Q&A - Gas Mechanic & Minerals Latest bluepost by Cavez about the gas mechanic and minerals: Here is how it works. All numbers are subject to change. We have changed the balance since the WWI build and will be fiddling with the balance this coming week for sure. You start with two Vespene Geysers in your base and at every expansion (some maps will not do this of course, but all the WWI maps do). Optimal number of workers per gas collection building is 3 (so you need 6 total). All gas collection buildings start with a certain amount of gas (like SC1). I believe it's 1000 in your WWI build. When a gas collector runs out it becomes "depleted" (like SC1). A depleted gas collector still allows you to harvest some gas (like SC1). In the WWI build you collect 6 gas per trip from a working gas collector and 2 gas per trip when depleted. All gas collectors have a "Restore Gas" (name temp) button that you can use to return your gas collector to a non-depleted state. In the WWI build this gets you 400 gas back into your collector. Restoring Gas costs 100 minerals and takes the gas collector down for 45 seconds (all numbers temp). Like all things this is work-in-progress, but here is what we have seen in the games we have played: 1) You can choose how much gas you want. The more gas you want, the less minerals you will have. If you build your 2nd gas collector too soon, you may have the wrong resource mix. If you go gas too late, you may have the wrong resource mix. If you use "Restore Gas" too few times you may not have enough gas to do some of the crazy end-game stuff. If you use it to often early on you may have too much gas and not enough minerals. 2) Some of the more mass-able units are very, very gas heavy. You can scout a player and gain some sense which way he is headed based on how quickly he goes for double gas. 3) Sometimes you don't want to "Restore Gas" if you need just a little more gas in the short term because you are trying to tech or build something critical. Since it takes down your gas collector for 45 seconds you may need to hold if you are close to being able to afford something that requires gas. This of course damages your gas collection for the long haul which makes the choice difficult. Why we are trying it: 1) We think gas could be more interesting than it was in the original StarCraft. 2) We think StarCraft 2 can benefit from additional economy choices. I think that's all of it. Now that you have complete information, please discuss. =) Sorry for the forum spam. I don't have the tools handy to deal with it. ___ Minerals are down to 5 per trip, but they harvest a little more quickly. We have been doing some timed comparisons of minerals in the original SC to SC2 and we have been really putting a lot of effort into getting the collection rate to be the same. The pathing is SO much better in SC2 that we were collecting minerals at a ferocious rate. So now mineral collection is pretty close to SC1. We aren't doing that currently though we did discuss it. We certainly wouldn't add it to what we have at WWI. It would be one or the other. Generally the "cooldown" type abilities we tried were a bit dull because you just mashed the button whenever the cooldown came up. Putting a minerals cost to the ability has so far been much more interesting. ___ 1) No. At least not right now.=) 2) Yes. I'm a little worried about some weird end-game scenarios where you have way too much gas but so far it hasn't been as much of a problem as I thought it would be. ___ Still 1500. We are only trying to lower the rate of minerals collection. We still want an expansion to have the same minerals value that it did in the original game.
Good post, thanks for the information. It will really make you able to do some early game gas heavy builds (12 gas instead of 8)
It's nice to hear the resource collection rate is about the same. I was worried because people were saying they gained resources at a pace where they always had a ton of minerals floating around back in Blizzcon.
Yeah, but the best change is really the gas part. Remember that protoss needed to do the bisu build so that they could go high tech (without pushing first)? Not needed anymore! The gas part really adds a lot of choices for the player of strategies, and thats just what I wanted!!!
I'm not sure about the Restore Gas though. It'll speed things up in the late game, but is it good? I don't know if I like that's it's unlimited. I expected a limit, like 3 restorations per geyser or something.
WIck i dont like the abbility either... Will it even be usefull? Isnt it minerals you need when the map is mined out?
I think in December we had a (for me) very painfully discussen about games where everything was mined out, and many (excluding me), thought this would be the solution: "Use gas to get Minerals abbility" Now Blizzard has done this: Use Minerals to get gas abbility" LOL
Maybe thats the draw back of getting more gas, you run out of minerals faster, so you have to space it out or use it when its most needed, but Blizzard doesn't know that do they xDD
i think they did this to futher increase the macro. i rkn this is good. it gives you an option when to go for fast tech or not.
i think its abit the opposite of what i'd need, especially since you can still mine depleted geysers and minerals just go.
Not the 100 minerals = gas abbility. I like you have 2 extractors, becuase you can go fast tech as you say, but the "recharge" abbility gives you nothing (someone calculated it in this thread: (first post) http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5361
this is truly a bads idea that i hope blizzard either works out or was lieing about. gas=infinite minerals = finite
I dont really like the idea, it can be abused rather easily. Just think of this, sending peons all over the map just building gas units, and restoring gas, once you get a solid mineral line going. This will make units like mineral based units not very needed. We all know once you get the first expand up with decent amount of workers its easy to get minerals its the gas that matters. What this will do is reduce the time in tier 2 and it will be mostly a jump from tier 1 to tier 3.
