Before I begin I'd like to have a little disclaimer. This is my oppinion as a player on mineral saturation. It will not be correct for every situation. These are simply the rules I follow. I'm sharing them here, please do not post along the lines of "Well you made more drones this game!" or "I made less drones and won!" This is not that sort of thread. I am simply stating what I feel to be optimal and wanted to share it with the community. Also this is not about balance.
There are confrontations and during these confrontations there should be the making of new units at the same time. This is the basis of Starcraft. This includes both the Micro of confronting your opponent and the Macro of creating new units to deal with his. In an ideal world where everything is going your way you will be able to prepare your army completely based on seeing your opponents army. In this sort of game, scouting becomes hugely important. To define scouting, should be to “find out a percent whether large or small, of their army and if possible find out their economy and production facilities.”
This is vastly under rated. If you can see your opponents mineral lines you can learn a great deal about your opponent.(Vice versa if you see their production facilities you can learn a lot about their mineral line) I suppose to first get into this I must explain the different levels of saturation and what they mean for each race. There are multiple different levels and you should be scouting for each level. First we will cover mineral saturation and then gas saturation. This will hopefully help answer the question "When do I need to stop making drones and build units?"
First a few fun statistics. Once you get more then 24 drones mining on 8 mineral patches ( 3 per patch ) you will not be receiving minerals any quicker than if you had 24 drones. 29>24? The answer is no. Don’t get me wrong, there are times that you should get 29 drones, however you won’t receive any more of a boost to your economy. This is fairly common knowledge, but keep it in mind. The next level of saturation that is a solid amount lies somewhere around 16-20. This level is very very close to the maxed 24 amount of drones, so it provides a large amount of economy, but it’s not quite perfect. A situation that involves this is as follows.. “Player A is a Terran, he has 16-20 scvs on his mineral line in his main base. He does not have an expansion. You can deduce something like 3 barracks and 1 factory can be producing off of this economy(I’m not covering extra orbitals and were assuming he has both gas). Now to do the math, if Player A has 16-20 scvs on his mineral line in his main base and 16-20 scvs on his mineral line at an expansion then he should be able to comfortably be able to produce from 6 barracks and 1 factory and 1 starport. (Note this is not exact because of mules and timings)” Now to give you an example of how this can be used for a zerg player. “I see player A has this 16-20 scv range on 2 bases I can assume he will have a fairly large army, fairly soon. So I will need to deal with it at some point, I would prefer to have something along the lines of a 24 drone saturation on 2 bases, or a 12-16 saturation on 3 bases in order to be economically ahead of Player A and then I can simply produce units to counter his while having a better economy.” I havn’t even discussed 12-16 saturation and lower. However here is a nice chart (without going into gold, or mules … how complicated!.. also ok its not really a chart)
12-16 saturation < 16-20 saturation < 24 saturation 8-12 saturation on 2 bases< 12-16 saturation on 2 bases < 16-20 saturation on 2 bases < 24 saturation on 2 bases < 14-16 saturation on 3 bases and so forth… HOWEVER we now come to a new rule. You DO NOT want to get 3 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent. Versus a competent opponent you will LOSE. (This considers you are playing someone of equal level and you haven’t killed his army 10 times and are about to win the game. 12-16 saturation implies that you have 12-16 drones mining on 8 blue mineral patches.. and so on)
An example, your opponent has 12-16 saturation (1 worker on some patches, 2 on most) you have 12-16 saturation on 2 bases! That means you have almost double the economy of your opponent, shouldn’t that be good?! In some rare lucky cases you can live, however if your opponent has cut workers much much earlier and has produced a huge army, you won’t be ready for it because you will simply have too many workers. The same goes for most statistics in this 3 level rule. You do not want 24 saturation on each base, while your opponent only has one base saturated, you want 2 levels ahead. 2 Levels ahead is where you want to hit, no higher. 1 level ahead, is generally fine and you can find an advantage there, but you want 2. (This applies for Zerg vs. [Any race that isn’t Zerg], it does not apply for Zerg vs Zerg. ) These are the basics, I won’t blame you if you skip ahead a bit now as I’m about to get into race specific and small information such as map position, race specifics and gold minerals.
"Their timed life allows 8 or 9 mining trips which totals 240/270 minerals respectively on a blue mineral patch and 336/378 on a yellow one. This works out to 160/180 and 224/252 minerals per game-minute respectively."
"MULEs are as effective as around 4 (±0.3) SCVs, as SCVs average 42-43 minerals per game-minute on blue mineral patches (for two or less workers per patch)."
Terran get these every 50 energy (I can’t be exact on times for Terran, I simply do not know enough to get exact). However I do know that a Mule mines at approximately the same rate as 4 scvs. So were going to assume that depending on how many orbital commands they will have 4 more added on to their saturation. For playing against a Terran the saturation rules differ somewhat. If you have a 12-16 saturation on 2 bases and they have a 24 saturation on 1 base, you are not that far ahead, in fact you are barely ahead at all. The reason for this is when you play against Terran they have different levels of saturation. They can go OVER the 24 workers on a mineral patch rule. Terran depending on how many orbitals can go up to something like 32 workers on 8 mineral patches and it will still be optimum. (24 scvs and 2 mules) 32 workers is VERY similar to 14-16 on each patch, but still a little behind. However as a zerg you want to be 2 levels ahead and this is tricky. If they have 2 orbitals in their base you want to adjust for this as well if you can scout it. So the vs Terran mineral saturation rules look something like this…. 12-16 < 16-20 < 20-24 <8-12 (2 base) < 28 < 32 < 12-16 (2base) < 16-20 (2base) < 20-24 (2base) and so on….
So to explain where you want to be as a Zerg Opponent has 12-16, you would be happy at 16-20 and just about perfect at 20-24. You want their number to coincide with your number, for instance if they are at 12, you would like 20. If on the other hand they are at 16 you would want to be at 24. Again we have to include mules in this calculation and generally staying one saturation level ahead of Terran in the early game is just about all we can hope for. This section is very important to when to make drones and when not to make them in general. Again this does not at all apply for ZvZ.
Now onto GOLD expansions. These expansion are GOLD, and as we know Terrans like shiny things. Our goal is to keep them away from shiny things. Once they get on gold, their minerals can skyrocket. To give a good gold mineral vs low mineral saturation point lets discuss this a bit. Scvs and drones mine 5 minerals from a regular expansion and 7 from a gold expansion. Having a gold is then like having 1 base and 2/5 of another base. The main benefit of mules here increases. Mules here are not mining from simply one base, but are mining from 1 2/5 bases making them even more powerful. The downside to the gold expansion is always that there are only 6 mineral patches. So 18 is the most workers you can put on a gold expansion to take advantage of it.
Terran is the ONLY RACE that can abuse gold. THEY can put AS MANY WORKERS as they want on the gold expansion. They can have the original 18 scvs and by all means if you take the gold, simply send all 18 of your scvs from other bases to their, (Why not?) and THEN they can call down Mules. Mules can then bring this 18 up to say 36. Well that’s only 36 miners, and I mean you have to balance with mules anyway right? WRONG it’s NOT just 36. Its 36 mining on 1 2/5 bases. So let’s do a little bit of math here. 36 x 1 2/5 is 36 + (3.6x4) 14.4 so its 50.4 workers. WOW that scales a bit eh? So by simply having a gold expansion and 3 orbital commands (or just enough energy to toss down 4-5 mules often they can raise their worker count through the roof on saturation. To be perfectly honest in a macro game I cannot think of a way to keep up and scale with this. If we take the gold and have an extra base saturated is just about our only hope. Keep in mind if they have 38 workers (on gold and 20 being 5 mules) and say 16-20 saturation on 2 others bases (a common occurrence) that’s 78 workers for Terran, only taking up 58 supply. We on the other hand will have to have to levels ahead of that, which for them is something like 16-20 on 4 bases, so we’ll need 24 saturation on 4 bases or 16-20 on 5 bases, or something like that, however we don’t have mules to free up supply, so we will simply have to waste 90 supply on drones allowing Terran to have basically a higher supply cap. This is the main problem you must contend with when trying to stay ahead of a Terran in saturation on maps with gold bases. It is VERY difficult. Luckily mules do NOT mine gas, so we can gain a foothold there.
We’ve discussed mules and Gold expansions a little bit. If you ever let a Terran get 2 Golds.. well I’m not even going to go there and may you have peace my brother. Onto gas saturation. This part gets to be short and sweet. However as many posts about mineral saturation as there are, there are very few posts on gas saturation. We can all figure out fairly quickly that the optimum is to have 3 workers mining a vespene geyser. So how can this be complicated? Well there are several ways. I’m not going to cover build orders with gas removal timings and the like, but I simply want to go into general situations. Sense we are still under the “Terran” side of things lets discuss why a Werran would mine vespene. I’m going to need to discuss why we as Zergs mine vespene, but that will probably be elsewhere. Terrans can make SCVs and Marines and Hellions and most tier 1 buildings (Supply, Barracks, Command Center) with only minerals. These are the things that Terrans will be producing most of if they don’t take their gas early. This may seem like common knowledge, but it has a deeper impact.
If you can have an overlord above the Terran’s gas, or near the Terran’s gas you can find out if they are mining it with 3 and if they have both gas. In the openings of games in close air positions, you definitely NEED to have overlords watching for when he takes his vespene. If he ever removes scvs from vespene you can be fairly certain there are no banshees, tanks or vikings etc. on the way. Generally if a Terran removes workers from gas he’s going for a quick command center timing with hellions, or a marine all in, or some sort of build that isn’t standard. (Bunker banks for instance! If you don’t know what a bunker bank is, don’t worry about it XD!) So then you can somewhat get a tell on what the Terran is planning on doing. If you can see his expansions gas you can also gain A LOT of information. If a Terran player is planning on doing a 2 base timing push, he generally will not be mining gas at his expansion. (At least not at all of them)
Some examples of this are as follows. Marine tank 2 base push – Does not require 4 gas. Marine Marauder push – Does not require 4 gas. Hellion marine medivac push – Does not require 4 gas. Any combination of Marines, Marauders, Hellions, a few tanks, and a few medivacs – Does not require 4 gas. So, if you see he has not taken his 4 gasses (the 2 at his natural, you can assume he is doing something with these units in general). Builds that Terrans will do with 4 gas. Banshees with or without cloak, Tanks used defensively into Mech (Thor Tank Hellion), Medivac drops into macro, Thors mixed in with marine marauder, Heavy upgrades on bio / Heavy upgrades on Mech. (If they are securing a 3rd base it can be done either way.) You want to be watching this with an overlord on a cliff, or an overlord out of range of being shot by marines. If you have to suicide an overlord that’s fine to get this information. (Only do that if you don’t know what’s going on AND try and suicide a ling either at the same time or before, for the information. So basically, if they take their gas late, watch out for early marine / hellion attacks, if they take it early watch out for medivacs, blue flame hellions and banshees. (I didn’t really go into blue flame that much because it can be used either way as well).
Ok. Look at me. Look at the distance to your opponent’s base. Look back at me. How far away is the opponent? Do you want your opponent to be as close as me? NO AS ZERG YOU DO NOT. The farther away your opponent is, the more levels of saturation you can get above your opponent. (AKA good for Zerg!) If your opponent literally spawned right next to you, you should 6 pool. If your opponent spawns really really really far away, just take like 4 hatches before spawn and get a huge economy. However on most maps such as Xel’naga, the rules I’ve listed apply. On maps such as Delta Quadrant, Steppes, and so on you really can’t get even 2 saturation levels ahead of your opponent. 1 level ahead is about good, and 2 is risky. Basically the closer you are to your opponent, the more units you have to make. You want to make sure you have enough units that WHENEVER your opponent moves out we can be safe. And quite honestly this is a pure guessing game on our part in really close maps. Good scouting helps, but…. It’s still really difficult. This is a major reason close positions have been removed in most tournament games.
The basic information for Mineral Saturation is still very sound for Protoss, but here are a few helpful tips. Protoss doesn’t care much for minerals. If you give a Protoss the gold, he really doesn’t need it. If you give a Protoss 2 blue mineral patches he might not even mine the minerals. What a Protoss REALLY needs to destroy Zerg in general is vespene gas. (Clearly they need minerals as well, but who is scared by non upgraded Protoss Warpgate units?) So, in cases where there are rich vespene geysers, we need to keep Protoss away. We need to minimize simply the amount of bases Protoss has not because of the minerals, but because of the gas. Protoss will ALMOST NEVER win a fight because they had 30 supply of zealots mixed into their army. However the Protoss will ALMOST ALWAYS win a fight because they had 30 supply of colossus mixed into their army. Sure colossus takes minerals as well, but the vespene gas is the real problem for Protoss making those units.
When you’re watching your opponent you want to find out his gas timings as well. With Protoss you also want to count and this is important : COUNT HIS SENTRIES, CHECK THEIR ENERGY. THIS WILL WIN YOU GAMES. THIS WILL LOSE YOU GAMES. Were now going to discuss what this sentry count means, what the energy amount means and basically how in the world this will help you win or lose! Ok. This part is going to be some guess work and NOT approximate numbers, but I feel it Is sound enough to post.
The standard build for Protoss at high and low levels is simply a 3 gate expansion. What this entails is the Protoss makes units that cost low minerals (sentries) and uses these to defend while he creates his expansion and lots of probes (mineral heavy). Now, let’s look at how we can tell if he is pretending to do this and actually doing something else. If we can figure out whether or not he’s faking it we can defend from the hidden DT tech, Stargate tech, 4 gate and so on. (I hope the Protoss building is called Stargate lol!) (This part will change based on the new patch changes as far as I can tell, so it’s only viable until then…. I’ll have to adjust whenever that comes out!)
Before Warpgate finishes, the Protoss should have approximately 1-2 zealots and 2-4 sentries and maybe 1 stalker. (You need to send an overlord around the side to make sure they take their second gas. If you can’t see that, then I recommend you drone scout to see if they have their second gas or not, because if they don’t take it early I can say they are very likely going to do a 4 gate rush. ) So now that the Protoss has 1-2 zealots and 2-4 sentries and maybe 1 stalker you need to watch carefully. You should be constantly sending a Zergling up his ramp just to poke and make sure these units are there. If you only see zealots + stalkers, THERE WILL BE A RUSH, if you only see 1 sentry and Warpgate is done (75% of the time THERE WILL BE A RUSH) Now that Warpgate research is done you want to keep checking with a ling to MAKE SURE they made 3 more sentries. If they did not make EXACTLY 3 more sentries then they had before Warpgate finished something fishy is up. If they made 2 sentries and 1 zealot, very likely something fishy is up. Keep all of this in mind it’s vastly important. You MUST count sentries throughout the entire early opening of ZvP. If you don’t see the proper amount, subtract it and you’ll realize how much gas they can be using on other things. (2 sentries less than normal? Stargate with a voidray seems like a good choice. 3 or more sentries missing? Seems like DT or phoenix build. No sentries, or a lot of sentries and a lot of stalkers zealots? It’s probably going to be a 4 gate or some sort of early pressure.
This is simply how to judge the early game by unit totals. You also want to make sure that the sentries all have different amounts of energy. If they all have the same amount of energy that means he simply warped them all in at the same time. If you ever see 4 sentries with the same energy that means he has 4 gates. If you never see 2 sentries with the same amount of energy, expect something tricky. These are things people rarely look at because it requires high apm, but people should be watching these things!
(As I’m writing this something hilarious is happening next to me. There is this little old lady with her hair dyed orange and a regular library worker trying to help her. She is having problems on the library computer she can’t get on her mail ID. It is a yahoo mail account. She is telling the worker that the library computers are not allowing her onto her mail ID. She expects this worker to know HER password and to know her ACCOUNT. She KEEPS telling him “nono I have it all written down here”. She thinks it’s HIS fault that she doesn’t remember her password correctly. It is rather hilarious lol (Also upon re-reading somewhat mean). This has been going on for like 3 minutes in that lovely recorder sort of setting. She says the same thing and he replies No I do not know how to get on this, it is your personal account not the libraries and she simply states “see I have the password written down right here, but I can’t get on. LOL its great!)
P.S. I've written over 4,000 words for this guide this morning, I think I need a little break! Also if anyone would like to help me include some pictures in this guide, feel free to PM me and we can work together to add in pictures / tables / graphs where its appropriate.
Thanks for posting dood! EDIT: Wow this is a pretty sick post thanks for sharing.
A few points:
This doesn't scale linearly because (as you mentioned), you get decreasing rate of returns when you reach 20-24 saturation. So it looks more like: 12-16 < 16-20 ~< 20-24 < 12-16 (2 base) < 16-20 (2 base) ~< 20-24 (2 base). Also, you start scaling by 8 drones instead of 4 drones on the 2 base example, making it even more nonlinear (which isn't a bad thing in this case because it takes more workers to make a difference on 2 base compared to 1, just pointing it out though).
For some really tight timings, I don't think you'll be able to afford being 2 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent (like versus 1gas 4gate). Even against 6gate, I find I can only be at 50 drones max (38 on minerals -> 19 2base) to his ~40 (34 on minerals -> 17 on 2base).
I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
For Terrans supersaturating the gold, you have to consider that they're not going to be able to support the production because before they take it, they only have the amount of production facilities necessary to produce off of nongold bases (usually24 2base + MULEs saturation if they take the gold as their 3rd). So they have to build more production facilities to keep up with the income boost, which means it'll take at least a full minute before you see any noticeable increase in production. Then, they hit a huge production spike, followed by a significant drop in production once the gold gets mined out (however long that takes, but it shouldn't be very long, like ~5 minutes, if they're constantly dropping MULEs there).
This post really emphasizes why you have to keep on expanding as Zerg (especially taking that 3rd at a reasonable time). It's not that hard to skyrocket to 60+ drones by the 9 minute mark, but you're going to be getting limited returns compared to what you could be potentially getting if your 3rd isn't up by then.
It's also really important to be able to approximate these saturations by glancing at a mineral line to be able to guess whether or not he's cutting economy for an attack.
Anways, thanks for bringing up this topic. It's definitely not covered enough given how important it is to consider, especially as a Zerg player.
Loving your in-depth description and calculation on how a zerg should maintain their economy. Yes, if left alone, zerg can amass a HUGE economy, but there's something to be said of 1 base army timings if the zerg isn't prepared. Or 2 base timings. Or whatever timings period!
It comes down to scouting your opponent and understanding his thought process and in turn knowing what to do with that information (which is exactly what you're providing).
Thanks sheth, easy to memorize and understand. however for the final draft, you might want to add some visuals (graphs and charts) since i know if you look at a picture of something its hacked on your mind, so that would be helpful and also would increase the level of prestige of you post.
Great Sheth i know now how i lose so much when being like 2-3 bases ahead, way too many drones. I will try to follow this and see how it goes, thank you very much. Keep the good job!!
So is it safe to assume that anyone cutting probes/scvs in the 12 - 15 area is doing some sort of all-in cheese which is unsafe to fast expand (and saturate but i assume that is self explanatory) against? Where does an expansion not saturated (maybe 6 - 12 drones) fall on your chart (basically if you have 1.5 expansions)?
This is an extremely helpful guide for me because I will now look much closer at opponents saturation levels.
I figured your were working on something when I didn't see you on the sidebar :D The part about not investing a lot more into economy than your opponent (even if you're saying, el oh el I play macro games I'll have 3 bases when his 1 base all in comes) is a very important one for new players to understand. I know it helped me a lot against terrans when I was still new to the game/rts in general.
Dit, its definetly sure they are doing early aggression or something hidden. Its ok to fast expand, but yea don't saturate too much. Yea I haven't covered 6 to 12 yet.. ill add that in when I get back to library
thanks sheth i am really interested in the bit about the situation of getting more econ than necessary. So you are saying that if my opponent is on two base, I should be content with 3 fully saturated bases instead of having 4 fully saturated bases? Thanks!
[*]I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
I am reasonably sure that a MULE is about 4 workers.
Some snippets from Liquipedia:
"Their timed life allows 8 or 9 mining trips which totals 240/270 minerals respectively on a blue mineral patch and 336/378 on a yellow one. This works out to 160/180 and 224/252 minerals per game-minute respectively."
"MULEs are as effective as around 4 (±0.3) SCVs, as SCVs average 42-43 minerals per game-minute on blue mineral patches (for two or less workers per patch)."
EDIT. Sick post by the way, I really can't wait to see the finished product!
EDIT2. Completed the second quote with the brackets.
So Sheth, I watch your stream very very often and the way you transfer often seems mysterious to me. Do you try to transfer from both your main and your natural when you take your 3rd but still keep your drone rally to the local base?
So I hear a lot from many players, I heard it first from Day9 and Artosis, when you get ahead, get even MORE ahead, etc.
Is this telling me that in a situation where I take out or deny an opponent's third base, it's not optimal for me to take my own 4th or 5th? I understand that I should be prepared for a counter attack or an all in, but if I am prepared, should I settle with my 3 (or 4) base economy?
How about versus a player turtling on 3 base, is it not in my best interest to take the whole map as many players would say?
First of all, let me just say that you are one of my favorite zerg players. I'm a huge fan.
Second, I want to take this opportunity to ask you a question. How do you inject larva? While watching replays, I see neither the queens hotkeyed to a single group (for the minmap method), nor do I see the camera jerking all around to every hatchery (for the backspace method). How do you do it?
Do you have to be two levels ahead in the late game as well and what does that translates into, in number of workers and bases, compared to T/P? What about the thread by lalush, I think, where he claimed that no more than 3 bases were necessary, in other words, what is the highest level a zerg should go to?
I had a dream the other day, a dream that the strategy forum was full of great players making interesting points. Sorry I don't have anything to add, just wanted to thank you.
I would like to thank you for this eye oppening post. This is one of the most well written and sophisticated posts in the last few months. I have always thought about this "3 levels above" rule of thumb as something that comes as a hunch. But you have put it in a more managable-countable way, making it easier for someone who has not 500+ games under their belt to stop loosing stupidly to pushes while expanding.
Ok, added one more section about Gas Saturation. Working on more...
Morefasho -- Yes thats exactly what I do. I want each base to be equal. I also want them to grow equally. (16 at each then 17 then 18.. so on.)
Brotosterone -- By all means take a 4th base, however scout before you saturate it! Also Hi! <3
RMManLots -- Will discuss this later @ different post.
Archon -- I've never agreed 3 base is the most Zerg should go to. If you talk to Lalush about it I'm sure now he'll agree that 4 bases is pretty optimal for Zerg late game. 5 If you can take the gold and minimally saturate each would be the best. (Might as well take 8 or more and saturate each with 8 drones on minerals if you can, basically there is no limit man!)
Thanks for a very helpful post. You're coming dangerously close to answering the "when should I make drones and when should I make army" question I've already started going for 12-16 x2 vs a lot of 1-base players and then switching to pure army and it's been working out pretty well. Would love to see the rest of your thoughts on this issue.
If more worker/base ratio should remain low. Is a 6 bases with 12 workers at each base better than 4 bases with 18 works, from a defensive perspective. In general, doesn't more bases lead to less safety for each base?
I feel extremely obligated to ask what a bunker bank is. Thanks for such an extremely awesome post Sheth! In my opinion, learning when to drone and when not to drone is still such a hard thing to master. I don't have much to contribute either. Just wanted to say thanks! :D
Archon -- if you have 6 bases, its actually somewhat easier to defend. Alot of times you won't see your opponent come in with drops so your going to lose the hatch even with perfect defense. (say 2 drops with marines) So in the 6 base case you just move the drones to the 5th hatch, and kill his drop. And you traded 300 minerals for 2 drops! But honestly its all about your own style in this regard!
If zerg should "over expand" or at least have so many bases that the worker count at a specific base is low, does that correspond to a specific composition or play style? Is muta/ling or bane/ling/infest or any other composition favourable?
I like this, and it confirms in a small way my wierd, bizzard multiple expo/saturation theory.
I.E: If I have 4 bases, and 80 workers, I have 8 Gas, which is 24 Workers on Gas. (Gas*3)
80-24=56 Workers mining Minerals, which is only 14 drones mining PER BASE. (54 Mining Workers/4 Bases)
Which in equivilancey via Sheth's theories here, is pretty damned good. It's not perfect "24 drone/base saturation", but it works due to worker count/mineralpatch ratio's. (4*8=32 mineral patches under my direct control)
Using this logic, and confirming this, I can minimize damamge to my economy by spreading out my workers over multiple bases, while maintaining a healthy, vibrant economy to fund my 300 food push, remax, and tech switches.
I feel less stupid playing this way with Sheth confirming my suspicions. It also makes setting up new expo's easier and slightly safe, as less drones are vunerable to be sniped in a drone transfer.
Thanks for the great post! Does your strategy change for Terrans if your calculations assume fewer gold mineral patches (AFAIK, most gold bases have 6 mineral patches, not 8)? How does that adjust your drone-count for bases?
I usually stick to mining 3 bases (approximately 66 drones) vs. any 2-base play. I'm having a slightly hard time reading your scale but I think you mean something like:
^^ great idea with the tables, though the only danger is that they only apply in certain situations (no gold taken, didn't just wipe out their army, etc)
I don't know if it's even worth mentioning, but sometimes players get into sub-optimal saturation that can be fixed with a simple worker transfer. 24 in the main, 4 in the natural, for example? If your natural is secure, a big transfer will increase mineral income pretty quickly. When T gets a gold base up they usually throw down a bunch of MULEs asap, but not every zerg I've seen does a transfer when a hatch on a gold is finishing. Recognizing how to get the most out of existing drones seems like an important part of playing the saturation game well. Thanks again!
I see your response regarding transfers and local rallies, that makes sense for keeping a good balance. Do you ever run into trouble with mixed production where one base ends up oversaturated relative to the rest?
Great post sheth and it's good that you are active among us lower tier players! An economic or production question, should each base have a corresponding queen? Many queens could cap the army supply, is that a problem?
Cookie -- Yep thats why I'm just giving general rules.
Nano -- Yep happens once in a while, thats why you need to be constantly checking how many drones you have in each mineral area. Actually LOOK at the workers, don't look through them. Count them and think about it. I should probably add something like that to the guide.
Archon -- I usually stop at like 5 queens, anything more is like you said a army supply problem.
If zerg should "over expand" or at least have so many bases that the worker count at a specific base is low, does that correspond to a specific composition or play style? Is muta/ling or bane/ling/infest or any other composition favourable? The ultra or broodlords/mass queen build might be less favourable?
Also with many bases I suppose you aren't building any macro hatches?
Since you are answering my posts, how did you feel when you were nr1 in ladder in the world? It was a great achievement!
On May 05 2011 03:49 archonOOid wrote: If zerg should "over expand" or at least have so many bases that the worker count at a specific base is low, does that correspond to a specific composition or play style? Is muta/ling or bane/ling/infest or any other composition favourable? The ultra or broodlords/mass queen build might be less favourable?
It would only correspond to specific playstyle in the early-mid game, whereas any expansions past the 3rd are usually just taken as soon as "safely" (and i use that very loosely) possible.
The only example I can think of where extra bases are playstyle dependant is when a player is going heavy ling/bane in the early game and an objective is to get a really fast 3rd up with the excess minerals they will have. The other compositions you mentioned have nothing to do with base count or "over expanding", though it is certainly easier to defend 8 bases on Tal'Darim with a fast army than it is with broodlords. Composition is only dependent on your income, not base count (beyond 3base)
I have a couple questions after watching almost all 200something of your replays.
In zvt I know you like to open roach, but some games I see that you will commit to an early roach timing off of 2 bases that most of the tme catches the terran offguard and win you the game or greatly cripple the terran. I'd like to know what indicates that you should go for that timing, as in, what does the terran do that cues that an early roach attack will be successful?
Secondly, I notice that in a lot of your games you stop at 84 drones, how do you get your drone count this accurately? Do you just select all your drones at each expansions and count them?
Awesome post thanks! I've always had a vague idea in my head of the kind of range of drones/bases I want to be ahead of my opponent without over-droning/expanding but I've never really tried quantifying it like this. I'll have to start getting used to estimating my worker numbers at each base better or at least start boxing them to check roughly how many there are.
Edit: Also I already check for gas timings and which units a protoss makes as hints at whether they will push me or just expand, but I've never considered checking the sentry's energy level. That's a great idea so thanks for that too, I think it will help me not die to some of the stranger 1 base protoss pushes.
Nice Sheth, I will be looking for this type of game sense during your NASL and other tournament appearances! This guide really made be a better player/fan of starcraft.
Extremely insightful, thank you! I think the thing I've gained most from watching high level streams such as yours is just how much extra information can be derived from scouting.
One quibbling comment: Lalush's analysis showed that going from 24 to 30+ workers does actually give a small increase in income (it's only about 3%).
The tip to check sentry energy levels to deduce when they were warped in and how many gates the Protoss player is using seems so obvious with the benefit of hindsight but is something I hadn't thought to do. Thanks for the guide!
Given equal distance to all mineral patches, every worker up to 16 adds 100% efficiency up to 16 mineral workers. At >16 workers, glitching may occur, but it will balance out especially on far patches. The real result is that although glitching occurs, each worker does however generate a net boost in income - although only on average 50% as much as each additional worker beyond the 0th. The roof is at 24.
So: 0-16: Each worker adds 100% optimal income (~45 income/minute) 16-24: Each worker adds ~50% optimal income (~22.5 income/minute) >24: Each worker adds 0% optimal income.
So, in short: Prio #1 is to saturate bases with >16 workers each, and if you need to further improve mineral income without expanding, 24 mineral workers per base is max.
Compare the cost of an expansion: 350 minerals & 1 larvae, to the cost and income of workers. Let's say you have 32 workers on two bases. You can either expand or build 7 workers for your 350 minerals (building workers costs more larvae, of course). Each worker will increase your income by 22.5ipm. Your additional hatchery, given that you are at OPTIMAL (16) saturation will net you exactly 0 income. But what happens when you add more workers, and where is the point where it is better to expand than to increase saturation?
Case A, expanding: A = 45*x-350
Case B, saturating: B = 22.5*x
Where is A = B?Where 45*x-350=22.5*x, thus 22.5x=350, thus x = 350/22.5, thus 15.555 (...). So, in other words, it coincidentally happens to be so that saturating is always more mineralefficient until you oversaturate, which might be good to keep in mind. However, the larvae cost is not accounted for, so it is gamewise unrealistic. You'd have to balance the equation up somehow, valuing larvae in minerals, but I won't attempt to do that.
As a rule of thumb: Mineralwise, the largest economic boost per worker is achieved between 0-16 workers per base, and mineralwise, the net gain is larger from saturating than getting an extra base.
There're alot of factors to factor in though: Larvae access, defendability, gas, future saturation, etc. etc.
If you keep the numbers 16 and 24 in mind you'll have come a long way by the way.
Extra note: If someone likes Google Translate (or speaks swedish), I wrote a guide about mineral saturation on our Team Property forums [G & D] Mineral Saturation etc.. If there's interest, I can translate it and update it. It has pictures and gametested facts, such as node-differentiation incomewise.
Hey Sheth, you wrote about scouting the front with a ling, in the Gas Timings (vs Protoss) section. But what if the Protoss keeps his sentries back and out of your vision from the top of the ramp? Is that a bad idea for a Protoss because of X, or is it simply something that you should try to see if possible?
monsieur, if the protoss keeps his sentrys away from the front you see less then you "should" see, which should trigger "something fishy" in your brain. well what does a zerg do when he doesnt know what the protoss is doing on one base? he sends an overlord in there. now that overlord will most likely be attacked by those "missing" sentrys, which gives you the information you need ( at least some of the time;))
On May 05 2011 07:02 Cyrik wrote: monsieur, if the protoss keeps his sentrys away from the front you see less then you "should" see, which should trigger "something fishy" in your brain. well what does a zerg do when he doesnt know what the protoss is doing on one base? he sends an overlord in there. now that overlord will most likely be attacked by those "missing" sentrys, which gives you the information you need ( at least some of the time;))
Or just one sentry, keep the rest away. Overlords are slow as shit
It's the different levels of sturation sheth was talking about:
On May 05 2011 01:08 Sheth wrote:
12-16 saturation < 16-20 saturation < 24 saturation 8-12 saturation on 2 bases< 12-16 saturation on 2 bases < 16-20 saturation on 2 bases < 24 saturation on 2 bases < 14-16 saturation on 3 bases and so forth… HOWEVER we now come to a new rule. You DO NOT want to get 3 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent. Versus a competent opponent you will LOSE. (This considers you are playing someone of equal level and you haven’t killed his army 10 times and are about to win the game. 12-16 saturation implies that you have 12-16 drones mining on 8 blue mineral patches.. and so on)
Just something I put together quickly, so sorry for the low quality. Just did it quickly, printed it out small and stuck it on my wall. I'm one of those people with all sorts of stuff stuck to the wall by my PC, but I'm anal enough about it that it had to stay in the SC2 theme of colours. Stuck up there it quickly sinks in and won't need to look at it anymore in a short time.
Posting in an epic Sheth thread. This definitely explains how it is a 2 base terran could keep up with a 4 base Zerg doing 16 workers on minerals per base, this is just mindblowing.
On May 05 2011 06:53 Arn wrote: Given equal distance to all mineral patches, + Show Spoiler +
every worker up to 16 adds 100% efficiency up to 16 mineral workers. At >16 workers, glitching may occur, but it will balance out especially on far patches. The real result is that although glitching occurs, each worker does however generate a net boost in income - although only on average 50% as much as each additional worker beyond the 0th. The roof is at 24.
So: 0-16: Each worker adds 100% optimal income (~45 income/minute) 16-24: Each worker adds ~50% optimal income (~22.5 income/minute) >24: Each worker adds 0% optimal income.
So, in short: Prio #1 is to saturate bases with >16 workers each, and if you need to further improve mineral income without expanding, 24 mineral workers per base is max.
Compare the cost of an expansion: 350 minerals & 1 larvae, to the cost and income of workers. Let's say you have 32 workers on two bases. You can either expand or build 7 workers for your 350 minerals (building workers costs more larvae, of course). Each worker will increase your income by 22.5ipm. Your additional hatchery, given that you are at OPTIMAL (16) saturation will net you exactly 0 income. But what happens when you add more workers, and where is the point where it is better to expand than to increase saturation?
Case A, expanding: A = 45*x-350
Case B, saturating: B = 22.5*x
Where is A = B?Where 45*x-350=22.5*x, thus 22.5x=350, thus x = 350/22.5, thus 15.555 (...). So, in other words, it coincidentally happens to be so that saturating is always more mineralefficient until you oversaturate, which might be good to keep in mind. However, the larvae cost is not accounted for, so it is gamewise unrealistic. You'd have to balance the equation up somehow, valuing larvae in minerals, but I won't attempt to do that.
As a rule of thumb: Mineralwise, the largest economic boost per worker is achieved between 0-16 workers per base, and mineralwise, the net gain is larger from saturating than getting an extra base.
There're alot of factors to factor in though: Larvae access, defendability, gas, future saturation, etc. etc.
If you keep the numbers 16 and 24 in mind you'll have come a long way by the way.
Extra note: If someone likes Google Translate (or speaks swedish), I wrote a guide about mineral saturation on our Team Property forums [G & D] Mineral Saturation etc.. If there's interest, I can translate it and update it. It has pictures and gametested facts, such as node-differentiation incomewise.
Need to stop you right there. We don't play this game in a vacuum, and there's a hefty dropoff between workers 17-20 and workers 21-24. Far patch 3rds mine roughly double would close patch 3rds mine.
45/minute is not an approximation, but the maximum that close patch workers can mine. Far patch workers mine at 39, and this averages (on most maps) to about 42-43.
Simple arithmetic shows that your mining numbers are very off-base, as maximum 1-base saturation is 816 (102 per patch).
Your maximum saturation would give: 112.5 per patch and 900 minerals/minute.
Awesome post - thanks for doing this. I particularly like that you discuss how to tell if you're overdroning, which hardly anyone ever addresses.
Counting workers when scouting seems to be a skill that comes with practice, since you can't control/box select them the way you can your own workers. I doubt anyone actually goes through and counts them individually. I'm getting better at working it out at a glance though. As far as I can tell it seems to go something like this:
- Workers moving back and forth in one direction only = one worker per patch maximum (so 0-8 workers). You can easily count them in this situation.
- Workers moving in both directions and crossing in the middle = two workers per patch. This means 9-16 workers - more workers crossing over means the upper end of that range, only a few means the lower end.
- Workers going round behind the minerals or switching between mineral patches = more than two workers per patch. This means 17-24 workers - the more that are doing this, the closer to saturation.
Maybe some images or short animated clips would help to illustrate this.
One thing I love about Sheth above all else is that he is one of the only top players making huge contributions to our written understanding of Starcraft. The general public has a much improved ability to understand Zerg thanks to his extensive posts on the Strategy forum and his commentary + replay packs. Thanks a lot Sheth!
I have a bit of a problem with the tiers on saturation. I find that 12 - 16 is a way bigger difference than 16 - 20. Difference between 20 - 24 is really small. Once you get past 16 on minerals it just gets less and less effective. Like past 16 on minerals per base each extra worker is more like 90% a worker and then 80% and then 65% as efficient all the way up to 24 where each extra is 0% as efficient. That is why 2 base with 12 workers each is way better than 1 base with 24. The difference is several tiers bigger than previous tiers. I don't even include 16 per 2 base because that is even bigger than 12 per 2 base. As for example having 24 one one base and 12 on another is actually not as good as having 16 per base even though you have less workers.
I mean just going from enemy has 12 and you have 14 is about a big a jump in saturation tier as him being 16 and you being 20. Him having 12 and you having 13 is about a big as difference as him being 20 and you being 24.
Another point I would like to make though is how many far patches you have compared to close patches. 2 drones can mine a close patch at near perfect efficiency while 3 is required to have a far patch mining constantly with that 3rd worker mining at about half the efficiency since it has to wait. You usually do not have more than 3 far patches and one cut off point you could look at is having 2 per close patch and 3 per far patch although that 3 per patch is not so good but better than 3 per all patches.
When I play Zerg I tend to go for a standard of 16 max per 8 mineral base only producing extra drones once I am producing another hatchery. The rest of the time I am making units, buildings or upgrades. Of course I over produce beyond 16 as well to take into account that I will be making buildings which cost a drone.
So for me being on 2 base means 48 drones max mining constantly with a little more for making buildings. 3 base means 72 max and with 4 base I stop at 80 mostly just taking gas and transferring most drones from my main if it is not already mined out. Mostly though 3 base with 72 drones means perfect efficiency and if you can get to that point before your enemy then I think you are quite ahead.
I almost never like to saturate all the way up to 24 unless I am about to expand with Zerg specifically.
Also when taking my third I sometimes start making the drones when my hatch is 75% complete and rally drone production to the 3rd because I do not want to do a transfer later. When they hatch and get there it will be complete at around that exact moment.
great read. thanks for this i learned quite a bit. I have to get into the habit of scouting opponent workers but now i actually know what im looking for ...
Your voice is like a warm glass of milk before bed. I don't even play zerg but I still watch your stream as often as I can. I just can't get enough of that ear-candy!
You should record some of these guides so I can saturate my ears with that angelic manner voice of yours.
Saturation has certainly been a problem of mine since playing SC2. In the beginning I learned I needed more drones to win. After winning many games with many drones, I learned of such a thing as overdroning. From losing to overdroning I have learned of all-ining. From all-ining has come more losing and now I am trying to learn proper play.
Some maps I find myself being stuck on 2 bases simply because I don't even want to make the units to take down rocks, or, the third is too far away and therefor, too difficult to defend. I think on most maps in most cases Zergs are very comfortable taking their natural and it feels "right". But I notice in myself at least, that when it comes time to take a third I feel "ugh, hmm".
Do you have any suggestions for taking a third? Is it putting pressure on your opponent first? Is it making some defensive units prior to taking? Or is it just too situational to really say specifically?
Dear Sheth, (I don't think you mentioned this in the OP)
at what times is it best to only saturate the gas at your 3rd? You talked about gas timings as far as scouting in terran/protoss, but didn't really mention the value of gas as a zerg player. How highly do you tend to favor gas? At what times is it best to take your geysers at your natural? At what times is it best to only saturate the geysers at your third base, and not the minerals? What about late game? What about timings when holding off early aggression? What about when facing toss who goes for FFE?
I feel like I have general ideas of when to take and saturate my geysers, but it doesn't always end up working out, and I'm really interested in your thought process behind your timings.
Oh wow Sheth, I am confident this is going to make me a much better player as I was already starting to tinker with goal-oriented mineral saturation with fabulous results. I had some idea of where the "money" was, so to speak, but now I will know exactly what I'm doing. Thank you so much, and please keep streaming! <3
I think it's acceptable to use a mental model of linear scaling for greater saturation than your opponent simply for the sake of quick calculations. The model Sheth has presented is certainly superior to the one that I used up till now that consisted of "stay at least one base ahead of terran".
Here are a couple questions I hope Sheth can address when he expands this guide:
Sheth, do you have any thoughts on saturation for Zerg two base timings, or do you feel that those builds are too non-standard to warrant discussion in this thread? At times I feel as though the rush to outproduce in terms of economy chains us as Zerg to our immobile bases in order to defend, taking away one of our unit strengths which is mobility.
Also, is there a point where you draw a line, in trying to have a better economy than Terran or Protoss, if they are playing unusually greedy? Or do you attempt to outpace them to infinity? (and beyond)
Great guide, Mr. Sheth, and a solid way of looking at things.
I would note, as several have used this to ask questions about base timings, that there are times you may want to take bases even if you can't or won't be able to saturate the minerals, just to get the additional gas, with only a minor mineral income. That approach can be beneficial at times, though normally doesn't occur until the 5-base mark or so (from my observation/experience).
On May 05 2011 06:53 Arn wrote: Given equal distance to all mineral patches, + Show Spoiler +
every worker up to 16 adds 100% efficiency up to 16 mineral workers. At >16 workers, glitching may occur, but it will balance out especially on far patches. The real result is that although glitching occurs, each worker does however generate a net boost in income - although only on average 50% as much as each additional worker beyond the 0th. The roof is at 24.
So: 0-16: Each worker adds 100% optimal income (~45 income/minute) 16-24: Each worker adds ~50% optimal income (~22.5 income/minute) >24: Each worker adds 0% optimal income.
So, in short: Prio #1 is to saturate bases with >16 workers each, and if you need to further improve mineral income without expanding, 24 mineral workers per base is max.
Compare the cost of an expansion: 350 minerals & 1 larvae, to the cost and income of workers. Let's say you have 32 workers on two bases. You can either expand or build 7 workers for your 350 minerals (building workers costs more larvae, of course). Each worker will increase your income by 22.5ipm. Your additional hatchery, given that you are at OPTIMAL (16) saturation will net you exactly 0 income. But what happens when you add more workers, and where is the point where it is better to expand than to increase saturation?
Case A, expanding: A = 45*x-350
Case B, saturating: B = 22.5*x
Where is A = B?Where 45*x-350=22.5*x, thus 22.5x=350, thus x = 350/22.5, thus 15.555 (...). So, in other words, it coincidentally happens to be so that saturating is always more mineralefficient until you oversaturate, which might be good to keep in mind. However, the larvae cost is not accounted for, so it is gamewise unrealistic. You'd have to balance the equation up somehow, valuing larvae in minerals, but I won't attempt to do that.
As a rule of thumb: Mineralwise, the largest economic boost per worker is achieved between 0-16 workers per base, and mineralwise, the net gain is larger from saturating than getting an extra base.
There're alot of factors to factor in though: Larvae access, defendability, gas, future saturation, etc. etc.
If you keep the numbers 16 and 24 in mind you'll have come a long way by the way.
Extra note: If someone likes Google Translate (or speaks swedish), I wrote a guide about mineral saturation on our Team Property forums [G & D] Mineral Saturation etc.. If there's interest, I can translate it and update it. It has pictures and gametested facts, such as node-differentiation incomewise.
Need to stop you right there. We don't play this game in a vacuum, and there's a hefty dropoff between workers 17-20 and workers 21-24. Far patch 3rds mine roughly double would close patch 3rds mine.
45/minute is not an approximation, but the maximum that close patch workers can mine. Far patch workers mine at 39, and this averages (on most maps) to about 42-43.
Simple arithmetic shows that your mining numbers are very off-base, as maximum 1-base saturation is 816 (102 per patch).
Your maximum saturation would give: 112.5 per patch and 900 minerals/minute.
Thanks for the corrections, I just have to defend my "given equal mineral distance" statement - I realize that different patches generate different income, and didn't have the exact numbers, however I do have some %ages. Basically there seem to be three types of patches, close/mid/far, which mine at 100%/88%/84% (img) in relation to eachothers. The reason I assumed equal distance is because it was not the point - it will equal out.
However, saying that each worker 16-24 adds exactly 50% efficiency is correct, the real numbers are higher for the first few workers and lower for the last - the first workers will go to far-patches without glitching.
But okay, if I am gonna do theorycrafting I'll do it more thoroughly next time, else it might be of too little real value.
really nice guide, that you've written there. Even for someone whos native language is not english, this concept is understandable.
Just one question: At which kind of skill-level do you aim this thoughts ? Do you think it is an good idea, from Bronze to Grandmaster, to start using and applying your idea about saturation and worker-counting, or is it more kind of a "high-level-thing" ? In other words: Should a Plat-Player concentrate his APM on "Injections, Producing and Overlords" ? Or should he start applying your ideas on his lower level, to get it down for higher leagues ?
Btw: The thing with the sentries -> Just great! Have to agree with the guy, who said that this was easily the best piece of advise against toss in this forum.
On May 05 2011 08:29 AzureD wrote: I have a bit of a problem with the tiers on saturation. I find that 12 - 16 is a way bigger difference than 16 - 20. Difference between 20 - 24 is really small. Once you get past 16 on minerals it just gets less and less effective. Like past 16 on minerals per base each extra worker is more like 90% a worker and then 80% and then 65% as efficient all the way up to 24 where each extra is 0% as efficient. That is why 2 base with 12 workers each is way better than 1 base with 24. The difference is several tiers bigger than previous tiers. I don't even include 16 per 2 base because that is even bigger than 12 per 2 base. As for example having 24 one one base and 12 on another is actually not as good as having 16 per base even though you have less workers.
This is almost certainly down to the number of close vs far away patches. The ideal amount of works for minerals is most likely ( far patches * 3 ) + ( close patches * 2 ). It would be interesting to know exactly how much difference there is between 2 vs 3 on a close patch. Of course this varies a bit as the distance isn't constant even between 2 separate close patches, same goes for far.
"If you ever see 4 sentries with the same energy that means he has 4 gates." This is so clever. Why the hell didnt i have already thought of this. Thanks Sheth <3
On May 05 2011 08:09 [Atomic]Peace wrote: One thing I love about Sheth above all else is that he is one of the only top players making huge contributions to our written understanding of Starcraft. The general public has a much improved ability to understand Zerg thanks to his extensive posts on the Strategy forum and his commentary + replay packs. Thanks a lot Sheth!
Exactly! Your contributions are awsome!!!! All the streaming, reppacks and your posts help so MUCH!
Great post, and damn I never thought about checking sentry energies, but that can be damn useful.
On May 05 2011 16:40 ShiroUtsuRi wrote: thank you ... from now on I will hide my other 2 sentries and the zergs will be at panic-mode ^^ helpful for toss, too!
I do not believe that will really work. Around 5-5:30 zerg will sac an ovi if he does not see enough units and you can either let him see your entire base, or use the sentries to kill the ovi - at which point he sees the sentries and the energy levels.
On May 05 2011 16:40 ShiroUtsuRi wrote: thank you ... from now on I will hide my other 2 sentries and the zergs will be at panic-mode ^^ helpful for toss, too!
I do not believe that will really work. Around 5-5:30 zerg will sac an ovi if he does not see enough units and you can either let him see your entire base, or use the sentries to kill the ovi - at which point he sees the sentries and the energy levels.
Even just making him sac an ovie is a nice little win. On the maps with the big mains you can often kill the ovie with 1 or 2 sentries, too, which can throw them off.
On May 05 2011 01:11 Saracen wrote: Thanks for posting dood! EDIT: Wow this is a pretty sick post thanks for sharing.
A few points:
This doesn't scale linearly because (as you mentioned), you get decreasing rate of returns when you reach 20-24 saturation. So it looks more like: 12-16 < 16-20 ~< 20-24 < 12-16 (2 base) < 16-20 (2 base) ~< 20-24 (2 base). Also, you start scaling by 8 drones instead of 4 drones on the 2 base example, making it even more nonlinear (which isn't a bad thing in this case because it takes more workers to make a difference on 2 base compared to 1, just pointing it out though).
For some really tight timings, I don't think you'll be able to afford being 2 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent (like versus 1gas 4gate). Even against 6gate, I find I can only be at 50 drones max (38 on minerals -> 19 2base) to his ~40 (34 on minerals -> 17 on 2base).
I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
For Terrans supersaturating the gold, you have to consider that they're not going to be able to support the production because before they take it, they only have the amount of production facilities necessary to produce off of nongold bases (usually24 2base + MULEs saturation if they take the gold as their 3rd). So they have to build more production facilities to keep up with the income boost, which means it'll take at least a full minute before you see any noticeable increase in production. Then, they hit a huge production spike, followed by a significant drop in production once the gold gets mined out (however long that takes, but it shouldn't be very long, like ~5 minutes, if they're constantly dropping MULEs there).
This post really emphasizes why you have to keep on expanding as Zerg (especially taking that 3rd at a reasonable time). It's not that hard to skyrocket to 60+ drones by the 9 minute mark, but you're going to be getting limited returns compared to what you could be potentially getting if your 3rd isn't up by then.
It's also really important to be able to approximate these saturations by glancing at a mineral line to be able to guess whether or not he's cutting economy for an attack.
Anways, thanks for bringing up this topic. It's definitely not covered enough given how important it is to consider, especially as a Zerg player.
Saracen why are you a mod? You bash perfectly good threads and then you wanna suck this guys dick who makes a rambling, theorycrafted, poorly written garbage thread.
This guide is full of mis-information and very very basic stuff.
"when the Terran take scv's off gas you can be fairly certain he isn't making banshees or tanks" LOL REALLY THANKS FOR THAT KNOWLEDGE. And I'm pretty sure zerg would have a hard time just parking an ovie at the gas to constantly watch it without it being sniped down. And I can think of plenty of 4 gas 2 base terran all ins. And WTF is up with the - if you spawn close positions you should 6pool. I hope that's a joke.
The basics I got from this article were simply the basics of macro zerg style: - You want more workers than your opponent - Don't overdrone or you can be killed - Rush distance plays a part in how aggressively you can drone
Nothing new was learned here by anyone above platinum league to be honest. Also I personally believe that trying to play in this "Idra/Macro Style/Stay ahead in drones and 1 production cycle behind your opponent" is not very good for bronze-platinum players because without good game savy and understanding (that they don't have at that level) they will fuck it up very often and be killed by anyone that does any sort of optimal timing attack.
Also the Saracen reply is almost as terrible as the original post. A Mule is ~ 4 SCV's. The OP highlights the importance of having a certain level of saturation/drones based of the distance from your enemy. Not "the importance to always expand as a zerg". If a Terran 1 bases, taking a 3rd would contradict what the OP is saying you should do.
And the Bronze Zergs flock to this thread thinking its literary gold. Sorry it's not. Move along.
On May 05 2011 01:11 Saracen wrote: Thanks for posting dood! EDIT: Wow this is a pretty sick post thanks for sharing.
A few points:
This doesn't scale linearly because (as you mentioned), you get decreasing rate of returns when you reach 20-24 saturation. So it looks more like: 12-16 < 16-20 ~< 20-24 < 12-16 (2 base) < 16-20 (2 base) ~< 20-24 (2 base). Also, you start scaling by 8 drones instead of 4 drones on the 2 base example, making it even more nonlinear (which isn't a bad thing in this case because it takes more workers to make a difference on 2 base compared to 1, just pointing it out though).
For some really tight timings, I don't think you'll be able to afford being 2 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent (like versus 1gas 4gate). Even against 6gate, I find I can only be at 50 drones max (38 on minerals -> 19 2base) to his ~40 (34 on minerals -> 17 on 2base).
I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
For Terrans supersaturating the gold, you have to consider that they're not going to be able to support the production because before they take it, they only have the amount of production facilities necessary to produce off of nongold bases (usually24 2base + MULEs saturation if they take the gold as their 3rd). So they have to build more production facilities to keep up with the income boost, which means it'll take at least a full minute before you see any noticeable increase in production. Then, they hit a huge production spike, followed by a significant drop in production once the gold gets mined out (however long that takes, but it shouldn't be very long, like ~5 minutes, if they're constantly dropping MULEs there).
This post really emphasizes why you have to keep on expanding as Zerg (especially taking that 3rd at a reasonable time). It's not that hard to skyrocket to 60+ drones by the 9 minute mark, but you're going to be getting limited returns compared to what you could be potentially getting if your 3rd isn't up by then.
It's also really important to be able to approximate these saturations by glancing at a mineral line to be able to guess whether or not he's cutting economy for an attack.
Anways, thanks for bringing up this topic. It's definitely not covered enough given how important it is to consider, especially as a Zerg player.
Saracen why are you a mod? You bash perfectly good threads and then you wanna suck this guys dick who makes a rambling, theorycrafted, poorly written garbage thread.
This guide is full of mis-information and very very basic stuff.
"when the Terran take scv's off gas you can be fairly certain he isn't making banshees or tanks" LOL REALLY THANKS FOR THAT KNOWLEDGE. And I'm pretty sure zerg would have a hard time just parking an ovie at the gas to constantly watch it without it being sniped down. And I can think of plenty of 4 gas 2 base terran all ins. And WTF is up with the - if you spawn close positions you should 6pool. I hope that's a joke.
The basics I got from this article were simply the basics of macro zerg style: - You want more workers than your opponent - Don't overdrone or you can be killed - Rush distance plays a part in how aggressively you can drone
Nothing new was learned here by anyone above platinum league to be honest. Also I personally believe that trying to play in this "Idra/Macro Style/Stay ahead in drones and 1 production cycle behind your opponent" is not very good for bronze-platinum players because without good game savy and understanding (that they don't have at that level) they will fuck it up very often and be killed by anyone that does any sort of optimal timing attack.
Also the Saracen reply is almost as terrible as the original post. A Mule is ~ 4 SCV's. The OP highlights the importance of having a certain level of saturation/drones based of the distance from your enemy. Not "the importance to always expand as a zerg". If a Terran 1 bases, taking a 3rd would contradict what the OP is saying you should do.
And the Bronze Zergs flock to this thread thinking its literary gold. Sorry it's not. Move along.
You're so wrong it's unbelievable and I really hope you get perma banned for flaming a mod like that.
The thread is not theorycrafting, it's stuff Sheth does on his stream all the time.
You don't have to "park your overlord over their gas", just keep it somewhere that you can poke in, check the count, and pull back. I will agree that not all of this will be great for low level players, but you don't discuss strategy as being limited by what you can do in practice, you figure out what you can theoretically do and make it happen (okay, maybe you need to do what you can theoretically do with 200 apm, but the basic idea is still there).
Also I find it funny that you rip on Bronze players at the end when you yourself sound like a Platinum player with a god complex.
A note on "general rules": This is true from many things I've studied, but I'll draw on something I've studied a lot, chess. First you learn the general rules: "Double pawns are bad" "Rooks are better than knights"
Then, when you're really good, you learn all the times when it's okay to break the rules, or how to evaluate when two of the general rules come into contact: "The doubled pawns here will actually not be weak and will control some important squares" "I can sacrifice my rook for his knight and leave him with weak doubled pawns that can probably be won or blockaded later."
Edit: Spoilered his garbage so it didn't have to be part of my post.
On May 05 2011 01:11 Saracen wrote: Thanks for posting dood! EDIT: Wow this is a pretty sick post thanks for sharing.
A few points:
This doesn't scale linearly because (as you mentioned), you get decreasing rate of returns when you reach 20-24 saturation. So it looks more like: 12-16 < 16-20 ~< 20-24 < 12-16 (2 base) < 16-20 (2 base) ~< 20-24 (2 base). Also, you start scaling by 8 drones instead of 4 drones on the 2 base example, making it even more nonlinear (which isn't a bad thing in this case because it takes more workers to make a difference on 2 base compared to 1, just pointing it out though).
For some really tight timings, I don't think you'll be able to afford being 2 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent (like versus 1gas 4gate). Even against 6gate, I find I can only be at 50 drones max (38 on minerals -> 19 2base) to his ~40 (34 on minerals -> 17 on 2base).
I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
For Terrans supersaturating the gold, you have to consider that they're not going to be able to support the production because before they take it, they only have the amount of production facilities necessary to produce off of nongold bases (usually24 2base + MULEs saturation if they take the gold as their 3rd). So they have to build more production facilities to keep up with the income boost, which means it'll take at least a full minute before you see any noticeable increase in production. Then, they hit a huge production spike, followed by a significant drop in production once the gold gets mined out (however long that takes, but it shouldn't be very long, like ~5 minutes, if they're constantly dropping MULEs there).
This post really emphasizes why you have to keep on expanding as Zerg (especially taking that 3rd at a reasonable time). It's not that hard to skyrocket to 60+ drones by the 9 minute mark, but you're going to be getting limited returns compared to what you could be potentially getting if your 3rd isn't up by then.
It's also really important to be able to approximate these saturations by glancing at a mineral line to be able to guess whether or not he's cutting economy for an attack.
Anways, thanks for bringing up this topic. It's definitely not covered enough given how important it is to consider, especially as a Zerg player.
Saracen why are you a mod? You bash perfectly good threads and then you wanna suck this guys dick who makes a rambling, theorycrafted, poorly written garbage thread.
This guide is full of mis-information and very very basic stuff.
"when the Terran take scv's off gas you can be fairly certain he isn't making banshees or tanks" LOL REALLY THANKS FOR THAT KNOWLEDGE. And I'm pretty sure zerg would have a hard time just parking an ovie at the gas to constantly watch it without it being sniped down. And I can think of plenty of 4 gas 2 base terran all ins. And WTF is up with the - if you spawn close positions you should 6pool. I hope that's a joke.
The basics I got from this article were simply the basics of macro zerg style: - You want more workers than your opponent - Don't overdrone or you can be killed - Rush distance plays a part in how aggressively you can drone
Nothing new was learned here by anyone above platinum league to be honest. Also I personally believe that trying to play in this "Idra/Macro Style/Stay ahead in drones and 1 production cycle behind your opponent" is not very good for bronze-platinum players because without good game savy and understanding (that they don't have at that level) they will fuck it up very often and be killed by anyone that does any sort of optimal timing attack.
Also the Saracen reply is almost as terrible as the original post. A Mule is ~ 4 SCV's. The OP highlights the importance of having a certain level of saturation/drones based of the distance from your enemy. Not "the importance to always expand as a zerg". If a Terran 1 bases, taking a 3rd would contradict what the OP is saying you should do.
And the Bronze Zergs flock to this thread thinking its literary gold. Sorry it's not. Move along.
You're so wrong it's unbelievable and I really hope you get perma banned for flaming a mod like that.
The thread is not theorycrafting, it's stuff Sheth does on his stream all the time.
You don't have to "park your overlord over their gas", just keep it somewhere that you can poke in, check the count, and pull back. I will agree that not all of this will be great for low level players, but you don't discuss strategy as being limited by what you can do in practice, you figure out what you can theoretically do and make it happen (okay, maybe you need to do what you can theoretically do with 200 apm, but the basic idea is still there).
Also I find it funny that you rip on Bronze players at the end when you yourself sound like a Platinum player with a god complex.
A note on "general rules": This is true from many things I've studied, but I'll draw on something I've studied a lot, chess. First you learn the general rules: "Double pawns are bad" "Rooks are better than knights"
Then, when you're really good, you learn all the times when it's okay to break the rules, or how to evaluate when two of the general rules come into contact: "The doubled pawns here will actually not be weak and will control some important squares" "I can sacrifice my rook for his knight and leave him with weak doubled pawns that can probably be won or blockaded later."
Edit: Spoilered his garbage so it didn't have to be part of my post.
I'm not ripping into Bronze players, as I and most people were one once, I am simply trying to help lower players discern what is good and bad information. Playing this style is for players with a very good understanding of the game, and players with a very thorough understanding of the game didn't learn anything from reading that as it's all common knowledge, that's the point a make.
The other point I make is that in comparison to other guides I have watched/read about playing Macro Zerg, this doesn't rate very highly and doesn't warrant the sort of praise that it's getting.
EDIT: and good players deny overlord scouting. You sac an Ovi at a certain time to get as much info as you can, but you can't have it there for any consistent period of time so I don't know what game you're playing.
The basics I got from this article were simply the basics of macro zerg style: - You want more workers than your opponent - Don't overdrone or you can be killed - Rush distance plays a part in how aggressively you can drone
You clearly suck at reading. There's a lot more detailed information than that in the OP.
great post! great way to think about things as i'm super greedy and a huge fault of mine is that i try to saturate too quickly. really helped me figure out optimal mining rates for my matchups :D
holyshit i've never thought about it like this. the model of "levels of saturation" is incredibly useful and makes it all clear. I feel like some noob russian scientist reading Ernestine's work for the first time after learning english. really eye opening stuff!
On May 05 2011 01:11 Saracen wrote: Thanks for posting dood! EDIT: Wow this is a pretty sick post thanks for sharing.
A few points:
This doesn't scale linearly because (as you mentioned), you get decreasing rate of returns when you reach 20-24 saturation. So it looks more like: 12-16 < 16-20 ~< 20-24 < 12-16 (2 base) < 16-20 (2 base) ~< 20-24 (2 base). Also, you start scaling by 8 drones instead of 4 drones on the 2 base example, making it even more nonlinear (which isn't a bad thing in this case because it takes more workers to make a difference on 2 base compared to 1, just pointing it out though).
For some really tight timings, I don't think you'll be able to afford being 2 levels of saturation ahead of your opponent (like versus 1gas 4gate). Even against 6gate, I find I can only be at 50 drones max (38 on minerals -> 19 2base) to his ~40 (34 on minerals -> 17 on 2base).
I thought a MULE was ~6 workers, not 4? That was always my impression anyways.
For Terrans supersaturating the gold, you have to consider that they're not going to be able to support the production because before they take it, they only have the amount of production facilities necessary to produce off of nongold bases (usually24 2base + MULEs saturation if they take the gold as their 3rd). So they have to build more production facilities to keep up with the income boost, which means it'll take at least a full minute before you see any noticeable increase in production. Then, they hit a huge production spike, followed by a significant drop in production once the gold gets mined out (however long that takes, but it shouldn't be very long, like ~5 minutes, if they're constantly dropping MULEs there).
This post really emphasizes why you have to keep on expanding as Zerg (especially taking that 3rd at a reasonable time). It's not that hard to skyrocket to 60+ drones by the 9 minute mark, but you're going to be getting limited returns compared to what you could be potentially getting if your 3rd isn't up by then.
It's also really important to be able to approximate these saturations by glancing at a mineral line to be able to guess whether or not he's cutting economy for an attack.
Anways, thanks for bringing up this topic. It's definitely not covered enough given how important it is to consider, especially as a Zerg player.
Saracen why are you a mod? You bash perfectly good threads and then you wanna suck this guys dick who makes a rambling, theorycrafted, poorly written garbage thread.
This guide is full of mis-information and very very basic stuff.
"when the Terran take scv's off gas you can be fairly certain he isn't making banshees or tanks" LOL REALLY THANKS FOR THAT KNOWLEDGE. And I'm pretty sure zerg would have a hard time just parking an ovie at the gas to constantly watch it without it being sniped down. And I can think of plenty of 4 gas 2 base terran all ins. And WTF is up with the - if you spawn close positions you should 6pool. I hope that's a joke.
The basics I got from this article were simply the basics of macro zerg style: - You want more workers than your opponent - Don't overdrone or you can be killed - Rush distance plays a part in how aggressively you can drone
Nothing new was learned here by anyone above platinum league to be honest. Also I personally believe that trying to play in this "Idra/Macro Style/Stay ahead in drones and 1 production cycle behind your opponent" is not very good for bronze-platinum players because without good game savy and understanding (that they don't have at that level) they will fuck it up very often and be killed by anyone that does any sort of optimal timing attack.
Also the Saracen reply is almost as terrible as the original post. A Mule is ~ 4 SCV's. The OP highlights the importance of having a certain level of saturation/drones based of the distance from your enemy. Not "the importance to always expand as a zerg". If a Terran 1 bases, taking a 3rd would contradict what the OP is saying you should do.
And the Bronze Zergs flock to this thread thinking its literary gold. Sorry it's not. Move along.
User was temp banned for this post.
I don't know if I should respond to this because you're banned anyways, but: 1. What "perfectly good" threads do I "bash?" What threads better than this one do I "bash?" Name one. 2. How on earth is this thread theorycrafted at all? It contains information pertinent to real in-game situations. It doesn't get less theorycrafty than this. 3. On some maps, like Shattered Temple and Metalopolis, it's very possible to have an overlord watching when he takes his gas. And knowing his gas timings is an incredibly important part of scouting. I don't know why you're arguing this. 4. Ok, name one good 2base 4gas Terran allin that hits at a timing that matters. 5. He means if the rush distance is pretty much zero, you might as well 6pool. Of course he's not advocating that you 6pool if you get close spawns - especially when you consider you don't know whether or not you're close spawns or not when you're committing to the 6pool. Seriously, use some common sense. 6. If that's all you got from the thread, you need to work on your reading comprehension. 7. No, I'm pretty sure it's just you who hasn't learned anything from reading this thread. 8. So you're saying that every strategy thread has to cater to bronze-platinum players? God I hope that's not the case. 9. My bad on the MULE = 6 SCVs part. As you can see from my post, I wasn't sure, which is why I was asking? 10. Since the OP didn't highlight the "importance of expanding" part, I added it. Hence why I included it in "a few points." You'll notice that the OP didn't really go over any of the points I mentioned, which is why I mentioned them in the first place... 11. What I said about expanding is pretty much common sense. Why have 60 drones, 30 on minerals at each of 2 bases, when for 300 more minerals you could have 20 on minerals at each of 3 bases and an extra production facility that you'll definitely be needing at that point? 12. 1 base Terran vs 3 base Zerg has absolutely nothing to do with this. When did I say you blindly produce 60 drones? Hint: I didn't. However, if you see your opponent FEing, you have no reason not to start droning your ass off. And you can even go all the way to 60 or more if you know he's not doing a 2base all in. 13. So yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. Please refrain from posting in the future if you're going to continue making such useless, misleading posts.
Sheth, thank you so much for your OP. I feel much more confident now in my play. Previously I tried to fully saturate any new base asap. It did not feel right but I had no better idea. Being myself only a Silver player I am thankful that a pro like you shares insights about the play. There is also so much information about indirect scouting I can now exploit thanks to your OP.
at the risk of shooting your self in the foot Sheth, would you please add gas timings and usage for zerg?
I noticed from watching my own replays against zerg that i beat a lot of them just because the droned too hard. Some of them i just straight cant keep up with on the army count even when staying on even bases. Now i know why, and also what to look out for together with army compostion when scouting.
Really loved this thread. Even as a terran player i learned a shit load from this one thread. Thank you for sharing. You sir have helped more people than you think
There's alot of good ideas in this post. I particularly liked the "saturation levels" as a bench mark for droning and expansions. Thanks for the work Sheth!
I have to say, after reading this (and not playing zerg) watching zergs play has become a lot more enjoyable. Just wanted to say thank for taking the time to write this up and even though I won't put it to use in games it has been very very useful.
(As I’m writing this something hilarious is happening next to me. There is this little old lady with her hair dyed orange and a regular library worker trying to help her. She is having problems on the library computer she can’t get on her mail ID. It is a yahoo mail account. She is telling the worker that the library computers are not allowing her onto her mail ID. She expects this worker to know HER password and to know her ACCOUNT. She KEEPS telling him “nono I have it all written down here”. She thinks it’s HIS fault that she doesn’t remember her password correctly. It is rather hilarious lol (Also upon re-reading somewhat mean). This has been going on for like 3 minutes in that lovely recorder sort of setting. She says the same thing and he replies No I do not know how to get on this, it is your personal account not the libraries and she simply states “see I have the password written down right here, but I can’t get on. LOL its great!)
I just want to say I do AppleCare (take calls from morons and help them fix their Mac stuff). And this happens to me on a daily basis. I still find it funny 100% of the time after the fact, but during its always so hard to explain to people ONLY YAHOO and YOU should have this information.
Also found it quite knowledgeable. As a gold 1v1 player and plat 2v2 I find myself over droning in a number of my losses.
Thanks for the great guide. I strongly recommend that all zergs watch Sheth's zvp MrBitter appearance. Very informative in terms of the economics of the game. It makes me at least think about building 90 drones whenever possible.
What the hell is deal with saxonhamish's issue with this thread? Whhy are you so mad in the first place? Even if it's not helpful to you, there's no good reason for you to attack it so aggressively. Clearly there are some underlying insecurities, thank god he was banned.
On topic, Sheth's post is a real gold mine of information for lower level players. A lot of this info is typically learned by tons experience and carefully examining replays. The ZvP info on how to read your opponent early game is vital for lower league players who experience a lot of 4Gating, DT's, or early Stargate shenanigans. This is the info that no one gives out for some reason, I really never understood why.
never thought about checking to see similar sentry energy levels learned something new thanks
one concern i have is: what if the protoss is hiding units? its not hard to place 3 sentries out of sight of the ramp... only way is getting a lucky overlord scout?
Thanks for explaining this. I hardly ever pay attention to things like saturation and just try to see buildings and army units, but this is opening my eyes to some info that could be very useful. Thanks for the tips!
There is a lot in this guide that makes me realise why i'll never be a pro gamer haha so much to think about reading it over again to absorb more of it i appreciate you taking the time to type this guide!
Thanks for the great post! Does your strategy change for Terrans if your calculations assume fewer gold mineral patches (AFAIK, most gold bases have 6 mineral patches, not 8)? How does that adjust your drone-count for bases?
I usually stick to mining 3 bases (approximately 66 drones) vs. any 2-base play. I'm having a slightly hard time reading your scale but I think you mean something like:
Hey Sheth, it looks like you didn't answer this guy but it sorta leads into a question I had regarding the post.
I know from your stream you're not a huge fan of Spanishiwa's build (and to be honest, neither am I -- I like to reserve the capacity for aggression and map control). However, I'd like to use it as an example here:
I'm sure you're familiar with the build. However, it really looks unsafe if you look at it in light of your guide here. He's achieving 16 drone saturation at his main and natural before getting ANY gas. Even against a fast-expand build from T or P, with Spanishiwa's build you're far, far ahead in workers (too far?).
I guess what I'm really is asking is this: is the reason why you dislike Spanishiwa's opening because you feel it's taking too much of a risk economically in case the opponent is 1-basing (too greedy according to your guidelines)? If so, how do you think Spanishiwa's build could be modified to make it a little more aggressive (perhaps saturating the expansion slower, taking gas earlier around the mid-20s, getting roaches instead of relying on slow 'lings, spines and eventually infestors)?
Personally, I think your guidelines really explain why Spanishiwa's build is really risky for the average diamond (like myself) in ZvZ -- against early speedling/low econ pressure, it just crumbles.
Great work Sheth. Well done. I may be a noob but the concept of there being saturation "levels" intrigues me. Earlier today I was lamenting the fact that I am scared to make drones because I am afraid of my opponent coming and killing me. Never did I actually think of finding out how many workers my opponent has. Also reading how over powered the MULES are made me want to shank a Terran. I appreciate your hard work writing this essay for the Team Liquid forums and appreciate it greatly. Maybe this will finally give me a leg up on getting out of gold league.
P.S. I had an elderly woman do the same thing to me except I worked at an apple retail store.
The protoss gas section is great (Terran gas gives less information given they have so many builds).
Best part about protoss fishy tech is that a couple spore crawlers and queens stop any of it (detection+AA).
At lower levels (my high diamond/low master) I have occasionally seem some weird fast colossus/1 colossus pushes but those aren't as strong and tend to die pretty easily.
Wow, I really enjoyed reading that writeup, and the mule math got me thinking a bit more about gold bases and mule supersaturation. This is a bit of rambling at the start, but I hope I make my point by the end. Now, not including mule supersaturation, if we go by the 42-43 minerals/min for 1 worker per blue mineral patch, then the income should be 1.4x (7 min/trip vs 5) that per patch for gold, however, there are only 0.75x the number of gold vs. blue mineral patches, so, just using scvs, fully saturated blue vs fully saturated gold is only:
42-43 min/min x 1.4 x 0.75 = 44.1-45.1 (5% increase)
So when Sheth writes: "Its 36 mining on 1 2/5 bases. So let’s do a little bit of math here. 36 x 1 2/5 is 36 + (3.6x4) 14.4 so its 50.4 workers."
Lets say the terran has the gold fully saturated (18 scv and... 4 mules? 5? 36 worker equivalents here would be 4.5 mules average, which i don't think the terran can constantly mine from that many mules in most cases). If you compare that to a fully saturated blue with same number of mules, though: 24 scv + 4.5x4 = 42 (so taking the gold is a 20% boost at this level of mule mining (4.5)) With only 2 mule average though, it becomes [18 + (2x4)]x1.4 = 36.4 worker equivalent on the gold, vs [24 + (2x4)] = 32 on the fully saturated blue, or a 14% increase. With only one mule, the worker equivalents are 30.8/28 for gold/blue (10% increase exactly).
So, to summarize that, fully saturated gold vs. blue with:
0 mule: 5% boost vs. blue base (so this is the level that Z and P would mine at on a gold) 1 mule: +10% 2 mule: +14% 4.5 mule: +20%
I think most terran will be able to average 2+ mules mining from a gold, which is usually a third base or even later. So, if you are not terran, even if you take your own gold base, you will be behind on mineral income, by around 10%, maybe more depending on exactly how many mules the terran is mining off of.
For P and Z, with gold bases generally being harder to defend, is the 5% increase really worth it? Yes a gold takes less workers to saturate, but mid-game to late-game, unless you've lost a lot of workers, you should be able to saturate a blue base anyway. As Sheth said, gold isn't all that enticing for protoss anyway, because of how gas thirsty they are. I suppose it's fine for zerg, if it can be defended, although zergs are pretty gas-loving themselves. But it seems like gold base benefits terran more, not only because they can mine the gold faster than Z/P, but also because their armies are so mineral intensive.
I made these awhile back. I have the tables if people me to put them on a drop Sorry if there's any ambiguity, I got annoyed with Excel slowing my laptop down so much and kind of just gave up. The x-axis is number of workers and the y-axis is minerals mined in a minute. I did this on Steppes of War's expansion location and the gold was done on the same map's gold expansion. I used a logarithmic trendline because I figured there's an upper limit where eventually the number of workers no longer matters, but I didn't really feel it was necessary to figure out the number.
Thanks for the great post! Does your strategy change for Terrans if your calculations assume fewer gold mineral patches (AFAIK, most gold bases have 6 mineral patches, not 8)? How does that adjust your drone-count for bases?
I usually stick to mining 3 bases (approximately 66 drones) vs. any 2-base play. I'm having a slightly hard time reading your scale but I think you mean something like:
Thanks for the great post! Does your strategy change for Terrans if your calculations assume fewer gold mineral patches (AFAIK, most gold bases have 6 mineral patches, not 8)? How does that adjust your drone-count for bases?
I usually stick to mining 3 bases (approximately 66 drones) vs. any 2-base play. I'm having a slightly hard time reading your scale but I think you mean something like:
Sheth, just want to add to the list of people thanking you for posting this! As a gold zerg, it has definitely honed my skills on judging when to power-drone and when to pump units, and by doing so, has already won me a few games I would have certainly lost before reading this post.
Between your safe, solid play, your instructive posts, your MrBitters appearances, and your exceedingly professional manners (which I *very* highly value), you are my new favorite zerg pro!
(As I’m writing this something hilarious is happening next to me. There is this little old lady with her hair dyed orange and a regular library worker trying to help her. She is having problems on the library computer she can’t get on her mail ID. It is a yahoo mail account. She is telling the worker that the library computers are not allowing her onto her mail ID. She expects this worker to know HER password and to know her ACCOUNT. She KEEPS telling him “nono I have it all written down here”. She thinks it’s HIS fault that she doesn’t remember her password correctly. It is rather hilarious lol (Also upon re-reading somewhat mean). This has been going on for like 3 minutes in that lovely recorder sort of setting. She says the same thing and he replies No I do not know how to get on this, it is your personal account not the libraries and she simply states “see I have the password written down right here, but I can’t get on. LOL its great!)
I work in a library and I have to deal with this constantly, is SO FRUSTRATING!!!
As a protoss I can attest as to what Sheth is saying here. Much of my deception when I play vs. zerg has to do with sentries, whether I show them are not, and denying scouting. If the zerg makes the wrong decision they are usually toast.
On May 09 2011 07:47 hugman wrote: "2-16 saturation < 16-20 saturation < 24 saturation 8-12 saturation on 2 bases< 12-16 saturation on 2 bases < 16-20 saturation on 2 bases < 24 saturation on 2 bases < 14-16 saturation on 3 bases and so forth…"
Such a long sentence.. hard to read Did you forget a "<" between "24 saturation" and "8-12 saturation"?
No, he didn't forget a "<". What that means is that 1base with 24 drones is equal to 2bases with 8-12 drones each. 8-12 + 8-12 is 16-24 but since they are more spread out they will mine a little bit faster than they would off 1 base so its on a similar income level with one base 20-24 drones.
i really appreciate the effort sheth but this definetly needs better structure. having to read a sentence for 2-3 times to actually understand it, doesnt make a very interesting read.
Edit: Another thing that struck my mind while reading through some replies: how the fuck am i to count / estimate the opponents workers? while scouting i get like 1 second to look at his mineral lines before my scout dies. I know i cant box his workers to count them so i only can anticipate.
I am not sure I understand this whole concept correctly.
Maybe it is since I am a low level player, and mostly play vs people also low level, who are not too concerned about timings, worker counts and "how many sentries" he needs to do "X", but rather basic macro macro macro. A move. Win/Lose. Bleh.
So the reason for me posting here is purely to "bookmark" this for myself for a later stage when i may start to understand this and grasp it better. I need to walk first before running.
If one day I understand it better I will edit the post saying how it helped me if it ever does.
Thx Sheth, great guide. I was poking at the article before I heard it on Mr. Bitter's next 12 weeks ZvT (only just started to watch it today on youtube). Thx again!
i've lost so many games because of overdroning... and then i started to cut back on drones, but lost because of a worse economy... i've never known, before now, when to cut drones based on my opponents economy, but now i do... thanks Sheth
Is there any value in estimating the duration of mining any given level of saturation can support? 12000 / (minerals/minute) is a rough estimate, but at different worker counts we'll see different patches dry up first. At 16 workers over 8 standard patches, the close ones will go first. At around 20, with 3 settling on far patches, I think those will disappear. (Sorry this is pure theorycraft, don't have SC2 on this machine to check replays etc.)
I ask, because it feels like some players cut their expo timings really close. I've seen T especially, oversaturating 1 or 2 bases, dropping to 0 income for a minute, then getting back in a game with a CC that isn't scouted immediately. I think pros understand the need to keep expanding, and keep tabs on their opponent's econ, but would it help to *know* that an opponent is going to lose half his income in a 2-3 minute window based on initial scouting and expo timing? 2x(12-16) vs 24+2 OCs worth of MULEs is close in terms of mineral income, but the 2 base player has significantly longer before patches start getting mined out.
Thanks so much for taking the time on this Sheth. Will try to work more drone and mineral line management into my "mental checklist" (quoting day9 for those who do not know). Keep up the awesome streaming and continued good luck in NASL!
The most important part of this guide is the overlord checking the gas mining. Bunker banks will be the thing all Terrans will be practicing for because next patch they will be worth 125% when salvaged after 5 minutes, just to balance the fact that they are only worth 75% when salvaged within 5 minutes after placement.
This post is pretty good. I think it is basic knowledge for Master players but it is always nice to read it and remember it once more.
If I can do a suggestion Sheth? - Could you make a post with all the timings you work with on your level (which is the highest )? For all the match-ups as zerg. As example: 6:20 check for a Nexus, if there is no Nexus and you (did) see +2 sentries expect a 4gate. If you see only a Stalker and a zealot expect DT/Void Ray. If you see +4 stalkers expect blink rush. I would love to see such a list. With such a list for the first 10 minutes in every match up you would help the Diamond/Master players more. This thread helps lower league players more in my opinion.
I saw this guide when you posted it but didn't have time to read through it until now. Amazing stuff, this is probably my weakest area (The idea about there being "levels" is somewhat foreign to me, I'm used to just thinking of it in terms of "Who has more workers"). Thanks a lot sheth! ♥
EPT
![[image loading]](http://s1.directupload.net/images/110508/tq9cve63.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/7360/sdronelevels.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b365/keeper21_/Screenshot2011-05-07at111658PM.png)
![[image loading]](http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b365/keeper21_/Screenshot2011-05-07at111913PM.png)
![[image loading]](http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo275/simi2/ShethsSaturationLevels.jpg?t=1304850116)
