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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?
Do you mean mineral walking by mineral glitching? If so, you are right. Also, now it occures to me that some players mine from the opponent's minerals so as to screw up their worker stacking.
I don't know any players in particular, I just remember that many a time I would watch games between high-level pro players and I would notice that one stacks their workers, and the other one does not.
Also, I checked the first game that literally came into my mind, Jaedong vs TaeJa in IEM Shenzhen semifinals. It seems to me that TaeJa didn't properly stack his SCVs in game one, but did so consistently in the following games. However, workers seemed to wander away after some time, breaking the perfect pairing.
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On August 07 2014 22:42 Wormi wrote:
i knew it wasn´t woth it for me (protoss). better chill and get flamed for 60 apm after the game.
#protosslyf
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Watching the video really enlightened me and now I am inclined to agree, I used to stack "normally" meaning my workers often bounced off pretty fast. This in turn made it bounce to another mineral patch bouncing away another worker and all that together made it feel more a waste of mine time than something that could actually give you an advantage.
Really liked the post and especially now that I've learnt how to properly do it I might incorporate it more into my play.
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On August 08 2014 00:36 tili wrote: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. dunno, that's how it works in my head 
not exactly exponential, because time is a limiting factor, but it can matter a lot. e.g. if your 15 hatch is 7 seconds earlier than the one of your opponent in zvz, it means earlier queens, earlier injects, more drones and so on. 7 seconds are HUGE at higher levels. (ofc there won't be such a big discrepancy, but still...)
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Startale Life goes 10 OL into 3 Drones, which has been proven to be less efficient than 9 OL. I guess he doesn't care, because I think it's foolish to say that a top Korean doesn't know something like that! I could be wrong, though.
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United States7483 Posts
On August 08 2014 01:31 reikai wrote:
Startale Life goes 10 OL into 3 Drones, which has been proven to be less efficient than 9 OL. I guess he doesn't care, because I think it's foolish to say that a top Korean doesn't know something like that! I could be wrong, though.
It's marginally safer against early aggression because you have the extra drone to fight with, and he knows he's good enough in longer games that he's willing to take the slight hit.
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Canada8160 Posts
Wasn't it only a 5-15 mineral hit? That IMO is marginal
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Pairing on the close patches makes a huge difference. The earlier the timing you're trying to hit the more important it is to pair them up, at least in my experience. Its a big deal when you're, say, proxying 2 rax to have the second one start at 1:55 instead of 2:04.
Ive found the best way to keep them on the patches is to start from the outermost patches and work inwards, and to keep adjusting your worker rally point. If you rally to a far patch in between two close patches, the newly spawned workers can sometimes bump and disrupt the paired workers...it only takes a little disruption to break your pairing. So keep your worker rally as far away from your paired patches as possible.
I dont start worker pairing usually until after the second trip, and I try to sync it up so that the worker I'm forcing onto a patch is one that is close by, and on the return, to avoid blowing the extra minerals I'll get by wasting more worker time than the pairing is worth.
As for the APM it takes to do this...I can hit the same early game production timings and benchmarks as a korean pro (first 3-4 minutes) averaging 20 APM or so. This is with all SCVs paired up on the close patches while my 9 supply scv (total supply, not 9th produced) is still building. Its realistically as fast as you can do it without blowing all your gains by inefficiently pairing, and I usually average waaay less than 20apm doing this.
Its always funny to me when watching replays to see my opponent blazing away with 200+ APM for the first 3 minutes doing NOTHING, while I manage to have a higher income and better build timings with 1/10 the actions. If youre one of those people who needs to "warm up" or who is so insecure that you need to spam at 200apm for the first 3 min so no one questions the size of your e-peen when they see your APM on the score screen...just relax for the first minute, and focus on pairing, then move on to your nonsense spamming. Your build can't help but be better as a result.
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The total difference in minerals is only true for terran that didn't transform to orbital right?
And did I mention gas workers and building workers..
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id just like to add my observations to this on a general game.
the minigame i like to play EVERY game on a 14/15pool opening is what time does it go down!
The earliest ive ever done a 15 pool(if supply clicks to 15) is 1.56 and i got that by NOT pairing the workers but sending them to their own mineral patches but of course letting the new drones go to their closest patch relative to their larva position.
Sometimes ive gone mass try hard and rallied all drones before the pool to the closest patches relative to the base and hit 1.57-2.05. it didnt make sense. closer patch mining is optimal right?
I found out, sometimes the pairing actually isnt efficient if you dont get the drone to latch on just as the other drone is leaving, if you get them to pair up just after the other drone arrives you lose quite a lot of time. The drone would have made the trip already if you didnt spam the click onto the patch! The closer mining is instantly negated.
This is to say, ive had much earlier pool put downs by putting each drone to their own mineral patch first, further or closer.
The game just to be clear automatically assigns to drones latch on to the patch and will jump if the position is occupied. although 16 drones on the patches is regarded as the most efficient its not the most mineral income. 3 drones on far patches and 2 drones on close is and they indefinitely lock on as you give the drone NO where to go and dont get the unlinking of the drone.
When you do this right you give the computer NO chance to jump patches as every single patch is locked. this is shown when you only have the one patch left and you have 20 drones on 1 patch . .why dont they bounce around . . because they cant!
for me and for what ive noticed over the 10000's of games ive played rallying the drones to their own patch, prioritising the closest one to the larva spawn and then the closest patch to the base THEN trying to get them to rally Just after the last drone leaves is the most efficient way to set up early game mineral collection and be consistent.
To add one more thing to this, if you spam box, double click and get it wrong, then there was never no point. i must see one top streamer a day do this at least once.
There is another little trick which is still possible and that is to shift click a point before the base and the patch to stop the deceleration of the drone to the patch, i thought they took this out with hots but to me its still there.
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i've been waiting for an analysis like this for ages, thanks so much.
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Nice research, you're work is really interesting and appreciation. Finding out small things about this game is setting we really need to do. Thanks for this.
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On August 08 2014 05:02 Yrr wrote:
The total difference in minerals is only true for terran that didn't transform to orbital right?
And did I mention gas workers and building workers..
Well let's say it's best for Protoss, shall we?
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I once lost a TvT cuz I was lacking 5 minerals for another reaper on 8-8-8 base trade T.T
Good analysis again!
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Awesome research! Your stuff is always great.
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Sick article! I do this and am frustrated when I mess up, but know I know it's not the hugest deal in the world...
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148 Posts
I can't see 50 minerals or even 7 seconds making a real difference in a game. The only difference may be in extreme cheese (7 pool, 11 11 rax, 2 gate proxy, cannon rush, etc) where games last 4 minutes long. If you're anal about timings it can have a placebo-like effect I guess?
It's not going to get you ahead in workers because you should already be making workers with 100% uptime or 95% uptime in the early game anyway. Zerg is limited by larva in the beginning so you're not going to get ahead there either.
Scouting is actually much more important, as is perfect chrono, injects, and mules.
With that said, yeah if it doesn't hurt and you've got all other aspects of the game down pat then why not?
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lol nice writeup.
My main is Z and I almost always do worker pairing.
Like you say, it is not very critical but that extra minerals really make a difference when you are going for, like, 14gas 14pool speedling expand.
I think it is useful to hone your skills if you are diamond or low masters.
On August 07 2014 22:52 TokyoGirl wrote:
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.
This.
There are little other macro tricks as Zerg, like building an extractor and then inmediately rally three drones to it (they reach as soon as the extractor finishes). Or making 1 or 2 Overlords right after you do an inject.
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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.
You just need to get them to go in at the same angle. If they aren't coming from the right direction, shift-click close to the mineral patch in-line with the already mining worker. If both probes are mining from the same spot, they'll never split up by themselves.
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On August 08 2014 10:10 GiveMeCake wrote:
I can't see 50 minerals or even 7 seconds making a real difference in a game. The only difference may be in extreme cheese (7 pool, 11 11 rax, 2 gate proxy, cannon rush, etc) where games last 4 minutes long. If you're anal about timings it can have a placebo-like effect I guess?
It's not going to get you ahead in workers because you should already be making workers with 100% uptime or 95% uptime in the early game anyway. Zerg is limited by larva in the beginning so you're not going to get ahead there either.
Scouting is actually much more important, as is perfect chrono, injects, and mules.
With that said, yeah if it doesn't hurt and you've got all other aspects of the game down pat then why not?
Below Masters being extremely precise with your timings will be extremely effective. So effective that you won't be below masters for very long at all. Even at low masters, I would expect to win a game (or gain an insurmountable advantage) with any timing I use if I I hit it correctly and don't f*** up my micro. I have won matches against players with good macro and better micro than I purely from being ~10 seconds ahead.
Of course, the longer a game goes the less 10 seconds matter, but you can get that 10 second advantage REALLY early and although this one mostly only applies to early game and taking bases, you can repeatedly grab an advantage so that you are further ahead.
EDIT: Of course, if everybody is doing it (eg: the pro level), then you won't get any advantage - but if you don't do it you will lose, which is often considered sub-optimal in Starcraft.
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EPT
