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Canada11348 Posts
Years ago I came across a blogger/ progammer called Shamus Young via Lord of the Rings and roleplaying DM of the Rings. I have always appreciated his insights into various games, but in 2010 he gave Blizzard a cold-shoulder due to the always online, no LAN and just never talked about SC2 (or Diablo 3.) He is very anti-DRM 
He has recently begun to get into SC2 (through his son) and has started blogging on it and I thought his third entry might be of interest.
The full blog of interest is this:
Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis
A partial quote giving the 'why' of the project:
Setting aside the jokes, the memes, the flame wars over game balance, and arguments over race: Just how much is the advantage of rushing, and how far behind will you be if you fail? What’s the damage, in a total numerical sense? How many units will you be ahead, and assuming there’s no game-ending engagement how long will it take for your opponent to pull ahead of you? I’m sure a pro player could intuit the answer just from the sheer volume of games they’ve played, but I wanted to see the breakdown on a chart where the rest of us mortals can visualize it. I so decided to write a little program to figure it out.
The cost of everything is right there in the game: The cost of the buildings, the time to construct them, the cost of the units, etc. It’s just like calculating compound interest, right? Just plug the numbers in and see what it gives you.
Well, no.....
He then details how he developed his program for analyzing rushes. I'm not sure if he has discovered anything new exactly, but I have enjoyed seeing someone entering into the world of competitive SC2 with fresh eyes.
Sidenote: He is easing his readers into SC2 as many have little to no background in RTS so some stuff may feel over-explained at the beginning.
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Cool stuff. Can't wait to see more from him, he seems to know his stuff.
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this is a good project, can't wait to read the entire thing
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Also note that in the parlance of the game a barracks is often called a ‘racks. Because two syllable words are for people with too much free time.
haha.
wow i have been exactly where shamus is (minus his experience) so many times trying to figure out the best economic opening for zerg. great read thanks for sharing
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When reading through it, it sounded like he's trying to recreate the build order optimizer, with the a specific focus on rushing. I wonder how the two programs compare. I'm surprised that he didn't find that since he found the post on resource gathering.
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Nice read! Its nice how he points out that travel time makes a rush fail because that's exactly why people proxy the racks. I wish he would do something similar on zerg because with the drones being consumed that would make things very interesting (complicated).
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I wish he had studied the widely used 11/11 rax.
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seems to me the tl;dr is rushes are rarely worth it and only works due to it not being expected or the opponent went econ too greedily. What is the equalizer to early rushes is time spent on crossing the map.
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Cool idea but SC gets so complex, so quickly that even something as basic as this is hard to study.
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On June 15 2013 07:28 RinconH wrote:
Cool idea but SC gets so complex, so quickly that even something as basic as this is hard to study.
That's what makes it fun and interesting
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On June 14 2013 12:40 Turbogangsta wrote:Show nested quote +Also note that in the parlance of the game a barracks is often called a ‘racks. Because two syllable words are for people with too much free time. haha. wow i have been exactly where shamus is (minus his experience) so many times trying to figure out the best economic opening for zerg. great read thanks for sharing
"rax"
because five letter words are for people with too much free time. =)
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To be honest, while doing a project like this is very interesting, to go about it in such a BIT-BY-BIT way isnt very efficient, To draw a quick comparison, imagine you have a grid of things x by y dimensions. How many things are there? You dont count, you multiply! So instead of asking yourself all of those tedious sounding questions, do what physicists do and estimate!
Unfortunately I dont have time to explain what I mean now in a long, winding post so I'll leave it at that. Very nice read though!
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On June 15 2013 08:17 idscy wrote:
To be honest, while doing a project like this is very interesting, to go about it in such a BIT-BY-BIT way isnt very efficient, To draw a quick comparison, imagine you have a grid of things x by y dimensions. How many things are there? You dont count, you multiply! So instead of asking yourself all of those tedious sounding questions, do what physicists do and estimate!
Unfortunately I dont have time to explain what I mean now in a long, winding post so I'll leave it at that. Very nice read though!
I get the impression that he wants to do exact calculations. Estimations are not exact.
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Shamus Young making an article about SC? Whaaaaat? He's one of my favorite Escapist columnists, too bad I can't access his website ;_;
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Canada11348 Posts
On June 15 2013 10:00 Kiithid wrote:
Shamus Young making an article about SC? Whaaaaat? He's one of my favorite Escapist columnists, too bad I can't access his website ;_;
Why is that? Is his website blocked in Brazil or something?
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On June 15 2013 08:28 tymt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2013 08:17 idscy wrote:
To be honest, while doing a project like this is very interesting, to go about it in such a BIT-BY-BIT way isnt very efficient, To draw a quick comparison, imagine you have a grid of things x by y dimensions. How many things are there? You dont count, you multiply! So instead of asking yourself all of those tedious sounding questions, do what physicists do and estimate!
Unfortunately I dont have time to explain what I mean now in a long, winding post so I'll leave it at that. Very nice read though! I get the impression that he wants to do exact calculations. Estimations are not exact.
not possible. if you wanted exactness, it would have to include so many assumptions to make it not really applicable nor worth noting.
i would be more interested in seeing someone using complex systems algos to analyze sc.
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On June 15 2013 15:10 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2013 10:00 Kiithid wrote:
Shamus Young making an article about SC? Whaaaaat? He's one of my favorite Escapist columnists, too bad I can't access his website ;_; Why is that? Is his website blocked in Brazil or something?
this is what i get
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /twentysidedtale/ on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
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On June 15 2013 15:12 dreamsmasher wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2013 08:28 tymt wrote:On June 15 2013 08:17 idscy wrote:
To be honest, while doing a project like this is very interesting, to go about it in such a BIT-BY-BIT way isnt very efficient, To draw a quick comparison, imagine you have a grid of things x by y dimensions. How many things are there? You dont count, you multiply! So instead of asking yourself all of those tedious sounding questions, do what physicists do and estimate!
Unfortunately I dont have time to explain what I mean now in a long, winding post so I'll leave it at that. Very nice read though! I get the impression that he wants to do exact calculations. Estimations are not exact. not possible. if you wanted exactness, it would have to include so many assumptions to make it not really applicable nor worth noting. i would be more interested in seeing someone using complex systems algos to analyze sc.
The "assumptions" are only the builds you take for your calculations and the map distances are fixed and measurable. Obviously you have to make some assumptions, but not a "big amount" as you said.
Any semi-decent scientist knows how to limit the number of variables in a row of tests to make the results meaningful, so you could try with a simple calculation of the efficiency of an 11/11 rax on the positioning of the two barracks. Maybe faking them in plain sight is a much better option than hiding them half a map away ... maybe finishing them and then floating them closer (to minimize your reinforce distance) is a good option.
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EPT
