Allowing buildings to be placed in the enemies base is at best, lazy, and at worst, corrupt. Workers can hold 5 minerals at a time, so it is not thematic for one worker to build a city on the other side of the map.
This is a real issue, because ranks become meaningless when people can win in an unskilled fashion, that also looks wrong.
The people in charge of the game have the skill to modify rocks to destroy minerals, so I’m sure that modifying building distance is trivial for them, but they don’t. I brought this up a year ago.
Here’s how I would do it, in code:
when placing, check if there is a town hall (nexus, CC, hatchery) within x range.
if no town hall exists:
check for any building within x range.
if friendly nexus in range, build.
Age of Empires 3 had a simple system. It was a ring.
It’s easy fix you just force every race be like Zerg.
This would solve toss main weakness pylon but nerfing thier main attack cannon rush.
Making upgrade where pylon would produce its own power instead getting from nexus. In twilight council or cyber core.
Terrans be little bit tricky I would do it like nexus type thing but with energy and fuel. They can build buildings away but lose ability to fly plus once they do fly it burns thier fuel. Once empty it lands and if can’t land it crashes and burn.
Create a rule for defining “your base” versus “the enemy’s base” that actually works. This is something I have a lot of investment in and I’ve toyed around with a few ideas but never came up with a satisfactory one.
For example, how do I expand in this ruleset?
Am I not allowed to build a new town hall unless it’s within X range of a previous town hall or building I possess?
How about building ‘spotter’ structures off on edges of the map so I don’t have to have a unit there to provide me sight?
Similarly, can I not make hidden buildings off in corners of the map?
As an example of where a flaw comes in, I had tried this:
–A more generous form of the creep rules: You can only build non-town hall, non-gas geyser structures within 20 units of a previous structure.
This led me to the spotter/hidden problem, which had an “obvious” solution - pylons and depots also being exceptions.
Well, for Protoss, this rule is now meaningless, it’s purely a Terran mechanic now; and for them, it’s not … doing anything?
So, that made me flip that, to what you said more or less; that you can’t build something within 15 range of an enemy town hall.
This creates the ‘ability’ to find out about hidden town halls you can’t see, which is mostly okay;
But also, it would allow you to… proxy a town hall and totally ruin your opponent’s base-building plan. Not that bad, since it’s so expensive, bbbbut it could be really awkward, especially when doing so as Zerg.
You could add a rule about how if it’s close to your own town hall you can build there even if an enemy’s is there, or only have it work on completed town halls, and I’m sure there’s other ways.
Though, if the building ban only applies on completed town halls, it’s kind of extremely meh.
But to overly summarize, try walling as Zerg; it’s randomly really hard and obnoxious especially if your creep doesn’t flow to exactly the right places or if your creep tumor(s) is/are in an awkward position because you were thinking about something else.
And what would the requirement for building new town halls be?
Because I’m going to remind/inform you of the fairly wacky 4 minute mark base-swaps in pro games. Those wouldn’t’ve happened if you had to wait for your previous town hall to die before building the new one, and they probably wouldn’t’ve happened if the pre-requisite was anything that took time to get.
What additional gating would you want on building combat unit production structures?
I’m going to remind you that the 12 worker start happened for a reason, and that the awfulness of simply not being able to build things is not actually fun either.
Requiring supply lines to construct buildings is awful. I’ve played one. To call it negative fun is an understatement
The rules are fairly simple. Any new building must be within x distance of an existing town hall. The distance is enough so that a player can always expand to their closest location.
If there is no town hall at all, the player has to build within x distance of any structure.
Yes, with these rules, hidden buildings and secret expansions would be basically impossible. I would prefer that. If you want to keep hidden buildings in, widen the build zone.
To define ‘your base’, and ‘enemy base’, I am referring to the starting locations. Yes, I am aware that they could change throughout the match, but the building rules (must build close to a friendly town hall) would allow that.
As for the town hall/military building requirements, I would propose that a military building must exist before a new town hall can be made. This would allow later scouting, as there would be no high eco opening to worry about. EDIT: I’ve actually changed my mind about this. The freedom to open any way is fine at the moment. I would wish for a dedicated scouting unit from the get-go, but whatever.
Some maps put the next base over 50 units away from the previous one - Especially in team games. Having to have different gameplay mechanics for teams vs 1v1 is a mistake when you could do not-that.
And like, what if you lose one of your mined-out bases? Now you can’t expand without having to leap-frog buildings?
Are these two X-values the same one or different?
Also, would this restriction apply to building a town hall while none is owned? Because that also completely ruins the ‘flee elsewhere’ idea that is pretty hype when it does happen and forces players to have solutions for bizarre and unexpected situations, which I think is one of the best things.
Then I think your idea is bad. These are extremely cool strategies because of their high risk component that has such a meaningful reward.
If you have a zone large enough that you can actually properly hide a building, then the zone is not actually serving a purpose? It’s creating a new point of frustration, being unable to tell where you can build something and why you can’t do it.
Age of Empires 3 has a grey ring, denoting where buildings can be placed. The zone could be rather big, maybe a third of the map.
Regarding where to place buildings when a town hall doesn’t exist, I suppose that the rule could be revised to allow no restrictions.
Starting scouts, the reaper, zergling and adept arrive after fairly important decisions have already been made. I would like a no-attack unit at the start. I understand that that is not to everybodies taste.
The worker scout is okay, I don’t love how you have to put yourself behind to do it. Again, it’s preference, but I don’t think that we should have to choose between eco and vision. It’s acceptable, though.
You arent entitled to perfect information. You can choose to take the risk of acting blindly, or spend some resources (time, money, attention, etc…) to make more informed decisions.
Realistically speaking the amount you set yourself behind is so miniscule that it almost doesn’t matter, considering the information you acquire from doing so effectively dictates a significant amount of your game-plan going forward. The trade off is almost always worth it.