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Now I just watched this TLO vs Spanishiwa game that husky cast and at 7:55 he said that the worker count would favor the zerg and I immediately thought of the 3 orbital commands TLO had and how the mules would count into that(not that husky is the most analytic caster, but get your things straight dog... get it dog? becouse husky is a kinda dog and his name is huskystarcraft)
So I decided to lay down some numbers and see what we can find out together! Actually not together you’re not doing anything your just watching what I already did.
I am 14 and in 8th grade so exactly the world’s best mathematician but I got bored had a calculator on my table and decided to check out some orbital commands. Now this has been made really really simple. No really it’s that simple, because I don’t expect button mashing fps haters that do nothing but scream “ZOMG MULES FUCKING OP NERF OTHER RACES THEN WHAT I AM GRRRRR BLIAZAAAAAAAARDD!!!!!” to be the most intelligent creatures in the world, so it’s really dumbed down
All of these things I state are something that I either calculated or that I tried in Starcraft 2 there is always room for human error when stuff like this is done. Well have fun reading.
Tested this on shattered temple top spawn and it seemed pretty legit 270 minerals per mule. I am going to use this in my calculations bellow.
Mule = 270 minerals on shattered temple top spawn
Mule = 50 energy
50 energy = 90 Starcraft 2 seconds
270 minerals = 50 energy note that this is only true if you don’t use any scans at all (which is unlikely)
50 energy/90 seconds = 0,555555556 energy/second
270 minerals/90 seconds = 3 minerals/second
Now I found out an orbital command made 3 minerals per second if you ONLY use mules. So that did not really tell me much because I had no idea how much a scv/drone/probe would get you, so I went and tested it. I got it to 60 minerals in 90 seconds so that’s
60/90 = 2/3 = 0,6666666666 minerals per second
So that’s 4,5 scv/drone/probes per orbital command if you ONLY use mules
3/(2/3) = 4,5 workers/orbital command if you ONLY use mules
So now I am going to lay down some fucking crazy ass 8th grade mathimatishiying. “Real complicated stuff”
Worker
Now the build time of a scv is 17 in game seconds according to the tooltip.
To make 4,5 scv’s you would need 76,5 seconds
4,5*17 = 76,5 seconds
The mineral cost required to make 4,5 workers is 225 minerals assuming the mineral cost for a worker is 50.
4,5*50 = 225 minerals
The supply cost for 4,5 workers is 4,5 assuming it cost 1 supply for a worker
4,5*1 = 4,5
A worker gave you 2/3 minerals per second according to my other calculations so 2/3 or 0,66
minerals per second = 1 supply
Worker = 2/3 minerals per second.
Worker = 1 supply.
Orbital Command
Build time of an orbital command is 35 sec plus the 100 sec for building the command center, so it end up being 135 in game star craft 2 seconds for a command center.
35+100 = 135 seconds
The mineral cost for a command center is 400 and the mineral cost for the orbital command is 150, so a orbital command cost 550
150+400 = 550 minerals
The thing with the orbital command is that it has 50 energy when it is done transforming, that’s one mule and 270 minerals not taking into account the time it takes for the mule to mine that is 270 minerals deducted from our original 550 minerals for an orbital command that is 280 minerals for our orbital command
550-270 = 280 minerals
At this point you could continue making mules for the rest of your orbital commands life and you would have your 4,5 workers of income.
Now I know what you’re thinking “omg Zaxomio terran isn’t protoss we need a scv to make our command center”. And yes that is completely true so let’s add that to the calculations shall we.
It takes 100 seconds to make a command center for a scv and since the scv makes 2/3 minerals per second and it takes around 4 seconds for me to move my scv away from the mineral line far enough to make a command center that should be 66,66 minerals lost from that scv’s mining time and 2,66 from the moving time.
(150+400-270)+(100*2/3) = 346,66 minerals to make an orbital command
346,66+(2/3*x) x being seconds it takes you to move your scv, for me 4 seconds getting it to 349,32 minerals to make my orbital command.
Now here comes the real awesomeness of the orbital command.
Mules cost ZERO supply this becomes rather effective later in the game when you don’t care how much it cost or the time it takes to make workers, compared to how much you care about the supply your workers are filling up, that prevents you for having that huge army you know you deserve : ( sad face for small army.
Comparison
Now let’s look at what we have learned
To make 4,5 scv’s you need 76,5 seconds
To make an orbital command you need 135 seconds
The mineral cost of 4,5 workers is 225
The mineral cost of an orbital command is more or less around 350
To make 4,5 scv’s you need to fill up 4,5 supply
To make an orbital command you don’t need to fill up ANY supply.
Now if you’re the smart kid in the class you say stand up and shout: “Hey, what about the supply depot, those aren’t free and take time to make to.” And yes that is true they take time to make and cost money to.
A supply depot takes 30 seconds to make that’s 20 minerals from a scv and 100 for the actual price
(2/3)*30 = 20 minerals
20+100 = 120 minerals
Now a supply depot gives you 8 supply and let’s just pretend that these are just for workers and not for units at all. That means that every time that you made 400 minerals worth of scv’s you need to make 120 minerals worth of supply depot. Now let’s start counting supply like a resource.
120/8 = 15 that’s how much 1 supply is worth in minerals, so let’s add 15 mineral cost to all of those scv’s.
50+15 = 65 minerals
4,5*65 = 292,5 minerals
Now that’s still around 57,5 minerals cheaper than the orbital command, but there is a limit to supply, and not a orbital command limit.
Now if you’re that smart student again you will put your hand in the air and tell me that the orbital command center gives you supply I will tell you. NO your wrong!… the command center gives you supply.11 supply to be exact. Now we just figured out that 1 supply = 15 minerals, so 11 supply is 165 minerals
11*15 = 165
Now that 350 mineral orbital command doesn’t look as expensive as it helps out with the supply to.
350-165 = 185
So that means that it only cost us 185 minerals for a orbital command that has the same mineral production as 4,5 scv’s that cost 292,5 minerals. So looking at this now I am thinking… this didn’t really help proving mules aren’t overpowered… let’s check the math through again to see if there is any holes.
Orbital command
(400+150)+(2/3*100)-270-(11*(120/8)) = 181,66 not including the time it takes for your scv to move to the building location and for it to move back to the mineral line.
So from looking at this data it shows us that orbital commands are actually more cost efficient but nearly half as time efficient as making scv’s.
Now what’s important to remember about the orbital command is that mining with mules will make harassment from the enemy player a lot more effective due to the mule having lower health compared to 4,5 scv’s, so it’s a easy target.
What is also to consider is that the orbital command can be used to scan and to make more scv’s. You also don’t have to offer your supply to make mules which becomes important once you max.
Scv’s can repair more effectively as there are 4,5 of them per mule, scv’s can make buildings, and having buildings becomes quite handy in certain situations, scv’s can mine gas, and that is where they should be as the mules do a way better job in the mineral lines.
So next time your TLO and your fighting spanishiwa and he has 80 drones and 120 supply zerg army, make a 176 terran supply army with 24 scv’s in gas and minerals made by mules  AND STEAMROLL HIS ASS
Now I properly made mistakes and I would like to say that when I measured how many minerals a scv made I let it start at the mineral patch and it ended at the command center so I would say, these calculations are in favor of the scv. Thank you for reading.
Peaze out ^^
Zaxomio
btw. Dident know if strategy was the right place to put it as you cant put theorycrafting there and i dont really know if this is considered theory crafting as it isent really a theory... becouse i tried doing the stuff
EDIT: made it more readibly by making spaces so its not just 1 big wall of text btw Day[J] owns
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Your math is wrong. You cannot say that the 270 minerals from the 50 energy the orbital command reduces the cost of building the orbital command. The orbital command has a mining rate just like scvs. Not a gift of free minerals. An orbital command costs ~ 413 minerals. (or 411 if we use your math)
Also the cost effectiveness of making scv's changes depending on the mineral saturation as the additional SCV has a different mining rate depending on the saturation.
Also you have to take into consideration the number of minerals the scv''s that weren't built immediately don't mine when you are building the equivalent number of scv's to an orbital command. The 4th scv built will mine 51 less seconds than the first scv so there is delay in the amount mined. Just like there is a 135 second delay in the mining of an orbital command from start to completion.
etc.
Just some things to consider.
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There's also the opportunity cost. For an OC, you have to save up for 400 minerals and then wait for the build time of the CC plus conversion to being an OC. In that time, the SCVs you've built are mining. This is very important early/mid game.
But I think there's a valid argument to be made that once you have like 60 SCVs, it really makes more sense to just build OCs instead of more SCVs.
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I am remembering a game by a terran months ago.. Boxer maybe? Anyway, after he was maxed he made like 11 orbitals commands just fore mules. It was sick.
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On May 02 2011 04:41 Lore-Fighting wrote:
I am remembering a game by a terran months ago.. Boxer maybe?
Boxer definitely.
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Also remember, Orbitals (Well CC's) actually grant you supply, so you save even more from not having to build as many supply depot.
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On May 02 2011 04:41 Lore-Fighting wrote:
I am remembering a game by a terran months ago.. Boxer maybe? Anyway, after he was maxed he made like 11 orbitals commands just fore mules. It was sick.
If I remember he sacked all his SCV's to free up supply and get a bigger army. It was quite impressive.
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Yeah. That's what Terran late-game is going to look like eventually. Many fewer SCVs, lots of orbitals, and as you expand, SCVs transfer over to mine gas and little else.
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the orbital gives you income assuming you constantly use them. u can replace the scv income with mule income to free up supply late game. mules also mine with more efficiency so if you have 8 OC you can drop 8 mules on a normal base. 8x4=24 scvs mining. since those mules mine so fast, you can add more raxes per base. this will lead to 10-12 rax per base. ( might be even more ).
you should only make mass OC if you know you are ahead or if you know he wont be making a ton of stuff and kill you.
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you forgot to mention that an orbital starts with 50 energy, so its not 3 minerals/second it's 270minerasls+3minerals/s with a 90s return of 270 minerals for 150 minerals + time
sorry if this has been mentioned it was kinda TL;DR but that was a key point I thought you needed to reconsider :o
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Yup, this remind me alot of griffith 4 OC build, who know if inbase 'macro OC' could become standard :O
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On May 02 2011 05:05 xZiGGY wrote:
you forgot to mention that an orbital starts with 50 energy, so its not 3 minerals/second it's 270minerasls+3minerals/s with a 90s return of 270 minerals for 150 minerals + time
sorry if this has been mentioned it was kinda TL;DR but that was a key point I thought you needed to reconsider :o
He definitely mentioned it. I think this is why TL hates the tl;dr reply.
Awesome first post. It was great to see you include the lost minerals from less mining time (SCVs building stuff), which is a major terran weakness that other races tend to forget.
The one distinction that I think is important is that the cost of an orbital command, while perhaps more efficient than that of SCVs, is much more front-loaded - 400 minerals right off the bat, then 150 when the CC finishes. I think that's the main reason people don't build extra OCs.
Also, I wonder about the comparison between the cost of CCs and the cost of SCVs. Presumably, if you have enough miners, it's more efficient to stop building SCVs and just save up money for an OC. But if you don't have many miners, then it's more efficent to just build the SCVs (this is because minerals deflate in value as the game goes on, 100 mins at the 1 minute mark is quite a bit, at the 20 minute mark its practically nothing. Also you can queue up and build a lot more SCVs early on instead of not building SCVs and waitinf for 400min, than you can later, when your income is higher). I wonder where the cutoff is, that'd maybe be worth knowing.
One other thing: extra OCs give you extra SCVs - you can build more, and more quickly saturate a base. I don't know how that would affect the calculations.
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I've always just assumed 1 Orbital is approximately equivalent to 4 scvs.
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Seems to me, someone needs to figure out the practical number of SCVs where you should stop producing SCVs and produce OCs. Of course theres a lot of factors that go into this.
Also, OP, you used a lot of commas in your post that were supposed to be periods. Kind of bugged me a little bit.
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On May 02 2011 04:48 Tiazi wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 04:41 Lore-Fighting wrote:
I am remembering a game by a terran months ago.. Boxer maybe? Boxer definitely.
I would love to view this game anyone have a link for the replay or know what it was against or where i can find it? very intrestead
i counted that 270 minerals for building it and having the mule as a reduced cost i know its not actually a reduced cost and its a huge investment but it would prove to be great for late game as no other race can run on maybe 20 scv's on gas and rest mules so you would demolish other races.
Also i counted the 11 supply you get from the orbital command as a 15*11 reduced cost to since a supply depot with scv mining time lost is 20 minerals for 30 sec therefor the supply depot cost 120 minerals counting that and you could cut out making up to 200 supply supplydepots if you start at maybe 140-150 and just bunker up and make orbitals then once you both max you will start having a huge army lead
maybe someday people will be like all
"argh just need to defend for the next 225 sec so my 4 orbitals can finish and there initial mules can finish and i can start powering units out of my racks due to the 44 new supply."
that would be awesome
dunno if you can quite multiply people in 1 post but uhh negativ i am sorry about the commas english is not my native tongue and i am not that old, thanks for your response tho ^^
OC's are a big mineral dump but they pay themself off if you can spare the minerals for the building time, and you dont have x/200 supply, they also give you a huge advantage at 200/200
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On May 02 2011 06:04 Treadmill wrote:
He definitely mentioned it. I think this is why TL hates the tl;dr reply.
that's funny cause I definitely read the entire OP, I'm pretty sure the limits of this optimization are nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.
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On May 02 2011 06:08 Uhh Negative wrote:
Seems to me, someone needs to figure out the practical number of SCVs where you should stop producing SCVs and produce OCs. Of course theres a lot of factors that go into this.
Also, OP, you used a lot of commas in your post that were supposed to be periods. Kind of bugged me a little bit.
That's how some countries seperate numbers (ie 10.5 = 10,5)
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On May 02 2011 06:06 KevinIX wrote:
I've always just assumed 1 Orbital is approximately equivalent to 4 scvs.
And you would be correct in that assumption.
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Great effort on the OP. Some of your math is a little bit off, but you have the general idea down very well.
Using CCs as a means to increase efficiency in mining and army supply is still quite problematic, namely because of timings and opportunity costs, as pointed out by GeorgeForeman. You noted this yourself when you factored in the time it took to build an orbital command, but the point can be expanded on.
The biggest problem of using an Orbital command as a means of providing supply for your army is that you have to expect in advance at which point the additional supply becomes relevant. Building CCs to provide supply in excess makes for a poor choice in terms of efficiency, because Terran also has to keep up constant unit production in order to assert pressure or to stay safe.
Terran doesn't have an easy way to take advantage of large surges of supply unlike Protoss or Zerg with the Warpgate and Larva mechanics, because supply must be available before production time on a unit can begin (as opposed to warpgates, which use a cooldown instead) and because of the relatively high cost of building Terran Infrastructure to build units out of (as opposed to saving up larva to make use of a surge in supply). Instead, the race has other advantages to make up for these mechanics. Nevertheless, relying predominantly on CCs for supply will lead to cutting units to save for the initial 400 minerals, and a longer period where additional supply is not available due to the build time. Supply Depots are still going to be essential for much of the early and mid game.
You should explore how much time it takes for the initial investment of building an orbital or an SCV of turning a profit, the point at which point the profit margin of building an orbital exceeds that of building the SCVs and how mineral line saturation fits into the whole idea. That way you can determine at which clear point in time it will make sense to switch to a "macro orbital" style.
You can then use that to plan out a build that does what you wanted it to - keeps relatively few SCVs mostly for the purpose of mining gas and maximizes the use of mules to achieve a higher army supply count.
Good luck! 
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On May 04 2011 00:34 Kazang wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2011 06:06 KevinIX wrote:
I've always just assumed 1 Orbital is approximately equivalent to 4 scvs. And you would be correct in that assumption.
No. The value of a mule as an effective number of SCVs changes depending on saturation. Below 16 miners on minerals, it's about 3 SCVs, above that it can be well over 4 (approaching an infinite number of SCVs as saturation reaches maximum). This is why being equal-base to a Terran for an extended period of time is so dangerous.
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On May 04 2011 02:26 Dragar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2011 00:34 Kazang wrote:On May 02 2011 06:06 KevinIX wrote:
I've always just assumed 1 Orbital is approximately equivalent to 4 scvs. And you would be correct in that assumption. No. The value of a mule as an effective number of SCVs changes depending on saturation. Below 16 miners on minerals, it's about 3 SCVs, above that it can be well over 4 (approaching an infinite number of SCVs as saturation reaches maximum). This is why being equal-base to a Terran for an extended period of time is so dangerous.
The value of a SCV differs depending on saturation, the value of a MULE will always be the same.
It will never be able to mine more than the equivalent of 4.5 SCVs at optimal.
Each Orbital, and thus MULE, returns 180 minerals/minute which is the maximum 4 workers can return.
Thus approximately equal to 4 SCVs.
Saying it has more value than SCVs that are not mining is completely pointless, which is what workers on a over saturated base are doing, not mining.
It's like saying your dick is worth an infinite number of melons as the value of a melon approaches nothing.
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Mules cost apm too, not much but more than SCVs.
Great analysis, I think players should definitely consider 'macro OC' playstyles. I think it also makes expoing much easier, you can even do something like float an OC to a gold or an isolated expo and just lay down mules, don't put any other infrastructure or SCV there, just mule up and lift off if the opponet attacks it.
Perhaps even taking a leaf from the zerg book and building the CC at another base with the sole intention of mining gas, with the added benefit of cc energy (larva for zerg).
Given enough OC you could start sacking SCV and actually have near 200 supply armies.
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EPT
