Skut where did you get that opening (build order)? :P
Joe K, I watched the first 10mins of the game vs Terran on Steppes of War, you had 1200 minerals and whatever gas and rapidly increasing, that's like 10 more stalkers? if you were using your warp gates, and that would have crushed what little the Terran had.
I am going to make a little cartoon character, called Macro, and he will be like Mr. Period, watching replays, and dismayed noone likes him
The reactor was an accident. I also saw him chronoboosting his warpgate so I put up the early depo. The rest I got from Day9 it's supposed to be 10 supply 12 rax 13 ref, I dunno what I did as I'm half asleep.
I really really freak out against protoss cause I 100% expect cheese or void rays (and I was right, as usual). As for the horrible macro at the end I figured screw it, he's fast teching void he probably doesn't have anything in his base and I can walk in and end it. Was right fortunately, if he'd kept his zealots home I'd have lost most likely.
Skut where did you get that opening (build order)? :P
Joe K, I watched the first 10mins of the game vs Terran on Steppes of War, you had 1200 minerals and whatever gas and rapidly increasing, that's like 10 more stalkers? if you were using your warp gates, and that would have crushed what little the Terran had.
I am going to make a little cartoon character, called Macro, and he will be like Mr. Period, watching replays, and dismayed noone likes him
Call him Multitak, and then he'll have a little buddy called Macro that he can scoot away.
"These heathens have never even heard of you."
Docshifty on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
and it's "sad" that you don't seem to understand that some people would rather find gratification in microing efficiently
Actually, being satisfied by executing mechanical instructions well is something I can understand.
I simply think that you can still get those "I executed that plan really well with my clicks" kicks from something like "target stalkers, shit there's a high templar FOCUS IT, oh focus, SHIT banelings from the side, STIM AGAIN AND BACK OFF, S/move/S/move, ok banelings dead, NOW DIE STALKER SCUM" kicks without throwing in a need for more mechanical interaction everywhere.
Not sure where this came from. How am I arguing against good unit composition exactly? I was pretty sure that what I was arguing placed an increased focus on good unit composition, by improving the baseline effectiveness of composition-based benefits (e.g. +dmg vs armour).
Yes, a player with crazy apm will be able to micro well and do roundabout what you're describing, but the they could never be as fast as two clicks and a button press.
Actually... shift-clicking is BETTER. The hotkey I describe only brings up the baseline. Shift-clicking involves focus firing, which means targets die faster, in turn meaning less damage to your units. It's optimal. The "target this unit type" hotkey just simulates a basic order.
also, microing always means your attention is limited to one location. you sacrifice time and energy for high apm microing and that in itself adds to the depth of the game.
Very true. However, it's worth bearing in mind that while micro plays a part, a lot of it is the need for information from that location, rather than the micro itself. There's generally little new information elsewhere from a battle (except at high level play obviously). Players won't suddenly spend half the battle looking at their base and setting new buildings and units just because they're confident in their "attack this unit type" automation.
what you want also makes it insanely easy it seek out lynchpins in armies and sniping out the problem spots.
Yes, that's true. It means the meta-game of, for example, hiding Templars in a few places in your army rather than one spot, so that the opponent needs to have a sharper eye and better clicking to hunt them all down suffers.
StarCraft is still mostly strategy, or at least it can be played that way at a high (non-professional) level. That's basically the way I approach it; as most of you probably know my execution is pretty poor in most anything I try. I just try to play up the strategic aspect as much as possible and make up for my poor execution.
On a semi-related note, you guys should watch this replay.
CycloneRanger on
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
It's a straw man. There is conceptual depth to Starcraft in a multitude more ways than there are in something like Nexus Wars, and there are a vast number of interesting decisions which you cannot automate. You are not in the remotest sense representing my argument accurately, and that is exactly what a straw man is.
In general, automating the mechanical execution of banal decisions has little to no effect on conceptual depth; that's why it's desirable.
there are a few other games that have similar situations that aren't automated, but don't take 'thought' or seem very 'interesting.' magic the gathering, for example, has you play and employ cards called Land that generate mana. tapping (using) them isn't particularly interesting or exciting, but it is how you get the primary resource (called mana) to play your other cards.
Tapping a land for mana is a resource system. It's part of the conceptual hardness of the game. Whether a land is tapped or not (and whether a player can untap a land or gain mana through another source) play into the meta-game.
Land-tapping is not a good example of what you're trying to show me. If you want to try another example, go ahead, but stop that one there.
that's why starcraft is so deep, because there are so many little things to keep track of.
I... er...
Were you overjoyed when they introduced Inject Larva? Be honest.
Not that this argument hasn't gone on long enough, but here's my 2 cents, and it's something I've already brought up a couple of times.
Starcraft is NOT a STRATEGY game.
It is a MULTITASKING game with element of strategy in it.
Even at the highest levels of play, the winner isn't determined by who executed the most full proof/best strategy. It is most often determined by who multitasked better by macroing/attacking/defending/harassing/dropping/etc. all at once.
If you want a game that is more about pure strategy, then may I suggest chess, or even supcom. The sooner people realize the game is more about the multitasking and forget about strategy until they are capable of said multitasking, the quicker they will improve.
As a perfect example: starcraft is not a game where you can just go "hmmm...my opponent is building stalkers, I'll just make immortals to counter, gg." I'll still roll over your immortals by having a shit ton more stalkers.
nah, it's still a strategy game. if youre talking about a dude with 1 arm vs a dude with 4 arms, sure the dude with 4 arms will win.
but assuming close levels of mechanical execution, the better strategy will win. it's just that in turn based strategy games, the level of mechanical execution is so low that it's not a hurdle in any way. and that's just not true of starcraft.
good mechanics will bring you far, no question. but good strategy will bring you just as far. for example, i only average about 40 apms, but im a diamond player cause i have good strategy (i think).
Note, I said it still has elements of strategy. Sure strategy is important, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Think of it this way, if you're teaching a person how to start off playing, what should they get down first? I usually get them to focus on the macro and multitasking aspect. You can't really start thinking about the strategy until you have the "basics" down. I.e., you can know the strategy behind starcraft backwards and forward, but if you can't execute it then you'll won't win much. Or even if you can execute it well, you still won't do well unless you can deal with harrassment, attacks from your opponent, all elements of multitasking. Whereas, I could have horrible strategy, but am capable of dealing with a bunch of things at once and roll over you.
Wow, this argument with the automation. I was pretty angry yesterday when I found out you could put banelings on auto-unburrow. Suddenly made that shit a whole lot less impressive.
And I wish there was actually more micro control players could pull off. I'm pretty sad there isn't any moving shot micro like the BW muta or vulture anymore for one thing.
Streltsy on
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
StarCraft is still mostly strategy, or at least it can be played that way at a high (non-professional) level. That's basically the way I approach it; as most of you probably know my execution is pretty poor in most anything I try. I just try to play up the strategic aspect as much as possible and make up for my poor execution.
On a semi-related note, you guys should watch this replay.
If what you want is battlefield control without having to do other shit they already made that game. It's called DoW. and aside from it's crippling balance issues it will never be an e-sport because the difference between me and the bestest player ever is not enough.
Wow, this argument with the automation. I was pretty angry yesterday when I found out you could put banelings on auto-unburrow. Suddenly made that shit a whole lot less impressive.
And I wish there was actually more micro control players could pull off. I'm pretty sad there isn't any moving shot micro like the BW muta or vulture anymore for one thing.
This is a perfect example.
Those with the APM will turn off auto unburrow because it is garbage. The banelings unburrow like a few miles radius from the incoming army (slight exaggeration). If you have it done manually, then and only then can you unburrow right under someone else's army.
I dont think most people who are good at baneling mining use auto-unburrow. it's way too risky.
you invest a lot of gas and your focus to getting them positioned well enough. If you have the things on auto unburrow you risk blowing them all on a couple stray marauders that wandered into the trap first rather than the bulk of marines. This actually happened to me earlier today. a couple hellions came up my rigged ramp before the infantry got there, if i had used auto unburrow there i would have been screwed
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
i think you should play turn based strategy games. the whole point of rts' is that they are in real time and that the execution is just as important as the strategy.
My point is not that execution is a bad thing. My point is not that making execution difficult is a bad thing. My point is that there are ways to make execution difficult that are needless and - I find - detract from my enjoyment of the game.
All you are doing is masturbating all over this thread full of people who do not agree with you or care what you have to say.
The interesting thing about places where lots of people don't agree with you is that they are (or seem like) a good way of finding out reasons you might be wrong.
Obviously, I don't think many if any will sway to my side as a result of this. Even if I am right and you're all wrong, cognitive dissonance is more than capable of dealing with the issue. But, if I am wrong, and there's something super-cool to understand (and I don't have too much cog.diss.), then someone here might know it.
Chess, man. Yeah, it has familiarities, but Starcraft is a REAL TIME STRATEGY game, which means you are up against things like Time and your ability to decide and PHYSICALLY enact those actions in game.
I also campaign for mind-operated robotic arms so that quadraplegics can play on a physical chessboard in my spare time?
You are advocating to remove as many physical barriers to the game as possible. You are trying to shift the game into a mind only game. You have the wrong idea about Starcraft and RTS games in general. Someone's physical ability plays as much a part in Starcraft as does their mental capacities, which is why Starcraft has the potential to be an e-sport.
Chess an e-sport man? You're trolling. Like hard.
I prefer some mind focus, but enough mechanical interaction at key points to heighten adrenaline.
There's basically a balance to automation and the need for mechanical interaction. The debate is not "NEVER AUTOMATE" or "NEVER INTERACT", it's over where the balance is struck. Even Blizzard sees this; they changed their automation balance quite significantly from SC1.
It's semi-joking rather than trolling but yes, chess is a sport, and competing with each other to see how well you do against the best AI chessbots is an "e-sport."
Wow, this argument with the automation. I was pretty angry yesterday when I found out you could put banelings on auto-unburrow. Suddenly made that shit a whole lot less impressive.
And I wish there was actually more micro control players could pull off. I'm pretty sad there isn't any moving shot micro like the BW muta or vulture anymore for one thing.
Auto-unburrow banelings turn out to be less effective because they'll unburrow once they have sight of a hostile target. In the case of MMM balls, this means they'll explode into a bunch of marauders (since marines naturally stay in the center).
The game is still young, so it's understandable that the wealth of micro tricks haven't been discovered yet. Regardless there's lots of nifty things you can do, some obvious, and some not so obvious:
I'm sure some of you have seen this on Reddit already, but some guy made a replay site aggregator so you don't have to surf 50 different sites to find some pro replays.
Oh, well I think it was JamesKeenan that told me they would unburrow perfectly under armies automatically. I didn't actually test it. Good to know that's not the case.
Wow, this argument with the automation. I was pretty angry yesterday when I found out you could put banelings on auto-unburrow. Suddenly made that shit a whole lot less impressive.
And I wish there was actually more micro control players could pull off. I'm pretty sad there isn't any moving shot micro like the BW muta or vulture anymore for one thing.
This is a perfect example.
Those with the APM will turn off auto unburrow because it is garbage. The banelings unburrow like a few miles radius from the incoming army (slight exaggeration). If you have it done manually, then and only then can you unburrow right under someone else's army.
Oh, yeah. Auto unburrow is only so very useful if they're moving without paying attention.
Oh, well I think it was JamesKeenan that told me they would unburrow perfectly under armies automatically. I didn't actually test it. Good to know that's not the case.
What the hell are stalife drops?
Marauder drop on a-moving banelings to cause them to detonate.
Kambing on
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Oh, well I think it was JamesKeenan that told me they would unburrow perfectly under armies automatically. I didn't actually test it. Good to know that's not the case.
What the hell are stalife drops?
I will make a youtube video to test it. Or test it yourself. Just create a game with the unit tester.
Oh, well I think it was JamesKeenan that told me they would unburrow perfectly under armies automatically. I didn't actually test it. Good to know that's not the case.
What the hell are stalife drops?
Throw marauders out of dropships into bling balls so all the blings die and only kill a few marauders.
Doesn't work if the blings are on hold position or right-clicked onto the marine ball.
kedinik on
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Oh, well, yeah. MM with marauders in front will matter. The unburrow time is such that the first unit will be on the edge of the banelings explosion range.
And obviously it's more effective to detonate them yourselves to get the most marines.
Oh, well I think it was JamesKeenan that told me they would unburrow perfectly under armies automatically. I didn't actually test it. Good to know that's not the case.
yeah you get way better splash coverage using manual detonation, as you can explode in the middle of a ball rather than the front
i still think a couple auto-unburrow baneling mines could be useful just for mind games
The problem with going down this road is that you want the game to do micromanagement for you, and this is a case where your argument is a slippery slope, because from what I understand of your argument, you want cases where the game executes, to use your language "perfect micro."
Firstly, that's not what a slippery slope argument is.
Secondly, no. I don't want perfect micro. I don't want units to, for example, focus fire down stalkers individually one by one, which is the optimal offense.
I want the baseline of my units to be improved so that if I'm not constantly shepherding them, they throw fights away by doing stupid things.
What annoys me is when I'm losing damage in a fight because my queue of targets reaches its end and the units just go off and seduce an Urdak Calf or something equivalently useless.
My problem is having to stop a unit from doing something stupid, essentially.
You could also make the argument that, well, it's always good for units low on health to run away, so why can't I make units run away at low health?
No, you couldn't, because it isn't. Sometimes you want the extra damage a dying unit puts out. Secondly, more simply but specific to this example, where to run to (and how to run) is a complex decision.
What you are suggesting is that you give the units more ai, which means more of the game is being played for you. While this wouldn't be a bad suggestion in some RTS's, it goes against the entire spirit of Starcraft. The game is not just about macro and positioning and economy and unit mix, it's also about being able to control individual units very well and making them more useful than they would be in the hands of a less skilled player. Your suggestion would dilute the importance of those micro skills. In this case, you seem to want to be playing a TBS not an RTS.
Interesting you say this.
Let's say for a moment that my hotkey is implemented. Players now have some free apm to play with. What might they do with those actions? You brought up one such thing; they might move away units on low health (if that's what they think is best).
The meta-game evolves in response to these sort of usability changes.
does the ai use move attack tactics? with its 1700 apm I think it could pull off some impressive stuff with marauders.
I always manually detonate my banelings.
Jars on
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
edited September 2010
@Bethyrn: People have already pointed out ways in which target priority is broken. Someone already mentioned:
Marines/Mauraders vs Stalkers/Zealots. If you can prioritize the stalkers with your M/M ball it would be extremely broken. You just vaporize the stalkers first and then kite the zealots all day.
Another example:
I go voidrays with a bunch of zealots. You go a bunch of stalkers with some zealots. You have your stalkers set to prioritize the voidrays. Now I want to run my zealots in to eat the fire from your stalkers while my voidrays charge up. Problem is, since you can set target priority, they'll never get the chance. In fact, it take even more micro out then just focus firing. See, without target priority you could try to focus my voidrays, but I run them out of range, your stalkers start firing at the zealots again and I bring my voidrays back in. I nice little micro dance plays out between us. With target priority, why even micro the voidrays? As soon as they get in range of the stalkers, the stalkers are automatically going to ignore the zealots and shoot the voidrays. I'm sure if I sat for several minute I could think of even more reasons why the ability would be broken.
In fact, target priority would just further increase a-move syndrome. I mean for crying out loud, I hate micro and prefer to just macro up and a-move huge blobs of units to win, and even I hate your idea. It further lowers the skill ceiling inherent in the game.
But the problem with your hotkey is, like you said, it increases the baseline but takes virtually no effort to do. All it really does is make poor players slightly better, but it barely helps good players at all.
Take me for example. I have terrible micro. A lot of times I'll be playing against someone who has better micro than me but worse macro. With your proposed change, that would just give me an extra advantage over them, because they already do something like shift click units and focus fire, so it doesn't help them, whereas I would normally just attack move. That doesn't really "free up" any APM for me, it just makes my units better. I don't really think that's a good thing.
There was a similar argument back when SC2 was still in development about multiple building select and auto mining. I was on the side saying that they should be implemented, and there were many others who said it was a bad thing. Essentially, it made macro much easier, so the concern was that macro would be too easy, so to mitigate that, Blizzard added stuff like Chrono Boost, MULEs and queens. With your suggested change, it would just make micro easier with no balancing factor, so it basically makes micro play less viable and macro play better, since now an a-mover is "better" without giving him any downsides.
Edit: Again, I ask whether you played BW, what league you're in, and what other RTS's you've played, because these things will significantly color your view on this situation.
Lemming on
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
edited September 2010
Lemming makes a good point. There are already players who are better at macro vs. players who are better at micro. Your change would remove some of the advantages of being better at the latter while bestowing some of those same advantages on people who are better at the former.
I never thought of it like that. They purposefully made the macro more difficult with larva/mules/chrono to compensate for the ease of modern RTS controls.
I fucking love game design.
JamesKeenan on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
this is where you're flat out failing to realize what the purpose of microing is in starcraft. you earlier proposed that you should have the option to automate chronoboosting, which completely misses the fact that remembering to chronoboost, inject larva, use mules, etc. is one of the many many things that separate skill levels in SC2.
Remembering to tell your workers to mine is one of the many things that could separate skill levels in SC2.
I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY WON'T PUT IT BACK IN.
Woah hey here's the problem, you think micromanagement is just a banal decision, which means you don't really understand how Starcraft works. Micro is not a banal decision, being good at it is a skill not everyone has and you need to be good at it to be good at Starcraft, and this is a good thing.
No, I think there are banal decisions and interesting decisions. Micromanagement is your ability to mechanically act on those those decisions.
A banal decision is "should a marauder attack a stalker or a zealot, ceteris paribus?" The answer is always obvious. I shouldn't have to make that decision over and over again for the marauder.
An interesting decision is "I have enough energy on my five ghosts for a load of Sniping. There are a mix of High Templar, Infestors and other Ghosts in this force at differingly staggered locations. In what order should I snipe them, and how far should I extend with my ghosts to get these snipes off?" Each snipe is a decision, a fairly interesting decision, and one that requires appropriate micromanagement.
Just out of curiosity, what league are you in? Did you play Brood War? What other RTS's do you play? All of these things could be affecting your view of how the game should work.
In beta I placed plat, then diamond when they added that. I've barely played live at the moment.
I played BW for a couple of years on release, not competitively, but stopped then; plus I was a teenager and didn't exactly have the head for balance.
I have played almost all C&C games (horrible balance), DoW (horrible balance, good design), DoW2 (same again, but the strategy point and cover systems don't work for it), SoaSE (an example of a game which is mostly conceptual but still requires high micro), Warcraft obviously and Universe at War (craaaaaaaaaazy). There are others in there but the list becomes less useful as the games become more obscure.
And it's not really them tinging my view, it's just a dislike of units causing you trouble by making significant mistakes if left alone. Like, the mistake of not focus-firing enemies down? Minimal. The mistake of attacking the wrong enemies? Quite significant.
why do you want to take out the mechanical difficulty of the game? is it to make it easier for worse players? do you think it will lead to more interesting strategic decision making?
for example, let's say marauders auto target armored units. now what interesting decision is created by that automation?
just wondering.
I want the mechanical difficulty to be focused on interesting things, like removing units from the fray (where there is a risk:reward to doing so) as opposed to focused on banal things, like making sure your units target things they do more damage against, ceteris paribus.
Regarding the third sentence, please read what I've written. I've lost count of how many people think I'm arguing something entirely distinct from what I am.
I for one would be irritated as hell if my units constantly switched targets as new "better" targets came into range. You could abuse that pretty easily with some micro as some people have said.
Example above:
Void Rays low on shields? Back up, stalkers go after zealots (which they would do regardless), zealots start to get low? Bring Void Rays back in.
Ideally you'd want a game where you can never play perfect, and that's sort of what BW was. Even the Jaedong and Flash would make mistakes (albeit very rarely) and could still (theoretically) improve their micro/macro.
We have yet to see whether that's case with SC2, and it'll be a big part of how long the game will last as an eSport I think.
Streltsy on
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
@Bethyrn: People have already pointed out ways in which target priority is broken. Someone already mentioned:
Marines/Mauraders vs Stalkers/Zealots. If you can prioritize the stalkers with your M/M ball it would be extremely broken. You just vaporize the stalkers first and then kite the zealots all day.
Another example:
I go voidrays with a bunch of zealots. You go a bunch of stalkers with some zealots. You have your stalkers set to prioritize the voidrays. Now I want to run my zealots in to eat the fire from your stalkers while my voidrays charge up. Problem is, since you can set target priority, they'll never get the chance. In fact, it take even more micro out then just focus firing. See, without target priority you could try to focus my voidrays, but I run them out of range, your stalkers start firing at the zealots again and I bring my voidrays back in. I nice little micro dance plays out between us. With target priority, why even micro the voidrays? As soon as they get in range of the stalkers, the stalkers are automatically going to ignore the zealots and shoot the voidrays. I'm sure if I sat for several minute I could think of even more reasons why the ability would be broken.
In fact, target priority would just further increase a-move syndrome. I mean for crying out loud, I hate micro and prefer to just macro up and a-move huge blobs of units to win, and even I hate your idea. It further lowers the skill ceiling inherent in the game.
@Bethryn: please address the above situations, or else I'm just gonna assume you're just QQing rather than actually discussing your idea.
Proper auto-targeting would simplify the game too much. Period.
If every unit perfectly selected the right targets, you could sit at your base and a-move everything. Period. You'd have a control group for your macro, your ghosts (to "interestingly" micro) and then every Thor, Marine, Marauder, Tank and Hellion you built. Because they'd all attack properly.
You don't like that marauders attack the closest unit (zealots?). Build some hellions or tanks.
What you call "banal" micro decisions might instead just be "interesting" macro decisions you're not picking up on.
Can we just skip to the part where you guys acknowledge what you each know to be true—that there's a continuum between total automation and having to direct each hip actuator in each stalker, and that none of you occupies either of the extreme ends of that continuum?
I think it'd make the game worse as currently the lack of intelligent targeting can teach new players an early lesson in micro. By automating it, you get people acclimated to bad habits.
Sterica on
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
Can we just skip to the part where you guys acknowledge what you each know to be true—that there's a continuum between total automation and having to direct each hip actuator in each stalker, and that none of you occupies either of the extreme ends of that continuum?
I know, right? Why isn't micro of individual limbs in the game? You shouldn't just be able to "research" speedlings. You should have to physically micro their individual legs to run faster. You guys have it too easy.
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The reactor was an accident. I also saw him chronoboosting his warpgate so I put up the early depo. The rest I got from Day9 it's supposed to be 10 supply 12 rax 13 ref, I dunno what I did as I'm half asleep.
I really really freak out against protoss cause I 100% expect cheese or void rays (and I was right, as usual). As for the horrible macro at the end I figured screw it, he's fast teching void he probably doesn't have anything in his base and I can walk in and end it. Was right fortunately, if he'd kept his zealots home I'd have lost most likely.
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lol I like your addendum. I was going to add if that had any sort of viability against my triple rax reaper in 2v2. Because that shit is glorious.
Call him Multitak, and then he'll have a little buddy called Macro that he can scoot away.
"These heathens have never even heard of you."
I simply think that you can still get those "I executed that plan really well with my clicks" kicks from something like "target stalkers, shit there's a high templar FOCUS IT, oh focus, SHIT banelings from the side, STIM AGAIN AND BACK OFF, S/move/S/move, ok banelings dead, NOW DIE STALKER SCUM" kicks without throwing in a need for more mechanical interaction everywhere.
Not sure where this came from. How am I arguing against good unit composition exactly? I was pretty sure that what I was arguing placed an increased focus on good unit composition, by improving the baseline effectiveness of composition-based benefits (e.g. +dmg vs armour).
Certainly.
Actually... shift-clicking is BETTER. The hotkey I describe only brings up the baseline. Shift-clicking involves focus firing, which means targets die faster, in turn meaning less damage to your units. It's optimal. The "target this unit type" hotkey just simulates a basic order.
Very true. However, it's worth bearing in mind that while micro plays a part, a lot of it is the need for information from that location, rather than the micro itself. There's generally little new information elsewhere from a battle (except at high level play obviously). Players won't suddenly spend half the battle looking at their base and setting new buildings and units just because they're confident in their "attack this unit type" automation.
Yes, that's true. It means the meta-game of, for example, hiding Templars in a few places in your army rather than one spot, so that the opponent needs to have a sharper eye and better clicking to hunt them all down suffers.
Which then in turn becomes a question of balance rather than automation.
On a semi-related note, you guys should watch this replay.
Note, I said it still has elements of strategy. Sure strategy is important, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Think of it this way, if you're teaching a person how to start off playing, what should they get down first? I usually get them to focus on the macro and multitasking aspect. You can't really start thinking about the strategy until you have the "basics" down. I.e., you can know the strategy behind starcraft backwards and forward, but if you can't execute it then you'll won't win much. Or even if you can execute it well, you still won't do well unless you can deal with harrassment, attacks from your opponent, all elements of multitasking. Whereas, I could have horrible strategy, but am capable of dealing with a bunch of things at once and roll over you.
And I wish there was actually more micro control players could pull off. I'm pretty sad there isn't any moving shot micro like the BW muta or vulture anymore for one thing.
Oh man, this is pretty good.
At least he was good-mannered about it.
https://medium.com/@alascii
This is a perfect example.
Those with the APM will turn off auto unburrow because it is garbage. The banelings unburrow like a few miles radius from the incoming army (slight exaggeration). If you have it done manually, then and only then can you unburrow right under someone else's army.
you invest a lot of gas and your focus to getting them positioned well enough. If you have the things on auto unburrow you risk blowing them all on a couple stray marauders that wandered into the trap first rather than the bulk of marines. This actually happened to me earlier today. a couple hellions came up my rigged ramp before the infantry got there, if i had used auto unburrow there i would have been screwed
The interesting thing about places where lots of people don't agree with you is that they are (or seem like) a good way of finding out reasons you might be wrong.
Obviously, I don't think many if any will sway to my side as a result of this. Even if I am right and you're all wrong, cognitive dissonance is more than capable of dealing with the issue. But, if I am wrong, and there's something super-cool to understand (and I don't have too much cog.diss.), then someone here might know it.
I also campaign for mind-operated robotic arms so that quadraplegics can play on a physical chessboard in my spare time?
I prefer some mind focus, but enough mechanical interaction at key points to heighten adrenaline.
There's basically a balance to automation and the need for mechanical interaction. The debate is not "NEVER AUTOMATE" or "NEVER INTERACT", it's over where the balance is struck. Even Blizzard sees this; they changed their automation balance quite significantly from SC1.
It's semi-joking rather than trolling but yes, chess is a sport, and competing with each other to see how well you do against the best AI chessbots is an "e-sport."
Auto-unburrow banelings turn out to be less effective because they'll unburrow once they have sight of a hostile target. In the case of MMM balls, this means they'll explode into a bunch of marauders (since marines naturally stay in the center).
The game is still young, so it's understandable that the wealth of micro tricks haven't been discovered yet. Regardless there's lots of nifty things you can do, some obvious, and some not so obvious:
+ Marauder/concussive shell kiting
+ Blink micro
+ Burrowed roach micro
+ Magic box mutas
+ Burrow/cast infestors
+ Baneling carpet bombs
+ Stalife drops
the goat show is on
everything else is meaningless
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That's a script playing the game, right?
Yeah, someone programmed AI to do it.
What the hell are stalife drops?
Oh, yeah. Auto unburrow is only so very useful if they're moving without paying attention.
Marauder drop on a-moving banelings to cause them to detonate.
I will make a youtube video to test it. Or test it yourself. Just create a game with the unit tester.
I'm not pulling this shit out of my ass.
Throw marauders out of dropships into bling balls so all the blings die and only kill a few marauders.
Doesn't work if the blings are on hold position or right-clicked onto the marine ball.
And obviously it's more effective to detonate them yourselves to get the most marines.
yeah you get way better splash coverage using manual detonation, as you can explode in the middle of a ball rather than the front
i still think a couple auto-unburrow baneling mines could be useful just for mind games
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Firstly, that's not what a slippery slope argument is.
Secondly, no. I don't want perfect micro. I don't want units to, for example, focus fire down stalkers individually one by one, which is the optimal offense.
I want the baseline of my units to be improved so that if I'm not constantly shepherding them, they throw fights away by doing stupid things.
What annoys me is when I'm losing damage in a fight because my queue of targets reaches its end and the units just go off and seduce an Urdak Calf or something equivalently useless.
My problem is having to stop a unit from doing something stupid, essentially.
No, you couldn't, because it isn't. Sometimes you want the extra damage a dying unit puts out. Secondly, more simply but specific to this example, where to run to (and how to run) is a complex decision.
Interesting you say this.
Let's say for a moment that my hotkey is implemented. Players now have some free apm to play with. What might they do with those actions? You brought up one such thing; they might move away units on low health (if that's what they think is best).
The meta-game evolves in response to these sort of usability changes.
I always manually detonate my banelings.
Marines/Mauraders vs Stalkers/Zealots. If you can prioritize the stalkers with your M/M ball it would be extremely broken. You just vaporize the stalkers first and then kite the zealots all day.
Another example:
I go voidrays with a bunch of zealots. You go a bunch of stalkers with some zealots. You have your stalkers set to prioritize the voidrays. Now I want to run my zealots in to eat the fire from your stalkers while my voidrays charge up. Problem is, since you can set target priority, they'll never get the chance. In fact, it take even more micro out then just focus firing. See, without target priority you could try to focus my voidrays, but I run them out of range, your stalkers start firing at the zealots again and I bring my voidrays back in. I nice little micro dance plays out between us. With target priority, why even micro the voidrays? As soon as they get in range of the stalkers, the stalkers are automatically going to ignore the zealots and shoot the voidrays. I'm sure if I sat for several minute I could think of even more reasons why the ability would be broken.
In fact, target priority would just further increase a-move syndrome. I mean for crying out loud, I hate micro and prefer to just macro up and a-move huge blobs of units to win, and even I hate your idea. It further lowers the skill ceiling inherent in the game.
Take me for example. I have terrible micro. A lot of times I'll be playing against someone who has better micro than me but worse macro. With your proposed change, that would just give me an extra advantage over them, because they already do something like shift click units and focus fire, so it doesn't help them, whereas I would normally just attack move. That doesn't really "free up" any APM for me, it just makes my units better. I don't really think that's a good thing.
There was a similar argument back when SC2 was still in development about multiple building select and auto mining. I was on the side saying that they should be implemented, and there were many others who said it was a bad thing. Essentially, it made macro much easier, so the concern was that macro would be too easy, so to mitigate that, Blizzard added stuff like Chrono Boost, MULEs and queens. With your suggested change, it would just make micro easier with no balancing factor, so it basically makes micro play less viable and macro play better, since now an a-mover is "better" without giving him any downsides.
Edit: Again, I ask whether you played BW, what league you're in, and what other RTS's you've played, because these things will significantly color your view on this situation.
I fucking love game design.
I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY WON'T PUT IT BACK IN.
No, I think there are banal decisions and interesting decisions. Micromanagement is your ability to mechanically act on those those decisions.
A banal decision is "should a marauder attack a stalker or a zealot, ceteris paribus?" The answer is always obvious. I shouldn't have to make that decision over and over again for the marauder.
An interesting decision is "I have enough energy on my five ghosts for a load of Sniping. There are a mix of High Templar, Infestors and other Ghosts in this force at differingly staggered locations. In what order should I snipe them, and how far should I extend with my ghosts to get these snipes off?" Each snipe is a decision, a fairly interesting decision, and one that requires appropriate micromanagement.
In beta I placed plat, then diamond when they added that. I've barely played live at the moment.
I played BW for a couple of years on release, not competitively, but stopped then; plus I was a teenager and didn't exactly have the head for balance.
I have played almost all C&C games (horrible balance), DoW (horrible balance, good design), DoW2 (same again, but the strategy point and cover systems don't work for it), SoaSE (an example of a game which is mostly conceptual but still requires high micro), Warcraft obviously and Universe at War (craaaaaaaaaazy). There are others in there but the list becomes less useful as the games become more obscure.
And it's not really them tinging my view, it's just a dislike of units causing you trouble by making significant mistakes if left alone. Like, the mistake of not focus-firing enemies down? Minimal. The mistake of attacking the wrong enemies? Quite significant.
I want the mechanical difficulty to be focused on interesting things, like removing units from the fray (where there is a risk:reward to doing so) as opposed to focused on banal things, like making sure your units target things they do more damage against, ceteris paribus.
Regarding the third sentence, please read what I've written. I've lost count of how many people think I'm arguing something entirely distinct from what I am.
Example above:
Void Rays low on shields? Back up, stalkers go after zealots (which they would do regardless), zealots start to get low? Bring Void Rays back in.
We have yet to see whether that's case with SC2, and it'll be a big part of how long the game will last as an eSport I think.
@Bethryn: please address the above situations, or else I'm just gonna assume you're just QQing rather than actually discussing your idea.
If every unit perfectly selected the right targets, you could sit at your base and a-move everything. Period. You'd have a control group for your macro, your ghosts (to "interestingly" micro) and then every Thor, Marine, Marauder, Tank and Hellion you built. Because they'd all attack properly.
You don't like that marauders attack the closest unit (zealots?). Build some hellions or tanks.
What you call "banal" micro decisions might instead just be "interesting" macro decisions you're not picking up on.
I know, right? Why isn't micro of individual limbs in the game? You shouldn't just be able to "research" speedlings. You should have to physically micro their individual legs to run faster. You guys have it too easy.