Starcraft AI blog

It’s decided. The next Steamhammer version will support drop. Dave Churchill had already implemented most of the skill: Choosing a transport for the job, sending it on a sneaky path around the edge of the map, and unloading it near the enemy’s mineral line. The remaining bits are proving surprisingly tricky: Choosing units to load, keeping them together until everything is ready, loading them up (seems like a key step), and not doing anything too ridiculous after they land (“oh no it’s scary here, let’s skip this job and go home”). Even so, I expect to get it working reasonably well by tomorrow, the day after at worst.

It’s limited. It only supports 1 transport, and after dropping it does not know how to reset itself for a second drop. Better make the one try count! I wrote a dark templar drop build for protoss. I’ll try to add a terran drop build, though it won’t be as dangerous. If I feel ambitious I’ll do the bit of extra work for a lurker drop too.

It’s a good start. Fancier versions can come along later.

Update: The first time I got a dark templar drop to land in a terran base, the dark templar said “Uh oh, our own base is under attack. We must ignore the enemy in front of us and walk across the whole map to defend!” Not doing anything too ridiculous after they land is a vital skill....