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Right, I hope this is the right section - this won't be a large post, but I hope to get some discussion on how to keep track of the amount of workers during the game.
The nr. of workers is obviously very important, this will decide how big your army can be, and importantly, if you make too many working when your opponent is putting on a lot of pressure, you might straight-out lose the game, especially Z is vulnerable to overmaking drones vs. early aggression.
What I do is very simple, when I reach close to 2-base saturation (I play Z, so this is a very common scenario), I hotkey all my workers to 0, and add all subsequent workers to '0' as soon as they're made. Mentally, add one worker for each gas you've taken (you'll see the nr. fluctuating a bit when using this, provided you have the tabs with the hotkeys open).
I don't know how useful this is at the higher levels of play, but at my nooby level I find it a convenient way of keeping track of my nr. of drones, especially after an attack that killed x nr. of drones, it helps in getting back to your ideal-drone nr, and it kinda helps you to keep up with the worker-count part of macro. It's also nice if you need to make emergency spines, spores, bunkers, cannons - hit 0 and start building.
I guess you can also just count the nr. of drones per base, but in the lategame for me there are too many things going on, and this a little more convenient.
Are there other ways of keeping-up with the worker count, and do other people hotkey their workers?
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Hotkeying a worker everytime you make one might be too much. I think the game is a little too fast paced for that.
I think the most efficient way is to box all your mineral workers per base and you'll get a rough idea of how many you have. It also helps check your saturation so you can properly allocate enough workers per base.
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In the early stages of the game (before you begin making large numbers of units), a really easy way to do it is something like this. We're assuming you went 3 hatch vs. a FFE.
Looking at both your main and your natural, you can see that they are evenly and wholly saturated. You have 3 queens injecting larva and 1 to spread creep. Additionally, you have a zergling at the map's two watch towers, one outside the natural of your opponent, and one to scout for proxies or hidden probes. Your current supply is 76.
We know that in terms of supply you have...
-4 Queens (8 supply)
-4 Zerglings (2 supply)
-X Overlords (0 supply)
-? Drones (? supply)
If you can handle some basic math, then you can see that 10 out of your 76 supply is non drones. The only other units on the map must then be drones. seeing as 76-10=66, you must have 66 drones across your 3 bases. A quick box of the mineral line can tell you how saturated you are specifically, and therefore how many more you intend to make. This can also act as a benchmark in case you get attacked before 70+ drones, as once you build enough roaches+zerglings to defend an attack, you can immediately sqeeze out the last few drones in that production round.
At least, that's what I do, anyway. Hope I could be of use.
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On June 05 2012 00:21 K3Nyy wrote:
Hotkeying a worker everytime you make one might be too much. I think the game is a little too fast paced for that.
well, you can just hit cntr+click on your 'latest' mineral line, and then hit shift+0 - not that much apm... or hotkey the eggs as soon as you make them - especially after 2-base saturation.
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There were some Terrans who hotkeyed his Worker from his Natrual to have quicker access for Bunker repair, but i have never seen a Player who hotkeyed all their Worker to check his overall saturation. This can be done very quickly by using the "Base-Camera" or Screen Hotkeys without much practicing. The optimal saturation for a Base is 16 Workers in the Minerals. So if you cycle through your Bases and select every Worker, who is an a Mineral Patch and you see 2 full lines, then you have the optimal Saturation. 3 lines would be maximum Saturation. If you do this quickly it really doesn´t consume that much time, but you need to practise it a bit to do it fast. Your Method only keeps track on your overall Worker Count on not about the Saturation for each Base, which is more important, because even with less Worker you can have more income than the other player if his Base Saturation is worse than yours. And don´t forget, that you have to add all your new built Workers to your Hotkey, which also consumes time. My advise would be to practise the "normal" Method and use your Hotkeys for something more helpfull.
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I've found the easiest way is to use the 'Base Camera' to cycle through bases, box your workers and hit 'S'. When done, you can simply refer to the 'Idle Workers' number. Quick and easy.
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@Sianis,
You're right, saturation is important and I do check and move workers if needed, but hotkeying helps to see if the drone-nr part of my economy is still ok.
@Kmatt,
That opening is a very easy opening to keep track about the nr. of drones, I was more pointing towards its usefulness in a late game sitatuation where your main is nearly mined out, your natural also a good way down, you're mining at your third and have just set-up a fourth and a fifth base and allocated workers from the main and nat over there. Now you're getting harassed and you lose few drones in each base - if you've hotkeyed all your drones, you'll see how much you're 'off' from optimal, and can replace quickly. Deducting the nr. of workers from your large army is something math majors might enjoy...
I guess this method is completely irrelevant for good players, they'll know. However, for the lower leagues the advice is 'probes and pylons' - this is a good way of keeping track. I thought I didn't do that bad in the worker count, but found out that I often only make 50 drones, and only make a few cycles of workers past 2-base saturation.
The hotkeying new workers is easier for Z since 'we' tend to make rounds of drones, and can just hotkey the eggs which will hardly be extra actions to do.
On June 05 2012 00:48 Kaitlin wrote:
I've found the easiest way is to use the 'Base Camera' to cycle through bases, box your workers and hit 'S'. When done, you can simply refer to the 'Idle Workers' number. Quick and easy.
...and then put guys back in gas at 4 bases? Thanks but no thanks...
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First of all, number of total workers is not nearly as important as saturation per base and transferring workers as you mine out. Oversaturated mineral lines do not reap more benefit. They just waste money. So you will need to get into the habit of periodically checking saturation. It's just a quick box move at all bases. 3-4 apm.
So yeah, I think you're wasting your time numbering all your workers.
With even saturation at all bases, just check the unit counts on your replays and you will have an idea of how many drones you have at 1,2,3,4,5 bases.
You want to have benchmarks (timings) for adding workers and bases.
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I aim for 3 fully saturated bases and a 4th with gas and maybe a few drones on minerals.
22+22+22+6=72'
Of course for the really long games it's nice to have a 5th base for gas but typically for me when that happens my main is mined out or close to it.
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On June 05 2012 00:48 Kaitlin wrote:
I've found the easiest way is to use the 'Base Camera' to cycle through bases, box your workers and hit 'S'. When done, you can simply refer to the 'Idle Workers' number. Quick and easy.
I actually laughed. I should start doing this, you get an exact number of your workers.
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On June 05 2012 00:48 Kaitlin wrote:
I've found the easiest way is to use the 'Base Camera' to cycle through bases, box your workers and hit 'S'. When done, you can simply refer to the 'Idle Workers' number. Quick and easy.
Yeah, and while doing it over and over again you will loose about 1k Ressources, but as long as you just want to know the number of Workers it´s a really good idea.
To get serious, when you are already boxing all Workers on your Minerallines, why not just hold Shift before goin to the next Base, so that you have boxed every Worker on your mining Bases and then just look at your total number:
1 Group: 24 Workers
2 Groups: 48 Workers
2 Groups + 2 Lines: 64 Workers
2 Groups + 3 Lines: 72 Workers
For me as Terran i allways stop producing SCVs, when i have 2 Groups and 2 Lines, which means 64 Workers. It´s very easy to do and way more profitable than stopping the mining for your whole Economy for a few seconds over and over again.
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Problems with hotkeying workers, is that if you forget to hotkey some you will end with with gross oversaturation. Also as the others mentioned, optimal saturation is important. You may be on 2 bases with 50 workers, but if there's 40 on one and 10 on the other, you're doing it wrong.
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Ok guys, I know that saturating bases is important. However, spending you money is also important, as is getting upgrades and scouting.
Those issues are not the point of this thread. This is about the nr. of workers, NOT about saturation. Saturation is easily checked. Everyone should know how to check for optimal saturation and try to keep max. 2 workers per mineral patch, not more.
That out of the way, for the people who say that the nr. of workers aren't important, I was inspired by this by the awesome research of 'whatthefat', who did a huge meta-analysis of many, many games. If you haven't read it, DO IT NOW, it is really good:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=266019
This is the money figure, linked from the OP of above message:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GFJk3.png)
Go and look at the link above for the figure legend and explanation.
You see, that worker production is correlated to league. Very strongly*.
Keeping up with the nr. of workers, and always having the nr. of workers in your screen, could definitely help in keeping you economy up and running.
To get serious, when you are already boxing all Workers on your Minerallines, why not just hold Shift before goin to the next Base, so that you have boxed every Worker on your mining Bases and then just look at your total number:
Then why not add 'cntr + 0' at the end, and you have your worker nr, live in your screen.
*Yes, I know that correlation =! causation, and there are more parts to 'macro' and being a good player than the nr. of workers you create. However, 'macro', as with other very complicated things, is best improved step-for-step, and this might be a good tool to improve on one part.
I hope that one day I don't need to count drones, and that adding workers is done more instinctively. However, for now this might be a good tool to have a live figure about your economy, and looking at the above figure, this could be true for many people below master level...
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You ask why not to do it and the answer is because there are more essential things to prioritize. A good player will know how many workers they have based on... saturation x bases = workers. No need to be looking at pages of workers in game when you could be macroing and microing more efficiently.
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Not a 100 percent on topic but doesn't deserve it's own thread -often times in pvt's when I take my third I pull some of my workers out of my main to my third so I don't mine it out as fast is this correct or does it depend on how early a third I take. My thinking is your third being saturated ASAP benefits u more even if u have say only 14 mining on your main for a short time
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On June 05 2012 06:57 IamPryda wrote:
Not a 100 percent on topic but doesn't deserve it's own thread -often times in pvt's when I take my third I pull some of my workers out of my main to my third so I don't mine it out as fast is this correct or does it depend on how early a third I take. My thinking is your third being saturated ASAP benefits u more even if u have say only 14 mining on your main for a short time
Top diamond here. It depends on the game. I wouldn't transfer too many workers asap unless you feel your third is safe, but certainly don't over saturate your other bases. I like to transfer workers from my natural. Shorter distance, less time with lower income (lots of probes off mining). Then you can rally your main over. Seems like you're looking at it correctly. If you have a reason for doing it, go for it.
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On June 05 2012 06:04 TRaFFiC wrote:
You ask why not to do it and the answer is because there are more essential things to prioritize. A good player will know how many workers they have based on... saturation x bases = workers. No need to be looking at pages of workers in game when you could be macroing and microing more efficiently.
this is pretty spot-on. tracking worker count is done by tracking saturation. if you're busy shift-selecting all of your peons after the opening gambit of a game, you're going to be missing details on the minimap, or your macro will suffer, or army positioning will be neglected.
you can infer a worker count by just keeping track of how well saturated each base is. only when you lose peons or during build-up phases should you actually have a need to select workers. even then, selecting workers shouldn't be a constant requirement, and it most definitely shouldn't be necessary to do across multiple expansions. tracking the worker count can be done entirely by inferring conclusions based on saturation.
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I've been trying to get good at approximating the amount of drones in my mineral lines at a glance. It helps because sometimes I don't want to take the time to box the drones and count them.
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you can have 30 workers per base, 24 mining and 3 on each gas. just click on your gas to see how many they have each. select all of your workers mining, and you should have 3 rows of 8.
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If you just stay on top of watching your saturation, you know that an optimally saturated base has 28 workers, meaning that 3 saturated bases will give you 84 workers or roughly the perfect amount that you need. So just focus on saturating three bases rather than figuring out a way to know exactly how many workers you have at any given time. It's not worth the effort or the hand speed invested to know that sort of thing
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EPT
