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After playing a bunch of games during the beta and just foolin around with units and cheese i decided to start working on a concrete build, first i was trying to make a solid tvt build order. i really liked a 9 rax opening with a quick orbital command however after massing some games on ladder something puzzled me. i was trying to set some sort of concrete timings and figured, the minerals i have at 30 pop, should be close to or the same as the game before as long as there was no huge deviation or loss of units, but i was wrong. it was fluxuating, a lot.. so, after deciding the only thing that could be causing this is the mule i ran some tests. i came up with the mule having three possible outcomes in terms of summoning on top of a mineral patch.
1. the mule can return 270 minerals throughout its duration
2. the mule can return 240 minerals throughout its duration(the further away patches)
3. the mule can collect 270 minerals but only return 240( its duration runs out before reaching the command center )
i will represent these outcomes with circles over the mineral patch summoned on top of.
1 = green
2 = yellow
3 = red
Desert Oasis:
+ Show Spoiler +
Blistering Sands
+ Show Spoiler +
Scrap station
+ Show Spoiler +
Steppes of war
+ Show Spoiler +
Kulas ravine
+ Show Spoiler +
Lost Temple
+ Show Spoiler +
Metalopolis
+ Show Spoiler +
so obviously the yellow circles have the longest pathing for a mule to take, red being second longest and green being the shortest. this can also be applied to workers. so the income difference will be effective as soon as the game starts.
I was pretty shocked by the results i found. to my knowledge the maps seemed completely symmetrical. during a full game the positional advantage tvt on certain maps is a little bizarre. other matchups not so much of a huge factor however it will still be a noticeable mineral shortage. im curious on what the tl community thinks about this. i know positional advantages and luck based on spawn locations was in sc1 but i feel this could be an issue at high level, maybe even the lower levels.
regardless, this should help out fellow terrans out there who were just spammin mules on any mineral patch 
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i see what you're saying, but i doubt it'll have a large effect. its like the difference between mining in bw with minerals above and minerals below. you can only have 2 mules out per oc anyways, and with 2 bases you wont even be muling your main anymore.
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Sweden33723 Posts
You are awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this 
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Good work dude =DDDD Awesome research
I think its so helpful with some BO like 6 Rax / 7 Rax or fast OB
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Good stuff! Definitely something we can use to help our early game xD
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Ya good work but think i was mining from all these from start anyways. The green one are all the closer min patchs go fig ?
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Awesome! thanks for doing this :D
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Thanks cheech, you're the best practice partner in the whole world.
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On April 15 2010 11:04 majesty.k)seRapH wrote:
i see what you're saying, but i doubt it'll have a large effect. its like the difference between mining in bw with minerals above and minerals below. you can only have 2 mules out per oc anyways, and with 2 bases you wont even be muling your main anymore.
i felt the same way at first, but remember 30 minerals poof into thin air when you mule a red circled mineral and the expos have the same awkward layout for mineral returns. just seems like a burden that other races dont have to deal with and i dont see this being justified from a game design point of view. its obviously something that was overlooked during map layout. maybe this is a draw back to the mule that was intentionally created to offset the huge eco boost that a mule provides however i dont think thats the case but i will keep my mind open
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basically its telling you which patches to mine to get FULL use of your mule
quite useful imo... get 270 rather than 240
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On April 15 2010 11:16 FrozenArbiter wrote:You are awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this
yea, I noticed that sometimes a Mule will die with minerals in it's hands. That's kind of a big loss. Good to know stuff for terrans so they don't disadvantage themselves with mules.
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On April 15 2010 12:55 SarcasticOne wrote:
basically its telling you which patches to mine to get FULL use of your mule
quite useful imo... get 270 rather than 240
More importantly how not to lose 30 minerals from the red patches >.<
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I remember someone saying how in Scrap Station it was possible to snipe an expansion with high ground Tanks on one side but not on the other.
Maybe there's some bug with the distances ingame? Or maybe the tiles themselves are not symmetric?
Another thing that could be happening, is that the Mule speed is screwed up due to angle rounding errors: the game needs to translate the MULE's speed into X and Y speed with sine and cosine functions, and by doing so truncates both, lowering the unit's speed when it travels in specific angles.
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this is really good information. Thanks for doing the tests.
Its worth mentioning that going after the same "green" (usually middle) with the MULE is bad though, since you'll mine that patch out too fast and you'll have 1 less mineral patch to mine with your workers. I guess ideally you would drop a MULE on every separate single green space, then going on the reds. Hard memory game.
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nice, now i know why my mule rushes are failing. little shits won't attack anything.
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I'm quite shocked with how different the starting positions can be. Of course you won't lose a match because of that, but I want it fixed.
Thank you for your work.
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It has take ages to compile! But it is great work. From what i see is really worthy to send mule to the middle patch(obviously if it is not behind other minerals match as in metalopolis)?(as a genearl rule..i suppose it is impossible to remeber all the mineral fields behaviour for all the maps )
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I think they should edit the mule to last 1 to 1.5 seconds longer? This way it won't die en route, but not enough time to mine another?
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On April 15 2010 18:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
I think they should edit the mule to last 1 to 1.5 seconds longer? This way it won't die en route, but not enough time to mine another?
Or just make future maps only have "green" patches. Or, only red patches is an option too. Could be used conciously to balance maps too, whether you want to favor terran in that or not.
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u paint perfect circle !
thx btw.
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