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useless and amusing Brood War mechanics trivia

• A medic can blind a zerg egg, and the unit that hatches will be blind. You might have thought that any eyes were hidden away inside the egg.... If 2 zerglings or 2 scourge hatch, they will both be blind. It’s a cute detail that has no practical use whatsoever. Ensnare and other effects work similarly with eggs, but it’s not as funny.

• If a science vessel irradiates a high templar, does the high templar have any chance to live? It could merge into an archon; that saves it. There is another way. If the high templar is next to a full shield battery, the battery has enough energy to save the templar by repeatedly charging its shields (the battery is left nearly empty). I don’t think I’ve never seen a high templar get irradiated in a game. Of course it’s the same for other biological protoss units besides the high templar, but why would you save another unit?

• A medic can heal biological units of any race. Zealots + medics make a fearsome combination. Ultraling + medics is nasty too, but harder to use well; healing close to the 400 hit points of one ultralisk will drain a medic, and the zerglings are too many and don’t stay put. These things come up in some kinds of nonstandard games. One day I wondered, “Wouldn’t medics go best of all with mutalisks?” But it turns out that medics can only heal ground units.

What’s your favorite curious and useless trivia about the game mechanics?

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skar1ath on :

You can't mind control hero units... unless they are Zerg. I think this is only relevant in the final mission of the Enslavers custom campaign that comes with the game, where if you rescue the Protoss (and play using Brood War - even though I think the campaign was released with the original StarCraft) you can rush to dark archons and mind control an army of the Torrasques that are sent at you periodically. You can even heal them up with medics.

krasi0 on :

Can I medic save a (low hp) irradiated organic unit by continuously healing it? I guess the medic itself needs to be healed at the same time, so that it doesn't also drop dead from the proximity of the radiation.

BTW, IMO, you should never try to heal a plagued unit. The plague is going to just drain the medic's energy with little or no benefit in the end.

Jay Scott on :

Let’s see.... According to Liquipedia, irradiate deals 250 damage over 37 seconds, for 6.75 damage per second, and has a radius of effect of 2 tiles. Medic healing can heal 18.6 damage per second, and the medic can have more than enough energy. I don’t know the range of healing, but I think it is 1 tile. If that’s correct, then theoretically you could save an irradiated ground unit with a chain of 3 medics: 1 at 1 tile away from the victim, 1 at 2 tiles away to heal the first, and 1 at 3 tiles away (outside the effect) to heal the second. Somebody want to try it and see?

Medic_Expert on :

You could probably get away with two medics if you rotate them: heal with first, then with the second, while first one chills nearby and lastly let medics heal each other; repeat.

krasi0 on :

Now, that is something I'd like to see a bot do LOL.

Hannes Bredberg on :

I'd probably say that it is about stealing enemy nukes. If you take the nuke silo with a nuke armed in it, the enemy still pays the supply for the nuke until you actually use it. You will have supply free nukes which increase the supply use of the enemy. (Yes, this came up in a game where my bot played itself)

Jay Scott on :

Oh, I didn’t realize the enemy still pays for the supply! The ownership of the silo passes to you when you build the new command center, but I guess the nuke itself doesn’t technically become yours even though you have control? Now I want to try it and see.

Jay Scott on :

Wow, that took me over an hour to reproduce, but I finally did it. Strange to see.

Shuttle_Guy on :

Upgraded protoss shuttles are faster than probes, so a bot can use them to help with mining while shuttles are on stand-by. Plus deceleration problem is solvable for bots shuttle.

Jay Scott on :

Does that work, taking into account loading and unloading time? I could see it for long-distance mining.

Arrak on :

It should work as long as the shuttle only holds 1 probe at a time for short distances, but it wouldn't be cost efficient (compare: 2 mineral locked probes vs. 1 probe + shuttle). However, transferring probes to a faraway base by shuttle instead of foot (or, uh, probe thrusters?) saves you a lot of money and is safer, though.

High_Templar_Lives_Matter on :

What about putting an irradiated high templar in a stasis?

Jay Scott on :

Oh yeah, that also works to save the high templar. The irradiate continues and its splash affects nearby units outside of stasis, but not units in stasis. Then the irradiate wears off at the normal time, and when the templar comes out of stasis it is no worse off than when it went in.

skar1ath on :

The science vessel that cast the irradiate could also save the high templar itself by casting Defensive Matrix on it - though only if the HT had almost all of its health to start with. The Matrix will stop spell damage, but each tick will still apply the very small amount of damage that Matrix allows through directly to the HT's health, bypassing shields completely.

skar1ath on :

Some other weird interactions I found while messing around with Defensive Matrix and Archons: [1] Defensive Matrix allows through a small amount of damage (as if the attacker had less damage than the units armor I think). If this damage comes from Psi Storm or Irradiate, it will bypass shields. This means that it is slightly easier to kill a Matrixed archon with storms (3 will do the trick, at 4 HP damage each) than it is to kill an ordinary archon. [2] Damage from plague ignores Matrix. Maybe it isn't really "damage?" [3] If you spawn broodlings on a high templar, and then it merges into an archon while the broodling projectile is in the air, then the entire archon will die and spawn 2 broodlings. I'm not sure what happens if the queen dies, or if you cancel morphing the archon. It works exactly the same if you spawn broodlings a drone that then morphs into a building (the morphing buildings dies, you get broodlings). In that case, I'm not sure what would happen if the drone was morphing an extractor. [4] Plague and Ensnare will persist from a drone onto a building it morphs into. [5] Defilers and queens cannot plague or ensnare themselves; they can however plague or ensnare a friendly defiler or queen that happens to be right next to them. [6] The interaction of splash and dark swarm and burrow is strange. I think burrowed units only take damage from the innermost circle of any splash radius. Because of the distance tanks miss by, this means they will never do any damage to a burrowed lurker they're aiming at if it's under a dark swarm. But, if they fire at something else (like another nearby lurker) they are perfectly capable of killing lurkers and other burrowed units under a swarm.

Jay Scott on :

You found some good ones. I didn’t know about storm bypassing shields of a matrixed unit, or broodling on a high templar that then merges into an archon. The point about tanks firing at burrowed lurkers under swarm is basic zerg knowledge. Good players sometimes arrange their units to avoid the risk.

Paul Goodman on :

Regarding Matrix and Plague: Plague ignores shields too, right? And Matrix mostly acts like a shield?

IMP on :

a well-known one, but still amusing: Hiding under a tree will actually reduce damage taken.

A lesser-known, but very interesting: All stationary detectors have detection range 7 and all mobile detectors have range 11. But all mobile detectors have sight range < detection range while un-upgraded.

IMP on :

of course the amusing part from above is detectors can sense (smell?) dark templars before they can see them. I forgot to mention one of my favorites: as far as I know the Archon is the only unit in the game that has no type at all. Neither robotic, nor organic, nor mechanical. It also has no special abilities, such as fly, detect, cloak, or cast spells. The archon just -is-.

Jay Scott on :

The immanent archon. The SCV is the only unit that can be both repaired and healed, and by the same token, the only one that can be both locked down and damaged by irradiate.

Jay Scott on :

Here is something I wonder: Why does a dark archon have 1 armor? It has 200 shields and 25 hit points, and yet those 25 hit points are for some reason protected by 1 armor. Is there a situation where that makes mind control more usable, or something?

Arrak on :

It would make it much easier to mind control some carriers from a carrier fleet and get away with it.

DanG on :

Stasising a detector inhibits detection. SCMDraft-hacked inverse ramps have "low ground" on the high ground. All attacks with bullets have a 1/256 miss chance. Splash damage attacks deal damage through Dark Swarm, though as if they were targeting the ground slightly short of the targeted unit. Right clicking a unit with a Shuttle slows down the Shuttle, but having a unit right-click the Shuttle doesn't affect the speed. Carrier interceptors, once launched, can't return to a Carrier that keeps moving, and thus launch immediately once the Carrier starts attacking again. Reaver range is limited by ground distance, not air distance. The delay in a Scarab exploding means Hydralisks moving away from the Scarab only take half damage. You can EMP Comsat Stations and Shield Batteries. Larva can be ordered to move when group-selected. The time it takes a worker to mine a mineral patch is random. But I think my favorite is that Assimilators take up less space than a naked Vespene Geyser.

krasi0 on :

Although the fact about Assimilators taking up less space than a naked Vespene Geyser is technically correct, is that exploitable in any way? I mean the no longer occupied tiles can't be walked or built upon, right?

Jay Scott on :

The map can make it exploitable. The current pro map Gold Rush has a feature where you can destroy assimilators to close a path. The feature was pioneered in the 2008 map Troy.

IMP on :

very good finds, but far from useless (blog title: "useless and amusing"). I would even say many of them could give a bot an advantage over a human. btw. off the top of my head mineral patch mining time is somewhere between 78 and 87 frames random, so it's roughly a +/-5% volatility.

Jay Scott on :

Useful peculiarities are nothing to complain about. :-) If you have an empty comsat and desperately need to scan, the quickest way to get 50 energy is to destroy and rebuild it. It’s valuable knowledge, and it comes up in games.

Ankmairdor on :

For minerals, based on the simple results(7889 harvests, long game) that I've recorded the range seems to be 75-97 frames. The game doesn't use a RNG, but instead uses the order of units in a list to assign values that are difficult to predict. So your results may vary. The 85-97 range only occurred ~5.5% of the time. Though according to OpenBW the range seems like it should be 76-88. 75(~0.5%) is a truly strange result, as a 75 frame timer is added after the first frame. 76-84 range occurs ~93.9%, but notable frames are 82(~41.8%), 84(~13.6%), and 76(~11.8%).

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