Hello Fellow TL'ers, I'm posting this demonstration today of a micro tactic which I discovered in one of my games today. I searched all around TL.net and YouTube and found nothing like it, so I figured I'd make a video and share it with all of you.
Video Overview: By setting your stalkers in a concave formation, and using the minimap to blink them as opposed to the main screen, you can maintain a concave while blinking, instead of having the units ball up on you.
The video explains how to perform a concave blink, as well as showing a positive outcome against Siege Tanks as opposed to standard blinking.
Enjoy!
Adding this post to the OP because I felt it was relevant.
On July 20 2011 21:59 SheffiTB wrote: Guys, the concave blinking doesn't work because you're using the minimap. There is a certain maximum range that the blink can move the stalkers. If you click somewhere closer than max range, the stalkers will clump up, but if you click further away (even on the main screen) they will retain their shape. It's the distance away from the stalkers that you click at that matters, and since he is using the minimap, the distance is obviously larger than the max blink distance. Try it; make a game vs AI on an open map, make some blink stalkers, arrange them in a concave, then use the mainscreen to blink the stalkers, while making sure you are telling them to blink as far away as possible. They will retain their concave. Using the minimap is just more convenient.
Edit 7/20/11: Wow guys... Page one reddit(Starcraft). Thanks! This community is truly amazing at getting the word out. ¤_¤ You all rock!
O_O this make me very sad as a TvP Mech player. Sick find. Heres a better application. Patrol your stalkers. This spreads them out. Then Concave Blink them into tanks.
I've been fairly impressed with the results. Though, to be honest, I don't think this will have practical use, except around the 9 minute mark if you went only stalker heavy (there's an awful lot of APM to spend during a fight, force fields, templars, watching your colossi...) Anyway, improving this timing window is still great!
And...
4:50 :
...mainly Teamliquid.net. Great site, if you haven't heard of it, go check it out!
it feels like the 16 stalkers vs 8 siege tanks without conclave blinking would of done a lot better if you didn't just move command them at the end. It felt like during that they could of done 2 volleys of attacks.
Good finding.. but when you think about it it's pretty obvious, how i didn't think of it earlier? Obviously when you clip on the minimap, the stalkers blink to the farthest the can go.. and because of that they mantain their initial position, or that is what I think.
maybe it works because when you blink by clicking on a point on the map the stalkers all try to blink towards that specific location but when you click on the minimap they are blinking towards that general direction which keeps the concave.
On July 20 2011 10:45 Gattaca.usa wrote: maybe it works because when you blink by clicking on a point on the map the stalkers all try to blink towards that specific location but when you click on the minimap they are blinking towards that general direction which keeps the concave.
That is correct.
The thing that intrigues me is application toward whole army. What if you A-move at the other side of the minimap, your concave would be much better versus amoving on top of their army. Right?
On July 20 2011 10:16 GinDo wrote: O_O this make me very sad as a TvP Mech player. Sick find. Heres a better application. Patrol your stalkers. This spreads them out. Then Concave Blink them into tanks.
Wouldn't that just be "Spread Blink" or Patrol + "Edge-of-minimap blink" instead of concave blink? And in the end wouldn't the stalkers at the back just come closer to the tanks and end up hugging all the other stalkers again causing the annoying ball again?
On July 20 2011 10:41 MonkSEA wrote: it feels like the 16 stalkers vs 8 siege tanks without conclave blinking would of done a lot better if you didn't just move command them at the end. It felt like during that they could of done 2 volleys of attacks.
Every time he moved them, they were on attack cooldown. That was actually probably the best he could have done, because that way he splashed on the front row of tanks. Also, if you were to focus fire on the concave blink, rather than just A-moving you'd have had more stalkers at the end. This could be great for picking off tanks (for people who use them) in PvT, almost the way mutas work.
This will also be big for breaking a ramp contain in PvP - it's always been the case that if the opponent has a concave on you, you'll lose. This could even that score.
On July 20 2011 10:45 Gattaca.usa wrote: maybe it works because when you blink by clicking on a point on the map the stalkers all try to blink towards that specific location but when you click on the minimap they are blinking towards that general direction which keeps the concave.
I think it's just that when you click the mini map, they are each moving as far along their blink path as possible, towards that specific point. When you do it close to the stalkers, the angle on the approach each one takes is so small that you get a clumping effect, but when that angle is projected across a whole map, the difference in position can still be accounted for. I think the farther across the map you can click, the better the concave would be maintained.
On July 20 2011 10:52 CurLy[] wrote: That is correct.
The thing that intrigues me is application toward whole army. What if you A-move at the other side of the minimap, your concave would be much better versus amoving on top of their army. Right?
The thing that's really intriguing for me is actually not a blink application at all. Can this be used to negate the ball syndrome with any unit? Can I Attack-Move my zealots, archons, or collossi in this manner and achieve more spread on my units? If so, it would be fantastic for heavy-Roach zerg armies, and for really large terran bioballs.
Wouldn't that just be "Spread Blink" or Patrol + "Edge-of-minimap blink" instead of concave blink? And in the end wouldn't the stalkers at the back just come closer to the tanks and end up hugging all the other stalkers again causing the annoying ball again?[/QUOTE]
It would be closer to a concave. The way patrol spread comes out there's often a lot of holes, so the stalkers further away would move into those gaps and assemble a concave faster than if you started them in a ball.
Manually building the concave is obviously best, but sometimes you don't have enough free apm to do that, so patrol spread has its uses.
I actually think this kind of formation moving is possible with all units by clicking the minimap. I saw this video of destiny's highlights and at the end, he has these groups of overlords moving in such a way that they spell "GG" but they are moving across the map. Usually when you do move commands they all clump up, so I'm guessing that you can do these kinds of formations, then do move commands on the mini-map and they retain their positioning relative to one another.
This is just speculation, but I'm going to test this out later.
This is incredible. Wow. Fantastic find. Not only for offensively blinking, but even retreating (vs. EMPs or Fungals). I don't think this'll be patched. Look for this in pro VODs soon. XD
On July 20 2011 10:45 Gattaca.usa wrote: maybe it works because when you blink by clicking on a point on the map the stalkers all try to blink towards that specific location but when you click on the minimap they are blinking towards that general direction which keeps the concave.
I think it's just that when you click the mini map, they are each moving as far along their blink path as possible, towards that specific point. When you do it close to the stalkers, the angle on the approach each one takes is so small that you get a clumping effect, but when that angle is projected across a whole map, the difference in position can still be accounted for. I think the farther across the map you can click, the better the concave would be maintained.
On July 20 2011 10:52 CurLy[] wrote: That is correct.
The thing that intrigues me is application toward whole army. What if you A-move at the other side of the minimap, your concave would be much better versus amoving on top of their army. Right?
The thing that's really intriguing for me is actually not a blink application at all. Can this be used to negate the ball syndrome with any unit? Can I Attack-Move my zealots, archons, or collossi in this manner and achieve more spread on my units? If so, it would be fantastic for heavy-Roach zerg armies, and for really large terran bioballs.
That right there. I've seen a few pro's successfully move their army down the map in a spread formation while maintaining that formation (most recently sage vs puma). At the time i figured he just had them on all different control groups with each group being a random mix of units. But rather than doing that you could keep your controls groups the way you want and achieve this same thing.
On July 20 2011 11:47 Giwoon wrote: OH PEEE D: oh my god please... i hope no toss players see this
I doubt it has much application to zerg players. xD
Seeing as how 99% of terrans go bio vs protoss I don't see it being that applicable vs terran either, but this seems to be an interesting find if generalized for other units (pre spreading marines and a-moving with minimap vs zerg seems extremely applicable), as someone in the thread already mentioned.
Wouldn't this also be useful vs. Zerg if he doesn't have a ling heavy composition?
vs. Roaches. You get the better concave instead of waiting for the stalkers to line up and your blinks will cause the roaches to attack new targets. Essentially it's the same but you get the concave faster, especially if you minimap move instead of minimap blink
vs. Infestors: You get to dodge fungals/incite more fungals to be cast because the stalkers won't be in a ball. You can also snipe those that fungal the stalkers in the back middle.
On July 20 2011 15:39 Darclite wrote: Wouldn't this also be useful vs. Zerg if he doesn't have a ling heavy composition?
vs. Roaches. You get the better concave instead of waiting for the stalkers to line up and your blinks will cause the roaches to attack new targets. Essentially it's the same but you get the concave faster, especially if you minimap move instead of minimap blink
vs. Infestors: You get to dodge fungals/incite more fungals to be cast because the stalkers won't be in a ball. You can also snipe those that fungal the stalkers in the back middle.
I feel like while this will make stalkers much more effective against roach/infestor, stalkers suck so much against that composition that it doesn't matter too much.
On July 20 2011 10:39 Trowa127 wrote: This is huge. Thanks so much for the video. I'm not sure if this would be patched because it looks really powerful...
What the hell, why in the world would this be patched? Mutalisk magic box would be patched as well if so. I like manual blinking better when I am prepared microing mainly Stalker Sentry Zealot, but I guess this can be useful during crisis multitasking situations with High Templars and other units. Anyways, I will look more into this, thanks!
This is a nice little example of how we will continue to discover more and more about the game. This is fairly intuitive, makes sense, is clearly beneficial, and only now has someone stumbled upon and shared it. Pretty awesome!
On July 20 2011 10:25 norterrible wrote: ooo wonder why this works. thanks for the heads up. love this community
It works because the units blink in the direction you aim. When you tell them to blink near their starting location, they blink toward that point, so they clump. If they are all blinking to a point that is very far away, their blink directions will be fairly parallel.
On July 20 2011 10:16 GinDo wrote: O_O this make me very sad as a TvP Mech player. Sick find. Heres a better application. Patrol your stalkers. This spreads them out. Then Concave Blink them into tanks.
Wouldn't that just be "Spread Blink" or Patrol + "Edge-of-minimap blink" instead of concave blink? And in the end wouldn't the stalkers at the back just come closer to the tanks and end up hugging all the other stalkers again causing the annoying ball again?
go try it and send replay or something, but i think if you were to do that, a lot of them wouldn't be engaging, and in a more realistic battle where there's more units aside from siege tanks and stalks, they might just get isolated
This is the same as the Magic Box technique used by Zerg to control the mutas. Its not something new, if you think about it.
There is an imaginary box around any group of units selected. If you press in that box, all the selected units move to that point, breaking the formation they are in. If you press outside of the box, all the selected units move to that point, but keep the formation.
thats because theyre going at a small angle, it also works if you do the blink command and go in a corner and try blink there, they'll be in the same formation.
On July 20 2011 17:44 JoeAWESOME wrote: Awesome discovery. For me as a Z player it wont affect me as protoss players dont blink in to me but I can see it being useful in some situations
If it works on attack-move commands too, it should allow you to have your banelings spread out in advance, so when you attack they aren't clumped together so a single siege-tank shot takes out 2-3 banelings.
On July 20 2011 17:38 ckolev wrote: This is the same as the Magic Box technique used by Zerg to control the mutas. Its not something new, if you think about it.
There is an imaginary box around any group of units selected. If you press in that box, all the selected units move to that point, breaking the formation they are in. If you press outside of the box, all the selected units move to that point, but keep the formation.
yeaaahhh if you think about it its not rly the same
Hmm... but if you blinked on top of the siege tanks wouldn't your units still spread out automatically? Plus it'd be more efficient to focus down targets as well. Not saying this isn't useful, it definitely is!
Retaining formation like that should actually work with every unit, whether it is moved by move-command, attack command or blink.
Every unit in a group individually moves towards the clicked target location. On the way to the target location the group thus loses formation continuously (exception: magic box) until the group is fully clumped. If the target location is far away relative to the distance you actually want the units to overcome, they (almost) retain formation.
Thanks to OP, never really thought about using the minimap for this purpose.
On July 20 2011 20:15 Zorkmid wrote: Patch glitch plox.
Shouldn't matter whether you click on the minimap or main screen.
Wonder if there are other tricks and glitches like this.
How is this a glitch? When you blink on the field ou specify a point where your stalkers are going to blink into. When you blink on the map you just specify they're going to blink in that direction.
I can actually see this being very useful against Baneling bombs in PvZ. This could also be used by the other races, like for banelings in TvZ to prevent them from clumping and all dying to one tank shot, so some experimenting should be done by all right now!
Not a glitch though. You don't have to use the minimap you can just click further behind the army, although using the minimap obviously allows you to blink as far behind the army as possible. The way blink works is that the stalkers will blink to as close to the location as you specified so when the location you want them to blink to is fairly close each individual stalker will try and blink to sit on that location and you will get clumping.
Guys, the concave blinking doesn't work because you're using the minimap. There is a certain maximum range that the blink can move the stalkers. If you click somewhere closer than max range, the stalkers will clump up, but if you click further away (even on the main screen) they will retain their shape. It's the distance away from the stalkers that you click at that matters, and since he is using the minimap, the distance is obviously larger than the max blink distance. Try it; make a game vs AI on an open map, make some blink stalkers, arrange them in a concave, then use the mainscreen to blink the stalkers, while making sure you are telling them to blink as far away as possible. They will retain their concave. Using the minimap is just more convenient.
On July 20 2011 21:59 SheffiTB wrote: Guys, the concave blinking doesn't work because you're using the minimap. There is a certain maximum range that the blink can move the stalkers. If you click somewhere closer than max range, the stalkers will clump up, but if you click further away (even on the main screen) they will retain their shape. It's the distance away from the stalkers that you click at that matters, and since he is using the minimap, the distance is obviously larger than the max blink distance. Try it; make a game vs AI on an open map, make some blink stalkers, arrange them in a concave, then use the mainscreen to blink the stalkers, while making sure you are telling them to blink as far away as possible. They will retain their concave. Using the minimap is just more convenient.
This is a great point, I'm going to add this to the OP if you don't mind Sheffi. Thanks for your insight man
On July 20 2011 21:59 SheffiTB wrote: Guys, the concave blinking doesn't work because you're using the minimap. There is a certain maximum range that the blink can move the stalkers. If you click somewhere closer than max range, the stalkers will clump up, but if you click further away (even on the main screen) they will retain their shape. It's the distance away from the stalkers that you click at that matters, and since he is using the minimap, the distance is obviously larger than the max blink distance. Try it; make a game vs AI on an open map, make some blink stalkers, arrange them in a concave, then use the mainscreen to blink the stalkers, while making sure you are telling them to blink as far away as possible. They will retain their concave. Using the minimap is just more convenient.
This is a great point, I'm going to add this to the OP if you don't mind Sheffi. Thanks for your insight man
No problem, I was just brainstorming to think why it would work when it hit me. I tried it in a match vs AI and it worked.
On July 20 2011 21:23 kHaza wrote: I can actually see this being very useful against Baneling bombs in PvZ. This could also be used by the other races, like for banelings in TvZ to prevent them from clumping and all dying to one tank shot, so some experimenting should be done by all right now!
Oh wow, this one :D
So often I have a fairly nice concave at the start of battle but when I blink back they all clump horribly. This could be really useful!
I'm pretty sure this works with most things, such as simply a-moving. This being because the units wan't to converge on the very point you click on. The farther away the point is, the more time it takes for them to clump together to converge. This is why you see the stalkers remain in the concave.
If he blinks on top of the tanks, all the stalker want to get AS CLOSE to that specific point as possible, so you'll end up with clumping, because that's what you told your units to do!
EDIT: The problem you would encounter with a-moving in some cases is if you click on a spot that doesn't have clear field all the way to it. The pathing is then going to realize all the ramps/chokes it would have to go through and still screw up the formation. Since blink ignores these things, it works better, but I'm sure there would still be applications if you just think before using it with other commands.
shouldn't work with banelings because of the path finding :3 . though no one keeps the zerg from using the known spreading mechanics on the banelings. Interesting really logical and quiet helpful in some positions with that blink though
This could be huge in the high templar vs ghost micro. You should be able to have high temps on a separate ctrl group and keep them spread out even while a-moving (they usually clump into a nice little area for one EMP to hit them once you give a move command then you have to spread them again).
Think of the movement of the units as a bunch of arrays. If the destination of the army approaches a point "infinitely" far away, the arrays for each unit become increasingly parallel to each other. Therefore, whenever you click as far away as possible on the minimap relevant to your current army position, they will maintain their current formation for a longer amount of time until they near the destination (this also works with attack-move if I'm not mistaken). It seems this is a completely different mechanic than "magic box."
On July 20 2011 22:20 Rorschach wrote: This could be huge in the high templar vs ghost micro. You should be able to have high temps on a separate ctrl group and keep them spread out even while a-moving (they usually clump into a nice little area for one EMP to hit them once you give a move command then you have to spread them again).
Same when slowpushing marine tank versus infestors and stuff.
On July 20 2011 22:13 gillon wrote: EDIT: The problem you would encounter with a-moving in some cases is if you click on a spot that doesn't have clear field all the way to it. The pathing is then going to realize all the ramps/chokes it would have to go through and still screw up the formation. Since blink ignores these things, it works better, but I'm sure there would still be applications if you just think before using it with other commands.
This is indeed why I think we've not seen this used *that much*. I read this on TL quite some time ago(like a half a year by now), where you could spread stuff out and just click far away to keep formations. Cliffs, ramps etc have prevented this from being used much, atleast why I've not really bothered(since I need to re-spread out pretty frequently anyway).
That thread(been searching for it, no luck -.-) however didn't speak of blink, which obviously cirumvents this issue for the most part, making this usage for stalkers probably pretty insanely good.
On July 20 2011 22:32 Zarahtra wrote: This is indeed why I think we've not seen this used *that much*. I read this on TL quite some time ago(like a half a year by now), where you could spread stuff out and just click far away to keep formations. Cliffs, ramps etc have prevented this from being used much, atleast why I've not really bothered(since I need to re-spread out pretty frequently anyway).
That thread(been searching for it, no luck -.-) however didn't speak of blink, which obviously cirumvents this issue for the most part, making this usage for stalkers probably pretty insanely good.
I guess only time will tell how much this tactic will effect current play. my gut is telling me minimal at best, but it at least adds some more utility to stalkers.
On July 20 2011 22:32 Zarahtra wrote: This is indeed why I think we've not seen this used *that much*. I read this on TL quite some time ago(like a half a year by now), where you could spread stuff out and just click far away to keep formations. Cliffs, ramps etc have prevented this from being used much, atleast why I've not really bothered(since I need to re-spread out pretty frequently anyway).
That thread(been searching for it, no luck -.-) however didn't speak of blink, which obviously cirumvents this issue for the most part, making this usage for stalkers probably pretty insanely good.
I guess only time will tell how much this tactic will effect current play. my gut is telling me minimal at best, but it at least adds some more utility to stalkers.
When it comes to blink, it worked great, it's with the other commands that it's a bit more iffy.
This mechanics of this was discovered quite some time ago (the mechanic of moving your army to a very distant point to keep the positioning of your army intact). It's basically because by telling your army to move to a very far point, the angle of the travel path to that distant point is relatively straight, while with short distances it is very angled causing the clumping of units.
Practically speaking the best in-game use of this I have found is for keeping units spread out when you engage on a position to mitigage AoE (like colossus wars in PvP for example).
Dear God in heaven this is useful information. I have been trying things like individually blinking groups of my concave forward to try to maintain formation, but it's just not fast enough and I just lose the individual pieces. Soo, soooooo useful. Wow. Thank you so much OP.
I'm not sure if my post relates or is even correct, but I also find it useful to use blink stalkers to create a concave (not against tanks where you create the concave before the battle). In battle with even armies, the advantage goes to the person who establishes the better position first and even though it prevents blink micro for a short amount of time, it lets your stalkers do a lot more damage. Basically, instead of blinking the whole army, you blink portions of your army, letting you spread them better and establish a concave.
For all the people saying that this will work just as well with a-moving (ground) units:
The reason this works with blink (and is analogous to magic boxing mutas) is that blink (like flight) ignores terrain - so blinking to the edge of the map, for example, will cause each stalker to blink in a straight line towards that point on the opposite side of the map. However, if you a-move ground units to the same point, they will not all move in a straight line towards the point you clicked. Instead, they will all move in a straight line along the shortest ground path to that point; so, if there is a choke or blocking obstacle that they need to go through/around nearby, they will all clump fairly quickly.
Really cool man. Maybe call it formation blink or formation preserving blink since concave blinking is a special case of this. it is probably the most useful scenario though.
You dont have to use minimap if you dont like, just scroll a few screens and blink. What's important is the angle between the a-moving/blinking unit and the place you select.
I made a picture because some don't seem to understand yet o_o
On July 21 2011 01:38 busbarn wrote: You dont have to use minimap if you dont like, just scroll a few screens and blink. What's important is the angle between the a-moving/blinking unit and the place you select.
I made a picture because some don't seem to understand yet o_o
Thanks Busbarn, that is a great visual representation of how this technique works. during the video, I mention the minimap because in 99.9% of situations, it would be more beneficial than moving your main screen focus away from your army just to preform a blink, then go back to it.
On July 21 2011 01:38 busbarn wrote: You dont have to use minimap if you dont like, just scroll a few screens and blink. What's important is the angle between the a-moving/blinking unit and the place you select.
I made a picture because some don't seem to understand yet o_o
Thanks Busbarn, that is a great visual representation of how this technique works. during the video, I mention the minimap because in 99.9% of situations, it would be more beneficial than moving your main screen focus away from your army just to preform a blink, then go back to it.
On July 21 2011 01:38 busbarn wrote: You dont have to use minimap if you dont like, just scroll a few screens and blink. What's important is the angle between the a-moving/blinking unit and the place you select.
I made a picture because some don't seem to understand yet o_o
I was going to go about explaining this, but someone beat me to it
Basically the farther the point you order to the more parallel your units' paths are compared to one another. This is especially important in PvP when you move colossus; you need to have your line of colossus stay in a line.
All units behave like this, if you take any unit and put in a concave, the further away you tell your units to go the longer they stay in formation, because of the pathing the goes with the game. i've done it with marines and zerglings against archons and other splash damage units.
You get the same concave by just blinking to the furthest extent of blink, which keeps the blink distance the same of every stalker... You dont need to use minimap.
I was flabbergasted when Anachromy showed me this last night. It makes perfect sense when using the picture. Regardless of whether or not its nothing new, it is now at the attention of a lot of people. Thanks buddy!
it works the exact same as the magic box does. By telling them to blink on one position that is within range, they'll all converge on that one point. Obviously only one stalker can land on that spot, the rest just land around. If you tell them to blink 4-5 times further then they can, it stops the clumoing.
Imagine drawing a line from each stalker to where you want them to blink. If its one screen away, the lines are going to be very steep - closing in on the position quicker Blinking across the minimap makes that line alot more gradual
How does this seem against infestors, if fungal can only hit 1 stalker at a time, then it is pretty useless. You could concave blink near infestors, snipe them, then ball up again against the zerglings and win.
You probably know Day[9]. I've left a message at his stream's feedback e-mail adress about this on the 15th (he mistakenly assumed that the only possible way to blink to tanks resulted in clumping up - until then, I did not know that this technique was unknown to the public and I hoped he'd possibly share it with everyone), and now I suddenly see it here. I was just about to make a thread about it and ran a quick search with multiple keywords to make sure that it is indeed something new. I'm ... somewhat disappointed as a person but nevertheless satisfied that I was right and I'm glad that there are still attentive players like you. I'm a zerg player myself so I had a harder time researching this technique - naturally, I work with zerg units for the most part. That's when I've noticed that the units clump up more and more as they get closer to the destination point (or rather try to get as close to the point as possible without interfering each other pointlessly), thus placing a movement waypoint far away (as long as there are no obstacles in the way - note that blink ignores obstacles but still works the same way in every other regard) results in the units keeping formation.
Hmm. The concave thing seems a bit much to set up. However, ranged units end up in wide, dense walls in combat anyway, and a teleporting wall of bodies seems just so good. Blink stalkers, also good as forcefields?
Stuff like this seems like it could get irritating.
I would just like to know, what map did the OP use to spawn all of the units? I would like to be able to use such a map to conduct my own micro experiments. :D
On July 21 2011 23:17 MuffinCookie wrote: I would just like to know, what map did the OP use to spawn all of the units? I would like to be able to use such a map to conduct my own micro experiments. :D
I just searched Unit Tester on the NA server and picked the first one that came up. there's many of them.
Maybe it's a habit from other games (DotA? idk) but I click on the minimap to move my armies a lot, even when I'm looking at them. Haven't used it for blink since I don't play Toss a lot but it makes a lot of sense, works exactly how it should. Will be cool to see blink micro evolve intelligently like this instead of awkward and spammy like it is now (even though its so potent T_T)
On July 20 2011 21:59 SheffiTB wrote: Guys, the concave blinking doesn't work because you're using the minimap. There is a certain maximum range that the blink can move the stalkers. If you click somewhere closer than max range, the stalkers will clump up, but if you click further away (even on the main screen) they will retain their shape. It's the distance away from the stalkers that you click at that matters, and since he is using the minimap, the distance is obviously larger than the max blink distance. Try it; make a game vs AI on an open map, make some blink stalkers, arrange them in a concave, then use the mainscreen to blink the stalkers, while making sure you are telling them to blink as far away as possible. They will retain their concave. Using the minimap is just more convenient.
Sort of. Its not that the click is out of maximum distance. The stalkers will attempt to blink as direclty towards the point commanded to, up to their maximum range. They are never ACTUALLY keeping their formation exactly, its just that when the point is very far, they converge very little towards the center relative to the distance they have to travel. Or rather, the slope of the line they are traveling across is vary low, thus, it takes them much more distance to come together.
Imagine just three stalkers, spread range five apart from each other in a vertical line. You tell them to blink to a spot direclty to the right of the middle stalker range 5 from the middle stalker. The top and bottom stalker will move in very far towards the middle stalker, because the angle between themselves, the point, and the midline, is very wide. However, if you tell them to blink to a spot directly to the right of the middle stalker (still on the midline) range 1000 away, the stalkers will barely have converged towards the middle stalker, because they are trying to cover more horizontal distance per each vertical distance.
My phrasing is poor because I'm just slapping this together and I havent done any proper math or geometry in millenia, but it makes sense.
Its not just whether or not the blink is within or without of max blink range, the stalkers will converge less and less the further and further the blink is set from them - as a gradient.
On July 21 2011 23:31 SuPerFlyTNT wrote: My phrasing is poor because I'm just slapping this together and I havent done any proper math or geometry in millenia, but it makes sense.
Its not just whether or not the blink is within or without of max blink range, the stalkers will converge less and less the further and further the blink is set from them - as a gradient.
Personally I'd argue this. Most of us don't have insight into the exact mechanics, and while your description seems accurate at first it's quite simplistic (hence why everyone knows about it) and sometimes blink works in a way that this alone can't explain.
I took the liberty to draw out blink patterns using burrowed drones. The biggest stalker group (in the middle), as you said, chose the shortest way to the point. This and the fact that they cannot path each other resulted in them getting closer and closer to each other, forming - essencially - a long column when arriving at the point. When blinking fewer stalkers for testing, however, I found that they don't do what you said - only the very last blink (which is placed between the stalkers) brings them into a clump. This happens even when blinking inside the maximum range from time to time and I have yet to find out why. The map itself is melee-esque, only the terrain differs.
I want to revive this thread asking: Why has nobody talked that much about how you can actually use the atack or move command on a spread out army the same way- on the edge of the minimap, to move your army without it clumping at all? Concave blinking is just a bonus to all that
This is huge! Breaking tank lines and infestor play can become really easy.
Thanks for sharing! After thinking about it, it's quite obvious though since this applies to a lot of things - you can find it in engineering and science. For example in mechanics: When a pole around which something's moving lies away in infinite distance, there will be a translational motion. Otherwise there will be a defined motion, for example a movement around an angle. In this case here obviously the purely one dimensional translational movement of the stalkers, contrary to the 2-dimensional movement towards a defined point.
EPT
nice find 
This is going to be as devastating as magic boxing ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ljp4m.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/8169/95493558.png)
