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.
With zerg its actually possible to calculate and estimate i think. The calculation depends on how many spare larva you have stockpiled and how many empty mineral patches are left..
Lets say we have infinity larva and infinity mineral patches but limited resources. We assume our resources are always at zero, because we always spend all of it. Now if a drone gets killed, that means 50 minerals lost for the drone obviously, but lets put that aside for a minute. The mining time that this drone lost, is equivalent to 40 minerals per minute. 40 Minerals is 80% of another possible drone, as a drone costs 50. That means that we not only lose those extra 40 minerals per minute for the original killed drone, but also 0.8 times this value for the ghost drone that you couldve built if the first drone wouldnt have died, in all subsequent minutes after the first, on top of those 40. For that ghost drone, we also need to calculate the additional lost minerals that we wouldve gotten if the ghost-drone wouldve been built and mined minerals, which in return couldve built another drone, the ghost-ghost drone so to say. This obviously leads to an infinity amount of income lost.
If we limit the amount of larva and mineral patches, we can calculate how much it actually cost us. If we have 3 stockpiled larva (after using all our money that we get without the drone that gets killed), this means we lose 50 for the original drone, 40 for another minute, 40 + 0.8x40 for the next minute and 40 + 0.8x40 + 0.8x0.8x40 for the third minute. This amounts to 259 extra minerals per minute until all mineral patches are full, at that time the player that lost the drone catches up with the one that didnt lose the drone. Now you sum up how many minutes passed until the mineral patches got fully saturated and you have a number. Basically the formula is: 50+ (40*larva + pow(0.8,(larva-1)x40 + pow(0.8,(larva-2)x40 ... until larva reaches 0 or all mineral patches are saturated) As you can do this with sigma, you can calculate the amount of resources lost as long as you know how many spare larvae you accumulated due to the drone dying and how many minutes are left until all mineral patches are fully saturated. If someone could figure out the formula for extra larvae that pile up due to a drone dying, we could actually completely answer the question.
This got a little longer than i had anticipated, i hope there arent any glaring mistakes left in the calculations due to me being too tired to look over it again. I could also be completely wrong and everything i wrote down is complete bullshit, so take it with a grain of salt.
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.
While you could figure out the mineral gain/loss, the true advantage you gain from doing harass like that is psychological.
And while that harass is nice and you did a lot of damage, you also had 700+ minerals banked at the end of it. So I'd say it was more detrimental to you in that regard. If your opponents weren't terrible and sending two workers at a time to deal with four (what?), or the protoss pulling all his probes to deal with it, you would have been very far behind.
This is extremely hard to compute. However I can see its usefulness, ie: knowing if a harass was cost-effective, or sucessful. For example, I killed 2 Probes with a Reaper. Did the Reaper payed it cost? Was it worth? Most of the time you cant tell, sometimes it gets tricky and you just "feel" behind/ahead but that's not really what's happening.
Assuming you were planning to make workers constantly until you reach, say, 70 workers, you can't replace the lost worker until you've created 70 workers (read: have 69 workers), and can build a worker for the 71st time, giving you 70 workers. The mining time lost is the time between when the worker was lost and when you build that last worker.
On June 02 2011 05:53 MShaw006 wrote: Assuming you were planning to make workers constantly until you reach, say, 70 workers, you can't replace the lost worker until you've created 70 workers (read: have 69 workers), and can build a worker for the 71st time, giving you 70 workers. The mining time lost is the time between when the worker was lost and when you build that last worker.
That depends on how many mining bases you have. You will replace the lost worker upon getting max saturation at all of your bases.
On June 02 2011 03:51 VirtualAlex wrote: 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.
This test is really not necessary. Lost minerals is: 50 minerals + 40 minerals/minute * 3.97 minutes (the time to build the last 14 probes).
I really thought my earlier response would answer the question you were asking - was there something else you were looking for here?
Protoss can make the loss much smaller by chronoboosting out (about) 3 workers per worker lost, so the number of workers catches up again.
Zerg can try to make up for the difference by making extra drones and making the army units somewhat later, so if you don't keep continous pressure against a zerg, the harass will lose effectiveness.
if you lose 1 worker before you reach - let's say - 10 supply as terran the worker you lose makes you get an extra worker at 9/10 when your opponent has 10/10 - we assume your opponent is also terran and hasn't lost any workers while your opponent makes a supply depot, you make your worker, so all you lose is the 50 minerals and build time since you start your depot later. A worker is not that much, I saw alot of pro games where a guy would lose the scouting worker without it affecting his game too much. The only real fact is when you lose your SCV to a protoss and he is blocking with a zealot, you are pretty much forced to defend vs 4gate.
Thanks alot for your input. Of course psychological damage is a huge factor. I have about 10 replays of this type of harassment working out amazingly well in which the terran player losts 4+ workers. One time we actually killed an entire supply depot. Another time, after he build his rax, he lifted it off and moved it instead of just making a marine.
But it's not possible to calculate that so I just wanted to get some hard numbers. It looks like killing 2 workers definitely makes it worth it. So I will keep developing this strategy.
EPT
