5 ms·

Well, anyone who says that advantage in micromanagement is not a big thing should see "Automaton 2000" videos. Given that automaton is a map script and thus can

by Monory 11y ago

Well, anyone who says that advantage in micromanagement is not a big thing should see "Automaton 2000" videos. Given that automaton is a map script and thus can have virtually unlimited APM, it beats people from a horribly disadvantageous positions (40 banelings vs 21 marine [1], or 100 zerglings vs 20 sieged tanks [2]). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

diskcat 11y ago
Yeah. infinite apm would make stuff like marine being able to turn around and shoot instantly OP. it was just impossible to exploit before with human reflex. also the APM is not unlimited, it is only very high.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I agree. It's one of only areas the AI's have been hood at. Pathfinding and build orders being other two. AI should be limited to a specific number of actions a minute comparable with opposing player or best human champ. Then, we're grading it on its "thinking" instead of dexterity. They better keep fog of war on too.
- derefr 11y ago
  Or, the AI could be set up like AlphaGo was: as a computer giving instructions to a merely human player. I'd love to see what a powerful StarCraft AI would do if trained to "predict and compensate for" not only its opponent, but also the inevitable human errors in faithfully executing its strategy. A certain Sector Command and Control Unit springs to mind...
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    A huge amount of Starcraft is the intense APM training regiment that the pros undergo. APM is a huge indicator of Starcraft "skill". Its not the only thing of course, but winning "micro-battles" greatly changes the game. I don't care how good Michael Jordan is. He'll never "win" a game of basketball vs a standard professional by shouting commands to an average joe. Similarly, no average joe will be able to perform a muta-harass while retaining full-speed, taking only a single missile from a Turret. That sort of "micro-skill" takes practice and dexterity.
    - derefr 11y ago
      You don't think it'd be interesting to take a player who's already one of the top players, and measure the marginal gains of them doing their own macro+micro, vs. just doing micro and leaving macro to the AI?
      - ktRolster 11y ago
        We can see that now, with the new Archon mode, which allows two players to control the units together.
        garrettgrimsley 11y ago
        I haven't been following SC2 since HOTS, are they really still trying to achieve feature parity with Brood War? http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee
        ktRolster 11y ago
        I haven't been following SC2 since HOTS Too bad, it's really good.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    The game moves too fast for that. When I contemplated it, I was going to let the AI do the micro battles and build orders. The other aspects are planning one's strategy, identifying opponent's strategy, counters, bluffs, and so on. Humans are best at this. The machines have been laughably easy to beat at it so far. DeepMind's system is all about finding patterns. It might do better on those aspects. It could even be trained to recognize some aspects of enemy intent, how the battles are going, etc. Thing is, there's lots of potentials for curveballs in Starcraft compared to Go or Atari games. Human pro's curveball on demand. Should be interesting to see what it can do.
    - derefr 11y ago
      Hmm. Instead of purely focusing on macro, what if the human was in the middle, while the AI existed at both the top and bottom? I'm now thinking more explicitly of the book series I alluded to (The General series by S.M. Stirling and David Drake): the human is a commander, so the units are intelligent in their own right (thus, handled by the AI); and the AI is also giving the human commander real-time advice based on what knowledge it can discover through the human's vision (isolated from the other AI-instance doing micro, but "smart" in the sense that it can assume that the micro is being done by a [fallible] rational actor that thinks like it does.) I feel like that "human in the middle" configuration would actually make for its own new subgenre of 4X/RTS-like games, if we could get it right; somewhat like a more interesting version of tower defense. Like an RTS, it would be about issuing orders; like a MOBA, you'd have direct control of a "champion" unit. But the job of the unit would be to give those orders, and your job as the player would be to get their position fortified while also gaining enough information to accurately strategize. Come to think of it, this is what Dungeons & Dragons was originally supposed to be about, wasn't it? Commander-level characters going off to do scouting or other special ops for their army, advancing in rank and gaining underlings in the process. (D&D1e assumes you'll just already have a wargame going with an overworld hex grid, unit stats, etc., and just serves as a "what heroes do in a zoomed-in view" add-on to it. Thus why it doesn't come with its own battle system.)
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
liusiqi43 11y ago
For Atari games, they limited actions to 50Hz, which is not entirely out of reach for human beings. I guess they would do something similar to make the SC challenge fair as well.
mizzao 11y ago
Agreed. It also wouldn't be very interesting to watch a human-AI game where the human is better at planning and tactics but the AI just wins even uphill battles due to insane micro.
- coryfklein 11y ago
  I would LOVE to see an AI vs AI game though where the AI had no restrictions on APM/micro. I mean, what would an AI come up with given just mass zerglings vs mass zerglings. Would love to see the strategies possible with near unlimited attention and APM.
  - LetaBot 11y ago
    You can always watch the StarCraft AI stream: http://sscaitournament.com/ http://sscaitournament.com/
  - Monory 11y ago
    Problem with that lies in different balancing. For example, while banelings, are considered hard-counter to marines, stimpacked marines are still faster than even speed-banelings not on creep and just a little bit slower on creep. Pros use splitting to minimize damage, but here, as you can see, it can be just ultimate showdown. Another example would be high templars vs ghosts. It is fairly difficult for Terran player to target high templars, but just two EMP shots basically puts templars out of combat, and miss of those shots renders ghosts mostly useless. So, any area-of-effect attacks would be mostly useless due to infinite APM. That means minus colossi, tanks, banelings, thors and many other units. Probably that means that some race will be somewhat (or, maybe, insanely) overpowered (my bet is on Terran due to possibility of multiple drops, which themselves could be useless, though (because AI can't "miss" a drop), and stim-marine micro). So, the game will require massive rebalancing.
HCIdivision17 11y ago
Watching the zerglings somehow wash through that tank barage was just ... demoralizing. Those little buggers are not supposed to be a hard counter to tanks, dammit! Fighting against Automaton 2000 is like having your own personal Kaizo assaulting your base. I think this really demonstrates why putting in APM limits is super important, and as brought out elsewhere also making the computer input via mouse/keyboard and get data from the screen (maybe just a filter to ease up on the CV bits?). A lot of the fun in watching a StarCraft map is seeing how the big picture is balanced against the details, and where a person's limited congnition flows from one focus to another. Limited knowledge and scope of sight play a huge part in the skill. But mostly I'm just ranting because dodging the splash damage feels unfair; goes against everything I stand for. Next we'll start seeing 5 Skill Rays bulldoze the map! (I'm going to be looking into this a lot more after work - it seems like a super cool project!)
shultays 11y ago
how does the siege tanks vs zerglings work? how do AI know which zergling is targetted? Also was there a delay for siege tanks after it selects a target but before shooting it down? Wasn't it instant like marine, can't remember it. Or maybe it is because opponent is also AI and automaton simply knows which target it will auto pick.
- Monory 11y ago
  All tanks have limited and fixed range, so Automaton just instantly splits all zerglings from the one which comes first into tank fire range. It IS instant, but highly deterministic, at least their first attacks are. And after their first shot, due to long cooldown, all zerglings are just already attacking tanks in fairly split manner and mostly unkillable by tanks anymore.

by Monory 11y ago

diskcat 11y ago

Yeah. infinite apm would make stuff like marine being able to turn around and shoot instantly OP. it was just impossible to exploit before with human reflex. also the APM is not unlimited, it is only very high.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I agree. It's one of only areas the AI's have been hood at. Pathfinding and build orders being other two. AI should be limited to a specific number of actions a minute comparable with opposing player or best human champ. Then, we're grading it on its "thinking" instead of dexterity. They better keep fog of war on too.

derefr 11y ago
Or, the AI could be set up like AlphaGo was: as a computer giving instructions to a merely human player. I'd love to see what a powerful StarCraft AI would do if trained to "predict and compensate for" not only its opponent, but also the inevitable human errors in faithfully executing its strategy. A certain Sector Command and Control Unit springs to mind...
- dragontamer 11y ago
  A huge amount of Starcraft is the intense APM training regiment that the pros undergo. APM is a huge indicator of Starcraft "skill". Its not the only thing of course, but winning "micro-battles" greatly changes the game. I don't care how good Michael Jordan is. He'll never "win" a game of basketball vs a standard professional by shouting commands to an average joe. Similarly, no average joe will be able to perform a muta-harass while retaining full-speed, taking only a single missile from a Turret. That sort of "micro-skill" takes practice and dexterity.
  - derefr 11y ago
    You don't think it'd be interesting to take a player who's already one of the top players, and measure the marginal gains of them doing their own macro+micro, vs. just doing micro and leaving macro to the AI?
    - ktRolster 11y ago
      We can see that now, with the new Archon mode, which allows two players to control the units together.
      - garrettgrimsley 11y ago
        I haven't been following SC2 since HOTS, are they really still trying to achieve feature parity with Brood War? http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee
        ktRolster 11y ago
        I haven't been following SC2 since HOTS Too bad, it's really good.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  The game moves too fast for that. When I contemplated it, I was going to let the AI do the micro battles and build orders. The other aspects are planning one's strategy, identifying opponent's strategy, counters, bluffs, and so on. Humans are best at this. The machines have been laughably easy to beat at it so far. DeepMind's system is all about finding patterns. It might do better on those aspects. It could even be trained to recognize some aspects of enemy intent, how the battles are going, etc. Thing is, there's lots of potentials for curveballs in Starcraft compared to Go or Atari games. Human pro's curveball on demand. Should be interesting to see what it can do.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Hmm. Instead of purely focusing on macro, what if the human was in the middle, while the AI existed at both the top and bottom? I'm now thinking more explicitly of the book series I alluded to (The General series by S.M. Stirling and David Drake): the human is a commander, so the units are intelligent in their own right (thus, handled by the AI); and the AI is also giving the human commander real-time advice based on what knowledge it can discover through the human's vision (isolated from the other AI-instance doing micro, but "smart" in the sense that it can assume that the micro is being done by a [fallible] rational actor that thinks like it does.) I feel like that "human in the middle" configuration would actually make for its own new subgenre of 4X/RTS-like games, if we could get it right; somewhat like a more interesting version of tower defense. Like an RTS, it would be about issuing orders; like a MOBA, you'd have direct control of a "champion" unit. But the job of the unit would be to give those orders, and your job as the player would be to get their position fortified while also gaining enough information to accurately strategize. Come to think of it, this is what Dungeons & Dragons was originally supposed to be about, wasn't it? Commander-level characters going off to do scouting or other special ops for their army, advancing in rank and gaining underlings in the process. (D&D1e assumes you'll just already have a wargame going with an overworld hex grid, unit stats, etc., and just serves as a "what heroes do in a zoomed-in view" add-on to it. Thus why it doesn't come with its own battle system.)
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago

liusiqi43 11y ago

For Atari games, they limited actions to 50Hz, which is not entirely out of reach for human beings. I guess they would do something similar to make the SC challenge fair as well.

mizzao 11y ago

Agreed. It also wouldn't be very interesting to watch a human-AI game where the human is better at planning and tactics but the AI just wins even uphill battles due to insane micro.

coryfklein 11y ago
I would LOVE to see an AI vs AI game though where the AI had no restrictions on APM/micro. I mean, what would an AI come up with given just mass zerglings vs mass zerglings. Would love to see the strategies possible with near unlimited attention and APM.
- LetaBot 11y ago
  You can always watch the StarCraft AI stream: http://sscaitournament.com/ http://sscaitournament.com/
- Monory 11y ago
  Problem with that lies in different balancing. For example, while banelings, are considered hard-counter to marines, stimpacked marines are still faster than even speed-banelings not on creep and just a little bit slower on creep. Pros use splitting to minimize damage, but here, as you can see, it can be just ultimate showdown. Another example would be high templars vs ghosts. It is fairly difficult for Terran player to target high templars, but just two EMP shots basically puts templars out of combat, and miss of those shots renders ghosts mostly useless. So, any area-of-effect attacks would be mostly useless due to infinite APM. That means minus colossi, tanks, banelings, thors and many other units. Probably that means that some race will be somewhat (or, maybe, insanely) overpowered (my bet is on Terran due to possibility of multiple drops, which themselves could be useless, though (because AI can't "miss" a drop), and stim-marine micro). So, the game will require massive rebalancing.

HCIdivision17 11y ago

Watching the zerglings somehow wash through that tank barage was just ... demoralizing. Those little buggers are not supposed to be a hard counter to tanks, dammit! Fighting against Automaton 2000 is like having your own personal Kaizo assaulting your base. I think this really demonstrates why putting in APM limits is super important, and as brought out elsewhere also making the computer input via mouse/keyboard and get data from the screen (maybe just a filter to ease up on the CV bits?). A lot of the fun in watching a StarCraft map is seeing how the big picture is balanced against the details, and where a person's limited congnition flows from one focus to another. Limited knowledge and scope of sight play a huge part in the skill. But mostly I'm just ranting because dodging the splash damage feels unfair; goes against everything I stand for. Next we'll start seeing 5 Skill Rays bulldoze the map! (I'm going to be looking into this a lot more after work - it seems like a super cool project!)

shultays 11y ago

how does the siege tanks vs zerglings work? how do AI know which zergling is targetted? Also was there a delay for siege tanks after it selects a target but before shooting it down? Wasn't it instant like marine, can't remember it. Or maybe it is because opponent is also AI and automaton simply knows which target it will auto pick.

Monory 11y ago
All tanks have limited and fixed range, so Automaton just instantly splits all zerglings from the one which comes first into tank fire range. It IS instant, but highly deterministic, at least their first attacks are. And after their first shot, due to long cooldown, all zerglings are just already attacking tanks in fairly split manner and mostly unkillable by tanks anymore.