There were exchanges about the impact of sharing stetzone to an ally’s mineral line. Some were heated, but none can agree on anything because there were no actual numbers. I figured maybe I can help settle this if I got the numbers. Let’s start with some facts.
The blue zone speeds up worker travel, NOT actual gathering at the patch. The only benefit is that the workers travel to, from, and between the patches faster. Once all workers end up waiting on a patch before actually harvesting it, players will get no further benefit from extra workers or the stetzone. This is usually called “full saturation”, but since we’re dealing with an additional factor of the stetzone, we will call this “full steturation”.
What we don’t know is whether we can reach full steturation, and if it is before the stetzone can reach the ally’s base. However, we can still approximate how many total minerals players can expect to gain from the stetzone throughout the course of a game. Then we can maybe determine whether the blue zone does give a worthwhile boost or not.
This is where I come in. In order to get them, I will use the approach below:
Summary of the Approach
First, I determine how quickly Stetmann can stetzone his ally’s mineral line on EACH map. Second step is to find out how fast the commanders can saturate their mineral line. Then do some maths to get the time spent at each saturation level. Comparing those numbers, I can determine for each map the time per saturation level without stetzone, and then with stetzone.
Next I run a separate test to see how much benefit the stetzone actually provides at each saturation level. Once I get the numbers and do some more maths, I will finally arrive at the total mineral benefit from stetzones for the ally during the entire game. Simple! Now for the details.
Time required to stetzone ally's base
All maps are not created equally. Maps where the bases are further away require more stetellites to reach the ally’s mineral line. It’s possible that the ally reaches full steturation before the stetzone arrives. And full steturation means 0 stetzone benefit. Therefore, time required to get to your ally for each map is critical.
I go on each map as Stetmann, and try out stetellite layouts. My goal is to substantially cover my ally’s mineral line using as few stetellites as possible. Here are the results:
The number of stetellites varies from 3 to 6. This means it can take twice as long to get to the ally’s mineral line on Temple of the Past as it does on other maps. Then we use stetellite cooldown information from 
starcraft2coop.com to get the actual stetzone extension time.
I calculated for both no stetellite cooldown mastery, and full stetellite cooldown mastery. I opted not to include the actual deploy time of the stetellite because it does not affect the cooldown, and because the effect is inconsequential. We see based on the times that the earliest possible stetzone reaches the ally’s mineral line at 1:00. On Temple of the Past, it can take as long as 2:30 to get to the ally’s mineral line.
Of note here is that the fastest Lair build for Stetmann will have the Lair complete by 1:54. This means that he actually gets an extra stetellite if you follow this build. However, this is a tailored build for Lair and may not be ideal or consistent for everyone. So we opted to retain the 2:00 and 2:30 spread times for Temple of the Past.
Ally's saturation times
This is probably the most complicated part of this process. There are so many variables to consider, including:
- Worker production time
- Macro mechanics [chrono, larva production]
- Workers not harvesting due to construction
- Map expansion timings
- Fast expand/tech; cutting workers
- Multiple worker production
- Stetzone-optimizing builds/saturations
- Switching configurations to push the enemy
In order to capture as many of the commanders as possible, I’ll consider only the fastest to saturate 1 base [assume there’s a mutator that forces the ally to go 1-base so the ally only focuses on saturating their main], and a commander who cuts workers at 2/patch, but Stetmann switching configurations to allow Super Gary to push out on the map upon spawning.
The fastest commander to reach full steturation would be Karax who has full chrono boost mastery with the normal chrono boost on his Nexus. With a blistering worker production of approximately 10 Blizzard seconds, he goes up to 2 workers/patch saturation [14 workers] by 0:21. He is temporarily held back by minerals for continuous worker production, but he nonetheless reaches 2.5 workers/patch saturation [17 workers] by 0:53, and full saturation by 1:32.
The slowest commander to saturate assuming constant worker production would be the terran commanders without chrono boosts, larva, or other production buffs. Each SCV requires them 17 seconds to complete. Hence from the start of the game, they will reach 2/patch saturation at 0:34. For one reason or another [fast expansion, teching, fast gas] they don’t add any workers to their saturation until Gary spawns at 4:00. Stetmann immediately pushes out with Gary to the first objective and switches to green zone.
For simplicity’s sake, we assume that the blue zone cuts at 4:30 because Stetmann benefits from green and purple zones more than blue, and because players should work towards full steturation as fast as they can anyway. I added 30 seconds for margin of error, travel time, and Super Gary transformation time.
Anyway, I have obtained these results:
Without stetellite cooldown mastery, fast saturation gets no benefit from blue zone until it has 3 workers per patch saturation. Full stetellite cooldown mastery however stretches a little bit into 2.5/patch saturation for as long as half a minute. This will likely be the case with allies who fully saturate one base as quickly as possible even with the blue zone.
However, the ally can tailor their saturation to stay on 2/patch on their main base for as long as possible. They can send their extra workers to immediately harvest their expansion, start tech structures, secure a fast expansion, and do other stuff. If the ally decides to saturate their expansion and vespene gases before increasing the saturation in the main, they can maintain 2/patch saturation in the main until Stetmann switches configuration at 4:30, which will give them up to 3 minutes of blue zone usage.
I could go into this in more depth, but it will likely be on a per-commander basis. For now, these quick-and-dirty numbers will have to do.
Actual benefit from stetzone
Workers travel faster with the stetzone. What we don’t know yet is whether they move fast enough that a 2/patch saturation mineral yield will resemble that of a 3/patch saturation. We also don’t know whether a 3/patch saturation will receive any benefit at all.
So I go into a game and test it out myself. I run six 3-minute tests as follows:
- 2/patch without stetzone
- 2.5/patch without stetzone
- 3/patch without stetzone
- 2/patch with stetzone
- 2.5/patch with stetzone
- 3/patch with stetzone
The difference between the yields with and without stetzone shows the actual benefits of stetzone per patch.
pls wacth muh vid i nid moneys
Based on the 3-minute tests, we can see that the 2/patch saturation has over quadruple the benefit of the other two saturation levels, which are close to each other. It’s plain to see that the impact of the blue zone with 2.5/patch and 3/patch saturation is almost negligible. After 3-minutes, they don’t even yield enough extra minerals to train a single Marine.
More importantly, notice how the yield of 2.5/patch without zone is higher than 2/patch with zone, and that the yield of 3/patch without zone is higher than 2.5/patch with zone. This indicates that saturating your minerals gets you more income than keeping it low with Stetzone. In other words, even with a Stetmann ally, it is still more impactful to saturate your own mineral line than to receive the blue zone. Of course, not to say that there is no benefit. There is, but you get more if you saturate than if you don’t.
Final numbers
I assumed for this test that Stetmann would cut the blue zone at 4:30 because he gets more benefit from pushing the first objective with green zone overcharge than he does by staying at blue all game long. Here are the results:
We can see that with fast saturation of your main, there is almost no gain if you saturate your main base quickly. At a rate of 13-15 minerals per minute, on the most advantageous map, the blue zone does not give you enough additional minerals to make a single marine.
That being said, the ally CAN take better advantage if they get Stetmann’s blue zone in their mineral line. On more advantageous maps, they can take a faster expansion and send workers to saturate that and the gases before saturating the main base higher than 2 workers per patch. They can cut workers to focus on upgrades, infrastructure, and army.
The map is a big factor, as the worst map [Temple of the Past] only yields 180 minerals, but there is still some gain.
Delaying main base saturation will actually yield more benefit from blue zone. On the best maps, it can yield an additional 230 minerals for Stetmann’s ally in the first 4:30, which is worth an extra Barracks and a Depot, maybe a couple of Overlords, a tech structure, or an upgrade if you also saturate your gas faster.
The benefit is definitely there. However, it’s not that big of a deal and won’t magically turn a bad player into a good one. The extra stuff you can get with the 200 minerals is only there if you’re on top of your macro and know how to take advantage of the blue zone in your main in the first place. And as I mentioned previously, you STILL get more benefit from just saturating your main base rather than asking your ally for the blue zone.
I'm lazy and just want your conclusion
It gives you some benefit, but not that massive. Only good players can really take advantage of it if they tailor their saturation to maximize the benefit of blue zone. Even then, you still get more minerals from saturating your main base, than by keeping it low with blue zone.
Addendum and additional testing
So I understand that 3 minutes of testing can expose itself to a lot of variances and errors, so I decided to do another test with 10 minutes per saturation level with, and without stetzone. Also, I used 18/21 workers for the 2.5/patch saturation in this test, instead of the 17/21. Here are the results:
It’s kinda hilarious that the gain for 3/patch is actually more than the 2.5/patch. However, it’s very much within the margin of error. You can see that the difference of the gains in 10 minutes is literally 10 minerals, which is 2 trips. Maybe 2 SCVs managed to complete their trips as I stopped the timer. Anyway, here are the total benefits per map:
It’s practically the same, with slightly fewer minerals on the 2/patch saturation. Same conclusion.
You know what REALLY matters though?
On a lot of the maps, you lose out on 12 GAS PER MINUTE because of far geysers! If you care about lost potential mineral income, then you should care more about lost potential gas income if you are Kerrigan, Artanis, Swann, Zagara, Abathur, Alarak, Fenix, Dehaka, and Stetmann because over the course of a 20-minute game, you would lose out on 240 gas per far geyser, or 480 gas on maps like Temple of the Past where each player gets TWO far geysers!
I tested it months ago, and I believe this issue should create far more of a discussion than the Stetzone one because it affects all commanders except Vorazun, Nova, and Zeratul. Plus, this issue is actually EASILY FIXABLE if Blizzard would just choose to move the geysers a little closer to the townhall location. THIS is what you guys should really be talking about.
