• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 03:20
CEST 09:20
KST 16:20
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins EWC 202543Tournament Spotlight: FEL Cracow 202510Power Rank - Esports World Cup 202580RSL Season 1 - Final Week9[ASL19] Finals Recap: Standing Tall15
Community News
Weekly Cups (Jul 28-Aug 3): herO doubles up5LiuLi Cup - August 2025 Tournaments3[BSL 2025] H2 - Team Wars, Weeklies & SB Ladder10EWC 2025 - Replay Pack4Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced58
StarCraft 2
General
Clem Interview: "PvT is a bit insane right now" Serral wins EWC 2025 TL Team Map Contest #5: Presented by Monster Energy Would you prefer the game to be balanced around top-tier pro level or average pro level? Weekly Cups (Jul 28-Aug 3): herO doubles up
Tourneys
WardiTV Mondays $5,000 WardiTV Summer Championship 2025 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament LiuLi Cup - August 2025 Tournaments Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 485 Death from Below Mutation # 484 Magnetic Pull Mutation #239 Bad Weather Mutation # 483 Kill Bot Wars
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion How do the new Battle.net ranks translate? Which top zerg/toss will fail in qualifiers? Google Play ASL (Season 20) Announced Nobody gona talk about this year crazy qualifiers?
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL20] Online Qualifiers Day 2 Cosmonarchy Pro Showmatches [ASL20] Online Qualifiers Day 1
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers [G] Mineral Boosting Muta micro map competition Does 1 second matter in StarCraft?
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Total Annihilation Server - TAForever Beyond All Reason [MMORPG] Tree of Savior (Successor of Ragnarok)
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Bitcoin discussion thread 9/11 Anniversary
Fan Clubs
INnoVation Fan Club SKT1 Classic Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Anime Discussion Thread [\m/] Heavy Metal Thread Korean Music Discussion
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Gtx660 graphics card replacement Installation of Windows 10 suck at "just a moment" Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
TeamLiquid Team Shirt On Sale The Automated Ban List
Blogs
[Girl blog} My fema…
artosisisthebest
Sharpening the Filtration…
frozenclaw
ASL S20 English Commentary…
namkraft
The Link Between Fitness and…
TrAiDoS
momentary artworks from des…
tankgirl
from making sc maps to makin…
Husyelt
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 732 users

[q] Cost of worker loss compared to...

Forum Index > Brood War Strategy
Post a Reply
1 2 3 Next All
DeepGreen
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
United States175 Posts
November 02 2008 17:25 GMT
#1
I was wondering if somebody smarter than me could tell me what the cost of losing a probe is to an early game harass. Obviously the probe costs 50 minerals, but if a zealot snipes one (let's say when you have 15 probes, just for simplicity's sake...clearly 1 probe matters less when you've got 4 base saturated.), you also lose mining time. I'm assuming then, this number will be a fraction. How many minerals do you actually lose if you lose a probe in the early game?
So I told him your car was like that when I got here and as for your grandmother she shouldnt have mouthed off like that
SiegeTanksandBlueGoo
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
China685 Posts
November 02 2008 17:29 GMT
#2
Well, you see, you have to differentiate the curves of the probe and integrate the resulting function to get the inverse of the reciprocal of the third derivative of the line tangent to the answer.
What does the scouter say about his macro level? It's Over 9000 minerals!
rkarhu
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
Finland570 Posts
November 02 2008 17:42 GMT
#3
The answer to your question and all things in life is 42.
Durak
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Canada3684 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-11-02 17:53:47
November 02 2008 17:51 GMT
#4
I suppose you'd need to calculate how many extra minerals/minute you'd be gaining if that probe was mining for the amount of time it's gone. However, that's really hard to do because you're constantly making probes where each has slightly less impact because your minerals are saturated. I don't think anyone has actually bothered to think about it that much but suffice to say it's going to have some impact. Therefore everyone says 50 minerals + mining time.

Edit: Crap, you weren't talking about using it to scout :D. I suppose you could think of it as 50 minerals + the mining it could have been doing for the rest of the game.
Avidkeystamper
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
United States8552 Posts
November 02 2008 17:52 GMT
#5
I would think about 10 seconds.
Jaedong
Xeofreestyler
Profile Blog Joined June 2005
Belgium6771 Posts
November 02 2008 17:55 GMT
#6
I'm pretty sure somebody made an article about this once
after a series where bisu used dts if im not mistaken!
Graphics
freelander
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
Hungary4707 Posts
November 02 2008 17:57 GMT
#7
On November 03 2008 02:25 DeepGreen wrote:
I was wondering if somebody smarter than me could tell me what the cost of losing a probe is to an early game harass. Obviously the probe costs 50 minerals, but if a zealot snipes one (let's say when you have 15 probes, just for simplicity's sake...clearly 1 probe matters less when you've got 4 base saturated.), you also lose mining time. I'm assuming then, this number will be a fraction. How many minerals do you actually lose if you lose a probe in the early game?


If a zealot snipes one of your a probe, and in that moment that zealot also dies, you are at 50 mineral advantage. Though this is turning into a disadvantage quite fast, because of your opponent's extra probe. 50 mineral is like 6.25 mining circle for his extra probe and after that he is gaining advantage I think. This was very rough estimation, it assumed that yours and your opponent's probelines weren't saturated. If they are, it is less disadvantage.

I don't know exact numbers but one mining cycle is like 15 seconds, so you are losing ~0.5 mineral per second if you lost a worker early game (e.g. losing a building scv ) until your worker/patch ratio goes above 1.5-2, where it gets saturated.
And all is illuminated.
micronesia
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States24682 Posts
November 02 2008 18:03 GMT
#8
It's nearly impossible to come up with a proper analysis of the effects of sniping individual probes early in the game on the rest of the game. However, experienced players can make judgment calls pretty easily.

In pvp, if you harass with 1 zealot and 1 probe, you are obviously way ahead if you snipe 3+ probes. What about 2 probes? 1? Obviously you are behind if you snipe 0. Assume you lose the zealot and scouting probe. How do you decide who ended up ahead?
ModeratorThere are animal crackers for people and there are people crackers for animals.
KlaCkoN
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Sweden1661 Posts
November 02 2008 18:08 GMT
#9
Making decisions such as whether or not to sacrifice units for enemy workers, how many and when is one of the features that heavily rewards the experienced player. A very difficult one as well in my oppinion sorry that I cannot give a proper answer.
"Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders ... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
megastarcraft20
Profile Joined September 2008
United States74 Posts
November 02 2008 18:09 GMT
#10
On November 03 2008 02:42 rkarhu wrote:
The answer to your question and all things in life is 42.

Correct. Even the answer to " How many chucks could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? " is 42.
freelander
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
Hungary4707 Posts
November 02 2008 18:21 GMT
#11
On November 03 2008 03:03 micronesia wrote:
It's nearly impossible to come up with a proper analysis of the effects of sniping individual probes early in the game on the rest of the game. However, experienced players can make judgment calls pretty easily.

In pvp, if you harass with 1 zealot and 1 probe, you are obviously way ahead if you snipe 3+ probes. What about 2 probes? 1? Obviously you are behind if you snipe 0. Assume you lose the zealot and scouting probe. How do you decide who ended up ahead?


If you don't count fighting units:
To be ahead, obviously you have to kill more workers than the number of your harassing worker.

If you does count them:
Theoretically, in the long run any worker loss hurts you much more than unit loss, because the worker production is being much more limited than unit production AND your saturation comes later.
I saw a build made on this fact:
In 2-3 years old Nal_rA PVP blizzcon matches!
Look for the replays. He had a build on that 2 players map, where the guys spawn at bottom left-top right. I forgot the name of the map. He sent an early probe, one gate proxy, zealot harassment constantly. He usually sniped 1.5 probe with every zealot he sent, and meanwhile teched to standard 2 gate goon with reaver (without cutting probes, very important).

But in practice, you have to take into consideration the current value of the harassing units, that's quite hard. (e.g slow zealots are worth less and less, first goon is worth a lot)
And all is illuminated.
SiegeTanksandBlueGoo
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
China685 Posts
November 02 2008 18:48 GMT
#12
Well actually since the efficiency of every worker decreases as you make more, I'm pretty sure you need some calculus to do this. I'll get on it once second semester rolls around or my college EA decision get back.
What does the scouter say about his macro level? It's Over 9000 minerals!
micronesia
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States24682 Posts
November 02 2008 18:53 GMT
#13
On November 03 2008 03:48 SiegeTanksandBlueGoo wrote:
Well actually since the efficiency of every worker decreases as you make more, I'm pretty sure you need some calculus to do this. I'll get on it once second semester rolls around or my college EA decision get back.

It's not that simple. This is a combination of several fields of mathematics at once, combined with a tricky model.
ModeratorThere are animal crackers for people and there are people crackers for animals.
x89titan
Profile Blog Joined April 2007
Philippines1130 Posts
November 02 2008 18:59 GMT
#14
you gota think in economic losses and gains. cost = implicit cost + explicit cost. implicit cost is your opportunity cost and explicit cost is the actual money lost/spent. so if you had say 10 probes and 1 probe dies and your opponent still has his 10, thats 50+(8 x mins mined during a certain amt of time) = cost, and if hes cheesing you, every min and probe counts. it depends on the severity of the situation.this doesnt count for emotions. if you overracted, youd think youve lost more than you think, vice versa.
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul, when at the cross the Savior made me whole
x89titan
Profile Blog Joined April 2007
Philippines1130 Posts
November 02 2008 19:02 GMT
#15
On November 03 2008 03:53 micronesia wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 03 2008 03:48 SiegeTanksandBlueGoo wrote:
Well actually since the efficiency of every worker decreases as you make more, I'm pretty sure you need some calculus to do this. I'll get on it once second semester rolls around or my college EA decision get back.

It's not that simple. This is a combination of several fields of mathematics at once, combined with a tricky model.


its called the law of diminishing returns.
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul, when at the cross the Savior made me whole
micronesia
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States24682 Posts
November 02 2008 19:02 GMT
#16
On November 03 2008 04:02 x89titan wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 03 2008 03:53 micronesia wrote:
On November 03 2008 03:48 SiegeTanksandBlueGoo wrote:
Well actually since the efficiency of every worker decreases as you make more, I'm pretty sure you need some calculus to do this. I'll get on it once second semester rolls around or my college EA decision get back.

It's not that simple. This is a combination of several fields of mathematics at once, combined with a tricky model.


its called the law of diminishing returns.

No, it's called <several things including the law of diminishing returns as one part of it>
ModeratorThere are animal crackers for people and there are people crackers for animals.
hiroxx
Profile Joined July 2008
Ireland115 Posts
November 02 2008 19:17 GMT
#17
honestly - who cares?
when yoü aim for Perfection yoü discover it's a Moving target.
GHOSTCLAW
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
United States17042 Posts
November 02 2008 19:20 GMT
#18
The strict answer isn't very straightforward at all, as it requires a heck of a lot of math and you need to look at many different econ factors in the game. The good news is that I suppose you could actually calculate it if you decided to, as you know everything, so it should be a closed form solution.

Rough cut though, you can estimate that every probe killed in the first 5 minutes is worth double the price (100 mins), in the same way that you can assume that gas is worth 3x minerals.

The figures above are kinda sorta random, but it lets you establish even a "reasonable guess".

As freelander pointed out, you actually don't care how much every probe costs, but you care about the difference in mining time; Aka how much is your opponent getting ahead with each probe he kills. If you kill the same amount of probes that he kills, your life is much better.
PhotographerLiquipedia. Drop me a pm if you've got questions/need help.
DeepGreen
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
United States175 Posts
November 02 2008 19:44 GMT
#19
On November 03 2008 04:20 waterGHOSTCLAWdragon wrote:


As freelander pointed out, you actually don't care how much every probe costs, but you care about the difference in mining time; Aka how much is your opponent getting ahead with each probe he kills. If you kill the same amount of probes that he kills, your life is much better.



Yeah, I'm curious to see just how close 1 probe kill early on comes to being worth the cost of a zealot.
So I told him your car was like that when I got here and as for your grandmother she shouldnt have mouthed off like that
GHOSTCLAW
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
United States17042 Posts
November 02 2008 20:06 GMT
#20
On November 03 2008 04:44 DeepGreen wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 03 2008 04:20 waterGHOSTCLAWdragon wrote:


As freelander pointed out, you actually don't care how much every probe costs, but you care about the difference in mining time; Aka how much is your opponent getting ahead with each probe he kills. If you kill the same amount of probes that he kills, your life is much better.



Yeah, I'm curious to see just how close 1 probe kill early on comes to being worth the cost of a zealot.


depends at what point in the game is the easy answer. I believe that's a poorly phrased question...
PhotographerLiquipedia. Drop me a pm if you've got questions/need help.
1 2 3 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 3h 40m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
ProTech20
StarCraft: Brood War
Rain 6360
ggaemo 2338
Zeus 799
Backho 546
Larva 306
Leta 193
PianO 138
Nal_rA 95
Aegong 45
Noble 14
[ Show more ]
ivOry 8
Dota 2
BananaSlamJamma191
XcaliburYe104
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K896
allub32
Other Games
summit1g6541
Fnx 2643
singsing739
Tasteless202
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick781
StarCraft: Brood War
UltimateBattle 75
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• davetesta34
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Rush1672
• Stunt243
• HappyZerGling149
Other Games
• Scarra1215
Upcoming Events
WardiTV Summer Champion…
3h 40m
Stormgate Nexus
6h 40m
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
8h 40m
The PondCast
1d 2h
WardiTV Summer Champion…
1d 3h
Replay Cast
1d 16h
LiuLi Cup
2 days
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
2 days
RSL Revival
2 days
RSL Revival
3 days
[ Show More ]
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
3 days
CSO Cup
3 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
4 days
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
4 days
Wardi Open
5 days
RotterdaM Event
5 days
RSL Revival
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

ASL Season 20: Qualifier #2
FEL Cracow 2025
CC Div. A S7

Ongoing

Copa Latinoamericana 4
Jiahua Invitational
BSL 20 Team Wars
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 3
BSL 21 Qualifiers
HCC Europe
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025

Upcoming

ASL Season 20
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
BSL Season 21
BSL 21 Team A
RSL Revival: Season 2
Maestros of the Game
SEL Season 2 Championship
WardiTV Summer 2025
uThermal 2v2 Main Event
MESA Nomadic Masters Fall
Thunderpick World Champ.
CS Asia Championships 2025
Roobet Cup 2025
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.