7 ms·

APM is misleading because it can mean a lot of things. There are bots out there that will perfectly micro units to win battles that would typically trade out.

by mafuyu 7y ago

APM is misleading because it can mean a lot of things. There are bots out there that will perfectly micro units to win battles that would typically trade out. SC2 is really about attention management- every action you take, like moving a worker to construct a building that you'll have money for in the future, takes time and attention, and good players will take the minimal action needed to get something done and then move their attention elsewhere while they wait (almost like CPU pipelining). This is why players will do runbys/drop harass at the same time as a big fight. It forces the defending player to spend more attention than the attacker, or risk losing key workers/buildings. APM is just a rough representation of the ability to multitask. From this perspective, AlphaStar's APM doesn't really matter. If it can instantly understand and juggle different scenarios occuring on the map at the same time (scouting, macro, battles, drop defense), that immediately puts it at an advantage, and many pro level strategies rely partially on pressuring the opponent until they make a mistake. The high level strategy stuff exists on top of all this, and that's what makes SC2 so difficult. AlphaStar is really impressive, but once it understands the game at some level, I think it's inevitably going to be better than human players. Human players are going to get wins off AlphaStar by forcing tactical errors in weird scenarios, but it's not going to look like typical human games.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
>> If it can instantly understand and juggle different scenarios occuring on the map at the same time (scouting, macro, battles, drop defense), that immediately puts it at an advantage, and many pro level strategies rely partially on pressuring the opponent until they make a mistake. Then you could restrict the AI to a certain amount of memory that is available to it. You could also play with latencies/exactness of the memories that is available to it.
pixelpoet 7y ago
I think it would be very interesting to keep the full map view, but then brutally limit the APM, within like a 1-2s window. Limiting map vision seems a kind of arbitrary limitation to me, an artifact of the particular minimap size Blizzard chose that you can't change; you should be able to change its resolution, size and placement as you like, and then face the computer on roughly equal terms (without its ability to do ridiculous micro, i.e. try to produce pure strategy games).
- doctorpangloss 7y ago
  You only need a few seconds of excess dexterity than your opponent to decisively win a game of SC2, the APM stuff is a big red herring.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    You also need to be somewhat even during the whole game, though, corrected for race. If you play 10apm vs somebody at 200apm, they will be able to a move at the engagements even if your burst to 400apm because the difference in army size will be that large thanks to the differences in macro.
jammygit 7y ago
It’s worth mentioning the huge advantage that impossible dropship or blink micro can give. It isn’t raw apm, but perfect timing sometimes that is an issue. The management of attention is truly important
- ericd 7y ago
  Sounds like the AlphaStar team should add some randomized jitter lag between when Alphastar issues a command and it’s executed. Would make it learn more robust strategies that were less dependent on perfect timing, and might look more like a human player.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jplayer01 7y ago
I'm not sure how you can write all that and still say APM doesn't matter. It's clear that in order to pull off simultaneous events while juggling macro and micro, you need sufficient APM. Being a pro means you know how to manage APM, which is essentially a limited resource, while accomplishing what you set out to do. If APM is no longer a limited resource, that removes another constraint on how you play and what you can do in the game.
- tinco 7y ago
  What he means is that even if the computer controlled at an amateur level of about 100APM, it might still defeat a pro that plays at 300APM, if it spends those 100APM more wisely. In theory it might be easier for a computer to manage multiple fronts than it is for a human. It doesn't need more APM for that. More APM does not mean you have more attention to spend, it means you have better micro at the position you are currently spending it. I'm pretty sure that if an AI would perfectly spread 100APM over three fronts, it would already play at pro or close to pro level. If it plays at 3000APM, which it could do, it would beat pro's just because of micro which is less interesting.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    You're going into a lot of mental gymnastics over this, which just shows how crucial APM is. There's quite simply a minimum APM required to micro, macro and handle multiple fronts at a sufficiently good level. And it's not 100 APM. And the more APM you have to spare, the more your possible decision space grows on tactical and strategic levels. Hell, the previous AlphaStar matches show what kind of ridiculous things can be done with 1000 APM. It's not just some magical number. Your armies become more effective the more APM you have.
    - tinco 7y ago
      I'm saying DeepMind could be better at lower APM than a human could be. Which is cool because APM we see as a physical limitation, topping out at around 350 average iirc. If you go through a players 350 clicks, how many are good tactical decisions, how many are mediocre or bad ones and how many are just the player keeping tempo? We don't know how our attention span is limited and how that relates to tactical planning.
chronial 7y ago
I don't think APM is misleading. Your basic assumption is that computers are better at StarCraft than humans. The whole point of these experiments is to prove that. Or to see whether we are advanced enough to build such a computer. The whole point of these APM shenanigans is to make sure that the competition is about intelligence, not interface. Even without any fancy technology at all, the computer starts out with a massive interface advantage. An API is just better that a screen and a mouse. It would be really cool if we could hook up a human brain to SC2, to give the human the same interface, but we can't. So we go the other way and limit the AI's Interface. The final step in that would be to give the AI the same interface as the human, i.e. point a camera at the screen and connect a robotic arm to the mouse. But that just creates computer vision and robotics challenges, which are probably seen as a distraction at the moment. But such a robotic arm would definitely have a limited APM, so the current approximations don't seem to bad to me.

by mafuyu 7y ago

heavenlyblue 7y ago

>> If it can instantly understand and juggle different scenarios occuring on the map at the same time (scouting, macro, battles, drop defense), that immediately puts it at an advantage, and many pro level strategies rely partially on pressuring the opponent until they make a mistake. Then you could restrict the AI to a certain amount of memory that is available to it. You could also play with latencies/exactness of the memories that is available to it.

pixelpoet 7y ago

I think it would be very interesting to keep the full map view, but then brutally limit the APM, within like a 1-2s window. Limiting map vision seems a kind of arbitrary limitation to me, an artifact of the particular minimap size Blizzard chose that you can't change; you should be able to change its resolution, size and placement as you like, and then face the computer on roughly equal terms (without its ability to do ridiculous micro, i.e. try to produce pure strategy games).

doctorpangloss 7y ago
You only need a few seconds of excess dexterity than your opponent to decisively win a game of SC2, the APM stuff is a big red herring.
- luckylion 7y ago
  You also need to be somewhat even during the whole game, though, corrected for race. If you play 10apm vs somebody at 200apm, they will be able to a move at the engagements even if your burst to 400apm because the difference in army size will be that large thanks to the differences in macro.

jammygit 7y ago

It’s worth mentioning the huge advantage that impossible dropship or blink micro can give. It isn’t raw apm, but perfect timing sometimes that is an issue. The management of attention is truly important

ericd 7y ago
Sounds like the AlphaStar team should add some randomized jitter lag between when Alphastar issues a command and it’s executed. Would make it learn more robust strategies that were less dependent on perfect timing, and might look more like a human player.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jplayer01 7y ago

I'm not sure how you can write all that and still say APM doesn't matter. It's clear that in order to pull off simultaneous events while juggling macro and micro, you need sufficient APM. Being a pro means you know how to manage APM, which is essentially a limited resource, while accomplishing what you set out to do. If APM is no longer a limited resource, that removes another constraint on how you play and what you can do in the game.

tinco 7y ago
What he means is that even if the computer controlled at an amateur level of about 100APM, it might still defeat a pro that plays at 300APM, if it spends those 100APM more wisely. In theory it might be easier for a computer to manage multiple fronts than it is for a human. It doesn't need more APM for that. More APM does not mean you have more attention to spend, it means you have better micro at the position you are currently spending it. I'm pretty sure that if an AI would perfectly spread 100APM over three fronts, it would already play at pro or close to pro level. If it plays at 3000APM, which it could do, it would beat pro's just because of micro which is less interesting.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  You're going into a lot of mental gymnastics over this, which just shows how crucial APM is. There's quite simply a minimum APM required to micro, macro and handle multiple fronts at a sufficiently good level. And it's not 100 APM. And the more APM you have to spare, the more your possible decision space grows on tactical and strategic levels. Hell, the previous AlphaStar matches show what kind of ridiculous things can be done with 1000 APM. It's not just some magical number. Your armies become more effective the more APM you have.
  - tinco 7y ago
    I'm saying DeepMind could be better at lower APM than a human could be. Which is cool because APM we see as a physical limitation, topping out at around 350 average iirc. If you go through a players 350 clicks, how many are good tactical decisions, how many are mediocre or bad ones and how many are just the player keeping tempo? We don't know how our attention span is limited and how that relates to tactical planning.

chronial 7y ago

I don't think APM is misleading. Your basic assumption is that computers are better at StarCraft than humans. The whole point of these experiments is to prove that. Or to see whether we are advanced enough to build such a computer. The whole point of these APM shenanigans is to make sure that the competition is about intelligence, not interface. Even without any fancy technology at all, the computer starts out with a massive interface advantage. An API is just better that a screen and a mouse. It would be really cool if we could hook up a human brain to SC2, to give the human the same interface, but we can't. So we go the other way and limit the AI's Interface. The final step in that would be to give the AI the same interface as the human, i.e. point a camera at the screen and connect a robotic arm to the mouse. But that just creates computer vision and robotics challenges, which are probably seen as a distraction at the moment. But such a robotic arm would definitely have a limited APM, so the current approximations don't seem to bad to me.