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shizna
United Kingdom803 Posts
when you see a pro player throw down 10+ mules on a single patch (typical 8-patch base), two of those mules will be doing almost nothing. they take longer to gather than workers, therefore you can't stack two on the same patch. whenever you saw a terran throw down 20 mules on a gold base (6 patches), he was being completely dumb. only 6 of those mules will be mining and the others will be bouncing back and forward at about 1% efficiency. basically throwing 13-14 mules down the toilet. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
On February 23 2012 06:58 Tobberoth wrote: Wrong. The minerals are still there in the gold expo, you aren't deleting the minerals from the patches just because you're mining with mules. Let's say the blue base has 5000 minerals and the gold base has 7000. Put enough mules to completely mine out the blue base, and you get 5000 minerals. Put enough mules to completely mine out the gold base, and you get 7000 minerals, it will just take longer than it used to since the mules don't dig as fast on gold as they used to do. Obviously it's better to spread mules around, since you want your scv's to always be mining, but for instance if you have limited scv's it still makes sense to spare the gold with your mules. Some people are arguing it doesn't matter or you should still mine out the gold earlier. I can't really follow your logic, to be honest. | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 07:37 Grumbels wrote: Obviously it's better to spread mules around, since you want your scv's to always be mining, but for instance if you have limited scv's it still makes sense to spare the gold with your mules. Some people are arguing it doesn't matter or you should still mine out the gold earlier. I can't really follow your logic, to be honest. You should mine gold out earlier because it's a high value target for your opponent and is usually way easier to attack. You're in a horrible position if you mine out your safe blue bases only to have your opponent completely wreck your gold base, leaving you with nothing. | ||
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wunsun
Canada622 Posts
On February 23 2012 07:37 Grumbels wrote: Obviously it's better to spread mules around, since you want your scv's to always be mining, but for instance if you have limited scv's it still makes sense to spare the gold with your mules. Some people are arguing it doesn't matter or you should still mine out the gold earlier. I can't really follow your logic, to be honest. Jeez... lots of quotes. XD I think he is thinking what I was thinking. Mules mine over SCV's so, your SCV's will always be mining regardless if there are mules or not. What he is saying, is that you want your gold to mine out faster, as typically golds are put in locations that are hard to hold; therefore, you want to mine it out faster as you want all the yummy minerals that you can get. My original post was about you expanding to a gold, so that you have a (or more) blue bases that are partially mined out, and a gold base that is relatively untouched. I was thinking that you want to still mule the gold, as you don't want to mine out your blue too fast. Otherwise, you have SCV's that are essentially not mining as you will be over saturated with SCV's at your gold. Even though you don't get minerals as fast, you do not mine out your bases, which either forces you to expand before you really want to, or forces you to over saturate your gold with normal SCV's or to not mine at all. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 07:20 shizna wrote: another thing about mules which people don't understand is that you can only effectively have 1 per mineral patch. when you see a pro player throw down 10+ mules on a single patch (typical 8-patch base), two of those mules will be doing almost nothing. they take longer to gather than workers, therefore you can't stack two on the same patch. whenever you saw a terran throw down 20 mules on a gold base (6 patches), he was being completely dumb. only 6 of those mules will be mining and the others will be bouncing back and forward at about 1% efficiency. basically throwing 13-14 mules down the toilet. Uh... Mules do not disrupt pathing or "occupy" minerals. 20 mules on one patch could technically all work on it. Search on youtube, there are several videos where players show how fast mass mules can mine out a base (it literally takes a few seconds with enough mules). | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 07:53 Grumbels wrote: That's a completely different argument. You say "you should mine out your gold first because it's a high value target", but that's just saying "you should mine out high value targets first" and you're assuming the gold is always easier to attack too. If you have two equally vulnerable expansions then it might be better to use more mules on blue minerals rather than the gold ones. Why? There's literally no argument why it's better to put Mules on blue minerals over gold minerals, the mineral gain is identical. The only reason would be that you for some reason want the blue base mined out faster, which will be rare. | ||
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wunsun
Canada622 Posts
On February 23 2012 07:55 Tobberoth wrote: Why? There's literally no argument why it's better to put Mules on blue minerals over gold minerals, the mineral gain is identical. The only reason would be that you for some reason want the blue base mined out faster, which will be rare. His situation I think is valid. If you have two bases that are equally vulnerable, than you want to maximize your mineral gain, which would be putting mules on the blue. | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 08:00 wunsun wrote: His situation I think is valid. If you have two bases that are equally vulnerable, than you want to maximize your mineral gain, which would be putting mules on the blue. But you're not maximizing your mineral gain, there's literally no difference. Put all the mules on gold, put all of them on blue, when they expire, you'll have gained as much gold. The ONLY difference is how fast the bases mine out, but since gold has more minerals, it will take a smaller hit from the mules (since the mules mine less of the percentage of minerals), so in a situation where you want bases to last as long as possible, you'll still want to put most of your mules on the gold. The only "gain" from putting all the mules on the blue base is that it will mine out much faster than the gold base, the amount of minerals you gain is the same. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
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wunsun
Canada622 Posts
On February 23 2012 08:06 Tobberoth wrote: But you're not maximizing your mineral gain, there's literally no difference. Put all the mules on gold, put all of them on blue, when they expire, you'll have gained as much gold. The ONLY difference is how fast the bases mine out, but since gold has more minerals, it will take a smaller hit from the mules (since the mules mine less of the percentage of minerals), so in a situation where you want bases to last as long as possible, you'll still want to put most of your mules on the gold. The only "gain" from putting all the mules on the blue base is that it will mine out much faster than the gold base, the amount of minerals you gain is the same. I'm not sure if that is true or not. I need to give that more thought. Anyways, I think that we both agree that in most situations, it is better to put mules on gold. | ||
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fraktoasters
United States617 Posts
On February 23 2012 08:06 Tobberoth wrote: But you're not maximizing your mineral gain, there's literally no difference. Put all the mules on gold, put all of them on blue, when they expire, you'll have gained as much gold. The ONLY difference is how fast the bases mine out, but since gold has more minerals, it will take a smaller hit from the mules (since the mules mine less of the percentage of minerals), so in a situation where you want bases to last as long as possible, you'll still want to put most of your mules on the gold. The only "gain" from putting all the mules on the blue base is that it will mine out much faster than the gold base, the amount of minerals you gain is the same. Yes Mules mine the same on both bases, but in real situations you'll also have SCVs, which will mine from gold faster. Wouldn't you want to keep SCVs mining on gold rather than blue? So you wouldn't want to drop Mules on gold bases since it'll cause you to stop mining there with SCVs sooner. In other words, drop Mules only on blue -> SCVs mine from gold for 100 seconds. Drop Mules on the gold -> SCVs mine gold for 60 seconds and then transfer to a blue base where they mine for <40 mroe seconds. Dropping on the blue would be the best scenario. | ||
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HeliBadger
538 Posts
Mining from the closest patch will get you minerals the fastest. But, it might waste 30 minerals on the final trip because it might not make it back to the command center, minerals in hand. Mining from not a closest patch usually makes the MULE die when it has no minerals in hand. However, I think getting minerals earlier/faster is far superior to saving yourself 30 minerals much later on when your patches run out. Starcraft is a game of getting resources NOW, not later. It is a game of fractions of a second. tl;dr put it on the close patches, noobs | ||
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Psychobabas
2531 Posts
On February 23 2012 05:28 TheDwf wrote: That was likely fOrGG. I saw Mvp do this too on some replays. It's only at the beginning of the game, obviously. Bomber also did that. | ||
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Deleted User 123474
292 Posts
On February 23 2012 08:26 superLanboy wrote: Mining from the closest patch will get you minerals the fastest. But, it might waste 30 minerals on the final trip because it might not make it back to the command center, minerals in hand. Mining from not a closest patch usually makes the MULE die when it has no minerals in hand. However, I think getting minerals earlier/faster is far superior to saving yourself 30 minerals much later on when your patches run out. Starcraft is a game of getting resources NOW, not later. It is a game of fractions of a second. tl;dr put it on the close patches, noobs This is partly true. When I am 1 rax FE-ing, I want that FE to be up 3 seconds earlier or whatever it is. However, at 15 minutes into the game I would rather not have 2 patches out of commission in my main, and at that point I'm not spending my minerals as closely. Therefore, always MULE on the close patches for the first few runs, and then spread it out equally. As to the Gold/Blue mining debate, it is true that if you can keep your gold base safe, you will gain more of a benefit by allowing the minerals to be mined by bonus-mining SCVs rather than by non-bonus mining MULes. Practically, this seems to be unimportant compared to wanting to mine out your most vulnerable base first. However, perhaps some tests could determine the exact gain you get. | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
The problem people are making in thinking it's better to mine out the blue to keep the gold is because they somehow think it's the same amount of minerals in a gold base as a blue base, only that the gold base somehow gives more minerals. That's not how it works. You need to think of it like this: You have 2 bases, one gold, one blue. Both are about equally mined out, so lets say the blue base has 2000 minerals, the gold base has 3000 minerals. Now, if you put enough mules to mine out the blue base immediately, you get 2000 minerals right away and you're left with SCVs on gold working to gather 3000 minerals. However, if you put the enough mules to mine out the gold (can sustain 50% more mules because of the extra 1000 minerals), you get 3000 minerals immediately, and you're left with a blue base of 2000 minerals. Putting them on the gold gave you 3000 minerals instantly, putting them on the blue gave you 2000 minerals instantly. Which option gave you MORE minerals FASTER? | ||
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Silidons
United States2813 Posts
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 17:49 Silidons wrote: i'm not sure if anyone does this (they probably do, i've never seen it mentioned exclusively) but i always put one mule on the same patch over and over again, so that i will end up with 1 less patch at that base and therefore need less scvs at that base in order to have full saturation. While that's a good tactic (you could put all mules on a far mineral and end up with a base needing less SCVs AND having closer minerals overall), I'd say it's very hard to implement properly. Remember, you have to actively remove those extra SCVs, or you're gimping yourself compared to spreading them out. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
On February 23 2012 17:44 Tobberoth wrote: God. The reason you want SCVs on gold minerals is because you mine MORE minerals FASTER that way. If you can mine out a base instantly with mules, it will always be better to mine out a gold one because it gives you MORE minerals FASTER than completely mining out the blue one, EVEN if MULEs get as much minerals per trip as on blue crystals. The problem people are making in thinking it's better to mine out the blue to keep the gold is because they somehow think it's the same amount of minerals in a gold base as a blue base, only that the gold base somehow gives more minerals. That's not how it works. You need to think of it like this: You have 2 bases, one gold, one blue. Both are about equally mined out, so lets say the blue base has 2000 minerals, the gold base has 3000 minerals. Now, if you put enough mules to mine out the blue base immediately, you get 2000 minerals right away and you're left with SCVs on gold working to gather 3000 minerals. However, if you put the enough mules to mine out the gold (can sustain 50% more mules because of the extra 1000 minerals), you get 3000 minerals immediately, and you're left with a blue base of 2000 minerals. Putting them on the gold gave you 3000 minerals instantly, putting them on the blue gave you 2000 minerals instantly. Which option gave you MORE minerals FASTER? Your example is dishonest. You compare a base with 3000 minerals and one with 2000, and you conclude that (arbitrarily) the gold is better to mine out first, when you just make the argument it's better to use mules on the base with 3000 minerals. Try the same scenario again, except now with two bases with 2000 minerals. | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On February 23 2012 18:05 Grumbels wrote: Your example is dishonest. You compare a base with 3000 minerals and one with 2000, and you conclude that (arbitrarily) the gold is better to mine out first, when you just make the argument it's better to use mules on the base with 3000 minerals. Try the same scenario again, except now with two bases with 2000 minerals. That's hardly a fair comparison though since that means the gold base is far more outmined relatively to the blue base since golds start with way more minerals. And even then, it would be scarry to put the mules on the blue since that mines out the blue base, and you're left with as many minerals in the gold base but it will be mined out faster since SCVs mine more minerals per trip. But I agree in this case, if the gold base is more mined out than the blue one, it is a good idea to put the mules on the blue one. | ||
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