ODT ro48 - recap and recommended games

BWWI SC2 Thoughts

Unit AI

Surround AI
In Starcraft 2, the AI of units has been significantly altered. One prime example of this is the surround AI most notably exhibited by speedlings and also workers. A single attack move from the speedling user will surround zealots on the ramp within 2 seconds (that is not an exaggeration). Right click past, then attacking onto the zealot is no longer required. When I first did this to Meat using a 10pool speed build, I was extremely shocked at the results.

The scv AI was demonstrated during my 1 zealot 1 probe rush against Xeo. In a situation where the Terran player usually struggles to deflect the zealot pressure and protect his scvs, he was instead able to simply select 8 or so of his workers, attack move in a general direction, and if I had any inclination to engage the scvs, my zealot would be surrounded immediately.

The Surround AI is extremely powerful, and makes early worker harass obsolete, as well as making certain defense situations extremely difficult.

Rally AI

In the current build, rallied units from gateways and other production facilities come out with an attack move command. What this means is that an early rush where every second counts can be easily interfered by a scouting scv lurking around near your gateways. This should be a simple fix, and should be fixed in order to uphold the integrity of the game.

IdrA commented that his retreat command (right click) away from enemy units was overridden when they were engaged by hostile fire. I myself do not think I experienced this (or at least it was not clear), but any possibility of this issue should be looked into. Units should do "exactly as told" in a game like starcraft 2 and currently there are certain areas where this is not exactly the case.

Mining AI

Automining AI is incredibly smart. it will find the optimum mineral patch to move to and rally the worker to it, maximizing efficiency with minimal user control. Furthermore, it seemed very difficult to disrupt mining with buildings, although I did manage to mess up pathing once with a couple buildings that were impassable.

Economy

As you know, in SC2 workers gather 5 minerals at a time and 6 gas at a time. The mineral income rate causes some awkward worker cutting early game. I am a Protoss player in Starcraft 1, so I was naturally inclined to test out my main race more than others when actually constructing build orders for SC2. What I found was that you must cut probes constantly even from the early game. Cut probe, 10 gate, make one probe, cut probe assimilator at 11, cut probe, etc. Perhaps this is not a big deal, and will be part of the overall schematic of SC2 - managing your worker production more than ever before, tweaking exact timings and priorities - but at the current stage, as a SC1 player, I must admit it felt a bit unnatural.

Gas geysers will deplete at around 7 minutes of harvest time. There are abilities that restore healthy gas prodcution, or increase mining rates in general, but to be honest these functionalities seem more contrived than necessary. The existence of 2 gas geysers in every main and natural seems to have a positive effect on decision making on when to take that second gas and what tech route to pursue. In the current setup, players of any race are strapped down by gas limitations, and must manage the timings very carefully. Units are gas heavy, buildings are gas heavy, and your gas income is low in both rate and total quantity. Double gasses and restricted gas income are concepts that could very well add another dimension of economy management to the realm of starcraft - which is exciting without a doubt - but in its current incarnation, there are clear holes in the dynamic.

Interface

The interface had the feel of Starcraft 1 while upgrading its capabilities big time. For instance, above the center bottom box, it would show you what buildings were bound to your hotkeys, which I thought was a cute addition (though not too relevant to the more dedicated players).

There was some "jitter" of the building preview grid when trying to place a building in certain locations, most notably near a ramp. It would jump back and forth between the two locations until I nudged the mouse a bit to settle it down.

And finally, MBS. The current incarnation of mbs is one where you can bind all sorts of buildings together and tab through them, like in War3. Notable is the fact that a Rax with no addon, a Rax with Reactor, or Rax with Tech lab are treated as different buildings altogether. To queue units - for example with a control group with 3 raxes - pressing 'm' once makes one marine in one rax. Pressing 'm' again makes another marine in the 2nd rax, etc.

This is actually the most powerful variant of mbs possible. You can control the number of units created, as well as the type and ratios perfectly. The best example is with zerg larvae. In the initial form of mbs, going '5sd' would have created 9 drones when selecting 3 hatcheries. While offering the power to create many units with minimal user input, this would have been very inflexible in sutations when you would want, say 6 drones and 6 zerglings. It would have encouraged the better player to perhaps bind his hatcheries individually, or in groups of two, etc in order to allow better control over his unit production. With the current, most powerful variant of mbs, the player can enter in 5sddddzzzhhh and get exactly the unit mix he desires. *Easy Button*

Strategy

There are certain areas regarding strategy I'd like to address - not many, but some key points.

There is "brush (tall grass)" present in some areas of the maps at bwwi that prevent vision from the other side. Xeo was able to exploit this nicely in tvp, buliding a factory outside my scout path vision behind some grass, lifting it into my main and doing a nice jackal harass. The move was enabled by the tall grass, as well as the faster floating speeds of Terran buildings in Starcraft 2. Such features should hopefully allow for some creativity in Starcraft 2 that was lacking overall in Warcraft 3 when I was playing seriously.

Detection seems to come very late for all 3 races, making them vulnerable to dt and lurker rushes more than ever. While I did not have the opportunity to test timings of detection vs invisibility rushes against another competent player, the overall consensus amongst us was that detection was indeed high up in the tree, and that they were too far out in the branches, if that makes any sense. To clarify, what I mean is that if a player opts to play it very safe in terms of detection and does the equivalent of a 1 gate observer build pvt in SC1, then that player is set back quite a bit unless his opponent went for a dt/lurker rush. The problem is particularly dire with Terran, who must get a rax, a factory, a merc haven, and then finally the scanner upgrade for their cc. Overall the timings and sacrifices combined in achieving detection and achieving invisible ninjas seems to be at a discord with 'strong' overall builds.

Carrier micro is impossible as they are unbelievably clumsy and do not stack. I heard similar complaints about mutalisks, but apparently mutalisk control is something Blizzard does want to maintain into SC 2 so hopefully air unit control can be revamped to reward players who can control them well and upkeep their economies simultaneously.

Feel

To me the overall feel of the game and its atmosphere wasn't quite SC1, wasn't quite War3, but somewhere in the middle. Overall, the feeling I had that differed greatly from SC1 was a sensation of "floatiness".

The best example I feel is the siege tank, which didn't feel nearly as 'grounded' to the terrain as I felt it should have - they are tanks after all. They looked and felt light, as if they weren't really connected to the grounded they were trampling over.

Lag
Xeo got a drop screen while loading the game. That was awkward.

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