• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 02:11
CEST 08:11
KST 15:11
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915Serral wins Maestros of the Game 243ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7Code S Season 2 (2026): RO4 and Finals Preview12
Community News
GSTL Returns in 2026!38Weekly Cups (Aug 3-9): Protoss get shut out7RSL goes to London! 2026 Offline Finals Nov 21-2212Weekly Cups (July 27-Aug 2): SHIN's big week0SC4ALL II: Brood War - $2500 - Dec 5-611
StarCraft 2
General
GSTL Returns in 2026! Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16) SC4ALL: II Talent Announcement! Protoss AoE skill expression Weekly Cups (Aug 3-9): Protoss get shut out
Tourneys
PIG STY FESTIVAL 8.0! (13 - 23 August) Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament 2026 GSTL Announcement Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) 2026 KungFu Cup Announcement
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 538 Media Blackout The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 537 Hostile Territory Mutation # 536 Railroad Switch
Brood War
General
Best Games Kespa era BCA KCU TANGERANG Telp:08218200233 Your past clans BW General Discussion ASL22 General Discussion
Tourneys
CSLAN 4 is Coming! Small VOD Thread 2.0 Escore Tournament - Season 3 BSL LAN Party - Kraków 29-30 August - OPEN SIGNUPS
Strategy
Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Fighting Spirit mining rates Any training maps people recommend? Simple Questions, Simple Answers
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Anyone here play Quakeworld back in the day? Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread EVE Corporation General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Power Rank TL Mafia Community Thread NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance
Community
General
Russo-Ukrainian War Thread US Politics Mega-thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Artificial Intelligence Thread The Letting Off Steam Thread
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club The herO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread Series you have seen recently... [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books
Sports
MLB/Baseball 2023 Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion Formula 1 Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Simple Questions Simple Answers FPS when play League Of Legend on laptop
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
LOCKPICKING NOOB
LUCKY_NOOB
Chinese Gen Z: Between Dream…
TrAiDoS
Cathedral Of CS And NY pizza a…
FuDDx
Please support my new stand…
Peanutsc
Hello guys!
LIN1s
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 7678 users

Maximum # of Worker per se - Page 5

Forum Index > Brood War Strategy
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next All
Commander{+}
Profile Joined December 2002
United States2878 Posts
November 14 2004 10:17 GMT
#81
On November 14 2004 17:51 BigBalls wrote:


i still think you should upload that rep


Oh indeed. TL needs more consistant rep uploading =O
4 cheers for Ryan307
LOcDowN
Profile Joined February 2003
United States1015 Posts
November 14 2004 11:29 GMT
#82
On November 14 2004 16:55 Firazpiral wrote:
you need 5 drones per patch, 2 probes per patch, and 1 scv per patch


Please read the my opening topic damn it.
LOcDowN
Profile Joined February 2003
United States1015 Posts
Last Edited: 2004-11-14 11:36:51
November 14 2004 11:36 GMT
#83
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.


Thank you for sharing this with us. I appreciate the datas and your effort for taking the initiative. <3
88)WhyYouKickMyDog
Profile Joined July 2004
United States608 Posts
November 14 2004 14:24 GMT
#84
On November 14 2004 10:33 LOcDowN wrote:
Show nested quote +
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.


Don't tell me there is no optimal value, as it is mentioned many times in this thread. Several peoples here also posted the saturation limited. From all these datas the reader should have a sense of the range in term of maximum efficiency & understanding the saturation limit. Ofcourse there is an inefficient factor as the number of SCV increase. However, I do think the inefficient factor can be decreased and this is the point of this thread - to find the optimal value for mineral efficiency. You do realize by understanding one variable, in this case our optimal value, we can compare it to other higher or lower set of SCV ranging from 15 (as you stated) to 40 (as GroT stated). One variable can trigger other questions to be ask. It can also set a standard value to measure for something else.


nope, i was right. the saturation limit will change by like +-3 SCV's each time someone does testing, because theres a random element. also, the number they come up with will very rarely be useless, unless you're playing BGH and you have a REALLY long time for your SCV to bring in its 50 minerals to make it worth it. Say you had 23 SCV's and this magic number you guys come up with is 24. If the patches have say ~400 minerals left each, and you built a 24th, it would only hurt you.

So, everything I said it right, and if somehow im wrong, I was just trying to help you out anyways. Don't need to be an asshole about it (or at least it seems like you were when reading your response).
88)WhyYouKickMyDog
Profile Joined July 2004
United States608 Posts
November 14 2004 14:25 GMT
#85
o btw guys doin all that research, interesting stuff. thanks for spending time to do that and write it up for us.
Abahgus
Profile Joined June 2004
United States323 Posts
November 14 2004 17:46 GMT
#86
So between 20 and 30 I looks like most of you are saying.
Bunkers are soso good. - GroT
mr.FiSt
Profile Joined October 2004
Czech Republic97 Posts
November 14 2004 18:14 GMT
#87
NTT's making scvs is crazy
gL hF
Liquid`Drone
Profile Joined September 2002
Norway28876 Posts
November 14 2004 19:49 GMT
#88
hm I tested this years ago

I noticed a slight, but quite small difference between 2.5 probes per patch and 3 probes per patch
and 3 and 4 probes per patch gave me the *exact* same results. although 4 might give you sliiiiiiiiiightly more in the long run / depending on map, it's DEFINITELY not worth spending money on.

apart from the fact that you want to expand, and you want to maynard peons. the term maynard didn't originally mean transferring peons btw, it meant overproducing peons in one base so you could transfer them and immediately have a new expo running.
overproducing.

in pvp you don't (depending on map) want more than 2.5 peons per patch because you usually don't want to expand very fast. in pvt you can make far more (at first, but eventually you stop producing them. )

zerg is obviously completely different from terran and toss, personally I very rarely have more than 1.5 peons per patch with zerg, usually between 1 and 1.5.
Moderator
Twisted
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
Netherlands13554 Posts
November 14 2004 20:55 GMT
#89
Would be stupid to make more too, terran dropship filled with some death rape the drones really fast, and protoss with storm drop rapes drones too.

Just take another expand if you want more income -.-
Moderator
Maksim
Profile Joined October 2003
United States22 Posts
November 14 2004 22:36 GMT
#90
at 24 workers you are fully saturated and at the peak of mining rate..
I remember this from a study posted on Brattsunami's site a couple years ago
ssregitoss
Profile Joined September 2004
Turkey241 Posts
November 14 2004 23:37 GMT
#91
more workers limit the your units at the last stage
ssregitoss
Profile Joined September 2004
Turkey241 Posts
November 14 2004 23:49 GMT
#92
this was written 6 years ago by zileas (emperor of toss)

Well, consider this: Player A loses 9 probes to a reaver drop (which is a reasonable number. You can almost always get 2 scarabs into the probes, particularly if you suicide the reaver). Heres what Player A REALLY lost, assuming that they IMMEDIATELY build their probes back up no matter what, possibly ignoring their defenses (which they generally cannot do):
50n + [12 * (n + (n-1) + ... +1)], which when simplified ammounts to:
50n + 6n(n+1)
Don't worry about the math. I assure you its correct. n stands for the number of probes lost, and the first term is the cost of replacement, and the second term is the mining you lost out on. Obviously in the very very long term (mined out minerals), the second term becomes irrelevant, but since we ALL know 1000 minerals now is FAR better than 1000 minerals 25 minutes from now, the second term IS very important, especially since you usually only kill probes on somewhat fresh mineral batches.

Just as a reference, I thought I'd just calculate a few sample loss numbers. Losing one probe is 62 minerals; 62 minerals per probe
Losing five probes is 480 minerals;95 minerals per probe
Losing 9 probes is 990 minerals; 110 minerals per probe
Losing 10 probes is 1160 minerals; 116 minerals per probe
LordOfDabu
Profile Blog Joined December 2003
United States394 Posts
November 15 2004 00:35 GMT
#93
The math Zileas is using must be assuming low probe numbers, as it doesn't account for any waiting time for mining (he's assuming that a probe can mine 1.5 times before another probe is built).
Think fast. Click faster.
BigBalls
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
United States5354 Posts
November 15 2004 07:53 GMT
#94
From the looks of it, he is assuming that a probe mines 12 minerals in the time it takes to build another probe

dabu got it before me
if you guys could use google and post direct links to the maphacks here it would be greatly appreciated. - Nazgul
Physician *
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
United States4146 Posts
November 15 2004 08:05 GMT
#95
This is just a guideline

~ because efficiency will ultimately depend on ur survival ~ perfect economy can mean death. The balance of economy/unit production can only be achieved with a lot of experience and very thorough scouting.

Terran 3 workers/patch >> bump to 3.5-4/patch when planning expo.
Toss 2.5 workers/patch >> bump to 3/patch when planning expo.
Zerg 1.5 workers/patch >> bump to 2.5/patch when planning expo.

Terran and Toss are similar, making non stop workers one by one is usually done, worker production is only halted when mass units is a priority.

Zerg is perhaps the most critical race in economy/unit production balance ~ a little mistake here usually costs u the game ~ specially given the fact that more units are needed early on that other races. Zerg needs less workers per patch always than the other 2 races.

Hope it was of help.

~ Physician

"I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities...."
Beast_Bg
Profile Joined October 2002
Bulgaria1623 Posts
November 15 2004 10:26 GMT
#96
Very funny how Zileas's points sounds pretty useful to me after 6 years...I guess this guy deserves his legend status.
MadFrog : In my opinion, the biggest reason why WC3 is dying is because it is not such a great game as Brood War is.
Jesus Christ
Profile Joined October 2004
United States35 Posts
November 15 2004 11:00 GMT
#97
At 17 minutes i usually have around 120 probes
Giggle
Allko
Profile Joined February 2004
China297 Posts
November 15 2004 12:57 GMT
#98
i heard of some gosu said: 2*n(the block of minerals) +n/2
Stop Playing God
BigBalls
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
United States5354 Posts
November 15 2004 13:22 GMT
#99
http://www.wgtour.com/match.php?id=411580&datab=broodwar

perfect example. he made 110 probes, i made 58. UNNECESSARY
if you guys could use google and post direct links to the maphacks here it would be greatly appreciated. - Nazgul
yeehaw
Profile Joined October 2004
San Marino888 Posts
November 15 2004 14:18 GMT
#100
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.


Just a point, I think mining out the location is inaccurate. Several times I have mineral patches mined out, while there are still some with almost 100 minerals. This is probably due to the mining algorithm. I suggest you try editing mineral values or do the test on BGH and see if there is a difference.
G_G
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
IPSL
16:00
CSLAN Day 1
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
Nina 155
StarCraft: Brood War
Pusan 202
Bale 44
Dota 2
The International57591
singsing2553
Fuzer 288
NeuroSwarm155
League of Legends
JimRising 657
Counter-Strike
summit1g8717
Other Games
WinterStarcraft580
m0e_tv388
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick660
BasetradeTV279
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• practicex 41
• intothetv
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• Azhi_Dahaki49
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• C_a_k_e 2148
• lizZardDota263
League of Legends
• Rush1679
Upcoming Events
Sparkling Tuna Cup
3h 50m
PiG Sty Festival
5h 50m
Maru vs Shameless
Reynor vs TriGGeR
IPSL
9h 50m
OSC
17h 50m
Afreeca Starleague
1d 3h
Rush vs Hm
Bisu vs Shuttle
WardiTV Weekly
1d 4h
The Patches Monday
1d 9h
Afreeca Starleague
2 days
Sharp vs Shinee
Action vs Shine
PiGosaur Cup
2 days
Replay Cast
3 days
[ Show More ]
Afreeca Starleague
3 days
BeSt vs Paralyze
Jaedong vs Speed
Kung Fu Cup
3 days
The PondCast
4 days
KCM Race Survival
4 days
Replay Cast
4 days
PiG Sty Festival
5 days
CranKy Ducklings
6 days
PiG Sty Festival
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Escore Tournament S3: W7
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
Eternal Conflict S2 Finale

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
Acropolis #5
CSLAN 4
RSL Revival: Season 6
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
META DYMY #4
Esports World Cup 2026
Esports World Cup 2026: LCQ
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026

Upcoming

ASL Season 22
CSL Season 22: Qualifier 1
Escore Tournament S3: W8
CSL Season 22: Qualifier 2
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
Acropolis #5 - TRS
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
HSC XXX
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #5
BLAST Open Fall 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.