Natural Selection Strategy?
t0x1kw4st3
Join Date: 2008-04-27 Member: 64167Members
Join Date: 2008-04-27 Member: 64167Members
<div class="IPBDescription">with a background in Starcraft Strategy</div>Imagine a cup of coffee in transparent glass. There is one pump of dark, rich chocolate bedding the bottom of the glass like sediment. Now, pick up the glass and swoosh it around - this will create a stream of swirling coffee that slowly lifts the sediment from the bottom of the cup back into the mixture. The point is, that rich layer of chocolate sediment at the bottom of the cup is good strategy. Good strategy will surface over time.
I play SC:BW and NS. I have noticed that strategy has evolved in Starcraft, fitting an efficiency curve, involving time and resources. A good Starcraft player will maximize resource income while maintaining a production infrastructure capable of pumping out as many units as their resource income will allow. Resource income is based on SCVs mining resources from mineral fields, which has an efficiency limit. To significantly increase this resource income requires the player "expand" around the map, claiming new resource fields as their own. Expansions and Expanding is the bet that production in the future (based on increased resource amount) will be equal or greater to the enemy's potential production levels and resources. A player who expands pre-maturely may be over run by a player focussing on greater initial production because the resources they could have spent on combat units was instead spent on a Command Center or a Nexus or a Hatchery. This brings about another good point: knowledge is power. (This is why players scout enemy bases in order to choose the best moment to expand, or more accurately, to choose the best fitting counter to the enemy's proposed strategy). One must know decisive moments and their counter. Strategy in Starcraft has evolved like a Korean using a whet stone on a dull blade. Watching good players is like taking a look at two efficiency curves countering each other, the decisive effects of a perfectly timed attacks, the honed expertise that can take a game based on an error in timing.
I am much less guru when considering Natural Selection strategies, which can be chaotic due to a lack of "perfect" control, as you are given in Starcraft.
Natural Selection seems to be like Starcraft in the days before the aforementioned concepts and strategies existed on Battle.net. Natural Selection is arguably a completely different game than Starcraft as well. However, they do share certain tactical elements: knowledge, timing, efficiency and resource management. More resources equates to greater production in the form of upgrades and weaponry for marines and higher life forms for aliens. However, some strategies employed in Natural Selection could completely disregard resource management, such as a skulk-rush or a gorge-rush. It has always seemed to me as I played Natural Selection that the games are chaotic and very uncontrolled, unless coordination of players is found. And at that point, there really isn't a clear "decisive moment" to pursue. Perhaps as the deviation increases into clan matches and leagues, a greater sense of coordination and critical moments can be seen. I think that strategy really comes into play only when there is coordination and a greater control. I am quite unfamiliar with core NS strategy.
There must be "critical" strategies in Natural Selection, but I still think they are still in the form of sedimentary chocolate.
I play SC:BW and NS. I have noticed that strategy has evolved in Starcraft, fitting an efficiency curve, involving time and resources. A good Starcraft player will maximize resource income while maintaining a production infrastructure capable of pumping out as many units as their resource income will allow. Resource income is based on SCVs mining resources from mineral fields, which has an efficiency limit. To significantly increase this resource income requires the player "expand" around the map, claiming new resource fields as their own. Expansions and Expanding is the bet that production in the future (based on increased resource amount) will be equal or greater to the enemy's potential production levels and resources. A player who expands pre-maturely may be over run by a player focussing on greater initial production because the resources they could have spent on combat units was instead spent on a Command Center or a Nexus or a Hatchery. This brings about another good point: knowledge is power. (This is why players scout enemy bases in order to choose the best moment to expand, or more accurately, to choose the best fitting counter to the enemy's proposed strategy). One must know decisive moments and their counter. Strategy in Starcraft has evolved like a Korean using a whet stone on a dull blade. Watching good players is like taking a look at two efficiency curves countering each other, the decisive effects of a perfectly timed attacks, the honed expertise that can take a game based on an error in timing.
I am much less guru when considering Natural Selection strategies, which can be chaotic due to a lack of "perfect" control, as you are given in Starcraft.
Natural Selection seems to be like Starcraft in the days before the aforementioned concepts and strategies existed on Battle.net. Natural Selection is arguably a completely different game than Starcraft as well. However, they do share certain tactical elements: knowledge, timing, efficiency and resource management. More resources equates to greater production in the form of upgrades and weaponry for marines and higher life forms for aliens. However, some strategies employed in Natural Selection could completely disregard resource management, such as a skulk-rush or a gorge-rush. It has always seemed to me as I played Natural Selection that the games are chaotic and very uncontrolled, unless coordination of players is found. And at that point, there really isn't a clear "decisive moment" to pursue. Perhaps as the deviation increases into clan matches and leagues, a greater sense of coordination and critical moments can be seen. I think that strategy really comes into play only when there is coordination and a greater control. I am quite unfamiliar with core NS strategy.
There must be "critical" strategies in Natural Selection, but I still think they are still in the form of sedimentary chocolate.
Comments
Also, additional supply depots required.
No way. What is your handle? You aren't Anytime[GM], yet you take his name... I want to see some of your replays on sc.gosugamers.net.
<!--quoteo(post=1677536:date=May 3 2008, 12:23 PM:name=aNytiMe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(aNytiMe @ May 3 2008, 12:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1677536"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->NS would benefit greatly from switching its resource formula to what SC has. This can be achieved quite easily TBH. Just make RTs more expensive and make them give more res. This would add another facet to the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes. I think the resource system in NS is quite linear.
x = Number of RTs, Res = x/5seconds)
So is Starcraft's. Starcraft's resource function relies on workers, and increases in efficiency until the efficiency plateau is reached (3 workers/mineral). It looks like this:
<img src="http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm5/t0x1kw4st3/starcraftresourcegraph.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
where NS's resource system looks like this:
<img src="http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm5/t0x1kw4st3/nsresourcegraph.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Perhaps one of Starcraft's great strengths is that when you combat an enemy you can damage their economy. A Reaver drop, psi storm, firebats, lurkers, nestling in an enemy's mineral line can turn the tides completely. The same is true in NS, but to a much smaller degree of potential - when one RT is destroyed, it is a manageable loss, perhaps equating to five or so workers in Starcraft terms, where as in Starcraft, a successful blow to the enemy's economy could be like destroying 4 RTs at once (20 workers). One time I reaver dropped a terran and killed 23 SCVs ^^. He was Korean. I was happy.
Perhaps NS resource system could improve if it integrated (aka, making the jump from a linear graph to a quadratic/cubic/asymptotic graph with a plateau, like Starcraft.) An example of how this could be done is being able to upgrade the Resource Tower (10 Res) to the effect of one more resource per tick. Then, make this upgrade destroyable, so the aliens can damage an economy even if they are unable to destroy the entire resource tower.
Overlords. Build more overlords.
SC really is built around a fragile resource collecting system, I wonder how that would pan out for NS? If RTs were cheap, but easily destroyable like peons it would be a very different game mode. I suspect it doesn't work that way now due to the speed differences between the two team as well as the tendency to steamroll that it would cause.
By all means, peons are the weakest units in the game, but arguably the most critical. Without them there would be no game -- without an RT, there would be no game. I know there is a way to slightly tweak NS's "resource collecting system" to make the economics of the game a point to be considered.
As my experience has guided me to say, Natural Selection's resource system is GOOD. One of the most effective ways to stop marines or aliens in their tracks is to destroy their RTs. This mode makes both teams expand around the map claiming resource nodes (critical to victory, usually) while offending or defending. This might be the easiest way to implement resources into a primarily RTSFPShooter. NS is dominantly a FPS. Starcraft is dominantly a RTS.
Perhaps the economic gameplay must stay the way it is to keep the game most balanced. I really have stopped caring. It's not in my hands. However, if the NS team implemented different resource mechanics (ie. NS original, COmbat, #3, #4...), there might be room to practically implement or test all these wild hypothesii.
Point being, eat salad and excercise.
Also, additional supply depots required.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
haha obvious troll, makes claims about his credibility without backing them up, and then gives an idea with no reasoning behind it