was studying saturation on the new Odyssey's fastest map mineral stack:
15 minutes, normal game speed (i always test on normal game speed to avoid stupid fractions like 12.5373 seconds to make 1 probe)
6 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 6224 minerals in 15 minutes 7 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 7232 minerals (+1008 increase) 8 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8136 minerals (+904 increase) 9 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8528 minerals (+392 increase) 10 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8744 minerals (+216 increase) 11 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8896 minerals (+152 increase) 12 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 9040 minerals (+144 increase)
a whole lotta work just to find out that you basically should only saturate 1 per patch xD
well the main value comes from mining "safe" minerals so u can out macro (out expo/gain more map control etc) ur oppo
also u cant really babysit ur mins all game to check and see how many workers u have exactly, ppl are pulling workers off all the time so its better to be safe and over saturate so u dont sandbag ur eco without realizing that u dont have enough workers mining while ur doing other stuff
12 workers seems like a good middle ground tho for z at least, u can just box ur main base workers (when youre double checking ur mining during ingame down time) and if u see 12 selected u go back to other stuff, basically its a quick way to confirm ur mining is fine without wasting too much time counting workers on ur command card etc.
How much minerals does a drone mine on average on a normal base for comparison? If it is less than the difference between 8 and 9 drones, it would be more efficient to have more than 1 per patch at that main.
On July 29 2026 15:52 Cryoc wrote: How much minerals does a drone mine on average on a normal base for comparison? If it is less than the difference between 8 and 9 drones, it would be more efficient to have more than 1 per patch at that main.
i have tested this before; but for 20 minutes (using one of the FS mains that have 9 minerals, but this was before 1.4 where the mineral placement has been optimized) 20 min 7584 9 drones 20 min 8080 10 drones (+496) 20 min 8568 11 drones (+488) 20 min 9048 12 drones (+480) 20 min 9528 13 drones (+480) 20 min 9936 14 drones (+408) 20 min 10336 15 drones (+400) 20 min 10696 16 drones (+360) 20 min 10960 17 drones (+264)
converted to 15 minutes by multiplying the values by 15, then dividing by 20 15 min 5688 9 drones 15 min 6060 10 drones (+372) 15 min 6426 11 drones (+366) 15 min 6786 12 drones (+360) 15 min 7146 13 drones (+360) 15 min 7452 14 drones (+306) 15 min 7752 15 drones (+300) 15 min 8022 16 drones (+270) 15 min 8220 17 drones (+198)
so oversaturating the natural would yield greater benefit than oversaturing the main by anything above 9 drones on 8 minerals... a bit different though since naturals have 7 minerals rather than 9, and one of odyssey's natural minerals only has 500 minerals
maybe i'll test naturals one day, but i feel like the gains on oversaturating the natural would most likely be greater than the gains on oversaturating the mineral stack past 9/8, up until 180% saturation on the natural
On July 29 2026 07:06 TT1 wrote: well the main value comes from mining "safe" minerals so u can out macro (out expo/gain more map control etc) ur oppo
also u cant really babysit ur mins all game to check and see how many workers u have exactly, ppl are pulling workers off all the time so its better to be safe and over saturate so u dont sandbag ur eco without realizing that u dont have enough workers mining while ur doing other stuff
12 workers seems like a good middle ground tho for z at least, u can just box ur main base workers (when youre double checking ur mining during ingame down time) and if u see 12 selected u go back to other stuff, basically its a quick way to confirm ur mining is fine without wasting too much time counting workers on ur command card etc.
what kind of a zerg can't eyeball 9 drones instantly? it's second nature to me to see if it's 8, 9 or 10
9 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8528 minerals (+392 increase) 10 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8744 minerals (+216 increase) 11 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8896 minerals (+152 increase) 12 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 9040 minerals (+144 increase)
incremental ROI. (1 extra drone for each step) 684% 330% 204% 188%
alternative scenario: 1 drone production normal base 67.1 per minute (Mining)
extra benefit per minute by incremental worker 9 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8528 minerals (+392 increase)/15 => 26 10 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8744 minerals (+216 increase)/15 => 14.4 11 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 8896 minerals (+152 increase)/15 => 10 12 drones on 8 mineral stacks: 9040 minerals (+144 increase)/15 => 9.6
total extra benefit per minute 1d -> 392 / 15 = 26 (2 min recover investment) 2d ->608 / 15 = 40.5 (2,4 min) 3d -> 760 / 15 = 50.6 (2,9 min) 4d -> 904 / 15 = 60.2 (3,3 min)
Simple implications:
(a) 1 extra drone ROI < build drone and send to exp for mining. (b) keep always 8 drones no more.
from (a)+(b) 9 hat exp is good.
i would prefer to gas instead of low ROI drone, but since exp has 7 minerals the main goal is to get third exp as fast as possible, in that case, you can stop gas in order to mine exp to get fast third or mix something in that way...
the baseline mining speed is between 101 frames and 110 frames, but average is close to 104 on FASTEST game speed each frame is 42 ms so each trip is 4.368s
that's 13.7 trips per minute or 110 minerals per minute
a boosted drone does 150 frames on a normal map, or 76.2 minerals per minute
the odyssey mineral mining is usually 44% faster than your fastest patch or 83% faster than the 10th slowest patch (on some maps)
this data says:
1 extra drone: 4.8% increase 2 extra drones: 4.8% + 2.7% increase 3 extra rones: 4.8% + 2.7% + 1.8% increase
so an extra drone on fastest speed should bring in something like 5.2 minerals per minute
On July 29 2026 07:06 TT1 wrote: well the main value comes from mining "safe" minerals so u can out macro (out expo/gain more map control etc) ur oppo
also u cant really babysit ur mins all game to check and see how many workers u have exactly, ppl are pulling workers off all the time so its better to be safe and over saturate so u dont sandbag ur eco without realizing that u dont have enough workers mining while ur doing other stuff
12 workers seems like a good middle ground tho for z at least, u can just box ur main base workers (when youre double checking ur mining during ingame down time) and if u see 12 selected u go back to other stuff, basically its a quick way to confirm ur mining is fine without wasting too much time counting workers on ur command card etc.
what kind of a zerg can't eyeball 9 drones instantly? it's second nature to me to see if it's 8, 9 or 10
eyeballing workers on a stacked min patch?? u have xray vision????
On July 29 2026 07:06 TT1 wrote: well the main value comes from mining "safe" minerals so u can out macro (out expo/gain more map control etc) ur oppo
also u cant really babysit ur mins all game to check and see how many workers u have exactly, ppl are pulling workers off all the time so its better to be safe and over saturate so u dont sandbag ur eco without realizing that u dont have enough workers mining while ur doing other stuff
12 workers seems like a good middle ground tho for z at least, u can just box ur main base workers (when youre double checking ur mining during ingame down time) and if u see 12 selected u go back to other stuff, basically its a quick way to confirm ur mining is fine without wasting too much time counting workers on ur command card etc.
what kind of a zerg can't eyeball 9 drones instantly? it's second nature to me to see if it's 8, 9 or 10
eyeballing workers on a stacked min patch?? u have xray vision????
ever heard of box selecting? Just look if it's a full stack or one missing, two missing, three missing or four. Because they are in pairs you can only make a mistake between 8 and 10, the other counts are VERY easy to tell
thats why i said "ppl are pulling workers off all the time so its better to be safe and over saturate so u dont sandbag ur eco without realizing that u dont have enough workers mining while ur doing other stuff", reason being is ur not gonna box ur workers when action picks up every single time u build something with ur main base drones, especially as the game goes on longer and longer
so u oversaturate in the stage of the game when action is low, when action picks up u can just make buildings without thinking about checking ur saturation in main, if u really wanna do 1 per patch then u should have a hard rule set that only lets u make buildings with drones from ur nat (cus the eco hit once u drop below 1 per patch on the stacked mins is a lot), but again these arent things that ull remember to do once action picks up ingame
its the same logic for finishing ur worker saturation asap so when action picks up ur not producing workers anymore when ur attention should be on map control/moving army etc., for t/p if ur producing workers actively and sending them to mine during that stage then thats a mistake, it takes up too much attention
same logic for z in the scenario were talking about, its mainly about prioritizing more important things, BW rewards logic way more than math
problem is u lack logic, same reason why u argue about spending 150 extra mins for something that ull end up getting more eco out of and also blocks potential mistakes, but then ull end up playing the game and waste 100k mins/100k gas for 20 years ^^
On August 13 2026 02:20 TT1 wrote: problem is u lack logic, same reason why u argue about spending 150 extra mins for something that ull end up getting more eco out of and also blocks potential mistakes, but then ull end up playing the game and waste 100k mins/100k gas for 20 years ^^
You haven't pointed out any problems with my logic
you'd rather I miss out on 1000+ minerals so that I keep 12 drones in the main instead of just making buildings in the nat and not touching the 8 drones
if you take drones off the stack you have WAIT for the return cargo button to show up or you'll miss out on 8 minerals
if you just grab a drone that just dropped off a mineral from the nat you are guaranteed not to lose 8 minerals
Sorry I have a noob question, does the stacked minerals on Odyssey contain the same number of maximum minerals? Or if you put in more probes you get more minerals out of it total (like a cheater's mineral patch, in a sense).
If it contains the same number of max minerals, how much is it?
On August 16 2026 01:40 namkraft wrote: Sorry I have a noob question, does the stacked minerals on Odyssey contain the same number of maximum minerals? Or if you put in more probes you get more minerals out of it total (like a cheater's mineral patch, in a sense).
If it contains the same number of max minerals, how much is it?
currently there are only 8 stacked minerals in the patch
first version had 10, which was nerfed to 9, nerfed again to 8
So is it actually worth going 8 hatch instead of 9 hatch?
9th drone has slower mining rates and sets you back for 2 minutes before it's actually useful. So 8 hatch might get you your hatch up ~5 sec earlier. At the cost of mining with 7 drones for a few seconds as well, but in return giving access to more larva and possibly better timings.
because the drones mine faster, it's less than 5 seconds difference
3-4 seconds earlier, and the third hatch comes down a bit later too (but less than 3-4 seconds later so you still get a benefit)
overall, it would be better if Protoss went for two gate a lot because having more lings against it early is actually more important than how many drones you have
EPT
Mining)
