How many formers do you want?

[Pandemoniak]

I said I thought this poll was nonsense because we cannot know what Terraforming efforts will be needed. This depends on too many things - growth of the base, usable squares, general mineral production, specific mineral production, etc...

Moreover, I think that the role of Director of terraforming is rather to consult people about what kind of terraforming is needed, and where in priority, the number of terraformers needed being just a detail of efficiency, that can easily be figured out according to specific conditions.

More interesting questions would be :
- Should we favor building mines or building solars in average squares ?
- Should we invest in building a sensor array in a square right before we build a base at this place ? (This gives the bonus all the time, with or without frontier moves ; this allow us to delay base fundation in case of ennemies/mindworms approaching ; this spare one square to have solars/mine on it, instead of a captor, but it delays base fundation a bit.)
- Should we terraform our cities radius with roads all around for a better circulation of garrison or should we do just the minimum needed, so that ennemies/mindworms cannot take advantage of our roads/magtubes ?

I am open to any other discussion about terraforming and colonization.

[Maniac]

Very well. Pandemoniak, what would you do if you were D of T&C? Perhaps you should post a pol/ discussion thread to ask people what their opinion is.

In any case, this is my personal opinion, as there haven't been much terraformation polls, momentarily still uninfluenced by the will of the people:

In average squares, say rolling moist, it is always better to build a forest instead of a farm + mine. That's why I would personally build no mines at all in the early game, except when we would stumble on a special mineral resource. The same counts for solar collectors. I doubt I would build many of them in the early game, as the focus in the first decades is on growth and production, nutrients and minerals, not energy production. I can be even more specific about my preferred terraformation choices under average conditions: I would build one farm if that would be necessary to ensure there is a two-food-tile in the base radius. This two-food tile makes sure any base can rapidly grow from size 1 to 2. Besides that, I would plant two or three forests for some mineral and energy production. As I personally wouldn't let an average base grow beyond size 3 in the early decades, this will mean there are always enough terraformed tiles for every base.

About the sensor question: if we have enough former capacity, sure why not? I wouldn't delay base foundation for this reason though.

About the road question. In the early years, the ones we should be talking about, I doubt we will have enough former power to build roads everywhere. So naturally the road system will be the minimum needed to connect all bases along the shortest path (thus allowing easy transfer of garrisons) and to speed expansion purposes.

A tip for later in the game: forest has a higher chance of spreading when there isn't a road or sensor built on it.