Sorry for asking a newb question, but I’ve been wondering about this for a while. I usually keep 14~16 at the main base, 12~14 at the expansion, so roughly 2x patch and two extra.
Though, saturation indicated by the main building is 3x patch, which I think isn’t that much better than 2x… or is it? The only time I make more than 16 workers is with Zerg because they are sacrificed to morph into buildings.
Isn’t a newb question at all, you’re correct in your numbers there.
2 per mineral is the most efficient, the 3rd will not collect as much. There’s actually two different kinds of mineral patches as well, close and far ones. The close ones are worse for 3x saturation, so generally 3-4 over 2x is the next most efficient amount.
The rule of thumb is to aim for 3x in coop, but adjust for your personal style. If your build is strapped by gas, there’s nothing wrong with cutting some workers.
One thing to note though, due to the 2x rule, when your expo is build it’s worth transferring workers to the second base to push below that amount. I tend to like to steal half of them, have both bases build their own workers from there.
Certain COs benefit from hard amounts as well, for example Nova pretty much always will want 3x due to her call downs, Raynor can often throw many workers to the wolves mid way into the game and support mostly on Mules.
Tldr: if it works for you, then it’s right, but play around with it from time to time.
Thank you for your answer!
Agreed.
The baseline you (and any player) want to reach is at a minimum 2x. As any 2 per patch guarantees their maximum and allowable mining rate (2 separate concepts).
The third worker mines variable efficiency as Rick pointed out. And depending on far versus near patch, the efficiency is only 75% to 15% efficacious respectively. So the choice to go 2-3 workers above 14 for main and 1-2 workers for expansion as a general rule is good. Why?
Of course, none of this truly matter in the grand scheme of things. However, it does highlight the unnecessary need to complete that 21/21 or 15/15 worker count. As a general rule, 19/21 will reach a negligible difference in max allowable rate of mining on main, while 14/15 for expansion.
What’s important once a person is made aware are:
Again, not doing so won’t make you lose. Yet, with the same CO and same build, a player who optimized the build order will have an edge against Amon. Well… perhaps an extra edge lol since there’s already so many edges (is this a dicer? Lol).
Interesting so by this would you guys say that it’s ok to go straight for your main’s gas at 12 workers?
It’s ok to do that but there’s practical reasons that you won’t be able to.
One has to realize the difference between max efficiency versus max allowable rate. The max efficiency is 40 per worker while max allowable rate is about 104min per patch (averaged between far versus near). This means even if you’re only running 12–14 workers, you’re still missing quite a bit of income. The difference of 80min/min of 2 workers per patch versus 104min/min is still quite the difference.
This is why the more practical importance is if you had 17-19 workers on main when expansion is up (with 0 workers). Then there is a more sensible option to pull 3-5 workers to expansion to start mining (in order to get the max efficiency of 40). Instead of waiting for the new workers to slowly saturate expansion from 0 to 10, while main fully saturate to 21 from 17-19.
That small difference won’t lose anyone the game, but will streamline or start your particular tech earlier. And it’s the time saved here and there that makes some players ahead versus others not.
So in your case for gas, yes absolutely if your build order requires early gas, and you don’t need the minerals, then focusing on earlier gas won’t hinder you.
I found that the best for gas saturation is often 4, instead of the 3 announced, either because the distance is a bit bigger, or for little accidents in pathing or who know what, that cause the production to occasionally slow down, this being compensated by the 4th worker.
Now for minerals that are the subject here, there’s one major issue: WORKERS ARE DUMB!!! 
Randomly, workers will decide to dance around, from one patch to another, for no good reason.
Since unlike BW, expansion are now an 
act of god (always made the same way, perfectly laid around for optimal use), it would have been great to have a system that allow to smartly allocate workers when they target minerals.
Sadly, there’s no such thing.
I think 3 per minerals compensate for those fits of dumbness, in fact I would not be surprised if on some selected periods of time, having even more workers could be more efficient than less…of course of the long term it would waste too much supply and resources and also cause more dancing around, still I think 3 per patch is an amount where it’s still reasonable.
The one time that seems worthwhile is for Alarak P3. with 6 gas workers and 6 mineral workers, you get minerals Slightly slower, so
12 assimilator
12 assimilator
build probes until both assimilators are up.
This occurs only after the 2 per patch saturation. There might be a small shuffle initially but that’s normal, as most players aren’t directing the 13th and 14th worker to the 1 worker-patch.
That 3rd worker will chase after new patch that opens, which may take a spot, and so on and so forth. However, the shuffle at prior to 15workers is quite small. And from 15th onward, you’ll see more and more (as again, players don’t generally assigning that 3rd worker onto the far patches).
As for the 4 workers per gas, you’re not wrong at all. CtG did an analysis I think on the lost gas from far geysers. And for the most part, every map has at least 1 of these. So while 4 for each gas isn’t necessarily worthwhile, having a 4th for the far geysers is. That said, the player would have to know which ones and how to tell. Imma leave that info out. For anyone interested, they can search and read up on the forum.
Asterisk for that, far gas is a thing, but it’s effects vary wildly, and often is fixed in other ways rather than 4 workers.
Putting aside auto-gas users, obviously. Raynor and the (real) Zerg COs can just put an extra town hall by the geysers to deal with the issue. Mengsk I don’t think cares, his workers moving faster with the blimp actually does help out here.