About Gas and Minerals

30th Jun 2008 01:31 AM GMT | Freelancer | 2 comments
Coverage WWI 2008 >> About Gas and Minerals



In Starcraft II you need resources to develop and build your army. There are two types of resources: Minerals and Vesphene Gas. You will usually need to gather both types in order to be able to fully utilize the possibilities your race has to offer. To be able to do this, you need workers: Drones if you are Zerg, Probes if you are Protoss and SCVs if you are Terran.

Thus far the resource model used in Starcraft II was pretty much the same as you where used to from the original game. The only known change was the fact that the Starcraft 2 actually features 2 types of minerals: the normal blue ones and a secondary yellow colored type with a higher yield.

During the WWI 2008 in Paris Blizzard revealed another resource model tweak they are fiddling around with:

	Blizzard Quote: (Source)
	Here is how it works. All numbers are subject to change. We have changed the balance since the WWI build and will be fiddling with the balance this coming week for sure. You start with two Vespene Geysers in your base and at every expansion (some maps will not do this of course, but all the WWI maps do). Optimal number of workers per gas collection building is 3 (so you need 6 total). All gas collection buildings start with a certain amount of gas (like SC1). I believe it's 1000 in your WWI build. When a gas collector runs out it becomes "depleted" (like SC1). A depleted gas collector still allows you to harvest some gas (like SC1). In the WWI build you collect 6 gas per trip from a working gas collector and 2 gas per trip when depleted. All gas collectors have a "Restore Gas" (name temp) button that you can use to return your gas collector to a non-depleted state. In the WWI build this gets you 400 gas back into your collector. Restoring Gas costs 100 minerals and takes the gas collector down for 45 seconds (all numbers temp). Like all things this is work-in-progress, but here is what we have seen in the games we have played: 1) You can choose how much gas you want. The more gas you want, the less minerals you will have. If you build your 2nd gas collector too soon, you may have the wrong resource mix. If you go gas too late, you may have the wrong resource mix. If you use "Restore Gas" too few times you may not have enough gas to do some of the crazy end-game stuff. If you use it to often early on you may have too much gas and not enough minerals. 2) Some of the more mass-able units are very, very gas heavy. You can scout a player and gain some sense which way he is headed based on how quickly he goes for double gas. 3) Sometimes you don't want to "Restore Gas" if you need just a little more gas in the short term because you are trying to tech or build something critical. Since it takes down your gas collector for 45 seconds you may need to hold if you are close to being able to afford something that requires gas. This of course damages your gas collection for the long haul which makes the choice difficult. Why we are trying it: 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. I think that's all of it. Now that you have complete information, please discuss. =) Sorry for the forum spam. I don't have the tools handy to deal with it.

To recap:

• You start out with 2 Geysers on competitive maps.
• Most buildings and units cost more gas
• It will be possible to partially replenish your Geyser once it is depleted. Effectively this means you will be able to turn minerals into gas.

	Blizzard Quote:
	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.

So changes to the mineral model as well: 5 minerals per trip instead of the original 8. I sounds like they have balanced this number based on the maximal effective number of SCVs. I wonder what the impact of this change is on occasions where pathfinding is not as big a factor. Imagine your initial situation for instance (not so much workers, so no pathfinding issues) or spread out mineral fields.

	Blizzard Quote:
	While we're on the subject matter, can you speak about the rumor that all gas buildings will have an ability that temporary enables two peons in the building to harvest gas at a time, and operates on a cooldown? We aren't doing that currently though we did discuss it. We certainly wouldn't add it to what we have at WWI. It would be one or the other. Generally the "cooldown" type abilities we tried were a bit dull because you just mashed the button whenever the cooldown came up. Putting a minerals cost to the ability has so far been much more interesting. I like this a lot more than some of the rumors going around. Two questions: 1) Will there be any way to regenerate minerals? 2) Can you Restore Gas an unlimited number of times? 1) No. At least not right now.=) 2) Yes. I'm a little worried about some weird end-game scenarios where you have way too much gas but so far it hasn't been as much of a problem as I thought it would be. Does each mineral field have 1500 minerals still, or has that been lowered as well? Still 1500. We are only trying to lower the rate of minerals collection. We still want an expansion to have the same minerals value that it did in the original game.

Quite a few fundamental changes here. A restore gas option on the geysers, less minerals per trip and no way to restore minerals. This leaves a lot of questions:

• What will the impact be of the Gas changes?
• Will there be a maximum number you can restore your gas to or do can you continue using the ability every 45s?
• Is this fun?

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