Starcraft AI blog

The latest insanitybot update is able to carry out drops. The author seems to be systematically adding All The Features. Here’s a typical drop game, insanitybot-WillyT. Insanitybot plays a battlecruiser rush (compare PurpleSpirit’s battlecruiser rush), and follows up with a vulture drop.

I think insanitybot performs a drop in most of its games which go over 10 minutes. There are plenty more examples.

The drop feature is clearly leaning on the limited support for drop in insanitybot’s parent Steamhammer. The drop is a usually vulture drop, just like Steamhammer’s terran drop, and the dropship follows the same path around the edge of the map and unloads in the same location. Notable differences from Steamhammer’s drop skills are: 1. If there are no vultures, the dropship will carry marines instead. Are there other possibilities? 2. The drop is a middle game behavior, rather than being coded into the opening. 3. Insanitybot can lay mines, so spider mines may end up in the enemy base. I notice that the drop location near the mineral line is not ideal for laying mines, though. 4. Insanitybot attempts to set up for another drop. The dropship comes home after the drop, and sometimes picks up new units. If the dropship dies, another is eventually made. I have yet to see the second drop land, though.

The game insanitybot-Gaoyuan Chen is a highly effective marine drop. The dropship returns home and starts picking up fresh marines, but the marines are more interested in the fight in front of them than in the distant enemy base. The dropship is finally shot down before it can make the second drop.

Drop in the general case is of course a very complex set of skills. There are cliff drops (Icebot and SAIDA can drop tanks on a cliff), mixed unit drops (marines and medics are good), not filling the transport (to reduce the loss in case it is shot down, or to speed up the drop timing; it is normal for protoss to load only 2 dark templar into a shuttle, for example), multi-ship killing drops versus harassment drops, good play after dropping (lay mines in front of the enemy gateways, for example), changing the drop point based on new information (the dropship may fly over an unscouted enemy base), scanning the drop zone to make final plans (“ack, turn back, it’s well defended!” or “I only see zerglings, let’s go behind the minerals so we’re hard to reach”), and so on. Then there is coordinating the drop with other actions. In pro games, it’s common to escort the dropship across the map, load up near the destination, and carry the troops only a short distance. And there are tricks to draw forces away from the drop zone, or to use the drop to draw forces away from the front. It’s far more than any bot can do, for now. Another way to say it is, there are plenty of ways available to surprise your opponents in the next tournament.

What’s next for insanitybot? I think there are still some terran skills to add, but not that many!

I lost a lot of time dealing with a Pile of Irritating Life Events (PILE for short), but theoretically I should getting back to norbal (search for “everything is back to norbal”). We’ll see if theory holds. Expect a status update on Steamhammer before too long.

Insanitybot has been updated, and its description says “Nukes CAN be built and MAY be launched.” I thought that might be the plan. It looks like insanitybot-WillBot (random terran) on BASIL was its first nuke game, and the only one so far on SSCAIT or BASIL as I write. Unfortunately the replay desyncs toward the end, but there is a cataclysmic nuke launched at about 18:35. (BASIL, by the way, adds little icons on its recent games page to point out certain interesting types of games. That makes it easy to find nuke games.)

The ghost’s cloaking energy looks low, but it was enough. In some cases WillBot scanned for cloaked ghosts and stopped nukes, but apparently this ghost stayed outside of range thanks to good nuke targeting. Don’t miss the before and after supply numbers.

Insanitybot also has a bug and builds multiple science facilities with covert ops. The bug may be in BOSS; that’s where I would look first. In Steamhammer, I intend to get rid of BOSS this year, so I’m not expecting to fix any BOSS bugs.

Insanitybot was also updated today. It is another terran fork of Steamhammer, and it is not particularly strong but it has been growing more interesting with every update. It has some play improvements over Steamhammer, but it appears that the author has put more effort into adding terran skills like wraith cloak, spider mines, irradiate, and more. This version also makes ghosts and cloaks them; I’m guessing that nukes may be coming down the pike.

This BASIL game against zerg CUNYbot by Bryan Weber shows off its ability to use optical flare. Optical flare research finishes a little after 11:00 into the game, and the first optical flare that I saw was about a minute later (because the cowardly medics had retreated from the front). Starting at 16:25, more overlords are blinded. CUNYbot does not seem to notice, but maneuvers the blinded overlords as usual—no doubt many other bots would also fail to react. Steamhammer doesn’t notice blind units either; it has never mattered.

Optical flare is similar to parasite in that it is more fun than useful. There are occasional situations where it can be valuable, but usually something else is more important. But that’s in human play; bots may be different. If nukes are coming, as I guessed, then maybe insanitybot will cloak the ghost, blind every detector that shows itself, and nuke in safety.

Few bots have the ability to destroy an undetected unit. Maybe I’ll write about that soon.