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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On March 20 2013 03:44 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 03:07 atarianimo wrote:Should note that the Terran can counter this trick by manually targeting the larger pack of zerglings. You can't manually target anything with Widow Mines. Their attack is automatic and there's nothing you can do as a Terran player to alter what it fires at other than unburrowing the mine to reset its lock on protocol. Personally I think this mechanic is beautiful and exactly the sort of thing this game needs. Widow Mines just like Spider Mines are units with great potential but the fact they are automated machines makes them a liability if the opponent is good enough, that raises the skill cap of other races playing against Terrans but it also means that higher echelons of play Terrans have to figure out other tactics and strategies to use if their Widow Mines are not going to be as effective.
False, you can change the target of the Widow Mine to any unit within it's range, resetting the attack timer.
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On March 20 2013 03:48 ZjiublingZ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 03:44 Vindicare605 wrote:On March 20 2013 03:07 atarianimo wrote:Should note that the Terran can counter this trick by manually targeting the larger pack of zerglings. You can't manually target anything with Widow Mines. Their attack is automatic and there's nothing you can do as a Terran player to alter what it fires at other than unburrowing the mine to reset its lock on protocol. Personally I think this mechanic is beautiful and exactly the sort of thing this game needs. Widow Mines just like Spider Mines are units with great potential but the fact they are automated machines makes them a liability if the opponent is good enough, that raises the skill cap of other races playing against Terrans but it also means that higher echelons of play Terrans have to figure out other tactics and strategies to use if their Widow Mines are not going to be as effective. False, you can change the target of the Widow Mine to any unit within it's range, resetting the attack timer.
Oh I didn't realize you could reset the Widow Mine attack without unburrowing it, this is very useful to know.
Either way there's no way to actually force a widow mine to attack a particular target, although with this trick you can adjust what "clump" of units it does target.
Requires a lot of micro to do that consistently, which again is awesome.
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+ Show Spoiler +On March 20 2013 03:14 Rainling wrote:
Nice analysis! Having an exact equation is helpful. It might be worth mentioning in the OP that you have to right click, not a left click, different units to change targets with a widow mine. I think a lot of terrans don't realize that yet.
Edit: Please, please, please Blizzard don't change the mine mechanics. They make the unit harder to use, but they allow for so much micro potential, which makes widow mines much more interesting to watch and play with and against. If the widow mine is deemed too weak because of this, just buff the damage of the widow mine or something.
It's possible to countermicro versus this kind of ling positioning, for example by retargeting other zerglings than the one that initially entered the widow mine radius. This does not make the widow mines useless, it just adds the ability to micro against them and countermicro that micro, and so on.
I feel like the purpose of Micro is to make a unit more effective then its default attack. A normal example, is that the siege tank AI might attack only one unit but with better micro it attacks a group. However, in the case of the widow mine; The unit sometimes won't attack anything within its effective range.
You must compensate for this, by manually target fire the group of units, with less then 1.5 second response time. Which may or may not have been neccessary, as there is no way to foreknow when it will go off and when it won't with such a short response times and..... subsequently, your microing may have prevented it from firing if the new retargeted unit is now out of range.
I don't consider this added Micro ability, I consider this over-compensating for a defective unit.
In the MLG tournament, the widowmine looked positively broken to a spectator, and the odd and unrelaible behavior of them spawned this thread. I think that know we understand the mechanics, that doesn't make it any less intuitive or correct.
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I'm surprised nobody in this thread mentions how MC's phoenixes picked up burrowed mines with graviton beam before they could fire. They could do it because of the 1.5 sec delay as well
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Another excellent graphical representation...
Mind if I add it to the OP?
Never expected the thread to get this much attention! Thanks to the mods for the spotlight and the addition of MorroW's game play-oriented explanation.
I added a picture with my mad paint skillz -- hopefully that should suffice.
I'm just as excited as all of you to see where this goes. It could significantly raise the skill ceiling for anti-mine micro, considering how difficult it is to pull off, and how shockingly effective it is when done correctly.
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On March 19 2013 23:12 Surili wrote:
Could you possibly make an image to help me understand? I'm pretty dim.
I made a quick illustration that might be of help.
Basically:
*A mine has a maximum activation radius of 5, indicated by the big circle. Any unit passing through this circle will trigger the 1.5 sec activation time fo the mine.
*A unit passing through the circle has to travel a distance (d), that is a function of the closest distance to the mine (r). If the unit is fast enough to cover the distance d in 1.5 sec, the mine will not be able to hit it.
*The closer to the center of the circle the unit passes, the longer the distance d gets. In other words, the closer to the center you get the faster you need to travel to avoid activating the mine.
*There is a critical distance from the mine that is the closest that a unit of a given speed can travel without activating the mine. This is indicated by the red and blue areas in the circle. The top zergling, labelled 'z', will pass through the blue area and is safe. The other three zerglings passes through the red area and will activate the mine. However, if the top zergling enters the circle first, it will be locked by the mine. When it leaves the circle, the mine will retarget one of the other zerglings, which by then are already part of the way through the circle, meaning that they most likely will be able to leave before 1.5 additional seconds have passed. This means that if the top zergling enters the activation range first, all lings will survive.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5KBJmDL.jpg)
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I have a boner right now. ty
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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? :[
Back to learning how to control units.
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I'm not sure if I understand well. If I do understand well I don't see how any of this came into play in Life vs Flash.
The thing about that Flash vs Life game wasn't that the mines didn't detonate. They DID detonate, they just didn't do as much damage as everyone expected. Maybe they detonated on some overlords? I can't remember well.
I've been trying to find the exact moment it happened in the finals. Does anyone remember which game it was? I don't think it was the game on Daybreak.
Also if that's the way mines work, then you wouldn't need to micro anything as Zerg. The mine would target the first zergling automatically, and since the ling will die to marines it will reset.
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This is fantastic. Thanks! The concept seems so straightforward given the mechanics, but the actual list of units and distance is great.
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On March 20 2013 04:31 MilesTeg wrote:
I'm not sure if I understand well. If I do understand well I don't see how any of this came into play in Life vs Flash.
The thing about that Flash vs Life game wasn't that the mines didn't detonate. They DID detonate, they just didn't do as much damage as everyone expected. Maybe they detonated on some overlords? I can't remember well.
I've been trying to find the exact moment it happened in the finals. Does anyone remember which game it was? I don't think it was the game on Daybreak.
Also if that's the way mines work, then you wouldn't need to micro anything as Zerg. The mine would target the first zergling automatically, and since the ling will die to marines it will reset.
If you (or anyone) would link to the specific game w/ game time of the engagement to discuss that. We might have to wait for the replays (they are being released yes?) to be sure about every engagement though.
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On March 20 2013 02:17 Plexa wrote:
Well I'm going to spotlight this thread because its PSA math club worthy.
There was no way I was going to attempt to explain it with math, but I noticed this happening in the game. It's not a new idea and frankly, I'd be very surprised if the Blizz programmers did this on accident. I'm sure they're working as intended.
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Your conclusion is that choosing the right angle is the key for the Zerg player. If I understand well, an even better thing to do would be to send one ling slightly ahead of the other ones.
Two things can happen. Either:
1) Your ling dies to the Terran army, and the mine resets, leaving enough time for the rest of the lings to pass through
2) The mine detonates, and was wasted on a single ling
And all you need to do is organize your army before moving in, which seems easier.
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Day[9] must love you for this ^_^
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Also a simple terran solution to this would be to always keep the mines in pairs, one right behind the first one so that the lings reach the other mines radius when leving the first one. Instead of keeping the mines side to side.
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On March 20 2013 04:47 Jawcub wrote:
Also a simple terran solution to this would be to always keep the mines in pairs, one right behind the first one so that the lings reach the other mines radius when leving the first one. Instead of keeping the mines side to side.
Well, mines automatically only shoot at units that aren't targeted by other mines. If you keep multiple close together, the enemy requires multiple of the first runner units.
I noted down a few aspects of the mine in another thread.
Oh, also, if the unit dies while the missile is flying, the missile will impact on its last position. So, in theory you can maximize the damage with stutter-stepping, if you are lucky. But this can easily cancel the mine's preparation phase, if the unit dies before the missile is launched.
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See not all of the bnet bros are dumb qq'ers 
Great post IndigO! Glad to see it got the love here it deserved.
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On March 20 2013 04:47 Jawcub wrote:
Also a simple terran solution to this would be to always keep the mines in pairs, one right behind the first one so that the lings reach the other mines radius when leving the first one. Instead of keeping the mines side to side.
The thing with keeping the mines in pairs is that they could (and usually do) both target the initial ling and can waste a shot unnecessarily. I believe the real solution to this is proper widow mine spacing. If you keep the mines properly spaced almost within the 5 range of each other, you will definitely take out those small packs of lings and banes, since all the active widow mines further down target the remaining units that survived the initial blasts.
Usually when spaced too close together, the initial splash will kill some shit, but that just creates a buffer for the units in the back to swarm through. With properly spaced widow mines, you'll definitely get bang for your buck, and no more unnecessary auto targeting of the same unit.
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Don't forget this is all stuff that people are just discovering. It will be weeks until Terrans learn how to stagger mines, and place mines in the best spots around the map, etc. Then people will learn how to avoid those spots, then terrans will change how placement works yet again. The fact that window mine are delay activated is a small mechanic compared to what it's actually used for in the game.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BIZ18Vil.jpg)
