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The way manual mine firing mechanics works is as follows:
- mines automatically squire a target when in range and fire after about a second.
- during this time if you change targets it resets the aiming time to a second again then launches at the new target
- if you keep changing targets before the second is up it will never fire (hold micro)
- if you stop using hold micro all selected mines will fire at the last targeted unit simultaneously.
- if a targeted unit is out of range the mine will auto squire a new target in range. This will reset the aim timer also.
- the whole time a mine is aquiring a target it is visible (but not attackable) by your opponent. This means they are aware you are using hold micro.
- note: (this is the only point which i still need to verify but i believe it is true) for hold micro you can target a unit which is out of range (eg an enemy overlord in your base while your mines are centre map), this does not technically target the overlord. What it does is reset the aim timer and force auto target a unit in range. But the end effect is that you can hold micro using a unit which is out of mine range.
As a high end example, lets say there is a 3 sentry, 5 zealot, 5 stalker army approaching your base and you have 3 mines in their path.
1) select all 3 mines and start using hold micro as they pass over your mines by clicking new targets <1 sec apart.
2) target a sentry with the mines
3) remove a mine from your selection
4) repeat steps 2-3 again until each mine is targeting a different sentry
depending on how quickly you performed steps 3-5 all 3 mines will kill seperate sentries and soften up the rest of the army over a period of 1.1-3 seconds.
I am sorry for my punctuation. Posted this from a phone because people NEED to know this now.
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There is no randomness to it at all. It simply fires the first unit that comes within range. What people need to do is learn to target fire properly, or position them better so that it is not wasted on the zerglings in the very front.
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United States7166 Posts
On March 18 2013 11:10 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 10:55 Zelniq wrote:On March 18 2013 10:49 avilo wrote:On March 18 2013 10:42 Zelniq wrote:
yeah actually you can targetfire with them I heard, at certain times when the target is in range or something. also I don't think it's random, it just feels/looks that way. if you study it closer or just get more experienced with it, you'll get the feel of how it works I think. it has an unusual, unique ai, but I don't think it's random.
I'm going to test it some right now in the unit tester, I suspect the strange detonations have to do with the speed of the speedlings just zooming on by them.. No you cannot target fire with them. They removed that capability. As for the detonations, they are more or less completely random in the sense that whichever unit appears closest to the widow mine at first at the moment it burrows will be targeted, but if there are a huge number of targets within roughly the same distance from the widow mine you have almost no clue which will be targetted. Also very fast units like speedlings can run out of the activation range of the mine if they are on the very fringe of the detonation radius, which then adds on to the randomness because the initial ling targetted becomes untargetted and the mine reacquires a closer target out of the 5000 lings/units there which you have no idea which one it is because there is no indicator. So, it basically is more or less random in the end because there's no way the human eye can track which unit first comes into the mine's activation radius and if the unit leaves the activation radius with 30 other units entering it shortly after it's impossible to tell what unit is targetted, both visually and in terms of what it's coded to hit. just tested it many times, targeting definitely works every single time. With right clicking? I'm fairly sure this does not work anymore, it "acquires" a target on it's own, I have not been able to manually target anything with mines. But i'll test it out later and check it out again.
yep with right clicking. it definitely works, i tested in in a normal map as well.
some other facts, spawned/temporary units set off mines, including broodlings from broodlords or dead buildings.
also another thing to note is you can 'overkilll' with target fire mines of course..if you have 8 mines and right click a zergling they'll all fire at the zergling.
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I think the widow mine is fine right now/
It will be a massive part of TvZ but we just don't have the data right now to make a rational decision.
I like it because it seems to reward the best player (maybe people willl disagrree)
TLDR- not enough data, rewards best player,keep as is for now
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As expected. As people get better the Widowmine gets worse.
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From what I have seen, they are indeed way too random. There were some points in the Flash vs Life final where Flash's mines crippled him by injuring his own units more than Life's, there were some points where, he practically destroyed the army of Life, and some points in between where they killed some units, but not enough to do serious damage.
IMO these should be heavily modified. I would have liked to see them as spider mines, more for map control than anything else. However, these can be used both offensively and defensively, and I think that basically overlaps the point of the siege tank. Right now, it is a flawed unit in that it serves no unique purpose of the terran army.
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United States7166 Posts
On March 18 2013 11:27 DeCoup wrote:
The way manual mine firing mechanics works is as follows:
- mines automatically squire a target when in range and fire after about a second.
- during this time if you change targets it resets the aiming time to a second again then launches at the new target
- if you keep changing targets before the second is up it will never fire (hold micro)
- if you stop using hold micro all selected mines will fire at the last targeted unit simultaneously.
- if a targeted unit is out of range the mine will auto squire a new target in range. This will reset the aim timer also.
- the whole time a mine is aquiring a target it is visible (but not attackable) by your opponent. This means they are aware you are using hold micro.
- note: (this is the only point which i still need to verify but i believe it is true) for hold micro you can target a unit which is out of range (eg an enemy overlord in your base while your mines are centre map), this does not technically target the overlord. What it does is reset the aim timer and force auto target a unit in range. But the end effect is that you can hold micro using a unit which is out of mine range.
As a high end example, lets say there is a 3 sentry, 5 zealot, 5 stalker army approaching your base and you have 3 mines in their path.
1) select all 3 mines and start using hold micro as they pass over your mines by clicking new targets <1 sec apart.
2) target a sentry with the mines
3) remove a mine from your selection
4) repeat steps 2-3 again until each mine is targeting a different sentry
depending on how quickly you performed steps 3-5 all 3 mines will kill seperate sentries and soften up the rest of the army over a period of 1.1-3 seconds.
I am sorry for my punctuation. Posted this from a phone because people NEED to know this now.
great post! and yeah just confirmed this stuff, it's true. I'd just like to correct that it's about 2 ingame(blizzard) seconds, though it feels more like 1 real second I guess. Neat stuff, so you can infinitely or however long you want to, stop their attack as long as there are at least 2 targets in range..but they can see the mine and likely wont just stand around with a bunch of units heh
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On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote:
further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall
Basically the first post i made accurately describes the how the mine works, and no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
On March 18 2013 11:35 Dibella wrote:
As expected. As people get better the Widowmine gets worse.
Essentially yes. It's been an issue since the beta began, reported to blizzard multiple times. They seem fine with how it is though.
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United States7166 Posts
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
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On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote:
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I wouldn't bother arguing with someone that has his head so firmly planted in the sand.
Thanks for the info, definitely confirms a lot of the stuff I've observed while playing around with it, you can retarget but only in range and it restarts the 2 second attack animation. If flash had all his mines hotkeyed and targeted well i think a lot of the fights would have looked completely different in the finals today!
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On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote:
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it..
I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
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United States7166 Posts
OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
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FROM THIS:
On March 18 2013 11:49 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote:
further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random.
TO THIS:
On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote:
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it.. I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that.
It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
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Oh you can still target with the mine, thought they removed it in order to keep the mine strong, so positioning them is important as well as the ability for the opponent to set the mines off. So personally I hope they remove the targeting completely.
And not so sure that their targeting is to random. Atleast for your opponent because the reveal when it is targeting basically tells you which one of your units the mine is locking on, so you can sort it out. Especially blink dodge is easy.
I really like the mine not being controlable apart from burrow unburrow (which is super fast with the upgrade), that way it can keep the high damage. Sure it owns noobs, but so do most AoEs.
And Flash should have just done what other Terrans already did in the tournament, leave a small bit of Bio in range to make sure the lings stack up when the mines go off.
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On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote:
OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated.
Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
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Isn't the real problem with mines that you can run a group of 50 lings over them and they do barely anything unless you target fire with them? Awesome unit for zoning out different attack paths etc.
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On March 18 2013 12:19 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote:
OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated. Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
you dont know when to stop, do you
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On March 18 2013 12:13 deth wrote:FROM THIS: Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 11:49 avilo wrote:On March 18 2013 11:20 Zelniq wrote:
further testing indicates a couple of things:
if an enemy unit wanders in range but exits the range (range of 5) within less than ~2 ingame seconds, the mine doesn't fire, same thing goes for multiple units..if 10 lings enter but leave the radius before the ~2 seconds, it doesn't fire. If it's there for ~2+ seconds it does. So for an idea of what that's like, the magic ~2 second time that it won't set the mine off is a speedling off creep that's moving across the edge of the circle's range of a mine, as if you were slicing the end of an orange.
The target unit's speed is irrelevant, a queen off creep can wander in, spot the mine and leave without getting hit if it leaves the radius fast enough. (btw even without detection, the mine reveals itself when I think you wander in its range. reveals its location, but doesn't allow you to attack it, similar to units you can't see that's on higher ground, that shoot you)
@Swagger: search "hots unit tester online" in arcade. it uses whatever the current state of the game is, as in say the unlisted change that occured within last few days where mothership core's recall is canceled if the mothership core dies during the recall no you cannot manually target mines. And yes it is more or less random. TO THIS: Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 12:01 avilo wrote:On March 18 2013 11:55 Zelniq wrote:
argh why are you still saying you can't manually target them...you obviously didn't just test it cus you would have found out you can..and your first post doesn't really explain the mechanics..it's basically what DeCoup posted at the top of this page. test it right now, you can see not only can you target with them but his post about how you can keep changing targets to reset the aim timer to indefinitely prevent them from attacking..just play vs AI and try it.. I'm talking about manually targetting to have them blow up immediately on the target you want like they were in a previous patch version of beta. You can no longer do that. It's no wonder people don't take you seriously when you argue, its just an exercise in eye-rolling and face-palming frustration.
Nice ad hominem, lots of people specialize more in ad hominems lately than they do in analysis because it's easier for them.
Point i was making that flew over your head was that in the beta you previously could use the attack command to manually target widow mines onto units, whereas in the current release version that is no longer possible.
What zelniq is saying is entirely different. He is saying you can target the widow mines with a right click command onto units which is completely unintuitive for any player that played the beta version with the previous attack command that was on the command card and the current incarnation of the mine that has no option available in the command card.
How is a player supposed to know that they can re-target the widow mine manually by constantly changing attack targets with the mine over and over within a 2 second time-span? No one knew this before, and there also is no tool-tip for it.
So deth if you want to go argue about arguments and improve your ad hominem take it to reddit, they take that quite seriously over there.
There's a differentiation between the ability for a player to use the attack-move command and for something that does not show that in the command card yet it's still possible with a weird rule on it that no one knows about.
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On March 18 2013 12:19 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2013 12:08 Zelniq wrote:
OK, well how was anyone supposed to know that from your statements..and if that's how it worked before then it sounds like they fixed an unintended mechanic of the mine.. The delay before it fires as it aims at a target seems deliberate. And since you can target them they aren't random at all, nor unreasonable to make effective use of them, unlike your first post implicated. Well, it's unreasonable for a player of SC2 to know that you can manually target a mine when there's no target command and nothing in the tooltip that explains anything close to that.
You started out saying that widow mines couldn't be manually targeted, then stated that you originally meant that widow mines couldn't be manually targeted and then instantly attack, now argue that it's unreasonable to not have the tooltip explain to you that mines can manually target units... I'm so confused. All Zelniq is trying to say is that you can target widow mines, which is correct.
I'm fairly certain you did not know manually targeting widow mines was possible under any circumstance. You said "With right clicking? I'm fairly sure this does not work anymore, it 'acquires' a target on it's own, I have not been able to manually target anything with mines." That's a very clear statement, I don't understand why you argue that this implied only an instant widow mine shot was possible after manually targeting a unit.
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Well, seeing mlg, it confirmed what i thought. Mines are good, but there not a replacement for aoe in a composition. But, mixed in your strategy and dropping some now and then is pretty sweet. So, yes they are good as a harras/defensive/spotter unit. But if u use them as your main aoe unit, chances are u will loose when facing an equally talented player.
But mines will have a bigger effect in lowerleagues because everyone is a-moving.
The lower u go, the more widow's u throw!
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EPT
