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On July 25 2010 02:59 FC.Strike wrote:
If you ever get supply blocked in your first 12 supply or so, send workers first. The small burst of extra minerals will allow you to get that supply a little bit earlier.
If you DON'T get supply blocked in your first 12 supply or so, build the worker first. The small time advantage where you kick start your economy is superior to the small burst of extra minerals.
Yup. I don't know why anyone says things other than this.
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I always send to mins, make drone, split, move OL, hotkey hat & OL. Might be 0,00001% less effective than drone first, specially as zerg due to larva production, but I might survive the deficit.
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On July 24 2010 15:47 Lane wrote:
The difference is totally insignificant.
I agree.. It's more personal preference than anything else.
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On July 24 2010 15:58 Kantutan wrote:
It extends far into the late-game though. If your first worker was made .5 seconds earlier, then every worker after that will be made faster as well, meaning they got in that much more mining time. Since constant worker production often doesn't stop until at least 15 food, it means you would have over 8 workers mining sooner rather than the 6 mining sooner using the method of sending your workers first.
No, your worker will simply be made .5 seconds earlier. Why would it be cumulative???
To me its obvious sending workers first is better, but then again, I play zerg, so I dont really have a training queue
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On July 25 2010 02:59 FC.Strike wrote:
Conclusion:
If you ever get supply blocked in your first 12 supply or so, send workers first. The small burst of extra minerals will allow you to get that supply a little bit earlier.
If you DON'T get supply blocked in your first 12 supply or so, build the worker first. The small time advantage where you kick start your economy is superior to the small burst of extra minerals.
If you're cool, are banging hot girls every night, and love bananas, you should do whatever you want because it really doesn't matter. And who doesn't love bananas?
One other point to note:
If you are building at your choke, you should always send workers first. There is absolutely no way you will consistently time that much travel distance perfectly to start your building the moment you break 100mins.
If you build a worker first, "optimal" play demands that you build around your nexus/cc.
If I still had the beta installed, I'd do some tests to see what kind of advantage is actually accrued from this kind of thing, but I don't. Its probably minimal, as everyone has said.
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First time poster here 
I tried to do the math on a purely economical point of view with the following factors :
- the time to start building a worker before sending the others (d) is different than the time to send workers before building the first (d' )
- income is linear and gives 0.7 mineral per second per worker
- as given by liquipedia, it takes 25s to build a pylon or OV, 30s to build a supply depot
- protoss build the first pylon exactly 25sec before the production of the 11th probe, no travel time
- protoss chronoboost once, right when the pylon is done
- terran build the first depot exactly 30sec before the production of the 12th SCV, no travel time, builder SCV doesn't count in the income during building time
- zerg build the overlord after the 9th drone
In that particular set-up, i tried to compare the two options for each race after 120 sec and stopping the production of workers after 14 max.
My results :
Protoss : it's better to build a probe first IF d <= 1.3*d' (e.g. if it takes you 1 sec to send your probes, you should build the 7th probe before if you can do it within 1.3 sec)
Terran : it's better to build an SCV first IF d <= 1.17*d'
Zerg : it's better to send you drones first and then build the 7th (the ratio where building first is better, is not static and quite improbable, for example, it's better to build first if you need 1.4s to send your drones and 0.2s to build the first)
The high difference between Zerg and the others is off course the fact that you can produce more than one drone at a time due to the larva mechanic.
Mind that those numbers are approximations in a particular set-up, please do not consider them as a rule.
The excel sheet i used for calculation is quite unreadable as of now but I'd be happy to send it if you pm me and try to explain you how i worked.
Just out of curiousity, i tried to start the production of the overlord after the 8th,9th and 10th drone and of course the results showed that the 9th is the best option in that particular set-up.
Last but not least, english is not my motherlanguage so please forgive my mistakes
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Thanks for all the great feedback guys. Being my first post, I am impressed with the community here. I am looking forward to monday night with great anticipation. For the record, if anything, this dialogue has sparked my curiosity into experimenting with F1 possibly, and with send, make, then split, as well as the weird WhiteRa stuff I read in here. Thanks
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Worker first is better imo. I agree with LuckyFool's points 100%
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I have a different claim - it depends on the race! (edit: glad to see it was claimed already  )
On July 24 2010 15:54 iEchoic wrote:
1) You send your workers first. This means that in the first .5 seconds of the game, you are not producing a worker. You are therefore down .5 seconds of mining time from one scv at the point at which the scv hits the mineral line.
2) You create your worker first. This means that you are missing out on .5 seconds of mining time from six scvs. Correct. If you play Zerg! Because in the first half minute of the game larva production is not bottleneck. In those periods for Zerg is more important to have optimal minerals as early as possible. (that changes a bit later)
False for Protoss and Terran, because they only produce one worker at a time, so it's bottleneck for them to produce them as early as possible. (hence Protoss better chronoboost those probes)
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Hope this make sense.
Logic tells me that it is better to send your workers first and then make an scv.
Would you rather have your 7th scv mining earlier or your 6 existing workers mining first?
The logic of having JUST ENOUGH minerals to build a probe is broken. What if the reverse was you'll have 25 extra minerals if you do it this way??
Common sense tells me that it is easier to make a sweeping motion towards the mineral line that starts with selecting the Command Center, pressing S, boxing your workers and right clicking on a mineral patch.
Than it does to make 2 motions where you first box your workers and send them to a patch and then go back with your mouse to click the command center and build another worker.
To Finalize.
If you do the start in one motion.
Build SCV
Send probes to mine
If you do the start in two distinct motions.
Send the probes to mine
Build SCV.
Practice how to do it in 1 move. Profit.
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Its not about having just enough minerals to build a probe. If you delay your first probe, your second probe will be delayed by just as much relative to someone who built first.
This alone makes worker-first the "optimal" option, with the caveats mentioned on pages 3 and 4.
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Having read the thread and followed the path of the discussion... right!, wrong!, right!, I just wanted to echo CitanZero in saying this was a great thread with great posts. Nice to see a genial dialogue with coherent arguments, and awesome math work. Control f1 is a revelation!
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On July 25 2010 14:12 CitanZero wrote:
Thanks for all the great feedback guys. Being my first post, I am impressed with the community here. I am looking forward to monday night with great anticipation. For the record, if anything, this dialogue has sparked my curiosity into experimenting with F1 possibly, and with send, make, then split, as well as the weird WhiteRa stuff I read in here. Thanks
Don't do the White-ra send! Its soooo bad!
You'll notice, in a lot of his replays, his first probe finishes building and he still doesn't have enough minerals to build a second probe.
Secondly, selecting and moving 2 probes at a time, quickly, leaves a lot of room for error. A misclick past your minerals once every few games will easily offset the average gain that you might get. Watch white-ra's replays, and you'll see him mis-click every few games.
Personal preference, I like to build my probe first so that I have a fraction of a second to see where the closest mineral stacks are, so that I can split my probes onto the best mineral stacks.
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EPT
