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http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/3/22/uc-berkeley-starcraft-class-week-8.html
A Crazy Trick
Professor Feng surprised many students with this strange trick. Build an assimilator (or your race's gas extractor building) on the enemy gas geyser. On the most straightforward level, this can act as a scout if you built it at their expansion before they do. If your building is destroyed, you know they expanded. But the trick is to assign a hotkey to this gas-building. Then AFTER it is destroyed, you can press that hotkey exactly ONE time to go back to the gas geyser. When you do this, you can see the amount of gas left, even though you don't have vision to the area anymore. If you kept track of how much gas was there before, you'll know if the enemy has started mining gas there, and how much exactly they have mined. If you keep your vision there for a moment, you can even see the RATE at which the gas is being collected, so you'll know if they have only one probe, or two, or three mining there. Remember that you only have one hotkey press to use here; after your building is destroyed, the hotkey becomes unassigned after that one press. Crazy!
I never knew about this. Pretty cool.
![[image loading]](/userpoll/draw.php?poll_id=5466) Poll: I knew (be honest) (Vote): yea (Vote): no
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Damn... that would be so useful in PvT. Does it work if you build an assimilator then cancel it? Because you could tell exactly what he was up to.
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woah pretty sick!! i would also like to know if this works after canceling the assimilator. guess the best way is to find out for myself.
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This blew my mind.
On second thought, it doesn't seem very practical, as it can severely mess up your build order in the early game. Mid-game, maybe you can use it to see if they took an expo, but scouting does the same without using 100 minerals.
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Nope, did not know this trick at all. Pretty crazy, I'll try it sometime. It is kind of hard to determine what they are doing that late in the game though depending on when they get their 2nd gas. Or at least it is for me. Most Terrans and Protosses get them at about the same time no matter what they are doing AFAIK. Perhaps it would help in TvZ or PvZ to tell whether he is doing 3 hatch muta or 3 hatch lurk or whatever? Don't you get your 2nd gas a little latter when you go lurks instead of muta or something? Would some Zerg shed some light on that?
Also, do you have to finish building the Refinery as Terran, or can you just start it, halt construction, and send your SCV somewhere else?
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Wow they can see gas usage? And they call scanners map hack?
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I just tried to copy this and it didn't work. Can anybody recreate this on Iccup?
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wow thats pretty insane, this would be really useful pvt on 2 base maps like desti when u gas rush terran almost every game
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also didn't work for me :S
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I only know how to steal gas, never knew u can check the opponent's gas
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Wow, if this works, you will never be off guard against a 2 fac again.
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Didn't work for a group of my friends that tried it with all three races, both canceling and letting it be killed by our opponent. Something else that needs to be done before it works?
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This could really be helpful in PvZ where speedlings block your scouting probe..
if you press that one hotkey at the appropriate time, it may indicate what the zerg's up to.. hm i'll try this on iccup today!
thanks.
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i also tried it but it didnt work ;p
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Wow, wdf? I sense this is going to get patched. This isn't even a trick, just an exploit, if you will. That's amazing just as much as it is imba.
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maybe the reason 92% of tl.net-ers haven't heard of this trick is that it doesn't work
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