EPTIf i don't need scans or supply and just want the fastest growing economy possible, is it good to skip the mules and not upgrade at all?
SCVs versus Mule
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
If i don't need scans or supply and just want the fastest growing economy possible, is it good to skip the mules and not upgrade at all? | ||
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SilverPotato
United States560 Posts
Mules on average gather 270 minerals (9 trip http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Mule | ||
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Zoltan
United States656 Posts
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Bair
United States698 Posts
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Mule And this one says 3 times as fast : http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Mining_Minerals 2 times faster sound about right. Is it? Also from the same article you can see that an SCV brings around 50 minerals per minute, and from my own experiments i could only see 40 minerals per minute. So 1 mineral per second for a total of 60 per minute seems a bit off... | ||
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
Mule mines 270/90 or 3 minerals/sec, like 4.5x faster than norm scv. I think the correct way to think of this is that you can make 2 SCVs instead of upgrading OC. 2 SCVs produce ~1.3min/sec vs 3min/sec from mule, so the longer you wait, the mule mining starts adding up vs the 2 SCV mining.(when you upgrade to OC it'd then be around (3-1,3)*[time between OC arriving in secs] less minerals you would have if you had built the OC first) There are situations where stalling OC might be good, but for econ it's prob only if you're using those extra mins for another early CC. | ||
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bobartig
40 Posts
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
I was under the impression that you would lose money on the first mule, but get a huge economic benefit as the game gets longer. But after running the numbers and a couple of simulations, I can see now that even the first mule is more profitable than the SCVs, and you cannot have it soon enough. I'll save you the calculations, but the result was that even the first mule puts you ahead by 15 (EDIT 15 not 60, corrected) minerals compared to pumping SCVs nonstop. (To get to that number you have to account for everything, cost of the comsat but also the cost of the SCVs.) One last question though, at what rate does the command center regenerate energy? I want to calculate exactly how many mules i can call over time and the associated income. | ||
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
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Jaeger
United States1150 Posts
Says 0.5625 energy per second | ||
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Pfeff
United States270 Posts
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
On September 08 2010 08:33 Pfeff wrote: Come on man, do some looking of your own. All this shit is on one site I did search for command center energy regeneration on Google but could not locate the information. Also often you see mistakes on web articles (example of the previous wiki entries that says mule is 2x and 3x faster), so it never hurts to discuss everything. Ends up the real answer was 4.5x faster. Besides... would forums like this one exist if everybody just searched for everything?  | ||
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ZannX
United States70 Posts
According to the editor, the mule's stats are: Amount: 6x SCV Time: 2.05x SCV So the mule gathers at roughly 2.93 or 3 times as fast. And of course the Orbital Command's energy regeneration rate is 0.5625 as stated earlier. Which means it takes 88.89 game time to get 50 energy and a mule lasts 90 game time which matches the typical in game experience that you can call down a second one just as the first one runs out. | ||
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
On September 08 2010 10:38 ZannX wrote: You can always open the galaxy editor. According to the editor, the mule's stats are: Amount: 6x SCV Time: 2.05x SCV So the mule gathers at roughly 2.93 or 3 times as fast. And of course the Orbital Command's energy regeneration rate is 0.5625 as stated earlier. Which means it takes 88.89 game time to get 50 energy and a mule lasts 90 game time which matches the typical in game experience that you can call down a second one just as the first one runs out. The editor gives you raw numbers that do not take into account things like travel distance and mining times, so it stays in the land of vague theorycraft.The math behind the 4.5x is as follow (from observed experimentation thus more reliable) : mule brings 270 minerals over 90 seconds, that is : 3 minerals / second SCV brings ~40 minerals per minute, that is : 0.66 minerals / second 3 m/s divided by 0.66 m/s = 4.54 times faster. | ||
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ZannX
United States70 Posts
On September 08 2010 10:43 Draken wrote: The math behind the 4.5x is as follow : mule brings 270 minerals over 90 seconds, that is : 3 minerals / second SCV brings ~40 minerals per minute, that is : 0.66 minerals / second 3 m/s divided by 0.66 m/s = 4.54 times faster. You're assuming 40 minerals per minute is correct. The person who stated 40 minerals per minute had 22 scv's harvesting on presumably 8 patches. That's obviously going to be slower per SCV than 8 scv's on 8 patches. You can't argue with hardcoded numbers - the SCV literally has a resource collection multiplier of 1 while the mule has 6 and the SCV has a collection time multiplier of 1 while the mule has 2.05. The 22 scv example further favors the mule of course since the mule can mine at the same time as an scv so it's very good for saturated bases - which is probably why the math turned out to be 4.5x since the base was actually oversaturated (20 scv's is *optimal* for 8 patches). I'm not sure what you mean by mining times and travel distance. They move at the same speed (2.8125) and mining time is... built into the editor (as I stated earlier the mule has 2.05x an scv's mining time). The only variable to consider here is saturation as I just demonstrated. | ||
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Nehm
Netherlands22 Posts
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
On September 08 2010 10:48 ZannX wrote: You're assuming 40 minerals per minute is correct. The person who stated 40 minerals per minute had 22 scv's harvesting on presumably 8 patches. That's obviously going to be slower per SCV than 8 scv's on 8 patches. You can't argue with hardcoded numbers - the SCV literally has a resource collection multiplier of 1 while the mule has 6 and the SCV has a collection time multiplier of 1 while the mule has 2.05. The 22 scv example further favors the mule of course since the mule can mine at the same time as an scv so it's very good for saturated bases - which is probably why the math turned out to be 4.5x since the base was actually oversaturated (20 scv's is *optimal* for 8 patches). I'm not sure what you mean by mining times and travel distance. They move at the same speed (2.8125) and mining time is... built into the editor (as I stated earlier the mule has 2.05x an scv's mining time). The only variable to consider here is saturation as I just demonstrated. Since I'd hate to have been not clear, at 8 scvs I was avg 340 or 42.5minerals/min, 11 @ 440 , 12 @ ~500, 10 @ ~420. I switched to LT and checked there and got similar results...That being said, I figured out as I was looking at the income tab, I'd take an estimated guess that the whole 60 minerals/minute comes from the fact income shows minerals/42,86sec(like APM). This ofcourse doesn't matter in the slightest though, but explains the discrepancy better. The reason why I say it doesn't change anything is, sure the value of SCV mining might be then instead a lot closer to 1min/sec, but at the same time the mule's value pumps up to 270/(90/1,4) = ~4,2, which is again around 4.5x when you have more than 8 scvs on minerals. | ||
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Draken
Canada61 Posts
I'd take an estimated guess that the whole 60 minerals/minute comes from the fact income shows minerals/42,86sec(like APM). I don't understand this part, could you explain the 42 seconds / APM thing please? | ||
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
On September 08 2010 17:17 Draken wrote: I don't understand this part, could you explain the 42 seconds / APM thing please? Fastest is 40% faster than real life(aka 100 RL sec = 140 ingame fastest sec). This translates to APM in SC2 and it seems income. 60/1,4 = 42,659xxxxxsec so income per min is actually income per 42.659 sec and same with APM Edit: Man I've posted way to much in this thread, sorry about that :/ Anyway to clarify it takes SCV roughly 5sec(gametime) to go a trip so ~1mineral/sec by timing it, which would make the income tab not add up if it was over 60 sec, but makes sense if it is over 42.x sec. This doesn't really matter at all though like I said earlier, except then the '60minerals per minute' thingie is true, if you are talking RL minute(aka 60sec instead of 42.x) | ||
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