[D] Widow Mine Mechanics - Page 4

On March 18 2013 16:03 Reki wrote:

At a glance it seems consistent with morrow's description. Every single ling that passed through didn't stay long enough for it's "channeling" complete.

IMO it's working as intended. Otherwise you would get results like multiple wms overkilling a single ling or accidentally losing your entire bio army because a roach tunneled under you.

On March 18 2013 16:16 Chocobo wrote:
It's working as intended, but imho I don't think it should be intended to work that way. I don't see anything wrong with the situations you described, or with having the widow mines fire their shot off instantly when a target is in range.

Consistency is good in a competitive game.

On March 18 2013 16:18 `dunedain wrote:
The funny thing is, no one really cares what you think.

On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote:
There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.

The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.

EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.

On March 18 2013 17:05 J.E.G. wrote:
There should just be an upgrade that lowers the cool-down or maybe lowers the targeting time to make it less coin-flippy in larger, late game engagements. While the hold-micro tricks are definitely sexy, it is not feasible for any player to make use of it past a certain point in the game. Thus, the randomness of the widow mine comes back, and the risk of having it sit there with its thumb up its ass waiting for cool down is too great to justify the dice roll of an effective detonation.

The main goal is to balance a unit with depth with being usable. If it proves to be to random in late game situations, it will be abandoned for something more stable, and possibly more boring.

EDIT: Please stop with the flames. This thread is important.

On March 18 2013 17:13 bakemono wrote:


Does this not just come down to positioning your mines better? If lings run past the very outside radius, it probably shouldn't go off and kill half of them, if they run right over the top, it almost certainly will go off. They already have a fairly generous range, and cost almost nothing. Just make 2 or 3 and spread them out so that your opponent is guaranteed to pretty much step on one.

As I said before I think you Terran expect far too much for such a cheap/extremely efficient unit. You don't see zerg complaining that marines split when a baneling shows up and that it gets shot down before it can get into melee range.

On March 18 2013 17:48 J.E.G. wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
I don't play terran. Widow mines are fun to watch, and i don't want players to stop using them if they are faulty in late-game situations.

The problem i think of in regards to better positioning is that moment when day9 was about to have a heart attack as a large group of mutas and lings went straight over three mines (i forget which game...) and nothing happened. This behavior was consistently inconsistent throughout the series.

As for the baneling analogy, it is less like a terran preforming good splits to avert baneling damage and more like connecting a perfect baneling hit on a pack of marines only to see a couple of them die. If WMs are only killing a couple lings after ~14 minutes into a game, they are not efficient at all, and there is not much the terran player can do about it. This would lead to more stable and possibly more boring play and unit compostions, which I am against.

+ Show Spoiler +

Reavers were very coin-flippy with glitchy scarabs, but that is a bit besides the point.

The risk of friendly fire with tanks and spider mines is great for adding depth to the game. Zealot bombs were one of my favorite things to see in BW. The difference here is that those things were more readily identified as strategies by the players and spectators, where as the widow mine detonations are more likely to be identified as a glitch instead of respecting an awesome play during a large late game battle, which is rather anti-climactic.

On March 18 2013 15:44 IdrA wrote:

you wanna know why everyone ends up making ad hominem attacks on you? its because you're legitly, genuinely, dumb. im not saying that as an insult or anything. you just don't think well. so you keep saying things that are untrue and missing points that are very clearly made. so people get frustrated and tell you to fuck off. its been a pattern since the start of sc2. you're slow but even you should get it by now.

On March 18 2013 18:08 Rainling wrote:

I think it's identifiable by spectators if zergs move-command small groups of zerglings into clumps of units to deal splash damage to the terran. If spectators are unable to easily identify when terrans target fire widow mines onto banelings, that's not a huge issue in my opinion.

You said that a group of units went straight over a group of widow mines and didn't detonate them. If this is true, that should be fixed because widow mines should automatically deal damage to units that run directly above them. If they ran to the side of the attack radius, then that's fine and simply means that the effective radius of the widow mine is different dependent on the movement speed of units.

I'm guessing casters, particularly analytical casters, will understand the widow mine AI soon enough and the apparent randomness of the mine won't be much of an issue for spectators.

On March 18 2013 18:13 avilo wrote:


lmao you're one to talk idra. Everything you just said applies to yourself more than it ever has me
edit: anyways, we got a few sour apples de-railing the thread...

Just refer to morrow's last post about how the widow mine works, or a previous post i made in the thread describing the exact same thing.

How the mine works:

1) acquires first target and closest to come within the 5 range
2) if the unit leaves the range it acquires new target within the 5 range
3) if you manually right click your opponent's units, you reset the widow mine's targetting

The question is, let's say a Zergling runs past the mine and then out of the activation range.

Then let's say 20 more Zerglings run into activation range as the first slips out of it...which one is auto-targeted and how can a player tell? It's impossible to tell visually right?

On March 18 2013 18:45 J.E.G. wrote:
I agree.

It happens at 13:15 of this video (17:45 ingame time of game 6).

I was wrong in my original statement. Four active and perfectly spread mines do detonate, but it seems like they kill hardly any lings and the mutas come out untouched. Is this because WMs really don't do splash to air units if they target ground? All of these details about what works and what doesn't just makes WM's seem.... weird.

I am guessing they will need some work in the end, but more time to understand it does seem like the best remedy, as you mentioned.

On March 18 2013 16:18 `dunedain wrote:


The funny thing is, no one really cares what you think.

Haven't you ever learned that if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. Because all you're doing now is not adding anything constructive to this conversation other than your over-inflated ego and and some deep seated hate.

Instead of continually replying with taunts and coming off as a jerk, it would make more sense to take it to PMs, so you won't look like such an arrogant fool.

Either that, or participate in the thread like a decent human being.

It's your choice, but ask yourself honestly, are you acting like a douche right now? And there's no way to hide from the answer that rings true from within you.

Just my two cents.