In such cases, when an alternate base is available, it may be best to send workers there if that base is not saturated to two workers per patch yet. These numbers remain valid as long as the worker is built from the base location adjacent to the mineral patches, and as long as those minerals are standard yield minerals.
For Protoss, a fully chrono boosted probe will realize its investment 6 seconds earlier, due to the reduced build time. General Recent changes Pending changes Random page. Betting Preferences. What links here. Related changes. Upload file. Special pages. Printable version. Permanent link. Page information. Browse SMW properties. See also: Resources. This section is outdated due to change of time scale in Legacy of the Void Help us by revising it. Resources Buildings Units Upgrades Attributes.
Categories : Outdated pages Game Theory. Blizzard did a good job in making StarCraft II more exciting by increasing the pace. But as I argued in this article, faster does not equate to better.
The change to the number of starting workers essentially increases the mechanics ceiling and dampens the strategic complexity. This shift in focus affects all stakeholders of the game.
Casual players, who already have relatively poor mechanics, find StarCraft II even less pleasant with the transition to LotV. I asked a number of friends who casually enjoy StarCraft II which expansion do they like to play the most.
No one said LotV. They do not like LotV, because:. The first reason is perhaps something Blizzard regretted. I remember reading game designers of other games saying they avoid redesigning the existing heroes, cards, and whatnot, because they want returning players to easily pick up the game again.
The second and third reasons echo my criticism. I believe there is a fourth one, and that is they cannot copy their favourite proplayers like they did in HotS. People like to imitate their favourite players one way or another , and every marketer understands this.
In NBA for example, Stephen Curry is one of the most marketable players, because his key skill sets of shooting, handling, and passing do not require him to be big, fast, and strong. The heightened emphasis on mechanics in LotV creates an unbridgeable skill gap between fans and pros.
The emphasis on mechanics over strategy could also affect the pro players. Older players could remain competitive by compensating their deteriorating mechanics with superior strategies.
Understanding and planning should improve with experience, but these qualities are less valuable in LotV than in HotS. Thus, an emphasis on mechanics could result in shorter careers. As a content creator, I feel the impact too. The last part of the previous section shows there are more details to discuss in HotS builds than in LotV builds. I often struggle to find interesting topics to write in LotV, as players just use very comparable builds over and over again.
For example, Terran players often use Reaper expand into , should I consider getting a Liberator versus a Viking for the first Starport unit as different builds? I can talk about the implications on the metagame, but the complexity and depth cannot be compared to pre-LotV.
I am tempted to write the same build orders for consecutive entries of Metagame Build Orders , because there are best builds that do not get rotated out by newer strategies. Mapmakers say they get affected too see tweet below. My mapmaking knowledge is extremely limited , so I have little to say about how the increased number of starting workers affects mapmaking.
But judging from what negativezero said, it seems like Zerg could take advantage of the worker difference better than the other two races, and the responsibility is placed on mapmakers to balance the game. Blizzard balance team should no doubt be affected too. One good example is the TvP proxy era in the later half of The strategy involves building multiple production buildings outside of the base, so Protoss players do not know which tech choice they are up against.
This strategy is only possible in LotV as a six starting workers economy does not allow Terran players to have access to that many options so early on. In an update of the annual balance revamp , Blizzard stated that:. The emphasis is mine. Without the old Cyclone, none of the plausible tech options in this proxy strategy requires immediate reaction, so the strategy got patched out of the metagame.
I spent many months on this article. I strongly believe this is an important topic that warrants a serious discussion in the community. As evident in the two tweets below, this is a controversial topic.
In fact, I believe StarCraft II could be a much better game if we keep everything the same but revert the starting worker number to six and revert the number of supply a town hall provides to be consistent with the number of starting workers.
We would still enjoy the other benefits of LotV. The mineral would still run out quicker than before to promote expansions, and this continues to promote constant battles at multiple locations as both sides extend their influence on the map. I acknowledge my limited understanding of the game, so I invited several respectable StarCraft figures to write commentaries to this article.
Each has specialised knowledge that can surely make the discussion more constructive and interesting. I stole this idea from some academic journals, whereby several scholars springboard from a focal article to discuss a specific topic. Importantly, I had explicitly told these contributors to disagree with me wherever they see fit, and I do not edit their articles to ensure we could have the best discussion possible by presenting multiple perspectives.
The commentary articles will be posted here on TerranCraft next week. The first one will be up on Monday, 27 January. You will know who they are when their articles are posted, so stay tuned! This article is translated and posted on scboy.
You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you really like my work, you can help to sustain the site by contributing via PayPal and Patreon. See you in the next article! Dude this is epic. Right now in the latest versions, where they changed mech around, mech has been extremely popular along with bcs.
If starting working counts were different, and builds were different, then maybe the refinery timing would be different, which would make scouting terran more difficult which would disseminate the early game decision making into midgame transition.
Also it would feel less binary for the terran in general. I think the current relationship between builds and compositions is that you can almost go to either mech or bio with any build. The ambiguity makes it difficult for the opponent to figure out early.
Workers are fundamental to economic and tech development, as they harvest resources and construct buildings. Most players spend their starting resources, and the first five or so minutes, training workers. Raids may aim to destroy workers. Workers may augment base defenses in an emergency, using large numbers to partially offset their poor combat value. SCVs must be present during the entire construction of buildings.
The constructing SCVs may not be controlled during construction; construction must be completed, paused or cancelled to return control. SCVs may begin construction on most open ground. Probes lay down warp beacons that result in a building after a period of time.
The probe may move to another task after setting the beacon, unlike SCVs and drones. Probes may only set beacons inside the psionic matrix generated by pylons , with the only exceptions being the nexus , assimilator , and the pylon itself. When the zerg require a new structure, drones are sacrificed in the process of mutating into the desired buildings. High-Yield Minerals Some mineral patches contain special rich minerals, which can be easily identified by their distinctive yellow or gold hue.
Rich mineral clusters provide 7 minerals per trip, instead of 5 minerals as normal mineral fields do. These rich clusters contain the same total amount of minerals as normal mineral clusters do, but workers mine them faster--increasing your mineral yield. Since more income means a bigger and stronger army, rich mineral fields are highly desirable. Beware that rich mineral clusters can be risky to take, since they tend to be placed in locations which are hard to defend and more exposed to attack.
Gathering Minerals At the start of the game, you can select the workers available to you and direct them to harvest minerals by right-clicking a mineral field. Workers will automatically arrange themselves to harvest from 'unoccupied' mineral clusters; if no free mineral clusters are available, workers will get in line behind one of the occupied clusters and wait their turn.
Saturation is typically reached when three workers are harvesting each mineral cluster or vespene gas geyser though this can change if a base is located further away from available resources. Each mineral cluster represents a specific quantity of minerals. After those minerals are gone, the cluster is depleted, and it will disappear from the map. A notification message will play when the last cluster in a mineral field has been mined out.
It's wise to move workers from a field that is being depleted to a new, fresh mineral field in order to maintain a steady income. Placing New Bases. The farther that workers must travel to claim minerals, the longer they will take to return those resources, and the slower resource gathering occurs.
While ideally new bases are placed as close to all resources as possible, because the rules for saturation apply to both minerals and vespene gas, it is better to place a new base as close to minerals as possible if a choice has to be made. Vespene Geysers Vespene gas has an unusually high potential energy rating, and, as such, is highly valued for use as a fuel in high-performance engines and reactors. The zerg have adapted themselves to use raw vespene as a source of nourishment to drive their greatly accelerated metabolisms, and even the protoss require vespene to work as a catalyst for their psi-driven machines.
Geysers of this powerful green gas can be found on many planets along the Rim, and several space stations have been built over vespene-rich asteroid belts. To extract gas from an active geyser, terran players must build a refinery, protoss must warp in an assimilator, and zerg players must morph a drone into an extractor.
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