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After playing a bunch of games during the beta and just foolin around with units and cheese i decided to start working on a concrete build, first i was trying to make a solid tvt build order. i really liked a 9 rax opening with a quick orbital command however after massing some games on ladder something puzzled me. i was trying to set some sort of concrete timings and figured, the minerals i have at 30 pop, should be close to or the same as the game before as long as there was no huge deviation or loss of units, but i was wrong. it was fluxuating, a lot.. so, after deciding the only thing that could be causing this is the mule i ran some tests. i came up with the mule having three possible outcomes in terms of summoning on top of a mineral patch.
1. the mule can return 270 minerals throughout its duration
2. the mule can return 240 minerals throughout its duration(the further away patches)
3. the mule can collect 270 minerals but only return 240( its duration runs out before reaching the command center )
i will represent these outcomes with circles over the mineral patch summoned on top of.
1 = green
2 = yellow
3 = red
Desert Oasis:
+ Show Spoiler +
Blistering Sands
+ Show Spoiler +
Scrap station
+ Show Spoiler +
Steppes of war
+ Show Spoiler +
Kulas ravine
+ Show Spoiler +
Lost Temple
+ Show Spoiler +
Metalopolis
+ Show Spoiler +
so obviously the yellow circles have the longest pathing for a mule to take, red being second longest and green being the shortest. this can also be applied to workers. so the income difference will be effective as soon as the game starts.
I was pretty shocked by the results i found. to my knowledge the maps seemed completely symmetrical. during a full game the positional advantage tvt on certain maps is a little bizarre. other matchups not so much of a huge factor however it will still be a noticeable mineral shortage. im curious on what the tl community thinks about this. i know positional advantages and luck based on spawn locations was in sc1 but i feel this could be an issue at high level, maybe even the lower levels.
regardless, this should help out fellow terrans out there who were just spammin mules on any mineral patch 
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i see what you're saying, but i doubt it'll have a large effect. its like the difference between mining in bw with minerals above and minerals below. you can only have 2 mules out per oc anyways, and with 2 bases you wont even be muling your main anymore.
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Sweden33719 Posts
You are awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this 
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Good work dude =DDDD Awesome research
I think its so helpful with some BO like 6 Rax / 7 Rax or fast OB
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Good stuff! Definitely something we can use to help our early game xD
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Ya good work but think i was mining from all these from start anyways. The green one are all the closer min patchs go fig ?
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Awesome! thanks for doing this :D
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Thanks cheech, you're the best practice partner in the whole world.
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On April 15 2010 11:04 majesty.k)seRapH wrote:
i see what you're saying, but i doubt it'll have a large effect. its like the difference between mining in bw with minerals above and minerals below. you can only have 2 mules out per oc anyways, and with 2 bases you wont even be muling your main anymore.
i felt the same way at first, but remember 30 minerals poof into thin air when you mule a red circled mineral and the expos have the same awkward layout for mineral returns. just seems like a burden that other races dont have to deal with and i dont see this being justified from a game design point of view. its obviously something that was overlooked during map layout. maybe this is a draw back to the mule that was intentionally created to offset the huge eco boost that a mule provides however i dont think thats the case but i will keep my mind open
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basically its telling you which patches to mine to get FULL use of your mule
quite useful imo... get 270 rather than 240
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On April 15 2010 11:16 FrozenArbiter wrote:You are awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this
yea, I noticed that sometimes a Mule will die with minerals in it's hands. That's kind of a big loss. Good to know stuff for terrans so they don't disadvantage themselves with mules.
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On April 15 2010 12:55 SarcasticOne wrote:
basically its telling you which patches to mine to get FULL use of your mule
quite useful imo... get 270 rather than 240
More importantly how not to lose 30 minerals from the red patches >.<
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I remember someone saying how in Scrap Station it was possible to snipe an expansion with high ground Tanks on one side but not on the other.
Maybe there's some bug with the distances ingame? Or maybe the tiles themselves are not symmetric?
Another thing that could be happening, is that the Mule speed is screwed up due to angle rounding errors: the game needs to translate the MULE's speed into X and Y speed with sine and cosine functions, and by doing so truncates both, lowering the unit's speed when it travels in specific angles.
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this is really good information. Thanks for doing the tests.
Its worth mentioning that going after the same "green" (usually middle) with the MULE is bad though, since you'll mine that patch out too fast and you'll have 1 less mineral patch to mine with your workers. I guess ideally you would drop a MULE on every separate single green space, then going on the reds. Hard memory game.
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nice, now i know why my mule rushes are failing. little shits won't attack anything.
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I'm quite shocked with how different the starting positions can be. Of course you won't lose a match because of that, but I want it fixed.
Thank you for your work.
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It has take ages to compile! But it is great work. From what i see is really worthy to send mule to the middle patch(obviously if it is not behind other minerals match as in metalopolis)?(as a genearl rule..i suppose it is impossible to remeber all the mineral fields behaviour for all the maps )
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I think they should edit the mule to last 1 to 1.5 seconds longer? This way it won't die en route, but not enough time to mine another?
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On April 15 2010 18:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
I think they should edit the mule to last 1 to 1.5 seconds longer? This way it won't die en route, but not enough time to mine another?
Or just make future maps only have "green" patches. Or, only red patches is an option too. Could be used conciously to balance maps too, whether you want to favor terran in that or not.
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u paint perfect circle !
thx btw.
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Damn, amazing find.
@Trump- isn't the point that you will never want to mine reds with MULEs because you will reduce the total minerals you will mine from a patch by 30 each time you do? Or am I missing something and those minerals magically get added back to the patch?
And just general comment, this on top of that Terran players still can't rotate their buildings so there is already the positional issue of walling screwing with add-ons (not as big an issue in Brood War since the 'rax didn't have/need any add-ons).
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On April 15 2010 12:59 brocoli wrote:
I remember someone saying how in Scrap Station it was possible to snipe an expansion with high ground Tanks on one side but not on the other.
Maybe there's some bug with the distances ingame? Or maybe the tiles themselves are not symmetric?
I know for a fact that there is a hellishly annoying light pole in the north base on scrap station that blocks a nice and proper wall in. There are also tons of other asymmetrical elements on ss, such as the fact that you can blink to the island w/o and obs from the south base but not from the north base.
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If you're truly worried about losing scraps of minerals in the long run, you should be using Calldown Supply.
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There are always a few assymetries on maps as blizzard thinks (and so do I) this looks better. Most of them are pretty irrelevant of the time, this one actually matters a slight bit. All you have to do I guess is use Mule on the close patches instead of the far away ones, lategame it really won't matter.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that you should spread out which patches you call down MULEs on because once it starts mining out, you'll end up with 1 less patch after awhile and less mining efficiency if you always calldown on the same patch. So these results are very helpful; players should cycle their calldowns on each green patch.
I think a solution to the red mineral problem is to have the MULE drop its minerals when it dies so that another scv can pick them up. Could also make for hilarious strategies where you drop minerals in key locations to block your opponent ;D
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The question I would now have, after this wealth of information, is whether or not it's actually worth not using MULEs on the yellow/red patches. Obviously you'll want to hit the greens first, but killing your saturation by using MULEs only on those might end up hurting you in the long run.
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Amazing! I hadn't even thought of this.
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starcraft is ALL about doing the little things
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Wow. I figured putting the mule on a closer patch could help a little bit but I never thought you'd lose that 30 min from it if it dies coming back! Thanks for taking the time for this!
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so jumping to conclusions here u wanna spread ur mules on all the green ones, not all on same green ^^
great find but i doubt ull get the same result if u redo everything
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I thought everybody knew this?
Like, I mean, everybody figured out some paths are shorter than others, and regardless whether it was as significant (30 minerals) as OP illustrated it would be obvious enough that with shorter paths you get your minerals quicker and eventually this would lead to more minerals collected overall as the MULE has a duration.
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Interesting find. Perhaps they could make it so that if the MULE dies from timeout, the minerals it is currently holding gets added you your total anyway?
On April 15 2010 21:25 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
I think a solution to the red mineral problem is to have the MULE drop its minerals when it dies so that another scv can pick them up.
I could be mistaken, but I think they actually had that in the original SC beta when workers died. Ended up causing too much clutter.
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On April 16 2010 01:48 Koffiegast wrote:
I thought everybody knew this?
Like, I mean, everybody figured out some paths are shorter than others, and regardless whether it was as significant (30 minerals) as OP illustrated it would be obvious enough that with shorter paths you get your minerals quicker and eventually this would lead to more minerals collected overall as the MULE has a duration.
The issue here is that the mule carries enough minerals on each turn that if it dies in transit, you actually lose a lot of minerals that you will never get back. I.e., the total possible amount that you could mine from a base is decreased.
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very nice threat is there 1 mineralpack at which it goes all the time??
that would be awesome :D
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I do have one concern- BW mining times were not consistent, there was some slight randomness. I'm not sure if that has carried over to SC2.
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On April 15 2010 12:59 brocoli wrote:
Another thing that could be happening, is that the Mule speed is screwed up due to angle rounding errors: the game needs to translate the MULE's speed into X and Y speed with sine and cosine functions, and by doing so truncates both, lowering the unit's speed when it travels in specific angles.
Yeah I wondered about this for a moment so I actually went to check, as it turns out, in UnitData.xml unit speeds are of the type double, not integer like in warcraft 3 (which was a constant source of frustration for map developers), So thankfully this is almost certainly not an issue in SC2 in any significant capacity. <3
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this is really fucking cool dude. we need more contributions like this!
great job! 
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On April 16 2010 01:48 Koffiegast wrote:
I thought everybody knew this?
Like, I mean, everybody figured out some paths are shorter than others, and regardless whether it was as significant (30 minerals) as OP illustrated it would be obvious enough that with shorter paths you get your minerals quicker and eventually this would lead to more minerals collected overall as the MULE has a duration.
i agree that everyone could logically reason that the closer patches would yield minerals quicker, this is obvious. however i dont think its quite as clear that if you chose to mule the slightly further out resources 30 resources will vanish, nor was it clear ( for me anyways ) that this problem was even more complicated by spawn location vs spawn location, and finally the problem is biggest when combining this all with the tvt matchup.
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On April 16 2010 01:38 MorroW wrote:
so jumping to conclusions here u wanna spread ur mules on all the green ones, not all on same green ^^
great find but i doubt ull get the same result if u redo everything
Not necessarily. Remember that not only do mules mine those patches first, but other workers mine those patches faster too. You don't want to lose anything by mining a red patch, but you may want to mine yellows in order to keep up regular worker efficiency. Obviously, the most important minerals are early in the game, so you want to mine green first, but after you mine those a little, you may want to try and equalize using the yellow patches as well.
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Wow that is a crazy thought. Thanks for the info! Very useful thread.
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Are you sure the number 2 and number 3 should be switched? Seems like the Reds are further than yellows.
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If you only mule the green patches they will be mined out much faster than the others and lower your income rate for the remaining minerals.
Are you sure that is worth it? If you did think that was worth it because you avoid mineral loss then wouldn't you consider supply drop better than mule anyway because it mule is only faster income, whereas supply is an actual gain of 100 minerals over the term of a base?
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This should be a simple fix, if the MULE has less than X seconds remaining on its life then it should not be able to start mining.
I think it's interesting that the rate of mineral (and also gas, although this wasn't covered in the OP) mining can differ from location to location. Isn't it true that in WC3, the harvesting speed of Peons changes very slightly depending on the position of the gold mine so that Gold income is always the same (equal to wisps or acolytes) regardless of where the gold mine is placed? I think that at least vespene gas should work that way.
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On April 15 2010 12:18 Clonze wrote:
Thanks cheech, you're the best practice partner in the whole world.
Yo, if you want to play and talk to someone sometime just jump up a few vent channels I'm sure me, vec, or dan (anti) will want to play
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So are all vespene geasers the same or is there a red / yellow whilst minning with normal miners?
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On April 15 2010 10:59 CheeC[h] wrote:1. the mule can return 270 minerals throughout its duration 2. the mule can return 240 minerals throughout its duration (the further away patches) 3. the mule can collect 270 minerals but only return 240 (its duration runs out before reaching the command center) i will represent these outcomes with circles over the mineral patch summoned on top of. 1 = green 2 = yellow 3 = red Metalopolismiddle left position![[image loading]](http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5635/middleleftposition1.jpg) middle right position![[image loading]](http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/404/midrightposition3.jpg) I was pretty shocked by the results i found.
Wow... that is absolutely shocking and requires some new research (also for more current maps). I mean are you kidding me blizzard? I don't know what to say apart from: WTF??!
PS: I also think they should re-time a mule (either life span or collecting rate) by a very minor factor, so that it will never (neither on far nor close patches) gather minerals and die while holding them.
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what if they dropped minerals, and u had to send a worker to pick them up.. like how u could pick up a doodad in bw
ahh reminds me of scv football
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Brazil109 Posts
Yeah, I was redirected here from a new post on the subject. It would be nice if someone could take their times to update this info (even on the old maps, since there's been changes to mining and MULEs in the patches).
(edit: typo)
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