Staredit Network

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Smart Vulture

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Up to 7 people each with 1 leg enhanced zealot take on 1 computer controlled vulture with ion thrusters and spider mines. Should be easy right? Well I have rarely seen the people win.

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Progress

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I have finished a working version, which includes many features to make the vulture survive and kill. However can make a mistake if it gets surrounded well.

-Features
•Stays at a distance from zealots
•Shoots while moving, even if facing the wrong way
•Lays spider mines
•Tracks enemy hp and targets the weakest nearby

-Ideas
•Thinking about scrapping the spider mine usuage, because it is hard to do and impossible to have perfect control over the laying process.
•I have an idea to make it less vulnerable to getting surrounding

-Triggers
•There are alot, but I try to make it seem as simple as possible like there are almost none needed to make the vulture be so smart
•The basic method used is many burrowed lings are placed.
•Each player goes through and gives all lings within a certain range from player 9 to 10.
•Then the vulture attempts to move to the closest ling not owned by player 10, afterwards all lings are given back to player 9

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Specifications

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-Players
1-7

-Map tileset
Twilight

-Map size
64x64


-What's new in your map that others have not done before?
•As far as I know, no one has made a computer control units so well

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Download

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http://www.darrenks.com/vulture

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ADDITION:
Oh I just played Millennium Army's Aerial Combat and I have a question.

How did he make it interceptors know where to go? I can make my best guess, but I am not sure if this would work. A technique like this could come in handy for my map.

They follow the spider mine, so to determine where that goes he creates 9 air unit at the spider mine, then gives away 1-8 of them and depending on which unit was dropped, and then centers the new location on the one that remains.

Is that how it is done? If so what is the air unit used, because I think I tried something like this once but had unpredictable results on the give away step.

Anyways back to my map. Do you think I should keep the spider mine laying in? Do you feel it adds to the goodness of the map or just detracts from the main point?

How much attack and HP do both the Zealots and Vulture have? Sounds pretty interesting.

Interesting map. Keep the mines in, they're part of vultures. Then, you would have to dodge mines while trying to kill the vulture, which makes it more intersting.

All defaults for damage and hp.

OooH, one of the most annoying units..Vultures!.. They can pretty much own any melee unit in a open arena with the proper movement, so long as the stats aren't too far apart

It's really hard for a real person to actually control a vulture flawlessly to hit & run w/o dying, but w/ a properly configured (triggered) computer... yipes!

Chasing a crazy vulture while the crazy mines are chasing me... this will be interesting to play

(Btw w/ defaults, how many hits does it take from a Zealot to kill a vulture? and vice versa?)

vulture to kill zealot: 9
zealot to kill vulture: 5

LW tried a similar map with dragoons vs lings. He failed because the microing for goons is a lot harder. They have to stop and then shoot rather than shot and go like a vulture.

Personally, I'd remove the vulture speed. It makes the vultures too powerful.

Hmm I don't think the triggering would be any harder for a goon, in fact it would be easier because you don't have to turn to face them first. But a goon is much slower so would need to face slower units. Was he trying to do this with more than 1 unit or against more that 1 unit per player? If so that would be much more difficult.

About speed:

zealot 4.63
speed lot 6.76

vulture 7.46
speed vulture 10.53

So I could remove vulture speed but then it would be too easy unless I remove zealot speed too, and in that case it would be the same game but in slow motion. So I'll stick with it for now, but this is a variable I can always tweak later.

Slower for both would still make it easier for the zealots. You should get rid of speed upgrades and put on 2x speed. That should balance it more while not maing it TOO slow.

Meh, keep it hard. I'd feel disappointed if I finally beat it only to find that it was some "easy" version...

And besides, the host can always host it at a slower game speed.

Hmm, I've been thinking do you think it would be a good idea to let people choose from a selection of units? The choices would be:

Firebat, Zergling, Zealot

Other possible choices, but I would have to check to make sure they don't make it too easy:
Marine, Medic, Dark Templar, High Templar, Archon, Infested Terran, Ultralisk.

For some I would have to say max of 1 person of each type, For instance if there could be 2 medics and 1 marine then the vulture could never win.

EDIT:

I just simplified the mine laying triggers, before I was doing stuff more complicated than I needed to. Now all it is is 3 parts

5 academies are placed around the center area of the map.

At start:
run AI script terran insane town or whatever
wait 0
wait 0
remove all buildings

then the part that tells vulture if not ingaged move to weakest zealot, is only ingaged once 3 mines have been placed

Before I thought I had to place the academy each time I wanted to lay the mine and a bunch of other dumb stuff.

xws

for my aerial combat thing, i used ground unit grids, not air units because your main unit is a shuttle, which is an air unit.

Ah thanks, does that same technique work with air units? I tried briefly and got unpredictable results.

Oh also another question for anyone who knows the answer: I am using p9 and p10 to keep track of the burrowed lings without using a player slot so the map can still be 7 player. Is there anything special I should know about P9-11? I wonder because P12 receives units from players that leave and spells like dark swarm. So I assume there is some point to P9-11 but what is it?

This is probably the first map I've taken the time to read about in awhile and I would like to say that it sounds fantastic, I mean those features are great.

Targets weakest enemy near by? stays at a distance?


If that really works I have 1 thing to say

WOW. Good job man.

sounds cool...one thing tho! Why did you choose to you a vulture? i mean of all the units you coulda chose why did you choose that? meh its works but id like to know why you didnt pick say a goliath or tank. maybe the vulture's speed...well im gonan dl the map...kthxbai

I can understand Ling, but the only way a Firebat could get a decent speed is to stim, and this would have to be done on a normal basis, thus taking away from his life very quickly.

The other units would make a fun mix of possiblities but yeah, I could see people doing little exploits with unit combos to detract from the difficulty of this game.

Well I have a guess for ya, a vulture is more of a tactical unit(hit and run) or placing of spider mines. The vulture is underestimated in melee games for some reason, it's really a good reliable unit(unless vs air of course) with its high speed, low cost, fast build time and spider mines.

meh I guess. i cant play the map now because my starcraft is being *** so ill have to wait till tomorrow to play...ill tell ya what i think TC tomorrow...kthxbai

Well I chose the vulture because of its speed. It started as just a curiosity, to see if I could get the computer to do the moving shot and after that I just thought it would be fun to see how smart I could get it. BTW the method to do moving shot is order to move towards target unit location, wait 0, order attack to target location, wait 0, order to move away somewhere.

True a firebat may not be a very good choice against a vulture, but its just a choice, alot of times choices are what make maps great. As it is now I don't think my map would become very popular because people have no choices except how they work as a team.

Im going to download it,but are there higher ground and water or something?

wow this seems really interestnig and odd seems like a micro game nice