Competitive player

Do the activities of your opponent in Starcraft 2 alter your Build Orders? Yes.

Are they still Build Orders? Yes.

Your opponent's actions are another variable. Variables can be accounted for in Build Orders.

Sounds like we're talking about roughly the same thing then. The actions of your opponent don't affect most build orders much, unless you realise that he's doing some kind of cheese or super early attack, in which case you usually abandon the build order for the most part. At least from what I've seen.

Your build orders are very flexible and short lists, short cuts for "how to get to point X quickly", while still requiring the player to decide which point X he's aiming for. They don't sound anything like a Starcraft II build order, many of which can be detailed down to where to click at any given second until almost the end of the game (unless your opponent has a superior execution of his build order)

I don't consider what you described above a build order problem. It´s not on the same level as the kind of build orders that I have an issue with and that more or less ruined starcraft for me.

-= Redacted =-

scpro's post says it better than mine.

@pluisjen you make a lot of assumptions about how the game is going to play out. We don't even know if a standard 1v1 match will involve multiple planets. But that's beyond the point. I don't know what makes you think that those all things could not be accounted for in a strategy.

This discussion is futile. I am just going to repeat myself. BOs are not a feature of the game. They are a consequence of people wanting to gain an edge over each other. If you could earn six figure salary for playing Planetary Annihilation then I guarantee you that you would see build orders prepared for every occasion, for every type of starting position, precise to seconds.

I get the impression some people think that Starcraft is simplistic and that is why you can have "strict" build orders.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Pr ... Zerg_Guide

Just take a look at it. You might not understand the lingo. This is not even in depth. This is just what you would call "standard play". Just look how many outcomes these openings take into account. Count how many time they mention scouting. Then take into account that different maps might require slightly different execution. Still too simplistic?

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/PvZ_Strategy

At the top you can cycle through matchups. These are also only the most popular builds. There were builds designed only to be used on time, on one map against a specific player.
Some more, still basics pretty much, and this is only one matchup out of three possible:

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Pr ... rg_Timings

It is not even exclusive to Starcraft.
http://aok.heavengames.com/university/s ... map/flush/

Of course processing all this knowledge during the game is quite impossible. That is why you need an "automated" opening. So you can focus on actually playing the game.

Well, I'm still sitting in the light, where Stream economy, wild variability, and actual strategic value for positioning, gives us a competitiveness out of chaos, and a baseball bat to the knees of tedium.

So, I'll go back to quietly crossing my fingers, hoping that PA may just solve our problems.


EDIT: @Scpro, I am the one who brought the notion of multiple planets into play. As I personally find it a likely solution to the initial problem this thread had, that the idea that a proceduraly generated planet would somehow remove competitiveness from the game by introducing an innate imbalanced nature to it.

How many times does one have to repeat the word "variable" before you cotton-on that it's an important word and concept while theorising and constructing a Build Order?

Planets introduce more variables, not a change in the fundamental gameplay optimisation efforts of; Increase in Money & Unit Count for least amount of Time Taken.

As I've said you have 3 resources; Money. Units. Time.
Calculating the most efficient way to use them with a given set of variables results in a Build Order.

?? That point was separate from Build orders. Had nothing to do with anything towards that.
It was just about the initial point of this thread, that somehow procedural generation would make things unfair.

I dunno, you seemed to think Build Orders are "gone" as a result of Planet Variations.

I contend that they are not. I'm responding directly to your statement in that post.

Depending on how it plays out, they might change the fundamental effort in the form of adding Place as a real 4th resource. After all; a tank is nice, but if it's on the wrong rock, it's still just wasted resources. In older games, this usually didn't matter much because you could usually move it anywhere in reasonable time and you often only had one army, but the scale of this game might change that.

If you have one stack of money and two places to spend it on, with the two not really being connected, what you make will probably matter less than where you make it.

If you cut a traditional RTS map into zones of relevance and paths of relevance, it's often a very simple little graphmap. I'm hoping that a good PA map will inflate this number by so much that it really has to be factored into the core of each build order.

Of course we won't know until we see it, but it's one of the things I'm hoping the game will accomplish.

"Place" has always been a "resource" by that logic. It's no different than a tank built on a separated island. It can still be moved around if there are interplanetary transports... and the speed of those transports dictates how much of the "Time" resource it takes to relocate.

If no such transports exist then what you have wasted is Time, Money and Units. You can't waste or conserve "Place"...
you can waste Space... but not "Place"

In a way, yes. But place has always been the least important one as far as I've seen. Distances are usually short, obstructions are easily overcome, and most parts of the map are simply ignored for most of the game.

Most Starcraft games for example, only have 3-5 relevant Places during most games; the player's bases and the middle ground. And most also have a single Path going from base to expansion, from expansion to middle, and then mirrored on the other side. And there's usually only one army, that occupies one of these 5 Places and moves between them.

(Remember, Most, not all. But generally, this seems to be how they play out)

I'm hoping that PA will introduce terrain in such a way that we can seriously up the number of Places and Paths of relevance, so that it'll be far more important in your overall strategy.

IMO Starcraft 2 type build orders won't really be possible in PA. Why? A lot of them rely on map features. And the most important one is a single small ramp leading from your base.

I'm inclined to say that AoE 2 type build orders will be more relevant as there we also had random maps (you could still hide in a corner though).

In case of PA there will be many more entry points to your base. You can't even hide in a corner because a planet doesn't have a corner.

Yes, openers will exist. And I'm sure that some people will defo come up with the most optimized openers for that during the first few days of the alpha.

But chess also has openers and there's no problem with that. However when the openers end the real game begins.

Well, this is why positioning is a really Poor resource in most RTS games. If I build a forward base, it's just a hanging liability. If I build a tank on an island, it's just a waste. But if that island is planet sized and needs a special set of units to transport units of any kind off of it, and only some kind of units can even be transported off of it and no units can freely traverse the gaps between planets. You are talking about a new ball game.

No, you're talking about a tiny change in rules for a bigger 'Ball Game', an increased emphasis on a subset of rules that before was not given much thought.

You've changed the game a little... you've not reinvented the wheel.

You're thinking We've added a strike, IE now it takes four strikes to get a batter out. But no, we've added a Base. Now the diamond is a pentagon. It's a whole new ball game.

Sorry if you don't catch the baseball metaphor, I just recently watched 42 and that sort of thinking is in my head.

No... that's... that's just ridiculous... how does adding one extra base in baseball make it a NEW game?

Yeah... that's a rather poor analogy, sorry :lol:

-shrugs- I've made worse. But it does change quite a lot if you take it to the logical conclusions.

Well, I've got to go for the night/morning anyway.

the whole point of BOs is to find a BO that can deal with all of this.

nanolathe put it well, build orders can account for the variable that is your opponent. This is especially true on starcraft where you adapt a build order according to what your opponent is doing instead of responding organically.

there is a subtle difference between "my opponent is attacking me with cruise missiles, i better construct tmd and subs" and "my terran opponent is going gas first, he must be opening FD push, i better go 13 nexus." this difference though is the crux of the matter. if i can actively delay my opponent from following any rigid order of production then a build order in the traditional sense ceases to exist.

as i mentioned before this active strategic denial can happen in FA, albeit only at the highest levels, and is one of the game's charms.