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On February 22 2011 14:13 SC2-Dethklok wrote:
Just wondering I know you show a pic of your 5.241x5.241 square but is that 5.241 building squares?
Also rather than posting magic box sizes woulnt the maximum number of each unit you can fit into their respective box sizes help more? like instead of saying roachs 4.99 you could say 15 roachs is the most you can fit in that square so spread your roachs into groups of no more than 15 to obtain the magic box or am I just off my rocker here?
I believe the number represents the furthest away the units can be from each other and still maintain formation. A box filled with shoulder to shoulder units isn't very useful for avoiding splash damage, and how many units you can fit into the box while avoiding splash will depend on the source of the splash damage.
Muta magic box just happens to be incredibly easy because their idling distance from each other is enough to negate the main source of splash damage against them (the thor).
The information above differs in that ground units won't automatically spread to an ideal distance away from each other when they're idle, but rather, they must be positioned manually at that distance (which varies depending on which source of splash damage you're trying to avoid).
For instance (and these numbers are completely made up), lets say you can fit a maximum of 16 marines max into the box where they will maintain their formation in order to avoid Tank splash, but only 9 marines will fit into the same box to avoid Baneling splash. So, you see, giving the number of units that CAN fit into the box doesn't really help.
I could see this being very nice for Stop-Fire formations for attacking into Siege Lines or engaging/disengaging Banelings.
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Most people that invent or discover something don't name it after themselves. The community bestows that endowment on them.
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I already did tests on the exact size, and posted them in the magic box baneling threads a while ago.
The box is 6x6 building blocks for all ground units, and 7x7 for all air units.
Any unit must fit completely inside the magic box.
This way of looking at it is imo just a ton easier, instead of looking at it from the middle of a unit, and having different measures for each unit, based on their size.
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lol Griffith´s magic box 
U must be really egocentric.
Why every your little tiny advice must by Griffith´s XXXXX (if it isnt new)?
Griffith's Magic Box™ should be used in conjunction with Griffith's 4OC Pressure Push™. That way, when you build Grififth's Marines™ you can completely decimate ling/baneling until you have enough factories to produce Griffith's Tanks™. Eventually, I think Griffith's Magic Box™, and really Griffith's ZvT Strategy™ in general will revolutionize Griffith's Starcraft 2™.
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On February 22 2011 05:54 Griffith` wrote:+ Show Spoiler +---------------------------------------- | GRIFFITH'S MAGIC BOX | ---------------------------------------- I've written an iterative script in the map editor that accurately and precisely determined the size of the magic box. Note that the mutalisk magic box is only a special case of the general property of magic boxes, so for the sake of clarity, the general magic box will be referred to as "Griffith's Magic Box". As long as your units are within Griffith's Magic Box, they will move in formation, so long as they avoid tight choke points like ramps. A bit of note for attack move on the bottom. The following values are accurate to 0.02 precision decimals for pure unit compositions: Mutalisk, Medivac, Phoenix, Banshee: 6.480 Carriers: 5.401 Zerglings, Marines, High Templars, Ghosts, Banelings: 5.241 Zealots, Roaches, Sentries: 4.990 Marauder: 4.862 Stalkers : 4.742 Hellion: 4.380 Tanks: 4.241 For example, so long as your marines are within a 5.241x5.241 box they will always move in formation. To provide you with a feeling of how big the 5.241x5.241 box is: http://i.imgur.com/VQm8h.pngMixed unit groups are rather complicated to deal with with varying results, but in general, the mixed magic box inherit the size of the smallest pure unit magic box. Implications:The Key Crux of the magic box is that you no longer have to split units a million ways during the fight. Instead, you can preparing your splitting long before the fight by assigning the setup groups to hotkeys. TvZThe marine magic box can roughly fit ~10 marines that are spread out. Meaning it is MUCH MUCH easier to deal with banelings and fungal growths because you can split marines way ahead of time. PvTThe HT and Sentry magic box provides ample room for to spread out sentries and HTs. This will make it much harder for ghosts to roffle-EMP an entire group of spellcasters. ZvTSpread banelings will prove to be extremely useful against siege tanks. TvPHard to say. For bio based play it will make storms and colossi splash less effective. About Attack MoveI you attack move - the instant an enemy is within attack range, you will lose formation and units will arrange in a formation to attack the units. You can avoid this by M - moving to the ideal point then either A-move or Stop.
Massive props. So glad you did this. Was planning to but I'll piggyback your hard work
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nice revelation :D
i hope somebody makes a youtube tutorial on this to fully understand
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would you please post a replay? would be awesome!.
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Wow. This is SO awesome. Nice find dude!
I'm gonna echo a few of the questions here:
How does patrol affect this?
Other than having more space to split marines, does having a preset formation help at all with reducing baneling splash?
Thanks again! This is so high level :D
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Oh yes, what about Overlords? Formation baneling carpet bomb would be really nice :D.
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i hope somebody makes a youtube tutorial on this to fully understand
Its not really very hard to understand.
Read http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Magic_box
That explains it perfectly
The only difference in SC2, is that the unit must fall entirely within the box, this goes for magic box, and minimum unit selection box.
The box is 6x6 sensor towers/building blocks for ground, 7x7 for air.
Or if you wanna go by minimum required to select the units, or by the middle of the units, then the sizes will differ for units of verying sizes, and you can use the complicated measures from griffifths.
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On February 23 2011 00:00 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Oh yes, what about Overlords? Formation baneling carpet bomb would be really nice :D.
Overlord box size is about 5.980
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On February 23 2011 00:41 morimacil wrote:Its not really very hard to understand. Read http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Magic_boxThat explains it perfectly The only difference in SC2, is that the unit must fall entirely within the box, this goes for magic box, and minimum unit selection box. The box is 6x6 sensor towers/building blocks for ground, 7x7 for air. Or if you wanna go by minimum required to select the units, or by the middle of the units, then the sizes will differ for units of verying sizes, and you can use the complicated measures from griffifths.
I think it has more to do with Movement - Radius and Movement - Separation radius property of the units and not so much the actual physical unit size.
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Here is a rough picture, excuse my paint skills.
![[image loading]](http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/762/magicboxu.jpg)
Both the marines, and the tanks, are as far appart as possible while still maintaining the magic box properties.
The black lines demonstrates my way of calculating what fits inside the box:
The selection circle of the unit must fit completely inside the box. Using that, we arrive at a single measurement for all units, and can easily make boxes that contain different types of units, and so on.
One size fits all.
You, as far as I can tell, calculated either from the blue lines, middle of the units, or from the minimum possible selection box for the units. That gives you different results for each size of units, because they have a different selection radius.
A bit harder to visualize, remember, and work with.
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While the magic box is at an advantage over AoE units and spells, it puts you at a disadvantage against their non-aoe support and provides a huge bonus in melee effectiveness which often times you'll run into first. Protecting your casters from EMP's with the magic box should be a non-issue, but spreading your marines and marauders to protect them from storms while they still have their Zeal Meat Shields and Stalkers may very will prove to be a case where you would much rather have just kept your units in a ball. Ling/Bling play is often very APM intensive on the Zerg's part and I rarely see a Sling Bling player hold back on their blings against split marines and opting instead to clean up with their Sling Swarm scoring surrounds on 5+ different smaller Marine Groups. But I rarely see this sort of play (And I'm interested in how MKP would respond to the Blings just rolling by his marine splits with Slings filling in the spaces between em).
But yeah, I certainly would like to see what sort of risk vs rewards you get out of this.
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Well it kinda depends on a lot of things, and sure, its not optimal to have your units spread out all the time no matter what.
sling-bling is strong because slings are good if you split up, blings are good if you clump up.
but there are definitely situations in which you wanna spread out.
Terran doesnt really have all that much that can punish you from being spread out.
10 zealots vs 10 siege tanks, 10 zealots die, 1 siege tank is damaged.
10 spread out zealots vs 10 siege tanks, you can kill 3 tanks.
The advantage to having them clumped up vs siege tanks, is that they will reach the target a tiny bit earlier, since they are a tiny bit more forward.
But if the front zealots dont actually ever reach the target, then that advantage doesnt exist, and spreading them out is better.
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My name is Griffith, thank you for naming this after me. Your tribute to my skill and wisdom will not be forgotten.
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Why not call it peter griffin's magic box? it's logical
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On February 22 2011 06:33 Phee wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2011 06:28 iChau wrote:On February 22 2011 06:25 Phee wrote:
This may seem like a noob question. But how do you magic box? I'm a 3.3K+ masters Zerg and don't know how to oO lol With mutas you press hold pos. And is the hold button used with all of the other units as well?
Yes, hold can also be used with marines-marauders-roaches-hellions for kiting. Also, you can use stop as well, which is what I do mostly. One exception: I'm magic boxing a thor with marines in the mix, if I use stop there, marines will draw attention from mutas and not all mutas will attack to thor. But, that doesn't mean that using Hold instead of Stop will not get attention to marines if marines shoot. After holding, you can give an a-click to thor to prevent mutas from getting distracted by marines. I didn't test that, but I don't think it will fail either.
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If only people could stop calling technique's after themselves. It's just pretentious.
About the technique, I can see it being quite useful to avoid splash damage's, but it seems rather hard to implement with lots of units as they have small magic boxes.
It might be useful to state how many units in general would fit into the box.
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If only people could stop calling technique's after themselves. It's just pretentious.
Well we can only assume that he was trying to be funny here.
I mean, renaming the magic box to giffifiths magic box just because he made a thread about it, is about as logical as if I made a thread about the fact that macro still exists in SC 2, and therefore keeping your money low should now be reffered to as "morimacil macro".
Its illogical, and its not going to happen. So we have to just assume he was going for a humor effect, and just keep calling magic boxes what they are, instead of trying to suddenly call them griffithfths's magic boxes because he made a thread about them.
About the technique, I can see it being quite useful to avoid splash damage's, but it seems rather hard to implement with lots of units as they have small magic boxes.
It might be useful to state how many units in general would fit into the box.
How many units would fit inside a box depends on how spread out you want them to be.
Since the whole point of using the magic box is to be able to have your units spread out, and remain so, telling you exactly how many units will fit inside a box doesnt really do all that much.
http://img10.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=screenshot2011022315002.jpg
Here is a couple of pictures that might help you familiarize youself with the size of the box.
Another easy way to familiarize yourself with the size, is to just take 2 units, spread them out, and then spam click somewhere. First time you click, they will start to converge on that location. eventually though, they will be close enough together to fit inside the box, and thus if you are spam clicking, the new order will overwrite the old one, and they will move towards the location as a formation, instead of individual units moving there.
Look at how far appart they are, and thats how big the box can be.
And about it being hard to use because you have to have tons of control groups for all the units in your army:
I think if you are faced with siege tanks for example, if you just send 1 group of spread out magic boxed units ahead, and then the rest of your army clumped up directly after, thats already quite a big improvement over sending your whole clumped up army at once.
The siege tanks will waste their first round of fire at killing just a couple of spread out units, and while they reload, the rest of your army got into position already.
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EPT
