StarCraft2: Easy way to calculate number of harvesters

Question

During game play one of the most important questions is: how many harvesters do you have right now. Will it be effective to build 3 more harvesters or it is better to build additional production building (for example)?

AFAIK optimal number of harvesters per base is 30: 8 minerals + 2 gas multiply by 3.

But often is hard to detect how many do you have right now. From what I see you could go to your minerals line, select all harvesters and see how much do you have. But sometime it is hard to do that (other units, non-harvesting SCV/probes). Time - is also factor. I would like to look into my supply numbers and know something like this: currently I have 50/64 supply.... how much harvesters do I have 20? 30?

Usually in replays that I lost my opponents have around 27-35 harvesters on 1 base and 43-48 with expand... Usually I have less...

Probably I just need to build those harvesters CONSTANTLY till supply id less then 60/80? (don't forget to build army too)? Probably I don't need to worry that I have too many harvesters?

Any thoughts are welcome!

Asked by Budda

Answer

After some time of playing I've found the following: doesn't matter how many harvesters do you have, you always need to build more! At least till the time when you have 2 bases fully covered with harvesters.

How to see if they are fully covered? I would say by eye - it will come with practice.

And when you are getting the 3rd expand usually you will have almost finished main and some harvesters loses. So you will move almost all harvesters from main to the 3rd expand and again you need to build them more

Please comment this answer if you see any lacks here.

Thanks

Answered by Budda

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