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Bad Habits from Starcraft 1: Stop Spamming Workers

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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Zelniq
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
United States7166 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-02-24 21:40:10
February 20 2010 22:39 GMT
#1
a problem several starcraft 1 players will have will be breaking their habits and intuition based from their sc1 knowledge. a lot of SC1 knowledge is ofc very helpful in sc2, but some of it will hurt

the main one I can think of is:

in SC2, 2 workers per mineral field gives you almost complete saturation. According to some replies in this thread, it's about 75% of full saturation 3 workers per patch gives you 100% saturation. *of course you want to have extra workers to transfer when you make expansions, the point is that the worker ai has improved greatly and 2 workers per patch in SC2 is way better than 2 workers per patch in Brood War.

---
EDIT:
Let me give an example of how players can sometimes think a unit is worse than it actually is:
New zerg players encounter fast 2 or 3 gate zealot rushes, tried using zerglings but they get demolished. They incorrectly come to the conclusion that zerglings suck vs zealots, then they discover roaches and how hard they counter zealots. In reality, in all my tests, speed zerglings beat zealots in terms of equal cost every time, the problem with going zerglings vs a fast 2 or 3 gate rush is that they can outproduce you on zerglings, zerglings are too cheap to spend all your minerals on with just 1 hatch, even with Spawn Larvae. Proton Charge of course helps the rush quite a bit. In my experience, protoss has no hard counter to zerglings before Colossus, which decimate them like nothing else of course. but by then you should have mutalisks which completely wreck colossuses. The point here is that players need to carefully analyze and think things through before quickly judging "oh this sucks vs this or I can't do this because of that."
__

If anyone else has any thoughts of habits or tendencies people have that aren't helpful in SC2, please post them here

a few zerg-specific ones I can think of that people probably figured out quickly is:

Don't spam hatcheries, get used to using spawn larvae from queen instead.

melee units like zerglings have improved significantly because of how closely tight they can fit together, being able to surround units much better. don't underestimate them.

try to spread creep as much as you can, (creep tumors are excellent for this, as are overlords) the speed boost is very significant and they help give map control/vision.
ModeratorBlame yourself or God
silencefc
Profile Blog Joined October 2008
United States875 Posts
February 20 2010 22:41 GMT
#2
Even if you reach saturation, you should still make workers for maynarding to expansions.

However, I've ran into people making 40+ workers for one base play and 50+ for two.
Slice like a goddamn hammer.
geno
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States1404 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-02-20 22:42:38
February 20 2010 22:42 GMT
#3
Its still semi-useful to get extra workers if only to be able to transfer a lot of them to your next expo and have it up and running quickly.

edit: beaten!
lamarine
Profile Joined January 2003
591 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-02-20 22:44:03
February 20 2010 22:43 GMT
#4
well u have to build more workers if u plan to expand and want expansion to work to its fullest right away...

edit: beaten x2 :D
So... BW is back
Tsagacity
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
United States2124 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-02-20 22:44:53
February 20 2010 22:44 GMT
#5
On February 21 2010 07:41 silencefc wrote:
Even if you reach saturation, you should still make workers for maynarding to expansions.

However, I've ran into people making 40+ workers for one base play and 50+ for two.
I think Zelniq is zerg, in which case you really don't need an advance worker count for maynarding because you can saturate in moments with spawn larvae. It probably deserves an asterisk though
"Everyone worse than me at video games is a noob. Everyone better than me doesn't have a life."
ghrur
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States3786 Posts
February 20 2010 22:46 GMT
#6
Yeah, about that creep thing, I hardly ever see Zergs use it. =/ It doesn't even cost anything does it? That's definitely a good tip.
darkness overpowering
peidongyang
Profile Joined January 2009
Canada2084 Posts
February 20 2010 22:52 GMT
#7
As many people have been saying, it seems that wc3 players will be better off than sc players in sc2.

Notable human players.
the throws never bothered me anyway
Deathfate
Profile Joined November 2008
Spain555 Posts
February 20 2010 22:56 GMT
#8
People gets the pool way early vs protoss, just because you have 200 minerals doesnt mean that you need the pool that early, you can make it 3 drones later and thats like +33 minerals or so which allow you to expand faster...
Feel the power of the zerg swarm.
Urth
Profile Blog Joined November 2007
United States1256 Posts
February 20 2010 22:57 GMT
#9
On February 21 2010 07:52 peidongyang wrote:
As many people have been saying, it seems that wc3 players will be better off than sc players in sc2.

Notable human players.

soooo wrong haha
BY.HERO FIGHTING!!!!
NarutO
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
Germany18839 Posts
February 20 2010 23:16 GMT
#10
I already eco-cut from time to time, but 2 scvs / mineral patch is not enough unless you don't want to expand..
CommentatorPolt | MMA | Jjakji | BoxeR | NaDa | MVP | MKP ... truly inspiring.
Monokeros
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
United States2493 Posts
February 20 2010 23:18 GMT
#11
I still try to use f buttons from time to time. Its a shame they were taken out.
Keep the Dream Alive twitch.tv/monokerros
d3_crescentia
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States4054 Posts
February 20 2010 23:21 GMT
#12
What testers have to figure out is whether or not making more than 2x workers per patch still gives you enough return to justify spending that money (and what number of workers this occurs at) so transferring is efficient.
once, not long ago, there was a moon here
3FFA
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States3931 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-02-20 23:35:48
February 20 2010 23:35 GMT
#13
You should only stop and not maynard if you're zerg or terran, as terran you have to have 18-19 per base's mineral patches so that your special worker guy(I always forget his name since I don't play terran) can actually be of some help to you.
"As long as it comes from a pure place and from a honest place, you know, you can write whatever you want."
geno
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States1404 Posts
February 20 2010 23:40 GMT
#14
I did a quick test using probes. Mined for three minutes at various probe counts (clicked all probes on middle mineral patch and started timer the second the mining animation on that patch began - hit S on all when the timer hit zero). Here's the results:

+ Show Spoiler +
16 probes: 998 -> 3768 = 2770 minerals gathered = 15.388888888 per second
20 probes: 10513 -> 13588 = 3075 minerals gathered = 17.083333333 per second
24 probes: 7143 -> 10483 = 3340 minerals gathered = 18.555555555 per second
51 probes: 3768 -> 7103 = 3335 minerals gathered = 18.527777777 per second


So yes, worker AI is amazingly better. Over 16 and the effects of adding additional probes drops fairly quickly. When you hit 24 (3 probes per patch) it stops COMPLETELY. There was even slightly more mined with my 24 probe run than my 51 probe run, I would be convinced that doing this test over and over would show they mine exactly the same. So think about it this way: Every probe you build and throw on minerals after 24 is doing absolutely nothing. If you are adding them because you plan on expanding, you must remember that they are just wasted minerals until the moment that expansion comes up. If you could get away with it, it'd even be better to long distance mine than add a 25th probe onto your main.
Jyvblamo
Profile Blog Joined June 2006
Canada13788 Posts
February 20 2010 23:42 GMT
#15
On February 21 2010 08:35 3FFA wrote:
You should only stop and not maynard if you're zerg or terran, as terran you have to have 18-19 per base's mineral patches so that your special worker guy(I always forget his name since I don't play terran) can actually be of some help to you.

The MULE can mine a mineral patch that is already being mined by an SCV.
mmp
Profile Blog Joined April 2009
United States2130 Posts
February 20 2010 23:49 GMT
#16
Making a very sturdy wall, only to have blinked units and colossi walk right over the cliff and pwn your tanks.

Worker saturation is about 5-10 units lower for minerals, but higher for the double gas (apparently gas demand is higher in SC2).

Trying to fast expand on minimal units is a bad idea without scouting first. Unless 1-base play is truly the strongest (which I doubt for some matchups), most of your opponents will be doing all-in builds or are hyper-aggressive.
I (λ (foo) (and (<3 foo) ( T_T foo) (RAGE foo) )) Starcraft
Ziph
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
Netherlands970 Posts
February 21 2010 00:41 GMT
#17
I did the test for protoss. Did it in like 10minutes with a friend me building probes he as observer checking my income / harvesters.

Results:

12Probes: 457-533
16Probes: 629-686
20Probes: 725-781
22Probes: 743-819
+24Probes: 762-838+
26Probes: 762-838
30Probes: 781-857
34Probes: 781-857

Posted this 3 days ago but got ignored '-.-
Starcraft 2 - Beta
d3_crescentia
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States4054 Posts
February 21 2010 00:45 GMT
#18
On February 21 2010 09:41 Ziph wrote:
I did the test for protoss. Did it in like 10minutes with a friend me building probes he as observer checking my income / harvesters.

Results:

12Probes: 457-533
16Probes: 629-686
20Probes: 725-781
22Probes: 743-819
+24Probes: 762-838+
26Probes: 762-838
30Probes: 781-857
34Probes: 781-857

Posted this 3 days ago but got ignored '-.-

This needs more attention (and information - how many patches? what do the numbers mean? did you stop at 34?)
once, not long ago, there was a moon here
Zeke50100
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States2220 Posts
February 21 2010 01:02 GMT
#19
With 8 patches at each base (this seems to be standard), you can have 16 workers, meaning you have 2 workers every patch.

If you add a third worker for every patch, you will take away that tiny, miniscule time-gap between when your mining worker gets off the patch and your incoming worker grabs the patch. If you have a third worker, it will stay at the patch and immediately grab it once the mining worker leaves.

That's why resourcing doesn't go any higher after 24 workers at a base. Basically, you can have up to 3 workers per patch without wasting any minerals.

In the end, you still only make like 200 extra minerals in the long run - and I mean the long run. You're better off going with 16 workers, while also stocking up additional workers if you're meaning to expand.
DefMatrixUltra
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Canada1992 Posts
February 21 2010 01:03 GMT
#20
On February 21 2010 07:39 Zelniq wrote:
a problem several starcraft 1 players will have will be breaking their habits and intuition based from their sc1 knowledge. a lot of SC1 knowledge is ofc very helpful in sc2, but some of it will hurt

the main one I can think of is:

in SC2, you should never go past 2 workers per mineral field. that's the maximum amount of gathering you can get. *of course you want to have extra workers to transfer to new expansions, but not for mining out a base* This is because of the improved A.I. lack of wandering around looking for mineral patches. I figured this is not something a lot of players will realize on their own.

---
If anyone else has any thoughts of habits or tendencies people have that aren't helpful in SC2, please post them here

a few zerg-specific ones I can think of that people probably figured out quickly is:

Don't spam hatcheries, get used to using spawn larvae from queen instead.

melee units like zerglings have improved significantly because of how closely tight they can fit together, being able to surround units much better. don't underestimate them.

try to spread creep as much as you can, (creep tumors are excellent for this, as are overlords) the speed boost is very significant and they help give map control/vision.


In addition to this, I've also noticed the following very important difference:

Zerglings can chase retreating units very effectively and get in potshots on them. So retreating from Zerglings is gonna give them free hits. This is much unlike SC1 where retreating units caused Zerglings to wig out pretty badly, making them effectively do no damage except to stragglers.
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