I've only been playing Starcraft 2 for about 3-4 weeks. I've picked up on most terminology and understand it, but there is one thing that has befuddled me for a while. I am a Protoss player and as one I've had trouble against early aggression from Terran players. As seen on Liquipedia for the 1 Gateway 1 Stargate build.. ..why would you do that? What are the benefits? Curious.. Thank you.
If you want a heavy mineral build after (ie. get mass zealots or something), then you can pull some probes off gas and mine minerals instead. More probes on minerals, faster you get minerals. that's what that statement is saying. Though i would just rather build more probes. What happens if you wanna change for example to High templar build? you would need all that gas you aquired.
Quite honestly, if I find I need to boost my mineral income, I am usually more than willing to take a hit in my gas income. Having said this, I usually pull one or two workers off each geyser rather than all three from a single geyser. This way, I get the mineral income boost without having to wait for the time it would take me to build those 2-4 worker units. I can then construct those worker units at my leisure to bring my gas income back up to speed. The main reasoning behind this is that if you need to boost your mineral income, you probably have excess gas anyway.
Mmm I occasionally do pull probes off of my gas, but not often. I'm rather lazy, even at starcraft...
If you have a mineral heavy strategy you need to do this. For instance the korean four pylon rush you need to pull the gas drones to the mineral line as soon as you hit 50gas for warp gate research. the extra minerals are used for zealots
To be honest, I don't think that's a good idea [taking probes off gas in this context]. I could only see this possibly being meaningful in a positive way if you did severe probe cuts to get void rays faster. The extra gas can be poured into, if nothing else, sentries.
Taking probes off gas is generally a simple thing to do, but to use correctly can take a seriously advanced player, asside from commonplace stuff. For example: After getting harassed and losing many probes from your mineral line, you can take probes off gas to help you get your economy up faster. That's quite simple and anyone can do, and a common place where it's a good idea to get probes off gas. Or: Having calculated your resources wrong, or having been set off plan and having an excess of gas and low minerals: That's a good time to get probes off gas to bolster and balance your economy. That's also quite simple. Or taking probes off gas when doing the korean 4gate or some similar specific build that requires a fixed amount of gas and all you can gather on minerals. That's quite more advanced and but also not hard to do and is based on planning. On the other hand there's the situation where you know that you're gonna need a specific amount of gas/gas income in the near future and you calculate/estimate it so that you have exactly as much gas as you need in the following minutes in the game, based on a specific strategy. That's extremely advanced and I do believe that only some of the pros are able to do it... So, generally, like everything in this game, it's something that has it's uses, can lead to trouble if used wrong, and even has very advanced uses/tricks where it can be used to great effectiveness. Generally, if you need more minerals and have an excess of gas it might be a good idea to consider moving workers from gas to minerals, given that your mineral lines are under-saturated. If they're depleted or saturated, then it might be a good consideration to expand instead...
Lol, usually I take probes off minerals. Even then, only if I've got waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many minerals and nowhere NEAR enough gas. Or to warp in a building. Go Probes!
