On September 01 2011 01:39 DuncanIdaho wrote: Very interesting... Definitely worthwhile vs the cannon wall-in.
As for ZvT, for offensive attacking, say, a terran's supply depot wall-in in this manner, it seems it can work for getting in, but the number of drones should be outnumbered by scvs once inside, though perhaps a drone +some lings all-in can overwhelm the terran's scv count, and possibly 1-2 rines, though as the game progresses, and the rine/maurader count behind the depots increases, the drones are going to have a harder time getting in...
I wonder what an optimal "drone-bust cheese" build order would be, if such a thing could be effective? (and obviously, this is map dependent, making the micro harder/impossible if the minerals are farther away)
In any case, awesome find, thanks for sharing!
2-3 scvs repair at the same rate that the drones do damage (on a bunker at least, didn't test depot)
Incredible find. It won me a game today. Toss called my race op and it's bs that I could break thru.lol. We need to keep this thread alive and tell all ur friends abt it since its such a revolution. All the top tier Zergs will love it when they find out abt it. And the ladder will be more fair. Make this thread sweep the world. Do u agree guys?
I was going to upload a video but it takes 2.5 hours for a 30 second clip with my internet connection >.<
Basically I have discovered something.
The easiest way to do it is to take 15 workers and just Shift queue a move to mineral patch closest to you then attack the pylon yourself but do not Queue the attack.
Before you requeue the move to mineral patch command, wait until you hear all the workers attack. The usual zap, or drill or bite sound effect will play but there will be 2 of them one played over another. Wait until you hear the second attack sound complete because after that sound effect the next attack will be from less workers since they are unstacked.
Something else I learned about the number of workers which actually have their attack connect.
No Matter how many workers you have not all of them will actually get an attack in. This is key to remember. If you take 8 workers not all 8 will attack the pylon and if you take 15 workers not all 15 workers will attack the pylon. The reason for this being that once you issue an attack command the workers will try to spread out and unstack.
This image shows I somehow manage to get 14 of the probes to attack doing a total of 70!! Damage to the shields of the pylon.
This next one shows that for some reason the 7 probes I highlighted with my mouse cursor spread away from the pylon and did not attack (last time only one did not attack last time).
This following image is of only 8 workers. The entire time I tried to use only 8 I could not get them to do a full 40 damage (each hitting).
Only 2 units on this first attack did damage. In fact fewer probes of the total 8 did damage whereas a little over half always did damage when I used 15 probes. I believe this is a result of the way the probes try to automatically split away from eachother and unstack when the mineral move command stops being given and an attack command is issued. They want to attack but the game itself forces them to unstack to a certain extent creating a variability in the total damage done. Having more workers will mean more workers remain stacked when they follow through on the attack command thereby causing more damage.
TL;DR Taking 15 workers makes them do more damage and if you get lucky the max output is 75 !! instead of 40-50. Taking 8 workers the maximum damage is 40 but it rarely happens and instead you do 20-25 damage more than doubling the time it takes to kill the blocking pylon.
It's not viable. Any good toss will scout you before you lay down a 15 hatch and deny it for quite awhile in which case your minerals keep going up. So you end up putting down a pool before hatch anyhow.
Even if you get a 15 hatch down, they can always cannon you behind your natural mineral line.
Also, since you will be only attacking 1 pylon, they can cut probes and block that pylon with another pylon and cannon and cannon #1 will already be up. So, you just pulled like 10 drones for nothing for a long time.
The video seems flawed. Would it not be better to stack workers by clicking a mineral patch and using them to do immediate burst damage at the pylon/bunker? Then repeat the process. Instead in the video the workers did that for the first attack but the operator started doing this shift queing business. I personally think restacking the workers again would be much faster and more potent.
hahahaha cant wait for combatex to fall from GrandMaster because of this. Glorious day indeed and shows all the neat tricks that has yet to be discovered! Bringing back the glory day of the discovery of the magic box! :D
Also like some people pointed out, without mineral patch to click on it wont work. An example would be the tripple bunker on the wide ramp on the natural of Shakuras.
On September 01 2011 01:07 Goolpsy wrote: That is 15 drones working to take down a pylon? And then thereafter have to take down 1 or 2 cannons. How is that not alot of mining time? The Math is 3xpylon + 2 cancelled cannons = 362 minerals vs 15/all mining workers for 1 ingame minute.
I do not not the exact numbers, but is it certain that Zerg will be economically ahead after this?
I believe 3 pylons + 2 cancelled cannons should be 375 minerals: a cannon costs 150 minerals and you get 75% of the cost back when you cancel a building so you should lose 37.5 minerals per cancelled cannon for a total of 75.
Intuitively to me zerg should be ahead after using this trick but the more I do the math the more it seems like zerg might be behind in terms of minerals spent by toss vs minerals lost by zerg. Perhaps the optimal solution is to bring just enough drones to break down the wall in time to kill the cannons? This definitely depends on how much people can refine this trick / how fast they can get it.
I love this trick! Very exciting to see a broodwar-esque trick like this discovered. It also seems like this should be a big help to zergs dealing with stupid pylon walloffs.
once u have the first pylon down u only need to keep 4 drones killing the cannon, 1 to chase. 10 can go back almost asap. then just repeat the trick if he blocks you in again.
you never need to lay a pool if he continues to block you in as he cant be making units either, just drone behind it for as long as the cannons keep getting laid
I dont think this will be enough for them to remove the ugly neutral supply depot at the bottom ramps, because this method really only works against terran and not zerg.
I posted this in the other thread, but I thought I'd do so again here. This more clearly illustrates why the shift method can do more damage overall. Again, forgive my excitement; at the time just demonstrating for a couple clan/teammates in vent.
On September 01 2011 06:09 MegaDancer wrote: Incredible find. It won me a game today. Toss called my race op and it's bs that I could break thru.lol. We need to keep this thread alive and tell all ur friends abt it since its such a revolution. All the top tier Zergs will love it when they find out abt it. And the ladder will be more fair. Make this thread sweep the world. Do u agree guys?
Yes the ladder will be more fair. Another build protoss cannot use, that could be stopped by having 1 drone sit at the bottom of your ramp while the probe is by your base. Not saying Zerg is OP like your ladder buddy. But your concept of fairness is lost on me. How was it ever unfair to invest 150+100+100+100+150 (+ the additional cannons you would need past the first) to kill a building that costs 300. I hate to sound like a Beta Zerg but, Protoss is screwed.
This following image is of only 8 workers. The entire time I tried to use only 8 I could not get them to do a full 40 damage (each hitting).
I could get 38 out of 40 probes to hit a pylon at same time on shakuras. Maybe it's just xel'naga.
It might get better the more probes you have. It was easier to do more damage with more probes than it was to do it with fewer probes.
On September 01 2011 10:12 Pwnographics wrote: Does this make SCV marine all ins that much stronger?
Not unless there are only scvs left and there are zerglings attacking them as they stack on the mineral lines and the guy can click really really accurately and fast. If the units move at all they decide to spread out. The unit they decide to attack would need to be in melee range.
I tried doing this on shattered temple and had an interesting result
It wasn't until I clicked them on the gold mineral patches that they started to stack at the bottom of the ramp. Clicking the natural mineral patches didn't work.
On September 01 2011 01:07 Goolpsy wrote: That is 15 drones working to take down a pylon? And then thereafter have to take down 1 or 2 cannons. How is that not alot of mining time? The Math is 3xpylon + 2 cancelled cannons = 362 minerals vs 15/all mining workers for 1 ingame minute.
I do not not the exact numbers, but is it certain that Zerg will be economically ahead after this?
I think that it is roughly 50 minerals as an average per worker but i dont know how saturation would effect this as there is a bigger income difference from 0 to 8 workers compared to 8 - 16 and even less in comparison to 16 - 24. So my maths works out that you would be way behind.
Considering you can really build a hatch somewhere else or just go one base and build 1 spine crawler to take down everything, i don't think that this is a huge problem considering you can also prevent this with one patrolling worker ?
On September 01 2011 06:09 MegaDancer wrote: Incredible find. It won me a game today. Toss called my race op and it's bs that I could break thru.lol. We need to keep this thread alive and tell all ur friends abt it since its such a revolution. All the top tier Zergs will love it when they find out abt it. And the ladder will be more fair. Make this thread sweep the world. Do u agree guys?
Yes the ladder will be more fair. Another build protoss cannot use, that could be stopped by having 1 drone sit at the bottom of your ramp while the probe is by your base. Not saying Zerg is OP like your ladder buddy. But your concept of fairness is lost on me. How was it ever unfair to invest 150+100+100+100+150 (+ the additional cannons you would need past the first) to kill a building that costs 300. I hate to sound like a Beta Zerg but, Protoss is screwed.
No. Protoss is not screwed. Having to open up pool first and automatically be behind because of the fear of cannon rushing was/is retarded. Not only that but you lose the hatch, have to rebuild another one, lose mining time, and then eventually lose units/mining time while breaking out.
EPT
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