Starcraft AI blog

Steamhammer has a special case reaction in the building manager to ensure that it builds enough macro hatcheries when it is contained: If a drone sent to build an expansion hatchery did not make it there, and zerg suffers from a larva shortage, then the expansion is converted to a macro hatchery instead. A drone is assigned to build the hatchery in base.

The feature seems to have bit-decayed and it is not working reliably. I’ve seen a few games where Steamhammer was contained and desperately kept sending drones to try to expand, while it had a larva shortage and its mineral bank was building up.

At the same time I see the diametrically opposite bug in Steamhammer’s terran play: When terran is contained for a long time, it starts to build “macro command centers” inside its base, which essentially act as oversize 400 mineral supply depots. It doesn’t know how to lift them off and land them elsewhere, and it doesn’t need more SCV production, so it’s pure loss.

What the what?!?

Logically, the bugs must be unrelated. The zerg special case explicitly checks that the building is a zerg hatchery. But it behaves exactly as though it had the races mixed up. If the two bugs annihilated like matter and antimatter, they would create energetic play.

Both bugs are on my list to solve soon. The terran bug is as serious as the zerg one in terms of wasted resources.