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The mechanic is not forgiving and the problem compounds throughout the game.
With Terran and mules, the mechanic only really costs you if you get to 200 energy and then gain no more energy. Until that point, you can spam the mules and get back to where you would have been.
It makes the zerg mechanic very tough. Lets say you are 10 seconds late on your first inject, then 3 seconds late on your next, then screw up and go 30 seconds a few injects later and miss because you were trying to micro lings. You are 43 seconds behind and you can never get that time back.
Maybe something should be added to the game called "single injection" where for 10 energy you can you can spawn 1 larva, and it stacks with itself and regular inject. Would still be less efficient then regular injections but if you got behind it would give you a way to try to catch up. Not sure how OP it would be but just a thought.
And to anyone that doesn't play zerg the injection mechanic is very tough. It is really not easy to have to do something late game every 45 seconds that doesn't involve anything to do w/ fighting. Add in creep spread and you have 2 things going on that operate independently of really anything else that is going on.
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Edit: Chise already brought this up!
Here's a funny thought about larva injects. If we want our hatcheries to be constantly injected, and I mean absolutely robotic and perfect. I've noticed that if your first queen comes out and you inject immediately, then stare at your hatch and try to inject right when the larva pop, you can't. Your queen doesn't have enough energy for a little bit more time.
Is this just something that happens on the first inject or does it actually take less time for the larva to pop than it does for your queen to get back to 25 energy?
Not that we'll ever be that perfect, but maybe someday some incredibly gosu zerg will start having 2 queens per hatch because he IS that perfect :O
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yes, if you inject perfectly quickly you don't have enough energy to re-inject instantly when the larva pops. it's annoying.
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one thing dissapoints me with the larva inject, a terran can call down mules before the last one is finished u can chrono boost anything when one is still runing, but you cant incekt larva when one is still runing and wait some sec when one is finished becouse there is a delay between larva pops out and the next 25 energy that makes me angry so many times^^
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On February 13 2011 22:23 freestalker wrote:
yes, if you inject perfectly quickly you don't have enough energy to re-inject instantly when the larva pops. it's annoying.
That annoys me so much.. having to wait till it allows you to inject is really dumb.
Anyway.. from this thread I decided to play zerg more.. my injects werent terrible but slow my energy on the queens rose and rose meaning I am missing lots of injects.. which that graph showed for the 2900 player/robot.. I think it was like.. 60 larva difference at the 13 minute mark which is crazy.. I will start putting a lot more concentration into inject timings even if it causes some losses by focusing on it too much for a while..
Some of the discussion here also made me think.. what if queuing larva injects was possible with a queen that has 50+ energy but instead of perfect injecting it would be like.. 5 energy late or something so still a really good player would be ahead and will allow the bad zergs to not having something to complain about anymore..
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To those of you complaining about the "less forgiving" nature of inject, just remember, every other inject is virtually a mule(+4 workers). However, that zerg "mule" is permanent, and compounds with the next. Also, the natural larvae mechanic can give you a new unit every 15s, which requires (production time/15) structures per base for every other race. For example:
If a zerg uses 2 hatches for straight army production, that's 600 minerals in production investment for a roach every 7.5s on average (6 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production, it takes 4.27 gateways, or 600-750 minerals.
If we take macro mechanics into consideration, 450 minerals gives you a roach every 6.43s (7 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production with chronoboost, it takes 3-4 gateways, or 450-600 minerals. The difference is inject is always available while chrono may not be available for the protoss since they get 1 chrono for every 1 inject.
As you can see, inject is more of a blessing than a curse. Zerg get so much more out of perfect injects compared to protoss and terran macro mechanics. At the end of the day, having perfect injects is more likely to win you a game than missing injects will cost you one.
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On February 13 2011 23:11 aksfjh wrote:
To those of you complaining about the "less forgiving" nature of inject, just remember, every other inject is virtually a mule(+4 workers).
LOL, how can you seriously say that?
I dont think the inject should be more forgiving, instead make the terrans more unforgiving than it is atm.
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On February 13 2011 21:46 morimacil wrote:Show nested quote +on-topic: a friend of mine has been argueing with me about the macro hatch for some time now. He places it right after his first queen pops (might be 2 early) but he states that once he gets his macro rolling he almost never loses.
i get the feeling that this could be the thing that gives zerg play a push into the right direction! How is that really a push in the right direction? Its similar to doing a 4gate every game against every race. It will help you win, but it wont help you improve. Or if as a protoss, for example, you went for an 8 gate push off 2 bases, instead of a 6 gate, because you are missing tons of warp-ins, and arent using your chronoboost. Its a good idea to win the game right now, but in the long run, its detrimental to improving, since your money will be low, and you will have the impression that your macro is good, but in fact it wont be. The only reason to get a macro hatch would be if you want to mass queens, or if you want to make units that are extremely larva inefficient, such as pure lings and drones. If you are making anything else than just lings and drones, then 1 hatch per base should be enough.
Terrans and Protoss add in Rax or Warpgates as they take more expansions. Why should zerg stick to 1 hatch per expo. It just makes the whole zerg play unforgiving and unflexible.
Also not even Idra keeps his queen energy close to zero after the 10minute mark. (watch the Immvp game for proof) A Macro hatch where you can quickly dump extra energy from main and nat queen, just place it at the choke and just run queens there seems like a good idea.
Also take a look at the Losira game from GSTL where he opts to get a fourth hatch on shakuras right with his third but only gets drones on 3 of them.
If you are making anything else than just lings and drones, then 1 hatch per base should be enough.
Nonsense... if you ever want to go muta ling without an extra hatch your minerals will skyrocket. you will need at least +1 hatch to pump out lings drones to keep your money low.
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Allowing queuing would defeat the whole purpose of having a macro mechanic in the first place.
The easiest way to make it more forgiving would simply be to allow it to stack, just like you can have multiple mules out at once. That would make it much more similar to the other mechanics out there. I realise everyone thinks this would be incredibly OP, but seriously, it wouldnt really change much. You could decide to have 6 queens on one base constantly injecting, and have access to a lot of larva, sure. But it would cost a lot of money to get that many queens, and you wouldnt be able to support all that production anyway. Kinda similar to how a terran could decide to get 20 rax off a single base, but wouldnt be able to support it anyway.
1 hatch and queen per base is enough larva if you inject enough, so if it was a little more forgiving, the ability to get extra queens to inject tons of larva would be irrelevant. Even if you did decide to get 3 queens to inject, the larva from your third queen would only be available at around the 6:30-7 minute mark, after you already have 2 hatchearies and 2 queens running, so it would make 0 difference in the early game decisions of drones or units.
But I disgress, its all useless theory crafting, since nothing indicates that blizzard has any intention of making the zerg macro mechanics as forgiving as the terran or toss ones.
but yeah, missed injects is definitely the number 1 problem holding almost every single zerg back right now, just because its so unforgiving, that any improvement in that regard is a huge overall improvement of your gameplay.
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Yes it's hard, deal with it
It's good to have mechanics you can continually improve
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On February 13 2011 23:11 aksfjh wrote:
To those of you complaining about the "less forgiving" nature of inject, just remember, every other inject is virtually a mule(+4 workers). However, that zerg "mule" is permanent, and compounds with the next. Also, the natural larvae mechanic can give you a new unit every 15s, which requires (production time/15) structures per base for every other race. For example:
If a zerg uses 2 hatches for straight army production, that's 600 minerals in production investment for a roach every 7.5s on average (6 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production, it takes 4.27 gateways, or 600-750 minerals.
If we take macro mechanics into consideration, 450 minerals gives you a roach every 6.43s (7 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production with chronoboost, it takes 3-4 gateways, or 450-600 minerals. The difference is inject is always available while chrono may not be available for the protoss since they get 1 chrono for every 1 inject.
As you can see, inject is more of a blessing than a curse. Zerg get so much more out of perfect injects compared to protoss and terran macro mechanics. At the end of the day, having perfect injects is more likely to win you a game than missing injects will cost you one.
I agree that the zerg gains more from inject that the other races gain from their mechanic. However, the game is balanced (not heavily zerg favored as you imply) when both players use their mechanic perfectly. As a result, if both players are equally suboptimally executing their mechanic, then the zerg ends up being behind. As the OP pointed out, this is exactly what happens: the zerg mechanic is so difficult that very few players can execute it well.
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On February 13 2011 11:47 Mafs wrote:
I just played a terran that did a marine/scv all in. 2 times. Failed first time. Second time he had 15-20 SCV's and 15-20 marines. I scouted it half way across the map. Was on sakuras cross diagonal positions. Also had a spine crawler. Should have got banelings on second though. Still lost.
what was your MIW?
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Terrans and Protoss add in Rax or Warpgates as they take more expansions. Why should zerg stick to 1 hatch per expo. It just makes the whole zerg play unforgiving and unflexible.
Yes, but good players try to add only as much as they can support with the extra income, and then macro well to keep the money low.
For a protoss for example, they could go 3gate expand, and then add on another 3 gates, and make sure to macro well to keep their money low. Not add on an extra 5 gates, and have sloppy macro.
In a similar fashion, as zerg, your goal with the current mechanics should be to inject on time, not to get sloppy with injects, and get extra hatcheries. Its quite simple really. If you can avoid spending 350 extra minerals for an extra hatchery by simply injecting better, then that should be your goal. Anytime you can avoid spending in-game money by just playing better, you should try to do that if you want to improve.
Nonsense... if you ever want to go muta ling without an extra hatch your minerals will skyrocket. you will need at least +1 hatch to pump out lings drones to keep your money low.
queen+hatch with perfect macro is 10 larva per minute.
2 mutas, 1 overlord, 7 lings/drones per minute. With 6 guys on gas per base, and 16 drones on mineral per base, that will give you a surplus of only ~50 minerals per base, per minute.
If you go for muta-ling with 22 drones per base, you can actually spend your money quite perfectly as long as your macro is perfect. Usually, you will have a few more than 16 drones on mineral per base, but usually, at that point you will also be making more expansive things, like getting an expansion, teching, making spines, and upgrading. So it does work out very well. If you miss out on injects, or they are slightly delayed though.... then it wont work, at all.
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it is forgiving once you plant a macro hatch, however this costs you 300 mins and a drone. For me its worth it  .
BTW: it is possible to shift click injects by letting the queen have a walk over non-creep terrain ..
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On February 13 2011 23:36 Commodore wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 23:11 aksfjh wrote:
To those of you complaining about the "less forgiving" nature of inject, just remember, every other inject is virtually a mule(+4 workers). However, that zerg "mule" is permanent, and compounds with the next. Also, the natural larvae mechanic can give you a new unit every 15s, which requires (production time/15) structures per base for every other race. For example:
If a zerg uses 2 hatches for straight army production, that's 600 minerals in production investment for a roach every 7.5s on average (6 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production, it takes 4.27 gateways, or 600-750 minerals.
If we take macro mechanics into consideration, 450 minerals gives you a roach every 6.43s (7 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production with chronoboost, it takes 3-4 gateways, or 450-600 minerals. The difference is inject is always available while chrono may not be available for the protoss since they get 1 chrono for every 1 inject.
As you can see, inject is more of a blessing than a curse. Zerg get so much more out of perfect injects compared to protoss and terran macro mechanics. At the end of the day, having perfect injects is more likely to win you a game than missing injects will cost you one. I agree that the zerg gains more from inject that the other races gain from their mechanic. The problem is that the game is balanced (not heavily zerg favored as you imply) when both players use their mechanic perfectly. As a result, if both players are equally suboptimally executing their mechanic, then the zerg ends up being behind. This is exactly what happens: as the OP pointed out, the zerg mechanic is so difficult that very few players can execute it well.
I disagree with the notion that equally suboptimal play equates in zerg losing. Look at how well those zerg are doing without a firm execution of a strong mechanic. If the mechanic was as unforgiving and zerg as hard as people say, missing that many injects would result in those players being in platinum or gold rather than diamond.
Also, for the record, inject is available roughly every 45 seconds, the same time it takes for 3 larvae to spawn. This means you can spend that larvae before it locks out your next natural one.
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Is adding a Macro hatch to make up for lost injects in order to compensate for missing production "learning the wrong way?"
Or should I just stay on 2 hatch and NEVER EVER miss an inject?
Thanks.
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On February 13 2011 23:51 6xy wrote:
Is adding a Macro hatch to make up for lost injects in order to compensate for missing production "learning the wrong way?"
Or should I just stay on 2 hatch and NEVER EVER miss an inject?
Thanks.
since you're not a robot, and can't always guarantee that you'll never ever miss an inject, i'd say macro hatches aren't a bad idea.
just because you can support 6 warpgates off two bases, doesn't mean your macro can't slip, and in order to use up the extra cash, you can't build another two.
either build a macro hatch when your money gets high if you miss injects (b/c everyone ALWAYS does), or die b/c you didn't have enough stuff....
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On February 13 2011 23:11 aksfjh wrote:
To those of you complaining about the "less forgiving" nature of inject, just remember, every other inject is virtually a mule(+4 workers). However, that zerg "mule" is permanent, and compounds with the next. Also, the natural larvae mechanic can give you a new unit every 15s, which requires (production time/15) structures per base for every other race. For example:
If a zerg uses 2 hatches for straight army production, that's 600 minerals in production investment for a roach every 7.5s on average (6 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production, it takes 4.27 gateways, or 600-750 minerals.
If we take macro mechanics into consideration, 450 minerals gives you a roach every 6.43s (7 larva every 45s). To get the same stalker production with chronoboost, it takes 3-4 gateways, or 450-600 minerals. The difference is inject is always available while chrono may not be available for the protoss since they get 1 chrono for every 1 inject.
As you can see, inject is more of a blessing than a curse. Zerg get so much more out of perfect injects compared to protoss and terran macro mechanics. At the end of the day, having perfect injects is more likely to win you a game than missing injects will cost you one.
Thats just such a simplistic view :/
First of all, a hatchery costs 350 minerals, not 300. You have to pay for a drone first before you can get a hatchery.
Second, you fail to take into account the fact that unlike a mule, to get 4 workers after an inject, you actually have to buy 4 workers. An inject doesnt give you a free 4 workers, it gives you 4 larva, that you then have the opportunity to use to buy workers.
And you also seem to forget to take into account that anything zerg takes larva. So sure, queen+hatch can match the production of 3-4 gateways. But it certainly cant match the production of 3-4 warpgates, plus a nexus, plus chronoboost, and pylons, and any additional structures. Overlords, gas geysers, expansion hatcheries, roach warren, spine crawlers, and so on, they all take larva to build.
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On February 13 2011 06:41 TALegion wrote:
Everyone needs to stop using the word, "Analysis," in the title of their thread.
Everyone needs to stop spamming threads and to put actual information in their post.
Wow, Haypro is amazing. But I think every zerg players has to put their hatches on a single hotkey so they can just tap through and know when to inject larvae. I am a Terran player in 1v1 but a zerg in Team games. I do this and I honestly can say that it is way easier like that I always am on top of my larvae. even if your on a big micro attack just tap through them it'll take you like 2 seconds to do it and you can always keep reinforcing to strengthen your attack. Putting all hatches on 1 hotkey isn't going to help you.
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On February 13 2011 23:56 reneg wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 23:51 6xy wrote:
Is adding a Macro hatch to make up for lost injects in order to compensate for missing production "learning the wrong way?"
Or should I just stay on 2 hatch and NEVER EVER miss an inject?
Thanks. since you're not a robot, and can't always guarantee that you'll never ever miss an inject, i'd say macro hatches aren't a bad idea. just because you can support 6 warpgates off two bases, doesn't mean your macro can't slip, and in order to use up the extra cash, you can't build another two. either build a macro hatch when your money gets high if you miss injects (b/c everyone ALWAYS does), or die b/c you didn't have enough stuff....
Aye
Either aim for perfection, and improve as much as you can by working on your injects, or accept that you cant macro, and make extra un-needed buildings, thus removing the need for improvement.
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EPT
