Here’s a summary of key takeaways from our debug session with Botato. For anyone building or tuning bots, especially those in the early stages, this should give you some high-impact areas to focus on:
Combat Logic & Attack Triggers
- Current attack waits until 150 supply — misses many earlier win windows.
- Upgrade: compare own army value vs enemy value.
- @rasper 's formula for army unit value:
(((minerals / 0.9) + gas) * supply) / 50 - Use Orbital Scan early game (3/5/7 min marks) to scout and cache enemy army.
Army Control & Pathfinding
- Tanks are sieging too far back; triggers based on distant Reaper.
- Units are overreacting to lone harassers, causing army to pull back.
- Solution: tighter distance checks + threat detection with thresholds.
Worker Management
- SCVs are mass-pulled to repair, killing the economy.
- Limit SCV repair calls by range and urgency. Prioritize mining.
Destructible Rocks
- Units attacking irrelevant rocks, getting distracted and split.
- Disable destructible targeting unless blocking a chokepoint.
Build System
- Botato has a dynamic build runner but lacks a solid opening.
- Recommendation: Pull a clean 5-minute pro build from SpawningTool.
- Helps establish macro and proper army composition from the start.
Harassment Handling
- Bot gets “jerked around” by enemy Liberators/Reapers.
- Fix: split army, create a defensive pool, or use threat-based filtering.
General Advice
- StarCraft II is a macro game. Focus on economy + composition.
- A good opening build solves many downstream issues.
- Prioritize high-impact fixes (e.g., attack logic) over niche edge cases.
Want to submit your bot for the next clinic?
Drop your replays in the form in https://community.versusai.net/t/debug-clinic/61 thread and show up at the next monthly session.