EPTOn January 10 2010 02:09 lolaloc wrote:
How do I know if I have 24 workers on my mineral line?
How do I know if I have 24 workers on my mineral line?
Learn to count to 24?
Cost Theory and No. of Workers in a Game - Page 2
| Forum Index > BW General |
|
ghostWriter
United States3302 Posts
Learn to count to 24? | ||
|
vishrut
United States567 Posts
On January 08 2010 22:22 Zona wrote: I expect so. By taking into account worker positioning and how long a mineral patch has until it is free for mining by another worker, there should be minimal wandering time. It's something I have been planning to code once I have some free time. It would be useless to try to do that because the BWAPI checks what to do every frame. I am assuming it takes a lot of instructions to do this and that the computer has to do this for every frame.Most computers will not be fast enough and the game will start to lag. | ||
|
Wurzelbrumpft
Germany471 Posts
lol dont tell me you actually count how many workers you make | ||
|
Severedevil
United States4839 Posts
On January 10 2010 04:13 Wurzelbrumpft wrote: lol dont tell me you actually count how many workers you make I don't, but it's not actually a hard thing to do. Just keep a running tally in your head, and increment it every time you build a worker. I'm gonna do that from now on. | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
The conclusion is that 24 workers on each base with 8/9 patches of minerals is the best number For 9 mineral patch bases this is incorrect. 24 will saturate an 8 patch base but will have bad wandering on a 9 patch base. You need 27 to saturate a 9 mineral patch base and this can take time to stop wandering, so more may be better in a real game situation. | ||
|
naonao
United States847 Posts
| ||
|
jodogohoo
Canada2533 Posts
On January 27 2010 07:58 naonao wrote: Also continually building workers is not just to saturate the base itself, it is also to have excess prepared for when you expand so that you can quickly have your new expansion saturated. truth | ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
On January 27 2010 07:55 ix wrote: For 9 mineral patch bases this is incorrect. 24 will saturate an 8 patch base but will have bad wandering on a 9 patch base. You need 27 to saturate a 9 mineral patch base and this can take time to stop wandering, so more may be better in a real game situation. That's not true - they still wander. If the AI was better, and they waited properly, 2 scvs/patch would be the maximum needed. Even with 4+, the amount of money they bring in still increases (although it increases so slowly that it is not worth the investment). | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
| ||
|
StRyKeR
United States1739 Posts
On January 27 2010 08:15 lMPERVlOUS wrote: That's not true - they still wander. If the AI was better, and they waited properly, 2 scvs/patch would be the maximum needed. Even with 4+, the amount of money they bring in still increases (although it increases so slowly that it is not worth the investment). With 4+, there is no improvement, assuming optimal waiting and "regular" mineral-hatchery setup, for the same reason that putting more than 4 workers on a gas doesn't help. Basically, a mineral can only be "ripped" off by a single worker at a time. If a mineral was constantly being ripped off with no rest in between, no amount of workers would increase production. You could derive a theoretical "best mining speed possible" with this metric. | ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
On January 27 2010 08:39 StRyKeR wrote: With 4+, there is no improvement, assuming optimal waiting and "regular" mineral-hatchery setup, for the same reason that putting more than 4 workers on a gas doesn't help. Basically, a mineral can only be "ripped" off by a single worker at a time. If a mineral was constantly being ripped off with no rest in between, no amount of workers would increase production. You could derive a theoretical "best mining speed possible" with this metric. Go and try it yourself and see. Then, make your own map, where there is 1 patch, and have 3 scv's mine it (since there is no wander, they will mine at max efficiency). Calculate the rate that the minerals are mined. Multiply that by 9 (or whatever number of patches there were that you were testing on), and if they don't equal each other, then there is still going to be an increase with additional workers. They wander in stupid ways, making it inefficient to try to mine out as fast as possible. EDIT - I just ran a test on it. It's not completely conclusive, however, they were almost identical rates, with a very, very small difference. 36 SCV's, mining 9 patches, at one base, with the setup of the 12 o'clock base on Destination. 3 SCV's, mining 1 patch, directly above the CC, at another base. I gave them 7 minutes to stabilize, then I set the mineral patches back to the original 1500 per patch. There were still 64 minerals left at the first base, when the second base ran out. I paused the second that the second base finished returning ALL of the minerals, and I counted the resources left in the crystals, excluding any that were in the hands of the workers. The difference is small, but even with 4 patches, it does not mine as fast as possible. Basically, the best-case scenario is that it is still 64 minerals slower than the fastest possible rate of mining. I used 3 on a single patch to identify the fastest rate that the minerals can be mined. There was no wandering at all. 4 per patch still had some wandering. Not much, but enough to prevent it from being an ideal situation. | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
Minerals Gathered: 12,864 Per min: 1,286.4 Per patch per min: 142.9 So my per patch, per min figure earlier was a little low or this happened to come out a little high, it's between 140 and 143 minerals per patch per min. Note how much higher this figure is than the usual values given by, for example the Chinese test, because these are using workers still in wander mode. Wander can still continue with higher worker counts, it's something I'll need to investigate. These will get somewhat lower than optimal values of mineral return for a number of reasons, wander hurts gathering in interesting ways. | ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
On January 27 2010 09:45 ix wrote: It's not just theoretical, it's (nearly) achievable. I just did my first 10 minute test after editing the Python 12 o'clock mineral pattern to the maximum value and got these results, starting the test after the 27 workers were completely stable, using APMLive's clock and start/stopping by hand (so small errors) with the workers already being in motion when the test starts (yes, some minerals en route to be delivered, the test was 10 mins so this should even out with those about to be delivered when it ends). Minerals Gathered: 12,864 Per min: 1,286.4 Per patch per min: 142.9 So my per patch, per min figure earlier was a little low. Note how much higher this figure is than the usual values given by, for example the Chinese test, because these are using workers still in wander mode. Wander can still continue with higher worker counts, it's something I'll need to investigate. These will get somewhat lower than optimal values of mineral return for a number of reasons, wander hurts gathering in interesting ways. They could be using a different timing technique than you, which would throw any comparison out the window..... | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
| ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
EDIT - just tested. 24 workers on 9 patches (setup identical to 12 o'clock on Destination) is 81% of ideal efficiency. 36 workers is just barely under 100% efficient (although close enough that it can be rounded). 36 workers costs a lot more than 24, is it worth the extra 19% efficiency? It costs roughly 30% more to get a 19% increase in mining rate..... Not worth it..... | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
Probes Minerals/min % of Max (avg) 27 (wander) 1080-1180 87.8% 27 (stable) 1286 100% It's too time consuming to do a complete list, perhaps at somepoint. I'll write a post about wandering though as that's more interesting. The Chinese result for 27 workers, presumably in wander mode (not sure which race, I always use probes as I play P) was 1056 so as you can see wander is significantly damaging and somewhat variable. I've manged to get 26 workers stable and in theory 25 or 24 may be possible to max out 9 minerals but I think you'd need the AI to do the micro to set it up, it will never settle by itself from what I've seen. The idea of efficiency and payback time doesn't seem relevant to any kind of reality in Starcraft (unless you can give an example?) for P and T at least. Z's economy is totally different obviously. You're always going to be tactically limited by what is defendable and this dictates how many expansions you take for P and T. You're either powering up units, teching or should be heading toward maximum economy as quickly as possible as far as I see it. It's worth investigating the correct transfer numbers and overproduction to achieve this of course. Maxing out your 9 mineral main and two 7 mineral gas expos requires a total worker count of 57 so I don't think food count is all that important either (better player correct me?). Workers take 12.6 seconds each so 2 or 3 nexuses can produce this is 6 and four minutes. Each worker pays for itself in about one minute, why would you ever choose not to max out? | ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
| ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
7 mineral naturals are noticeably less bad for wandering and will quickly max out at 3 workers per patch. Wander seems to set in when I try to optimize with 3x -1. 2.5 per patch is very definitely costing you minerals here. Perfect micro would max out a normal natural at around 24 or 25 workers, depending on the exact mineral placement (2 or 3 2 worker patches). Wander is avoidable, time or slight over production of workers will make them settle down at a speed that matters at sufficient probe numbers. 22 probes (the 1.5 value people tend to recommend) gather around 1020 minerals per minute, 288 less than 27 stable probes but not much less than unstable ones so the critical thing is achieving stability. The conditions for this I am still figuring out. | ||
|
Impervious
Canada4217 Posts
On those patches where it is only 3 squares away, it only takes 2 to max it..... Lets say there is 3 patches where this happens, out of the 9..... That is 6 workers. Now, lets also assume that you can micro 5 workers to cover 2 nearby patches that are not able to be mined by 2 workers/patch. 6 patches, times 5 workers/2 patches = 15 Note that I am not assuming that it could actually be something like 5 workers able to mine 3 patches at peak efficiency..... Add that up - 21 workers to cover 9 patches, at maximum. It can probably be done with 20, and if the resources were placed in a way to be friendly to mining (not fastest, but 3 squares away), then it would take only 18. Both of those is less than the 24 or 25 you are suggesting..... I don't get where your numbers are coming from..... EDIT - just ran it. 2 workers, on an ideal patch, is just as efficient as 3 workers on an ideal or non-ideal patch..... But, through trial and error, as well as studies for how the workers behave over the course of time, it's found that mid 20's is the ideal number - the greatest return for the investment. Above that is okay, as long as it is planned for an expansion. Below that is also okay, as long as there is some kind of all-in attack being planned, because the extra workers would not make their cost back by the time the game should be over, or at least the damage done. Also, since Zerg is gas-heavy, they don't need as much minerals, and, as such, less drones is actually ideal for them..... | ||
|
ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
I said where my numbers are coming from, you don't seem to read my posts properly. Most patches require 3 workers to saturate it. 2 or possibly 3 patches per natural only require 2, therefore it might be possible to max it out with 3 * 7 + 2 * 2 = 25 or 3 * 6 + 3 * 2 = 24 workers. In reality this seems impossible, the AI might be able to do it or someone determined playing at Slowest speed using control groups to set them up. Patches that are 3 squares away but not in a straight line are further away as units do not move faster on diagonals and it's 1.6 times further (for each diagonal square), plus the AI starts to screw up the path for some of them. Mid-20s is a terrible number as wander is at its worst. The perceived wisdom is 22 and in my tests this is shown to be a good number because wander becomes much worse after 22. Now, lets also assume that you can micro 5 workers to cover 2 nearby patches that are not able to be mined by 2 workers/patch. 6 patches, times 5 workers/2 patches = 15 That's quite a clever idea and would be worth trying for the AI people (we really need an AI guy to settle this debate 100% in any case). I don't know if the 5th worker could cover the missed time by the other two probes, would need to know the exact timings. This might be capable of saturating with computer micro, my number is the number of probes that can potentially be stable and maxed if it were possible to get them into the stable state so it might be humanly achievable if there's a clever technique of some kind. I mean once you start them going they require no intervention. | ||
| ||
