Somewhat silly question for old timers..

[Wingflier]

People who say Starcraft 2 Protoss don't really understand Starcraft 2.  Force Fields, Blink micro, Guardian Shield, Zealot Charge, Templar Feedback, and Psionic Storm, as well as many other combat mechanics mean that the player is often moving his force into different groups, or using each type of unit in a specific way.

Sorry, WingFlier, but at the Top Tier of Foreign and Korean play, blob tactics are among the most powerful mid to late game tactics as well as the most used. Also, everything you listed (Force Fields, Blink micro, Guardian Shield, Zealot Charge, Templar Feedback, and Psionic Storm) is used as part of blob tactics and usually is better. Blob + micro still is a blob.

In many games from turn based strategy to rts, the tension between high dps and high survivability usually twists original design intent with emergent gameplay.

Actually no, in mid to late game against a professional Terran or Zerg opponent, blobbing your army as a Protoss is a death sentence.  Zerg Fungal Growth and Terran EMP as well as Protoss Psi Storm are extremely powerful anti-blobbing game mechanics.

Even in the early to mid game, blink is usually taken by good players.  Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHwNPpjdu8w#t=4m

Even though his units are all close together, he's constantly moving the hurt ones to the back to extend his army's lifetime.  Don't let the "blob" appearance deceive you, each unit must be controlled on its own.  If he were to just blob + attack like you do in AI War, he would completely lose that battle. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlfWcKMW5iM#t=5m

In this video, the Protoss keeps his force too close together, and they all get EMPed, causing him to lose the battle basically instantly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rlcZy7G1pg

In this video, the Terran players keeps his marines too close together and gets Fungaled, basically sealing their fates.

Things like this happen in pro play all the time.  Blobbing may work against noobs, but good players have to separate their stuff to some degree - and it completely depends on the situation.  That's the idea, that the player adapts to the situation.  That's what AI War is lacking during planet battles in my opinion.

[Mánagarmr]

I've seen so many games settled with a well places fungal or psi-storm. Blobbing definitely doesn't work. Moving in a coherent group, yes, but not splitting yourself up properly is just asking to be owned. (And I don't even play SC2!)

[TechSY730]

It seems that the combination of little "stacking" avoidance ("stacking" avoidance and resolution is weak, aka, processed pretty late and not aggressively, leading to things like large numbers or things being able to be in firing range, much more than their total physical space would normally allow them to) combined with a relative lack of hard hitting AOE stuff means that there is little to discourage blobbing, either with mixing ship types or blobbing a single ship type. There rarely a need to be considered about positioning and "splitting" your fleet up at least some.

I noticed, taking SC2 as an example, almost all of the "blob punishing" AOE stuff is an active (manually triggered, typically with cooldowns and/or an energy pool for them) ability. If it was just a normal weapon with no downsides, it would almost certainly be OP if it did enough damage to each unit to matter, or UP if it did not. (Deployed siege tanks don't count. Yes, it is a normal weapon, but only when they give up their mobility)

AI War has had a long running "tradition" of not having active abilities for normal units. Only big, important stuff (right now, only the champions of the 4th expansion) have any hope of getting active, triggered abilities. TBH, I would like that to stay (IMO, nothing less than a spirecraft level unit should ever have an active ability, and even that is pushing it. Golems I could see), as I think this is one of the things that has helped keep micro a lesser importance in this game.


Could this be solved by adding more AOE threats for the AI (or buffing up the ones it already has)? I don't know.
Could the "stacking avoidance/resolution" be more aggressive without killing the performance of the game? Again, I don't know.
Could making the AI be much smarter about its fleet tactics (kiting, splitting forces, moving things away from their strong counters, etc), showing off how effective fleet tactics can be, may start pressuring humans to do the same to be able to keep up? Once again, I don't know (not to mention this last one would be a nightmare to code).

I just wanted to point out some observations.

[Wingflier]

AI War has had a long running "tradition" of not having active abilities for normal units. Only big, important stuff (right now, only the champions of the 4th expansion) have any hope of getting active, triggered abilities. TBH, I would like that to stay (IMO, nothing less than a spirecraft level unit should ever have an active ability, and even that is pushing it. Golems I could see), as I think this is one of the things that has helped keep micro a lesser importance in this game.


Could this be solved by adding more AOE threats for the AI (or buffing up the ones it already has)? I don't know.

Well that's where I get the idea of the revamped, "Rare and Powerful Guardians".  Guardians now are basically just a boring schizophrenic force multiplier.

To make them much more powerful but more rare, they become the "special ability" units that force you to play around them.  They force you to adapt to the situation instead of dealing with every situation the exact same way.  I think that's what's the game is missing.  There are tons of cool ideas to make each Guardian a unique and challenging threat the way they were probably intended to be.

[TechSY730]

Just saw the reinforcement focus (focus on certain ship types for reinforcements for planets) change, and that is pretty awesome.
However, it won't be all that effective unless the initial game seeding follows similar rules. Will it, or is the initial seeded (lack of) strength of AI planets mean it is not worth the trouble?

How about making the initial game seeding use the same logic (keeping those same three picks when the game starts), but making it 20-25% any ship, 80-75% focus? This way, it would be harder to just dominate an early game planet with just a single ship type, but still enough (on average) of a focus to reward focusing on that counter in the early game.


P.S. Yes, I know I posted this on the version thread, but I moved it here since it fit with this discussion better.

[keith.lamothe]

I don't understand the focus on the initial seeding; how big is that, actually, compared to the reinforcements a planet gets over the course of the game?

I do intend to straighten out the initial seeding stuff, it's just time I didn't want to spend on it at this stage.

[Lancefighter]

Thats actually a really unique way to look at it Keith - That youre thinking about it almost as if you are the master of the ai, in a DM sense, compared to just writing a game. Something I sat there and stared at for a few moments while I contemplated the idea..

You also bring up a few good points on rational thought. It does indeed seem like most of us here are able to coherently argue for or against a change, and for the most part do so eloquently. Like you mentioned, a few of us in particular have their particular niches when it comes to favored units, and certainly do like discussing them.. :p

Still waiting for my starship bonus ships though. I think splitting zenith/spire/heavybomber into bonus ship categories, along with warbird, beam, and .. theres one other one, I think, already in play.. But I think that would actually radically change things.

Pretty good discussion here overall, particularly on the thought processes behind a developer.

[keith.lamothe]

@TechSY730, On the reinforcement-focus thing, just gave it a shot and changing the initial seeding to pick the focus types and use them was actually pretty straightforward, so that will be in 5.075

[TechSY730]

@TechSY730, On the reinforcement-focus thing, just gave it a shot and changing the initial seeding to pick the focus types and use them was actually pretty straightforward, so that will be in 5.075

Too bad it missed 5.074, but as mentioned, it's not a huge deal. As the game moves on, the initial seeding of ships becomes less and less relevant. Plus, I'm not planning on starting a new game in 5.074 anyways.

Thanks

[NickAragua]

I don't play AI Wars often enough any more to notice "glaring balance issues". I also don't consider myself an expert by any means.

The only time something really irked me was back when the "shields" mechanic was still in place, and my ships literally could do nothing against the higher mark AI ships. You could see this as soon as the AI got to Mark II/III ships and your MK I stuff suddenly became useless - it doesn't take an expert to notice that your ships aren't hitting jack.

The other thing I really noticed was the formerly overpowered AI lightning turrets/electric shuttles. Good lord, those were rough. Bring a fleet ball in range, and you could watch it carve a semi-circular pattern out of your fleet ball. Again, not something that you needed to be an expert to notice.

Nowadays, I barely have time to absorb the latest round of patch changes before the next ten patches come in, so my perspective is effectively that of a new player.

[Kahuna]

Starcraft is full of blobbing (M&M&M, Zergs, Protoss balls). 30% blobbing, 10% not blobbing, 40% fast button smacking, 20% tactics.
Don't get me wrong. It's a good game. I just haven't "learned to like it".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHwNPpjdu8w#t=4m

=blobbing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRlPUN73uXo&t=8m48s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXon5wfyV64&t=9m9s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QupXMBzsU&t=7m19s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8neoxqAdUaQ&t=6m37s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziWA1tTIvy4&t=6m13s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7LVhDHj9o4&t=7m16s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoiAXAUTbTA&t=6m54s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DUvgUSCzKc&t=6m5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-7fNNdt5IM&t=7m34s
all blobbing

[TechSY730]

Careful. We need to distinguish between "mindless" blobbing; "mindless" blobbing except for a few unit types, with those getting minor micro; blobbing + minor micro (some positioning stuff, but nothing super advanced); and blobbing + major micro (constantly kiting, repositioning, splitting, retreating damaged units, etc almost all the time on almost a unit by unit basis, but still keeping the unit "blob" more or less together).

[Mánagarmr]

To be honest, nothing of that was what I'd define as blobbing. Blobbing is mindless, just select and send. Simply moving around stuff in a big group, carefully positioned and moving things around in combat isn't blobbing per se.

If you define blobbing as "simply keeping stuff together", then every strategy game ever has blobbing, due to Lanchester's Law.

EDIT: Spelling.

[KDR_11k]

I'm fine with the lack of AOE in most fights in AI War, that would just be really annoying to deal with especially with the lack of formation orders. One of the core features I had to implement when I made my own space mod (called THIS, for the Spring engine) was a formation system that would de-stack the units (had to disable collision checking between them to avoid killing the framerate at the intended unit counts) because it had a lot of AOE and having units EVER stack (the player can give formation orders in Spring but could forget to do so by mistake) would cause massive damage to them in combat.

[Hearteater]

Well then, apparently I don't blob in AI Wars.  Who knew!