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Zerg scouting flaw - Page 11

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SpicyCrab
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
402 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-04 00:20:58
September 04 2010 00:19 GMT
#201
I suspect that the non-zerg players in this thread are not aware of how easy and common it is to lose as zerg SOLELY because you weren't able to scout.

It is so much more important for zerg to scout his opponent early than it is for T or P it's a joke.

As a general rule with zerg; if you cannot scout your opponent... you lose. Flat out, lose.

I'm not even complaining (and I don't necessarily agree with the OP), but I think it's important for people to recognize the actual issue.

P says "my scout isn't good either why don't we get a better scout too!"

Because you don't need a successful early scout to live past early-mid game 90% of the time.


I'm such a baller in my dreams. - HiFriend
Leeoku
Profile Joined May 2010
1617 Posts
September 04 2010 00:20 GMT
#202
i definetly like overseer an evo chamber tech
Ksyper
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Bulgaria665 Posts
September 04 2010 00:24 GMT
#203
So you are saying that zerg should always be able to scout the enemy base without losing anything.
We can just give all zerg players built in map hacks while we're at it.
I play zerg and I have no trouble scouting out what I need.
KaiserJohan
Profile Joined May 2010
Sweden1808 Posts
September 04 2010 00:28 GMT
#204
Scouting isnt the problem os ZvX early. The problem is just surviving. 5rax reaper harrass into reaper/marauder/marine push is freaking over the top
England will fight to the last American
StarcraftPlayer
Profile Joined September 2010
2 Posts
September 04 2010 00:30 GMT
#205
This is kind of a stupid idea, but what about making overlords have about 100 energy? The ability's they could have are :

-Boost [25] (Makes them move fairly faster)
-Observe [25] (Makes an overlord see a bit farther)
-Spit [0.9 per second] (releases creep) - I know overlords already have this, but usually people just leave 1 overlord at one spot spitting out creep, and don't really pay attention to it...

Although doing this could cause problems like High Templars having the ability to feedback them, but seriously ... who feedbacks an overlord?

Just an idea
sl10
Profile Joined June 2010
Canada37 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-04 00:35:24
September 04 2010 00:33 GMT
#206
On August 14 2010 14:07 Goobus wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 14 2010 14:00 Iggyhopper wrote:
Split the overlord speed and overseer speed upgrades for 50/50 each. It's not viable to upgrade to lair and get the overlord speed just so you can sacrifice it.


I hate the way people throw around the word "viable." What the fuck does that even mean? Do you mean sacrificing an OL after getting OL speed to be cost inefficient? If that's what you're saying, you would need to back it up with some ARGUMENTS as to why it is in fact cost inefficient. Overall, your post means almost nothing.


trying looking up big words you dont know; might learn something.
vi·a·ble
practicable; workable: a viable alternative.

to op, increased natural OL speed would be nice, but i dont think its necessary. OL is fine, and overseers can scout well enough during early midgame
HEROwithNOlegacy
Profile Joined June 2010
United States850 Posts
September 04 2010 00:38 GMT
#207
4 gate is not a problem to scout, 1st zealot cant catch your drone if you micro it well, but I think against terran it is a little difficult. Maybe you should get a faster lair and instead of speed at the begining, use an overseer
SlayerS Fighting!
RoarMan
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
Canada745 Posts
September 04 2010 00:40 GMT
#208
On September 04 2010 09:28 KaiserJohan wrote:
Scouting isnt the problem os ZvX early. The problem is just surviving. 5rax reaper harrass into reaper/marauder/marine push is freaking over the top

This, survival is the problem.

Also with 4 gate. I feel like buildings really shouldn't be armored, it's kind of silly for them to take so much damage from units. I mean sure Spine Crawlers do extra damage to armor but that hardly offsets the fact that it's sooo damn weak and expensive.
All the pros got dat Ichie.
LaLuSh
Profile Blog Joined April 2003
Sweden2358 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-04 00:49:40
September 04 2010 00:47 GMT
#209
On September 04 2010 09:14 RoarMan wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 07:36 travis wrote:
Zerg scouting is not a problem. Zerg may have issues, but zerg has it better in the scouting department early game than protoss does. A simple fact right there.

Agreed, Zerg scouting is not that much of a problem. Zerg can also establish a lot of map control, more so then the Terran or Protoss player.

Although it would be nice to see Changeling buffed ( Changelings are so super obvious, ffs if you click on them it says "Changeling") I don't think it's necessary.

I can't comment on wether or not Zerg players scouting is stronger or weaker then Protoss, but I don't feel like Zerg has scouting issues.

Zerg has issues, just not with scouting.

Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 09:13 LaLuSh wrote:
I wrote this in the other crappy thread that was closed:

Hey top rated diamond here, but I could be the best in the world if I played more.

Sacking an overlord is often a very stupid move. It's not desirable whatsoever. It's only useful if you scout a tech heavy all-inish sort of build (read 2port banshee, cliff drop etc).

If you sack an overlord to an aggressive unit heavy 1base build (which you will be doing about 1/3 of the time because you're gambling like a moron by sacking the overlord in the first place), you might as well gg. You just decreased your chances of winning from ~50% to ~20%.

Important note: SC2 is such a sped up game, that scouting information has decreased in value compared to broodwar. Macro mechanics speed up timings so much that the overlord needs to be sacked at an unhealthily early timing for any sort of adaptation to occur (that's why bw-coaches whine about sc2 being "too fast"). Even if you scout early warp gate research and 4 gates, the changes you will be able to make to your strat in the short, boosted, time between your scouting and the time of the incoming attack are largely insignificant.

Sure there might be a real difference between expecting an expansion and a 4gate. But generally it is not hard to anticipate a multigate "all-in". It's simply that the time differential between absolute knowledge of the build and the incoming attack is too short. There's hardly any major difference in preparing for a 4gate and a normal build up until a critical point (which preferably is the latest point possible), where you start panick pushing out spines and roaches.

You simply can't start producing units earlier, or your economy will be too bad. There is not enough room to change or modify your strategy.

Same story with terran. Sloppy terrans will always reveal their strats by building their buildings in stupid places. But 3rax all-ins simply can't be defended if you don't have both metabolic boost and roaches ready. Any sort of slight delay on speedling research, any sort of lair before speed build, any sort of lair before roach warren build, WILL die regardless if you scout the build or not.

Same with 2-3rax/1fac MM/hellion+scv rush. It doesn't matter if you scout it. The timings at which you would have to decide for speedlings, roaches, and (most importantly) the construction of your baneling's nest are really really early. Pre "when it makes economic sense to sack an overlord"-timing.

If you want to supply block yourself at 24/18 supply vs a 1base build, go ahead be my guest, mr. progamer.

Same crap with Lair timings vs banshee openings. You have to commit to ling speed/roaches blindly in more than 50% of your ZvT games. You will only ever scout a banshee opening without having to sack an overlord vs a bad terran.

The rest of your games. Simply have fun guessing or flip the coin and sack your overlord anyway, while praying to god your opponent isn't doing a unit heavy 1base rush.



I don't believe in giving zerg better scouting as a solution. I think the game needs to be redesigned for HotS and all timings be delayed. This game will just keep sucking and be random as hell as long as its as fast paced as it is now. A game needs some "dead air" and build up time for good playhers to be able to adapt.


Yea really the timings in SC2 are so fucking random, but it may just be the fact that the meta game is not as developed as Brood War yet.

It really does feel like things are waay to sped up in Sc2, which is why we are having the feeling that "scouting" is the problem as there's a very small window of opportunity to react to certain things.


Nothing about the metagame. Macro mechanics are boosting shit way too much, depreciating the value of information, increasing the power and unpredictability of han bangs (one single timing attacks). Inititally probably a good idea from Blizzard in order to try to remove "dead air" time. But makes for a way too volatile game than we'd have prefered.

Terran macro mechanic is literally designed for 1base aggression. As long as they manage to keep the pressure on or keep you on the same amount of bases, they will always win.

Zerg macro mechanic is designed to be fucking broken any time they have too easy a time surviving the early game. Mostly applies to the vP matchup, as P actually have to counterexpand aggressively themselves to keep up with Z, whereas terran doesn't. Terran 2 base on full saturation is essentially 2.6 effective bases.

Zerg can't really afford to build enough drones, or expand enough vs T, as T's designed to be such an aggressive race. It doesn't matter that the terran stays on 1base long, because the full saturation+mule more often than not matches the scarcely saturated zerg on 2bases. Once zerg is able to produce drones again, terran usually is in the process of floating his second CC to expo, easily claiming the income lead again, despite expanding very very late.

P is safer vs T because their macro mechanic can boost army production, and because it doesn't require as much minerals/minute at the start to produce workers as compared to Z. Ps advantage in PvT only usually lasts to the 5th minute or so, which is usually signified by them standing with some units or a bunch of stalkers below the terran ramp/wall-in. As we move towards full saturation terran once again takes the lead, and the big big problem of the PvT matchup becomes apparent. P can't expand safely without getting run over, as T explodes in the midgame. Likewise, T usually can't FE in the early game without a huge gamble, as P's econ and production is boosted in this period of the game.


So what you're left with is a fucking borefest of 4gate builds and 1base all-ins, all fighting to be more extreme than the other. On the other end you've got zerg, because of the inherent weakness of their units, forced to expand quickly. Essentially they are gambling as much as the other races do on their extreme timing attacks, only zerg are on the other end of the spectrum: producing drones for as long as humanly possible and making educated guesses as to when the incoming attack is due. ZvP is more balanced because zerg can wait for much longer before having to decide. ZvT is ruthless because zerg blindly have to decide 1½ minute before terran moves out whether they need the speedlings upgrade/roaches or the quick lair.
mrd33ds
Profile Joined August 2010
Djibouti30 Posts
September 04 2010 00:50 GMT
#210
On September 04 2010 09:24 Ksyper wrote:
So you are saying that zerg should always be able to scout the enemy base without losing anything.
We can just give all zerg players built in map hacks while we're at it.
I play zerg and I have no trouble scouting out what I need.


If you say u have no problem, then how about you add some advice for this guy instead of just acting like youre a total bad*** zerg player?
mind control
synapse
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
China13814 Posts
September 04 2010 00:50 GMT
#211
On September 04 2010 08:29 travis wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 04 2010 08:24 StupidFatHobbit wrote:
On September 04 2010 07:36 travis wrote:
Zerg scouting is not a problem. Zerg may have issues, but zerg has it better in the scouting department early game than protoss does. A simple fact right there.


Just because zerg scouting is better than protoss scouting does not mean it is not flawed when zerg is far more reactionary than protoss can ever be. Zerg needs to have the best scouting of all three races, hands down, and right now there's a huge gap at the most critical time in the game.

Your logic is flawed.


so u admit zerg already has better scouting than protoss but your solution to zerg woes is to give them EVEN BETTER scouting. clearly the issue couldn't maybe, just maybe, be something other than the scouting.

also, i didn't even display any logic in my post. i just posted 2 statements, one of opinion and one of fact. so i don't know what logic it is that is flawed.


Zerg scouting is decent early-game, but the fact that scouting (Terran) tech involves the loss of an overlord and that Zerg early-game is already hard-pressed for resources to expand / tech with, I think improving Zerg scouting is one way to help boost Z early game survivability. Otherwise, Z has no way of going for economy over aggression.
:)
Lobotomist
Profile Joined May 2010
United States1541 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-04 00:59:29
September 04 2010 00:56 GMT
#212
Eh, It's sort of the same for toss though, yeah? I mean you're not going to get a scout in until you have an observer (or hallucination, which i NEVER see) which is pretty close to overseer/speed overlord tech. Terrans...well don't get me started, but scan at least has a disincentive on its use.

Though I do agree with the point made that zerg scouting is more critical than other races. With a much more reactive playstyle, zerg has the need to know what the enemy is doing, composition-wise, in order to win.
Teching to hive too quickly isn't just a risk: it's an ultrarisk
McFoo
Profile Joined April 2010
United Kingdom180 Posts
September 04 2010 01:29 GMT
#213
On August 14 2010 11:40 hadoken5 wrote:

- Zerg is a reactionary race in its purest form. It NEEDS to know what his opponent is doing and how to counter it.


Zerg is no more "reactionary" than any other race.
None of the races have strict, determined, game-long build orders that don't deviate at all regardless of what the opponent is doing; and neither race starts off the game with no plan/build at all, just with the idea: "Ok, I can't do anything until I know what he's doing."
All races require action and reaction.

If T makes a lot marines and Z throws down a Baneling nest and if Z makes a lot of mutas and T makes a lot of turrets and an armory for thors; who is the "reactionary race"?
Hidden_MotiveS
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Canada2562 Posts
September 04 2010 01:37 GMT
#214
OP makes a great point. This is an rts, people should be allowed to scout anytime.

And as other people have noted, protoss kind of gets the short stick too. They can't scout again until they have observers.




I would like to point something out though. Protoss can hide their tech in a corner of the map. They just need one pylon and one tech building, and the enemy won't know what they are doing until it's potentially too late. Terrans and zerg have a harder time doing this, so it kind of evens out that terran can scout protoss' base with scans but protoss can't scout terran's.
StupidFatHobbit
Profile Joined May 2010
United States98 Posts
September 04 2010 03:10 GMT
#215
On September 04 2010 09:47 LaLuSh wrote:<big post about macro mechanics breaking game>



all of this is absolutely dead-on
An expert is someone whose made all the possible mistakes there are to make in a very narrow field.
Smigi
Profile Joined April 2010
United States328 Posts
September 04 2010 04:08 GMT
#216
Yes scouting is a huge flaw for Zerg.

I feel its one of the only imbalances left in the ZvT matchup after this patch.

You don't know what the Terrans doing behind that wall, ever. Atleast againist a good terran, who leaves marines on the edges so no ovies can get in.

Drone then Own
Lunatic918
Profile Joined August 2010
United States2 Posts
September 04 2010 04:11 GMT
#217
Honestly, I believe most of starcraft 2's balance issues can be resolved with a map design change.
Some of these maps are obviously too small.

Take the Idra v Morrow Steppes of War game 4 at IEM for example:


I would suggest downloading the replay itself and watching the timing on the lair, overseer and timing push. While Idra could have obtained his Overseer about 20 seconds faster, it most probably would not have allowed him to recover due to lack of resources / larva.
Metal Apple Tits > Metalopolis
Jayme
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
United States5866 Posts
September 04 2010 04:28 GMT
#218
On September 04 2010 09:24 Ksyper wrote:
So you are saying that zerg should always be able to scout the enemy base without losing anything.
We can just give all zerg players built in map hacks while we're at it.
I play zerg and I have no trouble scouting out what I need.


If you are at any sort of high skill level you are lying.

You do have trouble scouting Terran in particular. No amount of tricks you can think of will change the fact that Overlords are slow as sin and a half decent terran player will kill it before it sees anything of note. Perfect wallins 100% of the time prevent ling scouts.

The only time youre getting good scouting against a T is if the T is a terrible player
Python is garbage, number 1 advocate of getting rid of it.
Antares777
Profile Joined June 2010
United States1971 Posts
September 04 2010 04:53 GMT
#219
On September 04 2010 09:20 Leeoku wrote:
i definetly like overseer an evo chamber tech


Then imo zerg would be able to contaminate buildings so much earlier and just delay macro maybe a little too much.
Antares777
Profile Joined June 2010
United States1971 Posts
September 04 2010 04:56 GMT
#220
On September 04 2010 10:29 McFoo wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 14 2010 11:40 hadoken5 wrote:

- Zerg is a reactionary race in its purest form. It NEEDS to know what his opponent is doing and how to counter it.


Zerg is no more "reactionary" than any other race.
None of the races have strict, determined, game-long build orders that don't deviate at all regardless of what the opponent is doing; and neither race starts off the game with no plan/build at all, just with the idea: "Ok, I can't do anything until I know what he's doing."
All races require action and reaction.

If T makes a lot marines and Z throws down a Baneling nest and if Z makes a lot of mutas and T makes a lot of turrets and an armory for thors; who is the "reactionary race"?


Do you even play zerg? it doesn't seem like you know what you are talking about - the majority of ppl who posted here would disagree with you. Zerg IS a reactionary race.
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