Starcraft AI blog

Among many other aspirations, I’ve always wanted Steamhammer to be able to take island bases. It’s not quite time yet, but getting closer. Here is my outline plan, with steps in order:

• BWAPI 4.4.0 helps make drop research practical. BWAPI 4.1.2 has a bug that prevents research in a hive.

• Pathfinding. Pathfinding is... on the critical path, according to my plan. The current release version of Steamhammer already has all the parts needed for pathfinding, except the final step of actually following paths.

• Nydus canals—with pathfinding support, because nydus is useless without. By hive tech time when nydus becomes available, nydus is cheap and valuable. If nothing else, Steamhammer would benefit hugely from transferring drones between distant bases without sending them through the center. In fact, if you have a hive and have drones to transfer far away, it’s normally better to hold the drones until you can get a nydus up. They are likely to get there just as soon, and more safely.

• Take island bases after hive, and nydus them up. Transferring units to and from islands by nydus is far simpler than transporting them by overlord. Given pathfinding, the regular base defense squads can defend islands with no extra code. The only drawback is that if the nydus is lost and the hive is destroyed so that the nydus can’t be replaced, then units will be stranded. But then, if the hive is gone we’re probably losing anyway.

It’s also possible to take an island before hive, and nydus it up later. The island will drone itself up slowly and struggle to defend itself before nydus, and drones will have nowhere to run from an attack, but if the enemy has no air units it may be worth it.

Many current bots do not scout islands. I’ve seen that in Ecgberht games; it can build island bases, though it doesn’t mine them efficiently (at least that I’ve seen)—it may lose a game on points with only an island surviving. A bot that’s good at islands might force other bots to adapt.

At some time in the more distant future I’ll add general overlord transport skills, so that Steamhammer can do mass drops, bypass contains, and fight with ground units on island maps.