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Hi everyone,
Before I get to my issue at all, a few general things. First off I'm a horrible player (mainly due to the lack of time I can invest in SC2) and am also new to the game. I also play zerg as my primary race with a passion.
Now, my game has been steadily improving over the past few weeks but obviously I still have a bunch of issues. Now, I don't really want to post any replays for a simple reason: I make so many mistakes that picking on them individually will not help me. I can identify half of my issues myself and the ones I see are probably the main ones.
One very glaring issue I've found has been that I don't ever seem to have enough units ready to counter an enemy ground push. My main ground unit tends to be the... zergling, so after thinking about it a little I figured I probably wasn't building enough of them.
I'd like to run my noobish thoughs by you guys here and hopefully someone will be able to tell me if I'm making sense with all this or if my thinking is driving me way in the wrong direction.
Zergling numbers
A few numbers:
Zergling: 0.5 food
Marine: 1 food
Marauder/Zealot/Stalker: 2 food
That's fairly basic, avoiding mineral costs entirely. Now, assuming a 60 food army (say 20 zealots, 10 stalkers or 20 Marines, 20 Marauders)... technically if I were building only Zerglings I'd need 120 zerglings for an equal counter food wise, ignoring resources, DPS and hard counters entirely.
The Hypothetical Army
Now a midgame push with a 60 food army is not unrealistic.However I've to this day never had the larva to make that many zerglings (I tend to end up with - say - 40 zerglings) by the time a 60 food army pushes.
Obviously I don't only build zerglings. There will be X 2-food unit in the mix (hydra, muta, roach, infestor) but that isn't the issue here. Even if I have - say - 10 of unit X (=20 food) I should be running with 80 Zerglings...
The issue arises for me because I often find myself to have too many minerals and no way to get rid of them save for building hatches, drones and mainly... zerglings. Many, many, many zerglings. But I begin to wonder... am I making enough?
Getting the Zerglings
To me, the numbers sound a little crazy. To build those 80 zerglings you'd need 40 larva. Most of your larva go towards drones in the beginning meaning that somewhere after the first expansion is saturated I'd have to spend a lot of time making zerglings (and unit X if you will).
Going by an average 1 larva/10sec per hatch (probably more like 1 larva/12 sec because I miss injects so often) on two hatches you get 12 larva a minute -> roughly 4 minutes to get 40 larva allowing for errors. This is completely ignoring overlords, mineral costs and other units/buildings you might want to be building in that time.
Questions
Okay... this has been a bit of a lengthy, confused post. Down to my concrete questions:
1) In my hypothetical 60-food army battle, is the hypothetical number of zerglings needed to make an equal food counter even sensible? Should those larva really go into zerglings and more importantly: is it actually possible to get that many zerglings in a reasonable time?
2) Again going with the hypothetical 60-food battle. Is there any reason to build more of unit X? Ignoring gateway only armies where hydras are really viable, is there any reason to build anything over zerglings?
3) Assuming those 80-120 zerglings are actually required in that 60 food battle I keep rambling about, how do you keep teching up with this many zerglings needed for a battle?
My gut tells me a third inbase hatch + a 3rd expo would be needed almost at the same time you start pumping zerglings to even support teching into T3.
Attempt to answer 2) myself:
I can't think of any reason.
In my limited perception, roaches and hydras die in upfront battles way too quickly. Infestors aren't really useful in larger numbers and mutas are a harrass unit anyways.
Against T I guess some part of those 80 zerglings could also be banelings in face of marines but the number of zerglings would still be the same in the beginning.
Personal Afterthought:
To me as a new player, the number of zerglings I've been aiming for suddenly seems incredibly inadequete.
I know the Zergling is a thow-away unit but I never really realized that to counter 20 MM food-wise you'd need 120 zerglings! I mean... wow! That's just a lot of zerglings!
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ok i could.. give you.. a lecture.. about why zerglings.. arent units you pump. BUT. instead. i will give you a tip. a piece of advice.
1) LEARN the unit counters. a terran goes let's say siege tanks. what do you do. go zerglings? neh you go for the exact counter to his composition. siege tanks < muta's.
2) LEARN to scout the build he is going for before he has actually build a combat unit. when i see a terran "droning" *with scv's lol* i would expect him to go for a turtling heavy econ build. when i see him go for quick gas. i ragequit because he rushes reapers. "nah jk". so scouting is the key.
3) Zerglings aren't your bread and butter. just try to adjust your army to his composition, it's just. zerg is the master of mutation and or adapting. just try to reply to him and once he's just stuck spamming the units he thinks are good because you just counter every damn thing he throws at you. you can make your move and steamroll him like that. or harass him with muta's. yeahhhh.. mutaaa's..
well GL
Kind Regards, Riouh.
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Zerglings in general are a very larvae inefficient unit although a good unit in general to use in conjunction with other units. This game rewards good unit mixture heavily, and so trying to go mass zergling is a pretty risky and gimmicky move. Once in a while, responding to an attack by making a ton of zerglings does turn the tide in your favor, but the core of your army should be other units.
Zerglings are great for absorbing damage, drawing fire, creating surrounds, scouting, and backstabbing. In a purely A-move battle though, they are very inefficient due to their melee nature and low hp. I know you are a new player and the swarm feeling of making tons of zerglings is a rush, but to achieve a zergling only strat that is effective against a wide variety of aggression takes you nowhere.
Focusing more on how to use zerglings to complement my main army, or to help me achieve a certain goal in the game, was more helpful in my play than trying to make a zergling build work.
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I'm not the best Zerg player, I have a lot of problems defending off early pushes. So I wouldn't take my advice over others. But for me zerglings are mainly for scouting, harassing and taking hits while my other units deal the damage. Zerglings can be good source of damage if you get a good surround, but thats the problem sometimes. When a player is hugging the sides of the map or on ramps zerglings become a waste. Zerglings are basicialy like zealots and marines. They can be good on their own or early game, but going mass of anything is easy to counter and with units without range it gets easier and easier as the game goes on.
Also as zerglings are really heavy on the larva for what they can actually do. I prefer to pump drones out untill I have a reason to be making other units.
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A 60 food zergling army is going to be demollished simpely because there is no way they will get into melee. secondly I want to state that not having enough might have to do with your lack of good injection( a problem almost every zerg suffers from.)
To awnser your second question: YES it almost always worth it to build different units. EVERY zerg unit has its place and spot in the game. Also if you get a good mix(e.g. ling roach hydra or bling infestor muta) its going to be very hard for your oponent to counter you.
I think you can get fast tech if you mainly focus on getting zerglings. You have all your gass to spare.
Thirdly i want to state that mutas arent only for harrash. Because they force to terran to make anti air/ turtle up.
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Okay - in retrospect I realize this post makes assumptions on my part and was greatly exagerated.
1) LEARN the unit counters. a terran goes let's say siege tanks. what do you do. go zerglings? neh you go for the exact counter to his composition. siege tanks < muta's.
2) LEARN to scout the build he is going for before he has actually build a combat unit. when i see a terran "droning" *with scv's lol* i would expect him to go for a turtling heavy econ build. when i see him go for quick gas. i ragequit because he rushes reapers. "nah jk". so scouting is the key.
3) Zerglings aren't your bread and butter. just try to adjust your army to his composition, it's just. zerg is the master of mutation and or adapting. just try to reply to him and once he's just stuck spamming the units he thinks are good because you just counter every damn thing he throws at you. you can make your move and steamroll him like that. or harass him with muta's. yeahhhh.. mutaaa's..
Scouting, check.
Unit comps, check.
I know what you're saying. Yeah, I mess those up from time to time but it isn't the main issue. Even if I see X and say... okay, I'm gonna build... this, this and this to counter it. I still end up with (generally minerals) to spare.
Now, those minerals turn into 1) drones 2) overlords but mainly 3) zerglings.
Assuming vs. T he's going some MMM (maybe with tanks) my general response is sling/bling and your general mutas for contain + infestors if time/gas allows. And with that combo I'm left with some (on average if I do nothing) 1k minerals. Thus, my thinking about the more zerglings as I don't know what the hell else to do with all those unused minerals which keep piling up.
Focusing more on how to use zerglings to complement my main army, or to help me achieve a certain goal in the game, was more helpful in my play than trying to make a zergling build work.
This is exactly what I'm attempting to do. I average 40 zerglings in most fights. The issue? 40 don't seem to be enough and I still have all these minerals left over, thus my question if building more is the way to go.
Or should all those minerals go into something else - and what else?
Also as zerglings are really heavy on the larva for what they can actually do. I prefer to pump drones out untill I have a reason to be making other units.
Very similar to what I just said above, I attempt to do this too. Yet after building all the other units I need, I still seem to have a ton of minerals lying around which *should* be going into my army and not into drones.
To awnser your second question: YES it almost always worth it to build different units. EVERY zerg unit has its place and spot in the game. Also if you get a good mix(e.g. ling roach hydra or bling infestor muta) its going to be very hard for your oponent to counter you.
I'm guessing I see this as so obvious I didn't mention it. I honestly agree, most units have a lot of uses but the point I failed to make is that after getting all those good mixes - I'm still left with the question of how the hell am I supposed to fill the rest of my army?
I'm at a perpetual lack of gas even if I go something that's fairly gas cheap (hah - zerg and cheap?). Sure, I can expo more which I try but with every expo I take I increase my need to spend minerals which keep piling up.
Actually, the more I think about this the real question I'm asking is: How the hell do you dump minerals as zerg?
Thirdly i want to state that mutas arent only for harrash. Because they force to terran to make anti air/ turtle up.
Agreed. I assumed this was implied in the harrassment role.
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1) It is rather rare situation that you want to pump zergling only army to counter your opponent. For armies of 60+ food even pure stalkers or pure marouders can be sometimes problematic to counter with zerglings only. Pure zerglings are good only at begining of the game, to counter few alone enemy units. Later zerglings are only sink to spend your free resources (when you have no more gas).
2) It is almost always good to have different units. If your opponent will do 30 zealots (60 food) attacking them with pure zerglings will be suicide. Spam roaches, spam hydras or mutas if you can afford, and then when you are out of gas, spam lings for rest of resurces and larvas.
To spend all your resorces choose units which have the best minerals to gas ratio. If you have many resurces stacked with not much gas consider to throw additional roaches or hydras instead for mutas and zerglings.
Additionally, it is good practice playing zerg that every time you have 400-500 spare resurces that you cannot spend because lack of larva build next hatchery preferably near minerals but if you cannot put it anywhere. To be able to spend all minerals on zerglings only you need two hatcheries (injected all the time) per one fully saturated mining base.
3) Out of one mining-base you are able to afford all tier one units with no problems.
Usually if you have second mining base at least half-saturated you are able to afford tier two units.
To afford tier 3 units with no cutting down your production on army composition (read: not die during tech switch) usually you need third expansion. Teching is limited mainly by your gas income, so this third base shuld be used to get additional gas at first place, minarals at this point are usually neccessary only when your main base is mined-out.
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Here is what Ive personally found out:
You can defeat most stuff with pure zerglings, as long as there isnt any aoe involved such as templars, archons, colossus, tanks, or hellions. And no air ofc.
To pull it off, however, you require 50% more food as zerglings than your opponent, and must be at least equal on upgrades.
To beat an average 60 food ground army with no aoe, you need nearly 90 food worth of lings.
6 zerglings per marauder/zealot is the right number, with only 4 and the ball effect, you will end up losing pretty badly.
To make only lings, you need additional production. How many is based on how much you like to saturate your bases. 10 drones support a hatch+queen worth of lings and overlords. If you tend to have 16 drones on mineral per expo, then for each 2 bases, you will need 3 hatcheries with queens. If you prefer to have 24 drones per base then for 2 bases mining, you would need 4 hatcheries with queens.
You will need to be ahead in economy to produce 50% more supply than your opponent, but not that much ahead. counting gas as worth the same amount as minerals for income, since a marauder is worth 125 total, and 6 lings are worth 150 total, you need to be ahead, but not that much ahead.
Adding in a couple of other units is totally worth it. You will be able to deal more damage at once with a couple of roaches, hydras, infestors, banelings, and so on thrown in there. You also then dont need quite as much larva to support it.
If your opponent adds in aoe units, or obv air, then mass zerglings, or mass ling with support from a couple of ranged units becomes incredibly shit.
Roaches are a great mineral sink too, you can spend twice as much per larva with roaches as you can with lings (for twice the supply ofc), and after zerglings, they are the zerg unit that is the cheapest on gas.
Roach-ling is a very potent ground combination for just minerals, and the roaches are fairly mobile too. lots of lings, a couple of roaches behind them. like 6 lings/roach is a pretty good ratio Ive found.
This starts to fail quite hard in the later stages of the game. The ball effect get more pronounced, you cant get a good surround anymore, aoe is bound to be in there, and in the later game, its just not possible to have more workers than your opponent, and also still have an army with 50% more food.
But early game/midgame, if faced with marine marauder, or with zealot stalker, roach-ling is a very good combination.
late in the game, it seems the mineral zerg units cant really keep up, so Id suggest just not mining it. take 9 drones off minerals, and instead, make an expo with 2 geysers, and 6 drones mining gas.
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you are comparing mixed P and T armies, (your zealot stalker example, or marine maurader) yet limit zerg to only zerglings?
Use roaches. Sure, yes, they have hard counters... that does not invalidate the unit!!!!!!!!
going mass lings is very larva inefficient, you need additional hatcheries to support the larva cost. But, its impractical anyway (6 zealots > 120 zerglings stuck on a 2 space wide ramp) so MIX YOUR UNITS.
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I would say 60 food worth of zerglings is not feasible unless you're doing a multi-thronged attack. 120 zerglings can't get a easy surround on that many number of marines/zeals.
4 lings surrounding 1 zeal with no upgrades on both sides = 4 lings win.
4 lings in a 1v1 (or even a 2v1) against a zeal with no upgrades on both sides = zeal wins.
You would need banelings in this case to stand a chance against 60 zeal/marine.
What I do use my lings for is chasing down retreating enemies and surrounding since speedlings are amazingly fast.
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Yeah, I think I'm beginning to see the flaw in my thinking. My mind sais: Hard counter = unit can't be used.
But that really... limits... what you can build. D'oh. It's so obvious and I fall for it.
Thank all of you for pointing this out! (Can't express this enough)
I feel like I've had some rude awakening here - but for the better.
Thanks again (this is exactly the kind of thing that makes posting here worth it, if you ask me)
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On September 21 2010 01:07 mololu wrote:
Yeah, I think I'm beginning to see the flaw in my thinking. My mind sais: Hard counter = unit can't be used.
But that really... limits... what you can build. D'oh. It's so obvious and I fall for it.
Thank all of you for pointing this out! (Can't express this enough)
I feel like I've had some rude awakening here - but for the better.
Thanks again (this is exactly the kind of thing that makes posting here worth it, if you ask me)
playing zerg, as long as you are ahead on economy, you can typically justy throw money at tough problems and make them go away. Mass thor? doesn't matter when you have 70 drones mining away 3-4 bases and can just make tons and tons of roach/hydra/ling.
mass maurader and only roaches? roaches can still kill mauraders, not efficiently, but they still kill em.
Obviously 2 base vs 2 base you have to be more careful, but when you can pile up larva on 3-5 hatcheries, don't be afraid to be inefficient, as long as you don't run out of larva and keep whittling them down, continue the campaign of carnage
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(6 zealots > 120 zerglings stuck on a 2 space wide ramp)
You are probably just exagerating to prove a point, but stil:
Zerglings dont do quite as bad against zealots as people seem to think, even when on a ramp where they cant all attack and get a surround.
It takes only 25 zerglings to kill 6 zealots positioned 2 by 2 on a 2 space wide choke.
5 zerglings will kill a zealot on a 1 space wide choke as long, ofc, as nothing is shooting from behind the ramp 
12 zerglings will kill a zealot, with a stalker behind him, both in a 1 space choke.
50% more supply as lings, is 6 lings per zealot or staler, and it works out perfectly fine.
Throwing in a couple of roaches or hydras is obviously awesome, and helps a great deal, but against gateway or barracks units, 50% more ling as food works out prefectly fine up to a certain point that is surprisingly late in the game.
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I am going to go ahead and disagree with everyone who told you 60 food of lings wasn't viable.
There are a few key points to making it work, first the in base hatchery(ies), second a dimaga opener (fast speed into expand and fast +1 attack, get +1 armor asap after that, against Terran or toss with forge +1 armor first can be good).
I had (maybe have) a replay of a Terran mid game mech push (3-4 thors, 3 tanks, 4-5 hellions, some marine marauder) running into my 157 1/0 lings (this was back when I forgot my upgrades frequently). The result is incredible, he loses his army and I lose 70 lings. That leaves 80 to wreck his natural (this was DO which is why I went lings).
It is a very map dependent strategy and requires you to know where the enemy army is at all times, make sure to keep a few lings and OLs spread, have some kind of air defence ready if needed, threaten runbys and only attack if you know you can kill his army.
Zerglings (especially upgraded cracklings) have some of the best damage in the game (and unlike many other units it is not dependent on armor type and does not overkill by much) and are tougher for cost than most things (except when faced with tons of splash).
You usually want a transition into ultras or mutas or infestors (or several of the above) as they are all gas heavy and synergize well with the lings.
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As someone stated before, the zergling is very larvae inefficient unit, but it has also the best dps per mineral of all units in sc2.
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Remember to be upgrading you units! Upgrades cost minerals! Roaches are a good mineral dump since they only cost 25 vespene. But if you start getting extra minerals it's usually because your injections are a little off timing.
+ Throw down an extra hatch to get more lings.
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On September 21 2010 02:31 Dudemeister wrote:
As someone stated before, the zergling is very larvae inefficient unit, but it has also the best dps per mineral of all units in sc2.
Larvae problems are solved by hatcheries and queens, even pros have excess minerals on a regular basis so in base hatches are good even at a high level. And I don't think I need to post replays to show 10-15 2/0 or 1/1 lings in a mineral line.
The real key (and it becomes better after patch) is the 1 armor vT followed by 1 attack. 1 armor means marines have a much harder time killing the lings and the attack is a 20% damage increase (25% against 1 armored units). Against hellions use 8 or so roaches to run at the ball first, the hellions tend to be in the front and will waste first round on the roaches. Once the lings close in and spread against the ball hellions become much less effective (they attack closest target which is in contact and perpendicular to your ling line).
In the meantime you have access to a ton of gas so add some banelings or a higher tech unit (mutas are good). Having a few banelings (with speed obviously) is always good against a Terran ball. Banelings destroy hellions and marines which are the 2 big threats to your lings and the banelings explode even if they get shot in the face (also note that if you have 15-20 banelings in the mid game the damage to adjacent thors and tanks ads up nicely especially when you have 1 or 2 attack upgrades. Banelings also force your opponent to spread units out if he wants to avoid full splash but then he is open to better ling surrounds, a nice little catch 22 to use.
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On September 21 2010 01:35 morimacil wrote:( You are probably just exagerating to prove a point, but stil: Zerglings dont do quite as bad against zealots as people seem to think, even when on a ramp where they cant all attack and get a surround. It takes only 25 zerglings to kill 6 zealots positioned 2 by 2 on a 2 space wide choke. 5 zerglings will kill a zealot on a 1 space wide choke as long, ofc, as nothing is shooting from behind the ramp 12 zerglings will kill a zealot, with a stalker behind him, both in a 1 space choke. 50% more supply as lings, is 6 lings per zealot or staler, and it works out perfectly fine. Throwing in a couple of roaches or hydras is obviously awesome, and helps a great deal, but against gateway or barracks units, 50% more ling as food works out prefectly fine up to a certain point that is surprisingly late in the game.
yeah I am exxagurating, but once you start adding ranged units into the mix, critical mass to kill 35 hp units is extraordinarily low, esp when you add a 2x2 ramp into the equation.
and in a proper protoss wall (1 space open blocked by zealot), only 2 lings can attack at a time so thats 6-8 zerglings, per zealot. so 6 zealots you're lookin at killing 35+ zerglings, or nearly 3 times the resource cost. Add a stalker or 2 in and zerglings are worthless.
infact, they really are only worthwhile when they can surround and flank, or run past completely. You really need more then zerglings on offense unless you're hitting a bronzer who doesn't know how to wall, or got really lucky on a backstab runby. defense is different since you can control to flank (on most maps atleast) plus creep speed bonus, but the whole point is mixed army is better. Mass lings is well, weak in more ways then not, even vs stuff they counter well when they cannot surround.
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On September 21 2010 04:32 baconbits wrote:
yeah I am exxagurating, but once you start adding ranged units into the mix, critical mass to kill 35 hp units is extraordinarily low, esp when you add a 2x2 ramp into the equation.
and in a proper protoss wall (1 space open blocked by zealot), only 2 lings can attack at a time so thats 6-8 zerglings, per zealot. so 6 zealots you're lookin at killing 35+ zerglings, or nearly 3 times the resource cost. Add a stalker or 2 in and zerglings are worthless.
infact, they really are only worthwhile when they can surround and flank, or run past completely. You really need more then zerglings on offense unless you're hitting a bronzer who doesn't know how to wall, or got really lucky on a backstab runby. defense is different since you can control to flank (on most maps atleast) plus creep speed bonus, but the whole point is mixed army is better. Mass lings is well, weak in more ways then not, even vs stuff they counter well when they cannot surround.
So they are great defensively (as the opponent can't sit on a choke to attack) while you tech and great at denying expands on relatively open maps (DQ, Xel Naga, DO, Metalopolis, BS and Scrap with 5 roaches to take out rocks very early ... I have vetoed LT, Kulas and Steppes ...).
On BS/Scrap when you get 5 early roaches to break rocks/apply pressure and follow up with upgraded speedlings (all on 2 base before 4 gate/tank play is properly up) it becomes very very hard for the opponent to seal their base properly, let alone expand.
Against a Terran who walls off multiple areas, add in banelings busts for more fun (they have to wall with depots or they waste lots of money and you can break 2-3 depots with 5 banelings, add in the ling damage and the supply locks and it's quite cost efficient).
If you deny a second effectively and can defend 1 base play, you win. simple as that. Remember that you don't need to enter colossus/siege tank range of the main to deny an expand, a few roaches on hold or the threat of a runby is enough to stop workers/force lift offs. If their army moves down to counter this, swarm them.
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EPT
