|
On February 14 2011 06:38 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2011 06:23 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:On February 14 2011 06:17 Sv1 wrote:On February 14 2011 05:51 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
Additionally: even with perfect inject you cannot spend all your money from 2 hatches in case you want to build mass lings or build drones from all your mins. This is something that someone smarter than me and with some sort of financial or economics degree can do the math for. Can we actually say that this is actually true theory? Or is what you are saying based on what we've seen in the past with huge mineral spikes because spits have never been perfect. I'm currently looking at a replay and getting numbers of a game between Ret and tGcBosseR and will be posting that graph by the end of the day. I'm inclined to say that it is possible to spend all your money from 2 hatches provided you don't miss too many spits, though again, I can't be sure. Spending the larva would be the issue though I think as the game goes on this eventually evens out. its basic math: a hatch + queen gives theoretically 10 larvae (perfect inject, instant consume larvae, in practice its ~8) per minute. If you want to build lings/drones only, this is 500 minerals. You can mine ~700-800 minerals with 16 drones from one base (and >800 if you saturate fully). Try building something other than lings and drones?
Well, ofc you can spend the money in case you build more expensive units, i usually save up larvae then until its save to build a round of drones. But there are several game situations, where your play profits massively from the additional larvae:
* you scout its safe to drone => you drone up 50% (2 base + one macro hatch) or 100% (1 base+1 macro h) faster.
* you play a ling heavy build
* you detect opponent is moving out => get an army more quickly, which means you can afford to build less army preemptively, which means you can risk more droning.
* you lost lots of drones to some hellion/banshee whatsoever harrass => you can replace the drone losses quicker (in case you still have the income of at least one fully saturated base).
additionally its a small advantage to have more of that 'natural' non-injected larvae, because they do not come in intervalls of 40 in game seconds. Its more likely you have always larvae at hand in case you need some.
|
On February 14 2011 06:23 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
its basic math: a hatch + queen gives theoretically 10 larvae (perfect inject, instant consume larvae, in practice its ~8) per minute. If you want to build lings/drones only, this is 500 minerals. You can mine ~700-800 minerals with 16 drones from one base (and >800 if you saturate fully). Not to detract too much from the original topic, but a long time ago I actually did a map test on this and concluded that without an auxiliary hatchery a zerg producing nothing but lings (while staying on top of injects) will get larvae blocked. Due to their build time and cost...you just can't spend the money fast enough. Roaches are more efficient but still you will get larvae blocked if you mass them off of two base (barely though). Mass hydra will not larve block you (in fact will give you a larvae surplus). From there the general rule with the tests I've found was that the more expensive the unit, the more apt it would counter larvae blockage. Really though only drones, lings and roaches will give you a problems though (this doesn't even factor in upgrades of infrastructure).
|
On February 14 2011 06:58 Fungal Growth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2011 06:23 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
its basic math: a hatch + queen gives theoretically 10 larvae (perfect inject, instant consume larvae, in practice its ~8) per minute. If you want to build lings/drones only, this is 500 minerals. You can mine ~700-800 minerals with 16 drones from one base (and >800 if you saturate fully). Not to detract too much from the original topic, but a long time ago I actually did a map test on this and concluded that without an auxiliary hatchery a zerg producing nothing but lings (while staying on top of injects) will get larvae blocked. Due to their build time and cost...you just can't spend the money fast enough. Roaches are more efficient but still you will get larvae blocked if you mass them off of two base (barely though). Mass hydra will not larve block you (in fact will give you a larvae surplus). From there the general rule with the tests I've found was that the more expensive the unit, the more apt it would counter larvae blockage. Really though only drones, lings and roaches will give you a problems though (this doesn't even factor in upgrades of infrastructure).
you can calculate this:
1 drone ~40 mins or gas per minute (no oversaturation)
1 hatch = 4 larvae per minute
hatch + queen ~ 8..10 larvae per minute if regulary injected
BTW: massing drones quickly is pretty important for Z play ;-)
|
Interesting perspective on an element of the macro game for zerg players.
However, in the late game (when you have 4+/5+ hatcheries), don't larvae injects not matter as much? The sheer number of hatcheries can keep up with your production as long as you're not looking to refill a 200 food army instantly. However, even in that situation, if you've had a 200/200 army for a while, you should have quite a bit of larva stocked up.
|
This is a great post which I hope every zerg reads. I had never expected such a huge larva deficit just from missing an inject.
I hope progamers are aware of this information, because I've never seen this before.
|
As the posts above stated, 2 bases saturated give more money than you can spend. So a macro hatch is necessary at that point. Really the only argument against it is why wouldn't you just take your third, if even not mining from it. Really nice thread, it's nice to have a visual, everyone knows missing injects is bad but to really see how much it deviates from perfect play is staggering. I'm more of a mechanical player than anything and i'll still get some surplus energy in the midgame. What this thread shows most clearly is how the macro mechanic makes zerg weaker; to drop a tumor is to miss an inject, and creep is absolutely necessary. I'd love if queens spawned with 50 energy.
|
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.
What? No, not at all.
1.) A mule is a function of the OC, if used non stop it provides 5 scv's worth of mining for less than tthe cost of 3 and a shorter build time than 3 consecutive scv's.
2.) As soon as a mule expires, if the base is mined out, the mule can be re dropped at any other expansion and oversaturates. When a terran mines out his first base, he has another base mining 10 workers over the capacity that zerg or protoss could, if by some occurrence he got onto his third base and the first 2 were mined out he's still mining at almost the same rate as protoss or zerg would be on 2 bases.
3.) Missing a mule costs you nothing, the equivalent of missing a larva inject to terran would be like missing out on training one marine from a barracks, then only being able to train 3 in 4 the next cycle, then 2 in 4 the next and 1 in 4 the next. Any time missing on an inject is an exponential loss for the zerg.
4.) If you miss a round of injects it can lose you the game right there and then. If you miss a round and it doesn't lose you the game right away it still has a huge knock on effect as you engage with less units meaning even if you win you take more losses and have less overall meaning even when you do catch up with your larva you're still further behind. What happens when a terran misses a mule? if by ten second not even a full a marine's worth of minerals, he doesn't even lose them permanently since he'll mine out the whole base anyway and he'll just drop two at the gold base later. The effort required to larva inject consistently is much more apm, much more difficult to remember along with spreading creep, and is absurdly unforgiving.
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.
Try 700, 600 for the hatches plus the two drones plus the mining time lost by losing two drones.
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.
Comparing chronoboost to larva inject is not very easy to do. Chrono boost is expended faster than it takes to accumulate, it can be used on upgrades as well which is pretty fricking useful in the lategame, it can also be used to reduce the actual time it takes from investment in a unit till it hits the battefield, as we often see it used for colossi. In any case, it's certainly more forgiving since you can let it build up just like mules and still be able to use it all.
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.
Oh of course, that's what I was doing wrong. Silly me not being perfect at a mechanic that top level ex broodwar players are struggling with while no name terrans are taking tlopens by storm. If by now the top zergs are struggling with a mechanic that the equivalent of for terran and protoss is being managed optimally at a diamond player level there's clearly a fucking problem.
|
|
|
Don't shoot me for suggesting this but, larvae inject could be made autocast <_<
|
I don't think this says anything except "don't miss your injects."
The graph is kinda nice to look at, though.
|
On February 13 2011 06:57 schiznak wrote:
Id be interested in a program where you can plug in the replay and it will spit out a similar graph.
Anyways, the main conclusions to be drawn from this is that;
C: Investing 450 in a macro hatch and a queen is a signifigantly better solution to missed injects.
better than what?
//tx
|
loool all i saw of the thread title was "[D]Larva Injection Anal"
|
Missing larvae inject is very much like protoss/terran producing units late. It's an opportunity for unit production permanently lost. The main difference is that the queen inject has to happen 40 seconds before you will have the opportunity to produce the unit.
If somebody had done the same calculations for a terran/protoss player I think they will see the exact same thing, ununsed buildings and wasted opportunities to make units.
|
That is a great looking visualization. What I would really like to see is the same graph for many top level zergs comparing them to "perfect" play.
How much better can they get? What top zerg is the best at larva timings? How important is it to be good at it the highest level?
|
i think it is a little bit too easy to flame on the ragequiting zerg.
yes he missed some larva inject. his play is maybe not the best, but one fact you've noted is that if you miss a spit you can NEVER catch it up. this makes it imba (some ideas for artosis and idra 
so basically a zerg who doesnt inject will never go to master league whereas it is totally do-able for T and P.
so i guess you can understand Z frustration.
its reallly easy to fix this issue btw. just ask blizzard to put a cooldown on mule and CB.
|
On February 15 2011 00:51 GenZai wrote:
its reallly easy to fix this issue btw. just ask blizzard to put a cooldown on mule and CB.
That's just the pessimistic way out though. The strictly better way would be to ask them to make spawn larva instantaneous! I mean, how "could" it influence balance more than adding a cooldown, mule isn't on a cooldown (j/k)
Anyways, all joking aside this is actually a very nice way of visualizing this problem. The fact that cutting economy early on could severely hamper your end game was already well visualized, this wasn't. Macro hatch FTW.
@ Sv1 / OP: I have one question though: did you time, count and input this all by hand? How long did that take you? Seems like a big effort!
Do you guys think there is any chance we could get SC2gears to implement something like this? Could be a useful analysis tool...
|
Please forgive me for not reading the whole OP and subsequent 6 pages, but does anyone know what program the OP used for that graphic? Manual photoshop image?
|
I think one of the most interesting inferences from the graph is that zerg 2 Hatch 2 Queen Production when done perfectly produces the same amount of (spit larva) as a 4 Hatch Haypro.
|
On February 14 2011 20:14 Ziggitz wrote:
Oh of course, that's what I was doing wrong. Silly me not being perfect at a mechanic that top level ex broodwar players are struggling with while no name terrans are taking tlopens by storm. If by now the top zergs are struggling with a mechanic that the equivalent of for terran and protoss is being managed optimally at a diamond player level there's clearly a fucking problem.
Cheer up friend. I think this all comes down to perception of what an acceptable MIW is, keep in mind that this graph still doesn't account for larva spawning on their own. I's hard to say what "struggling" is defined as. For some reason I think the most devastating thing might be missing a spit during a fight. Though it is only amplified if prior spits have been missed. Fooling around with zerg myself after this post I found that if I missed spits during a fight, if the fight continued, I had money but no larva to spend it fast enough.
Also, no one was 'born' to the race they play. If you feel the zerg mechanic is too hard, I don't see any reason to continue playing them, either continue to practice at all aspects of the game (spitting included) or maybe just switch races? If it's ladder points you are concerned with, just play custom games are hang out in a clan channel and ask for 1v1s. You also have to considered that terran and protoss are constantly looking back at THEIR bases to build supply depots and pylons, where as zerg doesn't need to (flying overlords around once they spawn is another story).
On February 15 2011 01:23 Obsolescence wrote:
Please forgive me for not reading the whole OP and subsequent 6 pages, but does anyone know what program the OP used for that graphic? Manual photoshop image?
Yes, it was a manual photoshop job, I'll be updating a Ret replay graphic later today also, have some other things to do first. SC2Gears does account for larva injects in the game log, so perhaps the fine folks behind it could work some functionality of what I did.
Also, if I was a developer, this could easily be made into a stand alone flash app to graph everyone's results provided they go through their own replays and input it in.
|
On February 13 2011 07:28 UruzuNine wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 07:13 thesideshow wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 13 2011 07:00 UruzuNine wrote:I personally find larvae inject similar to how a Terran will constantly check his production facilities to make sure they're producing. I don't think missing a larvae inject is as unforgiving as Zergs make it (i.e. you still get at least 3 larvae per hatchery, so it's not like Terran where entire production rounds can be missed -- although a Z's production capability will obviously become lessened for a time). I dunno, just my thoughts on the matter.  I look at it slightly differently. Zergs also have to manage their larva production cycles; this is similar to the mentioned terran production cycle.This is because, "If a Hatchery has 3 or more Larvae, it will not naturally create more." So the remaining cycle to monitor is spawn larva/MULE. Spawn larva being more unforgiving. If we go that way then we can say that spawn larva/MULE is more T forgiving, while production cycle is more Z forgiving. Natural larvae production and MULEs are similar in that you can not use them for a bit and still be fine, make use of them all at once, and have a quantity cap (3 larvae per hatch, 4 MULEs -- 200 energy -- per OC). ^ That's the reason why I coupled larvae inject with T production, because MULE and natural larvae are more similar.
Keep in mind that as long as you spend all your OC energy the instant/before it reaches 200, you're "good". You get the same income, just slightly later. But once you have a queen with 25+ energy you have lost larvae for good. That "I just missed the timing" window for zerg is rather small, compared to terran's, don't you think? This is what makes it less forgiving.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
