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On November 20 2014 04:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:04 Hider wrote:So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: What makes you think the only difference will be related to taking additional bases? I would expect expect that the biggest difference is that protoss will stay much longer on 2/3-bases, which either could be bad or good. If it just makes it easier for them to turtle --> bad. But if it makes it easier for them to be aggressive out on the map without being completlely all-in --> Good. How does Protoss making less income on 3bases compared to now make them more aggressive without being as all-in?
Eh, we were talking about the BW economy, where the immobile race is more likely to stay on fewer bases relative to the SC2 economy. The reason he isn't all in is that the economic discrepencacy between a 2base toss and a 3base terran/zerg is lower in a BW-economy than in a Sc2-economy.
If you stay for a long time on 3 base, then it's kinda assumed that a big part of your main will be mined out as well, and in this situaton, you are effectively on a 2-2½ base with lots of workers, where the BW economy is also advantageous.
Moreover, the BW balance will be balanced around the immobile race being somewhat more cost-efficient, and therefore a toss with 2*30 workers will be able to combat a zerg with 4*20 workers (despite generating lower income).
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On November 20 2014 04:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:04 Hider wrote:So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: What makes you think the only difference will be related to taking additional bases? I would expect expect that the biggest difference is that protoss will stay much longer on 2/3-bases, which either could be bad or good. If it just makes it easier for them to turtle --> bad. But if it makes it easier for them to be aggressive out on the map without being completlely all-in --> Good. How does Protoss making less income on 3bases compared to now make them more aggressive without being as all-in?
All players will be subjected to the same changes in income; the difference is more mobile army compositions (e.g. bio, Zerg in general) will actively want additional bases to exceed the mineral income of the Protoss (there's currently no expansion incentive aside from gas, until bases start mining out). These additional bases create more points of aggressive opportunity that the Protoss can exploit through harassment, which is exactly the stated goal Blizzard has for making the game more action-oriented with their economy changes.
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Is LotV in beta currently? When I see statements like "No LOTV action starts slower because you are forced to take bases superfast which means you can't afford to invest the same amount into army units" it seems to be talking in definites rather tha typical theorycrafting waffle where we still are very unsure to how things will play out.
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On November 20 2014 04:15 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 20 2014 04:04 Hider wrote:So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: What makes you think the only difference will be related to taking additional bases? I would expect expect that the biggest difference is that protoss will stay much longer on 2/3-bases, which either could be bad or good. If it just makes it easier for them to turtle --> bad. But if it makes it easier for them to be aggressive out on the map without being completlely all-in --> Good. How does Protoss making less income on 3bases compared to now make them more aggressive without being as all-in? Eh, we were talking about the BW economy, where the immobile race is more likely to stay on fewer bases relative to the SC2 economy. The reason he isn't all in is that the economic discrepencacy between a 2base toss and a 3base terran/zerg is lower in a BW-economy than in Sc2-economy.
Current Econ allows players to max out income at 3 based. 3 base toss now will have more than 3base BW Econ. 2 base Econ Protoss has even less than a 2 base toss now, he will be more all in as a 3 base vs 2 base discrepancy is much more emphasized in the BW system.
Protoss becomes more all in and forced to turtle more.
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On November 20 2014 04:20 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:15 Hider wrote:On November 20 2014 04:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 20 2014 04:04 Hider wrote:So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: What makes you think the only difference will be related to taking additional bases? I would expect expect that the biggest difference is that protoss will stay much longer on 2/3-bases, which either could be bad or good. If it just makes it easier for them to turtle --> bad. But if it makes it easier for them to be aggressive out on the map without being completlely all-in --> Good. How does Protoss making less income on 3bases compared to now make them more aggressive without being as all-in? Eh, we were talking about the BW economy, where the immobile race is more likely to stay on fewer bases relative to the SC2 economy. The reason he isn't all in is that the economic discrepencacy between a 2base toss and a 3base terran/zerg is lower in a BW-economy than in Sc2-economy. Current Econ allows players to max out income at 3 based. 3 base toss now will have more than 3base BW Econ. 2 base Econ Protoss has even less than a 2 base toss now, he will be more all in as a 3 base vs 2 base discrepancy is much more emphasized in the BW system. Protoss becomes more all in and forced to turtle more.
Please stop making blatantly false statements. We have over a decade of professional BW to show that what you're saying is completely wrong. This thread is supposed to be a discussion about what we'd like to see Blizzard do with the economy (and saying LotV Alpha's implementation is best is a perfectly legitimate stance, as well). However, it feels like the past few pages have been numerous people -- including myself -- having to debunk your nonsense.
If you're not going to contribute to a productive discussion, then I ask you don't post in this thread.
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On November 20 2014 04:20 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:15 Hider wrote:On November 20 2014 04:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:On November 20 2014 04:04 Hider wrote:So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: What makes you think the only difference will be related to taking additional bases? I would expect expect that the biggest difference is that protoss will stay much longer on 2/3-bases, which either could be bad or good. If it just makes it easier for them to turtle --> bad. But if it makes it easier for them to be aggressive out on the map without being completlely all-in --> Good. How does Protoss making less income on 3bases compared to now make them more aggressive without being as all-in? Eh, we were talking about the BW economy, where the immobile race is more likely to stay on fewer bases relative to the SC2 economy. The reason he isn't all in is that the economic discrepencacy between a 2base toss and a 3base terran/zerg is lower in a BW-economy than in Sc2-economy. Current Econ allows players to max out income at 3 based. 3 base toss now will have more than 3base BW Econ. 2 base Econ Protoss has even less than a 2 base toss now, he will be more all in as a 3 base vs 2 base discrepancy is much more emphasized in the BW system. Protoss becomes more all in and forced to turtle more.
I honestly don't really understand what your talking about here. I still get the feeling that you haven't properly read my previous responses, becasue your comments show a lack of understanding of the efffects of the BW economy. If you don't wanna read my explanations, then I suggest a different methodology. Do these two things:
(1) Observe/get some empirical data. You should quickly see BW, toss and and terran/immobile player stayed for much longer on fewer bases than in in Sc2.
(2) In order to understand why this is the case. Look at the math behind it. Pull up the excell sheet, and calculate the differences between 3 and 4 bases or 2 and 4 bases with various types of realistic worker count/active bases in all types of economies.
After you have done this properly, I am sure you will no longer look at the BW economy, the way you do now.
Is LotV in beta currently? When I see statements like "No LOTV action starts slower because you are forced to take bases superfast which means you can't afford to invest the same amount into army units" it seems to be talking in definites rather tha typical theorycrafting waffle where we still are very unsure to how things will play out.
It mostly comes down to math. With the current econ, you need to do x amount of damage if you opt for an aggressive opener that takes a late expo. If the punishment for taking a later expo increases, the amount of damage you need to do increases as well. So ceteris paribus, the effect of the LOTV-economy --> less early midgame action.
In reality, it's not completely ceteris paribus, becasue there is an offsetting effect in harass damage doing somewhat more damage if enemy takes bases faster as well. Which effect is the strongest depends on the situation, and I went into a more lenghty analysis of this previosuly, where I concluded that the net effect in the majorit of "realistic" situations" is less action.
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On November 20 2014 01:40 Hider wrote:
Disadvantage of BW economy:
- I think it will require "dumb" workers (but maybe there are other solutions here)
Cool post, but just to respond to this bit, I'm not sure it will require workers to be as dumb as they were in BW. Workers being dumb and drifting back and forth all the time was only part of why the economies worked they way they did. The other big part was the time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch was different than the time it took to return cargo and get back to the patch again.
In SC2, so far at least, that time has lined up, so you could efficiently with two workers per patch (roughly). Without changing the AI behavior, just changing mining time might replicate BW economy, to an extent. Then, anything above 1 worker per patch will yield diminishing returns, allowing use of more than 3 bases at a time (hopefully without having the bulk of your supply be workers :p).
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On November 20 2014 04:30 NrG.ZaM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 01:40 Hider wrote:
Disadvantage of BW economy:
- I think it will require "dumb" workers (but maybe there are other solutions here)
Cool post, but just to respond to this bit, I'm not sure it will require workers to be as dumb as they were in BW. Workers being dumb and drifting back and forth all the time was only part of why the economies worked they way they did. The other big part was the time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch was different than the time it took to return cargo and get back to the patch again. In SC2, so far at least, that time has lined up, so you could efficiently with two workers per patch (roughly). Without changing the AI behavior, just changing mining time might replicate BW economy, to an extent. Then, anything above 1 worker per patch will yield diminishing returns, allowing use of more than 3 bases at a time (hopefully without having the bulk of your supply be workers :p).
I suspect that this would be the best route to go if gradient income efficiency were to be implemented, and I believe is what Starbow does with their economy (though folks like decemberscalm would be best to verify).
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On November 20 2014 04:30 NrG.ZaM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 01:40 Hider wrote:
Disadvantage of BW economy:
- I think it will require "dumb" workers (but maybe there are other solutions here)
Cool post, but just to respond to this bit, I'm not sure it will require workers to be as dumb as they were in BW. Workers being dumb and drifting back and forth all the time was only part of why the economies worked they way they did. The other big part was the time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch was different than the time it took to return cargo and get back to the patch again. In SC2, so far at least, that time has lined up, so you could efficiently with two workers per patch (roughly). Without changing the AI behavior, just changing mining time might replicate BW economy, to an extent. Then, anything above 1 worker per patch will yield diminishing returns, allowing use of more than 3 bases at a time (hopefully without having the bulk of your supply be workers :p).
Well I know Starbow couldn't really find any other solution than to make workers a bit dumber.
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We’d really love to heavily test various, sometimes more extreme, ideas during the upcoming Beta.
Took that from David Kim's Blog about after Blizzcon's feedback on LotV
That's the most important thing to me, if they start the beta as they did on HotS I will be disappointed, they changed a lot but never tried something radical or crazy. If we (mostly high level players and pros) will be able to made them change their mind where it will be needed LotV will be great.
Anyways, good to read that they're collecting feedback, I think that all of this "LotV economy suck circlejerk" has done its work, probably they knew what we're talking about actually before BlizzCon and now they've changed something to fix those problems.. who knows
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On November 20 2014 04:34 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:30 NrG.ZaM wrote:On November 20 2014 01:40 Hider wrote:
Disadvantage of BW economy:
- I think it will require "dumb" workers (but maybe there are other solutions here)
Cool post, but just to respond to this bit, I'm not sure it will require workers to be as dumb as they were in BW. Workers being dumb and drifting back and forth all the time was only part of why the economies worked they way they did. The other big part was the time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch was different than the time it took to return cargo and get back to the patch again. In SC2, so far at least, that time has lined up, so you could efficiently with two workers per patch (roughly). Without changing the AI behavior, just changing mining time might replicate BW economy, to an extent. Then, anything above 1 worker per patch will yield diminishing returns, allowing use of more than 3 bases at a time (hopefully without having the bulk of your supply be workers :p). Well I know Starbow couldn't really find any other solution than to make workers a bit dumber.
What does that mean?
All you have to do is make the mining time longer than the travel time between a mineral notch and the command center (and back ofc)
Right now workers kinda wait a bit i guess, i guess you mean that?
I have no idea how long they really wait or if changing this would be bad at all?
"dumber" just sounds so negative :D
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On November 20 2014 05:08 FrozenProbe wrote:Show nested quote +We’d really love to heavily test various, sometimes more extreme, ideas during the upcoming Beta. Took that from David Kim's Blog about after Blizzcon's feedback on LotVThat's the most important thing to me, if they start the beta as they did on HotS I will be disappointed, they changed a lot but never tried something radical or crazy. If we (mostly high level players and pros) will be able to made them change their mind where it will be needed LotV will be great. Anyways, good to read that they're collecting feedback, I think that all of this "LotV economy suck circlejerk" has done its work, probably they knew what we're talking about actually before BlizzCon and now they've changed something to fix those problems.. who knows
I found that blog post quite intriguing; I'm curious to see how or if Blizzard is adjusting their approach to economy to achieve expansion incentive (which is basically what we all truly want).
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On November 20 2014 04:01 iamcaustic wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 20 2014 03:24 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 01:53 iamcaustic wrote:On November 20 2014 01:47 Grumbels wrote:Here are two example graphs for the ideal economy function according to the OP: 12Here are the values for Starcraft 2.  index.php?title=File:StarCraft II Zerg Harvesting Chart.jpg&filetimestamp=20100619133419&You can make an argument that the difference isn't noticeable enough for Blizzard to put in the effort to change it. Something like the mineral capacity is probably more strongly felt, even though it might also backfire. These are some fantastic visuals, thank you. One key thing to note, however, would be the more subtle differences between the graphs; the SC2 one shows a very linear growth up to 16 workers, while the examples for the OP have an efficiency curve at all parts. It's the first part of the graph that we care about, because no matter what system you're gonna have, you're likely to encounter a similar cap at the end. How the curve (vs. SC2's linear growth) affects gameplay is what's outlined in the OP. Well, look at an extreme example (picture taken from here): + Show Spoiler +Note that many practical situations will be less severe because: 1. you will have higher worker numbers 2. despite economic incentives there are defensive limitations on new expansions So in practice the difference won't be as noticeable and you have to question whether creating the incentives you speak of will be merely nice rather than essential, especially since there are already existing incentives to expand in Starcraft 2 that might already be sufficient: 1. higher efficiency/income (same as in BW though scaling starts later) 2. more gas income 3. existing expansions run out 4. access to macro functions of mains (building workers, macro mechanics) There are even incentives to continue investing into economy in SC2 while being contained on two bases: 1. replace workers lost due to harassment 2. access to more mules 3. building workers you plan to transfer later (this won't help you to break the contain but puts you in a better position once you do) And simple tuning changes (like the LotV economy) can have equally big effects to game flow in a practical sense. Actually, half of the complaints about the current SC2 economy are that you get too much income from three base, but there are a multitude of ways to effect change here. There are other solutions than the switch to BW economy, and your arguments just tell me that BW economy is perhaps (personally I agree with you) theoretically superior, not that it is necessary to switch to its model, or that this will be the smallest change with the most effect (Blizzard's words). Even that graphic demonstrates a 820 minerals/minute difference between equivalent workers on 3 and 6 bases. That's quite significant; it's ~120% the value of a fully saturated base's income in SC2. More than a full mining base's worth of income on the same number of workers, simply by having more bases to achieve higher efficiency numbers. That's pretty critical. Right now, a player with 6 bases doesn't earn any additional minerals compared to a 3 base player. Your only benefit is additional gas, which is only really useful for creating gas-heavy compositions. This is the crux of death balls; high-gas units are generally best in a large army, while mineral-focused units tend to be more mobile and/or harassment oriented. I talk about this in the OP: On November 09 2014 05:08 iamcaustic wrote:
Second, it meant a hard economic efficiency cap on 3 bases. This is by far the biggest complaint in the SC2 community. There’s simply no real incentive to take a 4th base until one of your other bases starts mining out, unless the game is so stale that you want to bank a huge amount of vespene and start converting your army to a gas-heavy death ball in the late game. A player wanting more bases generally desires mobility to cover a larger area, so it goes without saying that providing additional mineral benefit makes sense. The LotV Alpha tries to get players expanding in a different way: they run out of minerals much more quickly. The problems I find with that compared to gradient income efficiency are documented in the OP. You are right that there are going to be factors in the game that will impact how a game plays beyond the economic system itself (e.g. losing workers, macro mechanics, etc.) but the focus of this discussion is on the economic system and its role.
I'll highlight two parts:
"You are right that there are going to be factors in the game that will impact how a game plays beyond the economic system itself (e.g. losing workers, macro mechanics, etc.) but the focus of this discussion is on the economic system and its role."
The performance of the economic system can be measured both in isolation and in practical situations. I agree with your arguments that the BW system is superior on its own terms (albeit there are still some trade-offs), but you haven't shown that a switch will significantly improve the game in practical terms or that it's the superior solution when considering multiple ideas.
Case in point:
"That's pretty critical. Right now, a player with 6 bases doesn't earn any additional minerals compared to a 3 base player. Your only benefit is additional gas, which is only really useful for creating gas-heavy compositions."
This will never happen no matter if you introduce the BW economy. If you build six bases like that you'll simply die to terran drops or mutalisks or whatnot, you can never secure them and profit off them.
Different tuning on the current economy is obviously a much more attractive option for Blizzard and only when those options fail will they consider alternatives. Blizzard is strengthening harassment in LotV and if you merely provide a few more incentives to expand then players will refuse because of the inability to defend. By putting a clock on all bases they can more effectively force players to spread out and create the sort of gameplay Blizzard desires. The fact that this gameplay is horrible and that the game is suffering from severe powercreep is besides the point. Your suggestion can be an unfortunate case of "too little too late".
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Noticed some people arguing about which system is better for casuals. Here is Blizzard's Design Goals + Show Spoiler +More action
More opportunities to attack at any time, and a decrease in overall passive gameplay.
More harassment options
One of the core mechanisms Legacy of the Void aims to bring is consistent action. More harass opportunities should help distinguish players who can manage their units effectively due to the high skill-ceiling and micro requirements that harass demands.
Incentives to go on the offense
Spread players out more on the map and incentivize the use of mobile forces that can strike when there are openings (think low-risk Marine/Medivac drops).
Micro opportunities on both sides
Create more significant counter-micro opportunities and reduce the number of situations where one player’s ability to micro matters far more than their opponent's.
Army vs Army Micro
If micro doesn’t matter that much, battles are less interesting. Legacy of the Void aims to make micro much more important throughout a battle so that the results of a battle are more dependent on a player's ability to execute commands during combat.
Differentiate player skill better
Legacy of the Void will feature armies for all races that can split and become extremely effective. Armies that remain entirely together will find seriously decreased effectiveness.
Improve weaker design units/abilities
Units like the Corruptor and Battlecruiser will have more utility overall. Legacy of the Void will seek to ensure that units can always affect a battle in different and meaningful ways.
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@iamcaustic, I also want to add that the reasons for my last few posts are because your OP is specifically a call to action. If it was just game design discussion it would be different, but since you're dabbling in trying to lobby Blizzard to make changes I think it's important to look at 1. practical effect of changes and 2. practical chances of influencing Blizzard.
I know it reads a bit concern troll-ish, so I won't belabor the point.
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On November 20 2014 05:49 Grumbels wrote:
The performance of the economic system can be measured both in isolation and in practical situations. I agree with your arguments that the BW system is superior on its own terms (albeit there are still some trade-offs), but you haven't shown that a switch will significantly improve the game in practical terms or that it's the superior solution when considering multiple ideas.
If this were a discussion about how to make a good RTS overall, maybe I'd have a specific need to demonstrate (beyond what I've already done) how gradient income efficiency would make other aspects of the game better.
In case if you didn't notice, what you're requesting of me here is literally impossible to provide, because improving the game as a whole contains many more factors than economy; even a game with an excellent economy system can be a complete failure due to unit design, for example. Given that Blizzard's changes for units, abilities, etc. continues to be in flux, how am I supposed to account for that, and more importantly why should I when we're only focusing on the economic system and its benefits/flaws?
On November 20 2014 05:49 Grumbels wrote:
Case in point:
"That's pretty critical. Right now, a player with 6 bases doesn't earn any additional minerals compared to a 3 base player. Your only benefit is additional gas, which is only really useful for creating gas-heavy compositions."
This will never happen no matter if you introduce the BW economy. If you build six bases like that you'll simply die to terran drops or mutalisks or whatnot, you can never secure them and profit off them.
This is far beyond the scope of analyzing economy. Furthermore, your statement implies that Blizzard's attempts at economic changes will fail as well due to their unit designs. I'm putting in an assumed faith in Blizzard's design team that if the goal is to have players with more bases, then changes will be made to accommodate that. I'm not psychic though, so how am I supposed to factor in any such design changes beyond ignoring them under the assumption Blizzard fixes it?
On November 20 2014 05:49 Grumbels wrote:
Different tuning on the current economy is obviously a much more attractive option for Blizzard and only when those options fail will they consider alternatives. Blizzard is strengthening harassment in LotV and if you merely provide a few more incentives to expand then players will refuse because of the inability to defend. By putting a clock on all bases they can more effectively force players to spread out and create the sort of gameplay Blizzard desires. The fact that this gameplay is horrible and that the game is suffering from severe powercreep is besides the point. Your suggestion can be an unfortunate case of "too little too late".
Ultimately, you're trying to bring in a unit design discussion to an economy system discussion. They're two separate topics and, while they ultimately impact one another, do not need to be integrated when discussing only one. I'd appreciate it if we stayed on topic.
On November 20 2014 06:25 Grumbels wrote:
@iamcaustic, I also want to add that the reasons for my last few posts are because your OP is specifically a call to action. If it was just game design discussion it would be different, but since you're dabbling in trying to lobby Blizzard to make changes I think it's important to look at 1. practical effect of changes and 2. practical chances of influencing Blizzard.
I know it reads a bit concern troll-ish, so I won't belabor the point.
My OP is a concern post that Blizzard's economic implementation in the alpha wouldn't achieve the results they desire, a personal suggestion to achieve that result, and an open invitation for discussion. In particular:
On November 09 2014 05:08 iamcaustic wrote:
Discuss
I’d like to hear your thoughts about this: do you like/dislike the current SC2 economy? How do you feel about the changes currently introduced in LotV? Do you think gradient mining efficiency is a better solution or not, and why?
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On November 09 2014 05:08 iamcaustic wrote:
Brood War’s Economic Model
In the original game, worker mining efficiency was on a gradient scale (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/89939-ideal-mining-thoughts). What this means is the more saturated your base was, the less efficient its output. For example, 2 bases with 8 workers per base would mine more minerals than 1 base with 16 workers. What this did was provide a minor advantage to the player who expanded over someone sitting on lower base numbers. This is a clear incentive for players to expand without thoroughly punishing players who wanted to play an aggressive game and expand later.
One thing that isn't mentioned here is that workers in brood war were different. Probes had a faster acceleration than drones, and drones had a faster acceleration than SCVs, so even with identical worker count, mining rate between the races was different.
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On November 20 2014 09:06 b0lt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2014 05:08 iamcaustic wrote:
Brood War’s Economic Model
In the original game, worker mining efficiency was on a gradient scale (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/89939-ideal-mining-thoughts). What this means is the more saturated your base was, the less efficient its output. For example, 2 bases with 8 workers per base would mine more minerals than 1 base with 16 workers. What this did was provide a minor advantage to the player who expanded over someone sitting on lower base numbers. This is a clear incentive for players to expand without thoroughly punishing players who wanted to play an aggressive game and expand later.
One thing that isn't mentioned here is that workers in brood war were different. Probes had a faster acceleration than drones, and drones had a faster acceleration than SCVs, so even with identical worker count, mining rate between the races was different.
Pretty sure this has been tested, and prooved not true.
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On November 20 2014 05:22 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2014 04:34 Hider wrote:On November 20 2014 04:30 NrG.ZaM wrote:On November 20 2014 01:40 Hider wrote:
Disadvantage of BW economy:
- I think it will require "dumb" workers (but maybe there are other solutions here)
Cool post, but just to respond to this bit, I'm not sure it will require workers to be as dumb as they were in BW. Workers being dumb and drifting back and forth all the time was only part of why the economies worked they way they did. The other big part was the time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch was different than the time it took to return cargo and get back to the patch again. In SC2, so far at least, that time has lined up, so you could efficiently with two workers per patch (roughly). Without changing the AI behavior, just changing mining time might replicate BW economy, to an extent. Then, anything above 1 worker per patch will yield diminishing returns, allowing use of more than 3 bases at a time (hopefully without having the bulk of your supply be workers :p). Well I know Starbow couldn't really find any other solution than to make workers a bit dumber. What does that mean? All you have to do is make the mining time longer than the travel time between a mineral notch and the command center (and back ofc) Right now workers kinda wait a bit i guess, i guess you mean that? I have no idea how long they really wait or if changing this would be bad at all? "dumber" just sounds so negative :D
Yes and I think that was done by making workers dumber.
I guess by dumber I mean that they respond a bit worse when you move around with them. Not the end of the world, but I rather have my normal responsive workers if you can get the same type of gameplay with another approach.
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So I have a few questions for those looking for alternatives to the gradient style economy presented in the OP. Blizzard stated in their multiplayer update one of their goals was to allow
More Action
More opportunities to attack at any time, and a decrease in overall passive gameplay.
Their second design goal was
More harassment options
One of the core mechanisms Legacy of the Void aims to bring is consistent action. More harass opportunities should help distinguish players who can manage their units effectively due to the high skill-ceiling and micro requirements that harass demands.
so I'm assuming they do not count harassment in that first goal. This is specific to using an army to attack.
Wouldn't this mean that 1 and 2 base attacking styles must be viable ways of starting out a macro game?
If blizzard was content with the HOTS model of 1 or 2 base=all-in, 3 base= macro, then they wouldn't change the economy at all.
Isn't the forcing of players to expand going against this design principle? If yes, then why should we allow the forcing of players to expand rather than providing incentives?
What other economic style could achieve viability of 1, 2, and 3 base style game play?
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EPT
index.php?title=File:StarCraft II Zerg Harvesting Chart.jpg&filetimestamp=20100619133419&![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/56JZY.png)
