Never played this map and havn't edited SC1 for about 6 years... But I like this concept out of all the rest for balancing 'special' usage. Maybe create a structure which players can build and this will exempt them from the debt but remove this structure? So, if all 3 players on a team (if I am understanding correctly) build the Special Structure, and then they use a Special ability, no one will suffer any debt. But if only one player builds the Special Structure, the other two players will suffer income loss. That way - you can still co-ordinate with your team-mates to use a special if they are co-operating, or you can still cover yourself if they are not working together but you desperately need a special.

Hope this helps :s just my two cents on a map I've never played

Thanks, much appreciated. This is definitely an improvement.

I think this system is viable, but need some improvements:

1) As Cardinal said
2) If you dont want to be rushed by SCV - then just save 4000 minerals instead of 3000, and then cast a spell (I often use this trick before making gas)
3) Your debt system dont need to immediately stop the income like gas do - just slow down it (for example if I had 10 minerals per second - I will have only 5 minwerals per second after spellcasting). For example "if spell casted then subtract 5 minerals per second during 100 seconds".

About first system with bank account - I think debt system much better and can be balanced. Imho you have to use "patched" debt system.


And dont forget about colors of letters:)
(some people dont know what is "tan")

And, if player left the game - you need to catch this by "ladderboard" triggers.


Ok

Cardinals suggestion of having a "debt repay building" doesn't really fit into the map since activating a special already is done by creating a building and I've used up all buildings so I'd need a special area for that. Instead I'll just remove the minerals if they have them when one of the players activated a special. Same concept, but a little nicer to implement.

It also gave me an idea how prevent exploiting the debt system (I never really liked the idea of getting something now and pay later):
Case 1: Kinda the ideal case: All players have saved up money so, the special is cast and the minerals are subtracted.
Case 2: One or two players haven't saved up (enough) money so what they have will be subtracted and for the rest they will have to pay a loan tax. I'm thinking of maybe +30% of the debt you contracted. That's the price you pay for getting a potentially game ending special without having to wait until you can afford it.
For example, the special costs 2000, but you only have 1500 so you have to repay 500 + 30% = 650.

Alright, so far the theory, but any good ideas how to implement it? Make it fixed values, like 0, 500, 1000 and 1500 saved up and 2600, 1950, 1300 and 650 to pay back respectively? I think I'll have to since I wouldn't know how to do the triggers for any arbitrary amount of money.

I like the idea of repaying with slower income, although this can take quite a while. If I subtract 10 from the income this will be only about 200 minerals per countdown (~40 game seconds) which will be 13 spawn waves for the max. debt of 2600 which is huuuge. Maybe I'll make it like 5-10 income left (from an original 10-26 iirc). Specials will usually only be cast with full income anyway so this would be 16 income deducted, resulting in a little over 8 spawns slowed income which is fairly acceptable.

Uh about my quote... This is how it looks (all colored!)
I think the pipe might have thrown off your BBcode parsing, though it didn't do that for me...
If you still don't see it, don't worry of course I'll color it.

The banking system is ideal, but the problem is that SC1 just isn't flexible enough to make this intuitive enough to understand. We can't add strings that tell people what's going on, or dynamically adjust the cost of a building over time. We have to use clumsy "bring units to location" method for doing this sort of thing, and it doesn't really work for the DS system.

In my DS Night Fixed map I simply went with increasing the income rate of a team with fewer players, eg 1 vs 3, the 1 player will get a 30% bonus to their mineral rate. This is because the team of 3 people can cast 3 specials in the time that the 1 player can only cast 1 special, so by increasing the 1 players income rate they can cast specials a bit more. In the case of 1 vs 3, 30% really isn't enough to offset it, and they'll generally always lose anyway, but it does give it a bit better balance. In case of 2 vs 3 or 1 vs 2 it is a 15% bonus to income rate, which will generally still see the weaker side losing, but again makes them a bit more competitive.

This bonus is applied from the instant the teams become imbalanced - so you can actually start a 1 vs 3 game if you want and get income bonus from the very beginning, which can be challenging for the larger team to account for.

Finally, note that the actual string length that gets displayed on the leaderboard is pretty short. I think you're example of "<== Damn he's rich } ==> Next spawners: Tan vs. Green" would actually be truncated about where it says "Tan", so you'll need to come up with something much shorter, like:
"<== Rich | Nxt Spawn: Tan & Green"

You could check what I've done in DS Night Fixed, where I have beacons on the map that change ownership as spawning cycles through, so you can see from the colour blocks on the minimap itself who is spawning next, regardless of what the leaderboard says. I still have the 'spawns next' leaderboard, but it doesn't show for very long. Getting the beacons working 100% correctly isn't completely trivial - it's an easy concept to understand, but there are a few snags you need to be aware of (accounting for leaving players in particular).

What about to add spell frequency to each player or team (for example - player or team allowed to cast spell only 1 time per 3 spawns).

And 1x3 2x3 1x2 teams will have same spell refunds as in previous\current DS versions

UPDATE

My next idea: let's imagine, that spell cost 2000. So:

1) For 1-player team it should cost 2000
2) For 2-player team it should cost 4000
3) For 3-player team it should cost 6000

How to solve:

1) If player single at a team - he just need to save 2000 and use spell
2) If 2 or 3 players at a team - they just need to save 4000\6000 together and use spell

For example, if me and you at a team, you can save 1000, I can save 3000 and when I cast the spell - I lost 3000, you lost 1000.

You can say, that this is unfair, because your ally dumbass will not save money.
But: If your ally dumbass spend all money - you can spend money too, and the enemy, who saving money for a spell, will "lost" a lot of units, which will not spawn because he is saving money, and your team will have a lot of units.

Another trick - just save 3500 for example, and catch the moment when your ally will save 600 for a gas, or save 3000 and catch the moment when your ally will save 1200 for a reaver.

About triggers: I think you should capture values like 500 1000 1500 2000 etc. I think it is not very hard and this requires not a lot of triggers.

After, when you will have time, you can add triggers for 250 750 etc.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2011, 1:37 pm by theleo_ua.

This.

Thx, I'll keep that in mind

Now I know why people get all mad and call me names when I start a game with me being on the smaller team. And why they claim that I'd get more money and wouldn't believe me when I told them that player number doesn't matter - that it's still balanced. In my version all that matters is race composition, and of course strategy.

Lanth, I must say, I respected a lot of changes you did to the map but this particular change killed a keynote of my map: Number of players doesn't matter, so the game is still fair if a player leaves/drops, which happens so, soooo often in pub games. You'd do me a personal favor if you changed that back to what it was and used one of the solutions we're discussing here in your next version to balance specials.
Why did you change that in the first place? Admittedly, in my version specials can get really strong in some constellations (in case you don't know, I refund money for specials for a team with fewer players) but they never give the advantage to one team only, like in your version...

Yeah I know I can do it this way (and I probably will). I was asking if someone has a better idea.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2011, 4:39 pm by NudeRaider.

Maybe the SEN veterans (tuxlar, heinermann etc) has a better idea, but they dont check this topic imho

Hi again, Raider:)

I wanted to say this long time ago, but always forgot:)

What do you think, that player, who leave the game, and had 0 gas, but a lot of unit buildings or bunkers near the temple, give his team more advantage, than player, who built gas (especially 5 gas) and leave the game after it.

You have refunds for kills (if player with deaths is left the game) - so maybe you need to add gas refunds?


Another thing, I wanted to say, is fast bunker strategy: if you terran, and we play 3x3, you can build barracks, then 3 bunkers behind the temple, and then build only gas. You allies can build only gas (5 gas). After your team has 15 gas - you can start build units. If you afraid of enemy drone attacks - you can build gas only if you have 3 scv. If the enemy build DT or lurkers - just build turrets near the bunkers.

The counter to this (which I see) is to make only gas - no another buildings (because enemy team lose money to bunkers). But not a lot of players know and use it.

What is another counters?

I would have replied to this post if I'd seen it earlier. On Feb 22nd we had a 6.3 earthquake that struck my city, so I was a bit distracted at the time.

I'm surprised you consider that your refund mechanism actually balanced the map, and that my solution is worse. In my experience (and comments of many others), the refund system was fundamentally broken in favour of the smaller team. It meant that the smaller team could use their specials much more frequently than the bigger team, especially in the case of 1 vs 3. For the special use to be completely equal in this case, the single player simply has to save 100% of their income, which is easy. But unless all 3 opponents also save 100% of their income (eg, none of them build a single building), then they will come out at a disadvantage compared to the single player. Eg if one of the players spend 20% of their income on buildings, then that team is only saving 280% of their money, while the single player is effectively saving at 300%. In my experience, in unbalanced team situations it almost always favoured the smaller team.

My solution is really a compromise. When it gets to the end-game, the team that is smaller is highly likely to lose, even with the mineral bonus, simply because the other team has a higher income rate. Really it's gone to the other end - the team of 3 can save 1000 minerals each in some time period for a total of 3000, whereas the single player gets a 30% bonus, so in that same time period they will save 1300 minerals. When each team has saved enough to cast 1 special, the big team will have enough money to cast 3 specials while the small team can only cast 1 (although they would have saved the required money sooner, so they do have an edge).

I think the refund system is fundamentally flawed, but couldn't come up with anything better. So I went with the compensation route, so if you start a 1 vs 3 game, the single player gets an advantage from the beginning and hopefully can do sufficient damage using superior skills to kill the larger team before it even gets to the end-game special shoot-a-thon. However I've never actually seen this in practice - a couple of times the single player has done fairly serious damage, but they generally always lose in the end through specials. Bumping the bonus rates to 20/40 (currently 15/30) might help alleviate it somewhat.

As for not knowing about it - whenever a player leaves a game and the teams become unbalanced, it spams messages to everyone to let them know, so you should've seen that at least once. It should also display the message if the game begins with unbalanced teams (right after the mineral rate has been selected).

Don't you think you're contradicting yourself here?

What I read there is: "When the smaller team uses all income on specials the bigger team has to do the same to compete."
So what? I see that as proof of balance: When your enemy employs a superior strategy you'll have to adapt to keep up. You don't adapt - you lose.
I will admit however that in practice this poses a problem because the average bnetter will not listen to a unified strategy. Maybe that's where our spirits differ? Your balance caters for noobs and mine requires good strategy on both sides?

My mechanism doesn't balance "the map", rather it keeps the strengths of the teams the same. Gameplay is affected negatively, because the relative price of specials becomes higher with each dropped player from the bigger team. So in a 3v3 the specials are (relatively) cheaper than in a 2v2. But in a 3v2 the price is the same as in a 3v3.

I deem your solution worse because it goes against the very core idea of the map: A leaver doesn't mean your team has to lose.
When a player leaves on your map around mid/endgame the added income won't make up for when the enemy uses mass specials. If I understood you correctly you even said that even when you start the game 3v1 the added money still won't be enough to win the game (most of the time). This isn't balance!
In my version the bigger team just has to work together / adapt strategy to even out things again.

Well I don't think I can come to terms with a logic that says "players are idiots, so I'll have to add an imbalance to help them" and call it a good compromise. What if they aren't idiots for once? Then you blew your one chance for an interesting game. But you've probably made up your mind on that already, and I can't force you, so whatever.


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Hm yes, realized this a long time ago, but didn't see that as a serious problem since this this particular case is fairly rare and the disadvantage usually not enough to turn the game. So yes, this is a balance issue, albeit a small one so I'll consider your solution for the next update.

Basically you're right. When the bunkers (cannons and sunkens can work too) are well placed the only counter is to gas up as well. But
a) Oftentimes bunkers aren't placed well (enough) and you can just overpower them with hyds, goons, and tanks/vults
b) 2-3 bunkers is 1-2 gas, so it's a heavy investment and thus can backfire (kinda like cheese in sc)
c) only really cost effective for teams of 3.
The only other counter I see is not letting them build by either sending workers of your own (you gotta be ready or you'll be late) or by pumping out units early.

So admittedly this has the potential to make games boring (not imbalanced), but it can also make them exciting, for example when you try to kill the builder with your own workers and I don't see it employed very often because certain requirements have to be met, so I'm rather happy with it right now.

And if the bigger team even tries any other strategy, then they almost always lose. This makes it boring - the single player can dictate strategy and has the upper hand, and the bigger team can only react to what the single player is doing. If you, on the bigger team, have someone that just won't co-operate, then there is nothing at all you can do and you're bound to lose. This is not very fun if you had been playing a 3vs3 game and winning up until the late-game (so 2 enemies left the game), and then because of the specials refund and your lame team mate the single player ends up beating you. As these games take like 30-40 minutes to play, I typically feel very cheated at the end - the single player won because of the mechanics of the map (and stupidity of my team mate), even though overall our team showed much better skill.

Furthermore, the costs for your specials (I'm going from my memory of DS maps that have refund, which may not specifically be your original one) vs the actual benefits of them make the protoss one considerably more powerful. If the single player is Protoss and the other team is Terran/Zerg/Zerg, then no matter what the bigger team done the single player is always going to out-special them and win in the end.

Other problem is the actually mechanism itself. The single player gets a big refund in their price, so they get a huge amount of minerals just sitting in the bank. This means they can cast a special, and then if strategy warrants it, they can build a few expensive buildings instantly and add to the pressure (forgoing a future special). This is further increased flexibility that the larger team doesn't have. As their units are also spawning every round the investment from each of their expensive buildings actually gives them a much bigger payoff than the larger team, who only see their new units every 3rd time. This makes a big difference for units that are much more effective when massed, like carriers and guardians or BCs.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

And I deem your solution worse because someone leaving from your team actually increases your chances of winning dramatically, to the point that if you want to be a bastard you could drop-mate your allies to ensure you win.

Yes, it has problems. It's not perfect, but the perfect solution (banking) really isn't possible with our limited GUI controls. Even if we had access to a 3rd resource it would be feasible to jerry-rig something up. I guess you could do this in yours as you effectively don't use gas for anything, whereas in mine I use gas a counter for when the mineral stream will come back online.

Then hopefully they won't get their knickers in an twist and leave half way through the game because something appears to be going against them, so this mechanic shouldn't come into play. And if you want to start a game with 1vs3, then you should know all the implications up front and the 1 player should try and use their mineral advantage as best they can.

But how do you fix if player will mine gas with drones during mineral stream stopping?

The counter is actually done internally, the gas display is just a display of it. If someone mines gas, then their displayed number will increase, but the number behind the scenes will still count down properly. When it gets to 0, it will start up mineral production and set the gas value down to 0 also.

But players being able to mine gas completely rules out my idea of using gas a 2nd resource to get around this problem. Pretty 'duh' moment for me there. Unless you did some other mechanism to prevent players from actually mining the gas; using a different building entirely for example, or changing the player they belong to so they can't mine (I dabbled with that but gave up as it had problems with SCVs being in the way).

Why you need gas as a time counter for mineral freezing?

Because it's actually done via death counters, but at least you can plan and see how long it will take instead of bitching about how you made the last gas and have no idea wtf is going on or if the game froze up, just that you don't gain minerals (like the much loved ominously beautiful best map ever, version Queen).

Cannons and sunkens are too weak (in comparison to bunkers). And you can repair bunkers

Btw. I've given this some thought but I'm unsure how to implement a fair system because it depends on many variables how much advantage a team really gets:
- team sizes
- product of time * nr. of extractors dismissed, which is variable over the duration of the game.
Ideas?

I beefed them up considerably a while ago and they cost less, I'd say they are about the same strength now.
Repairing is partially valid, but shield regeneration shouldn't be underestimated. And keep in mind that a full repair costs 100 minerals which can add up if you rely on repairs.

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In other news I updated my leaderboard with leo's suggestion. When I've sufficiently tested it (and a few other changes) I'll upload a new version.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 19 2011, 5:23 pm by NudeRaider.

Can be easily triggered imho


Didnt understand this

Oh then how do you trigger when a player left some time into the game. You'd need to keep track of how long it was which combination of players.

pretty much the same as the above problem.
x = amount of refund
t = time with fewer extractors
a = nr. of extractors fewer than the average

Calculating t and a is already difficult in itself, especial as I need to keep track of them for all players.
Then I need to multiply according to x = t * a. which is tedious in sc.
Unless someone has a brilliant idea of how to easily estimate x I won't bother implementing it. Already got too many complicated trigger spawning system for such a supposedly simple map.