How many workers should be to a base?

[Alzarath]

I did a search here and on google, found nothing (Maybe I was too specific at the time though). I was wondering if there was a formula for how many workers should be gathering according to the mineral amount.

I had it so I had 4 gatherers to every 3 mineral deposits, but that didn't work well. What do you guys do?

[Pandonetho]

2 workers per mineral patch.

[Hammy]

I believe 2 per mineral patch is saturation... That's the limit you absolutely don't want to excede.
You start losing efficiency very quickly at 1.5 per mineral patch though, so when you get between 1.5 and 2 it's good to seek out an expansion and maynard.
You should only force up to 2/mineral patch when you're contained and/or are preparing at least one expand you can maynard to.

[Alzarath]

I believe 2 per mineral patch is saturation... That's the limit you absolutely don't want to excede.
You start losing efficiency very quickly at 1.5 per mineral patch though, so when you get between 1.5 and 2 it's good to seek out an expansion and maynard.
You should only force up to 2/mineral patch when you're contained and/or are preparing at least one expand you can maynard to.

Thanks, those are the numbers I've been trying out recently, it's been working well.

[Hammy]

Yeah having good worker saturation is really key. I made so much progress with my offraces (T&P) when I learned to constantly pump workers and expand accordingly. Zerg is totally different obviously.

[Alzarath]

Yeah having good worker saturation is really key. I made so much progress with my offraces (T&P) when I learned to constantly pump workers and expand accordingly. Zerg is totally different obviously.

Ya, Zerg is vastly different in economy compared to Protoss and Terran. Not that I'm going to try them for a bit, but how would you do them? would you make more than just 2-1 mineral? Or just replace them as you need to?

[Hammy]

Well for me, with zerg, it totally depends on the game... The big difference is that I don't really think in terms of drones, but in terms of larvae. The more drones the merrier (and zerg rarely saturate since they tend to me expansive anyways) but you constantly have to balance your drone production with your army production. Once the early game is over though, I tend to make drones in large batches (like after a big battle where armies were traded, always make drones).
... Or at least this is what I try to do^^. I'm a pretty bad player but I just watch lots of games and try to apply whatever I know as well as I can

[sandwich_bird]

Well for me, with zerg, it totally depends on the game... The big difference is that I don't really think in terms of drones, but in terms of larvae. The more drones the merrier (and zerg rarely saturate since they tend to me expansive anyways) but you constantly have to balance your drone production with your army production. Once the early game is over though, I tend to make drones in large batches (like after a big battle where armies were traded, always make drones).
... Or at least this is what I try to do^^. I'm a pretty bad player but I just watch lots of games and try to apply whatever I know as well as I can

hmm I'm a T but when I do play z I always try to have one hatchery pumping drones all the time until I'm saturated everywhere I can. Not in early game of course but in mid/late game.

btw is it worth it to evolve into lair to have faster spawn with more than one hatch?

[SuperKiller]

since when do lairs spawn larva faster? it's always been the same to me. just build drones, and it's obvious the timing is the same.

[sandwich_bird]

[QUOTE=SuperKiller;26210]since when do lairs spawn larva faster? QUOTE]I always thought they did since a guy I played against on b.net told me. But yeah you made me search on the subject and apparently they don't according to GG.net. They always spawn every 14 secs.