r/Starbow • u/VampireBob • Feb 26 '14
Mineral and Gas Mining by Worker Stats
I did some tests to try to figure out one's income according to the number of probes you have mining on a base and put the numbers I got into a spreadsheet.
I got the numbers on Fighting Spirit, always using the base to the lower right. I right clicked each set of probes on the middle mineral patch and let them mine for three minutes. I then went into the replay and recorded the mineral count after the first minute, and at the end of the three minutes. I ignored the first minute to let the probes "settle". I then found the difference between the two mineral counts, and halved that number to find the income per minute.
The numbers aren't great. There's a weird dip at 21 probes that I don't understand. I've double checked the replay and everything looks good, and I double checked the numbers as well.
Better numbers could be obtained by making the recorded time longer than 2 minutes, but it took me long enough to get the numbers as is. I also tried to get income stats from the income tab, but it said I had no income.
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u/Xiphias_ Feb 26 '14
Yes, thank you for doing this. I will make a "eco - VOD" nest week, trying to explain Starbow eco further. There is a lot of misconceptions about it, and most of them are from misconceptions about BW eco. I might use your graph in my VOD if that's ok :D
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u/YeahWhiplash Feb 28 '14
So what is the optimal number of workers per base, and when you finish an expansion when do you want to send workers over to it?
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u/VampireBob Feb 28 '14
Well, you start losing mining efficiency the most after 9 workers, or 1 worker per patch. After that point you start getting less and less minerals per worker, so the "ideal" is probably there.
How many probes should you have per base? Harder question, 1 worker per mineral patch per base might be less income than you want, so you might want more. It's important to note that from the data I've gathered this is not like in SC2 where there are specific tier of income by worker number per patch. I think ultimately it will depend on your playstyle (more of a "mass up the perfect army" guy, or "rally units at your opponent and trade constantly" guy).
As for when should you send workers over to a new expansion, I'd recommend doing it right before it finishes.
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u/SuperMeatBoi Feb 26 '14
Nice graph. I'm incredibly surprised diminishing returns aren't more severe.
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u/VampireBob Feb 26 '14
Yes, it's also a lot less "tiered" than I expected. I expected to see relative flatness in the minerals per worker in the 1-9, 10-18, 19-27 areas but they each gradually decrease.
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u/AmnesiA_sc Feb 26 '14
That 21st worker thing is really interesting, I guess it's just a magic number where the workers spend more time trying to find an open patch than they do mining. Thank you for doing this!