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Often times, in order to defend an expansion against runbys or harassment, or to defend any base, we find ourselves placing cannons between the Nexus and our mineral lines. Sometimes, it looks like our probes need to travel a non-trivial amount to get around those things. I wonder - how much are we losing in mineral collection rate when we do this?
Experiment
I played 2 games on Slag Pits, mining minerals with 16 workers and gas with 6, making sure that each patch was mined by exactly 2 workers. One game, I placed three cannons in the mineral lines as shown below, with one space between each cannon. The other game I did not.
![[image loading]](http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m579/Treehead280/Screenshot2011-03-0220_31_17.jpg)
Over a 10 minute time period, how much fewer minerals and gas were collected by the workers who needed to travel around the cannons? If it is a significant amount, would it be more cost effective in the long term to allow the probes to mine freely and to simply place additional cannons?
Results
Mineral Line without Cannons (note that these closely compare with the gathering rate listed on the liquipedia)
6715 minerals, 2332 gas
Mineral Line with Cannons
6560 minerals, 2324 gas
Difference
155 minerals, 8 gas
Conclusions
The cannons above impeded mineral collection rate by 2.3% and gas collection rate by 0.3% overall. If one additional cannon must be placed to provide the same defensive benefit as the three cannons depicted above, the placement of that cannon will be a net loss until nearly 10 minutes later.
In my opinion, the cannons should be placed in your mineral line unless you have a very, very good reason not to - as they provide almost no impingement to the collection of resources while being perfectly situated to defend both probes and nexus sniping. At the very least, consider the above as the tradeoff for doing so, and use this knowledge when deciding how to set up your expansions, or defend your main while defending expansions with your army.
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very nice, a thread with data!
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I'm assuming this goes for the spinecrawler/sporecrawler as well?
I couldn't imagine drones mining different. if not I'm in the habit of putting defensive structures out of it because I don't want to lose efficiency, but if it means not dieing to harassment I may alter my view on the subject.
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That's it? Woah! I thought it would be like 10% or more! Wow, totally putting turrets and cannons in mineral line from now on.
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I'd say that smaking sure your probes don't die, beats losing 155 minerals over 10 minutes, since f=if you didn't had those cannons there, you could lose alot more than 155 minerals in mining time and probes lost.
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why would you do it in the first place at the start of a game?
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I assume that this would be applicable to all races with 2x2 defensive structures, perhaps most so for Terran, because it makes repairing easier.
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On March 03 2011 12:14 Ratel wrote:
why would you do it in the first place at the start of a game?
To collect data. This was in a game with no opponent.
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cool. I build them in my mineral line usually. I knew there was somewhat of a loss, but now I see that it is clearly worth it.
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Fantastic post! Short and to the point, and presents some clear data. Thanks OP!
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Always wondered this. Thanks!
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Nice work, the results were not what i expected them to be. I will defiantly now be more receptive to placing cannons there. Obviously not a ton of cannons but two or three should get the job done. I always feel like my cannons are a waste when i place them around my minerals and nexus because they can't cover each other this info help me to justify to myself that the cost of this might be worth the benefit of keeping cannons and probes alive longer until my other units arrive to help.
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On March 03 2011 12:16 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2011 12:14 Ratel wrote:
why would you do it in the first place at the start of a game? To collect data. This was in a game with no opponent.
No need to lie, we know you were preparing for a 6pool : /
But to be serious, good job in collecting this data. I love to put static D in my mineral line and I'm now glad to know it does not effect mining rate in any type of significant way.
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Wow this is a pretty cool thread. Good to know that you really aren't doing terrible terrible damage to your economy by putting cannons in your mineral lines.
It would be nice have a comparison between 24+ probes, because I'm sure any Toss that doesn't have terrible macro has encountered situations where they have that many probes in a single mineral line. I am assuming the % of minerals lost would be even less, but maybe my logic is flawed somehow.
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I'm going to disagree with the gas collection, as 8 is a single trip- IE one trip a probe barely made it in, the other one the probe did not. Given that number, and the fact that the cannons were in no way near the gas line, I'd throw out the gas number as a piece of data, or simply say no difference.
The mineral number, however, I like. Good job on that ^_^
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I'm assuming that this is with space in between cannons, right? Iirc, putting 2 cannons directly next to each other impedes even more.
But yeah, this is some pretty useful stuff. Glad to know that I can put cannons in the mineral line without impeding my resource gathering by too much.
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Cool. I have always put cannons in my mineral line, anyways.
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On March 03 2011 12:20 Geovu wrote:
Wow this is a pretty cool thread. Good to know that you really aren't doing terrible terrible damage to your economy by putting cannons in your mineral lines.
It would be nice have a comparison between 24+ probes, because I'm sure any Toss that doesn't have terrible macro has encountered situations where they have that many probes in a single mineral line. I am assuming the % of minerals lost would be even less, but maybe my logic is flawed somehow.
I'd think the % would be less, yeah. Of course, if you could get them to stay on the node, the lost minerals would be 0, since it takes far longer to mine than it does to get to the nexus from the patch or to the patch from the nexus moving around the cannon.
On March 03 2011 12:23 blahman3344 wrote:
I'm assuming that this is with space in between cannons, right? Iirc, putting 2 cannons directly next to each other impedes even more.
But yeah, this is some pretty useful stuff. Glad to know that I can put cannons in the mineral line without impeding my resource gathering by too much.
Yes, this is placing one space between each cannon. In theory, you could completely block off part of the Nexus if you didn't place one space between cannons, which would be bad.
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EPT
