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Hi, I am back with another topic to analyze. This time it is about the possible imbalance in ZvZ due to the Hatcheries' Larvae always spawning on the south side.
The legend says that if a mineral line is to the south of the base, rather than to the north, then the spawning Drones will have to travel much less to the minerals when they begin working, and this materializes in an advantage for that player. Is it true, though?
Here is what I found:
+ Show Spoiler +
As always, here is the pdf for convinience and better quality.
TL;DR: If one player has a base with a southward mineral line, the other with a northward one, the former does have an advantage, but it is minimal. If the mineral lines are diagonal, the difference is even smaller; if they face east and west, respectively, then there should be no imbalance.
I'm looking forward to your opinions, criticisms, etc. 
Previous projects:
+ Show Spoiler +
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I don't think it makes that much of a difference. However it would be interesting if someone could give us the win rate in ZvZ based on the players spawn.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
The biggest difference in hatch-mineral positioning is the defense of early pools. If you are at a north hatch, your lings can easily be surrounded by enemy lings. If you are at the south hatch, your lings can never be surrounded without the risk of a drone surround.
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loving these series keep it up. although i know nothing of the mathematical talk  .
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Licheter makes a strong point.
There should have hatch orientation and an option to set it in melee initialisation as a minimum, that way mappers can use it if they wish.
More completely Blizzard could give players access to building orientation on hatches for other possible minuscule advantages, like spawning larvae away from potential bunker rushes.
Assuming you've done that in a way which works - isn't ugly as hell, is ignorable for newer players, doesn't require 6 fingers a hand to do, that sort of thing - the same for Terran addons at Barracks/Factory/Starport could be implemented as I'd guess that's decided more games than larva spawning.
For the Terran case though the can of worms(!) is larger: Addon only or whole building? Rotating or mirroring? Can you rotate flying buildings? Which adjacent building does the addon prioritise? The answers maybe straightforward but the implementation might not be.
What were we talking about again? Oh yea, 23 minerals @ first base saturation isn't that big a deal, but this is interesting stuff - would read more!
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On August 15 2014 17:07 algue wrote:
I don't think it makes that much of a difference. However it would be interesting if someone could give us the win rate in ZvZ based on the players spawn.
You could use a probitmodel and use all the factors that affect if you win or lose. Like, skill (which is unobservable so you might use a proxy), mapsize, apm, experience, race choice and so on... But I am quite sure that the coefficient on "spawn" is statistically insignificant. Although the idea is interesting.
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On August 15 2014 17:14 lichter wrote:
The biggest difference in hatch-mineral positioning is the defense of early pools. If you are at a north hatch, your lings can easily be surrounded by enemy lings. If you are at the south hatch, your lings can never be surrounded without the risk of a drone surround.
This is without a doubt a more important factor than losing mining time. I can't calculate this, though, but the mining time loss I could, so at least we now know that that is negligible.
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Not wanting to take anything away from that analysis - but the tl;dr part was rather obvious  . Though you seem to love those mathematics, so keep going!
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I think there's a small imbalance with spawns in any match-up; for terrans, it's useful to get a spawn where your rax can build an add-on inside the wall instead of as part of it, for example. Without statistics, however, it's impossible to say if it matters over the course of an entire game.
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How do you obtain the images? You are not using Latex and Tikz, do you? :o
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If you take slightly less time to reach a certain amount of minerals, then you can make a new drone slightly faster, which is going to mean that you can mine with the new drones slightly sooner. I think OP didn't take this into account, but merely calculated the mineral disparity resulting from the distances that the drones would have to travel. It still shouldn't be a big difference even if you took the faster access to new drones into account, but it is something to consider if you want to be thorough with the analysis.
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i tested it using the ai, set urself to ref in a custom game and get 2 ais to play against each other, i used zerg and the lingRoach timing, on all 8 goes the northward position had a 5 second lead of his warren timing which is something i didnt expect but their builds are literally identical each time . . .but that initial mineral assignment tho! worker acceleration play a factor in this? I would of expected the ai to mine super efficient in the south position, but was never the case. always seemed to be just under a split second behind on the mineral tick. this is a good example of how the game snowballs when one player gets a slight advantage . . . .hmm considering never drone scouting again!
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On August 15 2014 18:38 GERMasta wrote:
If you take slightly less time to reach a certain amount of minerals, then you can make a new drone slightly faster, which is going to mean that you can mine with the new drones slightly sooner. I think OP didn't take this into account, but merely calculated the mineral disparity resulting from the distances that the drones would have to travel. It still shouldn't be a big difference even if you took the faster access to new drones into account, but it is something to consider if you want to be thorough with the analysis.
Yes, only the Larva system of the Zerg screws up things, insomuch as being able to morph additional Drones does not only depend on whether you have enough minerals. I think, though, the effect is so marginal that even if it snowballs, it remains negligible.
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I don't think you can fix this tho. Putting larvas on the otherside would make them almost unclicable.
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On August 15 2014 19:31 Faust852 wrote:
I don't think you can fix this tho. Putting larvas on the otherside would make them almost unclicable.
That can't be an argument. You would have to exclude northern high grounds then . Also, there's very few opportunities to actually click larva manually (eg. hellions sniping larva, or running banes into it). Most zerg players will use the hatchery to access larva.
On August 15 2014 19:09 Sholip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2014 18:38 GERMasta wrote:
If you take slightly less time to reach a certain amount of minerals, then you can make a new drone slightly faster, which is going to mean that you can mine with the new drones slightly sooner. I think OP didn't take this into account, but merely calculated the mineral disparity resulting from the distances that the drones would have to travel. It still shouldn't be a big difference even if you took the faster access to new drones into account, but it is something to consider if you want to be thorough with the analysis. Yes, only the Larva system of the Zerg screws up things, insomuch as being able to morph additional Drones does not only depend on whether you have enough minerals. I think, though, the effect is so marginal that even if it snowballs, it remains negligible.
That would be the real thing to find out I think. Sometimes, I have the very subjective feeling of "gosh I'm so slow", which is really more than a feeling then some proven thing. That might explain what happens, because though I'm only a diamond/masters player (rather diamond then masters), I'm quite capable of executing a perfect hatch first build until 28-ish supply. Sometimes, I just feel slow. Dunno exactly why.
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United States4883 Posts
Artosis wants the math on hatch first nexus blocking in ZvP GOGOGOGO
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only way it can be solved if this EVER poses some kind of issue is that the camera is relative to you so you always spawn south
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United States4883 Posts
On August 15 2014 19:47 boxerfred wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2014 19:31 Faust852 wrote:
I don't think you can fix this tho. Putting larvas on the otherside would make them almost unclicable. That can't be an argument. You would have to exclude northern high grounds then . Also, there's very few opportunities to actually click larva manually (eg. hellions sniping larva, or running banes into it). Most zerg players will use the hatchery to access larva. Show nested quote +On August 15 2014 19:09 Sholip wrote:On August 15 2014 18:38 GERMasta wrote:
If you take slightly less time to reach a certain amount of minerals, then you can make a new drone slightly faster, which is going to mean that you can mine with the new drones slightly sooner. I think OP didn't take this into account, but merely calculated the mineral disparity resulting from the distances that the drones would have to travel. It still shouldn't be a big difference even if you took the faster access to new drones into account, but it is something to consider if you want to be thorough with the analysis. Yes, only the Larva system of the Zerg screws up things, insomuch as being able to morph additional Drones does not only depend on whether you have enough minerals. I think, though, the effect is so marginal that even if it snowballs, it remains negligible. That would be the real thing to find out I think. Sometimes, I have the very subjective feeling of "gosh I'm so slow", which is really more than a feeling then some proven thing. That might explain what happens, because though I'm only a diamond/masters player (rather diamond then masters), I'm quite capable of executing a perfect hatch first build until 28-ish supply. Sometimes, I just feel slow. Dunno exactly why.
The feeling of being "slow" has mostly to do with mineral stacking. On some maps, the natural minerals that workers mine from suck more than others, but if you are really paying attention to drone stacking for the first minute or two of the game, you can really minimize a lot of this inefficiency.
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Great math as usual! Thank you.
I wish you would take on a "bigger" aspect in future posts, of course it is not easy to know beforehand wether something will have a big or small influence.
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On August 15 2014 19:52 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2014 19:47 boxerfred wrote:On August 15 2014 19:31 Faust852 wrote:
I don't think you can fix this tho. Putting larvas on the otherside would make them almost unclicable. That can't be an argument. You would have to exclude northern high grounds then . Also, there's very few opportunities to actually click larva manually (eg. hellions sniping larva, or running banes into it). Most zerg players will use the hatchery to access larva. On August 15 2014 19:09 Sholip wrote:On August 15 2014 18:38 GERMasta wrote:
If you take slightly less time to reach a certain amount of minerals, then you can make a new drone slightly faster, which is going to mean that you can mine with the new drones slightly sooner. I think OP didn't take this into account, but merely calculated the mineral disparity resulting from the distances that the drones would have to travel. It still shouldn't be a big difference even if you took the faster access to new drones into account, but it is something to consider if you want to be thorough with the analysis. Yes, only the Larva system of the Zerg screws up things, insomuch as being able to morph additional Drones does not only depend on whether you have enough minerals. I think, though, the effect is so marginal that even if it snowballs, it remains negligible. That would be the real thing to find out I think. Sometimes, I have the very subjective feeling of "gosh I'm so slow", which is really more than a feeling then some proven thing. That might explain what happens, because though I'm only a diamond/masters player (rather diamond then masters), I'm quite capable of executing a perfect hatch first build until 28-ish supply. Sometimes, I just feel slow. Dunno exactly why. The feeling of being "slow" has mostly to do with mineral stacking. On some maps, the natural minerals that workers mine from suck more than others, but if you are really paying attention to drone stacking for the first minute or two of the game, you can really minimize a lot of this inefficiency.
Hm, I do pay attention to mineral stacking. Seriously. Thing is, I mostly play 3v3/4v4 these days, and on many of those maps, the mineral patches are truely poor placed, so that might be the reason? (ofc, I do not always stack perfectly, so that might be the reason, too, yep)
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