Science discussion thread

[Snowflake]

Look at this from another article:

Instabuilding is a term that smacers have coined for “starting and finishing the build of a secret project all in 1 turn.” Post Industrial Automation, it is virtually the only way a secret project should be built.

I started to wonder if we should hold up the SP a little and concentrate on getting the crawlers. Suppose we start it now, we may need 30 something turns, and other faction may try hurry their research and production of crawlers and before we know it they could finish the SP that we are trying to get and we would end up wasting all those minerals.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Rokossovky
(I forget where crawlers are though... can someone enlighten? ).

Crawlers come with Industrial Automation

[Googlie]

Or you could capture some of Roze's drop armored trance ones that I left lurking for her to find in middle and late game to instabuild later SPs

.................................................. .................................................. .............................just kidding by Googlie, June 26 at 11:30

[Snowflake]

Or you could just capture the enemy base that has the SP I guess.

[Snowflake]

This leads to a new question, are we playing the Hive as a momentum faction or a builder? All the discussions about crawler techs are more related to the builders I think. I see big difference in tech tree recommendations depending on who you are.

For example, here's the tech tree Ogie Oglethorpe recommends for builder type:
Cent Ecology
Ind Base
Ind Econ
Plan Nets
Social Psych - (IA doesn't normally show after PN)
Ind Auto
(Ogie Oglethorpe also indicates that you should get IA around 2114 to 2119. Which means we are probably quite behind.)

and here is Buster's recommended tech tree for early game combat:
Centauri Ecology - you need those crawlers (should be formers - HH) to get your empire going.
Information Networks & Planetary Networks - to get probes and be able to go planned.
Doctrine Mobility - to get rovers and command centers.
Applied Physics and Non-Linear Mathematics - weapons.
doctrine flexibility - ships
High Energy Chemistry & head for planes, MMI and Fusion (puts you pretty much on regular builder beeline)

I've never been a wargoinger but I suspect the Hive is best played as a momentual faction? What I don't know for sure is how big a benefit going to early war is other than you could wipe out one of your opponents. The problem is while you are busy at war, others are building and researching and if you don't become much stronger after the war then it's not likely you'll be able to wage another war toward a stronger opponent. However, early game means a lot of factions may only have size 1 bases and you will not gain any new base through war. The only other benefit I can see is that you can probe him for tech and maps and stuff and that means we need a lot of probe teams built.

Tech wise so far we've got
1) Doctrine: Loyalty, POLICE STATE
2) Centauri Ecology, Formers, WP
3) Info Networks, Network Node
and we're working on
4) Applied Physics, Laser (2)
Is that right? I think a possible option after Applied is to research Planet Networks, which gives us Planned and probe. By the time we finish PN, it's likely we've found out who is in the connected continent and if we should go the war route (impactor, mobility) or the crawler route (IB, IE, IA).

[Googlie]

Originally posted by HongHu
Or you could just capture the enemy base that has the SP I guess.

Hmm - the 2 AI factions should be a lot stronger than you'd encounter in single-player games (remember from my early general posts that I had to "dumb-down" the beefed up AI 'cos I'd made them just too overpowering )

Of course they will still do the stupid AI things like use crawlers as explorers, build 100 needlejets then site them all in one base etc etc, but they can be made effective (eg Miriam can be set to commit atrocities wantonly and then she equips nervegas to her noodles, and builds oodles of PBs, especially if linked to especially aggressive and also obliterates captured bases)

(These various tweaks can all be seen if you choose when loading a game the "Scenario" and "Create Scenario" functions, then hit the "scenario" tab from the left hand menu when the (empty sea) map loads. Go then to "edit faction personality" and to "edit faction strategy" and you'll see all the things that can be done to tweak the AI in a scenario-start game such as this one)

G.

[Snowflake]

As for SP, I remember reading somebody saying don't start a SP until you have 15 minerals.

I suspect university would be among the first who start SPs, but hopefully they'll go for VW, that means we could still hope to get WP.

[Snowflake]

Now that I've filled my post quota for two days perhaps, I'll stop for a while and probably won't come back until tomorrow night, when Captain Flaire starts to play SMAC again and Comrade SU comes back to the Hive so that he can make me a nice forward-looking avatar.

[Vev]

What would our stance be in tech trading?

[Snowflake]

Looks to me loyalty and AP may be the ones that other factions do not have. Most possibly they've already got IB, IE and PN.

[Kody]

I suggest we beeline for flexibility and start looking for factions to trade with. Also the pod popping will make it worth our while. After flexibility we go for wealth.

The drones look like they will get the WP. They started a project in turn 2. I think this was mainly so they could beat the AI to the secret projects. According to googlie's playtesting the AI is going to outbuild human players with secret projects and cash in their armored trance crawlers.

Since it will be very difficult getting secret projects I suggest our first aim will be on new cities and expanding terriority. That means flexibility so we can start colonising the smaller continents that are probably out there.

Kody

[Vev]

Especially if we find ourselves trapped on an island.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Kody
..... and cash in their armored trance crawlers.

I'd hate for a faction to set strategy on a joke - didn't you see the ........... just kidding by Googlie ........... disclaimer in that post of mine?

G.

[Kody]

Umm I guess I didn't.



Kody

[Snowflake]

I still think that crawler is a more important priorty. Also I think we should considering start SP in the valley base. A former should work on one of the mineral bonus right away, then the nut bonus. After a colony pod, the base should start SP. Before it is finished hopefully we'll got IA and all bases should produce a crawler, we'll cash in perhaps two to finish the SP. I still believe that we can do it. Plus I think I read somewhere that there's no penalty to switch SP so if we fail to get the WP we can still switch to another.