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A few interesting changes to StarCraft 2 have been revealed during the last couple of days, at the WorldWide invitational in Paris. However, the most noteworthy change is that to StarCraft 2’s economy and resource system - a core concept of the game which has so far remained (almost) untouched.
Gamers who attended WWI could immediately see one of the major changes: all starting bases and expansions now contain two Vespene Geysers. This alone is a huge change from StarCraft 1, where only user-created “money maps” (and a few specialized maps) featured more than one geyser per resource area.
The other changes to Vespene Gas are:
- Vespene Geysers start with only 1000 gas units, down from 5000 in StarCraft 1.
- Workers pick up 6 Vespene Gas units per trip, down from 8, and 2 gas units when the geyser is depleted.
- When a geyser has been depleted (all 1000 gas units have been harvested), an option to “Restore Gas” will appear when it is selected. In the WWI build, this allows the player to sacrifice 100 minerals in order to pump 400 gas units back into the Vespene Geyser, bringing it back to full operational status for a short time.
- Hitting “Restore Gas” will temporarily shut down the geyser completely, prohibiting workers from harvesting any gas. Currently, the downtime is 45 seconds.
All these major changes have been implemented to StarCraft 2 for one purpose: complicate the “macro” portion of the game, which has been downsized severely with the introduction of new and improved user interface aspects, and mainly, Multiple Building Selection (MBS) - which allows players to select all their similar unit producing buildings together and deliver a single command to construct units out of all of them.
Here’s how Dustin “Cavez” Browder, lead game designer, explains the changes:
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.
The need to complicate matters has led to the introduction of the second Vespene Geyser and to the “Restore Gas” feature. These two additions will require players to more carefully plan their resource spending.
First, the decision to build the second geyser, just like the first one, will determine the amount of each resource the player will have and the type of army he can construct. Tech progressions and specialized units and abilities require a greater amount of gas, something that a smart scouting player will also note and react to accordingly.
Second, the “Restore Gas” feature will require the player to “babysit” his base more often. 400 units of Gas are harvested quickly, meaning frequent trips to geysers will be needed for a good Vespene Gas income. Of course, players will not always wish to renew their gas supply for the cost of minerals - another decision that will have to be carefully considered and weighted.
These changes will steal some of the added focus to the micromanagement portion of StarCraft 2, which pro-gamers, who’ve had a chance to play the game extensively, have reported about, and divert it back to base and economy management. Other such changes, meant to give players more macromanagement decisions to play with without dumbing down the UI, are being considered by Blizzard. Likewise, the added gas income might explain the higher price on some units which were previously a lot less expensive.
Moving on, a few changes to Minerals have also been implemented. Cavez says:
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.
Mineral patches will still have 1500 resource units, just like in StarCraft 1 - the collection amount change has been brought by because of the different pathing behavior of units in StarCraft 2, which, apparently, is 60% more efficient!
All of these numbers are subject to change, of course. Currently, repleneshing the Geyser’s Vespene Gas supply is a somewhat futile effort.
Realistically, the difference between a depleted geyser’s output and an operational geyser is only 4 gas units. When factoring the downtime of 45 seconds, the real exchange rate hovers closer to 200 gas units for 100 minerals - not a great deal, considering minerals run out eventually (and fairly quickly), while gas fumes last the entire game. More number tweaks, and perhaps other ideas, will have to fill the void to macromanagement left by UI advancements.
17 Comments to “WWI’s Fallout: StarCraft 2’s Resource System Revised”
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Yes 1st again~…lol no comment on this one. im not sure of my opinion….
In all honesty, i would actually prefer an interface rollover. The whole WC3 “multiple buildings at once” thing is mega-noobified. However, since there are a lot of other people who we aren’t hearing from right now, who would ultimately dislike a UI rollover, i think Bliz are handling the macro changes fairly well. Both thumbs up.
What many people forget is that Starcraft 2 is not just targeted at the Brood War community (which is really not all that large anymore outside Asia), but to strategy gamers in general. And in that larger community, interface conveniences have long since become the norm. In fact, many recent games (Dawn of War, C&C 3) simplify base management even beyond the level of Warcraft III, and hardly anybody complains. It’s only in the context of a 1998 game that the question of MBS comes up at all. Everybody else just expects it.
In my opinion, the basic question is not whether MBS removes skill: everything else being equal, of course it does. The question is also not whether SC2 should have MBS or not: for a game released in 2008/2009, there’s really no choice. The real question is if all the *new* challenges they are adding can compensate for skill lost by the introduction of MBS. Like additional micro, and now this new resource system. And with all the pro-gamer testing that Blizzard puts into SC2, I’m confident that they can make this game “hard enough”.
So I don’t think that SC2 will be “noobified”, but there will be a shift from macro towards more micro. Whether that is good or not is a matter of personal opinion.
A variation of MBS that they could try is keeping all structures of the same type simultaneously selectable/hotkeyable, but making it so they don’t receive simultaneous training orders, and have to be tabbed through to order each structure individually. That way the time investment for managing your structures is increased, but it’s still a significant improvement over SC1.
Wow. This changes everything!
I concur with X.
I agree completely, X. You nailed it.
It’s hard enough for me to go back and play StarCraft nowadays… I’m not sure how much of SC2 I’ll play if they PURPOSEFULLY dumb down the UI. The skill required to play shouldn’t rely on artificial limitations, but on strategic and tactical concepts and the player’s ability to control them.
Wow thats a major change.. certainly going to affect gameplay but they’ll probably make more changes soon. I must say the spine walkers are wield looking, but i see that they added the acid trail back to the hydralisk attack. cool stuff
Gay. I don’t want to have to babysit my base all the freakin’ time. That just makes playing a “relaxing game of strategy” stressful. I say fire the F***** who approved this idea.
Personally, I hate to micro, that’s why I play Zerg: Just toss lots and lots of guys at the enemy, and they’ll eventually fall.
On second read-through: With these resource changes, all players get a starting max of 12 gas per tick, min of 4, which WOULD average out to 8, except that your starting gas is really down to 2000, instead of 5000. With the addition of Yellow Minerals, and no word yet on whether any minerals will regenerate like in C&C, they encourage either faster starts, with the option of long drawn-out matches if necessary, or sitting back to tech up. 2v2 and similar matches just got crazy good.
Oh, and knowing that my Drone’s pathing is faster, but my mineral/trip count is lower pretty much averages out makes me shrug. At the same time, I wonder whether yellow minerals have more than 1500. We know they gather twice as fast…
150% as fast.
“Big Gay Hunters” hahahahha, I couldn’t agree more!
The way I look at it, you shouldn’t even need to MAKE an SCV, point to a mineral patch and watch it grin. The command center should do that automatically, all you click when a Command Center starts is, ‘build 10 scv’ for minerals ‘build 5 scv’ for gas. And it should go automatically.
ALL RTS these days is about micro in combat, strategy etc. Anything mre manual, takes away the brain power to do other things.
“The command center should do that automatically”
Nooooo! I want to play, I don’t want to watch the computer play!
Automatic things like that slowly take away control by encouraging the player to do nothing.
This might also be the first command the player issues to their troops. It’s a nice safe way to start, which gets the player feeling comfortable with the interface.
By streamlining bits like this, you might actually be cutting out more than you realise.
나는 게임에 가장 중대하다. 사용자 인터페이스는 시골뜨기 실패 이다.
I think you are all overlooking one important aspect of this. The Geysers only have 1000 gas each. Consider the Zerg. Since Hydralisks are now 100 minerals 100 gas, you would blow the whole geyser on 10 of them. For protoss, Archons will be a rarity, costing a whopping 350 gas for just one, and will be practically unfeasible in anything but a large/huge map.
As a protoss player, I don’t want to see my favourite unit become hopelessly lost in a sea of cheap units because all you can build is zealots/lings/marines. The spice must flow, dammit!
Also, regarding the mineral/gas tradeoff option: No.
To whomever belongs the brilliant mind which conjured this idea from the blackened depths of retardation, fire them out of a 120 mm shock cannon. Immediately
The concept is what’s important here; I’m sure the numbers will be tweaked to allow the game to function as we’ve come to expect. However now when you run out of gas you’re not completely screwed anymore. And you have the option of getting more gas earlier.