Resources

Mineral Deposits
The planets along the rim are often dotted with clusters of precious Mineral crystals, which are collected and smelted to create the armored hulls of starships, vehicles, and personal armor. Even the Zerg require Minerals to harden their carapaces and develop strong teeth and bones. The crystals take some time to gather, and only Terran SCVs, Zerg Drones, and Protoss Probes have the necessary equipment to break off bits of the crystals and return them to the proper building.

Gathering Minerals
Each Mineral spot can only be mined by one at a time. If there is a free Mineral spot available, workers will try to head to it. If there are no free Mineral chunks available, miners will get in line behind one of the chunks and wait their turn. Because of this, there is a point where you can have too many miners working a group of Minerals, and you won't be able to gather any faster no matter how many workers you add. A good rule to follow is to have 2-2 1/2 miners for each Mineral chunk. If the main is further away from the deposits, this rule changes, and you will need to add more miners to bring in Minerals at the fastest possible rate.

Placing Your Command Centers/Nexus/Hatchery
Try to move your as close as possible to the Minerals if they aren't pre-placed. Players of all species should try to place their resource centers as close to the Minerals as possible to reduce walking distances for their workers. The further away from the Minerals gatherers have to go, the longer they will take to return the resources. You will notice a difference.

When given the choice to place the building closer to Minerals or gas, pick Minerals. When you place it closer to gas, you have to build more workers for each of the Mineral chunks, but when you are closer to the Minerals, you need only build more workers for one gas spot, rather than 5-10+ Mineral spots (since you can only mine geysers with one worker at a time).

Since Minerals come in multiple chunks and do not require a building to extract them they are much more plentiful. More often than not, gas is a worry while Minerals are not. Minerals are required for all buildings and units but there are many Mineral-only units, consisting of the lower tech tree units like the Terran Marines, SCVs, and Basic Buildings; Protoss Probes, Zealots, and Basic Buildings; and Zerg Drones, Zergling, Overlords, and basic buildings. While players can survive on Minerals only it is not recommended, since both upgrades and high-level units will be unavailable.

Gatherers bring back 8 Minerals per trip. To see how many Minerals are left in a particular patch, select it then look at the status display. A number will indicate how many Minerals are left.

When you initially start the game, it is a bad idea to select all four workers and right click on a Mineral patch. What happens is that all four workers go to the same patch and try to mine it. Since only one can mine at a time, the other three wait in line for that specific Mineral. This makes for a very slow start early in the game when it's vitally important not to make mistakes. A faster way to do this is to individually select each worker and then right click on a different patch for each worker. The fastest way, which requires more micro management, is to initially select all four then right click on the same Mineral patch to get them moving, then individually select each one as they are moving and move them to their own patch. Either method is a significant improvement over simply ordering the entire group to mine one location.

Vespene Geysers
Vespene gas has an unusually high potential energy rating, and as such is highly valued for use as a fuel in high-performance engines and energy reactors. The Zerg have adapted themselves to use raw Vespene as a source of nourishment to drive their greatly accelerated metabolisms. Even the Protoss require Vespene to work as a catalyst for their psi-driven machines. Geysers of this powerful green gas can be found on many planets along the Rim, and several space stations have been built over Vespene-rich asteroid belts. A Refinery of some sort must be built over an active geyser to process and package the gas for its collection by the difference species.

Terran players must build a Refinery to extract the gas, Protoss must warp in an Assimilator, and Zerg players must morph a Drone into an Extractor. While an individual geyser has an effectively unlimited amount of gas within it, after a certain point the geyser "collapses" and only trace amounts of Vespene can be refined from it. Most players would do well to seek fresh geysers to ensure they have enough fuel to maintain their military.

When a geyser collapses, you will receive the message: "Geyser has been depleted" and you'll hear the collapse. Pressing the space bar will center your screen on the collapsed geyser. At this point, it is not worth it to further mine the geyser unless there are no further fresh geysers available. If you do not find a new geyser, you will soon notice a large decrease in your gas gathering. Select all the workers mining the collapsed geyser and move them to another spot. When moving workers carrying gas, be sure to right-click them on the new geyser so they will start returning from the new gas mine.

If the gas mine is as close as possible to your then you don't need more than four workers collecting gas from that location. If you place any more on mining gas they will be wasted. If the gas mine is further away, you may need an additional worker or two to collect gas at the fastest speed. If you see more than one gas miner stacked up waiting for the gas mine to be free, you know you have too many mining it.

Gas is by far the most coveted resource. It is used for upgrades and to build all the higher tech tree units and buildings. One should attempt to get multiple gas mines until gas is not a worry. It is not uncommon to need 3-4+ gas mines to properly power a high-tech war machine.

Generally it is not a wise idea to specifically attack workers mining gas. Only 4 workers are usually mining the gas at a time, and it is really easy for your opponent to make another 4 workers if they are destroyed, then put them back on gas. Target the workers mining Minerals specifically because there will be many more workers in that area, and they will be fully exposed while they're harvesting.

To see how much gas is left in the geyser, select it or the Refinery (Assimilator, Extractor) then look at the status display. A number will indicate how many gas is left. A depleted mine will simply read "depleted". You might want to select a few units and destroy your own Assimilator, Refinery, or Extractor after the geyser is depleted so you know which geysers are still worth mining or not. Just select a few guys and destroy it. With multiple towns it can be quite confusing which geysers are depleted and which aren't, and this method can help.