Starcraft – How to effectively use Tempests

I don't play a lot of 3v3 and 4v4, but I would imagine the later tech transition is in part due to the much larger army you can bring to bare in early stages (having 4 people to draw on). I'm not sure how to help with that, but I can give you the 1v1:

Tech transitions should be part of your overall strategy. If your strategy is: Speedling into Infestory/Baneling into Ultralisk (the TLO ZvT), then you have clearly defined goals as to when to tech. You know that you'll have early harassment with speedlings, you switch to Baneling/Infestor as he starts to get Medivacs for his MMM, you'll upgrade melee damage, and once he gets his factory up and producing you'll move to Ultralisks.

Day9 once said "every [good] strategy has a beginning, a middle and an end." This was true even at the beginning of Beta when Zerg players went just Roaches. The strategy then was: I'm going to open Roaches. For my midgame I'm going to get Upgrades, Roach Speed, Burrow and Tunneling Claws. For my late game I'm going to get Roach HP Regen while unburrowed (since removed). Its not hard to see why people thought Roaches were overpowered at the time, but the key thing here is that even in this simple case he has ideas of when he wants to tech; its part of his core strategy.

This is not to say you won't have to adapt to what your opponent is doing. If your strategy is the TLO ZvT hellion harassment, maybe you build some Roaches before teching to Infestor. However, the key to execution is knowing that even before you've completely shut down that harassment you need to be upgrading your lair and getting Infestors. Just because you adapt doesn't mean you have to compromise your strategy.

I'm going to give you one last example: Terran MMM, because its actually well defined:

1. I'm going to wall off and open 3 Rax
2. Once I have a nice clump of units I'm going to expand
3. My mid game is going to be getting Stim and Medivacs
4. Once I have a sizable force I'm going to start breaking map control
5. For my end game I'm going to add on factories and start pushing siege tanks.

The reason MMM is such a popular build is that is very easy to do and it has a very nice mid and late game transition. Once you have your 3 Barracks you think about Expo. Once you have Expo you go to Medivac for your Stim. Once you've moved to late game you're backing up with Tanks. At all points you are strong, and at no point do you stop using the unit producers you currently have.

The most important thing to realize is that 3 workers per mineral is the max you would want. It is not necessarily optimal however. The third worker is not as effective as the first 2. Once you have more than 2 workers, one of them will always be "hanging around" waiting for its turn to be useful. Therefore, if you have an expo with less than 2 workers per patch, you would do better to move some workers there. You will get more minerals per minute by having 2 workers per patch at your main and 1 per patch at your expo than you would with 3 workers per patch at your main.

With that in mind, here are some answers:

How to keep track of how many you have at a specific base? Make sure all your mineral patches and gas geysers are visible on the screen. Now double click on one of your workers. This will select all your workers. At the bottom middle of your screen you'll see wireframes of all of them, 8 per row. if you have 3 rows full, that's 24 workers, which is a decently saturated base. "Full" saturation would be about 24 on minerals and 6 on gas, or 30. But if you have an expo, you're better off moving some of them... (Note that MULEs do not conflict with SCV's for mining time, so they should not factor into your counts.)

When you expand, should you build workers from that base or transfer?

This depends on the situation. If your expo is far away from your main, and there are potentially enemy forces in between, then transferring is probably a bad idea. If you have more than 2 workers per patch in your main, and your natural is nearby and well defended, then transferring makes sense. In my experience, Zerg players usually expand before they have much more than 2 workers per patch, while a 1 base terran or protoss will often build up 30 workers on one base before expanding.

**Rebuilding after some being killed **

I'm not sure what the question is here - you can just rebuild them like you normally build them.

Transferring when minerals run out

There is no automatic way to have workers move to an expansion when minerals or gas run out. However, you can listen for the voice that says "mineral patch depleted" and start transferring them. You can also look for the idle worker icon that pops up on the lower left hand side of your screen, that will alert you to a worker who is not doing anything.

Race Specific Tidbits

Protoss can chronoboost workers to help get an economy up and running, or recover from an attack.

Terrans can get by with less SCVs if they have a lot of orbital commands to summon MULEs with.

Terrans can load SCV's into command centers, then fly them to a new base.

Zerg players need to remember to build more drones to replace drones used to build buildings.