Yeah, F buttons are really important for macro and defending against harass. I have my F2 and F3 buttons on my up/down scroll wheel. I hope Blizzard doesn't wait until the final release to add the F buttons.

caution.slip

United States775 Posts

February 25 2010 06:25 GMT

#62

On February 25 2010 05:57 Gescom wrote:
Sorry, first time posting on TL.net

The chart isn't super easy to read (did it in excel), but the conclusion is this, averaged over three trials.

Workers • Minerals 1 min • Minerals per second • Minerals per Drone per Second • Recoup Time (s) • Time til Dry (min)
w   M/min      M/s      M/w*s   Recoup(s)  Time til dry(min)
8---476.66-----7.94-----0.99----50.35------25.12
16--853.33-----14.22----0.89----56.65------14.16
24--1133.33----18.89----0.79----63.54------10.59

reposting it for you, should be easier to read now

masamune00

France11 Posts

April 20 2010 11:37 GMT

#63

For zergs, did you try with 20 ?

Because semantics wrote :

After 1 min this is what i got in minerals
16 drones 925
17 drones 945
18 drones 990 -- 995
19 drones 1040 -- -1050
22 drones 1080
32 drones 1060

19-20 Drones is full saturation on 8 minerals in a field for a zerg player

Splendour

Bulgaria129 Posts

April 20 2010 11:49 GMT

#64

Some bad habits:

Sending ur overlord to the enemy's base in zvz - surprise, surprise, queen shoots air.

Spamming a hotkey - causes ur unit to go into attack move (i've lost my scouting units countless times that way)

Nitron

Singapore177 Posts

April 20 2010 11:50 GMT

#65

We still need to keep pumping drones/scv/probe to transfer to expansion to really have the economical advantage of having 2 bases asap.

On the zergling, part, they are still very good against the zealots early game because of surround, but we must take note that if the player goes for a 3 gate rush with zealot/sentry, lings are definately not enough and roaches will be needed to fight because u cant get the surround that easily

Makica

Canada180 Posts

April 20 2010 11:57 GMT

#66

This is a great thread. Any more information from you sc1 players on what skills from sc1 you should moderate? I'm a wc3 player learning about the game.

Adeeler

United Kingdom764 Posts

April 20 2010 12:06 GMT

#67

Its the balance of how many drones to make at a time that is hard to judge. I might get a spawn larva popping and have 4 larva ready to use early game and just don't know if I should spam a lot of lings to be safer or drones for economy.

If on 1 base it feels distinctly safer but that time where you put down an early/fast expansion you get so vulnerable to a variety of harassments. Some spine crawlers is really nice, but I guess learning to scout a lot more effectively is the key to knowing how hard you can pump drones.

Adama

Spain18 Posts

April 20 2010 12:14 GMT

#68

All these numbers about mining eficiency are really cute and i'm tankfull to you guys who have crunched them.

BUT, i think is should be considered theorycraft. In most games, almost everygame i would say, you should make workers all the time, for so many reasons. The biggest reason is also on those numbers, and it is "time til dry". You will need to expand if the games moves on and you want that second exp saturated asap. Ok, maybe you had 35 workers on your base, that's not eficient, but when you expand you will have 5 extra workers that can be moved to your natural, and that is a good thing!
But also you will be harrased, you may need to use workers to defend some atacks. I play terran, Terrans do move workers out of mineral lines and use them on battlefield, they repair and build bunkers and turrets. Zerg do turn workers into buildings.

Just consider time til dry of a 100% saturated base is less than the average game (educated guess).

Am i wrong? I never felt like stoping making SVC is a good idea at all.

Kronologic

Great Britain45 Posts

April 20 2010 12:27 GMT

#69

As Zerg, (assuming your expo is at your natural) instead of overproducing drones with the intention of Maynarding, would it not be better to build 7 (3 spawned larva 4 from vomit) drones from your hatch and set their spawn point to the expansions minerals with the intention of them arriving at (or moments before) the expo hatch completes & setting your main hatch's default drone spawn point to the expo minerals.

That way you are better able to match your income to spending without wasting income that could be spent on army/tech on surplus drones that will be needed "in the future"

Does this make sense, is it practical?

Socke

Germany451 Posts

April 20 2010 12:29 GMT

#70

i constantly rewaypoint my nexi, and check my main to manually send probes to mins often.
its a very hard habit to drop :[

jabberwokie

Canada142 Posts

April 20 2010 13:19 GMT

#71

Manually distributing harvesters between patches is still beneficial, auto-mine supplements this it does not replace it. Zerg units move faster on creep making them faster then their counterparts and requiring lower numbers for saturation. Coupled with the fact that you use the same building as production as expansion (hatchery) then it isn't as much about optimal saturation as it is income to production ratio. As a zerg player saturating beyond 16 mineral and 6 gas per base (22 drones) is detrimental because you are either not keeping your production capacity large enough to effectively utilize your economy or you are significantly reducing the effectiveness of production expansion by not taking advantage of the added benefit of larger economy that would come if the hatchery is placed as an expansion as opposed to another building in the main . If however there are external factors like you have no map control for some weird reason then there might be some extenuating circumstances but for the large part as a zerg saturate to 16 and expand rinse and repeat. To keep this focused on topic I will refrain from going into more depth on how to work army into your droning.

TyrantGuardian

Sweden76 Posts

April 20 2010 13:33 GMT

#72

I'm pretty sure drones don't benefit from creep movespeed though, do they?

But yeah, I usually stick to 16 drones on minerals unless I'm planning to expand soon.

T.O.P.

Hong Kong4685 Posts

April 20 2010 13:50 GMT

#73

I usually stick to a max of 16 workers per base. In SC2, you can't expand unless you have units and you can only get so much units if you don't make so many probes. I rather get a faster expand than more probes in my main base.

onmach

United States1241 Posts

April 20 2010 13:55 GMT

#74

Drones do not benefit from creep, for obvious reasons.

jabberwokie

Canada142 Posts

April 20 2010 14:21 GMT

#75

I didn't do the testing but the theory is sound without the numbers for expanding > saturating beyond 2 per mineral and 3 per geyser and the numbers are as follows:

Probes Minerals in 1min Minerals per second Minerals per Probe per Second Recoup Time (s) Time til Dry (min)
8 480 8 1 50 25
16 765 12.75 0.796875 62.74509804 15.68627451
24 1155 19.25 0.802083333 62.33766234 10.38961039
32 1140 19 0.59375 N/A

SCVs Minerals in 1min Minerals per second Minerals per SCV per Second Recoup Time (s) Time til Dry (min)
8 480 8 1 50 25
16 855 14.25 0.890625 56.14035088 14.03508772
24 1125 18.75 0.78125 64 10.66666667

Drones Minerals in 1min Minerals per second Minerals per Drone per Second Recoup Time (s) Time til Dry (min)
8 470 7.833333333 0.979166667 51.06382979 25.53191489
16 940 15.66666667 0.979166667 51.06382979 12.76595745
24 1120 18.66666667 0.777777778 64.28571429 10.71428571

indicating drones do gain advantage by being on creep and attain optimal saturation earlier.

Kevmar

United States22 Posts

April 20 2010 15:40 GMT

#76

I ran a test like this a month ago with up to 200 probes.

Diminished returns start in after you get 2 workers for each node. You do get more minerals per minute with 3 workers, adding a 3rd worker does not increase collection by 50% over 2 workers. If 1 worker per node is 100% production, 2 workers gives us 200%, and the 3 gives us 255%. With 4 workers I got to around 270%. I pushed it all the way up to 25 workers per node and did not gain much more than that 270%.

I think that very small gain after 3 workers is from the distance of the back nodes.

To test this I made 200 probes and sent them in 4 at a time. I watched the income chart in the replay after it was over. It did go up as I added more and more probes to the patches, but the gain was very very small at 4+ workers per node.

Frenzied_Tank

Germany100 Posts

April 20 2010 16:20 GMT

#77

On April 20 2010 20:49 CanT.ThinK.oF wrote:
Some bad habits:

Sending ur overlord to the enemy's base in zvz - surprise, surprise, queen shoots air.

Spamming a hotkey - causes ur unit to go into attack move (i've lost my scouting units countless times that way)

not sending a overlord to enemies base is rather silly.. you want to know at which time hes getting his pool / gas

Black Octopi

187 Posts

April 20 2010 16:40 GMT

#78

On April 21 2010 01:20 Frenzied_Tank wrote:

Show nested quote +

not sending a overlord to enemies base is rather silly.. you want to know at which time hes getting his pool / gas

Yes. Just don't leave it there or go in range of the queen.

Gokain

United States49 Posts

April 20 2010 16:40 GMT

#79

would sending extra workers in with troops to a battle, [i.e. Jinro vs. LucifroNNNN match] be a viable reason to continue worker production even after saturation?

arcology

United States92 Posts

April 20 2010 17:11 GMT

#80

This is true, but how does it relate to 'sc1 bad habits'? SC1 was basically the exact same- maxing out at 3 workers/patch, and there was significant diminishing returns as you reached 3..