Recently it has come to my attention that it is possible to reduce the mineral count of a cluster and then stack it to allow more peons to mine that "patch" at the same time without increasing total resource count. While a tactic normally employed in money maps, this is extremely useful for normal melee mapping under the following mechanisms:
1. Fixing worker AI for some mineral formations by reducing wandering.
2. As an "auto-split" mechanism by a stack of four 8-mineral patches in the min line.
3. To punish poor worker splits less, as a game's outcome should not be dependent on the first 3 seconds of gameplay.
4. To permit some difficult-to-hold expansions to gain economic value by increasing maximum saturation.
5. This mechanism, applied to mineral patches in the main, necessarily entails more economic flexibility in the early game by essentially maximizing worker efficiency for each patch.
6. This can make horizontal min lines mine much better than normally.
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Relatively ancient and inactive
Sounds interesting to me. No downsides. Probably not new, though.
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2. As an "auto-split" mechanism by a stack of four 8-mineral patches in the min line.
This. Very creative. I suck at splitting and I suck at melee.
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Well this has already been done, check BWMN for examples. The comments on a few of the maps also go into detail in discussing the dis/advantages.
overpowers any sort of temp/reaver drop
and i dont believe they auto split, and besides, why would u want it to auto split even if it did
by making a more efficient path, you need less worker saturation to mine at max capacity. this favours zerg (a ridiculous amount, at that)
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Quote from name:doomedrusher
Recently it has come to my attention that it is possible to reduce the mineral count of a cluster and then stack it to allow more peons to mine that "patch" at the same time without increasing total resource count. While a tactic normally employed in money maps, this is extremely useful for normal melee mapping under the following mechanisms:
1. Fixing worker AI for some mineral formations by reducing wandering.
2. As an "auto-split" mechanism by a stack of four 8-mineral patches in the min line.
3. To punish poor worker splits less, as a game's outcome should not be dependent on the first 3 seconds of gameplay.
4. To permit some difficult-to-hold expansions to gain economic value by increasing maximum saturation.
5. This mechanism, applied to mineral patches in the main, necessarily entails more economic flexibility in the early game by essentially maximizing worker efficiency for each patch.
6. This can make horizontal min lines mine much better than normally.
Lets point out obvious flaws:
1) Workers are more susceptible to splash damage.
2) Workers wander because you didn't split them properly. ;o
3) Increasing economic value = too much money.
4) You can't auto split. It just doesn't happen. You select all four workers and order them to mine a mineral patch, they all go to that patch, and one moves to the next one.
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Check out the proleague map, Hannibal:
Theres a picture of it.
And heres the page explaining the unique stuff about it like the
stacked minerals.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Hannibal
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I like the idea, especially after playing Starcraft 2.
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Quote from name:doomedrusher
by making a more efficient path, you need less worker saturation to mine at max capacity. this favours zerg (a ridiculous amount, at that)
Do you play zerg?
terran mainly but my zvt is fine
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I'm experimenting with different mineral amounts and stacks currently. Soon as I get something polished enough to post over here I'll put it up.
I was imagining how the game went. Sorry for that. Watching it now. brb