So here's the idea: Four of the mineral patches at a player's main base and both gases are greatly increased, perhaps to 10,000 or even up to 20,000--basically unlimited. And in the natural base, two mineral patches increased, maybe to only 5,000. Minerals from the fifth and sixth bases would have some patches removed and gas reduced to compensate.
This would prevent a winning player from closing out too easily, as there's not as much reward available for gaining full map control. And a losing player would have a sort of guaranteed income to keep him in the game. Also, players would have an incentive to turtle up a bit more and protect their main base, as it would now have a huge value, especially into the late game.
It would also be interesting if all bases after the fourth were greatly reduced, perhaps down to just 3 or 4 mineral patches. This would cause games to move into an end game more often, with enough mineral flow to keep the game interesting. I think everyone has at least one memory of an amazing end game, or a game that was decided by just a few units in a 1 base vs. 1 base. It is obvious that games do not need a huge amount of mineral flow to be interesting. They need to be kept equal for longer periods of time.
Thoughts? I know there would be some issues, especially with Terran Mech already being a turtle style and such. But I'm mainly concerned how the gameplay in general would improve, and we can pretend that any special broken aspects would be rebalanced.
If I worked on something like this, would anyone like to play test it with me?