you can, i cant remember exactly which one it was, but someone did a youtube video commentary, and one of the players put down a CC, then dropped 1 mule onto every high yield mineral patch

What's the point of doing this? You'll just float a lot of minerals and won't be able to spend them (you'll lack gas for mostly everything, and will be forced to pump out marines)

VTArlock

United States1763 Posts

March 07 2010 15:21 GMT

#24

Very nice write up. As a protoss player I wondered the effectiveness the mules really had on the terran economy... Now I know.. They rock...

On a sidenote, Now when I make phoenix's for some gravity harass I'll be sure to target those mules instead of the scv's

Thanks

oberon

United States1320 Posts

March 07 2010 15:33 GMT

#25

A semi-related thing -- mules mine "over" SCVs, which allows you to choose which expansion they mine at. By putting all your mules at your newest expansion, you can get the same number of minerals while avoiding mining out older expansions, keeping your mineral efficiency higher for a longer period of time. Not sure if this is wide-spread, but it probably should be.

--oberon

VTArlock

United States1763 Posts

March 07 2010 16:14 GMT

#26

I'm curious... Whats the mining efficiency of mules at high yield???

bITt.mAN

Switzerland3693 Posts

March 07 2010 16:34 GMT

#27

Great read and well reasoned .... but why is your title "MULE - Hunting the Wumpus" but you do not refer to the legendary "Hunt the Wumpus", that epic game of cataclysmic stature, the reason I opened this thread in the first place?

RPGabe

United States192 Posts

March 07 2010 16:34 GMT

#28

I'm trying to put a youtube compilation of this together, but there's another use MULES have - bombing unsuspecting opponents.

Basically, in Terran vs Terran, dropping MULES on enemy troops/buildings when sieged tanks are nearby results in hilarity. This almost always gets a laugh, though some people have been really upset by it.

You can also do this into a middle of a group of Banelings in TVZ for similar "what" moments.

Wintermute

United States427 Posts

March 07 2010 17:04 GMT

#29

On March 07 2010 10:40 igotmyown wrote:
So with high yield resources, it's (150-100-supply)+19 x rate, and you recover it at 1 x rate, so it should take 22 seconds on high yield resources. Also, can you save up energy so you can do a multi-mule drop on high yield resources?
.

Well, it might be worth saving energy from an existing command to mule or multi mule on high yield, as this will yield 360 total minerals vs 270 normally (so you have to judge the value of 360 minerals later vs 270 sooner).

On the actual expansion, however, you are probably better off NOT getting the OC until you have the expansion saturated with SCVs.

2 SCVs come out faster, mine just as quickly on high yield minerals, and cost less, so economically there's little advantage to the OC over SCVs

Mikilatov

United States3897 Posts

March 07 2010 20:05 GMT

#30

On March 08 2010 01:34 bITt.mAN wrote:
Great read and well reasoned .... but why is your title "MULE - Hunting the Wumpus" but you do not refer to the legendary "Hunt the Wumpus", that epic game of cataclysmic stature, the reason I opened this thread in the first place?

I figured it'd be a subtle reference that maybe a few people would get. =P Basically, I wanted to 'demystify' the MULE, and I found a relationship between this process and the 'Hunting of the Wumpus' in the 1983 game M.U.L.E.

By the way, if anyone here hasn't played M.U.L.E., get some friends and play that shit, it's the best party-multiplayer game of all time.

Mente

United States288 Posts

March 07 2010 20:09 GMT

#31

On March 07 2010 10:40 igotmyown wrote:
Very interesting, and carefully done.

Then it's definitely better to build an orbital command at the second expansion immediately. And compared to building two scvs, it's like you're getting one free scv.

So with high yield resources, it's (150-100-supply)+19 x rate, and you recover it at 1 x rate, so it should take 22 seconds on high yield resources. Also, can you save up energy so you can do a multi-mule drop on high yield resources?

I'm also curious about the value of an extra command center, which would be 400 + build time - supply cost, with an income of average mining rate x mineral patches + mule. With a mule you're breaking even in about a minute.

Man I love having fully saturated mineral patches, expanding to a goldbase with 2 ccs capped on energy and then just hailing the mules down. Wow do the minerals come in like gangbusters.

Mikilatov

United States3897 Posts

March 07 2010 20:14 GMT

#32

On March 08 2010 01:14 TheComeback wrote:
I'm curious... Whats the mining efficiency of mules at high yield???

Just did a quick test, and it mines 42 per carry instead of 30. It generated 378 minerals over one lifespan, as opposed to 270 minerals over one lifespan on normal mineral patches.

crate

United States2474 Posts

March 07 2010 20:18 GMT

#33

On March 08 2010 02:04 Wintermute wrote:
On the actual expansion, however, you are probably better off NOT getting the OC until you have the expansion saturated with SCVs.

How so? You're getting 2 more SCVs if you saturate before getting OC, but you get 1 extra MULE (permanently, basically, since you get 50 energy in just a bit shorter time than the MULE's lifespan) if you OC right away. 1 MULE mines more than 2 SCVs, so you get more minerals by getting the OC first.

Saturating your gas before you get OC makes sense economically since MULEs can't mine gas; saturating minerals does not.

That's um, kind of the point of this topic.

Wintermute

United States427 Posts

March 07 2010 23:03 GMT

#34

On March 08 2010 05:18 crate wrote:

Show nested quote +

Sorry, I was operating under some bad data, that SCVs gathered 10 minerals per trip on yellow minerals.

Since the gain is the same for both SCVs and MULEs (40% increase per trip) it still makes sense to go for MULEs first (or, if you need gas badly, immediately after you have saturated your geysers).

Red7z7

United States74 Posts

March 07 2010 23:35 GMT

#35

You might also note that calling down supply gives you 100 minerals out of thin air, while the mule mines those minerals from your patch. So you're getting your instant 100 + saving SCV mining time + saving 100 minerals in your patch that you can mine (albeit much later).

AcrossFiveJulys

United States3612 Posts

March 07 2010 23:37 GMT

#36

Hunting the wumpus, huh... somebody either played a very old computer game or has read at least some of the standard AI textbook

hugman

Sweden4644 Posts

March 07 2010 23:43 GMT

#37

On March 07 2010 21:35 brocoli wrote:What's the point of doing this? You'll just float a lot of minerals and won't be able to spend them (you'll lack gas for mostly everything, and will be forced to pump out marines)

More units = better as long as you're not supply blocked

Manifesto7

Osaka27174 Posts

March 07 2010 23:51 GMT

#38

Very cool thread, thanks a lot.

Thereisnosaurus

Australia1822 Posts

March 07 2010 23:59 GMT

#39

you know, this makes me wonder if players might tweak builds specifically to harass mules. Since they're (I think) only as tough as an SCV, making a small but mobile harass force against terran specifically to wander around and clean up his mules could be pretty effective.

For zerg- 2-3 mutas plus an overlord way out behind the mineral patches
For toss 2-3 phoenix lifting, plus an observer
for terran 1 or 2 banshees that just fly between expos and snipe mules.

Since each mule knocked off with relative promptness is 200 minerals knocked off, this seems a very, very efficient way to harass- really, if you get one mule and force the opponent to throw up a turret or two next to each mineral patch or keep units there, your little assassination force has paid for itself

crate

United States2474 Posts

March 08 2010 02:02 GMT

#40

On March 08 2010 08:43 hugman wrote:

Show nested quote +

More units = better as long as you're not supply blocked

(In reference to: save up energy, call down a ton of MULEs on high-yield minerals)

You won't be able to build all the units for a while though--if you're saving up energy to call down a bunch of MULEs, that means that either you have a lot of idle barracks/factories (which means you wasted money on them earlier) or you're going to shoot up to several thousand minerals as you build production facilities to burn off your new income boost ... which are then going to go idle later on. In either case you've also made your existing army weaker, though if you didn't get punished for that before you call down the MULEs that likely doesn't matter any more.

Getting 5000 minerals all at once is generally not very useful unless you feel like tossing up CCs at every expo on the map or something.