Starcraft AI blog

The Steamhammer 1.2.3 release will be tomorrow unless a surprise comes up, where “surprise” means “argh, how did that go wrong?” Nothing is left but testing and minor tuning.

Even though it has only been a few days, I got a lot done. In some situations, the release version will play dramatically differently. Compared to the test version that’s live now as Randomhammer, it has these brand new improvements:

• I added a corsair-dark templar opening for PvZ. Steamhammer plays it weakly, but I set it to happen only 5% of the time. The bot won’t be worse overall, and it will add variety. Mostly I wanted to put an example out there as inspiration.

• Terran and protoss flying units usually go into a flying squad separate from the “main attack squad” on the ground. Zerg has worked that way since December. Each squad gets a detector, if one is available, just like zerg.

• A squad is only sent to fight enemy flyers if it has at least one unit that can shoot up, and to fight enemy ground only if it can shoot down. This should—not entirely fix, but mitigate the problem of dispatching ultra-ling to fight carriers.

• With that in place, overlords can be acceptable tactical targets. (They’ve always been micro targets, which is different. A tactical target is one that you send a whole squad after.)

• Targeting is improved in a number of ways (I mean micro targeting for individual units). I fixed a bug in calculating the attack range of a bunker and added the ranges of reavers and carriers. Fast units that can escape are less likely to become targets. Targeting of workers is tweaked in a couple cases.

• The zerg strategy boss understands how to react to enemy static defense, both in economy and unit mix. I cut a few zerg openings much shorter to give the new skill a chance to work. In some situations, it is awesomely effective.

This is just a sketch of the latest. Details on all changes will come with the release.