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Steamhammer is getting better at scouting

I have improved Steamhammer’s early game scouting and added midgame scouting. It’s far short of human scouting skill, but much improved. The first overlord and the drone scout cooperate to locate the enemy base as quickly as possible, and the overlord moves there to watch as long as it can. I also taught it to notice the enemy’s overlord and try to infer the enemy’s base location (ZZZKBot is the only other bot that I know has that skill). The effect is that Steamhammer finds the enemy sooner and collects more information. The midgame scouting ensures that enemy expansions are found, and in my testing often destroyed quickly.

I already find it hard to watch the release Steamhammer play on SSCAIT, since the new one is so much less clumsy at finding things. I think that Steamhammer 1.4 will be stronger than the current Steamhammer even with opponent modeling turned off, because of the improved scouting, slightly more flexible tactics to take advantage of the improved scouting, and a couple of key bug fixes.

It still doesn’t overlord scout versus terran, though. It has no concept that marines are dangerous or that cliffs are useful.

Overlord scouting, by the way, is a deep topic. Pros often send their first overlord straight to the closest possible enemy natural base. But they sometimes move the overlord on a complex path, trying to catch proxies, or avoid the enemy scout, or spot activity without being seen, or just to stay flexible so the overlord can move to its choice of locations depending on the situation. An overlord that always follows the most efficient scouting path is predictable, and the enemy may be able to save time by scouting for your overlord instead of directly for your base.

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McRave on :

There's been some discussion on how important it is becoming for bots to keep their scout alive to gather information. PurpleWave, Skynet, Tyr and even the godly DAIDOES used to DT Rush McRave and win every game because I didn't see it. Now I rarely lose to DT rushes (I even get an Obs out from 12 Nexus opening before a DT arrives!) because I spent time making sure the scout stays alive as long as possible.

Jay Scott on :

Well done. I noticed that CasiaBot’s anti-scouting sunken (which was always a questionable idea) doesn’t work against McRave any more.

Jay Scott on :

A related issue: Are any bots good at preventing scouting? I can’t think of one. At some point I will teach Steamhammer the 2 basic anti-scouting skills, killing the scout efficiently and blocking the ramp to prevent scouting. I want to get back the ability to surprise protoss.

McRave on :

Yeah I had a small slip up in how it detected enemy threats on my grids, it wasn't properly using the full enemy tile width! Preventing scouting I think the best is PurpleWave in his DT Expand builds, he blocks the ramp with his initial Zealot and an honorable mention to Ziabot who stacks all his units on the ramp.

LetaBot on :

Building a Wall does a good job of trowing bots off and keeping them in the dark.

MicroDK on :

Yes! Letabot and Iron both do walls. ;)

Jay Scott on :

You are right, walls give bots all kinds of conniptions.

PurpleWaveJadien on :

Walls really do confuse units badly. I had to add wall-in detection (and dedicated wall-in busting) just to make my units halfway decent at attacking walled bases, especially uphill.

MicroDK on :

This is also how Microwave does initial scouting: First overlord toward the nearest start location, and 8-9th drone toward the next nearest start location. But I need to add expo scouting later in the game and let the army attack that location id the enemy has taken an expo. ;)

MicroDK on :

Hmmm seems I have accidentally turned off initial overlord scouting... need to activate that again. :)

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