Blizzard doesn't care though ;(
[Idea] GEM: New LotV economy model - Page 19
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HewTheTitan
Canada331 Posts
Blizzard doesn't care though ;( | ||
BlackLilium
Poland426 Posts
The last one is - I think - an important observation. In ideal situation, whenver you take a new base, you should transfer 16 workers from low base to that high base. There is no point to keep a low base going (and defending) when a high base is available and needs more workers. The only thing preventing you from doing so is the transfer cost. You pay an additional price for the time when workers are traveling to the new base. | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
There's a certain common sense appeal to "if DH makes the game better, and LotV makes the game better, then surely DH + LotV will be best of all!" But if you slap LotV mineral values into an (in)efficiency curve system, what do you actually gain? The ideal maximum number of bases has already changed. It makes it even more painful when your 8-patch bases go down to 4, because with DH or HMH there's even less gain from doubling up your SCVs on the remaining 4 patches. Since the biggest complaint I've heard about LotV economy is that it's too punishing to not expand, surely that would just make matters worse. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
On July 02 2015 16:30 ChristianS wrote: Alright, so the purpose of alternative economy models is to break the 3-base cap, because with only three active bases, map control isn't very important (map control being one of the more interesting and dynamic areas of Starcraft strategy, and one which should be promoted), and harass isn't very good because it's too easy to cover just three bases at once. So what we want is something that gives players an incentive to go beyond 3 mining bases, so that map control becomes a more useful resource and harass becomes stronger because both players are more spread out. (All of this is either directly borrowed or inferred from Meavis's post). If anyone has a disagreement with that, then that's where the discussion should start. If not, we can move on to how alternative economy models work on that problem. LotV in its current state achieves this by making half the minerals at each base mine out pretty quickly. So now the theoretical cap is somewhere around 5 or 6 active bases (plus your dumb main you still kind of need to protect), only because your other bases probably only have 4 mineral patches and you need to keep 24 patches of economy going to reach ideal economy. It seems to me this achieves the stated goals – players can't just turtle on their main, natural, and third; both players are more spread out, making map control a more important resource; and harass should be stronger now because it is easier to harass someone with 6 bases than 3. Meavis notes this is offset by the fact that each base has fewer workers so it's harder to score as big with each harass, but in the current state of things you rarely have time to kill a whole base of workers anyway; you pick off four or five before the army shows up. So now if you have time to pick off ten of the sixteen workers at a 4-patch base, since the army is further out of position to stop you, surely harass is still stronger than in HotS. DH and HMH combat the three-base cap by making workers mine most efficiently when they are one per patch. Therefore on 6 active bases you have 48 mineral patches, so you can have 1 worker per patch and maintain efficient mining without raising worker supply, whereas on 3 active bases your income is reduced by either having to wait to mine (DH) or by mining a patch while it's "hot" (HMH). The hope is that this will encourage taking more bases to maintain worker efficiency, thus breaking the three-base cap, making map control more important, and (as players take more bases and spread out workers) strengthening harassment. I'd note that just as in the LotV model, Meavis's note about there being fewer workers at each base, making the payoff for harassment less, is just as true here as for the LotV model. As long as we're keeping the same worker count and spreading them out over more bases, that is inevitably going to happen. GEM more or less takes the same tack as the LotV model, by reducing the usefulness of a base after a short amount of time. Unlike LotV, however, even 6 bases cannot achieve the same economy for the same supply if those bases have been mined enough. If you can get a fresh base, you might as well put as many workers there as you efficiently can; otherwise, you're no better off with 6 bases than 3. So players can make more than 70 workers to offset the loss of economy, expand like crazy to keep HotS economy levels, or just make do with the lower income. Any disagreements with anything I've said so far? Wow great post ChristianS as a basis for discussion. I agree with most of your post except a critical point. In LotV the base cap is somewhere between 3 and 4. Definitely not 5. It all has to do with how you count bases. Let's call T the time it takes to mine out a base in HotS. In order to maintain a 24 patch economy, in hots, one has to expand every T/3 (three bases every T). In LotV half patch, one has to expand every T/4, keeping always 2 low bases and 2 high bases. That's a hard 4 base cap. Now since low patches are 900 minerals and not 750, that means that the base cap is slightly lower than 4, thus somewhere between 3 and 4. So LotV standard play is: keep 2 high bases and two low bases and expand a bit faster than every T/3 and transfer 16 workers to new bases every time. GEM works a bit the same way, you need to transfer 16 workers to a new base, but it reduces the income when bases are low. As you've seen, opimal 48 patch economy is unatainable, so player either make more workers, expand more, or accept lower income. This opens a lot more strategic depth than just camping on 48 workers and 4 bases like lotv is doing right now. In LotV taking that 4th to reach optimal economy is highly rewarded ~40% more income on 48 workers as shown by my graphs. And taking a 5th is nit rewarded as you are already on optimal economy. In GEM, taking a 4th is a bit rewarded, taking a fith as well etc. (All under the asumptiom that some of your bases are going to be low. | ||
BlackLilium
Poland426 Posts
I agree with you that if each of the changes achieves the goal in a different, but sufficient way, than adding them both together may be too much. However, HMH and GEM can be tuned to be 50% effective. I am sure the same will be possible with LotV. Having a mod that is 0.5*LotV + 0.5*GEM or 0.5*LotV + 0.5*HMH is certainly viable and probably well balance. Just a bit complicated... | ||
BlackLilium
Poland426 Posts
On July 02 2015 17:31 Geiko wrote: GEM works a bit the same way, you need to transfer 16 workers to a new base, but it reduces the income when bases are low. As you've seen, opimal 48 patch economy is unatainable, so player either make more workers, expand more, or accept lower income. This opens a lot more strategic depth than just camping on 48 workers and 4 bases like lotv is doing right now. In LotV taking that 4th to reach optimal economy is highly rewarded ~40% more income on 48 workers as shown by my graphs. And taking a 5th is nit rewarded as you are already on optimal economy. In GEM, taking a 4th is a bit rewarded, taking a fith as well etc. (All under the asumptiom that some of your bases are going to be low. In GEM optimal economy it attainable although probably not very viable. You need to expand every T/6 and transfer 16 workers from low base to high base, leaving the low base empty. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
HMH and DH are truly orthogonal to LotV. One could imagine a LotV+DH system and it would make sense. Not sure that's what blizzard wants though. (Because they think it's too complicated) One could imagine a GEM system with slightly different mineral values for patches (not 50% more or less), that would be viable, but that would defeat the simplicity of the model. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
On July 02 2015 17:40 BlackLilium wrote: In GEM optimal economy it attainable although probably not very viable. You need to expand every T/6 and transfer 16 workers from low base to high base, leaving the low base empty. On this we can agree. My point is that it's no use going out of your way to reach maximal economy. The opimal play will probably be to accept that you have at least 1 low mining base and work with that. One aspect that GEM works on and no other model does is late game economy. Most people would agree that maxing and remaxing is happening too fast currently. Toned down economy (slightly) in the late game (and not in the early game) is a good thing that only GEM achieves so far. | ||
OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
On July 02 2015 17:34 BlackLilium wrote: I think that the reason why people are asking aboud LotV + mod is more political than practical:
I agree with you that if each of the changes achieves the goal in a different, but sufficient way, than adding them both together may be too much. However, HMH and GEM can be tuned to be 50% effective. I am sure the same will be possible with LotV. Having a mod that is 0.5*LotV + 0.5*GEM or 0.5*LotV + 0.5*HMH is certainly viable and probably well balance. Just a bit complicated... With all due respect, I think that everyone who thinks that we can "make Blizzard happy" and thus that they'll accept one of the community models is delusional. It seems pretty clear by now that Blizzard is clearly going for the current LotV model and that they won't change it, unless they suddenly change their game design goals for LotV (not gonna happen), and it's way too late in the beta for that. Thus, unlike what Geiko claims, the chances of GEM or a derivative being accepted as a new econ system are just as high as DH's or HMH's : zero percent. If GEM or HMH is to be the basis for a game, it will be a community-made one and not LotV. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
But yeah for a community mod game, you're better off using DH or HMH | ||
BlackLilium
Poland426 Posts
On July 02 2015 17:53 OtherWorld wrote: With all due respect, I think that everyone who thinks that we can "make Blizzard happy" and thus that they'll accept one of the community models is delusional. Just to be clear - I am not trying to make Blizzard happy I am just summarizing the reasoning that I see in few places, this thread included. | ||
Penev
28356 Posts
On July 02 2015 17:53 OtherWorld wrote: With all due respect, I think that everyone who thinks that we can "make Blizzard happy" and thus that they'll accept one of the community models is delusional. It seems pretty clear by now that Blizzard is clearly going for the current LotV model and that they won't change it, unless they suddenly change their game design goals for LotV (not gonna happen), and it's way too late in the beta for that. Thus, unlike what Geiko claims, the chances of GEM or a derivative being accepted as a new econ system are just as high as DH's or HMH's : zero percent. If GEM or HMH is to be the basis for a game, it will be a community-made one and not LotV. If you don't shoot you'll certainly miss. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
Now this might seem like a valid concern, and I will take the time to answer to this in detail. First of all, let's see what an ingame situation would look like. You're on 3 bases, your main is now low mineral and natural close to low. You take a 4th. What do you do according to your ideal play idea ? You take all workers from main and place them on your 4th. You're now on 3 mining bases + your empty main. Your natural turns low soon after that effectively you are on 2,6nb income. Now you can argue that this process can go on and on, always transfering all workers to new bases. However, that would be assuming you can keep up this expanding rythm, which as I've proved previously, is unatainable realistically. So you find yourself in a situation where you now have to mine on 1 fresh, and 2 low. With one of the lows being close to mined out. What do you do when it mines out ? Transfer all workers back to the 4th freshest base ! That's optimal play right ? But in reality, you've just been maynarding your workers twice (plus all the travel time from the workers you've had to rebuilt). Optimal play is in fact, to keep mining from all of your bases rather than just top 3. Of course saturate fresh bases, but spread out rest of workers on low bases. Not only for the problem I've stated, but also to ensure a constant income, less loss of income if one of your bases gets destroyed etc. Second point is gas. Late game you find yourself gas starved more often than not. Players will want to use their Vespene geysers (even if they yield only 3, haven't decided on what's best for geysers in GEM yet) on all of their bases, or at least more than three. If you're going to defend 4 or 5 bases for the gas, you might as well mine minerals from them. Last point is a practical concern. You argue implicitely that you don't need to defend more than 3 bases. However it's obvious that you're going to have to defend your main and natural (tech and production structures) even if you're not mining from them. You're still as spread out on 5 bases, GEM and DH similarely. And this holds true for any base. "oh I'm not mining for that base currently so I'll just let my opponent destroy it" is not the attitude you will see in the game, believe me. More important then "how many bases do I need to be mining from ?", is "how much expanding do I need to do ?". And GEM encourages you to expand. The problem with 3 base cap in HotS was that you could basicaly turtle on 3 bases and max out. This is not possible in GEM. GEM rewards expanding, and de facto spreads your army out, opens up room for harass play etc. Thanks for starting to take the conversation a bit seriously by the way, isn't it nice when we can all get along and discuss things calmly ? | ||
BlackLilium
Poland426 Posts
On July 02 2015 18:34 Geiko wrote: Thanks for starting to take the conversation a bit seriously by the way, isn't it nice when we can all get along and discuss things calmly ? Of course it is. When I joined this thread I was calm as ever, treating it 100% seriously and sticking to the point. But then you started your sarcasm, unhealthy humor, patronizing and - worst of all - pulling arbitrary numbers and manipulating (if not to say "lie"). | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
On July 02 2015 18:42 BlackLilium wrote: You don't have to explain to me in this big wall of text why reaching optimal harvesting in GEM is not viable. I said that myself! Of course it is. When I joined this thread I was calm as ever, treating it 100% seriously and sticking to the point. But then you started your sarcasm, unhealthy humor, patronizing and - worst of all - pulling arbitrary numbers and manipulating (if not to say "lie"). Please read again. My point is not that reaching optimal economy in unatainable (that's obivous), my point is that GEM encourages you to spread workers on bases and expand just as much as dh or hmh. | ||
Penev
28356 Posts
Great to see you back in the thread btw | ||
OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
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Geiko
France1929 Posts
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Meavis
Netherlands1297 Posts
On July 02 2015 18:48 Geiko wrote: Please read again. My point is not that reaching optimal economy in unatainable (that's obivous), my point is that GEM encourages you to spread workers on bases and expand just as much as dh or hmh. I'm not sure if it does exactly that, rather than it forces you to move them more forward to the most recent base taken, as long you saturate optimal patches it doesn't matter at all wether you have 16 or 1 on a semi depleted base, that's not exactly spread/patch. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
Theoretically all your workers will be on three bases but practically, you'll want to spread them out on all your bases. (While keeping fresh bases saturated, same as lotv in that regard.) | ||
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