Hi, I'm back with another analysis, now about worker pairing. This time it is a short one. The question about worker micro is how big an advantage you can get, to ultimately decide if it is worth at all. Here is what I found.
TL;DR: Worker pairing, in the best case, can provide an extra 50 minerals early in the game, but it is likely that it will be less. This is a completely free 50 minerals, though, without any drawback. In higher leagues, it may actually matter a little bit, and it should not be a problem managing.
I'm looking forward to your opinions, criticisms, etc.
Worker pairing is pretty important. The extra 50 minerals allows you to get your first building 6~10 seconds earlier which is huge for holding off early cheese.
When you see pros worker stack, they don't always force workers onto a close mineral patch because like you said there is a downtime. Instead they let the rallied worker mine from a far mineral patch for the first 1 or 2 waves and then force them onto a closer mineral patch for less downtime.
Nice! It may seem small, but if you pair your workers at the start that's the difference of dropping your barracks at 1:34 instead of 1:40, which results in a faster OC etc etc
Except when I try to pair them they fuck off after 2 or so successful trips. Also sometimes I misclick and send all my miners to one patch and ruin all my pairings. Lol.
Sometimes it's just such a pain to pair them. Even when it seems they are perfectly paired (same interval between gathering minerals from both workers), one will suddenly "catch up" to the other and wander away for no apparent reason...
On August 07 2014 22:35 loft wrote: Pretty awesome work Sholip! Answering those questions people never dared to test.
How do you make the workers stay paired?
I will pair them (by spam clicking the mineral till it catches) and then they sometimes break away after 2 runs.
Keeping them paired is one of the hardest parts about it because if you just put the worker from the base onto it and it starts mining asap it will end up leaving in a few runs.
HOWEVER, if you start mining the side of the mineral patch first (Or the corner, i can't remember exactly) then it lines it up perfectly from the quarter second extra it needs to travel back initially for the 2 to stay mining constantly.
EDIT: there are also closer and further mineral patches as in not all close mineral patches are the same distance. This causes some issues as well with the pairing so be on the look out for that :3
My stargate build in PvP actually requires it for the timings: with worker pairing I can cut no probes and get my cyber core started exactly on time, without it my cyber core is slightly late and I have to cut a probe for a short while.
On August 07 2014 22:35 loft wrote: How do you make the workers stay paired? I will pair them (by spam clicking the mineral till it catches) and then they sometimes break away after 2 runs.
Well, I rarely do (gold league ftw ), but when so, I do the same. I think there is some better method, but I can't remember what it is. I, too, noticed that, on particular maps, they sometimes do "break away". I don't know why that is, though.
Jakatak did a video on this on how to keep them paired, I'm on mobile so I can't link it but I'm sure if someone searched for 30 seconds they could find it
From what I gather it's just because the human clicking speed doesn't get it always within the perfect pairing range so the desync after not many returns.
edit:slow
edit: I enjoy your work OP, I would be interested to know how effective worker mineral harass is (the bit where your opponent click on your mineral patch lots with their worker stopping you from mining and if that's more effective than just sending the worker home asap considering they have to pull a worker or two to deal with it. My other thing is how many SCV's make effective repairing on buildings when burning and not, because keeping one not mining for ages or lots not mining for one trip could make a difference It must do when burning?
On August 07 2014 23:00 DinoMight wrote: Except when I try to pair them they fuck off after 2 or so successful trips. Also sometimes I misclick and send all my miners to one patch and ruin all my pairings. Lol.
awesome work indeed. i dont agree with your last sentence though: "why then do they occassionally pick up 5 minerals while scouting, but dont bother to get 50 minerals for free?"
afaik the pickup up minerals of scouting workers have the main purpose of allowing mineral glitching, which might be the difference between losing and saving the scout.
btw is there any KOREAN pro that doesnt stack his workers?
On August 08 2014 00:10 Black Gun wrote: awesome work indeed. i dont agree with your last sentence though: "why then do they occassionally pick up 5 minerals while scouting, but dont bother to get 50 minerals for free?"
afaik the pickup up minerals of scouting workers have the main purpose of allowing mineral glitching, which might be the difference between losing and saving the scout.
btw is there any KOREAN pro that doesnt stack his workers?
You will prob get kicked out of the house for not stacking your workers .
50 minerals so early is potentially exponential, no? The extra worker which can be produced allows for another worker to be produced earlier, etc. etc.
Another thing that should be pointed out is that the ai does not distribute the workers evenly. In my games, I frequently see one patch with 3 workers and another patch with only 1. According to the tables, a worker that is send to a patch with two workers already instead of a patch with only one worker generates a loss of 15-33 minerals per minute, which is actually surprising, I thought it would be much more.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/04U0e48.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/w5jULME.jpg)
