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Steamhammer’s 2 strategies vs XIMP

Steamhammer 1.0 got to try both of its prepared strategies versus XIMP in close succession. Did somebody schedule the games?

In the first game (Brood War replay file), Steamhammer went mutalisks. XIMP counters with corsairs, so I was taking a risk. The strategy is inspired by Sijia Xu's Overkill, which plays a 2-hatch muta opening that smashes XIMP before protoss reacts.

Instead of a quick air attack like Overkill, Steamhammer went three hatch before pool and prepared a heavy blow. The build produces a large first wave. XIMP saw the lack of ground pressure and built fewer cannons than usual, only 5. The mutas started in on the cannons, but had only killed 2 before corsairs chased them away. With the slower build, XIMP was able to react correctly.

Steamhammer strikes the cannons

When Steamhammer has a spire and scouts air tech, it makes 1 pair of scourge as insurance. When it verifies enemy air units, it aims for exactly the right number of scourge to clear the enemy air force. The game became a muta-scourge versus corsair seesaw. XIMP saw air units and felt the need to keep investing in corsairs, so it could not make carriers. Steamhammer pruned back the corsair numbers with scourge, but was short of gas. Neither side could keep a large force in the air.

XIMP took a third, and Steamhammer took bases down the left side of the map, struggling to get more gas. But the new gas came online slowly, and zerg resorted to making zerglings—which is what it needed all along! The lings tore down the protoss natural, and then XIMP could not keep up. It was an entertaining game.

Steamhammer hits XIMP’s natural

In the second game (Brood War replay file), Steamhammer went hydralisks, the safe and natural choice. Hydras attacked toward the protoss natural and danced with the cannons and carriers for a while, killing some cannons and then most interceptors. When enough hydras had accumulated, they cleared the cannons. At the same time, scourge arrived and exploded carriers. The game looked over.

Steamhammer fights cannons and carriers

But no, no easy win. Steamhammer hit a bug which made it unable to produce any more hydras. Scourge were able to hold off carriers for a while, but without ground attack there was no hope. Solving all the similar bugs is a major goal of version 1.1.

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Ail on :

Ailien, on the other hand, just crashes when it sees the first carrier. I think something in the code supposed to let it think it is a BC for Sparcraft calculations is wrong. Most likely a division by zero when trying to convert the shield + HP of the carrier into a fitting amount of just HP for the BC.
Also : Since Ailien doesn't know what Ximp will do before it sees the carriers, it is unprepared and just has a lot of lings. It will switch to Hydra but I don't know if that is too late.
Reacting to the enemy based on it's name clearly is a more successful approach.

Jay Scott on :

Reacting to the name can cause mistakes when a bot is updated. The main reason to do it is that it’s easy. I think that reacting to what you see should be fine, as long as you understand what you see. The cannons in front should tell you: 1. Lings are not so useful, better tech to something else. Hydras beat cannons, and mutas can fly around them; you don’t know the enemy tech, so either makes sense. In pro play, mainline ZvP has zerg getting both, making scourge from the spire, and scouting with scourge (it’s fast and cheap). 2. Cannons are expensive, so the enemy is short on combat units at first. Each drone costs 50 minerals + 1/8 of an overlord, meaning that a cannon costs the same as 2.4 drones. To a first approximation, you can throw in that many extra drones with little fear.

Ail on :

Good idea. I shall change Hydra Score to scale with enemy static defense. Right now my Bot seems to not like making Hydra all that much.

Ail on :

Edit: Oh, I just saw there was another game of Ailien vs. Vaijda, which Ailien won. Will try to watch it (am not at home) somehow. Probably it forced him into Corsair only and then busted the Front with Mutas Ling Hydra or Ultra.

Jay Scott on :

Ah, that one was not so interesting, sadly. XIMP failed to make its forge, possibly because the scouting drone happened to interfere as it ran by.

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