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On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. Disagree... Just like investments have a time value, so to does producing units earlier. While yes, missing warpgate/racks/building cycles hurts because you are under utilizing production capacity it is not the same for zerg as ALL their production capacity is focused on their hatcheries which greatly magnifies its significance. To make up for a missed production capacity, sure you can produce more hatcheries but this is expensive and incurs a significant opportunity cost. These costs are greatly magnified with zerg because is a 'weed race' that grow exponentially. The sooner they get out that drone, the sooner the drone pays for itself and the next drone. The sooner the army hatches, the sooner the zerg player can get back to overdroning and expanding. The only real time a zerg would want to build auxiliary hatcheries would be if they were going for mass low tech units (like ling/roach because they create larvae blockage). Otherwise that's money that's not earning interest in the bank.
And you don't think missing a worker for any other race is different? You having the drones and you having the army fall into the same overall game that everybody else plays as well. The only difference is that your problems are virtually consolidated on hatcheries, while T and P have the problems spread out. Basically, it boils down to T and P having to juggle 4-5 production variables by mid-late game, while you are limited to 2-3 the entire game. Like others have said, if you don't feel that the punishment for juggling fewer variables is fair, switch races.
Edit: I'd also like to add that this thread probably puts too much focus on injects as a defining skill level for zergs. Many great zergs out there win primarily on smart play. Proper scouting, army composition, and upgrades can more than make up for a great amount of missed injections. Most play up through masters is based on only a handful of timings and tricks by your opponent. Learning counters to these, more than anything, will allow you to dominate most matchups, much more than having perfect injections.
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Great graph and definitely insightful. I feel however that somehow its just to hard. Now i'm not saying i cant improve on my injects. i work on it all the time. I just feel like the entire race has to be played in 40 second increments if you want to keep up on zerg production. Now i'm no arguing that IF you manage to hit all your injects there is a definite advantage to being zerg, but as someone with 70 apm at plat lvl, just keeping track of injects can be challenging. I feel like zerg almost seems like a "Pro only" race because only pro's seem to have the multi tasking and time management skills to keep up with everything zerg needs to do.
That being said i'll still always play zerg. I love my bugs. I even like the larva inject mechanic. I just wish it was a little more forgiving for non pro players, perhaps even at the experienced of really high end larva advantages. Again though this is just the opinion of a plat player, for whatever its worth.
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I'm not sure if this is cheating, but what about a alarm/clock next to your monitor that beeps loudly at you every 40 seconds to tell you to spam some inject?
Of course, you turn it on after your queen pops.
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On February 15 2011 09:35 Zariel wrote:
I'm not sure if this is cheating, but what about a alarm/clock next to your monitor that beeps loudly at you every 40 seconds to tell you to spam some inject?
Of course, you turn it on after your queen pops.
Poster Jayrod has created a thread here regarding such an idea.
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I just deleted an elaborate post I wrote for 15 minutes -.-
I´ll make a short version of it.
There a few things that weren´t mentioned in the opening post yet(only skimmed rest of the thread, I´m awful):
There are situations and viable playstyles which can´t support nonstop larvainjections or don´t even want to.
Example 1: A build that builds few very expensive units(early roaches, mutas etc.)
Example 2: A build that saves queen energy for important transfuses(in defense against certain timing pushes)
I´m not saying people can´t improve their injectiontiming.
Imho one can´t tell yet if there is or ever will be a viable build that uses nonstop larva injections, maybe it isn´t viable at all. Early on you can only support zerglings and drones with your money.
It may turn out that these larva heavy openings are inferior to other playstyles or simply not viable at all.
I personally think mass queens into expansion has incredible potential and it will probably not be able to produce from perfect injections as money isn´t available at certain times(queens are expensive).
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Where's your argument for an increase of max supply to 300/300 instead of 200/200?
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On February 15 2011 10:11 Mataza wrote:
I just deleted an elaborate post I wrote for 15 minutes -.-
I´ll make a short version of it.
There a few things that weren´t mentioned in the opening post yet(only skimmed rest of the thread, I´m awful):
There are situations and viable playstyles which can´t support nonstop larvainjections or don´t even want to.
Example 1: A build that builds few very expensive units(early roaches, mutas etc.)
Example 2: A build that saves queen energy for important transfuses(in defense against certain timing pushes)
I´m not saying people can´t improve their injectiontiming.
Imho one can´t tell yet if there is or ever will be a viable build that uses nonstop larva injections, maybe it isn´t viable at all. Early on you can only support zerglings and drones with your money.
It may turn out that these larva heavy openings are inferior to other playstyles or simply not viable at all.
I personally think mass queens into expansion has incredible potential and it will probably not be able to produce from perfect injections as money isn´t available at certain times(queens are expensive).
I think this eventually catches up later, if you see the ret and haypro graphs, good spits earlier means you might be able to get away with missing a spit.
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Yes but you cant get ALL your injects always right
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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.
Problem is that you totally disregard that drones cost money (4 drones is 200 minerals), supply (4 x 1 supply) and take time to build (17s, while not being that long, is still some time). Obviously, mules also disregard base saturation.
However, zerg's macro mecanism is more forgiving on one point: worker timing. As terran or protoss, if you forget to build worker for x seconds, you lose x seconds of mining time on that worker, as well as x seconds of mining time for each subsequent workers (I know the calculations have been done for BW, and they're very similar for SC2. Hell, I've done it, but there are a few errors I need to fix)
Zerg's larva mecanism bypasses that to a certain degree. Up to a certain point, missing a drone is only lost mining time for that drone (in BW, that was true until an hatch was maxed on larvae).
Of course, I still don't think that this forgiving part of Zerg's micro offsets the unforgivingness of Larva Inject.
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really great post op
and i agree that many zergs including myself miss injects all overt he place
I also think that given perfect mechanics and play zerg would probably have an advantage
One thing that i think people are reffering to when people scream TERRAN OP, is that terran can make up for missed macro mechanics by dropping multiple mules at once, had their attention been elsewhere when the energy piled up.
There is no forgiveness if zerg misses an inject.
Obviously it wouldnt be fair if one race actually had an advantage if both players played perfectly, so its annoying that zerg needs to have much more apm just to break even.
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On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. Disagree... Just like investments have a time value, so to does producing units earlier. While yes, missing warpgate/racks/building cycles hurts because you are under utilizing production capacity it is not the same for zerg as ALL their production capacity is focused on their hatcheries which greatly magnifies its significance. To make up for a missed production capacity, sure you can produce more hatcheries but this is expensive and incurs a significant opportunity cost. These costs are greatly magnified with zerg because is a 'weed race' that grow exponentially. The sooner they get out that drone, the sooner the drone pays for itself and the next drone. The sooner the army hatches, the sooner the zerg player can get back to overdroning and expanding. The only real time a zerg would want to build auxiliary hatcheries would be if they were going for mass low tech units (like ling/roach because they create larvae blockage). Otherwise that's money that's not earning interest in the bank.
I feel like you disagreed because your gut was upset that you actually are agreeing with what I'm saying. When you "miss" something, you actually just delaying it. If you're delaying things often then you are playing "slowly." One way to get outplayed is to play "slower" than your opponent.
Now, you only quoted a portion of my post, so anyone wanting to read it, show the spoiler.
+ Show Spoiler +On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
Spawning larva is similar to forgetting to build units. You will NEVER get that unit back. You just missed it.
I see a lot of people compare the Spawn Larva mechanic to the MULE or Chronoboost. I think this is because we call them all "macro mechanics." This is an umbrella term and to use that term to equate all three abilities is improper, in my humble opinion.
(1) The MULE mines minerals faster than a worker, does not cost supply, ignores saturation, and can repair buildings or mechanical structures in emergency scenarios.
(2) Chronoboost decreases buildtime/research time/warpgate cooldown by 50% for a short period of time, 20 seconds.
(3) Spawn Larva creates 4 additional larva at the hatch every 40 seconds after it is cast.
Look how vastly different they are? They are all related to production in different ways.
So many people say that if they miss a spawn larva it is missed for good, and will never come back. They compare it to the MULE and say you only miss OC call downs for good after you've let your OC reach 200 energy, same with Protoss. This comparison doesn't really hold a lot of water because of how different they all are.
A spawned larva can technically become any core Zerg unit. If they "miss an inject" they aren't missing out on anything but a theoretically better game than they're currently playing. I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed.
Zergs who play the other races are more aware of how similar Spawn Larva is to, say, a Barracks, or a Warpgate cycle. These production buildings have a progress bar, exactly like Spawn Larva. If you order a "train marine" command and you do not instantly train a marine when that progress bar finishes you have "missed a marine" to use the same definition people "miss Spawn Larvas."
A Zerg on two bases, playing standard, will have two Hatches and two Queens; That's 2 progress bars to manage that can be fully synced. A Terran player may have two OCs, five barracks, a factory and a starport. That's a full 9 individual progress bars not counting the OC's call down orders which can be used every 50 energy. So, that's closer to 11 total progress bars. Each one of those progress bars will not be synced, as individual units have different build times. Additionally, when you have multiple production buildings on the same hot-key (like most competent players) you cannot even glean the progress of the buildings, you just see little white dots for queued units.
Now some, who may not be getting the comparison, will say, yeah but Zerg still has to build (morph) units from larva, so Spawn Larva is just an extra step compared to the other two races. My response is that the management of progress bars is independent of your available larva. Your larva doesn't disappear. Once it is spawned, it exists. You press your hatch hot-key, it tells you the exact number of units you can morph, you press "S" and then morph your heart out. There is no progress bar management at that step of the process.
So, in light of really looking into Spawn Larva, it should not be viewed as an "extra step" it should be viewed as "The only real step that matters." Same thing with Terran, or Protoss. If you're facing an equally skilled opponent and you are missing production cycles - you lose the game.
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On February 15 2011 09:25 aksfjh wrote:
And you don't think missing a worker for any other race is different? You having the drones and you having the army fall into the same overall game that everybody else plays as well. The only difference is that your problems are virtually consolidated on hatcheries, while T and P have the problems spread out. Basically, it boils down to T and P having to juggle 4-5 production variables by mid-late game, while you are limited to 2-3 the entire game. Like others have said, if you don't feel that the punishment for juggling fewer variables is fair, switch races.. It is a big difference between missing probes/SCV's and missing drones because zerg has the ability (and needs to) overdrone by producing more than one worker at a time. If zerg could only produce workers at the rate of protoss/terran they would lose all the time. Zerg has to take advantage of their ability to artifcially accelerate their economy because many of their units are not as cost-effective as many terran/toss units. For good reason...can you imagine being able to hatch mass marauders or mass colossi? But to make up for this zerg has to have the better economy which means overdroning as soon as possible to earn that 'compound interest' and pull ahead in the macro game.
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On February 16 2011 03:16 Fungal Growth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 09:25 aksfjh wrote:
And you don't think missing a worker for any other race is different? You having the drones and you having the army fall into the same overall game that everybody else plays as well. The only difference is that your problems are virtually consolidated on hatcheries, while T and P have the problems spread out. Basically, it boils down to T and P having to juggle 4-5 production variables by mid-late game, while you are limited to 2-3 the entire game. Like others have said, if you don't feel that the punishment for juggling fewer variables is fair, switch races.. It is a big difference between missing probes/SCV's and missing drones because zerg has the ability (and needs to) overdrone by producing more than one worker at a time. If zerg could only produce workers at the rate of protoss/terran they would lose all the time. Zerg has to take advantage of their ability to artifcially accelerate their economy because many of their units are not as cost-effective as many terran/toss units. For good reason...can you imagine being able to hatch mass marauders or mass colossi? But to make up for this zerg has to have the better economy which means overdroning as soon as possible to earn that 'compound interest' and pull ahead in the macro game.
I thought we were talking about Spawn Larva?
You don't "miss drones," you delay Spawn Larvas when you miss your optimal timing window.
Additionally, Zerg does not "artificially accelerate" their economy. What does that even mean?
In regards to workers ...
• Zerg can power drones, cut drones, or balance drones.
• Terran can regularly produce SCVs, cut SCVs, Mule or Scan
• Protoss can chrono probes, regularly produce probes, cut probes, or chrono production.tech.
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On February 16 2011 00:32 TimeSpiral wrote:
I feel like you disagreed because your gut was upset that you actually are agreeing with what I'm saying. When you "miss" something, you actually just delaying it. If you're delaying things often then you are playing "slowly." One way to get outplayed is to play "slower" than your opponent.
...
Now some, who may not be getting the comparison, will say, yeah but Zerg still has to build (morph) units from larva, so Spawn Larva is just an extra step compared to the other two races. My response is that the management of progress bars is independent of your available larva. Your larva doesn't disappear. Once it is spawned, it exists. You press your hatch hot-key, it tells you the exact number of units you can morph, you press "S" and then morph your heart out. There is no progress bar management at that step of the process.
So, in light of really looking into Spawn Larva, it should not be viewed as an "extra step" it should be viewed as "The only real step that matters." Same thing with Terran, or Protoss. If you're facing an equally skilled opponent and you are missing production cycles - you lose the game. You can't disregard the time value of larvae inject. Using your theory if spawn larvae took 10 minutes this should be no big deal as you still have those larvae. What the zerg is 'missing' is the production capacity of their queen/hatchery which is very important. This is very important because if you miss production capacity you have to compensate by building more capacity (hatcheries/queens) which are expensive or you delay the growth of your economy/tech/army growth which for zerg grows exponentially as opposed to the linear economies of toss/terran.
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On February 16 2011 03:26 TimeSpiral wrote:
I thought we were talking about Spawn Larva?
You don't "miss drones," you delay Spawn Larvas when you miss your optimal timing window. Larvae = drones because that is the most important thing zerg can make. In a very real sense a zerg does lose drones by not staying on top of injections... Each drone takes what...about 90 seconds to pay foritself? After that time period that drone produces pure profit. This pure profit can then produce more drones who quickly pay for themselves and then produce exponentially even more profit. Lost profit = less drones = lost drones...all because of missed injections.
Additionally, Zerg does not "artificially accelerate" their economy. What does that even mean?
In regards to workers ...
• Zerg can power drones, cut drones, or balance drones.
• Terran can regularly produce SCVs, cut SCVs, Mule or Scan
• Protoss can chrono probes, regularly produce probes, cut probes, or chrono production.tech.
Chronoboost just gives a minor advantage in the early game and is pathetic in the late game. Mules allow over saturation of workers which is incredibly powerful but terran doesn't depend on this like zerg does on overdroning. The ability to produce multiple drones at once allows for exponential growth that the other races can't match in a proper large scale macro game.
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On February 16 2011 03:26 Fungal Growth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 00:32 TimeSpiral wrote:
I feel like you disagreed because your gut was upset that you actually are agreeing with what I'm saying. When you "miss" something, you actually just delaying it. If you're delaying things often then you are playing "slowly." One way to get outplayed is to play "slower" than your opponent.
...
Now some, who may not be getting the comparison, will say, yeah but Zerg still has to build (morph) units from larva, so Spawn Larva is just an extra step compared to the other two races. My response is that the management of progress bars is independent of your available larva. Your larva doesn't disappear. Once it is spawned, it exists. You press your hatch hot-key, it tells you the exact number of units you can morph, you press "S" and then morph your heart out. There is no progress bar management at that step of the process.
So, in light of really looking into Spawn Larva, it should not be viewed as an "extra step" it should be viewed as "The only real step that matters." Same thing with Terran, or Protoss. If you're facing an equally skilled opponent and you are missing production cycles - you lose the game. You can't disregard the time value of larvae inject. Using your theory if spawn larvae took 10 minutes this should be no big deal as you still have those larvae. What the zerg is 'missing' is the production capacity of their queen/hatchery which is very important. This is very important because if you miss production capacity you have to compensate by building more capacity (hatcheries/queens) which are expensive or you delay the growth of your economy/tech/army growth which for zerg grows exponentially as opposed to the linear economies of toss/terran.
I apologize, FungalGrowth, but for some reason you're just not getting the point ...
You're trying to disagree with something your are agreeing too!!
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On February 16 2011 00:32 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. Disagree... Just like investments have a time value, so to does producing units earlier. While yes, missing warpgate/racks/building cycles hurts because you are under utilizing production capacity it is not the same for zerg as ALL their production capacity is focused on their hatcheries which greatly magnifies its significance. To make up for a missed production capacity, sure you can produce more hatcheries but this is expensive and incurs a significant opportunity cost. These costs are greatly magnified with zerg because is a 'weed race' that grow exponentially. The sooner they get out that drone, the sooner the drone pays for itself and the next drone. The sooner the army hatches, the sooner the zerg player can get back to overdroning and expanding. The only real time a zerg would want to build auxiliary hatcheries would be if they were going for mass low tech units (like ling/roach because they create larvae blockage). Otherwise that's money that's not earning interest in the bank. I feel like you disagreed because your gut was upset that you actually are agreeing with what I'm saying. When you "miss" something, you actually just delaying it. If you're delaying things often then you are playing "slowly." One way to get outplayed is to play "slower" than your opponent. Now, you only quoted a portion of my post, so anyone wanting to read it, show the spoiler. + Show Spoiler +On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
Spawning larva is similar to forgetting to build units. You will NEVER get that unit back. You just missed it.
I see a lot of people compare the Spawn Larva mechanic to the MULE or Chronoboost. I think this is because we call them all "macro mechanics." This is an umbrella term and to use that term to equate all three abilities is improper, in my humble opinion.
(1) The MULE mines minerals faster than a worker, does not cost supply, ignores saturation, and can repair buildings or mechanical structures in emergency scenarios.
(2) Chronoboost decreases buildtime/research time/warpgate cooldown by 50% for a short period of time, 20 seconds.
(3) Spawn Larva creates 4 additional larva at the hatch every 40 seconds after it is cast.
Look how vastly different they are? They are all related to production in different ways.
So many people say that if they miss a spawn larva it is missed for good, and will never come back. They compare it to the MULE and say you only miss OC call downs for good after you've let your OC reach 200 energy, same with Protoss. This comparison doesn't really hold a lot of water because of how different they all are.
A spawned larva can technically become any core Zerg unit. If they "miss an inject" they aren't missing out on anything but a theoretically better game than they're currently playing. I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. . These production buildings have a progress bar, exactly like Spawn Larva. If you order a "train marine" command and you do not instantly train a marine when that progress bar finishes you have "missed a marine" to use the same definition people "miss Spawn Larvas." A Zerg on two bases, playing standard, will have two Hatches and two Queens; That's 2 progress bars to manage that can be fully synced. A Terran player may have two OCs, five barracks, a factory and a starport. That's a full 9 individual progress bars not counting the OC's call down orders which can be used every 50 energy. So, that's closer to 11 total progress bars. Each one of those progress bars will not be synced, as individual units have different build times. Additionally, when you have multiple production buildings on the same hot-key (like most competent players) you cannot even glean the progress of the buildings, you just see little white dots for queued units. Now some, who may not be getting the comparison, will say, yeah but Zerg still has to build (morph) units from larva, so Spawn Larva is just an extra step compared to the other two races. My response is that the management of progress bars is independent of your available larva. Your larva doesn't disappear. Once it is spawned, it exists. You press your hatch hot-key, it tells you the exact number of units you can morph, you press "S" and then morph your heart out. There is no progress bar management at that step of the process. So, in light of really looking into Spawn Larva, it should not be viewed as an "extra step" it should be viewed as " The only real step that matters." Same thing with Terran, or Protoss. If you're facing an equally skilled opponent and you are missing production cycles - you lose the game.
This is a faulty comparison, because the key point here is the missed time which comes from not using a queen to inject on time.
To follow your train of thought, this would be the correct comparison:
For a Terran to make one marine they have to select their CC, use an ability on the barracks so it can make room for a unit, then wait until it is done, and then queue the unit. Now if the Terran player had to do that for 11 different queues, it would be very bad indeed. However, given that the Terran doesn't have to do this extra step, nor is blocked from making units, and can also double-queue up to 5 units to avoid missed time, it is NOT THE SAME.
I play random, and larvae inject is by far the hardest mechanic to master, as it is so very, very critical - critical and powerful.
Can you imagine that you would only be allowed to make a combination of 3 units if you miss out on the timings of CC-to-barracks/factory/starport-timed-to-queue-again? Oh, if you have 11 total then you get 6, but they're exclusive so you have to wait until they're done to do any more.
Oh crap you missed it, you only get two marines to defend!
What's also missing is the fact that continual smoothening of what is critical throughout the game makes for a much more stable composition. There are few gaps in the game where one is super vulnerable when you have all these soft limits overlapping.
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On February 16 2011 03:56 Luggage wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 00:32 TimeSpiral wrote:On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. Disagree... Just like investments have a time value, so to does producing units earlier. While yes, missing warpgate/racks/building cycles hurts because you are under utilizing production capacity it is not the same for zerg as ALL their production capacity is focused on their hatcheries which greatly magnifies its significance. To make up for a missed production capacity, sure you can produce more hatcheries but this is expensive and incurs a significant opportunity cost. These costs are greatly magnified with zerg because is a 'weed race' that grow exponentially. The sooner they get out that drone, the sooner the drone pays for itself and the next drone. The sooner the army hatches, the sooner the zerg player can get back to overdroning and expanding. The only real time a zerg would want to build auxiliary hatcheries would be if they were going for mass low tech units (like ling/roach because they create larvae blockage). Otherwise that's money that's not earning interest in the bank. I feel like you disagreed because your gut was upset that you actually are agreeing with what I'm saying. When you "miss" something, you actually just delaying it. If you're delaying things often then you are playing "slowly." One way to get outplayed is to play "slower" than your opponent. Now, you only quoted a portion of my post, so anyone wanting to read it, show the spoiler. + Show Spoiler +On February 15 2011 03:11 TimeSpiral wrote:
Spawning larva is similar to forgetting to build units. You will NEVER get that unit back. You just missed it.
I see a lot of people compare the Spawn Larva mechanic to the MULE or Chronoboost. I think this is because we call them all "macro mechanics." This is an umbrella term and to use that term to equate all three abilities is improper, in my humble opinion.
(1) The MULE mines minerals faster than a worker, does not cost supply, ignores saturation, and can repair buildings or mechanical structures in emergency scenarios.
(2) Chronoboost decreases buildtime/research time/warpgate cooldown by 50% for a short period of time, 20 seconds.
(3) Spawn Larva creates 4 additional larva at the hatch every 40 seconds after it is cast.
Look how vastly different they are? They are all related to production in different ways.
So many people say that if they miss a spawn larva it is missed for good, and will never come back. They compare it to the MULE and say you only miss OC call downs for good after you've let your OC reach 200 energy, same with Protoss. This comparison doesn't really hold a lot of water because of how different they all are.
A spawned larva can technically become any core Zerg unit. If they "miss an inject" they aren't missing out on anything but a theoretically better game than they're currently playing. I'd even venture to say it is 'exactly' the same as Terran "missing" a build unit order at any of his production buildings, or a Protoss player missing his warpgate or robo/stargate cycles.
If I miss a marine, there is no getting that marine back. He will be however many seconds late and there is no way around that. Same thing with spawn larva. Same thing with Warpgate, and so on.
This idea of "missing an inject" is an important one, but I think it is important to point out the distinction between "missing" something and "delaying" something. Unless you're queen spits larva, and misses the hatch, lol, you didn't miss anything - it was just delayed. . These production buildings have a progress bar, exactly like Spawn Larva. If you order a "train marine" command and you do not instantly train a marine when that progress bar finishes you have "missed a marine" to use the same definition people "miss Spawn Larvas." A Zerg on two bases, playing standard, will have two Hatches and two Queens; That's 2 progress bars to manage that can be fully synced. A Terran player may have two OCs, five barracks, a factory and a starport. That's a full 9 individual progress bars not counting the OC's call down orders which can be used every 50 energy. So, that's closer to 11 total progress bars. Each one of those progress bars will not be synced, as individual units have different build times. Additionally, when you have multiple production buildings on the same hot-key (like most competent players) you cannot even glean the progress of the buildings, you just see little white dots for queued units. Now some, who may not be getting the comparison, will say, yeah but Zerg still has to build (morph) units from larva, so Spawn Larva is just an extra step compared to the other two races. My response is that the management of progress bars is independent of your available larva. Your larva doesn't disappear. Once it is spawned, it exists. You press your hatch hot-key, it tells you the exact number of units you can morph, you press "S" and then morph your heart out. There is no progress bar management at that step of the process. So, in light of really looking into Spawn Larva, it should not be viewed as an "extra step" it should be viewed as " The only real step that matters." Same thing with Terran, or Protoss. If you're facing an equally skilled opponent and you are missing production cycles - you lose the game. This is a faulty comparison, because the key point here is the missed time which comes from not using a queen to inject on time. To follow your train of thought, this would be the correct comparison: For a Terran to make one marine they have to select their CC, use an ability on the barracks so it can make room for a unit, then wait until it is done, and then queue the unit. Now if the Terran player had to do that for 11 different queues, it would be very bad indeed. However, given that the Terran doesn't have to do this extra step, nor is blocked from making units, and can also double-queue up to 5 units to avoid missed time, it is NOT THE SAME. I play random, and larvae inject is by far the hardest mechanic to master, as it is so very, very critical - critical and powerful. Can you imagine that you would only be allowed to make a combination of 3 units if you miss out on the timings of CC-to-barracks/factory/starport-timed-to-queue-again? Oh, if you have 11 total then you get 6, but they're exclusive so you have to wait until they're done to do any more. Oh crap you missed it, you only get two marines to defend! What's also missing is the fact that continual smoothening of what is critical throughout the game makes for a much more stable composition. There are few gaps in the game where one is super vulnerable when you have all these soft limits overlapping.
I agree that this is a tough comparison, but yours is not correct either.
To put it as simply as possible, spawning larva is managing a progress bar (I'm assuming you're playing with status bars on always). You will fall behind in production (assuming your opponent is not making mistakes) if you do not issue the appropriate command right after the progress bar finishes. This is very similar to forgetting to issue commands at a Terran production facility. If your buildings are not producing you are falling behind and there is no way to recover this time.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that spawn larva is more closely related to managing production capacity than it is the MULE. The main drive of my original response was to deflate the comparison between the MULE and Spawn Larva.
The larva sits there, and does not expire. Nor is it affected by whether or not you immediately morph it into a unit. This is directly related to the fact that they expect Zerg to be collecting information and determining what to morph their larva into. So, the spawn larva is continuous, without the need to make a decision. The actual morphing of the larva is reactionary.
Not sure if this is coming across correctly ...
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Spawn larva certainly is related to managing production, however it is the same in regard to the mule as a macro mechanic. Meaning in the simplest form: After X amount of time I need to do Y to utilize my macro mechanic, this I think is where the comparison ends and the two races go their separate ways.
On a basic level I see this game functioning like this:
1. gather money
2. invest in a building to produce units
3. produce units and continue to grow economy
4. test your might
However zerg has an extra step given to it where producing units has 3 facets. It has the building that produces units (hatch) and grant production slots, the tech building to unlock units, and the queen.
But the queen expands production, while a reactor grants an extra slow for a unit to produce, the queen grants extra slots to produce units. Though the reactor must go on every building, and only produces a second of a certain type of unit.
I can see the idea behind the comparison of delaying larva vs forgetting to build a unit as another race. However there's different functionality involved, while someone may miss a production cycle, the production slot will always be there, you will ALWAYS have a barracks/gateway/robo to eventually build from that requires no reaction other than clicking on it and building from it.
However spawn larva is completely independent of economy and allows zerg to expand production slots at no cost to their income (aside from the initial hatch and queen investment). That I think is what separates it from the idea that "oh you're just missing a production cycle".
Though I think we can all agree (as we've been reinventing the wheel for 8 pages) Larva spit is AS important as producing units. Another thing about the mule that is difficult to compare is the fact that at any given moment, terran must be building supply depots to keep up with his or her production, so that means 3-4 scvs are off the mineral line doing something other than mining, so the mule is picking up some slack.
I think another thing to look at, is the built units, incomes, and how many spits missed (aka how many larva not in the game), and compare them among races. Though all 3 races are different perhaps a comparison could be drawn.
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EPT
