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On May 17 2010 15:44 torfteufel wrote:
heres how i do it:
i first click on the nexus (being protoss) then click "e" on my keyboard while still holding down left mouse button, hence i will not be building anything but think so. i then will proceed with the 4/2 split where i send the 4 workers behind the mineral field so they get to know each other first before starting to work (eventually). after ive sent my other two drones to the wrong patch so there is unnecessary walking. i then realize i did not have a worker build yet and frantically spam e only to see my first workers are still idling. after clicking like 4 times on the same patch to send those god damn idle workers to start which keeps them from splitting but forces them to try again and again to all mine the same patch.
then, after seeing all my drones are mining and after spamming lots of "e" to have my next drone build i lean back and enjoy watching the first built drone idle next to the nexus as i forgot to rally.
this is all too easy!
interestingly, this - although totally freaking me out - will somehow not effect anything in the game except my state of mind.
:D
Ahh a kindred spirit. I tend to only realise something is amiss when I try to build the next drone, only to find I don't have any money "WHY AM I POOR", "WTF are you lot doing?!! This isn't a democracy there is no time for tea breaks here, get to work or your all on scouting duty!!"
Once I have got my lazy workers in line I then move on to my double extractor trick where I create 2 extractors, cancel one of them rebuild it create 2 drones sit back and think I'm really clever "I'm going to be well ahead on the macro now :D" then 20 seconds later realise I forgot to build an overlord...
Then I start microing my scout, whilst building drones back at base "Hey look at me I'm so good at this SC2 game, I'm macroing away from base." My 14 hatch 14 pool turns into a 16 pool 15 hatch. Then I build my extractor just after my pool so that I have 100 gas shortly after the pool finishes, and forget to put drones on the extractor.
Then my Scouting drone goes into their base, whilst I'm building hatch, pool & extractor and dies, showing me 1 rax/gate and a building in progress.
A little while later my OL flies over their base (as I instructed him to do right at the beginning of the game and subsequently forgot all about his existence), comes under fire and gets shot down. My Supply goes red 
Whilst Day[9], HD & Husky, Orb, etc are showing us how to play the game well, I'm thinking of setting up a stream to show you how not to play SC2.
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I generally build before split, not sure if it really matters though
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I agree with some earlier posts that the difference is probably so small it's not worth obsessing over. However, here are my 2 cents anyway. (The reasoning below applies to SC1 too, by the way.)
If you queue your worker first, you send your workers to the minerals somewhat later, let's call this time x seconds. So your 6 workers are all idle for x seconds longer than they would be otherwise, BUT you'll get your seventh worker x seconds earlier and you will always get each subsequent worker x seconds earlier (disregarding chronoboost for simplicity). Thus, you get a small bonus to the rate of growth of your economy, at a small additive penalty. The question is really, how should we think about this tradeoff?
(Edit: Tenks' post below made me realize that I'm in fact assuming that the time it takes to split or queue workers is independent of the order in which you do those things. He is probably right that both splitting and queueing take less time if you queue first, since you can keep the mouse in the centre of the screen from the start, and use the time you're queueing to figure out where your workers are. This is an additional argument for queueing first.)
Which method gets you more money depends on how long into the game you look. Initially you clearly get more money with the split first approach (since the first workers return sooner), but as time progresses the build worker first approach pays off more. There will be some equilibrium time where both approaches get you the same amount of money; I find it impossible to guess around what point this will occur though: is this before you expand or after? I don't know. It's a lot of work to test since it would involve very many trials and require accurate timing.
However, it does make one wonder about the following issues:
* The number of workers you have at the start of the game is most important for Z, since they lose some of them to constructing buildings (this logic breaks down when you get the queen, but I'm talking about the time before you get your queen out). So for Z, if the timing of the first building is not absolutely critical, it is probably better to queue the worker first. Terrans are intermediate in this respect, as SCVs temporarily stop harvesting to construct buildings, reducing the number of miners. Thus for Protoss the potential advantage of splitting first (in so far as it exists in the first place) seems to be largest.
* If you go for a cheese build or a tech rush, and you run into a mineral bottleneck early on, it may be beneficial to switch to the split first approach to get some more early money. For example, if you go for rax before depot, this may allow for a slightly faster first rax. This may potentially speed up your build by maybe as much as, oh, let's say 0.1 seconds? As I said, not worth obsessing over, but it could theoretically be somewhat beneficial, especially if the rush is all in.
* If you don't have a very specific timing critical rush in mind, it seems it is probably best to focus on long term economics and queue the worker first.
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I always build a worker first.
No split, I find that any attempt to do so only ends with the workers getting back slower, and like many have said before, it really doesn't matter.
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The main reason I build a worker first is that I KNOW where my hatchery is going to be. It is going to be at the center of the map. The drones can spawn in various locations based on the map. So while I try and get my bearings and figure out where my drones are (granted, this takes half a second at most) I can just click the middle of the screen, s, d. By that time I know where my mouse is, I know where my drones are and I spent the time it takes for me to figure all that out by building a worker.
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Click Nex > 'E' > F1 + click x6 > Click Nex > set hotkeys > hit enter > gg/gl
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I pretty much always split then build, i've tried games where i've built then split and noticed no difference whatsoever.
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since its more or less about having enough minerals for the 2nd worker just b4 the 1st one finishes there is no real need to split the ai splits them good enough for you to have enough minerals b4 the first one finishes
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Build worker
Send all 6 to top of patch
select half of those send to bottom
set rally to center of mins or closest to spawn point if zerg
IMO esp important for zerg to build worker first so larva starts reproducing asap
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Well, I always position my mouse basically at the top right border of the find a match screen...the second the screen goes to game a quick click-drag, right click mineral, base click, press Q build start has the first SCV building at the 2-3 second mark. I'm usually on par with or at worst one second behind my opponent. I don't split the SCV's by hand (I find they split perfectly around 95% of the time, with mabye one double-mined node on the first go only 4.9% of the time. I think I played one game where the autosplit went to crap.
The only danger I've caught is on rare occasion if I'm not paying attention, in the rush misclick the mineral, or press Q early which just kills my first few seconds badly.
Granted, I'm just a newb, so YMMV...just giving my opinion.
In theory, you could also CTRL-F1, right click mineral, click base, press q which would speed my build up by the time it takes me to click-drag. Haven't tried that yet.
But really, I think we're talking about what, 1 second? Mabye with the best in the world 2 seconds? Which is what...4 or 5 minerals over the course of a game, assuming all else is equal?
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I have been queueing my first drone before sending my drones to the minerals so far, but i have noticed a brief lag at the start of the game, so half the time my drone doesn't end up being made.
I think i might try sending my drones first then making my additional drone, just to avoid any chance of lag (cause whenever the lag causes my drone to not make it annoys me! :D)
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On May 17 2010 13:09 Kow wrote:
Usually what I aim to do is to send the workers in one fell swoop to a node, queue a worker and before the workers get to the mineral line, send half to a different node (ideally 2-3 away from the one I chose).
But lag usually screws me up. I don't know why it always lags for like .5s at the beginning of the game and then the rest is fine. I'd rather just have that extra .5s loading, though I'm sure that's not the problem xD
I don't know what is the most efficient though.
Same thing happens to me, but I just execute my commands imaginarily while the screen is frozen, and after 5 seconds, when the next frame starts, the workers are happily mining, the rally point line is there, a worker is in production, and the game goes on  .
btw, I do a 3/3 split , then worker , then rally point, then hotkey the building and 1 worker.
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que a probe, send all your probes to a mineral patch, micro 1 or 2 if your good to go to patches that will not effect the first 4 probes.
thats preaty much a perfect split.
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Well I have a wireless keyboard, so I make a worker, send workers to 1 mineral patch, make another worker, while they are going to some mineral patch, I take half of them and send to another mineral patch, then make a worker, and pray that my click was registered at least once, if it wasn't I'm just spamming on the cc/nexus/hatch until it does. Yeah, FML T_T.
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I build a SCV first and then I send all my workers to the central mineral patch like a n00b. Honestly I don't think it makes a real difference even at high lvl since the workers AI is so good now.
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Do both at the same time. Just practice and you'll be able to build an SCV and split in under 1 second.
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Surprised everyone is saying build worker first. If each miner earns about 1 mineral per second, then I figured that by taking a second to build a worker first, I was losing 6 minerals from the original workers.
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It really makes no difference, but theoretically, the faster you have your worker out the better.
You can start your second workerwith no delay if you don't mess up your split.
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Have to agree with Vexx here. You may be able to start your second worker without delay in both cases but if you send your workers first then you will have more minerals than when your first worker is done, even though it comes out slightly slower.
Why have 6 workers do nothing instead of having 1 working come out slower?
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ain't it funny when you view the endgame stats and your opponent starts their first worker after 5-6 seconds?
you'd think it would be bronze league only, but quite a few gold/plat players do it as well.
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EPT
