Macro has been a major discussion topic in the community for the last several months so here's a little contest we over at SC:L devised to see what people have come up with to solve the perceived problem. Check it out and submit your entries:
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Therefore, StarCraft: Legacy is proud to present the Macro Theorycrafting Contest. The challenge is to craft a creative mechanic, for any race, or all, that will surpass the current gas mechanic. Here is an example of such a mechanic. Multiple submissions are allowed.
The winner will receive an "I <3 SC" t-shirt. In addition, the top three winners will have their ideas sent directly to Dustin Browder's desk. The deadline is 3 weeks from now - January 6th. StarCraft: Legacy will select the cream of the crop from the submissions and the community will vote for the best mechanic. Email your submissions to macro@sclegacy.com.
Hey that's a great idea! But hmm after reading some posts on that thread you're talking about on blizzforums, it's starting to get confusing what really is micro and macro. Could you give us some ''official'' definitions for the contest so that no one start talking about something that's not completely the right thing?
Hey that's a great idea! But hmm after reading some posts on that thread you're talking about on blizzforums, it's starting to get confusing what really is micro and macro. Could you give us some ''official'' definitions for the contest so that no one start talking about something that's not completely the right thing?
Hey that's a great idea! But hmm after reading some posts on that thread you're talking about on blizzforums, it's starting to get confusing what really is micro and macro. Could you give us some ''official'' definitions for the contest so that no one start talking about something that's not completely the right thing?
Can we not get hung up on one god damned post, please? We get people here ALL the time asking what MBS is.
Why? Because if you've been busy not obsessing over SC2 for the past two years (unlike myself, ldo), you wont have a fucking clue what that obscure term means. It wasn't even an abbrevation before SC2 was announced.
how about this: you make it so that whenever someone wants to make a unit, they have to click on one of their production buildings and tell it to produce that unit.
On December 17 2008 15:42 IdrA wrote: oh hell yes im gonna win easy
how about this: you make it so that whenever someone wants to make a unit, they have to click on one of their production buildings and tell it to produce that unit.
genius?
Damn, I wish they had that in the original Starcraft, would have made the game so baller. I can't think of any way to improve macro besides just keeping it the same as Starcraft. :\
* The ideal mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
* The ideal mechanic should have both advantages and disadvantages.
* The ideal mechanic should not have a drastically negative effect for any player, whether for you, your teammate or an opponent and his teammate.
* The ideal mechanic should not discourage micro.
* The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features. <----- BOO!
* The ideal mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
* The ideal mechanic should not be forced upon a specific map or upon a certain type of player.
* The ideal mechanic's effect should not be random - its results must have definite results. * Preferably, the ideal mechanic will be dependent upon a player’s choices.
On December 17 2008 15:58 beefhamburger wrote: It says they only want solutions for the gas mechanic. Not for MBS or automine or any other gameplay feature.
Hmm that shouldn't be there - we're looking at ways to improve macro in the game. So I'll remove that only gas mechanic part. And the suggested criteria is just that - suggested so if you want to alter MBS or auto-mining be my guest. The issue isn't that we agree with the features but that its pretty much been decided that its going to be in the game so all the smart ass comments already accruing above help absolutely no one.
the perfect macro implementation would be more complicated than ordering your workers to work. it should involve tertiary resources, aoe spells, quaternary resources, fatigue, mana, mineral refineries, mineral refinery mechanics, arbitrary activation and deactivation of resources, stim packs, observers, speed upgrades, harvesting upgrades, harvesting speed upgrades, speed harvesting upgrades, speed packs, aoe harvesting, ranged mining, ranged mining upgrades, siege mode workers, and lasers.
Workers could recieve a small buff when they turn in minerals, the buff makes them return X amount extra gas on their next trip to the geiser. A similar buff could be given to increase mineral return after gas turn in.
There should be some visual representation of the buff, to make it easy to see.
You could play normally, and it wouldn't make any difference. But you can also micromanage your economy to ensure that you're collecting gas faster.
Circling workers from minerals to main building, to gas, to main building and so on wouldn't benefit from MBS or automine. Also, it forces you to move your attention to your base and actually focus on your economy to get any benefit.
It would be a constant thing which could be implemented into the rythm of the game.
The effect could easily be balanced by altering the amount of extra gas the worker gets collects on its next trip. If micromanaging the every return would be too much, the buff could work for more than one trip.
On December 17 2008 15:42 IdrA wrote: oh hell yes im gonna win easy
how about this: you make it so that whenever someone wants to make a unit, they have to click on one of their production buildings and tell it to produce that unit.
There is nothing that's going to please both sides.
There's nothing that gives rise to intense multitasking gameplay and is not 'tedious and boring'.
The problem isn't the macro mechanics of SC. The problem is that people want two opposite things, two very different games.
The reason SC2 has MBS and automining is not because they couldn't come up with some better macro mechanics. It's because they are moving the game in a different direction. Probably under pressure of the marketing department or out of sheer ignorance.
How it works: instead of building new buildings, you can opt to upgrade the ones you already have for less cost in order to enhance their effectiveness / abilities. An SCV has to be called to the building to upgrade it, and if the building is a production building it would be inoperable during this time.
Example: you have a supply depot. you want another, but are cheap. So instead of spending 100 for a depot, you upgrade your existing depot for some lower amount, say 75 to get the additional 10 supply. For barracks, upgrades could increase the production rate, for example, or maybe even increase the hp of units built, I dunno.
Benefits of this feature: encourages user to come back to his base and manage it, as you must manually order an SCV over to the target building to upgrade it. Encourages choice-making: do I upgrade one depot a lot and risk that the enemy snipes it somehow, or do I build many? Do I want to upgrade that barracks now -- how will that affect my timing attack? Finally, it feels relatively natural, especially for terran, compared to the gas mechanic. It lends itself well to graphical representation as well. Also, it's easily balanced: you can adjust the power of the upgrades, upgrade time, nature of the upgrades, amount of upgrades, upgrade cost, etc.
have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons.
its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs?
Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines.
In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes.
But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much.
If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me
On December 17 2008 23:24 hymn wrote: Idra, I think now MBS works like this:
Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines.
In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes.
But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much.
If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me
You are correct, that's how it works and I agree with you.
On December 17 2008 23:30 Ki_Do wrote: that is still stupid Hymn the problem is, return the screen to your base, with this new problem u still can macro anywhere in the map
Don't people do 5sz6sz7sz8sz9sz0sd? In SC they don't return to their base unless they have WAY more production buildings then hotkeys, and even then they just hotkey a location with F1-F4(or up to F6? idk...) and then just make units in a few seconds.
no hotkeys arent all used for production buildings, T or Z use lots of keys ok? and F keys are for guess waht, change screen to rally points or production buildings screens. can u hotkey 12 or more?
bonus
have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units
by Idra
And even if early game or low eco ppl can 5t6v, the workers wont mine alone in brood war, you still have to change screens a lot, dont forget that in star2 u can queue supply depots infinitely too without having to pay for it too.
I've updated the list of the necessary criteria a bit:
1) The ideal new macro mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
2) The ideal new macro mechanic should have direct strategical value.
3) The ideal new macro mechanic should create a wide skill gradient and allow players of different play styles to distinguish themselves.
4) The ideal new macro mechanic should give the player alternatives, both of which should have their advantages and disadvantages.
5) The ideal new macro mechanic should be dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices.
6) The ideal new macro mechanic should allow for UI features such as MBS and/or auto-mining to remain unchanged and not punish the players for using them.
7) The ideal new macro mechanic should not be mindless nor repetitive.
8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention sink in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making.
9) The ideal new macro mechanic's effects should not be random - its results must have definite results.
10) The ideal new macro mechanic should not force a specific map design or play style.
11) The ideal new macro mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
I'll be sending FA's/my solution (the Mineral Mechanic) tonight, hopefully. ;]
On December 17 2008 23:24 hymn wrote: Idra, I think now MBS works like this:
Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines.
In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes.
But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much.
If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me
that is how it works, and i just said the clicking is irrelevant. but thats what the newbies complain about because they dont understand the game well enough to see that the difficult part of macro is going back and doing everything at your base while everything else is going on, thats where the real multitasking and time management requirements lie. all they see is 'mindless clicking', so give them that but maintain the requirements that matter, by not letting you hotkey multiple buildings.
I haven't read all the discussions in each threads, and I am not a huge SC macro strategic mastermind, but I guess I will give it a shot and post a vague idea here. Hopefully it (or something similar has not been posted yet).
the basic idea would be the following: The gas refinaries would have different levels of quality. When you finish constructing your refinary the first time you build it, It can allow to mine let's say 6 gas at the time. After a certain amount of time or gas mined (or potentially both) the refinary drops in quality, allowing for the return of 4 gas / worker (or whatever the number that makes it balanced). After a while it could further drop to 2. Also, there could be another level above the starter, let's say 8 gas / worker. Now if you want to repair the refinary or upgrade it, you need to use workers outside the building to fix it, more workers can upgrade it faster, but it would be limited (like 1-4 workers can upgrade a refinary at the time).
This system is as flexible in tweaking as it gets, the developers can choose the different quality levels of the refinaries, the time (and potentially the resources, it could cost minerals to repair the refinary, but not neccessarily) it takes to upgrade a building, the time it takes for each race to increase the quality of the refinary etc.
Depending on the timings chosen, this could require the player different amount of multitasking, the faster the building degrades the more attention / APM it requires to maintain the gas mining.
This could also add trillions of strategical choices in build orders, especially early game; the different amount of workers sacrificed in maintaining the geysers would be sacrificed from mining minerals or doing other tasks. Since each race favours a different ratio of workers to army and mineral miners to gas miners (zergs come to mind mostly), it could be balanced for each race as Blizzard sees fit.
If they wanted the players to spare from the insane amount of multitasking lategame with multiply mining gases, they could add a late tech upgrade for refinaries that would to a certain degree maintain effective gas mining. They could still make it imperfect to reward very high APM multitasking monsters, or in case some late game scenario arises where the player is highly dependant on gas on fewer bases and would prefer manually ensure that the gas flow is perfect.
The idea is this in a nutshell. I sincerely hope it hasn't been posted by someone else (I am not trying to rip off anybody of his/her idea) and also that it doesn't sound like total bullshit. I believe it could use some tweaking, but it seems to fit into all the criterias listed above.
EDIT: Naturally, this woldn't effect the total amount of gas mineable from a geyser, it could still dry up after X thousand, it would simply fluently effect the speed of the gas mining
An example. You open 1 gate tech in pvz, starting with a standard refinary that mines 6 gas / worker. You scout your opponent, decide to go very fast HTs, so you quickly upgrade your refinary to 8 gas while sacrificing some early mineral mining time. Then you take an expo, start massing up a midgame army, you maintain both geysers at 6 gas / worker. Then you take a 2nd expo, and after spreading the right saturation on all 3 mineral fields you decide late game to go mass gas heavy army and upgrade all 3 refinaries to 8 gas and keep multitasking it to ensure the high gas income.
1) The ideal new macro mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
2) The ideal new macro mechanic should have direct strategical value.
3) The ideal new macro mechanic should create a wide skill gradient and allow players of different play styles to distinguish themselves.
4) The ideal new macro mechanic should have give the player alternatives, both of which should have their advantages and disadvantages.
5) The ideal new macro mechanic should be dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices.
6) The ideal new macro mechanic should allow for UI features such as MBS and/or auto-mining to remain unchanged and not punish the players for using them.
7) The ideal new macro mechanic should not be mindless nor repetitive.
8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro.
9) The ideal new macro mechanic's effects should not be random - its results must have definite results.
10) The ideal new macro mechanic should not force a specific map design or play style.
11) The ideal new macro mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
On December 17 2008 22:40 talismania wrote: Here's an idea for terran: building upgrades.
How it works: instead of building new buildings, you can opt to upgrade the ones you already have for less cost in order to enhance their effectiveness / abilities. An SCV has to be called to the building to upgrade it, and if the building is a production building it would be inoperable during this time.
Example: you have a supply depot. you want another, but are cheap. So instead of spending 100 for a depot, you upgrade your existing depot for some lower amount, say 75 to get the additional 10 supply. For barracks, upgrades could increase the production rate, for example, or maybe even increase the hp of units built, I dunno.
Benefits of this feature: encourages user to come back to his base and manage it, as you must manually order an SCV over to the target building to upgrade it. Encourages choice-making: do I upgrade one depot a lot and risk that the enemy snipes it somehow, or do I build many? Do I want to upgrade that barracks now -- how will that affect my timing attack? Finally, it feels relatively natural, especially for terran, compared to the gas mechanic. It lends itself well to graphical representation as well. Also, it's easily balanced: you can adjust the power of the upgrades, upgrade time, nature of the upgrades, amount of upgrades, upgrade cost, etc.
Interesting take on upgrading buildings. Can I make some suggestions? Have you considered moving this over to zerg. They are the race that upgrades buildings. Also, I like were your going with tweaking production parameters.Why not also give the upgraded zerg buildings some special abilities that they can use. Activating the special abilities would require macro oriented tasks. The special abilities would have cool effects to agument the swarm.
1) The ideal new macro mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
2) The ideal new macro mechanic should have direct strategical value.
3) The ideal new macro mechanic should create a wide skill gradient and allow players of different play styles to distinguish themselves.
4) The ideal new macro mechanic should have give the player alternatives, both of which should have their advantages and disadvantages.
5) The ideal new macro mechanic should be dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices.
6) The ideal new macro mechanic should allow for UI features such as MBS and/or auto-mining to remain unchanged and not punish the players for using them.
7) The ideal new macro mechanic should not be mindless nor repetitive.
8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro.
9) The ideal new macro mechanic's effects should not be random - its results must have definite results.
10) The ideal new macro mechanic should not force a specific map design or play style.
11) The ideal new macro mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
12) Macro mechanic must be fun.
I think the idea of 'fun' is way too subjective to objectively mean something in terms of rules people designing the new mechanic can abide to.
I think that its being "not be mindless nor repetitive," "having direct strategical value" and "being dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices" ensures that the mechanic is more or less 'fun.'
I'll reply to your post in the other thread soon, by the way. Haven't had time lately. ;]
I agree that fun is a subjective term. Never the less we can usually all agree what fun is just by looking at it.
That being said I have a reason why I wanted to include that as one of your “12 commandments for macro thesis”. I believe that all too often new macro theorycrafters forget the WOW factor when creating there proposals. The WOW factor is what excites you to use the mechanic. It’s the tag line we put on the back of the Starcraft 2 box to get people to buy it. To demonstrate the WOW factor I am going to describe Warp-In in two different ways.
Warp-In without WOW factor With this ability a player can upgrade his building. The player loses the ability to queue units. The player also loses the ability to create a unit with hotkeys alone or MBS. When the player wants to create a unit they must order the unit. Following this they must move there vision to where they want the unit to go and then they must click the place they want the unit to be created in. They must do this for every single unit they want to make. They can only create a unit in a certain radius of supply buildings.
Warp-In with WOW factor This ability allows the protoss player to Warp-In units onto anywhere on the battlefield that has pylon power. . You can use phase Prisms to infiltrate behind an enemy base and warp your units from Aiur directly onto his mineral line. You can keep a large reserve ready for what ever expansion is attacked. The more warp gates you have the more mobile reserves you have ready to lay down on an enemy force. Try warping in units behind an attacking army to seal them off. Warping units is faster then regular production of units. Also, Warping units are accompanied by a splashy visual indicator that looks like something out of a cool sci fi flick.
8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro.
I generally agree with the rest but that one irks me for several reasons. First of all it´s longer than 2 lines which already is a bad sign (KISS).
2nd, why is a APM/attention sink a good thing? If we look closely - APM isn´t actually decreased all that much for example with automine you loose 1 Action per Peon - the rest stays even with the new system.
Attention doesn´t change since it doesn´t depend on keystrokes but desicions, in fact you are faster if you do it WITHOUT paying attention.
Also it´s not clear what exactly is wanted here: APM sink, multitasking, desicion making or not to discourage micro? Goal Definitions need to be free of contradictions, otherwise you might as well have said "make it better".
On December 17 2008 23:24 hymn wrote: Idra, I think now MBS works like this:
Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines.
In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes.
But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much.
If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me
that is how it works, and i just said the clicking is irrelevant. but thats what the newbies complain about because they dont understand the game well enough to see that the difficult part of macro is going back and doing everything at your base while everything else is going on, thats where the real multitasking and time management requirements lie. all they see is 'mindless clicking', so give them that but maintain the requirements that matter, by not letting you hotkey multiple buildings.
Yeah, I really really agree. The back and forth and back and forth is what makes/gives SC ridiculously fast feeling.
8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro.
I generally agree with the rest but that one irks me for several reasons. First of all it´s longer than 2 lines which already is a bad sign (KISS).
2nd, why is a APM/attention sink a good thing? If we look closely - APM isn´t actually decreased all that much for example with automine you loose 1 Action per Peon - the rest stays even with the new system.
Attention doesn´t change since it doesn´t depend on keystrokes but desicions, in fact you are faster if you do it WITHOUT paying attention.
Also it´s not clear what exactly is wanted here: APM sink, multitasking, desicion making or not to discourage micro? Goal Definitions need to be free of contradictions, otherwise you might as well have said "make it better".
OK, fixed.
"The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention sink in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making."
By "attention" I mean the fact that you need to split your attention between your army (units in general) related tasks and base related tasks, and that the new should reward being efficient at that.
That's because it's supposed to be a compromise, as I've said in other threads, and what many competitive players believe is lacking in SC2 is the (alleged?) lack of macro related tasks, and thus the game feeling less intense/more shallow in terms of multi-tasking requirements.
On December 18 2008 02:54 Archerofaiur wrote: I agree that fun is a subjective term. Never the less we can usually all agree what fun is just by looking at it.
That being said I have a reason why I wanted to include that as one of your “12 commandments for macro thesis”. I believe that all too often new macro theorycrafters forget the WOW factor when creating there proposals. The WOW factor is what excites you to use the mechanic. It’s the tag line we put on the back of the Starcraft 2 box to get people to buy it. To demonstrate the WOW factor I am going to describe Warp-In in two different ways.
Warp-In without WOW factor With this ability a player can upgrade his building. The player loses the ability to queue units. The player also loses the ability to create a unit with hotkeys alone or MBS. When the player wants to create a unit they must order the unit. Following this they must move there vision to where they want the unit to go and then they must click the place they want the unit to be created in. They must do this for every single unit they want to make. They can only create a unit in a certain radius of supply buildings.
Warp-In with WOW factor This ability allows the protoss player to Warp-In units onto anywhere on the battlefield that has pylon power. . You can use phase Prisms to infiltrate behind an enemy base and warp your units from Aiur directly onto his mineral line. You can keep a large reserve ready for what ever expansion is attacked. The more warp gates you have the more mobile reserves you have ready to lay down on an enemy force. Try warping in units behind an attacking army to seal them off. Warping units is faster then regular production of units. Also, Warping units are accompanied by a splashy visual indicator that looks like something out of a cool sci fi flick.
The WOW factor you're describing is called 'demagogy.'
It's a matter of semantics and no the mechanic itself. ;]
Nah, the WOW factor is more of a flavor thing rather then propaganda. It is the skin that goes over the mechanic. It is the lore aspect of the mechanic rather then the numbers and processes. We have already noted the excitement that comes from mulit-tasking and decision making. The WOW factor draws its excitement from things like story-form interpretation and visual representation. Warp-In FEELS Protossish. It ties in with everything we know about their values and methods. A zerg mechanic should FEEL zergish.
On December 17 2008 16:09 Conquest101 wrote: List of their suggested criteria:
* The ideal mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
* The ideal mechanic should have both advantages and disadvantages.
* The ideal mechanic should not have a drastically negative effect for any player, whether for you, your teammate or an opponent and his teammate.
* The ideal mechanic should not discourage micro.
* The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features. <----- BOO!
* The ideal mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
* The ideal mechanic should not be forced upon a specific map or upon a certain type of player.
* The ideal mechanic's effect should not be random - its results must have definite results. * Preferably, the ideal mechanic will be dependent upon a player’s choices.
Those are not valid, they were made by some noobs on Battle.net forums and then some guy posted them on the blizzforums macro suggestion board.
You can propose any macro mechanic. I'd say just be sure its not complicated!
On December 17 2008 16:09 Conquest101 wrote: List of their suggested criteria:
* The ideal mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
* The ideal mechanic should have both advantages and disadvantages.
* The ideal mechanic should not have a drastically negative effect for any player, whether for you, your teammate or an opponent and his teammate.
* The ideal mechanic should not discourage micro.
* The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features. <----- BOO!
* The ideal mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
* The ideal mechanic should not be forced upon a specific map or upon a certain type of player.
* The ideal mechanic's effect should not be random - its results must have definite results. * Preferably, the ideal mechanic will be dependent upon a player’s choices.
Those are not valid, they were made by some noobs on Battle.net forums and then some guy posted them on the blizzforums macro suggestion board.
You can propose any macro mechanic. I'd say just be sure its not complicated!
No, these are posted on the SCLegacy website. Maybe some noob on Battle.net posted them and then SCL copied/pasted it but they have become the official guideline for this. Go look at the website in the OP.
On December 17 2008 23:17 IdrA wrote: have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons.
its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs?
I really think this is the perfect solution. Elegant and simple. On one hand, it satisifies those who would be most irked by the removal of MBS, as they likely wouldn't realize the limitation in the first place. It also satisfies those most irked by the ability to macro perfectly without returning to base. It gives us the back and forth of base to combat, while eliminating the need for ridiculous handspeed in clicking gateways, which is no sad loss.
I think this, along with charging a player for a building when they queue it rather than when the worker gets around to building it, negates any need for a macro mechanic.
On December 17 2008 22:40 talismania wrote: Here's an idea for terran: building upgrades.
How it works: instead of building new buildings, you can opt to upgrade the ones you already have for less cost in order to enhance their effectiveness / abilities. An SCV has to be called to the building to upgrade it, and if the building is a production building it would be inoperable during this time.
Example: you have a supply depot. you want another, but are cheap. So instead of spending 100 for a depot, you upgrade your existing depot for some lower amount, say 75 to get the additional 10 supply. For barracks, upgrades could increase the production rate, for example, or maybe even increase the hp of units built, I dunno.
Benefits of this feature: encourages user to come back to his base and manage it, as you must manually order an SCV over to the target building to upgrade it. Encourages choice-making: do I upgrade one depot a lot and risk that the enemy snipes it somehow, or do I build many? Do I want to upgrade that barracks now -- how will that affect my timing attack? Finally, it feels relatively natural, especially for terran, compared to the gas mechanic. It lends itself well to graphical representation as well. Also, it's easily balanced: you can adjust the power of the upgrades, upgrade time, nature of the upgrades, amount of upgrades, upgrade cost, etc.
I see a problem with this mechanic. It is essentially the same as going back to base and constructing a new building. However, it removes one of the most useful remaining macro skills, which is how to fit all those buildings into your base in the first place.
On December 17 2008 23:17 IdrA wrote: have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons.
its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs?
This is actually the best idea I've seen (not that I've seen every idea). The only problem I could think of is that it might be wierd drag selecting and spamming 'm' 50 times for anyone who chooses to use mbs (reminiscent of the gas mechanic el oh el), but on the other hand it may make rallying a bit easier for the trade off. Overall the flexibility of it is pretty nice.
On December 17 2008 23:17 IdrA wrote: have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons.
its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs?
This is actually the best idea I've seen (not that I've seen every idea). The only problem I could think of is that it might be wierd drag selecting and spamming 'm' 50 times for anyone who chooses to use mbs (reminiscent of the gas mechanic el oh el), but on the other hand it may make rallying a bit easier for the trade off. Overall the flexibility of it is pretty nice.
I think they'd double-click on a production building and then have all of them (on the screen)selected.
However, it is an illogical solution. If I can select 12 gateways in the first place, then why can I only hotkey one? It's not like I can drag-select 12 dragoons but only hotkey one of them.
More logical would be making MBS not unlimited - for example, you can select 3 buildings at a time max.
"REAL LIFE RESOURCES DISTRIBUTION" Minerals and gas should be kept in "storage points" that could connect with the production spots nearby (e.g. creep distance) in order to provide them with resources used to build. Every town hall would have its own mineral counter and range, in which it would provide them to other facilities (like pylons). Long connections should be either impossible to be made, or consist of “pipes” that would be easy to break (e.g. by muta harass); thus the players should be given the option to transport their resources to their factories (or perhaps “other/old” storage points) by means of peons. Alternatively, they should be given the option to send the resources instantly at a price (e.g. pay a “2” mineral transport fee for each 10 minerals transferred). Of course such things should be also overridden by giving the players the option to move their production facilities (either by floating/teleporting or even removing/selling them).
Continued from the beginning: Such a system of resource distribution could lead to certain tactical problems - e.g. a new expansion would need its own production facilities, otherwise the opponents could block the path to it, in order to cut off the player from his resources. Transportation could be solved in few ways: – being able to move minerals by means of the peons (e.g. every peon would grab 100 minerals in order to transport them) – of course the peons could die during the process -players should be able to create “visible pipes” (that could easily be destroyed) -players should be given the option to transport the resources instantly by means of some other way, that would cost them a “transport fee” (e.g. underground tunnels, teleports) – for each 10minerals moved this way, they would only get 6 -Perhaps the players should also be given the option to sell their production facilities in order to rebuild them somewhere else (but not the “quick sell” option from CC, to discourage selling damaged buildings). -Terrans could also fly their buildings; perhaps Protoss should be able to teleport them.
The only drawback of this idea are island maps - one would have to build a dropship to move the minerals (and dropships are fragile). Perhaps players would have to decide to gamble by using dropships, or stay with the reliable “magic transportation techniqes". This would unfortunately mean, that island expansions (that are already hard to defend), would bring lower revenues – but perhaps the mapmakers could balanced it out by placing “upgraded mineral formations” (e.g. special crystals) that would provide additional resources when mined (e.g. 12 minerals instead of 8). This way, islands would not be harmed by the “transport tax”.
I dont get why doing a relaxed form of MBS isent enough. I understand that normal people arent going to like an old system.
Think about it, if blizzard released SC2 with the same UI as SC:BW, the rewiers would pull their balls off.
MBS is a good thing for newer and casual players but makes things quite lame for competitve players. Now i dont know any casual gamers that use hotkeys often, they just want to play layed back. On the other hand Competetive players wont a difficult game that is intense and gives them a great rewarding feeling of acomplisment once they have defeated an opponent.
I think MBS should purely consist in the game a the ability to double click a warp gate (or whatever) in order to select all gates in the vicinity. Everything else should be the same as in BW, one z key tap only makes one zealot and not a hole bunch from all the gates you made. Also you shouldnt be able to use hotkeys to mark several buildings, as this would mostly be used by competetive gamers anyway.
I realise that this is pretty mmuch what Idra said, but i still think its the perfekt solution to the problem.
P.S. Screw automining, that isent much of an issue.
Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global scale.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
On December 18 2008 11:45 Archerofaiur wrote: Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global sense.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
Good Luck Have Fun :-P
except warpin is nothing but an extra click (to place the unit) and mutant larva is a horrible idea that will never ever be used.
why not go back to the mechanic that worked for 10+ years?
On December 18 2008 11:45 Archerofaiur wrote: Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global sense.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
Good Luck Have Fun :-P
except warpin is nothing but an extra click (to place the unit) and mutant larva is a horrible idea that will never ever be used.
why not go back to the mechanic that worked for 10+ years?
On December 18 2008 11:45 Archerofaiur wrote: Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global sense.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
Good Luck Have Fun :-P
except warpin is nothing but an extra click (to place the unit) and mutant larva is a horrible idea that will never ever be used.
why not go back to the mechanic that worked for 10+ years?
On December 18 2008 11:45 Archerofaiur wrote: Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global sense.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
Good Luck Have Fun :-P
except warpin is nothing but an extra click (to place the unit) and mutant larva is a horrible idea that will never ever be used.
why not go back to the mechanic that worked for 10+ years?
the number of people who support something does not necessarily indicate that the particular thing has merit.
also, I don't think this is the place for coming up with a replacement for mbs, or suggesting reinstating mbs. This is about coming up with different ways to increase macro, regardless of whether or not mbs is in.
On December 18 2008 00:32 Ki_Do wrote: Put this in criteria:
The Mechanic should force you to look back at your base if you want to make use of it.
if not its an useless mechanic -.- and useless effort
Not true, it just has to divert your attention basically, even if it's not your base specifically IE if you had to go to the enemies base (purely hypothetically) it'd serve the same purpose.
On December 18 2008 11:45 Archerofaiur wrote: Don’t worry about MBS or automining. The contest is about coming up with NEW mechanics that enhance decision making and multi tasking on a global sense.
Think of warp-in and mutant larva as your examples. These two abilities do not revolve around unit micro. Instead they impact the production of your war machine.
Good Luck Have Fun :-P
except warpin is nothing but an extra click (to place the unit) and mutant larva is a horrible idea that will never ever be used.
why not go back to the mechanic that worked for 10+ years?
i said the mutant larvae were a horrible idea that will never be used (in competive game play*), not the warp gates. warp gates will be quite powerful, the cooldown is less than the build times of the units iirc and of course it lets them be built essentially anywhere, it will be used alot. however its not a substitute for a real macro mechanic because.. it doesnt really change anything. instead of going 5zzzz you go 5zclickzclickzclickzclickzclick, which really isnt all that much of a difference. fraction of a second difference if you look at progamer apm.
(note that its not the extra clicking that makes sbs/mbs relevant, its the fact that you can macro without looking away from your army)
i would think you just keep a phrase prism with your army, they change to pylon mode pretty much instantaneously, and just warp in new units right there. if you want to have your army warp in at his expansion or something then youd have to look away from your army, but youd still have to look away to control or to send the units to the expansion in the first place without warp in.
so the only way it really changes anything is if you want to warp the units in where your normal rally points would be instead of having them be immediately useful, doesnt really make sense to me.
On December 18 2008 18:18 Too_MuchZerg wrote: Simple mechanic system that is flexible:
1) After period of time amount of gas per trip by worker (let say its 8 gas) is reduced to 7 after 1 minute of mining gas (time is adjustable)
2) Gas has certain button (hotkey or not if want to raise macro) that enables gas mining to go maximun amount, no cost (or can be adjusted if needed)
3) game would give voice "Gas is depleting" (depends race voices) every time 1 gas drops down
4) you cant go below certain gas per trip, let say 5 gas per trip. That to be balanced who tends to go more micro than macro.
5) depleted gas doesn't effect this.
6) But after certain time (5 minutes, adjustable) gas goes back to maximun to help less macro players to catch up little bit.
Nice start. Now make it fun.
Try and make the player really feel rewarded when he does this task. However, this has to be done in a way that someone who doesn't do the task does not feel slighted.
Have you considered making the reward (gas output upon completion of task) above the baseline output (8 gas) rather than below?
Send it through e-mail, but figured out it's too small of a suggestion, so meh... E-mail is for big ones hehe
[TLDR]
Before Pylon can be used for Warp-in it should be tied up with a Probe (think of Night Elf Wisps from Warcraft 3 and how they harvest lumber)
[/TLDR]
The problem with Warp-in as I see it right now is that it's very easy to setup and adamant to any sort of enemy activity. Once you build Pylons at all of your expands (and that's something you will always do anyway, so it costs nothing), you can warp your units everywhere and opponent can't do anything with it. With this suggestion I've tried to address this and make Warp-in vulnerable to the harassment.
With this idea, before you can use Warp-in you'd need to build a Pylon and once it's ready bring a probe and use it on the Pylon, and as long as this probe stays there you can use this Pylon for Warp-in. Activating ability isn't instant and takes second or two, but you can always cancel it without any delay and run with Probe away. Since Probe is very fragile, that will make zones of Warp-in vulnerable to just couple Stalkers and therefore a player would need to be very conscious about that when he plays someone who's very harass-happy.
On December 18 2008 17:37 FrozenArbiter wrote: @IdrA, Kinda forgot toss has flying pylons =p
That's not a problem, isn't it? Just add ~5 sec delay when it turns into "Pylon" (turning back into Warp Prism could be instant) and make it lose shields in this mode or take double damage from enemy attacks.
I really don't know if this has been discussed because I really don't follow the sc2 forums at all but I was thinking about what if your nexus like either moprhed minerals and gas or sped up the workers so that you could choose a time and you could maybe make your workers gather twice as much minerals or three times as mcuh gas. This option would have to be physically activated and had a five minute cool down per each nexus, cc, or hatch that is located withing a certian proximity of minerals. The building would somehow cast a spell on the gas or minerals and would allow for faster mining for a certian time to get MANY different types of timing builds and gas intensive early game builds.
I think you would have to allow this to only be activated 2 minutes into the game because if you could do this instantly, four pool would be insanely problematic. I think this by choosing either amped gas or amped mins would allow for some neat fast expansion strategies, maybe cool proxies, or some gas intensive builds off 1base to counter fe's, or cool mid game timing by first amping up your minerals to give the ability to lay gates and make zealots then amp up your gas so you can roll out with templars and archons pvz.
On December 18 2008 17:37 FrozenArbiter wrote: @IdrA, Kinda forgot toss has flying pylons =p
That's not a problem, isn't it? Just add ~5 sec delay when it turns into "Pylon" (turning back into Warp Prism could be instant) and make it lose shields in this mode or take double damage from enemy attacks.
you mean to make warp in a viable alternative to macro?
if so that wouldnt really change anything, obviously make it a bit slower/more dangerous, but you still dont have to move your screen to do it. you're focusing on your army the entire time, you just have to deploy the prism 5 seconds before your warpgate cooldown finishes.
On December 18 2008 17:37 FrozenArbiter wrote: @IdrA, Kinda forgot toss has flying pylons =p
That's not a problem, isn't it? Just add ~5 sec delay when it turns into "Pylon" (turning back into Warp Prism could be instant) and make it lose shields in this mode or take double damage from enemy attacks.
you mean to make warp in a viable alternative to macro?
if so that wouldnt really change anything, obviously make it a bit slower/more dangerous, but you still dont have to move your screen to do it. you're focusing on your army the entire time, you just have to deploy the prism 5 seconds before your warpgate cooldown finishes.
I mean rebalancing the Prism so it's risky to use this way. It should be suitable for creating back doors, but not for carrying around your army as a flying Pylon. As I see it, Prism is just like shuttle - it's fast but fragile and kind of hard to mass, so each one of them counts. If it's weak as shuttle than double damage from any unit would be devastating.
The delay is here not just to slow down your army, but to increase the time the Prism is exposed to the attack. With the delay you obviously can't just fly in, warp stuff and flee from the battlefield in couple seconds - you have to leave the Prism deploying. And now, what if it was extra vulnerable in this exposed Pylon state? This way it's very easy to lose it completely fruitlessly, and to bid farewell with it to all the units that were in state of Warping in. Of course I'm assuming that units don't Warp in instantly and there's at least 2 seconds delay, right?
Edit: well, in the end, we can just give the Prism an energy and make deploying cost 75 mana if nothing else works. That one will work for sure.
Here is a gas macro mechanic: First of all, the current stupid gas mechanic needs to go in order for this to be any good, gayzers should be only 1 per mineral line just as in original starcraft. Now add yellow gayzers, in addition to normal gas OR make all gayzers work like this(depending what people like more): Yellow gas is built normally, has total of 5000 gas in it, but it gives 12 gas per trip. The catch is that you need to manually set the gas flow. There would be 3 options: min, med and max. (Numbers prone to balance changes)Setting it to max gives 12 gas per trip, but takes away 15 gas from the gayzer, seting it at med gives 10 gas per trip but takes 12 from the gayzer and setting it to min gives 8 gas per trip but takes 6 from the gayzer.
So you need to balance it fairly regulary depending on your strategy and tactics. So as you can see this mechanic also has meaningful actions that relate to strategy and tactics.
The different settings will have a visual cue in the form of red circles at the bottom of the gas, 1 red circle means its set to min, 2 red circles means its set to med and 3 red circles means it is set to max.
I have a great solution that will make macro great in sc2. First you remove the gas mechanic. In its place, you make it so only 1 building can be selected at any time, and that rallied workers merely move to their rally point without any other orders.
On December 19 2008 05:34 LonelyMargarita wrote: I have a great solution that will make macro great in sc2. First you remove the gas mechanic. In its place, you make it so only 1 building can be selected at any time, and that rallied workers merely move to their rally point without any other orders.
The obvious solution to any problem is to remove what is causing the problem. And yes, this is the only solution that will work
You are too late, from the first page:
On December 17 2008 15:42 IdrA wrote: oh hell yes im gonna win easy
how about this: you make it so that whenever someone wants to make a unit, they have to click on one of their production buildings and tell it to produce that unit.
Uhm. Just had an idea which probably sucks, but hell, here it goes.
What if they removed the "Your base is under attack" warning and replace it with a generic message (something like... "combat is underway") that "fires" each time two units engage in combat or a unit attacks a structure? That could make harass a lot more "stealth" if timed right... you send a few units to engage the opponent's army while also doing a drop in his base. This would encourage players to pay closer attention to the minimap, but also to check the base after each little melee, to make sure there are no units dropped there perparing to attack.
After "firing" once when damage is first done, the message wouldn't "fire again" for something like 2-3 minutes or something, giving a window of time where "stealth" harass could happen, which could be further prolonged by timing another attack for the next warning.
Extra balancing would be required though - maybe things such as... You can't see a single unit (one that doesn't have any other "friendly" units in its sight range or something) of your opponent on the minimap. Or maybe individual "dots" on the minimap being very small, so you could only clearly see bigger groups. Or units having a "stealth value" - e.g. you can have 4 zerglings next to each other that don't show up on the minimap, but only 2 zealots, one tank and no "capital" units such as a carrier, battlecruiser or ultralisk.
This would make bases a lot more vulnerable, thereby making it more important to take care of them, moving screens to make sure they're nothing dodgy going on, etc.
On the downside, it *could* encourage building lots of defensive structures, and it could be a imba when it comes to races - a single "stealth" tank could probably deal a lot more damage than any of the other races' single units, due to range and damage.
Opinions?
edit: i know it's not exactly macro, but it would encourage moving screens, paying more attention to your bases (and generally to the whole map), and it would also add quite a lot of new stategic and tactical options to the players.
-Keep MBS the way it's currently in SC2 (Can have 5 rax hotkeyed, but have to press M 5 times) -Keep gas mining the same as it was in SC1/BW -Remove Automine
On December 19 2008 05:44 exeprime wrote: Uhm. Just had an idea which probably sucks, but hell, here it goes.
What if they removed the "Your base is under attack" warning and replace it with a generic message (something like... "combat is underway") that "fires" each time two units engage in combat or a unit attacks a structure? That could make harass a lot more "stealth" if timed right... you send a few units to engage the opponent's army while also doing a drop in his base. This would encourage players to pay closer attention to the minimap, but also to check the base after each little melee, to make sure there are no units dropped there perparing to attack.
After "firing" once when damage is first done, the message wouldn't "fire again" for something like 2-3 minutes or something, giving a window of time where "stealth" harass could happen, which could be further prolonged by timing another attack for the next warning.
Extra balancing would be required though - maybe things such as... You can't see a single unit (one that doesn't have any other "friendly" units in its sight range or something) of your opponent on the minimap. Or maybe individual "dots" on the minimap being very small, so you could only clearly see bigger groups. Or units having a "stealth value" - e.g. you can have 4 zerglings next to each other that don't show up on the minimap, but only 2 zealots, one tank and no "capital" units such as a carrier, battlecruiser or ultralisk.
This would make bases a lot more vulnerable, thereby making it more important to take care of them, moving screens to make sure they're nothing dodgy going on, etc.
On the downside, it *could* encourage building lots of defensive structures, and it could be a imba when it comes to races - a single "stealth" tank could probably deal a lot more damage than any of the other races' single units, due to range and damage.
Opinions?
edit: i know it's not exactly macro, but it would encourage moving screens, paying more attention to your bases (and generally to the whole map), and it would also add quite a lot of new stategic and tactical options to the players.
I like it! simple yet effective, rewards offensive playes and those who check their base a lot. Don't know if I would make the interval 2-3 min long, 25 sec would probably be better. But all in all Its a great new direction. Taking away original sc automation instead of adding new stuff.
I was just using the MBS in wc3 yesterday and had 2 crypts selected and building ghouls and gargs. Then I go back to my base and check and its only 1 crypt with liek 4 units queued. MBS sucks for a number of reasons, and this is just one.
I have a better idea: you get free minerals for staring at the CC/Hatch/Nexus. The amount of extra minerals you get depends on how long the player has stared at the CC in a match.
On December 19 2008 07:40 CharlieMurphy wrote: I was just using the MBS in wc3 yesterday and had 2 crypts selected and building ghouls and gargs. Then I go back to my base and check and its only 1 crypt with liek 4 units queued. MBS sucks for a number of reasons, and this is just one.
On December 19 2008 07:40 CharlieMurphy wrote: I was just using the MBS in wc3 yesterday and had 2 crypts selected and building ghouls and gargs. Then I go back to my base and check and its only 1 crypt with liek 4 units queued. MBS sucks for a number of reasons, and this is just one.
WC3 will build from all selected buildings provided you have the resources for it. One click should queue a ghoul at each crypt. AOK does this though and its highly annoying and misleading.
On December 18 2008 17:37 FrozenArbiter wrote: @IdrA, Kinda forgot toss has flying pylons =p
That's not a problem, isn't it? Just add ~5 sec delay when it turns into "Pylon" (turning back into Warp Prism could be instant) and make it lose shields in this mode or take double damage from enemy attacks.
you mean to make warp in a viable alternative to macro?
if so that wouldnt really change anything, obviously make it a bit slower/more dangerous, but you still dont have to move your screen to do it. you're focusing on your army the entire time, you just have to deploy the prism 5 seconds before your warpgate cooldown finishes.
I mean rebalancing the Prism so it's risky to use this way. It should be suitable for creating back doors, but not for carrying around your army as a flying Pylon. As I see it, Prism is just like shuttle - it's fast but fragile and kind of hard to mass, so each one of them counts. If it's weak as shuttle than double damage from any unit would be devastating.
The delay is here not just to slow down your army, but to increase the time the Prism is exposed to the attack. With the delay you obviously can't just fly in, warp stuff and flee from the battlefield in couple seconds - you have to leave the Prism deploying. And now, what if it was extra vulnerable in this exposed Pylon state? This way it's very easy to lose it completely fruitlessly, and to bid farewell with it to all the units that were in state of Warping in. Of course I'm assuming that units don't Warp in instantly and there's at least 2 seconds delay, right?
Edit: well, in the end, we can just give the Prism an energy and make deploying cost 75 mana if nothing else works. That one will work for sure.
doesnt exactly seem relevant to the thread theres not really any reason to think that the prism is even imbalanced at this point. its certainly far less powerful than nydus worms. and its not like we can expect terran to be as good as the other races anyway.
and units do warp in essentially instantly.
actually come to think of it your solution wouldnt even fix your problem. making it weaker or more vulnerable means it would be more likely used just to reinforce your army quickly, since youd have your army right there to defend it while its vulnerable.
On December 18 2008 17:37 FrozenArbiter wrote: @IdrA, Kinda forgot toss has flying pylons =p
That's not a problem, isn't it? Just add ~5 sec delay when it turns into "Pylon" (turning back into Warp Prism could be instant) and make it lose shields in this mode or take double damage from enemy attacks.
you mean to make warp in a viable alternative to macro?
if so that wouldnt really change anything, obviously make it a bit slower/more dangerous, but you still dont have to move your screen to do it. you're focusing on your army the entire time, you just have to deploy the prism 5 seconds before your warpgate cooldown finishes.
I mean rebalancing the Prism so it's risky to use this way. It should be suitable for creating back doors, but not for carrying around your army as a flying Pylon. As I see it, Prism is just like shuttle - it's fast but fragile and kind of hard to mass, so each one of them counts. If it's weak as shuttle than double damage from any unit would be devastating.
The delay is here not just to slow down your army, but to increase the time the Prism is exposed to the attack. With the delay you obviously can't just fly in, warp stuff and flee from the battlefield in couple seconds - you have to leave the Prism deploying. And now, what if it was extra vulnerable in this exposed Pylon state? This way it's very easy to lose it completely fruitlessly, and to bid farewell with it to all the units that were in state of Warping in. Of course I'm assuming that units don't Warp in instantly and there's at least 2 seconds delay, right?
Edit: well, in the end, we can just give the Prism an energy and make deploying cost 75 mana if nothing else works. That one will work for sure.
doesnt exactly seem relevant to the thread theres not really any reason to think that the prism is even imbalanced at this point. its certainly far less powerful than nydus worms. and its not like we can expect terran to be as good as the other races anyway.
More relevant than WC3. And that's not about imbalance. That's about defining Prism role. It's clearly, at least for my likes, that it isn't supposed to be carried right in the midst of the battle to reinforce your army. And if you can't use it this way, than you will have to look away from your army when you're creating units. That's why I've replied to FA in the first place. Prism can be balanced so you have to look away from your army whether you use it or not.
and units do warp in essentially instantly.
~2 seconds delay too may seem essentially instant when in reality it's pretty big. And if it's really instant than it should be changed. It's not only makes it risky to create units near enemy. If there's delay, you can't just spam units, add them to the group and send somewhere especially if you have stuff to micro in the center of the map. With delay you'll be forced to comeback for them once again.
actually come to think of it your solution wouldnt even fix your problem. making it weaker or more vulnerable means it would be more likely used just to reinforce your army quickly, since youd have your army right there to defend it while its vulnerable.
This 'look away from the army' aspect of the macro makes sense only when there's actual battle going on that you have to micro, otherwise it doesn't matter. And if Prism is so vulnerable you won't have it near your units when there's battle going on. Especially if it costs mana to deploy.
And talking about posts relevant to this thread, I at least somehow contributed to the contest. Have you posted here anything besides complaints?
On December 17 2008 23:17 IdrA wrote: have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons.
its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs?
An option to specialize production buildings so they build one particular unit more efficiently, say you click a factory and tell it to specialize in jackals, after an initial cost for the factory specializing, all jackals produced from that factory become cheaper to make for a certain amount of time.
On December 17 2008 15:42 IdrA wrote: oh hell yes im gonna win easy
how about this: you make it so that whenever someone wants to make a unit, they have to click on one of their production buildings and tell it to produce that unit.
genius?
that sounds lame. what if you don't have a microphone?
On December 18 2008 01:26 Essence wrote: I haven't read all the discussions in each threads, and I am not a huge SC macro strategic mastermind, but I guess I will give it a shot and post a vague idea here. Hopefully it (or something similar has not been posted yet).
the basic idea would be the following: The gas refinaries would have different levels of quality. When you finish constructing your refinary the first time you build it, It can allow to mine let's say 6 gas at the time. After a certain amount of time or gas mined (or potentially both) the refinary drops in quality, allowing for the return of 4 gas / worker (or whatever the number that makes it balanced). After a while it could further drop to 2. Also, there could be another level above the starter, let's say 8 gas / worker. Now if you want to repair the refinary or upgrade it, you need to use workers outside the building to fix it, more workers can upgrade it faster, but it would be limited (like 1-4 workers can upgrade a refinary at the time).
This system is as flexible in tweaking as it gets, the developers can choose the different quality levels of the refinaries, the time (and potentially the resources, it could cost minerals to repair the refinary, but not neccessarily) it takes to upgrade a building, the time it takes for each race to increase the quality of the refinary etc.
Depending on the timings chosen, this could require the player different amount of multitasking, the faster the building degrades the more attention / APM it requires to maintain the gas mining.
This could also add trillions of strategical choices in build orders, especially early game; the different amount of workers sacrificed in maintaining the geysers would be sacrificed from mining minerals or doing other tasks. Since each race favours a different ratio of workers to army and mineral miners to gas miners (zergs come to mind mostly), it could be balanced for each race as Blizzard sees fit.
If they wanted the players to spare from the insane amount of multitasking lategame with multiply mining gases, they could add a late tech upgrade for refinaries that would to a certain degree maintain effective gas mining. They could still make it imperfect to reward very high APM multitasking monsters, or in case some late game scenario arises where the player is highly dependant on gas on fewer bases and would prefer manually ensure that the gas flow is perfect.
The idea is this in a nutshell. I sincerely hope it hasn't been posted by someone else (I am not trying to rip off anybody of his/her idea) and also that it doesn't sound like total bullshit. I believe it could use some tweaking, but it seems to fit into all the criterias listed above.
EDIT: Naturally, this woldn't effect the total amount of gas mineable from a geyser, it could still dry up after X thousand, it would simply fluently effect the speed of the gas mining
second idea so far, it sounds good. a little bit more normal than the example scl gave and obviously better than the first idea which violated one of the requirements (not be repetitive)
On December 18 2008 07:24 closed wrote: "REAL LIFE RESOURCES DISTRIBUTION" Minerals and gas should be kept in "storage points" that could connect with the production spots nearby (e.g. creep distance) in order to provide them with resources used to build. Every town hall would have its own mineral counter and range, in which it would provide them to other facilities (like pylons). Long connections should be either impossible to be made, or consist of “pipes” that would be easy to break (e.g. by muta harass); thus the players should be given the option to transport their resources to their factories (or perhaps “other/old” storage points) by means of peons. Alternatively, they should be given the option to send the resources instantly at a price (e.g. pay a “2” mineral transport fee for each 10 minerals transferred). Of course such things should be also overridden by giving the players the option to move their production facilities (either by floating/teleporting or even removing/selling them).
Continued from the beginning: Such a system of resource distribution could lead to certain tactical problems - e.g. a new expansion would need its own production facilities, otherwise the opponents could block the path to it, in order to cut off the player from his resources. Transportation could be solved in few ways: – being able to move minerals by means of the peons (e.g. every peon would grab 100 minerals in order to transport them) – of course the peons could die during the process -players should be able to create “visible pipes” (that could easily be destroyed) -players should be given the option to transport the resources instantly by means of some other way, that would cost them a “transport fee” (e.g. underground tunnels, teleports) – for each 10minerals moved this way, they would only get 6 -Perhaps the players should also be given the option to sell their production facilities in order to rebuild them somewhere else (but not the “quick sell” option from CC, to discourage selling damaged buildings). -Terrans could also fly their buildings; perhaps Protoss should be able to teleport them.
The only drawback of this idea are island maps - one would have to build a dropship to move the minerals (and dropships are fragile). Perhaps players would have to decide to gamble by using dropships, or stay with the reliable “magic transportation techniqes". This would unfortunately mean, that island expansions (that are already hard to defend), would bring lower revenues – but perhaps the mapmakers could balanced it out by placing “upgraded mineral formations” (e.g. special crystals) that would provide additional resources when mined (e.g. 12 minerals instead of 8). This way, islands would not be harmed by the “transport tax”.
On December 18 2008 10:27 Kong John wrote: I dont get why doing a relaxed form of MBS isent enough. I understand that normal people arent going to like an old system.
Think about it, if blizzard released SC2 with the same UI as SC:BW, the rewiers would pull their balls off.
MBS is a good thing for newer and casual players but makes things quite lame for competitve players. Now i dont know any casual gamers that use hotkeys often, they just want to play layed back. On the other hand Competetive players wont a difficult game that is intense and gives them a great rewarding feeling of acomplisment once they have defeated an opponent.
I think MBS should purely consist in the game a the ability to double click a warp gate (or whatever) in order to select all gates in the vicinity. Everything else should be the same as in BW, one z key tap only makes one zealot and not a hole bunch from all the gates you made. Also you shouldnt be able to use hotkeys to mark several buildings, as this would mostly be used by competetive gamers anyway.
I realise that this is pretty mmuch what Idra said, but i still think its the perfekt solution to the problem.
P.S. Screw automining, that isent much of an issue.
nobody in their right mind is going to bother with hotkeying a crapload of buildings individually. it's a waste of hotkeys.
On December 19 2008 04:59 SlickR12345 wrote: Here is a gas macro mechanic: First of all, the current stupid gas mechanic needs to go in order for this to be any good, gayzers should be only 1 per mineral line just as in original starcraft. Now add yellow gayzers, in addition to normal gas OR make all gayzers work like this(depending what people like more): Yellow gas is built normally, has total of 5000 gas in it, but it gives 12 gas per trip. The catch is that you need to manually set the gas flow. There would be 3 options: min, med and max. (Numbers prone to balance changes)Setting it to max gives 12 gas per trip, but takes away 15 gas from the gayzer, seting it at med gives 10 gas per trip but takes 12 from the gayzer and setting it to min gives 8 gas per trip but takes 6 from the gayzer.
So you need to balance it fairly regulary depending on your strategy and tactics. So as you can see this mechanic also has meaningful actions that relate to strategy and tactics.
The different settings will have a visual cue in the form of red circles at the bottom of the gas, 1 red circle means its set to min, 2 red circles means its set to med and 3 red circles means it is set to max.
On December 19 2008 07:40 CharlieMurphy wrote: I was just using the MBS in wc3 yesterday and had 2 crypts selected and building ghouls and gargs. Then I go back to my base and check and its only 1 crypt with liek 4 units queued. MBS sucks for a number of reasons, and this is just one.
you probably forgot to build your ziggurats/pylons or something like that.
On December 19 2008 04:59 SlickR12345 wrote: Here is a gas macro mechanic: First of all, the current stupid gas mechanic needs to go in order for this to be any good, gayzers should be only 1 per mineral line just as in original starcraft. Now add yellow gayzers, in addition to normal gas OR make all gayzers work like this(depending what people like more): Yellow gas is built normally, has total of 5000 gas in it, but it gives 12 gas per trip. The catch is that you need to manually set the gas flow. There would be 3 options: min, med and max. (Numbers prone to balance changes)Setting it to max gives 12 gas per trip, but takes away 15 gas from the gayzer, seting it at med gives 10 gas per trip but takes 12 from the gayzer and setting it to min gives 8 gas per trip but takes 6 from the gayzer.
So you need to balance it fairly regulary depending on your strategy and tactics. So as you can see this mechanic also has meaningful actions that relate to strategy and tactics.
The different settings will have a visual cue in the form of red circles at the bottom of the gas, 1 red circle means its set to min, 2 red circles means its set to med and 3 red circles means it is set to max.
On November 12 2008 07:21 maybenexttime wrote: II. The gas mechanic:
Each geyser starts at 50% (subject to balance) of its maximal capacity. There are three mining modes. You can reach its full capacity by using mode III. If the geyser gets depleted before it reaches its full capacity it's depeleted (say you depleted it in mode I, it started with 50%, which is 2500 - you won't get the other 2500 back).
The Refinery (or Assimilator/Extractor) modes:
Mode I - the standard mode (all Refineries start with that mode on) - up to 3 workers can mine; each worker mines 5 gas units per turn.
Mode II (requires the player to switch to this mode) - allows up to 5 workers to mine (workers spend less time in the Refinery); each worker mines 7 (subject to balance) gas units per turn but the player only gains 5 (it depletes the geyser by 2 units more than you are credited with); useful for fast tech or hanbang strategies, etc.
Mode III (requires the player to switch to this mode) - does not allow any workers to mine; the Refinery reaches its full capacity over time (let's say it starts with 2500 gas and reaches 5000 mark over a minute or whatever).
DISCLAIMER: If the Refinery depletes before it's reached its full capacity, there's no going back (e.g. you've mined those 2500 gas units and never switched to mode III - you're not going to be able to mine those "remaining" 2500 gas units).
This way there'd be plenty more openings. You'd have to manage you gas timing/mode switching (including even 3rd or 4th gas expansions, not just mains.naturals) well in order to get the most out of your strategy/build order.
Additional info:
- as oposed to the Blizzard gas mechanic does not require each and every map to have two geysers in every main/natural - it allows for far more map designs than BW's resource system, imo
- some geysers could start at 0 initial gas count (forcing you to set them to mode III immediately after you take them) to make you plan your economic growth and take them ahead of time
- mode III allows for power-teching
FA's/my Mineral Mechanic does all that but all around better. You can learn why here and here. ;]
SC 2 is not really going to be macro or micro it will mostly just be superpowered people from the average point of view a.k.a. the people who just see the youtube vods but is it actually gonna have as much micro/macro as sc or is it just going to be more tactic/stratigic based does anyone have beta yet?
Here's an idea - have the workers gain experience as they mine minerals/gas. As their experience level increases, so does the efficiency with which they carry out that task.
So you start out with 2 workers in the gas refinery, but as their experience level increases, they spend less time in the refinery. Less time means more room for another worker. So you bring another one, and you have 3 in the refinery. As they continue to increase in experience, you can make room until the refinery is working at capacity of maybe 5 workers or something.
This could present some interesting micro early on int he game, because you'd have to make a choice at which time to pull workers off the minerals and put them into the gas. Or maybe you don't need them in there, because the 1 or 2 efficient workers are able to sustain you with the gas you need.
And then consider worker raids, and how this would impact gameplay. You'd definitely want to hold onto the more experienced workers in your lines, because they're making a marginally greater contribution. SO there'd be a lot of micro involved there of holding onto the experienced ones. Or when you expand to a new location - do you want to take the experiences workers and get things rolling faster, but with the higher risk of that base being raided and losing that "intellectual property"? Could be interesting.... There's a lot more to it, but what do you think about the general idea?
Simple, elegant, the n00b could use it without knowing it, and the expert could get huge advantages from it.
On December 25 2008 05:48 X3N0N wrote: Here's an idea - have the workers gain experience as they mine minerals/gas. As their experience level increases, so does the efficiency with which they carry out that task.
So you start out with 2 workers in the gas refinery, but as their experience level increases, they spend less time in the refinery. Less time means more room for another worker. So you bring another one, and you have 3 in the refinery. As they continue to increase in experience, you can make room until the refinery is working at capacity of maybe 5 workers or something.
This could present some interesting micro early on int he game, because you'd have to make a choice at which time to pull workers off the minerals and put them into the gas. Or maybe you don't need them in there, because the 1 or 2 efficient workers are able to sustain you with the gas you need.
And then consider worker raids, and how this would impact gameplay. You'd definitely want to hold onto the more experienced workers in your lines, because they're making a marginally greater contribution. SO there'd be a lot of micro involved there of holding onto the experienced ones. Or when you expand to a new location - do you want to take the experiences workers and get things rolling faster, but with the higher risk of that base being raided and losing that "intellectual property"? Could be interesting.... There's a lot more to it, but what do you think about the general idea?
Simple, elegant, the n00b could use it without knowing it, and the expert could get huge advantages from it.
But it clashes with a central concept in Starcraft. Units don´t gain experience because they are supposed to be replacable. Unlike, say, WC3 it´s relativly unimportant to keep units alive, allowing more "reckless" attacks since rescuing units might not be worth the effort.
Is in criteria that the mechanic -have to let macro minded players to differ from micro minded players - by allowing 2 types of gameplay like in brood war, and that question in bach16?
On December 19 2008 05:44 exeprime wrote: Uhm. Just had an idea which probably sucks, but hell, here it goes.
What if they removed the "Your base is under attack" warning and replace it with a generic message (something like... "combat is underway") that "fires" each time two units engage in combat or a unit attacks a structure? That could make harass a lot more "stealth" if timed right... you send a few units to engage the opponent's army while also doing a drop in his base. This would encourage players to pay closer attention to the minimap, but also to check the base after each little melee, to make sure there are no units dropped there perparing to attack.
After "firing" once when damage is first done, the message wouldn't "fire again" for something like 2-3 minutes or something, giving a window of time where "stealth" harass could happen, which could be further prolonged by timing another attack for the next warning.
Extra balancing would be required though - maybe things such as... You can't see a single unit (one that doesn't have any other "friendly" units in its sight range or something) of your opponent on the minimap. Or maybe individual "dots" on the minimap being very small, so you could only clearly see bigger groups. Or units having a "stealth value" - e.g. you can have 4 zerglings next to each other that don't show up on the minimap, but only 2 zealots, one tank and no "capital" units such as a carrier, battlecruiser or ultralisk.
This would make bases a lot more vulnerable, thereby making it more important to take care of them, moving screens to make sure they're nothing dodgy going on, etc.
On the downside, it *could* encourage building lots of defensive structures, and it could be a imba when it comes to races - a single "stealth" tank could probably deal a lot more damage than any of the other races' single units, due to range and damage.
Opinions?
edit: i know it's not exactly macro, but it would encourage moving screens, paying more attention to your bases (and generally to the whole map), and it would also add quite a lot of new stategic and tactical options to the players.
I dont like it because it rewards faster players who probably already can control everything without the warnings. Slower players are put at an disadvantage and this doesnt add much to the strategy nor gameplay. In addition Im not sure if you know that you can press the spacebar after hearing a warning and your screen will be centered on the spot. This shortcut has been included even in Warcraft 2 as far as I remember, and WC2 didnt have rally points, nor unit queues...
In addition the warnings are played only once as far as I know - just when the units are attacked - and no unit can withstand 2 or 3 minutes of bashing anyway..
There are no "stealth tanks" but shuttles with reavers. If you make them impossible to be seen on the map you reward the faster player even more - they can probably click faster to "be" in two places more often. Clicking faster doesnt mean that they "see" faster - both players probably control the minimap at the same "speed". Some players can see an attack coming but might be simply to slow to stop it and control their micro/macro at the same time; thus they are put at even worse disadvantage. Also in general you dont know where the enemy units are, unless you are using a maphack o_O You need to use overlords/obs/scans to search for them..
"REAL LIFE RESOURCES DISTRIBUTION" Minerals and gas should be kept in "storage points" that could connect with the production spots nearby (e.g. creep distance) in order to provide them with resources used to build. Every town hall would have its own mineral counter and range, in which it would provide them to other facilities (like pylons). Long connections should be either impossible to be made, or consist of “pipes” that would be easy to break (e.g. by muta harass); thus the players should be given the option to transport their resources to their factories (or perhaps “other/old” storage points) by means of peons. Alternatively, they should be given the option to send the resources instantly at a price (e.g. pay a “2” mineral transport fee for each 10 minerals transferred). Of course such things should be also overridden by giving the players the option to move their production facilities (either by floating/teleporting or even removing/selling them).
Continued from the beginning: Such a system of resource distribution could lead to certain tactical problems - e.g. a new expansion would need its own production facilities, otherwise the opponents could block the path to it, in order to cut off the player from his resources. Transportation could be solved in few ways: – being able to move minerals by means of the peons (e.g. every peon would grab 100 minerals in order to transport them) – of course the peons could die during the process -players should be able to create “visible pipes” (that could easily be destroyed) -players should be given the option to transport the resources instantly by means of some other way, that would cost them a “transport fee” (e.g. underground tunnels, teleports) – for each 10minerals moved this way, they would only get 6 -Perhaps the players should also be given the option to sell their production facilities in order to rebuild them somewhere else (but not the “quick sell” option from CC, to discourage selling damaged buildings). -Terrans could also fly their buildings; perhaps Protoss should be able to teleport them.
The only drawback of this idea are island maps - one would have to build a dropship to move the minerals (and dropships are fragile). Perhaps players would have to decide to gamble by using dropships, or stay with the reliable “magic transportation techniqes". This would unfortunately mean, that island expansions (that are already hard to defend), would bring lower revenues – but perhaps the mapmakers could balanced it out by placing “upgraded mineral formations” (e.g. special crystals) that would provide additional resources when mined (e.g. 12 minerals instead of 8). This way, islands would not be harmed by the “transport tax”.
lol this idea isn't just fun, it's funny!
Why is it funny? I believe that my idea is not about making the players to click more (which leads to a mindless clickfest with the faster player winning), but about adding more micro and macro possibilities, which need to be reconsidered (and require some additional control too).
This could lead to many interesting situations - e.g. killing a CC would not only mean a loss of "future" minerals, but also a loss of some of the minerals that were already mined - unless the players decide to transfer them etc.
I've submitted my idea to the contest. It's so irritating that they didnt set up any sort of autoresponder saying that they got the email..
On December 17 2008 22:40 talismania wrote: Here's an idea for terran: building upgrades.
How it works: instead of building new buildings, you can opt to upgrade the ones you already have for less cost in order to enhance their effectiveness / abilities. An SCV has to be called to the building to upgrade it, and if the building is a production building it would be inoperable during this time.
Example: you have a supply depot. you want another, but are cheap. So instead of spending 100 for a depot, you upgrade your existing depot for some lower amount, say 75 to get the additional 10 supply. For barracks, upgrades could increase the production rate, for example, or maybe even increase the hp of units built, I dunno.
Benefits of this feature: encourages user to come back to his base and manage it, as you must manually order an SCV over to the target building to upgrade it. Encourages choice-making: do I upgrade one depot a lot and risk that the enemy snipes it somehow, or do I build many? Do I want to upgrade that barracks now -- how will that affect my timing attack? Finally, it feels relatively natural, especially for terran, compared to the gas mechanic. It lends itself well to graphical representation as well. Also, it's easily balanced: you can adjust the power of the upgrades, upgrade time, nature of the upgrades, amount of upgrades, upgrade cost, etc.
Don't push them toward "stronger units" I'm sure they're already on the brink of hero units Q_Q
as posted already, the "solution" to the artificially created problem is already there - SC1 macro. It is interesting how much effort the developers are putting towards solving artificial problems they themselves are creating when the "solution" is there already there, and has been alpha-tested for the past 10 yrs.
I liked my idea so I actually sent it in. This is what i emailed
"With this mechanic, when a player trains units with multiple buildings selected (MBS) there is a random chance for an accident to take place depending on the number of buildings used at a time (more buildings, more risk). A players units may either be: lost in psyonic energy while warping (for P), develop mutations (as Z), or injured during training/faulty construction (for T); unless, a distress call is answered. The distress call would function in the same way as Starcraft's under attack notifcation with a verbal warning, written message display and minimap ping. By selecting the specific facility that contains the ailing unit the player would press the "fix" button the endangered unit would come out full health; ignored the unit would spawn either damaged or possibly not at all (depending on the response time of the click). This could happen to any production building that initiated unit trainning through MBS at any time randomly throughout the units build cycle. Also once a unit is fixed it would be safe for the duration of its build. The idea being that distress calls are unpredictable and would force a reaction to focus a players attention (and screen) back to their base and would also give players an incentive to use MBS strategically as a tool instead oppossed to at all times.
Expanded description: By increasing the call % based off of the number of production facilities used it would make players develope more strategic hotkey patterns in a game where the community is demanding for such a thing. It would also make players focus on individual buildings in the late game when MBS would be used the most and macro would be considered the "easiest". It forces players to tend to their soliders as they develope and adds speed to the macro side of the game."
When you tell a miner to gather gas, it goes into the building, gets gas returns it (you gain 8 gas) then it goes back to the building to mine more gas...
HERES THE TRICKY PART... you ready?
When the geyser is out of gas..... its depleted and you only get 4!!!!!!!!!!
On December 26 2008 01:16 GearitUP wrote: Check this one out, tell me what you think...
When you tell a miner to gather gas, it goes into the building, gets gas returns it (you gain 8 gas) then it goes back to the building to mine more gas...
HERES THE TRICKY PART... you ready?
When the geyser is out of gas..... its depleted and you only get 4!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, are you serious? Are you sure this is gonna work? Did you do any playtesting? O_o
On December 17 2008 20:06 bottomtier wrote: the perfect macro implementation would be more complicated than ordering your workers to work. it should involve tertiary resources, aoe spells, quaternary resources, fatigue, mana, mineral refineries, mineral refinery mechanics, arbitrary activation and deactivation of resources, stim packs, observers, speed upgrades, harvesting upgrades, harvesting speed upgrades, speed harvesting upgrades, speed packs, aoe harvesting, ranged mining, ranged mining upgrades, siege mode workers, and lasers.
works for micro. right?..
wraith harvesting!
I'm sorry guys, I don't really understand what this thread is asking, but I just had an interesting thought train.
Go with me on this, in a "real" (ahem) starcraft world, more than one SCV could fit into a refinery at a time. And they wouldn't take the gas to a command center, they would take it to where it was needed--be that the barracks or factory (or bunkers if marines figured out how to smoke it).
I know having double the gas harvesting rate would just fsck everything up, but what if scvs could bring gas to a factory (which could be built or floated right next to a refinery) and it could be used--but only in that factory? That could make for some really interesting build orders.
On December 25 2008 15:59 MiniRoman wrote: I liked my idea so I actually sent it in. This is what i emailed
"With this mechanic, when a player trains units with multiple buildings selected (MBS) there is a random chance for an accident to take place depending on the number of buildings used at a time (more buildings, more risk). A players units may either be: lost in psyonic energy while warping (for P), develop mutations (as Z), or injured during training/faulty construction (for T); unless, a distress call is answered. The distress call would function in the same way as Starcraft's under attack notifcation with a verbal warning, written message display and minimap ping. By selecting the specific facility that contains the ailing unit the player would press the "fix" button the endangered unit would come out full health; ignored the unit would spawn either damaged or possibly not at all (depending on the response time of the click). This could happen to any production building that initiated unit trainning through MBS at any time randomly throughout the units build cycle. Also once a unit is fixed it would be safe for the duration of its build. The idea being that distress calls are unpredictable and would force a reaction to focus a players attention (and screen) back to their base and would also give players an incentive to use MBS strategically as a tool instead oppossed to at all times. + Show Spoiler +
Expanded description: By increasing the call % based off of the number of production facilities used it would make players develope more strategic hotkey patterns in a game where the community is demanding for such a thing. It would also make players focus on individual buildings in the late game when MBS would be used the most and macro would be considered the "easiest". It forces players to tend to their soliders as they develope and adds speed to the macro side of the game."
What you guys think
Doesnt this bring luck into the game? Let's assume a slow player vs slow player game. Both players use MBS. Both of them focus on microing and forget to "fix" their units. One player gets 10 full health units, the other one gets only 7, because 3 got randomly killed. In addition, this makes you focus more on clicking your buildings - you need to click them two times to build the units (one click to build, 2nd click to fix) - I think that fast people will do it instead of setting the rally point 53453454 times, while the slower players will be even more fucked.
On December 26 2008 01:16 GearitUP wrote: Check this one out, tell me what you think...
When you tell a miner to gather gas, it goes into the building, gets gas returns it (you gain 8 gas) then it goes back to the building to mine more gas...
HERES THE TRICKY PART... you ready?
When the geyser is out of gas..... its depleted and you only get 4!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, are you serious? Are you sure this is gonna work? Did you do any playtesting? O_o
Is this some sort of troll post? In original starcraft you get 2 gas instead of 8 from a depleted geyser...
This is my first post here... I have to admit I'm not very good at the game but I feel like I understand it for the most part. I've also developed some games (though I admit I never worked on a strategy game before).
I have a proposal for this contest. As I understand it is all about new things a player can do in his base that requires a lot of clicking and benefits either his economy or unit production. Why not do per unit upgrades? Imagine you are a terran who has a few factory units defending one of his expansions where he has production buildings. He can order his units to go back into their production buildings, and then pick an upgrade for each one. Maybe more hit points, better weapons, or anything really, maybe a decrease in the collision circle size (allow ranged units to group closer and attack more effectively). The protoss could do the same thing (maybe they can upgrade from a range with warp gates or something). Zerg almost did this in brood war, the only difference is that they can do it anywhere and the units actually change into a completely different unit type. Maybe Zerg can only upgrade when on the creep, or something.
I think it would work. Choosing upgrades right would take time and skill, promote development of skills, and it would be very useful in gameplay. Imagine that you scout your opponent's attack and then quickly upgrade your units to deal with the threat effectively, saving one of your crucial expansions.
Or you could create a few elite units and drop them in the opponent's base, which might be more effective than a lot of weaker units, because they are easier to control and take up less space, making them more mobile.
On December 27 2008 05:12 admn67 wrote: This is my first post here... I have to admit I'm not very good at the game but I feel like I understand it for the most part. I've also developed some games (though I admit I never worked on a strategy game before).
I have a proposal for this contest. As I understand it is all about new things a player can do in his base that requires a lot of clicking and benefits either his economy or unit production. Why not do per unit upgrades? Imagine you are a terran who has a few factory units defending one of his expansions where he has production buildings. He can order his units to go back into their production buildings, and then pick an upgrade for each one. Maybe more hit points, better weapons, or anything really, maybe a decrease in the collision circle size (allow ranged units to group closer and attack more effectively). The protoss could do the same thing (maybe they can upgrade from a range with warp gates or something). Zerg almost did this in brood war, the only difference is that they can do it anywhere and the units actually change into a completely different unit type. Maybe Zerg can only upgrade when on the creep, or something.
I think it would work. Choosing upgrades right would take time and skill, promote development of skills, and it would be very useful in gameplay. Imagine that you scout your opponent's attack and then quickly upgrade your units to deal with the threat effectively, saving one of your crucial expansions.
Or you could create a few elite units and drop them in the opponent's base, which might be more effective than a lot of weaker units, because they are easier to control and take up less space, making them more mobile.
just like in dawn of war series ? this idea would work in warcraft 3 i think, but imagine upgrading more then 300 zerglings ling by ling :D
I was thinking it would be more like loading them into a dropship, and then ordering the dropship to perform a specific upgrade, except the dropship is like a hatchery or other production building.
Each geyser starts at 50% (subject to balance) of its maximal capacity. There are three mining modes. You can reach its full capacity by using mode III. If the geyser gets depleted before it reaches its full capacity it's depeleted (say you depleted it in mode I, it started with 50%, which is 2500 - you won't get the other 2500 back).
The Refinery (or Assimilator/Extractor) modes:
Mode I - the standard mode (all Refineries start with that mode on) - up to 3 workers can mine; each worker mines 5 gas units per turn.
Mode II (requires the player to switch to this mode) - allows up to 5 workers to mine (workers spend less time in the Refinery); each worker mines 7 (subject to balance) gas units per turn but the player only gains 5 (it depletes the geyser by 2 units more than you are credited with); useful for fast tech or hanbang strategies, etc.
Mode III (requires the player to switch to this mode) - does not allow any workers to mine; the Refinery reaches its full capacity over time (let's say it starts with 2500 gas and reaches 5000 mark over a minute or whatever).
DISCLAIMER: If the Refinery depletes before it's reached its full capacity, there's no going back (e.g. you've mined those 2500 gas units and never switched to mode III - you're not going to be able to mine those "remaining" 2500 gas units).
This way there'd be plenty more openings. You'd have to manage you gas timing/mode switching (including even 3rd or 4th gas expansions, not just mains.naturals) well in order to get the most out of your strategy/build order.
Additional info:
- as oposed to the Blizzard gas mechanic does not require each and every map to have two geysers in every main/natural - it allows for far more map designs than BW's resource system, imo
- some geysers could start at 0 initial gas count (forcing you to set them to mode III immediately after you take them) to make you plan your economic growth and take them ahead of time
- mode III allows for power-teching
I really like this idea. Did you e-mail it in to the contest?
Is this some sort of troll post? In original starcraft you get 2 gas instead of 8 from a depleted geyser...
It's called playing along with a joke :C
After all these years you can never be sure. I used to visit a diablo forum frequently and once some guy asked what are the red and blue bubbles at the bottom of the screen..
How do you think games will be decided with mbs? Smarter strategy ? ( i dont see anything else)..Now i'm starting to think that most of people here like sc not for its strategy part but only for the macro system .. I mean wheres the fun making 250 apm? If u have free energy to spend then go outside and make some sport but not in sc . I totally disagree with most of the sc communauty who dont want mbs..I often say to myself while doing 200 apm in front of a computer "i look so computer nerdy", i mean did you guy realized once that people who dont know sc and see some1 doing 250 apm for the first time are thinking "wow he's totally overfocused/ addicted to his video game". If there is mbs then what? Who said it will be funnier without mbs? the one who think macro / apm is fun? crap
Scaled MBS. The main problem with MBS is that the macro cost is reduced to almost zero no matter the number of units. Building 40 goons takes the same attention/time as building 1 goon! Solution: scaled MBS.
Your foe with 40 goons over your 1 already has the inherent numerical advantage, so should he have the added advantage of building 40 just as quick as building 1 (which is almost zero, btw)? This problem isn't as obvious as, say, reducing the mineral costs for 40 goons to equal 1 goon.
I posted aplenty about scaled MBS already, so I won't regurgitate. I remember someone constructively criticizing that scaled MBS won't affect game play at pro level. And I now introduce a cooldown aspect (instead of pressing TAB, for example) to regulate how fast it cycles to the next hotkeyed building. I made a video on YouTube to demonstrate. Further comments are on the page. (I had too much time on my hands during the holidays.)
I feel very strongly about this, and I want to have "OPERATION TEAMLIQUID" as a cheat code if Blizzard likes it.
I'm going to sleep now and I'll watch the video tomorrow, but you realize that currently you need to click once for every unit you build, so building 40 dragoons takes 40 times as many clicks as building one?
On December 17 2008 16:09 Conquest101 wrote: List of their suggested criteria:
* The ideal mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay.
* The ideal mechanic should have both advantages and disadvantages.
* The ideal mechanic should not have a drastically negative effect for any player, whether for you, your teammate or an opponent and his teammate.
* The ideal mechanic should not discourage micro.
* The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features. <----- BOO!
* The ideal mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced.
* The ideal mechanic should not be forced upon a specific map or upon a certain type of player.
* The ideal mechanic's effect should not be random - its results must have definite results. * Preferably, the ideal mechanic will be dependent upon a player’s choices.
On January 04 2009 14:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: I'm going to sleep now and I'll watch the video tomorrow, but you realize that currently you need to click once for every unit you build, so building 40 dragoons takes 40 times as many clicks as building one?
Really? Is that how Blizzard currently has MBS macro set? Drats, my bad! But....even if so... it may still be worth watching the video, because to make 40 goons would require only 3 presses (5,5,D), which is newbie-friendly, but still manage to cost more macro time/attention.
And oh yeah, 5,D,D,D,D,D, etc. still applies, but with a cycle cooldown catch. (Pressing 5 once, not twice, doesn't force you to centre onto the hotkeyed buildings).
The point is the new mechanic should add something unique and interesting to the game and not dumb down a UI feature (unless I'm misinterpreting what you're proposing).
All these ideas are more confusing and unnecessary than the macro methods used in the original game. I see none of them as improvements but hindrances on the game. It's getting to the point where if these ideas were implemented the game would be worse as a result, not better.
It's getting away from a lot of people that macro in SC was a very simple, transparent physical barrier that players had to overcome if they wanted to be good. The constant addition of all these superficial macro ideas will just take away from the overall game and turn it into a horrible monster. I'm beginning to worry that if developers listened to what is being put forth, SC2 will play like popcap games crammed together with an rts underneath it somewhere.
idra since you are all over this thread what do you think of this idea + Show Spoiler +
Name: petzergling
tl;dr: Combine starcraft 1 mechanics with starcraft 2. Blizzard wanted to add automine & MBS to make gameplay easier, especially at a casual level. Provide a cost to MBS and automine that is negligible at a casual standpoint but can negated at a competitive level if players don't use the mechanics. Make the first mineral brought back by an automined worker not count. Most casual players don't even take the time to split their workers, so 8 minerals wouldn't make a big difference to them if it means they can do other things instead of click workers. Make units produced off of MBS take 25% longer to build or cost 10% more. This will allow anybody to have a large-scale battle of epic proportions while still rewarding players with high mechanical skill who take the time to select each factory individually.
Expanded explanation: Why is this a good idea?
-This promotes casual play, and even more, COMPETITIVE PLAY Adding MBS & Automine costs would be an amazing compromise and solution. It keeps casual players ability to use MBS and Automine and it still allows players to not use them and receive benefits for not using them. But heres the best part, casual players who use MBS and Automine are somewhat encouraged to not use them, even slightly, because it benefits them. Casual players get the choice to learn to play the game better and faster, and before they know it they are also playing at a competitive level where they can compete with the best players.
-Automine & MBS costs are completely simple, direct, and comprehendable. It is awesome for both the casual and competitive world. Casual players have a brand new shiny interface with the ability to automine and MBS, while returning competitive players still can bring their mechanics to the table and perfect their skills at starcraft 2.
-The costs have minimal negative effects. Casual players not only are only slightly harmed by them, but MBS and Automine allows them to play side by side with competitive players without it with a very small skill gap and no need for a change of game settings,
-A&MBS costs do not discourage micro, but rather they EMPHASIZE it. Players learn quickly in a battle they have the option to macro to gain a reinforcement advantage or just use the MBS feature and control their units normally. Players, casual and competitive alike, will be able to directly see the benefits and disadvantages of when micro should and shouldn't be used. This decision making, whether to macro or micro, is the backbone of the reason that plain MBS and Automine will hurt the game. This cost mechanic still leaves the decision there, but keeps the battle going by allowing players with lower mechanical skill to use MBS and control their units 100% while still knowing that reinforcements are coming.
-Automine & MBS costs are completely flexible to balance issues. Any issue regarding balancing it would just be determined by the % sacrificed by MBS and automine. Heck, there could even be a game setting where players can adjust it themselves! In competitive matches(kespa approved, tournaments) MBS and Automine would have high costs, where in friendly casual matches you could turn the costs down all the way to zero.
-A&MBS Costs are not random, map specific, player specific, or even game specific. All players are effected by it as much as they choose to be, and even though there are costs there are direct benefits to using it.
-A&MBS costs merge competitive gamers and casual gamers into a united gaming community. You would never think to see a casual player improving his mining and macro mechanics to get better at a game, but if there are tangible benefits to better macro then players will. You would never think to see a competitive player wanting A&MBS features in the game, but with the costs added even competitive gamers would use this to benefit their gaming experience. In the early and mid games they don't use the mechanic to gain every advantage possible, but in the late game players can use the MBS mechanics as well as automine to allow them to think more about strategy and less on brainless clicking on 16+ unit producers, leading ultimately for more fun and more play from all gamers.
* The ideal mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay. * The ideal mechanic should have both advantages and disadvantages. * The ideal mechanic should not have a drastically negative effect for any player, whether for you, your teammate or an opponent and his teammate. * The ideal mechanic should not discourage micro. * The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features. * The ideal mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced. * The ideal mechanic should not be forced upon a specific map or upon a certain type of player. * The ideal mechanic's effect should not be random - its results must have definite results. * Preferably, the ideal mechanic will be dependent upon a player’s choices.
On January 07 2009 04:36 petzergling wrote: idra since you are all over this thread what do you think of this idea + Show Spoiler +
Name: petzergling
tl;dr: Combine starcraft 1 mechanics with starcraft 2. Blizzard wanted to add automine & MBS to make gameplay easier, especially at a casual level. Provide a cost to MBS and automine that is negligible at a casual standpoint but can negated at a competitive level if players don't use the mechanics. Make the first mineral brought back by an automined worker not count. Most casual players don't even take the time to split their workers, so 8 minerals wouldn't make a big difference to them if it means they can do other things instead of click workers. Make units produced off of MBS take 25% longer to build or cost 10% more. This will allow anybody to have a large-scale battle of epic proportions while still rewarding players with high mechanical skill who take the time to select each factory individually.
Expanded explanation: Why is this a good idea?
-This promotes casual play, and even more, COMPETITIVE PLAY Adding MBS & Automine costs would be an amazing compromise and solution. It keeps casual players ability to use MBS and Automine and it still allows players to not use them and receive benefits for not using them. But heres the best part, casual players who use MBS and Automine are somewhat encouraged to not use them, even slightly, because it benefits them. Casual players get the choice to learn to play the game better and faster, and before they know it they are also playing at a competitive level where they can compete with the best players.
-Automine & MBS costs are completely simple, direct, and comprehendable. It is awesome for both the casual and competitive world. Casual players have a brand new shiny interface with the ability to automine and MBS, while returning competitive players still can bring their mechanics to the table and perfect their skills at starcraft 2.
-The costs have minimal negative effects. Casual players not only are only slightly harmed by them, but MBS and Automine allows them to play side by side with competitive players without it with a very small skill gap and no need for a change of game settings,
-A&MBS costs do not discourage micro, but rather they EMPHASIZE it. Players learn quickly in a battle they have the option to macro to gain a reinforcement advantage or just use the MBS feature and control their units normally. Players, casual and competitive alike, will be able to directly see the benefits and disadvantages of when micro should and shouldn't be used. This decision making, whether to macro or micro, is the backbone of the reason that plain MBS and Automine will hurt the game. This cost mechanic still leaves the decision there, but keeps the battle going by allowing players with lower mechanical skill to use MBS and control their units 100% while still knowing that reinforcements are coming.
-Automine & MBS costs are completely flexible to balance issues. Any issue regarding balancing it would just be determined by the % sacrificed by MBS and automine. Heck, there could even be a game setting where players can adjust it themselves! In competitive matches(kespa approved, tournaments) MBS and Automine would have high costs, where in friendly casual matches you could turn the costs down all the way to zero.
-A&MBS Costs are not random, map specific, player specific, or even game specific. All players are effected by it as much as they choose to be, and even though there are costs there are direct benefits to using it.
-A&MBS costs merge competitive gamers and casual gamers into a united gaming community. You would never think to see a casual player improving his mining and macro mechanics to get better at a game, but if there are tangible benefits to better macro then players will. You would never think to see a competitive player wanting A&MBS features in the game, but with the costs added even competitive gamers would use this to benefit their gaming experience. In the early and mid games they don't use the mechanic to gain every advantage possible, but in the late game players can use the MBS mechanics as well as automine to allow them to think more about strategy and less on brainless clicking on 16+ unit producers, leading ultimately for more fun and more play from all gamers.
Just so you know, that idea directly violates at least one of the criteria, so they won't accept it for the contest.
The ideal mechanic should not alter the MBS or auto-mining features.
Putting a penalty on using MBS or auto-mining directly alters the features, by encouraging people not to use them. In addition, there's no benefit to the mechanic, or a strategic choice. Finally, and most problematic, the mechanic creates a situation where the game encourages you to use MBS and auto-mining, then punishes you for doing so, sending contradictory messages to the player. That's a surefire way to get players to quit a game, and tell their friends it sucks.
Sorry if I'm coming off as harsh, but I've heard way too many variations on this idea of punishing the player for using MBS/auto-mine, and the criteria for the contest are designed explicitly to avoid these types of ideas.
I never really had intentions on winning the competition, as I disagree with the idea of MBS/automine and I don't think throwing more features into the game is the proper solution. Honestly I don't think it alters MBS or automining features that drastically. Other suggestions such as making MBS/automining a researched ability, or limited MBS alter it much more then just adding a cost to it.
As to the other ones, sc1 macro provides beneficial gameplay, it has advantages and disadvantages, and the impact is not "drastically negative". Any macro added to the game that a player refuses to do is going to have a negative impact on the player regardless of whether it directly involves A&MBS or not.
Saying that my suggestion isn't dependent on players choices doesn't make sense at all I'm not even going to try to argue it.
EPT
. Someone needs to go through this thread and sift the cream imo 
IE if you had to go to the enemies base (purely hypothetically) it'd serve the same purpose.
