EPTSC2 Optimal worker saturation - Page 4
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Santiago4ever
Sweden299 Posts
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MythicalMage
1360 Posts
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stepover12
United States175 Posts
I think the maximum number of mining workers you should have at 1 base is 30 (3 per mineral patch, 3 per gas.) That's because at any given time only 1 worker can gather at a mineral patch, and 3 workers per patch ensure that the mineral patch is constantly being mined . (Same thing with gas geyser.) So, if you have 1 base, aim for 30 workers, 2 fully mine-able bases - aim for 60 workers, and so on... There's a trade-off if you get to the rare situation of 4+ fully mine-able bases. Theoretically you'd need 120+ workers for fastest mining speed. But an 80 food army may not be able to cover and defend all your bases. Thus practically I'd say stop at around 100 workers no matter how many bases you have. | ||
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DarkSeerTurbo
United States105 Posts
LISTEN: 1. All workers (probe, drone, scv) move the same regardless of creep 2. They all mine at the same pace 3. There is something called diminishing returns (econ principle). It basically means that for every extra worker you add on, you will get more money in absolute terms but less in a relative sense. Basically, this means that every extra worker you add will be LESS efficient. The threshold for diminishing returns starts after 2 workers per mineral chunk (ie after 16 workers, you will start hitting diminishing returns for every worker you make). 4. After 3 workers per mineral chunk (for a total of 24 workers), you will get zero return on your investment. Do not build more than 3 workers per mineral chunk. Conclusion: 16 workers is optimal (most efficient) for a mineral patch consisting of 8 nodes. 24 is the max that you can have. Anything between 17-24 will get you more money than 16 but at a lower efficiency rate. | ||
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farseerdk
Canada504 Posts
On August 25 2010 10:49 DarkSeerTurbo wrote: wow guys, there is SO much bad information here! and the bad info just keeps on repeating! LISTEN: 1. All workers (probe, drone, scv) move the same regardless of creep 2. They all mine at the same pace 3. There is something called diminishing returns (econ principle). It basically means that for every extra worker you add on, you will get more money in absolute terms but less in a relative sense. Basically, this means that every extra worker you add will be LESS efficient. The threshold for diminishing returns starts after 2 workers per mineral chunk (ie after 16 workers, you will start hitting diminishing returns for every worker you make). 4. After 3 workers per mineral chunk (for a total of 24 workers), you will get zero return on your investment. Do not build more than 3 workers per mineral chunk. Conclusion: 16 workers is optimal (most efficient) for a mineral patch consisting of 8 nodes. 24 is the max that you can have. Anything between 17-24 will get you more money than 16 but at a lower efficiency rate. Almost right. This would be true if all mineral patches were exactly the same distance away from the nexus/cc/hatch. For the close patches, the optimal number is exactly 2. There is no wasted time (don't believe me? go and set up a mining pair on 1 close patch and watch). On the FAR patches, however, 3 is the max, but there will be some idle time. As such, the actual maxima for marginal returns would depend on the number of close vs. far patches, but the MAX it could be is 16. | ||
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Keitzer
United States2509 Posts
On August 25 2010 09:55 MythicalMage wrote: According to the Blizzard tips, it's three per mineral patch/geyser. im pretty sure it's 6 for gas (3 per) and 2 per mineral patch (so 16).... this makes 22 the "optimal" assuming 3 per mineral is oversaturated i like to have about 25 at each in case there are a few distant mineral patches | ||
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Comeh
United States18918 Posts
b: It is highly likely that you will lose workers to harassment / pulling to defend at some point c: Some workers will be sent off to build buildings, lowering the amount of workers from the "optimal" number at some points. However d: workers take supply away from your army, particularly important in the late game. overall, build more workers than you think you need. | ||
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ctOph
Canada6 Posts
<15? Make more workers 16-23? You can make more if you like, but beware that anything after the 16th worker is subject to diminishing returns, and will have less minerals mined per minute than the first 16 workers. 24? You've reached the cap. Any more workers after this would be stupid, unless you have an expo about to pop and you can move some off. Any more workers after 24 on minerals will be either subject to very very harsh diminishing returns, or even not increase your minerals per minute AT ALL, since once you have too many, there will always be a worker wandering around for an open patch of minerals that it will never find. That's pretty much it. You will see an increase in minerals per minute by adding workers past 16, while still keeping them under 24. The only thing is, like I already said, any workers past 16 will be subject to diminishing returns, since they will be wandering part of the time looking for an open patch. When you have 16 workers, one will mine the patch, then return to the HQ, as its returning, a second worker will mine the same patch, by the time its done, the first worker will be returning, leaving a very short amount of time for a third worker to come in and mine that patch. That is why you should have at least 16, but no more than 24. edit: Also, I'd like to point out that if you expand, take off workers from your main to your expo, but don't bring your main down to less than 16 workers. Having a main w/ 16 workers, and an expo w/ 16 workers is better than having 24 at your main and 8 at your expo. Kind of common sense but I thought I'd point it out. If you take a third, you should probably only have 16 workers on minerals per base, because having full saturation (30 per base, 24 on min and 6 on gas) cuts into your food supply hard. Creating workers into diminishing returns while having more than 2 bases seems pretty illogical to me. Then again, if you need the minerals, go for it, but at that point in the game you might want to have a bigger army to defend your economy. /thread | ||
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