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[T] Potential Solutions to Automine - Page 9

Forum Index > SC2 General
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EntSC
Profile Joined November 2008
47 Posts
November 18 2008 15:57 GMT
#161
On November 18 2008 22:51 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Ok, I have a few problems with most of these ideas, but I'm not sure how to put my objections into words.. I'll try though.

1) Passive vs Active
The benefits of handling your SCVs well without automining is sort of passive, if you are effecient, you get an advantage.
The benefits of many of the mechanics suggested here are active; click this button and you'll get an advantage.


Hey FA

I just wondered why you feel that managing SCVs in SC1 without automine is passive? You actively have to tell your SCVs to move to each mineral patch and mine (potentially cloning them to ensure mining efficiency). This has to be done multiple times (as you produce more and more strings of SCVs).

I think crystal realignment echoes this mechanic, because you need to periodically realign the crystals in much the same way as you would periodically tell SCVs to go to each mineral patch in Starcraft at present.

Cheers

Ent
Liquid`Jinro
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
Sweden33719 Posts
November 18 2008 16:20 GMT
#162
I don't know if passive is the right word, but basically it's the opposite of the ACTIVE abilities that have been proposed.

IE with manual mining being more efficient is just.. more efficient. With the movement speed boost, you get an ingame boost to your units for clicking. I dunno, I'm not sure I'm explaining I'm epxlaining things that well, but it makes sense to me.
Moderatortell the guy that interplanatar interaction is pivotal to terrans variety of optionitudals in the pre-midgame preperatories as well as the protosstinal deterriggation of elite zergling strikes - Stimey n | Formerly FrozenArbiter
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 16:43:58
November 18 2008 16:34 GMT
#163
On November 18 2008 22:51 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Ok, I have a few problems with most of these ideas, but I'm not sure how to put my objections into words.. I'll try though.

1) Passive vs Active
The benefits of handling your SCVs well without automining is sort of passive, if you are effecient, you get an advantage.
The benefits of many of the mechanics suggested here are active; click this button and you'll get an advantage.

I feel the active-type mechanics are pure arcade game features and I'm not comfortable with them being in an RTS game..

2) Trade-off
There is none. Pretty much all of the mechanics suggested you'd want to be on 100% of the time. You are not making a decision really, since there are no negative effects of using them.
It could be argued that the decision lies in wether or not to do something else or perform these economy boosting actions.. But I don't think this is ideal.

I don't think the idea of new mechanics to make up for ones lost is bad tho, and instead of just complaining I'm gonna post an idea of my own.

Mining Efficiency (needs a better name ^^)

Similiar to -orb-'s (I think it was -orb-, I'm sorry if I'm mistaken) suggestion that workers be given a one time/high cooldown speed boost ability, and borrowing from maybenexttime's gas idea, I think being able to set your workers to various efficiency modes would be interesting.

Mode 1:
5 minerals per trip. Normal speed.

Mode 2:
7 minerals gained per trip, but the mineral patch loses 10 (or whatever number ends up being balanced), normal speed.
An alternative to this could be the worker moving faster in mode 2, only returning 5, and the patch losing 7.

Now, these are just the first two ideas for modes I could come up with, there might be others. I think that not only does this type of mechanic have a higher chance of being impleneted, but it's gonna offer a lot of strategical options.

If it ends up working out in such a way that you'd want to use only one mode most of the time, things could be tweaked, or (but I find this an unattractive solution for similiar reasons I dislike most of the other ideas so far) you could have the worker start in a mode opposite to what is generally prefered.

EDIT: A more elegant solution would be to balance things in such a way that mode #2 is most effecient for part of the game (ie say your first 2 or 3 expansions) and then mode #1 (the starting mode) being more desireable due to the great number of mining bases you are at (ie your economy is stronger than you need it to be, so conserving minerals is fine).

Good idea? Bad idea?


I honestly agree with you.
I really want to put focus on this:

I feel the active-type mechanics are pure arcade game features and I'm not comfortable with them being in an RTS game..

I´d say it´s slightly more complex. It´s less about active vs. passive but one vs. 2 or more "dimensional". With at LEAST 1 Dimension being the other player(s).

To be a competative feature it needs to be judged in context of the current game. The mining mechanic is truly onedimensional and consistent independently if you are playing against Human or Computer, fastest or slowest, Zerg or Terran... In fact it´s so onedimensional that it´s really really simple to optimize it by automisation. IMHO the stuff that shouldn´t be automated is the stuff a human would be able to do better.

Build orders are one example since they vary greatly depending on a multitude of factors, majorly the own race but also the opponents race, build order, income situation, etc...
Of course you can look up some BO´s but the best players are able to adjust their BO´s depending on each individual game.
All these factors mean that it´s a highly scalable sucsess factor that would be impossible to automate and even hard to rank (which player has the consistently best BO´s throughout the whole game?)



Edit:
On November 19 2008 01:20 FrozenArbiter wrote:
I don't know if passive is the right word, but basically it's the opposite of the ACTIVE abilities that have been proposed.

IE with manual mining being more efficient is just.. more efficient. With the movement speed boost, you get an ingame boost to your units for clicking. I dunno, I'm not sure I'm explaining I'm epxlaining things that well, but it makes sense to me.


As mentioned above I´d say that Active and Passive are the wrong words. More reasonable would be: In context of the current match and not in context of the current match.
There are factors in maximising minerals that are affected by the opponent - but none of these touch manual vs. automining.
Peon protection, expansion timing, etc... are, even in SC:BW, a lot more gamedeciding than the time peons spend sitting around. I honestly NEVER saw even ONE serious match that was decided by forgetfullness regarding mineral mining (which happens but never makes a REAL difference).
The main argument against Automining is that it reduces skill differination - but I don´t see any in Manual Mining.
EntSC
Profile Joined November 2008
47 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 16:36:10
November 18 2008 16:35 GMT
#164
On November 19 2008 01:20 FrozenArbiter wrote:
I don't know if passive is the right word, but basically it's the opposite of the ACTIVE abilities that have been proposed.

IE with manual mining being more efficient is just.. more efficient. With the movement speed boost, you get an ingame boost to your units for clicking. I dunno, I'm not sure I'm explaining I'm epxlaining things that well, but it makes sense to me.



I think I see what you mean, but it depends on your perspective. If we run automine and crystal realignment in parallel within the remit of your argument then I think it can depend on your definition.

I would present it like this:

Default state without automine is SCVs are produced and do not mine. Player has to tell them to gather minerals and he receives income as a result.

Default state with automine is SCVs are produced and gather automatically.

Default state with automine and crystal realignment is crystals are unaligned (as non-gathering SCVs). Player must select the crystals and perform an action (similar in my mind to a player instructing the SCVs to gather minerals). Crystals move out of alignment over time as they are mined. This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals.

That's my interpretation of the mechanic - don't know if I wasn't clear or if you still have reservations!

Cheers

Ent
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
November 18 2008 16:49 GMT
#165
On November 19 2008 01:35 EntSC wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 19 2008 01:20 FrozenArbiter wrote:
I don't know if passive is the right word, but basically it's the opposite of the ACTIVE abilities that have been proposed.

IE with manual mining being more efficient is just.. more efficient. With the movement speed boost, you get an ingame boost to your units for clicking. I dunno, I'm not sure I'm explaining I'm epxlaining things that well, but it makes sense to me.



I think I see what you mean, but it depends on your perspective. If we run automine and crystal realignment in parallel within the remit of your argument then I think it can depend on your definition.

I would present it like this:

Default state without automine is SCVs are produced and do not mine. Player has to tell them to gather minerals and he receives income as a result.

Default state with automine is SCVs are produced and gather automatically.

Default state with automine and crystal realignment is crystals are unaligned (as non-gathering SCVs). Player must select the crystals and perform an action (similar in my mind to a player instructing the SCVs to gather minerals). Crystals move out of alignment over time as they are mined. This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals.

That's my interpretation of the mechanic - don't know if I wasn't clear or if you still have reservations!

Cheers

Ent


My problem with your direct mechanic is that it just "shifts" the mechanic, you explain it quite well yourself: "This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals."

I´d like a reason NOT to "align the crystals". Why not make them "targettable" while aligned so that you would be more vulnerable to enemy raids as "payment" for the increased income.
EntSC
Profile Joined November 2008
47 Posts
November 18 2008 17:09 GMT
#166
On November 19 2008 01:49 Unentschieden wrote:

My problem with your direct mechanic is that it just "shifts" the mechanic, you explain it quite well yourself: "This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals."

I´d like a reason NOT to "align the crystals". Why not make them "targettable" while aligned so that you would be more vulnerable to enemy raids as "payment" for the increased income.


Ahhh, I see what you mean. My intention though was to develop a mechanic that provided macro in the absence of automine. Without automine SCVs just stand still. We're talking about players moving back to their bases with the specific intention of telling their SCVs to gather; telling SCVs to construct buildings (or perform other actions) is a different mechanic, so the choice is to go back to your base and tell your SCVs to gather, or don't.

There's no advantage in not telling them to gather (apart from the time saving, but we haven't raised that as an argument because the time saving is naturally present with any mechanic that increases macro). So from my perspective crystal alignment is a good solution to the problem of automine because of the parallels with macro in SC1.

If, however, you are talking about coming up with an improved mechanic that doesn't parallel macro in SC1, then I completely take your points about a disadvantage associated with crystal realignment. My intention was just to replace macro in a format acceptable to the casual and competitive gamer with a graphical display that is interesting for spectators.
-orb-
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
United States5770 Posts
November 18 2008 17:11 GMT
#167
EntSC, I actually have grown to love your suggestion.

I'm still not sure I fully understand the mechanic of what the player actually needs to do to re-align the minerals (and I think it's open to suggestions as to the actions that need to be done on it), but I really like the idea.

At first I thought it was too complicated, but after you expanded on the idea it seems to me it provides exactly what we need. The only potential problem I see with it is that it's the same with all three races. One of the truly fantastic things about brood war is how each race does pretty much everything differently. This is one of the reason I was so gung-ho about the scv stim/probe afterburner/drone adrenal boost ideas, since it provides that difference between the races which makes starcraft so interesting to play.

Maybe something could be incorporated into your idea to make it different for each race?
'life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery'
how sad that sc2 has no shield battery :(
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
November 18 2008 17:38 GMT
#168
On November 19 2008 02:09 EntSC wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 19 2008 01:49 Unentschieden wrote:

My problem with your direct mechanic is that it just "shifts" the mechanic, you explain it quite well yourself: "This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals."

I´d like a reason NOT to "align the crystals". Why not make them "targettable" while aligned so that you would be more vulnerable to enemy raids as "payment" for the increased income.


Ahhh, I see what you mean. My intention though was to develop a mechanic that provided macro in the absence of automine. Without automine SCVs just stand still. We're talking about players moving back to their bases with the specific intention of telling their SCVs to gather; telling SCVs to construct buildings (or perform other actions) is a different mechanic, so the choice is to go back to your base and tell your SCVs to gather, or don't.

There's no advantage in not telling them to gather (apart from the time saving, but we haven't raised that as an argument because the time saving is naturally present with any mechanic that increases macro). So from my perspective crystal alignment is a good solution to the problem of automine because of the parallels with macro in SC1.

If, however, you are talking about coming up with an improved mechanic that doesn't parallel macro in SC1, then I completely take your points about a disadvantage associated with crystal realignment. My intention was just to replace macro in a format acceptable to the casual and competitive gamer with a graphical display that is interesting for spectators.



Well you are right, I would like a improved version of Macro compared to SC:BW. As mentioned before I think it´s too onedimensional. Anyone can perfect Manualmining very quicly - most confuse it a bit with Multitasking.

You should try to REPLACE the mechanic, not to REPEAT it in different colours. Right now I see:
Old: No income vs. income
Yours: Low income vs. High income
Mine: Low income low risk vs. High income high risk
See.Blue
Profile Blog Joined October 2008
United States2673 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 17:51:14
November 18 2008 17:50 GMT
#169
I would tweak it to make the speed boost a one-time thing. This way, peon spawns, works slowly until ordered manually to mineral patch at which point it becomes fully productive for its lifespan. This would only work if there is one order/peasant selected (ie keep cloning). This would be the most like SC1, you build then you order to mineral line. This also solves potential abuses about sitting in your base and mineralcrafting to hyper econonmy
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
November 18 2008 17:57 GMT
#170
On November 19 2008 02:50 See.Blue wrote:
I would tweak it to make the speed boost a one-time thing. This way, peon spawns, works slowly until ordered manually to mineral patch at which point it becomes fully productive for its lifespan. This would only work if there is one order/peasant selected (ie keep cloning). This would be the most like SC1, you build then you order to mineral line. This also solves potential abuses about sitting in your base and mineralcrafting to hyper econonmy


But it doesn´t create alternatives.
EntSC
Profile Joined November 2008
47 Posts
November 18 2008 17:59 GMT
#171
On November 19 2008 02:11 -orb- wrote:
EntSC, I actually have grown to love your suggestion.

I'm still not sure I fully understand the mechanic of what the player actually needs to do to re-align the minerals (and I think it's open to suggestions as to the actions that need to be done on it), but I really like the idea.

At first I thought it was too complicated, but after you expanded on the idea it seems to me it provides exactly what we need. The only potential problem I see with it is that it's the same with all three races. One of the truly fantastic things about brood war is how each race does pretty much everything differently. This is one of the reason I was so gung-ho about the scv stim/probe afterburner/drone adrenal boost ideas, since it provides that difference between the races which makes starcraft so interesting to play.

Maybe something could be incorporated into your idea to make it different for each race?


Hey Orb, I'm really pleased you like it! The original suggestion was a metagame idea that would require a degree of skill to perform quickly (e.g. dragging an arrow around to face the CC whilst it was pulsing, and match it up with an existing arrow). However, it was suggested that this was too complicated, so I reduced it to just a hotkey / button click. I think one of the benefits is its simplicity, and with the crystal glow, it will be easy to see which progamers have effectively aligned the crystals.

Perhaps to make it more interesting, whilst retaining the simplicity of the mechanic, the crystals could dealign twice. When aligned, they could glow and be worth 6 per trip, when dealigned once they would be worth 5 and twice they would be worth 4. The crystals could appear dimmer each time which would produce a nice graphical display of macro ability. I think this additional complication would be a question for balance as 6 down to 4 is a significant reduction in gather rate.

Another idea I just had was superficial differentiation by making it contingent on a technology, but on reflection I don't think it's a good idea to proscribe certain build orders. I also think it should be available from the beginning of the game. It parallels the lack of automining in SC quite well because all races have to move their SCVs/probes/drones to the mineral line in the same way, but I completely agree with you that differentiation would be preferable if a balanced interesting solution could be found.

Unentschieden: I see where you're coming from now, so I just think we differ on the objectives.
See.Blue
Profile Blog Joined October 2008
United States2673 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 18:07:33
November 18 2008 18:06 GMT
#172
@Unentschieden

Yes but alternatives aren't always better. I'd love to see SC2 improve upon the model of 1 but in this respect, I think parsimony is critical. Mining is inherently a simple mechanic. A lot of the previous suggestions suggest fundamental changes to how mining works but they are neither intuitive nor do they, while being interesting, (and this is just my opinion) really enhance the gameplay in any real way. Yes they are alternatives but if it isn't broken, don't fix it. I put down my idea just because that will more or less mean breaking even click per click-wise with SC1 which should help uphold the skill differential without adding an complex and somewhat contrived system into the game. If you want macro reform the place to look (and I think Blizz is going in the right direction here) is with production queues with reactors/warpgates.
Savio
Profile Joined April 2008
United States1850 Posts
November 18 2008 18:29 GMT
#173
On November 18 2008 14:17 Cres wrote:


Savio: Rally point becomes useless, and in a pro-gaming situation, I would rather see the players focus on battles that need their attention than switch back to base and make sure reinforcements arrive in time. You can say that takes skill, but would you choose between reinforcements on time or saving a few units with micro? Slower movement for workers on auto-mine is nice, but perhaps only for the first minute of mining.


Not true as a blanket statement. It is subject to balance and beta testing. My idea of it would be that if you rallied soldiers across the entire map, they would arrive maybe 1 or 2 seconds later than those ordered to go. Not enough the decide the outcome of low skill matches (which are decided more by things like 1 person not expanding or bad build orders or not using all your minerals), but it would only make a difference at the pro level.

Pros are so good that tiny changes can give them the slight advantage they need. So the outcome is that the pros would choose to play SC2 just like the did with SC1--with no automine. We know they can do it and that its fun to watch because that's the way SC1 is.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
bp1696
Profile Blog Joined February 2007
United States288 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 19:08:23
November 18 2008 18:59 GMT
#174
The speed boost thing sounds pretty good to me, but here's another variation on it. I didn't read through all nine pages of this thread, so bear with me if this repeats some stuff:

WORKER MANAGEMENT

Someone earlier posted an idea about the workers getting debuffs, where in essence their mining rate per minute gets decreased because of tools getting weaker/worn out/whatever. This seems like a completely plausible (lore-wise) solution and would allow for competitive play whereby there's a separate building where you send workers to get their drills fixed, so to speak.

In terms of game mechanics, you could basically have the amount of minerals returned by NEW workers = 6 (or 8, i forget the number in the current build), then decrease every minute/two minutes until it bottoms out at 3 per trip to the mineral patch.

The nice part about this mechanic versus the speed boost mechanic is that this slightly hinders players with lots of bases and lots of workers. As someone else also said in one of the MBS threads, there should be a NEGATIVE to having tons of bases and tons of workers. In BW, the negative is that you have to pay attention to more workers that pop out. Here, it could be that you have to pay attention to more workers not working at optimal efficiency.

Heck, we could have both mechanisms in play, with both the speed boost and the workers efficiency decreasing over time. Why not make workers a strategic focus for competitive play?

Thoughts?

EDIT: Also, there's more complexity to this than just HIGHLIGHT ALL WORKERS, CLICK SPEED UP/FIX THINGS BUTTON. At different points in the game, different workers will be at different levels of efficiency, so you can't just blanket tell all workers to go fix themselves. Also, you could have a minor cost for the fixing of each worker (like 5min/worker or something)

Example of 3 levels of players: Completely Casual, Amateur, Progamer -

Completely Casual - Never tells his workers to fix themselves. Beginning of the game, not a big deal and can still play against the amateur macro-wise. Mid-late game, this is a big deal and the casual player will fall behind.

Amateur - Sometimes tells his workers to fix themselves. The amateur would basically wait until all or most of his workers at each base are at low efficiency and then tell them all to go fix themselves. This would allow him MID-level mining efficiency and would work very well against the casual player, but not against the progamer level.

Perfect Progamer - Tells every worker individually to fix themselves at the optimal time (depending on build order, timing, etc). Thus, the perfect progamer would always be at maximal mining efficiency. In this mode, professional play is EVEN HARDER than in current starcraft, because they would have to spend even more time on macro than currently to achieve the perfect balance. However, because no one could be expected to do every single worker perfectly for a 40-min match, there will be a balance trade-off between the amount of time devoted to worker management and army micro/macro.
Sleep is for the fishes
Savio
Profile Joined April 2008
United States1850 Posts
November 18 2008 19:06 GMT
#175
Regarding FA's idea that he posted about fast mining with an efficiency loss.

I LIKE it.

Actually that is a very interesting idea. I think that the normal mining should be the most efficient overall (obviously it is since you are not losing any minerals), but your idea would allow a player to choose to lose some minerals in exchange for a fast boost to you economy perhaps preparing for a speed rush or a timed push or just cause he needs to fast minerals NOW.

After the emergency situation is over, people would turn off the fast mining because losing 2 minerals for every 7 you mine is a significant loss.

I really like it.

Any of the ideas on the thread, including this one, I think would make the macro aspect of the game more interesting
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
DrainX
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
Sweden3187 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 19:33:12
November 18 2008 19:26 GMT
#176
I kind of like the mineral realigning idea. However doesn't it implicate that the minerals are owned by you if you can click them and then use some action as if they were a unit? Also that feels a bit strange to me :e I would like it more if the minerals were realigned by just attacking the mineral once. Then the only new part that would have to be added to the game would be the minerals glowing when not aligned. I still feel this idea is kind of artificial though. It doesn't feel natural at all But I guess its better than keeping it the way it is.

Maybe adding this as a feature only to the golden minerals would be ok, since they are already a new addition to the game so it wouldn't really be changing anything or adding something that is too unintuitive. They already have exceptions to the rules so to say.

On November 18 2008 22:51 FrozenArbiter wrote:

Mining Efficiency (needs a better name ^^)
+ Show Spoiler +

Similiar to -orb-'s (I think it was -orb-, I'm sorry if I'm mistaken) suggestion that workers be given a one time/high cooldown speed boost ability, and borrowing from maybenexttime's gas idea, I think being able to set your workers to various efficiency modes would be interesting.

Mode 1:
5 minerals per trip. Normal speed.

Mode 2:
7 minerals gained per trip, but the mineral patch loses 9 (or whatever number ends up being balanced), normal speed.
An alternative to this could be the worker moving faster in mode 2, only returning 5, and the patch losing 7.

Now, these are just the first two ideas for modes I could come up with, there might be others. I think that not only does this type of mechanic have a higher chance of being impleneted, but it's gonna offer a lot of strategical options.

If it ends up working out in such a way that you'd want to use only one mode most of the time, things could be tweaked, or (but I find this an unattractive solution for similiar reasons I dislike most of the other ideas so far) you could have the worker start in a mode opposite to what is generally prefered.

EDIT: A more elegant solution would be to balance things in such a way that mode #2 is most effecient for part of the game (ie say your first 2 or 3 expansions) and then mode #1 (the starting mode) being more desireable due to the great number of mining bases you are at (ie your economy is stronger than you need it to be, so conserving minerals is fine).

Good idea? Bad idea?


Now this I like I think the idea could be worked on more and maybe more modes added or something. But this is a really good basis for an idea. It would both add the need for multitasking on higher levels and have a strategic angle too it as well.

Early in the game you would probably need to turn the speed boost on to not fall behind economically. Once you have saturated your mineral lines you would want to go back and remove the speed boost since it wouldn't make any difference on a saturated line. When you expand and maynard half your workers to your expansion you might want to turn it back on. After you get reaver dropped and lose 2/3 of your workers you might want to turn it back on. Once you gain map control you might want to turn it on and take control of another few expansions. If you are playing a defensive strategy where you know you will have big problems taking more than three expansions before the late game. (Corsair/Reaver or something...) you might want to keep the speed boost off the entire game to save those mineral clutches. It would take a lot of balancing to make sure that both of the modes would be useful in different situations. Might have some implications on map making too :e
StarBrift
Profile Joined January 2008
Sweden1761 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-18 19:43:56
November 18 2008 19:38 GMT
#177
God people are so freaking disrespectful in this thread. I seriousy wish I could take away some of yours ability to communicate on the internet considering your extremely unpleasant responses to theory that someone put time and effort into bringing the community. Do you walk up to people in real life and tell them straight to their face that their opinions suck and aren't worth shit?

That being said I like the fundamentals of this theory. The whole point of individual selection seems a bit hard to balance and that might be the reason why this theory may not work in reality.

My suggestion:
If you would add this ability of speed increase to the command center and give it a 20-30 sec cooldown I think it could work. The ability would have to be limited in scalability imo to not make it too imbalanced. For an example it could give the speed boost to 10 scvs per command center. Imagine if you had 4 command centers in really late game and had to select them every 20-30 sec and press a button. It's not alot of effort but atleast you need multitasking to pull it off perfectly.

One big problem with this theory (including the one in the OP) is that if your bases are very well saturated you gain nothing from a speed boost (unless you boost gathering time itself) since there will allways be workers queued at patches.
LaughingTulkas
Profile Joined March 2008
United States1107 Posts
November 18 2008 20:04 GMT
#178
On November 19 2008 02:38 Unentschieden wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 19 2008 02:09 EntSC wrote:
On November 19 2008 01:49 Unentschieden wrote:

My problem with your direct mechanic is that it just "shifts" the mechanic, you explain it quite well yourself: "This is analogous to the production of SCVs: as you produce workers you must tell them to gather crystals; as you gather minerals in SC2 with AM, you must realign the crystals."

I´d like a reason NOT to "align the crystals". Why not make them "targettable" while aligned so that you would be more vulnerable to enemy raids as "payment" for the increased income.


Ahhh, I see what you mean. My intention though was to develop a mechanic that provided macro in the absence of automine. Without automine SCVs just stand still. We're talking about players moving back to their bases with the specific intention of telling their SCVs to gather; telling SCVs to construct buildings (or perform other actions) is a different mechanic, so the choice is to go back to your base and tell your SCVs to gather, or don't.

There's no advantage in not telling them to gather (apart from the time saving, but we haven't raised that as an argument because the time saving is naturally present with any mechanic that increases macro). So from my perspective crystal alignment is a good solution to the problem of automine because of the parallels with macro in SC1.

If, however, you are talking about coming up with an improved mechanic that doesn't parallel macro in SC1, then I completely take your points about a disadvantage associated with crystal realignment. My intention was just to replace macro in a format acceptable to the casual and competitive gamer with a graphical display that is interesting for spectators.



Well you are right, I would like a improved version of Macro compared to SC:BW. As mentioned before I think it´s too onedimensional. Anyone can perfect Manualmining very quicly - most confuse it a bit with Multitasking.

You should try to REPLACE the mechanic, not to REPEAT it in different colours. Right now I see:
Old: No income vs. income
Yours: Low income vs. High income
Mine: Low income low risk vs. High income high risk


Am I mistaken, or is not the "risk" involved with Ent's idea the fact that you have to leave your army unattended in order to increase your mining speed? Is this not exactly what was desired by the OP and by competitive gamers in general? You need the distraction in order to make battles more exciting, and to make it a strategic decision "Can I win this battle without perfect micro? If not, will I be able to recover my lost units through superior economy? If not, how much will my economy be hurt if I have to spend all my attention at my army's location and how will that affect my building and unit production?"

It seems to me there is plenty of risk involved with going back to adjust your minerals, and that the suggestion (or one similar in design and execution) is something just like what the doctor ordered. A simple, easy to see mechanic that gives the player another decision to make.

NOT simply more "clicks"
NOT simply a "reward" or a "penalty"
BUT INSTEAD, another strategic decision.

THAT'S the sort of thing I think most of us want.
"I love noobies, they're so happy." -Chill
SaharaDrac
Profile Joined May 2008
United States76 Posts
November 18 2008 20:26 GMT
#179
I still think my "5 second motivation window" idea is a good one.
We are Venom
Ki_Do
Profile Blog Joined July 2008
Korea (South)981 Posts
November 18 2008 20:26 GMT
#180
I think this discussion is searching for a thing that is pretty obvious to do and that will make better players benefit from this like manually sending your peons to mine.
Thats why the passive/active words came into it, but really those obvious things are just the same things blizzard wants to automatizate, if we find some now, it will disappear in sc3, my thesis that we are lost is right again.
So I believe we need to add things like the gas mechanics or potential solutions to automine from a lore standpoint first, and then into mechanics for it never become surreal or utopic
I've got a point, and i'm ready to kill or die for it.
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