Obtaining Our Next Secret Project

[MrWhereItsAt]

Sounds like an excellent plan Now I see why getting 150 Credits from that pod is such a wonderful dream of yours, Impaler. We may not get a Naval Base every turn, as PEACE may be disbanding themif they have given up hope of defense.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Imposible for them to do, its a free facility they recive in all bases when they discovered Doc:Init. Just as we could not scrap our Navel Yards because of the MCC neither can they. Their are several other facilites though that they might scrap such as Energy banks, Rec Commons or Comand Centers.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Imposible for them to do, its a free facility they recive in all bases when they discovered Doc:Init. Just as we could not scrap our Navel Yards because of the MCC neither can they.

The following is in the turn report for 2151.

Order's executed, with the exceptions of:
The scrapping of naval yards in Triplex, since there isn't one (did they destroy it?).

Can anyone explain this? AFAIK no PEACE bases were landlocked, and thus every base should get a Naval Yard, right? So what happened to this one?

Oddly, we sold TWO Naval Yards in a base the turn before - could this have been a bug that relocated Triplex' Naval Yard somehow?

[Impaler[WrG]]

PEACE gets a navey Yard even in a land locked base (observe Little Accident).

Their is some kind of Bug thats duplicating a "real", scrapable, apears with an asterick next to it Navel yard in one of our bases when we take a Navel Yard.

But last turn we still had such a yard in Athena which may have prevented the Bug from functioning. Now we are free of real yards again and we will likly recive the duplicate and scrap both for a total of 80 Credits. Atleast this is my current theory. If it holds true then we want to make shure that we always end the turn with NO scrapable yards.

If we infact get the extra 40 Credits on each of our next 2 turns we could likly move up the Secret Project an additional turn as we will be bringing in more then 120 Credits a turn

[Maniac]

If we capture 2 bases next turn, who knows we might get 160 credits! Like this:
Capture Casablanca. Scrap its naval yard and also the possible extra naval yard that appears, hopefully resulting in 80 credits.
As no naval yard is in existence anymore, the bug could perhaps function again.
Thus capture Sealurk Channel and scrap the one or two naval yards again that could appear, for another 80 credits.

Can anyone explain this? AFAIK no PEACE bases were landlocked, and thus every base should get a Naval Yard, right? So what happened to this one?

If a base is captured, sadly enough about half of its facilities are destroyed every time. And the rec commons is always destroyed so it seems. (Similar to civ2 I guess, where the temple and cathedral was also always destroyed).

[Drogue]

I've never seen that? I've captured bases with Rec Commons in on SP before. Is that true?

[Maniac]

Plan's looking good. Though I mentioned a fear about the AP crawler in the chat. I had a further look at it:

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
The Third will come from Apolyton Prime which will likly need to be hurried, estimates are 22 credits so that it can first move in 55 and be upgraded imediatly.

Five more minerals will be added to Apolyton Prime's mineral box before it riots, bringing the total to 7. Due to the very unfortunate riot, no minerals will be accumulated in the production phase between MY 2153 and 2154. As a consequence the mineral amount accumulated MY 2154 will still be less than 10, meaning the hurry cost would be a small 100 credits...

However Zetaris can take care of the third crawler. Next turn MY 2153 it can start on a new crawler. If we rehome Node Runner to MBV and if we crawl that forest near Zetaris, Zetaris will be producing 10 minerals a year. This means that MY 2154 10 minerals will already be accumulated and for a small hurry cost for 4 minerals, the 24-mins crawler can be ready MY 2155. If MY 2154 we have upgraded the three other crawlers (LL, (72.64), (76.66)) to nine-row crawlers, we have together with this fourth three-row crawler enough to hurry the PEG.
PUT would have to give us trance ability MY 2154 at the latest though in this scenario. Perhaps we could also try to loan some cash from them. Who knows they'll loan it to us if we tell them it is to prevent the Hive from getting the PEG.

Is that my correct understanding of the plan, so we have the PEG MY 2156? Or was the plan to get it MY 2157? I'm not sure.

[MrWhereItsAt]

The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.

And I imagine it's a random number of base facilities that are destroyed by capture. In Civ3 it is all cultural improvements, but I imagine that this is a developed form of the destruction favouring Drone-reducing improvements. I think you can get Rec Commons with bases, but not very commonly.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Using the Zetaris Crawler instead would be a good Idea Maniac, I forgot to factor in the AP drone Riot (poks Drouge and reminds him to double check all the orders in the future).

The plan is to Upgrade crawlers on turn 55, start the project in 56 and cash all the Crawlers their and do any additional Hurry buying to get to 1 turn. Then the Project completes in 57.

We will likly require a bit more energy to hurry the Project though as 3 crawlers as 9 Rows each is 27 Rows leaving 3 more rows to account for, Zetaris will likly be able to provide 2 of thouse leaving about 1 row to hurry with Energy which should be about 30-40 Credits, this shouldn't be to hard to accumulate though and if nessary we can incresse Econ to help rase cash after our current Reserch is completed.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Speed up plan:

ok due to the ability to cash 3 PEACE navel Yards in this turn we can accelerate the PEG an additonal turn.

Now we use the Crawler the is currently working the Zetaris Mineral Bonus rather then the one Zetaris would otherwise build as our 3rd Crawler. It is the only one in position that we can use.

We can incresse Econ to 60% and still get our next tec on time and doing so gives us an output of 65 Credits which should give us more then 330 Credits next turn. We use these credits to upgrade 3 Crawlers to Plasma/Trance in turn 54. Then in 55 we start the Project in Zetaris and throw the 3 crawlers at it and hurry the few remaining credits needed to get completion in 56.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Excellent! And anything from the pod is a bonus.

And just to be sure, ATM we can build the PEG (Planetary Energy Grid) and CDF (Citizen's Defense Force) only, correct?

The CF (Cyborg Factory) and CBA (CloudBase Acaemy) are a few techs off.

If so the PEG still seems the best to get right now.

[Maniac]

We can only build the PEG right now.
If the leapfrog with Archaic is succesful, we should be able to build the Neural Amplifier (we already have the Manifold Nexus, so who knows getting this SP could be a good way towards a psi army with both attack and defence bonuses?), Cloudbase Academy and Cyborg Factory.
The Citizen's Defence Force requires Intellectual Integrity. The Hive will plan to research that, so perhaps we can trade that technology with them.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Just a thought - The Planetary Datalinks - how are they regarded for MP games? If it is like the Great Library in the civs, then the faction that gets it will instantly be the target for every other faction, but how is it seen in SMAC?

[Maniac]

In SMAC a tech has to be owned by not 2 (as in Civ2) but 3 other factions before you get it with the PD. This seriously reduces its value IMHO. In practice this would probably mean that a tech already has to be owned by the Hive, Drones and PUT before we get it. But how often is that going to happen? Probably the pact mates the Hive and Drones will have similar techs, but PUT might decide on another beeline, giving us no techs in return. If we had the opportunity to build it, I'd say go for it, but I wouldn't beeline to Cyberethics especially for this.

[Drogue]

I agree with Maniac, except that I would semi-beeline for Cyberethics for the Knowledge value.