24/24 Workers

I want to write a post celebrating Blizzard for a very minor change. There’s a good chance this change has been around the entire beta, and I’ve only just noticed it. I’m talking about the worker counter.

Click on a Nexus, Hatchery, or Command Center in HotS and you’ll see the most wonderful improvement to StarCraft since Dark Swarm. You’ll see a counter listing the number of workers mining, as a ratio to the maximum number of efficient workers. It looks something like:

14/24

This solves the greatest StarCraft mystery on my mind. How many workers is enough? Before this feature, I honestly had no idea. Answering the question of how many workers I should have mining had raised even greater philosophical questions to me. What is knowledge? Is that post I read on Team Liquid’s forums accurate? When HDStarCraft said otherwise, who is correct?

In one simple mouse over, Blizzard has laid the issue to rest. What’s even better about this feature is that the ratio changes, based on the number of mineral patches. If you mine out a patch, the number will change to look something more like 24/21. So it even helps you to micromanage that awkward in between number of workers mining as you’re playing longer macro games.

I played a set of three games the other day, keeping this information close to my heart, and I played LIKE A GOD! For once, I could make just enough workers. I have a feeling what I had been calling ‘saturation’ was actually under saturated.

My first game, a ZvZ, I was able to saturate two bases PERFECTLY, then switch immediately to a Stephano style max roach rush ftw!

Game two, a PvZ, I was able to saturate one base before launching the popular sentry-immortal attack, again ftw!

Game three, a TvZ, I was able to saturate two bases like a boss, and push a maxed thor-marine army, ftw and a hat trick.

Blizzard, let’s spread awareness of your best, most cost effective improvement, ever. If you’ve helped me, then you’ve helped hundreds, nay, thousands of gamers to take their StarCraft play to the next level.