[I] Proper Mineral Placement

On November 12 2012 08:08 AbideWithMe wrote:
Just a general question of somebody who has no idea about map making. Would it be a problem to make a mineral line with every mineral patch equally far away from the CC location?
This would make early double worker stacking and such obsolete. What is the downside of this? Why does nobody do it? It could also be used to get rid of the "mule wasting minerals" problem.

On November 12 2012 09:03 TheFish7 wrote:
The last one under "Standard" has one patch behind 2?

imo should look like this

+ Show Spoiler +

I would also include the configurations from Cloud Kingdom's main, and 3rd base. I am fond of those configurations (lol)

Also, the first one can also look like this
+ Show Spoiler +

On November 12 2012 13:00 Quakecomm wrote:

isn't the first one under "standard" the same as the cloud kingdom example?
thanks for correcting the last one, it looked wrong to me as well, but as a newbie mapper, i wasn't sure

On November 13 2012 18:05 opisska wrote:
Wouldn't it be better if the minerals were as nonstandart as it gets? I know that it goes gainst the wishes of Blizzard, since they want everything to be 8m2g, they probably also want it to be pretty standard. But creating minor differences in income (balanced for all positions on the map) could create different builds and strategies for different maps, don't you think?

You could even match this to other features of the map - for example when there is a wider natural, could you make mining in the main more efficient so that we can effort more buildings for the wall and vice versa?

On November 13 2012 18:46 moskonia wrote:

No that is silly, the difference is minor and would really not affect build order at all, only delay them a few if there was reduced income, there is absolutely no reason to go non-standard minerals, that is why I want to know if those here are standard (I keep messing up my mineral lines).

On November 15 2012 08:27 Flopjack wrote:
I appreciate that we have some guides on mineral placement, but I don't see many whys or numbers. Is there a set amount of minerals that must always be closer to the base vs those which are further? Does it matter on which base it is? What's the logic here, outside of 'this is how someone else did it"?

On November 13 2012 17:36 moskonia wrote:
Can any "pro" map maker confirm those to be the standard mineral placement?

On November 30 2012 09:06 TheFish7 wrote:
I thought it was a no-no to put geysers directly next to a min patch?

On December 12 2012 03:25 Gfire wrote:
This should be the standard for 45s, shouldn't it?



It's got better positional balance (both geysers are at the same position relative to the main building,) and on that other one it might take 4 workers to mine fully in some positions.

On December 12 2012 03:59 iamcaustic wrote:

This way works great as well; just a minor shift of a couple of the top minerals compared to my example (in the post above Gfire's) to allow units another space to pass through the mineral field. Geyser locations are identical. New mapmakers should definitely use either one of these examples for making 45 degree mineral lines -- NOT what's posted in the OP.

On November 12 2012 09:03 TheFish7 wrote:
The last one under "Standard" has one patch behind 2?

imo should look like this

+ Show Spoiler +

I would also include the configurations from Cloud Kingdom's main, and 3rd base. I am fond of those configurations (lol)

Also, the first one can also look like this
+ Show Spoiler +

On November 12 2012 08:52 Timetwister22 wrote:


Mineral lines will take up way too much space, making for some very awkward base proportions. Also, making mineral stacking obsolete is a bad thing imo.

On December 12 2012 05:49 ScorpSCII wrote:
Wouldn't a symmetric mineral placement work the best?

On December 12 2012 06:58 Monochromatic wrote:


What you posted is in the OP for a 45 degree one.

I should probably label them, as I have 2 different ways to make 45 degree bases. One of them was from Bel'Shir Vestige, which was the newest map at the time.

Also, I'd like to know which ones are messed up, so I could fix them in the OP.

Thanks for correcting my mistakes, though.

On December 12 2012 07:51 iamcaustic wrote:
The reason I don't recommend the OP is because there are a number of non-standard placements masquerading as standard. While you do have the placement that Gfire posted in there, it's buried in with a bunch of weird ones, making it overly confusing for new mapmakers.

On December 12 2012 09:32 Daumen wrote:
Is it right that in the last picture of "Standard" the Top Minerals are 3 Squares far away from the Main Building and the lower Minerals are 4 Squares away? :O

On December 12 2012 07:51 EatThePath wrote:

Mineral stacking will always apply because there will always be 1 or 2 patches centered closest to the face of the CC, which are optimal. The closest you could place mineral patches is probably this (below) which is as compact if not more so than typical mineral patch placements.



Or maybe this.



In any case it's better (or standard at least) to have 2-3 patches that are 4 squares away instead of 3 squares away, which causes the base to require 2-3 more workers for full saturation and lets high APM players eek out a slim mineral advantage with worker micro in the early game.

Nice thread, good basic resource. Now we need a thread about advanced mineral placements.... :O

On December 12 2012 14:09 thenexusp wrote:

another concern is aesthetics. Those mineral placements simply don't look as good or "natural" as the standard ones.

Is the gas footprint problem really that big of a deal, the income difference is pretty negligible isn't it?

On December 14 2012 00:45 Orek wrote:so my wild guess based solely on my hunch is that mineral line inefficiency for 8 mineral patches is probably about 1% among any decent mineral line layout standard or not, but we'll never know without a comprehensive research. Personally, I have hard time calling 1% negligible even if that were the case, though. A fair RTS game design should aim at 0% IMO.

On December 14 2012 04:34 EatThePath wrote:
In fact, I like oddities that produce minor asymmetries, as long as they don't create demonstrable imbalance. While rotating 2x1 patches would make for precise symmetry, most of the time you can create equivalent or nearly-equivalent formations (think of tetris pieces) to the point where it doesn't change balance, which would only be positionally in mirror matchups anyway. Not sure why I like the idea of minor differences but something about it appeals to me, kind of like in sports how one team gets to randomly choose a side of the field to have.

The gas thing should be fixed, though. Otherwise we have to use only east and west gas placements, and in certain situations like ling/bling wars, it's definitely impactful to have 8% faster gas mining.

8% is the worst ever case though, no one positions geysers in a way that you need 4 workers on it.