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Important: The tl;dr may be omitting key things, since it is a very concise version which simply states conclusions or facts. For details please check te whole OP.
At the end of this post, above the tl;dr I edited in my thoughts to different problems people think this style could have.
If you can provide replays with players using this style, I would be glad if you could post them.
As you all know, the standard way of playing Zerg is considered to be focussed on setting up your economy to start abusing the excellent production capabilities of the swarm. The most important part of the Zerg production are the Hatcheries and the Queens. Hatcheries are your resource collection, and the basic larva production, while Queens increase the larva production.
However, while Queens and Hatcheries together are the optimum in Larva production in terms of most larva per time and Hatcheries and cost per production, there also are drawbacks to it.
- Queens cost supply
Do you remember when Queens were counted into worker supply? Actually Blizzard was right with this sort of implementation, since the current use of Queens isn't in the army, but rather in the larva economy. Now the worker supply bars are correct, but the army supply bars are deformed.
Injects are the only macromechanic which require you to use up supply, which means, that having a lot of Queens, while it does increase larva production, it also does cut into your army.
- Queens destabilize your production
What is the first thing to go down when you get dropped? The Queen. In terms of Larva production, losing a Queen is like losing about 1.25 Hatcheries, and while Queens are quite durable, they can't hold their ground if they are alone versus a typical drop force of Zealots or stimmed Marines. In other words: It is easy for your opponents to take out parts of your unit production.
Also, the typical Larva production from Hatcheries is one at a time. Queens add bumps of four at a time. While in the end you get more, it also increases the importance of making the right decision between drone and army unit. Imagine you have 12 Larva popping off, you don't see anything suspicious and turn all of them to drones. A few seconds later you see your opponent moving out. Turns out your decision wasn't simply wrong, it actually was wrong 12 times at once. if those 12 Larva were four sets of three larva which spawn with short delays, you would only turn the first set into drones, which would result in you having 9 more units for defense which can play a big difference.
- Injects use up APM
I personally see APM as a resource. Everyone has a maximum APM, which is distributed towards the different tasks in the game. With a maximum amount of actions you can do in a single game, every repetitive process like injecting has the drawback of using up a part of the actions you want to use as beneficial as possible.
Now, back to what I said earlier: Queens and Hatcheries together are the optimum in Larva production in terms of most larva per time and Hatcheries and cost per production.
Notice the bold part. This is the way Zergs optimize their production. However, let me ask you: Is this kind of optimization good?
I think almost everyone will say: Of course it is!
I say: Of course it is early on, otherwise it is not.
- Early on, every resource has a big effect on the later stages of the game, so having high and less cost intensive production is unbeatable. Having to get supply also hardly is an issue, since additional Hatcheries provide the supply needed for the additional Queen. The game has to pick up speed, which means, that you can be generous with spending your actions.
- Later in the game, when you reached maximum supply, having something cut into your army supply can make or break a game. Since minerals are available in mass, spending less of them is unneccessary. Every Action can give you an advantage or prevent you from getting behind or even help you catch up. Having a repetitive task cut into it has to be seriously considered.
What I want to say is, that I think that Zerg players should change the optimization of their larva production when transitioning to later stages of the game.
To be more precise, they should start substituting the production they get from their Queens with production from Hatcheries.
What does this change?
- Your Queens aren't tied to a building anymore, they can now assist your army by spreading creep and using Transfuse. Or they can suicide and free up the supply for better units. In other words: The Queens supply can actually become the army supply it is considered to be.
- As long as you don't want to save up larva for a 300-food push, you don't have to spend any actions on getting larva and therefore you can focus more on your engagements and other more important things.
- Sniping a Queen is easy, but sniping Hatcheries is a different story. If a drop kills a Hatchery it was either a bigger drop, your hatchery was damaged in advance or a hidden expo, or you were caught way out of position. And losing one is even a less heavier blow to your larva production than losing a Queen.
- Your reinforcements become a steady stream instead of big waves. Units trickling in one at a time are less effective when attacking than a group, but if you already have an attacking group of units in place, a steady stream is the better form of reinforcing, since it is able to instantly replace fallen units without any delay.
In other words, producing larva solely through the use of hatcheries optimizes your larva production in terms of
supply usage (= 0), apm usage (= 0 except for 300-food pushes) and stability (harder to snipe and steadier production)
You may noticed, that I only mentioned the early and the lategame, and neglected the midgame. The reason for this is, that the midgame is, where the transition between the optimizations should happen, but it isn't very obvious when to do it, so I can't provide a definitive answer.
However, the midgame looks like the best time to start transitioning from one optimization to the other, since that's the phase of the game, where the minerals start to flood in, which allows you to free up your Queens by adding hatcheries, and it also is the phase, where Zerg usually has map control, which allows your now freed up Queens to safely spread creep. Also if you start transitioning if you are not maxed out, the additional max supply from Hatcheries can come in as a nice little addition.
Now, the theme of this discussion should be obvious: What do you think about this?
Personally I think that everyone should start to do this, since any additional unit in your late game army does count. Especially since Zerg Units are considered to be the least cost-effective units of all the races.
Since you see players drop a bunch of Spinecrawlers in the middle of maps to free up supply, they could also dump that money into hatcheries, which can also be placed to slow down your enemies movement. Additionally they are more durable than Spinecrawlers of equal cost and don't need Creep to be placed and once they finish they actually spread creep.
All in all, I don't really see anything speaking against it.
edit:
How larva intensive you play doesn't matter, since this aims to substitute your Queens with an amount of hatcheries which provides the same amount of larva per time. Your production rate should stay the same this way. Wether your play is Larva intensive is more important to the following point.
The remaxing problem:
I got multiple answers mentioning, that remaxing can be problematic, since Queens allow you to save up to 19 larva per hatchery instead of only 3. There's no denying, that remaxing big amounts of units solely with Hatcheries, especially with larva-intensive styles, is very costly, even if Minerals aren't worth that much in the lategame.
My further comments to this are based off what I personally think is how Zerg players should play, so please keep this in mind.
First off all, if you ever have a hatchery with 19 larva, this means, that you didn't produce anyting for at least for injects. Which is about 3 minutes ingame time if i remember correctly. Now let me ask you something: Why the f*** have you not used the main advantage of the Zerg, namely, their enourmous production capabilities, for three whole minutes? In my opinion, not even being maxed out is a reason to do so.
Now you maybe are thinking about doing a so called 300-food-push. Which means you basically accept the death of a huge part of your army for a chance to deal a lot of damage. If it doesn't work, you at best are at a disadvantage, because you just lost a ton of resurces. In Starcraft 2 terminology actions like this are considered to be an All-In. Which it is, since it has to do a big amount of damage or you are dead. While All-Ins are powerful, they are generally not reliable enough to be a regular used strategy. The problem in this case is, that you do not know the remaxing capabilities of your opponent. If he can reproduce his units fast enough, your push will fail except if the initial engagement favors you by a lot. Also you have to keep in mind, that you will remax with cheap units, since the other ones take too long to build. Which means, that your big units are in the initial engagement and will probably die, leaving you with the units which were supposed to die instead of the big ones.
Now, if you approach maximum Supply what do you do? Well, you know your own production capabilities, so why don't start dropping exactly the amount of units you can reproduce? Drops, especially multipronged ones, are nearly granted to do damage. With these drops you can actually let your units deal damage until they die, since you can reproduce them easily.
So what I say is: Don't use the Zerg production capabilities to remax big armies after unsafe engagements, remax small ones after dealing nearly guaranteed damage.
You can do this with every style, your production just limits what you can drop. Also, you could throw in a Nydus to do massive damage with your whole army, but then remember to cut your losses!
The additional supply doesn't matter:
I also saw comments stating, that the additional supply doesn't really matter. Wrong. Every little bit matters. especially with the Zerg units, since they are considered to be weaker than the units of other races.
Again, my further comments to this are based off what I personally think is how Zerg players should play.
What was also mentioned, was, that an additional Broodlord doesn't change a lot. Well, having a bigger bunch of Roaches under your Broodlords does help immensely. Why? Because no Protoss will blink into a bunch of Roaches to snipe your Broodlords ... except if you don't have enough Roaches. Even if the amount of supply you get is small, you can get a good amount of smaller units for it. You should limit the amount of big units you get. Past a certain number one more doesn't matter, but every unit which can support it does matter. Especially added meatshield units, sice they allow you to deal more damage and keep threats like Blinkstalkers away.
A middle of the road approach is better:
I disagree. Queens injecting is more cost effective, but only Hatcheries is more supply effective. In the lategame, cost efficiency with minerals is not relevant, but efficient use of your supply is. The middle of the road approach to this defeats the purpose of completely getting rid of the drawbacks of the more cost-efficient larva production.
However, when transitioning between the optimizations, you will naturally use a more middle of the road approach since you switch from one side to the other. In the end it's the decision of the players, after all, I can't make people obey to what I think is best.
tl;dr:
Producing Larva with Queens and hatcheries is optimal in ways of larva per time and hatcheries and larva per time and cost.
However, it isn't optimal in other regards: It uses up supply, it is more unstable due to the way injects work and the frigility of Queens compared to the durability of Hatcheries, and it also does require you to do a repetitive task.
I propose, that when transitioning to lategame, players shold start subtituting the larva production you gain from Queens with larva production from hatcheries, in order to get rid of these disadvantages, since those start hurting more and more towards the lategame.
For additional information on this please read the OP. Especially if you think there are problems with this you should check it, if they are mentioned in it.
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hmm. good read.
I'm a mid-masters level zerg and i see the logic in your thinking and i do agree that the idea could definitely be put into use lategame. Also i would LOVE to see more zergs do this and instead of replacing the queen in your army use it for mass heals on big units like brood lords or ultras. I've done this a couple times and having ~8 queens in your ultra/brood army makes it MUCH harder to stop 
overall: useful but will most likely take a while to catch on if it ever does, players are just too used to using up their APM on injects lategame xD. Personally i'm going to go play some games right now and try this out :D I'LL be spending that extra APM on multi pronged attacks 
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One thing worth mentioning is that you can store larva from injects up to 19 per hatchery, but hatcheries will otherwise stop at 3. I don't know where that fits into this analysis, but if you plan on re-maxing on larva inefficient units you will need a multiple of 4x the hatcheries to match what you could store. So this style is much better for infestor broodlord than for ling/bling heavy unit comps.
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I think remaxing is the most important part of a Zerg lategame. You absolutely need to have your queens active and injecting larva in order to get the maximum amount of larva. As long as you have more larva than you can spend, you have good macro which means you basically win the game. I am saying that because Queens with macro hatcheries to dump the extra energy on are the most optimal larva creators.
And any additional unit in your late game army doesnt really count. Since you are Zerg you understand that Infestor Brood lord late game doesnt really matter if you have that extra 8 supply. That statement may be controversial so I will leave it at that.
Also, what if you need to remax more than once? Hatcheries are way more expensive than queens, so if you want to have just four hatcheries that will cost you 1,200 minerals, the equivalent of 16 roaches in minerals!
I dont think its worth throwing away all your banked minerals just to have more larva.
What is more larva without minerals?
I can understand how you will argue this post. You will say that in the late game you will have a lot of minerals to dump and you can just simply buy hatcheries like they are free. But the problem is they are not free. I know I said every unit does not count (8 supply really isnt a big deal) but thats only when we have lots of tier 3 units like 13 brood lords, infestors, corruptors. Brood Lords cant be remaxed that fast because we don't have the time (about 1.2 minutes) to remax off brood lords, the Protoss/Terran/Zerg is already on our front door!
So because of this, you will need to max off of other crappy units. Zerglings, baneling, roaches, infestors, mutalisks....
You wont have as much of those because you need a lot of hatcheries since one hatchery can only spawn three larva. Since they only hold three larva without being injected, you will need to have a lot of hatcheries (about 13). 13x300 = 3900 minerals. 3900 minerals is the equivalent mineral count of THIRTEEN ultralisks. Pretty big deal there. But you obviously arent going to max off of Ultralisks because
A)They suck
B) You dont have the time to do that
So you need to resort to soemthing like Roaches. 3900 is the equivelant of 52 roaches in mineral counts, thats about one and a half maxes. So I think that you were on the right track of optimization. This would certainly be the most optimal way if we had infinite money but sadly we dont. A queen is half the price of a hatchery (less than half if you count the drone) and it can inject more than once if the inject energy piles up. So if a queen, 24 minutes in the game, has max energy, then it can inject 8 times. 8x4=32 larva. 32 Larva! You would need about 11 hatcheries to get 32 larva held without injects That right there is a huge deal.
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I think u're not taking into consideration a large amount of important factors.
The first one is that u're underestimating the advantage of larva stockpiling when u're maxed. In order to have as much larva on, say, 4 hatcheries with queens, u would probably need 10 if not 12 or 15 hatch total. that's 3k minerals... Would u rather have 40 larvae for free or 40 larvae for 3k minerals???
Second, building hatcheries takes a lot of time and space. U cant fit 10 hatch into ur main. U'll have to place them at very dangerous locations (aka in the middle of the map). And u're not going to wait for ur hatches to finish in order to have larvae for 300 food push. If u want ur hatch to be finished in time u need to make them at 180 food then make the reminder of ur army. That cuts too hard into ur army.
Third i disagree that queens are easily sniped than hatch. Queens can move, hatch not. They're moving as fast as zealots, and stimmed marines are not that much faster than queens. And anyway, drones are much more targeted than hatches.
So, according to me, here is the thing. You are either playing a composition that requires ton of larvae (ling muta, ...) and u need to stockpile larvae and u anyway can not make hatches in the middle of the map, or you're playing, let's say, brood infestors, then yeah u dont need much larvae and can use transfuse (i do it personnally). But then the larvae of ur 4 hatches with mb a few stocked before moving queens to attack is enough. So no need to make hatches everywhere.
And finally the argument that it takes apm makes non sens. If something use apm and u need to do it, practice ur apm!! Would you stop spreading creep because it ask apm?
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Pretty misleading title..."Optimized Larvae Production"... Do you have any replays of this strategy while executing a larvae heavy build like ling/infestor or muta/ling? The amount of hatches required is minerals that could be going towards your units, and 8 supply isnt that much of a deal when you can remax instantly off injected hatches.
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In other words, producing larva solely through the use of hatcheries optimizes your larva production in terms of
supply usage (= 0), apm usage (= 0 except for 300-food pushes) and stability (harder to snipe and steadier production)
I think the exception listed there is pretty important. Without queens injecting, you're capped at 3 larva per hatch. If you don't engage within the 30-45s window between maxing and capping your larva at all your hatches, they effectively shut down. With a high-tech composition like mutas or infestors, this isn't as big a deal, but if you want to re-max on lings you're going to run out of larva after a big fight. A shift from 1:1 queen:hatch to something like 1:2 seems like a more sensible approach. You can cut down your APM used for injects, but still take advantage of increased production and larva pooling by injecting once in a while.
I like the idea of using hatcheries in place of a spine or two when you're in the late game. Semi-permanent creep is nice. They serve as temporary stopping points for opposing pushes too, giving you time to rally behind them. The broodlings spawned from a destroyed hatch can soak up fire as you send the rest of your forces in.
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On December 10 2011 10:53 MoreFaSho wrote:
One thing worth mentioning is that you can store larva from injects up to 19 per hatchery, but hatcheries will otherwise stop at 3. I don't know where that fits into this analysis, but if you plan on re-maxing on larva inefficient units you will need a multiple of 4x the hatcheries to match what you could store. So this style is much better for infestor broodlord than for ling/bling heavy unit comps.
This is mentioned partially, with 300-food pushes still needing APM. (because of this very reason)
However if you have ever saved up 19 Larva I think you are doing something wrong, since you apparently didn't produce anything for at least 4 Production cycles. Also I don't think throwing your army into an engagement and hoping, that the reinforcements can mop up everything that's left is a good option from a strategic point of view, but that's what I think.
Using a fast remax for an attack implies losing a lot of units, which can backfire in a pretty bad way.
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I like the post, generally a good read and I can tell you thought about some of the ins and outs.
I really feel like adding a couple extra hatches would not be so bad, but completely switching from queens to hatches would be a bad idea. It is much simpler and much more effective to keep 3-4 queens injecting, and if you have extras to add them into your army for transfuse and creep tumors.
I believe a middle of the road approach to what you are suggesting would be more effective because both sides of this argument are valid and the strengths can be brought out by finding a compromise
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On December 10 2011 11:07 tskarzyn wrote:
Pretty misleading title..."Optimized Larvae Production"... Do you have any replays of this strategy while executing a larvae heavy build like ling/infestor or muta/ling? The amount of hatches required is minerals that could be going towards your units, and 8 supply isnt that much of a deal when you can remax instantly off injected hatches.
This isn't a guide for a reason. I don't have any personal experience with this style, but I think that every player should at least consider playing like this, so I made this public as a discussion, so people can try it out.
And I am focussing on different optimizations of larva production, especially on transitioning from the usual one to one which I think is superior in the lategame (for the reasons mentioned in the post), so I don't see why the title should be misleading.
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On December 10 2011 11:10 DMII wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2011 10:53 MoreFaSho wrote:
One thing worth mentioning is that you can store larva from injects up to 19 per hatchery, but hatcheries will otherwise stop at 3. I don't know where that fits into this analysis, but if you plan on re-maxing on larva inefficient units you will need a multiple of 4x the hatcheries to match what you could store. So this style is much better for infestor broodlord than for ling/bling heavy unit comps. This is mentioned partially, with 300-food pushes still needing APM. (because of this very reason) However if you have ever saved up 19 Larva I think you are doing something wrong, since you apparently didn't produce anything for at least 4 Production cycles. Also I don't think throwing your army into an engagement and hoping, that the reinforcements can mop up everything that's left is a good option from a strategic point of view, but that's what I think. Using a fast remax for an attack implies losing a lot of units, which can backfire in a pretty bad way.
o_O losing your army can backfire? seriously? There are a lot of cases where you want do just this. Basically, if you're ahead in terms of economy, trade armies with the opponent and build back up. Snipe colossi, remax on lings and clean up the stalkers, etc. I think it's just the nature of 200/200 engagements: barring really cautious play by both players, a lot of stuff is going to die. It's rare that only 7-10 larva worth of units die every 15s, allowing a steady trickle of reinforcements over the course of a few minutes.
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I like this.
This is exactly what the game needs! Less BS balance patches and more players trying to implement clever ideas like this!
I have been arguing that high level protoss players should start thinking more about how to manage their chronoboost energy instead of whining about ghost EMP. The situation there is very similar to this: do I use chronoboost on my gateways in the lategame or do I just make a ton of gateways to avoid the extra apm needed to do that. I have yet to see a high level protoss spend their chronoboost energy in the lategame...
In both the case with spending queen injects and chronoboost energy I think the answer is quite clear. The optimal play (possibly requiring very high apm) is to not make extra gateways and hatcheries and use the resources at hand which you already spent resources to get (queens and nexuses).
However, things like this might be very useful for players who are far from close to optimal play i.e every player except the ones practicing to win the GSL finals.
Doing stuff like building extra hatcheries instead of overlords when you are closing the supply cap might be very good.
A hatchery costs 300+25 for the drone. This saves you (more than) 100 minerals for an overlord you don't need and potentially some minerals for extra queens that you wont be needing.
Something that would be viable even on the highest level of play is to take a sneaky expo on your opponents side of the map and use the minerals for things like this. So in the case that you got that hidden expo up you might gain a relative advantage in a split map scenario by using what should be your opponents minerals to free up apm to use for other stuff.
Terran players could do the same and spend money on extra planetary fortresses , turrets and bunkers.
Protoss players could do it as an excuse to not spend that nexus energy , but only then!
In the general case I would recommend all zergs and protosses to practice their macro to the level that injecting and chronoboosting is not a problem even in the late game , at least if you have the ambition to win GSL ^^
After all , I think that larvae inject is the best spell in the game with chronoboost not far behind.
Terran is a special case since energy always can be used for scans and supply drops, which means that saving some energy might not be so bad as with the other races. This is somewhat also the case with zerg and protoss since the energy could be saved up for use in case of emergency , but I think it is way more common that protoss players max out their nexus energy than terran players maxing out cc energy on the highest levels.
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On December 10 2011 11:24 one-one-one wrote:
I like this.
This is exactly what the game needs! Less BS balance patches and more players trying to implement clever ideas like this!
I have been arguing that high level protoss players should start thinking more about how to manage their chronoboost energy instead of whining about ghost EMP. The situation there is very similar to this: do I use chronoboost on my gateways in the lategame or do I just make a ton of gateways to avoid the extra apm needed to do that. I have yet to see a high level protoss spend their chronoboost energy in the lategame...
In both the case with spending queen injects and chronoboost energy I think the answer is quite clear. The optimal play (possibly requiring very high apm) is to not make extra gateways and hatcheries and use the resources at hand which you already spent resources to get (queens and nexuses).
However, things like this might be very useful for players who are far from close to optimal play i.e every player except the ones practicing to win the GSL finals.
Doing stuff like building extra hatcheries instead of overlords when you are closing the supply cap might be very good.
A hatchery costs 300+25 for the drone. This saves you (more than) 100 minerals for an overlord you don't need and potentially some minerals for extra queens that you wont be needing.
Something that would be viable even on the highest level of play is to take a sneaky expo on your opponents side of the map and use the minerals for things like this. So in the case that you got that hidden expo up you might gain a relative advantage in a split map scenario by using what should be your opponents minerals to free up apm to use for other stuff.
Terran players could do the same and spend money on extra planetary fortresses , turrets and bunkers.
Protoss players could do it as an excuse to not spend that nexus energy , but only then!
In the general case I would recommend all zergs and protosses to practice their macro to the level that injecting and chronoboosting is not a problem even in the late game , at least if you have the ambition to win GSL ^^
After all , I think that larvae inject is the best spell in the game with chronoboost not far behind.
Terran is a special case since energy always can be used for scans and supply drops, which means that saving some energy might not be so bad as with the other races. This is somewhat also the case with zerg and protoss since the energy could be saved up for use in case of emergency , but I think it is way more common that protoss players max out their nexus energy than terran players maxing out cc energy on the highest levels.
The problem with this post is you have yet to explain why it is good. This is about hatcheries producing larva, not chronoboost energy lol
It's not such a great idea. I think the OP needs to use queens at least a little bit. Yeah, EVERY zerg should have about 7 hatcheries at the late game and about 4 queens that spend all their extra energy on the extra 3 hatcheries.
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On December 10 2011 11:05 Natalya wrote:
Third i disagree that queens are easily sniped than hatch. Queens can move, hatch not. They're moving as fast as zealots, and stimmed marines are not that much faster than queens. And anyway, drones are much more targeted than hatches.
And finally the argument that it takes apm makes non sens. If something use apm and u need to do it, practice ur apm!! Would you stop spreading creep because it ask apm?
If you have enough APM to do everything perfectly, then my argument is void. However, there is a physical ceiling to your APM, which you can increase by training, but as long as it is too low to do everything you have to, there is the need to prioritize. In other words: I would stop spreading creep, if there is something more beneficial, but I don't have the APM to do both. Of course the optimum state would be to have enough APM for everything, but as long as you have not reached this point, you have to manage your APM.
Queens die way faster than Hatcheries and have a tendency to aggro dropped units, which means they start engaging them if they are too close. If you are not spot on with getting it away it will most likely die.
Regarding remaxing and larva intensive styles, I think I will have to add some more to the op. But that will have to wait some time, anyway thanks to everyone for your thoughts, I appreciate it.
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So yeah, how about some replays of this?
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On December 10 2011 11:28 Lebzetu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2011 11:24 one-one-one wrote:
I like this.
This is exactly what the game needs! Less BS balance patches and more players trying to implement clever ideas like this!
I have been arguing that high level protoss players should start thinking more about how to manage their chronoboost energy instead of whining about ghost EMP. The situation there is very similar to this: do I use chronoboost on my gateways in the lategame or do I just make a ton of gateways to avoid the extra apm needed to do that. I have yet to see a high level protoss spend their chronoboost energy in the lategame...
In both the case with spending queen injects and chronoboost energy I think the answer is quite clear. The optimal play (possibly requiring very high apm) is to not make extra gateways and hatcheries and use the resources at hand which you already spent resources to get (queens and nexuses).
However, things like this might be very useful for players who are far from close to optimal play i.e every player except the ones practicing to win the GSL finals.
Doing stuff like building extra hatcheries instead of overlords when you are closing the supply cap might be very good.
A hatchery costs 300+25 for the drone. This saves you (more than) 100 minerals for an overlord you don't need and potentially some minerals for extra queens that you wont be needing.
Something that would be viable even on the highest level of play is to take a sneaky expo on your opponents side of the map and use the minerals for things like this. So in the case that you got that hidden expo up you might gain a relative advantage in a split map scenario by using what should be your opponents minerals to free up apm to use for other stuff.
Terran players could do the same and spend money on extra planetary fortresses , turrets and bunkers.
Protoss players could do it as an excuse to not spend that nexus energy , but only then!
In the general case I would recommend all zergs and protosses to practice their macro to the level that injecting and chronoboosting is not a problem even in the late game , at least if you have the ambition to win GSL ^^
After all , I think that larvae inject is the best spell in the game with chronoboost not far behind.
Terran is a special case since energy always can be used for scans and supply drops, which means that saving some energy might not be so bad as with the other races. This is somewhat also the case with zerg and protoss since the energy could be saved up for use in case of emergency , but I think it is way more common that protoss players max out their nexus energy than terran players maxing out cc energy on the highest levels.
The problem with this post is you have yet to explain why it is good. This is about hatcheries producing larva, not chronoboost energy lol It's not such a great idea. I think the OP needs to use queens at least a little bit. Yeah, EVERY zerg should have about 7 hatcheries at the late game and about 4 queens that spend all their extra energy on the extra 3 hatcheries.
Although I agree with you that my post is kind of "meta" I think that you didn't read it thoroughly enough. Doing comparisons with other macro mechanics is highly relevant for the development of the game!
All I said was that it could be viable on lower levels and that it in some cases could be viable on the highest levels.
There might be an awesome strategy which brings all your queens to the battle for transfusing purposes.
Asserting that every zerg on all levels and in all cases should have 7 hatcheries and 4 queens is just outright bad because it most likely is wrong.
Now remember before you answer to this: discussions like this are completely theoretical and because it has not yet been proven what the optimal strategy for zerg is they are worth consideration.
edit: grammar ..
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On December 10 2011 11:18 nanoscorp wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2011 11:10 DMII wrote:On December 10 2011 10:53 MoreFaSho wrote:
One thing worth mentioning is that you can store larva from injects up to 19 per hatchery, but hatcheries will otherwise stop at 3. I don't know where that fits into this analysis, but if you plan on re-maxing on larva inefficient units you will need a multiple of 4x the hatcheries to match what you could store. So this style is much better for infestor broodlord than for ling/bling heavy unit comps. This is mentioned partially, with 300-food pushes still needing APM. (because of this very reason) However if you have ever saved up 19 Larva I think you are doing something wrong, since you apparently didn't produce anything for at least 4 Production cycles. Also I don't think throwing your army into an engagement and hoping, that the reinforcements can mop up everything that's left is a good option from a strategic point of view, but that's what I think. Using a fast remax for an attack implies losing a lot of units, which can backfire in a pretty bad way. o_O losing your army can backfire? seriously? There are a lot of cases where you want do just this. Basically, if you're ahead in terms of economy, trade armies with the opponent and build back up. Snipe colossi, remax on lings and clean up the stalkers, etc. I think it's just the nature of 200/200 engagements: barring really cautious play by both players, a lot of stuff is going to die. It's rare that only 7-10 larva worth of units die every 15s, allowing a steady trickle of reinforcements over the course of a few minutes.
Yeah, it can backfire. If your opponent keeps a single collossus alive, your Ling reinfocements will do nothing. If you snipe every Collossus and the remaining army is still too strong you are also dead. Especially with Warpins and Chronoboosts, Protoss also has a very strong remax potential, and is able to do so directly at or near the engagement. One round of Zealots can also significantly reduce the damage your Lings can do.
If a 300-food push works depends heavily on the original engagement. If it isn't favoring you enough, you are dead. That's what I think about it. If I am sure, that I can have a good engagement I would definately go for it, but I don't think it is a very reliable option to go for.
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I edited my thoughts and comments on some of the conceirns people had to the end of the OP.
What I propose is more suited for what I think is the way of playing Zerg, which doesn't involve relying on heavy remaxing. More to this is in my rant about the 300-food-pushes I edited into the OP.
Thanks again for the comments so far. I appreciate it
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Really interesting ideas. I'm definitely gonna think about applying some of this the next time I get into a more drawn-out game.
I've had this little voice in the back of my head before saying "you have 5k minerals, 5 queens, 5 hatcheries and an army that doesnt need transfuse, and you're not making lots of tumors because you're bad. why?!"
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i think you need the possibility to save up larvae for fast renax, however one can mix up things by having some macro hatches and inject say each 80 in game seconds 2 hatches with each queen. some pros already do this (e.g. build a macro hatch right beside an expansion and inject both hatches with one queen each 2cnd cycle). This way you need 3 to 4 queens only
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EPT
