The Hero/Macro Mothership

[Xyvik]

Chess is about pure strategic depth.

I'm not getting involved in the major macro discussions until I have a chance to destroy them in beta, but I would like to point out a very large error right here.

Chess has absolutely NOTHING to do with strategic depth. Chess is, and always has been, about unit tactics involving area control. I still don't get why people call chess strategic. As one of the 8th grade chess champions I figured out what it was all about and promptly gave it up when I realized it's all been done before. Chess is more a logical pursuit than a strategic one. Not that the two can't be combined.

But I digress. I think putting PC on the Mothership is a bad idea, although I do actually like the idea of an upgradable unit that acts like a pseudo-hero. I have no problems with hero units. I have a problem with hero units that define the entire game and strategy, ala the Hero Worship of WC3.

[supersonic]

SC pro gamers, my brilliance, or "Archers Asinine Antics (TM)?"

SC pro tops listening to you guys go at it by far but, the fact that Archer comes up with random stuff to get people going, and people go right along with it perfectly.

[ArcherofAiur]

Do you know why I do it?


Because I have learned more about how Blizzard makes good design decisions from argueing with Demo and Co. than I could possibly have learned otherwise. You here all these things like "Oh everything should have decisions" or "everything that can be automated should" or "Proton Charge is exponential" and your like oh yah that sounds right i guess. And then you get down into what the real issues are and it changes your whole perspective for how games work.

[newcomplex]

You're inventing scenarios that simply won't exist in any large number.

The value of PC can be calculated by anyone with a simple knowledge of algebra. My editorial even gave the equations. The numbers may have been slightly wrong, but I even stated that, and that it was the equations that mattered.

If PC has high profit: You have a Mothership with 200 energy. It takes 50 to cast PC, and 25 to Wormhole. You have 3 bases. You cast on your first base, wormhole, cast on second, wormhole, cast on third. By that time you have 0 energy left. All you can do is hope your energy recharges fast enough for you to keep a constant PC going on your Probes, seeing as you won't have ebergy for abilities.

If PC has low profit: You have a Mothership with 200 energy. You might cast PC once as you wait for your army to Warp-In. Then you'll attack with 150 energy to cast spells. Then you'll retreat, and maybe cast PC as you rebuild your army and if you have nothing better to do.

Its sad when the only time PC gives you choice is when its so weak its hardly worth even having it exist.

Not to sound demeaning but did you seriously just suggest that a player should pull out algebra to figure out how good something is in the middle of a game?


Lets look at this. While proton charges gain is exponential, this system would not be. Your getting a exponential benefit, up until you hit mineral saturation (which is like 20 workers in sc2). Then, you get linear benefit for each expo you have. So it boils down to 75 energy=minerals. Lets assume we tweak these numbers so its something more reasonable on a mother ship type vehicle. Lets say that proton charge is...FREE...and tp is 25 energy

On the other hand, using mothership offensively gives you the options to cast black hole, and time slow. But you cannot use it to boost your economy.

Black hole removes a vast aoe of units from the game. It will single handedly win games. It is like a stasis with 8x the aoe and 40% more range, while time stop gives your forces a heavy advantage.

Are you honestly saying that you would always choose constant minerals over a black hole regardless of situation?. Well, I can already refute that just from Sc1 progaming. By simply building an arbiter in sc1, I refute your argument. By building a arbiter, I sacrifice minerals for a unit that gives me a potential to win the game, or greatly help my chances to. Thats how starcraft works. Sacrificing minerals for potential to win the game. Every 30 seconds I use the mothership offensively, or defensively outside of my base, I expend minerals (in the sense of not using proton charge) for a offensive unit.

"The UI is suppose to limit what your able to do."

This is the single worst design philosophy possible. That instead of restricting the player in game through unit balance, you should actually make it impossible for him/her to do certain things they instinctively want to do, like MBS.

You have officially offended me.

Saying the UI doesn't limit what you do is already...a direct contradiction of what the word means, and blizzards existing policy.

User Interface. A way for the User, to Interface with the game world. The UI thus, has direct control over what ways a user can and cannot interface with the game world. For instance, the starcraft UI restricts your viewing area to the size of a 3:4 screen ratio. Thus, the UI is restricting what you can and cannot do. A FPS UI restricts your feild of vision to that directly in front of you. The starcraft User Interface is currently not allowing you to custom bind keys. Because the game does not want you interfacing with it in a competitive environment in a way other then the way blizzard intended. Saying UI isn't a part of game balance is stupid, because the entire point of UI is to control the way a user interfaces with the game.

Watch a game of SC. No one cheers because of macro. They cheer because of microing units, or the effect of macro letting the player build a huge army, or a strong unit. Macro is a fundamental part of the game, but it is not what you think it is.

Of course macro is a fundamental to the game. Are you saying that macro in starcraft BW is a strategic and deep choice? None a single bit of starcraft macro is deep other then choosing what to build in response to what you think the opponent is doing. Everything else is just "apm sinks".

The reason why players OOO and AAHH when boxer does crazy shit is because it is very hard to do that kind of micro, when you are also macroing. Or when you are a only able to unit group 12 units at a time. (I'm not saying anything about SC unlimited unit groups, they're fine).

Obviously, they OOOH and AAHHH because what boxer is doing is fundamentally hard to pull of effectively, because of -apm sinks. Dropship micro is goddam easy when its all your doing, it becomes hard when you have to worry about the rest of your army.

While obviously starcraft 2 cannot just stick rigidly to this design, because sc1 is over 10 years old, its design should improve on sc1 core gameplay. Macro complimented micro, not supplemented it.

Your statement is hypocritical. You say StarCraft is about making good tactical decisions, but are supporting a mechanic that fundamentally lacks all choice. Macro doesn't need to take the glory from micro, and I have never suggested as such. It simply needs to be more interesting, and having mechanics that require a random 4 APM every X seconds are not interesting, unless you fail at them so completely you get overrun by a better player anyway.

Over stressing the importance of macro will detract from micro, we have already seen the effects of this. The queen is its first victim. Even if smartcasting was in sc1, I doubt the queen would see use, because noone made a lot of queens anyway, only one or two. The issue was that it wasn't viable to use it simply because it made you lose to much -apm, thus hurting your economy.

Not everything needs a choice. I admit that proton charge has very little choice. It could even be improved a bit to be like the terran mechanic (which the mothership idea does very well, except for the whole no blademasters thing).

The core of the issue here is that starcraft is fun to watch because of its micro. Its micro however, isn't skillful on itself, but because of the macro tasks a player has to manage.

tl;dr: function of macro is to compliment micro to make micro more skillful. It should not supplement micro as another system a player has to devote abstract thinking to, because that would cause starcraft 2 to be a drastically, completely different game, as different as warcraft 3 was from warcraft 2.

I'm not saying macro should be brainless. In fact, proton charge could even be more complex, it is rather retarded. But it isn't the focus on the game, and should be sub towards micro.

Its reactive to Probe count, profit. Not to the opponent. When someone discusses "reactive" things, its usually in relation to an opposing force. I thought you meant "reactive to the opponent." I apologize for making a wrong assumption.

Apology accepted.

I'm not getting involved in the major macro discussions until I have a chance to destroy them in beta, but I would like to point out a very large error right here.

Chess has absolutely NOTHING to do with strategic depth. Chess is, and always has been, about unit tactics involving area control. I still don't get why people call chess strategic. As one of the 8th grade chess champions I figured out what it was all about and promptly gave it up when I realized it's all been done before. Chess is more a logical pursuit than a strategic one. Not that the two can't be combined.

But I digress. I think putting PC on the Mothership is a bad idea, although I do actually like the idea of an upgradable unit that acts like a pseudo-hero. I have no problems with hero units. I have a problem with hero units that define the entire game and strategy, ala the Hero Worship of WC3.

I would classify "unit tactics involving area control" as strategy.

I use strategy as a blanket term for all that good stuff.


edit: what I meant by "sub towards micro" isn't meaning that starcraft should be a micro game like wc3. What I'm saying is that Micro should be the focus on strategic thinking while macro serves as a attention sink to make micro thinking harder.

[supersonic]

Do you know why I do it?


Because I have learned more about how Blizzard makes good design decisions from argueing with Demo and Co. than I could possibly have learned otherwise. You here all these things like "Oh everything should have decisions" or "everything that can be automated should" and your like oh yah that sounds right i guess. And then you get down into what the real issues are and it changes your whole perspective for how games work.

Yeah I can agree with that, from talking out your ideas and what not you can see things that would be flawed with not only your own ideas but the ideas of others, thus allowing everyone to make even more structured and beneficial decisions.

But you have to take everything with a grain of salt and admit you are wrong when you are, and when other people have good ideas, thus leading to being constructive rather than trying to form discussion from badgering and looking for a reaction from people.

Not saying you are, at least not totally lol, but you gotta know where to draw the line and say "hey I know when I'm trying to bring on constructive arguments and when I'm trying to get people going for a ruse".

[newcomplex]

meh archer, your like me and pandetheno except we keep our bickering to the lore forums so nobody cares.

PC makes up for the clicks lost by the introduction of auto-mine, MBS, Smart Cast, etc.
Ignore the fact its inherently imbalanced.
Ignore the fact it offers no choice.
As long as it makes up for the clicks, its acceptable

Well, it is acceptable, but when did blizzard ever settle for acceptable. Theirs nothing horribly wrong with it, and it isn't as imbalanced as squid says it is. Really, its exponential until it hits saturation, then it just becomes linear for every base you have at saturation.


Really, you guys are making a big deal about something very small. You guys are bickering about how proton charge isn't the best system like how proton charge will single handedly cause SC2 to be bad. Proton charge is fine in its philosophy, it could just be a little bit more complex so it can be more then just a -apm sink. Which should be its primarily purpose.


All the while, things like -apm sinks have to be taken very cautiously. I admit its not the best game design, intentionally designed -apm sinks isn't the best idea, but its the only one we've got. We can't make -macro this entirely new strategic path, because now your making starcraft like Total Annhilation. I mean, I love TA but starcraft should stay core to its original gameplay.

Here are the two sides of it

Designing a gimmick to mimic a unintentional bug/design that ended up beneficial to the original gameplay doesn't end well. It didn't end well for ID's Quake 4, which attempted to replicate quakes defining rocket jumping with a scripted thing that did the same thing. It ended up being a whole lot less skillful, clunky and bad then the original. As a result, Quake 4 is probably the Quake that sucks the most competitively, and even now Quake 3 is more highly regarded on the comp scene, while Quake 4 is a joke.

On the other hand, trying to remove those bugs from a progaming games usually ends badly for the games comp scene. See C:S:S and bunny hopping.

Incidentally, I can't remember the first successor to a game that had a progaming scene where its sequel was more prominent then the original. I really hope blizzard breaks that pattern.

[Xyvik]

I would classify "unit tactics involving area control" as strategy.

I use strategy as a blanket term for all that good stuff.

Apology accepted I'm the new resident strategy gestapo. If I spot a single misuse of the words "strategy", "tactics", or "balance" I LEAP!

Not always. As DSquid once pointed out, my standards are impossibly high and irrational. Oh well.


I think I see where you're coming from on the macro issue. I refuse to wade into that fire hellhole known as the giant macro thread, so I won't pursue this course of conversation too far. Personally I've always felt macro should be something interesting and something you should have to think about, at least a little bit. Spice things up and all that. But in defense of Blizzard, it is AMAZINGLY hard to actually pull that off. I've been working on my own little indie RTS for close to two years now and I still haven't gotten the macro down where I like it. It's a tough road to follow, and they've got billions more fans, and expectations, than I do.

[MattII]

Just asking, how is a ship supposed to gain 'increased hitpoints'? I mean it's not like the Queen which could at least change its form.

[Xyvik]

Just asking, how is a ship supposed to gain 'increased hitpoints'? I mean it's not like the Queen which could at least change its form.

Slapping on more armor plating?

[ArcherofAiur]

Just asking, how is a ship supposed to gain 'increased hitpoints'? I mean it's not like the Queen which could at least change its form.

The way I have it pictured you warp in a idk "Star Relic" as your Tier 1 Mothership. This would be just the core of the mothership that you see in this picture




When you upgrade to Tier 2 the three ring pieces would warp in around the Star Relic "core" making it into a ummmm "Mothership" Finally at Tier 3 your could Warp-in even larger armour over the unit making it a fully armed and operational battle station em "World Destroyer". BTW feel free to offer better names. Im blanking.




For the lore I would change it so the core is an ancient Xel'naga Kaydarin crystal from the protoss golden age. Capable of utilizing and combining Kahla and Void energy. As the protoss base grows the Kahla forces can warp in machinary that can utilize the Star Relic to regenerate shielding and even alter time. Finally when the protoss base has reached its Zenith Dark Templar forces can augment the the Star Relic with Argus technology and the ability to cast Blackholes.