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Preface
I've been using Pool-first builds for a long time because of uncertainty/safety issues. But now that I am more familiar with the game, I've been looking for more macro-heavy openings for mainly Lost Temple and Blistering Sands so that I don't get behind Terran or Toss too much in the midgame.
I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage.
Other benefits of 14 Hatch 13 Pool:
a) The Hatch finishes just seconds after the Pool.
b) You get 1 larva the instant the Hatch finishes.
This sets you up to save 3 larva for Zerglings as soon as the Pool pops. Make Queen, then three Larva of lings. When your Hatch finishes (a few seconds later), you instantly get an extra larva which you can make more lings with. When the lings in your main pop, send them to the natural. They will get there almost exactly when the lings at your natural pop. 6+2 = 8 lings all at once. On creep and possibly soon backed up by a spinecrawler (which you can build as soon as the Hatch is done).
Three Different Variations
I did some testing with three different opening build orders to see which one came out on top and to try to find interesting subtleties that could be useful in different situations. The three build orders are:
1) 9 Ovie
2) 10 ET, Ovie
3) 10 Ovie, ET
Where ET is Extractor Trick.
+ Show Spoiler [Why use the Extractor Trick?] +
It's awesome in SC2. Extractors cost 25 minerals, and you get 19 back when you cancel them. So not only is the "wait" time for the extra minerals much shorter, you also only lose 6 minerals. Since the process takes 2-3 seconds, you only lose an extra 2-3 minerals from lost mining time (considering that drones mine at a rate very close to 1 mineral per second).
So you lose 8-9 minerals in exchange for a much earlier 11th drone. This is a fantastic trade, and it will pay off later on in the game to have that drone out earlier.
+ Show Spoiler [Why is this post about 14H 13P and not…] +
This post probably applies to a lot of situations with these openers, but for different Pool and gas timings there could be some subtleties that disagree with the analysis here.
By focusing on 14H 13P, I can think about a very specific thing that I'm doing in the future and not have to water down my thinking with overgeneralization.
Testing Specifics
Each build was executed in a vs. comp game on Blistering Sands. After building up to 14 supply of drones, I send out two (2) drones at ~170 minerals to the natural. I build the Hatch at 300 ASAP, and the Pool at the next 200 ASAP. Then I drone up to 15, and make another Overlord. This timing is set up to allow saving up 3 larva almost exactly when the Pool finishes so that I can make 3 sets of lings if need be.
+ Show Spoiler [Why 2 Drones?] +
If the hatchery gets blocked for a significant amount of time, it will become very dangerous to put it down. Sending two drones can get any probe/SCV out of the way very quickly. I can also use my second drone to scout. Though this is a fairly late scout, it will see enough in time to let me know if I need to save larva for lings or just pump more drones.
Methodology
I only measured the timing (unfortunate, as you will see). I watched the replay on Slow and just took notes on the timing of important events like the 10th drone popping etc. To make sure all the times are relative, my time 0 is when my first drone makes contact with a mineral patch.
For those of you interested (and in case it makes any difference), here is the order in which events occur at the start of every game:
1. Click hatchery - S - D
2. Grab all drones and send them to a "middle" mineral patch.
3. Grab three drones and send them to an adjacent patch.
This method has worked really well for me, though it may not be the best.
Because the ticks (they are not seconds) only display in integers (i.e. no milliticks), my numbers are only accurate to +/- 1 tick. Additionally, I am not a robot and cannot time building placement etc. perfectly so for putting down the Pool and Hatchery, there is a slight uncertainty, maybe +/- another 1 tick.
Results
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae1/mettra/14H13PComparison.png
Unfortunately the image has been scaled down significantly so that it's not quite so easy to read, but it is still readable.
You can see that the timing for everything after 110 ticks is pretty much exactly the same. So the differences between the openers will lie solely in the openings themselves and not in any subtlety that is visible up to 270 ticks.
+ Show Spoiler [What are the Unlabeled Points?] +
The set of points at ~110 ticks are when I sent out my 2 drones to the natural. The set of points at ~185 ticks are the times when my 15th drone (perhaps my final drone for a long time) pops.
The 10 ET Ovie has a slight discrepancy in the Lings timing because I wasn't paying enough attention so I missed the lings by a second or two.
The big results (in my opinion) are the ovie timings.
The 9 Ovie timing has a very delayed 10th drone but a super early Overlord. Unfortunately, this super early overlord does not serve enough purpose to justify delaying the 10th and 11th drone for so long. There isn't enough larva/minerals to make a huge benefit. It's kind of like if you went 6 Pool for the early queen. When that first batch of larva pops up, you likely won't have enough money to buy all the drones, and you lost a lot of utility along the way.
The 10 ET Ovie timing gets a super-fast 11th drone (unfortunately not graphed here), but has a waaay delayed Overlord. This is the opposite of the 9 Ovie timing. It is harmful in that you are sitting for too long on 11 drones, unable to make your 12th and 13th very early. You can see there is a slight lag between the green points and the red points, and I feel like this is simply sub-par. This is actually what I almost always did before I ran this analysis.
The 10 Ovie ET timing turns out to be baby bear. You get that 10th drone out fast. A slightly delayed 11th drone in comparison to the 10 ET Ovie timing, but a much faster 12th and 13th drone. Because there is virtually no difference between the later timings of 10 Ovie ET and 9 Ovie, I have no choice but to say that 10 Ovie ET is purely superior to 9 Ovie since it gets a faster 10th and 11th drone.
+ Show Spoiler [Larva Waste] +
If you spend too long a time without using larva, you are effectively wasting or losing larva. In this build, there is a significant larva waste in the time between building the Hatchery and the Pool and waiting for 50 extra minerals afterwards. It is unavoidable with this build.
Here are the larva waste times:
9 Ovie: 17 ticks
10 ET Ovie: 20 ticks
10 Ovie ET: 22 ticks
Larva come every 15 ticks, so you are always losing at least 1 larva with this build. These are all pretty close numbers, with the largest gap being 5 ticks between the 9 Ovie and the 10 Ovie timings, meaning that you lose an extra 1/3 larva if you favor the latter over the former.
Not terribly important, but I took the numbers down anyway.
Conclusion
The 10 Ovie ET opener is superior to the other two for 14H 13P.
If I had a really awesome toolset, I would also put up mineral graphs to see the effects more explicitly. However, that would take quite a long time to do manually, and I'm fairly convinced that earlier drones translates directly into more money later on.
Hope someone finds this useful.
/edit
Update
There were some questions and concerns about previous work on this matter and conflicts with my conclusion. I did some additional work in gathering more precise data about drone timings.
Since the later timings are all practically equivalent (within a second of each other), the only concern with these openers when doing 14H 13P is superior economy. To quantify which opener has better economy, I use a "point" system based on drone mining time. The longer a drone is mining, the more points it gets.
To make the point system easy, a drone gets 1 point per every SC2 tick (this is not minerals per second, it is "points" per tick). If you know seconds per tick or minerals mined per tick, then you can convert "points" into minerals later on, but the conversion factor is just a number.
Here are the times for all drones after 9 for each opener. The very last point on each set is the time at which I send out two drones. I stopped counting points at that time. Importantly, the timings are when the drones pop, not when they are started.
http://i952.photobucket.com/albums/ae1/mettra/14H13PDroneTiming.png
To make it simple, I did not count the original 9 drones. I only gave points to drones starting at the 10th drone (1 point per tick). At 11 drones, the opener gets 2 points per tick and so on.
Here are the final points:
9 Ovie: 100
10 ET Ovie: 104
10 Ovie ET: 108
These are all super-close if you consider units being used.
Now, I haven't done an extensive enough test to determine very accurately the mineral gather rate per tick per drone, but I've seen the number .69 min/tick/drone. If we use that number (i.e. assuming it is correct), we can convert the points into minerals:
9 Ovie: 69
10 ET Ovie: 71.76
10 Ovie ET: 74.52
And 74.52 - 69 = 5.52
So there is a 5.52 mineral difference between 10-O-ET and 9-O. But if we consider the 6 minerals lost from ET and the 2-3 lost from ET mining time loss, then that puts the 9-O build ahead by 2.48 or 3.48 minerals.
A difference of 2 or 3 (or even 5-10) minerals is not something we can draw big conclusions from. Positional imbalance alone can cause bigger differences than this. The numbers are all so small and close together that I can't draw a definitive conclusion because of sources of error that could contribute more than the differences (ticks accurate only to +/- 1 etc.).
So my updated conclusion is that these builds are economically equivalent. I'd still say that 10 ET Ovie is slightly worse than 10 Ovie ET because there seems to be a delay earlier on in getting the Hatch and Pool out (when compared to the other two builds).
So the 9-O timing/economy and the 10-O-ET timing/economy are equivalent with the further statement that the 9-O opener could be ever so slightly superior. Certainly for practical uses, these two builds are exactly equivalent, so I'd probably say that 9-O is better since it requires less concentration.
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Thanks for the good work, I definitely found it helpful since I ALWAYS do the 10 ET, ovie order.
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There are some good things here. I really appreciate the look into the 3 builds (ET Ovie... Ovie Et.. etc) and I will probably try the extractor trick after my 10 drone from now on.
However I would love to see some replays to substantiate this claim:
I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage.
You say the main reason to hold off "early" attacks is the creep+spine crawler. Seeing as the movement speed, burrow speed, and build speed for the crawlers are all painfully slow, I don't understand how this can be the case for most early timings, however, I could be wrong. Like I said, I would love to see some replays on different maps proving that hatch before pool is more viable against very early agression than pool before hatch. It seems like by the time you could have that spine crawler up going hatch before pool, you could have a very threatening amount of zerglings up as well.
I would really just like to see that in replays. You have some good info there though so thanks.
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Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery.
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Yeah on close positions it's gross but I think you actually have to go 12 pool to hold off a 10 gate chrono.
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This probably has something to do with a 12hatch from BW being better than a 12pool for fighting off 2gates. Same principles, you get more larvae and creep up faster.
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that's some good stuff there, but it doesn't really justify a 14H13P build.
I think it's good to see that 10ovie then ET is the best general opener unless you do an early pool or 10overpool.
There are just too many ppl cheesing and rushing for me to safely do a 14H (i'm #1 gold).
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On May 11 2010 11:13 bodysnatcher21 wrote:
Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery.
Dunno, but I thought about 10 different gateways as opposed to gateway on 10 supply haha
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Wait I don't get it. From the graph it looks like 9 ov is about even with 10 ov ext? Isn't this what the 9ov vs 10ov thread said? I messed around a bit myself to see what the timings were and 9ov ended up being just slightly better. I would get stuff out about 2 seconds faster, not have to waste the minerals on the extractor trick, and I would get an extra larva out just a slight bit faster. That being said I was surprised to find out how close all the openings are to each other.
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i mean i just took everyone's word for it that 10 ovie extractor cancel was the best build. always did it since day 1. you may have spent a little too much time on this O.o
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Didn't we allready have a number crunching thread where it was proven beyond all doubt that 9ovi is the best econ opening unless you plan to make pool before 13?
In your thread you seem to have disregarded that 9ovi gets the 11th and 12th drone out faster than 10 ovi ET and that you pay money for cancling the extractor and while that drone isn't mining.
If I remember correctly those combined costs were 12 minerals which was the exact same cost as getting a later 10th drone. But bear in mind then that 11th and 12th is faster so you WILL gain more from a 9ovi.
Also, the 12 minerals loss is only correct if the player takes the mining drone off perfectly timed which not all players will do.
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replay please? this build sounds intriguing and i'm sure to try it, but i want to see it used effectively against early agression
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On May 11 2010 11:01 University wrote:There are some good things here. I really appreciate the look into the 3 builds (ET Ovie... Ovie Et.. etc) and I will probably try the extractor trick after my 10 drone from now on. However I would love to see some replays to substantiate this claim: Show nested quote +I tried the 14 Pool, 15-16 Hatch opener quite a lot, and it just feels clunky. The main reason is this: if someone attacks early on (like a soft 2 gate), my natural is too hard to defend. It might sound crazy, but it has actually been a lot easier to fend off fast attacks by going Hatch first!
The main reason is the creep it provides. If you get creep out early enough, you can throw down a 'safe' spinecrawler, and you get the benefit of having much faster Zerglings earlier on. This is actually a huge deal when defending against Reapers and early Zealots. It's as big a difference as slow lings vs. speedlings. It's the difference between easily holding things off and taking huge damage. You say the main reason to hold off "early" attacks is the creep+spine crawler. Seeing as the movement speed, burrow speed, and build speed for the crawlers are all painfully slow, I don't understand how this can be the case for most early timings, however, I could be wrong. [1] Like I said, I would love to see some replays [2] on different maps [3]
[1] No, the main benefit is the creep itself. When the hatch completes, your Zerglings are twice as effective or better. As far as the spine crawler goes, its slow movement speed and burrow speed are irrelevant. You can build it a lot earlier, but it will still take time. It will take care of reinforcements/second waves - not the first attack. Its long build time renders it useless in the first attack with one exception: if your opponent tries to kill it, it means less damage to your Zerglings, and you have the option to cancel it.
[2] Any replays that I provide would be fairly garbage because of my skill level and the skill level of my opponents. I will say that a Protoss that goes Forge and cannons your natural will kill your natural, but you will win anyway, even after he rushes to Void Rays :/.
[3] This is not for every map. This is mainly a build for Lost Temple and for Blistering Sands because of the longish rush distance. I've noticed many people making comments about other maps, but this is not something that you will use in every map. I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer.
On May 11 2010 11:13 bodysnatcher21 wrote:
Doesn't any hatch first build pretty much die instantly to 10 gate zealot build?
I 10 gate every game vs zerg to prevent them from fast expanding. Even against a 13 pool 16 hatch I usually kill the hatchery. [2]
Like you said, if you do a superfast rush (Chrono boosted lots etc.), any kind of FE is weak, even if you do Pool first and have earlier access to Zerglings. In this case, I think it's almost even irrelevant if the Zerg did Hatch first or Pool first - any kind of FE is punished hard by a fast rush.
But in my experience, most players don't do fast rushes, they will spend their Chronos on Nexus and play a more solid style. This kind of thing should be taken into consideration before doing a Hatch first build. The most important thing is the map you are playing on. A map like Lost Temple is usually not very favorable to fast rushes. Hence my searching for a more macro-oriented build.
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A few people have said that I disagree with previous work on the subject. I will go over my replays very carefully tomorrow to look for mineral trends and check more timings like 11-13th drones etc.
People have brought up some very good points, and I'm happy to mull over these kinds of things, even if my work ends up being proven incorrect. It's getting to the proper result that matters.
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Really you shouldn't try to keep a FE alive if he's 2 gate rushing. If he 2 gate rushes and you hold it off on one base you'll still be ahead. To get ahead when he's NOT rushing you, you FE.
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Good work, really helpful. I agree with the creep being a big factor in defending the natural. It saved me today. I scouted a Lot rush cross spawn Metalopolis and I was able to put down a spinecrawler. It wasn't finished for the first push, but it tanked a lot of damage while my queens and lings beat on them. It held him off with minimal, if any casualties. Although I didn't use the same build, I could see that creep made a huge difference. If it wasn't cross spawn, I may of lost, so your build might be more efficient on closer distances.
When you say you do this build for LT, is this considering close spawn (both players' naturals adjacent to each other), or the two others? I always thought close spawn was pretty close, so I wouldn't FE if I scouted this position.
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Uh... there is 0 larvae waste for 9 lord, or 10 lord ET (before the hatch). And this has been thoroughly researched before and they came to the conclusion that 9 lord is the superior build, by an insignificant margin.
And assuming the P does not do any pressure on you early game, I'm pretty sure 14 pool/16 hatch or 15 pool/16 hatch gives you the best economy due to early queens and 0 larvae wasting. But yea, 14 hatch/13 pool is probably the best way to fend off early pressure off 1 gate. If you scout 2 gate, you should probably cancel your hatch right away and just go for roaches either way. But make sure he didn't fake you out with the 2 gates then immediately build 2 assimilators and tech up without making many zeals.
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Against terran I go 13h, 12p and it works very well. It is early enough to deal with bunkers, and once both queens are out, reapers are rendered useless. Compared to 13 or 14 pool, it is a no brainer. It is actually significantly harder to defend a hatchery in a 13 pool ~13 hatch because he can bunker you while your hatch building and you won't even be able to see it unless you have an overlord overhead, he can use reapers on your hatch while it is still low on hp and take it out long before you can get a queen out there to assist.
However I've yet to win with a fast expand against a competent protoss unless there is some major distance between us, like say on kulas ravine. I just cannot hold off a 2 gate push if they commit to it, even if I produce all zerglings and spine crawlers as soon as my hatch pops. I'm not the best player though, so maybe machine could do it, or perhaps there is some magical build I'm missing.
Against zerg, I can juust about hold off a 10 pool by doing 13h, 12p. But not quite. If they go for the hatch I'll win, if they go for my drones, it depends on their micro, but most of the time if I lose more than 4 drones to their initial lings, then I am in big trouble.
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On May 11 2010 12:27 teamsolid wrote:
Uh... there is 0 larvae waste for 9 lord, or 10 lord ET (before the hatch). [1]
And this has been thoroughly researched before and they came to the conclusion that 9 lord is the superior build, by an insignificant margin. [2]
And assuming the P does not do any pressure on you early game, I'm pretty sure 14 pool/16 hatch or 15 pool/16 hatch gives you the best economy due to early queens and 0 larvae wasting. But yea, 14 hatch/13 pool is probably the best way to fend off early pressure off 1 gate. [3]
If you scout 2 gate, you should probably cancel your hatch right away and just go for roaches either way. But make sure he didn't fake you out with the 2 gates then immediately build 2 assimilators and tech up without making many zeals. [4]
[1] I was very specific when talking about Larva Waste. The waste does not come from any of the openers, it comes from the long wait time to Hatch + Pool + 50 mins.
[2] I saw that thread, and I will be looking over it more closely in detail, but it looks like he is doing a 14 Pool build and going up to 16 workers. While it may not make any difference, there may be some subtlety from the fact that I am doing 14 Hatch and going up to only 15 workers (because of larva timing).
[3] You are probably right about everything said here. Most of the games I play against Protoss, there is a "soft" attack early on. I take sooo much damage doing 14/15P -> Hatch that sometimes I end up losing my hatch in a later attack, making the whole thing moot. This 14H 13P build is a nice in-between that I've just been experimenting with.
[4] This depends on three things: map, locations, and Chrono boosts. If they are really close positions, then their risk in going 2 gate paid off, and you'll have a hard time. If they are Chrono boosting 2 gates then canceling your Hatch is probably not a bad idea since they will likely still be behind if you survive.
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On May 11 2010 12:00 Shenron wrote:
Really you shouldn't try to keep a FE alive if he's 2 gate rushing. If he 2 gate rushes and you hold it off on one base you'll still be ahead. To get ahead when he's NOT rushing you, you FE.
Agree with this. OP post is just economic talk and not relevant to overall strategy ... if I scout 2gate I will most definitely 1base on smaller maps and roachspam for the win.
Really it boils down to rush distance. Longer and it allows for FE and you can throw up spine crawlers+zerglings regardless of hatch before pool or hatch after pool ... what I've experienced, atleast.
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EPT
