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I find some stuff said in this thread completely rediclous.
One is that "pros" in general are bad and dont declump to bypass the problem and the other is that clumping somehow benefits the overall skill of the game.
Last time i checked "pros" have been declumping for over a year now, pretty much in every game, by "pros" im talking specificly about terran pros tough.
I am pretty sure you have to declump even in gold as a terran, even if its minimum splitting, otherwise a baneling, a tank or a storm will kill half of your army.
Yes, currently terran pros havent yet achieved those perfect splits and "formations" however i dont think we will see this perfect "individual" marine micro that some people here expect, till either enough time pass for the current players develop that skill in maybe a year or two or till the likes of flash move over to sc2.
But this brings us to the problem that clumping only "benefits" the skill of terran players, doesnt it ?
Pretty much the only situation were a protoss had to make heavy "declumping" is when facing EMP (wich btw none did anyway) but even then papa blizzard swooped in and nerfed the ability, so now the only declumping needed is not having those 4 high templars right on top of each other.
Also clumping looks like shi
So yeah i think units clump way way too much in sc2, and like it was said in some posts before mine, a simple way to do it is to simply dont allow the circles under the unit to overlap.
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Casuals wouldn't play sc2 with BW AI and sc2 would fail as an esport.
EDIT: because not enough viewers
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On December 29 2011 12:27 Golgotha wrote:
stop. this is nonsense.
the reason why clumped up units are SO good is because the concentration of units provide maximum firepower at a given point and time. Take for example a group of marines that are tightly packed together. More marines can fire at a given target because everyone is in range to fire their gun. On the other hand we de-clump them so that an invisible marine stands between every marine. This increases the firing range at which some marines can or cannot fire because of their distance apart. Thus, decreasing their DPS at that given time.
If you still don't get it, why do you think force fields are used and why do you think they are so powerful in this game? Because it spreads apart the enemy force so that half the force is holding their dicks and the other half is pew pewing.
Well that isn't correct: a concave/surround formation gives the most opportunity for all friendly units to hit the enemy target. The minute you put one marine 'clumped' behind another you're making the first marine get closer to the target so the ones behind can be within range. This drastically reduces the number of units you can have within range at any time.
Spreading means more friendly units can be next to each other on the front line within range. Force fields are powerful because they force enemy armies out of range, but it should be obvious that the size of a forcefield splitting an army is completely different to organising things so your units are next to each other.
+ with high damage ranged units it's better to have them behind and protected, but smart focus fire and spreading is the best method, not clumping units around them.
DPS comes from focus fire, not clumping.
I feel like I should draw a picture. See how spreading units out keeps the most in range? the big circles are forcefields.
http://imgur.com/Kn36i
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On December 29 2011 21:42 alhazrel wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 12:27 Golgotha wrote:
stop. this is nonsense.
the reason why clumped up units are SO good is because the concentration of units provide maximum firepower at a given point and time. Take for example a group of marines that are tightly packed together. More marines can fire at a given target because everyone is in range to fire their gun. On the other hand we de-clump them so that an invisible marine stands between every marine. This increases the firing range at which some marines can or cannot fire because of their distance apart. Thus, decreasing their DPS at that given time.
If you still don't get it, why do you think force fields are used and why do you think they are so powerful in this game? Because it spreads apart the enemy force so that half the force is holding their dicks and the other half is pew pewing. Well that isn't correct: a concave/surround formation gives the most opportunity for all friendly units to hit the enemy target. The minute you put one marine 'clumped' behind another you're making the first marine get closer to the target so the ones behind can be within range. This drastically reduces the number of units you can have within range at any time. Spreading means more friendly units can be next to each other on the front line within range. Force fields are powerful because they force enemy armies out of range, but it should be obvious that the size of a forcefield splitting an army is completely different to organising things so your units are next to each other. + with high damage ranged units it's better to have them behind and protected, but smart focus fire and spreading is the best method, not clumping units around them. DPS comes from focus fire, not clumping. I feel like I should draw a picture. See how spreading units out keeps the most in range? the big circles are forcefields. http://imgur.com/Kn36i
Imagine 200 marines clumped in 1 single point attack moving against 200 marines spread evenly all over antiga shipyard. it would basically be 200 vs 1 a lot of times over and over and clumped up would win
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I definitely agree the unit clumping is a problem, especially from a spectator perspective. However I wonder if it should be solved by increasing the radius of certain units OR decreasing the amount of units that can be selected at once. I'm not saying reduce the groups back down to 12 units only but just reduce the total selectable amount of stuff to what can be displayed on the bottom command tab (which is like 28 or something units isn't it? maybe make it a bit more).
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Higher density of units = more firepower per area. Valid even for melee units, indeed.
It's probably the only aspect "for" keeping units clumped as they are. However, on a second thought, do we really need lots of firepower? Blizzard certainly does. They've made all kinds of basic changes towards faster games with quicker conclusions. More concentrated firepower helps them with this goal. Meanwhile, we, who have experienced the pure epic brilliance of BW battles, still feel somewhat dissatisfied with how battles are in SC2 (fortunately they are improving slowly).
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Agreed with the above post, the real problem in sc2 is dps/area occupied.
10 marines can clump and occupy the same place as 2 stalkers. you can compare dps of 10 marines vs 2 stalkers and you'll quickly realise that dps/area is a ignored but absolutely important concept to understand why the clumping can't stay like it is.
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It forces micro but at the same time, it's a bit boring. But I think, in a 2010 game, this is normal. In Brood War it was really interesting just because the pathfinding sucked. I recommend the Day9 daily on game design where he exposes his opinion about what is interesting in old games, and he talks about the old games that need skill rather than the new games that need less skill but decision making.
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On December 29 2011 20:06 Lavi wrote:
its because most of them only uses like 2 control group max for army...
just splitting them of course will not work the pathfinding is so good that it will reclump them .. so best is like you said use different control groups to try minimize that way. Maybe you can also try that patrol move trick to spread out a little too if it works for banes.
so you deny the existence of magic box, because magic boxing is part of the pathfinding to exactly negate this.
I always laugh if a 200 apm zerg loses all his banelings clumped on one spot to 2 siege tanks. I mean every 30 apm person can make banelings ignore siege tank shots. All you have to do is autofollow half of them on your lings. and done split up banelings that will act perfectly like you want banelings to act, even if the ling they follow dies.
Same goes for emp on sentries or templars that are moved around with the main army on one spot.
And a basic splitting mechanic that works wonderfully even for attack move, have a few units on hold position the units will not push them away (same goes for attacking units they don't get pushed away), okay it ends up in a line formation, but thats okay against splash units (except hellions).
It seems we are still far away from where people actually try to use the pathing ai to their favor. even terrans still use attack move after they split their marines up, so they will clump together instead of move them around splitted.
Atleast i am pretty slow when it comes to apm, only around 200 apm during a fight, 100 average. Apm not anything blizzard things will show ^^; . And i love to use the pathing ai to buff up my unit formation pre battle. Okay units on autofollow look horrible funny. But for example hellions that autofollow a thor, lings on attack will surround the thors and get grilled by perfectly positioned hellions. Instead of running ahead and get fungaled.
Want the viking flower back in tvt, just autofollow the vikings on another air unit and turn it around.
Magic boxing, autofollow. The difference of pushing units away when attacking or idle. All mechanics that allow you to play around with the pathfinding as much as you like, and there are probably more out there.
Right now it would be bw without the knowledge of the patrol moves, or how to stack mutas properly. And alot of strategies rely on that stacking right now in bw. Well some knowledge is there just no need to experiment with it, since it will only turn into nerfs. (banelings controlled right against terran would surely be followed with a nerf lol)
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People who think unit clumping is the problem of sc2 and the difference between sc2 and bw doesn't understand the game. THe reason why these games are different micro wise is that sc2 has collosus, mauruders and roaches. If sc2 had more units that required good control like tanks, marines, HT, the game would reward much more micro.
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Poll: Unit organisationUnits always stay spread out (31) 69% Keep it as it is - clumped up (7) 16% Allow unit battle formations (7) 16% 45 total votes Your vote: Unit organisation (Vote): Units always stay spread out
(Vote): Keep it as it is - clumped up
(Vote): Allow unit battle formations
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if they make unit clumping less on lets say marines you would break the baneling since you would have to increase baneling explosion radius then aswell and then its alot easier to micro marines since everytime u box and click away you ahve less marines selected that you would usually have. Same for lets say collosus and other splash damage units would have to be completely rebalanced
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Not this again :/
Units act differently in SC2. That's just how it is. Dustin Browder has talked about this many times. His team has talked about it many times. Teamliquid has talked about it many times. Stop making new posts about the same old stuff !
What is interesting is some of the points people have brought up with what happens with SC2 when people learn to master the unit behavior of sc2 ! Speaking from a Zerg Standpoint, there is absolutely no reason why we don't have 5-6 control groups of units since we don't need half as many hotkeys for production. Would be amazing to see the first pro with perfect flanks and splitting of 5-6 control groups ;D
Will probably force myself to do it once my macro reaches a higher level 
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Actually I think the problem is just with the protoss race. It's a boring race and is the problem of the deathball syndrome.
Terrans are never allowed to a-move and ball-up their units at the pro level. Banes/infestors/colossi/HTs/tanks will just rape you all day. They have to split/kite/etc. along with using spellcasters and babying their tanks.
Zergs micro mostly comes before the battle; getting the flank up, making sure the roaches/ultras are in the front to tank damage, making sure units move in at the right time (e.g. the tanking units move in, and then your muta/infestor come in afterwards), etc. They do a-move the majority of their army, but that's somewhat excusable as they require the most multitasking for their macro anyway (injects, creep spread, overlord spread, constant scouting because they are the reactive race, etc).
Toss on the other hand, the only unit that requires significant micro that isn't a spellcaster is the stalker with blink. Zealots have no micro, colossi is "move away if anti-air units are firing at them", sentries and HTs are smartcasted and "don't clump these up if there are ghosts". Then you couple in the fact that toss units by themselves are laughably weak, and you get the toss army balling together.
Also, some people think that tvz is the closest mu to its BW counterpart, in that it doesn't revolve around one big fight in the middle of 2 a-moved balls. Terrans do constant drops and the zergs have to fend them off. And when the big battle in the middle happens, the winner can't just a-move to the opponents base, but they do gain an advantage they have to capitalize on. Honestly the mu is perfectly fine other than ghosts being OP. And notice how tvz... doesn't involve protoss!
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I recently watched an old GSL game on i think "Bel Shir Beach". Both players had 3+ bases on diagonal opposites of the map pulling in tonnes of income. Both players had 200 units and both had giant death balls that were chasing each other around a centre island for 10 minutes.
The 2 death balls looked like 2 Giant Warcraft Monsters each with their own set of unique spells and special abilities and arms and legs and other appendages appearing and disappearing.
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On December 29 2011 12:54 Mossen wrote:
Anyone who has fired a gun knows its more likely they would be dying of friendly fire at every shot.
This can not be count as an argument, sorry. If it would, you could also say zerg and protoss does not exist so the games does not make any sense.
And I do not know anyone who has ever fired a gun, we can not buy them in a supermarket, governments arround here would not enjoy us killing each other... That makes sense.
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5478 Posts
On December 29 2011 11:56 DibujEx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 11:54 PhiliBiRD wrote:
its intended because it forces micro, otherwise the game would be even easier. and ive never heard much about this ever being an issue o_O. seems fine to me I gotta say, In BW they didnt clump up.. and it was So much hard than SCII to micro...
I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread.
I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
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On December 29 2011 22:53 thezanursic wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 11:56 DibujEx wrote:On December 29 2011 11:54 PhiliBiRD wrote:
its intended because it forces micro, otherwise the game would be even easier. and ive never heard much about this ever being an issue o_O. seems fine to me I gotta say, In BW they didnt clump up.. and it was So much hard than SCII to micro... I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread. I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
Marines splitting against banelings comes to mind as game deciding micro...
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Simple question not so simple but very clear answer:
clumping > spreading but both get beaten by well done formation moves, which I havent seen in any RTS yet.
let's think about what we (usually) want:
Units should go as fast as we want and as close as we want to the spot we command them.
Units should fight as tightly as possible to maximize "snipingfire" and protect each other.
Units should attack in fights, so we want maximum surface (assuming limited range)
Units should be organized by function
So optimally we want our units to be as ballsy as possible until a battle starts. Then we want them in (thightly) organized lines. The one thing that really messes with this is AoE-dmg. For that we need a more specific approach.
F.e if the unit has slow firerate (tank, colossus, baneling) we want our units to be semispread--> we want to be able to rush in between shots and take the unit out (concentrated firepower) but dont want to get splashed to heavily.
Splas units with rather high firerate (ultralisk) should be fought spread all the time and dmg over time (storm) as well or dodged.
In the end it is always a matter of balancing the game around it's mechanics. broodwar with clumping AI but the same stats would be as much of a joke as sc2 without it.
RA3 water battles could become interesting if the units would clump while total war games without clumping would be really dumb.
From a skill Point of view I guess the less the game does itself, the easier it is for good people to win vs bad people. the downside is that (assuming limited human ressorces such as apm) the further away we get from "optimal" fights (and therefore "optimal" strategies as people evolve their stratehoes around their capabilities) and also the less people will play it, due to its skillrequirements.
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Lol, the majority of people here actually think clumping adds skill to the game.
Clumping is ideal in most match-ups. Having every single unit dpsing instead of sitting at the back walking into the fight even if you get hurt more by aoe is going to be superior alot of the time. It undoubtedly takes away skill not having to force units to clump when they automatically do it. Makes me sad and also makes me chuckle a bit, watching the rampant stupidity soar in these threads.
Also it looks like shit and having deathblob fights that decide the match in seconds is terrible imo.
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EPT
