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Updated: A second Graph has been added looking at a replay from Ret. Additionally a link to an XLS file has been added, use at own risk. I may, should I come into contact with them, do some replays of other high level zergs. Replays of NA and EU top level zergs seem to be a little more abundant, this could just be a result of my lack of searching skills. I would like to get a relatively current Idra replay if possible, as well as any other Code S zergs.
Updated 2/23/2011: Added to the resources section, a post from maxwellb which analyzes an SC2gears log. Don't ruin his server.
Larva Inject Analysis.
Greetings my TL friends. Let me first start with a little background, I'm a 2800 Diamond Terran player. The reason for this analysis was a result of a "lmfao terran imba" comment before a zerg left a ladder game I was playing. Now with my feelings hurt of both myself and that of the race I play, I said "why would this nice fellow who "gl hf"ed me at the start of the game be so angry at losing, losing's a part of the game. But then I realized, he's mad because he lost to a terran and terran is overpowered!!! (or so they say in many popular internet strategy forums). Determined, I looked at the replay to see if I had used my inherently overpowered abilities to defeat this poor zerg player in a rousing ladder match on scrap station.
Anyone who ever reads my posts about TvZ (which are few and I'm sure no one does). I am of a camp that says zerg is still a young race with a very different mechanic than the other two and might actually be an over-complicated race. Additionally zerg players have not yet matured skillwise to master their race. Simply put, they aren't being used to their potential by a majority of players. Top level zergs have already harnessed a lot of power, but I don't think we have seen a true master of the zerg race yet. My own prediction is that within the next year of the game, provided zerg's mechanic doesn't change zerg will be the best race.
I wanted to see how well my poor opponent used his queens. I felt that this was a great place to start, and as I watched the replay I started to notice the lack of spitting at times. This sparked my interest to I grabbed a pencil, some paper, a google doc, and my phone (stopwatch) and checked it out further.
Disclaimer: I should state that this is a very crude study with the bare minimum sample size. In the graph I post the results of only 2 of the 4 games I had looked at. This takes into account larva injects ONLY. The passive larva spawn, unit composition, micro, build order have zero to do with the purpose of this post. I am merely looking at the total larva produced over time via the Larva Inject mechanic. This post also has no discussion comparing it to protoss or terran (except for a few comments I make later). Those 2 are independant and I think the zerg community should look at these numbers by themselves before looking to how they balance among other races. Because it was a TvZ matchup that spawned the idea the replays analyzed are TvZ only. This really should be negligible since regardless of matchups, zerg need to inject their hatcheries
Larva Inject Analysis Method:
For this I looked at the down time on the hatchery in which 2 things were satisfied; The Queen had 25+ energy, and the hatchery was not in the process of "spawn larva". This downtime I call the Missed Injection Window (MIW or "MOO" if you say it I guess). The first thing to satisfy the MIW is that a queen must be paired with a hatchery. Once a hatchery is paired with a queen that has 25 energy, the timer is started. So the minute the first hatchery spawns its queen, the timer begins since queens will start with 25 energy. That is to say, that if your 2nd hatch pops while and then begins a queen to pair it, the timer is not running. If a creep tumor is placed, the MIW is from the moment the injection finishes the tumor is placed and then stops. It will restart the moment that the respective queen hits 25 energy again.
In the event a queen is killed: If the queen is killed during an injection the MIW timer starts at the time the injection completes until the next queen spits on it. This only occured in a replay I won't be posting the results here for (needless to say it can be devastating).
The Graph:
Haypro vs StarWEmpty
+ Show Spoiler +
Direct Link to graphic 1280x1080px
Ret vs tGcBosseR
+ Show Spoiler +
Direct Link to graphic 1280x1080px
The Analysis:
Well what are we looking at?
The span of each line represents the length of the entire game, and each line also represents a hatchery. Red indicates a time period in which a larva inject was available to the player but not used. Green then beings the spawn larva process, at the end of the green bar the number above it in the graph is how many total larva have been produced via Larva Inject among the hatcheries.
The numbers at the end of each bar represent the total time PER hatchery that spits were missed and roughly (rounded down) the amount of injections missed per hatchery. If you multiply that number by 4 and you can see the total units that could have been available.
Again, the plotted points above the bars represent the total larva to date produced, not army count, workers, or specific units. This is a cumulative representation of how many larva (via larva inject) have entered the game. Death of units made from the larva are also not included, this number can only go up.
Lastly, the 3rd section at the bottom is visualization of my poor zerg opponent had he been an insane ai (I haven't checked but I imagine that insane zerg never misses a spit)and hit every spit when he was able to.
Results:
Well there are some rather telling points in this visualization. Now, mind you I don't know how well Haypro was playing that day or if he was trying something new. You can see that his visualizations have many strings of smaller red bars. You can also see that Haypro got into a significant 'groove' around the 13' minute mark syncing his spits. When looking at the numbers, you can also see that haypro had significantly outproduced my opponent in larva even from an early point in the game.
You may also notice that Haypro's main and natural hatches had higher MIWs for the total game. Aside from the fact his game went longer, Haypro's 3rd and 4th hatches essentially had covered for the spits missed from his 1st and 2nd (e.g. the roughly 11 spits missed were canceled out by the addition of 2 more hatcheries).
Now I should mention that Haypro's 3rd hatch was in his main prior to taking his 3rd base. I will also note that his 3rd base never fully got up and running (it was being contested by his opponent) but it was still a vital production facility.
Updated: I've added a replay from Ret and compared to that of Haypro. I've also added some overlays to Ret's visualization to also highlight key events. You can see the stretches in his MIWs pretty much are relative to when he had to micro his units (the first larva inject window is slightly longer due to a creep tumor being spawned. He gains a slight edge over Haypro due to spitting so soon after his creep spawns. Because it's just 2 replays I don't think you can say Ret is better than Haypro, I didn't do an event overlay for Haypro though I can say from memory that the stretches are results of fighting. I think what we can see is that, better players, are better at their spits. You can see that during "peace time" Ret is really good about his spits, between 2-7 seconds.
Conclusions & an Open Challenge:
I think first and foremost what we can take from this is: Don't miss spits, or be as close as possible to making them. This obviously is nothing new to anybody. But perhaps this visualization puts things in a better perspective. From this I can only conclude is that the spits missed from your MIWs are esentially units that will not enter the game. This is slightly different from chronoboost and orbitals (provided they have not maxed out) in that those 2 can still be using on something. Mules can still work on mineral patches, and chronoboost can be used on something like an upgrade (or two), a robo/stargate unit. It is somewhat similar to the concept of using your warpgate cooldowns, but warpgates are still limited by economy. You don't need an economy to spawn larva, just a queen with energy.
Perhaps players who don't build a 3rd hatch in main will consider adding a hatchery in their main prior to trying to take secure a 3rd base and droning it right away. If we look at the numbers haypro was producing after the 13th minute mark, he was able to produce 12 units at a time. Now if you compare that to a terran or protoss on 2 bases, they too will most likely have the infastructure of 8-10 production buildings. You also have to consider that some of those larva need to be produced into overlords for supply, so in one instance, you could consider one of those missed spits a curcial supply cap increase.
Edit: I missed an important point I wanted to make. Yes, the queen larva inject is much more unforgiving as a mechanic, if you fall behind, the only way you can capitalize is if you invest in another hatchery. Whereas terran and protoss can spend it elsewhere, queens can't exactly dump it, creep spread and transfusion are dumps but not in the same value of getting larva. I won't say whether this is broken and should be fixed, but i will say that if you want to be good at zerg, this is ability is paramount to your success in the game's current incarnation.
Also, imagine what a robot haypro would produce?
Anyway, I challenge zerg players to go back and watch a replay that they lost or won and actually sit and see how much their total MIW was and how many larva they could be missing out on. I hope this doesn't turn into a discussion about race balance, but simply people discussing how to use their queens and ways to get better at syncing your spits.
Resources:
XLS file by ExoTau. I don't have Office, so I can't test it though he's made one and it's there. Use at your own risk. This utilizes SC2gears' log file. Larva Inject XLS macro
His post can be found here.
Another Analyzer script based on SC2Gears from posted Maxwellb: http://inject.maxwellb.com/
see his post here on how to use it
Lastly: I was inspired by Lalush's Post about macro mechanics to take a bit more of an empirical approach to SC2, I graduated with a degree in digital media so I'm not terribly on top of numbers so there is perhaps a bit of a margin of error. However, I don't think it is wide enough to make these numbers completely inconsequential. Grammar also isn't a strong suit so don't crucify me about my excessive comma use, I know it's a problem, and I am getting, help! The replay of Haypro can be found Here a la sc2rep.com. The Ret replay can be found Here
Questions and comments are welcome.
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thread says larva injection anal... lol..
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oh my god, mods change the name please 
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wow, this is really interesting, ive miss injects alot, but i never realised that it impacted me so much, btw on the forum side bar it says "larvae injection anal" lolol
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Everyone needs to stop using the word, "Analysis," in the title of their thread.
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so you're advocating more hatcheries in the base?
i kind of understood the graph (very confusing at first) showing how much better off Haypro was.
Lastly, are you also saying that b/c MULES can still mine and chrono can be mass blown... that zerg energy (or something similar) needs a similar mechanic?
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Well, this thread was a disappointment....
haha on-topic, I find this mechanic to be both good and bad. Zerg's larva mechanic is still too unforgiving in comparison to Terran's I believe, and this kind of mechanical "every 40 seconds click this" just artificially heightens the skill cap. Of course, then pros such as Haypro really stand out.
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This is a nice example of just how much room for improvement there is at a decent level like the 2900 opponent. His opponent doesn't even approach his potential... actually as the game goes on he gets progressively worse and further from the perfect robot larva model, which is to be expected i guess given theres alot more shit going on.
I thnk its important for people, before they go on about balance all over the TL forums, to analyze their replays and ask "why am I 20 larva behind where I could be at the 7 minute mark'? I guess the real question is... how to clean it up. Haypro adds hatches. More zergs should add hatches sooner.
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On February 13 2011 06:46 Jayrod wrote:
This is a nice example of just how much room for improvement there is at a decent level like the 2900 opponent. His opponent doesn't even approach his potential... actually as the game goes on he gets progressively worse and further from the perfect robot larva model, which is to be expected i guess given theres alot more shit going on.
build another hatch, don't build another queen... problem solved
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I get the feeling that people are now analysing starcraft for the sake of analysing.
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On February 13 2011 06:45 Keitzer wrote:
so you're advocating more hatcheries in the base?
i kind of understood the graph (very confusing at first) showing how much better off Haypro was.
Lastly, are you also saying that b/c MULES can still mine and chrono can be mass blown... that zerg energy (or something similar) needs a similar mechanic?
He's saying the zerg macro mechanic is not as forgiving, which is arguable with regards to things chronoboost, but probably pretty obvious that it effects zerg in a very direct and noticeable way.
Queens can also heal and spread creep and stuff so i don't know if they need a new mechanic. Players just need to get better.
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I feel the protoss players have also started to realize the importance of CB their probes, and doing it as soon as the CB is ready, and all throughout the game. So it will come to the point where it pretty much resembles the inject mechanics - you will have to drop it as soon as your nexus has enough energy, and do so at every nexus you have, keeping you energy constantly low.
Now if only the terran mules had a cooldown so you couldn't just drop dozen of them, but would have to drop them in similar fashion...
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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;
A: Nobody is perfect
B: Haypro is better than a 2900 diamond player
C: Investing 450 in a macro hatch and a queen is a signifigantly better solution to missed injects.
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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. 
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On February 13 2011 06:56 Odoakar wrote:
I feel the protoss players have also started to realize the importance of CB their probes, and doing it as soon as the CB is ready, and all throughout the game. So it will come to the point where it pretty much resembles the inject mechanics - you will have to drop it as soon as your nexus has enough energy, and do so at every nexus you have, keeping you energy constantly low.
Now if only the terran mules had a cooldown so you couldn't just drop dozen of them, but would have to drop them in similar fashion...
P and T are similar in kinda opposite ways. For example, T production is similar to CB in that you have to constantly check and make sure you're hitting the right intervals for maximum output. MULE is similar to warp gates in that you can spam a bunch out at once.
Kinda weird, comparing each race's army production with the other's economy mechanics.
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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.
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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.
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I still don't understand this graph even after spending a good 5 min on it. You say that ur opponent lacks of attention about spitting, but judging from the graph it's a mere error that doesn't justify his lose... Another thing i don't understand is why would you count creep tumor or transfusion (if there is any) on this graph ? That's why i spent minutes to understand why there were like half greenish bars compared to the robot's one. A clear way for the graph would be to cancel any creep/transfusion and additionnal hatches for 1 queen and focus more on the spitting hatches (possibly only 1 per base assuming there's a queen).
This way we would clearly see any late spit errors.
On February 13 2011 06:57 schiznak wrote:
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.
It's not. Because either you'd still miss spits, or have too much larvaes idling.
The graph itself isn't telling you how accurately you need to be spitting in order to get full use of larvaes.
Edit : Oh and, ur opponent got a way later 2nd hatch in natural, thus having a delay for queens larvaes.
Meh, i think it's safe to think the sample size is too small to really think that larvae issue is what made him lose the game.
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Shouldnt this be in Strategy section?
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this is a really cool looking graph but i'm not sure how it benefits anyone other than the OP.
ideally you shouldn't have excess energy on your Nexus/Orbital/Queen. i think people blow the difficulty of the other race's mechanics out of proportion although zerg does have two (tumor/inject).
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
You can inject all hatches with all-selected queens and one big finger (2 sub-buttons under big button on mouse)
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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.
Too bad you cant queue larvae injects
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On February 13 2011 07:40 Logican wrote:Show nested quote +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. Too bad you cant queue larvae injects
haha. first sentence than popped into my mind also.
Great read OP, really put a few ideas and thoughts into my head
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On February 13 2011 07:32 RaiZ wrote:I still don't understand this graph even after spending a good 5 min on it. You say that ur opponent lacks of attention about spitting, but judging from the graph it's a mere error that doesn't justify his lose... Another thing i don't understand is why would you count creep tumor or transfusion (if there is any) on this graph ? That's why i spent minutes to understand why there were like half greenish bars compared to the robot's one. A clear way for the graph would be to cancel any creep/transfusion and additionnal hatches for 1 queen and focus more on the spitting hatches (possibly only 1 per base assuming there's a queen). This way we would clearly see any late spit errors. Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 06:57 schiznak wrote:
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. It's not. Because either you'd still miss spits, or have too much larvaes idling. The graph itself isn't telling you how accurately you need to be spitting in order to get full use of larvaes. Edit : Oh and, ur opponent got a way later 2nd hatch in natural, thus having a delay for queens larvaes. Meh, i think it's safe to think the sample size is too small to really think that larvae issue is what made him lose the game.
The story of my ladder game was simply a pretext for why I was looking at this. How and why he lost the game isn't the issue. The issue is how under produced in larva he was. To say that you'll lose a game because you didn't spit is one thing, but you certainly won't win one without doing it. The purpose of the graph is to show what COULD be if you are good about your spits and your hatchery count.
As far tumors/transfusions are concerned, I said that these weren't counted in the visualization, if someone made a decision to creep tumor instead of spit, the graph won't reflect it.
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On February 13 2011 07:36 Sprouter wrote:
this is a really cool looking graph but i'm not sure how it benefits anyone other than the OP.
ideally you shouldn't have excess energy on your Nexus/Orbital/Queen. i think people blow the difficulty of the other race's mechanics out of proportion although zerg does have two (tumor/inject).
I didn't want to blow anything out of proportion, I was merely trying to visualize larva injects over the course of a game. If a zerg is in a game with 1200 minerals, an unmaxed army and no larva to spend, perhaps the 3 spits missed thus far are a case.
Again this really wasn't any sort of breakthrough. We know you need to spit on your hatchery, this isn't anything new. I was trying to bring a visualization into the mix. While Haypro is obviously better than a 2900 hundred diamond player on many levels, one level that a 2900 diamond player can meet Haypro, is being as good about spits as he is (and his addition of hatcheries).
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this thread is really fantastic, and just wanted to thank the OP for doing the analysis!
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I've lost more games than I care to admit because of poor injection. It was something I really started working on, and my production capability is now considerably better then it used.
This is one of the most common errors Zerg players have that hold them back.
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Yup! And you mentioned it a bit but I'd like to touch upon this a bit more;
For players that are, say, not spitting larvae for let's say roughly 25% of the time, which is probably anyone gold and under and possibly even some diamonds:
It is more cost efficient to build hatches instead of Queens for larvae (I stress this, for larvae! Hatches can't provide defense obviously). Another benefit to having a Hatch is that you can save the APM you would need to keep injecting and that a Hatch does not die nearly as fast as a Queen, and you can use it to help block some key area like as a semi wall and/or use it to spread creep.
Don't remember my calculations, may be I'll recalculate to see exactly how good at Injecting you need to be for a Queen to be able to out-larvae a Hatchery (speaking of larvae ONLY).
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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.
well you can not really queue larvae injects altho it can be a bit similar
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On February 13 2011 07:32 RaiZ wrote:I still don't understand this graph even after spending a good 5 min on it. You say that ur opponent lacks of attention about spitting, but judging from the graph it's a mere error that doesn't justify his lose... Another thing i don't understand is why would you count creep tumor or transfusion (if there is any) on this graph ? That's why i spent minutes to understand why there were like half greenish bars compared to the robot's one. A clear way for the graph would be to cancel any creep/transfusion and additionnal hatches for 1 queen and focus more on the spitting hatches (possibly only 1 per base assuming there's a queen). This way we would clearly see any late spit errors. Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 06:57 schiznak wrote:
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. It's not. Because either you'd still miss spits, or have too much larvaes idling. The graph itself isn't telling you how accurately you need to be spitting in order to get full use of larvaes. Edit : Oh and, ur opponent got a way later 2nd hatch in natural, thus having a delay for queens larvaes. Meh, i think it's safe to think the sample size is too small to really think that larvae issue is what made him lose the game.
The post is meant as a microcosm of a big zerg problem that often prevents meaningful balance discussions from occuring. The problem is how can you know if your perceived imbalance exists if you are not playing anywhere near where you should be mechanically. Its not a balance post... if anything, he is agreeing with the sentiment that zergs really get punished hard for missing spits... harder than the other two races for their macro mechanic. The graphs are just kind of showing how big of a difference it makes.
Additionally, I think it also represents a possible problem from the standpoint of blizzard trying to figure out what can be done to fix zergs without making them overpowered. If played perfectly, their power is incredible.. but even decent players ~2900 diamond zerg (not great, but not shabby) fall so short and have so much room to grow that maybe they dont need to do any fundamental changes.
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Very good writeup, however it is marred by one small thing.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Qt4mr.png)
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MIssing larva injects doesn't really matter that much so long as you have enough larva to spend all your money. If you're spending all your money without perfect larva splits then actually doing perfect larva splits will simply result in pooled larva, which is a benefit, but not a huge game changer in most circumstances.
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On February 13 2011 08:41 znowstorm wrote:Very good writeup, however it is marred by one small thing.
Ha yes, I was wondering where those comments about the title were coming from. Probably counts for all the views and low reply count (lot of disappointed Anal fans).
On February 13 2011 08:50 FrostedMiniWeet wrote:
MIssing larva injects doesn't really matter that much so long as you have enough larva to spend all your money. If you're spending all your money without perfect larva splits then actually doing perfect larva splits will simply result in pooled larva, which is a benefit, but not a huge game changer in most circumstances.
This is also a good point which I've skated around. At the same token however, by having more larva early on (lets say you are on the ball for the first 4 spits) that could mean your drone count is climbing faster than it normally would (say you miss one because of a push). Now larva are being spent on units only instead of units and economy. Lalush had pointed out in his post that to graph zerg worker gathering is a huge headache, because it will happen a little erratically (which I think is also in part due to mis-timed spits as well).
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won't be missing anymore injects if that's the last thing I do!
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On February 13 2011 09:22 Kaasflipje wrote:
Mod title change again?
no this one is just what it is to start off with haha
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Evan stay tuned for I am about to bring you zergs a powerful tool for building up your internal spitting clock
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Of course how many MULES did YOU miss? Maybe with a MULE cooldown it would actually matter. Again, Zerg has to improve their mechanics because the race is so badly designed.
/ QQ machine
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On February 13 2011 06:34 B.I.G. wrote:
thread says larva injection anal... lol..
^^
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This was not the kind of thread I was expecting Though nice read, thank you for the analysis.
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oops, posted earlier. my bad.
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After reading through this I finally understand what the graph shows. Its not very intuitive, and its also way too small of a sample size but it gets the point across: Missing larva inject is bad.
Zerg has the least forgiving 'mechanic' of the 3 races. IMO one of the best solutions would be to have an icon for 'idle spawn larvae' similar to how toss gets one for warpgates off cooldown. Ideally, yes, you want energy at zero.
However, if terran screws up, he ends up with money in the bank.
Toss ends up with faster upgrades, more units and has only lost TIME (granted, a very valuable resource but if you stored 100 on your nexus then blew it all, no harm done right?)
Zerg has LOST its larvae. Its gone, never to be recovered, forever unspent. This, in my opinion, makes the zerg macro mechanic weaker by comparison and not entirely fair.
This is marginally fixed due to the fact that zerg builds everything from hatcheries so there is no need to jump all over for production, but the very idea of LOSING a resource is not really fair to me in any RTS. What could you do, build two more hatches to spend energy on?
But anyways, good initiative looking into this OP. Thanks for giving us all something to consider next time the zerg pieces throw a tantrum.
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great Read though in Short the Thread says. Yes dont miss Lavainjects ever ^^ beside that I am amazed at the ammout of Work you put into this Analyzes great Job with what Programm did you make that Chart btw its looks awesome.
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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.
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On February 13 2011 11:24 Hopeless1der wrote:
However, if terran screws up, he ends up with money in the bank.
Toss ends up with faster upgrades, more units and has only lost TIME (granted, a very valuable resource but if you stored 100 on your nexus then blew it all, no harm done right?)
Time is THE most valuable resource in RTS, but agree with your other points about zerg.
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On February 13 2011 11:24 Hopeless1der wrote:
After reading through this I finally understand what the graph shows. Its not very intuitive, and its also way too small of a sample size but it gets the point across: Missing larva inject is bad.
Zerg has the least forgiving 'mechanic' of the 3 races. IMO one of the best solutions would be to have an icon for 'idle spawn larvae' similar to how toss gets one for warpgates off cooldown. Ideally, yes, you want energy at zero.
However, if terran screws up, he ends up with money in the bank.
Toss ends up with faster upgrades, more units and has only lost TIME (granted, a very valuable resource but if you stored 100 on your nexus then blew it all, no harm done right?)
Zerg has LOST its larvae. Its gone, never to be recovered, forever unspent. This, in my opinion, makes the zerg macro mechanic weaker by comparison and not entirely fair.
This is marginally fixed due to the fact that zerg builds everything from hatcheries so there is no need to jump all over for production, but the very idea of LOSING a resource is not really fair to me in any RTS. What could you do, build two more hatches to spend energy on?
But anyways, good initiative looking into this OP. Thanks for giving us all something to consider next time the zerg pieces throw a tantrum.
Hmm Perhaps I could be a little clearer about how to read the graph, it is essentially a timeline, and the status of your hatchery is reflected, I'll update the original post.
You've also hit the nail on the head of one of the conclusions from the idea, zerg has lot its larva, and it's sitting in the form of 25 energy on a queen, you can only get that back if you build a hatch to dump it into (and then of course get another queen to pair it).
Regarding the sample size, I understand it's small as it is only 2 examples, however the concept of it isn't so much a "well what is the average that zerg's miss over X number of games" it's really just to illustrate a point. Other games included a player missing 158 seconds on the main hatch and 138 on the expansion (short game), and another had missed 335 and 398 (also in about a 15 minute game) that was in short due to killing queens and lack of replacing them.
Again, this post was first and foremost produced as a 'food for thought'. I think it's a given that you shouldn't miss spits, but when you look at someone who is average with their spits, and someone who is better at their spits, you can see the potential. Larry Bird practiced shooting his free throws every day. He has a career FT% of .886 and one of the best in the NBA of all-time. Just sayin!
In addition to that, I would encourage anyone to look at a replay and post their results, here's an example of how I have them formatted:
+ Show Spoiler +
Window Begin || Window End || Total Duration
4:30:00 5:00:00 0:30:00
5:40:00 6:16:00 0:36:00
6:56:00 6:58:00 0:02:00
7:38:00 7:55:00 0:17:00
8:35:00 8:39:00 0:04:00
9:19:00 9:29:00 0:10:00
10:09:00 10:47:00 0:38:00
11:27:00 11:28:00 0:01:00
12:08:00 12:56:00 0:48:00
13:36:00 13:43:00 0:07:00
14:23:00 14:27:00 0:04:00
15:07:00 15:46:00 0:39:00
16:26:00 16:39:00 0:13:00
17:19:00 17:35:00 0:16:00
Total Time: 4:25:00
The graph was created in good old photoshop.
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This is a very interesting graphic. I think more zergs should invest in a macro hatch. It would help to lessen the impact of missed injects.
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On February 13 2011 11:48 Jayrod wrote:
Time is THE most valuable resource in RTS, but agree with your other points about zerg.
You're absolutely right. But then, time is available regardless of the race you play 
The point i was trying to make was that protoss can potentially make use of every chronoboost as long as the nexus doesnt reach full capacity. In a hypothetical where you just sat in your base and macro'd with no worrying about the opponent, it wouldnt make a difference if you spent your boost all at once or at the precise moment it became available, assuming continuous production of something.
And of course, the entire point of the thread was that zerg MUST use the queens energy AS SOON AS POSSIBLE or it becomes a lost resource. It doesnt matter how long you're not injecting, if a queen gets above 25 energy (or should it be 50?) then you've effectively lost 4 larvae from that queen.
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On February 13 2011 13:17 Hopeless1der wrote:
And of course, the entire point of the thread was that zerg MUST use the queens energy AS SOON AS POSSIBLE or it becomes a lost resource. It doesnt matter how long you're not injecting, if a queen gets above 25 energy (or should it be 50?) then you've effectively lost 4 larvae from that queen.
The amount of energy I think should always be as low as possible. It's also important to spread creep. I know some people oppose the idea, but a creep tumor as your first expenditure off the queen might be better. Remember that the addition of another hatchery/queen later on almost exponentially increase larva production. You can see what haypro is doing off of 4 hatcheries when they get synced up. If you consider that a larva represents a production slot in a building, having 24 larva banked is pretty impressive even if you don't have money at the time to built it. For terran or protoss to invest enough for 24 production slots is simply off the table as a concept as no economy could ever sustain that in a game.
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On February 13 2011 13:17 Hopeless1der wrote:
And of course, the entire point of the thread was that zerg MUST use the queens energy AS SOON AS POSSIBLE or it becomes a lost resource. It doesnt matter how long you're not injecting, if a queen gets above 25 energy (or should it be 50?) then you've effectively lost 4 larvae from that queen.
\The amount of energy I think should always be as low as possible. It's also important to spread creep. I know some people oppose the idea, but a creep tumor as your first expenditure off the queen might be better. Remember that the addition of another hatchery/queen later on almost exponentially increase larva production. You can see what haypro is doing off of 4 hatcheries when they get synced up. If you consider that a larva represents a production slot in a building, having 24 larva banked is pretty impressive even if you don't have money at the time to built it. For terran or protoss to invest enough for 24 production slots is simply off the table as a concept as no economy could ever sustain that in a game. (12 reactored barracks aside
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The thing about comparing MULEs to injects is they're entirely different things. One is for production, the other is income. If injects created mega drones that mined fast, then they would be one and the same. Income may allow for production, but that relies on macro. Chronoboost doesn't stack.
With the OP, I've more recently learned the value of macro hatches. Zerg is my offrace, and I just can't seem to keep my money down. But when I drop down a 3rd in base hatch, I find it's much easier then taking my 3rd a lot of the time and still gives me the larvae I want. I definitely feel zerg's very powerful, and I quite like being able to throw down a lot of units at once. Not missing injects just amplifies this, as does in base hatches.
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On February 13 2011 06:53 tealc wrote:
I get the feeling that people are now analysing starcraft for the sake of analysing.
I'd rather have this type of analyzing rather than the ton of other garbage that is out there.
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I think OP is making a great point that everyone commenting on the first page is missing. The message behind all this is that Zerg players have a lot to improve on. I'm a 2700 Masters Zerg but I know that I miss a lot of injects especially in the late game. Building another Hatchery might save you temporarily but it is NOT as good as being perfect in your injects.
Seeing this post actually give me a lot of hope. If I don't miss any injects, I would make so many more units right now and can reduce that huge mineral spike in the mid game that most Zergs I know experience.
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Heh, well yeah, its a little more unforgiving to zerg, overall, if a zerg waits till 75 energy to inject, 2 spawns are completely lost, if a toss waits for 75 to chronoboost his gateways, nothing is lost.
Same thing with creep tumors btw, each second that you dont make a tumor out of your existing tumors is lost creep that you can never get back.
It would be fun to see a similar graph for a high level toss for example, with red whenever the nexus is over 25 energy I suspect even for someone really good, there will be a LOT of red in the average pro player toss :D
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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;
A: Nobody is perfect
B: Haypro is better than a 2900 diamond player
C: Investing 450 in a macro hatch and a queen is a signifigantly better solution to missed injects.
pretty much sum'd up everything I was going to say.
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A problem I see with larva inject is that a Queen doesn't get exactly 25 energy per 45 game seconds. In the early game i rarely miss larva injects, so I always lose about 1-2 seconds waiting for my Queen to go from 23/24 energy up to 25.
This makes it basically almost impossible to not lose time from larva injects, because if your Queen is at exactly 0 energy after injecting, you have to wait for about 1-2 seconds after you got the larva from the injection until you can inject again.
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I'd be interested in seeing a graph for a macro monster like Ret or Idra now ^^.
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Protoss has idle warpgate icon popping up, zerg needs something similar like a queen saying "Larva has hatched" and a ping on the minimap or Hatchery icons which turn red which indicated that they are not injected.
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!
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On February 13 2011 20:19 Chise wrote:
A problem I see with larva inject is that a Queen doesn't get exactly 25 energy per 45 game seconds. In the early game i rarely miss larva injects, so I always lose about 1-2 seconds waiting for my Queen to go from 23/24 energy up to 25.
This makes it basically almost impossible to not lose time from larva injects, because if your Queen is at exactly 0 energy after injecting, you have to wait for about 1-2 seconds after you got the larva from the injection until you can inject again.
The simple solution there is to first use the popped larva to make units as soon as it pops off the hatch, and then inject, if you try to inject right after it pops, then yeah, you lose valuable time.
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.
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On February 13 2011 06:34 B.I.G. wrote:
thread says larva injection anal... lol..
I was gonna post a screenshot and say the exact same thing.
But SRSLY,
Thank you for the post, it does really hammer in the idea that Z shouldn't miss injects. I have fun with the Z macro mechanic but I just miss injects some times. As a garbage level Zerg casual, its useful.
+ Show Spoiler +thanks, imba terran man XD
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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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On February 13 2011 23:59 morimacil 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. 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.
I admit I wrote much of that in haste. However, after those workers pay for themselves after roughly 1 minute, there is a real gain in income over a mule. The only way this isn't the case is when the zerg is oversaturated.
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.
I think you missed my inference of it being a purely offensive hatch. If you used one hatch as an overlord/drone hatch and the other as an army producing hatch.
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morimacil if anyones macro would be perfect we would not have this whole conversation!
After playing some terran recently and watching some t streams i often find the same situation:
After microeing stuff they find themselves with 1k mins and they go back drops 2 mules sink their mins into units and go back to micro. They almost never switch to base during battles to drop a mule or q up supply depots.
Zerg HAS to switch back to 3+ bases to check for larvae and injection. Its like trying to juggle 3 balls while firing a gun. Terran just drops the balls, fires the gun, drinks a diet coke and then starts juggling again, no harm done to his macro.
After looking into my crystal ball i predict that with bigger maps (aka more places to safely expand) we will see the rise of the macro hatch.
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On February 13 2011 06:56 Odoakar wrote:
I feel the protoss players have also started to realize the importance of CB their probes, and doing it as soon as the CB is ready, and all throughout the game. So it will come to the point where it pretty much resembles the inject mechanics - you will have to drop it as soon as your nexus has enough energy, and do so at every nexus you have, keeping you energy constantly low.
Now if only the terran mules had a cooldown so you couldn't just drop dozen of them, but would have to drop them in similar fashion...
Forget the cooldown for mules. Just limit the OC's energy at 75 to keep the Terrans honest haha
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indeed, no one has perfect macro, that is true. But if you want to improve, then perfection should be your goal.
Here is how to improve:
step 1: Notice a problem
step 2: Fix the problem
Avoiding the problem, doesnt help you improve.
If for example, you are unable to macro, to improve, you need to focus on learning to macro.
If instead, you avoid the problem, by for example doing a 6 pool 100% of the time, then sure, it will help right now. Someone who doesnt know how to macro will win more by doing a 6 pool than by trying to macro and failing.
But 6 pooling doesnt make you improve your macro, and extra hatcheries also doesnt help you.
You could also decide for example to make 5 hatcheries and no queens off 2 bases. That way, you dont have to inject, at all. Same principle as your macro hatch, a fix for not being able to inject, that is suboptimal, since you have to spend a lot of extra minerals on it.
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My TvZ strategy is all about constant timing pushes and as a result zerg's queens aren't spitting on hatcheries. You can see the red strips in parts of the game are more or less representative of an attack or something that was happening in which the player's eyes couldn't be focusing on hatcheries. So in essence being attacked as a zerg at a crucial time could be damaging in 2 ways:
Units being lost from the fighting itself.
Potential Units being lost from a missing injection.
as far as fixing it? Well one thing that IS a bit annoying is the delay if you spit asap. There will always be about 2-3 seconds you have to wait, if you minimap spit with multiple queens grouped, your queens will start running around to the wrong hatch.
I don't think it should be changed at all, in fact I think zerg players should really embrace it, their mechanic is pretty different from the other two and powerful in its own regard. If my totally sweet sony walkman doesn't work because I didn't put batteries in, I don't send it back to sony because it isn't playing my Ace of Base cassette. I put batteries turn it on and become a fest djur.
It's kind of one of the reasons I'd like people to post some results of their own and maybe a little of why they lost the game (or won). I don't know if there's a direct correlation to consistent injections and winning/losing, but I know for the other two races building production buildings to build units is (which is what the larva themselves represent).
I've actually been playing zerg all weekend because of this trying see how good I can be about them. I have to say, it's fun and rewarding.
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a macro hatch does not free you from having to inject as well as possible. it just makes the inject mechanism more forgiving, also gives 2 supply, creep spread an overall higher production caps in case. Once you are that perfect, that you feel you don't need it anymore, just omit it. Building a macro hatch does not prevent improvement imho.
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A macro hatch is simply a way say "I'm going to invest 300 minerals and a drone because I know I'll miss injections."
Could you imagine if mules were on 45 second timers, it would be like building an extra command center so you could drop 2 mules at once. Getting my injections down is one of the biggest things I keep trying to improve, and often I find that I get behind enough I can actually work 3 hatches with 2 queens. I do everything I can to stay on it, but remembering to do something every 45 seconds that isn't making units, isn't making drones, gets tough. It is easy to lose track of time in SC... especially when trying to somehow micro around a protoss death ball and not lose everything you have and kill nothing.
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On February 14 2011 03:33 FLuE wrote:
Could you imagine if mules were on 45 second timers, it would be like building an extra command center so you could drop 2 mules at once. Getting my injections down is one of the biggest things I keep trying to improve, and often I find that I get behind enough I can actually work 3 hatches with 2 queens. I do everything I can to stay on it, but remembering to do something every 45 seconds that isn't making units, isn't making drones, gets tough. It is easy to lose track of time in SC... especially when trying to somehow micro around a protoss death ball and not lose everything you have and kill nothing.
I don't want this thread to degenerate into a mule discussion as it is flirting closely with. In essence, a mule IS on a 45 second timer. It mines for 90 seconds and it takes roughly about that for the energy to return. With about 7 seconds leftover, in some cases during that last 7 seconds the mule dies with his precious cargo. The mule however, is an economic advantage. That's all I'll say about the mule and I hope we can keep it regarding larva inject (though I understand talking about 1 macro mechanic is hard to talk about without comparing the two others).
Circling back to the Queens and the injects. The inject represents basically an infrastructure investment. That macro mechanic is in the form of expanding production slots. The mule and chronoboost don't do that. They can help grow the economy, but they can't expand production capacity directly. Sure the money spent from extra probes chronoboosted can be invested in buildings and units later on, the same can be said for a mule. The only difference is that it can be dumped directly.
The "dump" of zerg's macro mechanic only comes after "maturing" so to speak. If you've hit your spits consistently enough you can cash in on that mechanic when you exchange an army around the 18 minute mark and you have 38 larva banked, with another 12+ (I'm assuming 3 hatcheries with consistant spitting) arriving shortly. No other race works like that.
That's Starcraft 2, each race is different and has different strengths. Zerg I would say is fundamentally the hardest to play. For people who want to make that race easier by changing some of these things that make zerg powerful because they can't harness them diretly; well, shame on you I guess. Here you have a race that has a ton of potential at a basic level. And you could be proud you play the hardest race.
I think this is one of the reasons that blizzard has such a difficulty balancing zerg. If zerg is potentially missing around 12-15 (arbitrary number though an educated guess) spits a game, do you balance the units that ARE made around the fact that zerg is losing out on 48-60 units that could be eventually built? Those larva also represent drones that could be built, supply cap increases and of course larva can be represent a 1 to 6 food unit.
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On February 14 2011 00:29 CrumpetGuvnor wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2011 06:56 Odoakar wrote:
I feel the protoss players have also started to realize the importance of CB their probes, and doing it as soon as the CB is ready, and all throughout the game. So it will come to the point where it pretty much resembles the inject mechanics - you will have to drop it as soon as your nexus has enough energy, and do so at every nexus you have, keeping you energy constantly low.
Now if only the terran mules had a cooldown so you couldn't just drop dozen of them, but would have to drop them in similar fashion... Forget the cooldown for mules. Just limit the OC's energy at 75 to keep the Terrans honest haha
That's actually not a half-bad suggestion to make the other races macro mechanic less forgiving. Limit the total energy of Nexus and OCs to 75 or 50, and soon they'll be sweating bullets trying to constantly CB/MULE on time.
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Interesting 'Moo' analysis that confirms my suspicions that even the best players in the world (Haypro) miss injections (and a LOT) which is a huge problem because the zerg economy is like compound interest. The sooner you produce the drones, the soon you get the minerals to produce more drones and more expansions which in turn produce more drones... It's a giant feedback loop in which a tiny economic hiccup in the early game (like harass or missed injections) magnifies itself many times fold in the late game.
Solutions...
Folks, we have to consider auto-inject. Ask yourself...is manually clicking the inject button each time a cycle comes up creating diverse and interesting gameplay or is it tedious pointless busywork? Do I buy SC2 just so I can beat my opponent because I kept up with the injection cycles?
If we're not going for an auto-inject option (and for whatever strange reason ergonomic time savers for nonstrategic functions seems to be so unpopular in SC), then we need to make the injection process easy to keep track of and to execute.
Could be...
Hatchery icons (like warpgate) so each hatch is displayed and changes color when injectable. A queen could then actually inject straight onto the icon.
Being able to stack larvae (maybe a limit of 8).
Having dockable hatcheries/queens so when the queen 'docks' it can do integrated commands without having to switch control groups. To defend, the queen would then have to undock with maybe a slight time penalty.
Really the big pain is the control group switching you have to do execute timely injects. If you are doing muta harass the last thing you need is to lose control of your mutas for a couple of seconds while you are dancing around AA looking for gaps in their defense.
APM is scarce and blizzard needs to let players emphasis it on strategic decisions (which are fun) as opposed to monotonous no-brainer decisions in which automation should be enabled).
Build more hatcheries is NOT an answer. The queen is too valuable for it's cost and flexibility to not build and fully utilize.
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I miss wireframe injecting from the beta... made it so much easier. You just grouped your queens and hatches together and just Tab-> V-> Shift click. Done. easy to do every 45 seconds, never had to look away from a battle.
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Missing Inject Larvae is similar to having idle Barracks, Warp Gates, etc. If your Barracks is idle, you've lost the marine that could have come out forever. But if you inject, you can always make the roach, albeit, late (if you forget to make it an egg). In fact, I think, getting supply blocked as Zerg is more forgiving than Terran or Protoss as long as you are Injecting Larvae.
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On February 14 2011 05:18 Klishu wrote:
Missing Inject Larvae is similar to having idle Barracks, Warp Gates, etc. If your Barracks is idle, you've lost the marine that could have come out forever. But if you inject, you can always make the roach, albeit, late (if you forget to make it an egg). In fact, I think, getting supply blocked as Zerg is more forgiving than Terran or Protoss as long as you are Injecting Larvae.
It's less forgiving as zerg...
Say I have injected, and my larva pop, but I am supply blocked.
I inject my larva, build 3 OLs
Since I have 4 larva at hatch, hatch makes 0 larva.
OLs pop
Inject pops
I now have 8 larva at hatch. I have permanently lost 3 larva (the ones that would of been grown naturally at the hatch).
T and P just make the units a bit later.
Z lose larva period which means lost: harvesters, buildings, and units.
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Missing Inject Larvae is similar to having idle Barracks, Warp Gates, etc. If your Barracks is idle, you've lost the marine that could have come out forever
Actually it isn't, at all. This is the problem.
In your example it is zerg forgetting to make units with their larva, that is the same thing. Injecting and forgetting to make a marine are 2 totally different things.
The comparison would be not injecting and forgetting to drop a mule. The difference if you forget to drop a mule, it is ok just drop 2, or 3, or 8. If I miss injections, I can't inject multiple times.
I'm not trying at ALL to compare the mechanics in terms of how they are used, or the advantage. I'm simply saying it is an extra thing to worry about which is very tough. I don't want to nerf mules because I forget to inject. I'm just simply stating between spreading creep, and injecting, Zerg end up w/ these 2 very important features on top of having to do all the other things the other races are trying to do.
I go back to something I posted earlier, perhaps you give queens the ability to spawn single larva on a shorter timer for 10 or 20 energy. They would stack with regular injection and it is still going to be way more energy efficient to do a normal inject on time(4 larva for 25 energy vs. say 2 larva for 20 or 40 energy). But at least you could have a way to get that number from the OP's chart somewhat close between ideal larva injections and not.
Until I saw that graph I never realized how bad the problem really compounds especially in long games. I always figured maybe you'd be a bit behind, but not THAT behind on larva. If the pros are missing injections I certainly will.
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I don't like how important larva inject is to Zerg. My feeling is that Zerg is more or less balanced around its macromechanic, and too much of Zerg macro revolves around properly timed larva injects.
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On February 14 2011 03:33 FLuE wrote:
A macro hatch is simply a way say "I'm going to invest 300 minerals and a drone because I know I'll miss injections."
Could you imagine if mules were on 45 second timers, it would be like building an extra command center so you could drop 2 mules at once. Getting my injections down is one of the biggest things I keep trying to improve, and often I find that I get behind enough I can actually work 3 hatches with 2 queens. I do everything I can to stay on it, but remembering to do something every 45 seconds that isn't making units, isn't making drones, gets tough. It is easy to lose track of time in SC... especially when trying to somehow micro around a protoss death ball and not lose everything you have and kill nothing.
this is too one dimensional, a hatch gives creep spread (without having to drop an inject) + 2 supply. 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. I mostly end up building a 3rd queen to also inject the macro hatch midgame. Just try it, you'll wonder how easy you survive 5+ drone-loss harrass, because you can replenish extremely quick with the increased larvae production. BTW pros build macro hatches also, its not a noob strategy ..
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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.
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On February 14 2011 06:17 Sv1 wrote:Show nested quote +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).
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On February 14 2011 06:23 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:Show nested quote +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?
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Well this is not what I expected....
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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.
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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).
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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 ;-)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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Don't shoot me for suggesting this but, larvae inject could be made autocast <_<
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I don't think this says anything except "don't miss your injects."
The graph is kinda nice to look at, though.
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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
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loool all i saw of the thread title was "[D]Larva Injection Anal"
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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...
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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On February 14 2011 10:17 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
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 ;-)
I would say it's better to think of having 7 larvae every 45s than 8-10 per minute. Hatch gives you 1 every 15s, so 3 per 45, and queen energy refills to 25 just barely under 45s (44.4444444s).
On February 15 2011 02:17 goof wrote: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.
Except your production facilities should be setup so that a missed mule will force you to make production changes. Without 2 mules going down with 2 bases every cooldown, that's 300-400 minerals per minute being left out. Sure, you can call down mules after the fact, but without extra production facilities (that you can't normally support), you'll never get through the extra minerals you get from the hypermuling. When a terran misses a mule by a full duration, that's 3-4 marauders, or 6-8 marines, or 2-3 tanks they don't have by X time. Missing macro mechanics can effect all races the same way, zerg is just a lot more easy to make those connections.
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On February 15 2011 02:20 aksfjh wrote:
Except your production facilities should be setup so that a missed mule will force you to make production changes. Without 2 mules going down with 2 bases every cooldown, that's 300-400 minerals per minute being left out. Sure, you can call down mules after the fact, but without extra production facilities (that you can't normally support), you'll never get through the extra minerals you get from the hypermuling. When a terran misses a mule by a full duration, that's 3-4 marauders, or 6-8 marines, or 2-3 tanks they don't have by X time. Missing macro mechanics can effect all races the same way, zerg is just a lot more easy to make those connections.
This is true. But the key point is "[...] they don't have by X time [...]". For zerg X = never. Terran can use these minerals i.e. when his main is mined out, and his normal income drops. Yes, it will put you in (close to) the same situation as zerg for a while, but you'll make up for it later. This is not true for zerg.
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On February 15 2011 02:38 goof wrote:
This is true. But the key point is "[...] they don't have by X time [...]". For zerg X = never. Terran can use these minerals i.e. when his main is mined out, and his normal income drops. Yes, it will put you in (close to) the same situation as zerg for a while, but you'll make up for it later. This is not true for zerg.
They function differently, you are comparing apples to oranges. If queens are spitting throughout the game you could potentially have larva banked and resources (once you hit a 200 food army). You now all of a sudden have the power to create 30 units (or more) at once, terran economy can't really support enough production buildings to house 30 production slots, also consider all the money spent to BUILD those production slots, minerals and gas for both. Zerg has an upfront cost and a technically uncapped means of production, the only cap is how good you are at your spits, and if you've got an extra hatch or 2 depending on how long the game goes on.
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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.
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wow... was it only me that click this cause of "Larva Inject Anal..."?
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On February 15 2011 03:14 Deekin[ wrote:
wow... was it only me that click this cause of "Larva Inject Anal..."?
I think everyone came to this thread because of that, regardless of they're actually taking the discussion seriously or not, lol.
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On February 15 2011 03:14 Deekin[ wrote:
wow... was it only me that click this cause of "Larva Inject Anal..."?
I mean really if you think about it the thread is about being Anal about your larva injects
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On February 15 2011 03:14 Deekin[ wrote:
wow... was it only me that click this cause of "Larva Inject Anal..."?
This happens far to often for it being chance. Despite the op's claim that it was completely accidental, I have my suspicions.
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Just be thankful that they don't allow one more character to be portrayed in the sidebar links or this post would be giving out some really painful advice.
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After reading your post I made a quick excel macro to calculate my average inject time. It uses the SC2GEARS combat log to calculate the average time between injects. This way I can see how close (or far) I am to the perfect 40 seconds.
Copy paste the log of a game from SC2 gear (in the Charts tab) in excel and click the button in the 2nd sheet.
Can't process ZvZ (cannot differentiate players yet) and there is sometimes bugs with the log that gives inject interval lower than 40 sec, not sure whats wrong with that one. It still gives a good idea of your queen macro efficiency.
I ran a few of my games with it and I found I'm at around 50-70 sec average time on injects, pretty bad. Gonna work on it to try and lower that time.
Here's the file:
Larva inject.xls - 328.0 KB
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Just analyzing larva inject by itself doesn't paint the full picture. While it is important, you would also have to analyze it according to available resources and supply. The larva inject graph should be placed over a army value graph to show how the Zerg is being out macro'd by missing larva inject. Because just missing some larva inject time doesn't necessarily change the game, much like missing a mule for a few seconds won't necessarily change if for Terran.
The analysis is great and if it could be implemented into SC2Gears I'm sure it would help, but there needs to be more analysis and comparisons. Show how specifically missing larva inject allowed the opponent to have the larger army.
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I'd really like to see an Idra, Ret, or Nestea game where they are playing good. Maby the Idra vs IMVP game. I feel like it would be telling to see a known high end macro zerg at least in the early game how many larva injects are missed.
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On February 15 2011 05:38 ExoTau wrote:After reading your post I made a quick excel macro to calculate my average inject time. It uses the SC2GEARS combat log to calculate the average time between injects. This way I can see how close (or far) I am to the perfect 40 seconds. Copy paste the log of a game from SC2 gear (in the Charts tab) in excel and click the button in the 2nd sheet. Can't process ZvZ (cannot differentiate players yet) and there is sometimes bugs with the log that gives inject interval lower than 40 sec, not sure whats wrong with that one. It still gives a good idea of your queen macro efficiency. I ran a few of my games with it and I found I'm at around 50-70 sec average time on injects, pretty bad. Gonna work on it to try and lower that time. Here's the file: Larva inject.xls - 328.0 KB
You may be able to process ZvZ in turning off your opponent, the most recent version I know allows you to look at only your information (it's just above the graph).
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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.
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Grreaat analysis imo really liked the graph.... Wow! Shows how much I need to improve as a Zerg...
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On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:
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.
Show me one zerg that doesnt float like 3-4k minerals lategame and ill show you a liar.
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Updated with a graphic of a Ret replay
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On February 15 2011 08:55 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 08:39 Fungal Growth wrote:
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.
Show me one zerg that doesnt float like 3-4k minerals lategame and ill show you a liar. Late game is a different story...when you are maxed at 200, have taken most of the expansions, and have caught up with your tech then then yeah you'll want to create multiple auxiliary hatcheries so you can remax in minimal time.
The trick for zerg is getting to that superpower status as fast as possible to which hitting your injections is crucial. A lot of pro's float big time resources in the late game which is a mistake but easy to make because of how demanding things get during late game as battle micro becomes so important because of the size of the armies.
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On February 15 2011 09:07 Sv1 wrote:
Updated with a graphic of a Ret replay Very interesting...just goes to show how important it is when facing zerg it is to constantly harass them just to steal their APM away from injections...
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I agree with what TimeSpiral said however he might not agree with what i'm about to say so i won't quote him xP
i agree completely. i sometimes i even thought like t his back in SC:BW, because i realized that for w/e reason i missed making an SCV/Probe, that was time i'd never get back, as compared to zerg who could make multiple drones at once, as long as they had 50 min. basically, this flashback into SC:BW just shows that the races work differently from each other. It's illogical to compare Inject Larva strictly to MULE and Chronoboost and expect them to work in the same way.
think like this. a terran misses his wave of building units and a zerg misses his wave of inject larva. They both realize this and do said wave. they both lost time that they'll ever get back. after a while, the larva pops and the zerg can spam whatever units because his minerals have stacked over from being larva blocked. however, the terran can spam all he wants, the units will just get cued up.
seems kinda unforgiving for the terran right? well in the terran case, his "spam" ability will be MULES.
zerg can spam units if his minerals over flow
terran can spam MULES if his energy overflows
protoss can spam CB if his energy overflows
zerg can make up for lost unit making time because units can be made at the same time
terran can get a boost in his econ
protoss can make upgrades/units come out faster than normal
they're different! they're not exactly the same!
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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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Another side of this analysis should be unspent larva time. When larva inject pops, because the hatch now has more than 3 larva, it is definitely not producing more larva. This can also cause a substantial amount of lost larva on the back side. You can be 100% perfect with your spawn larva, but if you can't spend them immediately, you're missing out on larva in the future.
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What a lot of zergs need to understand about other race production cycles is that queuing is bad. If you're even queuing 1 extra round of units, you aren't playing even close to a good game. The resources sunk into that queue that could instead be used on essential upgrades, supply, or more production buildings.
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Hi everyone,
I'm quite new on this forum and a real bad player (please Blizz, re-create the lowest league so i can at least have a 50% ratio :p). So everything i will say is a not-noob but casual point of view (meaning i know the basic mechanisms but lack their applications in game). I don't have much time to play neither as i work a lot (too much for what i'm paid  ). And last but not least i'm french so i have a very poor english. Please keep those bad facts in mind
I play mostly protoss but like zerg too (used to play both on sc1). I try to increase my game sense for now focusing a lot on my macro as protoss with the objective to use warp prims as my main strategy.
What i have learned from my (ridiculous) games as zerg is that injecting larva is exponentially difficult for a low player. I suppose it's the same as skills increase but the player can manage it due to his level. I mean i got to inject, spread tumor, scout and/or harass, prepare an army, controlling the map and attack or defend. It's just a bit too much for me but i know (for playing with friends far better than me) that others players can do it. But they have their weakness too and i often destroy at least one expand just beacause they are too busy elsewhere (most of the time they are destroying my base but well...). So basically i would say that the difficulty of injecting goes up due to 3 factors :
- number of expand (1 base is easier than 2 bases... even if 1 is just too much for me...)
- harass defense (plz don't attack me... never...)
- army size (the more units you and your oponent have, the harder it is to take time for injecting).
So i came to an idea i wanted to share. It's undoubtly an utopia as it involves a lot of changes into the game. Anyway maybe the idea is good enough to have a return to blizzard and to inspire the developpers (or not). It's a bit pretentious and that's why i post here : i hope this post will be forgotten if it is that bad... :D
The whole idea is to give the queen a possibility to evolve as a cheaper but weaker planetary fortress by fusioning with an hatchery. This "new" hatchery would have an automate injecting (activable like the terran scv repair) which would give a minimal amount of injection lower than the manual ones but higher than missing them. This would allow low players as me to increase their game sense while not breaking the value of experience or the skills of better player (the better player is, the more he will use manual injections because it products far more larva at the end). Moreover it gives an easiest way to protect zerg expand against haras even if this protection doesn't last a lot and is expensive.
So here's the list of change i have thought of :
- replace the drop research by a "fusioning research" (T2)
- fusioning over speed and drop researches (price would be a bit more expensive than the addition of both) (T2)
- when a queen fusion with a hatchery, she lost the tumor and heal capacities but the hatchery gain the range attack of the queen and a "new" capacity of auto-injecting larva but not as efficiently as manual ones
- Once you fusioned queen and hatchery, you cannot "defusion" her. So if you want to spread tumor you must create another queen. If you loose the hatchery, you loose the queen too.
Those changes give zerg a nice protection for expand at T2 (so not that quick in the game), a low-level help so we could focus on other aspects of game and a simpliest way to flank terran or protoss wall.
I just end on repeating a thing : it's just an utopic idea with nearly no chance to happen (0% doesn't exist more than 100% :p). So please don't flame me too much
ps : and sorry for this very long post. I swear i'll do it again (...or not)
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On February 16 2011 04:51 TimeSpiral wrote:
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 ...
Yes, and now that we're closer to a comparable state, I think the issue of overlapping production becomes critical.
The reason I keep going back to this is because I keep thinking:
What if spawn larvae could overlap, even if just by a tiny bit? If you could spawn larvae when the progress bar of the currently spawning larvae was at 80% it would be a HUGE help.
The scenario would then be:
1: Spawn larvae on queen pop.
2: Miss larvae spawn by a second or two, have a bit more energy saved up. (and let this happen 2-4 times)
3: Use that extra energy for starting larvae inject when the previous is at 80%, get rid of excess energy, get 'back into the game' time wise.
This very simple, but subtle, change would stop the dreaded "10 queens inject on one hatchery" and it would stop queen energy spending from being the most unforgiving mechanic in the game.
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On February 16 2011 21:55 Luggage wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 04:51 TimeSpiral wrote:
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 ... Yes, and now that we're closer to a comparable state, I think the issue of overlapping production becomes critical. The reason I keep going back to this is because I keep thinking: What if spawn larvae could overlap, even if just by a tiny bit? If you could spawn larvae when the progress bar of the currently spawning larvae was at 80% it would be a HUGE help. The scenario would then be: 1: Spawn larvae on queen pop. 2: Miss larvae spawn by a second or two, have a bit more energy saved up. (and let this happen 2-4 times) 3: Use that extra energy for starting larvae inject when the previous is at 80%, get rid of excess energy, get 'back into the game' time wise. This very simple, but subtle, change would stop the dreaded "10 queens inject on one hatchery" and it would stop queen energy spending from being the most unforgiving mechanic in the game.
Well, I'm glad we're getting closer to being on the same page but making Spawn Larva "more forgiving" would be tantamount to letting me auto-cast a "train marine" command at my barracks, lol. It should not be easier.
There is currently no mechanic in the game that "forgives you" for forgetting to manage your production. Example:
+ Show Spoiler +A Terran player gears up to take his natural and is going to push his opponent with a timed Stim attack. He queues up a couple extra supply depots to cover his 3rax production while he's managing the attack.
He lands his command center, orders some SCVs to gather minerals, and marches out.
... Meanwhile, his opponent, be it Zerg or Protoss, or Terran, is managing his production. He's spawning larva, warping in new gateways and not missing cooldowns, or constructing new Terran productions facilities.
Now, our Terran player gets there, stims up, and has the fight of his life! He's tapping his hotkeys, training SCVs, training out of his three rax, scanning the enemy with his OC hot keys, but he is not going to win the fight. The defenders advantage is too large, and the enemy production pushes him away.
Our Terran player gets back to his base. Both OCs were producing SCVs the whole time, as were all 3rax producing units continuously, but dear god ... he has 750 minerals and 250 gas ... Wow.
My point? There is NO WAY to get that missed production time back. There is no forgiveness. You can drop all the MULES you want. It doesn't matter. Our Terran player "missed" his window to construct new production facilities to take advantage of the income boost of having his expansion. He is now very, very far behind.
If the Queens build up energy you have plenty of energy dumps: Spawn Larva, Pop a creep tumor, do some transfusing, etc ... So the MULE is spammable. That doesn't make up for the fact that you were not earning that income when you should have dropped the MULE to begin with. I think the only thing that is comparable between Spawn Larva and the MULE is simply that if you miss one you're delaying the benefits you would otherwise get earlier.
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On February 16 2011 21:55 Luggage wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 04:51 TimeSpiral wrote:
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 ... Yes, and now that we're closer to a comparable state, I think the issue of overlapping production becomes critical. The reason I keep going back to this is because I keep thinking: What if spawn larvae could overlap, even if just by a tiny bit? If you could spawn larvae when the progress bar of the currently spawning larvae was at 80% it would be a HUGE help. The scenario would then be: 1: Spawn larvae on queen pop. 2: Miss larvae spawn by a second or two, have a bit more energy saved up. (and let this happen 2-4 times) 3: Use that extra energy for starting larvae inject when the previous is at 80%, get rid of excess energy, get 'back into the game' time wise. This very simple, but subtle, change would stop the dreaded "10 queens inject on one hatchery" and it would stop queen energy spending from being the most unforgiving mechanic in the game.
Except there is not cost for you to queue in that scenario. When a terran or protoss queues up units, they are spending resources to do so. If you were able to queue up an inject at even 99%, you would be getting a straight up advantage at no cost.
The ONLY possible fix that I can think of that would punish you effectively is if inject simply made hatcheries spawn larva 233% faster for 45s, but at that point you're basically turning it into a chronoboost.
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When you spawn larva, a bar fills up indicating how close your larva is to popping off. However, whenever you train a queen, upgrade burrow/overlord speed/drop, or mutate into lair/hive this bar goes away. I use the "tap" technique to cycle through my hatches to see which ones are close to popping off larva. Would it change the game's balance if the larva status bar remained even during upgrading/training? It's a small detail but I think it would help a lot with good inject timing.
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On February 17 2011 12:45 Grumblethorpe wrote:
When you spawn larva, a bar fills up indicating how close your larva is to popping off. However, whenever you train a queen, upgrade burrow/overlord speed/drop, or mutate into lair/hive this bar goes away. I use the "tap" technique to cycle through my hatches to see which ones are close to popping off larva. Would it change the game's balance if the larva status bar remained even during upgrading/training? It's a small detail but I think it would help a lot with good inject timing.
It does. The spawn larva bar is gray, the upgrade bar or train queen bar is blue.
Are you playing with status bars on, always?
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If anyone's interested, I have a python script that will generate a similar graph (although nowhere near as nice looking as Sv1's). Since I'm a lazy programmer it takes sc2gears text exports (right click replay > export actions) instead of parsing the actual replay binary. I set up a web frontend for it, which you can try at inject.maxwellb.com. The script is super inefficient, so please try not to kill my server.
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+ Show Spoiler +On February 16 2011 18:44 Neurf wrote:Hi everyone, I'm quite new on this forum and a real bad player (please Blizz, re-create the lowest league so i can at least have a 50% ratio :p). So everything i will say is a not-noob but casual point of view (meaning i know the basic mechanisms but lack their applications in game). I don't have much time to play neither as i work a lot (too much for what i'm paid ). And last but not least i'm french so i have a very poor english. Please keep those bad facts in mind I play mostly protoss but like zerg too (used to play both on sc1). I try to increase my game sense for now focusing a lot on my macro as protoss with the objective to use warp prims as my main strategy. What i have learned from my (ridiculous) games as zerg is that injecting larva is exponentially difficult for a low player. I suppose it's the same as skills increase but the player can manage it due to his level. I mean i got to inject, spread tumor, scout and/or harass, prepare an army, controlling the map and attack or defend. It's just a bit too much for me but i know (for playing with friends far better than me) that others players can do it. But they have their weakness too and i often destroy at least one expand just beacause they are too busy elsewhere (most of the time they are destroying my base but well...). So basically i would say that the difficulty of injecting goes up due to 3 factors : - number of expand (1 base is easier than 2 bases... even if 1 is just too much for me...) - harass defense (plz don't attack me... never...) - army size (the more units you and your oponent have, the harder it is to take time for injecting). So i came to an idea i wanted to share. It's undoubtly an utopia as it involves a lot of changes into the game. Anyway maybe the idea is good enough to have a return to blizzard and to inspire the developpers (or not). It's a bit pretentious and that's why i post here : i hope this post will be forgotten if it is that bad... :D The whole idea is to give the queen a possibility to evolve as a cheaper but weaker planetary fortress by fusioning with an hatchery. This "new" hatchery would have an automate injecting (activable like the terran scv repair) which would give a minimal amount of injection lower than the manual ones but higher than missing them. This would allow low players as me to increase their game sense while not breaking the value of experience or the skills of better player (the better player is, the more he will use manual injections because it products far more larva at the end). Moreover it gives an easiest way to protect zerg expand against haras even if this protection doesn't last a lot and is expensive. So here's the list of change i have thought of : - replace the drop research by a "fusioning research" (T2) - fusioning over speed and drop researches (price would be a bit more expensive than the addition of both) (T2) - when a queen fusion with a hatchery, she lost the tumor and heal capacities but the hatchery gain the range attack of the queen and a "new" capacity of auto-injecting larva but not as efficiently as manual ones - Once you fusioned queen and hatchery, you cannot "defusion" her. So if you want to spread tumor you must create another queen. If you loose the hatchery, you loose the queen too. Those changes give zerg a nice protection for expand at T2 (so not that quick in the game), a low-level help so we could focus on other aspects of game and a simpliest way to flank terran or protoss wall. I just end on repeating a thing : it's just an utopic idea with nearly no chance to happen (0% doesn't exist more than 100% :p). So please don't flame me too much ps : and sorry for this very long post. I swear i'll do it again (...or not)
First of all, welcome to the forums.
Secondly, I'm happy for every creative mind that comes to TL, puts thought in the game and a lot of effort in their posts. Your postt didn't go unnoticed. Props for that.
But I'm not sure if that post really does help a lot. I'm sure there's a lot of creative and profound thoughts going on in the players' minds, but posting them here, as fine as they might be, does not change an awful lot. To have an effect, ideas about changing the game design need to reach Blizzard, they need to not have thought about the idea themselves and last but not least they have to actually decide for implementing that change in the game.
There's a lot of people in Blizzard Entertainment who think about the game from a statistical and profound point of view. A lot of ideas might seem fun and maybe even might lead to a better game, but small changes can have impacts that few people foresee. The game hasn't been figured out completely, and what I read from Blizzard is that they wanna wait until a change is really due and doesn't destroy more than it does good.
And at last, your idea of changing the hatchery to make it more noob-friendly but less effective contradicts the idea that balance in SC2 is made mainly for the professional level. Casual gamers might endure some hard times but making the game easier for them might imbalance it for the more skilled players. Keep that in mind.
But again, welcome
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Would allowing Larva Injects to be queued(in some way that doesn't allow for abuse of mass queens) break the game? Perhaps injected larva could be more fragile, making them only last a certain amount of time after popping. Perhaps hatches could have seperate hotkeys to utilize injected larva and normal larva.
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someone may have asked this and I apologize if that's the case, but would you share exactly how you made these graphics/models?
Is it easy to do? I wouldn't mind doing this on my own replays and timing myself vs ideal.
edit: I found a way in sc2gears to extract ONLY spawn larva times. I wonder if there's a way to use the output chart/times to create a new chart with "ideal" overlay on it?
edit2: I posted this on reddit maybe someone can help. http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/fqwzh/help_me_make_a_larva_injection_analysis_automated/
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On February 18 2011 03:39 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 12:45 Grumblethorpe wrote:
When you spawn larva, a bar fills up indicating how close your larva is to popping off. However, whenever you train a queen, upgrade burrow/overlord speed/drop, or mutate into lair/hive this bar goes away. I use the "tap" technique to cycle through my hatches to see which ones are close to popping off larva. Would it change the game's balance if the larva status bar remained even during upgrading/training? It's a small detail but I think it would help a lot with good inject timing. It does. The spawn larva bar is gray, the upgrade bar or train queen bar is blue. Are you playing with status bars on, always?
He's talking about "Tapping". If you have a hatch hotkeyed as 5, and tap five, you can check your larva injects without going back to your base and taking your eyes off the scout or battle or whatever the case may be. If the hatch is making a queen or morphing into a lair or upgrading burrow, that production bar shows up instead of the larva one. I would actually consider that a bug.
If your injects are synced, you can often check another hatch, but it's still kind of annoying.
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Reading this thread got me thinking about how the macro mechanics relate. In my opinion, spawn larvae is most like warp gates, as there is no way to queue and there is a direct punishment for not immediately spending the cooldown (less units). Somewhat ironically, though, is that Protoss CAN sort of recover the lost time with Chronoboost.
However, on that note, Protoss then delays something else, usually research, for this. If I'm accelerating warp gates, I'm receiving less colossi or slowing extended thermal lance.
It's really a matter of scope; Zerg is punished in army and economy for missing injects, Protoss is punished in tech or economy or army (Protoss's choice), while I am unsure of Terrans punishment (not to say it doesn't exist).
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@Spekulatius :
I just try to explain my point the best i can. I'm not that creative and don't have really deep thoughts. But thanks to give at least that kind of qualities to the low player i am
About your main purpose :
1. about Blizzard return : i think that blizzard doesn't care about a 1 player thought, even if he's a genius (and i'm not). Just because it is a single person and that no one can tell the entire truth. It's far better in my opinion to debate first between players from all level to reach global propositions (even if they are differents) and then only to have a well-known player report it to blizzard. This is not to force blizzard to do anything but to give information of the tendency inside the players (whishes, ideas, whines...). That's why i posted here and not on blizzard forum. Maybe i'm the only one to think it would be a good idea, maybe not. Number is a smart key to separate good ideas from bad ones.
2. about pro/casual/noob balance : i agree and disagree. Some changes would lead to an imbalance game but some would not. For the precise larva inject, where can be the imbalance if the worst pro does basically more injections than an automate one ? Let's say that pro have a 8/10 note at minimum for injections and a low player as me has 1/10, if not less. How could we imbalance the game if we give low player a minimal note of 3/10 or 4/10 ? In other word, pro games can't be affected by imbalance if they don't use that possibilty because it is uneffective at their level.
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On February 16 2011 07:10 MoreFaSho wrote:
Another side of this analysis should be unspent larva time. When larva inject pops, because the hatch now has more than 3 larva, it is definitely not producing more larva. This can also cause a substantial amount of lost larva on the back side. You can be 100% perfect with your spawn larva, but if you can't spend them immediately, you're missing out on larva in the future.
This is really important !
hatch = 4 larva per minute
hatch + queen + perfect spawn + instant spend larva = 10 larva per minute
hatch + queen + stockpile >= 3 larva = 6 larva per minute
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On February 15 2011 23:21 Strike_ wrote:
Yes but you cant get ALL your injects always right
But with practice you can get better at it. You shouldn't need a quick-fix just because you're not good enough at the moment. It separates the best from the rest.
Why don't you just ask the game to auto-micro your units for you, while auto-macroing for you too? You can't *always* keep your money at zero while *always* perfectly moving all your units, right? How do you resolve the issue of you missing an important tech upgrade or building worker units or attacking units at the right time? Practice.
Just get better at the game. Practice makes perfect. Asking for quick-fix solutions like some of the ones in this thread make for lazier players.
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On February 13 2011 11:24 Hopeless1der wrote:
After reading through this I finally understand what the graph shows. Its not very intuitive, and its also way too small of a sample size but it gets the point across: Missing larva inject is bad.
Zerg has the least forgiving 'mechanic' of the 3 races. IMO one of the best solutions would be to have an icon for 'idle spawn larvae' similar to how toss gets one for warpgates off cooldown. Ideally, yes, you want energy at zero.
However, if terran screws up, he ends up with money in the bank.
Toss ends up with faster upgrades, more units and has only lost TIME (granted, a very valuable resource but if you stored 100 on your nexus then blew it all, no harm done right?)
Zerg has LOST its larvae. Its gone, never to be recovered, forever unspent. This, in my opinion, makes the zerg macro mechanic weaker by comparison and not entirely fair.
This is marginally fixed due to the fact that zerg builds everything from hatcheries so there is no need to jump all over for production, but the very idea of LOSING a resource is not really fair to me in any RTS. What could you do, build two more hatches to spend energy on?
But anyways, good initiative looking into this OP. Thanks for giving us all something to consider next time the zerg pieces throw a tantrum.
I wish people would stop comparing abilities in a void and actually consider the entirety of the races discussed. The races macro mechanics consist of more than just mules/CB/Larva inject.
Unit production, and special abilities, chrono boost/mules/larva inject.
Zerg has the least forgiving special ability, but the most forgiving unit production features.
Larva inject missed by 10 secs, those 10 secs are gone forever. You miss marine production for 10 secs, those 10 secs are gone forever.
You miss hatchery larva generation by 10 secs, those 10 secs are not gone, since you'll keep generating larva, up until the cap. You miss mules by 10 secs, you can throw down more of them later, up until the cap.
See the similarities?
And again, if you ended up forgetting a bunch of mules, sure you could throw down 8 mules later on in the game, but those 8 missed mules meant that from the point where you started pooling energy, you had a subpar economy and production compared to what you could have had, and if there were any battles whatsoever, your standing army and tech was smaller than it should have been. The same goes with larva pooling from natural hatchery generation. If you forget to produce larva when they spawn from the hatchery, you'll be able to double produce to compensate, just like mules, but you'll have the same amount of units out later than you should have had, i.e less mining time for drones etc.
Those are the penalties for missing mules/forgetting to use up your larva as soon as they spawn.
Edit: Also, I saw some people posting about unit queuing. In what situation is unit queuing ever good? Could you clarify?
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What if they made made it so Inject Lava fould b put on auto-cast, i really feel like that would make this mechanic so much easier to use in the lategame. Just saying
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On February 23 2011 23:01 dbkim92 wrote:
What if they made made it so Inject Lava fould b put on auto-cast, i really feel like that would make this mechanic so much easier to use in the lategame. Just saying
This would completely break the game and make it far too easy to play as Zerg.
Even the pro-level Zerg players (Idra, for instance) recognize this. And the game is balanced at the top level, not at the low level.
Players need to take responsibility for actually playing the game and owning up to their imperfections. Practice can help solve your problems. There should be noticeable differences between the best and the worst players.
Similarly, there should not be auto-MULE or auto-"warp a unit every time a cycle finishes cooling down on a warpgate".
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If you simply auto-cast the injection without any other change, yes it would be imbalance. But if you see auto-cast as a minimum that can be "easily" overtaken, it could be balance for all level.
For instance if, in the same period, the auto-cast does 1 inject and the manual inject does 2, i don't think it would break the game.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img810.imageshack.us/i/larvainjectanalysis.jpg/)
![[image loading]](http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/4976/larvainjectret.jpg)
