Arrakhammer’s infested terrans
Arrakhammer’s description changed recently to say that it supports infested terrans. As far as I know, it is the first bot to make them. Now it has played a game with infested terrans versus Randomhammer.
The game is on Destination, a 2-player map. Arrakhammer opened with hatchery on 9, and instead of playing the opening the natural way with mass zerglings, only made a handful, aiming to tech up fast. Randomhammer opened with 2 barracks and before long had enough forces to push to the zerg natural. Zerg was forced to make sunkens, but terran did not dare to break in, and lost medics due to a bug in retreating them.
Zerg went for lurkers against the infantry, but the expensive sunkens set Arrakhammer’s tech plans far back and the lurkers were slow. Terran accumulated marines to hold a strong contain while expanding. Randomhammer had an objectively winning game; with good play, zerg should never catch up (see the worker and army counts in the picture). But Randomhammer is not a good player.
Straight infantry with only scanners for detection is not a winning combination against lurkers, especially not if you try to attack across a narrow bridge and repeatedly lose medics to the retreat bug. As long as scanner energy held out, Randomhammer held its own. But the scanners ran down and Arrakhammer hesitantly pushed out into the open map.
In this picture the lurkers have defeated most of the infantry after scanner energy ran out during a big fight. The queen has just now infested a command center, and from the flashing ramp and the production tab you can see that an infested terran has already started. Before the base was taken, terran had 5 bases to 4. Zerg had more or less caught up, and both sides had chances.
The first infested terran was shot down barely before it reached its intended victim. Steamhammer knows that an infested terran is a high-priority target, even though this is the first time it has seen one. In the overall situation, marines continued to fight lurkers without enough scan energy, and zerg was pulling ahead.
In the next picture, terran has lost another base, but the marines gave a good account of themselves, clearing the attack and killing the infested command center before it could produce. Losing the base was down to poor tactical skill. The marine army was larger and had 1-1 upgrades versus 0-0 for zerg, and repeatedly fought well until collapsing when scanner energy ran out. The queen, by the way, broodlinged an SCV before the zerg attack.
Infested terrans are difficult units to use well. They’re similar to scourge: Suicide units that do a ton of damage, but are fragile and costly in gas. If you walk them into an enemy army, the army should normally kill them without much risk, as above—it only took 4 marines. If they walk in the open, they should attack SCVs or defenseless buildings. A few infesteds can clear out a dense mineral line, or demolish a substantial block of supply depots; they’re efficient for that. You can drop them on tanks, or on dense concentrations of units that can’t shoot up. Otherwise you need dark swarm to attack an army with infested terrans. You go to a lot of trouble to get them, and they’re a specialty unit which is complex to use.
Of course bots don’t know how to react, so walking into an army may work in practice. Steamhammer, for example, doesn’t react at all when retreating, so if you attack while the army is running away, you can do massive damage. 2 infested terrans did this, with excellent cost-efficiency, by catching the army in retreat:
Notice that even after the carnage, terran is ahead in army, though it has fallen behind in economy. Zerg is winning but has some fighting ahead.
The upcoming version of Randomhammer, by the way, has TvZ improvements so that Steamhammer can be a tough test opponent for itself. The upcoming version would have put up a fiercer fight, without the medic retreat bug and with a vessel and tanks against the lurkers.
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