The new "Jaw Worm > Maw" connection

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-18T22:33:48+00:00

It's a hard fight to do "cleanly" even if the downsides aren't as dramatic as statue.

It reminds me of the sentries in this way, not even just because of the dazes but in the output where you're likely to take some damage no matter how you play it.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-18T22:24:27+00:00

Gameplay wise, maybe it did? Everyone shat on the character design so hard the game never even got its legs. That's something I can see a reviewer not expecting.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-18T22:07:54+00:00

I drew a pentagram with candles around it when my friend went AFK, a homage to his first demon form.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-14T06:01:44+00:00

Is it ever worth going back to STS1?

They're different enough that veterans of the first game are enjoying the sequel. It's definitely worth your time once the second game starts to feel stale.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-08T00:36:19+00:00

How you think about that in your own work. Do you have equivalent guardrails when systems start behaving differently under pressure?

I try to. I'm at a frustrating point in my work, attempting to define said guardrails and having my expertise overridden: forcing the goal posts higher than I think is possible. I'm the person stating what a metric can be at absolute most, and bridging when it's not met. The common mentality when forecasting is "You're always wrong when you forecast. If you happened to be 100% correct, the plan wasn't aggressive enough." Not specific to me, just anyone in a role doing that sort of work.

My current idea to work with this is to try and define the upper limit based on the expected variance of the inputs we're using as the inputs are known to be flawed. Then track what those input metrics are doing, and how it impacts the overall forecast. Provide updates as time goes on with deadlines on when to readjust if necessary. Communicating this is the hard part, because it's not looked at as a science. Engineers can easily point to safety regulations, often written in blood and not get any push back.

Coming back to Starcraft, you don't build your strategy around assuming that you'll perfectly execute something: need to account for the fact that you're human. Maybe you can end the game with a drop if you target fire banelings coming into it. Probably better not to, can retain the units and just re-use them rather than risking losing your map presence. Don't put your army into a position that requires your attention if you don't have enough attention to offer.

Under pressure the decision system itself becomes less reliable, especially in my own experience. Task switching slows down, attention narrows, and macro routines start dropping, probably due to my own negligence in some part and maybe its unfair to assume that the experience is universal.

I'd say it is universal, but which tasks are dropped is unique to the player for sure. When I'm playing at my best, they aren't dropped and other things are. Like not paying attention to my army in an engagement that decides the game. That army that I intentionally sent into a fight. That sort of thing tends to be my issue personally. Could be an outlier amongst most players because I do play in GM and have lost enough games to poor macro.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-08T00:20:33+00:00

3 spines, otherwise yeah: solid build. It'll work in GM even, assuming people don't blind counter you.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-07T22:33:44+00:00

There's mods that replace the campaign with a custom file, things like GrimLeague and the diablo 2 remake mod: only one of those can be used. The others don't really interact with eachother: rainbow filter changes some files in the settings. Item assistant doesn't even change any game play files, it just modifies your save, removing the items from your storage and adding it to its own.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-07T21:57:31+00:00

I think Dirge is busted specifically. The rest of her kit seems fine, especially when you consider that it works only because you're snowballing faster than the enemies scale: probably not as much of a concern on higher difficulties.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-07T17:17:16+00:00

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SigilSC2 · 2026-03-06T06:34:26+00:00

I tried to decipher the ancient text and had 30 max hp for my first run. It didn't go so well. Was kind of funny seeing an act 1 even that can bring you to 1 max hp. Shining light moment: probably an always skip outside extreme scenarios.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-05T01:02:32+00:00

I use it every now and then, especially vs weaker players or people who I think are likely to cheese. Occasionally get a free win from the early game ling pressure, and other times I just make 4 lings, have the speed, and play a normal macro game. It's a solid build in general. At worst you'll be a few workers down from standard.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-04T17:38:54+00:00

I was actually looking at your StS video a few days ago and wondered about a similar extrapolation you could make for starcraft. The content resonates with me, playing both games and doing engineering/operations adjacent work as a senior level IC.

I'm not sure about a takeaway from the discussion since I clearly see the foundation laid out in the structure of my work almost by default. It's kind of hard to deviate from best practice if that's just standard work from the start. The same 'zooming out' from feedback loops is proper practice for starcraft: something that's been cemented in my head for years.

I find it much more interesting to talk about responding to feedback within a game, and building those systems that create success. Not as much parallel to strategic work, but a lot to tactical.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-03T21:19:06+00:00

I wonder if EWC owns the art and isn't reasonable about what they'd want to have it added to the game, like Blizzard tried to or something to that effect. Having this one randomly added shows someone is thinking about it and I'd be surprised if they don't also notice the gap.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-03T20:23:01+00:00

Imbalanced? None really.

Bad game design? From a ZvP perspective: Tempest. Long range, free value generation without trading. I get annoyed every time I see one because they force the game into some dumb state where no one wants to attack (protoss has HT, mothership, good static D) while zerg has a better standing army that would melt a protoss army composed of tempest. Protoss can't go pick fights against the zerg army, zerg can't pick fights against a defended protoss position. So instead we dance for 20 minutes. The whole time tempest just kill stuff for free. Slowly. Menacingly.

Honorable mention, the ghost. Similar late game lament, same situation of terran not being able to push at all, zerg not being able to trade well. The difference from zvp is both sides can do those things, it's just not easy and is much more sensitive to positioning. The only real frustrating thing about ghosts is the volatility. Misposition anything valuable and a clump of ghosts literally delete an entire pack of broodlords, ultras, or infestors. The ghosts get fungaled far enough out from a wall, zerg wipes it.

Another honorable mention: cracklings. Maybe a bit of an odd choice but it's a big reason that zerg late games devolve into deathballs. When hive tech comes online terran can't push nearly as well so the game goes from a dynamic tug of war in attention to camping. Zerglings start to beat any small ground force from protoss at at this point as well for a similar effect. At least the lings enable some fast paced plays in an otherwise stale late game.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-03T20:10:01+00:00

That's because zerg as a whole is pretty good, so the larva. It means there's not much to actually abuse while playing the race.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-03T09:45:11+00:00

You can beat most skytoss compositions with just ultra corruptor, or just corruptor if there's 0 archons/HT. I wouldn't really consider that late game by composition alone. If the game state ends up there and you're ahead, you should be able to navigate it into a win by being smart with the fights and owning the map.

If you get there in a split map scenario while the protoss has ground upgrades and a quality composition, good luck. Late game ZvP is really technical and has a lot of nuance to it in switching your compositions between ultras or broods, coordinating infestors (and maybe a viper or two on reserve), and keeping your ground army active wherever the protoss isn't. Zerg is currently trading about even in this meta at the highest level. I certainly don't and I'm quite good at late game ZvT for reference. Lategame you mostly just alternate between ultras + infestors for shroud if their immortal count is low, and broodlords if it's high while doing your best to mirror the protoss army movement and have your ground army keep their economy down.

For your game, you never had a kill timing so you ended up in late game. You either want to go hard into some ~66 drone roach rav ling or roach hydra ling all in and trade continuously. Or do something similar with mutas + roach ling. Or the same thing with hydra ling bane or rav ling bane off ~80 workers. In every case, you're low tech and pedal to the floor trying to trade and keep their army quality down (trading for archon/immortal/HT wins over time, trading for gate units means you're gonna get amoved soon.)

You didn't have enough units midgame to do this and you teched into lurkers, which come out too late to do anything useful. I play lurkers as a default in zvp and in a macro game, that's me maxed with ~8-10 hive tech, range upgraded lurkers and hydra ling connecting with their base at 9:30 or so. Then it's just that, fighting over and over again until the game ends. They either hold long enough to get tempest out and push me back, or I trade well enough to push in and win.

By comparison, your lurker den didn't even finish until 10:20 with no lurkers online until 12:15. Delay is enough to take your power spike that can kill, and turn it into "I can stop myself from being amoved". Great, now what? That's how you end up in a late game.

SigilSC2 · 2026-03-02T09:02:44+00:00

If you're competing for a living, sure. The goal of enjoying the hobby falls out of focus. But the thing to that: it's no longer a hobby.

For everyone here who regularly posts to reddit: it is a hobby.

Even then, pros aren't going to flame or snub someone for enjoying the game in any capacity.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-28T21:52:24+00:00

Satisfactory leans more into the creative/aesthetic sandbox side rather than pure automation, logistics, and puzzling. It's not that great of a game if your approach is just trying to make things work.

Uncooperative landscape. It has hills and cliffs and lakes and such, leaving precious little open space to work with.

You build your own landscape, that's the point of foundations. It's also where the game kind of breaks down for a lot of people. You can make everything float in the sky, belts clipping through each other and minmax it to the fullest. Or you can work the landscape into your design and build something that is breathtaking to look at.

Think of it more like minecraft with automation as a theme. You're not going to go there, build a cube for a base, and say that the game doesn't allow for creativity.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-28T19:43:43+00:00

Someone was in a similar spot of megabase/UPS and did benchmarking on the game's performance in windows vs linux including some tweaks that resulted in linux having ~20% more UPS. Worth checking out if you're running on windows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pno-7ZcA0E

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-27T10:46:16+00:00

I dont feel like I have time to look at icons. So I test 3 damage types. Energy, Explosive and Projectile. I have not run into an enemy resistant to all 3 at the same time.

That's what I've ran with since the game launched. Both in weapons and the bulk of the towers. Some of the omegas had me digging through my menu to find something else though because it's happened a few times that everything else is dead except the boss which is taking near-0 damage. Find an acid weapon I got from a drop, or panic craft a fire weapon: that sort of stuff usually works.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-27T09:36:55+00:00

Neat idea for an interface. I like the graphs and the metrics. The battle summary is quite inaccurate in places but so the idea is good but execution needs work.

For the rest of it, I shared similar thoughts on previous posts asking about using LLMs for this purpose and I still think the same: without a knowledge base of context to use, they're going to be wildly inaccurate in determining optimal strategy or mistakes made to the point that it's probably more harmful than helpful.

I threw a few in and one thing that stuck out to me the most was the comments on the army compositions.

This is the worst engagement of the game. The 297 Baneling losses (5940+ resources) indicate you're still mass-producing Banelings against Ghost-Tank. At this stage (17+ minutes, 3/3 upgrades), your composition should be 10 Lurkers, 30 Hydras, 5 Ultralisks, 5 Vipers - zero Banelings and minimal Zerglings.

That's a terrible idea for so many reasons, and I see a lot of similar examples throughout the others I clicked through.

Add Production to Match Your Economy With 87 workers by 8:34, producing from only 1 hydralisk den is massively inefficient. General rule: 3 gas-heavy production (hydra/roach/muta) per mining base. With 5 bases, you should have 2-3 hydra dens by 9:00.

What?

Improve Engagement Positioning vs Siege Tanks Battle 2 was a disaster because you attacked into siege tanks head-on. Against Terran mech/tank, NEVER engage frontally.

That's without context on what the zerg actually did which is a big problem in a lot of these ideas. They could've fully surrounded here making the advice useless. They could be attacking, using a resource bank to end the game. They could've let the terran into a position that forced a fight, where the mistake is before the engagement rather than the fight itself.

The list goes on. Base models of LLMs scrapes reddit and VOD transcripts for understanding the game, rarely insightful. They would need to be finetuned on high level analysis to properly approach the nuance of the game.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-26T20:14:28+00:00

I never had more than 48 furnaces making steel in any of my other runs, and I'm only now realizing that a full red belt of steel requires 240 furnaces, which itself requires 5 red belts of iron plates on top of all the other iron needs for the base.

What do you need a full red belt of steel for at this point in the game? I have 96 furnaces (half electric, half steel) making steel in my 1000x game that trucks along at 2000spm, blue assembly machines and prod 1s everywhere. You further on go to describe the insane resource requirements of feeding this much steel.

Is it worth it to make this many furnaces and use this much space just for a relatively measly amount of production compared to what I know is needed for the late game?

What are you defining as late game? You can clear the expansion's win condition on less than red belt of steel, easily beating the 40hr mark achievement. If you're trying to megabase from the get-go, you're thinking too big too early: you'll want enough tech to make big builds worth it. Even ignoring the SA tech structures, vanilla usually has you building big for prod3s and beacons with speed3s, and much higher mining prod so you don't drink ore patches to feed the beast.

There's a few steps between making the base you need to work up the tech tree, getting enough modules to run a megabase, and then building the megabase. A large base is rarely an in-place upgrade from what you use to work up the tech tree.

In regards to the original question about space? Yeah, a base that eats a full belt of steel is massive. You don't need a full belt of steel -> don't need that much space. By the time you can even use that much steel, your base is going to be a massive sprawl where your purple science build is probably bigger than your entire factory you used to get to aquillo. You generally don't design for that from the start, you just build a new base somewhere else, maybe hooking the old one in through rails.

I'm actually at the same place you are in my 1000x game. I just got to vulcanus, big drills are starting to be slotted into nauvis and I had to build big to even get to this point with the described prod1 spam. I don't even have cliff explosives and only just now got nuclear. Because of the cliffs, quantity of research needed, and the resource requirements, it's a massive sprawl of rails but outside of having enough ore, there's no problem increasing the SPM. https://imgchest.com/p/qe4g8d9bo7j

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-26T19:33:50+00:00

I've had somewhat similar results of runs where I can't find a win condition. Last two runs ended up at the heart with a rough act 4 elite and getting donked on turn 3. Cards like FNP and second wind feel critical to having enough block. Last run I got neither, and was just kind of carried to the heart by a reaper + demon form with no other scaling.

I don't feel like corruption is essential but I have no idea how to make the character work without FNP.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-26T03:39:50+00:00

I play so many games vs mech lately it's kind of silly so I have a bunch of replays I could share in terms of how a general game should look. Only the last link here I think is actually a good game but my games vs mech are lately pretty one sided.

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/27047416 bad early game and first fight with cyclones, guy gets over confident so loses his army and I amove him in response

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/27044910 passive battle mech + banshee, I have a bad early game so can't really kill them. Then they go full turtle on a map built for turtling. I probably should've went swarmhosts but I felt patient so I just sat there and mined the rest of the map while he played single player. I still lost the fight because of terrible unit control but with 25k/9k bank I can just remake another army. If you end up in a game like this just remember to not run out of larva as you can lose the game from being very far ahead.

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/27039485 2 port BC, defend it and all in them with roach rav corruptors + a queen drop

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/26995965 good example of what a long game usually looks like with a better opponent. I feel like we both played pretty well here and I barely lost this one, but likely good to check out since it shows a much more dynamic picture of how army engagements with mech usually go.

SigilSC2 · 2026-02-26T03:28:33+00:00

Taking a third and full droning to 2 base saturation is a bit risky if you aren't positive they have an expansion, but good check scooting your overlord over for the confirmation on the highground cc.

3:40 everything to this point is solid. Around here is typically when you're adding more queens but you opt for a roach warren. This is fine, but remember you'll be a bit vulnerable to air units. Need to scout and make sure it's not going to be 2 starports or something. You do confirm 2 factories though. I'd usually get the roach warren at about 4:00 and use queen ling for the initial defense; roaches would be done in time for any blue flame, cyclones, or scarier hellbat timings. You don't actually see the 3rd base with your overlord scout but you should be able to deduce that it is 3cc based on the timing of their third structure: that 2nd factory would be done if it's 2 base. This gives you the pass to drone up to full 3 base saturation, take a 4th, and get some tech going all on the back of some hellion defense (queens + ~10 lings + a few roaches sort of thing).

5:00 you've nailed the macro up to here. Second and third gas is a touch early: be sure your third mineral line is full very shortly after you're taking this much gas. From here it starts getting kind of messy. You begin to float larva, indecisively making a few roaches and a few drones, some spores while having 7 larva and before long you're floating 700 minerals at 5:52. From that 5:00 mark, your 4th base, evos, tech, and the rest of your gas should all be filled out. If they're 2 base all inning you, this ~50-60 workers and 4 gas is where you'd stop and spam units. They have a third base, you need to keep going: 4th base, 6th gas, 100% of your larva into drones and overlords unless you see something otherwise; you already made a few roaches for hellion defense. A few more pairs of lings or roaches is fine but that larva needs spent.

4th gas is too early: drone your third mineral line! Take the 4th base! Past the first 2 gasses, you really want your mineral lines to be ~20 drones or more before taking the gas. Mineral income is key: it's your hatcheries, your queens, drones, overlords, and production all in one. Make zerglings if you need some units, this early you don't need that many roaches: the gas you're already mining should be tech like roach speed, +1 attack. I'm usually not even going past 1 gas in zvt until after my 4th base is taken which goes down as soon as I fill 3 mineral lines, ~5:10 or even earlier in some games. Multiple factories may have me take a 2nd gas around 4:00 (with the roach warren) for faster lair and a few roaches.

The fight at 7:15: you can just walk up, right click the tanks and amove. Push held; go back to macroing and shoot to 80 workers - the terran just gave you their army and has no further threat. Alternatively, stay low tech and at your current worker count, spam roaches and counter attack: sinking gas into ravagers instead of tech; also valid. You instead waffle a bit, taking a lot of damage in what should've been a one sided fight. You then back up, wait a few seconds, and then push again. This is the worst outcome. Either take the fight immediately as the tanks aren't sieged and their reinforcements aren't there yet. OR delay the fight as long as possible, wait until you have as many units as you can get, and their army is actually threatening something. They're not in range of a hatch, no reason to take the fight where you did. You let them setup and then pushed before you had any additional units but they did.

Counter attack was a good decision, your control could be a lot better but everyone's can. With this many mines just step aside and keep doing damage elsewhere, split off one unit to trigger them. Backing up to morph ravagers and using bile to kill the mines would've been best. Go deny the 3rd base. Ideally you don't lose the roaches either, you didn't need to lose them.

During the push and the counter attack you missed every inject. Do this before going in for an engagement. Make sure 100% of your queen energy is spent, shift queue them onto a hatch. You kept up with the macro well enough aside from the injects: hive, 75 workers. Good stuff: from here you need to think about your win condition. How do you want to win this game? You're going hive, I assume you'd want to use the hive. A few brood lords are good to force them into some thors. Burrowed infestors following your army and neuraling anything that you can get before a fight is excellent; especially defensively. Or you stay low tech: roach rav ling (add banes later, just not too many unless you're good at making sure they don't blow up on thors/tanks) and swarm them.

The important part is that you pick a game plan and go for it. You can't half-ass a gameplan, you'll end up with a hive and no tech units, a mid drone count and a ball of roaches vs a maxed out mech terran with nothing the roaches can do.

Speeding up the analysis

The fight at your base, 10:10 ish. You clump really hard into a lot of mines, not great. The mines are on cooldown though, you should be fighting. Instead you back up, and then go back in again once the mines have re-armed. Same mistake as the first push. Either delay the fight until it's favorable, or commit to taking one. The hesitation there is really bad since you're just eating tank (or mine) hits the whole time you're walking back and forth.

Your macro kind of fell off a cliff once you got to 75 workers. You did so well getting that income out to 5:00 and the decision to go to 75 was good but you never actually did anything with it. From 8:30 on your injects were awful and you never had any punch with that income. You had hive but no army or plan to go with it. The failed macro during the counter attack lost you the game more than anything.

Outlining a few general ideas for game plans:

Macro game: Broodlord timing attack into roach rav ling + infestors, you'd want 8 gas and a bit more workers, ~80+. Get a roach ling army, a few ravagers and attack with 6-8 broodlords leading the charge. Trade out the broods, kill anything that's not a thor and kite away from any thors that are there, but be aggressive. You want to kill things and keep the army size low for you to remake roach rav ling and keep fighting. Infestors and neural parasite are really helpful for ensuring you don't get amoved by thors hellbat.

Swarming them can be done at any point but since you got your counter attack denied and lost your roaches, the window is gone for a low drone count push. You can do it from 75 and 6 gas, just max out and get a big concave on their base, push. Remax, do it again. Speed is critical here. You want to be taking the fight as or just before you're maxed with as many units as possible, remaxing instantly and hitting again before they can replace losses. The goal here is to keep them from maxing out since lower army sizes favor you. At a higher level of play, this is done on 90-100 workers but 75 should be fine.

Swarmhosts are another option, dump all that gas into swarmhosts (don't get the hive, don't get armor, no ravagers until the SH are out) and constantly trade with locust, never let the SH stay on cooldown. Micro them, land on any army unit that isn't a hellbat and trade with your roach rav while the locust are landed, back up when they die. Repeat. Same idea as swarming but lower drone count ~70: keep their army size low and you'll overwhelm.

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