[H] Inject Timings

ccesssu

United States19 Posts

November 10 2011 00:41 GMT

I just started using sc2gears and of course, the inject timings. i see this as one of my weaknesses, and wanted to seriously improve it. of course, i should aim for 1 second delay between my injects if i was god, but i'm not..so...
right now, it is between 12 and 14 seconds, i'm silver league

what is a decent delay i should try to aim for? what is your delay (just curious for comparison)? and what is the best way to improve?
does using an audio loop reminder help, or simply makes one worse at remembering?

emc

United States3088 Posts

November 10 2011 00:44 GMT

I think having queens on seperate hotkeys really helps you get in the rhythm of constantly cycling through queens to see who has 25 energy. I never look at the clock or use timings, I just cycle and if I see 25 energy then I know to inject, otherwise I continue what I was doing.

Hotkey everything and cycle through them, the more you do that the more your apm will rise.

coriamon

244 Posts

November 10 2011 01:22 GMT

I just inject every time I have an extra second, or when I feel that there is a inject coming. At the same time, I look at the minimap. I use the backspace method for this. I find it easier to just randomly do it, or focus on it when in macromode. Since I've not been focusing on certain times (like counting 40 seconds), my zerg macro has gotten better, and so has my multitasking. My delay is generally 2-3 seconds and I'm in plat. That being said, I do have the occasional 10-20 seconds when I'm busy. A good idea is to build units every 20 seconds and inject every second time you build units.

SoKHo

Korea (South)1081 Posts

November 10 2011 01:26 GMT

I think you should aim for 7 seconds in an average game length. I've seen pros with 5 sec gaps, but I think 7 is still very good.

FindMuck

63 Posts

November 10 2011 01:36 GMT

In a normal macro game ( 15-20 ingame minutes), 12-14 seconds would be amazing, aiming for 7 seconds in silver league would be impossible unless all you do is stare at your base.

If you could achieve an average of 15 seconds delay like that, just macroing roach hydra into plat would be a breezer.

My macro is not the best, but when i play 15-20 min macro games vs toss (speciall when i go muta harass centric), my injections are around 20 second gaps ;_;

Goes to show you dont even need macro to get into diamond O.O

EDIT:

Generally to remember to inject, you should be constantly making units. That way, when you sudenlly make 20 lings instead of 5, you know its time to inject your 5 bases.

On November 10 2011 10:22 coriamon wrote:
My delay is generally 2-3 seconds and I'm in plat.

SO JEALOUS OF YOUR MACRO

when did plats get so good ? T_______T

Cerpher

United States37 Posts

November 10 2011 01:41 GMT

As long as your injects provide sufficient larvae, where you have enough larvae to spend all your resources without getting supply blocked. then your macro is fine. 7 seconds is pretty damn good for a silver league so good job!

prowala

United States147 Posts

November 10 2011 01:44 GMT

I recommend the strategy known as "tapping" coined by day9 I think. For me, I hotkey my main hatch on 4 and all my hatches on 5. I tap 45454545 all game, watching the HUGE inject duration bar on the 4. This helps me keep an eye on injects, and is good to get a feel of the timing. It's gotten to the point where I can sort of "feel" it, and hop over and inject without having to check constantly. Now if only I could micro... =(

FindMuck

63 Posts

November 10 2011 02:13 GMT

On November 10 2011 10:44 prowala wrote:
I recommend the strategy known as "tapping" coined by day9 I think. For me, I hotkey my main hatch on 4 and all my hatches on 5. I tap 45454545 all game, watching the HUGE inject duration bar on the 4. This helps me keep an eye on injects, and is good to get a feel of the timing. It's gotten to the point where I can sort of "feel" it, and hop over and inject without having to check constantly. Now if only I could micro... =(

I used to do this, until i needed more hotkeys for units (1 main army (sometimes split into 2 for flanking), 2 for banes/infestors, 3 for mutas 4 for harass, more flank hotkey, etc)

What you can do (what I do) is keep all hatches on 5, have 1-4 for units, and i remap f1 f2 f3 f4 as 7 8 9 0, and thats where i keep my queens ( you gerneally dont need more than 4 injecting queens)

that way, you have more room for units, and to check, you can just double tap f1 , which will center to the queen, with the hatch right near by.

ccesssu

United States19 Posts

November 10 2011 02:42 GMT

hmm i'll try the 4545 trick next game..i use the backspace method, so i can't do the separate queen hotkey method
how do people have enough hotkeys for each queen? my set up right now:
*hatches
*queens
*whole army
*lings (or unit type 1/2/3)
*blings
*infestors
*rest of the jazz if i need another unit group, usually ranged units / corruptors etc
*scouting ol
*scouting ling at their nat or tower
*mutas

Rafael

Venezuela182 Posts

November 10 2011 02:44 GMT

#10

Best way to do it is ( at least for me )

Is the tap method as above poster said.

Hotkey every hatch indivodualy. i.e

First Hatch - 4
Second Hatch - 5
Third Hatch - 6

Tap your 3 hatchs regularly. Then double press the hotkey to go to the location , select a queen , inject.

Also all your hatcheries hotkey to 0 that can be remapped to 'W'
Many pros do it this way to.

And its was made public by day9

AngelLock

New Zealand54 Posts

November 10 2011 03:10 GMT

#11

I have all my hatches on 5 then queens bound with their assigned hatch to 6 onward. (The reason I have the queens bound with the hatches is because when you double tap it centers the screen on the hatch instead of the queen. That way if the queen has wandered somewhere because of harass or whatever the hatch is always easy to hit quickly)

I then am always spending any extra amp I have on checking my larva on 5. If suddenly I have a bunch of larva I know its time to inject. The only issue with this is if you get supply blocked it suddenly becomes unreliable, but that's an easy fix (don't get supply blocked =P)

Hope this helps!

Chutoro

New Zealand95 Posts

November 10 2011 03:12 GMT

#12

It's difficult to establish a benchmark using just one number because it's affected by so many different factors. Load up some MLG replays in SC2Gears and you will see that even pro Zerg players can be all over the place depending on what was going on in the game.

I think it's more useful to look at the overall pattern of the graph. If you consistently see gaps of 5-10+ seconds on every inject, your basic mechanics need work. If you go for long periods with very small gaps, but then see occasional large gaps where you don't inject at all, then your mechanics are probably fine but you might need to improve your multitasking. If you have big gaps because your queens got sniped due to harassment or a push, then you might need to work on your scouting and reactions.

I find SC2Gears most useful for finding out what actually happened macro-wise, as opposed to what I think happened. It's easy to forget injects during a big battle without ever realizing you've done it, but it will stick out like a sore thumb in replay analysis.

Silidons

United States2813 Posts

November 10 2011 03:14 GMT

#13

best way to improve is to use camera hotkeys. if you dont use camera hot keys then you're just gimping yourself. every pro uses camera hot keys because they are pivotal. i changed it to bind the hot keys like this: (shift+f2, shift+f3, shift+f4).

just tabbing through the through the game makes it 10x easier to hit injects. bind each camera position to a different expand etc. the backspace method is very bad because it only works the most efficiently if ALL queens inject at the same time and that is not going to happen in pretty much any game.

Fishgle

United States2174 Posts

November 10 2011 03:44 GMT

#14

YO. doing none what these noobs say matters. Camera hotkeys are for pros! you aint pro! Binding queens? what the shit is this? Bondage!? Backspace method? Tapping? screw that. i know you! you're like me! a lazy good for nothing worm! but unlike you, i inject like a boss. Inject like a boss like dis:

[image loading]

Now, always look at that side of screen. Never look at center. never. Look at top right, bottom left, or left of screen. Now, when you see the little wormy come out, you do whatever nonsense you normally do to inject. for me, 55(LC)F(LC) 6(LC)F(LC) etc. So. look at left, when wormy (or queen) shows up, stop what you're doing and inject. (you can push spacebar when you see it and your camera will auto move to the location btw, but you gotta be fast. or you can click on orange square, but that's kinda dumb)

and that is how you inject on time, like a boss, without any outside help like that one guy that has a 45 sec loop of himself saying inject or the darn inject overlay and a multitude of nonsensical stuff.

iKuMoonSa

Korea (South)5 Posts

November 10 2011 04:00 GMT

#15

interesting posts

SpoR

United States1542 Posts

November 10 2011 05:08 GMT

#16

I hope, hope, hope, hope that blizzard fixes the inject timing and mana gain. For the first 3-5 injects of the game I find myself watching the inject happen and waiting for my mana to regen so I can spawn larva again. It fucks up my rhythm and RTS games definitely have a rhythm to them when you get used to them. Its really annoying.

zylog

Canada943 Posts

November 10 2011 10:36 GMT

#17

You know, it would be interesting to do a study on the average inject gap and injection % of top pro players. You often hear in casts about how pros always have perfect injects on their queens, always bringing the energy down to zero like clockwork, however in replays of Nestea, Idra, Ret, etc... I'm seeing average injection gaps of maybe 10 s (game time) for shorter games and maybe 20 s for longer games. I admit that I've only looked at a small sample, but the point is that getting inject times into the range of current pros is probably a very good goal, but to improve it beyond that, while still an area for improvement, might not be as beneficial at the moment.

Hairy

United Kingdom1169 Posts

November 10 2011 10:43 GMT

#18

Ideas for keeping track of larvae:

--Constantly macro. If you spot you have a burst of larvae, it's time to inject
--Watch for the notifications on the left side of the screen
--Listen for the sound effect
--Try finding a single hatchery to a hotkey and 'tapping' it occasionally to see the inject progress bar
--Use camera hotkeys to occasionally pop back to a hatchery to see the progress bar (unit healthbars always on!)
--Use 'cycle town hall' button (default backspace) to pop back to a hatchery to see the progress bar (unit healthbars always on!)
--Double tap hatchery hotkey to to pop back to a hatchery to see the progress bar (unit healthbars always on!)
--Note the clock time you need to inject next

SC2Gears is great. If your injects are always sloppy you need to decide on and use a reliable method that works for you. If your injects are generally good, but have gaps, you need to go look at that point in the replay and find out what was distracting you, and try not to let it pull your attention away next time.

tuestresfat

2555 Posts

November 10 2011 13:50 GMT

#19

You guys must be the best plat players in sc2, I check the larva inject of almost every zerg I play at masters and rarely are they <5s for a <10min game and rarely are they <10s for a >15min game.

Personally my injects are around 7-10s for macro games and around 5s for short ones.

I have never, never, never, never ever met a zerg with 2-3 second injects unless they only injected like twice before the game ended.

OP, 12-14 seconds will get you to diamond lol. It's not great, but it's not keeping you in silver.

c0ldfusion

United States8293 Posts

November 10 2011 18:38 GMT

#20

On November 10 2011 22:50 tuestresfat wrote:
You guys must be the best plat players in sc2, I check the larva inject of almost every zerg I play at masters and rarely are they <5s for a <10min game and rarely are they <10s for a >15min game.

Personally my injects are around 7-10s for macro games and around 5s for short ones.

I have never, never, never, never ever met a zerg with 2-3 second injects unless they only injected like twice before the game ended.

OP, 12-14 seconds will get you to diamond lol. It's not great, but it's not keeping you in silver.

Inject timing is pretty important for aggressive openings (like in 2s for example).

You have to be pretty much on the dot with your injection in low econ vs low econ scenarios in team games.

tuestresfat

2555 Posts

November 10 2011 18:49 GMT

#21

On November 11 2011 03:38 c0ldfusion wrote:

Show nested quote +

Inject timing is pretty important for aggressive openings (like in 2s for example).

You have to be pretty much on the dot with your injection in low econ vs low econ scenarios in team games.

Yes but can you honestly look through replays you lost and say "well shoot, I guess my avg 12s inject timings screwed me over, guess that's why I'm in silver"?

I'm making the assumption his injects are much better in the early game and get worse and worse as the game stretches on (as is the case with every single zerg player in the world, pro or amateur). I'm pretty sure his injects aren't 12s when executing low econ scenarios as you specified. Even if it is, it's not why he's in silver. See how useless all this discussion is.

Bad_Habit

Germany243 Posts

November 10 2011 19:01 GMT

#22

a decent tip, hotkey your means so when u select them u see the timing of your duration. its only really really really important in the early game, in the later stages its getting worse and worse for me 2, i just build a macro hatch then.

but in the early every inject has to hit in oder to get the eco advantage you need as a zerg

nanoscorp

United States1237 Posts

November 10 2011 19:14 GMT

#23

I like to keep an eye on the progress bar on the hatchery itself. Based on what I see there I budget some time to do other tasks before the inject pops off. Another useful bit of info is creep tumors: if you spread creep after injects, a fully spread creep tumor means your injection popped off. If you're looking at the minimap and see tumors sitting comfortably away from the edge of your creep it means a couple things: time to spread creep, time to check on queens too. Note that if you're really aggressive about creep spread, your tumors and injects won't be synchronized, since tumors refresh much faster than injections.

Petninja

United States159 Posts

November 10 2011 19:15 GMT

#24

On November 10 2011 10:36 FindMuck wrote:
In a normal macro game ( 15-20 ingame minutes), 12-14 seconds would be amazing, aiming for 7 seconds in silver league would be impossible unless all you do is stare at your base.

If you could achieve an average of 15 seconds delay like that, just macroing roach hydra into plat would be a breezer.

My macro is not the best, but when i play 15-20 min macro games vs toss (speciall when i go muta harass centric), my injections are around 20 second gaps ;_;

According to Nestea, it's the most important thing to work on as Zerg. It should be more important than winning, and developing a good system that will let you inject on time consistently is probably enough to make you win anyway at lower levels. Creep spread should probably be the next mechanic to work into your play, and then drone timings. Build spines to defend until you get the feel for it enough to get away without building them.

Granted, most of this is stuff I've gleaned from personal experience, so take it with a grain of whatever your favorite spice may be. When I switched to Zerg I applied these principles to my game play and focused on them and found myself holding my own against high platinum players and low diamond within a week.

Petninja

United States159 Posts

November 10 2011 19:28 GMT

#25

If you want you can look up how many injects you did in the game, multiply the number by 4 to get the number of larva you would get from each of them. Then take your average inject delay % (13 second delays = ~30%) and add that percentage to your larva count. That's how many more you would have had if you had perfect injects.

Example: Say I played a 16.5 minute game totaling 26 injects (using the filter options in SC2gears) for a total of 104 extra larva spawned with a 12 second delay average . Had I injected perfectly I would have gained roughly 30 more larva throughout the game, which is a lot of extra drones or roaches or whatever you build. Another way of looking at it is that a 12 second delay is similar to only spawning 3 larva from each inject rather than 4 because of the delay. If you're fast you get all 4, but if you're not you only get 3. Be fast. Win more.

TheGreenMachine

United States730 Posts

November 10 2011 19:32 GMT

#26

Multiple ways to remind yourself to spawn larva:

1. You are spending larva every second you get them, OH you just got 16 larva time to spawn again.
2. You see spawned additional larva alert in top left.
3. Hotkey a hatchery to check the duration on your spawn larva, hotkeying a single hatchery not multiple ones is an easy way to check progress on it.
4. Hotkeying a queen, works until you forget to spawn larva once then your queen no longer has around 25 energy before spawn larva hits.
5. Use game timer to do it every 40 seconds (not sure on the time of it lol)
6. Just remember, Ive played a long time and my game sense just goes to spawn larva right before its done without thinking about it, im one of the lucky ones

lhr0909

United States562 Posts

November 10 2011 20:02 GMT

#27

It takes me about a week to get this down. You just need to build up the muscle memory for it. I always double tap back to my hatch and see the gray bar right below the health bar if your hatchery. The inject methods does not matter much as long as you stock with one. It is faster to do backspace trick during battle. Sometimes I even scroll around the screen and make sure I inject all of the hatches. As long as you don't miss it, you will have so much larva. I checked my injects with the tool you use angst compared that to sheth's injects, I was better than him on injects. I think just that it made me into platinum. Now I am in diamond league.

Vond

Sweden145 Posts

November 10 2011 22:01 GMT

#28

Gold-EU/Plat-NA zerg here. I worked on my injects for awhile and am usually at 80-85% according to sc2gears, so 7ish secs. That's for up to 20min games or so, if game goes on longer and I stay maxed for longer periods of time it will drop. Even with good injects however I've had some issues, since with more larvae comes quicker need for ovies, and thus I started supplyblocking myself more. I have yet to play a ZvZ where my opponent "out-injected" me, yet I still lose 45% of my ZvZ since I mess up other things in the macro-cycle.

Also making sure to actually spend my larvae every cycle before building additional stuff (there are exceptions ofcourse) has helped me keep macro good, but oftentimes I fail and end up with tons of larvae (since I focus on the injects) and lots of money because of bad multitasking if I'm being harassed. Esp vs T since 99% of the time they open with reactor hellions and just suicide into my drones, so while trying to keep them alive I forget to macro, etc. Like others have said, I really doubt injects is keeping you in silver, but you might need to do like me and work on actually spending the larvae instantly - otherwise your good injects won't help too much.

TibblesEvilCat

United Kingdom766 Posts

November 10 2011 22:34 GMT

#29

vond has it clear, i also, can get very good injects if i focus onit, but everyone can, its bringing rest of your play up that level, you just gota do everything just abit little bit better x

darkscream

Canada2310 Posts

November 10 2011 22:44 GMT

#30

Hotkey your queen, check their energy every 10 seconds or so. If its around 25 or above, its inject time. Always spend your extra energy immediately on creep or transfuses when you notice you fell behind then go back to macroing. queen with 200/200 energy doesn't help anything, ideally you never miss injects but you will eventually so spend that energy in some way and then go back to watching it.

In this way you can have a good idea of "how many" injects you missed. If your queens get to 50 energy you missed at least 1 per queen, etc.

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