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On April 09 2010 06:36 guitarizt wrote:
I agree that zerg is way too easy to macro but nerfing spawn larva will make zerg too weak early and mid-game without any other changes imo.
I actually experimented with doing no queen FE builds ZvT for a while. Reapers obviously were a massive deterrent in continuing that, but on some maps reapers aren't too bad (scrap station, metalopolis). It worked fine actually, so I know that zerg does not need the extra larva from spawn larva earlygame to survive. The reason zerg is weak in the early-midgame is because they're so open to cheese. If you get caught with your pants down at all you lose.
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On April 09 2010 02:55 Floophead_III wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2010 02:40 dogabutila wrote:
You make it sound like zerg has some amazing winrate. They are barely playable post patch-8. I play random and I'm about to choose either Terran or Toss because they are pretty crap now. Maybe if there were maps wherein flanking was actually possible zerg would be playable...but in the current build with the current mapset... They arnt.
Roaches are supposed to be tanks, yet they are squishy and melt, hydras melt faster. And at this point in the game mutas are a nuisance but not game ending unless you tried to just mass straight zealots. How exactly do you propose a zerg win without any larva with squishy ass units?
Havent lost a game post patch to zerg, I've only won once as. And there was a game I should have won but apparently didnt set a hotkey and was trying to macro nothing... I never said zerg is imbalanced and is winning everything. I said zerg is broken. The balance lies in the inability of zerg to fight off early pressure, but if they do they can literally mass roach or mass baneling to victory. There is no unit for terran besides the marauder that can deal with mass roach.
You can deal with roaches as terran more easily than you can deal with zealots, probably more easily, since they don't have Charge. Shielded marines in front of tanks work just fine, or a MnMnM mass that's even 1/5 marauders seems to work fine with stim.
Marines got effectively a 25% boost in damage vs roaches, and barracks are not difficult to mass up throughout the game, or even as needed.
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Because you can always spend all your larvae into eggs at all times right? Free moneys and gas at all times?
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On April 09 2010 06:35 onmach wrote:
The reason they are bothered is that for the first time, the zerg can stack larvae. I agree that is kinda weird and way different from BW, in that it really affects lategame play.
Stacking larva is super inefficient - you lose the hatcheries production. To get 19 larva on a hatchery, you need 45 seconds (including a well-timed spawn larva) to get the first 7, and then 4 spawn larva to get the next 12 - 160 seconds, and you've wasted 10 or 11 larva in that time from the hatchery not producing. In that 205 seconds, you could be getting 20 larva from the queen alone, and another 13 or 14 for the hatchery.
To put it another way, to be getting 21 larva every 45 seconds, you only need 3 Hatcheries with queens, which is not hard or unusual, while 3 and a half minutes is a ridiculous amount of time to not be building drones or units.
Does anyone have a replay where the zerg stockpiles larva and it helps? I really can't imagine it being a strong strat.
On April 09 2010 07:37 zomgzergrush wrote:
Because you can always spend all your larvae into eggs at all times right? Free moneys and gas at all times?
Cheap enough Using 1 mineral/second/worker, with 16 workers you get 640 minerals in 40 seconds. Using 7 larva every 40 seconds (you get less), you get slightly more than 90 minerals per larva from saturated bases. Those numbers are a bit wobbly, but close.
Given that drones and zerglings cost only 50, you've got enough resources to morph all your larva, and you only end up with surplus of larva when your income hiccups.
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good thing people in this thread are not on the balance team... if they nerfed spawn larva they would need to buff zerg units they melt way fast. oh and tmech is very good vs z +1 thor can 1 shot a hydra. hmm after the patch i dont think you even need to have the +1, not sure. hellion tank thor banshee your set for whatever zerg throws at you.
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On April 09 2010 07:39 MeditationError wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2010 06:35 onmach wrote:
The reason they are bothered is that for the first time, the zerg can stack larvae. I agree that is kinda weird and way different from BW, in that it really affects lategame play.
Stacking larva is super inefficient - you lose the hatcheries production. To get 19 larva on a hatchery, you need 45 seconds (including a well-timed spawn larva) to get the first 7, and then 4 spawn larva to get the next 12 - 160 seconds, and you've wasted 10 or 11 larva in that time from the hatchery not producing. In that 205 seconds, you could be getting 20 larva from the queen alone, and another 13 or 14 for the hatchery. To put it another way, to be getting 19 larva every 45 seconds, you only need 3 Hatcheries with queens. 3 and a half minutes is a ridiculous amount of time to not be building drones or units, but 3 bases is pretty modest, and gives much more larva overall. Does anyone have a replay where the zerg stockpiles larva and it helps? I really can't imagine it being a strong strat.
Assuming your macro doesn't suck, no it doesn't help. If you are stockpiling larvae, there is a discrepancy between your income and your production. The likely culprit is that you have too many queens. for ex: early on there should only be one queen, even if you have two bases.
People have this misconception that you always have a queen at all hatches and all larvae is automatically able to egg into w/e. That is not the case. There simply isn't a way to afford spending all those larvae if you do that off the bat everywhere. Unless your macro sucks and you float your resources all day.
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I'm with you on this. For example in PvT if you harass the zergs mineral line and kill 10+ workers it's no problem at all to replace, the zerg will overtake you in econ very soon.
2 base Z vs 2 base T is not really fair, macro-wise, but terran has some really strong army composition against Z to make up for that - but it's a shame they can't all-out macro battle as much.
I'm not sure what to do, but Zerg could still produce incredibly fast in BW without queens.
The problem with any nerf to spawn larva is that it doesn't feel as useful to spawn 2 larva for example, so keeping it balanced and fun is tough if Blizz were to change it somehow.
It's a pity that Zerg doesn't need more than 2 hatcheries for 2 bases because it makes all build orders very similar and makes scouting builds as we did in BW pretty damn tough.
Overall Zerg is pretty unappealing mechanically, but i must say i'm loving them graphically.
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it's not zergs fault u sit in your base and try to outmacro it.
in reality zerg has the worst production value - if zerg attacks you and fails its game over for him 90% of the time, if you attack zerg and fail. Well.. zerg gains no advantage.
Lets say you go banshee and you succeed. Dead zerg. Lets say he goes muta and he denies you. What happens? You yawn and continue with your post banshee gameplan without any setback.
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I think this problem arose from the fact that overall units deal more damage than in BW.
Since BW was delicately balanced, the stats of Zerg units fit in there almost perfectly.
When moved to Starcraft II where the game is just bigger, Zerg has a bit more trouble using the slow rate of larva to create lings early game. Lings with speed is same tech as the barracks with lab which has access to mauraders, reapers and marines. Gateway with cyber core has zealots, sentries and stalkers.
Though Cybercore and Roach W. are similar in the case that they are completely new buildings used to create different types of units, Sentries AND Stalkers have much more flexibility than just Roaches.
This forces the Zerg to be unable really do much earlier on, ling micro to get map control in so you could tech was crucial in BW.
Chronoboosting your zealots can easily get you map control and if a Terran walls off and just goes for a big early game army, then he'll get map control too. Supplies depots helped a little in walling off while Warpgate helped alot for those who use their first gateway to block their base and use warpgate to get units out.
Because of all of these changes to the Terran and Protoss, Blizzard saw inspiration in the fact that Zerg is the swarming race, compared to the defensive race compared to the strong-units-high-cost race. The only logical route? More units!
Hence, extra larva! But, because of the fact that they implemented that larva increase through a Queen that can in addition to the Hatchery, create 5 more, this though, makes the Zerg a much more flowing race: "huge amount of units all in drones with no army into, no drones whatsoever and all army." This was the sole advantage and disadvantage of Zerg in BW had
Now that the other races have become so easily aggresive, the extremely mobile reaper, viking and helion, the super early Zealot, the sentries which just annihilate melee armies.....aka. ZERG, etc, etc, etc. Zerg is forced into the situation that we see all too much. They're losing all game until they can finally support army production, armies clash, survivors limp away back to respective bases and then Zerg uses all of the production to only make army units.
That's how it always was in BW but in BW, you had to get multiple Hatcheries but instead, spawn larva, being something so standardized and powerful (compared to how "normal" it would be to get a 10 hatchery at your MAIN) makes our problem.
Both my ideas for how to fix this are too radical now:
1. Take Queen completely out or put it back into an offensive spellcaster. An upgrade somewhere that increased larva production speed and/or larva cap. Simple but doesn't allow Zerg to instaneously get 5 units. It can even be the exact same tier as Queen and have the same net production.
2. Take Queen and raise it to lair or hive tech. The Queen would be like a termite Queen, swollen, barely capable of moving and after long time, produced a large amount of babies (which could either be larva, or you select queen, select larva and make the units from the queen itself.
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Zerg just plays differently then the other races. If you weaken their ability to produce units quickly and erratically, then you need to heavily buff the units they do produce. As Zerg, it's all about the choices you make. I can't both produce workers and units, so I have to time my lulls in army production and scout very well and avoid cheese.
Larvae (like creep) are a RESOURCE for Zerg, same as Minerals and Gas. Damaging our econ by killing 10+ workers, like an above poster mentioned, isn't worthless because we can quickly replace them; it still costs us the minerals, and it costs us important Larvae that we generally need to desperately fight off timing pushes. As it stands we generally need to heavily out-supply the opponents army to win army vs army, because our units are rather flimsy. People say "that's what Zerg is about" but then also say "they shouldn't be able to make so many units"?
Fine, nerf larvae production down to Terran and Protoss level production. But don't complain if our units get buffed up, and never complain about a lack of diversity, because then all the races really will play pretty much the same.
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On April 09 2010 06:05 Floophead_III wrote:
Hatcheries cost 350 minerals + time to build the drone + time to build the hatch. Queens cost 150, actually fight things and can be used to plant creep tumors, produce MORE larva than a hatchery, and are easily replaced if they die.
Zerg can still accidently make too many drones or too few drones. SC2 has not changed the fact that you need to know when to drone and when to not. The strength of spawn larva is moreso that you don't need any time to build up an army. With 2 hatch 2 queen you can pump over 36 lings in a minute. That's absurd. Marines take 25 seconds to build. You would need 8 reactor barracks to match that rate of production. That's 200/50 * 8 or 1600/400 resources just to match zerg's production factor which they spent a whopping 350+150*2 = 650 minerals on. Not to mention they also expanded by making more production. To match their expansions you'd need to spend another 400 minerals.
So what if zerg has 20 less drones than you have scvs. All that extra money has to go into production just to keep up with the rate zerg makes units. The point is that zerg hardly needs full saturation to pump a ridiculous number of units, because they never needed to invest in all that production in the first place.
8 Reactor barracks is not reasonable to be able to produce off 2 bases, but you don't need anywhere near 1 marine per 2 zerglings. The zerg's on 2 bases, so assume you are too. Or else you're trying to secure one. He will need a significant number of drones to pump pure lings. At least 1-1.5 per patch. 1 Planetary fortress + 2 bunkers can secure your second base vs all in zerglings and once you're even on bases you can EASILY crush 36 zerglings a minute. I know 2 queens 2 hatcheries requires full saturation on minerals to produce 18 roaches a minute. Full 2 base saturation terran + MULES can support what, 4-5 barracks + 1-2 factories +1 starport?
Are you still arguing this by the way? The thread is about 4 pages of people explaining why you're wrong and the odd post suggesting nerfing it down to 3 larvae which wouldn't make a massive difference until later on.
"I'm with you on this. For example in PvT if you harass the zergs mineral line and kill 10+ workers it's no problem at all to replace, the zerg will overtake you in econ very soon."
This is terribly wrong. He has to spent 500 minerals and 10 larvae. By the time he mines that extra minerals with whatever drones he has left and makes the drones you probably have an extra 1000 minerals or more of an army and can just kill him.
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It is a really difficult thing to balance. I think early game you need it because there is a point where your queen first hatches and your using your larva immediately for the first few spawn larva. This is either to drone up on your expansion or producing attacking units. A lot of non zerg players complain about how much larva you have but fail to realise that terran and toss have their own buildings they can make units out of. Also if they are a good player they will be spending there money as and when they have it. So if you whipe out an army they wont be able to replenish it straight away unless they were food capped.
Overall i wouldn't say it was broken just because you need it to be the way it is early game to help keep up. But stopping the late game stock pile of larva being used on mass crackling once a massive fight has occured leaving both sides left with nothing needs to be addressed, but there is no real way that can be sorted without effecting early game.
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On April 09 2010 07:42 zomgzergrush wrote:
People have this misconception that you always have a queen at all hatches and all larvae is automatically able to egg into w/e. That is not the case. There simply isn't a way to afford spending all those larvae if you do that off the bat everywhere. Unless your macro sucks and you float your resources all day.
It depends what you're morphing. Zerglings will consume every larva you've got, but turning all your gas into mutalisks will take a tiny proportion of your larva even without queens.
Reducing zergs larva will just put pressure on them to build more expensive units, it won't reduce their ability to turn minerals into armies in the blink of an eye. Especially late-game, where zerg will just compensate with more hatcheries.
In an actual game situation, when the larva pops off, you have a certain amount of minerals and gas. If you have more larva, then zerglings are an option, roaches are attractive. With fewer larva you can still comfortably spend all your gas on mutas/hydras, with enough larva left over for a couple of drones, you just can't build zerglings because they cost too much larva.
Nerfing larva just leads to fewer units, not smaller armies. Just a less zergy zerg.
I'm not saying that there aren't issues with zerg in the late game, but I am saying that spawn larva isn't the source of these problems, and nerfing larva is not the solution.
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On April 09 2010 06:05 Floophead_III wrote:
Hatcheries cost 350 minerals + time to build the drone + time to build the hatch. Queens cost 150, actually fight things and can be used to plant creep tumors, produce MORE larva than a hatchery, and are easily replaced if they die.
Queens cost 150 minerals + time to build the queen + easily dies to sniping + prevents lair tech while building + cannot be used as an expansion.
So... you save like what 200 minerals for every queen instead of a hatch. Guess what? Each MULE brings in Terran like 300 minerals and this happens every 50 seconds for EVERY OC, while you only make 2-3 queens per game max. Stop whining, zerg would just mass hatches if there weren't any queens like SC1. This is simply their macro mechanic.
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On April 09 2010 08:21 w_Ender_w wrote:
Zerg just plays differently then the other races. If you weaken their ability to produce units quickly and erratically, then you need to heavily buff the units they do produce. As Zerg, it's all about the choices you make. I can't both produce workers and units, so I have to time my lulls in army production and scout very well and avoid cheese.
Larvae (like creep) are a RESOURCE for Zerg, same as Minerals and Gas. Damaging our econ by killing 10+ workers, like an above poster mentioned, isn't worthless because we can quickly replace them; it still costs us the minerals, and it costs us important Larvae that we generally need to desperately fight off timing pushes. As it stands we generally need to heavily out-supply the opponents army to win army vs army, because our units are rather flimsy. People say "that's what Zerg is about" but then also say "they shouldn't be able to make so many units"?
Fine, nerf larvae production down to Terran and Protoss level production. But don't complain if our units get buffed up, and never complain about a lack of diversity, because then all the races really will play pretty much the same.
Easily the most sensible post in this thread.
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I think it does make sense to cap the larvae count at each hatchery to 7 (for example, since that's the number with 3 saved + 4 spawned) as it encourages good macro and still allows zerg the huge production boost they need for drone pumping while expanding or unit pumping after a battle.
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On April 09 2010 07:43 MaD.pYrO wrote:
I'm with you on this. For example in PvT if you harass the zergs mineral line and kill 10+ workers it's no problem at all to replace, the zerg will overtake you in econ very soon.
2 base Z vs 2 base T is not really fair, macro-wise, but terran has some really strong army composition against Z to make up for that - but it's a shame they can't all-out macro battle as much.
Have any of you guys even looked at the income tab of a replay? Especially TvZ.
Income of two FULL bases of drones equal one full base of T with constant mule.
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People's issues with larva seems to be about late game zerg or their ability to drone very quick.
1) You rly shouldn't be going to late game vs zerg if you play properly.
They do have the macro advantage there due to stacking larva.
It would be like, if I didn't use my CC/Nexus, and my 4 GYs/Barracks to produce units 4 workers and 10 Zealots/20Marines (IE they are not producing units for the time it would take to make those units list above) then my GYs and Nexus or CC and Raxes for the next 4 SCVS/Probes and 10Zs or 20 Marines, now produce EXTRA fast. Essentially I saved up their unused production power.
However the other races can Q production. So to make up for zerg;s ability to rebuild super fast, Q up reinforcements while you fight. Make your raxes produce 10 marines (with Reactors) each this way as you're losing units in battle, or moving across the map you're rebuilding your army.
2) Make them build units, instead of drone by attacking/harassing them. If you mass and only attack after 10 minutes then they can spend all their drone for 7-8 Minutes on Drones then mass an army in the last 2 minutes. You have to scare them into making units early game, so they don't just make drones.
It is true that if all they do is produce drones, and expand they will achieve saturation and a massive economy much faster than you. This occurs b.c they are effectively using ALL their production buildings for workers, while you can only produce workers 1 at a time from your CC or Nexus. Even with CB or Mules you're still behind. It would be like if you could build workers from ANY production building.
However, while this gives them a HUGE economic advantage that if left unchecked will win them the game, they are defenseless. They can't D up w/o spending larva or using workers to build the defenses and thus cutting into their eco advantage. Terran and Toss can field workers, an army and produce defenses (mineral permitting). Zerg has to pick either: Make a Unit, Make a Worker, or Make a Worker to Make a Colony.
So what is the lesson here? If you leave them alone to make nothing but workers and expand, while do do the same. They will win. You are at a disadvantage since you are much less versatile, so you have to beat them by punishing them for their choices. When he goes and drones up like crazy send a few reapers or even marines and harass him, he'll have to make units or lose his drones. In PvZ even 1-2 Zealots can get an droning Zerg to react and make zerglings, effectively stifling his economic pure drone spam advantage.
That being said, I am not sure if some changes need to be made to stacking larva. if I under stand it correctly you can only stack the Queen larva once you're beyond the initial hatchery larva the hatchery stop making it's own larva. Is that correct?
If so then, all they are doing is stacking "Chrono boosts" and Mules. The only race to legitimately complain is Toss since they can't stack chrono boosts on a single structure and to benefit from a full nexus they'd need 4 of that building. IE 4x Stargate or 4x Robo Facs. I'd much rather see a nexus stacking change than a larva stacking nerf.
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On April 09 2010 08:22 Slayer91 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2010 06:05 Floophead_III wrote:
Hatcheries cost 350 minerals + time to build the drone + time to build the hatch. Queens cost 150, actually fight things and can be used to plant creep tumors, produce MORE larva than a hatchery, and are easily replaced if they die.
Zerg can still accidently make too many drones or too few drones. SC2 has not changed the fact that you need to know when to drone and when to not. The strength of spawn larva is moreso that you don't need any time to build up an army. With 2 hatch 2 queen you can pump over 36 lings in a minute. That's absurd. Marines take 25 seconds to build. You would need 8 reactor barracks to match that rate of production. That's 200/50 * 8 or 1600/400 resources just to match zerg's production factor which they spent a whopping 350+150*2 = 650 minerals on. Not to mention they also expanded by making more production. To match their expansions you'd need to spend another 400 minerals.
So what if zerg has 20 less drones than you have scvs. All that extra money has to go into production just to keep up with the rate zerg makes units. The point is that zerg hardly needs full saturation to pump a ridiculous number of units, because they never needed to invest in all that production in the first place. 8 Reactor barracks is not reasonable to be able to produce off 2 bases, but you don't need anywhere near 1 marine per 2 zerglings. The zerg's on 2 bases, so assume you are too. Or else you're trying to secure one. He will need a significant number of drones to pump pure lings. At least 1-1.5 per patch. 1 Planetary fortress + 2 bunkers can secure your second base vs all in zerglings and once you're even on bases you can EASILY crush 36 zerglings a minute. I know 2 queens 2 hatcheries requires full saturation on minerals to produce 18 roaches a minute. Full 2 base saturation terran + MULES can support what, 4-5 barracks + 1-2 factories +1 starport? Are you still arguing this by the way? The thread is about 4 pages of people explaining why you're wrong and the odd post suggesting nerfing it down to 3 larvae which wouldn't make a massive difference until later on. "I'm with you on this. For example in PvT if you harass the zergs mineral line and kill 10+ workers it's no problem at all to replace, the zerg will overtake you in econ very soon." This is terribly wrong. He has to spent 500 minerals and 10 larvae. By the time he mines that extra minerals with whatever drones he has left and makes the drones you probably have an extra 1000 minerals or more of an army and can just kill him.
They don't have to be zerglings. What if they were banelings. What if they were 18 roaches? The point is the same. I can produce more banelings than you can produce infantry. I don't care how many infantry you make, cause I'll have more banelings. When you attack, I will kill your entire army then flood speedling which you can't stop. Worst case, you don't die but I get full map control to expand and then start the process again. Oh and if it's mech, I just make roaches.
In BW you couldn't make a force of zerglings of that magnitude on such short notice. That would have to be planned and build ahead of time. SC2 makes it so you can literally flood 20+ units at once.
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Spawn Larva takes away from the Drone v Overlord v Attacker balance in the original. It still exists, but is greatly diminished.
SC1 Zerg - Units are very weak. But they are very cheap - cheap enough that the price-to-utility ratio was often higher than the other races. So you have weaker units but they are cheaper, so you just make more with the money saved and you come out ahead right? Well, not quite. Your ability to make them is limited because the same building must make drones and supply. Ouch.
Well in SC2, once you get a Queen or 2 out that's not a problem. Now your units which are stronger in price-utility come out in enough numbers.
Almost every unit has higher DPS and/or more health in SC2. Fine. But even though Hydras just got a nerf, and are slower than SC1 (off creep anyway), they are wickedly good. 75/25/1 got you ~10dps versus large, and ~5dps versus small (and 7.5 against the rare medium). 100/50/2 is overall less than a double increase. And it gets you ~16dps versus large (less than double - fine) and ~16dps versus small (over 3 times).
So you have a problem there. In SC1 you got a weak, but cheap unit. But you had problems massing them due to larva. In SC2, you get a stronger, normal cost unit. Therefore you do not need to use as many larva to create an effective hydra force. And to top it off, you have more larva!
If Roach is the new hydra (same costs) then you can see why we complain. They are quite potent, besides lack of air attack. So I argue they are better than SC1 Hydra in many situations. Even if you disagree, you still have the fact that spawn larva means way more of a cheap unit.
Expect more Zerg units to get a nerf if spawn larva does not. They are STILL too strong for the amount you get.
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