UC Berkeley Starcraft Class, Week 2
Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 11:12PM Week 2 of the class was better than week 1 because most of the administrative stuff was out of the way so more time could be spent discussing StarCraft itself.
This week was about units. Professor Feng started by explaining that units are your eyes, ears, and hands in the game. Units give you vision through the fog of war (eyes) and are they are what you use to perform actions such as attacking, repairing, building, moving (hands). What he said we might not realize is that they are also your ears. He mentioned one match where the famous player Boxer put an SCV kind of near some minerals to scout, but it was actually the sound effect for gathering minerals he listening for, rather than the sight the SCV provided.
The next topic was something I refer to as local imbalance, though that term wasn't used in class. Explained in my terms, a game is supposed to have global balance (Zerg vs. Terran for example) but it's supposed to NOT have local balance, or it would be too boring on homogeneous. StarCraft has massive local imbalance amongst units and that is a very good thing.
One example was siege tanks. The longest range Protoss ground unit is the Reaver, with range 8. Zerg have lurkers of range 6. But Terrans have siege tanks with range 12(!) when in siege mode. This is a massive "imbalance" in that it gives you an advantage the other sides don't have. That is not to say there is any design problem (it's a strength of the design, not a problem), but it is to say that you have to recognize what exact situations and unit combinations are completely slanted in your favor so you can play to get into those situations.
Feng then asked us to name any Terran melee unit. Firebat? No, it's splash damage. SCV? No, they can't attack under Dark Swarm. There are no Terran melee units, he said. This was just to show that local imbalances swing the other way if you need to fight on the ground under a Dark Swarm.
Next, he asked us "What unit are you afraid of from Protoss if you are playing Terran?" Someone immediately yelled out Carriers. He then explained how good a cloaked Wraith would be against Carriers. Of course, your opponent knows this so your opponent has Observers to reveal the cloak of your Wraiths. He then examined the Medic's abilities, explaining the function of Flare. Flare blinds units and also turns off their detection abilities. Putting all this together, he said, you could use Medics to Flare all the Observers, then attack the Carriers with your cloaked Wraiths.
Here is a video of Boxer doing just that. (Is this a Boxer appreciation class?) Notice that he actually sends in just one Wraith initially, as a test of whether the Carriers can see it. They can't so he sends in the rest.
Feng then talked about damage types and sizes. As you probably know if you've played StarCraft, units are classified as small, medium, or large and attacks can have classifications of concussive (good against small, bad against large), explosive (the reverse), or normal (full damage vs all sizes). He then pointed out that Zerg's Sunken Colonies deal explosive damage and asked us to think about the implications. Most early units are small, while later game units tend to be bigger. That means Sunken Colonies actually increase their effectiveness as the game goes on. (Yes I know that's a simplification because of things like air units and siege tanks, but you get what he meant.) He said we should note though that units can upgrade their damage (zealots for example), while turrets can't (they only get a defensive upgrade).
Feng then asked us to think about how seeing some of the enemy's units gives you information. Not only what they attack you with but what they DON'T attack you with. A specific tell to look for is how much gas their units cost. You usually have some idea how much gas the opponent has, and if he sends wave after wave of units that don't cost any gas, then you can guess what's next. Feng asked, "If your opponent sends wave after wave of Zealots at you, what do you think is next?" One student answered "more Zealots" and I thought to myself that would make a good Rose player in Street Fighter Alpha 2.
Next, Feng asked us what would you do if you've reached late game, the map's minerals are mined out, your only units are a single drone, some overlords, and one defiler. Your opponent has one Wraith. Furthermore you have only 47 minerals, and 38 gas. One student said "I would type gg," which Feng accepted as usually a good answer in a case like that. But he showed a video of just such a situation.
The Wraith attacked the Drone. In moments, it would die. Before it did, the Zerg player put the Drone inside an Overlord, just to buy a little bit of time. He then used the Defiler's Dark Swarm many, many times in a row as a way to transport the Drone safely to a gas mine. With swarms everywhere and temporary protection from the Wraith, the Drone mined enough gas to build Scourge, then used the Scourge to kill the Wraith. This made the game a draw instead of a loss. Here's the video:
Someone asked how this happened and Feng explained that the Zerg player also had a pack of Ultralisks, but they were worthless because the Terran could fly his buildings around, preventing the Zerg win. The Defiler actually consumed one to keep up the Dark Swarm barrage.
Yosh then took over and showed us several examples where a player attacks in a way that is designed to get an advantage but is specifically not intended to win the game. The first was a reaver drop with a shuttle, 1 reaver, and 1 zealot. The shuttle landed the enemy's base right by the minerals, and adjacent to the enemy's one siege tank. The tank went down almost instantly, and the reaver tried to kill as many SCVs as possible while the Terran player scrambled to move them to safety. I cringed as each SCV died, because losing any of them, not to mention all the time lost where none are mining, is deadly in a game of exponential economy. Several died, at least 5, before the Terran was able to surround the reaver with SCVs and kill it.
Yosh then asked us if the Protoss player intended to win the game with this move. It's certainly possible to, and it's been done before. But we know that he really didn't because at the same time, he was building an expansion. Yosh said that if the Protoss player was serious about winning right then and there, he would have invested in more attacking units, send those too, and not put the resources into expanding. The player's actual choices were very good though. The attack did serious damage to the Terran while leaving the Protoss player with good economy.
The next example was a Protoss player who sent 2 corsairs around the map. What was his objective? Obviously not to win the game on that move, but to scout. It wasn't only scouting though, Yosh explained. The corsairs were able to fight a couple overlords, so the Protoss player gained more than just scouting information. Also, the Protoss player knows that one of Zerg's strong moves in this match is to build a bunch of Mutalisks. The Corsairs were really looking for a Spire to see if the Mutalisks were coming or not. If they *were* coming, then having corsairs is a already a headstart on countering the Mutas, so he thinks that's what the Protoss player was gambling for. No Spire was seen, but it seems that the Protoss player's actions were sound and his gains were good.
Next he showed us an example of the Mutalisk stacking bug. By making a group of Mutalisks with one (far away) Overlord in the same group, a bug in the StarCraft game engine makes the Mutalisks stack even more exactly on top of each other than they normally would. This also lets them attack simultaneously, as if it's one big attack. Yosh showed us a match where a Zerg player sends his stacked Mutas to the Terran base. Does he expect to win off this attack? No he doesn't. What he finds is a pretty well defended Terran base with turrets.
The Zerg player circles the Mutas around the base, going for containment. The Terran will not be able to leave the base while the Zerg player expands to a second (or even third) base. But as the Mutas fly around the Terran base, they find an opening and are able to take out a few Terran units. The match goes on to show some cat-and-mouse play with the Mutas, some are lost, but the point is made. They harassed, they contained, they destroyed some units, and they allowed the Zerg player to expand without trouble.
Yosh's final example was a match where the Terran player sent 3 Vultures and 3 Siege Tanks to the enemy Protoss expansion base. Before doing this, he scouted and gathered enough information to believe that attacking early would probably be favorable to him. He did not know exactly what was in the Terran main base though (which was up a ramp). Anyway, he sent the attackers, clearly having Vultures in assigned to one hotkey and tanks to another hotkey. As he arrived, the Protoss player pulled all his expansion probes away, up the ramp to safety while mobilizing 4 Dragoons to fight the Terran units. The Terran player quickly laid spider mines everywhere to control space around the expansion, then attacked the Dragoons. The Dragoons were forced to retreat up the ramp to the main base. The Terran was then able to destroy the expansion base.
Yosh said the whole thing was executed very well by the Terran, but he pointed out two improvements the Terran might think about. First, if he had driven his Vultures ahead quickly at the start of the skirmish, he could have laid the spider mines in a way that would have basically forced the Dragoons to get hit as they retreated. The vultures would then have been able to actually kill some of the Dragoons. Second, Yosh believed that it would have probably been a better idea to bring 3 SCVs to the fight. At the very least, these SCVs could repair the tanks during battle. They can also act as a wall to buy for the tanks as the slow dragoon shots hit them (or float around them due to strange bugs with Dragoon shots). Also, the SCVs could then stake out the territory by building turrets or whatever else.
Anyway, the Terran player didn't bring SCVs and what he did after the battle, I found very interesting. He left. That's right, he just turned around and went back to his base. I have spoken much about "pressing the advantage," but in this particular situation, it does seem that leaving was a smart choice. Yosh referred to this as "accepting the advantage." The Terran could have pushed up the ramp and tried to win right there, but it's really uncertain how that would pan out. He could have lost all those units that way, or he could have gotten lucky. He didn't have the main base scouted and even if he did, 4 dragoons and a ramp can go very wrong for you. Instead, he let the game play out, knowing that they would end up in a 3 base to 2 base situation, with Terran advantage.
Finally, Feng took over again and showed us a video about how 3 Marines can cleverly avoid all damage from a Lurker by making the Lurker attack, then moving to avoid the linear attack, then briefly firing and repeating. This is very, very difficult (impractical in a real match to do it to the degree shown in the video) but it shows a concept you can use a little bit here and there in a real match.
He said that studying small details of the game like this is very important and it's how people in the class can contribute to the StarCraft community. As parting words, he gave an offer. Sometimes when a Dragoon shoots at an SCV, the shot misses completely. Maybe it's something to do with the SCV turning at just the right moment, he doesn't know exactly. He said if someone can show a way to make a Dragoon miss at least 50% in this situation, that he will give that student a passing grade for the entire class.
That's all for this week, and it was a lot. Did you actually read it all?
Reader Comments (67)
The video sounds like the one by TraToss, where he has 3 marines simultaneously run-fire in a circle around 1 lurker?
Inter seems to be talking about a famous move where iloveoov splits like 30~ marines to dodge lurker spines while retreating (at least that's the only iloveoov micro move I can think of involving m&ms and lurkers).
The link Intervigilium posted doesn't work for me, but this is the video he was pointing to (1:55):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_uqz_Juxc
The 3 Marine vs Lurker trick was used in a real game (7:10):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00l7BvBApQE&feature=related
But this exact tactic hasn't been used in any other real games that I am aware of. However, moving marines perpendicular to the Lurker's line of fire is fairly common. TraToss was just the first person to do it simultaneously with only 3 Marines.
He mentioned one match where the famous player Boxer put an SCV kind of near some minerals to scout, but it was actually the sound effect for gathering minerals he listening for, rather than the sight the SCV provided.
He might have been talking about this game, where Boxer played a blind Starcraft player (!), but with the handicap of being blindfolded for the first few minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR_ZMlPoVs
On second thought, I think the game is known as "Boxer's Ninja Proxy."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5257543096009647325
Rekrul has a fanclub over at that site because he's a decent player and former admin. who went on to make a lot of money from poker. A combination of small internet fame and personal wealth gives his post more credit than they deserve. On a side note It's interesting that so many competitive SC players made the move to poker and some are very successful (the Frenchmen Elky shown in lecture 1 is a very, very successful poker player now).
I'm gonna have a heart attack from all the straw man arguments in that teamliquid thread, wow
It's 30% chance to miss, not 70% chance to miss.
Aw, shit. I forgot I clicked the link to this page a few hours ago. I should have refreshed before replying. I thought there was supposed to be a way to edit posts. :(
Yet another post (go ahead and delete the first two), but...
Phantom:
He mentioned one match where the famous player Boxer put an SCV kind of near some minerals to scout, but it was actually the sound effect for gathering minerals he listening for, rather than the sight the SCV provided.
He might have been talking about this game, where Boxer played a blind Starcraft player (!), but with the handicap of being blindfolded for the first few minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AR_ZMlPoVs
On second thought, I think the game is known as "Boxer's Ninja Proxy."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5257543096009647325
Thanks for reminding me of something I wanted to ask. I thought you could only hear the mining sound effect if your screen is over (or very close to) the mining. Is that not true?
The video Alan showed in class with the marines dodging the lurker spines was indeed a controlled situation and it WAS the video done by TraToss.
Rekrul (Former progamer, Former TL Admin, Successful Poker Player)
"Dear Sirlin,
I know you like fighting games. Fighting games are kinda cool. But be careful when commenting about a genre you have no idea about. The very fact that you could even suggest that lessening the physical tasks required to play optimally (APM/mechanics etc etc) would raise the strategy level of the game is ridiculous.
First of all why are you even talking about genres? Starcraft is not part of a 'real time strategy' or 'strategy' genre. Starcraft is starcraft and nothing can compare to it because it is unique in the fact that its the only game ever invented to not only require such intense physical skills (APM/mechanics) but an even deeper sense of knowledge of strategy and even further the ability to apply that knowledge in the right situations. Starcraft is Starcraft and to classify it with any other 'strategy' game is a joke. Warcraft 3 is a joke. Command and Conquer is a joke. Age of Empires is a joke. Etc Etc. And don't try to brush me off thinking I'm just another overzealous Starcraft fan. I'm not. I've played all those games and talked to countless pros that have played those games on a top competitive level and guess what they all say: "yeah my game sucks SC is way better." THEY ADMIT IT!
In all your idiocy you are kinda right on a certain level when you say 'lessening the mechanics will make it more of a strategical game.' This will be very true. But only true at the very beginning or maybe the first 6 months-yearish. As with all new strategy games players will continuously come up with all sorts of new strategies that they can use to outsmart and outwit their opponents. If Starcraft2 is made how you want it to be a lot of geniuses that would have otherwise failed because they have no dextrous skills will be owning it up with their brilliant strategies. This will only last a year. After a while everyone will know the optimal strategies and your brilliant creators of strategies will now be average joe schmoes. Now you could try to argue that with non-stop new maps to use new strategies on the brilliant players will always have their edge. But I'm going to tell you right now your argument would be null and void. When you play starcraft you have many limitations based on what matchup you're playing and the type of map it is. Even if you keep drastically changing maps the general limitations will always remain the same and players will have to do similarish-type opening builds and the game simply won't be fun. It will only be interesting for the first year or so due to strategies still being discovered + constant balance changes by Blizzard forcing people to adapt.
Starcraft in all its complexity is a vey simple game. Every unit and/or unit combination crushes certain combinations and can be crushed by other certain combinations (other than late tech monster tech combos obviously). If everything is so easy to do (you don't have to macro like crazy and fly around everywhere making sure to take care of everything) and everyone knows which units in which amounts at what times are best against certain races and situations (due to replays expediting the learning curve for everyone) what will games be decided by? Perhaps by imbalance, perhaps by luck, perhaps by brutal small mistakes that can't be made up for. Is that fun? No.
The first year will be fun, yes, after that no one will give a fuck about the game anymore and it certainly won't be a good spectator sport. The reason why the strategies in starcraft are so complex are because of the multitude of unique situations that come up due to differences in players' mechanical ability as well as strategical ability. This is true on all levels of play from complete newbie to top-tier pros. Two newbs play eachother one of them has better mechanics and can pump more units and expand faster but the other guy is more strategically advanced so he makes the right units at the right times...vwalla we have a good game.
I mean listen to yourself. You are ranting that if you dumb down the APM/mechanics requirements it will be a better strategy game. Okay LOL suuuure man... In that case the player with a better strategical grasp / more experience will always win. There will be no way for the lesser player to win right? Thats why Starcraft is interesting....some guy that watches a lot of replays and studies the game a lot but is really slow can get raped by some idiot with high APM and good macro. This is what drives players to improve their strategies AND mechanics. Also...as much strategy as there is in Starcraft...a high % of the strategies are straight up GAMBLING/RISK build orders. Do you even realize this? Because starcraft is such a fast paced game and relies on players making split second executive decisions players are able to take huge risks to try and win. STRATEGY in starcraft is a non stop series of calculated risks taken by players and will only work when taking place in a high paced mechanics oriented game. Often times its not a STRATEGY at all, it's just one player doing an all-in build hoping to get lucky lol (or he thinks he can predict his opponents build).
What the fuck is a strategy to you anyways? Go Corsair DT against zerg to kill the overlord and expand safely? LOL is that a strategy? WOW WHAT A SICK STRATEGY!!!! SO BRILLIANT. No. The strategy is to use your insane high APM to execute the build with perfect timing so that you can harass overlords and wiggle that little fucker into zerg's main. Ooops he had it blocked! Oh well I have an expansion up and running now time to frantically figure out what he's doing so I can quickly pump out the precise strategically correct unit combination that will allow me to come behind from this small deficit and seal my next expansion all the while sick microing my shuttle with dt/ht in it to harass to get my edge back. <-- If all your probes go directly to minerals and you can select infinite units on whatever keys and mass macro from all your gates would this be hard? No. Should it be hard. Yes. The very fact that SC requires sick mechanics and strategy is why we have progamers and starcraft on TV. It is only when a player is completely stressed by all the tasks he must complete by clicking everywhere to pull off the strategies he intends on doing that we can see who has real talent and who doesn't. Thats why PRO sc is so fun to watch as well...these guys are so fast and clean that they can execute brilliant new strategies and unreal timing attacks with raw perfection all the time due to their insane mechanics. This is why even the best of the best rarely break a win % higher than 70%. We would never see this if they all could just easily macro by pressing two keys. There wouldn't be a difference between Mumyung and Jaedong. Games will either be one sided because one player is smarter and more strategically advanced or games will be even and decided by some simple mistake rather than decided by some brilliant combo two sided attack. And that, would be a huge problem.
I mean...are you even aware of the fact that Savior has a low APM compared to other pro-gamers? His revolutionary defiler use and muta control alone parted the sea of progamers as he earned himself the title of Bonjwa. Do you even play Starcraft? Do you even know who Park-Jung-Suk is? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? LOL.
We are Starcraft players. Every game we play we are simply rolling the dice with our strategies based on limited information, but we know that the faster and more efficiently we play with our good execution the higher our chances get. Sometimes the dominos fall perfectly and we win. Sometimes AVGJOE27 on USWest is actually a smurfing Korean monster pro and he picks up our dominos and eats them then laughs at us. Sometimes we practice countless hours for months straight only to forget zealot speed at the WCG Grand Finals and lose the most important game of our lives. Even though we thought we were the best one there we fall short of our dreams and expectations. Do we blame the game? Fuck no. Do we whine about how it's not fair because the other guy was too fast? Fuck no. We are Starcraft players. We take it like men and only blame no one but ourselves.
If we, the foreign players that have gotten butt-raped by Koreans because of their superior APMs countless times in competitions where it counts don't cry about how it's not fair for people with superior mechanics to have such an edge, then what gives a bone headed fighting game nerd like you the right to do so? Just do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up. I can't believe I just wasted my time writing all this obvious common sense shit.
I mean fuck it man...Make starcraft easier to play? LOL THEY SHOULD MAKE IT HARDER TO PLAY.
This isn't the Special Cyber Olympics. THIS IS STAAAAAAAAAAARCRAFT"
Rekrul fighting! gooo!!
btw, Rekrul's name is just Lurker backwards. haha
Rekrul should stick to Starcraft and Poker. He's terrible at debating and writing.
Please use the forums to post off-topic letters, such as those with personal attacks and arguments that counter things I never said in the first place. This is about the 2nd lecture of UC Berkeley's class.
Unfortunately he's 100% correct, forty.
"He said if someone can show a way to make a Dragoon miss at least 50% in this situation,"
well that ends my idea
"That's all for this week, and it was a lot. Did you actually read it all?"
Look forward to the next one. At least i feel i can attend the class by proxy now : (
Are there any women enrolled in this class?
Yes, there are about 6 girls in this class
"Next he showed us an example of the Mutalisk stacking bug. By making a group of Mutalisks with one (far away) Observer in the same group, a bug in the StarCraft game engine makes the Mutalisks stack even more exactly on top of each other than they normally would. This also lets them attack simultaneously, as if it's one big attack. Yosh showed us a match where a Zerg player sends his stacked Mutas to the Terran base. Does he expect to win off this attack? No he doesn't. What he finds is a pretty well defended Terran base with turrets."
Replace Observer with Overlord. Wrong race.
bo7, ugh typo there, good catch.