The biggest question I have is is there any difference between a 1(2) and a 2(1) because honestly the fact that the 2(1) jumps so much higher than the 1(1) is blowing my mind. Is this the same rate that a 1(2) would have though? It could possibly change my entire starting strategy!

eLy

United States1 Post

May 01 2010 01:16 GMT

#163

I think gas consuption needs to be balanced early game by race. Terran seems to be very "eco-friendly" as far as this goes, whereas zerg requires a much more vasp/min ratio.

Fu-Fo-

Croatia7 Posts

May 01 2010 16:00 GMT

#164

U should work for newspaper. Or like Randy in SP. Nice article, but too much information and effort to have little point in the end.

Tiptup

United States133 Posts

May 01 2010 22:56 GMT

#165

Very informative analysis. Till now I had only two starting options for gas. Either 3 on 1 or 6 on 2. Now, however, I might go with 2 on 1 or 5 on 2 if gas isn't desperately needed.

Knollercoaster

United States6 Posts

May 02 2010 00:00 GMT

#166

From what I have seen in the game, the rate at which you collect gas still works pretty well with various build orders.

rmolin88

United States11 Posts

May 02 2010 03:05 GMT

#167

super hot article. that really shows how dedicated the starcraft fans are!!!! :D

tjoonz

United States11 Posts

May 02 2010 18:21 GMT

#168

i'm glad someone actually did this! thanks for going through this trouble

TriniMasta

United States1323 Posts

May 03 2010 01:11 GMT

#169

wow nice job, you definitely used your effort into this

NinetyWhon

United States20 Posts

May 03 2010 16:28 GMT

#170

--- Nuked ---

Beakyboo

United States485 Posts

May 04 2010 08:35 GMT

#171

Someone should doublecheck me on this because if it's true then I'm honestly surprised that this data's gone this long undisputed. I ran a bunch of tests on blistering sands comparing 2 drones to 3 on an extractor and I found the 3rd drone to be just about as valuable as the 2nd. The 3 drones mined ~155gas/minute (2.58/s) and the 2 drones mined ~105gas/minute (1.75/s). This is considerably different than OP's data: 3(1) | 2.00 gas/second and 2(1) | 1.50 gas/second.

I ran the test a few times for 5 minutes each, but that should be accurate enough. I'm not sure if the discrepancy with OP is because of the geyser location, human error or some other unknown factor, but considering how a lot of the different trials in OP don't add up correctly, I'd say the data's a bit questionable. If you watch 3 drones mine a geyser, the wait period is practically nonexistant so I'm a little skeptical.

Old Sagat

United States42 Posts

May 04 2010 19:38 GMT

#172

On May 02 2010 01:00 Fu-Fo- wrote:
U should work for newspaper. Or like Randy in SP. Nice article, but too much information and effort to have little point in the end.

Yo, this guy is putting together a data and drawing a conclusion and all you can say is that it wasn't a big enough impact? How would he know what the impact would be if he hadn't done the data collection. Maybe there could have been a big discovery here. Like if Edison hadn't actually ever make a light bulb, it still wouldn't have been a waste because there was possibility of him actually making something happen. Now we know that there is a subtle difference between gas collection rates. G-d, just thank this guy for doing this on his own time for you. If you want it done better, shut up and do it yourself

FetusFondler

United States246 Posts

May 05 2010 00:59 GMT

#173

On May 02 2010 01:00 Fu-Fo- wrote:
U should work for newspaper. Or like Randy in SP. Nice article, but too much information and effort to have little point in the end.

I dunno, I kind of like that he didn't make his point clear. I kind of feel that he's trying to get us to think of what we could do, now that we have all of this information on hand. This is the kind of information players will need to come up with truly innovative and creative builds.

NET

United States703 Posts

May 05 2010 04:51 GMT

#174

Appreciate the information you found. Even though the outcome may not have been a crazy breakthrough, it did clear the air of a lot of uncertainty I had regarding the two vespene geyser system in SC2.

I'm sure in due time there will be some sort of minuscule timing window where it may be effective to abuse. Then again its probably all map, race, and circumstance dependent.

shoop

United Kingdom228 Posts

May 05 2010 08:34 GMT

#175

On May 04 2010 17:35 Beakyboo wrote:
If you watch 3 drones mine a geyser, the wait period is practically nonexistant so I'm a little skeptical.

This IS strange: if it is because of geyser location, then either your geyser is further away than the OP's, or it is closer. Since you mine more gas per second with two drones than the OP did, it appears that your geyser is closer. But if it's closer, then the third drone should have at least as large a delay before it can get into the geyser, so the effectiveness of three drones should be decreased even more than in the OP. The only explanation I can think of is that your extractor is in fact further away AND you tested with a faster game speed.

As you may have noticed reading the previous posts in this thread, I think the analysis in the OP is in fact pretty bad, even though it is long and looks complicated and most people seem to love it to bits. I'm in favour of the following heuristic, which is safer, simpler and relies more on common sense than blindly adopting the figures from the OP: "if I see a drone waiting at the geyser, I'm not mining at optimum efficiency so I should consider placing more extractors". Sorry if that sounds simplistic. It's either that or test and memorize how far away the geysers are on all maps.

yomi

United States773 Posts

May 05 2010 11:06 GMT

#176

the graph is missing the line for 3(1)

Fredoq

Sweden206 Posts

May 10 2010 14:15 GMT

#177

Great article and imba mathing skills!

You're awesome!!!

aaaaaah

45 Posts

May 10 2010 21:53 GMT

#178

Very good analysis and everything =D Makes me think about how i start in SC2 beta nao.

holybad

United States9 Posts

May 12 2010 05:20 GMT

#179

this stuff reminds me of my physics labs. Exel ftw!!!

Fizbin

Canada202 Posts

May 13 2010 20:47 GMT

#180

well after reading the whole thread im a little confused.... because in sc2 everything is so gas expensive.. ur going to want to saturate ur gas pretty quick. ontop of that all this talk about 4/2 5/2 pretty much only matter around 25 food or so and only lasts for like 5 food or so.. so in the grand scheme it really isnt important. u need SOOO much gas that if this article was about a 4th miner per gas node it would be much more interesting.

its even funny cause i see shoutcasters saying oh hey this guy has 4 guys on gass what an idiot. when the fact is on far gas it makes a difference.

im always gas starved and i play platinum. forces you to expand and get more tech building i guess.

ever notice with only 3 guys on a gas node u run outa mineral nodes earlier then gas even when they start at the same time.

woulda been nice if u guys had ANY data on what really matters... 4th miner.