to defend against a timing push u need to know what kind of push its gonna be.

hellion marauder? > put spines and stay on lings
3rax? >baneling nest
reactor hellion?>roaches

early game is about effectiveness of your units. when all that is done, and you have more bases than your enemy, then its gonna be about holding bases while massing an army.

BlasiuS

United States2405 Posts

June 16 2011 17:34 GMT

#22

Airact has it right.

You need to scout your opponent constantly, until you know exactly what he's doing. This involves scouting with a drone early on to check for rushes & all-ins, and checking if he has 0, 1, or 2 gas. You should be constantly scouting the ramp with lings, seeing what units he has, and what buildings he has. This also involves sacrificing an overlord at the right times (usually between 5:00-5:30 is a good starting point).

Based on what you scout you need to know what your opponent is going to do (or guess

). Example: in ZvP you scout 5 sentries + 1 zealot at his ramp, and a pylon at the bottom of the ramp. You pretty much know at this point he's going to 3gate expand. Confirm by constantly checking that he starts his nexus, make sure he doesn't cancel it, etc.

Based on what you know your opponent is going to do, you need to respond appropriately.

Examples:

3gate sentry expand -> make drones
1 base blink stalkers -> mass lings
1 base DT -> immediate evo chamber, 1 spore at each base
hellions -> make small amount of lings, block ramp with queens, make spine crawlers to cover nat, sim city your nat, then drone
1 port banshees -> get lair, make more queens, overseer when lair finishes
2 port banshees -> make at least 2-3 more queens, drone up

This process of scout, know, respond needs to be done multiple times, so that you know when to drone even in the mid-game.

Example: protoss does 3 gate sentry expand, but that's just his opening. He still has multiple mid-game options once his expansion is up, you need to scout his tech and see what he's getting:

-more gates -> 5/6 gate attack
-doesn't get both gases at nat -> most likely 5/6 gate attack
-twilight council -> 2 base blink stalkers (confirm by constantly checking his army and making sure he doesn't get stargate or robo)
-robotics facility -> GW + immortal, or GW + colossus. Confirm by checking if he makes a robotics support bay after the robo-fac.
-stargate -> some combination of phoenix/void ray harass

You need to scout, know all of these builds, and respond appropriately to them. Once you have this process down, you'll know exactly when you can drone, and when you can't.

TheSambassador

United States186 Posts

June 16 2011 18:19 GMT

#23

I'm somewhat confused... it seems like you have some weird assumption that you can only make 1 or the other...

I understand that it's easier to build all of one unit... you just hold down the button. But you HAVE THE ABILITY to make SOME of your larvae be drones and SOME of them be lings.

I don't understand how you think that offsetting your hatchery inject times so that you have to re-inject hatcheries more often makes any logical sense. You're trying to compensate for your tendency to be lazy/greedy by thinking that you need to hold down either the D or Z keys. You're getting the same amount of larvae in both scenarios, but in one you're increasing the amount of APM you have to macro with with no actual benefit.

If your 2 injects just popped, build 5 drones and 3 sets of lings. It really isn't hard. If they don't attack, you still made 5 drones! You'll have more larvae coming. Next you use those lings you made to scout around and actually see if things are coming. Pop one up the ramp and see what they've got.

Also, people are being really silly with their explanations of hatchery vs queen larvae injections:
Hatcheries spawn larvae at a rate of 1 every 15 seconds IF there are LESS THAN 3 larvae at the hatchery. If there are 3 or more larvae at the hatchery, the natural regeneration timer is suspended. If you inject, your hatchery will stop producing its own larvae when the inject pops. Once you use enough larvae to bring the number down to below 3, the hatchery starts making larvae again. Injects don't care about the number of larvae already there UNLESS you get to 19 larvae, in which case you are limited to that number. (Wiki)

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Larvae

I actually don't know what the wiki means when it says that the larvae timer is "suspended." Maybe it's like this:
Hatchery is 10/15 seconds through its cycle (it's going to pump out another larvae in 5 seconds)
Inject pops right then, and the hatchery has 4 larvae while the timer is at 10/15
Player uses larvae so that there are only 2 larvae, when does the next larvae from the hatchery spawn?
- Is it in 5 seconds, because the timer resumed from 10/15
- Is it in 15 seconds, because the timer reset?

Xylarthen

United States137 Posts

June 18 2011 18:10 GMT

#24

@ TheSambassador, granted this is an imperfect analogy as well as the fact that SC2 has few 100% truths, but the fact is, as a race car driver, you should either be accelerating, or braking. Driving in any way, outside of shifting gears (coasting if you will), is an inneficient use of your time in what is in essence, a game of inches. Yes you can make a drone or two to keep up with building creation every inject-pop, but I believe the true point is being able to either fully drone or fully army because one or the other benefits you the most based on the way Zerg play rather than dipping your toes into both.

Nobody ever said it was hard to do both, and sometimes it's the right thing to do, but I imagine you yourself either drone or army most of the time yourself.

Also, I find it a little sad there was this much lack of knowledge about how hatch-inject larva spawning works. The "Natural Regen Timer" is not suspended if there are more than 3 Larva at the hatchery, but the hatchery has two separate counts, the (up to) three larva the Hatch makes at a rate of one every 15 seconds and the sets of four added by an inject, reaching a max of 19 combined (3 natural and 16 for the injects). If you had the memory, luck, and insane clicking skills, you could constantly use the "1 every 15 seconds" larva and leave the 4 inject larva there and the 1 every 15 would continue to respawn. Why else do you occasionally have 0 Larva, and then the inject pops so you have 4, and you click over and then there are suddenly (!)...5 larva. Also, the 15 second count starts as soon as you use the first of the three "Hatch specific" larva as it triggers the hatch to start the 15 second spawn as you no longer are at the limit.

dronefarm

United States260 Posts

June 18 2011 18:30 GMT

#25

If he goes for a 1 base timing and you hold it off with some saturation at each base (read, after you have your main and natural partially saturated, go pure unit if he's all in unless you KNOW you can fit in more drones), he'll never win (because over saturation doesn't help), just stop him from expanding, sprinkle in drones and get an evo with a spore at each mineral line and surround his base with overlords, because the only way back in for him is banshees (DT's, Mutas, VoidRays, etc, etc, etc) or a big drop/nydus all in. He can eventually push out to his natural with seige tanks if he's terran, but you're in an overwhelmingly large lead at this point.

It's important to note that after you crush his push, it's tempting to go pure drone, because obviously, you're ahead, you want to get more ahead. If you know from experience you can pull this off, great, if not, just go pure unit occasionally sprinkling in a few drones.

You should listen to ...
http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/Day90004HOP1WinWithAdvantage.mp3

It's a podcast from brood war, but the same principles apply. Don't go crazy and expand a ton or make a sick amount of drones off 2 base, just continue with your plan, and keep scouting up (sometimes you'll encounter someone who will do some crazy shit like 3 port banshee/viking when they're pinned in a corner like that)

gl