Zerg scouting flaw - Page 11

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.

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.

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.

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.