One aspect to consider is that if you are short on minerals or apm there is one more way for queens to lose their efficiency - if you don't use the larvae immediately after spawning you block the hatchery from producing. This means that queens are apm-demanding in two ways: 1. spawning new larvae asap 2. spending the spawned larvae asap.

Scottymc

Australia134 Posts

September 18 2010 22:54 GMT

#23

one other thing tho - queens have what 150 health? hatcheries have like 800 or something. much easier to kill a queen and to shut ur production down.
queens are better if u can remember to micro them but if you find your queen has 200 energy your better off with a hatchery.

darmousseh

United States3437 Posts

September 18 2010 23:14 GMT

#24

It seems to be that the macro mechanics of all 3 races are intended to benefit those who can use them in a good manner. For protoss, knowing what and when to use chrono boost and also not let it get to 100. For terran, it provides extra income if you don't use it for scanning and for zerg, it provides extra production rate on each hatchery. This leads me to believe that things like 1 queen per 2 hatches or only using chrono boosts to speed up certain upgrades or units, and only using mule's when scouting info is not needed, is a viable strategy for someone who isn't a diamond.

Victim

United States188 Posts

September 19 2010 00:11 GMT

#25

A hatchery takes 100 seconds to build over the queen's 50, plus you're delayed by the need to gather 150 minerals more - assuming you already have a pool; since zerg wants an expansion hatch anyway, the main tradeoff is between 3rd hatch in base versus queens. So even if you start at the time, you get the queen and the first larva inject finished before the hatchery provides a single larva. After 130 seconds from start time, a queen has given you 8 larva from 2 finished inject cycles (early game it shouldn't be too hard to handle inject timing), and the hatchery has given you 3 larva.

Even if the hatchery and queen provided larva at the same effective rate, the queen can kick in sooner because of the lower cost and build time, and thus provides more actual units. The hatch would stay ~4 larva behind. Getting 4 extra drones early on really ramps up your economy, or 8 extra lings can be the difference between holding and not.

My brother tried a no queen style with faster hatcheries, and kept getting crushed by early pushes because the increased delay before getting additional production meant his economy and army size didn't ramp up quickly enough to keep up with his opponents.

Plus Queens are pretty reasonable anti-harass units in their own right, especially since they're the only zerg anti-air. Yeah, a hatch has more HP, but it also can't chase reapers/hellions away. Certainly those units are capable of kiting away from queens, but that's hopefully time they're not killing your drones.

Once you get to the mid game, I can definitely see favoring extra hatches since players will often miss injects while microing their mutas around or just handling other aspects of a 3+ base economy.

SuperdanCSB

Canada2 Posts

September 19 2010 00:25 GMT

#26

more queens = smaller army.

Bibdy

United States3481 Posts

September 19 2010 00:41 GMT

#27

I tend to build an extra Hatchery or two later in games when my macro has clearly been sucking, I'm accumulating too many resources and don't have enough larvae to spend it all.

Nothing wrong with using extra hatcheries as training wheels until you perfect Zerg's macro.

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

September 19 2010 01:03 GMT

#28

in fact i often loose with FE, so i tried to figure out, why FE gives you that boost .. in fact a FE is saturated late, so the real strength of FE is the additional larva+supply+creep. This lead me to play in base 2cnd hatch, which is a build i have much more success and i get quite good eco, too.

14 hatch near ramp (not at ramp, zerg has disadvantage of narrowed choke)
13 (or 14) gas
12 (or 13) pool

build queen in second hatch, evo, speed, lair, muta. Depending on the opponent i put my 3rd hatch early on or when muta harass starts. Do not build the hatch directly near ramp, but a bit behind. put one or two spines in range of ramp entry, so incoming enemies will be attacked by spines, but you have room to do ling surround while enemy is attacked by spines. this is the best way for zerg to block the ramp.

What's cool with this build:
* its robust
reaper/hellion does not work that good (small area to defend) against that. 2 gate is defended easily. banshees are not a problem because of safe early lair. Queen is out in time.
* decent eco
Skipping the 1st hatch queen + extra supply of in base hatch allows for extra eco early in the game which compensates for late expand a bit.
* flexible
if your opponent is greedy, you are able to get a 2cnd queen and pump slings like hell to do early agression ;-)
* good defense (partial ramp block)

rockslave

Brazil318 Posts

September 19 2010 01:40 GMT

#29

Problem with that is that it will take 10 years to get your third/fourth gas.

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

September 19 2010 02:38 GMT

#30

true .. not ten years, but late. You can take nat around 30 supply. it is also possible to pull out mutas at roughly the same time as with one base muta into expand. rely on lings instead roaches or skip muta in favor of tech. in fact i do muta ling most of the time , that works well ..

Simberto

Germany11519 Posts

September 19 2010 02:50 GMT

#31

One thing i do not really accept is the people saying that queens are worse than hatcheries lategame. Especially if you are maxed, the total larvae production rate is not that interesting when compared to the abilitiy to stockpile a large amount of larva for after you trade some armies.

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

September 19 2010 03:05 GMT

#32

On September 19 2010 11:50 Simberto wrote:
One thing i do not really accept is the people saying that queens are worse than hatcheries lategame. Especially if you are maxed, the total larvae production rate is not that interesting when compared to the abilitiy to stockpile a large amount of larva for after you trade some armies.

i agree, indeed i am just delaying the first queen as it blocks supply, blocks lair (no fast lair possible). i build queens later on of course. But as always: the later money/supply is spend for something not-a-drone, the better your start up (talking of supply < 20..30).

Stockpiling larva is extremely important, as it allows to delay production until you detect a rush. If the oppnent does not rush, you do not waste money for an army which does nothing useful (e.g. because of wall in). Stockpiling frees from producing units "just-in-case" mostly. I think this is the most important ability of queen play overall.

aka_star

United Kingdom1546 Posts

September 19 2010 03:09 GMT

#33

from my experience you need a hatch early for the lava supply as the queen hatch caps out quite quickly, It might be better to forgo the queen for an earlier hatch and then doubling queens on the way to lair for air defense and creep spreading. Either way the queen + hatch will make 1 extra lava than two hatches every minute providing you hit the inject in time so you prefer to micro intensively bust early on then perhaps the two hatch will be better as it gives you 4 extra pop to playwith and forgos the injecting timing.

Cyclon

United States99 Posts

September 19 2010 03:50 GMT

#34

On September 19 2010 02:48 petergibbons wrote:
Hatchery = 1/15 larvae/game sec
Queen = 1/10 larvae/game sec

naturally hatcheries don't have the downside of relying on solid macro to keep spawn larvas back-to-back, but that pales in comparison to the much cheaper cost of queens in addition to their other abilities (attack, transfusion, creep tumor).

I've heard that in absolute terms, the Queen lowers hatchery efficiency because when 3 larvae are spawned at once it interrupts the Hatchery's natural larva generation. Does this partially/completely eliminate the advantage 1 Hatch + 1 Queen has over 2 Hatch?

In any case, the queen pretty much pays for itself in early on with creep spreading and defense. The only time I could see skipping out on a Queen in favor of a Hatchery as being a good idea is rushing to Lair while expanding.

ckw

United States1018 Posts

September 19 2010 03:53 GMT

#35

On the Asia server a popular thing to do is add a third Hatch after you expo and put it in you'r main. This way if you miss injections you can inject two hatches with your main queen to keep up you'r macro without heavy APM.

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

September 19 2010 12:14 GMT

#36

roundup (early hatch vs early queen, later on you need queens of course):

queen:
costs 2 supply
can inject OR spread creep
blocks fast lair
low hitpoints. can move, attack air, ground

14 in base hatch:
gets 2 supply (frees another one because built by drone)
spreads creep AND produces larva (sufficient for early game), ramp protection

hatch cost 300 + 50 drone - 30 (1/3 overlord) = 320
queen cost 150 + 25 (supply) = 175 (+ hidden cost because you need early ovie to get supply for droning, eco delay ?), APM

Kegs.aus

Australia133 Posts

September 19 2010 12:31 GMT

#37

On September 19 2010 03:39 Chronicle wrote:
Hatchery costs 2x as much as a queen, spawns larvae at a slower rate than injecting and comes out slower than a Queen + 1 inject. A bonus Hatch is only effective as a mineral dump.

Unless uve screwed your injects in which case its also an energy dump too.

heaps of larvae

Vikkekh

Sweden47 Posts

September 19 2010 12:36 GMT

#38

I usually FE then get queen at both expo and main, then put a third hatch cause a queen can inject larva to 2 hatcheries for a little while, and when it cant do it efficiently i just get another one.

But at your scenario i'd root for the queen rather than a extra hatchery

Emmon

England21 Posts

September 19 2010 12:52 GMT

#39

Worth playing around without queens definately, if you have a strategy that you know you're going to stick to that doesnt utilise Queens, go for it. To me, Queens just provide more flexibility to builds with their brilliant amount of abilities early on.

Fully upgraded they are a very versatile unit
- 175hp
- 4 armour
- 13 vs air
- 7 x 2 vs ground
- Exempt from +armour type weapon bonuses

Combined with just a few ultralisks they make an incredibly hardy hole punching shock troop. And especially good as burrowed ambushers

They're utility is exponential to their number though, two together are more than twice as good as a single Queen.