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I am not by any means a pro player, far from it, but when I realized that Blizzard has proposed this new change for the LotV Beta, I've been torn ever since. Let me start by saying that I understand the goal of the change. Blizzard have reduced the number of minerals available into 1 base by a good amount. This seems to hope to acomplish the goal that the players are more pressed into expanding on the map because their resources will run out more quickly.
This leads to map movement as people are motivated to expand on the map much earlier into the game. They hope that this will bring more action and skirmishes across the map, instead of turtling to 200/200 - which is a very desirable goal.
However, 2-3 bases are still easy to defend/turtle and also still have enough resources to reach max supply. Lowering the available resources on the map will just make the games end quicker, true, but not necessarily make players move out of their base.
The biggest flaw that I see is in regards to how base saturation works. In Sc2 bases are extremely efficient at being saturated, i.e. you can put so many workers into a base and the marginal increase of every worker is still going to be high. Also, the need for Vespene Gas is also lessened for strategies like Bio-Terran which can sustain their gas needs just fine from 2 or 3 bases.
In Sc2, you also need a lot of workers to mine. 70 workers is a lot and this saturates about 3 bases. Also, compared to BW, you need more workers on Gas as well to obtain a similar intake. This is a huge population count to commit to workers. More than this number, your income will indeed increase, but your army size will be severely gimped. This is why the optimal amount of simultaneous mining bases is about 3.
Here is where the problem occurs: because nobody will produce more than around 70 workers to mine, as long as both players have at least 3 mining bases, they are equal in economy. Even if one of them has 4 bases he will not be able to outproduce the 3 base player, because his income is not necessarily better: it only has a better long term prospect, but in the short run those players are equal in production capabilities and income.
However, the 4 base player is spread much more thinly, thus open to attacks and harrass. So as long as both players mine from 3 bases, building a 4th puts you in a tactical disadvantage. Which leads to the optimal strategy which is that as long as you have resources mining, you are best of restricting yourself to the minimum amount of bases needed and only expand when your first runs out => this is exactly how the current Sc2 works => turtle into the minimum amount of bases, expand when needed.
To resume: because of the current saturation mechanics, there is very little insentive to spread out on the map and expose oneself to harrass as long as you are mining from 3 bases.
If we were to tweak the effects of saturation, this would potentially change. If a player with 4 bases and same amount of 70 workers could gain much higher resources per minute, then the risk of spreading thin would pay out and he would be able to overwhelm his oponent. Even if the extra advantage is in the terms of Vespene Gas this would make expanding worth while. However it currently does not seem to be the case.
Overall, to change how the game plays out, it's not the total available minerals which needs tweaking as this will simply scale the duration of the game, it's the available minerals/gas per minute from 1 base which requires rethinking.
This is why I believe that the current system still needs to be looked at.
Discuss.
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Not to be nitpicky, but I'm going to be slightly picky, I think there is a slight flaw in your hypothesis. You say that the player taking the 4th base will only have better long term prospects, however I disagree. In lotv, i think that by the time you fully establish and saturate your 3rd base, your lower main mineral patches will already be low/mined out. This means that if you stay on 3 bases you'll only be getting around 2 1/2 bases worth of minerals in the short term, whereas the player who took the 4th will be above 3 base saturation(so if he has 70+ workers he will be mining efficiently still). I'm not exactly sure what observations to draw from this but I thought id point that out :D. Somewhat interestingly this will affect Terran less than the other races b/c they have mules.
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First of all, I agree, I really didn't and still don't really like the ressource changes. It still goes into the right direction I think. Have you played one of those fan-mod maps? The patches with 750 minerals mine out really really quick. So as this happens, it puts your income from that base to half, also making the workers who mined from those patches pretty much useless. Unless you get another expansion. So you do have to expand earlier than now to maintain the high "3 Base"/66 worker income, but I don't know, if that's necessarily a good thing. There is sooooo much balance in the maps, especially in the protoss matchups I think. So on the current maps it would be like: Do I try to take another expansion, which, most of the time, is pretty hard to take beyond 3-4 Bases, with my immobile army and work my ass off to defend it? Or do I just 2 base all in before my bases get (half) outmined? I don't know, I'm pretty clueless what will happen in the end, how the maps are going to be etc. etc. but I don't think that those bases with 4 full and 4 half patches feels like SC2. It might be good, it might be bad, we'll see I guess. But I do think, that maybe reducing the cost of all main buildings might be a good idea. That would at least make it less of a risk/investment to take more bases and you could easily sacrifice one without falling behind too much. Right now, losing a base in the midgame feels like you're so far behind that you've already lost. Doesn't really promote expanding and multitasking IMO.
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OP is completely correct. But this is a realization that's a few years old at this point. The mod Double Harvesting has already demonstrated the superiority of almost exactly what you're suggesting. Starbow has a different system with a similar effect that matches what was used in BW mining. I perennially suggest a system where each mineral patch confers 6 minerals and then has a cooldown after being mined in which it only supplies 4 minerals. There are no shortage of excellent suggestions. The trick is convincing Blizzard to get their head out of their ass.
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