Starcraft 2

[luckywaldo7]

You lose a worker when you make a building, and every building is a research building except the one factory. Not really as different as you might think.

Tbh thats really the best part of starcraft; the little trickery in all the finely tuned details. Like how 'building', 'morphing', and 'warping', sound so different. Or 'research' vs 'evolution'. Tiny little things that make the game feel incredibly immersive in the unique styles of the factions, when they are not really that different at all.

Not that I am complaining. Too different and they would never be balanced

[Gota]

When i first got SC i didnt find it all that awesome.
I think SC made it and became so popular due to great support and due to the fact Blizzard already had an incredible reputation not cause of the fact the product was amazing at release.
It was deffinatley polished but not awe inspiring like say homeworld...
When i first played homeworld i was WTF this is fucking awesome.

[Machete234]

When i first played homeworld i was WTF this is fucking awesome.

Then I realised theres a 15unit limit and it wasnt awesome anymore.

[SwiftSpear]

@SwiftSpear - I have to disagree about StarCraft - I played some games with dissimilar factions that preceeded StarCraft, and I can't think of any that went the extra mile like SC did to keep the factions distinct. The economic differences between the Zerg and the other two factions really stand out to me.

That's what blizzard does though, take something established and go the extra mile with it. They're the best in the industry for that.

[Forboding Angel]

The economic differences between the Zerg and the other two factions really stand out to me.

+1 I'm still trying to emulate this in my spring mod by running ideas through my head. It's very difficult.

Extremely difficult tbh. For one, in spring we can't do harvesters (until some enterprising soul decides to maek epic luaz).

[Hobo Joe]

The economic differences between the Zerg and the other two factions really stand out to me.

+1 I'm still trying to emulate this in my spring mod by running ideas through my head. It's very difficult.

Extremely difficult tbh. For one, in spring we can't do harvesters (until some enterprising soul decides to maek epic luaz).

Why would anyone do that? income system is better.


if you really wanted to take 15 steps backwards and use harvesters you could still probably make it work with income.

[Hoi]

Why would harvesters be 15 steps backwards? Sure, harvesters are not very efficient, an energy plant only requires... the building itself, but that doesn't mean harvesters are bad.

If sc2 wouldn't have harvesters it would be very hard to attack and deal huge economical damage, because there are no (easily killable) harvesters.

imo both systems are good and it just depends on what works for the game.

[Machete234]

harvesters are not good to get a steady income so its not as easy to have this dynamic spending of ressources like in TA

The less harvesters you have then more your money would jump up and down.

[Google_Frog]

Innovation isn't absolutely everything, there is something to be said for a solid game.

CarRepairer wrote:
"+1 I'm still trying to emulate this in my spring mod by running ideas through my head. It's very difficult."

Extremely difficult tbh. For one, in spring we can't do harvesters (until some enterprising soul decides to maek epic luaz).

That's CarRepairer you are talking about. Anyway when did he say harvesters? He is implementing more exciting things such as Orcs gaining energy from killing.

[zwzsg]

Zpock had done it. But afaik he only posted videos, not code.

[Hobo Joe]

Why would harvesters be 15 steps backwards? Sure, harvesters are not very efficient, an energy plant only requires... the building itself, but that doesn't mean harvesters are bad.

If sc2 wouldn't have harvesters it would be very hard to attack and deal huge economical damage, because there are no (easily killable) harvesters.

imo both systems are good and it just depends on what works for the game.

By harvesters I assumed he was including the stockpile/lump sum system that almost all non-TA related RTS's use. Maybe he wasn't.


Maybe I'm just a blind fanboy but I honestly see no reason to use that system whatsoever. The income system just plays so much better from a gameplay standpoint, and it gives it much more depth.

If sc2 wouldn't have harvesters it would be very hard to attack and deal huge economical damage, because there are no (easily killable) harvesters.

I wasn't necessarily talking about SC2 specifically, but I'm not even going to get into that because I'll end up going on a huge rant about how much I hate the entire resource/base setup of SC2, in order to change it you'd have to completely trash the whole current system and replace it. but just because there's no harvesters doesn't mean there's not easy way to deal econ damage, i.e. spring games don't have harvesters, they have mexes, you kill the mexes and that deals economical damage.

[Hoi]

Maybe I'm just a blind fanboy but I honestly see no reason to use that system whatsoever. The income system just plays so much better from a gameplay standpoint, and it gives it much more depth.

The harvester system allows a lot of things that the TA system can't do.

- Amounts of resources, a limit to the maximum resources that can be mined at a place. This promotes expansion.

- The killing of workers. Workers are usually a lot weaker than the buildings in games that don't use harvesters. So it allows opponents to sneak into your base and destroy your economy if you don't watch out.

- A limit to how much resources you can harvest per minute per resource spot. In spring you can simply make 1000 fusions and 1000 moho metal makers and put them in the back of your base. In games with harvester systems, you can't. You will need to expand to get more resources per minute. If you expand you can become more vulnerable and that makes it interesting.

[Gota]

It's just different.

[luckywaldo7]

Maybe I'm just a blind fanboy but I honestly see no reason to use that system whatsoever. The income system just plays so much better from a gameplay standpoint, and it gives it much more depth.

The harvester system allows a lot of things that the TA system can't do.

- Amounts of resources, a limit to the maximum resources that can be mined at a place. This promotes expansion.

- The killing of workers. Workers are usually a lot weaker than the buildings in games that don't use harvesters. So it allows opponents to sneak into your base and destroy your economy if you don't watch out.

- A limit to how much resources you can harvest per minute per resource spot. In spring you can simply make 1000 fusions and 1000 moho metal makers and put them in the back of your base. In games with harvester systems, you can't. You will need to expand to get more resources per minute. If you expand you can become more vulnerable and that makes it interesting.

Its painfully obvious that you are trying to compare SC 1v1 to BA 8v8. In BA 1v1 expansion and raiding are, if anything, more important, especially because your base and expansion usually aren't walled in by a the cliffs of a terribly artificial map.

That and instead of 1 target for ecological damage (workers) you can try to bottleneck them with any between metal, energy, or build power.

Now start imagining Starcraft 8v8. There is a reason that will probably never happen D:

[Hobo Joe]

Maybe I'm just a blind fanboy but I honestly see no reason to use that system whatsoever. The income system just plays so much better from a gameplay standpoint, and it gives it much more depth.

The harvester system allows a lot of things that the TA system can't do.

- Amounts of resources, a limit to the maximum resources that can be mined at a place. This promotes expansion.

- The killing of workers. Workers are usually a lot weaker than the buildings in games that don't use harvesters. So it allows opponents to sneak into your base and destroy your economy if you don't watch out.

- A limit to how much resources you can harvest per minute per resource spot. In spring you can simply make 1000 fusions and 1000 moho metal makers and put them in the back of your base. In games with harvester systems, you can't. You will need to expand to get more resources per minute. If you expand you can become more vulnerable and that makes it interesting.

Ok, I know you like the harvester system and everything, but all of these apply (or can apply) to the income system as well.

1. No reason not to put a finite number of resources on an income based system

2. Buildings and harvesters are different I'll grant you that, but the concept is the same. And mexes aren't any harder to kill than harvesters.

3. what luckywaldo said. You're comparing it to 8v8badsd. First of all - even in BA games, properly sized games very rarely reach that point, most barely even reach T2, much less any decent sized T2 eco. And second, the way BA handles T2 eco isn't the only way to do an income system. You don't have to have fusions and moho metal makers. Watch a 1v1baccr game - without expansion and amazing area control you won't win. Expansion IS the key to winning, you're just applying the rules of a game with too many players on a map that's too small to all games. It doesn't work like that.



I'll just say though, my main problem with the harvester system isn't so much because of the 'harvesting', but because of the way it deals with lump sums and unlimited storage, and most of all, the way that most games that use harvesters deal with resource location - huge amounts in key locations, and none everywhere else. See: SC2. You have all your resources in a couple places around the map, and you build a town hall and spam harvesters and get it all as fast as you can. The expansion isn't fluid or dynamic, it's rigid and applies to only a couple mapper-defined points, whereas in something like BA, you have small amounts of resources all over the map, and the key points are based on the actual lay of the land, and the hot spots vary from game to game.

[Gota]

retarded argument is retarded.
Both the TA and the SC systems of collecting resources can have many modifications and alterations,none is in some way objectively better and you can have all sorts of crossbreeds where, for example, your still using harvesters but the resources are scattered everywhere or still use the TA system but have maps that only have metal spots at certain location or have limited resources or unlimited storage with just a number specifying how much you have.
and of all the elements of the TA resource system I'd say Storage is the least formidable part.

[erasmus]

You lose a worker when you make a building, and every building is a research building except the one factory. Not really as different as you might think.

Tbh thats really the best part of starcraft; the little trickery in all the finely tuned details. Like how 'building', 'morphing', and 'warping', sound so different. Or 'research' vs 'evolution'. Tiny little things that make the game feel incredibly immersive in the unique styles of the factions, when they are not really that different at all.

Not that I am complaining. Too different and they would never be balanced

if you played much starcraft at all, you'd know that each race actually is very different. The mechanic with zerg larvae means that larvae are the limiting factor in your unit production. you can't fully power workers and mass units at the same time as with the other races, which means that zergs have to plan their economies very differently and choosing whether to makes drones or fighting units at any given moment is a critical decision. There are a million other little things that may seem to be of minimum consequence on the surface but make all the difference in gameplay.

attack-moving a ball of protoss units feels completely different from the carefully metred step-by-step pushing of a tank/vulture army setting up lines of mines, turrets, and sieged tanks which again feels different from the constant flanking and entrapment of a lurkerling army. mutalisk micro is a unique skill. 200/200 worth of protoss units does not equal 200/200 worth of terran does not equal 200/200 of zerg. This is critical end-game, as a protoss needs to have an economic + production edge to constantly reinforce his army if he wants to beat a terran 200/200 army. A 200/200 zerg army is unheard of, because gas is a strongly limiting factor (high tech gas-hungry units make up the core), while protoss armies are limited by minerals (zeal/dragoon makes up the core). Both races need to expand strongly to win against terran, but for very different reasons.

I could go on, but seriously, the three races play very, very differently both in how army micro works and in planning strategies and determining timings.

[luckywaldo7]

Yes I have played Starcraft, yes there are differences, no they are not really that significant, and no I do not suck Blizzard's overrated member on an overhyped game.

I am talking about the game from a creative-ness perspective, not from a keyboard-masher perspective. Already CarRepairer has some much more interesting ideas for his game.

[Hoi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-59VYDyjc

MOST EPIC GAME.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Yes I have played Starcraft, yes there are differences, no they are not really that significant, and no I do not suck Blizzard's overrated member on an overhyped game.

... no, they are pretty different, more so than any other RTS that comes immediately to mind. different playstyles, strengths, mindset. I play protoss normally, abdwhen I switch to zerg for lulz there is very little similarity in what im doing.

the button bashing is only at the highest level remember. spring would be played button bashing also if the community ever reached that level of skill, its just optimal play.