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Hey Tlers, for people who do stack probes on closer mineral patches to your town hall, I would love to hear some theory on certain styles of doing it or your theory on not doing it at all. For example some people right off of the beginning start stacking probes on closer patches but others saturate all of their mineral patches, 1 harvester per before beginning.
I would also be interested in knowing if anyone stacks probes after the initial stacking of the closer mineral patches to the point where the first 16 are stacked without bouncing around at all (Assuming no 6 pool is happening or such). This is something I view as very cool and economical and only possible with a refined BO, very high apm and not really "active scouting" with your harvester in the beginning, like harassing or possible if you don't scout at all like Nada in that TvP MU in the most recent GSL on Shakuras or just OL scout not drone.
Please everyone who wants to keep this thread going and just share ideas, theories and really delve deep into this small aspect of the game that could give someone a nice little edge in a game, please bump this thread or whatever people do to keep it going alive, thank you!
My Problem:
So I have been having a consistent problem for a while. Since I started to manually stack harvesters on the closer mineral patches in the during the first couple minutes of the game every now and then, to the point where it has motivated me to make a post on TL, one of the 2 harvesters in sync will leave the mineral patch and go to a different patch and sometimes knocking other harvesters off and which results in me losing minerals.
Hopefully that explanation isn't botched to the point that people don't know what I am talking about. Does anyone know what exactly is causing this, usually I manually will stack a harvester to a mineral patch and then look elsewhere so most of the time I don't catch a harvester leaving the dual sync on one patch to go to another. I have done games against Very Easy AI where i just focus on watching how my harvesters act and determing the nuances of their AI and really have not discovered any concrete truth although I do have speculations of why the harvesters leave synced mineral patches. If anyone knows the cause of harvesters leaving synced mineral patches, whether it be completely random, "The harvesters weren't actually synced", or some AI nuance, I would greatly appreciate the input!
Thanks for reading my ramble in advance and please lets try to make this an educational post about as far as I am aware, a not really talked about much "tactic" of the game.
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I've seen many Top pros doing this. Also Idra recently actually talked a bit about this on JP and Friends when he was teaching JP.
Anyway back on the topic. I have the exact same issue. I've only started to manually stack very recently but even now and then I get synced harvesters unsyncing. I'm not exactly sure why or if I'm just meant to resync them. Maybe it depends on the position of gathering?
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Maybe it is, while writing this post and checking on it, I have been doing custom games against AI and have noticed that in one that a harvester left a synced pair to mine a completely empty mineral patch that was extremely close to the synced mineral patch, like right next to it hugging it. That could be a coincidence or a possible explanation.
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I don't think it's worth it to be honest, even if you stack them, the chance of them unstacking is high and you'd be wasting more mining time stacking them back rather than letting them mine evenly.
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I usually set my waypoint to the patch who's assigned probe returns at the same time the new probe pops. This is usually pretty close timing to get two drones per patch, but you might have to manually tell a probe to stay on a patch instead of the ai taking it to another patch farther away and possibly on the other side of the mineral field.
When doing the initial spread i just take a probe from a far patch to use as a scout to reduce the amount of apm needed
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If you have the extra APM then do it, but in reality it'll give you a SLIGHT mineral harvesting advantage and is probably not worth it.
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I call them retard drones. This is what a normal situation for me looks like:
Me: Okay listen up drone. We need as much as minerals as possible right now, so im assigning you to a closer mineral patch. There currently is another drone mining it, but if we time it just right we can have both of you mining the same patch without anyone waiting for the other. It's more efficient to mine the close mineral patch than the further ones, which I know you like doing, but we need the minerals.
Drone: HUUURR OKAY ILL GO THERE DUURRR
*arives at the mineral patch*
HUURRR ACTUALLY EVEN THOUGH YOU TOLD ME TO MINE HERE, I THINK I'D RATHER NOT DERPDERP
every single time this happens
even when I tell both drones to mine the patch they still leave. You need to micro your drones really well or just give up because they are fucking retarded. I usually choose the ladder.
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Yep, the AI will always make that worker go to a free mineral patch if there is one avaliable. The most I could stack was 2, but yeah.
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On January 30 2011 06:41 Lucid90 wrote:
I call them retard drones. This is what a normal situation for me looks like:
Me: Okay listen up drone. We need as much as minerals as possible right now, so im assigning you to a closer mineral patch. There currently is another drone mining it, but if we time it just right we can have both of you mining the same patch without anyone waiting for the other. It's more efficient to mine the close mineral patch than the further ones, which I know you like doing, but we need the minerals.
Drone: HUUURR OKAY ILL GO THERE DUURRR
*arives at the mineral patch*
HUURRR ACTUALLY EVEN THOUGH YOU TOLD ME TO MINE HERE, I THINK I'D RATHER NOT DERPDERP
every single time this happens
even when I tell both drones to mine the patch they still leave. You need to micro your drones really well or just give up because they are fucking retarded. I usually choose the ladder.
harvesters are so dumb sometimes haha. like there are times where i will see a probe of mine like go to the back of a mineral patch and mine then go the whole way around to return it. makes no sense lol
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it's worth it if you're trying to early gate/pool/rax, since the extra 10-20 minerals you get will allow you to keep constant(or near constant) worker production which translates exponentially as you get more. After that, however, the extra 20 minerals is just extra 20 minerals. It won't change the game and you'd have other stuff to focus on by then..
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On January 30 2011 06:46 LyRa wrote:
Yep, the AI will always make that worker go to a free mineral patch if there is one avaliable. The most I could stack was 2, but yeah.
I issue is when 2 are stacked and synced but after a few returns the one leaves for another patch.
Also people stating "It's not viable" or "it's viable". Please don't do so without actually posting testing and data to show either of these two statements are correct. Just saying something as if it's fact when it's just ones opinion is of no help.
EDIT: quick note. The stacking is more for the closer mineral patches early game. So workers have shorter mining distance.
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Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if the advantage of this is actually lower than the advantage of pooling exactly at 200 instead of at 210 or something like that.
I do split though, but that's more to get a feeling for the mouse when I start.
I am completely positive by the way that if you're zerg and if you spawn with your minerals above or below you the drone travel time due to larva location makes up more than manually stacking.
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Half people didn't even read what you have written.
I have same problem, even if there is 1 drone at each patch you sometimes still cannot send 1 more to closer patch because it is automatically going to farthest patch.
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Thanks for the input so far everyone! I do agree that the advantage is probably miniscule like some of these posts suggest, and maybe only the highest tier of players should do it but for me personally I do something that I just recently found it is harmful to my economy according to Artosis and probe stacking is relevant to it.
I hotkey a worker to a number to be my "builder probe" . I also hotkey 3 workers to another number so when my gas finishes I can just press spacebar and then the number and click on the gas and then go back to my scout who is gathering intel / harrasing. I make sure that these probes aren't one of the "close mineral patch stacked probes". So while the economic advantage might not be substantial, for my style of hotkeys in the early game, (which may be detrimental to my economy) probe stacking is essential so I don't pull probes off of my closer mineral patches, which is the goal of my hotkey setup. Hopefully it balances out any detrimental effect to my economy caused by having pre-selected probes that are possibly pulled off of far mineral patches rather than selected immediately after they return minerals to make infrastructure or mine gas.
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United States7166 Posts
you can always have 2 workers stay on 1 patch, it just requires precise timing so that the mineral patch is never already being mined when the other worker arrives to try to mine it. if it is, it'll go seek a new patch to mine if there is one available. that's smart design actually.
the method I use to set it up so that 2 workers will always rotate on 1 close patch and I never have to worry about it again is simply to send the 2nd worker at the patch so that there's only a SLIGHT delay (as in practically the smallest amount of time) between when one worker finishes mining the patch and the other comes in to start mining it. The timing has to be perfect otherwise it won't work: you can't have a worker mining IMMEDIATELY (as in 0 downtime of mining) after, nor can the delay between mining be too long either. What I do is try to get it as close to being precise as possible when I first double up on a patch, then adjust the worker that's coming in too early by hitting S and immediately clicking the patch again, to get the timing right. The time between when you hit S and when you tell it to go back to mining depends on how early the worker was going in to mine. Learning this takes practice, as well as doing all of it efficiently without missing a beat on building drones while doing so.
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Thanks Zelniq I will definitely try your method of hitting S and immediately clicking the patch.
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I'd really like to hear Tyler's thoughts on this, I've heard him criticize HuK on his stream for not microing his probes efficiently and I think a further expansion on that idea would be really enlightening.
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Yeah nice thx for info Zelniq 
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I think its something with the ai. It appears as though they will go to a nearby patch if it is empty, even if they are perfectly synced and not waiting on each other. perhaps this is a reason some people let all patches get at least 1 worker first before trying to stack. i don't even bother trying anymore as the workers disobedience has led me to have them figure it out themselves
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Thanks Zelniq. Awesome info there. I never thought about delaying the mining slightly. I always had 0 downtime.
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EPT
