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I think many of us watched Morrow vs. Nightend yesterday in the TSL
where he lost in the lastgame, because he had the "wrong unit composition"
and much supply in Drones, while having many Ressources in Bank
(which effectivly lost him the Game.)
While watching that i realized something, and tested it afterwards.
well, i searched in the forum too look if anybody already mention the "trick" that i realized right now. (i have never seen any Zerg utilize it yet, but i see this beeing potential Game breaking)
I have no replay at hand to show you, but i tested it and it works!
I think everybody here is familiar with the Extractor Trick that allows you to
get more Supply before getting an Overlords.
This of course works because Zerg Supply deacreases while trying to build a building.
Now take a 200/200 situation, zerg stacks many larva and ressources on the bank.
Usually that leads to what we use to call the "300 food" push, where Zerg can remax instantly and stay 200/200 the whole time.
Now the Idea is to do the "extractor trick", to surpass the 200 food limit.
For that you only need to realize that it works for every Building that is in a building process!
looking at this, now Zerg can use as many drones as he wants to build the cheapest building he can afford (Spore Crawler that is = 75mins)
Example:
if we take 20 Drones and build 20 Spores it takes the zerg:
20*75 = 1500 minerals
thats usually easily affordable in lategame situation (where Zergs flood 3-4K minerals)
What happens Gamemechanic wise?
The Supply Drops to 180/200 during the building Process of the Spores now you can build additional 20 Supply of Army
i.e. 40 Zerglings (20*50 = 1000minerals)
after building Fightsupply you cancel the Spores.
This will give you back:
The 20 Drones
75% of the Minerals spend on Spores = 75% * 20 * 75 = 1125
and leaves you with an 220/200 Supply, while still having the superior economy.
essientially Zerg can build XX Drone + 200 Supply of Army as long as he has enough minerals to start Spores and building Units.
Costs for doing this:
Since you cancels the Spore Crawlers, you will get 75% of the minerals back making making the whole "Oversupply-Trick"
effective costs:
25%* 20 * 75 = 375minerals. (which is imho nothing)
EDIT
i didn't count that opportiunity cost in (lost mining time), but you could do this with Drones on a base that are mined out thus minizing the lost ressources alot, it certainly (for me) seems better than building even more Money in the bank. ("keep your money low","build more Supply")
of course 20 Drones isn't the limit, if you have enough money you can get even more Army like 230/240/250.
while still keeping the drones to keep your economy as high, instead of wasting them on useless buildings or sacrificing it.
With the Additional FightSupply you can do anything you want!
Harass? Get Banelings for additional dmg (i would favor this!!) ? get additional techunit to counter? Pick up Reinforcements?
This whole Trick will of course give you effectivly XX additional Fightsupply on the Field in Lategame where XX is the amount of Spores and Fightsupply you can afford after reaching 200/200.
This gives Macro Zergs even more strengh as it already has, which could give them an edge over the opponent (and could be Gamebreaking/Winning)
Didn't make a Video for it but it works...feel free to test it yourself.
I just find it odd that no "pro" has already has discoverd this, at least i couldn't find anything about this on the internet and have never seen it in games.
quintessence of the thread:
If Zergs gets maxxed, he can get even more fight supply surpassing that 200 limit.
The idea of course works in any matchup ZvX
where getting additional of a specific unit might give you an advantage in battles.
Ofcourse your main goal isn't to get 200+XX supply in a game, but it might be advandtageous do to so in certain situations -> discuss
generell
Advantage:
+ More additional Battle Supply, in maxxed situations -> better outcome in fights
+ No need so sacrifice units to free supply
Disadvantages:
- Costs of canceling buildings, lost mining time
- (more APM)
- possibly harder techswitch cause you need to get <200 supply to rebuild units.
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Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
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On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
you can play as normal, max out with roaches (200/200), and still get the additional 40 Banelings.
that is the whole point of the "Oversupply-Trick" and it only costs you 375 minerals, in my example.
This gives hard macro reactive Zerg players quite an advantage imho.(since Zerg Macro excels both other Races)
since you have Additional XX Fightsupply which you wouldn't be able to build if you didn't sacrifice units to free supply, so this whole concept has no DRAWBACKS after you are Maxxed.
More Fightsupply on the Field = better Results in big Engagements in your Favor.
(while still keeping superior economy)
look at this with the Morrow Game in Mind, even after he had maxxed out he could have retreated, and build additional Fightsupply, instead of wasting his Army.
takeing your example Zerg could do what you said, stop at 180 food get 20 supply of banelings, and then get another additional 20 supply of banelings. (thus having 80 Banelings!)
This opens many possible Tactics in the future if it isn't going to be fixed.
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Hey, its an interesting idea, which I had honestly never conisdered.
How we use the supply is would be situational obviously.
The real discussion then becomes is it actually cost effective, or which situations is it cost effective. If I'm paying 4-500 minerals for an extra 20 supply (100 for 40, etc), and I still lose the head up battle I'm obviously even further behind.
I somewhat shockes me that I haven't seen any discussion on this, while my gut suggests that saving the money and just rebuilding after/durring the battle would be best, I'm not sure. I have to admit I don't often feel that in my lategame 200 vs 200 battles that an extra bit of supply would have won me the day... still worth thinking about
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Its already been discussed in other threads.
Its usually better to do it with spine crawlers, it costs a little more upfront, but it gives you an extra 20 seconds of build time, which can be crucial time. Telling 60 drones to build 60 crawlers, and then having them get to the place, and actually start building takes a surprisingly long time.
If you tell them to build spines instead, while the initial cost is slightly higher, you have more time. And if some of them do morph into spines before you can cancel, well having a bunch of spines in the middle of the map, or spread out at each base, is usually a lot more useful than having extra spore cralwers around.
Since you cancels the Spore Crawlers, you will get 75% of the minerals back making making the whole "Oversupply-Trick" cost you only effectivly
25%* 20 * 75 = 375minerals. (which is imho nothing)
Nope, thats wrong.
You are pulling a large amount of drones off mining. for 50-100 seconds.
Doing this costs you thousands of minerals and gas, even if you just bring all your drones together, run them around for a bit, and then send them back. the money lost by canceling buildings is just the tip of the iceberg.
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On February 21 2011 01:08 morimacil wrote:
Its usually better to do it with spine crawlers, it costs a little more upfront, but it gives you an extra 20 seconds of build time, which can be crucial time. Telling 60 drones to build 60 crawlers, and then having them get to the place, and actually start building takes a surprisingly long time.
If you tell them to build spines instead, while the initial cost is slightly higher, you have more time. And if some of them do morph into spines before you can cancel, well having a bunch of spines in the middle of the map, or spread out at each base, is usually a lot more useful than having extra spore cralwers around.
i understand your the reasoning, but i had no problem pulling that of
since you can cancel all building spores with one klick
You are pulling a large amount of drones off mining. for 50-100 seconds.
Doing this costs you thousands of minerals and gas, even if you just bring all your drones together, run them around for a bit, and then send them back. the money lost by canceling buildings is just the tip of the iceberg.
ok i didn't count that opportiunity cost in, but you could do this with Drones on a base that are mined out thus minizing the lost ressources alot, it certainly seems better than building even more Money in the bank. ('keep your money low')
Still having additional fight supply on the field is better imho than having Fightsupply building after losing supply in fights.
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is one 220 food army later in the game more effective than an earlier 200 food army and then a smaller army by a wide enough margin that it's worth the enormous inefficiency required to do this?
let's find out...
1...
2...
3
The answer is 3.
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i think its a good idea, paying 400 minerals for an extra 20 supply seems pretty worth it for zerg ^^
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but you're not paying 400 minerals in the simple terms that that wording implies, you're paying 1500 and getting 1100 back later. That delays the initial investment and ties up more resources
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So this is the situation:
A) You're maxed
B) You have a huge surplus of minerals.
Against an even opponent this means:
A) He's maxed.
I don't believe the strategy your suggesting is viable in that situation because:
As Zerg you DON'T want to engage huge army on huge army.
It's not like a 240 supply army beats a 200 supply Protoss ball anyway. You'll just lose even harder!
You want to counterattack, drop, flank and then resupply instantly. The extra supply doesn't matter for this.
If you get to 200 supply you're instant thought should be, let's throw 40 supply into his main base via drops.
He wont be fully upgraded at this point so hit the tech buildings, forges, templar buildings and stargates, robos etc...
If he moves his army back to engage you hit his nearest expo.
And you can make spine crawlers to defend key positions so that if he tries an all-in counter you can hold it.
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On February 21 2011 01:15 drewbie.root wrote:
i think its a good idea, paying 400 minerals for an extra 20 supply seems pretty worth it for zerg ^^
well making examples, ZvT
Muta/Bling/ling, how often you do see a big clash 200 vs. 200 where Zerg pushes out against terrans army survives barely (due to micro), and wins and Zerg desperatly tries to rebuild Army, while having his bases crushed.
now this additional 20 Supply (or More) equaling 40 Banelings or more, could tip the battle in favor of Zerg completely crushing the Terrans army.
Whole trick costs you effectivly ~ 19 minerals for each additional supply after 200.
Especially with upgraded Banelings which get very costeffective in masses i can see this viable.
Sure it isn't the instant win button, but it can give you an edge in a big macro game.
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I tried this out in games several months ago and found that it's much harder to do in game than it looks. It can mean the difference between win and loss in some situations but it's reaaaaaaaaaaally rare that you'll be in a situation where you can pull this off. I'd like to see if some pro's can do better with it than I could though.
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On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
I second this notion.
Banelings work as a general 'everything' killer. They bolster any lategame army vs protoss so much.
But in combination with this oversupply trick, this might work to add a couple more roaches to your force before engaging.
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On February 21 2011 01:22 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 01:15 drewbie.root wrote:
i think its a good idea, paying 400 minerals for an extra 20 supply seems pretty worth it for zerg ^^ well making examples, ZvT Muta/Bling/ling, how often you do see a big clash 200 vs. 200 where Zerg pushes out against terrans army survives barely (due to micro), and wins and Zerg desperatly tries to rebuild Army, while having his bases crushed. now this additional 20 Supply (or More) equaling 40 Banelings or more, could tip the battle in favor of Zerg completely crushing the Terrans army. Whole trick costs you effectivly ~ 19 minerals for each additional supply after 200. Especially with upgraded Banelings which get very costeffective in masses i can see this viable. Sure it isn't the instant win button, but it can give you an edge in a big macro game. It DOES NOT effectively cost 19 minerals per supply. In fact, to reduce the cost of this to just minerals is naive; time is a better measurement.
Here's how it would play out: you max out as zerg. There are 2 cases, assuming your opponent isn't bad and sitting around doing nothing after reaching 200 before you.
1) you have 200 and your opponent does not. Let's assume your opponent is at 190, which is intentionally high to favor this technique (correct me if i'm wrong but i think zvt and zvp the zerg usually hits 200 when the t or p is at around 180). Now you're sitting around doing nothing while you build up over 2000 minerals. Meanwhile, your opponent who was at 190 is hitting 200 and spending his money on upgrades or unit producing structures instead of stockpiling it for more units. Once you get your 220 supply, you've increased your lead by 10 supply but you have all the money from canceled crawlers sitting in the bank while the opponent has been investing his money as it came in. So you've gone up 10 supply but lost position in upgrades and infrastructure.
Was it worth it? I've been making assumptions generally in favor of this technique the whole time. If the other player was at a lower supply, say 180, this trick is even less favorable. Now you're making 20 units while he makes 20 units, but you make yours 1500 minerals later while he spends it on upgrades! a clear loss.
2)you and the opponent both reach 200 at the same time. Your opponent just attacks you or builds tons of unit producing structures and upgrades while you stockpile money for 20 more supply. I don't think timing is in your favor here. A good opponent will know what you're up to, make sure the max army battle takes place near your base if not just attack right away, and use all the buildings he built (if he waited) to make reinforcements that can hold off your survivors. Then he's at an advantage with more infrastructure than you.
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@Yotta
thats true this isn't a get out of jail free card.
but it specifically refers to endgame situations (which seem to happen quite often), where Zerg is bound to collect more ressources than he can spend.
My idea just goes with the flow "Zerg need more masses"
I mean most of you would agree i think going into a fight with 240 Supply (thus more fightsupply)
is better than with less.
After the engagement , your opponent should have lost more than a 200vs.200 situation.
but you still have the better economy to wrap up.
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On February 21 2011 02:00 freetgy wrote:
@Yotta
thats true this isn't a get out of jail free card.
but it specifically refers to endgame situations, where Zerg is bound to collect more ressources than he can spend.
My idea just goes with the flow "Zerg need more masses"
I mean most of you would agree i think going into a fight with 240 Supply (thus more fightsupply)
is better than with less.
After the engagement , your opponent should have lost more than a 200vs.200 situation.
but you still have the better economy to wrap up.
He should be attacking and taking advantage of his quick unit reproduction abilities, not waiting around on max army to use his money less efficiently than his opponent.
Nobody ever said this was a get out of jail free card and that's not what I'm arguing against. I'm simply saying this is not viable at high level play.
Edited to accommodate your edit:
it's 240 supply now? Now you're saving up for 40 crawlers + 40 units of money before you see any return on your income. What is your opponent doing during this time?
I'd argue that by the time you're done amassing your inefficient army your opponent will have either already forced a 200v200 fight or surpassed you economically.
Edit at your post below me because I don't want end up having 10 posts from this discussion saying basically the same thing:
On February 21 2011 02:05 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:02 Yotta wrote:
Nobody ever said this was a get out of jail free card and that's not what I'm arguing against. I'm simply saying this is not viable at high level play. Well that is out of grasp of my understanding of Zerg Gameplay, so i don't want to argue that. sure in tense fights, where fights are happening left and right, this isn't going to be useful. But in those situations you won't have the money anyway to do it. Question is will this never be viable in endgame situations. again i could care less (<--- protoss player) just found this a very interesting trick that might me viable in certain situations.
I'm not trying to attack you and say your idea is stupid. It's pretty clever and I've never thought of it before now.
I am, however, saying that if both players are playing well this will not be useful, ever. I've outlined in my previous post why I think this won't work if you reach 200 a bit before your opponent and if you reach 200 as your opponent does. If your opponent hits 200 before you and lets you do this you're not playing a high level player. If you hit 200 way before your opponent you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. If you can think of a viable scenario for this I'll gladly accept it, but I just can't imagine one.
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On February 21 2011 02:02 Yotta wrote:
Nobody ever said this was a get out of jail free card and that's not what I'm arguing against. I'm simply saying this is not viable at high level play.
Well that is out of grasp of my understanding of Zerg Gameplay, so i don't want to argue that.
sure in tense fights, where fights are happening left and right, this isn't going to be useful.
But in those situations you won't have the money anyway to do it.
Question is will this never be viable in endgame situations.
again i could care less (<--- protoss player) just found this a very interesting trick that might me viable in certain situations.
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This is a great idea, more so in ZvT than ZvP imo but very useful nonetheless. The zerg usually doesn't lose because he's out of minerals. They mostly lose because they get crushed and don't manage to remax in time. Also you don't lose the minerals when you pull drones, you just get them later. The only minerals you are losing are the ones that you use to cancel the spore crawler. It might be hard to pull of in a real game, but if you manage to do it it's definetely worth it imo.
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On February 21 2011 02:02 Yotta wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:00 freetgy wrote:
@Yotta
thats true this isn't a get out of jail free card.
but it specifically refers to endgame situations, where Zerg is bound to collect more ressources than he can spend. He should be attacking and taking advantage of his quick unit reproduction abilities, not waiting around on max army to use his money less efficiently than his opponent. Nobody ever said this was a get out of jail free card and that's not what I'm arguing against. I'm simply saying this is not viable at high level play.
I guess I'm just not sure its' something you can make such a blanket statement about.
I can see issues with it, but assuming your making the crawlers in your base to cancel, and you've got at last 100 apm then the lost mining cost could be kept to a reasonable minimum.
The real question is, are the situtations where extra supply is going to be cost effective.
my intiuition says there should be some, but not most situtaions, but I feel thats where the real discusion is.
I mean people, if there was an upgrade you could buy at hive tech, that increased your supply cap by 20 supply and cost 800 min, how many people would buy that?
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this is pretty solid imo
update us with the replay when you're free pls
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On February 21 2011 02:09 Galleon.frigate wrote:
I mean people, if there was an upgrade you could buy at hive tech, that increased your supply cap by 20 supply and cost 800 min, how many people would buy that?
great hypothetical argument, in my eyes, Zerg Players of course would get that Upgrade, i don't see why they shouldn't (if it suits their strategy)
Lets take the argument, ("Zerg should attack when they are maxxed")
I have no problem with this statement at all, as it is great to use that advantage.
Question would be why 200? why not 180? 160?
you should still have the economic and supply advantage.
the answer to that question, is the answer why not 220? 240?
especially in those "P, Deathball" situations, where you could overproduce Corrupters, and are left with to few groundunits, where it is argued that you will get rolled by gateway armies, this could play a role.
i mean the Corrupters are gonna roll his Voidray/Colossus ball in decent numbers,
now this additional supply due to the "trick" might give you the time to remax properly.
i mean you only need to play on time. (since your on assuming 4-5 bases, where he is on 2)
(again this is just an example where it could give an edge!, needs testing)
but 2 base deathball is an All-in after all,
if it fails he loses.
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On February 21 2011 02:08 Bergys wrote:
This is a great idea, more so in ZvT than ZvP imo but very useful nonetheless. The zerg usually doesn't lose because he's out of minerals. They mostly lose because they get crushed and don't manage to remax in time. Also you don't lose the minerals when you pull drones, you just get them later. The only minerals you are losing are the ones that you use to cancel the spore crawler. It might be hard to pull of in a real game, but if you manage to do it it's definetely worth it imo. If you get your minerals later you are losing minerals. Not minerals mined over the course of a fully-mined out game of course, but until you would have been mined out and start mining the minerals you would have mined earlier you are down by that many minerals.
This isn't equal in the long run, this is a clear advantage for an opponent who does not take his workers off minerals. Until the point at which you only have left the minerals you didn't mine, you are behind, and once you hit that point you begin to catch up. At the end, when you are fully mined out, you have mined as many minerals as you would have if you didn't take your drones off earlier. At every point in the game until then, you are behind by as many minerals as those workers would have mined while off the mineral line. If your opponent plans to win he will take advantage of this. If he doesn't, you've caught up to him at the end of the game.
So many people on this site seem not to understand that the value of money is a decreasing function of time -.-
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On February 21 2011 02:30 Yotta wrote:
So many people on this site seem not to understand that the value of money is a decreasing function of time -.-
i understand your argument fully, but Zerg (at least compared to the other races) mines more minerals in the same time as far as i am aware.(so it would be less of having an advantage, and not a disadvantage)
lets say Zerg has 3-4k on the bank and is maxxed, you say, taking drones of the line thus delaying mineral income is putting you up on the backfoot.
This now has to be compared to the tactical advantage of using those additional units?
lets consider baneling drops (into eco), which you wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
Question is, can those XX more supply used more costefficiently so they outwaight their costs of getting them?
idk, but seems worth testing.
how many additional XX units are beneficial is a question that needs to be answered, my +20 Supply is just an example, and may be "too much"?
(i am not a active zerg player!!)
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i do agree that this is useful, there is a vod of machine coaching mr. bitter in which he actually does do this, though less exaggerated. he put down like 6 spores to free up space for some corruptors and had 206 supply, but the same idea still applies.
the thing is, i don't think this is a good idea unless you're in a situation where you're maxed but you can't attack in a good position. it's a position not unfamiliar to a late game zerg. sometimes you have to put down bases and such just so that you don't stagnate after maxing, because the shit hits the fan when a non-zerg is even or 1 less base and even supply maxed. this is less efficient but nonetheless another way to prevent stagnation to the point where the non-zerg catches up to you.
however, i think the original thread's intent of having like a 220 or 240 or whatever supply army is hugely exaggerating the usefulness of this. you're basically putting a mineral line out of commission at a time where you could be attacked and you need to be remaxing. i imagine there is that once in a blue moon time where the move pays off, but with this technique i imagine a more consistent usefulness, like maxing out and then fitting in some supply efficient units, like morphing corruptors to broodlords (4 supply, +2 since the corruptor is made already), or infestors or banelings to put into some overlords, maybe a pack of zerglings to runby without using your main army. things like that, i think are well worth the cost, while putting down 20 spores, stopping mining for 30 seconds to a minute, just for 10 more roach/hydra is just too much unless you just KNOW you'll die without more stuff than you have right now.
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Smart idea. At this point of the game you really don't care about lost mining time.
Not sure why people are bringing it up.
You're not trying to be resoure efficient either. You're trying to end the game, and floating 4k/4k isn't helping in the least bit.
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For now it does boil down to a style choice. It would take a lot of games to figure out if one method is more effective than the other. No need to theorycraft so muc. Just try it enough times to see if you like this method over making excess larva.
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On February 21 2011 02:32 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:30 Yotta wrote:
So many people on this site seem not to understand that the value of money is a decreasing function of time -.- i understand your argument fully, but Zerg (at least compared to the other races) mines more minerals in the same time as far as i am aware.(so it would be less of having an advantage, and not a disadvantage) lets say Zerg has 3-4k on the bank and is maxxed, you say, taking drones of the line thus delaying mineral income is putting you up on the backfoot. This now has to be compared to the tactical advantage of using those additional units? lets consider baneling drops (into eco), which you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. Question is, can those XX more supply used more costefficiently so they outwaight their costs of getting them? idk, but seems worth testing. how many additional XX units are beneficial is a question that needs to be answered, my +20 Supply is just an example, and may be "too much"? (i am not a active zerg player!!)
Decreasing the magnitude of an advantage is a disadvantage.
If zerg is maxed and has 3-4k in the bank he has either been maxed for a while or has been macroing poorly. My argument is that this is not viable at high level play.
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On February 21 2011 02:37 junemermaid wrote:
Smart idea. At this point of the game you really don't care about lost mining time.
Not sure why people are bringing it up.
You're not trying to be resoure efficient either. You're trying to end the game, and floating 4k/4k isn't helping in the least bit.
yes, it does help. your maxed army is going to die if you get attacked with a maxed army. food counts late game zvx are deceiving because often the zerg has many more drones and yet still ends up behind in food, meaning their army is way behind after the attack. you then recoup your losses with 1 production cycle.
you can't make 50+ units all of a sudden if you don't have thousands of resources. if you don't have that buffer, the non-zerg just marches forward, killing what they see. if you stop mining from one of your bases for a long time and you also spend a lot of the money preemptively, what you're doing is banking on winning with the first attack, because the banked resources are depleted. i'm completely unconvinced that adding 20 food of units before you inevitably remax to some extent allows you to do that without replays. maybe in tvz, but it seems completely futile in pvz
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On February 21 2011 02:30 Yotta wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:08 Bergys wrote:
This is a great idea, more so in ZvT than ZvP imo but very useful nonetheless. The zerg usually doesn't lose because he's out of minerals. They mostly lose because they get crushed and don't manage to remax in time. Also you don't lose the minerals when you pull drones, you just get them later. The only minerals you are losing are the ones that you use to cancel the spore crawler. It might be hard to pull of in a real game, but if you manage to do it it's definetely worth it imo. If you get your minerals later you are losing minerals. Not minerals mined over the course of a fully-mined out game of course, but until you would have been mined out and start mining the minerals you would have mined earlier you are down by that many minerals. This isn't equal in the long run, this is a clear advantage for an opponent who does not take his workers off minerals. Until the point at which you only have left the minerals you didn't mine, you are behind, and once you hit that point you begin to catch up. At the end, when you are fully mined out, you have mined as many minerals as you would have if you didn't take your drones off earlier. At every point in the game until then, you are behind by as many minerals as those workers would have mined while off the mineral line. If your opponent plans to win he will take advantage of this. If he doesn't, you've caught up to him at the end of the game. So many people on this site seem not to understand that the value of money is a decreasing function of time -.-
When you're maxed out and floating thousands of minerals and gas, this entire argument doesn't really mean jack.
Edit:
On February 21 2011 02:46 Herculix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:37 junemermaid wrote:
Smart idea. At this point of the game you really don't care about lost mining time.
Not sure why people are bringing it up.
You're not trying to be resoure efficient either. You're trying to end the game, and floating 4k/4k isn't helping in the least bit. yes, it does help. your maxed army is going to die if you get attacked with a maxed army. food counts late game zvx are deceiving because often the zerg has many more drones and yet still ends up behind in food, meaning their army is way behind after the attack. you then recoup your losses with 1 production cycle. you can't make 50+ units all of a sudden if you don't have thousands of resources. if you don't have that buffer, the non-zerg just marches forward, killing what they see. if you stop mining from one of your bases for a long time and you also spend a lot of the money preemptively, what you're doing is banking on winning with the first attack, because the banked resources are depleted. i'm completely unconvinced that adding 20 food of units before you inevitably remax to some extent allows you to do that without replays. maybe in tvz, but it seems completely futile in pvz
I think 40 banelings would help in the initial confrontation like crazy.
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On February 21 2011 02:45 Yotta wrote:
Decreasing the magnitude of an advantage is a disadvantage.
If zerg is maxed and has 3-4k in the bank he has either been maxed for a while or has been macroing poorly. My argument is that this is not viable at high level play.
i guess it is a difference in playstsyle, you would suggest i am assuming attacking and trading armies when you reach 200/200?
then my question to you, why not already at 180 or 160?
(you still have your mining/supply advantage)
what makes 200 so special? (beside it beeing the ingame food cap)
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On February 21 2011 02:49 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:45 Yotta wrote:
Decreasing the magnitude of an advantage is a disadvantage.
If zerg is maxed and has 3-4k in the bank he has either been maxed for a while or has been macroing poorly. My argument is that this is not viable at high level play. i guess it is a difference in playstsyle, you would suggest i am assuming attacking and trading armies when you reach 200/200? then my question to you, why not already at 180 or 160? (you still have your "mining" advantage) what makes 200 so special? (beside it beeing the ingame food cap) Your mining advantage is more pronounced later in the game because your economy grows exponentially. If you could go to 300/300 that's when I would attack as zerg. In starcraft, however, the lastest you can attack without doing inefficient things like this trick is at 200/200. This is when your faster economy growth will have the highest possible advantage against an opponent. So, in a sense, you're right. There is nothing special about this timing except that it is the food cap, the end of economic growth.
My argument from here is that this trick is so economically inefficient that doing it lessens any advantage you may have had at the 200/200 mark.
Edit: Of course, there are times when you should attack as zerg when you are not supply capped, like when your opponent screws up and you gain an advantage earlier in the game, but this is neither an example of high level play nor relevant to this thread.
Edit2: by "this is not an example of high level play" i don't mean that pros never make mistakes; of course they do. I'm saying that you can't theorycraft assuming that people will make mistakes because they do not make mistakes consistently. That's why theorycrafting is useless; everyone makes tons of mistakes every game and you can't predict what they will be. The best you can do is theorize how the game would play out if everyone played as well as humanly possible.
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On February 21 2011 02:49 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 02:45 Yotta wrote:
Decreasing the magnitude of an advantage is a disadvantage.
If zerg is maxed and has 3-4k in the bank he has either been maxed for a while or has been macroing poorly. My argument is that this is not viable at high level play. i guess it is a difference in playstsyle, you would suggest i am assuming attacking and trading armies when you reach 200/200? then my question to you, why not already at 180 or 160? (you still have your mining/supply advantage) what makes 200 so special? (beside it beeing the ingame food cap)
this is a secondary question that is actually almost a second thread.
I think some people are moving away from the 300 push to the have a timing attack as soon as you max, try to trade to your advantage.
I'm not sure what is best, and I doubt even the best players will have the difinitive answer for months, though they will obviously know what works best for them.
It's a valid question, but if it should or shouldn't happen, zergs will and will continue to end up maxed with a lot of banking money - and that is the situation that the thead is addressing
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This idea gives me a tremendous nerd boner. I'm imagining a 200/200 army with 10 mutalisks poking at their back for free (in terms of food) during the confrontation
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On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
you wont believe that shit but some protoss are actually capable of targeting down overlords
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I have not tried this yet but it seems like a pretty good idea although incredibly situational. People who say 20 extra food is nothing for the cost are pretty uninformed IMO. Imagine in ZvZ you bust this trick out late game and get another 10 units than your opponent. The battle suddenly swings WAY into your favor and you come out with exponentially more units than your opponent after the engagement (in even fights, 2 more roaches or hydras on one side than the other will mean 25 units at the end).
Also considering supply in late game is ~70 workers meaning your actual army supply is only 130. Gaining 20-40 more supply is HUGE. Also to people who think the extra supply is pointless and burning your army just to re-max would be a better option: Imagine fighting a protoss army and 1/4th of your army gets force-fielded off. You lose 3/4thss and retreat with the remaining 1/4th and re-max. That is basically what you're doing if you don't break your food cap. Anyways that is a pretty crude example.
Anyways definitely going to try this. Thanks OP.
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I can see this having some rare uses, but in general you should attack when you get close to or arrive at 200 supply. if you wait at 200 until you have harvested another ~3k minerals (1.5k for the spore crawlers and another 1.5k to spend on, for example, corruptors) it will actually give you a worse result in most cases than just attacking immidiately, because protoss can catch up in supply during this time.
and no matter what, 220 zerg supply still doesnt win against 200 of protoss (assuming somewhat equal tech etc.)
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this is very common and used quite frquently, i remember hearing it on mr.Bitter's 12 weeks with the pros too, but it was quite known before that too.
Funny thing is, actually it might have been Morrow who did this first time i saw it, not sure though.
the problem is this takes up some time, and 20 supply or so doesnt change that much unless you need it for something like BLs, banedrops or whathaveyou
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On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
I think this makes sense if you opening with drop tech to do drops in ZvP, but if you didn't, that's quite a bit of tech and you could be caught thin at the wrong timing.
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Of course, i don't see a Zerg playing going straight for a 240 food situation.
Sure attacking at 200 sure is most likely the better choice, but there is bound to occur some games where it comes to some really late games, where this might give you an advantage, in some of the matchups. (it just came into my mind after the nightend vs. morrow match, but it is not matchup specific)
i'll leave it too active zerg players to test and judge if this is something viable to incorparate in real play, since i have never seen this, so i just wanted to share my finding.
beside the 200/200 situation this also can be used to prevent supply blocks, though i don't know if it would be worth it.
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I am, however, saying that if both players are playing well this will not be useful, ever. I've outlined in my previous post why I think this won't work if you reach 200 a bit before your opponent and if you reach 200 as your opponent does. If your opponent hits 200 before you and lets you do this you're not playing a high level player. If you hit 200 way before your opponent you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. If you can think of a viable scenario for this I'll gladly accept it, but I just can't imagine one.
Well the problem here with your assumptions is that you are looking at it in situations in which nothing will work.
If you reach 200 supply as your opponent has a 190 supply void ray colossus deathball, you are dead. If you both max out at the same time, you are dead. If he maxes out before you, you are dead. So of course, in all of those situations, getting to 220 food, or 260 food, or what ever, isnt really going to work. But in all of those situations, very little is going to work.
If you hit 200 way before your opponent
Thats the point you should be considering something like this, or a 300 food push, and so on.
you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency.
There are quite a few situations where you may for example max out while your opponent is at 160 food or so, or have the ability to max out while he is still there, but cant actually attack him.
Sure enough, you may have a supply advantage at that point, but if you decide to attack through a choke into a PF and sieged tanks, with vikings, turrets and bunkers, then the fact that you have a supply advantage is quite irrelevant here, since an attack would be suicidal.
So yeah, in cases where your opponent maxes out before you, or at the same time as you, you will lose if he knew what he was doing.
In cases where you max out, and your opponent doesnt have some kind of defensive advantage, then you can just go and kill him. No point in making a 220 food army, or a 300 food push.
But in cases where you max out first, and have an advantage, but cant actually just go and kill him, well then you have to be inefficient.
Attacking into an entrenched position with your freshly maxed army is going to be inefficient. 300 food pushing him is also inefficient. Going to 220, or more supply, is also going to be inefficient.
But in cases like those, since all of your options are inefficient, you just stop caring about what is efficient or not, and instead start caring about what is effective. Stuff like dropping 20 banelings on a planetary fortress. Inefficient ressource wise, but highly effective.
In short, anytime you would consider a 300 food push, thats when you should consider this. Not as a goal in every game, but as a useful tactic.
And imo, this is superior to a 300 food push. Or a 300 food defense.
Instead of fighting with ~140 supply of army, remaxing, and fighting again with ~140 supply of army, fighting with 200 supply, directly is going to be a lot more effective.
Having your first army being 50% bigger, that makes it exponentially more effective.
A 200 supply army is just way more brutal than 2x 140 food armies.
And ofc, the best would probably be a 200 supply army, followed by instantly remaxing, and so another 140 supply wave coming right after. The 350 food push 
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Why are people theorycrafing situations where the zerg maxes, the protoss maxes soon after, and the zerg has to wait a long time to build up the resources to do this? Even at the top level, zerg players spend a ton of time at 200/200 with 2k+ minerals.
You can theorycraft all you want about how the zerg out to have attacked immediately after 200/200 and whatever else, but in reality that isn't always viable, and certainly doesn't always happen.
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On February 21 2011 03:49 morimacil wrote:Show nested quote +I am, however, saying that if both players are playing well this will not be useful, ever. I've outlined in my previous post why I think this won't work if you reach 200 a bit before your opponent and if you reach 200 as your opponent does. If your opponent hits 200 before you and lets you do this you're not playing a high level player. If you hit 200 way before your opponent you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. If you can think of a viable scenario for this I'll gladly accept it, but I just can't imagine one. Well the problem here with your assumptions is that you are looking at it in situations in which nothing will work. If you reach 200 supply as your opponent has a 190 supply void ray colossus deathball, you are dead. If you both max out at the same time, you are dead. If he maxes out before you, you are dead. So of course, in all of those situations, getting to 220 food, or 260 food, or what ever, isnt really going to work. But in all of those situations, very little is going to work. Thats the point you should be considering something like this, or a 300 food push, and so on. Show nested quote +you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. There are quite a few situations where you may for example max out while your opponent is at 160 food or so, or have the ability to max out while he is still there, but cant actually attack him. Sure enough, you may have a supply advantage at that point, but if you decide to attack through a choke into a PF and sieged tanks, with vikings, turrets and bunkers, then the fact that you have a supply advantage is quite irrelevant here, since an attack would be suicidal. So yeah, in cases where your opponent maxes out before you, or at the same time as you, you will lose if he knew what he was doing. In cases where you max out, and your opponent doesnt have some kind of defensive advantage, then you can just go and kill him. No point in making a 220 food army, or a 300 food push. But in cases where you max out first, and have an advantage, but cant actually just go and kill him, well then you have to be inefficient. Attacking into an entrenched position with your freshly maxed army is going to be inefficient. 300 food pushing him is also inefficient. Going to 220, or more supply, is also going to be inefficient. But in cases like those, since all of your options are inefficient, you just stop caring about what is efficient or not, and instead start caring about what is effective. Stuff like dropping 20 banelings on a planetary fortress. Inefficient ressource wise, but highly effective. In short, anytime you would consider a 300 food push, thats when you should consider this. Not as a goal in every game, but as a useful tactic. And imo, this is superior to a 300 food push. Or a 300 food defense. Instead of fighting with ~140 supply of army, remaxing, and fighting again with ~140 supply of army, fighting with 200 supply, directly is going to be a lot more effective. Having your first army being 50% bigger, that makes it exponentially more effective. A 200 supply army is just way more brutal than 2x 140 food armies. And ofc, the best would probably be a 200 supply army, followed by instantly remaxing, and so another 140 supply wave coming right after. The 350 food push
And my argument is that the inefficiency of this technique puts you so far behind that it nullifies your economic advantage and allows the enemy player to catch up, matching or surpassing your surplus production and putting you at an unnecessary disadvantage. For every 20 supply you make beyond 200, even with your late game economic advantage, enemy players should be able to match you at least 1:1. It's better to be ahead by 40 when they have 160 than it is to be ahead by 40 when they have 200 (200/160 > 240/200)
I guess we can't really know who's right until people start testing it but I have a strong feeling this will have little to no use in high level play.
On February 21 2011 04:36 PJA wrote:
Why are people theorycrafing situations where the zerg maxes, the protoss maxes soon after, and the zerg has to wait a long time to build up the resources to do this? Even at the top level, zerg players spend a ton of time at 200/200 with 2k+ minerals.
You can theorycraft all you want about how the zerg out to have attacked immediately after 200/200 and whatever else, but in reality that isn't always viable, and certainly doesn't always happen.
I've said it already but I'll say it again, you can't assume people will make mistakes in theorycrafting because you can't predict their mistakes. As people get better play should approach theoretically optimal play and that's what I'm arguing about.
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This is useful if you are maxed and need to e.g. get a few brood lords. however getting 10 extra roaches or something like that is not that useful as what you need to worry about is trading armies while staying maxed, and it's not really practical to use this to consistently stay at 220/200
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On February 21 2011 01:08 morimacil wrote:Its already been discussed in other threads. Its usually better to do it with spine crawlers, it costs a little more upfront, but it gives you an extra 20 seconds of build time, which can be crucial time. Telling 60 drones to build 60 crawlers, and then having them get to the place, and actually start building takes a surprisingly long time. If you tell them to build spines instead, while the initial cost is slightly higher, you have more time. And if some of them do morph into spines before you can cancel, well having a bunch of spines in the middle of the map, or spread out at each base, is usually a lot more useful than having extra spore cralwers around. Show nested quote +
Since you cancels the Spore Crawlers, you will get 75% of the minerals back making making the whole "Oversupply-Trick" cost you only effectivly
25%* 20 * 75 = 375minerals. (which is imho nothing)
Nope, thats wrong. You are pulling a large amount of drones off mining. for 50-100 seconds. Doing this costs you thousands of minerals and gas, even if you just bring all your drones together, run them around for a bit, and then send them back. the money lost by canceling buildings is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you are maxed with extra money then yoiu don't really need it anyway. I think this could be better than losing with 3000 in the bank.
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On February 21 2011 04:47 dementrio wrote:
This is useful if you are maxed and need to e.g. get a few brood lords. however getting 10 extra roaches or something like that is not that useful as what you need to worry about is trading armies while staying maxed, and it's not really practical to use this to consistently stay at 220/200 If you have ~1-2k extra minerals (5-10 supply with this) when you hit 200/200 with nothing else to spend money on (upgrades?) then this might be a viable option to mitigate the effects of mistakes you've made There's still the lost mining time and a weaker 300 food push, but it could be situationally better to do this. If you're waiting around for enough money to get 20,40, or 60 food (4-10k minerals to begin production) over as some have suggested in this thread then you're falling behind.
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Personally i feel that Zergs are thinking about the late game the wrong way. They keep thinking about trying to get the right unit composition / economy to fund those units.
Tho a Zerg army wasn't really meant to stand and fight a late game Terran or Toss army.
Sure the 300 food push had a time where it worked well, but back then Terran and Toss players weren't playing for the late game. Thats why people perceived the Zerg late game to be strong.
As Crazy as it may sound, i feel Zerg need to be the Aggressive race come late game.
Zerg has: The Most transport methods, Typically faster units, Most map awareness, cheaper units, and the best production capacity. All these aspects lend themselves to being aggressive.
Late game Zerg, should really be trying to abuse movement plays. Hitting a series of points simultaneously, to break your opponents defensive posture. Making good trades for your cheaper easier to produce units.
This doesn't mean a Zerg shouldn't be expanding, as they are now. Its more a different stylistic way utilize the Zerg late game army.
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A quick question, if this was remotely viable, wouldn't it have been a dominant strategy in BW?
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South Africa4316 Posts
On February 21 2011 03:02 DarKFoRcE wrote:
I can see this having some rare uses, but in general you should attack when you get close to or arrive at 200 supply. if you wait at 200 until you have harvested another ~3k minerals (1.5k for the spore crawlers and another 1.5k to spend on, for example, corruptors) it will actually give you a worse result in most cases than just attacking immidiately, because protoss can catch up in supply during this time.
and no matter what, 220 zerg supply still doesnt win against 200 of protoss (assuming somewhat equal tech etc.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in many situations Zergs aren't able to choose when to attack. In the Morrow games, Nightend turtled quite hard and only moved out when Morrow had 3000 minerals stored up. In situations where Zerg can't get a good attacking position, a trick like this might be useful. That said, I'm not convinced this will be used in top level play.
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i think the time required to make 20 spines and cancelling them will hurt your play more than benefit it.
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To be honest I don't ever think the OP is suggesting that this is used as some kind of thing zergs should implement in their BO. But it is just very situational and actually is underused when the right situation DOES come up!!!
One example I can think of is just recently in the FXOpen it was Glade vs oGsSupernova it was on Shakuras and Glade was on Brood tech waiting to get them with massive bank. Where he could have used this trick he instead suicided his mutas which were doing soo much for him to help pump out some broods. Sure it might not have won him the game but getting those broods out about 30s-1min quicker while having the 8 broodlords of mutas in supply he sac'd earlier - I think it would have atleast had quite a good impact on the outcome.
To the people saying you're loosing 3000k onwards in bank - how? If anything if you are quick at doing your things (Which in all likeliness this trick will only see most potential at higher levels of play) you should be getting back 75% of that within a couple seconds of even having to do the trick. For the people saying you probably won't be sitting at such big numbers - You probably will if you are at late late game especially on some of the newer maps where you are just waiting on engaging the enemy's deathball chances are you should be sitting on as much larvae and mins as you can to repop instantly anyways...
*edit: by the way I figured if you do take the time to execute the trick as you build spines its probably easier to shift+# add em into a ctrl group or add em all to a control group after building em (before popping units) to make it that much faster to execute the cancellation.
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On February 21 2011 05:38 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 03:02 DarKFoRcE wrote:
I can see this having some rare uses, but in general you should attack when you get close to or arrive at 200 supply. if you wait at 200 until you have harvested another ~3k minerals (1.5k for the spore crawlers and another 1.5k to spend on, for example, corruptors) it will actually give you a worse result in most cases than just attacking immidiately, because protoss can catch up in supply during this time.
and no matter what, 220 zerg supply still doesnt win against 200 of protoss (assuming somewhat equal tech etc.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but in many situations Zergs aren't able to choose when to attack. In the Morrow games, Nightend turtled quite hard and only moved out when Morrow had 3000 minerals stored up. In situations where Zerg can't get a good attacking position, a trick like this might be useful. That said, I'm not convinced this will be used in top level play.
Well, one of morrows biggest mistakes in general is that he does not get drop earlier, which results him in not being able to attack once he hits 200 quite often. i am pretty sure that you get to 200 supply as zerg vs protoss you absolutely need to start attacking in some way. and if you cannot attack via a normal ground attack (shakuras for example) then you need the drop upgrade ready in time.
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On February 21 2011 05:47 Cite wrote:
*edit: by the way I figured if you do take the time to execute the trick as you build spines its probably easier to shift+# add em into a ctrl group or add em all to a control group after building em (before popping units) to make it that much faster to execute the cancellation.
double click or control click selects all building spines, one click on ESC cancels all of them
this can be done fast, thus any "time" argument not really justified.(you could also put them in a control group i think)
If you have the money to do it, there is imho few reasons to not do it, i mean having more units now is most times better (when you are going to fight) then having alittle more later
you could also view it as a early 300food push:
so instead of attacking with 120 Army + and replenishing constantly with 100 food during the engagement. You engage with a 160 food army and replenish with with 60 food.
The main difference would be that you initial Army should be way more deadlier.
and my gamesense at least says to me that a bigger army will deal more damage and receive fewer losses than a the smaller one (thus making it possibly more efficient, and make up for the "wasted" ressources)
Again i don't want to judge which one is better but situational i can see it giving good results.
@darkforce
i agree with u in general, dropping is strong as zerg if done right.
my idea is not a general strategy/goal, just another tool that might have his place in special situations.
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On February 21 2011 05:11 Yotta wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 04:47 dementrio wrote:
This is useful if you are maxed and need to e.g. get a few brood lords. however getting 10 extra roaches or something like that is not that useful as what you need to worry about is trading armies while staying maxed, and it's not really practical to use this to consistently stay at 220/200 If you have ~1-2k extra minerals (5-10 supply with this) when you hit 200/200 with nothing else to spend money on (upgrades?) then this might be a viable option to mitigate the effects of mistakes you've made There's still the lost mining time and a weaker 300 food push, but it could be situationally better to do this. If you're waiting around for enough money to get 20,40, or 60 food (4-10k minerals to begin production) over as some have suggested in this thread then you're falling behind.
You're talking like its rare for a zerg player to get to 200/200 without a huge amount of minerals in the bank. It's not a question of if, but of when.
Yes, I realized you've made a case for "optimal play", but that has yet to be seen. With the current data-set, I haven't seen a zerg that wasn't hemorrhaging money when they are maxed. Spending it on upgrades is only going to sink about 200/200 every 3 minutes. It's not exactly taxing on the income. You can't argue for a future that may or may not have a more streamlined spending of resources.
As is, taking into account top level zergs, this is a very potent ability to be able to get extra units. An extra 10 supply of roaches isn't that much, but if you look at an extra 10 supply of banelings (or even 20), you're looking at 5 (or 10) overlords filled to the brim with banelings. That will definitely be able to turn the tide of a battle.
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On February 21 2011 05:30 DarkGeneral wrote:
A quick question, if this was remotely viable, wouldn't it have been a dominant strategy in BW?
Much harder to pull off in BW because you'd be battling the UI to actually make the buildings. With SC2 you can just select a bunch of drones and queue up structures.
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Why is everyone in this thread making such a stupid comments like "its useless" etc.
At least its an option, for sure there are situations where this could be really helpful. Considering the fact that in this game outcome of battles sometimes lies on absence/presence of single unit...
Small example: 10 Mutas beat 15 Marines with ~3 Mutas suriviving, 16 marines beat 10 Mutas with ~6 Marines surviving. Presence of one more Colossus in lategame battle can be difference between crushing defeat and glorious victory...
...then difference between 200 food and 240 food can be game changing. Also we dont know that 240 food zerg army dont have chance vs 200 food Protoss army, we only know outcome of 200 vs 200.
However once getting exploited, I believe it will be fixed as it is clearly bug
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I can see this becoming more viable really late game once both players max out on upgrades, as there would literally be nothing else to spend money on.
It's situational, sure, but kudos to the OP for some creative thinking.
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this sounds sort of dumb-ish when you read it but honestly thinking back there are a ton of games where i could have done this and theres no reason not too, if theres no more bases for me to drop, no more tech to reach for, Ill gladly take an extra 30 supply worth of ultras at the end of a game
low ish currently masters Zerg
putting this on my list of things i need to remember to do more, right next to baiting any fight i think looks "too even" close enough to my worker line to pull them in to make it "way unfair" :-D
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Why is everyone in this thread making such a stupid comments like "its useless" etc.
That seems to be a general trend around here, anytime anyone suggests the possibility of anything, a bunch of ppl are instantly there to comment on how it will never work. About 50% of the comments on every thread are just explaining how the strategy will never work because it can be countered; In every thread.
A quick question, if this was remotely viable, wouldn't it have been a dominant strategy in BW?
Afaik, in BW, a terran or toss couldnt sit on 2 bases and max out a 200/200 army while letting zerg get 7 bases uncontested, and still have a fighting chance.
So different game, different situation.
If your opponent is actively trying to stop you from taking over the whole map, is forced to actually expand, giving you multiple places you can attack/drop, and you have dark swarm to bust down a front, then you just dont get in a situation where you are on 6-7 bases, and still cant break a turtling terran/toss trying to max on 2 bases.
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On February 21 2011 04:47 dementrio wrote:
This is useful if you are maxed and need to e.g. get a few brood lords. however getting 10 extra roaches or something like that is not that useful as what you need to worry about is trading armies while staying maxed, and it's not really practical to use this to consistently stay at 220/200
I think the idea is that it bolsters the food count of your initial army without the zerg player actually sacrificing drones (which are useful latter). It saves larva as well, sac'd drones would need to be reproduced later to keep up mining.
Assuming both players have around 80 workers, a 140 army is going to be a lot scarier in the initial exchange which is quite often the moment of truth for the non-zerg player. Assuming you don't put that extra food count into something like lings, I think it would make the exchange much more favorable. All ranged units scale favorably as their numbers increase, so the initial force is a lot stronger.
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On February 21 2011 05:27 Cyanocyst wrote:
Personally i feel that Zergs are thinking about the late game the wrong way. They keep thinking about trying to get the right unit composition / economy to fund those units.
Tho a Zerg army wasn't really meant to stand and fight a late game Terran or Toss army.
Sure the 300 food push had a time where it worked well, but back then Terran and Toss players weren't playing for the late game. Thats why people perceived the Zerg late game to be strong.
As Crazy as it may sound, i feel Zerg need to be the Aggressive race come late game.
Zerg has: The Most transport methods, Typically faster units, Most map awareness, cheaper units, and the best production capacity. All these aspects lend themselves to being aggressive.
Late game Zerg, should really be trying to abuse movement plays. Hitting a series of points simultaneously, to break your opponents defensive posture. Making good trades for your cheaper easier to produce units.
This doesn't mean a Zerg shouldn't be expanding, as they are now. Its more a different stylistic way utilize the Zerg late game army.
And then the protoss/terran builds a single pylon/depot while rolls over your hatcheries.
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On February 21 2011 03:00 Sfydjklm wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been! you wont believe that shit but some protoss are actually capable of targeting down overlords
Overlords have 200 health and cost 100 minerals. Bring extra empty OLs with your baneling bombers so 50% or more of the the shots go at empty OLs. Now it's a win for you if P is shooting at dirt cheap OLs with crap tons of health instead of at your roaches and hydras.
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On February 21 2011 09:10 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 03:00 Sfydjklm wrote:On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been! you wont believe that shit but some protoss are actually capable of targeting down overlords Overlords have 200 health and cost 100 minerals. Bring extra empty OLs with your baneling bombers so 50% or more of the the shots go at empty OLs. Now it's a win for you if P is shooting at dirt cheap OLs with crap tons of health instead of at your roaches and hydras.
Never looked at it this way, thanks for sharing.
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I've seen machine do this in the Mr. Bitter lesson on ZvP air play. I think going for 20-40 supply might be a bit overambitious considering the time required to execute this trick and the money required up front. However, if you can get 6-8 extra corruptors before engaging a big protoss death ball, then that can make a nice difference in the outcome of the big battle to come.
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On February 21 2011 04:44 Yotta wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 03:49 morimacil wrote:I am, however, saying that if both players are playing well this will not be useful, ever. I've outlined in my previous post why I think this won't work if you reach 200 a bit before your opponent and if you reach 200 as your opponent does. If your opponent hits 200 before you and lets you do this you're not playing a high level player. If you hit 200 way before your opponent you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. If you can think of a viable scenario for this I'll gladly accept it, but I just can't imagine one. Well the problem here with your assumptions is that you are looking at it in situations in which nothing will work. If you reach 200 supply as your opponent has a 190 supply void ray colossus deathball, you are dead. If you both max out at the same time, you are dead. If he maxes out before you, you are dead. So of course, in all of those situations, getting to 220 food, or 260 food, or what ever, isnt really going to work. But in all of those situations, very little is going to work.
If you hit 200 way before your opponent
Thats the point you should be considering something like this, or a 300 food push, and so on. you're giving up your advantage by making units inefficiently while your opponent makes his at normal efficiency. There are quite a few situations where you may for example max out while your opponent is at 160 food or so, or have the ability to max out while he is still there, but cant actually attack him. Sure enough, you may have a supply advantage at that point, but if you decide to attack through a choke into a PF and sieged tanks, with vikings, turrets and bunkers, then the fact that you have a supply advantage is quite irrelevant here, since an attack would be suicidal. So yeah, in cases where your opponent maxes out before you, or at the same time as you, you will lose if he knew what he was doing. In cases where you max out, and your opponent doesnt have some kind of defensive advantage, then you can just go and kill him. No point in making a 220 food army, or a 300 food push. But in cases where you max out first, and have an advantage, but cant actually just go and kill him, well then you have to be inefficient. Attacking into an entrenched position with your freshly maxed army is going to be inefficient. 300 food pushing him is also inefficient. Going to 220, or more supply, is also going to be inefficient. But in cases like those, since all of your options are inefficient, you just stop caring about what is efficient or not, and instead start caring about what is effective. Stuff like dropping 20 banelings on a planetary fortress. Inefficient ressource wise, but highly effective. In short, anytime you would consider a 300 food push, thats when you should consider this. Not as a goal in every game, but as a useful tactic. And imo, this is superior to a 300 food push. Or a 300 food defense. Instead of fighting with ~140 supply of army, remaxing, and fighting again with ~140 supply of army, fighting with 200 supply, directly is going to be a lot more effective. Having your first army being 50% bigger, that makes it exponentially more effective. A 200 supply army is just way more brutal than 2x 140 food armies. And ofc, the best would probably be a 200 supply army, followed by instantly remaxing, and so another 140 supply wave coming right after. The 350 food push And my argument is that the inefficiency of this technique puts you so far behind that it nullifies your economic advantage and allows the enemy player to catch up, matching or surpassing your surplus production and putting you at an unnecessary disadvantage. For every 20 supply you make beyond 200, even with your late game economic advantage, enemy players should be able to match you at least 1:1. It's better to be ahead by 40 when they have 160 than it is to be ahead by 40 when they have 200 (200/160 > 240/200) I guess we can't really know who's right until people start testing it but I have a strong feeling this will have little to no use in high level play. Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 04:36 PJA wrote:
Why are people theorycrafing situations where the zerg maxes, the protoss maxes soon after, and the zerg has to wait a long time to build up the resources to do this? Even at the top level, zerg players spend a ton of time at 200/200 with 2k+ minerals.
You can theorycraft all you want about how the zerg out to have attacked immediately after 200/200 and whatever else, but in reality that isn't always viable, and certainly doesn't always happen. I've said it already but I'll say it again, you can't assume people will make mistakes in theorycrafting because you can't predict their mistakes. As people get better play should approach theoretically optimal play and that's what I'm arguing about.
I mean if you want to put arbitrary restrictions on theorycrafting then go ahead. You're still ignoring the fact that there are often times where it is not optimal to attack immediately upon reaching 200/200 supply, and even if there are, there haven't been many games where people have gone to 220/200 and actually tested how this fares relative to play normally. Perhaps there are situations which warrant waiting for a 220/200 supply army.
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The thing is that you need to have a ton of extra resources to start this.
If Terran was maxed, then he could build 20 orbitals and just stop using mineral mining SCVs. If you have that much money to spare, then you should have won already.
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On February 21 2011 09:47 TurtlePerson2 wrote:
The thing is that you need to have a ton of extra resources to start this.
If Terran was maxed, then he could build 20 orbitals and just stop using mineral mining SCVs. If you have that much money to spare, then you should have won already.
that might be true for Protoss or Terran which get more costeffective lategame but mosttimes not for Zerg (who stay at T2 at least)
i think it was common sense that Zerg has cheap massable units, this design forces that Zergs get maxxed way earlier, than both other races.
Since this comes down by design, it is seen pretty often.
the whole concept of 300 food pushes derives from this.
But if i am able to afford a 300 food push, then i should be able to afford this "trick" here too.
if a Zerg can remax like 60-80 food with roaches this means he has already ressources stockpiled of
at least 4-5k
but why should you go for remax-style if i can get the same or at least some of it right now, just by the expense of 40*25%*75min= 750 minerals
the only limitation, would be the ressources you need to do it and the APM to pull it of ingame.
lets calc it for Hydras:
20 more Hydras = 2000/1000 ~40 supply ~40 spores
40 spores = 3000 minerals
"Trick" cost = 750 minerals
so to get additional 40 supply of hydras you need to start the process 5000/1000 ressources.
this is quite a bit, but a lategame Zerg with 3-4 bases should have around ~2-2,5k income i think
so thats 2 mins he needs to save up the necessary ressources.
you still can go for the 300 food push afterwards
just that it isn't 200/100 food but 240/60
another idea would be instead of getting normal units get additional queens
think of 10-20 additional Queens just for Transfuse energy additional to your normal army.
seems quite scary to me.
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On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been!
True. but what if you do both!!
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What about all of the lost mining time with drones...?
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Using drones from mined out mineral patches isn't really a solution to lost mining time. If things are mined out because every base on the map is mined out, then why not just suicide the drones to permanently get that extra supply?
And if every base on the map isn't mined out, then the opportunity cost of not mining remains because you should be looking to secure another base.
I don't know. This is the kind of thing that is useful to "think about" but is almost never going to be worth doing.
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obviously this trick is worth it if you have the resources to throw down a bunch of buildings and have some left over to spam out units.
no matter how you put it when both players are maxed the guy who has the 200+ food army is in better shape than the guy with 200 food.
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if you spend resources and mining time doing this, the re-max army strength is diminished
375 minerals is an ultralisk and a bit, nearly 4 mutas and 2.5 corruptors
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you shouldnt ever have to worry about this though... zerg isnt about army size it's about army replacability. the time you're taking to go oversupply is the time your opponent is taking to build up. its better if you throw your army at the other player as soon as you have 200/200 because as zerg, you WILL have reached it sooner, meaning you already have a supply advantage. and its better to rebuild as your units die. much better use of resources and time. and of course there's the fact that you WILL be able to rebuild faster than your opponent.
the only time i could see this as a viable strategy would be in ZvZ where niether you nor your opponent pressure each other all game...
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I remember hearing on some Mr. Bitter VOD that once you get to this point you can throw down 10 spine crawlers on the path between your base and his, so you 1) your income isn't as extraordinarily high 2) delays the counterattack once your first 200 food army is gone. Just sort of sounds like the same.
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I seem to remember IdrA doing this vs QXC on Blistering during MLG, though if I recall he lost a hatch shortly after so he may have just decided to increase distance mining. Managed to squeeze another ultra or two in I think though, going over cap.
Edit: Just looked for the replay. MLG DC, IdrA vs QXC game 3, 22:25, 6 o'clock expansion. Only goes to 202/200 though, so nothing too extravagant, but to fill with an extra ultra seems more practical than, say, working up to 220 or beyond.
Thing is, like DarKFoRcE said, as Zerg you shouldn't sit around at 200, 220, 240, whatever, you need to be trading that and remaxing. It's a nice trick if you can do it once, trust fund issues aside, but I'd like to see someone keep that up. Even if you have the apm and your opponent gives you the time, if you honestly have that many resources lying around you're doing something wrong.
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I would think if this became popular that blizz might have to take actions to make it impossible to go over 200 supply, you never know..... it could be quite broken.... time will tell i guess.
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On February 21 2011 02:09 Galleon.frigate wrote:
I mean people, if there was an upgrade you could buy at hive tech, that increased your supply cap by 20 supply and cost 800 min, how many people would buy that?
I'm pretty sure everyone would buy the upgrade, then at 220/220 perform this trick.
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*Puts gun to head*
"Well I guess that's it huh?"
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lets imagine all the conditions are fulfilled for this, and resources spent would never come close to edging into what you need to replenish your army.
do you really think the actions (time) spent is worth the extra 20 supply rather than half-suiciding your army and simply rebuilding it? just imagine it being done, grabbing 20+ drones and spamming the ground with spore/spines, then 5srrrrrrrrr. this is one of those super rare tactics that just aren't practical due to the physical human limit.
zerg's irrational army replenish speed is there for a reason.
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On February 21 2011 05:56 DarKFoRcE wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 21 2011 05:38 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 03:02 DarKFoRcE wrote:
I can see this having some rare uses, but in general you should attack when you get close to or arrive at 200 supply. if you wait at 200 until you have harvested another ~3k minerals (1.5k for the spore crawlers and another 1.5k to spend on, for example, corruptors) it will actually give you a worse result in most cases than just attacking immidiately, because protoss can catch up in supply during this time.
and no matter what, 220 zerg supply still doesnt win against 200 of protoss (assuming somewhat equal tech etc.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but in many situations Zergs aren't able to choose when to attack. In the Morrow games, Nightend turtled quite hard and only moved out when Morrow had 3000 minerals stored up. In situations where Zerg can't get a good attacking position, a trick like this might be useful. That said, I'm not convinced this will be used in top level play. Well, one of morrows biggest mistakes in general is that he does not get drop earlier, which results him in not being able to attack once he hits 200 quite often. i am pretty sure that you get to 200 supply as zerg vs protoss you absolutely need to start attacking in some way. and if you cannot attack via a normal ground attack (shakuras for example) then you need the drop upgrade ready in time.
That's a really insightful point, thanks. Going to have to start incorporating this into my play.
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What now we should wait until 400/200 supply to attack? (Maybe 388/200 to compensate for queens)
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I think this can be useful, a lot of people are all over the place on their theory crafting in this thread.
To be honest, the best and most useful way I've found to use this is when your maxed and want to make brood lords. This is a great way to not have to kill off units and make a few broodlords, and doesn't require trying to make 20 sunkens and cancel but a few and there are a lot of pros that I've seen do that quite often.
I've also seen this done quite often when people have banked a lot but instead of canceling the sunkens, and you have good creep spread let the sunkens build and bring them into battle with you. I think it will become more important for zerg to cut out drones in longer games, to help increase actual army supply especially since terran can sack SCVs for mules, and you are already losing supply w/ queens.
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On February 21 2011 09:10 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 03:00 Sfydjklm wrote:On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been! you wont believe that shit but some protoss are actually capable of targeting down overlords Overlords have 200 health and cost 100 minerals. Bring extra empty OLs with your baneling bombers so 50% or more of the the shots go at empty OLs. Now it's a win for you if P is shooting at dirt cheap OLs with crap tons of health instead of at your roaches and hydras.
right. If only protoss had some kind of unit magic to block off your main army while he shoots down your overlords...
HMM.
I'd also like to point out that overlord speed is 1.88 and stalker speed is 2.9.
Hilarious overall. Really love this whole smugness of your new spin on the "use nydus/spread creep better" nonsense.
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Honestly, having to micro 20 drones to build shit and then cancel seems like a real waste of time. Lategame 200/200 battles are usually extremely volatile and utterly reliant upon positioning. I'd rather just build a shitload of overseers to perma-contam their whole base, or a heap of spines. That way I can focus more on positioning my army/counter attacking/scouting. If you're maxed as zerg, you really want to be looking for undefended openings rather than sitting in your base.
Though I can understand doing a few cancels if you max out before you get the real crucial/power units (ala infestors or BLs).
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If you have enough drones that you don't need them to saturate all your bases, and it is so late game that you won't be able to take another base, even with your 200 food army, why not just make the extra drones into spine crawlers? If you decide later that you want to go back to drones, your 5+ hatches should be able to saturate a new base in seconds.
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It is an interesting idea. People have been doing some variation of this for a while in the form of mass spine crawler late game to free up supply for broodlords.
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On February 21 2011 14:05 Antisocialmunky wrote:
It is an interesting idea. People have been doing some variation of this for a while in the form of mass spine crawler late game to free up supply for broodlords.
This seems better.
The thing is (for this I will assume that minerals are irrelevant/unimportant), lets say you're current army is 200/200 and his is 170/200. By the time you do all that stuff, he would have 200/200 and you would be building the units still. He will engage and win. And even if your units came out in time, I would rather fight with 200 against 170 than 230 against 200 (due to the percentage of your army being bigger than his gets lower).
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If I'm maxed, apparently the better thing to do is to just spam spines and spores in the middle of the map, and try use nyduses to slowly chip away at your opponent.
I generally just box select a patch full of drones and just bc+shift click spam (the middle of lost temple - with a few spores in between)
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you guys say that, but what about the additional tactic advantage?
with additional supply, i.e. using in flanks (doing full surrounds)
Zerg gains so much by overhelming the enemy from everyside, and this with additional 30-40 supply without wasting economy seems very interesting at least.
Again u guys think too theoretical. sure in a "perfect" game, your enemy hopefully never reaches the supplycap, then would have less to worry about, but that isn't the discussion here.
how is the reality?
Never have reached a state of a game, where attacking would do no good even if you are maxxed?
Never have had a game where you have been in late game with mass minerals?
in those situations this "could" be practical.
should you go for this as a general strategy? hell no!
should you go for this if you are in such a situation ? why not?
Or do you just GG in those situation cause it is maxxed vs. maxxed?
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So i tested this a little further,
i was easily able to do additional 40 supply and the progress bar of the Spores was around half way done this trick doesn't take more than 10-15 ingame seconds.
Assuming that you don't have more than 30 Drones in one base it would make you need to pull additional Drones from other bases, which would makes it at least less efficient.
because of this i guess additional 30 Supply would be the most effcient and fastest amount.
And should take ~10s with a little practise.
Only hard thing is to have enough creep to place each Sporecrawler and having the Drones stay near to the build places so splitting them in smaller groups would speed up the process since they have to walk less distance; (only the closest drone goes for the building)
The Commands done is:
Select all Drones
Shift keep pressed -> Sporecrawler -> 30*(mouseclicks) on creep
Hatch Hotkey -> Select Larva Hotkey -> Unit Hotkey (keep pressed)
Double Click on one Sporecrawler, Press Escape to Cancel all Spores at ones
Send back to mining.
tada additional 30 Fightsupply
Calculation for this would be:
Oversupply-Trick Cost:
30 * 25% * 75 = 562minerals
(+ lost mining time)
Needed Ressources to do it:
30 * 75 = 2250minerals ( for the spores)
+ the ressources for the Units of course (+ the necessary larva)
30 Zerglings = 1500/0 (additional 60 * 25/25 for 60 banelings = +1500/+1500)
15 Roaches = 1125 / 375
15 Hydras = 1500/ 750
15 Mutas = 1500/1500
5 Ultras = 1500/1000
15 Corrupter = 2250 / 1500
(+562minerals = effective cost for additional Units)
so 2000/1000 for additional 5 Ultras seems reasonable for me.
If you already have the ressources for it already gathered, and the time/apm do to it.
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This is very nice theory-crafting. But this isn't viable for a few reasons.
Lets go with the same situation. It's late game and you have 3-4k resources floating. Your at 200/200.
You build spore colonies for more army, I'll throw down 4-6 hatches.
Let's compare and contrast the gains of both.
Spore colony route = 15-20 (however many spores thrown down) more supply for army for initial engagement.
4-6 hatcheries = 4-6 more supply for initial army, 12-18 more larvae for reinforcing army (MINIMUM, if you dont inject the extra hatcheries)
hmmmmmmmmm.........
Edit: Also I don't lose money for the the canceled spores. However you want to try to justify that, it's money for units i'd never get back.
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well you can still put down hatcheries afterwards or before hand it is not like you will lack the larva/ressources in those lategames, but the (free) supply to use for.
In the end you will want more Units now in lategame situations, you can still remax afterwards.
the whole trick hasn't that big costs after all just, needs some money on the bank and a little time.
lets say this for ZvZ if you go
240 vs 200
both remax constantly who will win?
More Army now means, more DPS dealt in less time, which of course results in bigger losses on your opponents side while meaning fewer losses during the fight for you most likely.
will this increased fighting efficiency outwaight the inefficiency of using this supply trick?
i certainly don't now, but i wouldn't be so sure if this couldn't be better.
especially with hydras dealing so sick dps.
is there any unittestmap where we could test this in a multiplayer situation?
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Won't it be more practical to just morph the excess drone into spine crawlers and then make more attacking units? I mean if you save up enough money to do this "extractor trick" (1500 mineral for 20 supply if you build spores), might as well make some spine, at least they are useful for delay tactic so that zerg can remacro up.
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Very good trick to use, the only big drawback I think is that it's actually hard. You need to be quick quick quick. ofc you can do stuff with waypoints or building them far away but that's not efficient at all. You need to click around at 20 spots, and build the units when the last one starts building. And then you need to cancel before the first spore finish. It's harder than it seems.
Edit:
So why are people responding with other tricks saying they are better? You can't say something you can also do simply is better when you can do both. It's illogical and as long as you do this trick the last, it dosen't make more sense to only do spines or only hatcheries, when you can do that and then this, in a theoretical maxxed scenario that's actually not that uncommon.
Edit 2:
Oh yeah, and i've tested around a long time ago, theoretically you can get much supply but in practice even 20 is pushing it. You have to let everything else go because it's so time critical.
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Interesting idea, obviously. I think it's very situational. If you feel the game is going to come down to one big engagement which decides everything this would be the way to go. If, however, it is a big map and you have plenty of resources and, more importantly, time to remax safely, I think that's the way to go.
I realize this trick and remaxing are not mutually exclusive, but I do think the time required and the money wasted (due to not mining) are not worth it if you are basically going for a 2 or more wave attack anyway.
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On February 21 2011 13:16 Sfydjklm wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2011 09:10 kcdc wrote:On February 21 2011 03:00 Sfydjklm wrote:On February 21 2011 00:48 kcdc wrote:
Or you could just stop making roaches at 180 food, and instead of grabbing 10 more roaches to max out, you could make 40 banelings and research OL speed and drops. Now your 200/200 army is twice as strong as the pure roach composition would have been! you wont believe that shit but some protoss are actually capable of targeting down overlords Overlords have 200 health and cost 100 minerals. Bring extra empty OLs with your baneling bombers so 50% or more of the the shots go at empty OLs. Now it's a win for you if P is shooting at dirt cheap OLs with crap tons of health instead of at your roaches and hydras. right. If only protoss had some kind of unit magic to block off your main army while he shoots down your overlords... HMM. I'd also like to point out that overlord speed is 1.88 and stalker speed is 2.9. Hilarious overall. Really love this whole smugness of your new spin on the "use nydus/spread creep better" nonsense.
If only your units had a magic spell that could make them sort of go under things.
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EPT
