EPTIf it does help, the plus is that it requires no changes to the game mechanics and just different maps.
I would love to see something like this in the simulations as it could really inform map makers decisions for making awesome maps.
Analysis of Macro - Page 5
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SpaceYeti
United States723 Posts
If it does help, the plus is that it requires no changes to the game mechanics and just different maps. I would love to see something like this in the simulations as it could really inform map makers decisions for making awesome maps. | ||
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
On February 10 2011 03:24 teamsolid wrote: No actually, the Zerg economy really does have exponential growth on the # of workers, since they are able to divert their entire mineral income into even more workers (and are not constrained by larvae production due to injects). Theoretically, the higher the mineral income, the faster drone production is, which leads to even higher mineral income. Meanwhile SCV/Probe production is constant per nexus/CC, so their economies are only exponential on the # of bases. Realistically though, drone production is heavily constrained by pressure from the opponent. I don't know if you're aware of this, but there is a cap, even with larva inject, to how many larva a hatchery can produce in a minute the same as there is a cap for a nexus producing probes or a CC producing scvs, I agree the number is higher for the hatcher for zerg than for the corresponding structures for protoss and terran, but it still exists. | ||
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Shadrak
United States490 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:24 Logo wrote: Interesting idea, but the problem with it is MULES. If Terran had access to gold patches from the start of the game for MULES... Well it wouldn't be pretty  .It already seems like MULES are a problem in normal situations based on the OP's graph of the effect of MULE vs Chronoboost in mineral production. | ||
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maize
United States38 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:24 Duka08 wrote: Wow this is really interesting. This is what I'm looking forward to so much, maps experimenting with these kinds of things, few patches, gold patches in mains, patches in a line instead of a curve... The economy could be so greatly impacted by these such simple things. I do think that in time the MULE might need to be rebalanced (as a Terran player, btw), with a cooldown, shorter duration, lower multiplier, or NOT being able to "share" mining with an SCV so to speak... But I believe map makers can experiment with many things that find the best results for all three races, and then the balancing can be observed not being able to share mining seems like a good idea, but it would be very hard to implement when your base is saturated because the mule would spend most of its' time walking around unable to mine and have very low efficiency perhaps having the natural contain gold patches (less patches to compensate) would be a better idea, giving more incentive to expand early | ||
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PepperoniPiZZa
Sierra Leone1660 Posts
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
Having a gold patch in every mineral field makes MULEs about 3x as good as they are now, which is already REALLY FREAKING GOOD!!! Having less mineral patches overall makes MULEs better (while simultaneously making chrono/spawn larva worse) because they are ignoring that super-saturation point earlier. Reducing total minerals per patch might be viable, but I can't predict the total ramifications of a change like that. Bases would mine out sooner, and therefore expanding sooner would be highly encouraged, but it could very well become a race to keep up your bases just to keep an optimal income depending on how fast bases mine out, and that would make the whole game incredibly volatile, if you're forced to transfer probes from base to base every 5 minutes. | ||
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Bagonad
Denmark173 Posts
One thing that defies this is the terran mule though, as mules can work even on saturates patches, and building an oribital command is a direct income increase with 0 supply cost, which means you can even sac all your scv's, but the ones that take gas, and get a 160 supply army, and still having reproducion facilities, and actually saturate more than 3 bases as once. So basicly, as zerg is usualy very fast on saturating a third, you should instead of taking more expos to sature, focus on deniying the opponent from having 3 saturated bases, as no m atter your amount of bases and map control, will have the same mineral income as you, this especialy worries me in PvZ where protoss can create their ultimate doom army off 3 bases, while zerg won't have a higher income to be able to destroy it even with 9 bases, except for gold expantions(Which seems far more important with this info) This also makes me believe that terran will be the most powerful race in late-game with bigger maps, with the ability to gain more income than the maximum income possible, to be gained by probes and drones. | ||
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Shadrak
United States490 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:52 maize wrote: not being able to share mining seems like a good idea, but it would be very hard to implement when your base is saturated because the mule would spend most of its' time walking around unable to mine and have very low efficiency Maybe that would be a good thing, as it would encourage expansions which would enable the MULE to operate at its full capacity. It would also likely encourage players to save up energy to dump on a new expo (more than they already do) which would tamp down on the early game mineral excess the OP talks about. | ||
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Duka08
3391 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:52 maize wrote: not being able to share mining seems like a good idea, but it would be very hard to implement when your base is saturated because the mule would spend most of its' time walking around unable to mine and have very low efficiency perhaps having the natural contain gold patches (less patches to compensate) would be a better idea, giving more incentive to expand early Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad case haha, forcing MULEs to only become an efficient use of energy if dropped on a partially saturated or brand new expansion in the later game. It would certainly throttle their incredible effectiveness late game, and early game wouldn't be as major a factor; I'd be more concerned about the mid-ish game where there are a lot of SCVs on only about 2 bases, and MULEs would run into the issues you described, but again I'm not under the impression, even as a Terran player, that ANYONE thinks MULEs are to be any stronger than they are... It would, as the thread implies, encourage expanding more often and simultaneously allow for use of fewer patches per base (to force expanding from all 3 races) without giving Terran and incredible advantage for abusing MULEs on bases with few patches. | ||
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FILM
United States663 Posts
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iSTime
1579 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:44 SpaceYeti wrote: What if bases simply had fewer mineral patches (i.e. 6 patches instead of 8)? I'm not suggesting that this is the fix, but I'm curious how this would change the expansion dynamics of the game. If it does help, the plus is that it requires no changes to the game mechanics and just different maps. I would love to see something like this in the simulations as it could really inform map makers decisions for making awesome maps. Less mineral patches would worsen the problem described in OP, allowing players to cut workers even earlier without hurting their econ. Increasing the mineral patches would be more beneficial if lalush's theory is correct. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10282 Posts
Thanks for making this I'll check it out in more detail later, however I think there was an error in your first graph. You said in BW you "should" have 4 workers per patch. However I think you seem to have forgotten that in BW there were 9 mineral patches in the main? So if you look at the 3 worker mark per patch in BW, it would be at the 27 worker mark, and as you can see it does slow down. Another question for discussion: In BW why did the Kespa maps work so well? Was it that they simply were good at making balanced maps, or was it that the size of maps that Blizzard balanced the game on was still used in Kespa maps? I think Blizzard made a mistake for changing the "proportions" of the game, as in the unit and building sizes and such, so that they are having a harder time finding a correct map size. It seems that things like this has caused problems like this, which they can't balance easily by looking directly back at BW as a reference. Also another example like the OP is that the workers mine differently now and such. Also I think if the supply cap were increased, 300 is probably not a good number, unless Blizzard make some big changes (perhaps in the expansion? I don't blame them for being "slow" like others may say since these are hard decisions). 300 is just too extreme (although saying I have 300 sounds epic, aka the movie haha). A number like 250 would seem much more reasonable to me, but with the unit clumping in SC2 it'll make deathballs that much stronger. Best luck to Blizzard to figure this stuff out! :D | ||
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djWHEAT
United States925 Posts
I really like thinking about the evolution of the game on all levels and I'm glad you discussed the concept of GSL vs Blizzard Sized maps because many of us (including myself) have felt bigger maps would solve smaller issues. I'm not so sure that's the case anymore after reading this. Well done. | ||
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Anomandaris
Afghanistan440 Posts
Increasing the population cap to 250 or maybe 300 is a really smart suggestion. You got my support. About the 3 base is all u need thing: make the natural and other expansions have less mineral patches (like 6 instead of 8), would help imho. | ||
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
On February 10 2011 05:16 PJA wrote: Less mineral patches would worsen the problem described in OP, allowing players to cut workers even earlier without hurting their econ. Increasing the mineral patches would be more beneficial if lalush's theory is correct. Hmm, the way I was thinking about it, wouldn't having less mineral patches make fast expanding much stronger? I see what you and the OP are saying, but I'm not sure which of us is correct. If we consider extreme examples: 1) Suppose bases had 2 mineral patches. You would be saturated immediately, so there's no point making more workers until you expand (gas aside). Expanding would almost immediately double your mineral income. 2) Suppose bases had 30 mineral patches. You would not be saturated until far into the mid-game. Expanding would yield almost no additional mineral gains until you had over 60 workers. | ||
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.kv
United States2332 Posts
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
On February 10 2011 05:06 Jermstuddog wrote: Unfortunately for a lot of these alternative ideas, the mechanics of the MULE makes them WAY better for Terran. Having a gold patch in every mineral field makes MULEs about 3x as good as they are now, which is already REALLY FREAKING GOOD!!! Having less mineral patches overall makes MULEs better (while simultaneously making chrono/spawn larva worse) because they are ignoring that super-saturation point earlier. Reducing total minerals per patch might be viable, but I can't predict the total ramifications of a change like that. Bases would mine out sooner, and therefore expanding sooner would be highly encouraged, but it could very well become a race to keep up your bases just to keep an optimal income depending on how fast bases mine out, and that would make the whole game incredibly volatile, if you're forced to transfer probes from base to base every 5 minutes. I agree that fewer mineral patches makes mules better and chrono boost worse, but I think it actually favors zerg mechanics, it's much faster to get expansions practically as zerg and you'll have better mining vs your opponents who are on one fewer base vs the status quo. | ||
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FrostedMiniWeet
United States636 Posts
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Duka08
3391 Posts
On February 10 2011 05:16 PJA wrote: Less mineral patches would worsen the problem described in OP, allowing players to cut workers even earlier without hurting their econ. Increasing the mineral patches would be more beneficial if lalush's theory is correct. I see what you're saying, but it's all relative the way I see it. Players would be able to cut workers earlier, but simultaneously have a lower income than currently. It wouldn't make any current all-in / timings much STRONGER because the worker cuts are so few in comparison to the income lost by staying on one base. A smaller force is easier to deflect as the expanding opponent. The extreme example listed a few posts back was a good image: imagine if bases went from 8 -> 2 patches. The "one-basing" player would cut probes very early, leaving more supply and mineral focus to getting a force instead of laying down a CC/Nexus/Hatch and more supply facilities, BUT the lower income would inherently damage the size of the attack in the end. This means an easier attack to parry for the expander, giving the advantage. I understand where you're coming from, but I feel like it would affect everyone, no? | ||
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