For base facilities the equation is even simpler:

• Two credits per remaining mineral if at least ten minerals have already been accumulated.
  
• Four energy per remaining mineral if less than ten minerals have been accumulated.

For units the matter is a bit more complex, as the hurry cost is not linear. Instead the energy cost per mineral depends on how many minerals are still missing for unit completion. You could of course have a look at the reference chart I provided a link to, every time you want to partially hurry a unit, but personally I find it easier to just have a calculator nearby and do the following: take the full hurry cost, divide it by the number of minerals still missing, multiply it by the number of minerals you want to hurry, and then round up to the next integer number. Voilą, you've got your hurry cost!

The main purpose for this treatise is certainly not giving yet another summary of hurry costs though. I rather wanted to discuss tricks and methods that make the hurry costs lower than those you see described above. While these methods - some might say exploits - were probably not intented by the game desigers, the good news is that they have become commonplace and accepted in the SMAC multiplayer world, so you can use them freely as much as you want! Those "tricks" I talk about all involve either using crawlers, using unit upgrading, or both of them combined: upgraded crawlers!

CALCULATING UNIT UPGRADE COST
So before I begin to explain some cheaper hurry methods, let's first explain what affects the upgrade cost of units, on which the cheaper hurry methods are largely based on. The formula is pretty simple: to upgrade a unit you must pay in energy credits the following amount:

• Ten credits per mineral row the unit design to which you upgrade, is worth.
  
• Ten credits per weapon and/or armour level the upgraded unit design has more than the old unupgraded unit design.

Two things that should be noted:

• Your SE Industry rating doesn't play any role for the upgrade cost. This makes upgrading a relatively more lucrative method for Industry-poor factions (like Sparta) than for Industry-rich factions (eg the Drones).
  
• The mineral cost of the old unit design doesn't matter at all. Neither do special abilities in the old design have any effect. So only the weapon and armour of the old unit have an influence for the upgrade cost.

To give an example, upgrading a 0-1-1 supply crawler to a 0-2t-1 trance synthmetal crawler (8 min rows) would cost 90 credits. Why?

• 80 credits because the new unit costs 8 mineral rows.
  
• 10 credits because the armour level rises by one: from one to two.
  
• The "weapon" - the crawler module - stays the same, so no extra cost fort that.

Now we are aware of this, we can move forward to actually discussing the cheaper hurry methods.

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About the author: International Politics student in Belgium.

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Originally published in full on October 14, 2004.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.