EPT[D] Larva Injection Analysis - Page 9
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
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Neurf
France3 Posts
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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Luggage
Canada34 Posts
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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TimeSpiral
United States1010 Posts
On February 16 2011 21:55 Luggage wrote: 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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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On February 16 2011 21:55 Luggage wrote: 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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Grumblethorpe
36 Posts
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TimeSpiral
United States1010 Posts
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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maxwellb
United States4 Posts
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Spekulatius
Germany2413 Posts
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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worldchrisis
United States45 Posts
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michaelhasanalias
Korea (South)1231 Posts
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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Ribbon
United States5278 Posts
On February 18 2011 03:39 TimeSpiral wrote: 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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Aequos
Canada606 Posts
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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Neurf
France3 Posts
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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Schnullerbacke13
Germany1199 Posts
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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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43516 Posts
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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Dalavita
Sweden1113 Posts
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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dbkim92
Australia30 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43516 Posts
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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