An interesting idea on gas harvesting

Was scouring battle.net and came across this suggestion on changing gas dynamics.

Code:

A gas geyser has an additional gas escape rate property. e.g.: 
Geyser: 
2000 gas 
escape rate: 5 gas per second 

When you build an refinery it starts storing the escaped gas in an transportable way. 

Refinery after 8 seconds: 
1960 gas 
escape rate: 5 gas per second 
stored gas: 40/100 

The basic idea is now that your Drones, Probes and SVCs can only take away the stored gas. 
The small gas storage of the refinery allows you several cool tactics: 

Let assume one SVC can move gas at a rate of 2 gas per second. 
If the escape rate is 5 then you can: 

1.) Let 3 SVCs harvest gas. 
Advantage: 
You have the highest possible gas income

Disadvantage: 
You don't make full use of your SVCs


2.) Let 2 SVCs harvest gas: 
Advantage: 
You make full use of your SVCs

Disadvantage: 
You get only 4 gas per second instead of 5

3.) Let 2 SVCs harvest gas until the stored gas is at maximum (100/100). 
Then place 3 SVCs at the gas until the stored gas is at 0/100. 
Advantage: 

You make full use your SVCs

You have the highest possible gas income


Disadvantage: 
you have to use your "time ressource" for the micro


4.) Let assume you need first 100 minerals for building a and then 100 gas for something else. 
Then you could: 
Pull all your SVCs from the refinery to mine minerals. And once you have got the 100 Minerals for the building you put them back to the refinery. If this takes 20 seconds your refinery might now have a full storage 100/100. Now you could send like 10 SVCs to mine gas to get the gas as fast as possible. 
Advantage: 

You can finish the first and second buildings faster

You don't loose gas, if you send your SVCs back to the refinery before the storage is full


Disadvantage: 
You need even more micro than with tactic 3.



As you can see this gas mechanic would allow many strategies. Please note that of course the numbers should be a point of balancing. So don't vote on numbers. 

Besides that this gas mechanic: 

is realistic: gas escape rate, limited storage, etc.

is simple: no additional ability required

allows nice user feedback (1): SVCs might wait before the extractor until enough gas is stored

allows nice user feedback (2): The zerg extractor might indicate the stored gas with more green light for zerg, or some half filled tanks for the terran rafinery

is hard to master: As strategy 4. indicates there is much room for micro.

is extendable: Map makers might change the gas escapre rate dymamicly to make additional challanges



If you like it, please post a comment so that this thread stays long enough at top so that Karune sees it. 

I think this is less simple than Blizzards new approach to gas but this allows for new dynamics throughout the fight instead of only being a concern at later stages.

 

it's actually kinda cool.
not sure about the numbers, but of course is subject to change.
Really nice idea.

 

No, the way gas is collected works just fine, leave it alone. Think of some other way of changing gas, but not how it is collected.

 

Well there aren't that many ways to change how minerals and gas work. The only thing we could really do is make new types of resources to gather.

I think people would be less thrilled with the idea of decomposing gas and min into basic componenets and recombining them top get new types of resources.

I doubt they would be thrilled they would have to abandon gathering gas because the geyser ran out and have to try and extract gas from shale even though gas shale is more expensive and time consuming to extract than normal gas.

I also doubt people would be thrilled with an econ management game where people have to invest an armies worth of RnD to tech up to "alternative resources."

 

That is a very interesting idea on how to harvest gas. The new way that blizzard has it is kind of weak but I doubt they will change it by next year.

 

This is one of the resource harvesting methods I've looked at before. (I think about resource harvesting waaaaaay too much) I like this one because it's simple, but at the moment it won't work.

I think the main problem is going to be that most players don't really care that much about efficiency, and would simply keep three workers on their refineries all the time, never minding that each load is less than the most the unit can carry.

In SC1, three workers is a "sweet spot" for efficiency at the minimum distance. You get wasted income with 2, and very, very slow returns with four (people have tested this stuff, you get sometihng like ten extra minerals per minute with four workers.)

If the income rate is such that it is economically feasible to keep three workers on a geyser, it is likely that this is exactly what will happen, and the "storage unit" will never get used.

This kind of thing is better suited for:
-games where resources nodes are necessarily far from the harvesting point
-games where workers are expensive
-in general, games where efficiency matters over the long run

So it wouldn't really help with SC macro unless some stuff is changed.

 

I think this is a really cool way to harvest gas
(of course, you'll be able to change how often gas comes)

 

No, I don't think you should mess with those things.
As a bad example just take the new Red Alert 3 game.
Instead of gathering money from the field, gem fields, you now must build refineries on top of mines.

This totaly "destroyed" the Red Alert feeling.

I know it's not the same thing but in a way this idea would change SC2 from the original Starcraft (a bit) just like RA and RA3.

Again, I never think you should temper with the economy, but your idea sounds really exciting.