Starcraft – How to construct a refinery on a vespene geyser and order the workers to collect the gas in one command queue

starcraft-2

I want to know the fastest (not the most efficient way) of taking a fresh vespene geyser. I want to give my workers only 1 command queue and be done with it. The workers have to construct a refinery / extractor, wait until its finished and start collecting on their own. I realize that it is not the most efficient way, since the workers that are waiting for the refinery / extractor to finish are not doing anything productive in that time. The advantage of this is in the late game, where you don't care about about the 30 minerals opportunity cost for the waiting time, but value your attention more and the fact that you don't have to do 2 tasks to accomplish this goal: 1) build the refinery 2) send workers to the refinery.

This is what I normally do (the bad way). Example as Terran but works for all races:

  1. Select one SCV
  2. Build a refinery on a vespene geyser
  3. Wait until the SCV traveled to the vespene geyser and started the construction
  4. Select 2 more SCVs and send them on the construction
  5. Now they will wait and start collecting as soon as the building is created

The problem is that you have to wait for the SCV to travel to the geyser. This is especially bad if the geyser is far away. In this case you have to remember that you have to send your workers on the new refinery in 30 seconds.

This is what I tried so far:

  1. Select 3 SCVs
  2. Send them to the neutral vespene geyser
  3. Error message shows that you cannot take any gas before you have built a refinery (but the SCVs will still travel to the vespene geyser)
  4. Select one of them and build a refinery

Unfortunately this doesn't work. One SCV constructs the refinery and starts working. The other 2 just stand idle in front of the newly created refinery.

I tried the same thing with different commands. Instead of right clicking on a neutral vespene geyser. I gave the SCVs a move command (the error message does not show in this case), an attack move command (impossible to do because a geyser cannot be attacked, in this case the SCVs don't do anything), a patrol command (they just patrol between their current position and the vespene geyser). But nothing seems to work.

Anyone has an idea or knows a trick how to accomplish this?

Edit: I asked a question similar to this before, but this is more precise and is exactly the core of problem. I will remove the older question.

Best Answer

Have not played Starcraft 2 in a long time, but this may work.

Select 3 SCV's.

Open up the build interface, and when you go to build the refinery hold down "Shift" and then left click to build the refinery, and right click on the gas location.

This is technically 2 commands, but since you can do them together it will be extremely quick.

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