I just wanted to share some of my thoughts about Queen usage vs. a Terran player going Mech. Veterans will probably know these things, but others might be able to learn something new. My aim is to inform Zerg players about the use of Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell on Tanks and what effect they have on the Terran economy.
Introduction
The Spawn Broodling spell can instantly eliminate any Terran unit on the ground. Queens can cast it about as far as a Goliath can fire in the air, which means they won't necessarily die after doing so. The most valuable unit to use the spell on is the Tank, which costs a Terran player 150m/100g to build. The backbone of a Mech push is the Tank because of its large damage output (especially with upgrades) and its long range of attack. Rather than using a ground army to engage them, which can be very costly, a Zerg player can use Queens to eliminate them efficiently.
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors. Every couple of minutes when a control group of them comes to collect by casting Spawn Broodling on a control group of Tanks, it costs the Terran player at least 1800m/1200g. The reason I say, "at least," is because Broodlings can cause additional damage by making the Tanks splash on themselves and triggering Spider Mines. Artosis famously said that when one is ahead, one should get even further ahead. One way a Zerg player can extend his lead in a game (aside from getting upgrades and tech) is by producing Queens. Queens don't provide any immediate benefit when they spawn, but over the long term they deteriorate the Terran player's economy and army position on the map. It's important that a Zerg player doesn't rely on Queens exclusively; they are supporting units, not replacements for attacking units.
When you are looking to engage a Mech army and have many Mutalisks it's a good idea to cast Spawn Broodling on the Goliaths instead. If you have many Hydralisks, it's a good idea to cast Spawn Broodling on the Tanks.
The Queen Experiment
The Queen Energy upgrade makes a Queen spawn with more energy, which allows it to cast Spawn Broodling sooner. Is it worth investing in this upgrade before the first group of Queens comes into play? Let's find out.
The Method
I used a stopwatch to measure the time it takes in seconds for Queens and all their upgrades to complete. The "Fastest" game setting was used.
Observations
Queens take 32 seconds to build.
Queens without the Queen Energy upgrade spawn with 50 energy.
Queens with the Queen Energy upgrade spawn with 62 energy.
It takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds to go from 50 to 150 energy.
It takes 1 minute and 59 seconds to go from 62 to 150 energy.
The Spawn Broodling upgrade takes 50 seconds to complete.
The Ensnare upgrade takes 50 seconds to complete. (This information was unnecessary, but I was curious.)
The Queen Energy upgrade takes 1 minute and 45 seconds to complete.
Analysis & Conclusions
With these times we can predict how long after a Zerg player decides to use Queens it takes to cast the first set of Broodling spells. Let's assume the Zerg player decides to use Queens in the game at the 15:00 mark.
The reason Queens are built at 16:13 is so that the Queens spawn just as the Queen Energy upgrade completes.
From these spreadsheets we conclude that it's not worth it to get Queen Energy before the first set of Queens comes out. Not only can the resources for that upgrade be used for more important things at the 15:00 mark, but also Terran suffers later rather than sooner.
After an unupgraded Queen spawns, it takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds to kill one tank. This means that the moment a Queen spawns, a Terran player loses on average:
After an upgraded Queen spawns, it takes 1 minutes and 59 seconds to kill one tank. This means that the moment a Queen spawns, a Terran player loses on average:
Therefore, the Queen Energy upgrade increases the rate that new Queens make Terran lose income by about 13.4%. Note, though, that this advantage is lost once the first Spawn Broodling is cast because the upgrade affects the energy the Queen starts with, not the rate that it increases. A Zerg player should get the upgrade if he plans to spawn many more Queens in the game.
After Queens cast their first Spawn Broodling spell at 150 energy, their energy falls to 0. We can determine how long it takes for a Queen to be useful again (to get back to 150 energy) by calculating the rate that it gains energy.
We could also have done (150 - 62)/(60 + 59) and obtained the same result. We have for the Queen recovery time:
Therefore, after a Queen casts its first Spawn Broodling, it takes roughly 3 minutes and 23 seconds before it can cast it again. The rate a Terran player loses from that point on average is:
Questions, comments, and criticisms are welcome. No Queens were harmed in the making of this article. Thanks for reading.
Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
On November 15 2017 23:59 Ty2 wrote: Shalashaska posts are always a delight to read.
I'd like to expand a little more on what I said earlier.
Therefore, the Queen Energy upgrade increases the rate that new Queens make Terran lose income by about 13.4%. Note, though, that this advantage is lost once the first Spawn Broodling is cast because the upgrade affects the energy the Queen starts with, not the rate that it increases. A Zerg player should get the upgrade if he plans to spawn many more Queens in the game.
In practical terms a 13.4% increase means that a Queen which spawns after the Queen Energy upgrade completes costs the Terran
and
more than a Queen that spawned before the upgrade. Since the Queen Energy upgrade costs 150m/150g, a Zerg player would need to make (after the upgrade completes) 8 Queens to pay off the mineral cost and 12 Queens to pay off the gas cost. If a Zerg player anticipates that the game will go past 30 minutes, it is worth getting. Also, realistically a Terran player will snipe some of the Queens, so replacements will be needed eventually.
Something I forgot to mention before is that Irradiate is one of the few ways a Terran player can deal with Queens. I've noticed this is what FlaSh usually does. Using this spell on a Queen, however, will spare a Zerg player's more valuable ground units, including Lurkers, Defilers, and Ultralisks. Also, Queens are never stacked, so they are quite easy to split apart in the event one is irradiated. A few times I have seen FlaSh invest in a group of Valkyries with Air Weapons upgrades to deal with the Queens, even chasing them around the map. They're just that much of a nuisance for the Terran.
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands. Queens cost 100m/100g and Tanks cost 150m/100g, so even if a Zerg player loses one Queen for every Tank he uses Spawn Broodling on due to poor micro or whatever, it's a favorable trade for Zerg (+50m). That's an extreme case, but I just want to help you see it. And I can provide proof that people (top pros, mind you) do use Queens and Spawn Broodling against a Mech push. It's my favorite game of the year.
Larva makes the decision to go Queens at about 18:30. If you count the number of Tanks and Goliaths he kills with Spawn Broodling, tally up the amounts of minerals and gas they cost, and compare those with the numbers from the Queens FlaSh killed, you'll see that the Queens had insanely good value. This is the point I'm trying to make, and you don't have to a have a progamer's micro to use them. Larva lost about 10 Queens that game. The ones that survived went back to base to recover energy and came back over and over again just as I said.
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands.
No, it does not and everything you try to tell him is not countering the point he originally made. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting read, but nothing that wasn't already known.
Killing Siege Tanks isn't "economical damage", it's killing part of the army of a Terran. Terran does not lose income from losing fighting units. Economical damage would be to kill expansions, delaying expansions or killing workers, or forcing your opponent to focus on fighting units rather than expansions or workers. None of that happens in your scenario. What you did is to calculate is the long term cost/efficiency of spellcasters as part of the army. This is the part where it's tricky.
You didn't (and probably can't) take into account when Queens are used and for what purpose these are used. Queens are great to bust open a static defense, they're not doing too well if they're needed to stop a Terran's ongoing attack, because it's hard to time their energy-level to the incoming attack. Therefore, the entire calculation has a huge random noise behind it, e.g.: the money could be spent elsewhere, let's say for the ordinary ground army composition, which is a bit more flexible as it can be used for defense as well as offense _during the entire game_.
Posts like these are educating and interesting, but I'd be very careful to read out general strategy advice from them.
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands.
No, it does not and everything you try to tell him is not countering the point he originally made. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting read, but nothing that wasn't already known.
Killing Siege Tanks isn't "economical damage", it's killing part of the army of a Terran. Terran does not lose income from losing fighting units. Economical damage would be to kill expansions, delaying expansions or killing workers, or forcing your opponent to focus on fighting units rather than expansions or workers. None of that happens in your scenario. What you did is to calculate is the long term cost/efficiency of spellcasters as part of the army. This is the part where it's tricky.
You didn't (and probably can't) take into account when Queens are used and for what purpose these are used. Queens are great to bust open a static defense, they're not doing too well if they're needed to stop a Terran's ongoing attack, because it's hard to time their energy-level to the incoming attack. Therefore, the entire calculation has a huge random noise behind it, e.g.: the money could be spent elsewhere, let's say for the ordinary ground army composition, which is a bit more flexible as it can be used for defense as well as offense _during the entire game_.
Posts like these are educating and interesting, but I'd be very careful to read out general strategy advice from them.
Responding to Luddite, who said that the data doesn't account for all of the Queen's "connecting," for the most part it's a fair and safe assumption that the Queens will all unload their broodling spells, dead afterwards or not. You can't possibly account accurately for these edge cases in this data.
Where does time and purpose come into play when the energy needed for broodling and the energy regen rate is always the same? It's always a 150/100 loss for Terran from the tank. It seems like the post was stating was how many minerals/gas are lost per second it takes to gain energy for broodling which was correct and further extensions of that point. The real game scenario you present seems like another point that talks about how this interaction might be affected in a real game by these edge cases that are at best trivial in the larger picture that you can't easily reflect in the data.
Likewise, the assumption that Queens won't have 250/250 energy is also another safe and fair assumption as I'm guessing you implied when talking about the purpose of Queens and when they're used. Still, even if in a real game, say a Queen had 250/250 energy and was effectively missing out on energy, sure the player misses out, but it doesn't take away the original point. In the first place, having 250/250 is already pretty unlikely as zergs always use these queens as soon as they can.
As for income, that seems more like a case of semantics. Income, money, or whatever, in the form of resources the terran is losing these tanks in a much more surefire exchange of always 150 energy for 1 tank that other units don't have.
Edit: The way it's presented as Terran gradually losing minerals/gas at a certain rate is unusual and feels bizarre but it seems like a mathematical way of looking at the whole exchange that wouldn't be available in most other unit interactions (Science vessel irradiate?). I want to clarify this is just my impression, misunderstanding or not, and I don't speak for Shalashaska.
I can see Liquid'Drone coming in here soon to speak about the wonders of Ensnare. People really sleep on Ensnare but against Vessels and Bio I think it'd be pretty good!
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands.
No, it does not and everything you try to tell him is not countering the point he originally made. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting read, but nothing that wasn't already known.
Killing Siege Tanks isn't "economical damage", it's killing part of the army of a Terran. Terran does not lose income from losing fighting units. Economical damage would be to kill expansions, delaying expansions or killing workers, or forcing your opponent to focus on fighting units rather than expansions or workers. None of that happens in your scenario. What you did is to calculate is the long term cost/efficiency of spellcasters as part of the army. This is the part where it's tricky.
You didn't (and probably can't) take into account when Queens are used and for what purpose these are used. Queens are great to bust open a static defense, they're not doing too well if they're needed to stop a Terran's ongoing attack, because it's hard to time their energy-level to the incoming attack. Therefore, the entire calculation has a huge random noise behind it, e.g.: the money could be spent elsewhere, let's say for the ordinary ground army composition, which is a bit more flexible as it can be used for defense as well as offense _during the entire game_.
Posts like these are educating and interesting, but I'd be very careful to read out general strategy advice from them.
Responding to Luddite, who said that the data doesn't account for all of the Queen's "connecting," for the most part it's a fair and safe assumption that the Queens will all unload their broodling spells, dead afterwards or not. You can't possibly account accurately for these edge cases in this data.
Where does time and purpose come into play when the energy needed for broodling and the energy regen rate is always the same? It's always a 150/100 loss for Terran from the tank. It seems like the post was stating was how many minerals/gas are lost per second it takes to gain energy for broodling which was correct and further extensions of that point. The real game scenario you present seems like another point that talks about how this interaction might be affected in a real game by these edge cases that are at best trivial in the larger picture that you can't easily reflect in the data.
Likewise, the assumption that Queens won't have 250/250 energy is also another safe and fair assumption as I'm guessing you implied when talking about the purpose of Queens and when they're used. Still, even if in a real game, say a Queen had 250/250 energy and was effectively missing out on energy, sure the player misses out, but it doesn't take away the original point. In the first place, having 250/250 is already pretty unlikely as zergs always use these queens as soon as they can.
As for income, that seems more like a case of semantics. Income, money, or whatever, in the form of resources the terran is losing these tanks in a much more surefire exchange of always 150 energy for 1 tank that other units don't have.
Edit: The way it's presented as Terran gradually losing minerals/gas at a certain rate is unusual and feels bizarre but it seems like a mathematical way of looking at the whole exchange that wouldn't be available in most other unit interactions (Science vessel irradiate?). I want to clarify this is just my impression, misunderstanding or not, and I don't speak for Shalashaska.
Cheers,
Ty2.
Of course you can't reflect a real game in the data, that was my point and I guess it was also the point of Luddite: The information is interesting, but not enough to extrapolate more than: "Queens aren't a bad idea against mech".
Killing Siege Tanks isn't "economical damage", it's killing part of the army of a Terran. Terran does not lose income from losing fighting units. Economical damage would be to kill expansions, delaying expansions or killing workers, or forcing your opponent to focus on fighting units rather than expansions or workers. None of that happens in your scenario. What you did is to calculate is the long term cost/efficiency of spellcasters as part of the army. This is the part where it's tricky.
You define economical damage to be a loss of income, which leads to a loss of production. The ability of a Queen to wipe out a Tank from the map without the Zerg having to extend its army is a loss of production in my mind. It's as if all the minerals and gas the Terran mined to make it are gone to waste, which I consider to be economic damage. The mineral and gas rates per second in my original post are how I attempt to quantify it. I wanted to present a new way of thinking about Queens.
You didn't (and probably can't) take into account when Queens are used and for what purpose these are used. Queens are great to bust open a static defense, they're not doing too well if they're needed to stop a Terran's ongoing attack, because it's hard to time their energy-level to the incoming attack. Therefore, the entire calculation has a huge random noise behind it, e.g.: the money could be spent elsewhere, let's say for the ordinary ground army composition, which is a bit more flexible as it can be used for defense as well as offense _during the entire game_.
In this thread I don't care about how Queens are used tactically. Any positional edge a Zerg army can gain from using them is an added bonus. All I care about is that the Queens are casting the Spawn Broodling spell whenever they have the energy for it so that they don't ever stop accumulating energy. In response to the bolded part, hopefully the numbers in my original post give you a better understanding of the timings. Even if you can't predict when the Terran player will attack you, having a lifeline like the Queen will make it easier to defend a position for sure. If you watch that Larva vs. FlaSh game on Camelot, for example, Larva used the Queens to stop the Terran attack. I honestly don't know how he could've done it without them.
Of course you can't reflect a real game in the data, that was my point and I guess it was also the point of Luddite: The information is interesting, but not enough to extrapolate more than: "Queens aren't a bad idea against mech".
In addition to the timings I mentioned above, I also talk about how effective the Queen Energy upgrade is. Surely people will have a better idea now of when they should get it. That was the point of doing the experiment.
u could also look the eng upg like this: assume each queen casts 1 broodling before dying assume you have enough time to upgrade energy before making queens assume the 15 seconds extra regen time for +12.5 energy is negligible
1 queen 1 broodling takes 100 energy (for first cast) and costs 100/100 thus each point of energy costs 1/1
eng upgrade costs 150/150 thus it needs to provide 150 points of energy to break even on cost
eng upgrade provides 12.5 energy thus you need to build 12 queens after eng upgrade to break even
if you adjust the assumptions (1.5 or 2 casts per queen, add a time constraint etc) it tends to look worse for the energy upgrade
you can do the same thing for all the other energy upgrades, they all suck for the most part unless they provide more utility (plague and swarm on one defiler for example)
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands. Queens cost 100m/100g and Tanks cost 150m/100g, so even if a Zerg player loses one Queen for every Tank he uses Spawn Broodling on due to poor micro or whatever, it's a favorable trade for Zerg (+50m). That's an extreme case, but I just want to help you see it. And I can provide proof that people (top pros, mind you) do use Queens and Spawn Broodling against a Mech push. It's my favorite game of the year.
Larva makes the decision to go Queens at about 18:30. If you count the number of Tanks and Goliaths he kills with Spawn Broodling, tally up the amounts of minerals and gas they cost, and compare those with the numbers from the Queens FlaSh killed, you'll see that the Queens had insanely good value. This is the point I'm trying to make, and you don't have to a have a progamer's micro to use them. Larva lost about 10 Queens that game. The ones that survived went back to base to recover energy and came back over and over again just as I said.
I'm not disputing that Queens can be used successfully against Mech, I just don't think your analysis shows why it works. The resource cost of the queens in isolation doesn't matter that much, you have to see it as part of a larger whole.
Look at Jaedong's game against Flash on Destination this year (sorry I'm at work and don't have the link handy). If I remember it correctly he lost quite a few queens before they could kill a tank, and he used them all just for one break, it wasn't a continuous sapping at all. So if you analyze the resource cost of the queens vs the tanks it wasn't that good, maybe even negative, and that's not even counting indirect costs like the attention to use them or how you have to pay for them way in advance and then sit around doing nothing while they build energy.
But he still won the game, because the queens did *enough* damage that his hydras/lings could break through the remaining mech. If the queen money was spent on extra ground units or mutas, it probably would have failed, because it's just so ridiculously hard to break through a large and well-positioned mech army. And you have to break it all at once, not just pick off stray units because otherwise they'll soon be sieging up outside your expansions and you lose.
On November 16 2017 03:15 Luddite wrote: Interesting to see the numbers like that. Good job calculating everything.
But I feel like this:
Queens can basically be thought of as tax collectors.
Isn't right. With the high losses of the queens, and the long wait time between building them, they're not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy. At least not unless you're already massively ahead. When I see queen's being most effective, is when there's a critical mass of tanks in a protected position with supporting mech, and there's just no other way to break it, since everything else gets shredded from range even under dark swarm. But taking out all the tanks in a concentrated area, all at once, allows a breakthrough so that the hydras are zerglings can get in and do the real damage.
They're more comparable to an Ultralisk I'd say- they do *some* damage, yes, but that's not why you build them. It's to protect your other, higher-DPS units.
Hi, Luddite.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "high losses of the queens" and "not efficient enough to wear down a Terran's economy." If you spend money on 12 Queens and the Spawn Broodling spell, it costs 1300m/1300g. After about two minutes you can use Spawn Broodling on the Tanks leading to a loss of 1800m/1200g for the Terran and whatever position those Tanks occupied on the map. Assuming you don't lose any of the Queens, you can keep causing that damage over and over again every 3 minutes and 23 seconds. How is that not efficient at wearing down the Terran economy? Maybe I misunderstand what you're saying. Also, one doesn't have to get 12 Queens initially. I'm just using that as an example. You can build up slowly by starting with 3 or 4 if you want. They are an investment unit for the Zerg. I didn't really talk about tactics in my original post, but if you can use the Queens to break a position, then that's a bonus in addition to the economic damage.
Basically I think you're analyzing this in a very theorycraft kind of way that doesn't reflect how people actually use them. Like you can't just assume that you don't lose any queens, or that every single one will connect with a broodling on a tank. Especially not "over and over again".
Whether one loses Queens or not is irrelevant because my point still stands.
No, it does not and everything you try to tell him is not countering the point he originally made. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting read, but nothing that wasn't already known.
Killing Siege Tanks isn't "economical damage", it's killing part of the army of a Terran. Terran does not lose income from losing fighting units. Economical damage would be to kill expansions, delaying expansions or killing workers, or forcing your opponent to focus on fighting units rather than expansions or workers. None of that happens in your scenario. What you did is to calculate is the long term cost/efficiency of spellcasters as part of the army. This is the part where it's tricky.
You didn't (and probably can't) take into account when Queens are used and for what purpose these are used. Queens are great to bust open a static defense, they're not doing too well if they're needed to stop a Terran's ongoing attack, because it's hard to time their energy-level to the incoming attack. Therefore, the entire calculation has a huge random noise behind it, e.g.: the money could be spent elsewhere, let's say for the ordinary ground army composition, which is a bit more flexible as it can be used for defense as well as offense _during the entire game_.
Posts like these are educating and interesting, but I'd be very careful to read out general strategy advice from them.
Responding to Luddite, who said that the data doesn't account for all of the Queen's "connecting," for the most part it's a fair and safe assumption that the Queens will all unload their broodling spells, dead afterwards or not. You can't possibly account accurately for these edge cases in this data.
Ty2.
I thought if the Queen's die after launching the broodling but before it hits, it disappears? Now I'm not sure about that though. Either way I agree that's an edge case, although things like getting all your Queens killed by valkyries while they're trying to hide and regenerate is less of an edge case.
Well writen article, and good job clarifying the "energy or queens first" dilemma. However, killing a unit can't be economic damage, otherwise you could argue the same for every single time a unit dies and the term loses its value.
Also, yes broodling does nothing if the queen dies before it reaches target, that's why it's very hard to use queens when there is any anti-air around.
you dont calculate how you have to use stupid amounts of effort to keep your queens from dying and to spam there spells. effort you could be using elsewhere
Getting Queens for tanks has nothing to do with much money they each cost. The key resource that Queens deal with is time. They park off somewhere (investing in time) to delete a bunch of tanks (or goliaths if you have a much of mutas nearby) from a key location (stealing Terran's time that it took to build the critical mass of tanks) so that your hydra/ultra/ling can A-move through whatever's left (buying the units time to do that, and the Zerg player time to focus on the next important thing).
I'm not disputing that Queens can be used successfully against Mech, I just don't think your analysis shows why it works. The resource cost of the queens in isolation doesn't matter that much, you have to see it as part of a larger whole.
Look at Jaedong's game against Flash on Destination this year (sorry I'm at work and don't have the link handy). If I remember it correctly he lost quite a few queens before they could kill a tank, and he used them all just for one break, it wasn't a continuous sapping at all. So if you analyze the resource cost of the queens vs the tanks it wasn't that good, maybe even negative, and that's not even counting indirect costs like the attention to use them or how you have to pay for them way in advance and then sit around doing nothing while they build energy.
But he still won the game, because the queens did *enough* damage that his hydras/lings could break through the remaining mech. If the queen money was spent on extra ground units or mutas, it probably would have failed, because it's just so ridiculously hard to break through a large and well-positioned mech army. And you have to break it all at once, not just pick off stray units because otherwise they'll soon be sieging up outside your expansions and you lose.
I see what you're saying. The way I look at the situation is idealized, I admit. There are no guarantees a Zerg player can use Spawn Broodling before a Queen gets killed, so they aren't as valuable as I make them seem. What I can say is that if a Zerg player can keep the Queens alive and consistently get shots off on the expensive Mech units, it is good for him. If it's too hard for him to use Queens and he can't help but lose them to Turret fire or whatever, then they're less than useless and shouldn't be made.
Dead9's comment:
u could also look the eng upg like this: assume each queen casts 1 broodling before dying assume you have enough time to upgrade energy before making queens assume the 15 seconds extra regen time for +12.5 energy is negligible
1 queen 1 broodling takes 100 energy (for first cast) and costs 100/100 thus each point of energy costs 1/1
eng upgrade costs 150/150 thus it needs to provide 150 points of energy to break even on cost
eng upgrade provides 12.5 energy thus you need to build 12 queens after eng upgrade to break even
if you adjust the assumptions (1.5 or 2 casts per queen, add a time constraint etc) it tends to look worse for the energy upgrade
you can do the same thing for all the other energy upgrades, they all suck for the most part unless they provide more utility (plague and swarm on one defiler for example)
Buy 12 Queens and get 1 Spawn Broodling spell for free. I think that's a great way to think about how the Queen Energy upgrade works. Honestly it isn't really worth it unless going mass Queens in the super lategame is a legit strategy.
There is a useful energy upgrade actually, and that is the energy upgrade for the High Templar in PvZ. Since Psionic Storm costs 75 energy and each High Templar spawns with 12 more energy, you basically get 1 free Storm for every 6 High Templar you build. The energy upgrade is useful once you can start mass-producing them.
Ty2's comment:
Next experiment: Is ensnaring mineral lines worth it?
On November 17 2017 08:36 Ty2 wrote: Next experiment: Is ensnaring mineral lines worth it?
That has already been done and the interesting finding is that it doesn't really make a difference, the workers still mine almost as efficiently as they do when not ensnared.
[*]It takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds to go from 50 to 150 energy.
[*]It takes 1 minute and 59 seconds to go from 62 to 150 energy.
This is wrong. It takes 74 seconds to gain 100 energy in Starcraft...
No idea how you got to these numbers, but I cannot take any of these seriously if you are posting figures this grossly incorrect.
I know you are trolling because right above those data I explained how I got the numbers.
[b]The Method
I used a stopwatch to measure the time it takes in seconds for Queens and all their upgrades to complete. The "Fastest" game setting was used.
Even so, here's proof that I was correct. This is the featured game on Bisu's YouTube channel.
Skip ahead to 26:10 in the video, where Bisu does a Storm drop. At 26:15 the High Templar has 42 energy after it does the storm. At 26:35 when he selects it again, it has 57 energy.
From this I conclude you have it backwards: It takes 100 seconds to gain 74 energy. I assume Blizzard hasn't changed this with the advent of SC: Remastered.
On November 17 2017 08:36 Ty2 wrote: Next experiment: Is ensnaring mineral lines worth it?
That has already been done and the interesting finding is that it doesn't really make a difference, the workers still mine almost as efficiently as they do when not ensnared.
like 15 years ago I had a phase where I would always ensnare scvs/probes before lurker drops. I stopped doing it for a reason I guess - normally wasn't viable to have ensnare ready during the stage where I would be dropping lurkers, and queen energy is normally spent better elsewhere, but I have some pretty sweet memories of peons trying to escape and just being like.. fuck we r 2 slow.
There is a useful energy upgrade actually, and that is the energy upgrade for the High Templar in PvZ. Since Psionic Storm costs 75 energy and each High Templar spawns with 12 more energy, you basically get 1 free Storm for every 6 High Templar you build. The energy upgrade is useful once you can start mass-producing them.
I think getting to your first and second storm faster with HTs is the primary benefit of the energy upgrade.
Even if you don't make a ton of HT, a small chance of happening to have 155 energy instead of 143 energy during an engagement is huge. In my opinion, this is more significant than that same small chance of 155 energy vs 143 with Queens, because Psi Storm is so strong (much stronger than Broodling for the most part), and HT are so fragile (much harder to keep alive than Queens).
energy upgrades don't kick in until you start building a unit after the energy upgrade has already finished. you'll get energy for your queens much faster by building them before getting the energy upgrade than by waiting. Not like you need 12 of them to have broodling at the same time for them to be useful.
broodling might not even be the best ability on the queen vs terran really, ensnare and parasite are incredibly strong if used correctly. doesn't ensnare like negate the usage of stim or something? or ensnared units get a massive fire rate and movement speed debuff, such that when they use stim they're just like normal marines? regardless, ensnared M&M is soooo weak. the problem is that ensnare's radius is kinda small so you the terran really has to be clumping the marines.
i always parasite dropships and vessels though, because basically no terran will ever kill the unit or cleanse it. it's like having a free map hack...
broodling is obvs really good against mech under the right circumstances, but it takes a looooooot of attention and finese to split 12 queens onto 12 tanks without running them through vessels and or goliaths (while maintaining vision with an overlord or commanding the battle that is giving you vision in the first place). typically you move command them from a considerable distance away such that they don't all go in 1 by 1 when you issue the broodling command.
There is a useful energy upgrade actually, and that is the energy upgrade for the High Templar in PvZ. Since Psionic Storm costs 75 energy and each High Templar spawns with 12 more energy, you basically get 1 free Storm for every 6 High Templar you build. The energy upgrade is useful once you can start mass-producing them.
I think getting to your first and second storm faster with HTs is the primary benefit of the energy upgrade.
Even if you don't make a ton of HT, a small chance of happening to have 155 energy instead of 143 energy during an engagement is huge. In my opinion, this is more significant than that same small chance of 155 energy vs 143 with Queens, because Psi Storm is so strong (much stronger than Broodling for the most part), and HT are so fragile (much harder to keep alive than Queens).
Absolutely. I was always scratching myself when I saw progamers not getting it, even if they had 3-4-5 bases...
On February 17 2018 03:25 Liquid`Drone wrote: energy upgrades don't kick in until you start building a unit after the energy upgrade has already finished
I don`t think this is true.
The only spellcaster that in nearly all circumstances can benefit from an energy upgrade before starting the unit is the arbiter. With other units it`s quite sitatuational and game will dictate your choice by priority, but most of the time, you`ll find more use resreaching abilities first. Personally if I can afford, I try to upgrade energy capacity for all used spellcasters because I found them worthwhile.
On February 17 2018 03:25 Liquid`Drone wrote: energy upgrades don't kick in until you start building a unit after the energy upgrade has already finished. you'll get energy for your queens much faster by building them before getting the energy upgrade than by waiting. Not like you need 12 of them to have broodling at the same time for them to be useful.
if you can only afford the energy upgrade earlier, making one queen is pointless, since Terran will usually have more than just one tank
whoa, just tested, and queens are actually different from arbiters in this regard. With arbiters, if you start an arbiter while the energy upgrade is researching and the energy upgrade finishes before the arbiter finishes, the arbiter will spawn with 50/250 energy. the same scenario with queens, starting them while the energy upgrade is researching and the upgrade finishing before the queens finish, has them spawning with 62/250.
I had tested this with arbiters before and assumed it was the same for all spellcasters - apparently it's not, sorry about that. ;p
It's situational though. If you are talking about a late game make 12 queens type, then sure, it's good if you have started the energy upgrade a while before you make the switch. but if you have enough money for 12 queens, you'll have energy for broodling much faster if you start 10 of those queens together with the energy upgrade than if you start the upgrade and wait for it to be nearing completion so the queens you eventually build spawn with 62 instead of 50 energy. ;p Personally, I often make queens right after the queens nest finishes (usually like 4-5), and then those queens won't benefit at all from the energy upgrade because they spawn a long time before the upgrade finishes, and I don't necessarily make any more queens for a long time after those 4-5.
Eri, those queens do profit from it. One: they`ll have more capacity and two: they`ll regenerate mana faster, a veteran like you, should know the ins and outs of this queen stuff.
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