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After playing a game on Scrap Station it seems that Zerglings may be a little too adept at squeezing between enemy units. Basically I scouted him as he placed a second hatchery in his main and immediately suspected mass Zerglings. Fine, I thought, I'll make some Roaches to block my ramp. However, my ramp was broken on two different attempts. So I decided to analyze my Roach placement.
Here is the first scenario. Notice that the unit circles of my Roaches are all overlapping.I build 7 roaches because the Scrap Station ramp is notoriously large. Theoretically you could cover the ramp with six Roaches in a straight line but I use seven in order to tighten up the gaps even more.
Immediately the Zerglings begin to seep in between the Roaches even though the Roach circles are still overlapping (visible in the pic). Obviously the Roaches are on hold position.
Here is the second scenario. This time I have 9 Roaches with some parts of the ramp having two rows of Roaches protecting it. Nevertheless, the Zerglings once again break in between what probably should be a tight block.
In this picture you can see that the lings are successfully passing through a segment of the ramp with two layers of Roaches.
While the other races can block with buildings, this isn't much of a feasible option for Zerg. Even if I somehow messed up the block (although I can't see how), it's clear that stopping the Zerglings early in the game is ridiculously difficult due to the new pathing.
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You'd be amazed how well you can make zerglings go though units just by right clicking madly past them, i've ran past zealot walls with enough right clicking and zerglings
ofc i've never tested what allows them to go though sometimes and what doesn't
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Canada5565 Posts
I think the bigger the unit the harder it is to make a wall, but that being said it should definitely be possible to create a ling tight wall with units, just harder to do in SCII, positioning has to be perfect I assume
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Yes, I remember making a zeal wall on ramp and lings somehow made it through. It looks like it is the consequence of the new pathing which allows the units to "move away" it's allied units from the way. When mass zerglings attack those in the back start pushing those at the front and they get through like you could get through impassable mineral line with workers.
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i had about 12 rines on a ramp and lings just slipped through and killed me, i hate this ;/ ramps useless
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Germany / USA16648 Posts
this really needs to get fixed :/
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I think Cheerio's explanation makes the most sense. The small collision size of the zergling combined with the unit AI and how units tend to shift a lot more when being pushed probably leads to this (hopefully a) bug.
If this isn't fixed then the days of neat little zergling/zealot lines blocking choke points in pro games are over >:{
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United States7166 Posts
zerglings can go through everything, not just roaches. any unit block ive tried no matter how tight can be passed. other units can as well but zerglings can easiest
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oh wow, until this gets fixed, Zerg might be dominant for a while
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This is really just a problem with lings I think, but it's a problem all the same. I think it could be easily fixed by adjusting the collision size of the zergling if it's not a bug. If it's a bug, well it needs to be addressed.
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That's pretty ridiculous... but then again, zerglings have so little going for them I feel in SC2 when roaches exist like they do, that maybe giving them some additional harrassment potential isn't that bad.
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Ramps are so useless right now for so many reasons.
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Canada5565 Posts
On March 11 2010 06:19 koreasilver wrote: Ramps are so useless right now for so many reasons.
I've seen them used really effectively against roach pushes, but anyways, yeah, units should be able to make walls. for sures.
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On March 11 2010 06:19 koreasilver wrote: Ramps are so useless right now for so many reasons.
tell that to the 200/200 terran that i rolled with 140 supply toss by cliff jumping into his base after he pushed his units down his ramp. A ramp is a choke, stop trying to block with units if buildings can block just fine. and wtf the ramp on scrapyard is huge...if you have enough roaches to cover the entire width of that shit how are you not picking off most of the zerglings?
oh and solution: put zerglings between your roaches maybe that will work ha. plug a zergling hole with a zergling.
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So, this will probably develop into an SC2 technique similar to all the ones that evolved from SC1. Unless it becomes completely broken, I say have fun with it. It's more realistic, too.
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On March 11 2010 06:24 [uci] Fizik wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 06:19 koreasilver wrote: Ramps are so useless right now for so many reasons. tell that to the 200/200 terran that i rolled with 140 supply toss by cliff jumping into his base after he pushed his units down his ramp. A ramp is a choke, stop trying to block with units if buildings can block just fine. and wtf the ramp on scrapyard is huge...if you have enough roaches to cover the entire width of that shit how are you not picking off most of the zerglings? Your first sentence isn't relevant at all, and there should be a distinction between a ramp and a choke. As it is now, the moment you have vision, there is no disadvantage in attacking up a ramp at all.
Yeah, and a Zerg is going to block a ramp with buildings just fine, aren't they.
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On March 11 2010 06:17 Chairman Ray wrote: oh wow, until this gets fixed, Zerg might be dominant for a while No, zerglings got such a huge nerf in sc2 from sc1, their uber pathing is the only thing going for them. What happened is that they attack almost half as fast as before so zerglings really aren't scary at all now. Before 1 zergling gave ~the same dps as a zealot, now a zealot deals twice the dps of a ling, if everything else stayed the same zerglings would be 100% useless.
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Ah, just another reason something needs to be done about collision size for the entire game -_-.
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Another reason why zerglings aren't as hot is that a lot of units have fairly beefy armor off the bat. roach, for example, has 2- which is the key to why they rock zerglings so very, very hard.
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The way that SC2 handles collision makes it impossible to block with units.
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mrmin123
Korea (South)2971 Posts
Maybe the zerglings are running through the roachs' legs.
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I've lost atleast 5 PvZ with that glitch.. I found a post on the battle.net Bug Forum and a blue post said it was indeed not intended any they're looking into it. so no more will I lose to mass lings killing my economy as protoss :D
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I just wish all ground units collision was increased by about 5-10% Just enough to make walling a little more doable AND fixing the way units ball really really close together for spectators.
In wc3 you can get some nice blocks on units that are running away if you can micro your units infront of the runners, but with the tiny collision and superior pathing of sc2, they don't slow down at all..
*shrug*
edit: thanks for the post Fusionz, glad to see they are working on it
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that was me in that game. if you had threatened with a higher amount of roaches (9 or more) you could have just slow pushed out or defended in your base
i know the "quarry" is with collision size, but there was a massively better transition than just blocking and trying to tech. also sim city would have helped your spire from dying. honestly i don't see how this is much different than zvz in bw, aside from the fact that it takes little to zero micro to break a ramp
i realize it's easy for me to say all this but the problem isn't with blocking so much, your decisions need to be adapted.
it's like all of these p users trying to forge expand and then complaining that "they" should make it more viable
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I just had a strange, what I will dub "philoSCophic," thought:
Blizzard undoubtedly wanted to make SC2 better than its predecessor by creating more well defined boundaries within the game. Units have infinitely better AI and are limited in what they can and cannot do. Positions are optimized, and units are spread according to their size so you no longer have them stacking together like some sort of freakish pile of flying cards. In this case, the well defined small size of zerglings is creating a weird glitch that opposes/overcomes the well defined unit spacing of our poster.
What if, in the process of trying to tweak these hard boundaries (in this case unit collision & pathing), other anomalous things start to occur in a chain reaction as a result of creating "exceptions" in their algorithm? Is this simply something that can be changed by making zerglings "bigger?" Are we going to start seeing SC2 revert back to Broodwar after these boundaries and rules are blended together?
I'm definitely over-thinking this.
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I honestly hope they increase the colision of ALL units, it's pretty ridiculous now in that aspect :S.
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On March 11 2010 07:22 ProoM wrote: I honestly hope they increase the colision of ALL units, it's pretty ridiculous now in that aspect :S. True that would fix a lot of problems. Like the ridiculous over-clumping of everything.
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It seems that so much science from BW is not going to get adequately transfered to SC2.
I had fun testing out different building placements, making mazes and blocks against lings and zealots. That whole aspect of game is gone. And now this?
On March 11 2010 07:25 Klive5ive wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 07:22 ProoM wrote: I honestly hope they increase the colision of ALL units, it's pretty ridiculous now in that aspect :S. True that would fix a lot of problems. Like the ridiculous over-clumping of everything. I agree too.
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To me this whole collsion size mess looks like this:
Blizzard wanted units to move more fluently, so units make themselves "thinner" if a friendly unit wants to pass. They also move out of the way but that alone wouldn't make it very smooth.
This thing somehow seems to apply to enemy units as well, even though it probably wasn't intended. The gap that opens as a concequence is large enough for a zergling to squeeze through (zerglings probably also reduce their collision size slightly while moving).
I am just assuming this, it's hard to verify without knowing the code. In any case I think it shouldn't be too hard to fix - or it might be extremely hard to fix now that I think about it. If the zerglings have a smaller collision size while moving, and their size returns to normal once they stop, they will push the roaches away for that bit. Those roaches will trigger the other roaches to make room because they "want" to move. This opens those gaps.
Well, now I went pretty far from such a vague assumption  If I am close to the real implementation, Blizzard has to make sure that enemy units can't push your units around. They probably won't let go of the "making room for friendly units" part of the AI because that's so fancy and modern (I don't like it very much, it's quite hard to form a proper arc because you keep pushing your own units around, and sometimes it still is useful to have an arc).
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I thought the circles under a unit when selected is just a visual indicator and not an indicator of its collision size except in a general sense. Use the physical model for creating a tight wall not the circles and the wall usually holds. I think only massive units should be able to push other units i.e. ultralisk, tank & collosus.
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You know. I think I figured out why it occurs:
Zerglings, like all units, push their friends out of the way so that they can get to their goal position. If you tell them to attack past a line of enemies, the first lings will try to squeeze into the gaps between the opposing force's units. The next line of lings will try to do the same and will push those lings just slightly. With larger units this may not have an effect, because the units simply can't squeeze into those tiny gaps in the first place, but with lings they get pushed through.
This is of course an educated guess, but I think a good way to test it would be to take different numbers of lings from 1 up to... a lot, and you just try to break through walls with them.
I wish I could test it myself, but I'm away from my desktop computer and can't run sc2 on my laptop with any degree of playability.
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On March 11 2010 06:30 Klockan3 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 06:17 Chairman Ray wrote: oh wow, until this gets fixed, Zerg might be dominant for a while No, zerglings got such a huge nerf in sc2 from sc1, their uber pathing is the only thing going for them. What happened is that they attack almost half as fast as before so zerglings really aren't scary at all now. Before 1 zergling gave ~the same dps as a zealot, now a zealot deals twice the dps of a ling, if everything else stayed the same zerglings would be 100% useless. I think Lings could use a buff, but making them unblockable isn't the way to do it.
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United States4126 Posts
Doesn't this problem only occur when you don't use hold position?
Nvm, misread the OP.
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Yes this is a problem that's been really pissing me off too. It makes early speedling builds annoyingly hard to hold off as protoss because it's literally impossible to block your ramp with zealots against them.
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On March 11 2010 07:25 Klive5ive wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 07:22 ProoM wrote: I honestly hope they increase the colision of ALL units, it's pretty ridiculous now in that aspect :S. True that would fix a lot of problems. Like the ridiculous over-clumping of everything. Seriously. This. This simple change would make big battle so much easier to watch. Throw in a slight modification to coloring and all of the "oh my god wtf is going on?!?" moments will go by the way of a pvp tech build.
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With moves like this mixed with early baneling wall snipes, I've lost some games way too early. When 2raxing isn't safe, there's a bit of a problem. And yeah, this is even worse when playing protoss.
BTW, props to the guy saying this isn't a problem because you deserved to lose the game anyway. That kind of posting seems to be par for the course here lately...
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This has actually been a problem for awhile. I discovered it when using Plexa's zealot walling technique a long time ago against my brother and we tested it a couple times to make sure it wasn't just bad positioning. I hesitated to make any posts about it anywhere though because most zerg players just figured hold-position unit walls would be tight (I'm protoss). I submitted a bug report when I found it though and got a blue response looking into it the next day, just before patch3 I believe. Hopefully they take it seriously because this can have some serious implications with a LOT of protoss strategies right now.
By the way, its not just a zergling thing, I've pulled it off with zealots as well. Its easier to do the more units you have and the smaller (thinner I should say) the wall. Doesn't just apply to ramps, also works against 1-matrix wide chokes. The only way right now to 100% block a choke of this type with units I've found is to put a unit wider than the choke in front or behind it and hold-position. So for instance, if you make a 1-matrix wide choke using buildings and put an archon in front or behind, no matter how much they clump up zerglings won't be able to make it through with just spamming move commands. Obviously this is not particularly helpful though. They really just need to fix hold-position walls altogether.
In the meantime, you are best off just making your wall as thick as possible to prevent this kind of stuff. For instance, putting a gateway next to a wall so you get a 3x1 matrix corridor and filling that with zealots will make it hard to break. The zerglings can eventually make it through all the zealots, but they have to do it one at a time (they only seem to jump through units when you have at least 2 to 3 clumping on top of eachother). Also, be careful if the zerg gets ling speed because that seems to make it like 20x easier to pull off to the point where zerglings can pretty much walk right through a 1-zealot thick wall.
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On March 11 2010 09:46 -orb- wrote: Yes this is a problem that's been really pissing me off too. It makes early speedling builds annoyingly hard to hold off as protoss because it's literally impossible to block your ramp with zealots against them. If you place your gates in such a way to leave a small space between them , or wall them together to leave a small wall on the edge of the cliff then you can wall with 1 zeal or whatever.
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Read the post above you, that doesn't actually work either. Any and all hold-positioned zealot walls can be glitched through as of right now with enough speedlings.
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you can definitely block a choke vs zerglings with hold position roaches. you didn't have them close enough, and the first picture shows that.
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I tested this with a perfect wall Roach wall. Each one as close as possible to each other, like how the pro's in SC1 do it with Zerglings. With Hold Position.
You don't need to spam right click, Zerglings will automatically path through the roaches with one right click.
Without speed, only a handful of lings seep through over time. With speed researched, Zerglings pretty much unit walk through the wall like it's not even there. God help you if you have creep on your ramp.
Seems like a bug to me. The poster above me if demonstratively wrong.
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The reason why this happens is because the collision between allied units are soft, ie. they can push each other around. So in extreme cases this push can overpower the block effect of enemy units. This can be adressed if you prioritize enemy unit collision over allied unit collision. However, if you do that it will lead to a somehwat more stale movement of the units when two groups collide with each other, much like it was in SC1. Units can be trapped more easily for instance. A slight increase of the collision radius can probably solve the current zergling issue, but it won't solve the core issue. Broodlings have even less of a radius I would guess but is not as critical.
Edit: I don't know how the pathing radius works in SC2, but an increase of that could be a solution. Then zerglings wont even try to go past since the path is inaccessible no matter how many times you click.
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Hmm, i know for a fact that my lings have been blocked with zealots a lot and it hasn't bugged before. I wonder if there is something that zerg player was doing in particular.
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On March 11 2010 10:23 CharlieMurphy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2010 09:46 -orb- wrote: Yes this is a problem that's been really pissing me off too. It makes early speedling builds annoyingly hard to hold off as protoss because it's literally impossible to block your ramp with zealots against them. If you place your gates in such a way to leave a small space between them , or wall them together to leave a small wall on the edge of the cliff then you can wall with 1 zeal or whatever.
This is true. And not hard to do. You only keep 1 zeal between gates or whatever and they can't go through 1 zeal, can't push just the one away.
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I am pretty sure that the game won't allow you to block your own units with more of your units. I think if you move any unit of your own past a wall of your units, they just allow them to slide through. This is what I noticed, at least.
On March 13 2010 22:47 Tef wrote: The reason why this happens is because the collision between allied units are soft, ie. they can push each other around. Pretty much. I would guess this is the cause of the OP's inability to block his own lings with his Roaches.
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Quick tip to those who don't know it but hold position makes it so that units don't plow through other units when trying to get somewhere. Units going somewhere simply go around the other units that are on hold position.
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On March 14 2010 04:14 FarbrorAbavna wrote: Quick tip to those who don't know it but hold position makes it so that units don't plow through other units when trying to get somewhere. Units going somewhere simply go around the other units that are on hold position.
only work with ally unit not opponent unit
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I kinda like that zerglings can squeeze by things. I think it adds to the game.
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Units on HP never budge so much as an inch, in my experience, even to get out of the way of allied units or building placements. Are the Lings just fitting between the Roaches magically despite that their collision joins up?
Start a game in sandbox mode with a friend and post some replays, I bet this will get fixed. Ramps and chokes are meant to be blockable with a few units to allow you to push a defensive advantage.
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On March 14 2010 06:40 Gedrah wrote: Units on HP never budge so much as an inch, in my experience, even to get out of the way of allied units or building placements. Are the Lings just fitting between the Roaches magically despite that their collision joins up?
Start a game in sandbox mode with a friend and post some replays, I bet this will get fixed. Ramps and chokes are meant to be blockable with a few units to allow you to push a defensive advantage.
yeas, the roaches dont more but the lings squeeze through
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United States7166 Posts
i'd just like to reiterate to make people aware, it's not just speedlings, other units ive noticed can squeeze through any unit wall (that's hold positioned), it's just harder to get them through
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On March 14 2010 05:20 Bosu wrote: I kinda like that zerglings can squeeze by things. I think it adds to the game. All i can think is it's a shame i cant make them jump over terran buildings blocking it lol.
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On March 14 2010 07:24 Zelniq wrote: i'd just like to reiterate to make people aware, it's not just speedlings, other units ive noticed can squeeze through any unit wall (that's hold positioned), it's just harder to get them through Honestly, I feel like the community should be making a bigger deal of this and unit clumping as a whole. Things like overpowered roaches or what have you are simple to balance (well, changing the stats). But things that imply that the engine is BROKEN worries me greatly. If we can't block our own ramp, the limitations for strategies (particularly any sort of turtling/quick tech enabled by zealot walls) will be great. :\
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I checked out some replays, you're right. Whereas a unit holding position will not move out of the way when any units want to push past him, and a unit will never move out of the way when a hostile unit wants to push past him, it seems that if one unit pushes another unit into a unit that's holding position, the HP unit will move out of the second (battering ram) unit's way.
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On March 14 2010 06:40 Gedrah wrote: Units on HP never budge so much as an inch, in my experience, even to get out of the way of allied units or building placements. Are the Lings just fitting between the Roaches magically despite that their collision joins up?
Start a game in sandbox mode with a friend and post some replays, I bet this will get fixed. Ramps and chokes are meant to be blockable with a few units to allow you to push a defensive advantage.
since you'd like a replay and i happent o have posted one in another thread about this issue
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ytmyywjfjdi/2010-03-12 12-33-48.SC2Replay
heres a replay of using zealots to stop zerglings (impossible)
the zerg here just spams right click past the wall of units no matter the unit formation
maybe other formations can be tried but heres a good example of the testing ive done.
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the replay shows testing, it was a custom game, has nothing to do with winning, unless you count it was impossible to prevent entry into my base so i lost? to his spam right click?
regardless it was only a test game, ment to show example of what this thread is talking about to those who dont have a beta or those who havnt experienced it.
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Anyone else notice that the AI reacts differently from a building block to a unit block
when a building blocks the ramp units don't usually go up the ramp if you just right clicked into base, while a block with units doesn't ususally result in that.
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ive been abusing this fact in zvz. makes mass ling really really hard to stop.
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United States7166 Posts
yeah but once zergs learn to just keep roaches in their mineral line until they attack, leaving behind a few roaches + 1 sunken when they push out, that wont work too well anymore
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it would seem that either the hit boxes are smaller than they appear ingame. for the most part most of the other units are fine. perhaps they could make the ones for zerglings a little bigger. i recall they made the collision boxes for the collossus a little smaller because everything practically ran into it
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Its honestly not a big deal, you can make ling tight walls of roaches, its just difficult to do. I honestly wouldn't even bother walling off with roaches, especially considering if you just tell your roaches to sit in your mineral line the lings can't do any damage anyways. Also, zealots are tight with buildings, so no, your wall of 3 zealots will not block your choke off completely, but if you put a zealot next to the edge of a cliff on one side and a gateway on the other its totally tight. I really don't think this is game breaking, nor do I think its ridiculous or unrealistic. A swarm of zerglings is going to be able to squeeze through a line of zealots... think about it.
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On March 14 2010 10:36 Wr3k wrote: Its honestly not a big deal, you can make ling tight walls of roaches, its just difficult to do. I honestly wouldn't even bother walling off with roaches, especially considering if you just tell your roaches to sit in your mineral line the lings can't do any damage anyways. Also, zealots are tight with buildings, so no, your wall of 3 zealots will not block your choke off completely, but if you put a zealot next to the edge of a cliff on one side and a gateway on the other its totally tight. I really don't think this is game breaking, nor do I think its ridiculous or unrealistic. A swarm of zerglings is going to be able to squeeze through a line of zealots... think about it.
No you can't wall off speedlings. Tested 130 lings right clicked through 4 rows of roaches  Anyway they won't do much damage if you stick to your mineral line.
It seems the lings "push" eachother when they collide.
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On March 14 2010 09:36 Virtue wrote: Anyone else notice that the AI reacts differently from a building block to a unit block
when a building blocks the ramp units don't usually go up the ramp if you just right clicked into base, while a block with units doesn't ususally result in that. Yeah that's because pathing takes all information into account even if you can't see it, your units "know" they can't get through the building wall even though they have no vision of it lol.
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On March 11 2010 06:17 Chairman Ray wrote: oh wow, until this gets fixed, Zerg might be dominant for a while
u should send this to blizz. this is prolly the only problem about balancing right now LOL
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Yeah, I think this is more an issue with zerglings piling up on top of eachother and pushing their way through more than there being gaps between unit collision boxes. IF you tell your units to hold position they make a much tighter wall.
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On March 14 2010 08:47 Sid(TB) wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2010 06:40 Gedrah wrote: Units on HP never budge so much as an inch, in my experience, even to get out of the way of allied units or building placements. Are the Lings just fitting between the Roaches magically despite that their collision joins up?
Start a game in sandbox mode with a friend and post some replays, I bet this will get fixed. Ramps and chokes are meant to be blockable with a few units to allow you to push a defensive advantage. since you'd like a replay and i happent o have posted one in another thread about this issue http://www.mediafire.com/file/ytmyywjfjdi/2010-03-12 12-33-48.SC2Replayheres a replay of using zealots to stop zerglings (impossible) the zerg here just spams right click past the wall of units no matter the unit formation maybe other formations can be tried but heres a good example of the testing ive done.
Yeah I went and checked for myself, there is most definitely a quirk in the pathing AI for HP units where they will move around if shoved by another unit that was shoved by another unit.
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If you don't tell them to hold position, its not really a wall at all. If you do, they can still run zerglings through it. Its really very simple, its a bug that needs to be fixed. It has nothing to do with how thick the wall is or if its on a ramp or between buildings or its facing north/south or west/east, its just plain broken right now. I hope more zerg players begin to realize this because until it is abused, its not likely to be fixed.
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On March 11 2010 06:44 -fj. wrote: The way that SC2 handles collision makes it impossible to block with units.
If we are talking collision done without look ahead features than it could be entirely possible for a fast unit to run right through another unit as the collision would not be detected until it had passed the threshold that blocks a unit from moving through another. Since its online and done through the servers, the speed of the servers could have a great impact on the speed of these calculations, however I do not think blizzard would use such a primitive collision system. Given the fact its beta and there are latency complaints, it might possibly be performance issues(I doubt this since the units do not move at such high speeds).
These problems are usually found in programs running directly from the hardware and they do not incorporate some sort of fps/game loop limiter. I am not familiar with the networking done via bnet but im sure such limiters are in place, especially for controlling the latency between players.
I remember something about havoc engine back when they were showing off the mother ship for the first time, i do not remember if they are currently using it or not. If so, then everything probably has a hamsterball collision field which is why they move around like marbles.
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i like it how ppl still say on the 4th (!!!) page thats its still possible to wall lol read the topic before u post ur wrong informations so annoying
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It seems to me like blizzard made several units' collision sizes way smaller than the unit itself appears to be. ZvZ would be lame without walls
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I get so pissed of when I see the way units behave in streams >=( It is quite literally impossible for a unit to hold its ground in a large army, the units just push each other around till ordered to go somewhere else. I think the collision sizes of units really need to be fixed
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