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Existing macro mechanic proposals almost always lie in adding features to units and buildings and that is quite limited because it works the same way on every map and adds relatively little to strategy, and balance patches effect all of them at once and map makers can't tweak the importance of macro like, say, the effectiveness of mutalisk harass. In addition, more features added units are hard to read like how it is hard to check factory efficiency and no one ever saw a pimpest factory usage play in a vod.
Here is my proposal to macro that is map dependent. It requires no new game concepts, only extension to the normal-gold mineral concept.
The solution only includes adding more Mineral types. For example:
1. Brown minerals returns 2 minerals a cycle
2. Blue mineral returns 6 minerals a cycle
3. Gold mineral return 10 minerals a cycle
4. Red mineral return 15+ minerals a cycle (for remote mining)
With these mineral patches, we can create all sort of thing to promote all kinds of macro we want. Here are some examples:
1. Make manual mine work better than automine:
Automine is stupid and does not differentiate mineral patches. If you mix gold minerals and brown minerals in a patch, automine would often mine brown minerals first. A macro-ing player can manually move peons to mine gold minerals and reassign rally points after every peon to improve efficiency.
The effectiveness of this mechanic can be tweaked by different mixture of different mineral types.
2. Mining timing:
Minerals can be used to block other minerals to create timings in mining. For example, you can have three brown mineral patches (at 100 minerals each) blocking the path to 6 blue minerals at a expo. This way, you have to start with 6~9 peons at the expo to mine out the blocking patches first, before timing to move from the main to mine the blue.
By having many layers of minerals blocking each other, a complex timing can be made into the map. For example, you may start out with 2 patches, than unblocked to reveal 6 patches, finally end with 3 high patches with 3k minerals each. This would mean the player would need to vary his peon count over the game for the expo, all of which can be planned by the map maker to create timings and more strategy. One interesting way is to have timings to move workers from the main, expo and third every two three minutes in response to number of available minerals and their type.
To make minerals block each other well, some sort of semi-stacked mineral patches might be a good idea to keep the peon travel distance more even.
3. Long distance mining
Existing SC maps are dependent on highly concentrated mineral patches around a nature base placement location. With super high yield minerals, it is possible to put minerals far from possible bases and have mining work more like C&C type harvesters. This can result in even more complicated mining timing (eg. grab the red minerals in the open before enemy's breaks the front contain) It would also require manual mining, as a 120 mineral patch would run out before many rallies can be done, and dumb mining far from the base as just asking for peons to be sniped. If we really give super high yield patches, say 50 a carry with 200 total, mineral steal might be a valid strategy.
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Why this is great:
It is a intuitive, easily balanced, strategic, and highly visible macro mechanics.
The peon movement of skilled players would show a lot of strategy in balancing income flow and risk. One can build timings not only out of the macro and resource flow, but also weaknesses peon movements, like a timing drop on the nat when you know the opponent is trying to take advantage of unrevealed gold minerals at 8:20 seconds.
With complex mineral distribution, one can also balance gas/mineral at different phases of the game for even more strategy and fix broken race balances and so on.
N00bs can just play maps with one line of simple blue minerals everywhere.
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On January 12 2009 10:19 SWPIGWANG wrote:
1. Make manual mine work better than automine:
Automine is stupid and does not differentiate mineral patches. If you mix gold minerals and brown minerals in a patch, automine would often mine brown minerals first. A macro-ing player can manually move peons to mine gold minerals and reassign rally points after every peon to improve efficiency.
What do you mean by: "automine would often mine brown minerals first"? This whole paragraph doesn't make any sense to me.
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^^It really sounds like it would be redundant to actually reassign workers anyway unless it was the first few minutes of the game. By the time you are 10 minutes in you will have enough workers that they will automatically mine all mineral patches equally whether or not they are brown or gold so that reassigning them won't matter.
The only times you would actually need to reassign workers is in the first few minutes and when you clone workers to send to a new expo.
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I don't like this idea. Normal blue minerals work just fine in my opinion. Why complicate it? Why make complicated solutions to simple problems?
The problem: Auto-mine is in Starcraft 2, it wasn't in Starcraft 1. The addition of auto-mine might make game mechanics way too easy.
Solutions: If auto-mine doesn't have much of an affect on gameplay it stays. If it does take it out.
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On January 12 2009 10:28 BanZu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2009 10:19 SWPIGWANG wrote:
1. Make manual mine work better than automine:
Automine is stupid and does not differentiate mineral patches. If you mix gold minerals and brown minerals in a patch, automine would often mine brown minerals first. A macro-ing player can manually move peons to mine gold minerals and reassign rally points after every peon to improve efficiency. What do you mean by: "automine would often mine brown minerals first"? This whole paragraph doesn't make any sense to me.
It makes sense at the beginning of an expansion or the beginning of the game, similar to how players split to the closest mineral patches to marginally speed up mining time (except with a lot more of an impact). Once you get anywhere near saturation though, it's going to start not mattering.
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yup, these complex solutions are really dumb. SC 1 was great because it was so simple and yet so deep. SC 2 will be focused more on micro and tactics + unit composition and will be more sophisticated in these aspects because over half your time isn't spent 1a2a3a4a 5sd6sd7sd8sd9sd. So what? Instead of mindlessly macroing the fastest players will lay traps and execute more harasses.
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Well, automine doesn't matter near saturation either. After you get 2+ workers per patch it doesn't matter that much any more since additional peon only helps a very little bit.
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With mineral blocking each others to create timings however, automine just don't cut it, for example:
You start with 2 gold, 2 blue minerals first and you saturate it with 10 SCV.
The two gold minerals gets mined out and you are left with 2 blue minerals. You reassign 5 SCV to your expo and reset your rally point to expo.
The two gold minerals gets mined out, revealing 3 gold 3 blue minerals, where you now reassign rally point to the gold mineral....etc
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Why complicate it? Why make complicated solutions to simple problems?
Its as complicated as the map maker wants to make it. Like I said, most people can just play with one line of blue minerals and call it a day.
Thats like asking why make maps like Troy or Monty Hall or Plasma. Why don't we all play Hunters or Python and call it a day?
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its novel, but it adds a lot of complexity. Anything that tries to make up for SBS->MBS that adds complexity isnt really going to work out imo.
Its like they changed SBS to MBS to make it easier/less complex for noobs, and then you replace it with a system that just adds the complexity/difficulty back in another form.
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these complex solutions are really dumb. This solution is actually incredibly elegant and streamlined.
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On January 12 2009 10:53 SWPIGWANG wrote:Its as complicated as the map maker wants to make it. Like I said, most people can just play with one line of blue minerals and call it a day. Thats like asking why make maps like Troy or Monty Hall or Plasma. Why don't we all play Hunters or Python and call it a day?
Um...no one plays troy and plasma. They have been out of the leagues for a while now and aren't coming back. The only successful map out of those three was Monty Hall.
Maps like (Neo) Requiem and Blue Storm are more successful as innovative maps than Troy, Plasma, and Monty Hall combined. Blue Storm is better than those three without using mineral walls, closable paths, or egg walls.
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its novel, but it adds a lot of complexity. Anything that tries to make up for SBS->MBS that adds complexity isnt really going to work out imo.
It is not a necessary mechanic. Just have a line of blue minerals for the least complicated mechanics. Than have gold-blue mixed minerals for something that is closer to existing manual mine complexity. Than have brown-gold for something that result in even higher rewards. Only if that is not complicated enough than do we add blocked mineral timings.
Um...no one plays troy and plasma. They have been out of the leagues for a while now and aren't coming back.
Professional gaming is dynamic and interesting in large part due to constant stream of new maps, some of which obviously would fail.
Given those tools, players and map makers would find the balance between complexity, race balance and strategy. Even if it does result in some unbalanced maps, it is fun to learn those maps and watch them being played while we figure them out.
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Ooh, I like this idea alot
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On January 12 2009 11:24 GhostKorean wrote:
Ooh, I like this idea alot
Me too.
And it's not complex at all. It just takes something that's already there and expands it a bit.
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I think its a good idea. It doesn't "make up" for anything....its just a way to make a map more micro or macro oriented. Even SC1 could benefit from this.
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Creative thinking SWIPIGWANG. I actually see a lot of potential in your theorycrafting ability as soon as you get over your hang up about automining.
Your trying to solve the question "How do I undo automing?"
You should be trying to solve the quesiton " How do I make a fun macro mechanic?"
Focus on fun rather then fighting something in the game and I am sure we will see some interesting mechanics out of you.
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it's a good idea, especially in early game, but when it gets to late game, your not gonna focus on re-assigning probes, but your'e going to have to start micro'ing/moving your guys.
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i think the different color mineral patches is too confusing, i think they just made things more complicated for the noobs for sc2 when they could make it simple with just make your workers work! i mean of course if you don't have automine and noob forgets about their workers they are punished by not getting more minerals than they could've potentially have, but its the same way if you dont mine effeciently if you just automine, so you reward the other players who remember to mine the correct patches at right time, but then thats the new bar, that practically teh same thing as not having your worker mine maybe to a less extent but still basically the same. XD
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I think we just have to face it... The Macro won't be as important as in SC/BW... Well it will be as important but it will be way easyer to be good at it... But on the oderhand it seems to me as if flanking and stuff like this will be more important. I feel that frontal assaults will be way less effective due to many Units which are hard to attack if they don't really want to fight you or which are devastating if they can attack you in a good angle.
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Superb idea.. very clever. I like the simplicity, it is all very in your face, but the intricacies can go very deep. Although I think mineral trickery like described in the op will be applied very limitted in competetive maps, they can be applied and give a map a strong identity and bring variation.
Second thoughts... super high yield minerals may invoke a positive feedback loop.. although proper map design can negate this somewhat. But the stronger army can defend 'maynarding' workers more easily in any case. Terran will have more difficulty defending long distance SCV's because of their less mobile units. Hmm.. has to see this idea in action I say.
I am thinking of dropship-SCV action.. haha. bank robberies..
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actually, seeing the screenshots of the demo sc2 map as posted on bwmn, i think there actually is one more mineral kind, a gold coloured mineral expansion. I suppose it has some greater benefits than a normal blue one so this idea (might) just already be implemented to a certain extent?
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wats the point? when u have enough workers, all mineral patches will be mined at the same time. it would only effect the first few minutes of an expansion. its pointless. whats with all these ridiculous ideas. why dont we we just go and add frogger on the mineral patches so he can jump mineral to mineral patch and then u keep him jumping on these mineral patches or u wont get extra frog power stats on ur units.
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On January 12 2009 21:15 zimz wrote:
wats the point? when u have enough workers, all mineral patches will be mined at the same time. it would only effect the first few minutes of an expansion. its pointless.
I believe your correct in saying that after worker line saturation this mechanic would have no effect.
On January 12 2009 21:15 zimz wrote:
why dont we we just go and add frogger on the mineral patches so he can jump mineral to mineral patch and then u keep him jumping on these mineral patches or u wont get extra frog power stats on ur units.
Frogger idea has potential but would be imbalanced for terran who already have hopping units like viking and reapers.
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On January 12 2009 20:52 Starparty wrote:
actually, seeing the screenshots of the demo sc2 map as posted on bwmn, i think there actually is one more mineral kind, a gold coloured mineral expansion. I suppose it has some greater benefits than a normal blue one so this idea (might) just already be implemented to a certain extent?
You are right, iirc gold minerals get double the amount of minerals (10) per gather. I believe that these two types, gold and blue, may be sufficient to serve as an incentive for pro-gamers to micromanage workers before the point of saturation. Still, having more types of minerals with varying performances will allow better fine-tuning, and more strategical depth options for mapmakers. Perhaps a simple configuration per mineral, but then there's the need for some standardization as well as visualization so it remains viewable for those less experienced with a map.
The thing is, when Blizzard mentioned the gold minerals, they said it could be used for 'gold mineral bases' in difficult positions. The op thought further, and saw a solution for worker micro, by mixing these mineral types in a single mineral line.
And to those who claim it is not a good solution because saturation ends the need for worker micro:
- When a mineral line is saturated, no matter what, there is less incentive to micro workers. This is already the case in the current game of Starcraft. Only mechanics like strip mining prevent this percieved problem.
- Worker raids happen often enough, keeping bases from being saturated. When worker raids don't happen, there's probably enough action going on in the game at that point.
- New bases do get constructed. Often enough? Would be nice to see a study on games indicating the time where a player has full worker saturation on all bases, and when not.
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Thats an idea that may prove to be very interesting and may be used to craft some unique solutions by map makers. Blizzard should at least have something like this in the editor.
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This idea is at least good as a possibility, its good because it increases potential without seriously increasing complexity. Its easy to see that certain minerals are worth less even without a complex understanding of the game.
Its like destructable rocks. Just because they're in the game doesnt mean every map will have them.
Several mineral types at least add more potential to the game, they give mapmakers more to work with. If they don;t solve macro, so be it, but they can at least make interesting expansions.
However i do think they will add to macro, bringing back the possibility of microing workers, which was irrelevant in SC1 after a certain saturation - so there is no real change.
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What many people don't understand is that something like this takes two minutes to implement on a map via the map editor (from my limited experience with TFT Worldeditor you can even do something like this in Warcraft 3 with the proper knowledge.)
The community, or more specifically creative mapmakers could and will make such interesting mechanics for particular maps, ESPECIALLY if the successful trend of changing maps seasonally set by Kespa remains.
I personally like this idea, as it increases complexity of timing strategies/surgical worker line strikes, and this is a good increase to strategy/tactics, while the effect on the game's complexity from a newb PoV remains nearly null.
The key point however, is for Blizzard to OFFICIALLY implement such a mechanic (kudos to the OP again, this is an ingeniously simple solution to increase macro). As in, what will make them accept something like this over a worse solution?
If SC2 is to have a more demanding macro facet, it is quite imperative that the game is originally created that way, because no matter what the SC hardcore community does with maps, the mass of new players will set the trend on a low demanding macro, multitask-wise, because people always choose whats easier over what is not.
Complementary is the fact that if SC2 is to be successful as an Esport, the focus around the SKorean scene will be greatly diminished compared to how it is today with SC, as it will most likely 'catch on' worldwide, similar to how WC3 evolved as an Esport, in my humble opinion .This only means that the already experienced professional scene formed in South Korea will have less of an influence, and it will highly likely that whatever the equivalent of KeSPA will be for SC2, it will not set a dominating map trend every few months.
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On January 12 2009 11:35 Dromar wrote:Me too. And it's not complex at all. It just takes something that's already there and expands it a bit.
This idea is incredibly good.
[x] Not too complex
[x] Balance through maps
[x] Advantage for manual mining
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Edit: Looks like minus_human said this already.
Actually when I think about it, I'm 99% sure this idea will be capable of being implemented in SC2 without even telling Blizzard about this specific application.
Since there are already blue and gold(high yield) mins, it really wouldn't make sense if there wasn't an ability in the map editor to change mineral yields just as an normal function of the map editor. Probably you would be able to change the color too, iirc you could change the color of units in the WC3 editor?
On January 12 2009 22:42 Archerofaiur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2009 21:15 zimz wrote:
why dont we we just go and add frogger on the mineral patches so he can jump mineral to mineral patch and then u keep him jumping on these mineral patches or u wont get extra frog power stats on ur units. Frogger idea has potential but would be imbalanced for terran who already have hopping units like viking and reapers.
I can't believe you actually took him seriously.
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On January 13 2009 08:43 Fontong wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2009 22:42 Archerofaiur wrote:On January 12 2009 21:15 zimz wrote:
why dont we we just go and add frogger on the mineral patches so he can jump mineral to mineral patch and then u keep him jumping on these mineral patches or u wont get extra frog power stats on ur units. Frogger idea has potential but would be imbalanced for terran who already have hopping units like viking and reapers. I can't believe you actually took him seriously.
You never know, you just might be Romanian
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On January 13 2009 07:20 indecision wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2009 11:35 Dromar wrote:On January 12 2009 11:24 GhostKorean wrote:
Ooh, I like this idea alot Me too. And it's not complex at all. It just takes something that's already there and expands it a bit. This idea is incredibly good. [x] Not too complex [x] Balance through maps [x] Advantage for manual mining
one more QFT 
I think it would be hilarious to see early-game peon fights over mineral patches :D
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in what concerns comunity star2 will become another macro game, the same way starcraft became one too, the micro oriented maps from Elky vs Boxer 1.08 will become Katrinas from 1.15 equivalents
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I really like the idea. I think it's great, simple and greatly adjustable. I just don't think it resolves the MBS problem. But it would be nice to have the possibility to change mineral cargo returns for a map.
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On January 13 2009 08:43 Fontong wrote:
I can't believe you actually took him seriously.
I can't believe you actually took me seriously.
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Interesting idea, I'd like to see them try something like this. I guess they already have the gold minerals, but multiple types would make the system more flexible.
edit: also, the ideas presented here of how to use different mineral types are just as important as inventing them in the first place, because if Blizzard implements this in the retail game, it will be much more likely to be widely used/accepted by the community than if it has to be added in custom maps.
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One easy and quick solution would be to just space the minerals out a lot more.
eg:
_________MM
MM ______ CC______ MM
_________MM
(M = minerals, CC = CC/nexus/hatch; underscores are just there for formatting)
Basically, the mineral patches are spaced at around the CC in such a way that workers rallied to one patch won't move to the other ones when they get saturated. This is certainly cruder than the solution suggested in the initial post (which I like in a lot of ways) and would require only a bit more time to macro appropriately, but it's far easier to implement.
Just a thought. ^_^
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Or...... Instead of worrying about strip mining/mineral value/mineral positioning they could just REMOVE automining and make this much more simple.
+ Show Spoiler +But I suppose you are all being more civil about this than I.
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Here's a concept. Three kinds of minerals:
Low grade ore: Returns 2 minerals per trip. If a sufficient number of works is ordered to mine from a low grade ore patch, they will instead do a worker drill that destroys the low grade patch. Graphically, a low grade ore could be a rocky outcropping with blue mineral viens.
Standard grade ore: Returns 5 minerals per trip. Represented by the standard blue mineral patch.
High grade ore: Returns 8 minerals per trip. Represented by golden minerals.
The concept is to have multiple layers of minerals. The first layer would be mostly standard minerals with several low grade patchs thrown in the front line that could be drilled out to expose three or four standard patches to mine. The standard front patches would be lower numbers than standard BW, and would exhaust in the mid game rather than later. After they exhaust more low grade patches are exposed that need to be drilled out to once again exposing three or four standard patches, allowing more effecient mining.
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I'm sick of these stupid mechanics. I read them all, and i dislike them all. The gas mechanic is actually the best one out there and it to is a vomit-shake (don't even get me started on the TL proposed mineral mechanic).
The point I'm trying to make is that if Blizzard is soooo hard pressed to put in a mechanic just to make the game more "difficult" to please you SBS nostalgic crowd i would much rather have MBS out and play the old-fashioned way with SBS, than play with a retarded mechanic, witch I also think is the ultimate goal of all this whole circus. So they can happily announce a few months later that they tried everything out and that ppl ultimately like SBS better than the new mechanics and they keep everyone happy.
It is also a theory of mine that the reason we don't have a beta out, and the whole product for that matter is the stupid SBS/MBS/new mechanic debate, guess who i blame for that?
edit:typo
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On January 14 2009 05:25 eugen1225 wrote:
I'm sick of these stupid mechanics. I read them all
Can anyone propose a solution to this guy so he stops getting so sick?
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On January 13 2009 16:55 BanZu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2009 08:43 Fontong wrote:On January 12 2009 22:42 Archerofaiur wrote:On January 12 2009 21:15 zimz wrote:
why dont we we just go and add frogger on the mineral patches so he can jump mineral to mineral patch and then u keep him jumping on these mineral patches or u wont get extra frog power stats on ur units. Frogger idea has potential but would be imbalanced for terran who already have hopping units like viking and reapers. I can't believe you actually took him seriously. You never know, you just might be Romanian
He says the exact same thing for every single mechanic..
"Your idea has potential..."
Edit: but yes I have been caught being Romanian on occasion.
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On January 14 2009 09:56 Fontong wrote:
He says the exact same thing for every single mechanic..
"Your idea has potential..."
You know why?
Because I think the SC2 community has the potential to change SC2 for the better. I believe we can create incredible macro. And even if they are not good enough for the final version they are at least good enough to point the developers in the right direction.
Plus I am not into the whole 'tearing apart this guys macro suggestion' that everyone else so enjoys. I would rather encourage people to improve their creative ideas.
P.S. There have been allot I have read that did not have potential and therefore I did not tell them they did.
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It would look ugly with this geological mardi-gras cluttering up the already too-colourful screen :/
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well technically they didn't have this in tft but they did have it where you could have the units themselves mine at different rates. since starcraft 2 is going to have a special rate for the mineral...it stands to reason that you can make a custom map in starcraft 2 that has many different kind of minerals which give different mining rates. so even though warcraft only had rates on the units' abilities themselves, starcraft will have the rates on the minerals and possibly even in the abilities...it'll be slightly more complicated to change unit abilities for that but it won't be a problem. that's my guess.
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On January 12 2009 10:19 SWPIGWANG wrote:
2. Mining timing:
Minerals can be used to block other minerals to create timings in mining. For example, you can have three brown mineral patches (at 100 minerals each) blocking the path to 6 blue minerals at a expo. This way, you have to start with 6~9 peons at the expo to mine out the blocking patches first, before timing to move from the main to mine the blue.
Wouldn't this give a large advantage to Terran, who could build a Command Center to mine the brown minerals then Lift off to mine the blue?
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On January 15 2009 03:17 bendover340 wrote:
Wouldn't this give a large advantage to Terran, who could build a Command Center to mine the brown minerals then Lift off to mine the blue?
The CC can't land everywhere. Just add a doodad or unbuildiable terrain or something, than the Terran would be stuck with a CC position that is like everyone else.
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sc2 already uses gold minerals and once you got enough workers it wouldn't matter anyway.
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On January 15 2009 07:25 SWPIGWANG wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2009 03:17 bendover340 wrote:
Wouldn't this give a large advantage to Terran, who could build a Command Center to mine the brown minerals then Lift off to mine the blue?
The CC can't land everywhere. Just add a doodad or unbuildiable terrain or something, than the Terran would be stuck with a CC position that is like everyone else.
Yes, but won't that ruin manner pylons and other similar annoyances?
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Well, sort a bump now that the SC:L ideas are posted. How does they compare to this one?
It would be nice if there are a list of elected threads (doesn't have to be this one) thats stickied on top to prevent repeats.
On January 17 2009 06:50 bendover340 wrote:
Yes, but won't that ruin manner pylons and other similar annoyances?
Manner pylons are smaller and have different placement limits....besides I don't think the game is broke if there are no more manner pylons.
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On January 24 2009 07:58 SWPIGWANG wrote:
Well, sort a bump now
At least hes honest.
SWPIGWANG, I would move on to race specific macro mechanics. Its the direction Blizzard is going in and plus they are really fun to theorycraft.
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Race or no race, looking at the proposals, there are a few category of stuff being proposed:
1. Mining modes
2. Regen res/Res Degradation
3. Timed Resourcing special ability
4. Resource Trading (Min <-> Gas)
Frankly, I don't see anything coming out of them outside of APM sink or Build Orders....and nothing that generates a new dynamic.
In other words, I'm kinda bored (idea wise) by them.... Maybe I'll try the dodge the nuke proposal again.
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EPT
