The Wealth of the Nations: the mineral report

joinker

China6 Posts

May 27 2005 23:49 GMT

—— A speed test about the three races’ mining

------written by Will Winters
-----translated by MeccaMarine
《The wealth of the nations》is an Adam Smith’s book about economics which released in 1776, and it supply the academic basement to the American construction on economy system. It even played a better role in the history than Marx’s《Capital》. I used the name of Smith’s book to entitle the study about the economics in broodwar. May Mr. smith be not to ask me for the copyright.
The fluctuations of the capital margin as well as the fluctuation of the laboRage due to the fluctuation of the wealth of the society, but the wealth have far different influences on the two.
----------Adam Smith
The fluctuations of the number of the army as well as the fluctuations of the number of the farmers (SCV, Probe and Drone) due to the number of the minerals, but it have different influences on the two. The farmers are most important when you are out of money, yet they are rubbish if you tape “show me the money”. ^.^
---------Will Winters
Now let’s go to the point. It is believed that the protoss has the fastest speed on mining and Terran has the most efficiency on getting gas; we often see that the protoss use up the minerals of its first base. That’s why? I do some experiments to find the reason.
1. Get the farmers closest to their base with a mineral.(typing C and S continuously to get that as the picture.) Then chose the three and typing C, they will move at the same time, by which we can observe the speed.

Two rounds after, we can see the difference.

We can see that the probe surpass the drone and SCV all the directions. And the probes have the difference in the four directions themselves as the pictures.

The above is the fastest, the left follows, then the under and the right.(I think that’s why the lost temple made the difference on the distance from the mineral to the base..)
Maybe you have been confused why the probe is fastest and why there are differences on each direction. Originally, I thought that when the SCV and Drone return the mineral to the base, they must touch the base, but the probe doesn’t have to. So I do the next experiment to prove my opinion.

Exchanging the places of the probe and the drone then began. Pay attention to their places, they are in their closest to the base, what can you see?

Yeah, that’s it!
Because protoss’ base is bigger than zerg’s.-_-! But when zerg’s base got level up, its base will be bigger; the speed will be the same.

So, level up can do good to the economy for zerg.
After that I made an other map to conSider the difference between zerg and Terran.

P still is the fastest, then the drone followed, SCV is the last.

The size of terran’s base is the same as the protoss, why it’s the slowest?
Then I do the next experiment to find the reason.

Pay attention to the SCV on the right direction. It’s closer to the base than the probe. Then typed C to let them move at the same time.

The SCV slow down while the probe is at the same speed.

So, it’s obvious that the reason is the SCV will slow down when it is near the mineral and the base. Then I further my experiment. I used 3 p bases to see whether it’s SCV’s fault.

We can see that the probe is the fastest and the drone and the SCV are at the same. So it prove my opinion that when the SCV and Drone return the mineral to the base, they must touch the base, but the probe doesn’t have to. More obviously at the picture below.

So it’s not SCV’s fault. I guess it may be the command center will give us the answer. So I used 3 command centers to test.

As what I guess, all the races’ farmers slow down when they got close to the command center.
Maybe Blizzard did this to get balance for terran’s armies are very strong. It can limit the number of the terran’s army at the beginning of a game. It’s talented enactment.
I think if you control the SCV when they are mining (move the scv to the places near to the minerals or the base then move to the point), the ‘slow down’ effect may be somehow reduced. So I further the experiment.

That’s right. It coincided with what I guessed.
There is a flaw in my experiment. That’s whether the speed of the three races’ mining is the same. So I add a mining test.
I think if we use the watches to clarify the time, it will be very difficult to see the small difference, so I work out this method to test. (Use terran’s supply to build a road let the 12 farmers mine one mineral to save time.)
Let’s see the result as the pictures show us.

We can Reach a conclusion that from a macro point of view, the speed of the three races’ mining is the same. It supplied the basic to my study.
Ok. The end. There are still many details to study, all of you can do it.
Broodwar is just a PC game, but it would show out many other kinds of meaning and value if many people participate in, it due to how u treat it. Maybe you will find that starcraft is not so simple as only a PC game for you

chrusher97

Canada806 Posts

May 27 2005 23:52 GMT

judt letting u know half the pics dont work

joinker

China6 Posts

May 28 2005 00:29 GMT

Thxs
I just posted it first then edited
In fact,there are too many pics,^^.

Jim

Sweden1965 Posts

May 28 2005 00:35 GMT

Great Job!

Mindcrime

United States6899 Posts

May 28 2005 00:42 GMT

Wow....

Excalibur_Z

United States12226 Posts

May 28 2005 00:46 GMT

Your link to the image http://www.54bb.com/upload/images/20050514/3d93a5zb/p3ywvbviithh.jpghttp://www.wfbrood.com/Article/UploadFiles/200505/20050515174812213.jpg
is dead. I presume it's a URL error.

Very good analysis. It confirms what we knew, that SCVs have the slowest acceleration, but also shows that SCVs slow down to deposit minerals. However, there are still some unanswered questions. From certain return angles, SCVs do not slow down at all when depositing minerals. This can be seen when the SCV is returning to a corner of the CC. I guess everyone has seen this phenomenon at some point but I can't verify which maps exhibit this behavior. In any case, it is still fascinating that we are learning things about this very old game even now. Thank you for your informative post!