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Good Day Everyone,
While watching MikeD's stream yesterday, several of his regular viewers and myself had a discussion regarding the initial seconds of the game; is splitting your miners first better than building your initial worker first. I've done a little math and hope to hear some of your opinions as well.
On average, the player will split his workers to mineral patches so that you end up with 4 workers on close patches and 2 on far patches, so I'll assume this is true for the purpose of the following calculations. I'm also going to assume that it takes 2 in-game seconds to either split workers or build the first worker and hotkey your initial building. My last assumption is that the travel time of your initial workers will be the same no matter which path is chosen, so I will not include it in my calculations.
Build First
With the above assumptions, choosing to build your worker before splitting will generate an immediate loss of roughly 8.6 minerals. (This is the amount of minerals that would be gained with the additional 2 in-game seconds with 6 workers split 4close/2far.)
Split First
Choosing to split first will generate an immediate loss of 1.43 minerals and an anticipated loss of 1.43 minerals for each worker built immediately after the first. As soon as there is a cut to probes, this loss is nulified. This means;
Protoss;
10 gate will lose roughly 5.7 minerals overall. (Loss over 68 in-game seconds)
12 gate will lose roughly 8.6 minerals overall. (Loss over 102 in-game seconds or 90.66 in-game seconds with 1 Chronoboost)
13 gate will lose roughly 14.3 minerals by the 16th probe. (Loss over 170 in-game seconds or 147.3 with two chronoboosts, 136 with 3 CBs)
Note 1: Chronoboost will not effect the minerals lost, but if chrono causes an accidental cut, it may stop the loss chain.
Terran;
15 Orbital will lose roughly 12.9 minerals overall. (Loss over 153 in-games seconds)
Zerg;
Larva mechanic nullifies this debate...everything I calculated says split first.
So the math seems to tell me to split first as Zerg, Build first as Terran, and that Toss should change based on their openings...10 or 12 gate = Split first, 13 gate = Build first.
I understand that we are talking about a very small amount of minerals...but I know that mirror matchups can be largely effected by such differences. Let me know your thoughts on the matter!
+ Show Spoiler +
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Your math may be right, but your assumptions are wrong. For average player it takes more time to split your workers then to build a worker.
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On April 30 2011 03:34 gejfsyd wrote:
Your math may be right, but your assumptions are long. For average player it takes more time to split your workers then to build a worker.
The selection and first click to minerals is the more important part...splitting the second half afterwards is only beneficial to determine the average ratio of close/far patches. I do not think it would effect the numbers too much. (Change the split and it will equally effect both options anyways.)
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Very interesting results for Zerg and Toss. I never would've thought that split or build first would depend on the race.
Even though it doesn't affect me cause I'm Terran and I already build first, I'm sure it will help out tons of Zergs and 13-gating Toss players.
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i think its better to split first because:
_the 6 workers outmine the 1 worker ur building so you will mine more
_with ctrl+f1 you can select workers so fast that you can ''gain'' 1 second.
building a worker first will hurt you in my opinion because those 6 workers will not be mining untill u put them on the minerals. and 6 workers outmine the 1 or 2 second delay on your 7th worker.
with the individual splitting you can make your builds even better and get faster hatches as zerg. splitting is the last thing you want to master though but its definately worth it. most players wont think about it but you can lose lots of minerals if your probes run between mineral patches without mining.
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The math is flawed, there is no way it takes 2 seconds to build a worker, in fact i wouldnt be supprised if it was around 0.5 for myself. Personally i grab 6 workers, set them to the top far mineral patch, and then quickly build my worker as i pull off 3 and send them to the bottom.
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It takes 2 seconds to start building the 7th worker? Just center your cursor during the loading screen and asap click and build, I don't see how that can ever take multiple seconds :O
On the actual topic though, I never really considered which would be better, building worker was always prioritized in bw so I just do that, and I play zerg anyway so even a small delay won't delay workers after that first one since I have larvae anyway.
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lol everyone builds first and splits then. 100% sure that is the best way.
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On April 30 2011 03:45 deanyo wrote:
The math is flawed, there is no way it takes 2 seconds to build a worker, in fact i wouldnt be supprised if it was around 0.5 for myself. Personally i grab 6 workers, set them to the top far mineral patch, and then quickly build my worker as i pull off 3 and send them to the bottom.
In this case time will only change the base value, not the ratios or amount of time for the losses to equalize accross the two options. Keep in mind that it likely takes your brain close to 0.25 seconds to tell your hands to start...so adding that to your 0.5 seconds means that 0.75 seconds turns into 1.125 in-games seconds which is likely. (Also, I'm using averages here...)
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I build first and always am able to start the second probe immediatly anyway, although I see what youre saying if someone were doing say a 10 gate opening or whatnot
Otherwise 100% do build first in my opinion
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You can see how long it takes a player to build their first worker using the Build Order tab at a Score Screen. Most players take about 1 second, but the range is ordinarily between .48 seconds and a little over a second.
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0.25 second reaction time? That's ridiculous. Please don't make a thread like this without actually looking into.
I build then split but I could see sending all, building, then splitting being the best
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I think it slightly depends on the player. Since I have a keyboard that has macro keys, what I do is hold E to build my Probe (since I'm Protoss) and when the moment the game starts I click on the Nexus and it starts my worker. Then immediately after I hit the Nexus (and Probe starts building) my pinkie is easily able (and already positioned) to hit my G12 key which is CTRL + F1. So basically, I start building my Probe right away and already have my workers selected to send them on their way.
I'm still working on my getting the "perfect" split... But I seriously get them both started almost simultaneously that I think in my case it's better to build the probe first. In a general sense, I think it depends on how quickly you are able to do it. Before I had my keyboard I would build probe first and since my mouse was already in the vicinity of the probes, I'd box them and get them moving, and try and split them as they were getting off the start mining.
And as Blindgamer said, I've always found that I'm able to have no delay between building my second probe and the completion of the first one... So I'm personally of the opinion to build first (that and I remember seeing it a few times in some pro games that I was watching, so I just assumed it was the better way to go).
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As a longtime Terran player, I build first then send workers to minerals. But really what matters most is that you get your commands in as soon as humanly possible and you select the best mineral(s) to drop your group of workers into. The thing to avoid is having one or two SCVs confused about what patch they should be mining.
My tactic is to spam S as the match is starting, and select my CC as quick as possible. Then as fast as I can, box my workers into one group and send them all to one mineral patch in the middle of the line, preferably the closest one to the CC. My "split" is to grab one of SCVs and send him to a patch away from the middle, but not all the way to the very end. (This is the SCV that would be left straggling if you sent all workers to one mineral without splitting). It took me a while to get good at selecting the single SCV without mis-clicking and screwing it all up, but the end result is I rarely rarely have stragglers left trying to find their patch to mine and everyone has their minerals back at the base in time for me to produce my next SCV with zero CC downtime.
That being said, the gain made from doing this is very small, and in a best-case scenario you will be maybe a half-second ahead of your opponent - hardly game-changing.
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Well doesnt it make sense that zerg drone production is limited my minerals while terran and toss are limited by time?
So zerg players should splitt first.
Personally I send all workers to 1 patch->build probe->take 3 and splitt
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I actually double-checked and graphed your math because I was unsure if the compounding would actually occur (instead of a linear loss) and turned up roughly the same results - interesting.
I can say for a fact that I've never lost a game by a razor thin margin like this, though, fortunately. I split first without splitting, then build. The lazy way.
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I always start the game with the cursor over the hatchery, so it takes practically no time to build a worker. Basically I am moving the cursor to split whilst I click and press "S - D". Then I split, so basically I think this is the best method =)
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On April 30 2011 03:51 Anomandaris wrote:
lol everyone builds first and splits then. 100% sure that is the best way.
everyone also believed the sun rotated around the earth a few hundred years ago. you're just appealing to popular belief!
interesting thread though, i always assumed that splitting first or building first would make no difference. thanks for the contribution!
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i knew people would start getting mad at this thread... everyone seems to have their own opinion. it seems not important but it actually is.
as for what i said about the 1-2 second delay on the probe, if u split first then build then your probe will be created at the 1-2 second of the game. depending on how you split. this means you will lose 5 minerals for the delayed probe max but the 6 workers will mine more than 5 minerals. thats why i think splitting first is better.
Edit: the reason building first could potentially be better is because you dont know where you will spawn. the mineral patches could be above the nexus or beneath the nexus. you need some time to react so if you build first you will be able to locate the mineral patches and click with maximum precision. if you are focussed when the game is loading, you can prepare to locate the mineral patches and click on them as fast as you would if you built a probe first.
Edit nr.2 : yea sure this wont matter too much but if you want to maximize the efficiency of your build by doing this kind of things its only gonna help you. isnt it better to build a nexus 5 seconds earlier? or constantly building stuff and have more?
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Your initial estimation of 2s to build a worker seems a little high. Just because you build first doesn't mean you hotkey the building at that point. You can easily build, send, split, hotkey.
However, I'm curious how using ctrl+F1 to have your workers selected the exact second the game starts versus having to select them later factors in. I try to use:
Control+F1 as the game loads
Send workers
Build worker
Split workers
Hotkey main
But in reality that messes up my split. However I assume that's a lack of APM on my side, not something fundamentally wrong with the order.
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On April 30 2011 04:01 Monta wrote:
0.25 second reaction time? That's ridiculous. Please don't make a thread like this without actually looking into.
I build then split but I could see sending all, building, then splitting being the best
.25 is stunningly average
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bind idle probe alternate key to Caps Locks
press control while loading
press E while holding down control (MUST be in this order)
spam click around the middle of your screen where the nexus will be
as soon as you click, let go of E and hit caps lock while holding down control and moving your cursor to a mineral patch
right click patch then split the other 3 asap
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if i do it right i have a probe building ASAP and my workers are all mining by 2 - 3 game seconds via 3 - 3 split, practically none of this makes a difference though unless you're pretentious and think it does IMO
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I split as zerg first while hotkeying the hatch and going sd. just feels better to me to get the drones moving quicker. also you arent inhibited by queues anyway
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This is so insignificant. Do whatever feels right to you.
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If you're going a standard T opening (10 depot, 12 rax, 13 ref, 15 OC) u will be supply blocked for 1-2 seconds before you depot completes. This means that you actually only lose 4 * 1,43 minerals if you split, because its all about the depot timing. If you get that depot up earlier, u will get supply blocked for less seconds, resulting in a quicker SCV.
4 * 1,43 minerals < 8,6 minerals, which reverses your conclusion for Terran. I think protoss got a similair situation, but then at 9/10 pylon. Not sure about this tho
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I make drone first between 0sec and 1sec real time. SC2gears doesn't show milliseconds so I don't know exactly how long it takes.
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Coming from BW, i make the drone first and then split. It literally takes less than half a second to do all that. in SC2 i 3/3 split.
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I think that trying to put concrete math behind this is a little silly, as the deviation even between one player's games is going to be very high; it's a very, very small time period.
As long as you split & build your worker as fast as you can, then it's all good.
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I feel this mostly applies to pros who can actually utilize minor advantages like this and mineral stacking...I am curious since I'm here, has the math been done for zerg on 10OL+extractor vs 9OL? I've only managed to find that it is more of a larvae management issue than anything, but I find with 9OL I only get 2 larvae up at any one time if I'm doing it right...though if I'm at all slow there will be a third larvae by the time i make my OL.
Apologies if this is too off topic, it is mining centric still and larvae count is impacted slightly by split technique :/
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Yeah, making the worker doesn't even take a second. You can see in the build order menu after the game when it says something like drone @ 59: 99. So i always make the worker first. It also helps my split because it gives me slightly more time to decide how to split/what mineral patches to pick.
At the beginning of the game you don't know what direction the minerals are going to be but you can keep your mouse right in the center to quickly click on the town center to build a worker and then ctrl+f1 to select workers so your mouse can go directly towards minerals after building the worker (instead of boxing).
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My reasoning is that getting 6 workers mining a split second faster will yield more minerals than that 7th worker that would come out a split second faster.
Spam ctrl+f1 and send to patch
Build worker
Try to split off last two workers
is that I do...
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I usually just do a mine command for all workers, then build and then split them.
No need to do hotkeys or anything else until after you're done with the initial commands. Not like there's much else to do at that point.
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I'm sorry, but this discussion is pointless. If anything, the only difference is going to be 5 minerals, which won't change the game. Even in a mirror match-up.
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If you want to make a substantative mathematical analysis, don't make bad assumptions. Do the necessary testing to figure out exactly what realistic times are.
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Maybe its different in SC2, but in BW you ALWAYS built the worker first. Even if you sent them, built the worker, and then split, you got less minerals then if you built the worker first
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On April 30 2011 04:15 Flammable wrote:
I always start the game with the cursor over the hatchery, so it takes practically no time to build a worker. Basically I am moving the cursor to split whilst I click and press "S - D". Then I split, so basically I think this is the best method =) yeah that's what I do, it just seems pretty efficient. definitely it's very fast to build a worker.... far under 2 seconds, lol.
What's terribly annoying though is when the mouse, or especially the camera, is off-center. They should add a patch where the mouse and camera won't move in this small period of time between when the game is loaded and when the playing screen appears.
Also I find top positions, 12 o'clock, to be so damn annoying and terrible for zerg. The overlord like blocks sight, and the drones are in a line instead of a right-angle V at the corner of a base.
Bottom (9 o'clock) is also annoying, but it's not as bad because the overlord isn't as obtrusive I don't think.
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On April 30 2011 05:01 Shadrak wrote:
Control+F1 as the game loads
Send workers
Build worker
Split workers
Hotkey main
This can be used to a good effect but I believe you have things in the wrong order.
Hold S or E at loading screen
Click Base
(Press D if you're zerg to actually spawn the drone)
Control+F1
Right-Click on Minerals
Split Desired Workers
(Send Overlord if you're Zerg)
Hotkey Base
At least for me, that seems to be the most efficient way to go through things and I have everything done within the first 5 or so seconds of game time unless I mess up badly. Still, I haven't made it second nature and constantly mix things up.
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I always wondered why people built first. For the longest time, I sent to mine first because it seemed logical to me that it would be better to get 6 workers mining faster than to get 1 worker mining faster. Now that I know it is a brood war thing, it makes more sense.
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It should take less time to build than to send workers over.
Think about the actions required to do either. To build a unit, you click (since cursor should be centered to begin with) and then press S, D, or SD (which can be held from the beginning.)
On the other hand, splitting workers requires you to select all workers (Ctrl + F1 is probably fastest) and then click on a mineral patch (requires mouse movement since you don't know which spawn you start at.)
If you were to split first, it's actually probably faster to send probes to mine, build a probe, and then split if you can manage to do that.
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Always build a worker first. I don't know how slow your guys splits are but from my first probe to my worker split is about 0.1 of a second and thats the point it's all dependant on the speed of which you can do it so two seconds just doesn't cut it. Also your first two actions are 1)Worker 2)split 3)hotkey.
if anyone is going worker first then hotkey before the split they need a slap because thats stupid
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This has been answered quite solidly before, here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=138157
The short answer is build first. The correct answer is that it depends on your race (Zerg benefits slightly from split first), your initial supply building location/timing, and your speed at split->build and build->split.
[edit] Also some reworkings of my proof in that thread are here and here.
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There were so many threads about this. Just do whatever you think is better for you.
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hmm
As a zerg player i think i might have to disagree to your conclusion. Your next larvae will only start producing from the moment your hatch has less than 3 larvae so making a worker first will make a difference as long as you don't "cut" larvae.
With your calculations your conclusion would be:
every cheesy pool -> split first
every eco zerg build -> drone first
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Build first seems like it's better on paper but I just find sending first a bit more user friendly as I do not like using the ctrl f1 key thing. But I would like to see how a mis-split would factor into this 
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splitting your workers isn't even that necessary tbh, it doesn't really make a massive difference
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I am not going to QQ this thread, but here is my 2cents... Idra never lost a game because he didn't split his workers, or made a drone first versus splitting first.
This thread has probably been made infinity times... Use a search function =/ This is like a "betcha didn't know" kinda thread... Non-helpful and if any helpful to like #2 Grandmaster in the world if he didn't know to get to the 1st...
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i use to split 3-3 and build my worker then at second 0.03 - the 11th worker nullifies any losses.
+ you can build the pylon a bit earlier, since you mined more till worker 9.
its just about feeling, its not more then 5-10 mins, which is rly not even a huge thing on the toppest pro lvl in PvP...
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On April 30 2011 09:24 djdoodoo wrote:
splitting your workers isn't even that necessary tbh, it doesn't really make a massive difference
wrong - its 5 times more important then "build worker first or split first" due to mineral loss.
even more important to stack workers on near mineral patches - but just if you dont lose too much mining time while doing it
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Splitting generates no extra mineral income.
The only reason to do it is it makes stacking easier, but on its own its worthless.
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On April 30 2011 10:18 kzn wrote:
Splitting generates no extra mineral income.
The only reason to do it is it makes stacking easier, but on its own its worthless.
That's flat out incorrect. If you split your workers correctly, they will mine at the closest mineral nodes, causing the return trip to be faster and thus, you will mine more minerals within X period of time. Once you achieve full saturation, of course your income will be the same regardless. But early on, getting that faster income can speed up a build, even if by only a couple of seconds... But those couple of seconds can make a big difference if you're aiming to do something in a very precise timing window.
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Just a small comment here, hopefully this doesn't piss off any mods, but I've found that splitting my workers takes much less than 2 seconds to complete, as i am able to both produce my first SCV and get my workers mining (on the best available patches, not just box em all and send em to 1 patch) all withing around 1.4 seconds, I know for a fact that I'm not nearly as fast as most of the masters and GM players out there, so I think there may be a flaw in your reasoning. Also, if I build any SCV first, I don't hotkey the CC before splitting, as I have plenty of time after that to set up hotkeys/rally my CC.
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i personally split my workers by clicking on the patch, building a worker and then pulling 3 workers to closer patch.
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On April 30 2011 12:13 CrAzEdMiKe wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2011 10:18 kzn wrote:
Splitting generates no extra mineral income.
The only reason to do it is it makes stacking easier, but on its own its worthless. That's flat out incorrect. If you split your workers correctly, they will mine at the closest mineral nodes, causing the return trip to be faster and thus, you will mine more minerals within X period of time. Once you achieve full saturation, of course your income will be the same regardless. But early on, getting that faster income can speed up a build, even if by only a couple of seconds... But those couple of seconds can make a big difference if you're aiming to do something in a very precise timing window.
Nobody has been able to reproduce this in practice. In theory, it might generate a tiny amount, but after massive testing the consensus is that its impossible to produce it.
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I think this can't be done by this sort of math accurately and really just needs a whole lot of testing. Ie for each race, just get one person to go split first 10 times and then build first 10 times, and compare the minerals at the 1 minute mark.
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My philosophy is, build first, split second because the sooner you get that first worker, the sooner you can get the 2nd, 3rd...etc. Faster first worker = faster increased income rate.
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Every game, I do:
Select hatchery, sd
ctrl f1, click, split
send overlord to scout close air, control group overlord
control group hatchery, sd
I feel like as zerg your goal is to churn out drones so the only time I'd split before build is if I were 6poolin'
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At least we can all agree that the zerg should mine first then build correct?
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As a Zerg I am confident I have the right way of doing it by doing this:
Hold Ctrl+F1 (Workers are instantly selected when game loads)
Send them to a mineral path
Start my first worker
Individually split workers up (while they are still on their way to minerals)
... (Tell overlord to go away, hotkey stuff, camerabind stuff and other routines)
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Why do 12 and 13 gate differentiate when both of them have to cut probes to get out the first pylon? Or am i understanding how you calculated this wrong?
I've always done split first then make worker as protoss because .5 faster for 6 workers is better than .5 faster for 7th 8th and 9th probe until it equalized with a probe cut.
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I've actually been trying to build and then split lately, as opposed to vice versa. Guess I should always build first since I always go 13 gate.
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it does not take 2 seconds to hold 'S/D/E' and click CC/larva/nexus
you seem to calculate that it takes 2 seconds to build then split... but build first is almost instantaneous, ergo ~95% of that time will be the actual split. if we were to assume this:
basically a split means your workers gather 0.1 sec faster, and thus the minerals are returned 0.1 sec faster. this works out as 0.4 minerals.
but in the process you lose 1.9 seconds on your next worker, which works out as 1.27 minerals.
it's a miniscule difference, but if your trying to optimize then i don't see much reason to split first. it's the same story if you're not fast enough to do the build first with zero downtime, because it would further delay your first worker.
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well i am lazy at the start ... but everytime i build first i lack the minerals to build the next scv x3 . I think i am below these 2 seconds though still. So i guess as long as this happens building first isn't good for me ^^.
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you hold 'S' and from the loading screen you know where the CC will be... spam click... faster than 0.21 sec imo. it's not like waiting for a green light to appear. it's more like 0.1 second.
in addition to this.. after a split it will take like 0.5 seconds to initiate the first build, because you now have to find the cursor, move cursor to CC, click and press S or whatever.
in short... i don't know of any pro players who split first. this is because it was discovered on pretty much day one that build first was more tidy, easier and resulted in faster yield of a tiny amount of minerals.
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What would math be if you were to:
1. Box all workers and send to patch
2. make worker
3. split
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I always build first and then split.
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On April 30 2011 10:18 kzn wrote:
Nobody has been able to reproduce this in practice. In theory, it might generate a tiny amount, but after massive testing the consensus is that its impossible to produce it.
Who can't reproduce this? Worker first and perfect split will make you be able to produce your second worker exatly when your first one has finished. making it optimal for any one worker producing race Toss/Terran even for zerg with the workers quicker would still make it optimul in my eyes
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I usually send all workers to one min patch, que probe, and then split. This can be done before any workers hit that initial mineral patch.
I never am waiting to produce my second worker.
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On April 30 2011 17:47 Validity wrote:
Why do 12 and 13 gate differentiate when both of them have to cut probes to get out the first pylon? Or am i understanding how you calculated this wrong?
I've always done split first then make worker as protoss because .5 faster for 6 workers is better than .5 faster for 7th 8th and 9th probe until it equalized with a probe cut.
you are right, TE is wrong. well, you dont have to cut for the first pylon, you have to cut before the first pylon completes for a rly small period of time
@ the "splitting itself doesnt regenerate minerals"
ofc it does - if you do not split the workers take years to find a mineralpatch - by splitting you pretty much lower that time by 50%
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On April 30 2011 20:15 TrANCE, wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2011 10:18 kzn wrote:
Nobody has been able to reproduce this in practice. In theory, it might generate a tiny amount, but after massive testing the consensus is that its impossible to produce it. Who can't reproduce this? Worker first and perfect split will make you be able to produce your second worker exatly when your first one has finished. making it optimal for any one worker producing race Toss/Terran even for zerg with the workers quicker would still make it optimul in my eyes
Worker first and no split attempt at all results in the same thing.
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EPT
