v10.1 Resource Quantity Increase/New Mechanic Idea!

As we all know, as of patch 10.1, both gas and mineral sources now contain far more than they used to. Going off the SOLE game I played (I likely won't have time for another until Friday), resources are now TOO abundant.

Purple minerals are not the problem; they are just like blue minerals, expect if you find a good patch of them you can leave some defenses, a Mule, and a CC there to exploit the residual income.

The usual mineral mining "plan" is to find a nice cluster of blue minerals, then mine for the day/set up a temporary base and mine through the night. Let's say a nice large cluster has eight patches. Before the patch, each mineral field averaged about 40-60 minerals. That is a total gain of around 400 minerals. Now, patches tend to average 120 minerals, for a gain of 960 minerals! Pre-patch, mining bases would be set quickly, mined out, and then you would move on. You spent as much time exploring as you spent mining. Now you need to move less often, so you have more "profitable" time spent mining. And it especially increases the value/power of Mules.

Gas has been less impacted by the change, mainly because it is rarer and cannot be mined by Mules. However, it is still far easier to obtain. Before, you needed approximately 3-9 geysers to get 1000 gas. Now, all you need is 2-4. Again, you spend far less time exploring for geysers, and instead mine a single one for longer.

I can now get far too much money. I was literally set for the entire game by the muta wave, and was constantly receiving money from Zerg attack waves (this will have an even larger effect on Brutal). I am a prolific and efficient miner, but this is too much.

What prompted this change? Did you feel that money was too scarce?

Starke wrote: resources are now TOO abundant.
What prompted this change? Did you feel that money was too scarce?

I think, this was changed because there was need to make the map more newbie friendly?

What was before: new people come, try and leave. Not everyone is going to make a great effort and learn haw to become a prolific miner and super-powerful fighter in order to beat the map.

This is the question of popularity of the map: people like you and me, who are ready to dig into it, are rather exceptions.

This is the entertainment time, why would somebody learn so much of a strategy in order to have a few hours of a single game? Those skills are not crucial in a life.

With this changes and wonderful original and newly esquired diversity of a game I expect this map to became very popular. New changes made the game much more dynamic, and players have enough means to fight the Zerg during the match, not only to stay heavily and uncomfortably besieged all game long and if they were lucky: successfully escape at the end.

The new balances in a game gave the Zergs more power, increase the number of them, but at the same time give the player tools to fight back.

Overall experience of a game after the change: it became more comfortable to play without reference to win or loss. And still some challenges stayed there: player can explore and fight off numerous foes, find technologies, look into opportunities that the Zerg tech implements. Also... yes, the final escape from the planet is still challenging, it requires careful planning and good defense.

Outside of purple minerals, the amount of minerals available on the map has not changed, as far as I know.

Vespene Geysers are a fair bit richer, but the mineral fields are unchanged from the last version - the only change is that their appearance now varies depending on how many minerals they have.

Give new and old players opportunities to be able to play with new features while keeping the difficulty on a balanced scale.

If you can beat this using every trick in the book, and still complains, then it's still your own fault. You don't go and force other players to play it in the same style as you.

It's like using cheat codes to beat a game, then complain the game is too short.

So Nagnazul should focus on many options in the game that parallels to the main objectives of the map.

Like being able to use turrets in various situations, but obviously balancing each one so they have both a Pros and Cons.

Make each turrets quite effective against the zerg, but the downside is that the zerg do attack in large numbers, so just strength alone doesn't get the job done. This means new unique mobs with abilities like burrow or cloak can be handy.

Zerglings will prioritize hitting the closest enemy.
Banelings will prioritize hitting structures over units, if said structure is in range.
Roaches will prioritize in attacking light units to structures.
Hydralisks will prioritize hitting air units over ground units.

And tweak the infestors a bit, using it's ability every single time from afar can be annoying, so change it up a bit so it can use 1 infested terran sometimes. Like a 30~40% chance of it using each abilities, with 30% doing nothing for a brief moment.

Throwing bosses into the mix seems a bit bad since lag from mobs + a huge boss kinds of screw you over unless you got a decent enough computer. There's got to be some way to balance the numbers of zergs = the # of current players.

dra6o0n wrote:Throwing bosses into the mix seems a bit bad since lag from mobs + a huge boss kinds of screw you over unless you got a decent enough computer.

The best single card of the exactly one year ago time (Radeon 5870)
+ i7(920)
+ 12 Gig 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
- isn't it decent enough?

Still sometimes laggy even on min setting now.

Nagnazul wrote:Outside of purple minerals, the amount of minerals available on the map has not changed, as far as I know.

Vespene Geysers are a fair bit richer, but the mineral fields are unchanged from the last version - the only change is that their appearance now varies depending on how many minerals they have.

Wait, what!?!?!? Until now, mineral fields averaged 40-60 minerals per patch, with the total range around 15-125. Now, it is VERY rare to see a patch under 100 minerals. The range is more like 90-230, but averaging about 120-140.

There are a LOT more minerals on the map.

Brodyaga, I'm not crazy, am I? I have only had time for one game since the patch, and will not have another for some time. Our game wasn't some crazy aberration, was it?

Starke wrote:

Nagnazul wrote:Outside of purple minerals, the amount of minerals available on the map has not changed, as far as I know.

Vespene Geysers are a fair bit richer, but the mineral fields are unchanged from the last version - the only change is that their appearance now varies depending on how many minerals they have.

Wait, what!?!?!? Until now, mineral fields averaged 40-60 minerals per patch, with the total range around 15-125. Now, it is VERY rare to see a patch under 100 minerals. The range is more like 90-230, but averaging about 120-140.

There are a LOT more minerals on the map.

Brodyaga, I'm not crazy, am I? I have only had time for one game since the patch, and will not have another for some time. Our game wasn't some crazy aberration, was it?

Yes, there was a lot of minerals per patch. I also noticed the difference.

But I also noticed that all those patches were grouped together, therefor easier to protect, which makes the game more comfortable for newbies, and not only: even experienced player now has more time to practice different experiments with the Zerg tech tree, once he established some minimum defense so that not to be interrupted.

I mean: if the Minerals are grouped here, this can also mean that there are no little tiny patches there (everywhere), therefor the overall amount of Minerals per map still can be the same, they just are more comfortable to dig.

More minerals means more reason to spend them all at once... Maybe make transport ship and rescue beacons that much harder to obtain?

Maybe custom resources falls into them, finding them and constructing the ship/beacon with them.

Also, eventually the zerg will need a smarter boost, not HP/armor, but AI maybe...

Maybe make roaches smart at later waves, make them start burrowing and moving to ambush you. Make zerglings preferring to hide by burrowing and unburrow when players are nearby. Same goes for hydralisks, and lurkers maybe.

Also, a fun idea:

Make queens the "limited" mob that wanders the map, putting down creep tumors randomly. This mean the map will re-infest if the players don't put them down.

I just don't see why there are more minerals now - and the change isn't in the patch notes, and Nagnazul doesn't say he changed them. What is going on, and why? I thought the resource quantities were fine before.

However, I do really like this idea:

dra6o0n wrote:Make queens the "limited" mob that wanders the map, putting down creep tumors randomly. This mean the map will re-infest if the players don't put them down.

Really awesome. If there is some conflict with the Queen attack wave, then maybe use the old Infestor/Slugalisk model shrunken down? This would make the map even more dynamic.

EDIT: You know what, scrap that idea i had before...

New idea:
Make a special drone that "feasts" on minerals, and grows bigger and stronger, but packs more minerals inside it.

HP = 30
Attack = 5
Armor = 0
Speed = Drone
Gathering speed = 50% (-10% for every 100 minerals gathered)

For every 100 minerals it eats, it gains +20 hp (max of +200) and +1 attack and +1 armor, up to a max of +10 attack and armor. It also slows down by 10% for every 100 minerals, up to 90% less movement speed.

Be warned though, after packing itself to 1000 minerals (maxed), it would head straight for the nearest hatchery to dump the load off, making it shrink and revert to it's old status. This also means a loss of income if you fail to kill it. It's not that hard since it's super slow (10x slower than a marine or scv).

When a rare drone is spotted, it's last known location will be revealed on the map. Rare drones gathers minerals much slower than normal drones, at 50% gathering speed and slows down the more it feasts... Up to about roughly 5~10 minutes of feasting on one mineral patch (but by then the mineral patch would be gone).

Only 2~5 rare drones would spawn in a single session.

Killing these drones? It gives most (up to 700) of the minerals to the killing player and the other 300 minerals dropped as 6x 50 mineral items.

Also, as a way to mess with you, the drone will burrow when it's in danger, thus detection is a must if you want to chase it and not leave it alone.

I am liking you more and more Dra6o0n.

I really like both ideas, and think they could be implemented side by side. Right now the map is extremely variable game to game, but once you clear out an area, it becomes very static. I think at giving the Zerg an ability to regenerate would revitalize the gameplay. Along those lines, I have an addition to go with your Queen idea. My implementation of both the Queen and the gatherer ideas:

Queens:
Starting after the Baneling wave, 1-4 Queens are released during each day. The fewer Hatcheries that remain on the map, the more Queens are released. The default would be one Queen. If a player has been extensively Raven bombing most of the Hatcheries on the map, the full four would be released. They wander the map, each sporadically laying several Swollen Creep Tumors. They move a bit faster than a Survivor, don't defend themselves, and give a small bonus if killed. The new Tumors cannot be laid within, say, 20 hexes of an existing Creep Tumor or Hatchery. For the moment, they act as normal Creep Tumors: burrowed and extruding creep. This serves several functions: they speed up Zerg attack waves during the night, block building placement during the day, and, importantly, makes them noticeable by the players. If the tumors survive the day, the night, and the next day, the following night they each become a Hatchery! So if a Swollen Tumor was laid on the Hydra wave, it would become a Hatchery at the start of the Roach wave. The idea is to give the map an even more Zergy feel and add a new dynamic to barren areas cleared by turrets or Ravens, all while encouraging exploration and being proactive. At first, the Tumors are an annoyance and an obstacle, then become a threat if not handled. At the same time, they shouldn't be overpowered because the number of Queens, and therefore Hatcheries, is based on how many you have already destroyed.

Slugalisks:
Starting after the Hydralisk wave, 1-4 Slugalisks are released, depending on the number of players in the game. During the day, they wander around gathering minerals. They start off small and very weak. As they mine minerals, they get stronger. Each night they have a maximum mineral limit. They should be able to gather this amount by nightfall if uninterrupted. At night, they attack along with the other Zerg forces. They are faster than other Zerg, do decent melee damage, and have a lot of health compared to other attackers in that wave. They are designed to tank your defenses to allow other Zerg to close in. And every day when they are released, they get a slightly higher mineral limit and gathering speed so that they are always somewhat stronger than the other Zerg attackers. Again, they add a new reason to explore the map and be proactive by enhancing the Zerg waves and (slightly) reducing the mineral supply. You attack them during the day if possible, as they will be weaker from lack of mining, though they will try to fight back. They give a decent resource bonus. By they don't refund their gathered minerals, because it removes part of the incentive to kill them during the day. They would be like having extra gatherers, gathering minerals and bringing them to your doorstep!

Make both of them spawn at Hatcheries around the map, so that the new Hatcheries aren't concentrated together, and that Slugalisks don't suck one area totally dry of minerals. And don't let Slugalisks mine purple minerals, otherwise they will sit there mining one mineral at a time!


I got pretty "into" designing these concepts. Dra6o0n, what to you think? I think they would be a viable addition to the game, eventually. Nagnazul, is there any chance of you adding something like this in patch v12.0 or something?

Starke wrote:...once you clear out an area, it becomes very static... ...player has been extensively Raven bombing most of the Hatcheries on the map

Now it is very difficult to make.
One reason: game is very balanced now, and the intensivity of Zerg attacks is growing just in the way that you have to take care about building your positions all the time.
Another reason: there are a lot of players, new to the game coming with this new system and the game constantly changing it's position on a list. At least 3 very experienced players out of 4 still can do this, but the team of experienced players happens seldom now. (2 out of 2 can also clear the map.)

Are you saying that people are no longer clearing the map with Ravens? Even if they do not clear the entire map, I see players often build a few Ravens to clear out nearby Hatcheries, or take out all Hatcheries in a certain direction (usually the "back" of their base) so they don't have to worry about air attacks from there. This would make it so that you can't kill off all the Zerg there in one pass.

Starke wrote:Are you saying that people are no longer clearing the map with Ravens?...

No, I am just saying that it is difficult to clear all the map now.