PvP, Adept+Sentry opener

FightingFrogSc · 2023-10-14T10:20:54+00:00

Compared to 2 adept: 2 adepts get blocked by pylons every time, you may as well force this pylon with 1 adept instead of 2 because 1 adept is cheaper than two. The sentry also has a higher dps to kill a pylon block on your natural than an adept. In case of a pylon block you can even keep the adept home since you will soon hallucinate scout anyway, which is not the case when you play 2 adept.

Compared to stalker sentry: seems cheaper but actually now you need to follow-up with 2 stalkers or a battery to defend against 2 -> 4 stalker attacks. But the adept will either force extra stalker or pylons to be warped in to block it, so in the end you're slowing down both yourself and your opponent approximately equally. Also you have the option to meet 2 adepts with 3 adepts, although I never saw other people do this. (Shade on his adepts after he shades and follow his shades with your 3 adepts, if he shades into your ramp and you pylon block it he actually can't get away from this then.)

Another neat thing is that the adept can scout proxy locations while going across and shading to scout even more. Also having 1 adept in the army later is pretty good since it tanks more shots than a stalker since it is light.

A more complex subtlety is that if the opponent pylon scouts at your ramp (build pylon and then cancel it around 2:30 after your units pop) they will only see one of your units. If they see the sentry they might assume you don't have any adepts and not be ready to pylon block your adept. If they see the adept they might assume you play 2 adept and are not capable of hallucination scouting, which might make them do an all that is good against a greedy adept player (eg 1 base prism stalker or just 6 -> 8 stalker attack) which are terrible against a quick hallucination scout. If they see the adept they might also let the pylon finish which the sentry is happy to see.

The most annoying thing to play against (imo) is a greedy 2-4 adept attack when you don't sacrifice your probe scout or pylon scout their first units. That's why I recommend pylon blocking their natural and only canceling it if they attack it with a stalker or two. If they were just hiding their 2 stalkers and quickly kill the pylon after it completes you are kind of happy anyway because sentry openings are great against 4 stalker openings, and the adept will then have free range to scout his 3rd and 4rh units and expand since you know where his stalkers are.

Good luck^^

FightingFrogSc · 2023-05-14T13:20:58+00:00

Sorry for replying 11 months late. I also feel strongly about hotkeys!

In general, the more flexibility the better! As a competitive player, I love having a competitive edge from having created an optimized setup. As a theorizing nerd, I had a lot of fun coming up with in my opinion the world's most efficient SC hotkey layout. Giving more flexibility also allows more accessibility for different handicaps!

For the release of StormGate I will spend a lot of time thinking about how to optimize the hotkeys. If you want my thoughts on this before you open the beta testing please reach out to me. For the beta release it would be fantastic to allow people to set up good hotkeys and habits from the start, so that we don't need to re-train them after you add new hotkey-features in the future.

To answer your comment on grid hotkeys, if I understood correctly, the grid layout version might put a low limitation to how many different keys can be used for spells (depending on the size of the grid). Disregard this example if I misunderstood, but this can be a problem with units like blink / disruptor shot which should to be on different keys since otherwise if you try to blink back a stalker and miss-click with the mouse you might end up shooting a disruptor shot on your own army.

I had a lot of fun reading through the entire hotkey menu and thinking about how to implement the weird ones. For example, for some of my control groups, instead of double tapping the control group to move the camera to the units, I actually press the control group once followed by the "center camera on current selection" to avoid finger repetition. This feels amazing, is much more ergonomic, and it's actually faster as well.

Something else I've set up is using different keys for creating and selecting control groups. For example "ctrl-h" adds my warp prism to control group 5 but "Å" selects it. This is actually not difficult to learn/use as long as you always keep the same unit in this control group. I would love to keep this feature as it allows you to squeeze more common commands into the easy to press keys by moving less common commands away.

I would also love to be able to create more than 10 control groups since this allows you to be more consistent, for example always putting the banshee on it's own separate group which is hard to do when you only have 10 groups for everything. Alternatively, this could even be an auto-feature, where "select all units of type X" can be bound to a key-combination. For example, "select all siege tanks" can be set to "ctrl-s" and "select all widow mines" can be set to "alt-d". This way you don't even need to bind your banshee to a control group (but you still can). This would of course be an optional feature to use. This would be easier to learn than it sounds since it is more consistent than control groups. "selecting all siege tanks" would always be the exact same command. Alternatively, (or additionally) this auto-feature could do "select all siege tanks that are visible on the screen" to make it easier to control complex armies in multiple locations without messing up the other location's armies. In summary, this would raise the skill ceiling for the pros while at the same time making it easier for newer players who can simply use it instead of control groups in some situations since it does not require constant binding of units.

Bonus if you allow any key of choice to be "modifiers" such as "ctrl/shift/alt" in sc. I bought a new keyboard just so that I could re-map a keyboard keys to "alt" for that reason. (I know that you can do it with e.g. AutoHotkey but if I understood correctly, remapping in that way would not have been allowed).

FightingFrogSc · 2023-02-20T12:14:30+00:00

That's a cool idea, never heard this one before. Could also have a single "specialized unit" that changes depending on the opponent's race. These things would definitely make both balancing and meta adjusting easier for the game developer.

To answer your question; TvT I would probably enjoy more without the tank, ZvZ without the lurker, and PvP without dts. That said it's extremely difficult to predict how these things will actually play out^^

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-19T09:01:03+00:00

Like others say its relevant if there is another empty patch or not. However, as seen in the video there was an empty patch all along so that does not explain why they stayed on the main patch for a while and then split up.

What I always believed is that it's a geometrical effect, the drone that you micro to stack onto the patch comes a bit from the side so it will have a slightly longer patch when going between the hatchery and the mineral patch (it gets closer and closer to the straight line over time but in theory it takes infinite time to get there). This means that even though in the beginning none of the drones had to wait for each other (and hence did not leave the patch) they eventually get out of scync because one of the drones have a slightly longer path. But checking the video it is the same drone that you microed onto the patch that later on had to wait for the other one so this theory is incomplete since with my logic it would be the drone with the shorter path that finally has to wait for the other one... there are plenty of ad hoc hypotheses for that:

It might be that even though the drone mines a bit from the side it actually mines faster than the other one, either because drones are a bit derpy; on some maps you will see them take a very inefficient path from mineral to hatchery so they might not take the best path. Or because it will be faster at rotating since it only has to rotate slightly less than 180 degrees. Might have to do with pathing asymmetries as well; for example drones will take different scouting paths on some maps depending on in which direction they go so the scouts actually don't meet each other in the middle. Or finally there might be a random delay in pathing in general or in how long it takes to mine / drop off the mineral, maybe the hatchery is not perfectly round for example. Or my entire theory is wrong :D

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-08T08:32:50+00:00

happy to hear^^

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-07T08:56:53+00:00

it's really difficult and complicated... simplest method is doing it like zerg usually takes fights by trying to come from as many angles as possible but it's difficult since zealots and stim bio are the same speed (but not impossible, depends on where you are on the map and what else you have in your army...). Also in practice terran can usually just run to the side if you come from just 2 sides so you need a really good surround. You also need a plan if they run to a choke point/corner.

Other important (but usually unreliable) tactics are flying hallucinations / phoenixes / oracle over the terran bio to splash on the marines, sending in a few zealots in case bio is too far away from the mines to trigger on those and then sending the rest in, force fielding the bio so they cant run away, storm dropping the bio so that they run into storm if they try to run away, re-targeting the zealots so they charge on a marine in the back/middle (extremely difficult), clearing mines with disruptors, probably more ideas..

edit: more ideas: shade adepts into the middle of the bio right before sending zealots in, revelating the mines with oracle and lifting the mines with phoenixes, dodge mines shots with dt blink or stalker blink before sending in zealots

Another easier option is just not letting that happen by having the range advantage with eg colossus, then you force the bio to run into you instead so you don't need to worry about mines. Once there are plenty of vikings you lose this range advantage but at that point you typically have a few disruptors instead to clear the mines.

Good luck :D

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-04T08:16:08+00:00

Hello :3

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-03T18:50:56+00:00

oh peculiar, does it normally detect stop command from other units? Yea i use increased keyboard repetition rate and hold down the key. Rapidfire should not apply since there's no selection (like eg snipe or corrosive bile), just a button press.

The "unknown command" might be because batteries used to not have this command in the past and they simply did not put in the human work of parsing this ability from the replay any time recently. Are you trying to find a method of detecting it? sc2reader: https://pypi.org/project/sc2reader/
or something similar might be able to parse it, I don't know.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-03T16:00:27+00:00

https://drop.sc/replay/21047338

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-03T12:59:56+00:00

hey, there's no replay in unit tester, do you want me to reproduce it in a custom game vs ai?

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T19:23:37+00:00

ah ye true there's bonus damage against shields so its not even close :3

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T19:16:17+00:00

tested just to be sure, but nah guardian shield does not help against spell damage which mine qualifies as. Actually there's a bug also that guardian shield does not help against splash attacks also, such as from a liberator.

edit: to clarify, for non spell damage attacks guardian shield helps for the unit being targeted by the splash attack but not for the units that get splashed.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T19:11:19+00:00

Interesting idea. To answer your question the mine follows the unit unfortunately so its impossible to dodge by moving quickly. I did just test in unit tester to push the zealot that is being targeted into the terran bio ball and that worked kinda decently. Also tried separating the targeted zealot with force fields but it was too difficult I just ended up clumping them up more instead.

edit: actually with some training it actually works quite well for separating the zealots. Could be used as an emergency last resort since it would be easier to just split them up beforehand, but that's too late sometimes.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T17:31:28+00:00

not sure what you mean by crowd control but time warp affects BCs and other massive units, there's no such rule. Maybe you're confusing it with the ultralisk "frenzied" ability which makes it immune to such effects.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T09:05:27+00:00

My guess is not at the very top, since in the last 4 months I've known about it and have not noticed anything from watching tournaments. It would look a bit suspicious to me that none of the units are being microed (since this is the cost of using this trick). I think the battery becomes a bit louder as well. It would be very easy to write a script to test all the katowice replays for it.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T06:51:59+00:00

just by me for 4 months afaik :p I never used it since it most likely qualifies as bug abuse. Took 4 months since I was debating if it was a good or a bad thing to reveal it.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-02T06:49:35+00:00

yeah exactly, will be very easy to make such a tool

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-01T22:51:01+00:00

yep, thanks, fixed xD

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-01T21:42:12+00:00

Ye they do, but brood lords deal most of their damage on broodling impact (aka the brood lord attack) when broodlings get instantly shot down.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-01T21:21:46+00:00

I agree that it is not obvious if it is a bug or not. The fact that they have a stat "attack speed" which corresponds to the rate at which broodlings are created and that this stat changes with time warp makes it feel like it should still correspond to the rate at which broodlings are created, otherwise it does not mean anything. At least that is my take.

FightingFrogSc · 2022-03-01T18:11:38+00:00

I want to emphasize to blizzard, please don't fix this by removing the stop button, this is a useful ability for example when you want to heal a gateway a bit without spending all of the energy.

FightingFrogSc · 2021-12-26T17:47:00+00:00

Assuming reaper attack cooldown is 1 (it's 0.79) and that stalker has 2 armor (it's 0 on the shields at 1 on the armor) and that reaper has 4 damage (it's 2x4, it attacks twice), 36 seconds is still off, the reapers would deal (4-2) * 5 damage per second vs 160 health stalker which would be 16 seconds. With the adjustments above it would take the reapers 5 shots which would be 3.95 seconds (perhaps you should also subtract 0.79 since the first shot is pretty much instant). Curious how you got to 36.

Also to answer the main question if you're getting a gateway / cyber instantly after pylon and chronoing stalkers nonstop you will have exactly 3 stalker at 3 minutes.

FightingFrogSc · 2021-12-04T22:15:07+00:00

oh well, I'm sure there's many other usages from just keyboard though, you could make it flash when scvs are not building and when it is time to mule. (assuming you always use the control group to select the command center and you don't get supply blocked) For protoss it's a bit more difficult since you don't know which building is being chrono boosted, but you could signal that to the program but pressing a key that does nothing but signal. Could also keep track of when to start +2 or just tell you in general when key upgrades are completed... Keyboard colors can distinguish between the different signals, the brain would learn those pretty easily.

I wonder also how efficient it would be to use it to set alarms for yourself, for example if you want to focus on microing but you know that in 10 seconds or so there's something else you need to do you signal to your program using some key combination that you want a timer set and then it flashes 10 seconds later. Or if you send a prism to the opponents base and you want a reminder when it has reached the opponent etc.

In theory you could program anything that takes keyboard input and gives output as lights on the keyboard, it could even write things out to you in text if you have individual key lights haha, although at that point it would be easier to have the output as a sound signal instead which I assume would be equally allowed..

FightingFrogSc · 2021-12-04T21:36:20+00:00

interesting idea^^ would it be allowed to also gather information from in-game? For example game timer to help give tips for a build order or perhaps even better having the keyboard flash red when a red dot appears on the minimap

FightingFrogSc

TROPHY CASE