Maximum # of Worker per se - Page 4

On November 14 2004 07:35 Fedaykin wrote:

NTT once gave me that advice

On November 14 2004 08:04 88)WhyYouKickMyDog wrote:
LoCDowN there is no right answer. its all situational, like everything else in starcraft. if your asking for the number of SCV's required to mine the fastest out of like a 8 patch mineral field, its INFINITE, because just by random chance, if you have 200/200 SCV's mining it, give it a few years of leaving SC running, and im sure for one split second, all the workers looking for a patch will be on the wrong side, and you wont be gathering from that one patch.

So, there IS NO ANSWER to your question, just use common sense. you build SCV's when you think the money is best spent investing in one. Take into account things like how many SCV's you already have mining, how many bases you have, and if spending the 50 mins on something other than an SCV would benefit you more than spending on an SCV.

The only way to learn this is to play a good deal, and think about why you're doing it.

A better question than yours would be "How much faster does 20 SCV mine than 15 SCV on a 8 patch mineral field?" or something like that, so your gauging of whether the new SCV is a good investment is more accurate. But until you have the other basic knowledge that you get from playing and understanding the game, thats kinda worthless information.

On November 13 2004 15:43 BigBalls wrote:
Then someone test it.

Ive been wanting to do this for a long time but never got around to it.

Ive been thinking that my macro is stronger midgame than almost all other players because i play with a low amount of workers

if an optimal amount of workers per base could be found, then people could perhaps save hundreds of minerals that would be better spent on other things

On November 13 2004 15:52 SuNDAnce wrote:
Pros don't count their workers (at least T and P pros).They just feel if they have enough workers.You can see in FP vods where zerg player count drones at early stage of game.He want only ensure if he have at least 12 drones per base (when he exp to his nat).After that stage of game there are only two degrees for them : thy have enough drones in that particular base or the dont have enough drones in that base.That's how i see it.

On November 13 2004 16:49 IntoTheWow wrote:
Depends in you strat. Some people play TvT with little scv count so they get more money early game, have a faster fact, etc. Depends on your scouting. If you talk about non-stop producing game? i would go for all i can afford as your opponents tend to harras you mineral line (lurk drop or storm drop as an example)

I think zerg is the race in which you actually have to specifically measure your drone count.

On November 13 2004 19:23 Day[9] wrote:
The saturation limit is about 36

What i mean by that is that anymore workers than 36 won't increase the rate of money collection

I can work out the set of integrals for it if you REALLY REALLY wanted to ;p
takes a while but, hey, i am a serious friggin nerd ;P

On November 14 2004 13:25 LordOfDabu wrote:
So I did a little test on Lost Temple. I basically edited the map and added the following two triggers:

Always: Create x Protoss Probe
Player 1 Accumulates 12000 [that's 8 x 1500, the amount at one starting location] ]ore: End scenario in victory

I then tried various values of x and sent all probes to mine. When the scenario ended I took note of how long it took to mine out the location. I first did 20-25 and then 30 and 35. All of these tests were done at the 9 spot.

Hopefully my chart will come out okay.

Number of Probes / Time taken to mine / Minerals/min / Cost of probes / Money gained

20 14:05 852 1000 11000
21 13:20 900 1050 10950
22 12:52 933 1100 10900
23 11:54 1008 1150 10850
24 11:13 1070 1200 10800
25 11:17 1064 1250 10750
30 11:00 1090 1500 10500
35 11:02 1088 1750 10250

Some things of note is that it sometimes took longer with more probes: I assume this is due to the randomness and/or movement of the probe AI (such as when a probe arrived at a location already being mined). It looks like the desired number of probes is 24, which is surprisingly exactly 3x the number of mineral patches.

I'll probably rerun the test again later to verify that the times I get are close, as well as with scvs and drones.

On November 14 2004 15:19 worst.player wrote:
day, whip out those integrals. pvp zvz tvt would be interesting to see what the optimal value of workers is (of course different for different strats).

pvt pvz etc it's non-stop probes if you have strong macro.

On November 14 2004 16:55 Firazpiral wrote:
you need 5 drones per patch, 2 probes per patch, and 1 scv per patch

On November 13 2004 20:36 GroT wrote:
I tested a small, specific part of this months ago, because i used bamboo nearly every game and I very oftne found myself in the situation where you have about 40 SCV and only a single mineral field to mine from.

Now, what I rnoted about those tests is that 40 SCV still mine (considerably) faster than 30 SCV, even if they are all on one mineral field and it looks like it's just overburdouned with workers . These numbers are exact, it was 40 workers vs 30 workers.


Now, let me ask you this: when will you ever have 40 scvs on each of your expansions? not too often huh?that's where the "never stop worker production" theory comes from

Now let me ask you this. If you have 4 mining bases and you want to mine with as close to optimal efficiency as possible (i say as possible because maybe 50 SCV mine even faster, I don't know), you need 160 SCV's. That leaves you 40 supply for units when you are maxed out. This look good? no?

"Never stop workers" <- bull shit


as to when you actually should stop workers, I quite simply don't know. However, my long TvP games vs BigBalls have convinced me that:

a) I build too many scvs late game
b) BigBals is closer to the right amount


does bigballs make too few or could he be better with even less? We don't know (yet)