Void Rays

My favorite unit in the whole game of SC2 has to be Void Rays. Hu sen guaiya siha. Meggai na biahi esta na Siha gumoggue yu' gi duranten gof mappot na huego.

In my early days of SC2 they were my only hope against the harder levels (VH and Insanne) of AI difficulty. I could never make as many land units as the computer and photon canons don't last very long against masses of anything, and so Void Rays would be my salvation. I would fly them around sniping the enemy bases, slithering into their buildings and either taking out their command center/nexus/hatcheries or taking out key buildings to hopefully prevent them from building certain units I wanted to avoid. In those early days I lost plenty of Void Rays by staring down stimmed Marines, a scary gaggle of Hydras or Stalkers that seemed like they were on heroine, forgetting that they weren't fully charged or that Void Rays are freaking guaguan, expensive and so they shouldn't be thrown away in a battle which odds are good you will lose.

But naturally when you first get VR, they are like gekpu na yommok na guakka ni' gailaser gi i tatalon-niha, or for those who don't speak Chamorro, big flying cows that have lasers strapped to their backs. Void Rays are incredibly powerful if you can get them early. A two gate rush, with a fully charged Void Ray is a sight to see and gives you a powerful advantage. But as the game goes on, a pack of Marines or a handful of properly microed stalkers can instantly turn that very costly flying cow into vapors.

Early on I would not get a fleet beacon and flux vanes until I had five or six Void Rays, but now I've made a habit out of getting it after my first two. Although VR were both weakened and flux wanes made slower in recent patches, having vanes for my VR makes a huge difference, especially since I've started trying to play more FFA games against 5-7 VH or insane computers. Having that ability to move in and out quickly of a base before the huge mass of units the computer inevitably makes and marches around is essential since in those free for all matches, that mobile mass tends to make expansion difficult to impossible.

Unfortunately in the early games that myself, Leevin and Davis would play, my Void Rays would often save the day, but it became for me a crux, something which I could always rely on to win a game, but would also make my play one-dimensional. For most games I would make 20-30 units and end up with 300-400 kills, because all I was making were probes and VR. When I would try to actually make other units I would find myself feeling irritated when my meager forces would be magalamok ni' i AI, or swallowed up by the ferocious AI, and pine for my regal fleet of Void Rays. Thankfully now I've started to work on other strategies, but my favorite unit is still the Void Ray. And whenever we end up playing a level where we aren't sure what the best strategy will be, I always say, "I'm canoning up and going VR, good luck you guys."

The Army That You Have

Playing against the computer AI for the past few weeks has been an interesting experience. When I first started playing Starcraft 2, I found myself always struggling to catch up against the computer, especially on the AI difficulties of Very Hard and Insane. The normal pace at which I created units in the campaign mode was nothing compared to the speeds at which the computer could pump out a constant stream of units. Fihu kulang saddok i fina'tinas-na. Playing against the computer and its ability to always be creating and expanding, and not lose track of things the way humans do when the map gets scattered or the fighting gets brutal actually helps you appreciate the importance of timing windows. When you see high-level players compete against each other, the most obvious game is the one where they are trying to kill each others' units and buildings. A less obvious game is the vying for the ability to capitalize on "timing windows" or moments where your opponent is temporarily vulnerable, either because of something you caused through harassment or because of a choice your opponent made in order to expand or change tech. The best players can guess when these moments arrive and use them to take out their opponent.

When I first began playing SC2, I would simply build until I had the army I wanted and then start heading out. Against the VH or Insane computer this doesn't always work. You can only turtle up so long before the computer begins to expand and build enough units to blot out the sun. I've had matches where I killed 7 times more units than I made, but still lost. So many of those assaults take out a decent portion of my units and require that I build more before countering. Somehow the computer is still able to build up a comparable force fast enough that before I can even head out, I'm getting hit again.

Although I may be the only SC2 player to ever consider this, I could not help but think of former Secretary of Defense under Bush II, Donald Rumsfeld and his response to those who criticized him for invading Iraq with a force which could absolutely take out Saddam, but was nowhere near enough to pacify the country effectively. Mildly dissenting voices had said that more troops, hundreds of thousands of more troops would be needed, but Rumsfeld, high off of being at the helm of the biggest and most modern military in the world ignored them. After it was painfully clear that Rumsfeld and his crew had botched the occupation of Iraq, even people serving in Iraq started to find ways of speaking out and questioning their mission.

At a Townhall meeting with troops in 2004, this exchange took place.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson: Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? And why don;t we have those resources readily available to us?

Rumsfeld: It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have---not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.---You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up...

Given my political leanings, it might seem very strange to be quoting someone who I would definitely argue is a war criminal, but Donald Rumsfeld is a very quotable person, who sometimes meanders his way to standing on uncomfortable troops and accidentally speaks the truth of a situation with a thick layer of privileged douche-bag shellacked atop it. In this case, he is correct. When I first started playing SC2 I was always waiting to have the army I really wanted and in the campaign mode and on easier levels that is possible strategy. But against the harder computers, you wait too long and you miss all the possible windows at which you could have attacked. By the time you do move out, the computer has such a massive production advantage that you can't overcome it.

For the past few weeks, working with my two mas mafnot na SC2 na ga'chong, Leevin and his pare' Davis, we've been working on figuring out those timing windows, both how to make them and how to find them. This means not always attacking with the best force and of course not the ideal force either, but finding a way to make the force that we have, the best for the moment. This rarely means head on confrontation since the computer, especially in 3 v 3 always has so much more. It instead means using chaddek na tinigong, or rush attacks, surgical suicide strikes with charge zealots meant to take out their Nexus/CC/Hatchery, sneaking in with sniping air such as vikings/banshees or VR to take out their infrastructure, or other sorts of diversions meant to buy time to lure out their main army and then take advantage of the moment. We have gotten much better at it can now consistently beat the computer on VH on any map.

TTPP v ZZZZ

I played in an epic 4 v 4 earlier tonight. 4 VH AI versus me, two of my students and a VH AI ally.

The map was Megaton, which isn't too difficult a map to play on. It is easy to wall in and later expand out into your naturals. Within five minutes however one of my students had disconnected, leaving us his minerals, but nothing else, except taking up some space in our main. My computer ally seemed determine to constantly all in rush and so for the first ten minutes he just led a stream of zealots, sentries and stalkers to their deaths. Eventually the computer, who was 4 zergs countered. We beat them back, just the three of us and when it seemed safe enough we started to expand. The computer, as if to accentuate that he had no ability to be a team player, took two expansions at once, leaving me with the one closest to my starting point, but also right in the path of the roaring river of zerg units trying to wipe us out.

I built my nexus, set up some quick pylons and canons to defend and moved out four immortals and two colossi to defend. My puny army was no match for the massive wave of hydras, roaches and infestors that came. I lost my nexus and was forced to retreat back to the main. Once we had beat them, I built again. Lost it again. Built again, lost it again. By this point the computer was aggressively encroaching on me. Hitting my buildings with brood lords, mutalisks and roaches sniping my probes as they minded what little minerals I had left.

At this point, 20 mins into the game, I suggested to my remaining student that we quit and start over. I have no qualms about giving up on losing battles, especially when my gashed open and bleeding carcass is now the battlefield. My student however, much to my surprise, ha na'gof manman yu' when he suggested that we could somehow win it. I said, ok, secretly hoping that once he had felt the pain of being sniped on all sides by irritating zerg units he wouldn't be so hopeful. The only thing which was actually helping at this point was the fact that zerg would be focusing on my buildings, allowing my student's small fleet of vikings and growing line of siege tanks to come in and slowly take out their advance units.

I saw that the computer was only attacking on the left side of the map, leaving the rght side almost completely open. I snuck my remaning forces out through the northern ramp and built my new nexus (with 400 of my remaining 500 minerals) at the closest northern high yield expansion. My gamble paid off. While my student and the mainly taisetbe computer ally fought literal building to building battles in the main, I gathered up slowly my minerals. Built a set of new gateways and a Twilight council, chrono boosted zealot charge and started trying to take the pressure off the main by sniping their northen set of two expansions.

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One thing which I've learned about the computer ai is that even at its most insane levels it does not ever leave units to guard its expansions. Every once in a while you'll find spore crawlers or missile turrets, but rarely any mobile units.

It ended up working. With the pressure off, my student was able to expand and start building up quick M and M and M forces to start harassing the southern expansions. It took a while but we slowly pushed them back, prevented them from getting new minerals and forced the creation of smaller, more easily manageable clusters of units, as opposed to that horrid, ungodly varied unit mass that the AI somehow always makes.

As we mopped up the remaining structures of the 4 zerg, I realized that I need to stop saying that we should give up the moment something goes wrong and that you won't rally successfully every single time, but sometimes you might, and when you do it is truly epic.