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Hi folks,
Newbie here, (again) asking a maybe silly question. I play zerg and one of the important things is to balance between drone and unit production and to fully saturate a base. My question here is simple: how do I know how many drones I currently have? Let's say I'm on 2 bases at around 8 minutes. How do I count my drones? I know that by double clicking a drone I can get all of them (in that screen) selected, but then this does not include the drones at my expansion.
Or should I be counting food supply taking into account the non-drone units by subtracting that from the total food supply?
Thx for any replies!! 
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well you really only need to count drones per expo, if i double click at each expo and i have 21+ at each I know im saturated at all my bases. Of course you won't always be saturated at every expo given the climate of the current game but you have the general idea.
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Youll learn to estimate it pretty accurately simply by looking eventually, but for now you'll just have to double click drones at both the expansions and do the math.
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If you want to have them all in one group to count, you can double click or ctrl-click the ones at your main, go to your natural, hold shift and then double click the drones there too.
Honestly, I don't think counting your drones will help much. Eventually you'll be able to see how saturated your bases are
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best way is to keep track in your head of all the fighting units you have produced, then keep a running tally of all the units that die. Then you subtract the remainder from your current supply count, and this very quickly and easily tells you how many drones you have.
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I feel saturation as Zerg isn't as important as it is with the other races, because just like BW, you're going to want to stay a base or two ahead of your opponent. You sacrifice full saturation for more bases and unit production from said hatcheries. So I wouldn't worry about getting exactly 24 drones per base or whatever. Just drag a selection box over your minerals and as long as it's around 16, don't worry too much. Zerg always has a mineral surplus anyways, and assuming by the nature of your post, it's not game breaking at lower leagues.
Edit: Not saying that you shouldn't go for full saturation, but in terms of prioritizing your attention span, it's definitely lower on the list, as opposed to say, scouting. You get the idea.
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You can estimate the amount of drones from the amount of food supply. It is also useful to make a note on when to stop droning in the beggining to make units by counting your supply. For example, if you see the protoss going 4 warpgate push, you normally drone until 35-40 supply, then make units.
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Russian Federation81 Posts
no need to double click. no much need in memorizing food value of your units, especially if you're zerg. which is harder
you hsould simply try to select good "sqaure" with your mouse, which will cover full mineral line. if you see 2 "rows" of drones that means that base almost saturated (to full saturation you need 3 rows but 3rd row gives less income per drone). and just make a habit to order 3 drones per any gas you created, so you willnt need to accouunt these "gas" drones
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On October 24 2010 18:04 chinaski.chinaski wrote:
no need to double click. no much need in memorizing food value of your units, especially if you're zerg. which is harder
you hsould simply try to select good "sqaure" with your mouse, which will cover full mineral line. if you see 2 "rows" of drones that means that base almost saturated (to full saturation you need 3 rows but 3rd row gives less income per drone). and just make a habit to order 3 drones per any gas you created, so you willnt need to accouunt these "gas" drones
This is my method.
There are 8 mineral patches, and an optimum of 3 per patch, so 3 lines in a selection box group will be full saturation.
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IMO just glance and your field throughout the game. I look for 4 stages of saturation. When i glance at the field and i can count how many drones are there just by looking for a sec i assume stage one - 6-10 drones. Stage 2 i see drones both returning minerals but there is also a drone at each patch at the same time 12-18 drones. Stage 3 hardest to tell but the spot you should aim for lots of drones but not to many moving around erratically so i assume 18-24. Stage 4 this is when i see more drones appearing to be looking for a free patch then actually mining so 24-28+ drones. For Zerg however i will almost always split the count of my drones to another base if its possible right when stage 3 hits.
FYI this is not counting my gas drones as i can see how many of those i have on a geyser without trouble.
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Click drag your mineral line, you can easily see if you have 3 per geyser. 2 full lines of drones is enough for efficient mining any more and you're looking to take another base as zerg.
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If you absolutely wanted to know the exact number.. I suppose you could double click all the drones at 1 base then while holding shift double click all the other drones at your natural.. and then put them into a control group. Then you can look at the bottom tab area of the control group to see the exact number.
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I add all my drones 2 a hotkey and do this periodically in game.... This way i have a drone count and an easy way too build w.e because the closest drone will build ...
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If I box a base's mineral fields and gas and see a full page of drones, I'm good.
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You can check by hovering over the top right supply display. Tells you a breakdown of worker to army. Wow 2010, hope you're still playing.
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Bot edit.
User was banned for this post.
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EPT
