There are a lot of mechanics in Starcraft 2 which we've yet to explore. After my well received colossi mechanics thread, I decided that I'd keep looking into the quirks of different SC2 units.
Some will be obvious and some will be not so obvious, but it should be a lot of fun. And hopefully, someone will learn something new or useful.
Instead of spamming all over the forums, I'll be posting all of my findings in this thread. If we can get the findings verified, I'll be adding them to the SC2 Liquipedia for all to enjoy.
And of course, if you'd like to make an addition to this list, make a post in this thread and PM me the post ID (click the little pound sign in the top right corner of the post). I'll add it to the list immediately.
As we all know, seige tanks have smart AI and refuse to overkill targets. That got me thinking: This behavior can't just be a seige tank quirk, other units must also share the same overkilling logic.
I decided to test every ranged unit in the game for whether or not it overkills in the following manner:
1. Take five Stalkers 2. Bring one of the stalkers down to where it'd die in one more hit 3. Fire three of the stalkers at the almost dead one, and then immediately fire at the last alive one 4. Repeat with every ranged unit
Now that doesn't sound too intuitive, so I made some videos which will make my testing method very obvious.
Unit Which Overkills (Stalker):
Unit Which Has Smart Targeting (Immortal):
Notice how units which overkill (Stalkers) all fire at the same time when they're attacking the second target. Units which don't overkill (Immortals) will save their shots on the first target and then immediately attack the second target with shots they haven't used yet.
After testing every unit, I've discovered that every unit with an instant ranged attack exhibits smart targetting. This includes:
For some reason, Thors are excluded from the smart targeting logic - perhaps it's because they fire in two bursts instead of one shot.
Also, something interesting to note is that many of those units will look like they're overkilling, but in reality it's just the animation firing off. The biggest offender of this is the Immortal, who looks like it's firing from the blue animation, but doesn't actually overkill.
Added a few links that I remember were posted a long time ago but sorta fell into the nothingness. If you guys can think of any other good ones, let's make sure that the people who put their hard work into those aren't forgotten!
Blizzard has stated that smart targeting wasn't intended and it was a side effect of instant attacks. I think it was Dustin Browder that said this in response to the "OH MY GOD TANKS ARE TOO STRONG" comments but he also said that they weren't planning on changing it since the stats say all of the MUs right now are somewhat balanced.
It seems like the overkill mechanics are responsible for a lot of the complaints about Terran, not only due to siege tanks but this also makes early marine-heavy pushes a LOT stronger than they would otherwise be (demolish all 5 zealots in the front of the pack at once instead of one at a time).
So the other day I was watching some replays on SC2win.com and I noticed that the pros were doing beautiful moving drops with their medivacs. Now, I had no idea how to moving drop more than 1 medivac at a time, so I decided to do some investigating.
The solution is surprisingly simple.
Because dropping is an ability, you can use the same multicasting mechanics that all other abilities have. All you have to do is select all of your medivacs, hold D, and then rapidly click on all of them while still holding D the entire time.
This results in an easy to execute moving carpet drop.
On August 02 2010 04:15 FC.Strike wrote: It's about time I updated this thread!
So the other day I was watching some replays on SC2win.com and I noticed that the pros were doing beautiful moving drops with their medivacs. Now, I had no idea how to moving drop more than 1 medivac at a time, so I decided to do some investigating.
Because dropping is an ability, you can use the same multicasting mechanics that all other abilities have. All you have to do is select all of your medivacs, hold D, and then rapidly click on all of them while still holding D the entire time.
This results in an easy to execute moving carpet drop.
Excellent... now my enemies will die under my CARPET BIO BOMB!!!!
Perhaps not as deep(Or deeper?) than some might be looking for, but it is a mechanic and it will go along way in developing theoretical timings for the "ultimate" build. Mining Timing Mechanics.
On August 02 2010 20:57 Renseru wrote: Perhaps not as deep(Or deeper?) than some might be looking for, but it is a mechanic and it will go along way in developing theoretical timings for the "ultimate" build. Mining Timing Mechanics.
Thanks, I updated that into the original post. I'm basically looking for anything interesting and putting it into this thread, so that definitely qualifies.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i30.tinypic.com/331143k.jpg)
