Maximising ECs to minerals for SP projects

[Kody]

As you know we're going after a secret project, so I was looking at how to build it faster.

One idea that has been banging around is upgrading crawlers before cashing them in. For our case it is not very useful. I will now outline why.

Upgrades are independant of industry. It will cost the same to upgrade whether we have +5 industry or -2 industry. Hence upgrading is more useful for a faction that has bad industry.

We currently can only get +2 armor (we can obtain it from the drones). We also haven't prototyped it yet. Here are the results of the experiments I did.

With +3 industry, planned, wealth, and hive bonus.

Crawler = 21 minerals
+2 Armored Crawler = 35 minerals
+2 Armored Crawler unprototyped = 56 minerals

Crawler -> +2 Armored Crawler unprototyped = 730 EC to upgrade
Crawler -> +2 Armored Crawler unprototyped = 21 mins -> 56 mins
Cost per mineral = 730/35 = 20.86 EC/Mins

The above definitely means we need to prototype the armor first. If we were to do it.

Crawler -> +2 Armored Crawler = 60 EC to upgrade
Crawler -> +2 Armored Crawler unprototyped = 21 mins -> 35 mins
Cost per mineral = 60/14 = 4.29 EC/Mins

At 4.29 EC/Min to do the upgrade we're better off directly rush buying the secret project at 4 EC per mineral.

However, we can rush buy the crawlers.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/pmm1/games/nethogs_SMAC_rush_build_table.pdf

With some careful mircomanagement of crawler building and rush buying we can channel our energy into the secret project making it build faster, for 1 mineral every 2 EC. Or 1 mineral for 3 ECs.

Kody

[Jamski]

Nice work Kody Good to know that SOMEONE in this faction can do the maths. Can you work out how fast we can build the WP starting from now?

-Jam

[Kody]

I have yet to do that.

It's difficult because I need to work out several turns into the future. WP can possibly be built in 12 years. Maybe less when we have three bases working on the task. I know once we have crawlers on all the mines it will only take 5 years or so to do a project from 0 minerals.

Kody

[Rokossovky]

Impressive work I must agree. I would suggest doing whatever you production bean counters figure out to be the fastest. As long as it does not stop the rest of the hive from doing other things, like building social or military improvements (as I suspect the crawler solution would...)

- Rokossovky

[Kody]

Look at it this way. If we set up the mineral crawling correctly we may end up getting WP, HG, PTS, and to top it all off the Command Centre too. In the long run our military will be more powerful than if we invest too early.

Kody

[Vev]

That will be an impressive bundle of SPs.

[Kody]

We should be able to build the Weather Paradigm around 2137-2139.
The drones will probably get their first SP around the same time we get ours.

I'm guessing that the other factions will start getting SPs between 2140-2150. That's assuming they have industrial automation or get it soon after we get IA.

I think we can nab one more SP around 2145. The main problem in the simulations I've done are actually drones. You see while some of our bases are busy building crawlers we're still expanding from the colony pods we're currently building. With a large map we hit the efficiency limit at 8 bases and start having drones turn up in our bases forcing us to build more police or recreational commons. Maybe we can just ignore the drones by setting our 2nd worker to a doctor?

What do people think about what's the best way to deal with drones riots?
- Cut back on the number of bases we're building.... (slows down long term colony growth)
- recreational commons..... (slows down SP building moderately)
- build more police units..... (slows down SP building slightly)
- set 2nd worker to doctor..... (slows down long term production, but good for short term production)

Kody

______________________________

Oh the above about getting those 4 SPs is probably not going to happen. I was over optimistic. We'll probably get 2 at least during the mad rush. After that we can do the command centre at our lesuire, as long as we're careful not to trade or get the tech loyalty stolen.
It's unlikely anyone will actually research loyalty in the early part of the game.

Kody

[Kody]

Actually it's after 7 bases when we start getting drones at size 1 bases.

Kody

[Snowflake]

There's no way we should stop expansion. I support using doctor as a temporary solution and when bases finishes the crawlers build police units. I don't think we need rec commens yet 'cause there's the possibility after WP we'll get VW or HGP.

Kody, this post listed a table with when and where b-drones will appear. I thought maybe it will be of some use to you (or anybody else who's interested).

Getting those 4 SPs may be over optimistic, but if everyone of us would work as hard as Kody I'm sure we'll at least grab 4 of the 4.

I suspect CC is not too far away from IA too, though. Could they already have it? What about Uni?

Edit: I meant 3 of the 4.

[Vev]

Once we have those SPs, we have to make sure we hold on to them. Otherwise they prove to be lovely presents.