Sorry if this is in the wrong section, I fit it as best as I could. I'm pretty new here. Anyways, I'm a regular over on the Bnet forums, and recently I posted some calculations I had on widow mines. However, being the Bnet forums, it was largely ignored, despite having significant merit and getting claim from the few people who did respond.
This is a primarily math based post, so bear with me.
Here's my transplanted post.
This little tidbit came to my attention during the recent MLG, and I decided to try to crunch some numbers in order to fully understand what it means in terms of gameplay. I noticed in particular during Flash vs Life that Life was able to run through a number of Flash's minefields while only taking a few shots, far fewer than he should have.
The Theory: Essentially, units are able to run through widow mine's attack radius without activating them due to the 1.5 second delay on the widow mine's activation. After a unit leaves the mine's radius without activating the mine, the mine chooses a new target and attempts to "lock on" to that unit. It repeats until it finally locks on and fires.
So, widow mines have a lower "effective radius" than actual radius.
The Math: I based my calculations on chord lengths using the following formula: Chord Length = C = 2sqrt((r^2)-(d^2)) I then solved for d, getting: d = sqrt((r^2)-(C/2)^2),
Which we can plug r=5 into, so my final formula became:
d = sqrt(25-(C/2)^2), Where: d = distance to Mine at closest point on chord (AKA Effective Radius) C = unit speed*1.5.
Unit speed is calculated as range units traveled over 1 ingame second. So if you take your unit speed and multiply it by 1.5, you get the distance a unit can travel within a widow mine radius before activating the mine.
I bolded d because it's the most important, as we'll see soon.
For example, if we take Speedlings on creep, which have a C value of 9.163, we can do the following: sqrt(25-(9.163/2)^2) = 2.002, or just 2. This means that speedlings must travel on a chord which comes within 2 range of the widow mine in order to activate it before exiting the mine's range.
What this means in terms of Gameplay: I hope that by now you're starting to understand what I'm getting at...
Based on the speed of the unit traveling over the mine, a mine has a radius in which the unit must pass in order for the mine to activate. I dubbed this radius "effective radius"
Let's again look at Zerglings, which have an above calculated d value of 2. What that value means is that a speedling on creep, when traveling in a straight line through a mine's radius, must pass within 2 range of the mine in order to activate it.
And this is why Life was able to seemingly magically take Zero damage from mines. He likely realized, consciously or subconsciously, that if he attacked with the proper formation and using a move command, he could get mines to lock onto Zerglings which would not pass within 2 range of the burrowed mines. Once the first wave passed, the mines attempt to lock onto units based on proximity, so the chances of one locking onto a Zergling which just entered it's radius were near minimal. That led to a cascading "mine confusion" where they could not lock onto any unit for long enough to activate. More on this in the below bolded section.
Other unit examples: (All values in effective widow mine ranges): + Show Spoiler +
Mutalisks: 4.0 SpeedBanes on creep: 4.1 Speedlings off of creep: 3.5 Speedbanes off of creep: 4.5 Roaches W/Glial on creep: 4.1 Roaches w/Glial off creep: 4.4
Charging Chargelot: 2.1 Phoenix: 3.85
Hellion: 3.85 Stimmed units: 4.3
And here's a picture representation of the idea:
It's not a lot of leeway for most units, but speedlings, mutalisks and banelings are very able to run right over minefields without taking many, if any, hits for this very reason. Furthermore, as pointed out by Terranic, once the first wave gets through the mines, the mine will start to select units based on proximity. Given that, the very close units will already be halfway over the mine's radius. Meaning that they need to travel 5 range units in 1.5 seconds, which nearly all of the above mentioned units are able to do. Any unit then traveling over the mine with a speed of at least 3.33(...) will be able escape the mine prior to activation, creating a cascading effect in which the mine is never able to activate and instead repeatedly changes targets.
- Credit to Mitosis for this excellent graphic! And another: + Show Spoiler +
- Credit to Ahli for another sweet graphic, and Prplppleatr for analyzing it!
Of course, all of this only applies to units traveling in a straight line over the mine. However, this is relatively simple to do, as a move command will achieve this effect.
Conclusion: Properly leading with well positioned units in muta-ling-baneling packs can allow a player to run over a minefield with near impunity. Use it if you can. It's a cool tactic.
And that's all for now. Comments? Questions? Concerns?
On March 18 2013 14:15 MorroW wrote: how widow mine works they lock onto a target. first one who enter within 5 range OR best unit (which is basically the closest unit to the widow mine) once they lock into a target it begins channeling for 1.5 seconds (ingame)
if the unit leaves the 5 range, dies or player manually switches target during the channeling period - the widow mine repeats the process
so this is why mines sometimes dont attack, sometimes kill terran and sometimes kill zerg so lets say you run in with zerglings against marines and a widow mine. the widow mine locks onto the first zergling who enters. if the zergling dies to marines, it changes target and has to wait another 1.5 sek, if that ling dies to marines it changes target etc. so it appears not to be attacking at all. if the zergling runs past the widow mine, behind the marines for example it switches target as well (the target has to be within 5 range the entire lockdown process)
as terran so in a fight, you basically as terran ideally want to switch targets between the zerglings until the banelings enter range and then you target the bane and let the mines be. second option is to stay with the marines, burst down as many lings as you can, and hopefully (and probably) you will kill all zerglings which were targetted automatically by the widow mines before they finish channeling and then banelings enter and you target the mines onto the banes
as zerg as a zerg player, you know that your first zerglings will be targetted, so use your frontal line in move command behind the terran army and attack with the rest of your zerglings normally. if you do this just right (and terran doesnt) the mines will all fire on your lings that are behind his bio army and kill everything he got
widow mines appear random at the first glance of it. but the more you play around with them the more you realize how much you (as terran or zerg) can manipulate them and make them do exactly what you want them to. its not a user friendly unit at all because of how it can completely backfire using widow mines where as a siege tank you know will do a certain amount of damage. things like this is really beautiful and what is making bw a very different game from sc2. in bw there were tons of "OP" units that crushed your opponent or did close to nothing or killed yourself where as in sc2 its much more predictable whats expected of a unit because the complexity of it its not very deep
i think the widow mines are slightly too strong right now. but if your a zerg reading this i hope it helped abit how to make the widow mines turn against the terran instead of raping everything you got
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.
On March 19 2013 23:12 Surili wrote: Could you possibly make an image to help me understand? I'm pretty dim.
^ This sounds like very useful information, but also very confusing for ppl with low math skillz. An image is a cool idea. Also video showing how this works (or when it doesn't - like when unit moves too slow or in the wrong path over mines).
Might be a lot to ask, but it sounds like you're on to something really important here! Put some effort so everybody could understand it easily :D
Given that, the very close units will already be halfway over the mine's radius.
I think that's the most important point in the whole piece. Lead with lings, and the even the slower stuff that follows won't get hit.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, the Flash v Life engagement occurred off creep (http://bcove.me/gt7scsrw, 13ish minutes*). So this statement:
He realized that if he attacked from the correct angle, he could get mines to lock onto Zerglings which would not pass within 2 range of the burrowed mines.
...seems a bit misleading. The range should probably say 3.5.
* EDIT: The mines were actually at the edge of the creep, so the effective radius is going to fall between 2 and 3.5.
This is huge! A lot of people might have thought the widow mine is OP, but if you can micro against it like this, that has huge implications for all the terran matchups.
On March 19 2013 23:12 Surili wrote: Could you possibly make an image to help me understand? I'm pretty dim.
I cannot make an image, but I can explain it without any math.
A widow mine picks a target that comes within it's range. If it is a slow moving target it will fire at it. If it is a fast moving target it will only fire if the targeted unit gets very close to the mine. A widow mine can only have on target at a time.
On March 19 2013 23:12 Surili wrote: Could you possibly make an image to help me understand? I'm pretty dim.
^ This sounds like very useful information, but also very confusing for ppl with low math skillz. An image is a cool idea.
No images to contribute, but imagine a circle. Now draw a line segment that is inside the circle. The longest line segment that you can have inside the circle is one that crosses through the center. The further the line is from the center, the shorter the line segment will be. The extreme case for the shortest line segment possible is a line that is tangent to the circle.
The widow mine is the center of that circle. People will instinctively think that they need to stay outside that circle to avoid damage from the widow mine. But because of the arming delay for the widow mine's attack, you can enter that circle as long as you get back out fast enough.
So going back to that mental image of line segments going through the circle. How quickly you can move from one end of the line to the other depends on how long the line is (the longer the line, the longer it takes to move that far) and how fast the unit is (a faster unit can cross a fixed length line in less time than a slower unit). A faster unit can run closer to the widow mine and still be safe.
The widow mine has a unit radius of 0.5 that is added to the range. Because the widow mine is burrowed, units can move across it. So it's actual range is 5.5.
Fear my mad MS Paint skills: The black dot is the w-mine, the black circle the edge of the trigger range (radius 5). Suppose a unit passes by over the dark gray line, then the light grey line indicates the "effective radius".
The numbers in the first post are the maximal effective radii for various units to still trigger the mine (that is, the mine fires before the unit exits the radius 5 circle). The faster the unit, the closer it can pass by the w-mine without getting hit.
This is somewhat true when the target is moving quickly but for targets that are slow the effectiveness of the mine is higher... so for example a stimmed marine might dodge the bullet , but non stimmed will not altho going trough same path ... It is perfect then for all matchups because a ling has higher chance of avoiding the mine ... while a zelot has lower since it has higher hp and slower movement speed.
Awesome! Maths! Nice job on interpreting it, I wouldn't have thought to work out a radius that is the closest you can get without activating, I guess the counter to this strategy is to manually target the mines on units further from the mine (after the initial ling).
Awesome job ! I had a similar feelings without being able to explaining it, thanks to you i know. Wonder if top players, other than life, will start using this information in their gameplay.
On March 20 2013 01:02 skyafterrain wrote: Hope Blizzard will change the mine mechanics soon, I would suggest the mine will always shoot the locked target although it runs out of radius.
Why won't we suggest blizzard that hellbats should fly while we're at it?
On March 20 2013 01:02 skyafterrain wrote: Hope Blizzard will change the mine mechanics soon, I would suggest the mine will always shoot the locked target although it runs out of radius.
Why won't we suggest blizzard that hellbats should fly while we're at it?
Both suggestions are bad, but something must be done taking these calculations. Mines were designed to stop zerglings, and making it so easy to disable them should not be possible. But then again, terrans will figure out way to stop what zergs are doing, either through positioning, composition or micro, and that's why this game is so beautiful.
On March 20 2013 00:51 StagaDish wrote: Lone, we might have to call you "The DeWidower" from now on...
Widow Un-maker.
Edit:
Also fuck me this is awesome. I love that people have to learn speed - widow mine range benchmarks to reach a higher level of play. It was shitty as a Flash fan to see, but I'm glad somebody has been able to figure out so precisely what happened.
On March 20 2013 01:02 skyafterrain wrote: Hope Blizzard will change the mine mechanics soon, I would suggest the mine will always shoot the locked target although it runs out of radius.
Why won't we suggest blizzard that hellbats should fly while we're at it?
Both suggestions are bad, but something must be done taking these calculations. Mines were designed to stop zerglings, and making it so easy to disable them should not be possible. But then again, terrans will figure out way to stop what zergs are doing, either through positioning, composition or micro, and that's why this game is so beautiful.
Maybe drilling claws should make the mines acquire targets just a bit quicker to avoid this issue?
Great job on actually calculating this. Though I'm a little confused about the reactions. I thought it was common knowledge that you can pass mines like this...
On March 20 2013 01:02 skyafterrain wrote: Hope Blizzard will change the mine mechanics soon, I would suggest the mine will always shoot the locked target although it runs out of radius.
Why won't we suggest blizzard that hellbats should fly while we're at it?
Both suggestions are bad, but something must be done taking these calculations. Mines were designed to stop zerglings, and making it so easy to disable them should not be possible. But then again, terrans will figure out way to stop what zergs are doing, either through positioning, composition or micro, and that's why this game is so beautiful.
I was being cynical. The widow-mine is a very strong and almost imba unit (almost, because now it seem like we got a semi-solution that, as always, requires extreme skills out of zergs players). If anything, this unit should be nerffed, not buffed. HotS is no longer a game of a-move. Stop looking for self-microing units.
All terran has to do agains this is keep a zerg in the path a bit longer. I think we will see really unique play to do this. People will sac a marine or marauder in a widowmine field to keep enemy units there for longer.
Very nice job starting this thread. However, I do feel like there are some things not covered. Most importantly, I think you should analyze unit speed more carefully, based on the direction of travel.
SC2 shape theory - it explains how I came up with the picture below. Skip if you don't care about it . + Show Spoiler +
As I understand it, the model behind starcraft 2 has a square based hex grid (i.e.: what we see when building new stuff). That is what the game engine uses for distance calculations (1 such square is 1 unit of distance).
Because of this, a radius of 5 will not actually be a circle with a diameter of 10 units. It will actually be a square-cornered shape, defined by the grid units which are covered by an imaginary circle of radius 5+ half of the size of the modeled unit generating it. A widow mine (I think) covers a single grid unit, so it will be a circle of 5+0.5 grid units.
I assume the "rules" are just like with everything else - round up to nearest integers. Therefore, every cell covered more than 50% will be part of the "radius". Here's an approximation of what I tried to explain:
Theoretically, being a "circle" a unit should pass it just as fast in any direction. However, given the actual shape and the addition of the unit hex, we can calculate that for a unit with a speed of 1 it will take:
- 11 seconds to clear the mine field, assuming it moves on the E6-O6 path (11 hexes total) - ~9.9 seconds, assuming it moves on the F2 -> N10 path (~9.89 hexes total)
Your original formula assumes the unit path through the "minefield" is a chord in a 5-radius circle. However: - the circle has a radius of 5.5 - the circle is not a circle, but a irregular shape, with square corners
Therefore, the formula is a lot more complex, having to take into account this "real" shape. For example, it the unit travels parallel to the grid sides (either perfectly horizontal or vertical), it will spend exactly the same amout of time in the minefield, regardless if it's passing over the hexes which contain the mine, or over / under it by 1 hex.
Please let me know if this makes sense to you or if I'm badly wrong about it .
On March 20 2013 02:19 moQbara wrote: Very nice job starting this thread. However, I do feel like there are some things not covered. Most importantly, I think you should analyze unit speed more carefully, based on the direction of travel.
SC2 shape theory - it explains how I came up with the picture below. Skip if you don't care about it . + Show Spoiler +
As I understand it, the model behind starcraft 2 has a square based hex grid (i.e.: what we see when building new stuff). That is what the game engine uses for distance calculations (1 such square is 1 unit of distance).
Because of this, a radius of 5 will not actually be a circle with a diameter of 10 units. It will actually be a square-cornered shape, defined by the grid units which are covered by an imaginary circle of radius 5+ half of the size of the modeled unit generating it. A widow mine (I think) covers a single grid unit, so it will be a circle of 5+0.5 grid units.
I assume the "rules" are just like with everything else - round up to nearest integers. Therefore, every cell covered more than 50% will be part of the "radius". Here's an approximation of what I tried to explain:
Theoretically, being a "circle" a unit should pass it just as fast in any direction. However, given the actual shape and the addition of the unit hex, we can calculate that for a unit with a speed of 1 it will take:
- 11 seconds to clear the mine field, assuming it moves on the E6-O6 path (11 hexes total) - ~9.9 seconds, assuming it moves on the F2 -> N10 path (~9.89 hexes total)
Your original formula assumes the unit path through the "minefield" is a chord in a 5-radius circle. However: - the circle has a radius of 5.5 - the circle is not a circle, but a irregular shape, with square corners
Therefore, the formula is a lot more complex, having to take into account this "real" shape. For example, it the unit travels parallel to the grid sides (either perfectly horizontal or vertical), it will spend exactly the same amout of time in the minefield, regardless if it's passing over the hexes which contain the mine, or over / under it by 1 hex.
Please let me know if this makes sense to you or if I'm badly wrong about it .
While this is likely spot on, I don't feel the added complexity to get the fully accurate picture is necessary to understand the Widow Mine mechanics and be able to use them to your advantage. OP's method should be more than sufficient for even high level play.
Well if mines ever become too easy to avoid, and Blizzard lets them remain the same forever, then we can still count on map makers to create maps with thinner chokes and more doodads. And although it would be obvious, Terrans can build structures at the edge of the mine's radius to prevent units from running through minefields in straight lines.
It's funny thinking back to game 4 between Life and Flash now and seeing how easy it would have been for Flash to get his mines to trigger. Rather than pulling back entire squads of marines and giving Life a clear path to run through his mines, he could have left his back row (~4 marines) to impede the path of the lings.
This kind of information is really cool, because I can only imagine it increasing the amount/types of micro required in battles where mines are involved.
so leading with a unit on the edge of the range and then getting out to create a targeting delay, allowing for a mass of quick units to go through safely - dewidowing.
On March 20 2013 02:29 Ryndika wrote: Does the mine take closest target or random target in range?
The mine takes the first target to enter the range. If the target exits the range before the mine fires, it will then reacquire another target. If more than one target is in range, it will acquire the closest target within range.
In terms of gameplay, this roughly translate by the following rules
- Dont place mines on creep unless the Z is using roaches or unless you lead with a sacrificial little pack of marines that will bait the whole ling army and hold position on top of mines (so that everything dies)
- if you want to place mines alone on the field (as opposed to use them with your bio), you should not place a mine on its own but create a field with mines within 3-4 range of each others (so that there is no safe path to run trough it without triggering anything)
- finally the best use of widow mines offensively seems to burrow them just in front of your bio with a good split from your part (so they're guaranteed to trigger to a good pack of lings because one ling would die to your bio before the mine actually firing)
On March 18 2013 14:15 MorroW wrote: how widow mine works they lock onto a target. first one who enter within 5 range OR best unit (which is basically the closest unit to the widow mine) once they lock into a target it begins channeling for 1.5 seconds (ingame)
if the unit leaves the 5 range, dies or player manually switches target during the channeling period - the widow mine repeats the process
so this is why mines sometimes dont attack, sometimes kill terran and sometimes kill zerg so lets say you run in with zerglings against marines and a widow mine. the widow mine locks onto the first zergling who enters. if the zergling dies to marines, it changes target and has to wait another 1.5 sek, if that ling dies to marines it changes target etc. so it appears not to be attacking at all. if the zergling runs past the widow mine, behind the marines for example it switches target as well (the target has to be within 5 range the entire lockdown process)
as terran so in a fight, you basically as terran ideally want to switch targets between the zerglings until the banelings enter range and then you target the bane and let the mines be. second option is to stay with the marines, burst down as many lings as you can, and hopefully (and probably) you will kill all zerglings which were targetted automatically by the widow mines before they finish channeling and then banelings enter and you target the mines onto the banes
as zerg as a zerg player, you know that your first zerglings will be targetted, so use your frontal line in move command behind the terran army and attack with the rest of your zerglings normally. if you do this just right (and terran doesnt) the mines will all fire on your lings that are behind his bio army and kill everything he got
widow mines appear random at the first glance of it. but the more you play around with them the more you realize how much you (as terran or zerg) can manipulate them and make them do exactly what you want them to. its not a user friendly unit at all because of how it can completely backfire using widow mines where as a siege tank you know will do a certain amount of damage. things like this is really beautiful and what is making bw a very different game from sc2. in bw there were tons of "OP" units that crushed your opponent or did close to nothing or killed yourself where as in sc2 its much more predictable whats expected of a unit because the complexity of it its not very deep
i think the widow mines are slightly too strong right now. but if your a zerg reading this i hope it helped abit how to make the widow mines turn against the terran instead of raping everything you got
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.
Widow mines - the reavers of SC2: they blow up your mineral line and in battle are quite unpredictable. Maybe we should start calling them reaver mines.
Yes, I know this post proves they're totally predictable, but when watching Life vs Flash they totally felt like reavers.
Curious what this means for Terran micro. Conc Shell (halfs the units speed!) Marauder micro? Walls to stop units from running past the mines? Or just closer positioned mines?
On March 20 2013 03:32 nidhogg11 wrote: Widow mines - the reavers of SC2: they blow up your mineral line and in battle are quite unpredictable. Maybe we should start calling them reaver mines.
Yes, I know this post proves they're totally predictable, but when watching Life vs Flash they totally felt like reavers.
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.
On March 20 2013 03:44 Vindicare605 wrote: 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.
Yes you can, during the 1.5 second window after the time bomb triggers you can focus something else within the Mine's range; the time bomb will reset and the Mine will shoot if the new target is still in range.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I must say this is a high-quality thread and reminds me of early WOL threads where people were first figuring out tactics like magic-boxing mutas and sock-folding, etc. Kudos to the OP for starting this.
Looks like widow mines have some complexity and tactical depth to them, and that bodes well for HOTS.
Pretty cool. In BW, the spider mines worked better against slower units anyway. Faster units could drag the mines around and damage the terran laying them. That's why meching terrans would often destroy their own mines while pushing.
There is one more factor which I do not think anyone mentioned.
Even after activation, Mine does not allway hit.
Max range of Mine is 5. So, if speedling mine activated leave this range after it activated, mine will explode at range 5 doing only splash damage. That may not effect speedling too mach, but for bigger units it can greatly reduce damage mine is dealing.
There are other micro ways to reduce damage - Blink same effect. Unit lieve mine radius, mine explode at place stalker was befor blink. Burrow - mine explode on place doing only splash damage only to primary unit.
Go invisible - same effect, mine explode in place units last time was seen.
Same rules apply to seeker missiles, which have mach longer time to fly range 13 to target, giving a lot of time to avoide dammage even after seeker missile activated. The only difference I belieev that seeker missile will pass range 13 after activation, so this method does not work for seeker missile.
On March 20 2013 05:27 Shinespark wrote: I'm pretty sure Life didn't realize any of this consciously...
I am sure he didn't come up with the math. But looking at the games, and how he chose to move through areas he knew had mines, it certainly looked like he had grasped the concept to some point and used it to his advantage. There was several time where he was very careful even prearranged his forces before advancing. Not that luck had nothing to do with it. I am sure that it did.
But now this is common knowledge and I am sure he and other pros will be able to capitalize on it.
On March 20 2013 05:27 Shinespark wrote: I'm pretty sure Life didn't realize any of this consciously...
No, probably not in a mathematical sense. But he probably realized conceptually that you could get past mine fields without activating them by move-commanding... Whether or not he specifically realized how to do so we wont know until we have replays, etc.
Still, the idea bodes well for SCII. More tactical depth is never a bad thing. Already I've seen some awesome positioning/leading suggestions.
Another important point to note is that you can see a slight indentation in the ground where mines are located, even if you don't have detection...
this is AMAZING stuff! hope terrans will someday be skilled enough to micro mines like you suggest! Props to you for finding the math behind the mine. =]
In my opinion, you could tell when life knew about a mine because he sent 1 zergling at a time. But other times he just ran everything over 3-4 of them, and only 1 went off.
Seems really broken to me... it should fire on anything within it's range after 1.5 sec. This retargeting mechanic just makes it stupidly unreliable. If the enemy doesn't know where the mine is placed, it's pure randomness if it will go off vs zerglings.
I think this would be a great opportunity for Automaton 2000 to show off it's amazing micro. Imagine watching a video where 200 lings make their way through 20 widow mines because of precise zergling movement.
On March 20 2013 05:27 Shinespark wrote: I'm pretty sure Life didn't realize any of this consciously...
No, probably not in a mathematical sense. But he probably realized conceptually that you could get past mine fields without activating them by move-commanding... Whether or not he specifically realized how to do so we wont know until we have replays, etc.
Still, the idea bodes well for SCII. More tactical depth is never a bad thing. Already I've seen some awesome positioning/leading suggestions.
Another important point to note is that you can see a slight indentation in the ground where mines are located, even if you don't have detection...
I have to agree with Lone here. Life plays this game WAY too much to be simply ignorant of something that very well could have won him games more than a few times. Widow Mines do MASSIVE damage when used right, but Life had an amazing way fo microing past them. Can't be pure coincidence with someone as good as Life, I don't believe.
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.
It depends on the situation I would say. Mines placed in-line, behind each other, provides a corridor where units passing through will trigger each mine in succession. In other words, if your opponent blindly runs through a choke in the middle, he will activate all the mines and take a lot of damage. However, there is quite a lot of room to the sides of the mines where you can easily avoid taking any damage at all if you know what you are doing.
On the other hand, if you place the mines side by side it will be virtually impossible to pass through the choke unscathed. But it is likely that units travelling in a narrow column will only trigger one of the two mines, meaning that the potential damage is lower.
As the number of mines grow, a combination is probably the best. That is, stagger the mines in a triangular pattern (or square, or whatever polygon you prefere ) in order to ensure that no unit can pass through without getting hit by several mines.
Hell in the very last game Life played he opted to run past mines he knew were planted for minutes because he was working with mainly muta+ling. It was only after there was a significant break in the action that he finally decided to clear them out.
When you watch most Zergs play (stream) you can see that they try to clear mines as they move out with their army. IdrA in particular will order his mutas to destroy the mines.
Again though, it comes down to whether or not Terrans give you the space to move past the mines. If Terrans start purposefully halting portions of their armies in front of the mines, then Zergs are going to be fighting one hell of a bad battle.
On March 20 2013 05:27 Shinespark wrote: I'm pretty sure Life didn't realize any of this consciously...
No, probably not in a mathematical sense. But he probably realized conceptually that you could get past mine fields without activating them by move-commanding... Whether or not he specifically realized how to do so we wont know until we have replays, etc.
Still, the idea bodes well for SCII. More tactical depth is never a bad thing. Already I've seen some awesome positioning/leading suggestions.
Another important point to note is that you can see a slight indentation in the ground where mines are located, even if you don't have detection...
I have to agree with Lone here. Life plays this game WAY too much to be simply ignorant of something that very well could have won him games more than a few times. Widow Mines do MASSIVE damage when used right, but Life had an amazing way fo microing past them. Can't be pure coincidence with someone as good as Life, I don't believe.
Life probably knew he should send at least 1 ling ahead of the pack to get it to prefire on the least valauble target, but as an unintended consequence, his 1 speedling prevented it from firing at all, because it travelled between mid and outer ring of its range, preventing the AI from firing against it or the next subsequent group of speedlings.
This changes the game, Lone amazing job dude this is absolutely nothing shy of impressive. Loved the visual as well! Can't wait to get plastered as I try to be like life and gosumicro my way to victory lol
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.
It depends on the situation I would say. Mines placed in-line, behind each other, provides a corridor where units passing through will trigger each mine in succession. In other words, if your opponent blindly runs through a choke in the middle, he will activate all the mines and take a lot of damage. However, there is quite a lot of room to the sides of the mines where you can easily avoid taking any damage at all if you know what you are doing.
On the other hand, if you place the mines side by side it will be virtually impossible to pass through the choke unscathed. But it is likely that units travelling in a narrow column will only trigger one of the two mines, meaning that the potential damage is lower.
As the number of mines grow, a combination is probably the best. That is, stagger the mines in a triangular pattern (or square, or whatever polygon you prefere ) in order to ensure that no unit can pass through without getting hit by several mines.
Quick illustration of the mine-pair case:
This is an anti-widow mine thread and you're not helping!
In all seriousness, great post here. You can eliminate the effective radius by stacking them at the correct ranges. Very nice!
On March 20 2013 03:44 Vindicare605 wrote: 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.
Yes you can, during the 1.5 second window after the time bomb triggers you can focus something else within the Mine's range; the time bomb will reset and the Mine will shoot if the new target is still in range.
how? I should go check again but the last time I played with widow mines there was no attack or move option in the command card while they were burrowed.
hehe pretty nice information thank you. I really love to play around with mines, but I hope they remove any ability to target, it is so much fun to micro against it. With the target ability that is a bit negated, of course it depends on the Terran skill, but I would prefer if it would be solely on the opponents side apart from unburrow. But that may be me who loves to burrow the leading ling and the group runs past the mine. Or clean a mine without losses by burrowing the targeted unit, needs a lack of detection though.
Wait What? he was actually intentionally dodging? I honestly thought he was just getting lucky. There were a few times he went in and i thought on well hes about to loose 40 lings or so and hence loose this fight. Though the mines just missed completely.
Especially in that series vs he gave up many packs of banes to widow mines. (Just an excuse to why i didn't believe he was dodging intentionally.)
This is a great post. I was actually going to try and figure it out after watching the games Sunday, but I'm glad someone got to it before me.
Honestly, if these mechanics are accurate, I think it's a bit silly on Blizzard's part. If the mine's already finished its 1.5 second charge, it shouldn't have to do another 1.5 before firing. It should attack another target right away. If a (real life) influence mine needs a signal (magnetic, pressure, acoustic, whatever) to exceed a certain threshold for X seconds to trigger, it doesn't care if it's one ship or three passing overhead. It just activates. If it loses that threshold, yeah, it resets. I know, SC isn't real life, but this would make more sense in the game, too! I'm guessing the mines were never intended to act like this.
This should be easy to fix in any case. You could have units enter a queue when they enter the radius and leave the queue when they exit the radius. When the mine charge finishes, it just shoots at whatever's at the front of the queue.
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.
That was what I meant, I meant that you should keep them far enough behind eachother for the mines not to target the same lings.
On March 20 2013 04:31 MilesTeg wrote: 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.
It's a bit blurry for me too, I remember a big pack of zergling running on a minefield, only one mine detonate and fire on an area with a high zergling density but strangely kill almost nothing. Day[9] was quite surprised too. Does someone know the replay + timestamp ?
Bahahaha this makes me so happy. It's like 2010 GSL 2 when MKP/Fauxer went "wait, you can split marines against banelings, and then they're not a hard-counter anymore" and BitByBit went "yes please" and every Zerg in the world went "oh shit."
Well, Life makes it look easy but it seems like this unit can be flummoxed by top level players (not me) so it should be fun to watch even though they kill my own gameplay.
If it helps anyone, here's a video of lings running through a widow mine's radius.
Widow mine #1 goes off, but for #2 and #3 there are lings entering the edge of the radius but then exiting before the mine can fire.
Now there are more lings inside the radius, mine #2 targets the closest one... which exits the radius before the mine can fire, since that ling was already halfway across. This repeats several times, with the end result being that lots of lings run past without the mine ever firing a shot.
So the faster the unit, the smaller the effective radius of the WM is. Interesting. Really makes T put more thought into positioning of WM's and guessing at the pathing of the enemy units.
Good work, OP. In terms of dealing with mines as zerg though, this still feels like it's rather random. And I'm deeply convinced that randomizing elements don't belong in high level competition. :/
great post. I did notice this partly, but i thought i was misreading the radius slightly. Very interesting feature, i hope this won't be patched out in some way.
If life made use of this knowingly, it was brilliant. :D
On March 20 2013 07:24 TwilightRain wrote: Good work, OP. In terms of dealing with mines as zerg though, this still feels like it's rather random. And I'm deeply convinced that randomizing elements don't belong in high level competition. :/
could you explain what you exactly mean by bolded part? I don't really understand how it's random. Also the purpose of the word 'still' is a bit unclear. What exactly compared to when?
On March 20 2013 07:02 Nachtwind wrote: In conclusion that means never place mines farther then 2 units away from each other or you produce "holes" in the target zone. Right?
4 units, but yes (two mines with radius two = 4 units total distance). good point.
That was cool research. It is nice to see people putting in serious effort to study and explain game mechanics that are obvious for us 'average joes '.
So in the last game of Flash vs Life when life just rolled right through the mine field, how should the mines has been laid out to rip apart lifes forces? Essentially how does the ideal mine field look in that kind of scenario?
I did Maths at University and its always nice to see it some real world applications!! (lol). This is very interesting indeed, as players understanding this will create a whole new dynamic to the game with counter control to mine targeting.
OP's explanation is bullshit. 1 Finishes burrowing once the zerglings are well past, fires on a Corruptor. 2 Remains on cooldown till Life's entire army is past, fires on a Corruptor like 20 seconds after the fight. 3 First mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack as it goes past. Takes Life from 194 to 190 supply (8 zerglings killed). 4 Second mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack a second or so after 3. Takes Life from 190 to 179 supply (22 zerglings killed). 5 Gets boxed with Flash's marines temporarily and moves back a bit. Eventually burrows once the zerglings are past and fires on a trailing pack of 4 banelings. Looks like it kills 2 banelings.
On March 20 2013 07:38 DonFonzy wrote: So in the last game of Flash vs Life when life just rolled right through the mine field, how should the mines has been laid out to rip apart lifes forces? Essentially how does the ideal mine field look in that kind of scenario?
My guess would be something like this
This is just quick thinking, but Something like this would give good surface are for 3 mines over almost the entire top landing of the ramp up.
On March 20 2013 07:24 TwilightRain wrote: Good work, OP. In terms of dealing with mines as zerg though, this still feels like it's rather random. And I'm deeply convinced that randomizing elements don't belong in high level competition. :/
Except that it's not at all random. That's the entire point of the OP.
On March 20 2013 07:24 TwilightRain wrote: Good work, OP. In terms of dealing with mines as zerg though, this still feels like it's rather random. And I'm deeply convinced that randomizing elements don't belong in high level competition. :/
Except that it's not at all random. That's the entire point of the OP.
4 base spawns are random! There are some random build order wins!
This makes TvZ a lot more interesting. Terrans just need to learn how to spend their gas in the late game and we'll have a matchup that can rival the BW one. Blizzard better not patch this!
On March 20 2013 07:56 berf wrote: OP's explanation is bullshit. + Show Spoiler +
1 Finishes burrowing once the zerglings are well past, fires on a Corruptor. 2 Remains on cooldown till Life's entire army is past, fires on a Corruptor like 20 seconds after the fight. 3 First mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack as it goes past. Takes Life from 194 to 190 supply (8 zerglings killed). 4 Second mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack a second or so after 3. Takes Life from 190 to 179 supply (22 zerglings killed). 5 Gets boxed with Flash's marines temporarily and moves back a bit. Eventually burrows once the zerglings are past and fires on a trailing pack of 4 banelings. Looks like it kills 2 banelings.
I fail to see how this makes anything whatsoever in the OP "bullshit". There is nothing in the VoD or that picture that suggests what the OP posted is false. You seem to be assuming that the point of the post is that mines are bugged and don't fire on zerglings or something, which just isn't the case.
@the rest of the thread: Very informative, thank you!
On March 20 2013 07:56 berf wrote: OP's explanation is bullshit. + Show Spoiler +
1 Finishes burrowing once the zerglings are well past, fires on a Corruptor. 2 Remains on cooldown till Life's entire army is past, fires on a Corruptor like 20 seconds after the fight. 3 First mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack as it goes past. Takes Life from 194 to 190 supply (8 zerglings killed). 4 Second mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack a second or so after 3. Takes Life from 190 to 179 supply (22 zerglings killed). 5 Gets boxed with Flash's marines temporarily and moves back a bit. Eventually burrows once the zerglings are past and fires on a trailing pack of 4 banelings. Looks like it kills 2 banelings.
I fail to see how this makes anything whatsoever in the OP "bullshit". There is nothing in the VoD or that picture that suggests what the OP posted is false. You seem to be assuming that the point of the post is that mines are bugged and don't fire on zerglings or something, which just isn't the case.
@the rest of the thread: Very informative, thank you!
He claimed "mine confusion", that the mines couldn't lock onto a zergling for long enough to activate which caused them to constantly retarget. I'm not saying that his math is wrong and mine confusion can't happen, but it's not what happened in the scenario on Daybreak.
If you reread my post you'll see that only two of the five mines ever had an opportunity to fire at the zerglings. To be more clear only two mines of five ever had zerglings in range to fire on while being burrowed and off cooldown. Both those mines got their missiles off and both missiles hit the front of the zergling pack, something that mine confusion would prevent.
Wow, really interesting.. Good stuff, thank you for writing this! I know this will only really effect high end players to know, but its still really cool to know why the mines won't go off
Blizzard should fix this. Because its getting easier and easier to counter widow mines: 1. oracle+envision+phoenix+liftup 2. swarm hosts 3. micro with 1 ling/muta/roach/marine/zealot ahead etc.
Mmh that's very interesting. I watched Life vs Flash and as a spectator I was really confused by what happened. The widow mines' behavior seemed quite erratic indeed, almost random. So is the widow mine working as intended? I'm sure that Blizzard did some intense testing prior to releasing this unit so there is a good chance they are aware of this behavior.
I think for T, positioning marines within the mine radius -- enough to kill small groups of lings, but not enough to care if the mine wipes them out -- is going to be key.
On March 20 2013 12:43 JtoK wrote: Blizzard should fix this. Because its getting easier and easier to counter widow mines: 1. oracle+envision+phoenix+liftup 2. swarm hosts 3. micro with 1 ling/muta/roach/marine/zealot ahead etc.
All of these scenarios will be prevented if your army is present over the widow mines, killing the enemy units and preventing the widow mines from firing before 1.5 seconds pass. I'm pretty sure widow mines are most useful when they are there to give aoe support to your army, not burrowed alone in key locations around the map like burrowed banelings. That's how Flash used them, anyway.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
On March 20 2013 07:56 berf wrote: OP's explanation is bullshit. 1 Finishes burrowing once the zerglings are well past, fires on a Corruptor. 2 Remains on cooldown till Life's entire army is past, fires on a Corruptor like 20 seconds after the fight. 3 First mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack as it goes past. Takes Life from 194 to 190 supply (8 zerglings killed). 4 Second mine to fire. Fires on the front of the zergling pack a second or so after 3. Takes Life from 190 to 179 supply (22 zerglings killed). 5 Gets boxed with Flash's marines temporarily and moves back a bit. Eventually burrows once the zerglings are past and fires on a trailing pack of 4 banelings. Looks like it kills 2 banelings.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
?
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.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
There's no bug about it... if it's out of range it won't fire. That's it.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
You think widow mines taking 1.5 seconds after acquiring after a target to fire, and being visible while the target is acquired, is an error? I'm sure Blizzard knew what they were doing when they programmed this unit. The widow mine not firing if a unit is out of its attack range when it attacks? Also working as intended, I'm fairly certain. There isn't a unit in the game that can attack a unit outside of its attack range.
The only possible unintentional mechanic of the widow mine, imo, is being able to reacquire targets via right clicking.
the mechanism leads to cool micro tricks possibly but I also think it's a bit confusing and random. On the one hand this makes mines much weaker against fast units which is an interesting interaction, making lings still do well against them for example. On the other hand it makes them a bit random as the retargeting is quite random and near impossible to control. You can get lucky that the retargeting targets the middle of the pack and kills 20 lings or that it retargets to far away and you don't even get to fire.
On March 20 2013 17:47 Markwerf wrote: On the other hand it makes them a bit random as the retargeting is quite random and near impossible to control. You can get lucky that the retargeting targets the middle of the pack and kills 20 lings or that it retargets to far away and you don't even get to fire.
There's nothing random about the (re)targeting. Mines (and other attacking units) will always pick, among the targets with the highest target priority (attacking units have prio over mining workers for example), the closest target. So if a pack of lings is near a mine, the mine will target the closest ling.
There's another thread somewhere where there's a method laid out that allows players to retarget the mines manually.
On March 20 2013 07:38 DonFonzy wrote: So in the last game of Flash vs Life when life just rolled right through the mine field, how should the mines has been laid out to rip apart lifes forces? Essentially how does the ideal mine field look in that kind of scenario?
The best way is to just fight the zerg army where the mines are instead of laying mines in random locations. However, according to the calculations, the initial unit can't run past the full diameter, so essentially if you lay mines in a straight line so that there really isn't any part of the radiuses where the zerg can run by only a chord instead of the full diameter it should guarantee a firing.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
You think widow mines taking 1.5 seconds after acquiring after a target to fire, and being visible while the target is acquired, is an error? I'm sure Blizzard knew what they were doing when they programmed this unit. The widow mine not firing if a unit is out of its attack range when it attacks? Also working as intended, I'm fairly certain. There isn't a unit in the game that can attack a unit outside of its attack range.
The only possible unintentional mechanic of the widow mine, imo, is being able to reacquire targets via right clicking.
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.
It's not exactly the most intuitive or spectator-friendly mechanic ever (exploiting am invisible 1.5 sec delay within a radius), but it's definitely a cool design for highly skilled players to exploit.
It would be neat if the target unit was highlighted in that 1.5 second widow (like hunter-seeker) so spectators can marvel at sick dodging or manual targetting of mines.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
You think widow mines taking 1.5 seconds after acquiring after a target to fire, and being visible while the target is acquired, is an error? I'm sure Blizzard knew what they were doing when they programmed this unit. The widow mine not firing if a unit is out of its attack range when it attacks? Also working as intended, I'm fairly certain. There isn't a unit in the game that can attack a unit outside of its attack range.
The only possible unintentional mechanic of the widow mine, imo, is being able to reacquire targets via right clicking.
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.
Well be careful what you wish for. Because the alternative would be the mine firing on whatever it targets first, even if it dies or goes out of range. And it means that with a single zergling you could render an entire mass of mines completely useless.
Mines behave like this because it's the smartest way to behave.
Also, can people please pick up on berf's post? It should be added to the OP too IMO. It seems people are still confused and think this retargeting explains what happened in the game on Daybreak. It simply didn't happen; some mines were in cooldown, others weren't burrowed.
Also no it cannot be "disregarded". The findings of this thread have almost no practical impact unless the mines are on their own. In which case, again, by sending individual lings you would achieve the same result.
Did a quick test in the unit tester, and it looks like the math is pretty much spot on. Ling 1, patrolling on the dashed line 3 "squares" from the square occupied by the wiow mine (ie 3.5 squares from the center of the mine), passes right through the red danger zone but is constantly safe. If timed correctly, ling 2 can easily pass along the solid line right on top of the mine while ling 1 is patrolling.
okay i just watched the main bit but what's so impressive about this? i thought it was common knowledge, i did this sort of thing in a few games when i had blink stalkers, before they shoot, even if you dont have detection you can see the widow mine popping up you cant shoot it tho so i just see the thing on screen blink out
I still can't believe Flash sticked to the BioMine composition when it clearly did not make him any safer than Tank/Marine. sure, Widow Mines are cool and can safe you the day with a good hit but you cannot really count on them in a sticky situation whilst tanks can focus banelings down without the mines' restrictions.
On March 20 2013 19:39 schaf wrote: I still can't believe Flash sticked to the BioMine composition when it clearly did not make him any safer than Tank/Marine. sure, Widow Mines are cool and can safe you the day with a good hit but you cannot really count on them in a sticky situation whilst tanks can focus banelings down without the mines' restrictions.
Good find, OP!
BioMine better against mutalisks? Life uses mutas a lot. I don't really know but I wish Flash would have switched it up a bit.
I think that this is a great addition to the game.
I never played BW much beyond a few 1v1s like 5 years ago but I was always envious of the ideas of dodging reaver shots (due to weird mechanics/bugs) and other cool micro tricks, muta stacking, carrier interceptor micro etc.
I believe that eventually this will lead to increased skill in all terran match ups for both sides.
And some food for thought for terran players. a few mines burrowed and a lone hellbat standing in the middle of them would cause any a moved lings to gather around the hellbat and get absolutely crushed when the mines go off. In fact the key to making the mine works seems to be holding your ground at the edge of the mines radius, stopping units from running straight by and out before the mine can activate
Imagine a mine field and a terran force stationed just at the edge of the mine radius. If Zerg tries to send a few units out to detonate the mines then the Terran force can move forward and kill them before the mines 1.5 sec activation time completes. This means that zerg would have to approach with significant numbers in order to detonate the mines
So now consider the zerg force attacks the terran line, the mines target the first few initial lings and the rest of the zerg force crashes into the terran line. As long as the terran line holds and does not retreat (or stutter step back like usual) the zerg units will remain in the mine radius and the mines will fire. Also because the terran does not have to stutter step his units in this situation he can target fire the mines on lings in the middle of the pack.
This becomes interesting if banelings are involved as this could force the terran to retreat and save his marines or hold the line and hope the mines go off in time.
this post is gold! awesome job, although it is still difficult to solve the mines problem for me, I am glad to have a chance to clear up the mines + MMM! thanks!
On March 20 2013 07:02 Nachtwind wrote: In conclusion that means never place mines farther then 2 units away from each other or you produce "holes" in the target zone. Right?
4 units, but yes (two mines with radius two = 4 units total distance). good point.
amazing insight, thank you very much! now im even more interested in how the game will develop, given that they do not patch anything substantially in the next weeks/months.
What most people don't understand, maybe because they didn't read Morrow's post, is that as terran you can micro to make widow mines effective. Widow mines have no "attack" command, but spamming right click actually targets a unit for the mine. If you spam right click, the mine will never trigger because of the 1.5s cast time reseting. So the trick is to spam right click on lings until banes arrive in mine range, and as soon as they are in range you just click one time on banes to fire the mines on them. It's hard to do because you can't micro your bioball and your mines at the same time, but it makes them super effective if used right. I tried on the unit tester and it works.
If they're tweaked to be more of a single target damage unit, and less of a splash damage unit (as hinted by David Kim), then it's a good idea.
They will look too much like a baneling that needs to burrow with this feature. It would drastically increase damage potential, but it would also ruin the concept of an original unit, which goes against Blizzard's philosophy.
The Widow Mine single target would work for me, they may even reduce the cooldown then,
Well said on the theory. Knowledge is power. Thanks, no many THANKS to solving this to allow more and more newer players understand the dynamics of SC2 which Im sure many of are are so impressed about
I really like that you can dodge the shots like that since it requires alot of skill pulling it off in a game! Especially since it takes equal amounts of skill aiming with the widow mine, (spam clicking on zerglings then targeting banelings and the likes)
Seems like the widow mine is in a good state, Guess we'll have to wait and see though.
On March 20 2013 22:58 monkybone wrote: Let's wait and see if anyone else but life can pull it off so excellently. Really, all we have to do is to keep an eye on the resource lost tab for the coming months.
Life didn't pull it off (for the millionth time). I shall not quit this thread until everyone understands that, I don't care if I post half the messages in it :p
On March 20 2013 22:58 monkybone wrote: Let's wait and see if anyone else but life can pull it off so excellently. Really, all we have to do is to keep an eye on the resource lost tab for the coming months.
Life didn't pull it off (for the millionth time). I shall not quit this thread until everyone understands that, I don't care if I post half the messages in it :p
Indeed. It's unfortunate how quick people jump the gun on such things. The last one I tried to drill into people's heads being the coach Park hype.
On March 20 2013 22:58 monkybone wrote: Let's wait and see if anyone else but life can pull it off so excellently. Really, all we have to do is to keep an eye on the resource lost tab for the coming months.
Life didn't pull it off (for the millionth time). I shall not quit this thread until everyone understands that, I don't care if I post half the messages in it :p
Well he pulled something off, he did win the series.
If the mines effective radius is cut in half by speed and has the potential to not work at all, that is not a good unit design. Anymore then a collussus that doesnt fire at stimmed marines, or roaches that don't fire at stalkers. It's bad unit design.
Micro should improve basic unit AI effectiveness, not compensate for its defectiveness.
On March 21 2013 00:38 nottapro wrote: If the mines effective radius is cut in half by speed and has the potential to not work at all, that is not a good unit design. Anymore then a collussus that doesnt fire at stimmed marines, or roaches that don't fire at stalkers. It's bad unit design.
Micro should improve basic unit AI effectiveness, not compensate for its defectiveness.
do you really read what others said ? you can micro mines and micro zerglings is very micro intensive . please read all pages before posting claiming widow mine is bad design .
Something seriously need to change then. You can't have them dealing splash/having range/being able to hit flying units and hold fire all with the same unit.
On March 21 2013 00:38 nottapro wrote: If the mines effective radius is cut in half by speed and has the potential to not work at all, that is not a good unit design. Anymore then a collussus that doesnt fire at stimmed marines, or roaches that don't fire at stalkers. It's bad unit design.
Micro should improve basic unit AI effectiveness, not compensate for its defectiveness.
do you really read what others said ? you can micro mines and micro zerglings is very micro intensive . please read all pages before posting claiming widow mine is bad design .
I've read all of it, and seen the videos. You can micro mines to target an object within its radius, which resets the timer. Which will therefore lower your chances of hitting the new target, because now you have a human response time (the time it took to require a target manually) + the 1.5 second delay, allowing a higher probability that the new target will be out of range by the time the mine is capable of firing.
In other words, compensating for the possibility that the mine might cease to fire, can actually greatly increases the probability of it not firing. An obvious unintended consequence, that people suggesting retargeting don't seem to be considering.
I've also seen videos where no micro was involved, just a hundred lings running in a straight line in the mine's outer range on silver league games. I don't think that microing zerlgings in a straight line past a mine is top teir micro, especially, when the results are just as easily replicated in the lower leagues unconsciously.
Great information, thanks for the quality post. I find it awesome that these little intricacies (that can make a big difference, too) exist in Starcraft and even more so that people in the community figure them out and share their findings.
I just dont understand why someone would bother going through so much math only to be proven "no the mines shot in middle of the pack and almost nothing died".
This is so, so big. V Blizz, please dont nerf mines. The bold part about how to trigger mass mine confusion and give safe passage is amazing. Im probably not going to pull it off very often. But damn, this is awesome.
On March 20 2013 18:36 FireMonkey wrote: is there a replay or vod of this game? i want to see it, link please.
Here's a video of the most relevant part, hopefully people watch it and stop being stupid.
As for the full games you can find them easily on MLG's wiki page.
Why are people saying Life had amazing micro? He just ran past the mines quickly, because he knew there was a delay with the mine's attack. You don't need to know the exact number of seconds it takes for the mine to attack either.
On March 20 2013 21:31 Nimix wrote: What most people don't understand, maybe because they didn't read Morrow's post, is that as terran you can micro to make widow mines effective. Widow mines have no "attack" command, but spamming right click actually targets a unit for the mine. If you spam right click, the mine will never trigger because of the 1.5s cast time reseting. So the trick is to spam right click on lings until banes arrive in mine range, and as soon as they are in range you just click one time on banes to fire the mines on them. It's hard to do because you can't micro your bioball and your mines at the same time, but it makes them super effective if used right. I tried on the unit tester and it works.
Ok that's an awesome feature, why is there a poll for hold attack command then?
On March 20 2013 22:58 monkybone wrote: Let's wait and see if anyone else but life can pull it off so excellently. Really, all we have to do is to keep an eye on the resource lost tab for the coming months.
Life didn't pull it off (for the millionth time). I shall not quit this thread until everyone understands that, I don't care if I post half the messages in it :p
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.
On March 21 2013 02:35 Zarahtra wrote: I just dont understand why someone would bother going through so much math only to be proven "no the mines shot in middle of the pack and almost nothing died".
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.
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
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?
On March 21 2013 02:35 Zarahtra wrote: I just dont understand why someone would bother going through so much math only to be proven "no the mines shot in middle of the pack and almost nothing died".
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.
On March 21 2013 02:35 Zarahtra wrote: I just dont understand why someone would bother going through so much math only to be proven "no the mines shot in middle of the pack and almost nothing died".
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.
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.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
?
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.
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?
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
You think widow mines taking 1.5 seconds after acquiring after a target to fire, and being visible while the target is acquired, is an error? I'm sure Blizzard knew what they were doing when they programmed this unit. The widow mine not firing if a unit is out of its attack range when it attacks? Also working as intended, I'm fairly certain. There isn't a unit in the game that can attack a unit outside of its attack range.
The only possible unintentional mechanic of the widow mine, imo, is being able to reacquire targets via right clicking.
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.
I don't know why anyone would use mines offensively with Marine/Marauder to begin with. MMM was, besides a few games always not just inferior but completely dismanteled by muta/ling/bane. I remember MKP doing it on Metalopolis against Muta/Ling/Bane but that was only allowed by his godlike control AND constantly trading from the very beginning. If you allow a big enough muta/ling/bane force to gear up, marine & marauder will stand no chance, no matter the control.
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~
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.
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.
v It was more in response to the people talking about Life calculating this ingame and such, I never criticized the OP.
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.
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".
I see, thanks, nice observations! I'm still leaning on the side that mines are too random (which is bad), but anything that makes them less a matter of luck and more a matter of skill, is a very good thing.
On March 20 2013 17:11 papaz wrote: This is surely not working as intended.
This community might love things like this because it "raises skill level" but you don't design a game having it work like this.
Imagine a random player (which of course doesn't play the game to become pro but just for fun/relaxing) coming to bnet forums thinking he has found a bug saying "hey, I made these widow mines in this game but they didn't fire. Must be a bug".
And then a blue comes over with: "Well kid, thing is if you take this formula, consider these mechanics and then apply this to your situation it obvious that everything is just working as intended".
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but this will be fixed just like mining tricks and all have been fixed.
?
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.
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.
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?
On March 20 2013 22:58 monkybone wrote: Let's wait and see if anyone else but life can pull it off so excellently. Really, all we have to do is to keep an eye on the resource lost tab for the coming months.
Life didn't pull it off (for the millionth time). I shall not quit this thread until everyone understands that, I don't care if I post half the messages in it :p
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.
All the stupid hate on OP "Life knew nothing about this" etc.. Wtf?! He probably went like "hmm if I run fast from mines they wont explode" and used it. Ofcourse he didnt use math - he doesnt care, if it works it works. The fact someone just explained us exactly how it works should be praised not damned.
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
On March 21 2013 19:54 Veriol wrote: All the stupid hate on OP "Life knew nothing about this" etc.. Wtf?! He probably went like "hmm if I run fast from mines they wont explode" and used it. Ofcourse he didnt use math - he doesnt care, if it works it works. The fact someone just explained us exactly how it works should be praised not damned.
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
The thing is Life never did at all what he is indicating, he just kept blowing them up with 1-few lings at a time, that is atleast why I dislike the title of the thread. It's like saying "Flash won MLG winter", it has the same amount of truth to it.
I'm not dissing on the math that the OP did, it's quite interesting actually, but to draw people in with a lie I don't like.
Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
It might be fine if you had to do something very specific to trigger it, but you don't. If Life managed to trigger this behaviour it wasn't likely on purpose. It's the exact type of thing that you do by accident trying to do something else:
You box one cheap fast unit, and click on the other side of the mine field by itself. Then wait 1 second and send your massive ball over them. The logic is that your one unit will trigger the mines and put them all on cooldown. However, lo-and-behold that because the pathing worked out in a certain way, and the first zergling clips the side of all the mines range, all the zerglings make it over the mines without any of them detonating.
It's something that even a bronze player might do by complete accident without knowing that they are even pulling off a trick. It's even technically possible that it happens 100% by chance just because of the formation the units were in when they were selected.
People seem to be making the argument that the solution to this is staggering the mines that it's harder to move over them. However, that isn't a viable solution because the units have a cost. The moment you need to stagger them you are spending at least twice as many resources to secure the same amount of area. I don't have time to make pretty pictures right now to show that, but you should be able to figure it out. This makes them WAY less useful at their initial intended goal of area denial. Especially early game when production/resources/supply is at a premium.
The argument that it's a micro war doesn't hold too much weight in my mind because of how lopsided the effort it is. Someone can exploit mines all over the map, by accident or not, easily simply by repositioning troops and then a-moving while they micro other things. However, a Terran needs to pick ONE mine on the entire map, and spend multiple seconds spending all their attention clicking with it. Hoping that they picked the right mine the whole time.
I could be wrong, but it's not something I expect blizzard to keep around. They don't like mechanics that aren't immediately obvious, and don't make sense to someone who doesn't follow the game closely. They've removed things that were much less broken looking because of this fact.
Also with widow mines, more and more Zerg players will begin to make them useless by blowing banelings up over them. I think this spat of everyone using them should be over, but the meta will calm down, and it will be back to bio tank. The only thing wrong with bio tank is the vipers. Bye bye tanks. It's fine though, us Terrans will figure it out.
for life to be deliberately and constantly using his lings in this way for an entire series during the intensity of the whole situation makes him a fucking genius o.o
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
True. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are retreating across a line of mines (don't ask me why), then maybe a stalker blink train is faster. The effective radius of the mines should be about 5 - (2.9531)(1.5) = 0.57.
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
True. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are retreating across a line of mines (don't ask me why), then maybe a stalker blink train is faster. The effective radius of the mines should be about 5 - (2.9531)(1.5) = 0.57.
So the main variable is C, may I ask if this is negated when mines are stacked in a certain pattern? Also, is there any change with flying units regardless of speed, I.E. is there any extra distance from the ground-air? Sorry if these are stupid questions.
Nice post OP, this finally helped me understand that game on Daybreak where I thought Life would lose a big part of his army and he didnt, also, after watching some games on Ret's and Kawai's streams I went to bed feeling sick and now i feel like you've given me some hope ^_^ On a serious note, this truly is some sexy material, thx for sharing.
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
True. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are retreating across a line of mines (don't ask me why), then maybe a stalker blink train is faster. The effective radius of the mines should be about 5 - (2.9531)(1.5) = 0.57.
OMFG :'( the memories, for some reason my body wasnt rdy and i think im losing it here, i dont even play these races but who gives a tit about that, its freaking Broodwar/OSL/Boxer/Anytime U CANT TOP THAT ^^
On March 21 2013 03:37 UnholyRai wrote: life is calculating this shit in real time during the games? What a genius prodigy
yep he's calculating sines and cosines like a calculator
Oh do stop being silly. It is not hard to calculate stuff like this in your head In fact you can calculate things a hell of a lot more complicated than this, very quickly. The human brain is good like that. If you've ever thrown a ball, you've automatically done a ballistics calculation inside your own head. It is a rough one but it is one none the less.
Ballistics are far more complicated than a bit of trig.
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
True. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are retreating across a line of mines (don't ask me why), then maybe a stalker blink train is faster. The effective radius of the mines should be about 5 - (2.9531)(1.5) = 0.57.
I'm not sure why you used stalker base speed to calculate the speed of a blink train, but nonetheless...
d = sqrt(25-(C/2)^2)
sqrt(25-(C/2)^2) != sqrt(25) - sqrt((C/2)^2) ; and you forgot the power of two.
Once Terran players learn to micro their mines it won't be so easy to avoid the bulk of damage like this intentially or otherwise. If a ling is leading for example all the Terran has to do is select the mine and click one of the lings in the pack behind the leading ling. The mine will have its timer reset and fire at the clump instead of at the leading unit.
If the Terran has 6 mines as close together as possible all he has to do is select them all and click one of the Lings in the pack (as above) then unselect 1 mine and just start right clicking lings randomly in the ball (to hold micro the rest if the mines so only the one fires). He can repeat this as many times as he wants by targeting another unit in the pack and deselecting an extra mine. By doing this a Terran can selectively increase the damage output of the mines tenfold.
On March 22 2013 00:34 MilesTeg wrote: ^ I don't think you realize that there is no way to change the AI that wouldn't fuck the Terran a lot more. Or at least none that I can think of.
Sure there is. Start the chargeup when any enemy is in the radius. When it's done, shoot. If the first enemy is gone, shoot at something else. Don't restart the timer unless there's no enemies nearby.
Who to shoot at? Maybe the one that's been in the zone the longest. Maybe just shoot in the direction if the enemy who ran. Maybe whoever's closest. That could be tested. But none if these would fuck the terran over more than NOT firing.
The immediate implication for Terrans who wish to continue going mines against Zergs is that there is a critical density (where the mines are 2 times 'd' apart) where there is no way for zerglings to cross the minefield without crossing within a radius 2 of a mine. Obviously, this is pretty dense, thus expensive. This means that mines can only stop zerglings with 100% efficiency if they are placed in chokes at densities above the critical density.
The response to this from Zergs?... set off the mines with a single zergling and then move in or simply go around (possibly by using Nydus or drops!). It seems that Terrans must begin to use tanks to lock down anything but narrow ramps.
On March 21 2013 22:38 KillingVector wrote: Would this also be useful for blink stalkers? You could queue up a blink train like you do to go up/down cliffs between your bases. Of course, you better make sure there aren't any other terran units on the other side.
You can just run there with a stalker, trigger the mine, blink out. You dodge the damage.
True. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are retreating across a line of mines (don't ask me why), then maybe a stalker blink train is faster. The effective radius of the mines should be about 5 - (2.9531)(1.5) = 0.57.
I'm not sure why you used stalker base speed to calculate the speed of a blink train, but nonetheless...
sqrt(25-(C/2)^2) != sqrt(25) - sqrt((C/2)^2) ; and you forgot the power of two.
sqrt(25-(2.9531/2)^2) = 4.77.
tl;dr Stalkers are not faster than speedlings.
I was looking at how far the stalker can move towards the mine before blinking. Of course, since the blink distance = 8 and 8 + (2.9531)(1.5) = 12.4, we see that the stalker doesn't have to blink entirely out of the mine's radius. It can walk in a little, blink almost across, and then walk out.
Everything is considered in the worst case scenario of traversing the diameter of the circle. There is no need for Pythagoras.
Also, on another note, what happens if a dropship picks up the first unit to enter the mine's radius while that unit is inside the radius? Would the mine find a new target since the unit isn't on the "game board" while its in the dropship? Could you theoretically (although probably not practical) use this to get slower units to move safely across if you hit the mine at a certain angle?
Edit: Could you also do some kind of trick with burrow?
That is math's explanation for: "If you run quickly enough when you triggered the mine, you won't be hit.
(Mine's radius minus Effective Radius) divided 2 = the distance your unit can step in and back out of radius w/o being hit (ofc depending on unit's speed, too slow units still will be hit).
This is an excellent mechanics post that can be used to combat mines. I hope blizzard holds back on the nurf stick until we can work out countering mines a bit more.
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[B]On March 23 2013 04:10 KillingVector wrote: Edit: Could you also do some kind of trick with burrow?
I've seen Stephano do this on his stream. Basically, when you burrow a unit that is targeted by a mine, the mine will still fire at the location of the burrowed unit, but the latter will only take the splash damage, and not the single target damage.
I don't know if this also happens with drop micro.
I get the OP. What still I don't get is why units that outrange the widow mine (ex. Stalkers) still trigger them sometimes even they are at optimal distance from the mine.
On April 09 2013 12:16 shin_toss wrote: I get the OP. What still I don't get is why units that outrange the widow mine (ex. Stalkers) still trigger them sometimes even they are at optimal distance from the mine.
The stalkers' 6 range is calculated from the center of the unit, not the edge. So part of the stalker sometimes extends just into the mine's range. That's why pros tend to move their stalkers back after each volley on mine(s).
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