The effect of larvae-mineral distance on Zerg.

On November 26 2011 04:32 Klondikebar wrote:
Are you just testing this for academic purposes or do you advocate some change be made?

It seems like you're just doing this for academic purposes which I like because I was kinda curious about this myself.

On November 26 2011 04:34 Duban wrote:

I did this mostly because I could. It also supports my postion of "Tiny changes can make or break a game for a good macro Zerg"

On November 26 2011 04:37 Ghoststrikes wrote:
That is interesting, but I might add that those map differences do not only affect zerg. Terrans have their add-on placement that changes if they want to properly wall off. I'm pretty sure it does not affect protoss walloffs, because basically you can make units spawn from either side of a building.

I agree that this difference might be significant in the case of a game agaiinst the AI where you hit everything dead on an no micro is required. In a real game, however, even a 2 second delay on a larvae inject will nullify any "advantage" you get by a good spawn position, so while I agree the exponential nature zerg economy grants the spawns a bigger and bigger advantage (or disadvantage), I just don't see it really being a cause for loss/win in even pro games today.

On November 26 2011 04:43 Zephirdd wrote:
now larvae must spawn closer to minerals for all hatcheries.

That or add a rally for larvae(limit distance to very close to hatchery). While you are at it add a rally for overlords. And let addons be placed with mouse instead of being locked on a position.

Game fixed.

On November 26 2011 04:45 Klondikebar wrote:


You assume it's broken...it could very well be that this is just a tiny way that maps create diversity of play.

Difference does not necessarily mean problem.

On November 26 2011 04:36 Al Bundy wrote:
How about Terran production buildings & addons? Depending on the spawn position (ex. 6 o'clock on Shattered Temple), If I wall off with a Barracks I can't put an addon on it because of the position of the ramp.

Every race got some drawbacks, in my opinion it's all part of what makes this game a Starcraft game.

And it's clearly not as game breaking as the creep tumors on Scrap station, I don't even understand why people brought that up. Scrap station is clearly a MAP design issue.

On November 26 2011 04:57 ChineseWife wrote:
now lets compare the effects of larva inject on creating workers to that of the other races...

On November 26 2011 05:03 Flonomenalz wrote:

Nice QQ buddy. Get out of gold first.

@OP - Very interesting stuff. Little things like this go a long way in games at the top level... hope to see more threads like this!

On November 26 2011 05:02 Kfcnoob wrote:
so since each drone produced at the top spawn has to travel 4.5 seconds instead of 2 seconds, each drone produced from that hatch loses 5/3 or 1.66 minerals compared to a drone produced from a bottom spawn hatchery, assuming a rate of 40minearls/minute. This is only a one-time loss of 1.66 minerals per drone produced, and does not affect that drone's future mining. However, since top-spawn minerals are later, their potential to invest will be delayed etc, as you were describing with the geometric growth of sc2 economy.

To make this post better you should separate your conclusions into (a) and (b) just as you have done for the procedure and results section. You should also qualify your conclusion of (b) in that the 6 second difference is comparable to an 8% economy gain ONLY WHILE doing the specific build that you mentioned. Any build that differs in drone timings will have different economy growth results so it is misleading when you say "Spawn position causes a 6 second difference on shattered temple which means an 8% bonus to economy & 16%ish bonus to economic growth with exponential growth of economy" with no qualification of the limited context of your one build order in that sentence.

On November 26 2011 05:08 taldarimAltar wrote:

That was pretty mean, he has a valid point, OP testing assuming nothing is else produced, the game's too dynamic for this to make a difference between a win and a loss
It's really pretty negligible i think, rotational symmetric maps are often worse than this

On November 26 2011 05:19 ThePlayer33 wrote:
Massive difference. and the main problem is, TERRAN and PROTOSS are unaffected by such imbalance :D

On November 26 2011 05:19 shammythefox wrote:
this is not an 8 percent deficit. your econ doesn't comprise solely of drones, it's also hatches queens and overlords. there it's no justification to ignore army spending when assesing this discrepancy and also of course the benefit of adding more drones is below linear (20 drones vs 40 does most usually NOT equal double the income). your discrepancy should be 6 seconds / 6:29 ~ 1.5%. id also like to see your full table of results for each test as judging by the3 second discrepancy between best and average times, your error bars could easily render this result obsolete.

On November 26 2011 05:00 Klondikebar wrote:
I feel like spawn locations is more comparable to white vs black in chess. Doesn't white have an extra 4% win rate or something? Based entirely upon "spawn color."

On November 26 2011 05:23 Fleebu wrote:


Umm... Your econ maybe doesn't consist solely on drones, but your income does.

Whether you have 5 queens, 20 overlords or none 11 drones will always mine more than 10.

On November 26 2011 05:29 TERRANLOL wrote:


White has the higher winrate because white moves first.
Spawn color is how we identify who has the advantage, but it is not the advantage itself

On November 26 2011 05:36 shammythefox wrote:

funnily enough your income actually also depends on hatches. but for the broader picture I think you may have misunderstood me good sir;

a player who has made 11 drones and 50 roaches has NOT had a 10 % economic advantage over a player who has made 10 drones and 50 roaches.

On November 26 2011 05:44 Duban wrote:

True, but they will have a 10% economic advantage soon assuming everything else is equal. I assume I could include the 1/8 of an overlord cost but it's still a significant amount. Also hatcheries and queens are one time costs that are going to be built at specific points in economic development either way. It will stall your growth for a short period of time, but it doesn't have a baring on my work. What's your point?

On November 26 2011 05:40 Nymbul wrote:
Are we talking a purely mining test here? cause surely the zerg with the larvae distant from the minerals has a reinforcement advantage?

On November 26 2011 05:49 shammythefox wrote:

they will have a no economic advantage for the most of the game, a short 10% economic advantage for a few seconds whilst.their opponent creates their 11th drone and then none again. the result is an incredibly small economic advantage. my point amongst others which were in my original post is that your logic takes this to be a 10% economic advantage which is erroneous.

On November 26 2011 05:50 Cascade wrote:
Nice analysis.

Theres a shortcut though.
Once you have measured the 2.5 second delay, you can calculate the delay as function of number of built drones:

The first 7 drones (including the first you built) will be 2.5 seconds late. Thus, i fyou stay on a 7 drone eco (ohai 7 pool!! ^^) everything you build will be 2.5 seconds late. If you build more drones, your 8:th drone will also be 2.5 seconds late to build, and with the extra walk distance, it will be 5 seconds late to the minerals, thus your 8 drone eco will be 2.5*7/8 + 5.0*1/8 = 2.8 seconds late. By generalising this argument, you can define a function d(N) which is the dealy in yuor total economy after N built drones. We know that

d(7) = 2.5

and we know that drone number N+1 will be built with a delay d(N), and arrive at the minerals with a delay d(N)+2.5. Thus, your N+1 drone eco will be delayed by

d(N+1) = N/(N+1)d(N) + 1/(N+1)(d(N)+2.5) = d(N) + 2.5/(N+1)

from this, by recursion it is easy to see that

d(N) = 2.5 + 2.5*sum_{n = 8 to N} 1/n

So the result is:

number of built drones --> delay of economy in gs
6 --> 2.5
10 --> 3.3
15 --> 4.3
20 --> 5.0
25 --> 5.6
30 --> 6.0
40 --> 6.7
50 --> 7.3
60 --> 7.7
80 --> 8.4

which is consistent with your result within your error margin, as I guess your build had around 30-40 drones.

Feel free to add it to the OP if you want, and also feel free to rewrite it better formulated consistent with your format.

On November 26 2011 05:54 Duban wrote:

I like, it was 27 drones. Still I feel people would be too critical if I didn't include practical examples and a second independant test. Practical evidence is good, right?

On November 26 2011 05:52 Duban wrote:

Economy is synonymous with income in this game. You’re thinking of the word macro includes production, resources, and position. In the end you will be in a much better position as the game progresses with 8% more income and economic growth that increases with economic position.

On November 26 2011 05:50 Alpina wrote:


advantage over what? Terran and protoss do not make units from nexuses or CCs, you can't say it's advantage for zerg.

On November 26 2011 06:01 shammythefox wrote:

that comment isnt really relevant to the quote. im writing on a phone here and short of words I cant really think how to explain this much better. An 8% income would be huge if it existed however your ignoring all income generated which isnt poured back into drones and are also ignoring the fact that each drones effect on your income is only relevant with respect to the time it was created and the duration of the game.

On November 26 2011 05:59 Staboteur wrote:
So what you're saying is that a Zerg spawning in top left of Shakuras should lose 100% of the time. Between this and the left/right combat disparity*, the disadvantage is insurmountable :D

+ Show Spoiler +

On November 26 2011 06:09 Duban wrote:

I didn't ignore the income that wasn't poured back into drones. I made specifically sure to point out that if the amount of resources you spend on upgrades, tech, and army stayed the same with time your economic growth was actually LARGER than 8%. The amount of resources available to be poured into economy is based on what's left over after army/tech/upgrade development and an 8% bonus to economy has a disproportionally large effect on resources devoted to drone production if all other costs stayed constant.

If both the 10 and 11 drone players built armies at the same rate the 11th drone would grow on itself. The 11 drone player’s advantage in the long game would be disproportionally larger than the 10 drone player. If 5 drones work to produce army for both players, at the same rate of army production, it would effectively be 6 drones vs 5 drones. It would effectively mean a 20% bonus to economic growth.

On November 26 2011 06:29 Cascade wrote:


I really feel that the most reasonable way to look at the difference is how much slower the same build is. These percentages are messy and highly build-dependent, while the time delay is very constant and can be read of directly from the table in my post.

you do a roach timing from 20 drones? Hits 5 ingame second later with bad starting position compared to a good one.
10 pool? 3.3 ingame seconds later.
60 drone no army into mass units like Ret? if all three bases are bad, 7.7 ingame seconds later than all three bases good.

See? Easy, no messy argument, everything clear.

On November 26 2011 06:29 Cascade wrote:


I really feel that the most reasonable way to look at the difference is how much slower the same build is. These percentages are messy and highly build-dependent, while the time delay is very constant and can be read of directly from the table in my post.

you do a roach timing from 20 drones? Hits 5 ingame second later with bad starting position compared to a good one.
10 pool? 3.3 ingame seconds later.
60 drone no army into mass units like Ret? if all three bases are bad, 7.7 ingame seconds later than all three bases good.

See? Easy, no messy argument, everything clear.

On November 26 2011 06:18 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:


wow, that's interesting o.o will keep that in mind lol. I'm guessing it's more noticeable with marines?

On November 26 2011 05:21 Akhee wrote:


remember it can be 8% you are getting unfairly

blizzard can put it to be always further too

On November 26 2011 06:36 Duban wrote:

While x seconds may be better for timing attacks I'm writing this from the perspective of a macro zerg. My initial thought was to do exactly what you said and compare 386 seconds with 380 seconds but dismissed it as not all seconds have equal growth. When it comes to economic position the most recent 6 seconds contain siginificantly more growth than the preceeding seconds and it's that growth that defines the difference bettween 6:26 close and 6:26 distant.

On November 26 2011 06:36 Uncultured wrote:


Your roaches are also seconds closer to them

On November 26 2011 07:52 Wren wrote:

Yes, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a situation where they don't sit at a rally point for at least that long.

Furthermore, because the rally distance is longer for non-workers, the small difference between front and back of hatchery is far less significant. For example, if the rally point is 12 seconds away from the front (and therefore 14.5 from the back), the difference is 21%. The difference in worker transit time is 125%.

On November 26 2011 06:53 Cascade wrote:


with "a macro zerg" i assume you mean a late game zerg with around 80 drones --> 8.4 seconds late with everything you do. How is that not clear?

yes, later in the game you will in general have more income per second, correct. I don't see your point? Would you like to see it in terms of how many exra minerals you have at a certain time? Then just multiply number of drones with the income/drone with the time delay. Do you like a table like this better?

number of built drones --> difference in minerals
6 --> 12
10 --> 22
15 --> 43
20 --> 67
25 --> 93
30 --> 120
40 --> 179
50 --> 243
60 --> 308
80 --> 448

On November 26 2011 08:10 Duban wrote:

Just moving your initial 6 drones into position costs every unit you will ever build 2.5gs. Every drone you build after that only serves accumulate more time onto that loss.

On November 26 2011 08:10 Duban wrote:

Just moving your initial 6 drones into position costs every unit you will ever build 2.5gs. Every drone you build after that only serves to accumulate more time onto that loss.


The spirit of the "macro zerg" is to have the minimum amount of army required to fend off an attack at any given time and everything else goes into economy. Lets say you need 14 zerglings and 4 hydralisks to be safe at 7:00. You have build 30 drones base, 3 are on gas and 3 have become a hatchery pool and extractor. In the far larvae-mineral position you complete your defence at 7:00 while your defense is complete at 6:54 in the close position.

The close position gives you 6 free seconds to do nothing but build economy with the same level of army, tech, and upgrades. Your x drones give y seconds doesn't really account for the fact that you can safely build more drones in the same period of time. This is why I compared the potential economy gain between the two positions.

On November 26 2011 10:24 Imalengrat wrote:
It would be hard to fix this because if the larvae is on the other side you would have ultras spawning in your mineral line affecting late game mining just as bad or worse.

On November 26 2011 10:15 Cascade wrote:


ok, so if you want it in that format, divide by 50?

number of drones when defending attack --> number of extra drones you can have
7 --> 0.2
10 --> 0.4
15 --> 0.9
20 --> 1.3
25 --> 1.8
30 --> 2.6
40 --> 3.6
50 --> 4.9
60 --> 6.2
80 --> 9.0

or you prefer it in percentage of the current number of drones? Divide by the number of drones and multiply by 100...

number of drones when defending attack --> percentage extra income
7 --> 3%
10 --> 4%
15 --> 6%
20 --> 7%
25 --> 7%
30 --> 9%
40 --> 9%
50 --> 10%
60 --> 10%
80 --> 11%

it's all the same thing... I still don't understand what you are objecting to, as I'm reproducing your result. I helped you put your test on theoretical ground, and generalized your result, but this conversation feels so pointless....

You enjoy your analysis anyways. cheers.

I really feel that the most reasonable way to look at the difference is how much slower the same build is. These percentages are messy and highly build-dependent, while the time delay is very constant and can be read of directly from the table in my post.

On November 26 2011 04:42 MoreFaSho wrote:
This is why I always 6-pool when I get top spawn on shakuras, drones start on right side and lings pop on right side. Makes rush 0.5s more effective.

On November 26 2011 05:03 Flonomenalz wrote:

Nice QQ buddy. Get out of gold first.

@OP - Very interesting stuff. Little things like this go a long way in games at the top level... hope to see more threads like this!

User was warned for this post

On November 26 2011 04:40 SafeAsCheese wrote:



6 second difference could mean your zergling speed is 6 seconds later, which means your 4-6 zerglings get caught by their speedlings with similar openings.

That's quite important.

On November 26 2011 17:43 ShineOnYou wrote:
irrelevant thread imo

On November 26 2011 05:50 Cascade wrote:
Nice analysis.

Theres a shortcut though.
Once you have measured the 2.5 second delay, you can calculate the delay as function of number of built drones:

The first 7 drones (including the first you built) will be 2.5 seconds late. Thus, i fyou stay on a 7 drone eco (ohai 7 pool!! ^^) everything you build will be 2.5 seconds late. If you build more drones, your 8:th drone will also be 2.5 seconds late to build, and with the extra walk distance, it will be 5 seconds late to the minerals, thus your 8 drone eco will be 2.5*7/8 + 5.0*1/8 = 2.8 seconds late. By generalising this argument, you can define a function d(N) which is the dealy in yuor total economy after N built drones. We know that

d(7) = 2.5

and we know that drone number N+1 will be built with a delay d(N), and arrive at the minerals with a delay d(N)+2.5. Thus, your N+1 drone eco will be delayed by

d(N+1) = N/(N+1)d(N) + 1/(N+1)(d(N)+2.5) = d(N) + 2.5/(N+1)

from this, by recursion it is easy to see that

d(N) = 2.5 + 2.5*sum_{n = 8 to N} 1/n

So the result is:

number of built drones --> delay of economy in gs
6 --> 2.5
10 --> 3.3
15 --> 4.3
20 --> 5.0
25 --> 5.6
30 --> 6.0
40 --> 6.7
50 --> 7.3
60 --> 7.7
80 --> 8.4

which is consistent with your result within your error margin, as I guess your build had around 30-40 drones.

Feel free to add it to the OP if you want, and also feel free to rewrite it better formulated consistent with your format.

On November 26 2011 19:13 Endymion wrote:
the metagame will fix it

On November 27 2011 15:46 canikizu wrote:
Look at the bright side, your zerglings can intercept 2 rax bunker faster, your overlord can fly faster, your new-spawned drones can be transferred faster to 2nd, 3rd base,.v..v.v.v

On November 26 2011 16:44 TheAmazombie wrote:


But it was the same in Brood War. SCVs came out of certain points and larvae sat in certain areas and it did not really affect it. I think it is fuss over basically nothing. The more of this type of "balancing" that occurs, the less dynamic the game will be and the more similar races will feel. It is just the nature of the race.

On November 26 2011 04:36 Klondikebar wrote:


I would tend to agree that interfering with timings for something as trivial as larva positioning is kinda silly. But I would hold off on actually calling for tweaks until Nestea says "I lost that game because my larva were too far from the minerals."

On November 27 2011 13:48 upperbound wrote:
Can blizzard just normalize the amount of time it takes a spawned drone to hit a mineral patch when it's rallied to one? Like, change the movement speed so a rallied drone always hits the patch in 2.5 game seconds or something similar. That seems like the easiest fix with least additional burden on the player.

On November 27 2011 15:46 canikizu wrote:
Look at the bright side, your zerglings can intercept 2 rax bunker faster, your overlord can fly faster, your new-spawned drones can be transferred faster to 2nd, 3rd base,.v..v.v.v

On November 26 2011 04:36 Klondikebar wrote:


I would tend to agree that interfering with timings for something as trivial as larva positioning is kinda silly. But I would hold off on actually calling for tweaks until Nestea says "I lost that game because my larva were too far from the minerals."

On November 26 2011 04:57 ChineseWife wrote:
now lets compare the effects of larva inject on creating workers to that of the other races...

On November 26 2011 05:29 TERRANLOL wrote:


White has the higher winrate because white moves first.
Spawn color is how we identify who has the advantage, but it is not the advantage itself

On December 02 2011 06:52 FreeTossCZComentary wrote:


You really think that first move is OP? Having first move can be even problem actually! Imagine 2 guys runing into minefield... one who runs in sooner is in worse position than one who runs in faster...

On December 02 2011 06:22 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote:
Nice OP; but you have a serious flaw. Part A you just took self-admitted 'rough' numbers; despite making calculations based on a quarter of an in-game second, hopefully you can see the flaws in that; especially with what is below:

Part B Standard Deviation!

Below are my calculations based on your numbers, broken down in a uniform measurement of seconds. Again these are your numbers!
Top Deviation Calculation:
X1 = 386
X2 = 389
X3 = 392
Mean = 389 (heh, easy one)
Deviation = Root ( ((Mean – X1)^2 + (Mean – X2)^2 + (Mean – X3)^2)/ Number in Sample)
= Root( ( (389-386)^2 + (389-389)^2 + (389-392)^2 ) / 3 )
= 6

Bottom Deviation
Deviation = 6.2

So your claim is that there is a 6 second difference between mining times at the top and bottom. But the standard deviation for your top and bottom tests are at least as big.

This means that if you ran only the top 66% of your data would be 389 seconds, give or take 6 seconds. And 33% of the time it would be MORE than 6 seconds difference. Or phrased this way, running only the top experiment, your data would be 380-392 seconds most of the time; with a large chunk of it outside of even those time ranges. And this is just what the data that you provided says will happen if you alone try experimenting only the top part.

The idea behind your experiment is awesome, but you need either a much larger sample size, and likely more practice at it to keep your deviation to a minimum. Because right now I can claim with over 91% confidence (look up confidence intervals if you're curious) that based on your data the mining time between the top and the bottom are EXACTLY the same time. Which we know by observation isn't true.

A plea to everyone reading this thread; if you have GM or above mechanics, please help the OP out, try the top/bottom mining experiment. Do it 10 times to warm up. Do it 20 times to record the time top. Then do the same thing for the bottom. Give the OP your 20 Top and 20 bottoms (and please be honest) and then he can come back with meaningful numbers. He's got a great idea and even a good start, it's just the numbers he has don't prove anything. (Seriously if like... Sheth did this, you could have pretty fantastic data with maybe even an 80% CI.)

On December 02 2011 07:37 stOpSKY wrote:
Im not disagreeing with the results you found but I will definitely disagree with this statement; "While the difference between a close larvae-mineral position and a distant one won’t cause a great player to lose to a terrible one it can still have a marked effect on a game between two players of equal skill."

NesTea won a GSL with a flawless record. So clearly the "marked effect on a game between two players of equal skill" isnt very drastic and need not be attended to.

And a human performing a "highly accurate build" to test such a hypothesis is kind of ironic? Dont you think?

On November 27 2011 13:14 Goldfish wrote:
IMO they should make it balance by allowing you to control where the larva spawns/patrol. Protoss + Terran can already do this technically (rally their workers, then they'll spawn in the direction you rally).

On November 26 2011 04:49 decemberscalm wrote:

Someone is ALWAYS behind the other player by default of spawn positions. That is an unfair, undue advantage.

On December 02 2011 08:54 Duban wrote:
I've done more samples which means more data points. It would be too difficult to upload every replay I have but I do have them saved. I guess i could email the replays to people if they really wanted it and gave a good reason in PM.

Combined new & old data

Close mineral-larvae position
+ Show Spoiler +Average: 6:23.5
Best: 6:20


Far position
+ Show Spoiler +Average: 6:28.5
Best: 6:25

On December 02 2011 08:57 Tektos wrote:
Build a spawning pool / evo chamber / roach warren / any building at the bottom of your hatch and it shifts the larvae around your hatch, closer to your mineral patches.

On December 02 2011 07:54 Eschaton wrote:
A third rally point from the hatch for larvae would be quite nice.

On December 02 2011 06:22 1st_Panzer_Div. wrote:
A plea to everyone reading this thread; if you have GM or above mechanics, please help the OP out, try the top/bottom mining experiment. Do it 10 times to warm up. Do it 20 times to record the time top. Then do the same thing for the bottom. Give the OP your 20 Top and 20 bottoms (and please be honest) and then he can come back with meaningful numbers. He's got a great idea and even a good start, it's just the numbers he has don't prove anything. (Seriously if like... Sheth did this, you could have pretty fantastic data with maybe even an 80% CI.)

On December 02 2011 12:34 paintfive wrote:
this is minor compared to the difficulties protoss faces if they want to FFE. Some naturals on the same map require 3-4 buildings while some will take 2.

On December 02 2011 12:37 Xapti wrote:

that's more a problem of the map than a problem with the game. Yes the map can fix the games problems (resulting in either other positional imbalances on the map, or very bland/similar maps), but anything where changing the game instead of the map will fix the problem should be done.

On December 02 2011 15:19 hersenen wrote:
Oh so this is whats been holding me back from becoming Grandmaster league! Darn you Blizzard!

Good to see someone collecting real data to put the debate to rest.

On December 02 2011 12:43 Mr Showtime wrote:
The reason you should do a worker split at the beginning of the game is that you can save ~2 seconds, and many people find that essential. In light of that, a 6 second difference is MASSIVE. Nice work.

On November 26 2011 04:49 DoubleReed wrote:
Maybe the larva could drift in the general direction of the worker rally. Other than that, it's minor enough to not need changing. Certainly not as significant as the add-on issues that terran has.

On November 26 2011 18:52 RevOrchid wrote:
This idea is completely negligible in the current state of the game... not saying that it's useless data, but it's irrelevant until the game develops further. It's the same as splitting your workers; you do not lose a game, and blame it on a bad split. I guess there's a point in that it is practically a free advantage given by the game, but I honestly can't see this advantage becoming a factor until maybe when the metagame calms down, and players have a stronger grasp on the game.

On December 03 2011 06:04 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
Can you quantify the effect this has on reinforcing your army during battle?
Is there a bit of washing considering?

I mean in ZvZ ling battles (especially early on) reinforcements become a factor

On December 02 2011 16:36 Thrombozyt wrote:
Actually this problem spirals out of control for Zerg, because their drone timing isn't limited by constant production of their main building. This means if the drones reach the mineral patches 2.5 seconds later, the second drone built will be delayed by 2.5 seconds (because the initial drones that have to mine the 50 minerals are 2.5 gs late) and then takes another 2.5gs more to reach the patch.

With this in mind, it's actually surprising, that in a ZvZ mirror we don't see pronounced differences depending on the start positions.

On December 03 2011 05:11 Torpedo.Vegas wrote:
The initial 6 drones with any distance disadvantage would be the same across all 3 races right?