mineral farming

[overmind]

i always run out of recourses lategame and end up in a stale mate where i have to just through my entire army at the enemy for better or worse.

what if you could build a farm-like building that has an infinite supply of minerals/gas but is slow to harvest?

have it teir 3 so its not exploited and this will stop games freezing

2 defensive players will ussually run out of money before they get killed (im only defensive with 'toss but like they say a good offense is a good defense).

thoughts ???

[ImaGiNe.]

This would only encourage turtling by huge defensive players. Not so fun. Though mineral farming sounds like a great idea!

[Fenix]

Too much like Age of Empires.

[DontHate]

the way it is right now is fine.

[paragon]

That would be dumb and make people build huge mineral farms instead of expanding. Expanding is key to the game however. If you can't expand you are bad for a reason.

[generalrievous]

expanding is key aspect of sc and with a building that farms vespen and minerals there would be less

[overmind]

with a li it to build and like i said teir 3 would stop turtling

the problem is with too many players the recourses go like anything.
they wouldn't give you enough to relie on just a way of stopping stalemates.

[starcraft2]

I think the mineral farming would be a great idea, ok imagine if, and im ifing, you were playing against an evenly matched player, and you find your selves at end game with some of your last forces, you attack eachother and both of your armies die, ,you sit thier and then wat wait for the other guy to leave cause all the resources were gone??? So now tht i think of it why not instead of having a farm for minerals, why cant the resources grow back at a slow rate, i know this may sound a little bit like cnc3, but it be a good idea for any late game economy problems.

just a thought.

[Meloku]

An interesting idea. Command and conquer: generals tried it.

The Americans could build supply drop pads, and a plane would drop you resources every so often. China could use hackers to gain a little money every few seconds.

What resulted were games that would never end, and players who could just sit content in their bases and have no counter. Starcraft presents you with a very real problem that has plagued nations throughout the ages, should you expand and spread yourself thin? Or stay home and invest in better units. Germany and Napoleon expanded too early imo. Anyways, in conclusion, it is a cool idea, but doesn't really make for fun multilayer gameplay.

Perhaps there will be captureable neutral buildings that provide resources over time, or something close to what you mentioned in the single player campaign. Who knows.

[DontHate]

I think the mineral farming would be a great idea, ok imagine if, and im ifing, you were playing against an evenly matched player, and you find your selves at end game with some of your last forces, you attack eachother and both of your armies die, ,you sit thier and then wat wait for the other guy to leave cause all the resources were gone??? So now tht i think of it why not instead of having a farm for minerals, why cant the resources grow back at a slow rate, i know this may sound a little bit like cnc3, but it be a good idea for any late game economy problems.

just a thought.

that's when you send in you're workers :D
anyways, it's not like you would run out of minerals... in all the games i played i never ran out of minerals. maybe in my main but never in my expansions. also, if there is mineral farming no player would need to expand, which is one of the key aspects of sc.

[Ghost]

when I play against my friends we normally go 3v3 or 2v2 and resources run out pretty quickly. But I for one know the potential terrans have for turtuling and making them have an infinite amount of reasources would end up in a stalemate, which was what the mineral famrs where trying to prevent.

[Arachanox]

Instead of having an infinite resources building, why not have a 'Vespene Synthesizer' that could be built on Vespene Gas Wells, which would churn out minerals instead?

Or just get an AoE2 marketplace and start trading. :P

[starcraft2]

ive ran out of resources plenty of times and it gets pretty annyoing when it does cause then youre stuck there wondering wat your supposed to do

[Arachanox]

You're supposed to expand before you run out of resources, silly! If you don't you're doomed to fail as you get Carrier'd by your foes.

[starcraft2]

no but we all run out of resources and then were all like omg this is pointless then they leave and i win,

[Arachanox]

A game should never, EVER be out of resources. If you have the power to mine that many minerals and harvest that much vespene, you should have 30 fully loaded carriers with observers, arbiters, and a sizable scout/corsair fleet. Micro it properly and you can destroy just about anything.

[starcraft2]

well i do have to work on getting better with my micro, so thts probably why i lose alot cause i just charge my guys into battle.

[Lord David]

A game should never, EVER be out of resources. If you have the power to mine that many minerals and harvest that much vespene, you should have 30 fully loaded carriers with observers, arbiters, and a sizable scout/corsair fleet. Micro it properly and you can destroy just about anything.


What if the map is purposely ridiculously low on minerals in the first place? :P ;)

[Gorythax]

Guys... have you ever, ever thought of just opening map editor and adding minerals?

[Lord David]

Oh and make people download them again... :P

[Gorythax]

Exactly!

No, seriously... or just ask blizzard to make a patch or something to increase the mineral max on every map. Or something like that.

[didd293]

it might work if there was a limit on the number of farms you could make, but i'm still skeptical.

[overmind]

yes a limit on farms a small amount of minerals only and having them lategame.
i like to play team games with four a side but if you protect your allies you end up with not enough resourse's becouse eight players chew it up too quickly.

if you'r using extra minerals as an alternative to this so they don't turtle its going to make them turtle more than a small amount of farms becouse instead they'll just build around a sh*tload of minerals with no need to expand

i suck at making maps and i'm not going to download a patch. i hate patches *grumble grumble*

[Protoss Kills Infinitely]

maybe they should make a limit of 2 farms or something per player 2 make it fair???

[paragon]

no that just turns a stupid idea into a stupid idea that can't ruin the game as much. if it's only 2 buildings which could not add enough to truly help, why not just have no mineral farms.

[starcraft2]

yeah and then people could find a way to exploit the two mineral farm thing and then create dozens and dozens of them and start spewing in resources how about just leave the resources like they are because like someone said earlier they are already giving us gold resources that i would think give you more resources.

[paragon]

there are multiple types of collection systems in different RTS games. Some have strategic points that give you resources, some have resource collection through resources on the map. Both require that you expand outwards to gain more resources. This is a key part of the game and is the part that creates the conflict of the different players fighting with each other. So, adding something to water this down would be a big mistake. Same with adding more minerals to each field.

[10-Neon]

The map running out of resources?

I'd solve that problem by making minerals act like vespene: giving a large amount for a given quantity, then depleting afterwards...giving the player only trace amounts, but something you can still lean on if you're absolutely desperate.

I kind of apply something like this in some of the maps I make: I make heavy patches of 12 of or so clusters, but maybe 7 of them have low resource amounts, maybe 250-750. For the first half of the game, you have something comfortable to work with, but later on, your income drops sharply, and by then you should really be considering expansion. On other maps, you might not notice the fact that you're on the edge of being broke if you only look that the number of clusters, but having more than half of your income drop out, almost at once, in theory, at least, is a bit more noticeable.

Of course, in theory, decent players on a decent map should be able to finish just about every game without depleting the map, so who knows if that actually helps? *shrug* It makes the clusters look prettier, at least.

[Ghost]

Well, for me massive attacks dont win games, but small precisely placed powerful units or powerful unit combinations, so generally I dont require more than 1 expansion, but I like to secure reasources nodes early in the game incase initial attacks fail. I also have had to rely on turtling (I hate to admit it) and I have gotten to a point where I simply run out of resources from constantly laying siege on enemy bases.

I would hate to add any automatic reasource generating building as I am afraid of late-game unbalance but I do like Ne's idea. The way I have it pictured is making the minerals not decrease in size but become greyer and greyer until they become "depleted" like the geysers. Then workers could still gather but very small amounts. Nice suggesiton Ne.

[paragon]

unless there are two evenly matched players who just can't get an advantage because they are both so good at countering each other's moves... either way I think running out of resources on a map is fine. Makes it interesting.

[starcraft2]

yeah its all cool except for the fact that youre going to be stuck there for a while, untill something happens. The idea Neon brought up of making the resources act like the vespian gyser was actually pretty good, cause c'mon really who likes to sit there with no resources to use, itll turn into a dull boring match unless both players turteled and accumulated tons of resources and then start attacking eachother at the end game point. i really wouldnt like to see that but threr are aalot of peopel who do that, it becomes a boring game, well atleast for me.

[Remy]

10-Neon, the mineral setup for your maps that you mentioned sound so damn interesting.  I hope they set up some of the official SC2 maps that way, would make some awsome games.  If there were more maps like that, we would've had more people who learned to play properly.

Although running out of resources has never bothered me, I like 10-Neon's proposal of depleted mineral patches.  But in that case, they would need to make two distinct type of mineral patches.  Ones that deplete and ones that disappear.  They would still need patches that disappear for maps that have mineral patch blockades.

[overmind]

howabout they all disapear but they leave little blue specks on the ground that you can mine for minimal resourse?
i like that idea quite alot actually.

[starcraft2]

yeah say like the first patch of blue minerals you start out with could deplete, while all the others run out so your only left with your original patch of blue minerals i think that would sound fair, so i would think it would encourage you to finish the game faster or you would have to mine like 3 resources instead of the possible 8.

[Gorythax]

I really like the little blue specks idea. Especially if you could walk over them. Or hover. Or w/e it is your freak race does xD. Anyways, I really like the idea, and I bet it would be implemented if it wasn't already for the brown minerals.

[DontHate]

eh, i like the idea of the brown minerals that blizzard came up with. Lets say you and your enemy are running out of minerals so you go for the expansions with the brown minerals. This will add a great deal of strategy and whatnot. With the idea of the minerals being depleted and you get less of them, the battles would be much smaller during the end of the game.

[overmind]

their much smaller anyway when you can't train much troops :P

[Dreadnought]

Make the minerals slowly regrow their amount (after all crystals do grow :p) 1 every 2 seconds sounds fair..
same with geyser. Srry forgot persons name who suggested this..
You could also have a system where if you harvest a patch it doesnt regrow for a minute or something...

[FlyingTiger]

Eh with the vespene geyser depleted, you can still be able to get 2 vespene units anyways so prolly any vespene amount that is replenished at a small rate would be futile.

[10-Neon]

I didn't mention this in my first post, but regrowth, as you mentioned, could also be used to lengthen the useful lifespan of minerals.

Minerals would have a set mineable amount (let's call it the cache) that is like normal minerals. A cluster with 1500 cache would be the same as a 1500 mineral cluster in StarCraft, except on top of that, the cluster would also have a regrowth amount: its cache would slowly increase over time. As you are mining a cluster, this would be totally unnoticeable. With a slow enough growth rate, you'd see maybe 400 extra minerals per cluster in 5 minutes. But with patches of minerals away from heavily mined bases that don't get touched for the first 20 minutes of the game, assuming each cluster started with 1500, these patches would have over twice the available resources, ready to feed hungry armies.

I don't personally like the idea of doubling resources, so maybe each cluster can be assigned a cache limit, where the regrowth stops when the limit is reached. This would mean that the regrowth effect would only be helpful for filling "depleted" minerals in mined-out patches, and re-filling abandoned patches for later re-use. It might also work to keep players from expanding to certain patches of minerals until they have filled to a usable amount (say, they start at 100 cache, with a limit of 1500.)

I still think basic gas-like depletion would be more appropriate for StarCraft II. The regrowth thing is a bit too complex for the desired effect over the average timescale of a StarCraft match: you just wouldn't notice it in shorter(most) games. It would really be better suited for longer games: I personally came up with the idea while brainstorming potential resource problems in long-term MMORTS games, where the depletion of resources vs expansion problem would be a lot nastier.

[Gorythax]

Firstly, I like this concept, and it doesn't disturb for fast games, because there isn't a significant (or needed) change anyways. So it's all good. But, as I said before, there already are brown minerals, so... Great idea though. To everyone who thought out the problem, you all have really good ideas!

[marinepower]

Perhaps for animation purposes, there can be caves filled with minerals, which might look better than blue specks. This way, the worker mining the cave will still get the 8 minerals, except it will take the worker 2 times longer to mine the patch. The cave will never run out, but it compensates for this by the slow mining rate, and i would guess there might be at most 20 on a 256x256 map.

[mc2]

OK, I'll put in one immature post here, since the idea just came to mind.

A player can farm beans if he's running out of gas.......

[overmind]

HAHAHAHA!!! mc2 Lmao

[PowerkickasS]

10-Neon, the mineral setup for your maps that you mentioned sound so damn interesting.  I hope they set up some of the official SC2 maps that way, would make some awsome games.  If there were more maps like that, we would've had more people who learned to play properly.

no way! main problem is minerals taking up too much space without providing enough mineral deposits/rates. that's why you dont have progames playing on maps with 1 gas expos or 5- mineral patch or such.....and you sound like you havent played the sc campaign or something o_O

idea of farming is lovely since turtling should definitely be a valid strategy (of course not a rigged one which everyone seems to presume in games which turtling does work like in $$$maps i mean come on your fault for losing to turtlers lol) but it isnt morally correct for starcraft :P keep it with supreme commander! =D

[Remy]

I don't see how space has anything to do with it.  It can work even on existing maps while only adjusting the maximum number of minerals per patch for some(not all) of the patches at starting mains.  Implementing it on SOME maps definitely won't be a problem, never said that should be the case with every last official map.

And I play SC for multiplayer only.  I've beaten the campaign exactly once and never touched it again since.  I don't remember much detail to the story or anything like that.  10-Neon's mineral idea is meaningless if it's not something in multiplayer maps anyway.

[Gah345]

I was thinking maybe not a constant farm but maybe crystals that slowly regenerate.
Kinda like in red alert games where there is a gold/mineral well and it slowly replenishes the field on minerals That way, they cannot be exploited too much because the player doesnt have control as in a infinite resource building.  Yet it would help to prevent that stalemate situation.

Plus it would encourage players to get more mineral fields because then they will have multiple regenerateing resource fields.

Still they would have a limit, each crystal crop would have a limit to how much crystal it contains

Anyone agree?

awwww it looks like my idea has already been posted    crap

but on the good side  i have 40 posts  YAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

[Peter.Hong]

Can someone explain how the brown minerals work pleaseee ::)

[T-man]

Can someone explain how the brown minerals work pleaseee ::)

Instead of bringing 8 minerals per load back to the base, you bring more (maybe 12 or 16, just speculation) in one trip. This way you have an increased rate of resource gathering.

[Peter.Hong]

Oh I see, I get it now. Hmm well I just wanted to know information about the brown minerals before I made any posts regarding this issue. IMO i think a game should be over before all the minerals on a map run out mainly because there shouldn't be a time when one force doesn't overwhelm another. The thing about SC2 is that many of the units are complete counters to each other so obviously if both your forces are annihilating each other but not gaining any ground then you should switch to something which is more effective against your enemy units. Also during game play when do you stop producing units? the answer should be never if you have the mineral/gas supply because even while your army is duking it out on the battle field you should be microing your base and upgrading/building so when the battle is over and if you come out on top you have a fresh batch of units to send out to destroy exps/main base. On the other hand if you come out below then you have a fresh batch of units to defend your base for a counter. However keep in mind that if the other player has also created a fresh batch then the game could be decided right there in losing the first battle. Having a stale mate because the map has run out of minerals has never been an issue that i've encountered often. In all the games i've played it has happened to me maybe 1 out of 25.

[marcusrodrigues]

Hmmmmmmmm... a resource making capturable building would be perfect, cause it would not end in a stalemate (players will need to fight for and defend this building, wich would generate even more combat ;))

[spike]

thats not to bad of an idea but i don't think they should do that just because it would change the way starcraft economy would be and thats the reason you make sure you own more than one mineral patch

[furrer]

I dont like all those: We dont want stalemates. After all Blizzard is looking very much at competive play, and as spike writed, it will change a bit of how you play. In Korean pro-level only one stalemate ever happened, and that was on an island map! (DA + mass cannons)

[marcusrodrigues]

Well, no ofense to "pro players" but the majority of us are not "no life" Koreans who only play to "pwn n00bs"... Most of us want to have fun on a LAN or Net game, and it looks like by this thread that it is indeed a welcome idea.... And it would be easy to make official maps with and without resource generating structures :D

[furrer]

Well, no ofense to "pro players" but the majority of us are not "no life" Koreans who only play to "pwn n00bs"... Most of us want to have fun on a LAN or Net game, and it looks like by this thread that it is indeed a welcome idea.... And it would be easy to make official maps with and without resource generating structures :D

Yes but how important is this for you: Love to have fun etc. etc. players?
How many slatemates did you have in SC1?

And after all, you know why Starcraft is as famous as it is today? Because it an E-sport... You know how many fan´s it has? You know why there still exist so many korean players that love to play SC? Because they saw it in the TV!

[Major Willy]

I'm still wondering why this topic was dug out of it's grave.

D:

[Rambling]

Expansion plays a key role in SC, Thats what seperates the good from the bad.