Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURe 4.8
a race of accumulation
It is a good thing
StarCraft
is about more than just collecting minerals. Spending
all your minerals on SCV units is a poor strategy because eventually you will be
attacked. You have to balance your long-term goals with short-term requirements
such as the protection of your base. In addition, some players favor a tactic in which
they build up an offensive force quickly in a gambit to overwhelm their opponent
before they can build up their defenses—the “tank rush,” which was first made
famous in
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
. On some maps, initial access to resources
is limited, and you must move around the map quickly to consolidate your access
to future resources. Investing in SCV units is a good strategy in the long run, but it
requires you take some risk in the beginning, possibly giving up on quick military
gains via the tank rush.
Variation From player perFormance
and resource distribution
in
StarCraft
, it is not only the number of scv units that determines the pace at which
you harvest minerals. minerals come from deposits of crystals, which have a particular
location on the map. Finding the best location for your base, and micro-managing your
scv units to harvest minerals from crystals effectively, is a skill in itself. These are good
examples of how player skill and game world terrain can produce input variation that
affects the economic behavior of your game. Of course, the players' inputs must influ-
ence the economy, but it is best if the player's inputs occur frequently but no one input
has too large an effect.
