Just replying to confirm what cloaked said. Back in the day, nearly every game played in competition used the settings he outlined. Still, as long as people enjoy themselves that’s the main thing!
Cloaked,
Who were you with, I forget? FL? SLS? I know I remember the name.
Cloaked is correct. Those were both the ladder settings and the expected defaults for any game you joined.
Hey ratamaq, I remember you.
I was with SF back in 2007, then moved on to no-tag clan with Finger and the like. Whats your steam ID? We should grab some games.
So essentially your calling starcraft boring because the first 5 minutes of scouting and resource establishment are too slow for you?
By your logic why not just start each player with heavy cruisers and destroyers. Why even have the earlly game or the mid game if you attempting to negate it with huge resource starts.
It like watching CGS CSS, 16k everyround. Its a joke.
“Both the player and the spectator get to enjoy a more interesting and fun game to play and watch.”
Again you talk about the spectator for what reason? Literally what purpose would modifying anything for the spectator do the a competitive game any good. No comp game has ever grown doing such a thing. Its counter productive, i’d challenge you to find one game that grew with its community by forcing players to conform to whats more fun to watch.
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Being a long time HW2 player, I recommend settings that Cloaked has posted.
Huge ship cap leads to laggy games if the players are good enough to duke it out for a while. You end up building multiple shipyards and spamming BC until the map runs out of resources.
10k start is too rich and promotes quick tech rushes. There are more build choices with 3k start (map-dependent).
5 min rush protection is a funny thing for a tournament. It is completely unnecessary for higher skilled players.
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I think making the argument: ‘Because thats the way it was done’ is extremely bad.
There was probably a reason for it and these reasons need to be brought to the front and examined to see if they are still relevant and discarded if not.
A tournament or competitive ladder is a competition of skill between participating players. Basically to see who is best at the game. Scouting, resource management, expansion, harassment, countering, positioning, unit preservation, etc. are all things that take skill and should be included in a measure of said skill to see who is better. Anything that negates these tests of skills makes the competition less relevant or valid unless a tournament is held to test a specific thing (who is best at x part of game not just who is best at game).
So in light of that High starting resources negate early harassment/expansion/resource management. High unit cap negate countering because you can just build every counter or blob. Too High resource multiplier negates the need for expansion and reduces the effectiveness of harassment but in this case because you are only reviewing 3 player maps and up the total resources available per map is already higher so standard is probably a good call for the bigger maps.
I am unsure why starting locations are set to fixed for competitive play ‘back in the day’ as from my understanding that is not the norm. This negates early scouting, especially on 3+ player maps. Bounties reduce the importance of resource management and economic management though could be an interesting modifier for a special tournament. Same with relics, an interesting modifier for a special tournament.
Rush protection is the mark of the noob lol. The idea is you have to balance early protection with early harass and that is a skill that needs to be measured and tested 
Edit: Still good job on reviewing the maps and for making all this effort. let us know how the tournament turns out and if you run another tournament look at why people suggest certain things qand consider incorporating them into the NEXT one. (don’t change settings half way through a tournament ever, regardless of how bad they are)
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I’ll address one of the items you mentioned above, resource management.
Good resource management was aways a good vs great separator. I’m not sure I could go into full detail in one post the efforts made to squeeze out 500 more RU at a given point in time. The difference in a vette wall supported by 3 support frigs instead of 2 was potentially enough to decide the whole battle for competitive players.
You seem to be well versed in the competitive gaming areana of today, but I urge you to listen to the wisdom of your elders in this case because chances are we’ve been doing this since you were in diapers and we chose those settings for a reason.
Again, I thank you for doing this. You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this, and it’s impressive how much you’ve concluded about what we will fight for in game to win. But starting RU at 10k when it takes collectors several trips to bing in that extra 8 completely negates early harvesting management and harassment.
You may do well consulting with some of the old Cases Ladder moderators for this community, I can dig up some names, I bet they are still around.
@UberJumper care to weigh in here?
[quote=“jus7addwater, post:25, topic:104372”]
So essentially your calling starcraft boring because the first 5 minutes of scouting and resource establishment are too slow for you?[/quote]
Are you aware that the StarCraft development team is changing the starting worker count from 6 to 12, “In order to generally reduce the passive time-periods in the game.” [src:http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/16654945/legacy-of-the-void-multiplayer-preview-11-8-2014] The current most competitive e-sport RTS out there recognizes their game has a slow start, and that both spectators and players alike will benefit with less down-time early game, without affecting player skill or early game.
Setting the starting resources to high does not remove the early game. I already showed you the math. What math do you have to support that people can afford heavy cruisers and destroyers, and all the infrastructure that is required to even get their tech requirements, production facilities, or economy enough to afford to consistently build them? 10,000 sure isn’t enough that’s for sure.
Probably best to experiment a bit eh?
I think the starting units should be looked at. Perhaps a starting research module option and more Colls.
Are you aware that the StarCraft development team is changing the starting worker count from 6 to 12, “In order to generally reduce the passive time-periods in the game.”
I guess I missed the fact that starcraft has been THE competitive RTS series for over a decade. But you’re right, changes after over a decade of watching and learning are nonsense, they should of made these changes day 1.
The current most competitive e-sport RTS out there recognizes their game has a slow start, and that both spectators and players alike
Gosh, I know the thousands of spectators that watch homeworld will be happy that you go counter to players wanting 3000 RU starts in favor of speeding things up for their watchability.
without affecting player skill or early game.
Yet this has yet to be launched and even when pros say things feel good blizzard pulls 180’s and will remove complete features.
Setting the starting resources to high does not remove the early game.
Yes it does, by your logic why was it not always high? Why even post that “we are testing it” if you know for a fact it does not have any earlly game impact.
I already showed you the math.
Not really, you basically said “Earlly game RTS is slow”, welcome to the genre?
So again why are you making changes to make the game more watchable when its not going to have any audience watching?
10,000 sure isn’t enough that’s for sure.
So by that logic why even do that, why not start everyone with BC’s and full fleets. Get right to the action.
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The 5 Min Rush Protection was to protect against an unfair cheese HW2 races could do to HW1. After running some focused experiments I have decided that this cheese is not unfair, and my decision on Rush Protection has changed to off. I do not think it factored in very much, not many players have vessels within that protection zone within 5 minutes anyway (even on high starting resources), and ones that do for some focused cheese builds do not create a situation which is unfair. To be clear I take the traditional stance that unfair cheese is cheese that is much easier to perform than it is to defend against.
I heartily agree. I’m well aware, and do not need any more posts on the way it used to be. I want to do exactly what you suggest.
Here! Here!
Agreed, unless the balance of the map dictates SL, they should be random for those reasons.
Agreed. Though I do wonder if low bounties could help players who are going aggressive builds (ones that are not game-winning) not be too punished. There’s an argument to be made for Low, and I’d like to hear it, but currently I need to be convinced it does as I think it should be turned off.
I want relics on so bad (for the reasons stated in op), but their spawning locations really need to be changed.
Come on man, you have no clue how old I am. I want to hear what everyone, especially those who played the games competitively in the past, that’s why I’m posting my reasoning, and participating in the discussion. All I ask is that more posts are like yours and a few others, people who are explaining their reasoning, not just saying, “Well this is how it was,” or “You’re wrong!”
The OP has been updated to reflect my current views, and I have discovered a bug that showed a different amount of resources on the map than the settings displayed. I am soon going to reevaluate decisions on resource multipliers for specific maps. I’ll post when that is finished.
You are absolutely correct that I shouldnt assume your age, and I’ll humbly take the hit for that remark. But on the same token please do not disregard or downplay ‘The way it was’ solely on the basis of no one explaining to you why yet. I and many others here lived and breathed competitive play in this game over a decade ago and we didn’t just establish these defaults on a whim.
If you go back to my original reply I gave you three settings to change. Unit cap, bounties, and starting RU.
Unit caps prevent the overuse of a potential single overpowered unit.
Bounties lead to unintended advantages of one strategy over another (swarmers had and advantage over frig cap users)
And high starting RU removes early game resource management which when it came down to it, was one of the biggest separators of player skill.
What may be helpful here is for some old ladder matches or higher skilled player matches to be reviewed. Much of the overarching tactics may be or ever be (if they don’t fix the formation issue) relevent again, but the recordings exist all over the Internet if you know how to look for them.
Feel free to reach out to me if you want to collaborate on any medium (pm, IM, IRC, email, cell, face to face if you make it to New Orleans) and I’ll help you in any way I can.
Thank you very much for your reply. Do you remember how long it generally took for interesting things to happen during gameplay? Generally how long was the beginning ‘down-time’ in competitive matches?
Edit: because reply is no longer relevant do to ops edit.
Action started at minute 1 if you knew what to look for. A huge part of competitive play is watching the enemy. Which meant keeping him from seeing you. Every scout and probe is an asset and a threat.
Theprogramer, can you update the game settings in the first post to reflect what will be used for the rest of the tournament? I hope starting resources will stay 3k like it was in my games yesterday. Also comparing to Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 only starts you with 100 minerals. And even if they gave you 12 workers, typical games see 60 workers, vs the 6 starting/22 total harvesters in homeworld.
Also, you can watch game recordings of the top hw2 players over the last decade here:
http://homeworld3.org/hw2/
Typically 1v1 matches are decided in 20 minutes on small maps, and 30+ minutes on larger ones.
So I’m starting to be moved from my position on unit caps. First let me address my concerns to some arguments that aren’t doing it for me, then let me address the one that had me nearly 180 my opinion. For reference here is the difference in unit cap settings: http://i.imgur.com/8gS35eo.jpg
I think that’s why the unit caps are balanced the way that they are. 150 fighters, and 39 frigates max. If it was no caps at all then I think your argument would hold more weight with me.
At this moment in time, a lot of computers out there can handle the amount of ships high and huge allot, comps aren’t as bad as they used to be.
Aside from the lag, that sounds like an excellent game! Going to the point where you’ve harvested all your resources, and watching these high end players strive to use what they have to it’s fullest, playing at the top of their game knowing that each vessel counts!
I’m not sure there are any ‘overpowered’ units in this game. There are counters for everything aren’t there? Even so if one person can overuse an overpowered unit, so can his opponent. Then we have a bunch of ‘overpowered’ units blasting each other. That’s an epic game right there. This is where what some people have erroneously brought up regarding other arguments, finds it’s proper place here. This may be fun to watch, but is it a display of skill?
Many people in the SC community are quick to yell ‘overpowered’ when a bunch of these units show up at the doorstep of their base. But what they fail to realize is the unit wasn’t overpowered, but that the player should never had let the unit count of that unit get so high in the first place. And this is something the entire SC pro scene agrees on. The player who had these things show up at their door step should of been harassing, trading, pressuring, all the things that a good player does. If you leave someone alone long enough that he got out 4 BCs, that’s not the unit caps fault, that’s the poor performance of the other player.
Assuming both players are of a very high skill, if their able to have 4 BCs on the field at a time, that means there was some epic plays in that game that player pulled of to prevent himself from being punished for it. Aren’t those the plays, and demonstration of skills we want to see?
This is the crux of what is holding me back from agreeing that the unit cap should be lower. You have me teetering on the edge of changing my mind, please address these issues and have me take that final step!
Being able to build a ton of ships that normally wouldn’t counter something, but do simply because you could build 40 squadrons of them is certainly not a demonstration of skill. No matter how cool it would be to see 9 different huge engagements going on all over the map, NOTHING is worth taking skill out of the game. Perhaps my vision is incorrect, maybe players won’t be showing their skill microing several different types of units in several different skirmishes happening all at once at the late game, because it’ll never get to the late game; why go to the lategame and do that when you can spam 90 multigun corvettes, and 150 defenders?