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On January 02 2011 23:35 wherebugsgo wrote:
And please, the larva garbage... At that stage in the game, you're not saturated enough to use all your larvae nor do you have minerals to spare on purely defensive units like queens. I'd love for you to point out a pro who routinely gets more than 3 queens for defense as opposed to just making units or spines. I haven't seen a fourth queen in months, precisely because it's a waste of 150 minerals that could go to a hatchery or something more versatile.
Yeah, lol, 4 queens is 600 minerals. *shudder*
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On January 02 2011 22:25 mlbrandow wrote:
You're being extremely closed-minded to cherry-pick a small scenario (super early small-force aggression) to tell him that in general, the idea is bad.
Where have you been living? Early aggression with a small force is a standard crap Zergs have to deal with in _every_ _single_ game.
In ZvP:
a) 1 stalker
b) 2 stalkers
c) 1 stalker and 1 zealot
d) 2 zealots
In ZvT:
a) 3 marines (very early)
b) 4 marines (later by some 30sec)
c) 3/4 marines + 1 helion
d) 2 helions
In all of these cases, queens are pathetic and horrible. Their only current use is to run around and to take damage without ever shooting back, to allow you to put a spine crawler or spawn some units.
Go back to dream land. Zergs are trying to survive here.
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On January 02 2011 22:57 FeyFey wrote:
queens are really used often as defense in most games. Blocking ramps, healing spines, shooing air units away etc. The combination of queens and spines is probably the most effective defense in game, especially because its semi movable.
That's plan false. People keep thinking of transfuse as if the queen is a freaking medivac or something.
It's one transfuse at best, if at all, because you should be injecting. And one extra transfuse will never change the battle when Z has the defend semi-early push, such as 4gate or Terran pressure. Other races can pressure with such amount of units that a queen even with 2 transfuses is a spit in a bucket.
And in the early game, a spine by itself does just fine without transfuse.
The only exception is vs 2/3 banshees, then yeah, get 3rd and 4th if your mutas are too far away from spawning.
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I favor spine queen. 14 hatch 16 pool, hatch and pool finish at same time, and then it's always making 2 sets of queens and a few spines depending on situation, creating chokes at ramps or similar, according to map.
So if you position well, neither zerglings nor zealots can get a surround, and just get destroyed. Marines are outranged by spines as well, and die very fast. And transfuses make it almost unbeatable. If it gets scary, making a few zerglings to flank is sufficient to repel anything, and usually enough survive to punish with a counter after that.
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Ultimately I am just theorycrafting here, but some ideas as to why queens are not used:
It takes awhile to get a queen with enough energy for transfuse. Assuming you expand, you use the energy from your first two queens solely for creep tumors and injects. So you have to get a third queen and wait until it gets 50 energy in order to have a single transfuse.
You probably want lair tech at some point. Thus, you'll probably research it instead of one of your early queens - which is when you need the queens for defense anyway.
Queens are slow and don't have that much range. A well placed spine crawler should be able to get hits on stalkers, hellions, marines, etc. but a queen can be fairly easily microed around. Thus, instead of taking on your small group of transfuse-queens, an opponent could just snipe a bunch of your drones.
Constant queens for the first 10 minutes of the game is just absurd. I don't want to sink 1-1.5k into units that are too slow to be on the offensive. Maybe 4-5 queens is understandable if you spread creep extremely aggressively.
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i played roach queen for a while, and queens scale very well with upgrades...it worked well if i hit my transfuses. i would have a couple transfuses ready for the first push which kept roaches alive, and i would roll out with a 200 food 2/2 army at like 13 minutes.
i am in gold though, which is why i assume it worked 
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Dont see how you can discuss this for 2 pages.
Queens are not efficient vs ground. Thats why they are not used as ground defence.
Queens are pretty decent vs air. They ARE used as defense vs air.
Yes, they can transfuse. They still suck vs ground.
Its queen+spine or spine+spine.
Double spine has more range, and more dps than queen+spine, and if they attack less than 3 minutes after you built your queen, it also has more life.
Sure enough, if you have 5 queens with full energy, and 5 spines, thats pretty decent defence. But if instead of making queens that sit around building energy, you had made drones early on, and then made the crawlers, you could have 15 crawlers, which is even better defense against ground.
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On January 02 2011 21:32 wherebugsgo wrote:
I'd love for you to point out a pro who routinely gets more than 3 queens for defense as opposed to just making units or spines. I haven't seen a fourth queen in months, precisely because it's a waste of 150 minerals that could go to a hatchery or something more versatile.
Dimaga consistently gets 3-4 queens early on. Granted, he's not relying exclusively on queens, but they definitely have a place in his unit composition. Not only do they supplement his army, but they help shut down early hellion/banshee harassment and allow aggressive early-game creep spread. He's been doing it forever, but check out day9 dailies 225 and 226 for some relatively recent instances.
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I think queens could maybe be useful late(r) in the game when zerg needs a mineral dump. A few in each exp can shoot down medivacs carrying units right? and you don't need to worry about having delayed tech since this comes with your 3rd or 4th.
THEN, you might want to build a few more.
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On January 02 2011 23:35 wherebugsgo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2011 22:25 mlbrandow wrote:On January 02 2011 21:32 wherebugsgo wrote:
Four Zerglings kill a queen. One zealot will kill a queen. Any number of marines can kill a queen.
Queens are bad early game defense. When in numbers they're decent AA, and in ZvZ they have lots of potential because of transfuse and their sheer HP, but otherwise, for their mineral cost, they're very inefficient. One spine crawler defends better than two queens, while 4-6 Zerglings can defend, scout, attack, and make banelings. I think your entire post is wrong, and I'd like to explain why: 1) Two queens with 1 transfuse (your extra queen) and zero micro about breaks even with 6 zerglings, comes out slightly ahead of two zealots (for cost) and way ahead of three marines. If you can fend off this with your extra queen, that queen has already broken even with you, since you have to buy the other one for your hatch anyway. 2) They aren't decent AA, they're amazing AA. Consider the cost: 2 food, 150 minerals and ZERO larva. Now, 2 queens with transfuse can kill at least two banshees or two void rays, and if you have more energy, they could kill more. 3) You don't give any credence to the other abilities of the queen, while praising the other abilities of zerglings. One queen costs you zero larva, while a spine crawler costs you a drone/larva, and 6 zerglings cost you three larva. They can transfuse and spread creep, adding value to your actual army, and if you have roaches, transfuse is an incredible defensive ally. If you want to maximize your defense against ground units, getting 5 queens is almost certainly going to be inferior to 3-4 spines and a handful of zerglings. But to get added defense throughout the game in addition to shutting down AA, and providing added HP for your roaches/hydras/mutas is a pretty wonderful advantage. You're being extremely closed-minded to cherry-pick a small scenario (super early small-force aggression) to tell him that in general, the idea is bad. The point here is that the OP isn't just referring to early game. He's speaking in general. Getting several queens is a valid strategy and has been used effectively at high level play throughout the age of this game. I'm no pro, but I do it in some situations and I've found it to be very effective more often than not. Second to probably the marine, I'd argue that the queen is the most efficient unit in the game. No. 1.) You don't get 2 queens with transfuse until you've made 4 queens. By that point, we're not in the early game, but you've spent early game minerals when Zerg is clamoring for them early, the third queen is generally used for creep spread (delaying transfuse) and getting the fourth queen is a 40 second investment that does nothing in about 95% of games. In fact, it's detrimental to get a fourth queen precisely because it's 150 minerals that's almost never going to do a thing. By the time you have two queens with transfuse, as you say, you've dumped 300 minerals that have sat and done nothing for however long it took for them to get 50 energy each. That's a free expansion for your opponent. You basically HAVE to transfuse something to have them pay for themselves, and at that stage of the game the best you'll get is one or two free muta heals (if that) 2.) Queens being "amazing" AA is honestly bullshit and I don't know why this misconception has been so widespread, for so long. A queen's attack is pathetic, and the only reason I consider it decent is because it's long-ranged enough to deter something from truly sticking around. Losing one of the two standard queens is a crippling blow, and banshee harass/Phoenix/void ray harass does this quite often. One banshee kills a queen straight up. Then it can go back home (or cloak). 2 banshees will kill 3 queens! Usually when banshees come you don't have 2 queens with transfuse. You have two queens with <25 energy and one with 50 energy, and usually only two are together. The banshees catch the queen with 50 energy and bam no transfuse possible. Watch Foxer vs Kyrix on scrap station. There's some proper banshee micro for you, and it highlights how overrated queen AA is. If the opponent somehow has more than one queen with transfuse, then you can always force a transfuse and go backto repair. By the time you come back, he'll have +1 queen at most but you'll have another banshee, and no transfuses! 3.) What "other" abilities of a fourth queen? There are none! Making two queens is standard, and they're larva injecting machines. The third is usually made in the midgame against Terran or otherwise skipped in ZvT and usually ZvP. It's used against stargate in ZvP but it's usually better to go spores, and the third queen is necessary backup for if one of the larva injectors gets gravitonned, not for AA. Queens are absolute shit vs both phoenixes and voidrays. We ARE talking about getting an early third queen for defense instead of lings or a spine crawler, right? Cause an early third queen has no "other" abilities other than a creep tumor. And yet, it's still worse than both other options BY FAR. And please, the larva garbage... At that stage in the game, you're not saturated enough to use all your larvae nor do you have minerals to spare on purely defensive units like queens. I'd love for you to point out a pro who routinely gets more than 3 queens for defense as opposed to just making units or spines. I haven't seen a fourth queen in months, precisely because it's a waste of 150 minerals that could go to a hatchery or something more versatile.
i agree with a lot of this. People always tend to go, "oh, your queens pop and boom, you can instantly transfuse 30 things"
It takes a while to build up a transfuse. You can either forgo your macro mechanic (who needs larva anywayyyyy) to get a transfuse you might never need, or you can inject, and just not have enough for transfuse when those 2 banshees come rolling in
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On January 03 2011 02:04 Yarhj wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2011 21:32 wherebugsgo wrote:
I'd love for you to point out a pro who routinely gets more than 3 queens for defense as opposed to just making units or spines. I haven't seen a fourth queen in months, precisely because it's a waste of 150 minerals that could go to a hatchery or something more versatile.
Dimaga consistently gets 3-4 queens early on. Granted, he's not relying exclusively on queens, but they definitely have a place in his unit composition. Not only do they supplement his army, but they help shut down early hellion/banshee harassment and allow aggressive early-game creep spread. He's been doing it forever, but check out day9 dailies 225 and 226 for some relatively recent instances.
Getting queens for creep spread, defense against hellions or air rushes is something completely different than getting queens for defense against ground pushes.
- queen is the only unit which can spawn creep tumors, overlords alone are not enough for creep if you use units which really need creep (banelings, hydras, infestors), you don't have a choice here if you want creep tumors
- queen is the only AA unit zerg has early on. You don't have any choices here unless you got lair tech up or an evo chamber built
- hellion harrass is not really a ground push, it can pretty much be stopped by any unit that can attack them, only zerglings being unefficient here because hellions can kill them easily. But you might as well use your queens to fight this harrass since you have at least 2 anyway
Honestly, queens are not that bad against any sort of early defense expect for ground pushes. Compared with the 3 other ground defense possibilities you have early on (zerglings, roaches, spine crawlers):
Queen resources : HP ratio is the worst of all 3 of them. Queen - 1.166... (read: 1 resource for around 1.166... HP), zergling - 1.4, roach - 1.365 (<- I calculated with 4 gas being worth 5 minerals), spine crawler - 2 (<- add 50 minerals to their cost of 100 minerals for the drone). Also it should be noted that zerglings don't have armor while queens and roaches have 1 and spine crawlers 2 by default.
Their ground DPS is pathetic (4 damage * 2 every one second = 8 dps) compared to the rest and suffers greatly from armor - granted, roach DPS is equal, but roaches are about 40 resources cheaper each and don't really care about armor. zergling - 7.18 DPS, spine crawler - 13.5/16.2 against armored units. This brings you to the following resources : DPS ratio:
Queen - 0.053 (read: you get 0.053 DPS for 1 resource), zergling - 0.28, roach - 0.0753, spine crawler - 0.09/0.108 against armored units
Queens are slower than roaches on creep (~2.6 <-> ~3) and have even less range. Their build time is nearly twice as long as for zerglings (24 seconds) and roaches (27 seconds) and exactly as long as for spine crawlers (50 seconds). Also you can produce queens only from hatch/lair/hive which can be a problem since you usually only have 2 hatchs early on an want to upgrade one of them to a lair which disables queen production during that time.
Queens are terrible ground defenders statswise. Sure, an army of queen transfusing each other is scary, but until then, they are just terrible against most ground units. Transfuse is certainly a good ability, but you need "transfusable" units like roaches or ultras before you can really use it in battle. Until then queens without charged energy for transfusing buffs your army neither really with range, DPS or health against ground armies.
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Queens are okay in the early game in small scale combat, but once it gets to the 50 food mark, getting those crucial transfuses in time becomes harder and harder and it isn't worth it to have more than 3 or 4 of them, tops.
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Queens actually save my day alot, Fast banshee void ray stuff like that, queens are there, they just help you from getting an auto lose too early. Other than that, I find when I do my 14 hatch, 13 pool against T and P, the queen I make to go to my natural (my first one when pool pops) helps so much against any type of early agression. like a zealot dies against 2 lings and a queen, and so will a 3 marine/2 helion type of push. Lets say I know a terran gonna try some helion harass on me, I make a third queen and block my ramp. Plus they don't need larva!
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queens are expensive but i can definitely see zergs adopting 4 or 5 queens to protect early expands. They have many many uses. Id say any zerg that is sticking to 2 queens is really giving up alot of map control and early defenses. having a bunch of creep tumors early on can get you where you need to go, late game.
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You never need to have more than 3 queens to defend unless you're suspecting an air play. Taking up 2 supply adds up really quickly and while queens own air and zealots they are hilariously bad against tanks, stalkers, roaches, and fast units like hellions. Making too many queens will delay your lair timing, too.
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You ppl are off topic for the most part. The OP is talking about making more than 3 queens for ground defense.
Queens actually save my day alot, Fast banshee void ray stuff like that, queens are there, they just help you from getting an auto lose too early
Thats air. Queens are pretty decent vs air.
ther than that, I find when I do my 14 hatch, 13 pool against T and P, the queen I make to go to my natural (my first one when pool pops) helps so much against any type of early agression. like a zealot dies against 2 lings and a queen, and so will a 3 marine/2 helion type of push. Lets say I know a terran gonna try some helion harass on me, I make a third queen and block my ramp.
Thats your first 3 queens. THey arent made as combat units, but since they can fight, you can use them for that a bit ofc. But thats off topic, since you arent making extra queens to defend past the first 3.
queens are expensive but i can definitely see zergs adopting 4 or 5 queens to protect early expands.
Queens come to late to defend the expo, you can only have them once the expo is already up. Plus, money invested in queens is better spent in anything else against ground.
Id say any zerg that is sticking to 2 queens is really giving up alot of map control and early defenses. having a bunch of creep tumors early on can get you where you need to go, late game.
Thats again, off topic, a third queen for creep is good, everyone knows that, the topic is about making more than 3 queens to actually use them to fight.
Airfan made a great post with actual numbers outlining why queens suck so much vs ground.
If the numbers are too complicated for you, think of it this way instead: 3 drones cost as much as a queen, and have more dps. Thats right, against ground forces, even making drones and using those to fight is superior to making queens to fight.
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On January 03 2011 07:21 morimacil wrote:
Airfan made a great post with actual numbers outlining why queens suck so much vs ground.
If the numbers are too complicated for you, think of it this way instead: 3 drones cost as much as a queen, and have more dps. Thats right, against ground forces, even making drones and using those to fight is superior to making queens to fight.
A drone dies after 40 dmg is dealt to it and your dps gets smaller. After 80 damage you're left with only 1/3 of the dps you had in the beginning while the Queen still deals full dps.
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On January 02 2011 21:02 mothergoose729 wrote:
If I sound like I am theory crafting a little bit please excuse me, but I am wondering why so many players favor spine crawlers and zerglings as their early defense, and maybe a macro zerg who wants to spread a lot of creep might get a third queen for air defense and tumors. Why do most players stop there? One really underutilized ability of the queen is transfuse which is like medivac heal on steriiods. One queen costs as much minerals as a drone morphed into a spine crawler, takes only 2 food, can attack air, can spread creap, its more mobile, and can heal building and other units. Also, and perhaps more importantly, queens are the only zerg unit which costs no larva. Why don't more higher level players make constant queens for the first 10 or so minutes of play? Wouldn't this allow for faster expanding, better defense and be economical? The only con I can see is that they are terrible offensive units, but many zergs marco hard until the the final push anyway. Would even 20 food worth of queens really take that much away from a max zerg army anyway?
Thoughts?
i've never seen a zerg above gold not use his queens defensively in the early game.
secondly, transfuse is horrible for swarm units. it's only really useful for really small micro battles or a huge ultralisk push.
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1 zero spare energy early due to need for creep/larvae
2 low hp
3 low dps
4 high cost for early game
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On January 03 2011 02:04 Yarhj wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2011 21:32 wherebugsgo wrote:
I'd love for you to point out a pro who routinely gets more than 3 queens for defense as opposed to just making units or spines. I haven't seen a fourth queen in months, precisely because it's a waste of 150 minerals that could go to a hatchery or something more versatile.
Dimaga consistently gets 3-4 queens early on. Granted, he's not relying exclusively on queens, but they definitely have a place in his unit composition. Not only do they supplement his army, but they help shut down early hellion/banshee harassment and allow aggressive early-game creep spread. He's been doing it forever, but check out day9 dailies 225 and 226 for some relatively recent instances.
Alright, I'll be quite blunt here. I used to be a fan of Dimaga. Since release though, his skill has been eclipsed by much better players.
3 queens isn't much different from the standard. Occasionally Dimaga gets that fourth queen before getting his third hatchery, but honestly he's making a mistake here. Unless he's playing against air harass where he'd need a replacement queen, it's unnecessary and a waste of 150 minerals.
Better players than he have showed how to stop both Hellion harassment and banshee harassment in their tracks with only 3 queens. With 3 queens you have the advantage of having 150 minerals to spare on spores, or 2 roaches, or 6 Zerglings, or a spine crawler. All of these units are more useful than a queen.
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EPT
