More MM widget doping? Those are some insane OP badgers...

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quote: Less whining, more coding from you guys please?

I'm not looking to get banned but it's very hard not to unleash on this one. Fuck me mate...

Firstly regarding "Less whining, more coding from you guys please?" - I won't stop pointing out things that I believe to be issues, a.k.a "whining". I also don't know how to code, but a full 10 years since making my ZK account I have managed to sneak under the radar and so far have not been punished for it. I had not realised this was meant to preclude me from being welcome in the ZK community, though you are the first to make me aware of this being the yard stick by which I should measure my value.

Regarding literally every other RTS - I don't know them all so I will cherry pick. One I know very well is Starcraft 2, outside of S. Korea, maybe the biggest RTS there is. You may or may not be aware there is an AI that beats humans in SC2 easily, without cheating - DeepMind. I have no doubt this is easily possible for Zero-K too.

[Spoiler]

Then why has DeepMind not won all SC2 tournaments since it's reveal? Why are there still some humans out there able to still be a "pro" at SC2 with their weak, feeble, human restrictions? Simple, DeepMind is not allowed to compete in the same tournaments. It's because people don't want to watch an AI competing against other AIs. It's why the Robot Olympics does not have the same popularity as the human variant.

The two competitions are not merged into one because they would be competing on an uneven playing field. If people want to make widgets that change the fairness and balance of the game, great. But don't bring it into the human arena, where your opponent is looking for a fair game against another human, they could have chosen to play against an AI but they didn't. Keep that shit separate.

On to this particular case:

This is not a widget that improves the game. If the powers that be (GoogleFrog) had wanted badgers to be always auto laying minefields in the direction of the enemy, they would be. This is not some magical limitation that the devs could not overcome. It was a game design choice with the intended result being a fair, balanced and enjoyable game for those playing.

Altering the unit in such a way so they are just plain better than they are meant to be is not some amazing feat to be applauded, it is done by someone who wants to have an advantage that others do not. If someone made a balance suggestion, "I think badgers should fire all the time, none stop, no down time, no penalty for moving", I highly doubt it would be implemented without some rebalances in other ways, and it certainly would not be given to only some players.

PRO_rANDY: Got no time for a full discussion, but on this:

quote: If the powers that be (GoogleFrog) had wanted badgers to be always auto laying minefields in the direction of the enemy, they would be.

This isn't true. Even over the past year there have been a number of unit ai changes.
Something might not be implemented because it's not worth the hassle to code up or because it hasn't been thought of. Dev mana is not an infinite resource.

and on this:

quote: it is done by someone who wants to have an advantage that others do not

Or someone who is annoyed by a tedious aspect of the game and wants to fix it.

This particular widget is not very useful in my view given laying minefields is trivial already with the area fire command. (Though ideally that command would be redone so that you designate minefield areas and those are mined by all badgers in range so that new ones that come in mine the area)


Regarding AI in general, I think a game where the tedious uninteresting stuff is automated is better than one where it isn't automated. Automating the stuff requiring high level thinking and analysing (which most likely will require some complicated neural networks or somesuch) would be bad, but automating basic things like your glaive backing away from an oncoming Reaver is good.
This is pretty much the only RTS I know of that's slowly moving in this direction, the others all seem pretty happy to having frantic clicking and babysitting idiotic units be an important game skill.

Can you not leave JUST THIS ONE GAME OUT OF ALL THE GAMES IN THE WORLD ALONE?! It hasn't even affected your placement or anyone else's! The top 20 would pretty much all be there in roughly those positions if local widgets weren't a thing!

iwantusername : I'm not sure you have the same understanding of the word "widget" as I do (or PRO_rANDY for that matter). I'm too lazy to link GoogleFrog's explanation right now, so I'll instead ask: is the idle con assist functionality a "widget"?

Without checks and balances in place, without people pointing these things out, the eventual situation is we end up playing close to AIs with minimal human inputs.

I think the conversation is more about custom, hidden widgets giving advantage rather than widgets/unit behavior being bad.

Whitelist? All custom widgets banned for MM/Pro 1v1? All "unit behavior" abilities of custom widgets disabled?

"Please don't disable my hotkey widget that I wrote, but please do if it is necessary."

-Dave

I think the difference between this and manually giving Badgers ground-fire orders is not immediately and outright gamebreaking in the way that the dodge widget was. As such I don't feel the need to pre-empt GoogleFrog by making a statement with my admin hat on. (It doesn't seem like Bakuhatsu made such a statement either.)

I agree that you can do similar things without the widget: Just use the set target command, then hold Alt and draw a line. The widget just spares you those clicks. I guess that that's the intended way to use Badger since it's not a normal artillery but a mine layer artillery.

The widget does also not overload the server with commands. It has a maximum rate of 1 command per frame. If there are many units, the command rate per unit is thus reduced. The tricky part in this widget is how it solves quadratic equations to consider unit movements until the next update.

I have a plan to publish all my useful widgets. I only have to test and polish them a bit further before I feel comfortable with that. There is a rare bug that I should fix first.

That some Badgers stopped autofiring at some point was actually not a bug but a feature: The widget does not overwrite manual fire commands as they are expected to still be better.

Is StarCraft 2's Zerg queen larva inject tedious micro or clutch to fight against the odds? There are many behaviors that are automated in this game but not in others, like factory repeat queue, or the many toggleable features such as fire at radar dot, cons assist factory, gunship strafe, and hidden ones like Overkill prevention and unit ai.

Sounds like your main problems are
A) unfair battleground. Your opponent has options that are not available to you. This ruins the fair competitive spirit.
B) unit behavior without player input. Of there was a widget to snap commands to the edge of range native to the game, like how DotA 2 blink dagger when cast will blink your hero in the direction of your target even when your cast is out of range, you would find casting attack target line much more easily yourself as a player input decision.