Second Function's Office

Maniac · November 16, 2003, 17:29

Since the other three functionnaries seem inactive, I would like to offer these tentative orders for next year for discussion:

Apolyton Prime: Add "stockpile energy" to the build queue.
Aurora: Construct 0-3-7 cruiser transport. Move worker back to the fields.
Binary Bastion: Add "stockpile energy" to the build queue.
DBTSverse Portal: Construct 0-1-2 probe team, and add stockpile energy...
Logic Loop: Add "stockpile energy" to the build queue.
Mythical Matrix: Construct scout patrol, and add stockpile energy.
Zetaris: Change production to Impact Cruiser and add stockpile energy. When there is a mine in place, that base will be quite productive, so building high-cost war units there should be efficient, so I thought.

Eastern Unity Rover: Explore the northern coasts a bit.
2-1-8 Laser Cruiser: Check out that base site in its SW, and then proceed east.
Probe defense and plasma sentinels: Cancel current movement and go to Boolean Bay instead, preparing to be shipped to captured PEACE bases.
Boolean Bay supply crawler (70,78): move to Aurora and rehome.
Zetaris supply crawler (74.66): move E to harvest the minerals next turn.
Mythical Matrix Colony Pod: Move to (81.63)
LL former (69.73): Assist the former (71.73) planting a forest.
MM former (80.70): Change terraformation to planting a forest. Until now we've always cultivated a farm on rainy nutrient squares, but planted forests on moist nutrient squares.
The three formers at (72.62) & (70.64): move to (74.66) and build road. After that proceed east to finish the mine asap.

New additions:

Mythical Matrix scout patrol: Escort the MM CP. Also changed production of MM to a replacement scout.

Impaler[WrG] · November 17, 2003, 07:32

I only think 1 former needs to go and assist at Zetaris mine building as by the time they get their the thing will be half done and having 3 formers building the mine wont be significantly better then having 2 do it. Unless your planing on having thouse formers travel East of Zetaris and contribute to terraforming thouse as of yet untouched areas. I would be all for that but if your going to send them right back to ware they came from dont bother.

Have one of the formers start farm/solar panal on the rolling 1000m+ square thats over in that Area, this will be good for Zetaris to work soon.

Also as I said Earlier Zetaris dosn't need to do war Production now, it should build a Tanks to keep Growth up. It can focus on other tasks later.

Dont forget to escort the Pod from Matrix as their are still worms up in that area ware the new base will go.

Oh and take a look at the Chat Log, its kinda rambly but theirs a few good ideas in their too.

MrWhereItsAt · November 17, 2003, 08:08

What exactly is the stockpile energy thing? I have heard it mentioned before, but have no idea what it does.

All build orders look fine to me, and since Zetaris won't benefit much from pop 3 sooner until we get more improvements up perhaps Tanks can be put aside, if that Cruiser is going to be insurance at the front.

Why is the Laser Cruiser going East? I thought it was to help in the reduction of the PEACE bases, in which case it would have to start West pretty soon. Can't say I understand the reason for the Crawler rehoming, but maybe that's me... Next turn the former near LL will have 3 formerturns to go with the forest - adding the other forner to it will surely take that to 1 formerturn after one more turn, in which case we should activate one former and move it elsewhere the turn before the forest is finished, else we lose a turn of movement. Is this how it works in SMAX?

IF we move those three formers to help the mine on the mins bonus SE of Zetari, we get it done quicker by a few turns - quite useful with that many minerals, but tailor how many we have there so we don't waste formerturns.

Hope I'm not making too many rookie SMAX mistakes.

Maniac · November 18, 2003, 18:35

Impaler:

I only think 1 former needs to go and assist at Zetaris mine building as by the time they get their the thing will be half done and having 3 formers building the mine wont be significantly better then having 2 do it. Unless your planing on having thouse formers travel East of Zetaris and contribute to terraforming thouse as of yet untouched areas. I would be all for that but if your going to send them right back to ware they came from dont bother.

Since at the moment our three original bases of Apolyton Prime, PI Square and Logic Loop seem to have sufficient terraformation, I was indeed thinking of sending those formers more or less permanently to the east. Does that sound ok?

Have one of the formers start farm/solar panal on the rolling 1000m+ square thats over in that Area, this will be good for Zetaris to work soon.

How about this revised former proposal which both takes care of finishing the mine soon and building farms & solar collectors?:

One (70.64) former moves to the rolling & moist (71.65) and starts building road. The other moves directly to (74.66) to build road. The (72.62) former moves to the rolling & moist (73.65) and builds road. When the (74.66) road is completed, the former on that square and if available the former at (73.65) aid in the mine construction at (76.66). The two formers building roads on the two rolling & moist tiles start on a farm and solar collector (possibly after one of them is finished helping constructing the mine).
Do you still follow?

Also as I said Earlier Zetaris dosn't need to do war Production now, it should build a Tanks to keep Growth up. It can focus on other tasks later.

It seems we have a diametrically opposed opinion and thus unsolvable difference on this.

So what do others think about this we should do with Zetaris? The most popular opinion will be executed.
Edit: If I read correctly, MWIA seems to give priority to Impact Cruiser as well in his next post.

Dont forget to escort the Pod from Matrix as their are still worms up in that area ware the new base will go.

Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten about it.

Added to the preliminary orders.

MrWhereItsAt:

What exactly is the stockpile energy thing?

In short, if a production item finishes and the next item in the build queue is "stockpile energy", then you will get the effects of "stockpile energy" that turn. For example, when your min production is 8 per year, your currently accumulated mineral amount is 16, the item you're building costs 20 mins, then that item will finish next turn. When it then finishes that next turn, and "stockpile energy" is next in the build queue, then you will get the effects of "stockpile energy" in that base for free that year, meaning 4 credits (50% of 8 mins) for nothing. Also when you then switch production from "stockpile energy" to another item, the 4 minerals that were carried over from previous turn (16+8=24, and the item only cost 20 mins) are still saved, so you lose nothing.

Personally I think using the stockpile energy bug and thus adding it deliberately to the build queue to get free cash should be allowed, because when a base facility or secret project finishes, the production automatically switches to "stockpile energy" if no next item is included in the build queue. On the other side, when a military unit is finished, production immediately starts on another unit of the same type instead of switching to "stockpile energy". IMO this gives an unfair advantage to builders (who construct more facilities and thus get more free cash) over warmongers if you are forbidden to add stockpile energy in the build queue after a unit.

Why is the Laser Cruiser going East?

I was thinking that next turn we could send it through the shallows of (89.55-57) and send it back to the PEACE frontiers along our southern coast, in the meanwhile also exploring that coast a bit. That way I think it should arrive near Boolean Bay around the time we should send our invasion force on its way.

Next turn the former near LL will have 3 formerturns to go with the forest - adding the other forner to it will surely take that to 1 formerturn after one more turn, in which case we should activate one former and move it elsewhere the turn before the forest is finished, else we lose a turn of movement. Is this how it works in SMAX?

As I don't fully understand what you're talking about, probably not.

If I understand you correctly, is it perhaps in Civ3 that if one worker (civ3 formers IIRC?) finishes the terraformation, all the other workers on that tile can no longer move, even if they didn't add to finishing that terraformation that turn? If so, SMAC fortunately doesn't have such a micromanaging-hell-rule.

MrWhereItsAt · November 19, 2003, 00:12

I mean that, if we have 3 turns to go for an improvement with 1 former, and we add a second former that turn, then it will only take two turns to finish the improvement. Howeer, once the improvement is finished, one of the formers will not have been needed to finish that turn, so it could be more efficient to have used that extra turn to move the unneeded former elsewhere rather than have it an extra move away from its next destination.

Turn 1
- one former has three turns to go on an improvement
- second former jons in on the improvement - now only two turns until the improvement done

Turn 2
- one turn to go with both formers
-if we activate one of the formers and send it on its way NOW, the improvement will still be done in one turn, and this activated former can move on quickly instead of being stick where it is until turn 3

Turn 3
-improvement done, at least one former can now move on, but if we had activated one last turn it could be two moves away and still the improvement would be finished...

Make sense?

Drogue · November 19, 2003, 18:30

Topped, sorry for the delay, have had RL issues

Impaler[WrG] · November 21, 2003, 12:27

Hey I just noticed in the Hive exchanges that the Hive has OKed Contact with the University. Lets do that this turn, we just might be able to squeeze some com link trades out of them before the Council is called. Sell them for what ever the University asks as we have no time to bargan. I think we also need to ask for Ecological Enginering so we can get access to advanced terrafroming options like Bore Holes and Echlon Mirrors

*Salavates at though of Bore Holes and Echlon Mirrors*

MrWhereItsAt · November 21, 2003, 16:43

So that means the Hive has agreed we can seel contact with them to the Uni? Sounds good to me.

And as for the Boreholes et al, if we DO get them, I am dying to see what Implaer is going to do with them. This will help me a lot in my PBEM game.

I'm not much of a builder.

Maniac · November 21, 2003, 18:27

MrWhereItsAt, isn't it rather:
MY 2146: Old former reduces time to two turns to go. New former to one turn to go.
MY 2147: One former finishes the plantation. Other former has its movement left to do anything it wishes.
?

Btw, how about a change in my tentative order?:

MM former (80.70): Change terraformation to planting a forest. Until now we've always cultivated a farm on rainy nutrient squares, but planted forests on moist nutrient squares.

to build a road first? If we first build a forest and only then a road, the road will cost three (on forest) instead of two turns (on rolling tile) to build.

Also, should we hurry the Impact Marines in Logic Loop, using 6 credits?

MrWhereItsAt · November 22, 2003, 18:02

Sounds good, as long as we are not going to need the forest anytime before it is done.

Maniac - looks like I will need toplay a SMAC game of my own or two to figure out how terraforming works there. I may just be letting Civ3 experiences mess me up here.

Impaler[WrG] · November 25, 2003, 16:18

Hurry ALL production I say. Energy Credits are for Reinjecting into our civil and military engine to gain turn advantage with. We dont realy need them for anything else as we have no trades or SP that we are aiming for. Anything above an emergency reserve of around 100 credits should be invested. Remember to use Just enough to get completion in 1 turn.

Maniac · November 25, 2003, 17:18

Hurry ALL production I say.

We don't make enough money yet to do so.

Which rushes would you give the highest priority?

Personally I'd vote to use our growing cash reserve to upgrade our laser cruiser to an impact cruiser, and to hurry our cruiser transport a little bit if necessary.

Illuminatus · January 21, 2004, 15:44

My apologies, for posting spam in turn thread. I thought that the fact we don`t have CenEmp has somehow slipped your mind. About the Ctrl +r road bug, didn`t know about that. uups

Drogue · January 21, 2004, 16:06

Don't worry. I should have told you. It really doesn't matter.

And hey, In got to use my mod powers, which is always nice

Impaler[WrG] · January 21, 2004, 16:14

I noticed a ways back that using Ctrl- R just caused the former to remove fungus before making a road. Which problably wasn't worth it in the long run but I figured we might as well finish it rather then waste all thouse accumulated turns of terraforming.

Now that we have the Fungacidal Ability we should consider producing or upgrading to some fungacidal formers so that we can start to attack that blop of fungus.

Illuminatus · January 21, 2004, 16:27

Actually I my five year gaming career of SMAC I have encountered tons of bugs, so this bug is still a surprise to me - unpleasant one.

Maniac · February 16, 2004, 21:11

According to the never-accepted

constitution Social Engineering is part of the Second Function's Office. So I have found a good excuse to bump this thread.

The matter is going FM or not, and when.
It is possible, with 20% psych, to go FM this year already. The only problem would be Thermal Tassagrad, which would suffer from drone riots due to that impact cruiser near Calico. So until Calico is captured (hopefully next year already ) and the cruiser thus is in CC territory, all four Tassagradian citizens would need to be turned into doctor for one year. So my question is: should I change to FM this turn already, or wait longer until we've had plenty of opportunity to discuss and poll this matter?

GeoModder · February 17, 2004, 08:17

Not FM yet, we're going to have pacific drone problems then also when the fleet is going to Atlantis in what? 2 turns?

Constitution never accepted

Do we have an 'organized' anarchy here then?

I'm going to check and force implement that gov poll immediately!!

Maniac · February 17, 2004, 09:58

Originally posted by GeoModder
Not FM yet, we're going to have pacific drone problems then also when the fleet is going to Atlantis in what? 2 turns?

Will the fleet move to Atlantis?

Atlantis is a land base, so the fleet can't help in assimilating it.

Do we have an 'organized' anarchy here then?

I would call it "flexible organization".

GeoModder · February 17, 2004, 10:03

Originally posted by Maniac
Will the fleet move to Atlantis?

Atlantis is a land base, so the fleet can't help in assimilating it.

I mean one of the transports, but a impact cruiser wouldn't be bad for protection in case one of the missing PEACE boats roams around (it all depends on what transport is used for bringing units to Pampalona and Atlantis afterwards. I always have problems letting units board the right ship.

Maniac · February 17, 2004, 10:08

IIRC transports don't cause pacifism drones. I could be wrong of course.

Anyway, no FM for now. We'll see what happens later.

GeoModder · February 17, 2004, 10:27

Originally posted by Maniac
IIRC transports don't cause pacifism drones. I could be wrong of course.

Anyway, no FM for now. We'll see what happens later.

transports not, I suppose, but the units on board?

GeoModder · February 18, 2004, 20:18

Originally posted by Maniac [*]Also a bit of the NW of Little Accident was revealed after the base capture. Could there be a PEACE vessel there?

I have a question about your remark here. What has the revealing of a NW tile to do with the possible presence of a PEACE vessel? Is this another bug?

Maniac · February 19, 2004, 02:37

Due to the CyCon techsteal ability, every time we capture an enemy base we get a technology of the enemy faction, or if we already own all the enemy techs, the enemy's world map. That (stealing map) is what happens now every time we capture yet another PEACE base. We got their map when we captured HMB, and also a turn later when we now captured Little Accident. This turn those few squares in the NW of Little Accident are revealed after capturing that base, while last year the squares were still unexplored. The most likely explanation seems to me that there is a PEACE schooner on that location.