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As any competitive player already knows, a worker mining from a close mineral will mine faster than a worker mining from a far mineral. Thus players will naturally rally point their worker to the closest minerals possible.
However, there appears to be a technique where its possible to stack 2 probes on a near mineral regardless of whether or not there is an unmined mineral
http://sc2rep.com/replays/(Z)TeriuSfOu_vs_(P)LiquidHuK_metalopolis_sc2rep_com_20101208/3538
When I personally attempt to do this the games Worker AI forces my worker off the mineral i wish it to mine onto an unmined mineral patch.
Does anyone know the technique used to prevent this from happening?, or if its not a "technique" but merely map/mineral location specific.
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It's just a matter of good timing with your workers.
Grab a worker right after it's returned it's minerals, and put it on the close patch you want. Try to time it so the worker you grabbed goes to the patch just before the worker mining the close patch is about to finish. Spam the mine command until it starts mining (will start right when the worker currently mining finishes).
If you don't spam mine, it will just try to go to another patch, as you describe.
It takes some decent timing to pull it off smoothly.
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It's something that can happen at random too, if your drone pops and arrives at the mineral patch precisely at the time where the other drone finishes mining, it will keep mining from there in sync.
off topic: I love your sig Inori
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On December 12 2010 23:03 Inori wrote:
Huk spams rclick on mineral patch with each worker until it starts mining, afaik
This is how psy does it too, you can see on some of his videos...
What I do is just rally my SCV to any mineral patch, where I know it will stack for sure, without running around the place, and if it happens to be a near patch even better.
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everyone in the tl house use afaik.i thought about this in early beta but didnt start use it until recently  my 15hatch can start about 3-5 seconds quicker with this from personal feel xd
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Watching Jinro's games in the GSL you could see this in action very well. He would have the 4 closest mineral patches supporting exactly 8 workers at maximum efficiency every game I saw in the semi's. When I play, I just do my normal 3/3 split, and then the workers that end up going to slightly further patches soon desync from the other workers enough to through them on one of the closer patches without interrupting mining. Just make sure, like others have said, that you spam mine until the currently mining worker finishes.
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Below is some work I did earlier and think it relates to this thread.
![[image loading]](http://i25.tinypic.com/28nw2u.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler +These tests were preformed with Terran on Lost Temple in YABOT at the 6 o'clock natural. The 'minutes' referred to are Game Minutes as observed through watching a replay.
This spot was selected by the seemingly large discrepancy between patches 3 4 5.
![[image loading]](http://i28.tinypic.com/4pxvl2.png)
What does this tell us?
The Minerals per minute from from the first workers can vary from at least 38-45.
The maximum minerals per minute from each patch is ~105.
Worker 2 is equally efficient as worker 1, while worker 3 can vary between 30% and 75% efficiency.
What can I do with this?
Be diligent at the start of the game to ensure that you have 2 workers on each patch before any patches get saturated with 3 workers. The auto mine is smart but occasionally it will hit a harmonic in which patches will get 3 workers while others still only have 1.
In an ideal situation (from this example) you would want 2 workers on patch 4 before having any workers on patch 6. Although the auto mine will usually kick in and say "I see an empty patch! Let me go there instead".
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doesn't even really take good timing, just spam click the mineral line until the first miner is done. why would you do this though? you'll get to a point where you're only mining from half a base and it doesn't really increase your mine rate while it's in effect. and as far as i've observed from the games in which people do it, there is no increase in mining efficiency whether you have 8 workers on 8 patches or 4 or 6 or anything. obviously you don't want 3 to a patch if you can have 2 because the 3rd worker gets delayed, but this is something different. i'd argue that unless there's proof of increased mining efficiency that you just lose minerals any time you try to line up the workers and miss perfect timing. in other words you're hurting yourself by trying to be unnecessarily fancy
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On December 12 2010 23:37 Herculix wrote:
doesn't even really take good timing, just spam click the mineral line until the first miner is done.
I disagree. If you do it sloppily, you might lose a trip or two worth of minerals, making it take quite a bit of time for it to pay off. The whole point is to accelerate your build. If you try to do tricks like this and you waste mining time, you are defeating the purpose.
On December 12 2010 23:37 Herculix wrote:
why would you do this though? you'll get to a point where you're only mining from half a base and it doesn't really increase your mine rate while it's in effect.
It does increase your mining rate. Emphasizing the close mineral patches is more efficient and definitely gets you more minerals, faster.
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EPT
