Starcraft AI blog

Here’s my answer to what major feature should be next?

My analysis of SSCAIT games said that most losses were due to poor strategy decisions (in the Steamhammer sense of strategy, which is mainly “what should I spend on?”). Dan Gant did his own analysis of Steamhammer losses and drew the same conclusion. To be sure, some of the bad production decisions are deliberate choices to cover weaknesses in Steamhammer’s other skills. For example, Steamhammer makes an inefficient spore colony to defend against corsairs, rather than saving the expense and going with mobile units that have more uses, because its hydras are poor at air defense. Also, some losses are traceable to tactical mistakes. Even so, most losses are due either to bugs or to poor strategy decisions. Choice 1, strategy adaptation, is my pick for the next major feature. It does the most good.

I want to work on the ops boss too, but it’s too much; I can’t do everything at once. I will miss its interesting skills. The ops boss is a prerequisite for most of the sneaky tricks, flexible tactics, and multi-step plans that I have in mind. Going that way would make Steamhammer’s play more fun.

My goal is not to win the most games in this year’s tournaments, though I wouldn’t mind. I want to make the most progress toward my end goal, an imaginary Final Steamhammer that is strong in every aspect. It just so happens that making the most progress this year helps with making the most progress in the long run. Last year I found that working on macro improvements as I had been was no longer helping; Steamhammer’s tactical and micro weaknesses were dominant, so that improving an area that was already relatively strong made no visible difference. If I made a macro improvement that I thought was big, or one I thought was small, either way Steamhammer’s performance stayed about the same, because it was losing games for other reasons. That meant I could not measure my progress! I had to concentrate on immediate improvements to be sure that I was getting anywhere at all.

This year, tactics and micro are still not strong, but are improved enough that they are no longer the weak point. It’s time to take another loop around the spiral. Next year, if not earlier, I’ll reevaluate and likely bend my course again.

I laid out a 3 phase program for strategy adaptation. My plans change often, so you can be sure I won’t carry through exactly as advertised. Given my past rate of progress and the number of side features I throw in, I doubt that the year is enough time to finish all 3 phases. Still, I should get a lot done and make big improvements.

Speaking of side features, commenters who wanted specific fixes are not entirely out of luck. I can’t do deep reworking of tactics like last year, but I will patch some of the big weaknesses. Lurkers will grow bigger brains. Units will gain at least a limited ability to foresee threats and route around them. I’ll see what I can do about losing units piecemeal while retreating. Stuff like that. Plus I’ll add some skills purely for fun, maybe queen support. Can’t let things grow dull, it’s bad luck—er, I mean, bad for motivation.

Anyway, next up is Steamhammer 2.2 with a variety of fixes and improvements, and without BWTA—good riddance. It will be out when the worst bugs are squashed. After that might be 2.2.1 or 2.3 with incremental changes to fix any fresh bugs and to help with big weaknesses. Strategy adaptation is a big enough change that it will probably deserve the name Steamhammer 3.0, but it will be a while before 3.0 appears. Early versions of strategy adaptation are likely to play worse than current Steamhammer, because it will take time to whip it into shape.