Strat Chat: Updates and Vods - Page 2

On July 13 2015 21:05 BlackLilium wrote:
I really enjoyed both shows and looking forward for more!
For me a "map/board control" is more about a denial of enemy movements rather than making your own. Sometimes you can achieve that without necessairly having units in the middle, but just by having a potential threat that prevents the enemy from doing something.

The Hellion or Mutalisk map control examples that you bring throughout the show - you don't really defend the map with them. You don't need them in the middle. But if the opponent moves out, you can counter-attack.
Other units that can function similarly are Oracles, Warp Prisms, loaded medivacs... even a network of Nydus tunells can go in this direction!

Regarding map design for map control, there is one broader feature that I think it was missed: travel time. If there are two or more routes from A to B with one route being shorter than another, it gives one side a tool to control both points, and hence maintaining map control over that area more effectively. This scenario can appear even on a flat map without extreme chokes - just by having walls/cliffs defining what routes are possible.

Looking forward towards the unit design section, as I am starting to mess up with units in my mod - and your talk is very informative!

On July 14 2015 03:20 BlackLilium wrote:

Defending a point X by reinforcing X is very different in my eyes, than defending X by reinforcing/attacking Y. Some units or compositions are better suited for one thing or another, usually not both.

On July 14 2015 05:15 Big J wrote:


This is quite an interesting question, as then you could go further and define "direct mapcontrol" and "indirect mapcontrol" and such concepts*. And then ask the question, when talking about indirect mapcontrol, whether this is actual mapcontrol, or you can just punish him for certain moves which doesn't really include you "control" the area in question in a classic sense. So it's not really that you control that area per se, but that him taking control over the area is an overcommitment that you can punish by controlling a different, much more valueable area, e.g. his base.

Maybe this roots in the question whether you accept "dead areas", or if in the definition of mapcontrol you automatically assign the whole map to one or another player at all times.

*which you kind of did, but I think you didn't go deeper into it

On July 14 2015 07:28 Big J wrote:


Exactly, the question is whether you break it down into a tactical or strategical point of view. And I 100% agree with what you are saying, I just really like the discussion about it.
I think talking about this differs strongly depending on whether you play the game right now, or whether you do an analysis afterwards. Because in game it is often not obvious that you had control in the broad sense. You just go for the attack and hope it works, but it may not. Only once you have all the information - which is usually only after the game - you can really say: "Yes, I won here because I actually could punish him for moving into this area, which obviously was not under his control." Or you couldn't and you lost trying to counterattack, running into your death.

While with direct area control you can just say: "I have forces here and you don't", or "I can reinforce this area faster than you can attack it". Which is a much more graspable concept in a game.


Also an interesting aspect in that regard is incomplete information. For example, what is a hidden base? Do I have control over it? Does my opponent? I feel like this becomes kind of a dead space that noone is controlling (unless of course you can just defend it, but say Protoss hides a base against Zerg and doesn't canon it to no end). Because the hiding player cannot really defend the base so he has no control, but the opponent obviously does not punish it until he has confirmed its existance and directly taken control of the base area (assuming the hiding player cannot indirectly control the area of course). Again, this is much more tactically speaking of course than in the broad sense.

On July 15 2015 05:28 Uvantak wrote:
Watching the vod I can't really help but feel that you guys should really have had a mapmaker there... Talking about LoS Blockers, Xel'nagas, unit splitting for map control, terrain advantages for map control and all that without a mapmaker to aid you guys guide the discussion was really bad.

Talking with blanket statements such as "Great map", "Awful map", "More LoS Blockers", "Less Xel'nagas", is really really bad from a mapmaking perspective. The fact that you guys have no direct experience with maps outside of ladder does not really help either.

On July 15 2015 11:10 Whitewing wrote:


We were being very general rather than specific for the most part, but would you care to elaborate?

On July 16 2015 10:55 Uvantak wrote:

Sorry, I had forgotten that I had commented here, as you said you were all very general about maps and their features, but even when I know you weren't really serious about about saying things such as "great map" when referring to Ohana and others. But what really irked me was how away from applicability the whole thing when touching maps was, touching into unpathable areas without touching into other more linked things such as the general openness of the place, which is very very important when regarding unpathable areas on maps.

At the same time it is understandable because you wanted to stay in topic, but some of these topics, can't be touched without going into more detail, because map control and maps are so deeply connected, the fact that the big bulk of your contact with maps also comes from lader leaves a bad taste on my mouth too, but there's nothing that can be done about that.

Overall I really enjoy the show, it is that these things "rustle my jimmies".