I see zergs abusing it all the time. You can get few extra drones without morphing an overlord. Zerg is the only race which can get over 200 supply because of this. Drones should be killed the moment when building finishes, not starts.
This is literally a bug tolerated since 2010. It should have been fixed long time ago.
I know that some NA semi pros still use it but thats it. That trick is not used anymore in pro level as far as i know.
Same goes for the above 200 supply trick. Its not really used anymore because like protoss (but way stronger) you could just trade over and over and over and insta rebuild everything you lost. Or you simply begin to build so many spine/spore crawlers. But building them only to crank out some 10 more units only to cancel them again is just not worth because you lose a lot of resources and mining time.
The only thing i would agree is that its basically a “ooopsie i havent build my overlord/hatch in time” mechanic to cope the potential supply block. But its neither efficient nor good.
Killing the worker at the end of the building process would be a massive nerf for zerg because the opening would be pretty delayed. But maybe you are right, maybe its a good balance suggestion.
For supply? Pfft. I’m microing my heart out with my first reaper because macro is for chumps and all he does is build a spore crawler until a queen pops. It needs the cancel tumor treatment.
Perhaps, but this is literally cheating. I don’t care if zerg gains small or massive benefits because of this - it’s still a bug. Yesterday i played a ladder game vs a guy who did it twice at the start of the game and had 16 drones instead of 14. Imagine zerg who has fastest worker production gets 2 additional drones at the start .
Now suppose there is a bug where terran can get mule without morphing CC → OC. Zergs/Protosses would literally flood forums with tears. "Terran is abusing this bug. Please fix it !!! "
That contradicts a bit with
If you dont care about the gain and just want to ban it outright, why you follow it up with an example?
Like i said: the extractor trick at the beginning doesnt give you an advantage. Its actually rather a disadvantage. You can do it to cope with it if you forgot the overlord but thats it.
You get 75% back from a cancel meaning if he builds 2 extractors and cancels them he loses about 13 minerals. Lets say the drones that do that miss one mining trip each would mean that he loses 23 minerals. Note that a worker collects like 40 minerals in a minute and the 2 workers he can build extra are like 20 seconds faster than usually. That means those 2 workers can collect like 2* 40/3= 26 minerals extra while he loses at minimum 23 minerals. Which equals more or less to 0 at the grand picture of that because you delay your overlord meaning you could build more drones quicklier after a regular overlord timing. Also its pretty good to have the second overlord rather quickly since you can scout for proxy in a zvt. a later overlord would be too late to react accordingly.
At least this is my rough estimation of the whole thing. So this is no way near your example of getting a mule without morphing the cc to oc because a mule actually gets you like 200-225 minerals.
Same thing can be said about warp in cancel from protoss btw. Is it a Bug ? Idk but it seems kinda unfair. But since toss is too gimmicky and fragile in general i would let it slip but its a very weird mechanic that you get your stuff back if the warpin pylon gets destroyed or if you cancel the warpin by changig the mode of the warp prism.
And finally: terran is the only Race that can more or less Play without workers in lategame since you have mules. Ask any pro. This is a huge huge huge Advantage in ultra lategame. Its Not a Bug thats true but this way you can have so much more Army supply than the Other races
if you werent wood tier you would know that the extractor trick loses minerals in the long run
edit
LOL are you stupid ?
If you weren’t wood tier you would know that extractor trick gives you extra income - because you get the drone FASTER It doesn’t matter that zerg loses few minerals (6 to be exact) for canceling. It is still worth the price.
And if it is so useless then why so many zergs abuse it on the ladder bird brain ? “It just loses minerals”
Mules give terran economical edge when they go mineral heavy style (mass marines) for example. If you go mech/skyterran then mules are nearly useless since they cannot mine gas. In the very late game +10 orbitals allows terran to sack all of their scvs but objectively speaking how often do you see it in pro games or on the ladder ? The answer is almost never because nobody goes mech/skyterran on the pro level, and on the ladder good z/p will kill t before they get to that state of the game.
If it would be useful, why arent top zerg pros doing that? Please give us some replays where serral or reynor doing that ^^
Why are some zergs on ladder doing that? Because pros did that trick back in the day because they thought its good. But it is not. So they stopped. But ladder zerg didnt get the memo or forgot their first overlord.
There have been plenty of tests because of that.
It basically says it doesnt give you an advantage.
Yeah but the same can be said about going over 200 supply zerg. It happens rarely because you need a bigger bank anyway. What i was trying to say is that every race has a mechanic to go “above 200 supply”. protoss has warpin mechanic meaning even you are at 200/200 you have potentially like 20 extra supply in terms of warpgates that are ready. Zerg can do extractor trick (and low tier insta remax could be counted too) and terran can sacrifice workers and doesnt build as many workers anyway. Feels pretty even i would say.
Getting back to math.
Not sure if you agree with this but if you build simultaneously 2 extractors , them morph two drones, then cancel extractors you are losing only roughly 22 minerals:
I have no clue why they don’t do it - maybe it has only potential for some cheesy/all-in play and not in the long run ? Maybe they don’t want to abuse it in official games, because people will start shouting to fix it ? Ask Serral, not me.
Regardless of all math, calculations, arguments etc. this IS A BUG whether you agree with this or not. Getting extra units above your current supply limit is obviously abuse and therefore should be fixed.
This site is no longer relevant because it applies to WOL/HOTS - 6 worker start so the data provided are inaccurate for current ladder
I see your point but its still relevant because extractor trick has been debunked for ages and the bottomline whats happening there is exactly the same in hots vs lotv. You can test it yourself. Do a testrun where you do exactly the same but one time you use gas trick and one time you dont.
But literally everyone of allthingszerg reddit is saying exactly the things as i do:
https://www.reddit.com/r/allthingszerg/comments/ozyh0e/double_extractor_trick/
Well the question is how much can those 2 extra drones mine before they would pop out in a regular overlord timing. My assumption is roughly 20 seconds because it takes like that much time to morph the overlord. Meaning the net sum is more or less 0 which is actually exactly what they calculated back then.
Yes exactly. Its good for cheese/all in or if you messed up your overlord timing. Its not worth in the long run.
Yeah but this is literally the thing. Pros actually talked about it and they said its crappy. Harstem pointed that out in one of his videos but i cant remember which one. Maybe i can ask him on stream and clip it.
We can argue that happend with nydus sh abuse but do you remember what happend with the infested terran bug? Do you know how long it took the community to figure out that it was bugged? The thing is we KNOW that the extractor trick is not worth. Thats the difference.
In Erik`s build the extractor trick is used.
So that you can build the Hatch/ Pool earlier.
but you should not forget that you have to save minerals.
14/14 → save 150m (100 for 2 drones and 50 for 2x extractor)
so i think if you play 13 ovi you have constant donen production. and you use the larvae more efficient (no stacks).
No, it is apart of game design, the extractor trick was first used in SC1 from 1998. If the developers had considered it a bug, they wouldn’t have programmed it the exact same way in SC2.
It is exactly the same as stutter stepping, mineral walking or air unit clumping. It may have been unintendedly added, but it was intentionally left in.
Gotta love this community that keeps trying to get zerg features removed by reclassifying it as a bug like they did with brood lord leash while also allowing every other leashing mechanic to stay. Extractor tricks have been in the game since sc1 and work the same with NE in wc3.
It is laughable to call this mechanic cheating when this is one of the few advantageous tradaeoffs to having the worst building mechanics out of every race in the game, as zerg is not only limited to building on creep, but also sacrifice a worker for every building they complete. This is like the equivalent of me calling scv micro on a constructing building cheating.
A double extractor trick costs 12 minerals for cancel and a few mining seconds, which on its face is a positive economic trade as workers gather approx 55 minerals/minute and you are creating your 15+16th drone about 9 seconds earlier, as well as your 14th drone 8 seconds earlier, about 26 seconds of earlier mining total = 43.333%, 43.333% of 55 = 23.8333 minerals.
23.8333 > 12 + (2/60*55)
However in practice, 38 minerals back on cancel is equivalent to 35 because the extra 3 can’t be spent on anything unless you cancel something else, so it would then be 23.8333 > 15 + (2/6055), and then if you consider that you can’t actually spend the 3.8333 minerals either it becomes very close with 20 > 15 + (2/6055) where (2/60*55) = lost mining time which could very easily be 1-2 seconds longer from human error, which would likely make double extractor trick not economical.
edit: additionally the 55minerals/minute/worker is an average and you are likely not pulling 2 workers to create your extractor immediately after they’ve dropped off minerals, so there is likely some wasted gathering seconds there.
This would concur with my own experience in early lotv where I did a bunch of tests with the double extractor trick opening vs ai, played up to 5 minutes for at least 5 times each with standard 13 ovie and double trick, every single time the 13 ovie would be slightly ahead at 5 minutes and the minerals felt less tight thoughout.
Granted the standard back then was 17 hatch with standard and double trick is on 16 hatch, so if the meta has become 16 hatch then it could be that double extrator trick 16 hatch > 13 ovie 16 hatch, but I still think that no trick 17 hatch is economically superior to any extractor trick based opening.
There is also a 15/15 extractor trick based build for zvp that has become increasingly popular, but again that’s not because its better economically but because it avoids the probe block, making it an anti-meta build.
Actually it is the opposite, you float 3 larva for a fraction of a second with 13 ovie but a perfect double extractor trick results in no larva float, it’s the one reason I keep doing it on principle, though in the long wrong it’s still worse eco wise.
Ok maybe i was wrong in regards to early game and the benefit is so small that it’s not worth doing it but still LOTS of zergs on the ladder abuse it ? I think they should read your comment then and get their facts straight.
However apart from any economic boots it is stupid that zerg can get ANY units above their current supply limit by canceling any structure - it’s not OP, just plain stupid. Imagine terran/protoss getting faster workers before depo/pylon finishes.
Terran have a 0 supply worker unit that does exactly that, so very easy to imagine.
Yeah maybe…juuuuust maybe 
Ok now lethe gets all the Credit. Woooow.
Because people do all kinds of dumb bs when they dont know anything about a topic. Just Look at harstems iodis Series where Hes speechless about the build Orders of Players below master or even below grandmasters. Some zergs Just dont expand at 2:30 and stay 2 Base until 4:30 Not because they wanted to Play aggressive they Just dont know any better. Or why are people below grandmasters floating a Ton of Money ? Because its good ? No they are Just Bad.
Its a Same with any Other field. People that arent skilled at Something do stupid stuff. For example some people would say 1+4*2 would be 10 and Not 9.
I see you fall for the engagement scams on Facebook. The smart play is to say the wrong answer with absolute confidence… Much to learn, Padawan.
I actually thought about it But i didnt commit. Im a weakling, bourne was right.
Cool, now tell us when is exact timing when terran gets his first “0 supply worker unit that does exactly that”