Hit Points: 20 Plasma Shields: 20 Size: Small Supply: 1 Cost: 50 Build Time: 20 Produced at: Nexus Requires: Nexus Base Ground Attack: 5 Base Air Attack: N/A Base Armor: 0 Range: 1 Sight: 8 Cooldown: 22 Production Hot Key: P

The tiny Probe was designed by the Khalai to lay the foundation for Protoss colonies on hostile worlds where living workers would be at too great a risk. Probes are responsible for harvesting the Minerals and Vespene Gas that are needed to fuel the Protoss industry. They also produce and plant the warp-beacons that allow them to teleport buildings from Aiur to distant planets.

Probes are built in the Nexus and you can queue up to 5 Probes at once in each Nexus.

Probes have Plasma Shields as well as Hit Points. While Terrans can repair their SCVs and Zerg Drones regenerate automatically, if a Probe's Hit Points are reduced, they cannot be reproduced. However, their Plasma Shields regenerate slowly over time, and you can speed up the process using Shield Batteries.

[ Click to Enlarge - 91 KB ]

Use Probes to scout for any enemy base(s) early in the game. It's very important to learn what race the enemy is and where their base(s) might be located. Any additional information you might learn can also be useful such as what buildings they have, and what strategy they seem to be leaning toward based on their buildings. You can set way points for the Probe around the town and leave it. Often the enemy will focus their time on chasing the Probe. Use this to your advantage. Take your Probe, run it into the enemy town, then run it away. Repeat. Often the enemy will become bent on destroying your Probe to the point of disrupting their build orders and game timing. If your enemy was planning an early rush attack this kind of disruption can create valuable time to prepare your defenses.

[ Click to Enlarge - 94 KB ] Don't forget, Probes can attack too! A group of Probes fight off an Offensive Bunker attack.	[ Click to Enlarge - 80 KB ] Probes are weak and easily destroyed by these Zerglings.

[ Click to Enlarge - 90 KB ] "It only takes one Probe to build an empire."

The Probe has the ability to warp in multiple buildings at will provided resources are available. A Probe only needs to start a building in the process of warping in, then the probe is able to return to resource gathering duties or immediately warp in yet another building. This is a significant construction advantage when compared to the Terran or Zerg player. A Terran SCV is unavailable for other duties while erecting a building and also vulnerable to destruction at the same time. Zerg drones are lost in their transformations into the various structures of a Hive Cluster. This means the Protoss are able to set up a huge colony in a short amount of time with only one Probe. A Protoss player only has to worry about sending one Probe to a location to start a town, instead of multiple workers as with the Zerg and Terran (unless they are willing to build more from the newly created Command Centers or Hatcheries). A Probe can Warp in a Nexus, Assimilator, and a few Pylons all at the same time.

Players should be particularly careful to prevent any Protoss Probes from escaping a town being razed. If even one Probe gets away, the Protoss player's war machine can be rolling again in very little time.

Build then mine
There is a trick to allow your Probe to mine resources after warping in a building to prevent it from sitting idle until you give it further commands (a good idea in a real-time game). Select the Probe, then hold down shift and while holding shift, select the building you want your Probe to warp in. Once you have done that, and while still holding shift, right-click on Minerals or Gas and let go of the shift button. Note: you must give the shift-clicked Command before the Probe starts warping the building in or you can't give any other commands. When your Probe is done constructing the building, it will start mining the resource on its own.

Another way to do the same thing is tell a Probe to warp in a building, then quickly, before the Probe starts constructing the building, hold down Shift, right-click on Minerals or a Gas mine, then let go of the Shift button. The difference between this and the above method is you are pressing Shift after instructing the Probe to warp in the building, rather before. Both methods will work but you may find one easier than the other.

The Probe is capable of mining both Minerals and Vespene Gas. To mine Minerals simply right click on a Mineral cluster with the Probe. Each Mineral spot can only be mined by one Probe at a time. The Probe looks for what it thinks is the first and closest available mineral patch to mine. If none are available, the Probe will wait until a patch becomes free. Because of this, there is a certain point where you can have too many Probes mining Minerals. If you have a large portion of your Probes waiting to mine, you have reached the mining limit. At that point your Probes are not being efficiently utilized, and you should instead look for another set of resources for the redundant probes to harvest.

It is up to you to determine how many Probes to place on mining Minerals without building too many. A good rule is about 2 - 3 Probes per Mineral chunk, although you might want to build more or less depending on the distance of your Nexus to the Minerals.

To mine Vespene Gas you must first build an Assimilator on the Gas mine. After that is completed, select Probes and right click on the Assimilator to mine Gas. Only one Probe can be harvesting Vespene Gas from an Assimilator at any one instant. The maximum number of Probes mining a Gas mine (if your Nexus is as close as possible) is 3-4 Probes. If you order more Probes to harvest Vespene, the Probes will just stack up outside the Assimilator waiting for their opportunity to harvest. If your Nexus is further away from the Assimilator, have more Probes on Vespene harvesting duties until they begin to stack up again.

Ground Armor Level 1 - 100 100 Level 2 - 175 175 Level 3 - 250 250

Plasma Shields Level 1 - 200 200 Level 2 - 300 300 Level 3 - 400 400

Ground Armor - Each Upgrade adds +1 to Ground Armor for a total of +3 with all three upgrades.

Plasma Shields - Each Upgrade adds +1 to Shields for a total of +3 with all three upgrades.

Researching these upgrades will add a little to the defense of the Probe. Since the Probe is already such a weak combat unit, you might only see a subtle change in the lifespan of a Probe in serious combat.