EPTMath on Widow Mines -- How STLife Dodged the Shots - Page 11
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Account252508
3454 Posts
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WalkinDead
88 Posts
On March 19 2013 23:04 reikai wrote: + Show Spoiler + This explains a lot of the game on Daybreak, especially the battle in the the bottom middle base where Day[9] was even confused as to why Life's army took almost no damage. Back to bio-tank? :[ bio tank is gonna get shreeddded by mutalisk ling/bane runbys | ||
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vNmMasterT
68 Posts
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:31 Lone wrote: On the contrary, the math proves that it's possible to quite literally sneak entire masses of Zerglings over minefields by properly positioning a few "lead Zerglings" inbetween mines. It's a very complicated micro trick, but it could be important in the future. I was also thinking about what would happen if players were to create a wedge formation with their Zerglings. As long as the point of the wedge cuts between mines, the entire mass could go straight through, as each Zergling in turn would hit the edge of the adjacent mine's radius before any Zerglings hit the middle of the radius. Thanks to everyone for the support and comments! This went far further than I'd ever expected. I will agree that there is potential in this, but you are acting like Life somehow knew about this or was actually doing something smart, when he wasn't(well there were probably shittons of things he was doing smart, but not anything close ot this). If this had any relevance on what he was doing, the mines would not be detonating, they however were. Furtheremore I'm hardly convinced that a zergling army needs to have some front zerglings when they can take the detonations in the face like Life did and come out with hardly any deaths, or better yet just send a few zerglings to bait all the mines. So yeah, I think this thread is at best confusing and at worst based on incorrect statement to get more views. | ||
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Lone
7 Posts
On March 21 2013 06:30 Zarahtra wrote: I will agree that there is potential in this, but you are acting like Life somehow knew about this or was actually doing something smart, when he wasn't(well there were probably shittons of things he was doing smart, but not anything close ot this). If this had any relevance on what he was doing, the mines would not be detonating, they however were. Furtheremore I'm hardly convinced that a zergling army needs to have some front zerglings when they can take the detonations in the face like Life did and come out with hardly any deaths, or better yet just send a few zerglings to bait all the mines. So yeah, I think this thread is at best confusing and at worst based on incorrect statement to get more views. I used the title I did because that was how the idea came to my attention. Baiting or forcing detonations on 1 mine is not always possible, due to time constraints or the simple fact that an enemy army is sitting ontop of or near the mines. There are other possibilities, however, I'm just pointing out that with some good technique, a Zerg can run over the mines if he has no other options. Whether or not Life knew about this, consciously or subconsciously, I wouldn't know. I think it's very likely that he realized on a conceptual level that he was able to do something like this, even if he didn't understand how or why. I'm taking a situation I observed occurring and explaining it with math. At no point in the thread do I claim that Life did calculations in his head or that Life understood what was going on. I made a suggestion because I doubt that Life would intentionally run his Zerglings over known minefields if he thought that they would all score 35 kill shots. And again, in the particular situation noted by several posters, it's true that all of the mines did detonate. In other situations during the 4 games, however, they didn't -- at least not when they should have. I can think of one distinct one (which I noted on page 10); perhaps two, where this was the case. | ||
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KillingVector
United States96 Posts
On March 20 2013 17:29 MilesTeg wrote: ? This has nothing to do with the formula, OP was just just trying to calculate the effective range. There's nothing complicated about it, I don't think you understand. And yes it's certainly working as intended. This is interesting, but it doesn't really sound like it is working as intended. Blizzard will probably add some interval of time after the initial 1.5s delay, where the mine is "armed" and doesn't need to wait for another delay. | ||
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PH
United States6173 Posts
On March 21 2013 06:21 vNmMasterT wrote: Imo doing “micro trick” this is hardly worth the risk. Why risk having the mine triggered at clumped lings (which will happen if your timing following the runby ling is not exactly correct) when you can guarantee safe passage of the ling pack by just sacrificing 1 ling? It worked for Life. | ||
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kevinmon
United States540 Posts
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Kingsky
Singapore298 Posts
On March 21 2013 04:27 monkybone wrote: yep he's calculating sines and cosines like a calculator i think he just figured it out in serenpidity when playing or watching replays  Of course i could be wrong and he actually used maths, if so, i would be very impressed | ||
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Rainling
United States456 Posts
On March 20 2013 18:15 papaz wrote: If only I had a dollar everytime a developer "knows what they were doing and could anticipate how it would turn out" I would never have to work again. Can we agree that this "mechanic" that you can actually run across widow mines without triggering them is kinda of a big thing in the game? It's not just a "small" cute feature. So you are designing a game. You are showing off your new units to the public. You demonstrate the unit for your audience "here is a mine, the purpose of this is some aoe effect, area control and look how it works in the battle". Now if Blizzard anticipated that "hey, remember that even if this units is a mine there are cute things you can do so that it doesn't fire at all" you don't think this woud be mentioned AT ALL? They just go silently about a freaking unit that is supposed to blow up stuff can be DISREGARDED if you work out its "mechanics"? It's just some "easter egg" that just got discovered by the community? I know these subjects are sensitive here at TL because of the hardocre nature of many of the players/people here but here is the simplest way I can say this: This is a mine, the purpose of the mine is to blow up stuff. Blizzard adds different timers to it to balance out how it works. The timer could be there so that when you discover it you can run away, or you can have time to "gun it down" before it blows up. It's certainly not there so that you can abuse the "lock on to target" and "relock on to target" indefinetely so that it NEVER EVER goes off if you are good enough. If that was intended you bet Blizzard would have mentioned this when presenting this new unit. Like I said, this isn't just a tiny thing that got discovered. It's freaking HUGE. A good example of Blizzard not mentioning something they intended to be in the game is the carrier micro change. Blizzard said they were thinking about changing how the carrier leash range worked, but they didn't disclose that they changed it in a patch of HotS and people had to discover it on their own. I think you might be making too many assumptions. You can't abuse the mine so it never targets your lings, no matter what, you can abuse the mine so it never targets your lings unless the opponent takes the time to right click a ling right as it enters the mine attack radius. This doesn't seem that unreasonable to me, considering it takes a fair amount of micro, as well as knowing fairly accurately the position of a widow mine, to avoid widow mine shots. Widow mines can be positioned in narrow chokes created by buildings where avoiding widow mine shots is no longer possible. Besides, the alternative is the widow mine killing or damaging one sacrificial unit- either way, it's not much of a loss for the opposing player. I don't agree that, if Blizzard realized that avoiding widow mine shots entirely was possible under some circumstances, they would immediately conclude that this was a bug that must be fixed. You're entitled to your own opinion though, I don't know Blizzard's thought process. | ||
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Zaixer
Sweden82 Posts
That cant be what Blizzard intended. It is something that will frustrate casual players and Blizzard will fix it. | ||
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NarutO
Germany18837 Posts
Widowmines are a very good defensive thing, prevent runbys and can save bunkers/turrets but to actually be applied in battle you would have to be a genius with some luck. The problem in my opinion (offensively) is that they do trigger range. If the mine were to explode with a good amount of AoE when there's a unit running over it, it would be a far more efficient way of offence and would allow zoning. This way, most of the time the fast zerglings will be close to your units and you get the same AoE the zerg gets which spells disaster since Terrans biggest fear is actually AoE. No AoE means no victory over Terran, be it banelings, fungal or even the very own mines of Terran. I am pretty sure had Flash played tanks and used mines defensively or offensively in the purpose of zoning only he would have won against Life's very aggressive muta/ling/bane style. Tanks have bigger range and a good amount of splash and can target effectively even before the battle begins. They can also force a situation and/or fight upon the zerg, while mines can pressure but not nesseccary force fights. The real problem for Terran were never the zergling numbers, as marines with good upgrades and medivacs behind eat zerglings alive, but the banelings. Now you can take out zerglings faster as they suffer from mines, but the likelyhood of you being hit by is is also there. The banelings will probably be close to you, if not in your force before the mines it and if they hit, banelings die and do damage regardless. Kiting back over a mine field allows for more mines to trigger, but since zerglings are faster than bio and mutalisks are as well, this could be another potentially danger for Terran getting freehits in addition to the mines. Even if mines give the benefit of mobility , they cost you a lot of possible pressure and zoning you can do with tanks. They also don't buffer damage, as tanks would and they force you to play marine/marauder as units will get close and you cannot play marine medivac mine against muta/ling/bane as you will have banelings connect. Mines are cheaper, but that cannot compensate the need of marauders for example. In my opinion marine/tank should and will become standard again and mines will be used to cut off reinforcement pathways and/or expansions OR zone out your push to prevent an engagement from the Zerg from multiple angles. Thats my take on it~ | ||
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Addicted2Dreaming
Canada116 Posts
On March 21 2013 16:02 Zaixer wrote: So basically you can run a 200 supply army straight over a mine without it firing as long as the leading unit happen to be slightly off center? That cant be what Blizzard intended. It is something that will frustrate casual players and Blizzard will fix it. 1 mine blowing up 50 lings or banelings is just as frustrating. | ||
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
v It was more in response to the people talking about Life calculating this ingame and such, I never criticized the OP. | ||
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NarutO
Germany18837 Posts
On March 21 2013 16:50 Shikyo wrote: I doubt Life used any maths for this. You don't really even need maths. He probably just used some logic and observation "Oh, the mine doesn't detonate if I run the ling out of range in time. Oh I see, if I now make it switch targets after that it never has the time to go off". You really need no maths at all for this to get a good idea, you can just experiment for like 15 minutes. Some people are not satisfied with it working, they want to understand why it works like it does. Ofcourse you are right that Life probably didn't calculate and use math for it on the fly and figured out how a mine works, doesn't mean that the OP is not useful information. | ||
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madnessman
United States1581 Posts
On March 21 2013 06:21 vNmMasterT wrote: Imo doing “micro trick” this is hardly worth the risk. Why risk having the mine triggered at clumped lings (which will happen if your timing following the runby ling is not exactly correct) when you can guarantee safe passage of the ling pack by just sacrificing 1 ling? It might be safer for most players to just sacrifice a ling but high level players could still benefit from this "micro trick". | ||
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figq
12519 Posts
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MilesTeg
France1271 Posts
On March 21 2013 06:55 KillingVector wrote: This is interesting, but it doesn't really sound like it is working as intended. Blizzard will probably add some interval of time after the initial 1.5s delay, where the mine is "armed" and doesn't need to wait for another delay. That would be pretty bad for the Terran IMO. Because in that case a smart Zerg will detonate the mines easily with a small pack of lings. And possibly do more damage to the marines than to the Zerg army. No, I think that's really the smartest way for the mines to behave. And I think people are overreacting a bit, for 2 reasons: - you'll have a bio army close to the mines, preventing the Zerg from doing this kind of stuff. - the thing you really want to target is banelings, and the Zerg can't really micro them that way. Not just because they're slower, but because you want to move your banelings towards the bio army. You can't really pick your angle with banelings, you want to run them towards marines. Except he didn't actually do that. | ||
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MilesTeg
France1271 Posts
On March 21 2013 03:31 Lone wrote: In the specific situation you referenced, it would appear that Life did not actually achieve the results noted in this thread. However, there were other situations throughout the series in which he was able to do so. There may have been other situations in the tournament as well. For one, in the same game, I distinctly remember Life doing a runby into Flash's third. His lings went straight through the edge of the mine's radius, and the caster expressed his surprise that it didn't go off. Whether Life knew of the trick or even where the mines were is irrelevant. In cases where the mines should have gone off based on Blizzard's description of the unit, they didn't. Whether this is intended or not is also unknown. So yes, in the engagement where there were five mines on the southern ramp outside of Life's fourth, this does not apply, as so nicely diagrammed on page 6. You are correct in that particular circumstance, and I'll gladly add it to the OP if you'd really like people to understand. I'm going to be going through the games today and noting specific circumstances. Thanks for the input, MilesTeg and others who have made this apparent. However, the information in my article is still valid as far as I'm concerned. Oh, didn't see that you answered. Fair enough. Didn't want to sound like a dick; I just think most people coming in this thread got confused, and got the wrong conclusion. When doing a run by, it can probably be useful, although I'd argue that it's better to just run a couple zerglings to detonate the mines and neutralize them for a few seconds. | ||
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Veriol
Czech Republic502 Posts
And for the title of the thread .. quite simple if it wasnt for "how ST_life dodged the shots" most of you wouldnt even open the thread nor read it | ||
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