EPT[D] Safe Drone Pumping - Page 3
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Phayze
Canada2029 Posts
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Inkarnate
Canada840 Posts
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morimacil
France921 Posts
Ok so enemy walls himself with canons and you gonna pump lings, right? lol Well ofc, in SC, part of the game is reacting to your opponent, and if he makes cannons, you dont really want to make too many units too early. But the point still stands that when my opponent is going for a midgame push (which is about 60% of the games I play, the rest being ZvZ, cheese, and crazy players trying to fast expand, and get more economy than a zerg), I would much rather invest more heavily in army, and crush his push, and then still have an army to threaten a counterattack, force him to invest in his army rather than in tech or expos, keep mapcontrol, and so on. The basic principle of having more units causes less losses still holds true. For example, against a single unmicroed zealot on creep, 4 lings are enough to kill it. you lose 2 zerglings. But if you made 2 more lings, then you only lose a single one. So in both situations, you killed the zealot. In situation 1, you paid 100 minerals, killed a zealot, and have 2 lings left over. That is 50 minerals per ling. In situation 2, you paid 150 minerals, killed a zealot, and have 5 lings left over. That is 30 minerals per ling. So yeah, you paid 50 minerals and a larva more, that could have been a drone. But you still have those 2 lings that you paid for. And you also saved yourself 25 minerals, and half a larva from having one less ling die. Imagine that after that, a second zealot arrives. Now if you were in situation 1, you have to make another set of lings, putting you at equal cost with situation 2. But now in situation 1, you are still at 2 lings, in situation 2, you are still at 4 lings. If a third zealot arrives now. If in situation 1, where you make just enough to hold it off, you have to remake another set of lings! In situation 2, you still have 4, even if you didnt make any more since the initial set. So then with situation 1, by opting to make just enough lings to hold it off, you ended up having to pay 50 more minerals, and an extra larva, to hold off the exact same amount of zealots (3). If you the extra set of lings was made more than 1 minute before the zealots arrived, then by opting to get the early drone instead, you would have made back the 50 minerals, but are still 1 larva behind. If the extra set of lings was finished for example 30 seconds before the zealots started arriving at your base, then making more army put you ahead on both minerals, and on larva. Now I know this example is pure theory, and it wont happen like that in an actual game situation, but it still holds true in the grand scheme of things. Investing in workers will put you ahead in the ressource count if done early enough, but investing more heavily in army will put you ahead on larva. "Curious as to how you deal with a 4/5 Barracks Reaper build with this? Do you just mass speedlings and throw them repeatedly?" Same thing vs reapers. Or any unit. if you have 6 lings, and 2 reapers are attacking you, you can sacrifice them by running forward and back to gain some time. But if you have 15 lings against those 2 reapers, if he fails you can just kill them, and if he doesnt, you still pushed him back to a cliff, at least, instead of to the edge of your creep. And he cant kill them quite as fast, since he doest have so much of a chance to stop moving them. Just try it in the unit tester if you dont believe me. Take the ramp area. Take 1 reaper with speed, vs 4 lings with speed. Easy kills, no risk of your reaper dying at all. Takes almost no time to kill them. Then, try it vs 20 lings, 10 of them at the top, 10 at the bottom. Managed to kill all 20 of them without taking a hit? Managed to do it fast, and not spend most of your time jumping up and down a cliff? Now imagine it with creep on top, and with you having no vision of it. Much much harder when the player has enough lings to actually pose the threat of a kill on the reaper, and to have enough to hold both sides of a cliff. Also, against a few more lings, going into the open terrain with your reaper means certain death. Against a couple of lings, you dont even really have to hug a cliff, you can kill them before they reach the reaper, even in the open. So yeah, I do believe that attacking a reaper with 16 lings, is a whole lot more effective than sacrificing 4 lings, then another 4, and another 4, and another 4. The downside is you dont make the drones at the earliest possible moment. The upside is that you gain a lot more time, and have a chance to actually surround and kill the reaper. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
The biggest upside of playing this build, for me at least, is all the oh crap moments. With the standard way, which I used to do, the oh crap moments went like this: Oh crap, he had a couple more units than I expected. GG. But now instead, the oh crap moment is: Hm, I didnt crush that push quite as hard as I thought I would, guess he might be able to secure his expo faster than I expected  | ||
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KaiserJohan
Sweden1808 Posts
Take ZvP for example. my drone scout reveals 12 or 13 gate into core, with 1 zealot being added during core to wall off. There is NO reason not to 100% drone for atleast a little while; its useless to open with some splings. Like, add 2x splings after expo, to take towers and poke ramp. Thats it. | ||
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SayaSP
Laos5494 Posts
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horoLA
Brazil50 Posts
I do think players that tell stuff like "i play on the borderline and ur bad" are wrong as you are mostly playing luck and that won't get you anywhere. There's some obvious times where just drone pumping is ok like the user KaiserJohan has mentioned, but if it isn't obvious I think you shoudn't take the risk. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
Yes, if you scout something safe from your opponent, making only speedlings from all your next 10 larva is dumb. Thats not the point though. I dont have all the numbers figured out, but I tend to make them in an increasing rate. Something like 7 drones, 1 ling, then 6-2, then 5-3, then maybe all lings if theres a possible timing for my opponent to come attack, if he does move out all lings again, if not all drones for a while, since Im safe with the lings. And the theory of having more than "just enough" stuff to hold off his push still remains valid imo, even if you are making your stuff at the last moment. "Just enough" is a HUGE risk, the potential reward is very small. By trying to make everything at the last minute, you run the risk of losing, and your gain is having the drones out a couple of seconds earlier. By first making enough units to be safe, and then making only drones, knowing that you are safe, well.... You are safe you get the drones a little later, but you dont risk losing the game if your opponent pushes out at an akward time. My personal opinion, is that the very best way to play (as in 100% optimal), is to play safe, and not play the game on a gamble. BUT! The amount of units that you need to be safe can be different from game to game, opponent to opponent, depends on his race, what you scout, and so on. So if you are a super awesome player, you can totally be safe with fewer units, and consequentially, get away with pumping more drones early on. Thats good (obviously). But risking to lose the game on a gamble, because you didnt play it safe enough is a bit dumb. Play safe. If you are safe with 0 units, fine. Good. If you need more units to be safe, make more units. But if you are not Idra, why the hell are you throwing games away by not just playing safe? Dont lose by trying to mimic exactly what a pro is doing, and failing, because you are not that pro, and thus the amount of units he needs, is smaller than the amount of units you need. | ||
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Fugue
Australia253 Posts
Terran: 1 SCV every 17 seconds, 1 SCV must be pulled for 30s (+ travel time) to build a depot. Protoss: 1 probe every 17 seconds, 1 probe must be pulled for travel time only to build a pylon. Zerg: 1 larvae every 15 seconds means over time 1 drone every 15 seconds, but with 1 overlord every 8th larvae, the 8th drone takes 30 seconds, making it just a hair under 17 seconds a drone. So, long story short, 1 hatch no queen is equivalent to a single CC with no OC, or an unchronoboosted Nexus. Any extra larvae on top of the 3 from the 1st hatch could be put into units other than drones and your economy would grow as fast as players not using OC or Chronoboosting Nexus. Which doesn't happen. So, as a rule of thumb, you can say use (on average) at least 3 larvae from every cycle as drones, and as many more as you can get away with safely. I think it's a nice rule of thumb and probably what this build is centered around, but I do think the argument holds that, as it should be 3 larvae on average, doing rounds of drones earlier and switching to lings/roaches as soon as a threat presents is more streamlined than holding to 3-5 drones every cycle and building up lings over time. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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heishe
Germany2284 Posts
Once you rise up through the different levels of skill and reach the zone where everyone of your opponents knows what he's doing, pumping the maximum amount of drones without losing to pushes is THE essential skill that a Zerg player has to have in order to win games, as building combat units when there is no need to will set you behind in matches against high-level opponents. This includes: precise scouting, taking thirds at the right time, producing units at the right time, knowing when to tech,of course some basic mechanics like inject larvae and in-base drone management. the last point means that you decide when to get additional gas, if and when it's smart to maynard, if and when it's smart to spread more tumors or get more larvae. If you, for example, get gas too early you will get mineral starved rather quickly and won't be able to produce the maximum amount of drones anymore since you'll have too much larvae left over and no minerals to produce drones or even build buildings like roach warren etc. The effect that 4 less drones have on your mineral economy (1 for geysir and 3 which are collecting gas) is often very underestimated. During the time it takes the queen to inject 3 larvae those 4 drones would usually have mined 200-300 minerals. thats 4-6 more drones! Taking gas too early is often the reason that some players can't keep up with the queens larvae injecting and are constantly "overlarvae'd". A good way to detect if you do it right is for looking at replays of yours and then looking at the larvae count in your hatcheries. If there are always small windows where you don't yet have at least 2 fully saturated bases but you still have a lot of larvae left over, you're probably doing something wrong (most zerg players who read this will know what I mean... sometimes u mess up your mineral mining and gas collecting distribution and you will have like 6 larvae and just get one more drone every 5 seconds or so - that's not how it should be. You should be able to build what you want to build as soon as the larvae get available). Note that I'm still talking about early game, where you mostly set your economy up and scout / prepare for early pushes. Of course, in later stages of the game, it's actually smart to have larvae saved up in order to quickly reinforce forces after a lost battle. Many Zerg players forget that "overlarvae-ing" also has the effect that it reduces your maximum amount of units produced in the game (drones + combat units), since your hatcheries won't spawn any more larvae if you have 3 or more at them. This (especially in regards to drone production) will have pretty detrimental and snowballing effects on your economy over the entire course of the game. Just missing one natural hatchery larvae spawning cycle can mean that you have 300 minerals less a few minutes later in the game and you can't take your third or you can't get out those additional 6 roaches that would've saved you the game. If you can't keep up with inject larvae, in essence, it means that you'll expand to a third later, that you'll have a harder time quickly getting units to defend a push and in general to get an army. It might mean that you are able to tech faster (if you get gas too early), but you won't really be able to do anything once you reach lair, since you have no resources. As a little tl;dr for this part of my post: Figure out how to keep up with "Inject Larvae" and still tech fast enough or produce gas-requiring early game units fast enough (roach/baneling). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By the way, the reason zerg is reactionary is that none of these factors are constant and instead very dynamic. As Terran and Toss, you pretty much always "drone up" + build units and tech, plus you'll also have predefined times when you build certain things (in short: build orders) and certain time windows when you transition into other parts of the game (like expandanding and so forth). Zerg mostly doesn't have that beyond xpool/xhatch, and even xhatch is usually very dynamic depending on the very-early-game actions of your opponent. If you compare Zerg replays, Zerg players never tech at the same time, they never produce units at the same time, in most games they'll not have the same amount of combat units/drones at the same time. That is why zerg is reactionary. The state of the Zerg's game depends on the actions of their opponent. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
The first one would be about making drones when you are safe. It seems like everyone agrees that its a good idea to make drones when you are safe. Basic stuff. However, I just wanna point out, that sometimes, you do need units to be safe. If you have 2 lings and a crawler, and know that you can use that to delay your opponent enough for your next round of larva to pop and become lings, and so you make all drones, and are safe, thats perfectly fine and valid. But if you need more units to be safe, then you should make those preemptive units to be safe. Pumping all drones because idra does it and going "oooh, hope he doesnt push now! *fingers crossed*" isnt a good way to play. playing safe is better, and if you cant be safe without units, make units. And the second point is about the number of units to hold off a push, having barely enough vs having enough for a decisive win. And point one leads well into this one, if you have preemptive units, its easier to have enough units to crush his push by the time it arrives. But still, you could just as well have a couple of preemptive units, enough to be safe, and then when his push comes, make just the required amount of units to hold it off. For that one, I believe its mostly a matter of how you like to play, your style, your strategy, and personal choice. | ||
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
Another thing to think about is that the "minimum" amount of units created will always end up in a fight that is entirely dependent on micro as to which player wins. That's really bad, seeing as Zerg units are the hardest to micro, and anything that helps you micro (like getting an advantage in army count) will help you win as Zerg. Outnumbering an opponent will allow you to overcome his push and then secure an immediate win. Merely meeting his numbers is simply playing Russian roulette; anything can happen, and the odds are stacked against the Zerg player; if his hatcheries are too far apart, the units will arrive late, if he's supply blocked or close to it he wastes larva on overlords, if he doesn't have enough larvae he is fucked, and if he just pumped drones it's gg. If your panic minimum actually manages to win the fight, what have you done? Nothing. The game just goes on longer, and most likely, the odds are STILL 50-50 or worse, since the fight was probably near one of your bases. The current mindset of macrozerg players is retarded. | ||
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ryanAnger
United States838 Posts
I too, opt to build a large army in the early game to crush my opponents push, and I've been fairly successful with it. This whole idea of FE every game that so many people have is just utterly retarded. Nothing is set in stone. The game has been available for about 6 months and people think there is a infallible standard on how things MUST be done. Completely false. Sorry for the rant, im working a mid shift, and my Droid isn't exactly the best tool for writing comprehensively. | ||
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pheno
Germany33 Posts
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natris
23 Posts
The logic behind "crush rather than barely win" is valid but only if the opponent lets you crush him. Maybe this is the reason why at the top level this approach does not really work while at lower level the terran/protoss just goes for certain timing push without reacting properly. | ||
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MangoTango
United States3670 Posts
If only I could find them. Also, I just violated rules 1 and 2 of Artosis' rules of droning. | ||
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Ciddass
Germany149 Posts
this is a summary of my last ZvT games on ~900 diamond lvl. - resources - workers created Z ----- 7,1k ----- 42 T ----- 7,7k ----- 29 game 2 --- 20 minutes played Z ----- 18,8k ----- 64 T ----- 16,5k ----- 33 game 3 --- 14 minutes played Z ----- 9,3k ----- 53 T ----- 10,1k ----- 31 game 4 --- 9 minutes played Z ----- 4,7k ----- 29 T ----- 6,5k ----- 26 game 5 --- 31 minutes played Z ----- 28,4k ----- 63 T ----- 34,0k ----- 55 game 6 --- 11 minutes played Z ----- 8,1k ----- 36 T ----- 8,6k ----- 29 game 7 ---- 11 minutes played Z ----- 7,1k ----- 33 T ----- 7,3k ----- 22 game 8 --- 23 minutes played Z ----- 27,0k ----- 84 T ----- 15,7k ----- 27 game 9 --- 13 minutes played Z ----- 8,2k ----- 46 T ----- 9,1k ----- 27 game 10 --- 21 minutes played Z ----- 21,0k ----- 60 T ----- 21,5k ----- 40 now imagine this without powering drones. | ||
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
On September 08 2010 01:15 MangoTango wrote: This would be a good thread to copypasta Artosis' rules of droning. If only I could find them. Also, I just violated rules 1 and 2 of Artosis' rules of droning. This may help. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/search.php?q="rules of droning"&t=ct&f=-1&u=&gb=date It's funny though. I don't remember an "Artosis'" rules of droning... | ||
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