Ok, so I'm making this thread so I can stop linking to the older one, which is very outdated.

For new Mappers, try to get as close as possible to them, as they will basically resolve any issue you might face with gameplay problems related to Mineral Lines, Harassment, Mining efficiency, etc.

Trying new Mineral lines should be something done for explicit reasons because very easily it can lead to Mining and gameplay issues to players, so try to avoid creating new non-standard Mineral lines when not required.

Standard Mineral Placement

Standard Mineral Placements are the bread and butter of any map, they are of preferred use on Naturals, Thirds, Fourths, etc. Their main and only weakness is that this type of bases tend to use a considerable use of space, on those scenarios where bases are required to be placed under space constrains, it is left to the mapper to use his judgement on how to best achieve a good Mineral Line placement.

Advanced Mineral Placements

Advanced Mineral Placements can be handy for Main base Mineral lines, in order to have both geysers be at the same side of a Mineral line, and this way ease the enemy scouting of gases, this way weakening Gas dependent Timing attacks and reducing the "Coin flip" nature of some of them.

Vespene Inefficiencies

Vespene Geysers have been shown to have a ~8% variance on gas income depending on their positioning relative to the Town Hall, the from 2012 to today changes to the pathing have been done to reduce this reality, but because of the Pythagoras the variance will always exist, as such, avoid placing Vespene Geysers on Non-Efficient positions without need.

~8% Faster Gas Mining Thread

As stated, the Mineral lines above are the preferred way for any mappers to position resources, other layouts an be found on the older Proper Mineral Placement Thread, and in the comments left by Mapmakers there, tho beware that the thread is highly outdated, and many of the comments, dont account for the later discovery of the ~8% Gas Mining efficiency.

There are several other Mineral Placements which also work well, such as the older + Show Spoiler [HotS Standard Mineral Placements] +

and its variants.

Hopefully, this thread is clear and concise enough for new people getting into Mapmaking, which have trouble trying to find information about proper Mineral Line placements.

AkashSky

United States257 Posts

October 22 2017 06:14 GMT

Hmm, this mineral placement post brought a few maps to my attention, namely overgrowth and catalena. Overgrowth has really efficient mineral placement, leading to higher income in early game, whereas catalena has poor mineral placement - leading to less income in the early game (though this may have been fixed in LoTV).

Though i've always wondered just how much more effiecient the overgrowth placements are. Regardless, interesting post.

Ej_

47656 Posts

October 22 2017 07:03 GMT

Haven't played enough Overgrowth in LotV, but n HotS your BO was around 5 seconds faster there. If you stacked workers perfectly, you could even make hatchery at 14 instead of 15 supply.

Uvantak

Uruguay1381 Posts

October 22 2017 21:29 GMT

For the record, I dont recommend anyone, ever to think on raw income per mineral line as a good metric for the actual mineral line positioning, and there are couple reasons for this, such as the most efficient mineral line placements, are not necessarily symmetric for both players on most maps, and they can easily cause issues regarding harassment, because of the way workers concentrate, it can easily lead to buffs or considerable nerfs to certain strategies like Mine Drops or Disruptor Drops to give a couple simple examples, then you have the thing that because of spacing issues it might lead to heavily constricting map designs, bases take a considerable amount of space on maps, and they need to be thought very carefully, when maps are being constructed, lest you end up with highly exploitable things, such as Siege Tanks or Libs being able to easily exploit Natural or Third bases.

So yeah, for players in general, when I'm talking about Standard Mineral placement, I wont ever refer to the income rates from those bases, because Mapmaking wise that's incredibly cancerous, and it is bound to cause issues on long term. But I'm referring to creating a framework for newer Mappers so they dont end up screwing up Mineral lines or wasting space when they make their own maps.

TheFish7

United States2824 Posts

October 23 2017 23:11 GMT

Good stuff, should be required reading for any new-intermediate mappers.

One thing I was wondering, although it's not really an issue - why are those corner bases preferred in LotV versus the ones in the HotS pic? I thought it was bad to have 3 mineral fields touching like in the below, because the AI would once in a while send a worker behind the line to mine the back patch?

[image loading]

Monochromatic

United States991 Posts

October 24 2017 13:09 GMT

Thanks for remaking the old thread!

Quick question, why do you have two types of advanced mineral placement? The first one seems to be identical to the standard one, save the gas location. I don't think it's that important to give specific gas locations, especially as you included a chart of the various inefficiencies. It might even discourage new mapmakers from playing with their gas placements.

+ Show Spoiler +

Also, why does overgrowth get the credit for the base layout? Earliest I remember seeing it was cloud kingdom.

Uvantak

Uruguay1381 Posts

October 24 2017 23:35 GMT

On October 24 2017 22:09 Monochromatic wrote:
Thanks for remaking the old thread!

Quick question, why do you have two types of advanced mineral placement? The first one seems to be identical to the standard one, save the gas location.
+ Show Spoiler +

Also, why does overgrowth get the credit for the base layout? Earliest I remember seeing it was cloud kingdom.

That was an error on my part, I updated the Advanced Mineral line image:

+ Show Spoiler +

Old (wrong) | New (Updated)

The difference is a single Light Blue Mineral patch, which was moved to the "center" of the image.

Thanks for the keen eye man.

On October 24 2017 22:09 Monochromatic wrote:
I don't think it's that important to give specific gas locations, especially as you included a chart of the various inefficiencies. It might even discourage new mapmakers from playing with their gas placements.

Hmmm, that's a fair criticism, I'll probably remove the geyser icons, when I was making the graphics I also screwed up the footprint for the geysers aswell, so that's another reason to remove them, but doing that and re-spacing everything will for sure be a pain in the butt, so I'll probably need to do it next weekend when I have got more time.

On October 24 2017 22:09 Monochromatic wrote:
Also, why does overgrowth get the credit for the base layout? Earliest I remember seeing it was cloud kingdom.

Mostly (and only) because it popularized the Mineral line layout, I honestly couldnt come up with a better name for it, so I called it "overgrowth based", but if you have got a better name, I can change the name without much trouble.

Also, iirc (?) the mineral line was used on a couple korean maps before it was used on Cloud Kingdom's third.

On October 24 2017 08:11 TheFish7 wrote:
Good stuff, should be required reading for any new-intermediate mappers.

One thing I was wondering, although it's not really an issue - why are those corner bases preferred in LotV versus the ones in the HotS pic? I thought it was bad to have 3 mineral fields touching like in the below, because the AI would once in a while send a worker behind the line to mine the back patch?

[image loading]

Workers moondancing their way into the back of a Mineral line is an issue on most if not all Mineral lines tho, for example, any Mineral line which uses this shape:

Is basically at risk of having workers get into the back of the mineral line, specially when workers get scrambled, like when maynarding workers, the trick is to try and reduce this problem from happening consistently, while still gaining all the benefits a layout like the Standard one brings, such as the Symmetry, which makes the Mineral line easy to learn and apply for Newer Mappers, or the two Worker Stacking spots.

So yeah, it is a balancing act, atm the only Mineral line that I know of, which doesnt have the issues of Workers getting behind the actual Mineral line, is the Overgrowth based Placement, but as I mentioned, that Mineral Line, also lacks things like the Symmetry which makes it slightly harder to memorize for newer Mapmakers, and it also lacks the Worker Stacking spots, which make it less defensible against early rushes or harassment.

Also, other thing important to say, is that the "Standard" Mineral lines, even when they still suffer from the problems with worker bouncing around the 22 workers threshold, it still is far less of a problem than on the older HotS mineral lines.

Old HotS Min Line | Newer LotV Placement

So, even when the issue might still happen, it will for certain happen less often, and even if that's not enough Mapmakers can use the Advanced Mineral Lines, which will for sure take care of it.