Yeah, but you made it seem like it was a design mistake since they are gathered the same way. It may be uninteresting from a gathering point of view, but adds strategic depth, which is the important point in a competitive game.

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Original post by Tiblanc Yeah, but you made it seem like it was a design mistake since they are gathered the same way. It may be uninteresting from a gathering point of view, but adds strategic depth, which is the important point in a competitive game.

Yeah, it does add some, just not an awful lot, IMHO. They could have been more interesting. You talk about the differences between gas heavy and mineral heavy build orders, but what does that actually mean in terms of acquiring the resource? Most of the time, it just means you assign a couple of extra workers to gas mining duty. And as they are often found together, it doesn't make a huge difference to expansion either.

It becomes more interesting once the majority of minerals are mined out. Then the infinite nature of the gas vents becomes significant, and the remaining pockets of minerals are so much more valuable. Denial of one or the other can have a massive impact and can form a core part of a player's overall strategy. This is less true the rest of the time, as typically denial of one implies denial of the other as well.

Your questions 1 and 2 are different for minerals and gas.

1. What must I do to increase my supply of resource X, and how does that fit into the game flow?

Minerals: you need to build more SCVs or get a new expansion if your minerals are already saturated.
Gas: you need to build an extractor in your main base, or at an expansion (which may require you to get one)


2. What must I do to decrease my opponent's supply of resource X, and how does that fit into the game flow?

Minerals: you need to take a high templar and use psi-storm on his mineral line. This encourages fast, dramatic action.
Gas: you need to destroy his extractor which you can probably only do if you destroy the entire expansion. Killing the SCVs won't make much of a difference because he can just pull a few off of minerals to replace them.

These differences make ramping up minerals a more even process, one that you can't do too fast (because your command centers can only make one scv at a time) but you can do it continually. You can ramp up your gas really quickly because gas is scv intensive rather than expansion intensive.

You can effectively attack minerals to depress your opponent's income until he resaturates but the same cannot be done with gas short of a destruction of the expansion.

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Original post by Sandman Yeah, it does add some, just not an awful lot, IMHO. They could have been more interesting. You talk about the differences between gas heavy and mineral heavy build orders, but what does that actually mean in terms of acquiring the resource? Most of the time, it just means you assign a couple of extra workers to gas mining duty. And as they are often found together, it doesn't make a huge difference to expansion either.

The difference is deeper than that. If you build your extractor later, you can gather more minerals, which can help you fast expand. If you build your extractor sooner, you can gather more gas, but less mineral, which allows you to tech but not fast expand and reduces your army size. The implications of this is if you suspect a rush, you can build your extractor a bit later which gives you enough mineral to counter the rush or fast expand if the rush doesn't come. If you suspect a fast expand, than you may wish to tech and do a timing push. That makes you vulnerable to a rush because you have less mineral to counter the rush since you invested minerals in your extractor and took some workers off minerals. With a single resource, the optimal strategy becomes to harvest as much as possible because you need it if you want to rush, expand or tech.

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It becomes more interesting once the majority of minerals are mined out. Then the infinite nature of the gas vents becomes significant, and the remaining pockets of minerals are so much more valuable. Denial of one or the other can have a massive impact and can form a core part of a player's overall strategy. This is less true the rest of the time, as typically denial of one implies denial of the other as well.

Most of the games are over before resources are mined out. A good portion of them before the main base is mined out. Basing a resource system around eventual depletion of resource isn't really a goal, but a side effect.

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Original post by Tiblanc The difference is deeper than that. If you build your extractor later, you can gather more minerals, which can help you fast expand. If you build your extractor sooner, you can gather more gas, but less mineral, which allows you to tech but not fast expand and reduces your army size. The implications of this is if you suspect a rush, you can build your extractor a bit later which gives you enough mineral to counter the rush or fast expand if the rush doesn't come. If you suspect a fast expand, than you may wish to tech and do a timing push. That makes you vulnerable to a rush because you have less mineral to counter the rush since you invested minerals in your extractor and took some workers off minerals. With a single resource, the optimal strategy becomes to harvest as much as possible because you need it if you want to rush, expand or tech.

Fair enough, but it seems to me that this is only half of the equation. What you describe here is how strategy drives resource management. But what about the other way around? How do the resources drive strategy?

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Most of the games are over before resources are mined out. A good portion of them before the main base is mined out. Basing a resource system around eventual depletion of resource isn't really a goal, but a side effect.

I know, I brought it up because I felt it was an area of the game where the distinction between the two resources starts to become more significant.

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Original post by Glak Minerals: you need to build more SCVs or get a new expansion if your minerals are already saturated. Gas: you need to build an extractor in your main base, or at an expansion (which may require you to get one)

Well, you could rephrase this as: Mine at existing local base(s) until saturated - then expand. Granted, the cost of the extractor plays a role, and the difference in accumulation/saturation rates may also, but mainly in terms of timing. Where i expand to, will often be the same.

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Minerals: you need to take a high templar and use psi-storm on his mineral line. This encourages fast, dramatic action. Gas: you need to destroy his extractor which you can probably only do if you destroy the entire expansion. Killing the SCVs won't make much of a difference because he can just pull a few off of minerals to replace them.

This suggests that Gas denial isn't a really an option. Destroying an entire expansion sounds like a high commitment strategy, which you probably wouldn't take on *just* to deny your opponent gas. Your main objective there would be denying your opponent gas, minerals, and units. [grin]
Harassing SCVs with ranged AoE on the other hand, sounds like a much more viable option.

It seems to me that gas has a much weaker influence on strategy than minerals, and where it does have influence, it's in much the same direction as minerals anyway.

I like the idea of diversity, but usually when it comes to balancing a rts game, you're going to have to bring everything together to the point that there is no diversity, just so everything can be balanced.

I'd say make two resources, but make certain units and they're related structures only use one type of resource, so the player can specialize.

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Original post by Sandman This suggests that Gas denial isn't a really an option. Destroying an entire expansion sounds like a high commitment strategy, which you probably wouldn't take on *just* to deny your opponent gas. Your main objective there would be denying your opponent gas, minerals, and units. [grin]

I explained this stuff in my earlier reply to Girsanov. Did you read it?

Take a look at this textbook low-gas vs high-gas game between the best Terran and best Zerg in the world:


Zerg gets gas at his natural expansion as soon as he possibly can, around the five minute mark. At around 7 minutes, we can see the Zerg's overlord observing the unoccupied gas geyser at the Terran's natural expansion. At that point, if not before, the Zerg knows with certainty the Terran is going heavy infantry, not mech, wraith or vessels. (The Terran eventually builds that refinery a whole nine minutes into the game.) Even at the very end, the Zerg is still not worker saturated at his natural expansion - it's not the minerals he needs.

Throughout the game the Zerg attemps to get extra expansions to get more gas; throughout the game the Terran uses his superior army to kill those expansions to stop the Zerg from getting enough gas. (Yes, it's absolutely worth doing to deny gas.) Terran technology reaches vessels, tanks and a critical amount of marine-medic, and the Zerg falls over like a house of cards because at that point he would need Hive tech to fight. Guess what resource you need for Hive tech? :-)

Gas dictates practically everything that goes on in the match.

1 resource plays very different from 2 resources. 2 resources does not play very differently from N > 2 resources.

The reason being at 2+ resources you must take into consideration what resource gathering to prioritize, since having a lot of one resource can be useless if you need to buy something that requires more than zero of the other(s). Whereas with one resource you can just maximize it without any risk of it becoming useless.

I wouldn't say the game being more complicated at 2 resources is a drawback, after all we play strategy games supposedly just because they are complicated. It may be a drawback if the game already is pretty complicated and associated "economy management" of 2 resources doesn't add to the core game. But again, for many games it is a benefit.

It should be noted though that with the further depth of strategy that is possible with 2+ resources comes a greater chance of unbalance. With a single resource it is easy to compare real costs, with 2+ it becomes waaay more difficult.

Note that the above uses the definition 'resource' as the gatherable quantities seen in Starcraft, Age of Empires and Dawn of War. Of course, resource can also refer to other things (for instance time is a resource..); my paragraph does not consider that.