I like the interface improvements in SC2 quite a bit. I remember multi building selection being pretty controversial when the game was in alpha stages and some discussion of it during beta. But overall it looked like the player base came to accept it, especially with the introduced macro mechanics. Lots of other features were pretty game changing and welcomed by the community. Autorepair, on the other hand, has never sat well with me. I hadn't really verbalized it, but there was something about it that just didn't feel like it belonged with the other interface improvements. MBS, unlimited unit selection, workers harvesting on rally, all these things applied and benefited all three races. Autorepair, however, only benefits Terran. If it was only that, then fine, each race is entitled to be different. But it's more than that... there's something about autorepair that makes it feel like it's more than just a convenient feature....
After much thought, I have come to verbalize why Autorepair is not just an interface improvement. It's automated microing. Autorepair can achieve feats that players cannot humanly achieve on their own. Autoreplay can instantaneously have each SCV repair each other SCV in a cluster. It is humanly impossible to click 10 or 15 individual scvs and right click each neighboring scv in a fraction of a second to repair them all. (a cluster of scvs can survive more than 2 fungal growths with autorepair.) Autorepair allows extremely fast reactional repairing in many situations. It only improves when there's more scvs and more units to be repaired.
So in this sense autorepair is automicroing for you at a superhuman level. Autorepair is capable of doing things for you that you couldn't do yourself. That's the major issue I have with it. It would be like an option for melee units to autotarget nearby workers when there are enemy attack units in range (ie zerglings in mineral line when stalkers are firing at them). The trouble in that situation is that it's humanly impossible to take individual zerglings and right click on nearby individual workers in a timely manner. This is analogous to how you could not possibly micro individual scvs to repair neighboring scvs & attack units in time. Autorepair is performing automated micro at a superhuman level.
In this view, autorepair is no different from an automated micro technique like an imaginary "autoattack workers" command outlined in the above paragraph. Autorepair is also no different from other imaginary automations I can think of like "auto-stutter", "auto-scatter", etc. All these things have something in common: they achieve micro feats that players cannot humanly do on their own. We've seen the automaton 2000 videos: (if you havent, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0) Automated microing looks godly; no human can do what the automaton script did here. Similarly, autorepair can repair at the machine-like level that we see in automaton 2000.
What about the other autocast features in the game? Contrast autorepair with the other automated convenience put in the game, autobuild intercepters for carriers. What is the difference between autorepair and auto build intercepters? Build intercepters can easily be done manually by the player regardless of autocast. The "APM cost" of build intercepters is not significantly reduced by autocast because it doesn't take many more actions to bulk up on intercepters; they can be queued and one click queues an intercepter for every carrier. Autorepair, however, significantly reduces the APM-cost of the player in many practical situations. More importantly, autobuild intercepters doesn't do anything the player cannot do himself. You can manually keep up intercepter production with a player who has build intercepters on autocast. It is mere convenience and doesn't achieve anything the player cannot do on his own. Autorepair, on the other hand, can achieve amazing feats of micro that players could not do with manual repairing.
How about medivac heal? Technically, it's autocast. But it's autocast out of necessity; medivacs need autoheal for their spell to be effective. True, medivac healing allows for the same impossible feats of micro when marines are constantly taking damage on and off and manually casting it could never keep up with the effectiveness of autocast. But let's consider that medivac heal would be useless if you had to manually cast it. Repair, on the other hand, is still very very useful without autocast. Medivacs are balanced around autocast. Whereas scv's repair has not been balanced around autocast. Autorepair has never been nerfed or anything to compensate for autocast. If it was, that's unfortunate because there are situations where you don't want to have autocast on and being nerfed for the automation feature is just not fair for those situations. Anyway, medviac heal is no different from every attack unit autoattacking when something is in range. Heal is a medivac's "attack". when you attack move a medivac it follows a unit and heals them. Also, medics had autocast heal in BW as well, which was really the only autocast ability in the game which further reinforces the idea that autocast med heal is autocast out of necessity.
So we've looked at two different kinds of autocast other than autorepair: "convenience autocast" such as build intercepter, and "necessity autocast" like medivac heal. To wrap it up, I want to theorize autocast queen inject for the purpose of comparing it to autorepair because I think most of us can agree that inject should never have an autocast feature. What category of autocast it would autoinject fall under? It certainly wouldn't fall under necessity, as Queens don't need autoinject for inject larva to be effective. (Also, inject larva is an intended macro mechanic meant to make macroing more difficult and separate skill levels.)
So with that out of the way, would autocast inject be more similar to autobuild intercepter or autorepair? Ask yourself this: If you had 30 carriers, could you manually build intercepters and keep up with another player with 30 carriers who had autobuild intercepter on? Absolutely; simply have all carriers selected and keep hitting the build intercepter key. If you had 30 hatcheries and 30 queens, could you manually keep up with autocast larva inject? Absolutely not. The time it would take a player to click through all those hatcheries, even with tricks like "next base" queen injection (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0RLKroMJrc) is delayed significantly enough that autocast inject would come out on top. So autocast inject is in the same category as autorepair: it performs automated feats that the player cannot perform on his own. Neither autorepair nor autoinject really groove with this game.
Nerfing autorepair would be absolutely meaningless given it would only force people to unnecessarily spam right click or r + click. People CAN perform the feats of autorepair unlike auto inject. I don't know how you're saying that autorepair is inhuman and impossible to recreate. To even inject those youtube videos of INSANE micro done by AI bots is just a ludicrous comparison.
I'm actually shocked that someone has this much beef with autorepair especially considering the regen mechanics of both zerg and protoss. o_O
On May 10 2011 17:13 stevarius wrote: Nerfing autorepair would be absolutely meaningless given it would only force people to unnecessarily spam right click or r + click. People CAN perform the feats of autorepair unlike auto inject. I don't know how you're saying that autorepair is inhuman and impossible to recreate. To even inject those youtube videos of INSANE micro done by AI bots is just a ludicrous comparison.
I'm actually shocked that someone has this much beef with autorepair especially considering the regen mechanics of both zerg and protoss. o_O
I'll give you a practical example and you tell me it's ludicrous and that a human can do it.
Your 10 scvs are clustered under a group of banshees and are repairing them. Most of your scvs are somewhat injured, enough that a fungal will kill most of them. your scvs get hit by a fungal growth and will die if you don't order the repair command for each to another neighboring scv (you have to click the neighboring scv, not one out of immediate repair range as the units cannot move due to fungal and also there's just not enough time). Your scvs will all survive if you successfully issue the repair command to each of them near instantaneously. Can you honestly tell me you or anyone else would be able to issue those commands in the fraction of a second it would take to survive the fungal? Could anyone even do it in the full 2.5 second (real time) fungal duration? (maybe your first two repair commands would save two scvs at best, but the delayed reaction from the rest would result in death)
Auto repair isnt fool proof your scv`s dont always repair what you want plus setting your scv`s to repair somthing is nowhere near as hard as spreading maarines
On May 10 2011 17:13 stevarius wrote: Nerfing autorepair would be absolutely meaningless given it would only force people to unnecessarily spam right click or r + click. People CAN perform the feats of autorepair unlike auto inject. I don't know how you're saying that autorepair is inhuman and impossible to recreate. To even inject those youtube videos of INSANE micro done by AI bots is just a ludicrous comparison.
I'm actually shocked that someone has this much beef with autorepair especially considering the regen mechanics of both zerg and protoss. o_O
I'll give you a practical example and you tell me it's ludicrous and that a human can do it.
Your scvs are clustered under a group of banshees and are repairing them. most of your scvs are somewhat injured, enough that a fungal will kill most of them. your scvs get hit by a fungal growth and will die if you don't order the repair command for each to another neighboring scv (you have to click the neighboring scv, not one out of immediate repair range as the units cannot move due to fungal and also there's just not enough time). Your scvs will all survive if you successfully issue the repair command to each of them before fungal wears out. Can you honestly tell me you or anyone else would be able to issue those commands in the 2.5 seconds (in real time) that fungal lasts for?
Do you honestly believe the SCVs are going to survive fungals? It's an impractical situation given the amount of DPS fungals do in such a short span of time. Clicking repair or having autorepair for those SCVs would do absolutely nothing except sink your money in the VERY short amount of time they manage to survive.
I even dare you to find a scenario where autorepair is GAME-BREAKING. This is the key as autorepair is, in the opinion of most players, completely fine and unnecessary to be analyzing in the current state of the game...
On May 10 2011 17:21 gogatorsfoster wrote: i have to disagree but great write up!!
Auto repair isnt fool proof your scv`s dont always repair what you want plus setting your scv`s to repair somthing is nowhere near as hard as spreading maarines
It's certainly not fool proof, and I dabble with that a little bit in the article. There are times you want to manually cast it. Albeit most of those times you'll want to repair a single thing, or something similar where it's relatively easy to do it manually. There's also times when scvs on autorepair pull themselves off harvesting to repair nearby buildings that have trivial amounts of damage on them when you just don't need them to be repaired. But that's like turning off autocast intercepters when you need the money elsewhere... autorepair is acting like a convenience you don't need at the moment in this situation.
On May 10 2011 17:21 gogatorsfoster wrote: i have to disagree but great write up!!
Auto repair isnt fool proof your scv`s dont always repair what you want plus setting your scv`s to repair somthing is nowhere near as hard as spreading maarines
It's certainly not fool proof, and I dabble with that a little bit in the article. There are times you want to manually cast it. Albeit most of those times you'll want to repair a single thing, or something similar where it's relatively easy to do it manually. There's also times when autorepairing scvs for insignficant damage on neighboring buildings pulls them off harvesting when you just don't need to. But that's like turning off autocast intercepters when you need the money elsewhere... autorepair is acting like a convenience you don't need at the moment in this situation.
You'd be very surprised actually.... repairing scvs can survive fungals indefinitely. That's not the main motivation behind writing this article, it's just the most poignant example of autorepair's inhuman micro potential because it forces time to be absolutely critical and in numbers you cannot possibly manually issue the commands you need to.
Given the fact that Fungal locks a unit in place and that repair is a "melee range" ability I dont see the point of it being IMBA. It wouldnt save a worker line because the units are too spread out.
If the opponent has 10 SCVs hugging each other below a few Banshees its really bad for your opponent already, because technically the Banshees have to deal enough damage for themselves AND for the 10 SCVs. Given the slow repair speed (unless you put 20 workers on repair), the fragility of the SCVs and the changes to targeting priority its unlikely to work well enough anyways. Not worth whining about ...
This discussion isn't specific to fungal, it's just the most extreme example to demonstrate superhuman, automated micro. There are hundreds of other examples we could choose from, like scvs huddled around tanks/helions/thors that are constantly taking damage in separate areas. particlarly if they're on different sides of the map.
If you don't like that specific example with fungal, I can change it to scvs under a battle cruiser. That's certainly effective if the situation demands it... repair heals for a lot on BCS. and you could save them all from fungals with autorepair in that scenario.
On May 10 2011 17:13 stevarius wrote: Nerfing autorepair would be absolutely meaningless given it would only force people to unnecessarily spam right click or r + click. People CAN perform the feats of autorepair unlike auto inject. I don't know how you're saying that autorepair is inhuman and impossible to recreate. To even inject those youtube videos of INSANE micro done by AI bots is just a ludicrous comparison.
I'm actually shocked that someone has this much beef with autorepair especially considering the regen mechanics of both zerg and protoss. o_O
I'll give you a practical example and you tell me it's ludicrous and that a human can do it.
Your scvs are clustered under a group of banshees and are repairing them. most of your scvs are somewhat injured, enough that a fungal will kill most of them. your scvs get hit by a fungal growth and will die if you don't order the repair command for each to another neighboring scv (you have to click the neighboring scv, not one out of immediate repair range as the units cannot move due to fungal and also there's just not enough time). Your scvs will all survive if you successfully issue the repair command to each of them before fungal wears out. Can you honestly tell me you or anyone else would be able to issue those commands in the 2.5 seconds (in real time) that fungal lasts for?
Do you honestly believe the SCVs are going to survive fungals? It's an impractical situation given the amount of DPS fungals do in such a short span of time. Clicking repair or having autorepair for those SCVs would do absolutely nothing except sink your money in the VERY short amount of time they manage to survive.
I even dare you to find a scenario where autorepair is GAME-BREAKING. This is the key as autorepair is, in the opinion of most players, completely fine and unnecessary to be analyzing in the current state of the game...
but they do repair fast enough to survive fungal, and in this situation it is game breaking an extra 10+ scvs that dont have to be remade and can mine is a game changer
fungal harass cant kill scvs on auto repair, at all, combined with repair costs a lot less than rebuilding them and the weaknesses inherent in infestors, thats potentially very game breaking
they did nerf it once to give scvs the attack priority of the unit they were repairing
No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair.
Pending fungal vs autorepair with minerals.... *sigh* such a dumb debate. See next post for basic math.
On top of this, the AI for auto repair is highly regarded as slightly retarded. If you search you can find just how bad it can be at times....
Please... I have lost many thors to autorepair AI. Its really annoying to see scvs running around like crazy, then deciding to repair themselves while your units die. However, its also quite useful in some situations. Commanding your scvs to repair a turret being attacked by mutas is a common event in a TvZ. But what happens when the turret reaches full health? Yep you got it, they idle if they dont have autorepair on. Also autorepairing in a bunker rush is a no no, the scvs will not enter the bunkers if they are damaged and the autorepair is on. It has its pros and cons, deal with it.
On May 10 2011 17:48 stevarius wrote: No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair.
Weird graphical problem at beginning because of Aero theme option ticked in Xsplit, but you can see clearly at end. 720P :D
Take a look at the top right of your map where your mineral count is.
On May 10 2011 17:48 stevarius wrote: No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair.
On May 10 2011 17:48 stevarius wrote: No. I even did an experiment just to show how wrong you are. I picked 3 infestors(less than the average zerg I've ever seen have, ON AVERAGE. I also used 22 SCVs. 16 on minerals you may have and 6 on gas that could be pulled and auto-repair activated to repair something in dire need such as a planetary, a mechanical unit, etc. To top this off, the SCVs only had each other to repair making your statement look even more ludicrous. Video evidence shows that SCVs with auto-repair die INSANELY fast to fungal growth. With that knowledge lacking from your experience, I call into question anything else you have stated and I do not find the argument you provide compelling in any way as to influence me or people I know to call into question the legitimacy of auto-repair.
Take a look at the top right of your map where your mineral count is.
Irrelevant, they die to 2 successive fungals. Do I really have to do this again?
I think he's suggesting they didn't repair because of lack of minerals. I don't know how the editor works so I can't comment on that but if that is the case it would make your video kind of pointless even if you are correct.
On topic, I don't see what the big deal is. The only imba thing about autorepair was on pf's but that isn't too big of a problem nowadays.
Why the comparison the auto cast spawn larva? That is an ability zerg players use dozens of times each game, where as auto repair comes into play how often? No matter how 'imba' something may be its potential to influence the game is limited to its use within the game. In other words a change to spawn larva is game breaking, where as changes to repair or things like bunker salvage are almost meaningless.
Also I have never understood why people complain about auto repair when zerg and protoss units all automatically heal over time - for free.
On May 10 2011 17:13 stevarius wrote: Nerfing autorepair would be absolutely meaningless given it would only force people to unnecessarily spam right click or r + click. People CAN perform the feats of autorepair unlike auto inject. I don't know how you're saying that autorepair is inhuman and impossible to recreate. To even inject those youtube videos of INSANE micro done by AI bots is just a ludicrous comparison.
I'm actually shocked that someone has this much beef with autorepair especially considering the regen mechanics of both zerg and protoss. o_O
I'll give you a practical example and you tell me it's ludicrous and that a human can do it.
Your scvs are clustered under a group of banshees and are repairing them. most of your scvs are somewhat injured, enough that a fungal will kill most of them. your scvs get hit by a fungal growth and will die if you don't order the repair command for each to another neighboring scv (you have to click the neighboring scv, not one out of immediate repair range as the units cannot move due to fungal and also there's just not enough time). Your scvs will all survive if you successfully issue the repair command to each of them before fungal wears out. Can you honestly tell me you or anyone else would be able to issue those commands in the 2.5 seconds (in real time) that fungal lasts for?
Do you honestly believe the SCVs are going to survive fungals? It's an impractical situation given the amount of DPS fungals do in such a short span of time. Clicking repair or having autorepair for those SCVs would do absolutely nothing except sink your money in the VERY short amount of time they manage to survive.
I even dare you to find a scenario where autorepair is GAME-BREAKING. This is the key as autorepair is, in the opinion of most players, completely fine and unnecessary to be analyzing in the current state of the game...
but they do repair fast enough to survive fungal, and in this situation it is game breaking an extra 10+ scvs that dont have to be remade and can mine is a game changer
fungal harass cant kill scvs on auto repair, at all, combined with repair costs a lot less than rebuilding them and the weaknesses inherent in infestors, thats potentially very game breaking
they did nerf it once to give scvs the attack priority of the unit they were repairing
Bad example as usually a few scvs team up to repair one scv, so a lot will die no matter. Ignoring that, this hypothetical example is probably the biggest hair pull I've read. In any case, if auto repair was to be nerfed, I'd expect combat APM to be reduced, because it really is ridiculous how much combat APM a terran requires(using tanks and/or bio).
This might be ok for thor combos(Which suck anyway after patch except for allins), but would just take out one more thing people can do, adding scvs to strengthen their army(since even the best pro wouldn't be able to repair + do all the combat APM stuff terran must do).
Commanding your scvs to repair a turret being attacked by mutas is a common event in a TvZ. But what happens when the turret reaches full health? Yep you got it, they idle if they dont have autorepair on.
This would happen with manual repair too...
On May 10 2011 17:51 Wyk wrote: It has its pros and cons, deal with it.
It certainly does have its pros and cons, as was mentioned earlier in the thread. I agree with that. It doesn't have to be the perfect, be all end all solution to be considered a feature that doesn't belong with this game. Its potential to automate microing for you is just... a no no for starcraft 2 in general.
I'd also like to point out that autoinject would have pros and cons, technically. if your queens are always injecting, then you'd never have a transfuse when you need it. maybe a flimsy example but you get my idea. automation isn't perfect, but there are some automation features we could simply do without in a game that emphasizes the skill of the player.
never used autorepair because the AI is so retarded... why ppl decide it needs to be nerved when so many other things might be far more out of place then AR is beyond me.
OP probably lost to a terran who used it and blames his loss on it...
EPT
