A Treatise on the Economy of SCII - Page 19

On April 14 2015 17:52 Teoita wrote:
The same can be said about the LotV economy model though. Mules are annoying because the terran is on an even more brutal clock to expand, chrono is underwhelming, while larva inject+faster thirds give Zerg enormous freedom, and keep their own "expanding clock" from being as harsh as protoss or terran.

On April 14 2015 23:25 solidbebe wrote:
Why would you linked the tax system to worker count? Despite not making a lot of sense imo, you greatly benefit terran who can substitute scv's with mules.

Why wouldn't you link it to supply like wc3?

On April 14 2015 21:08 Bazik wrote:
Ok. Having heard zeromus with Gretorp talk (late last night 5am or something for me ) I now I feel I have a better grip on what this proposal tries to accomplish, having said that I'll try to make a constructive counterpoint as to why I feel this kind of change isn't viable.

First, there are several reasons why blizzard increased worker efficiency to 22 per base (16 on min. 6 on gas) in no particular order here are some of the features of this decision I feel are key:

- army size management( by allocating many workers to each base it forces more food supply into the economy making the stable point between base count and army be very apparent and base count quite small, by keeping it small it helps viewers understand whats on the line).

- Very clear cost vs reward for viewers ( having so many workers means it takes a lot longer to replace, also after the replacement start, the time it takes to have full efficiency back is also a lot slower, after all it takes longer to replace 22 workers then 12 making harassment that much more obvious).

- Increases tension for viewers since there's more on the line ( by making the amount of mining bases any player has at any time no bigger than 3/4, it creates tension in several ways, first and foremost because when u loose one it's more important then if u had let's say 6, secondly it creates tension by creating very obvious points in time when expanding is essential, when one base runs out u need to have a replacement or your economy is going to crumble very fast).

- The mining doesn't disappear all at once ( by creating a point in time where the mining operation in one base is crippled it creates opportunity for casters to create tension, instead of just saying the minerals are almost over and that's it, they can easily comment on how it was crippled to 4 patches and later revisit that situation having several possible scenarios ie base replacement, the actual end of mining, worker transfers, etc...). [LotV feature]

Lastly but not least the main reason why I don't think Blizzard will ever be receptive to this kind of change.

The proposed system isn't a clear improvement on what they have, it simply tries to fix problems while opening others and at the same time requiring a massive restructure of supply costs across the board to maintain parity between army representation from HotS to LotV.

I hope it was not too long and any response will be very appreciated. Before I'm sold on this kind on system change this kinds of problems need to be addressed, it's easy to give a solution to problems we don't like , it's a lot harder to defend why their more important than the ones were creating.

Thanks a lot for reading.

PS: A special thanks to Zeromus for creating the article, I would very much like people like him to keep doing what they do, with which without we would never have so much healthy discussion. Also thanks to everybody else that contributed.

Bazik (Zerodai on twitch)

On April 15 2015 02:40 Apostremo wrote:

Yeah right because that was my goal. It's still his idea and reasons behind it. I only tried a different aproach after reading his.
Losing effeciency is the same as losing money though. The difference is DH starts at higher base rate. The same could be achieved by giving a efficiency boost for under 8 Worker per base (105% for example)

On April 15 2015 00:00 Shuffleblade wrote:

I don't know if I agree on this, I agree that zerg might get a bit too strong since their hatch is cheap and it is also their production facility but I don't believe the macro mechanic would be the problem. You say chrono is underwhelming, it achives to a slight degree what zergs larva inject does increase worker amount early game at a more rapid speed than normal. You can also use it to go eco mode longer than you should be able too because you can take the necessary upgrades or units production later with the help of chrono boost.

Upgrades are the perfect example, take PvT, P can start their upgrades significantly later than T and instead focusing on economy (or if you so chose early aggression) and still be ahead in upgrades later on.

I believe the effect of chrono boost and how much freedom it gives to P in their build orders are greatly undervalued.

On April 15 2015 03:20 Apostremo wrote:


You're right, from a community driven perspective DH is way easier to implement of course. I still dreaming about Blizzard taking bold steps with LotV, but thats propably a dream.


Okay sorry now i understand what you meant. You're right, thats a point i didn't think about.
If both players mine out half the map, the player with more spread out workers gets another advantage by higher overall minerals.

On April 14 2015 22:06 Barrin wrote:

It might get rounded [truncated] on a return -- though maybe not tbh -- but I am quite positive the data editor can handle 4.5 in the pocket for a return a whole 9. Knowing the editor, I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that decimals are fully supported in resource values (even if not displayed in-game). I'll test it soon.


I don't think you've fully contemplated the ramifications of these facts stated in your chart




if you think most of its effect is in the early game.

For one, the early game hardly exists if you accelerate it so fast.

More importantly: especially under a mineral income model with a curve starting at the 9th worker, players are going to be expanding a lot of the time (at least until they don't need to anymore*). This means that even though


a lot (if not most) of the time the income is going to be higher than 5% (and 5% isn't really small, tbh).

Unless you go from 1 base start to full-bases-fully-saturated very quickly, we're looking at more like a 10% overall income increase. So if we want to "keep the resourcing rates similar to that of HotS", we're definitely looking at more like 9/trip instead of 10/trip.

*So when we're looking at a mining rate increase of 5-38%, we actually are looking at a situation where you go from 1 base start to full-bases-fully-saturated very quickly. So maybe it is closer to a 5% increase, but I don't think getting to full-bases-fully-saturated so quickly is what anyone actually wants.

---

Yes, I do want to slow the game down (9 per trip wouldn't do that btw). But that doesn't mean there were no points in my first reply about this system itself. I would particularly like a rebuttal to



What I'm saying is that you basically already have all the income you could possibly want in HotS model on just 3 bases already. When you already have all the income you want on so few bases, a little more income or a few less workers hardly justifies an investment in spreading yourself out even more. In a 5-38% income increase model, if you do keep expanding past that it's probably more because you have extra minerals to spare (or you're zerg and you were going to take the 4th for gas/production anyway).

Do you think people are going to want a 4th mineral mining base under 10 per trip?

On April 15 2015 03:09 Whitewing wrote:


It's not undervalued, it is useful, but I actually did calculations for this paper that were left out due to brevity on the rate of return for a new expansion in the system, which assumed full chrono boost on probes (which is obviously not always going to be the case because you often want to chrono boost something else), and zerg and terran both had protoss beaten on rate of return.

On April 15 2015 05:00 Shuffleblade wrote:

Hmm I'm still kind of confused at what this actually means. Are you saying that you have compared the economy differences between how underwhelming chronoboost is as an economic booster in hots compared to lotv(with this proposed dual harvest patch)?

In hots economy chrono boost can keep up with the economy boosters of the others but with dual harvesters they can't?


I've thought that chrono boost has always been beaten by the others races macro mechanic in term of rate of return economy wise. That this is stil the case after a change to the game isn't really shocking. The strength of the mechanics are different the rate of return for one thing doesn't have to be the same for all three races. Even for terran with mules and triple CC builds they are going to be behind zerg if they let him drone and expand freely for too long, thats why pressure builds are a thing. Maybe I'm missing something or not understanding what you mean but unless the rate of return is very reduced compared to how even it was in hots i can't really see he difference to hots.

On April 15 2015 05:22 Whitewing wrote:


No, I did a DID (Differences in Differences) calculation. I took the difference in rate of return that exists in heart of the swarm on an expansion, and contrasted that to the differences in this model. In other words, this model benefits zerg and terran slightly more in terms of how fast they pay off an expansion relative to protoss than the heart of the swarm model does.

That said, it's not a big difference which is why it was left out, wasn't deemed significant enough. There are too many variables to really run an effective econometric analysis on the question, so I made estimated guesses from that point. The econometric tests I did conduct demonstrate that protoss is slightly weaker in double harvesting relative to terran and zerg than they are in heart of the swarm, but not nearly as badly harmed as they are by the current LOTV model, but only around the p <.07, which is not that statistically significant.

In general, chronboost is a weaker economic mechanic than the terran and zerg equivalents. Where chronoboost shines is in researching tech: there's nothing terran or zerg can do to speed their economic research along, other than starting the research sooner, but Protoss can. So, chronoboost is weaker than the terran and zerg macro mechanic, but more versatile.