Transport Micro, Stuck Units & Protoss Walling - Postbot

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me, @chad and @mindme as we dig into medivac transport logic, stuck unit detection, and map debugging quirks. The session also showcased experiments with Protoss wall-offs and building placement tools. Themes included debugging mechanics, smarter micro, and balancing automation vs. manual map setups.

Key Takeaways:

  • :helicopter: Use medivac’s unload at targeting the transport itself to allow smooth drop-while-moving behavior.

  • :mouse_trap: Detecting stuck units can be done by pathing them toward distant miners—workers are guaranteed pathable.

  • :military_helmet: Debugging load/unload requires careful tracking: drop ships chasing units vs. units moving into transports behave differently.

  • :building_construction: Protoss walling can be automated with map analysis, but SC2’s grid system snaps buildings to 0.0 (even sizes) or 0.5 (odd sizes), making manual editor placement often faster.

  • :hammer: Dynamic calculation vs. hard-coding: worth prototyping, but for only 5–6 ladder maps, manual coordinates may be the pragmatic choice.

  • :chart_decreasing: Bugs like missing Battlecruiser damage values can cascade into faulty combat simulations—debug across maps to isolate whether it’s code or map data.

  • :balance_scale: Balance time spent on automation with practical shortcuts; sometimes manual fixes unblock progress faster than over-engineering.

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I presume Chad is trying to address when tanks get stuck because of a mistake in building positioning within the main and can’t get out. He is pathing to a far away worker to detect if a tank is stuck.

One potential flaw in the logic is: say he has a wall at the top of his ramp in the main. if the enemy is near the ramp, a common thing for terran bots is to raise the depots. this would then register the tanks as stuck, and that may not be what he is trying to identify.

This has tripped me up before. He may need to detect if the pathing is invalidated because his wall is temporarily up. ie check the state of any wall offs. Could be a natural wall if the bot sets that up for protoss/zerg opp too.

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that is true, but I think I handle this by not calculating it for sieged tanks, which they probably are if the depots have been raised. I also changed the “use the furthest worker” approach to finding a valid placement for a missile turret near the middle of the map and reusing that position. Was running in to issues with using a miner position because workers can overlap with each other which resulted in sporadic “no path” responses

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