I’ve been thinking about this dynamic…
On one side, an Overlord and Queen are cheaper than a Hatchery and produce more larva in a burst whereas a new hatchery costs 50 more minerals, gives less supply and produces less larva.
Now this is where I have a unique thought. The constant generation of larva in the early game is much more beneficial than Inject’s burst of larva because of consistent production giving money through mining time whereas you do not gain the same amount of minerals as fast when you wait for inject to finish to get your additional drones on less bases.
Further more, because of the consistent economics of having another hatchery over a queen early game, it snowballs into more hatcheries which means more queens, faster without hurting your drone count at all.
Now I don’t think macro hatcheries are a good idea, they’er bad. But if you take a base with resources fast instead of building a queen, provided you can keep Protoss busy, the payoff is much, muuuuch greater than the benefits of using inject…only during the early game, however.
Thoughts? Opinions?
quite risky in standard ecofocused openings and other method than 12 pool i think far to risky since toss will have walls in place to repel zergling shenanigans and i think 3gate+robo or 4gate with an proxy will break that zerg to easily since you have delayed queens that much the 3rd is hardly connected to to the rest o the zerg cluster while toss i able to bring forth his army due to on zergside warpins on the map
edit macro hatches are good in cases of a stable 50+ drone economy since the units made from those hatches+macro hatch aren’t scattered all over the map, similar to terran production when you have the gross off production buildings on main plateau
I just watch a macro game of Dark vs Stat, the 4th match between them on GSL Super Tournament, which the map is Acropolis.
Dark placed his natural expansion at 0:48, where he was 15/22 after placing the hatchery. He began his extractor at 1:12, where was 17/22. Pool began at 1:25, 16/22. He sent a drone to 3rd, or 2nd expansion at 1:33, 19/22. The drone arrived at 1:45 and begin to build the 3rd hatchery.
Natural expansion finished at 1:59, 20/28. Pool finished at 2:01, then a queen and 2 zerglings begin to build immediately, 23/28. Second queen began to build from expansion at 2:13, 26/28. The third overlord began at 2:19, 26/28. Zergling speed began at 2:49, 33/36. Third queen began one or two seconds earlier, then the 3rd hatchery finished at 2:57, 36/42. 4th queen at 2:59, 38/42, then another overlord at 3:02.
Right now he had 26 drones, another 3 in eggs, 4 queens and 2 zerglings, 38/42 supply.
They’ve reduced the role of the queen quite substantially. Inject only makes 4 larvae. Transfuse is nerfed. Creep spread is nerfed. Making a hatchery gives 33% more larvae, supply and creep spread. It is better to make hatcheries now than it is to make queens. This is why Zergs in Korea take a third instead of queuing up 2 queens as soon as their pool finishes. You need that pool timing because you need zergling speed in time to deal with hellions/adepts, but you certainly don’t get it to make fast queens. RIP the pool first opener and spanishiwa expand.
One minor correction, it’s 3 larva, not 4. Not that Queens are bad, they’re great. It’s just better to get a Hatchery early on because it enables superior macro play…at least imo.