Overview of my thesis work

It was a while since I last wrote something here, but now I'll write about what I did for my bachelor thesis work. My thesis was about the internal economy in RTS games; more precisely StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. My thesis was about if you could look at cost per DPS as a way to approach game balance on.

So how did I approach this matter? As the first step of the process, I decided to break down the various properties of all units in the game, with the most important properties being their cost and their DPS values. After lots the data had been gathered, average values were calculated for all the various properties. Both total averages and average per individual race in the game was calculated.

In order to make the analysis easier, I decided to treat a unit's cost as just a single variable, minerals. 1 unit of gas assumed to be slightly higher than 1.4 minerals (The total mineral cost of all units divided by the total gas cost of all units equaled roughly 1.4). Even though the exact number used may not have been ideal, it simplified the analysis process.

After that, the analysis process begun. Here, I would look at some units and mechanics in the game, compared their properties to the average values and make an analysis on if the units had some benefits or drawbacks for its cost/DPS ratio.

One example of this is the Protoss unit Dark Templar. Even though it's cost is very close to the average cost in the game (302 and 305 mineral respectively). And despite this, if the Dark Templar would have costed according to the average cost/DPS ratio (which was 27,8 minerals/DPS), it would have needed to cost 722 minerals (as the Dark Templar almost have 26 DPS). I figured that the Dark Templar has some drawbacks that compensates for it's high DPS (in relation to it's cost): it has very low health and a fairly long build time.

Another example of this included the Zergling unit (belonging to the Zerg). If  a Zergling were to cost according to the average cost/DPS values in the game, it would have needed to cost 160 minerals, compared to 25 minerals that it costs now. I assumed that one of the reasons for this was because the  Zergling is among the units with the lowest health in the entire game.

I did this kind of analysis for 1 mechanic and about 3 different units per race in the game. This study was obviously not a complete one, due to the time available for the thesis. But in the end I got to the conclusion that it could be possible to approach game balance by looking at a unit's cost/DPS ratio. I do however feel that the subject needs to be approached with caution, because when I was doing the analysis, some units came of as being way to powerful for their cost (among them the Zergling unit)

The full thesis, as well as the complete data used for the theis, will be posted here when it passes all the required formalia. Lastly, I want to give a big thanks to my tutor Jakob Berglund-Rogert for tons of valuable feedback during the process of writing the thesis.