EPTThe earlier you get a hatch, the worse your "worst case scenario." 14H leaves you very vulnerable, especially on maps like Scrap Station and Steppes of War. Especially in ZvZ, if your opponent is 1-basing, 14H or even 18H can be deadly, especially against 5RR or 7RR.
Pushing The Limits of Zerg Economy Builds - Page 15
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raded
United States21 Posts
The earlier you get a hatch, the worse your "worst case scenario." 14H leaves you very vulnerable, especially on maps like Scrap Station and Steppes of War. Especially in ZvZ, if your opponent is 1-basing, 14H or even 18H can be deadly, especially against 5RR or 7RR. | ||
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Schnullerbacke13
Germany1199 Posts
On December 16 2010 02:41 jacobman wrote: Lets not be rude. This thread has been fairly respectful so far. I play high gold since it is so important to you. I used to play platinum, but I haven't been playing much recently, so basically I play high gold/low plat players. However, whatever league you're in has no bearing on if what you say is true or not. Really the only people who really know the game well are those in 2700+ diamond, but that's besides the point. The early hatch is irrelevant when compared to the 12H/14P and 13H/15P I mentioned. The early pool is nice, but it's not worth the extra minerals. I would rather just use my mineral advantage to throw up more spine crawlers if they're coming that early. I'm assuming that you're in gold? I'm also guessing that you have trouble fending off early pressure since you seem to really like the really early pool/hatch type builds. I'm not sure why this would be. I have very little trouble fending off early pressure when I play, and I do not only play people who don't attack before 8 minutes. I'm far from the best play either, so I would guess that if I can fend off early pressure running a 14H/14P, which is what I do, many other players can. Is it possible that you just need more practice in doing so yourself? sorry, reads more rude than meant. Ofc i am bad player ;-). About 10..20% of terrans in high silver/gold/low plat (that's my opponents most of the time) currently play pure 2 rax. Anyway more and more do so. Most players nowadays block the early hatch. However i don't want to rely on a build which fails deterministically, if the opponent responds correctly. Btw there is no time for spines, when playing 13/14 hatch, see the youtube link i posted some posts ago. regarding early hatch .. say 14 hatch is blocked very often. 2 extractor into 12 hatch (1'41 hatch) is blocked not that often but it can be blocked, however often the scout is still goofing round in your base. 10 hatch is hard to block (think i'll stick with it). Pool timing can be adjusted by scouting, but if you get proxied its nice to have lings early on. The metagame has shifted and i recently was blocked, proxied and 2 rax rushed more than in the past (metagame shift => response to zerg hatch first builds), since i switched to earlier hatch and pool timings my loosing streak ended. All i want to say is, that those early build timings have some advantages which are of very practical use. It depends on map, metagame and your micro abilities. IMHO you should not simply ignore the fact, that a solid played pylon block or proxy build (P) or hatch block/2 rax play (T) very often crushes (or at least cripples) hatch first builds easily, even if played by pros. So it is not useless to discover the economics of hatch/pool timings adressing these issues (just watch some shoutcasts/gsl vods to see what i am talking about). | ||
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jacobman
217 Posts
On December 16 2010 06:52 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: sorry, reads more rude than meant. Ofc i am bad player ;-). About 10..20% of terrans in high silver/gold/low plat (that's my opponents most of the time) currently play pure 2 rax. Anyway more and more do so. Most players nowadays block the early hatch. However i don't want to rely on a build which fails deterministically, if the opponent responds correctly. Btw there is no time for spines, when playing 13/14 hatch, see the youtube link i posted above. regarding early hatch .. say 14 hatch is blocked very often. 2 extractor into 12 hatch (1'41 hatch) is blocked not that often but it can be blocked, however often the scout is still goofing round in your base. 10 hatch is hard to block (think i'll stick with it). Pool timing can be adjusted by scouting, but if you get proxied its nice to have lings early on. The metagame has shifted and i recently was blocked, proxied and 2 rax rushed more than in the past (metagame shift => response to zerg hatch first builds), since i switched to earlier hatch and pool timings my loosing streak ended. All i want to say is, that those early build timings have some advantages which are of very practical use. It depends on map, metagame and your micro abilities. IMHO you should not simply ignore the fact, that a solid played pylon block or proxy build (P) or hatch block/2 rax play (T) very often crushes (or at least cripples) hatch first builds easily, even if played by pros. So it is not useless to discover the economics of hatch/pool timings adressing these issues (just watch some shoutcasts/gsl vods to see what i am talking about). My biggest confusion is what advantage do you think the 12 hatch build you mention has over the 12H/14P and 13H/15P builds that are already posted? | ||
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Schnullerbacke13
Germany1199 Posts
On December 16 2010 07:00 jacobman wrote: My biggest confusion is what advantage do you think the 12 hatch build you mention has over the 12H/14P and 13H/15P builds that are already posted? 2 extractor into 12 hatch into 11 pool (in fact 11 hatch 11 pool is quite similar, maybe some seconds later). * gets pool 15 seconds earlier (so lings are done, queen is mostly done when first marines arrive) * gets hatch 8 seconds earlier. compared to 12h 14p. This is not huge, and its questionable if its worth. Anyway 8 seconds earlier hatch lowers the risk of beeing blocked, this is definitely a timing race and a matter of probability. The earlier pool is worth it IMHO (maybe its just a personal preference) as i get queens earlier, spawn larvae earlier, get lings for xel nagas earlier. However one might change your 12h14p to 12h12pool to get an earlier pool .. BTW today i got hatch blocked (by a SCV) barely on shakuras plat with 2Xtr12h ... The point of the 2 extractor trick is, that you save money and time to build an ovie, so you can squeeze out the hatch earlier while still having 12 drones built. I tried triple extractor into hatch, but the distance to nat is too long on xel naga, so the drone walks instead of mining ;-) .. | ||
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roadrunner343
148 Posts
On December 16 2010 06:50 raded wrote: I'm 2100 plat and I've had a lot of success recently using 11P and 18H (opponent and map depending). The earlier you get a hatch, the worse your "worst case scenario." 14H leaves you very vulnerable, especially on maps like Scrap Station and Steppes of War. Especially in ZvZ, if your opponent is 1-basing, 14H or even 18H can be deadly, especially against 5RR or 7RR. No offense, but scrap station is one of the BEST maps to 14hatch on. Long rush distance and easily defended natural. I agree with not hatching first on Steppes though. | ||
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jacobman
217 Posts
On December 16 2010 07:56 roadrunner343 wrote: No offense, but scrap station is one of the BEST maps to 14hatch on. Long rush distance and easily defended natural. I agree with not hatching first on Steppes though. Totally agreed on both assessment you made. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
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greenkid
114 Posts
9 ovi 12 hatch 11 pool 16 ovie 16 queen 18 queen 24 ovie 33 ovie 40 ovie do eco wise? | ||
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jacobman
217 Posts
On December 18 2010 13:38 greenkid wrote: how does a 9 ovi 12 hatch 11 pool 16 ovie 16 queen 18 queen 24 ovie 33 ovie 40 ovie do eco wise? It doesn't do well economy wise. I actually already tried that build. I only did one run, but if you would like to compare it to the other builds I have listed, it had a final mineral collection rate of ~4900 minerals. It's much better to just delay the pool a little bit. Basically, every second you spend in those really really low supply counts hurts your economy. | ||
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Igaryu85
Germany195 Posts
Of course the havíng the hatch get blocked is still an issue though;) | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On December 18 2010 03:55 ChickenLips wrote: Hey Skrag, still waiting for the results of the 'real' tests Sorry. They're a LOT of work, and I've been doing a lot more playing than testing. I have the next two weeks off work though, so I should be able to find some time. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
So the target number of workers I'm going to building up to on minerals is 19 at the main and 20 at the expansion, for a total of 39. Anything else is overkill for the purposes of economic testing. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On December 20 2010 06:59 Skrag wrote: Sorry. They're a LOT of work, and I've been doing a lot more playing than testing. I have the next two weeks off work though, so I should be able to find some time. No problem I'm still not finally settled on pool vs hatch first and even though I can only say from personal experience that hatch first feels better when getting all that shit you want in a real game, those AI tests would settle the case for me (and pretty much everyone bar the hardcore-believers). Take your time as long as you do it right and proper^^ | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
So what I've done is completely removed the AI from the equation, issuing orders directly at exactly the right time for every single order, and after doing that, I haven't been able to get anything but completely consistent results, even without the drone micro. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it was actually the AI adding the variance, which can only mean that the AI code only runs on one player's box, rather than all of them. Which actually makes sense, because then the AI synchronization could happen in exactly the same way that player synchronization happens, based on what orders are given when. It's probably quite a bit simpler to sync everything the same way than to make sure the AI code itself is completely deterministic. Having said that, I probably am going to have to add the drone micro back in, because my current round of tests (just getting back to the state I was in before, running a drone test) has 11p18h being slightly superior to 13p15h economically (by 15 minerals at the 6 minute mark). However, I can see that the drones at the main settle in on the 11p at around 4:30, but at 6:00, those first 19 drones *still* haven't settled in on the 13p build and there are bouncers. Which is totally fine, because I think as perfect an execution as possible is a better testing base than an execution that can be subject to all the random timings that can make large differences, it just means that I have to recalculate the optimal micro for all the builds I'm doing. :/ | ||
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jacobman
217 Posts
On December 20 2010 12:54 Skrag wrote: Another interesting thing I've come across. I started suspecting that the AI itself might be the source of the variance between tests of the same build, because it doesn't seem to always act immediately. For example, I actually had to manually force the queen builds because in one build a SetStock call had the queen delayed by 2-3 seconds unnecessarily. So what I've done is completely removed the AI from the equation, issuing orders directly at exactly the right time for every single order, and after doing that, I haven't been able to get anything but completely consistent results, even without the drone micro. I'm pretty convinced at this point that it was actually the AI adding the variance, which can only mean that the AI code only runs on one player's box, rather than all of them. Which actually makes sense, because then the AI synchronization could happen in exactly the same way that player synchronization happens, based on what orders are given when. It's probably quite a bit simpler to sync everything the same way than to make sure the AI code itself is completely deterministic. Having said that, I probably am going to have to add the drone micro back in, because my current round of tests (just getting back to the state I was in before, running a drone test) has 11p18h being slightly superior to 13p15h economically (by 15 minerals at the 6 minute mark). However, I can see that the drones at the main settle in on the 11p at around 4:30, but at 6:00, those first 19 drones *still* haven't settled in on the 13p build and there are bouncers. Which is totally fine, because I think as perfect an execution as possible is a better testing base than an execution that can be subject to all the random timings that can make large differences, it just means that I have to recalculate the optimal micro for all the builds I'm doing. :/ I'm still a fan of multiple trials  If you give me some data when you're done, I can post it on the OP. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On December 20 2010 14:27 jacobman wrote: I'm still a fan of multiple trials If you give me some data when you're done, I can post it on the OP. Yeah, at this point I'm not doing drone micro so that repeated trials aren't necesssary, but to make sure that really big drastic differences don't happen because of randomness. Although I guess doing multiple trials and not using a fixed seed would still be fine. | ||
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Shintuku
Canada76 Posts
(Note: I didn't scout in this game, I probably could have avoided this doing so, but I just want to show 11P18H's awesome early defense capabilities) ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-175336.jpg) | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
The timings I got from his replay are: Gas @ 2:57 16 scout @ 3:00 One set of lings @ 3:43 Ling speed @ 4:28 Creep tumor with first queen's first 25 energy @ 4:37 Crawler @ 5:04 He also did a second creep tumor with the second queen's first 25 energy, but the map was lost temple, and that's a safety thing for cliff drops, and shouldn't be necessary on most maps. So, the problem I'm having is that it's taking a *long* time to tune the build order because I have to micromanage every detail in code, which involves a lot of trial and error, progressing further and further through the sequence each time until I get it right. I just have to work the spine crawler in to be basically done with 14h15p, and the first one was a lot harder than the rest will be, because I had to lay out a ton of support code, so I'm going to move onto 13h15p next, but I could *really* use some help generating basic build orders for 11p18h and 16h15p. It would save me a ton of time just laying out the basics if somebody(s) wouldn't mind taking the time to work out timings for those two builds. By the way, I started by recreating the drone races under my new framework (using mostly script now, with support from triggers where they made things easier), and using my new drone max rules (no more than 39 total), just to make sure that the economic races gave results consistent with my previous runs and jacob's testing, and everything looked about right. However, by extending the time by just building shitloads of overlords and zerglings after reaching the max drone count, it looks like 13h15p truly does have about a 2 larva advantage over 14h15p, and therefore very likely the same lead over just about everything else larva-wise. I'm still a little unclear on why that is exactly, but the ~2 larva lead was very consistent over a 10 minute run, so I'm pretty sure it's real. It's possible using early queen energy will reduce or eliminate that lead, but I thought it was pretty interesting that it was there. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
I just realized something that's going to make my life a whole hell of a lot easier for tuning. Now that I'm not using the AI at all, I can set the player as human controlled, which lets me SAVE. So once I get a sequence figured out, I can save and not have to start over from the beginning. I could still use some help figuring out build orders for 11p18h and 16h15p though. EDIT Ahshit, nevermind, that doesn't help me, cause the map logic would need to change after loading.  | ||
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