EPTMaynarding Workers Before Saturation is Harmful - Page 3
| Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy |
|
CryMore
United States497 Posts
| ||
|
Cerion
213 Posts
| ||
|
Piousflea
United States259 Posts
Assuming your main is "better defended" than your natural, you should never maynard your main below 2 workers below mineral patch. Any less would simply be an inefficient use of resources. By maximizing the number of workers per base (while expanding when needed), you keep your income high on relatively few bases. One base with 24 workers is much easier to defend from harassment compared to two bases with 12 workers each. Two bases with 24 workers each is easier to defend than three bases with 16 workers each. | ||
|
Skrag
United States643 Posts
On September 25 2010 04:21 Emperor_Earth wrote: I find it very interesting that new SC2 players completely ignore over a decade of thinking that went into SC:BW and immediately think that double rallying to nat min lines is preferable to maynarding. Even the semi-pros/amateurs in the GSLs do this and it boggles my mind to no end. While all your other points certainly have validity, this is just silly. Workers in SC2 are different than workers in BW. They don't behave the same way, so assuming that decade of thinking applies at all is a pretty big assumption. For example, in BW you could "oversaturate" and get increased income at a diminishing rate. In SC2, you simply cannot oversaturate. Maximum income is 2 per close patch, and 3 per far patch, or 22 workers on lost temple mains. 23 workers mine at the same rate as 22. 24 workers mine at the same rate as 22. THIRTY workers mine at the same rate as 22. So technically, if you ever go past max saturation, you'd be way better off distance mining anyway. | ||
|
Skrag
United States643 Posts
On September 25 2010 06:54 GreEny K wrote: There are multiple threads like this from BW. Look them up, you'll find your answer. Absolutely. The fact that workers behave totally differently won't have any impact on those answers at all. Oh wait... | ||
|
Skrag
United States643 Posts
On September 25 2010 05:23 Triscuit wrote: Also, I thought that FULL saturation was 3 workers per mineral patch. I think there was even a little tip for this in-game. Is it just the point that any more than 2 per see such insignificant gains that it's not worth doing? The closest mineral patches will never be worked by 3 workers at a time. You'll always have a "bouncer", who is contributing exactly zero income to your economy. | ||
|
csfield
United States206 Posts
On September 25 2010 06:56 Skrag wrote: Until you get past 16 workers, mining speed is based purely on how far away the patch is. It's not until you start getting 3 workers on a patch that you start losing efficiency. So 10 on each of two bases will mine slightly faster than 20 on one base, but the difference is pretty small. There are some misconceptions in the original post, though, which seems to be claiming that you lose minerals because of the travel time. Travel time is mostly irrelevant, because you should be doing one of two things: maynarding workers to the expansion, and building new workers at each base, sending them to the nearest patches, or leaving workers at the main, and rallying workers from both bases to the expansion. So if you don't maynard, you still have to pay the travel time cost, as workers go from the main to the expansion. That cost does come a little later when not maynarding, but that's just another argument for not transferring. The real cost, and I did extensive tests on this during beta, is that workers need to "settle in" to a routine, where they're just going back and forth between a single patch and the base. Any workers who are shuffling around looking for places to mine are obviously not actually mining, and are not contributing anything at all to your mineral input. It's not until they settle in that they start adding to your income. Every time you add a new worker, there's some amount of time between the time that it's built, and the time that all the workers are settled and fully mining. Every time you add a worker, the routine gets broken. The new scv will pick somewhere to mine, but will likely interrupt another worker who had already settled into that spot, and that worker then has to go find somewhere, which likely interrupts another worker, etc. The more workers you have, the longer that settle-in time is. And it can get *really* long. For example, on lost temple, where 22 workers is the maximum that will ever be actually working at once, I've seen it take as long as two full minutes for everybody to settle in after adding the 21st and 22nd worker. That is two full minutes before the worker you built even BEGINS contributing to your economy. Average time was less than that (I don't remember the timings, it's been so long, but somewhere around 60 seconds seems to be sticking out), but it absolutely shocked me to see that the last worker could take that long before it even began to contribute. If you have a saturated main, with all the workers settled in, and not bouncing around, you then take half of those workers to the expansion, and start building workers at both bases, you're messing up the routines in both bases, rather than just one, which has a penalty associated with it. In the tests I ran, I started with 20 workers at a main (22 is the max on many maps, but those last two workers can take a really long time to settle in, so it may not even be worthwhile to hit max saturation) fully settled into a routine, and compared the difference between taking half of them to the expansion, and leaving them there and just rallying new workers to the expansion, until both bases had 20 workers each. Transferring showed a very consistent cost of around 150 minerals, due to the "settle-in" effect. That's where the real cost of transferring comes from. You can avoid this "settling in" problem by paying attention to which patch you send each worker to | ||
|
disco
Netherlands1667 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:03 Skrag wrote: Having done very extensive tests on mining rates and the effects of transfers, I have to assume that you didn't account for the "settle in" time in those tests. Probably you just sent 16 workers, measured minerals after some amount of time, and then did the same thing for 8 workers on each base. 16 workers will take quite a bit longer to settle in than 8, and you'll probably have multiple bouncing workers initially, while they try to establish a routine, while 8 will just immediately go one to a patch. If you build up to 16 one at a time, you only ever have one worker bouncing at a time, so that effect will be minimized somewhat. Also, as I'm sure you found out, it's EXTREMELY difficult to measure mining rates by looking at the mineral count, which is why your tests show such a massive range. When I was testing mining rates, I focused on the trip time instead, and can say with complete confidence that 2 workers on one patch mine at exactly double the rate of one worker on the same patch. You won't have "bouncing" workers when there's only 2 per patch. So there is really no settling. And I did wait a while untill the resource income figure settled. And a little tip, you can reply to multiple people in 1 post. Stop posting multiple times in a row. | ||
|
FrostedMiniWeet
United States636 Posts
| ||
|
sob3k
United States7572 Posts
Its like all the methods of splitting SCV's and whether or not to send or build first... ultimately its just a waste as there are such more important things to think about, plus its a moot point when talking about far bases (3rd/4th) as you cant be streaming scvs across the map and you often wont take them until like 35 workers in your nat/main lines. | ||
|
Skrag
United States643 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:21 disco wrote: You won't have "bouncing" workers when there's only 2 per patch. So there is really no settling. And I did wait a while untill the resource income figure settled. You absolutely do have bouncing workers when there are 2 per patch, until they settle into a routine, it just doesn't take nearly as long as when you're adding the last few. If you waited until everything was settled, then there are some other factors that might account for the differences you saw, but the difference is not because one worker on a patch is more efficient than 2 workers on a patch, because that is provably untrue. Again, during the beta I spent hours and hours examining mining rates, and the things that can affect it. I'm pretty damn confident on the "2 workers mine exactly twice as fast as 1" assertion. And a little tip, you can reply to multiple people in 1 post. Stop posting multiple times in a row. Oh. How do you do that? I just hit the quote button. I haven't seen a multi-quote feature on this board, but then again I haven't looked very hard.  | ||
|
Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
| ||
|
disco
Netherlands1667 Posts
On September 25 2010 08:11 Skrag wrote: [...] If you waited until everything was settled, then there are some other factors that might account for the differences you saw, but the difference is not because one worker on a patch is more efficient than 2 workers on a patch, because that is provably untrue. Yeah, like I said, you're gonna have extra "close" mineral patches at a next base which probably explains the income difference. | ||
|
morimacil
France921 Posts
1: easier to defend the main than the nat, and Im not worried about drops when I take my nat. 2: gas. When I take my 2 geysers at the natural, Thats going to be 8 workers. If I have both hatcheries rallied to their respective minerals after maynarding half the workers, and then use 8 from the nat to take gas, I end up having to transfer 4 from the main to the nat to keep equal saturation, quite annoying. 3: I play zerg. So if I have to make a couple of units, then Ill be using up larva from one of the hatcheries. Thus by maynarding half the workers, and then having them both rallied to their respective minerals, I end up with uneven amounts of workers. Also, I tend not to have a queen up for the expo when it finishes, so thats again an uneven number of workers. 4: When I take my third, I can just transfer all the extra workers from the nat which will be slightly oversaturated at this point to the thirs, without having to take the ones from the main too to move to the third. Mostly, its just less hassle, I hate spending time microing workers and making sure that all my bases have 16 workers on minerals, and not 30 in my main due to spawn larva, and 10 at the expo due to having taken my 3d and 4th gas  And for BW refferences: Well since the workers mined differently, there was no max saturation, they was no worker rally points, there was only a single gas, and so on, Id say thats fairly irrelevant here. But yeah, personally, I just like not having to worry about what my workers are doing until I take my third, at which point I only need to maynard from the nat. | ||
|
toadstool
Australia421 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:06 xixecal wrote: The main reason to maynard workers is to prevent your main from mining out. You try to saturate your natural first because it is more likely it will go down, so you try to maximize your investment in the base by sending workers over. That's not the main reason to Maynard workers. It's to get maximum value from your workers, to maximise resource collection. | ||
|
Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:09 Piousflea wrote: I have to agree with Skrag. I've done pretty extensive testing of mining speeds, and 2 workers on one patch mine at EXACTLY the same rate as 1 worker apiece on two patches. Assuming your main is "better defended" than your natural, you should never maynard your main below 2 workers below mineral patch. Any less would simply be an inefficient use of resources. By maximizing the number of workers per base (while expanding when needed), you keep your income high on relatively few bases. One base with 24 workers is much easier to defend from harassment compared to two bases with 12 workers each. Two bases with 24 workers each is easier to defend than three bases with 16 workers each. Something you probably haven't thought about: If you don't maynard your main mines out much faster and you'll end up being oversaturated on one base(your nat) instead of mining two bases at full saturation later on. | ||
|
Mithhaike
Singapore2759 Posts
why? To prevent oversaturation. the fact that its more effective to have a 8:8 instead of X:X split between expansions is just a bonus to me. i always get ALL my CC's into one hotkey,and build scvs on them all at the same time. By splitting my base workers into half,and sending to my expansion, both my main & expansion will be saturated at the same rate making my life easy.once i get all 3 bases up and running,my main will be running out giving me a reminder i do not need to build anymore scvs and i can grab another expansion and get it running at max capacity using the base SCVs. | ||
|
charlie420247
United States692 Posts
On September 25 2010 04:01 Cell.cell wrote: This is a good point. In other words, you don't want all your eggs in one basket. It's less of a gamble against drops, etc to have 2 partially mining bases. Is this worth the extra 100 early minerals? on the other hand 2 bases require more defense than one and early game its just easier to defend 20 drones in one spot than 10 and 10 split up. muta harass is the perfect example because they can pop between the bases picking off workers. | ||
|
charlie420247
United States692 Posts
On September 25 2010 07:06 xixecal wrote: The main reason to maynard workers is to prevent your main from mining out. You try to saturate your natural first because it is more likely it will go down, so you try to maximize your investment in the base by sending workers over. if your natural is likely to go down wouldnt it seem counter intuitive to get it saturated befor your main? | ||
|
Skrag
United States643 Posts
On September 25 2010 08:41 toadstool wrote: That's not the main reason to Maynard workers. It's to get maximum value from your workers, to maximise resource collection. The point of this thread is that you don't actually get maximum value from your workers by maynarding. If that's the main reason people do it, they should stop, because the transfer actually *costs* you minerals, unless your main is past max saturation. | ||
| ||
