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Preface
I've been using Pool-first builds for a long time because of uncertainty/safety issues. But now that I am more familiar with the game, I've been looking for more macro-heavy openings for mainly Lost Temple and Blistering Sands so that I don't get behind Terran or Toss too much in the midgame.
I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage.
Other benefits of 14 Hatch 13 Pool:
a) The Hatch finishes just seconds after the Pool.
b) You get 1 larva the instant the Hatch finishes.
This sets you up to save 3 larva for Zerglings as soon as the Pool pops. Make Queen, then three Larva of lings. When your Hatch finishes (a few seconds later), you instantly get an extra larva which you can make more lings with. When the lings in your main pop, send them to the natural. They will get there almost exactly when the lings at your natural pop. 6+2 = 8 lings all at once. On creep and possibly soon backed up by a spinecrawler (which you can build as soon as the Hatch is done).
Three Different Variations
I did some testing with three different opening build orders to see which one came out on top and to try to find interesting subtleties that could be useful in different situations. The three build orders are:
1) 9 Ovie
2) 10 ET, Ovie
3) 10 Ovie, ET
Where ET is Extractor Trick.
+ Show Spoiler [Why use the Extractor Trick?] +
It's awesome in SC2. Extractors cost 25 minerals, and you get 19 back when you cancel them. So not only is the "wait" time for the extra minerals much shorter, you also only lose 6 minerals. Since the process takes 2-3 seconds, you only lose an extra 2-3 minerals from lost mining time (considering that drones mine at a rate very close to 1 mineral per second).
So you lose 8-9 minerals in exchange for a much earlier 11th drone. This is a fantastic trade, and it will pay off later on in the game to have that drone out earlier.
+ Show Spoiler [Why is this post about 14H 13P and not…] +
This post probably applies to a lot of situations with these openers, but for different Pool and gas timings there could be some subtleties that disagree with the analysis here.
By focusing on 14H 13P, I can think about a very specific thing that I'm doing in the future and not have to water down my thinking with overgeneralization.
Testing Specifics
Each build was executed in a vs. comp game on Blistering Sands. After building up to 14 supply of drones, I send out two (2) drones at ~170 minerals to the natural. I build the Hatch at 300 ASAP, and the Pool at the next 200 ASAP. Then I drone up to 15, and make another Overlord. This timing is set up to allow saving up 3 larva almost exactly when the Pool finishes so that I can make 3 sets of lings if need be.
+ Show Spoiler [Why 2 Drones?] +
If the hatchery gets blocked for a significant amount of time, it will become very dangerous to put it down. Sending two drones can get any probe/SCV out of the way very quickly. I can also use my second drone to scout. Though this is a fairly late scout, it will see enough in time to let me know if I need to save larva for lings or just pump more drones.
Methodology
I only measured the timing (unfortunate, as you will see). I watched the replay on Slow and just took notes on the timing of important events like the 10th drone popping etc. To make sure all the times are relative, my time 0 is when my first drone makes contact with a mineral patch.
For those of you interested (and in case it makes any difference), here is the order in which events occur at the start of every game:
1. Click hatchery - S - D
2. Grab all drones and send them to a "middle" mineral patch.
3. Grab three drones and send them to an adjacent patch.
This method has worked really well for me, though it may not be the best.
Because the ticks (they are not seconds) only display in integers (i.e. no milliticks), my numbers are only accurate to +/- 1 tick. Additionally, I am not a robot and cannot time building placement etc. perfectly so for putting down the Pool and Hatchery, there is a slight uncertainty, maybe +/- another 1 tick.
Results
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae1/mettra/14H13PComparison.png
Unfortunately the image has been scaled down significantly so that it's not quite so easy to read, but it is still readable.
You can see that the timing for everything after 110 ticks is pretty much exactly the same. So the differences between the openers will lie solely in the openings themselves and not in any subtlety that is visible up to 270 ticks.
+ Show Spoiler [What are the Unlabeled Points?] +
The set of points at ~110 ticks are when I sent out my 2 drones to the natural. The set of points at ~185 ticks are the times when my 15th drone (perhaps my final drone for a long time) pops.
The 10 ET Ovie has a slight discrepancy in the Lings timing because I wasn't paying enough attention so I missed the lings by a second or two.
The big results (in my opinion) are the ovie timings.
The 9 Ovie timing has a very delayed 10th drone but a super early Overlord. Unfortunately, this super early overlord does not serve enough purpose to justify delaying the 10th and 11th drone for so long. There isn't enough larva/minerals to make a huge benefit. It's kind of like if you went 6 Pool for the early queen. When that first batch of larva pops up, you likely won't have enough money to buy all the drones, and you lost a lot of utility along the way.
The 10 ET Ovie timing gets a super-fast 11th drone (unfortunately not graphed here), but has a waaay delayed Overlord. This is the opposite of the 9 Ovie timing. It is harmful in that you are sitting for too long on 11 drones, unable to make your 12th and 13th very early. You can see there is a slight lag between the green points and the red points, and I feel like this is simply sub-par. This is actually what I almost always did before I ran this analysis.
The 10 Ovie ET timing turns out to be baby bear. You get that 10th drone out fast. A slightly delayed 11th drone in comparison to the 10 ET Ovie timing, but a much faster 12th and 13th drone. Because there is virtually no difference between the later timings of 10 Ovie ET and 9 Ovie, I have no choice but to say that 10 Ovie ET is purely superior to 9 Ovie since it gets a faster 10th and 11th drone.
+ Show Spoiler [Larva Waste] +
If you spend too long a time without using larva, you are effectively wasting or losing larva. In this build, there is a significant larva waste in the time between building the Hatchery and the Pool and waiting for 50 extra minerals afterwards. It is unavoidable with this build.
Here are the larva waste times:
9 Ovie: 17 ticks
10 ET Ovie: 20 ticks
10 Ovie ET: 22 ticks
Larva come every 15 ticks, so you are always losing at least 1 larva with this build. These are all pretty close numbers, with the largest gap being 5 ticks between the 9 Ovie and the 10 Ovie timings, meaning that you lose an extra 1/3 larva if you favor the latter over the former.
Not terribly important, but I took the numbers down anyway.
Conclusion
The 10 Ovie ET opener is superior to the other two for 14H 13P.
If I had a really awesome toolset, I would also put up mineral graphs to see the effects more explicitly. However, that would take quite a long time to do manually, and I'm fairly convinced that earlier drones translates directly into more money later on.
Hope someone finds this useful.
/edit
Update
There were some questions and concerns about previous work on this matter and conflicts with my conclusion. I did some additional work in gathering more precise data about drone timings.
Since the later timings are all practically equivalent (within a second of each other), the only concern with these openers when doing 14H 13P is superior economy. To quantify which opener has better economy, I use a "point" system based on drone mining time. The longer a drone is mining, the more points it gets.
To make the point system easy, a drone gets 1 point per every SC2 tick (this is not minerals per second, it is "points" per tick). If you know seconds per tick or minerals mined per tick, then you can convert "points" into minerals later on, but the conversion factor is just a number.
Here are the times for all drones after 9 for each opener. The very last point on each set is the time at which I send out two drones. I stopped counting points at that time. Importantly, the timings are when the drones pop, not when they are started.
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae1/mettra/14H13PDroneTiming.png
To make it simple, I did not count the original 9 drones. I only gave points to drones starting at the 10th drone (1 point per tick). At 11 drones, the opener gets 2 points per tick and so on.
Here are the final points:
9 Ovie: 100
10 ET Ovie: 104
10 Ovie ET: 108
These are all super-close if you consider units being used.
Now, I haven't done an extensive enough test to determine very accurately the mineral gather rate per tick per drone, but I've seen the number .69 min/tick/drone. If we use that number (i.e. assuming it is correct), we can convert the points into minerals:
9 Ovie: 69
10 ET Ovie: 71.76
10 Ovie ET: 74.52
And 74.52 - 69 = 5.52
So there is a 5.52 mineral difference between 10-O-ET and 9-O. But if we consider the 6 minerals lost from ET and the 2-3 lost from ET mining time loss, then that puts the 9-O build ahead by 2.48 or 3.48 minerals.
A difference of 2 or 3 (or even 5-10) minerals is not something we can draw big conclusions from. Positional imbalance alone can cause bigger differences than this. The numbers are all so small and close together that I can't draw a definitive conclusion because of sources of error that could contribute more than the differences (ticks accurate only to +/- 1 etc.).
So my updated conclusion is that these builds are economically equivalent. I'd still say that 10 ET Ovie is slightly worse than 10 Ovie ET because there seems to be a delay earlier on in getting the Hatch and Pool out (when compared to the other two builds).
So the 9-O timing/economy and the 10-O-ET timing/economy are equivalent with the further statement that the 9-O opener could be ever so slightly superior. Certainly for practical uses, these two builds are exactly equivalent, so I'd probably say that 9-O is better since it requires less concentration.
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Thanks for the good work, I definitely found it helpful since I ALWAYS do the 10 ET, ovie order.
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There are some good things here. I really appreciate the look into the 3 builds (ET Ovie... Ovie Et.. etc) and I will probably try the extractor trick after my 10 drone from now on.
However I would love to see some replays to substantiate this claim:
I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage.
You say the main reason to hold off "early" attacks is the creep+spine crawler. Seeing as the movement speed, burrow speed, and build speed for the crawlers are all painfully slow, I don't understand how this can be the case for most early timings, however, I could be wrong. Like I said, I would love to see some replays on different maps proving that hatch before pool is more viable against very early agression than pool before hatch. It seems like by the time you could have that spine crawler up going hatch before pool, you could have a very threatening amount of zerglings up as well.
I would really just like to see that in replays. You have some good info there though so thanks.
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Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery.
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Yeah on close positions it's gross but I think you actually have to go 12 pool to hold off a 10 gate chrono.
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This probably has something to do with a 12hatch from BW being better than a 12pool for fighting off 2gates. Same principles, you get more larvae and creep up faster.
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that's some good stuff there, but it doesn't really justify a 14H13P build.
I think it's good to see that 10ovie then ET is the best general opener unless you do an early pool or 10overpool.
There are just too many ppl cheesing and rushing for me to safely do a 14H (i'm #1 gold).
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On May 11 2010 11:13 bodysnatcher21 wrote:
Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery.
Dunno, but I thought about 10 different gateways as opposed to gateway on 10 supply haha
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Wait I don't get it. From the graph it looks like 9 ov is about even with 10 ov ext? Isn't this what the 9ov vs 10ov thread said? I messed around a bit myself to see what the timings were and 9ov ended up being just slightly better. I would get stuff out about 2 seconds faster, not have to waste the minerals on the extractor trick, and I would get an extra larva out just a slight bit faster. That being said I was surprised to find out how close all the openings are to each other.
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i mean i just took everyone's word for it that 10 ovie extractor cancel was the best build. always did it since day 1. you may have spent a little too much time on this O.o
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Didn't we allready have a number crunching thread where it was proven beyond all doubt that 9ovi is the best econ opening unless you plan to make pool before 13?
In your thread you seem to have disregarded that 9ovi gets the 11th and 12th drone out faster than 10 ovi ET and that you pay money for cancling the extractor and while that drone isn't mining.
If I remember correctly those combined costs were 12 minerals which was the exact same cost as getting a later 10th drone. But bear in mind then that 11th and 12th is faster so you WILL gain more from a 9ovi.
Also, the 12 minerals loss is only correct if the player takes the mining drone off perfectly timed which not all players will do.
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replay please? this build sounds intriguing and i'm sure to try it, but i want to see it used effectively against early agression
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On May 11 2010 11:01 University wrote:There are some good things here. I really appreciate the look into the 3 builds (ET Ovie... Ovie Et.. etc) and I will probably try the extractor trick after my 10 drone from now on. However I would love to see some replays to substantiate this claim: Show nested quote +I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage. You say the main reason to hold off "early" attacks is the creep+spine crawler. Seeing as the movement speed, burrow speed, and build speed for the crawlers are all painfully slow, I don't understand how this can be the case for most early timings, however, I could be wrong. [1] Like I said, I would love to see some replays [2] on different maps [3]
[1] No, the main benefit is the creep itself. When the hatch completes, your Zerglings are twice as effective or better. As far as the spine crawler goes, its slow movement speed and burrow speed are irrelevant. You can build it a lot earlier, but it will still take time. It will take care of reinforcements/second waves - not the first attack. Its long build time renders it useless in the first attack with one exception: if your opponent tries to kill it, it means less damage to your Zerglings, and you have the option to cancel it.
[2] Any replays that I provide would be fairly garbage because of my skill level and the skill level of my opponents. I will say that a Protoss that goes Forge and cannons your natural will kill your natural, but you will win anyway, even after he rushes to Void Rays :/.
[3] This is not for every map. This is mainly a build for Lost Temple and for Blistering Sands because of the longish rush distance. I've noticed many people making comments about other maps, but this is not something that you will use in every map. I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer.
On May 11 2010 11:13 bodysnatcher21 wrote:
Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery. [2]
Like you said, if you do a superfast rush (Chrono boosted lots etc.), any kind of FE is weak, even if you do Pool first and have earlier access to Zerglings. In this case, I think it's almost even irrelevant if the Zerg did Hatch first or Pool first - any kind of FE is punished hard by a fast rush.
But in my experience, most players don't do fast rushes, they will spend their Chronos on Nexus and play a more solid style. This kind of thing should be taken into consideration before doing a Hatch first build. The most important thing is the map you are playing on. A map like Lost Temple is usually not very favorable to fast rushes. Hence my searching for a more macro-oriented build.
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A few people have said that I disagree with previous work on the subject. I will go over my replays very carefully tomorrow to look for mineral trends and check more timings like 11-13th drones etc.
People have brought up some very good points, and I'm happy to mull over these kinds of things, even if my work ends up being proven incorrect. It's getting to the proper result that matters.
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Really you shouldn't try to keep a FE alive if he's 2 gate rushing. If he 2 gate rushes and you hold it off on one base you'll still be ahead. To get ahead when he's NOT rushing you, you FE.
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Good work, really helpful. I agree with the creep being a big factor in defending the natural. It saved me today. I scouted a Lot rush cross spawn Metalopolis and I was able to put down a spinecrawler. It wasn't finished for the first push, but it tanked a lot of damage while my queens and lings beat on them. It held him off with minimal, if any casualties. Although I didn't use the same build, I could see that creep made a huge difference. If it wasn't cross spawn, I may of lost, so your build might be more efficient on closer distances.
When you say you do this build for LT, is this considering close spawn (both players' naturals adjacent to each other), or the two others? I always thought close spawn was pretty close, so I wouldn't FE if I scouted this position.
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Uh... there is 0 larvae waste for 9 lord, or 10 lord ET (before the hatch). And this has been thoroughly researched before and they came to the conclusion that 9 lord is the superior build, by an insignificant margin.
And assuming the P does not do any pressure on you early game, I'm pretty sure 14 pool/16 hatch or 15 pool/16 hatch gives you the best economy due to early queens and 0 larvae wasting. But yea, 14 hatch/13 pool is probably the best way to fend off early pressure off 1 gate. If you scout 2 gate, you should probably cancel your hatch right away and just go for roaches either way. But make sure he didn't fake you out with the 2 gates then immediately build 2 assimilators and tech up without making many zeals.
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Against terran I go 13h, 12p and it works very well. It is early enough to deal with bunkers, and once both queens are out, reapers are rendered useless. Compared to 13 or 14 pool, it is a no brainer. It is actually significantly harder to defend a hatchery in a 13 pool ~13 hatch because he can bunker you while your hatch building and you won't even be able to see it unless you have an overlord overhead, he can use reapers on your hatch while it is still low on hp and take it out long before you can get a queen out there to assist.
However I've yet to win with a fast expand against a competent protoss unless there is some major distance between us, like say on kulas ravine. I just cannot hold off a 2 gate push if they commit to it, even if I produce all zerglings and spine crawlers as soon as my hatch pops. I'm not the best player though, so maybe machine could do it, or perhaps there is some magical build I'm missing.
Against zerg, I can juust about hold off a 10 pool by doing 13h, 12p. But not quite. If they go for the hatch I'll win, if they go for my drones, it depends on their micro, but most of the time if I lose more than 4 drones to their initial lings, then I am in big trouble.
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On May 11 2010 12:27 teamsolid wrote:
Uh... there is 0 larvae waste for 9 lord, or 10 lord ET (before the hatch). [1]
And this has been thoroughly researched before and they came to the conclusion that 9 lord is the superior build, by an insignificant margin. [2]
And assuming the P does not do any pressure on you early game, I'm pretty sure 14 pool/16 hatch or 15 pool/16 hatch gives you the best economy due to early queens and 0 larvae wasting. But yea, 14 hatch/13 pool is probably the best way to fend off early pressure off 1 gate. [3]
If you scout 2 gate, you should probably cancel your hatch right away and just go for roaches either way. But make sure he didn't fake you out with the 2 gates then immediately build 2 assimilators and tech up without making many zeals. [4]
[1] I was very specific when talking about Larva Waste. The waste does not come from any of the openers, it comes from the long wait time to Hatch + Pool + 50 mins.
[2] I saw that thread, and I will be looking over it more closely in detail, but it looks like he is doing a 14 Pool build and going up to 16 workers. While it may not make any difference, there may be some subtlety from the fact that I am doing 14 Hatch and going up to only 15 workers (because of larva timing).
[3] You are probably right about everything said here. Most of the games I play against Protoss, there is a "soft" attack early on. I take sooo much damage doing 14/15P -> Hatch that sometimes I end up losing my hatch in a later attack, making the whole thing moot. This 14H 13P build is a nice in-between that I've just been experimenting with.
[4] This depends on three things: map, locations, and Chrono boosts. If they are really close positions, then their risk in going 2 gate paid off, and you'll have a hard time. If they are Chrono boosting 2 gates then canceling your Hatch is probably not a bad idea since they will likely still be behind if you survive.
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On May 11 2010 12:00 Shenron wrote:
Really you shouldn't try to keep a FE alive if he's 2 gate rushing. If he 2 gate rushes and you hold it off on one base you'll still be ahead. To get ahead when he's NOT rushing you, you FE.
Agree with this. OP post is just economic talk and not relevant to overall strategy ... if I scout 2gate I will most definitely 1base on smaller maps and roachspam for the win.
Really it boils down to rush distance. Longer and it allows for FE and you can throw up spine crawlers+zerglings regardless of hatch before pool or hatch after pool ... what I've experienced, atleast.
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On May 11 2010 13:17 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2010 12:00 Shenron wrote:
Really you shouldn't try to keep a FE alive if he's 2 gate rushing. If he 2 gate rushes and you hold it off on one base you'll still be ahead. To get ahead when he's NOT rushing you, you FE. Agree with this. OP post is just economic talk and not relevant to overall strategy ... if I scout 2gate I will most definitely 1base on smaller maps and roachspam for the win.
You've got the right idea here. The only reason I made this thread was because I was looking closely at 14H 13P as an economic option on certain maps. I did some analysis and figured I would post it here and see what others thought.
This is definitely not gonna be the thread that rocks the SC2 Beta. This is just a guy (me) interested in a build (14H 13P) looking at what way to make it work best. Those wondering about whether some other economic build is better have good questions but are slightly missing the point. This isn't a thread about those other builds, just this one that I'm looking closely at.
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well im a 1550 plat player and i just tried ur build vs a protoss who scouted it out and had already decieded to do double warpgate or whatever its called before he had seen it. I was able to throw off his rush relativly easily. this build has alot of potential for those who have at least 100 apm to manage everything and keep your resources low, it does take some getting used to.
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On May 11 2010 10:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote:
If the hatchery gets blocked for a significant amount of time, it will become very dangerous to put it down. Sending two drones can get any probe/SCV out of the way very quickly.
Thanks for the analysis, but this is wrong. If opponent decides to micro his probe/scv (not just waypoint it), two drones still have to chase for a while, and you definitely need to pool first in this case. Also Protoss can do pylon block. This is the biggest disadvantage in hatch-first build.
Edit: also your own table shows that 9o is at least the same as 10o+ext.trick. And if we take into account that you lose 10 minerals from ext trick (4 minerals cant be spend), 9o is better.
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I tried some different openings as zerg with a 14 pool to see which ET was worth doing. I watched when I was first at 14 food and had the 200 minerals to buy the spawning pool, and if there were any drones still building.
Overlord at 10: 1:53, 1:54, 1:54 with one drone building
Overlord at 9: 1:52, 1:55, 1:56 with no drones building.
Overlord at 10+ET: 1:54, 1:55 with no drones building.
Double ET+Overlord at 12: 1:56, 1:59 with two drones building.
ET+Overlord at 11: 1:53, 1:57, 1:57 with no drones building.
I tried to do the trick as quickly as possible and with no time lost on making drones (always whenever I had the minerals or supply)
Personally I prefer overlord at 9 since it doesn't get as much larva buildup or waiting for larva while making drones, and there's less to do in the beginning so there's less change of fucking it up. From what I could see ET is pretty much no difference at all from overlord at 9. Have anyone done similar tests to see if ET is in fact better, or just think it's better?
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I completely agree that 14-hatching in both ZvP and ZvT seems to be the way to go because of the creep to get the early spine crawler down. It also creates a better staging area to ramp up on several spine crawlers when you're facing an all-in. I decided to try that and get the spine crawler down and spawn lings the moment the hatch pops even knowing I'm going to get rushed and I started having better results. There are many fine technical details that you must get the timing of to deal with everything like cannon cheese, proxies, bunker rushes, reapers, hellions, banshees, void rays, etc. But once you get the timings down you'll ever want to go pool first unless you really have to in ZvP/T again. It's so nice to be close to matching their economies in the early game and getting saturation on 2 bases early so you can make a lot of hydras or mutas.
There are a lot of ways to block a 14-hatch from being effective, so having both good pool-first and hatch-first openings is a must. It's not too hard to throw down a pool the moment you see your hatch is going to get blocked by a pylon or bunker. The only real consideration is the timing of your extractor. I like to go extractor at the same time as pool when I 14-hatch, it just feels best that way. I get speedlings and lair going at just the right times to defeat early BS. So if you go pool first you should consider getting the extractor a little after pool to match the timing. And if you have to kill a pylon or bunker you're going to need even more minerals relative to gas early on to pay for the lings and the hatch.
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On May 11 2010 15:57 Kyruel wrote:
well im a 1550 plat player and i just tried ur build vs a protoss who scouted it out and had already decieded to do double warpgate or whatever its called before he had seen it. I was able to throw off his rush relativly easily. this build has alot of potential for those who have at least 100 apm to manage everything and keep your resources low, it does take some getting used to.
I'm not at your playing level, but this is my experience. Early attacks are easily blocked with the creep + sudden influx of zerglings.
On May 11 2010 21:17 goszar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2010 10:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote:
If the hatchery gets blocked for a significant amount of time, it will become very dangerous to put it down. Sending two drones can get any probe/SCV out of the way very quickly.
Thanks for the analysis, but this is wrong. If opponent decides to micro his probe/scv (not just waypoint it), two drones still have to chase for a while, and you definitely need to pool first in this case. Also Protoss can do pylon block. This is the biggest disadvantage in hatch-first build. [1] Edit: also your own table shows that 9o is at least the same as 10o+ext.trick. And if we take into account that you lose 10 minerals from ext trick (4 minerals cant be spend), 9o is better. [2]
[1] If you set one drone to attack move and micro the other, it is pretty easy. You obviously cannot do anything about a pylon block, but that's the same story as BW.
[2] The 9O timing is the same as 10-O-ET timing. I based my conclusion on which was superior based on the economy. I initially decided that 10-O-ET had better economy because my intuition was that earlier drones coming out sooner meant more money. But I looked at the numbers very carefully today and found that the two are practically equivalent in terms of economy. I updated the post accordingly.
Also I'm not sure how you can say that you lose 10 minerals from ET just because you can't spend 4 minerals. Maybe on some millisecond level, that is correct, but after you get >9 drones, you have practically continuous income so that the discrete 5 inputs don't matter anymore.
On May 11 2010 22:07 Highwayman wrote:
There are many fine technical details that you must get the timing of to deal with everything like cannon cheese, proxies, bunker rushes, reapers, hellions, banshees, void rays, etc. But once you get the timings down you'll ever want to go pool first unless you really have to in ZvP/T again. It's so nice to be close to matching their economies in the early game and getting saturation on 2 bases early so you can make a lot of hydras or mutas. [1]
There are a lot of ways to block a 14-hatch from being effective, so having both good pool-first and hatch-first openings is a must. It's not too hard to throw down a pool the moment you see your hatch is going to get blocked by a pylon or bunker. The only real consideration is the timing of your extractor. I like to go extractor at the same time as pool when I 14-hatch, it just feels best that way. I get speedlings and lair going at just the right times to defeat early BS. So if you go pool first you should consider getting the extractor a little after pool to match the timing. And if you have to kill a pylon or bunker you're going to need even more minerals relative to gas early on to pay for the lings and the hatch. [2]
[1] The other detail that's very different is the queen timing. Your first queen comes out late in comparison to Pool-first builds, but your second queen comes out a lot earlier, and you can actually support both of them as soon as you build them.
[2] I've only had a handful of people actually try to block my Hatch. Most of them are happy that I'm going Hatch first because they feel like their early attack is just going to be that much stronger. But yes, if you are certain that your Hatch is gonna get blocked, you should immediately throw down a Pool AND an Extractor so that you're spending your money better and that you can prepare for Ling Speed or fast Lair if necessary.
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I thought 14 hatch is a BO loss vs fast (proxy) reaper + bunker? How do you deal with that?
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On May 12 2010 02:10 BlasiuS wrote:
I thought 14 hatch is a BO loss vs fast (proxy) reaper + bunker? How do you deal with that?
You don't let the bunker finish. If it finishes in range of your hatch you're pretty much screwed though.
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On May 11 2010 10:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote:
[1] The other detail that's very different is the queen timing. Your first queen comes out late in comparison to Pool-first builds, but your second queen comes out a lot earlier, and you can actually support both of them as soon as you build them.
Great point. I definitely believe I've noticed this difference. When I go pool first I end up having a ton of extra larva or energy fairly early in the game, while when I go hatch first I'm usually able to spend all my larva at least until the mid-game is well established.
On May 11 2010 10:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote:
[2] I've only had a handful of people actually try to block my hatch. Most of them are happy that I'm going Hatch first because they feel like their early attack is just going to be that much stronger. But yes, if you are certain that your Hatch is gonna get blocked, you should immediately throw down a Pool AND an Extractor so that you're spending your money better and that you can prepare for Ling Speed or fast Lair if necessary.
I also experience very few people trying to block my hatch, and if they do they're rarely successful. But I mention this because I've seen some of the top players becoming really successful at blocking, so I think it's important to be aware of it. Even if they don't block it, they immediately go into the mode where they must attack as soon as possible with whatever force they can muster. It seems to play right into my favor because spine crawlers are so cost effective in the early game when you can ensure they're hitting targets in the battle (no gas and -1 supply!). I had problems with defending cannon cheese and bunker rushes because of the morphing hatch's lack of vision but sending my first spawned overlord (2nd total) to the natural solved that issue almost completely. I will also send a drone to chase the SCV or probe around if it seems like they're trying to peel off to do something sneaky, which seems especially effective considering so many toss players rely on the close proxy pylon for their initial attack.
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since roach nerf, i've switched to this as my standard opener. so far, my maths tell me it can stop almost any rush.
ive had the most trouble with a 2gate/mass zealot, but thats a matter of throwing down enough spine crawlers to deal with it.
i have not attempted it on steppes yet.
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I Personnaly believe that the 11th drone, who is my scout drone, coming out faster is more important than a very little Eco advantage. Thus 10 ET Ovi is definitiy the best of these 3 builds IMO. I don't get cheesed, and am able to completely adapt to rush builds (chrono 10 gate, 9 rax mass marine, etc.). The 12th and 13th coming later is actually an Advantage because I often can switch to a late overpool if needed. I do think this should be taken into consideration in your choices... 
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EPT
