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Let me start by saying I'm a complete noob, so forgive me if what I'm writing sounds retarded, but it seems logical to me from what knowledge I have from watching VODs.
Since I don't have a beta key and the current AI is pretty bad, I started doing random little tests on damage, how many shots it takes to kill what, etc. and I started testing the optimal number of drones for harvesting. I found a couple of things out, the more obvious of which is that mineral nodes which are closest to your HQ can support only 2 harvesters whereas the ones that are a space farther can support 3 with each worker being slightly less efficient as a result of the timing. So optimal saturation should be 2xclose nodes + 3xfarnodes which is usually 21 or 20. You can put more on, but beyond this point the mining rate of your worker will drop approximately 20 fold.
I figured I would try some tests to figure out the average income with various HQ positions in combination with certain numbers of harvesters. Long story short I found that placing an expo 1 space farther away from the minerals actually allows you to mine out a mineral field more quickly at full saturation for an increase of only 3 workers. The downside is obviously that your workers have to travel slightly longer to return home with their cargo, meaning that before you approach the saturation point you will be making less than you would with normal placement, making it pretty impractical for early expos.
I realized though that it could be applied to high yield expos in mid/late- game for a couple of reasons. First, the high yield fields don't have as many nodes as the normal ones, meaning the number of workers needed for full saturation will drop by around 6. Second, by the time you're expoing at the high yield you should have enough workers to fully saturate the nodes immediately when the HQ finishes, skipping the part of the curve where you would be mining more slowly than an HQ placed 1 square closer. Finally, because the high yields offer double minerals the disparity between the average intake of the differently placed HQs is also doubled accordingly.
So if you get a high-yield expo up, place it 1 space farther from the nodes than you normally would, and immediately saturate it with 18 workers, you will be able to mine it out a few minutes faster than someone with a properly placed HQ.
You can obviously test this really easily yourselves, but here are the basic numbers I came up with for anyone who is too lazy. I'm assuming that the income counter on replays is measured in units per minute:
1 worker mining at minimum proximity can collect around 40.5 resources per minute (gas and minerals mine at the same rate)
2 workers mining any node will acquire fully double what one would, but if a node 1 space farther is given a third worker, this third worker will increase your MPM(minerals per minute) by roughly 30 instead of 40, because there is a brief period of waiting for the previous worker to finish.
Dancing workers (a third worker on a proximity node) only increase your tally by roughly 2.5 MPM, after which point the increases get exponentially smaller.
Full saturation of a normal mineral field yields approximately 800MPM, whereas saturation with a misplaced HQ yields roughly 850-860MPM with a ceiling of about 900
if you take 3/4 of that (x2)(for 6 nodes as opposed to 8) this is about 1200MPM with normal placement on a high yield with full saturation, meaning you would get minerals at an increase of about 100-120MPM.
May not sound like much but one extra zealot a minute and having your high-yield mined out a couple minutes before your opponent can make a big difference in a close game.
I see very little downside to this if you are able to saturate the mineral field immediately. Other than harassment becoming slightly more effective. What do you people think?
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On April 20 2010 10:19 Aether wrote:
What do you people think?
I think the search function could have saved you hours of your life.
User was banned for this post.
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well, not really. I was messing around with this stuff to learn about the game because I don't have access to b.net. I would've been doing something along these lines anyway.. Why, is this common practice?
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Very interesting and nice work. I'm not sure anyone has done this so in depth before, so I'm not sure how he wasted his time Vexx?
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On April 20 2010 10:39 Vexx wrote:I think the search function could have saved you hours of your life.
I disagree, nothing I found using the search function for "worker saturation" yielded anything like this. It's definitely something I'd never heard of before - everyone always thinks of optimal saturation if your nexus/cc/hatchery is as close as possible to the mineral fields, but nobody's yet seen whether your intake speeds up as Aether describes: increasing saturation past the normal optimal level and counterbalancing by adjusting the mining distance slightly. I'd be interested to see what the optimum combination of distance and saturation would be.
Edit: small typo.
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I read through those threads, and people did touch on things like the fact that maximum saturation is 3 nodes + distance mining can be more efficient, but no one really put it all together into a direct in-game application.
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I've got to agree there, I'd never heard of this before either. I find this to be pretty useful tbh.
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Wow, interesting... thanks for the information.
When you say place the hq one square away, does that mean one square in both directions (assuming a corner high yield base), or one square in just one direction?
For example, if I spawn at 9 on LT and I am expanding to the high yield just below my natural (in the bottom-right, about 4 or 5 o'clock), the minerals make a corner formation. Do I place the hq one space left, or one space left AND one space up?
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one square on both sides if the minerals are on a corner.
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This topic will be closed after my post, you will see why
No need to thank me, i didn't make the graph.
User was banned for this post.
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right, then why when people expand do they not place their Nexus/Hatchery/CC 1 space farther from the high yields? I've never seen it done in any replays... Is this not relevant information?
This chart also doesn't address the disparity between HQs placed in different locations. This graph is a small part of the overall puzzle. I think some people are just seeing the numbers for a saturated mineral patch and saying "yeah yeah, we know" without considering the extended implications which is what I'm actually focused on.
It is a direct in-game application of this information that could be potentially useful, especially for people with highly macro-oriented styles.
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On April 20 2010 11:29 ooni wrote:This topic will be closed after my post, you will see why + Show Spoiler +No need to thank me, i didn't make the graph.
Thanks (for not reading the OP and making yourself look like an ass).
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On April 20 2010 11:29 ooni wrote:
This topic will be closed after my post, you will see why
No need to thank me, i didn't make the graph.
Have you even read the OP ? This has nothing to do with it..
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Wait, are you saying 18 workers mining at a base placed 1 space away mines faster than 18 workers mining at a base placed in the correct spot?
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Sorry if you didn't understand the graph. I'll explain it thoroughly.
He said:
Since I don't have a beta key and the current AI is pretty bad, I started doing random little tests on damage, how many shots it takes to kill what, etc. and I started testing the optimal number of drones for harvesting. I found a couple of things out, the more obvious of which is that mineral nodes which are closest to your HQ can support only 2 harvesters whereas the ones that are a space farther can support 3 with each worker being slightly less efficient as a result of the timing. So optimal saturation should be 2xclose nodes + 3xfarnodes which is usually 21 or 20. You can put more on, but beyond this point the mining rate of your worker will drop approximately 20 fold.
The optimisation according to graph is at 24.5 not 21 or 20, you can see from the graph gradient at 24.5 is not much lower than at 20 or 21.
He calculated in terms of 21 or 20, i.e. a case where the minerals aren't saturated. When saturated the distance make little to no difference.
misplaced saturation (this graph is for automatic mining) is 900-1000; It make little to no difference, where the workers are placed. This is because once you have 18+ peons start to dance towards an empty patch automatically. Either he miscalculated or tested with only two matches which brought an unstable result.
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On April 20 2010 11:57 RifleCow wrote:
Wait, are you saying 18 workers mining at a base placed 1 space away mines faster than 18 workers mining at a base placed in the correct spot?
yes, essentially.
The reason is because if the mineral node is 3 spaces from the nexus, the minimum allowed, only 2 workers can fit into the cycle, and there's a brief period when the patch is not being mined. If you over-saturate the patch, the workers do not wait at the patch the way they do with a vespene guyser unless the current worker is nearly done mining. This causes them to wander around from node to node since they are all saturated and his actual mining time is massively decreased.
if the nodes are 4/5 spaces away instead of 3/4, all nodes can accommodate a full cycle of 3 workers.
So instead of 14 workers at 100% + 4 workers at around 5% efficiency versus 18 workers all averaging around 95% of their maximum capacity.
On April 20 2010 12:11 ooni wrote:
The optimisation according to graph is at 24.5 not 21 or 20, you can see from the graph gradient at 24.5 is not much lower than at 20 or 21.
He calculated in terms of 21 or 20, i.e. a case where the minerals aren't saturated. When saturated the distance make little to no difference.
misplaced saturation (this graph is for automatic mining) is 900-1000; It make little to no difference, where the workers are placed. This is because once you have 18+ peons start to dance towards an empty patch automatically. Either he miscalculated or tested with only two matches which brought an unstable result.
I believe you're misreading your own graph. The intersection point is actually exactly at 21 workers on that graph, which is exactly where I calculated it to be... Your graph supports my evidence. What you're saying WOULD be true if workers didn't move away from nodes that are occupied and waited at them, but they are not able to do this if the node is 3 spaces away. Therefor, you need a wandering probe to randomly hit the open mineral patch during the brief period for which it is available. Since the chances of this are very low, the probe spends about 95% of it's time wandering around and only 5% mining.
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Actually just checked, the optimal differentiation point in the graph, at the point is between 22~23.
It does seem like 20~21 is ideal because if you look
20 brings 53 minerals p/m
21 brings 52 minerals p/m
Suddenly drops to
22 brings 50 minerals p/m
So 20~21 must be optimal right?
nope,
with 23
23 bring 49 minerals p/m
Thus making 22~23 optimal
So what's the difference if it's 22+?
when it's 22+ no matter what the peons still bounce between minerals, that means even you put 3 per minerals they will still bounce to an emptyfield. Though it does not look optimised that peons bounce around the minerals, the income wise it is beneficial.
I believe you can benefit from optimising the nodes 2-3 only if you have low peon numbers or have full satuation and microing the peons constantly.
See the problem is I'm and everyone else on this thread is generalising workers. Drones are on creep, probes have different acceleration and SCVs are just SCVs.
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Can this be the case with SC1 also because I remember hearing a comment on a replay video about a Russian SC1 player who always placed his Nexus 1 space away from what is considered closest, but the commentator had no idea way.
Anyways, nice job.
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what that fails to incorporate is the fact that if a mineral node is occupied, the drone that arrives at it DOES NOT WAIT. This is important.
Imagine just one mineral node with a probe. This probe has a certain capacity for mining which is the distance it must move divided by its movement speed plus the time it takes to physically mine the minerals. To make it simple, we will say that the probe travels 1 square per second and the HQ is 32 spaces away from the mineral patch, and takes 36 seconds to mine the minerals. the probe takes a certain amount of time to complete 1 revolution, in this case exactly 100 seconds. 64 seconds back and forth plus 36 seconds mining time. If we want to add more probes to this mineral patch, we need to account for the fact that probe #1 is coming back in exactly 64 seconds, so if probe #2 consumes 36 seconds mining his minerals, this leaves only 28 seconds for probe #3 to mine before the first probe returns. Upon returning he says:
"Hey! This guy is going to be mining for 8 more seconds? I would wait for 2-3 seconds, but I'm not waiting for that!" and wanders off to find a different mineral patch. If he would wait there the mineral node would be operating at full capacity and the drones would not, unfortunately they don't do this.
the solution to this problem is not to pack as many workers in as possible so that there are 5 of them waiting to mine a patch with a 20 second window, the solution is to INCREASE the length of a single rotation to better accommodate the probe's mining capacity. By increasing the distance from 32 spaces from the minerals up to 36 spaces, we create a cycle of exactly 108 units. Now 3 probes can each take their 36 seconds without interfering with one another as they are taking a few extra seconds to bring the minerals back.
After all of that, if you still don't understand what I'm saying, load up a game on an empty map, build 40 or so drones, 1 CC/Nex/Hatch in the usual spot at the high yield, and another one 1 space away from where you normally would, send 18 drones to each one and see which one finishes first. If you don't believe my logic, test it out. I guarantee the one that is placed 1 space away will finish at least a full minute before the one in the normal spot.
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What if you force 3 workers to mine a close proximity patch? The third worker would wait for a while, but would it not mine at the same rate as 3 workers mining a far patch?
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The problem is that the cycle isn't long enough to support 3 miners at that distance. The cycle will always be interrupted by the third probe wandering off.
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On April 20 2010 13:55 Aether wrote:
The problem is that the cycle isn't long enough to support 3 miners at that distance. The cycle will always be interrupted by the third probe wandering off.
So what you're saying is, the AI intentionally moves the third worker away, causing a decrease in mining rate?
What if you had patch num x 3 workers mining where there would be 3 workers per patch? Would the third worker still move away?
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yes, exactly. Since all the mineral patches that support 3 workers are already fully saturated the wandering worker can only successfully mine if it lands on a 2 worker node during the brief window it is unoccupied, which will simply send one of the original 2 wandering again.
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+1 for Starcraftscience
nicely done!
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Nice, +1 for the scientific method 
Seem very counter intuitive but I so want to try this for myself.
Does someone see a way Blizzard could fix this? If they knew this, I would presume they would try and fix it. They are quite strict in starcraft 2 in making the intuitive thing the absolute best it seems...
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Oh hey that's pretty cool to note... I'll have to think about like if I ever set myself up on a high yield.
Also, do you mean like one spot away diagonally? Or like one spot away in one direction?
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if the minerals are on 2 sides of the HQ then it's 1 space diagonally, but if they're in a straight line it's just one space in the opposite direction. Basically if you build a Nexus or whatever, and then you try to place another Nexus over the corner, it should look like your original Nexus has a green moat.
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this actually gv us a consideration as a zerg player, number of workers population.
do you want more workers so that your armysize will be smaller or less worker with a huge army size? the cap still 200 so i dont think increasing number of workers will help you that much unless u want to be like movie vs Flash and exp like crazy and try to mine out b4 your foe
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On April 20 2010 15:59 NB wrote:
this actually gv us a consideration as a zerg player, number of workers population.
do you want more workers so that your armysize will be smaller or less worker with a huge army size? the cap still 200 so i dont think increasing number of workers will help you that much unless u want to be like movie vs Flash and exp like crazy and try to mine out b4 your foe
That's why I said it is impractical to use it on normal mineral fields. High yields though only result in 3-4 extra workers, and if you're in a macro battle that leads to you mining out an entire high yield, your food is probably in the high one-hundreds anyway.
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Hey aether, I am convinced by your argument but does making your HQ slightly further affect the gas mining efficiency? Have you tested this?
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I have and there is no noticeable difference. It still peaks at 122 per guyser. If there's a difference at all it's like a fraction of 1 gas per minute. I even tested it with 4 guysers to see if a small difference would make itself more apparent through multiplication, but the numbers stayed consistent. 488 peak 122 per guyser.
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On April 20 2010 16:12 Aether wrote:
I have and there is no noticeable difference. It still peaks at 122 per guyser. If there's a difference at all it's like a fraction of 1 gas per minute. I even tested it with 4 guysers to see if a small difference would make itself more apparent through multiplication, but the numbers stayed consistent. 488 peak 122 per guyser.
Isn't it supposed to be 180 per guysers (60 per worker)? Thought I read somewhere that workers mines mineral and gaz at the same rate (60/minute).
Great work btw! Will definitivly incorporate that in my play when I get a gold expo up =D
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I'd like to see a replay with proof. So far you've thrown in a lot of numbers, but I have trouble believing that it will finish a whole minute faster than the expo that's placed closer to the min line.
Replays please.
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The mining rate for both resources is equal, but I calculated the average to be around 40 or so. This could be the result of several things, such as the manner in which the replay income calculator updates, or the fact that mineral nodes are staggered.
The important thing is that the numbers are consistent relative to each other. I observed that on a normal field
8 = 325MPM
16= 650MPM
and guysers = 122 GPM
which all work out to a little over 40 resources per worker per minute.
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I love the work youve put in to this, and as people confirm your numbers the whining nay-sayers will disapear with the tail between their legs.
It sounds like youve found something noone ever thought about before; building your expo one step away increases your income with quite a bit as long as you can saturate enough. This sounds like something terran can easily exploit, building his expo as usual, but once it is saturated lift it off and move it one square for an extra 100minerals per minute.
Awesome!
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So... if the node is in closest spacing, ideal worker count is roughly 2.5. +1 off and it is 3 and yields more than 2.5. Plausible... potentially plausible in SC1 as well...
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thanks
I did most of my tests with protoss by the way. All workers MUST collect minerals at the same pace, so that should be irrelevant, but it's nice to see it done with another race.
I would've uploaded my replay of my tests, but I didn't think anyone would want to watch me mining out mineral fields on an empty map when they could just test it themselves. I was minimizing while the workers mined too, so there are parts where nothing happens in the replay for like a half an hour because I'm watching a show or something, heh.
As you can see from his replay though, it finishes a little under a minute faster, AND that is with the normal placement being over-saturated. There are 4 extra drones basically going to waste due to oversaturation.
I should note one thing though, the results of these tests don't account for Terrans using MULEs. I haven't done any kind of calculations for that, I'm thinking that it would still be better than the normal placement, but the gap wouldn't be as large. Possibly even counter-beneficial depending on how the MULEs are timed and how many of them you intend to use.
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brilliant thinking. no matter if it's gonna be huge or not, great ideas
thanks for replay kostja
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On April 20 2010 16:42 sk` wrote:
So... if the node is in closest spacing, ideal worker count is roughly 2.5. +1 off and it is 3 and yields more than 2.5. Plausible... potentially plausible in SC1 as well...
Yeah, I know it seems very counter-intuitive. The thing that really changes things is the fact that probes won't wait at the closer mineral fields. If they waited and only mined the node you assigned them to this wouldn't work, but because they ultimately wander off to look for another node increasing the distance to allow for full saturation actually helps.
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On April 20 2010 16:48 kenhennen wrote:
brilliant thinking. no matter if it's gonna be huge or not, great ideas
thanks for replay kostja
Thanks. I don't think it's a major thing, it has really limited uses, but I think it's something that in a really close macro war could tip the scales one way or another.
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Not convinced. When we were promised a minute's difference, I expected all mineral patches in the 2nd gold expansion to live at least a minute past the last one in the 1st one. Instead, for the past 52 seconds (not even a minute), there were only 2 patches left.
I mean it's a good find, but nothing significant that will change the outcome of a game. Have you checked whether longer distance makes gas mining slightly slower? That might be the compensating factor.
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On April 20 2010 16:58 Sadistx wrote:
Not convinced. When we were promised a minute's difference, I expected all mineral patches in the 2nd gold expansion to live at least a minute past the last one in the 1st one. Instead, for the past 52 seconds (not even a minute), there were only 2 patches left.
If you move your Hatchery/Nexus/CC one grid away, you're not going to change the mining rate from the patches, that are farther away. So all you get is mining from the nearest patches faster without side effect on the other patches.
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On April 20 2010 16:58 Sadistx wrote:
Not convinced. When we were promised a minute's difference, I expected all mineral patches in the 2nd gold expansion to live at least a minute past the last one in the 1st one. Instead, for the past 52 seconds (not even a minute), there were only 2 patches left.
I mean it's a good find, but nothing significant that will change the outcome of a game. Have you checked whether longer distance makes gas mining slightly slower? That might be the compensating factor.
Like I said before, I don't think it's a big thing either, but why not get "x" number of extra minerals per minute if you can? It's small, but it's just one of those little things, they all add up, especially in a close game. The reason it went in about 50 some seconds is because it was oversaturated. What I initially said was that with each patch at it's saturation point (no dancing workers, they're operating at 5-10% capacity.) the farther one would mine out over a minute faster, which is true. The idea being that at this point you have enough spare workers that it's 0 cost to add a couple of them to your high yield.for a slight edge in income.
I answered the gas question earlier  No noticeable difference.
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i don't think this will increase mining speed. while it does increase your MPM on the overlay the MPM is highly variable in the first place, with the exact same worker saturation you can be mining 780 one worker cycle and 820 the next. i think by delaying the worker trip time but increasing workers you are returning more minerals per cycle but that doesnt necessarily mean you are mining more. the delay you are introducing + the extra workers just happens to result in more workers returning minerals at the same time per cycle giving you inflated MPM numbers.
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On April 21 2010 01:58 mahnini wrote:
i don't think this will increase mining speed. while it does increase your MPM on the overlay the MPM is highly variable in the first place, with the exact same worker saturation you can be mining 780 one worker cycle and 820 the next. i think by delaying the worker trip time but increasing workers you are returning more minerals per cycle but that doesnt necessarily mean you are mining more. the delay you are introducing + the extra workers just happens to result in more workers returning minerals at the same time per cycle giving you inflated MPM numbers.
Yeah I think this is a valid explanation. If you think of an extreme example, say a mineral field all the way across the map. You have 50 scvs mining it, once they all return it, your mpm will skyrocket. I think this is because mpm is calculated every second or so.
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Calgary25980 Posts
That doesn't make sense because you're still only going to have 8 returning at a time, even if it's across the map. Someone mentioned the replay shows the 1-space-away expansion mining out first as well, although I can't watch the replay right now.
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On April 20 2010 16:51 Aether wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2010 16:48 kenhennen wrote:
brilliant thinking. no matter if it's gonna be huge or not, great ideas
thanks for replay kostja Thanks. I don't think it's a major thing, it has really limited uses, but I think it's something that in a really close macro war could tip the scales one way or another.
I think that's pretty major. Placing an expo a square away mines out high yield minerals couple minutes faster makes a big difference. Very good observation imo; when you get a beta key, I want to play you.
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dude, use bigger words!!
That way Google Korea will translate this into something extremely unreadable.
Just sayin.
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This concept reminds me when you attack with a large swarm of zerglings and once the target has been completely surrounded, the rest of the zerglings continuously run around the ball until they find a location to attack. I don't know if this is optimal or not, but it's just annoying for me to look at for some reason lol
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holyshit this is genius ^^.
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Very nice discovery. It was so obvious that nearer HQ should get more income that I have no idea how you started trying the opposite.
Keep posting more if you find.
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Quite interesting and not even surprising (I was very familiar with wandering in BW) but I would never have thought about placing a HQ further away to increase mining efficiency.
Did you test the mining rate difference if you have less than 18 workers?
Now as interesting as this may be I won't use it. Since I'm playing zerg I am always lacking gas, especially when I take a high yield. By that time I also don't want too many drones because 150 supply of zerg fighting units isn't even that strong, and every additional drone that does nothing but mine useless minerals hurts my army size even more.
Terran probably should focus on MULE efficiency instead (returning 9 times instead of 8 times and timing out after mining the 9th cargo).
I think protoss can profit the most from this, especially if they have to play defensively (pvz) and are taking a high yield as their only expansion at the moment.
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very interesting!!! (wish i had the free time you have!) keep up the good work!
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Very useful information here, +1
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Great find indeed.
I've always wondered whether or not it would be beneficial to build an extra command center with orbital command at some place other than expansion. It would build up energy for a quick muleing action midgame (giving you about 1500 minerals from high yield for 200 energy paying off with just 2 mules) as well as provide some emergency scans if needed. You might then just lift it to take your 4-th or 5-th base later in the game. Or is the 550 mineral investment early on just not worth it... Has anyone tested it?
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Ok so let me see if i got this right :
Placing the expansion 1 space away will allow 3 workers on every patch. One mining, one waiting to mine and one bringing minerals. The closest position allows only 2 workers on some patches, one mining one bringing minerals back, and this means you have a tiny loss of mining time. Because even if you put 3 workers there, given the reduced distance, you have 1 mining, 1 waiting, and the third one won't wait but will look for another patch, becoming a dancing worker.
I don't know if that's right, my mind is pretty much fucked now :D And grats on your beta key. In computer science this is a pipeline and of course having a pipeline of 3 is more efficient, even with the slightly increased travel time.
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I just tested
15 drones with further distance
vs 13 drones at closer distance
This was on high yield.
They both finished at the same time.
Not sure if i should have done more drones, but i can link replay if u want.
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i take back what i said, just tested 18 vs 18 and further mines faster than closer by a few seconds.
with the further cc, the scvs sync'd perfectly 3 per patch no wandering
with the closer cc, the scvs would freak out and wander leaving the closer mineral patches with downtime as they would travel around then just come back to the same mineral.
really neat find.
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Russian Federation85 Posts
On April 21 2010 03:26 Full wrote:
I just tested
15 drones with further distance
vs 13 drones at closer distance
This was on high yield.
They both finished at the same time.
Not sure if i should have done more drones, but i can link replay if u want.
If i'm not mistaken high yield has 6 mineral patches. Since in your configuration neither of the high yield is fully saturated (under the assumption of the OP), you would need to calculate the theoritical time for them mineral it off since you have different lengths.
He says that at the max saturation, the distance is important to achive the maximum result with the current AI (i doubt it will change, so).
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United States2095 Posts
Thanks Aether, Definetly gonna go home and check this out! =)
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Ok i have given this a shot.
My experiment is made at the natural expansion @5 o clock of Kulas Ravine. I have made it with 24 workers and I start mining in the same way for both experiments (the 24 workers start mien together)
Here are my results.
I take note of mineral count every 30 seconds.
![[image loading]](http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/6474/graphn.jpg)
As you can see the "+1 expansions" not only mine at the same time of the "normal expansion" but in 8 minutes it takes an advantage of 240 minerals
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I tested this method using MULEs and it had a negative effect. Not a good method if you plan to use MULES. I also feel the small gain in mineral collection is cancelled by the small loss in gas collection. If anything, this test shows that it won't really hurt if for some reason you missplace your building.
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On April 21 2010 04:25 Arcalious wrote:
I tested this method using MULEs and it had a negative effect. Not a good method if you plan to use MULES. I also feel the small gain in mineral collection is cancelled by the small loss in gas collection. If anything, this test shows that it won't really hurt if for some reason you missplace your building.
Yes it has a dramatic effect on MULEs, however the gas issue was nothing to be bothered with.
barely 1 per minute?
I know my hatch will be going down on +1 more often than not thanks to this guy.
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On April 21 2010 04:25 Arcalious wrote:
I tested this method using MULEs and it had a negative effect. Not a good method if you plan to use MULES. I also feel the small gain in mineral collection is cancelled by the small loss in gas collection. If anything, this test shows that it won't really hurt if for some reason you missplace your building.
I was thinking just that while I read the 4 pages, since terrans will for sure use mules I think it wont be good to misplace the CC since it will make them have to travel more and they don't have to wait for a free patch so no need for the misplaced CC. I think Zerg and Protoss can make more of this.
Great find and congratz for the key you win for this post, you deserve it!
PD: just curious, wouldnt this logic apply to Broodwar too? have anyone tryed?
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This seems like a great idea for toss, terran it seems inefficient due to mules mining over SCV's, as for zerg I am curious if the slight speed increase still allows for the square back mining to be efficient or will they reach their a split second to soon?
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On April 21 2010 04:40 kawoq wrote:
PD: just curious, wouldnt this logic apply to Broodwar too? have anyone tryed?
Nope, it doesn't work because harvesters in BW don't wait at all, while in SC2 a worker will wait at a mineral patch if the worker that is currently mining is at least 50% (or some value similar to that) done. SC2 has a buffer for slightly varying distances because of that.
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David Kim the balance designer for the game said in an interview or battle report I can't remember which, back in Alpha that the optimal numbers are 24 workers on minerals and 3 on each gas.
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Hey congratz on your key. Well deserved :D
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On April 21 2010 04:56 Silver777 wrote:
This seems like a great idea for toss, terran it seems inefficient due to mules mining over SCV's, as for zerg I am curious if the slight speed increase still allows for the square back mining to be efficient or will they reach their a split second to soon?
Drones don't get a speed bonus on creep, so it should be fine.
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Just want to see if I get this right.
the optimal amount of workers on minerals in your main is NOT 24? 3 at each patch? but like 21? 3 at the 5 patches farther away and 2 at the 3 closer patches?
Do I get a negative income of building 3 at each or just no more income of them?
and then on an expansion if I put it down 1 step back, I would get the maximum minerals with 3 on each patch?
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On April 21 2010 03:26 Full wrote:
I just tested
15 drones with further distance
vs 13 drones at closer distance
This was on high yield.
They both finished at the same time.
Not sure if i should have done more drones, but i can link replay if u want.
Yeah, you need more workers to make use of that difference.
What's important to focus on is not the efficiency of the workers. This is relatively unimportant. It's the efficiency of the mineral node, ie: is it being mined every possible second.
Full saturation on a normal placement should be 15/14 workers vs 18 on the farther end. If you do 18 vs 15 the difference is more like a minute and a half.
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I started off skeptical (like almost everyone I think) but you had tons of data and info, so good jorb on that. I don't have a Beta Key either, so I hope I'm not just spewing garbage. 
I've heard lots of people agreeing that this can help for Protoss and Zerg on gold expos, but I think Terran is the one race that can really use this to their advantage on a large percentage of their games.
For Terran, it seems like it would best be used almost the exact opposite as P or Z would use it. It would be bad to do this on a gold expansion because that's where all the MULEs should be going, and if they make one less trip then it's a big loss.
But because terran have the unique ability to move buildings, they are the only ones who can take advantage of this on any and every base each game, as long as they have enough SCVs and leave a single base at the normal distance for MULEs.
For this hypothetical game example, I'm going to completely ignore attacking/defending and just focus on mining efficiency:
So let's say it's mid-game and we are playing Terran with whatever strategy (doesn't matter). We have our main and natural at normal distances from the minerals. We have our eye on a gold expansion, so we are going to be creating extra SCVs to get ready to transfer them to the gold expo. With this extreme saturation and an extra base to dump all the MULEs, this player can lift and land his natural CC one space away to increase effeciency and income until the gold base gets up and running. Why move the natural, you ask? Because there are more minerals there at this point in the game, and we are about to have the gold base to spend the MULEs on. We can save the MULEs temporarily for the gold base. Remember, we wouldn't be moving the CC back if we weren't just about to take the gold.
After the gold base is up and running at the normal distance for MULEs (and a Planetary Fortress since this base won't be moving), a bit later on in this same game, we are under pressure and need a little boost in econemy but can't expand. So instead we just build more SCVs at our main and move the CC one space further back so we can get the mineral boost.
Let's pretend that our opponent gets some excellent harrasment at our natural and kills almost all of our SCVs there. We already have extra SCVs and simply move some of them from the main to the natural and move both CCs back to their original positions. This way, even if we lost a huge number of SCVs it doesn't hurt our economy too much (or at least as much as it normally would).
A bit later and we get a hidden expantion at a different base. Because we can't get enough SCVs right away, we should position the CC at the normal spot. Then maybe our main starts running out of minerals (because we've been mining faster than normal) or we just get enough SCVs produced there that it gets over saturated at the normal distance, so we pick up and land one space away. All the while sending all our MULEs to the gold base so we get as much income as efficient as possible.
This can go on in a pattern; As long as we have one base at the normal distance to spend MULEs on (preferably a gold base), we can make all other bases one space out, provided sufficient SCVs.
So far in this game we are mining/have mined three bases faster than normal which can add up to a significant increase in income. Not only that, but we weren't forced to have less than optimal mining at any point in this game, with or without worker harass, like Protoss or Zerg would have.
Now this optimization may have helped, but then we get into some grey areas I'm still wondering about. Part of me feels like this may be over-analysis, but another part says this may save my ass if it comes up and I know what to do. Back to our example game:
Once again a little later in this same imaginary game, we lose the gold base but we aren't out of the game yet (maybe some excellent harasment, base trade, whatever). We are able to save most of the SCVs that were there, and they move to our main & natural to keep the hidden base secret. Now what? Move one base closer for MULEs? Move both closer since we are going to have ridiculous over-saturation and SCVs are going to be dancing regardless? Move neither for the same reason (over-saturation)? This is of course assuming we have the time and presence of mind to do anything, and the enough pressure that we can't expand. In essence, once you get over 3 workers per patch, does it cease to matter what position the HQ is in?
Super-saturation (more than 3/patch) may seem extremely unlikely to happen, but if this is a sensible strategy then a lot of time we are going to have more workers compared to the normal now, so it would be more likely to have super-saturation.
And one final question outside of any hypotheticals: Does the gas mining not change even if the minerals make a corner and the gas is in the middle? So the HQ is one space vertical and one space horizontal off of the normal position, and the gas is as far away as possible?
On April 21 2010 06:41 folke123 wrote:
Just want to see if I get this right.
the optimal amount of workers on minerals in your main is NOT 24? 3 at each patch? but like 21? 3 at the 5 patches farther away and 2 at the 3 closer patches?
Do I get a negative income of building 3 at each or just no more income of them?
and then on an expansion if I put it down 1 step back, I would get the maximum minerals with 3 on each patch?
To answer what I can:
The point of the OP is that you can get more efficient use out of 24 workers if the HQ is placed one space further back than normal. If you can't move the base (Z & P & Planetary Fortress), then you rapidly start to loose worker efficiency once you go over 2 at the close mineral patches and 3 at the farther ones. The problem with 3 workers at the close patches is that one of the workers will get to the patch too soon and switch patches and spend too much time trying to find an open patch when really it would have been quicker to just wait it out at the first patch. Even if a base is one space back then with 3 workers there is near max patch efficiency.
I can't test these myself as I don't have a Beta key, but I have been following as much of what is happening as I have time for. And if you can't tell, I love the super technical. :D
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On April 21 2010 04:25 Arcalious wrote:
I tested this method using MULEs and it had a negative effect. Not a good method if you plan to use MULES. I also feel the small gain in mineral collection is cancelled by the small loss in gas collection. If anything, this test shows that it won't really hurt if for some reason you missplace your building.
Yeah, I suspected this might be the case. One possible way terrans can make use of this though is to use normal placement on high-yields, but on a normal expo, lift off and land 1 space farther once a normal mineral field is fully saturated, only using their MULEs on the normally placed CCs. So if your natural is saturated, you have a high-yield, you would use all of your MULEs on the high-yield, land the CC at your natural one space farther, and you should see gain as a result, since the MULEs are acting independently of the misplaced CC.
I don't believe there is a loss in gas, the reason being that with normal placement the workers have to wait a split second to enter the guyser, so by moving it only one square farther, the travel time eats into the waiting time BEFORE it eats into the mining time.
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Ah rufio beat me to it, yeah I agree. That is the way for Terran to take advantage of this. Use MULEs on a regular placement high-yield, and move your CC back once you reach full saturation on a normal field.
Good observation Rufio.
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Just want to mention that this is an awesome find, and thanks for all the work you put in! But if you did move your command center as has been suggested by lifting it, you'd have to figure out the mining time lost while the cc was in the air and figure out how long it would take for the new position to overtake the minerals gained from the non-moved CC. I'm betting lifting a CC like that probably wouldn't be beneficial.
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This newb question but: why do I see players maynard 4 drones to expansion when they have less than 16 mining at their main (in many cases way under 16... like 12). Is it so they can just mindlessly spam drones at both bases or is there some advantage that makes up for all the minerals lost while they're moving from base to base?
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On April 21 2010 09:44 fantomex wrote:
This newb question but: way do I see players maynard 4 drones to expansion when they have less than 16 mining at their main (in many cases way under 16... like 12). Is it so they can just mindlessly spam drones at both bases or is there some advantage that makes up for all the minerals lost while they're moving from base to base?
It's because (at least from my understanding) even though in theory you could have 2 on each mineral patch in the main, it's not so easy to make them actually mine like that. They'll probably be dancing around and losing time when it would be better to just send em over to the expo.
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I'm going to do some more thorough tests on whether gas is impacted or not. My game is minimized right now running tests.
As for the point about the liftoff time, I did consider that, Not sure how it would impact the overall time. I can try testing that as well.
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On April 21 2010 10:19 Aether wrote:
I'm going to do some more thorough tests on whether gas is impacted or not. My game is minimized right now running tests.
As for the point about the liftoff time, I did consider that, Not sure how it would impact the overall time. I can try testing that as well.
I can't test it, but I would think that it's not more than 3 ~ 4 seconds of lost mining time. Surely if you end up moving a lot back and forth then there could be some significant lost time, but as long as you switch positions at a very deliperate pace and don't rush things too much, it would seem to be worth it in the long run.
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tested and true ! no actual timings and such, didn't time my builds
i played against the AI on Desert Oasis ..... i played terran vs protoss
i kicked the AI's ass and i left him with just 1 assimilator
then i made 1 cc at a high yield and one at another , one space farther
the number of SCVs were 24 at one, 24 at the other, the one fartherst finished faster
the ai didn't mine from any high yield, and i saw that on the replay
i don't post the replay, just try it yourselves
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OK, I did a more thorough test on guysers. As I expected there is a difference but it's incredibly small. A guyser takes around 23 minutes to exhaust with normal placement and moving your HQ +1 only adds about 9 seconds to that 23 minutes.
If we break it down into seconds, this is 2500/1380 vs 2500/1390.
1.811GPS or 108.7 GPM vs 1.798GPS or 107.9 GPM.
As I expected, the difference is less than 1 units of gas per minute. You lose approximately 0.8 GPM, and you would ONLY lose that on the high-yield guysers. This equates to only about 14 Gas over the course of over 23 minutes.
There could be a very slight difference depending on if the guysers are diagonal and in the centre or not, but I would still estimate an incredibly small difference. Possibly .9 as opposed to .8
The reason for this is as I stated earlier, with normal placement workers actually have to wait a split second before entering the guyser, so the added distance cuts into the waiting time before it cuts into the mining time, meaning that most of the extra distance is absorbed by the fact that probes don't have to wait to enter the guyser.
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I think the real issue with this is its generally impractical with how the game is currently, could be useful in the future.
From my understanding of reading all of this, and you will lose minerals until you hit 18* because of the distance right? before it starts increase because you can have 3 maxed out instead of 2 right?
Most of the high resource games generally revolve around harrassing entire mineral lines and or killing off bases, making sure you have minimum 18 per minerals seems to be like another layer of complexity that might not even benefit you
it could be very useful as terran or zerg that are taking high yield resources, but I don't know, someone may find this useful, I just don't see it.
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also you can use a cheat program to speed up the single player game you seem to be a pretty bright person already so it shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out
thats how i tested stuff like this in wc3
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That's true, I did mention that myself. This is why I realize it has limited uses.
I completely lied about this point that I'm editing out. It does require complete saturation to work. If you have 1 less than full saturation they work out to be pretty much even. ie: 17 vs 17. is equal and 18 vs 18 gives a bonus to the misplaced CC
After some more tests this might actually be MOST beneficial for Terran because of what you're saying here. I did another test building 2 command centres, building probes from each one with a rally point at a single mineral node.
When both patches have 20 workers, I queue up an additional 4 on 1 and 1 on the other. when the single SCV is done, I lift the CC off and replace it 1 space farther. The other CC continues building SCVs. Despite the fact that I fumbled badly trying to land my CC and kept it floating for a good 15-20 seconds, this mineral patch STILL caught up and finished first by about 15 more seconds. So considering the point about harassment, if a Terran used just a few workers at their high yield and spammed all of their MULEs there, while replacing a more well protected expo, the player will see a benefit without the risks associated with other races.
As far as speeding the game up, meh. I just set them to mine, then minimize it and do something else. Only takes a couple of minutes to build the first few resource buildings and set up HQs in the right place.
I think at this point I've done a pretty exhaustive battery of tests, I don't know how much more information there is to be acquired. I guess it's up to players who are better than me now to decide whether this will be beneficial in any given situation and whether it's worth using as a result. I think the practicality of it will depend largely on the map you're playing. On a map like metalopolis for example I think it would be highly impractical since the high yields are in a really difficult position to defend, but if you do this on say an island expo with some turrets or a high yield that's more easily defended then it could be viable.
Something for people to play around with and decide if they can make use of it.
edit
P.S. I'm really interested to hear what any of the top level guys around here think about this. I think they're the ones who have the potential to make use of something as small as this. Nazgul, Idra, day[9], etc. (I only know a few from the replays I've watched, heh)
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Mad fucking props, Aether.
Just to be clear, this works with probes and drones as well?
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yeah, all workers mine at the same speed.
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haha, it's amazing what we bored SC players will unearth! Discoveries like this are why I am so excited for beta to end and get the real game out the masses. The first year of a game has massive development in strategies and I love to see these come to light so early. Great work Aether and for the rest of out sake, I hope you find some more free time to goof around soon!
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As rufio said.
In addition, early game;
Lets say your are making a FE. Your main will be saturated, so you can move that one 1 step away from the mineral lines and build a few more SCVs there to saturate it agian, and have your mules at the expo.
All you ever need as terran is one base close to the minerals for your mules to work at and the rest one step away. Since the positive effect of "One-Step-Away-Mining" only kicks in when the mineralline is fully saturated, and when not using mules; the mules should always go to the newest expansion. (not to mention that mules also always should go to the mineralline with most unmined minerals left which in this case coincide).
It would be interestin to see a spreadsheet of how much the income would benefit from having 2 ordinary minerallines and 1high yield mining with the "One-step-away-mining" idea, compared to the same but mining ordinarliy.
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nothing short of genius.. very impressed. It is one of those simple scientific ideas that you think gosh should of thought of that but didn't. Love the logic and the way you have backed up your argument... you may well see this being used by the pros in tournaments which is definately kudos for your work.
Congrats.
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Excellent post. Judging by the reactions, it could double as an intelligence test.
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I'd like to join the praise. Even if it does not provide a huge advantage, it can be done with little effort, so it might just become as standard as worker splitting. I agree that it might be especially valuable for expanding terrans.
I already foresee the new Flash of SC2 maynarding his scvs right before aethering his CC. Hell, it even sound right!!
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Can we get a picture showing this new positioning vs old positioning?
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sorry clicked wrong button.
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The problem here is that when you place your nexus one spot away anticipating saturation you are ill positioning yourself for worker harass. During the game he might kill off your workers and in plenty of games your count of 18 goes to a count of 12. Despite that there are certain scenarios where it could be worth it. Turtling Terrans, or games where you need to pull out a move to come back into it so you take a bit of risk trying to close the gap. Games where your main is mining out so you will know for sure you have 18 spare probes to mine to perfection on the new expo. Etc.
Really good stuff though I had been playing around with a lot of this stuff already such as for example where in SC:BW you needed to send your first 8 probes to 8 minerals, in SC2 if you get the opportunity you need to send a second probe to the closer minerals so two of them can return minerals from that one more quickly.
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right, but what do you think about Terrans using it in a main after they've expanded. ie you're in mid game, your expo has basically become your main because the main is mined out, and most of the harassment is actually happening at your high yield. So you lift off and replace the command center in the expo and spam mules at the high yield where the CC is in it's proper position. Then they have to either harass both mineral lines or choose between the high yield and the expo mining at slightly higher capacity. At this point you should be able to hold off harass at one of the two mineral lines so you're pretty much guaranteed a bonus beyond what the MULEs normally supply.
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Yep I definitely think there are situations in practice where it will help you in the game. It's going to be super tricky to get a feel for these situations. In short: I love it. It's the sort of thing SC2 needed.
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Yeah, like I said initially, I really think the uses are highly limited. I also think there are a small handful of situations where knowing to do it can give you a bit of an edge though, and I will be excited to see if someone is able to use it effectively some time in the future.
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Could someone please test how long it takes to mine out a gold mineral base with 16 (and mabye also with 17) workers with the standard CC position?
In my opinion, that's the real question here. Are the 2 extra SCVs worth the investment in terms of mining efficiency or not?
If a gold expo with 16 workers gets mined out just as fast as with 18 (due to workers changing patches regularly), the minerals/worker/time ratio is actually better than with the new method.
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Am I missing something? I see in the OP the numbers to back up his arguement, bonus income. But what I don't get is that once you are fully saturated *normally* with about 20-24 workers, the mineral nodes are constantly being mined from. And that rate is constant... no amount of space from the CC/nexus/hatch will change that.
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On April 21 2010 02:25 Chill wrote:
That doesn't make sense because you're still only going to have 8 returning at a time, even if it's across the map. Someone mentioned the replay shows the 1-space-away expansion mining out first as well, although I can't watch the replay right now.
However! His point is that this method allows each patch to always be getting mined. If the Nexus is in the "correct" position this doesn't happen. If a "close" patch has 3 workers one will just peace, and then since 2 workers isn't enough to mine the patch constantly, things will be suboptimal until another worker goes into "wander" mode and walks all the way over to that patch. Even if this happens immediately, the added walking time for the worker makes that method suboptimal, since with aether's method the third probe would just be standing at the patch ready to mine as soon as the previous guy got his minerals and left.
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On April 21 2010 23:35 BDF92 wrote:
Am I missing something? I see in the OP the numbers to back up his arguement, bonus income. But what I don't get is that once you are fully saturated *normally* with about 20-24 workers, the mineral nodes are constantly being mined from. And that rate is constant... no amount of space from the CC/nexus/hatch will change that.
The whole argument resolves around the point that for saturated bases, harvester work is not the bottleneck anymore, but patch accessability (so far so clear). There is a phenomenon in SC2 that for "close" mineral patches, a third harvester does not wait at his original patch, if it is currently blocked by another harvester, but rather starts to search for a free patch (decided by the AI). This "worker dancing" prevents close patches from being mined constantly. Now, if you set up your CC/Nexus/Hatch one space away, the dancing stops, and thus all patches are constantly mined from without downtime (if enough workers are provided). This increases minerals per minute.
Edit: or you just read blipster's post above :-P
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I tested this at well.
16 workers will normally mine at about 10.97 minerals/second on 8 patches.
24 workers will normally mine at about 13.48 minerals/second on 8 paches.
5 trillion workers will mine at about 13.86 minerals/second on 8 patches (this is 100% effective mining).
Then I tested moving the Hatchery one space farther from the mineral field (on Kulas Ravine at the natural expos):
16 workers will mine at about 9.88 minerals/second.
24 workers will mine at about 13.86 minerals/second.
Conclusion: Holy monkey! Placing the Hatchery one space farther will let you fully saturate at 24 workers.
It's beautiful to watch actually. Well, at first I thought my game had bugged because I always had a drone mining. There's no moving around, just beautiful, perfect mining.
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Pretty interesting research, never seen a pro do it though but if you say its true this will you give you indeed the match in a close game.
Definitely will try it out when I get a beta key,
Thanks.
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On April 22 2010 01:42 Derogatory wrote:
Pretty interesting research, never seen a pro do it though but if you say its true this will you give you indeed the match in a close game.
Definitely will try it out when I get a beta key,
Thanks.
My guess is that no pro has noticed it yet
The so called "pros" really aren't very good at Starcraft 2 yet.
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On April 20 2010 13:51 AssuredVacancy wrote:
What if you force 3 workers to mine a close proximity patch? The third worker would wait for a while, but would it not mine at the same rate as 3 workers mining a far patch?
Its not possible.
I tried REALLY HARD for a REALLY LONG TIME to get a third worker on the close patch. It just won't ever happen.
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Sorry for the bump. Somehow I missed all the big OLD POST warnings, and the bump warning at the bottom. Somebody linked this post in a more recent one, and I suck.
:/
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On June 22 2010 16:06 Skrag wrote:
Sorry for the bump. Somehow I missed all the big OLD POST warnings, and the bump warning at the bottom. Somebody linked this post in a more recent one, and I suck.
:/
*aww* why the long face? Now maybe some good players sees this thread and we can see this put to use in some real games :D
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I was about ready to start throwing fire before for posting about a topic that's been discussed 500 million times already (and it's even in the friggen in-game tool tips) when I noticed it had simply been accidentally ressed.
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actually thank you for bumping this. it's really interesting and i'm glad to have this info! i'll totally use it.
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Wow, I never thought of doing this, and it makes sense.
If a mineral patch has 2 workers, a third worker will stay on that patch if it's 4 units away, or move on if it's 3 units away.
If he moves on and all minerals are saturated, he is effectively not adding anything. If he stays, he is adding a little bit.
Very cool.
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Nice little edge we will have over people who haven't read this . I hope Blizzard doesn't fix this anytime soon. Thanks a lot Aether
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EPT
