Hello, I am trying to figure out exactly how much is lost when you lose an early worker. Let's say for example he gets killed by the enemy scout. So I am talking like 10/11 food, and one of your workers is killed.
Obviously you must pay 50 minerals to rebuild the workers. But how much mining time do you lose?
From the SC2 wiki, a workers gathers 40 minerals every 60 seconds. Which is about .667 minerals every second. So it's easy enough to calculate minerals lost per second. But how long does it take to "make up" for the loss of the worker?
It can't just be building time, because if a player is constantly making workers until ... say 26 food. He wont actually get that dead worker back until 26 food. So is he one worker behind for like 8 minutes? Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong.
If a player is at 8 workers and one gets killed, then when he builds his 9th, it only takes the place of the 8th. So from this point on he is 1 worker behind and he wont actually make up for this one worker all the way until he hits his supply cap.
Sounds like losing an early worker is an opportunity lose of like 300 minerals?
You've got it right, but it's more complicated due to what you could've done with those minerals if you'd had them (opportunity cost), such as putting down another CC/Nexus/Hatch, and making EVEN MORE workers.
Also each worker gathers less as you get more saturated, so while it may be 40 minerals per 60 seconds with just one worker, once you're getting close to 26 food, the difference between 26 and 25 workers might only be 15 minerals per 60 seconds.
Well just for the sake of simplicity. Let's assume unlimited minerals. So the player can continue to build more workers, and buildings as normal. I am just looking at assumed minerals not harvested due to the lost time.
The worker will take a while to get back to the base: -30~60sec Once you pass 16 probes on minerals, you don't get 100% efficiency anymore (+3 - +6 probes for 1-2 gas) Between turning to orbital, chrono boost and larvae, it will take differing amounts of time to reach point where you stop making miners.
Personally, when rushing I may cut miners at 5-6min mark. Assuming the scouting worker would have gotten back at 3minutes, that's 2-3 minutes in lost mining time. That would only by 130-170 minerals.
you mean that losing this worker early would have earned you 300 minerals in X time ? Sure but you need to know that the mining time is somewhat exponential as long as you keep building workers. Say, you don't build any worker past the 9th, so yeah it's a pretty big economical lose. But we're never stopping to make workers so you're just losing less and less time as you're building more and more tbh. 300 minerals is like what ? 15 sec with 16 workers ? If so, do you think it'd have been game breaking ? It's all up to you.
I am not talking about the scouting worker. I am speaking only about a dead worker in the early game. And only about the money lost because of that workers loss. Basically I am trying to pin down exactly when that worker's loss is made up for. Which too me, seems like the point at which you stop making workers constantly. So if you are rushing and you need 13 workers before you stop, that is when you finally make up for it. But the entire time before that you are working one miner down and losing .667 minerals per second.
FYI, 3 minutes not mining is 120 minerals not mined, shown by .667 x 180 seconds = 120.06
So your scouting workers (assumed 3 minutes) costs you 120 minerals. Just as a reference point.
The 130-170 reference was 80-120 + cost of probe for the 2-3 minutes lost
I assumed you meant a scouting worker since it's rare to lose a single worker in early game except scouting (or maybe not paying attention and losing a SCV to a probe/drone)
lets just say a lost worker is not game ending early game. It will mean you are most likely to hold any form of super early attack so you can feel more comfortable that you won't be attacked. But its not even a whole marine you lose every minute. So after 5 minutes you are 4 marines behind. But if you get attacked even in a mirror i guess the lost worker won't mean that you lose the game.
If it would no one would dare to scout with a worker.
But for your calculation, its 45 minerals (your first 6 workers are for free if the general max is 60 workers you have to substract 10% as the whole worker cost would be 54x50 and not 60x50) + 40 minerals every 60 seconds from the time the worker is killed until worker production is stopped. Buildings and stuff doesn't have to be incorporated or gas working, as you can just assume this worker would be a mineral only worker all the time.
Well taking gas into consideration wouldn't be so hard, from a generalized standpoint.
But thats how you could calculate it. One worker early game is no big loss though, compared to two workers 5 minutes later if the game lasts over 15 minutes ^^.
If you are building up to 25 workers constantly, and which point you will stop making workers non-stopped.
Let's say an enemy scout comes in and kills your 11th worker. You immediately start building another one of course however you are now only mining off 10 workers instead of 11. Once the (new) 11th worker pops out, you are mining with 11 instead of 12. Continue until you hit your stop point of 25. So from the time your worker was killed, to the time you hit 25 you are mining a worker down, and every second you are losing .667 minerals. Am I wrong?
In 6 minutes, thats 240 lost minerals + 50 for the rebuild cost. So you lose nearly 300 minerals if you lose a worker. Even more than that if you plan to continually make workers until a higher number, like 30.
Not everything can be boiled down to mathematics. Even if you could work this out, is there every going to arise a situation where you are trying to assess if you should spend .667 minerals per second on getting an extra 10 seconds of guaranteed scouting?
This isn't about scouting. This is about how detrimental it is to lose a worker in the first 5 min of the game. And it can and should be boiled down to mathematics.
Why wouldn't it be important to know that scouting for 3 minutes costs you exactly 120 minerals? Do you feel that information isn't important? If you choose not to scout as zerg for example, you will be able to afford almost 6 more lings than you otherwise would have. This is crucial information.
Anyway, the reason I am asking, is I am messing around with the concept of sending 2 drones to scout/harass terran players. My goal is to use the 2 workers to quickly kill the SCV building the barracks.
Regardless of how stupid, hard this is to do. I am trying to calculate if this is an efficient use of resources assuming I do kill a worker, and lose 0. Understanding that scouting with that extra worker costs me 120 minerals in mining time, I am need to know that killing a worker costs the opponent more than 120 minerals in cost+mining time.
On June 02 2011 01:26 VirtualAlex wrote: Hello, I am trying to figure out exactly how much is lost when you lose an early worker. Let's say for example he gets killed by the enemy scout. So I am talking like 10/11 food, and one of your workers is killed.
Obviously you must pay 50 minerals to rebuild the workers. But how much mining time do you lose?
From the SC2 wiki, a workers gathers 40 minerals every 60 seconds. Which is about .667 minerals every second. So it's easy enough to calculate minerals lost per second. But how long does it take to "make up" for the loss of the worker?
It can't just be building time, because if a player is constantly making workers until ... say 26 food. He wont actually get that dead worker back until 26 food. So is he one worker behind for like 8 minutes? Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong.
If a player is at 8 workers and one gets killed, then when he builds his 9th, it only takes the place of the 8th. So from this point on he is 1 worker behind and he wont actually make up for this one worker all the way until he hits his supply cap.
Sounds like losing an early worker is an opportunity lose of like 300 minerals?
this seems not threadworthy since u have the about right calculation wich obv answeres ur question its just math and given that numbers u can check how worth it is even to scout rater then let some units do the job and get a tight macro.
Assumptions 1. Your opponent has an ideal number of workers for each game, and hits that number every game. 2. Your opponent is never supply blocked. 3. Your opponent is constantly making workers. 4. Your opponent's expansion timings are ideal (for his build) and not deterred by the loss of a worker.
Result The loss of minerals is 50 (for building cost) + 40 (mineral harvesting rate) * t, where t is the time elapsed between losing the worker and when your opponent ceases making workers.
Applicability Realistically, this means that your opponent is down some amount of resources, but this is more of a hindrance for those who favor longer games than those for whom the game is nearly half over when they lose the worker (maybe they only make 15 SCVs each game, in which case they'd retrain the 15th and lose little mining time). From a position of limited information, all you can reliably discern is that he lost *something*.
I appreciate your collective inputs. It seems that losing early workers is quite detrimental. I came up with a good test, according to my assumptions of course.
Simply get into a test map as terran, and make non-stopped mining workers until 25, and record my total collect resources at the moment the 25th worker is constructed.
Then run the same test, except get one of my 11th scv killed. Work up to 25 workers and record my resources. This should accurately show the difference between the total mined and include the 50 extra minerals spent on the fresh SCV. I am at work now, but I will try to run this test when I get home. Unless someone else is willing.
I think the larger impact of losing an early-game worker is the effect on your opening, not necessarily the amount of minerals you're going to lose over the entire game. I used to lose the SCV building my first barracks all the time in TvP, and it ended up meaning that I had to build my second depot before my second barracks to avoid getting supply blocked, which delayed the barracks by around 30 seconds, which is obviously a lot.
Here is the strategy I am employing. This is 2v2, although I want to attempt this in 1v1.
In this replay me (Zergxes) and my partner Quad-Harass the terran and obviously in this replay it's a huge success. We kill 7 total workers and delay terrans barracks buy well over 90 seconds. It's really funny.
I want to figure out what the minimum amount of damage I need to inflict is, to make this type of gambit worth it. Because I am losing minerals sending workers away for so long as well.
EPT
