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I'm just a curious gold-league terran who spends too much time watching streams of pros and major tournaments and I want to ask a question I cannot seem to figure out after two weeks of pondering...
Why doesn't zerg downtech?
I mean, in late-game macro situations the zerg has lots of larva, lots of money, and lots of bases to tech switch but almost every zerg I see at all levels sticks to the highest tech they have access to (BL/infestor, roach-hydra, etc). Almost all of those zergs will end up complaining that they cannot "Break" certain unit compositions (including terran ghost+tank pre-patch).
In the specific case of the Terran MMMTGV late-game unit composition, zerg should know they can remax much faster if they do damage to Terran tech units (tanks, ghosts less so, vikings) and can continually work down the terran army with wave-after-wave of ling/bling or switch some gas into mutalisks to harass reinforcement lines or worker lines, etc.
Upon watching a game of ASUS ROG (Strelok v Bly G2), Bly goes Infestor Ultra (with a bait of infestor broodlord) with well upgraded lings. Strelok is going MMM+T with some vikings from the baited greater spire tech, but is able to continually wear down his opponent. He loses several major engages with good fungals and gets a much later 4th than he wants. Instead of continuing an assault with ling/bling (low build time and fairly cheap compared to other remaxes) he decides to try and make BLs even though there are some vikings on the field. Mutas or ling bane could have done wonders vs this Terran...
So I'd like to hear the issues with downteching your army composition temporarily while, say, expanding, banking gas to use for the next big round of tech units, or w/e.
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I wouldn't say Zergs don't downtech ever. In ZvP for example remaxing on Roaches is quite common. One of the biggest problems in ZvT is 3/3 marines are very good vs lings. Infestor/BL is much more cost effective overall. At late stages of the game players are often starved for resources as well.
That said I've started to switch back to muta if I see a huge window where they'll do wonders (take out tech structures etc) However, an endgame composition is usually more helpful. Eventually you do run out of larvae and Terran at that point should be able to produce pretty quickly anyways. That plus walls, PF mean that lings aren't as effective as they could be.
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On February 25 2012 03:55 TG Manny wrote: I'm just a curious gold-league terran who spends too much time watching streams of pros and major tournaments and I want to ask a question I cannot seem to figure out after two weeks of pondering...
Why doesn't zerg downtech?
I mean, in late-game macro situations the zerg has lots of larva, lots of money, and lots of bases to tech switch but almost every zerg I see at all levels sticks to the highest tech they have access to (BL/infestor, roach-hydra, etc). Almost all of those zergs will end up complaining that they cannot "Break" certain unit compositions (including terran ghost+tank pre-patch).
In the specific case of the Terran MMMTGV late-game unit composition, zerg should know they can remax much faster if they do damage to Terran tech units (tanks, ghosts less so, vikings) and can continually work down the terran army with wave-after-wave of ling/bling or switch some gas into mutalisks to harass reinforcement lines or worker lines, etc.
Upon watching a game of ASUS ROG (Strelok v Bly G2), Bly goes Infestor Ultra (with a bait of infestor broodlord) with well upgraded lings. Strelok is going MMM+T with some vikings from the baited greater spire tech, but is able to continually wear down his opponent. He loses several major engages with good fungals and gets a much later 4th than he wants. Instead of continuing an assault with ling/bling (low build time and fairly cheap compared to other remaxes) he decides to try and make BLs even though there are some vikings on the field. Mutas or ling bane could have done wonders vs this Terran...
So I'd like to hear the issues with downteching your army composition temporarily while, say, expanding, banking gas to use for the next big round of tech units, or w/e. they do? They always want to have infrstors broodlord with crackling/bane to run in if Terran overextends. Or, in Zvp they use roaches to keep them back and buffer the infestor broodlord. The End goal pretty much is to push forward with infestor broodlord, and once the defensive position is broken, they can then spam cracklings from every hatchery and swarm everything. Such a satisfying feeling.
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I guess its really situational and even progamers dont do the best of decisions all the time. The biggest reason i can think of is that Zerg needs to have a high tech army at some stage in the game to get some at least cost even trades (think protoss without HT / Colossus, they wouldnt win any engages vs marines).
Roaches, zerglings, , hydras, mutas and sometimes even Banelings all do pretty poorly vs the core unit of the terran army - marines at higher numbers.-
Once you do have hive tech, and have traded units in the situation you desribed, lots of people do reinforce with pure zergling. You just cant add many other units since you basically only have upgrades for melee and maybe air, so your options are to rotate with zergling / ultra / baneling / infestor / broodlords if you want to use your ups.
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I already see a trend of "cost effectiveness" of the push but I guess I'm not describing it well. Think of it as a way to get a little more map control. let's say you have some infestors, some BL, and some corruptor with lingbane leftover from early game or to fend off a terran push. Why not whittle down tank counts and keep them low via lots of small engagements to force a terran retreat into a more defensible location? If broodlords lead the siege, marines run forward..fungal/bane them then the tanks are fairly exposed for about a minute before 2 rounds of marines clear and get back in position.
This is where I'd say to downtech, but most zergs will take the chance to strengthen their festor/BL numbers instead and expand. Both good ideas, I'm not denying, but as a Terran if you kill a healthy portion of my tanks (>50%) I feel naked and easily abused by wave after wave of ling/bane. If the first engage exposes the tanks, even with no tank kills, then zerg needs to capitalize on the ability to get into the tank lines without much added added marine DPS or catch retreating tanks.
I suppose I'm just too critical of masters/Pro who do so much more mechanically and harassment wise to always know the best way to abuse the opponent and too low of level to see it in my own matches often.
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Personally I found remaxing on ling bling with ultra/infestor as needed was really effective againt ghost heavy, tank light compositions late game zvt
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Yes I think that what your saying is correct. Against ghost tank medivac which apparently was the invincible combo of death I think that mass ling bling infestor would actually work better (esp if used in conjunction with drops) then the ultra infestor some lings or BL infestor some lings. However no need to really test these ideas, just whine alot and blizz will nerf it for you instead.
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has a bit to do with upgrades, for example without ranged attack roaches and hydras fall abit out of the line. And if you don't have 3/3 cracklings they aren't that good in a lategame situation. Same like a terran that shouldn't even bother building thors lategame without vehicle armor if there are t1 units out. But often it is that the terran or toss won't move away from their bases that are build order tight against low tech. But i agree that zergs often rush on remaxing before the battle even is over, if you keep some supply free and wait till the fight is over, you can analyze the left overs of the opponent and can guess on what the opponent will rebuild first. But this is the difficult part of the race, while a terran just can produce wave after wave of units, the zerg can recreate a whole army at the same time (and thats not easy). Units like mutas, hydras and queens are often overlooked when remaxing.
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Every teir 1 zerg unit being completely unworkeable without their mandatory 110 second-speed upgrade doesn't exactly help their case when you skipped them on the first pass. Hydra range is somewhat less critical, but their lack of a speed upgrade is more something you can't get than something you don't need for this case. Infestors have an analogous relationship with pathogen glands, if you were dumb enough to skip pathogen glands.
If we ignore corruptors, that leaves muta and t3. In fairness, mutas are fine to remax on if you have over 3000 gas and you can survive his army walking straight to your base the moment you reveal 30 surprise mutalisks. So basically, if he turtled and built 11 colossus.
More serious answer: we're the cost inefficient race, and there's a hard limit on how many units you can actually throw at the other army. After a certain point, you literally can't have enough roaches (for example) to engage with, or even suicide and do damage with.
Case in point: rallying 130 speedlings in the lategame can be great, but only right after your armies wipe each other out. It works b because you can produce them and get across the map all in under a minute. So. the lings are still only going to work when your opponent lacks sufficient numbers to cope with what you're sending, the only difference is in this instance, you get the bigger army by racing against his production cycle rather than against his economy.
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I often see the tip-top zergs "down-teching" and continuing ling production / baneling morphing / making roaches. The fact is though, that without baneling speed (say you skipped banelings and went infestor ling for faster hive, etc), or with 0 ranged attack upgrades (say you made no roaches and focused on fungals instead of inf. terrans) switching downward to these techs simply isn't an option. Also, the cost-effectiveness of the higher tech units is why you made them in the first place. If the game is still close, making shitty tech can get you killed, but obviously, there are times when an overcommitment to the wrong high tech units simply makes the situation unwinnable.
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Currently the strongest Zerg style is, in my ever so humble opinion, 3 base Muta with air armor +multi-expand with a back tech into a standard Roach/infestor army and if the Protoss is still somehow alive, transition into an already started air armor broodlord/infestor.
I've seen HerO and iNcontroL despair and rage after getting rammed into the ground after seeing 12 mutas one minute and 30 roaches and 8 infestors the next. Zerg has the best back tech in the game, but it's hard to pull off. Probably why it's not seen nearly as much as it should be.
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Because "lots of larva" isn't enough. If you switch into a mass ling follow up, you just used all your larva. Now you can't make high tech units again,e xcept for painfully slowly. If you have FIVE fully maxed hatcheries of larva, that's still not enough for 100 food of zerglings. If you have 7 fully maxed hatcheries (5 base + 2 macro hatch), then that's enough for getting ~115 food of zerglings. Sounds like a lot, and it is, but then you're totally out of larva.
Of course, you don't have to make only zerglings, but the point is that your idea of "lots of larva" isn't really that much when you start making mass zerglings, they soon run out. Even Nestea has games where he's floating 3k/2k and loses because he literally can't make any more units.
You CANNOT do "wave after wave" of units like zerglings because it's just not possible without having mass resources in hatcheries and mass food in queens to inject them, that's why people mix in some lings, but dont try and wear their opponent down like that.
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If you think Zergs can send "waves after waves", you may be partially right, but not always. Yes.....Zergs can send waves after waves..but guess what? Doing that is EXTREMELY expensive...
And to be honest Zerg being "able to remax faster than any other race" is not that true, in my opinion. Lets say with Ultra, they all die, so try to remax on Ultra, not only is it expensive as hell, but it takes a long time too. And by the time they all pop up, the T army is already destroying one of your hatcheries, killing around 4+ Ultras. And this impact is significant, because of course, fighting 4 or so Ultras is much easier than killing a big group of them. Its a rally point issue, I guess.
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Simple question, simple answer: Because the longer the game goes on, the more supplyefficient a composition has to be.
In detail: Zerg has 4 supplyefficient units in their arsenal: -) Broodlord (vs ground) -) Infestor -) Corruptor (vs air) -) Baneling (vs light and clumped units)
All the other units are fairly bad out of various reasons when it comes down to high supply battles. -) Zerglings are somewhat OK, if they fight a unit they are really hardcountering like stalkers, but with the melee aspect it gets very bad against most other units and splash just destroys them. -) Queens... yeah lol. Not efficient, not strong. Needs creep. Can't be mass produced fast. -) Roaches are just supplyinefficient. Your opponent pretty much has to have a mass hellion composition for them to be efficient. -) Hydralisks are a little better than roaches, but even easier to counter. Though they sometimes find a use if a Protoss has hardly any splash left. But to really make them work they still need something in front of them to tank damage, else they just get countered by basic gateway units. -) Mutalisks are somewhat OK if your opponent has really bad antiair, if there are mass stalkers or marines or thors they are just not efficient (and those are the usual units Ts and Ps will have). Also they are incredibly expensive. Switching into a reasonable amount of them at that stage of the game is close to impossible. -) Ultralisks. They are not really supplyinefficient, you just can't overmake them due to their size. And they need a lot of Infestor backup as well.
Also any time you want to attack into a position with a lot of artillery (siege tanks, Templar, Colossi), you simply will need artillery as well (Broodlords, Infestors). In my opinion you can only go something Broodlord based like Broodlord/Infestor/Corruptor or something banelingbased like Baneling/Ultra/infestor, but both of those compositions are not "remaxable", due to their superhigh costs and switching into them takes a lot of time and ressources. Ultra/Hydra has seen some experiments as well, but it has serious mobility issues and needs more upgrades, while not really having the power to break a fortified position.
But of course: if you see a hole in your opponents composition all of the named "supplyinefficient" units might be good, yet most of them get shut down by the basic backbone of Terran and Protoss compositions.
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because SC2 is quite often about the 200 vs 200 food army engagement. You need a strong army so that when they engage, you want to be winning/losing with about equal army size. Zerg cannot remax their strong tier 3 units because it takes too long and we don't have builds like PFs which can be zone out and slow down any pushes. Ghost tank marine viking is strong because of PFs are hard to crack without any tier 3 units.
Protoss especially 4 or 5 bases can remax a stronger army in a much faster rate because they can pump of gateway units so quickly along with chrono and they spawn as a group
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I think the OP is talking about a situation where it's 200/200 Ultra/ling/bling or something like that vs 200/200 Terran army. They trade evenly and Terran is down to like 120 supply where Zerg can remax instantly. Instead of remaxing on ling/bling to end the game, he remaxes on Broodlord/infestor which costs a lot more, takes more time and is not as strong without large numbers.
If that's the situation he's describing, then I agree. It's much better to have a 200/200 ling/bling army and win right there vs like a 120 Terran army than to remax on Broodlords where you only have like 160 supply and takes two minutes to make and another minute to travel across the map.
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On February 25 2012 12:13 ETisME wrote: because SC2 is quite often about the 200 vs 200 food army engagement. You need a strong army so that when they engage, you want to be winning/losing with about equal army size. Zerg cannot remax their strong tier 3 units because it takes too long and we don't have builds like PFs which can be zone out and slow down any pushes. Ghost tank marine viking is strong because of PFs are hard to crack without any tier 3 units.
Protoss especially 4 or 5 bases can remax a stronger army in a much faster rate because they can pump of gateway units so quickly along with chrono and they spawn as a group
im pretty sure spine crawlers can zone out and slow down anypushes. other than air pushes obvi
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People still get lings late game...
Roaches aren't the best in 200 vs 200 engagements because they're not very supply efficient especially in larger battles, and the z also might not have invested in the missile upgrades
Mutas cost a lot of gas and get exponentially better the more you have. If you already lost most of them throughout the game you'll probably just be better off using the gas on infestor / broodlords
On February 25 2012 04:01 Drmooose wrote: One of the biggest problems in ZvT is 3/3 marines are very good vs lings
If you're matched on upgrades that's not really the case. 3/3 marines vs 3/3 lings is the same as 0/0 marines vs 0/0 lings. Each weapon upgrade for both units adds +1 damage which is canceled by the armor upgrade.
Main thing is that marines with 3 weapon kill buildings very fast... eight 3/3 marines = 12 unupgraded marines in DPS against buildings so hatches go down quick.
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On February 29 2012 17:47 Genome852 wrote:People still get lings late game... Roaches aren't the best in 200 vs 200 engagements because they're not very supply efficient especially in larger battles, and the z also might not have invested in the missile upgrades Mutas cost a lot of gas and get exponentially better the more you have. If you already lost most of them throughout the game you'll probably just be better off using the gas on infestor / broodlords Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 04:01 Drmooose wrote: One of the biggest problems in ZvT is 3/3 marines are very good vs lings If you're matched on upgrades that's not really the case. 3/3 marines vs 3/3 lings is the same as 0/0 marines vs 0/0 lings. Each weapon upgrade for both units adds +1 damage which is canceled by the armor upgrade. Main thing is that marines with 3 weapon kill buildings very fast... eight 3/3 marines = 12 unupgraded marines in DPS against buildings so hatches go down quick. 3/3 almost always comes earlier for T because of hive timing. Lings are also purely fodder once tanks are out unless you plan on going Stephano style fast 2/2...
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