I guess we'll never get a fix to this but my most annoying positional imbalance just occured to me again. Just played a 2v2 on 2.45@iCCup TP v PT and I was the red protoss on top. The opponent's toss went for a MASS of carrier/reaver with tiny goon support while I went for goon/sair. He quickly amassed a TON of them along with his ally's mass of BCs and then just as he breaks my army of sairs guess what happens? "Cannot Create More Units" I lose every part of my ground except 1 gates worth of zeals, 2 goons, 2 high templars, and 2 archons along with my army of sairs(which got cut too). At which point we were even with them in the special war about to occur while they had heros out and a stronger/massed up army. I left knowing we had lost.
Complaint: CCMU causes positional imbalance because the top side gets their unit spawn taken out almost entirely while the bottom keeps spawning about the same amount of units. Occurs in 2v2, and 3v3 mostly.

There's already a system in place where the side that spawns first alternates. In a 2v2 game however this will mean that player 1 will spawn then player 5, then player 6 and player 2, and that cycle will repeat. So you kind of get locked into any bad outcomes. In 3v3 it will slowly cycle around.

Unfortunately map-max is impossible to solve and to substantially mitigate it will take a huge amount of work.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I figured. I remember playing one version with you and discussing how you added in that system and talking about the probes that had been added in and how they were OP at first etc.

It's not possible to control the number of scarabs the Reaver has to help reduce map max?

Reavers spawn with 0 scarabs and have 1 added every 2 seconds, for a maximum of 5 in their holds.

So the map max on spawning problem won't be due to the reavers spawning like that. Similarly carriers spawn with 0 interceptors and have them added, although I think 4 interceptors might be added to each carrier before the other team has had a chance to spawn so I may have a look at that.

I could make the scarabs spawn slightly slower, say every 3 seconds, but I don't want a situation where a reaver is on the field and could fire but doesn't have any ammo. Often times a scarab takes a long/delayed path to its target and prevents the reaver from firing for longer than usual, but whether the interval was 2 seconds or 3 seconds this build up would still eventually occur. So setting the interval to 3 seconds won't really alter the root cause of the problem: reavers storing up scarabs unnecessarily.

Again, if it were possible to Set the number of interceptors/scarabs, I would do so. Unfortunately the only trigger available is Add.

I see, because I remember playing a mass map where Reavers would only have 2 scarabs. Then I remember that they were only created with two scarabs but they never rebuilt. My bad.

OK, so you cannot set the number of scarabs/interceptors but can you simply start with 1 then tell it not to add additional (beyond +2 if you can detect the number previously built) if the map is spawning 200 units or more?

Build or battlefield limits on Carriers/Battlecruisers/Devouers/Valkyries would be the only other thing I could think of to solve the problem as stated earlier but balancing that might pose a challenge.


On a side note, Insta-spawn with a Zerg spawining 320 units completely freezes up the game for several seconds if that team has their previous spawn(s) on the battlefield.

Thanks again!

It might be possible to count up the total number of units in the map and set switches based on that to control behaviour. But it won't be flawless, because things like animations from dying units take up a unit slot but can't be detected by Bring or Command triggers. Dead zerg units leave blood stains for a while, for example. There may be other units that contribute but can't be counted, like Map Revealers (don't show upin any locations).

Limiting carriers, and therefore putting limits on BCs and zerg air is a possibility. I think it would be very unfair to limit carriers while not limiting the other races, and if you start limiting all of them it gets a bit cheap. At the moment the only units that are limited are those that are clearly very difficult for some races to counter when they're built en-masse (such as ghost, void ray, queen, medic) but also lets me have reasonably low build prices for the ones that you are able to build.

Note that devourer acid spores and valkyrie attacks don't count towards the unit limit. The valkyrie attacks count towards the weapons sprite limit; not sure about acid spores/plague/esnare as I've never actually seen those graphical effects fail, so I guess they must have a separate graphics buffer from regular attack sprites.

This would be a function of the computers that are playing the game; older computers will struggle more. I had been planning on releasing a version that used upgrade EUDs that would help reduce trigger computations on unit spawn, but any EUD version would potentially be unplayable after Blizzard patched the game again and I can't gaurantee I'd be around or have the inclination to update it to support the new patch, so I'm a little hesitant to go further there. Ideally I'd like to have a non-EUD version and another version with EUDs that incremented the version number by one (eg 2.50 and 2.51) so when a future patch came out the older one would still work. This would require me to stop tweaking the map so much, though. Maybe in a few months.

I've started looking at my Blood Pressure Marathon map again.

I understand why units like Void Ray or Defilers are limited, but why ghosts and medics? Ghosts can be a threat in the beginning of the map but usually later on they're not really as useful anymore. Medics though, not really a huge threat in spells.

Plague and Ensare has fail though. Well when the units try to use them, just nothing comes out. I think it does count as weapon sprite limits? I don't think Acid Spores fail though.

As for a EUD version, what are the chances for Blizzard making a new patch for SC anyways?

Ghosts is because of lockdown. In earlier versions where there was no limit, TvT or TvP just became silly when they built heaps and heaps of ghosts, it made it very difficult to combat. I guess newer versions have changed that dynamic somewhat, as protoss and terran both have stronger non-mech units (reapers, archons) than they did earlier. Medics is similar with healing, not so much with a terran force, but with a zerg ally: utralisks + 20 medics is annoyingly cheap, and now that you can build in your ally's bases this could be even worse.

I guess they'd fail if the original AoE graphical animation didn't show up because it counted as a weapon sprite, but the actual splodges on the units wouldn't count towards the weapon sprite limit.

For EUD and Blizzard patch: they'll likely do one eventually. It won't be gameplay changes at this point, just changes they have to make to battle.net for whatever reason.

Regarding the building in ally's bases and the max. Is the max for one individual spawn or for all buildings that player makes? For example if I build 12 pylons in each non-protoss base on my team along with 12 total in my own base will all pylons count to each individual base's spawn they are in or is it 12 total pylons owned by each player, not each base?

It's a tricky answer.

The building max is per-player, so each player can build 6 void rays for example. But there is a field maximum that is generally 50% more than the building maximum. So you can have 9 void rays on the field at once. 10 bunkers will create 20 ghosts, and you can have 30 on the field at once. So if there are 20 bunkers (40 ghosts) in 1 player's base, if there are 0 ghosts on the field at spawning time, then 30 ghosts will be spawned from the 20 bunkers. If there were already 25 ghosts on the field at spawning time, then only 5 ghosts would spawn from the 20 bunkers. Note that the 'on field' applies to regular spawning conditions too: if P1 and P2 both have 6 void rays, if when P2 comes to spawn there are still 6 void rays on the field then they will only spawn an additional 3, taking the field max up to 9.

Pylons are a little different in that they have a soft max. Any one spawning instance will create a maximum of 18 probes, and there is no field max. So if P1-3 all built 20 pylons in P1's base, when P1 spawns there will be only 18 probes created. If P1-3 build 12 pylons in each of P1-3's base, then each spawn will create 18 probes. If P1-3 each build 12 pylons in their own bases (and not each others), then again they will get the max 18 probes spawning.

I actually think probes are an avenue for abuse, but I've never seen it. A 3P team could probably get some early advantage by maxing out probes, while also throwing in a few zealots, immortals and dragoons to deal damage. I actually tried this myself once, building 8 pylons early to get 12 probes vs a terran player who had early ghosts. It was somewhat effective for 1-2 spawn waves but after that not so much. But I think 3 protoss who all built 12 pylons early could probably each get a 'free' gas with little risk to their prison cell / silo.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 3 2011, 12:21 am by Lanthanide.

Yo,
I found that with 1 BC building sometimes i spawn 2 BC's instead of 1, it's the same with the siege tanks.
I was thinking about adding a SCV with the supply depot, because it's gonna make it a liittle better building, because most people just ignore it. And I like the idea about adding vultures to the factory. The terran special is a little overpowered. Maybe remove the infestation thing around the base and make it act more like boom or something. Or just make it more expensive. Anyway, nice work

Well yeah it makes 2 BCs every now and then because it's not like you can spawn half a BC. Pretty sure Lanth made it that way. Though that does sound like a nice possible idea, adding a SCV to the supply depot.

Found another bug, though I assume your map is not made for 1v1 No Specials. It was TvZ, and he kept going a ling/ultra/defiler build along with some guardians and eventually his army was so big that when it spawned in the spawn area, it didn't give all the units to the computer right away. So he managed to sneak some guardians/devourers out, sent them to the battlefield and started attacking my Night Defense and Temple. Since you pretty much had the computer ally us, my spawn would just ignore it. And using a boom didn't kill the units either. I'm just surprised he didn't attack my base instead since we're not allied to each other and he could of destroyed all my buildings. I got a replay if you need it but it's a long replay, so yeah..

Yeah, the way that additional unit buildings operate is to alternate what they spawn. Generally it works by addition, so if you have 1 science facility you will spawn 1 BC, then 2 BC, then 1 BC, then 2 BC (total of 6 over 4 cycles = 1.5 per building). Some of them work by deletion, notably the 0.75 war pigs and 0.75 devourers: with 1 building it will spawn 1, 1, 1 then 0 (4th spawn is deleted), for 3 / 4 = 0.75 per building.

Not sure what the purpose of adding SCVs would be. Marauders fill this role much better than SCVs. Unless your point is that SCVs (like probes) don't get targeted by enemy units while marauders do - the answer I think is to make marauders stronger. The probe fills two purposes: it's unfair that the protoss should have a building they are required to make that doesn't spawn any units, and also they help to soak up enemy lockdowns when they build ghosts. Again we run into the string length problem: having 3 units on the supply depot will simply take up too much space.

And yes, that is an interesting bug Leon. When you say it didn't give all the units to the computer right away, what precisely do you mean? All of the units should be spawned in a single trigger cycle, so is it the case that he spawned so many units that some of them overflowed (like 5 or 6?) outside of the spawn box and therefore weren't given to the CPU player? Posting the replay can't hurt, anyway.

Boom not affecting them is because the boom killing mechanism is operated by the CPU player on a Foes basis and all humans are considered Ally's now. If he'd flown the units too close to your base they would have been killed by the out-of-bounds trigger, although guardians have quite a long range so he'd be able to kill quite a bit before that happened.

Well from what I saw, he had so many zerglings and ultralisks. All the units spawned in the spawn box area at once but like, only 95% of the units were given to the computer. So he had control of some of the lings/ultras/hydras/guards/devs for a couple of seconds. They didn't spawn outside the box, he just moved them out of the area before they were given to the computer.

Attachments:

Ok, I'll have a look at that. Do you know approximately how far through the replay it happens? Does this happen on just 1 spawn, or on several, perhaps after a certain period in the game?

I'm at work at the moment, but I can't imagine why the Give trigger would miss some units, unless they were outside the location. Unless it's just a starcraft bug, in which case there's nothing I can do about it.

Jsyk, Acid Spores, Plague, Ensnare, and any other graphic effect which remains on the target are pure images. Images have a much higher maximum, because anything you can see - unit, weapon, Psi Storm, spell, sprite, whatever - contains at least one image. They can still fail, but it's /much/ harder. FaRTy once intentionally used the image limit to make Archons/DAs which were only the spherical glow (the humanoidish thing inside and the spinning energy thing are separate images); getting close to it without hitting other limits first required placing several dozen critically-damaged Pylons, as the Pylon takes up a surprising number of images due to the placement aura, and the blue flame eats up even more images. (I'm unsure of why the aura matters, but w/e.) Anyway, unless someone decides to mass Pylons and the Pylons almost die but don't quite, there's no need to worry about these effects. ...And I doubt someone could get the requisite number of Pylons without losing. ;0

Very interesting, thanks.

Towards the end of the game or around there. It happened several times. I think it only happens if he gets his full army. If the map maxes out and he doesn't get much units, it doesn't happen. Is it possible that the trigger has a limit number of units it gives? Maybe at least per trigger?