Automated Formers

[socrate95]

Anyone know if there's anything that can be done to make automated formers plant only forests (ie tweak some settings in alpha.txt)?

[Kody]

I know you can disable specific kinds of terraforming in the alpha.txt. However I suspect the actual terraforming AI is embedded in the terran.exe.

If you feel like fiddling with what kinds of terraforming are available, do a search for "#TERRAIN" and adjust lines to suit your preferences. Note that this will affect all terraforming rather than just the automatic formers.

[Jac de Molay]

Re: Automated Formers

Originally posted by socrate95
Anyone know if there's anything that can be done to make automated formers plant only forests (ie tweak some settings in alpha.txt)?

I thought there was a menu in the game where you can tweak it. But, I hear it doesn't work anyway as the AI will still have formers plant other stuff.

Jac.

[socrate95]

I'm not worried about the AI's formers. I only worry about my formers. I want them to only plant forests and nothing else. There is a menu in AC, but there is no way to prevent the stupid formers from planting farms, mines and solars.

[CEO Aaron]

Yes, autoformers blow goats, unfortunately there's really no way to get around it. I'd like very much if it were possible to fix the AI's terraforming, which is uniformly horrid, but I have a feeling that if the AI were able to terraform well, I would be unable to beat it at Transcend, since they get substantial industry, growth and research bonuses.

[Vev]

Put arid land world setting and chances are your formers plonk down forests over those dry squares.

Although chances are that the AI might still stuff things up.

"Hey let's mine that rolling square!"

[gwillybj]

Re: Automated Formers

socrate95 asked:
Anyone know if there's anything that can be done to make automated formers plant only forests (ie tweak some settings in alpha.txt)?
I'm not worried about the AI's formers. I only worry about my formers. I want them to only plant forests and nothing else. There is a menu in AC, but there is no way to prevent the stupid formers from planting farms, mines and solars.

Automation Preferences {Ctrl+A}

On:
__Automated Formers can plant forests.

On or Off:
__Automated Formers can remove fungus.

Off:
__Automated Formers can raise/lower terrain.
__Automated Formers can build condensers, boreholes, etc.
(does that etc. mean farms, mines, solars?)
__Automated Formers can build sensors.
__Automated Formers can build roads and tubes.

[CEO Aaron]

Yeah, the problem is that there's no switch that says: Formers CAN'T build farms and Formers CAN'T build Solar Collectors.

[HeymlicH]

There is no way. This means, auto formers are useless in most cases. There are some exceptions:

ctrl shift F forces them to remove fungus only. I usually have some of them.

ctrl shift O forces a former to build sensors only

In some cases it makes sense to automate sea formers, since there are not many options for them.

[socrate95]

Yes automated sea formers are excellent. They even raise sea squares for free!

[Jac de Molay]

Hmm..did not know that

The only thing auto former do decent is the aforementioned fungus removal, as well as road/magtube building.

[socrate95]

Indeed they do. But make sure to check Automated Formers can raise terrains in the Automated section of Preferences.

[Commander Jace]

you shouldn't have to use autoformer later in the game, each former should be specialized into his own individual tasks and have his job completely picked out.

[igtenos]

Depends on circumstances. Personally, I like to guide my formers early on to clean up my home territory and (after getting WP) build a few choice Boreholes in the Rocky squares. Once that's done and one of the AI decide it's time to vendetta me because of SE choices or because of my refusal to vendetta someone else (Yang, Miriam, and Santiago love doing this to me) & I start kicking ass, I tend to let the new formers auto-improve the base and use my older formers to do brush up work (IE: More boreholes!) on new territory or plant forests/boreholes on islands and put a bunch of sea bases around them for the mineral boost in the early/mid-game period before Adv. Eco Engineering makes tidal harnesses worthwhile. I usually have enough to deal with having to pummel 2-3 different factions without guiding my formers too.

BTW, one of my favorite custom units are (Super) Drop Formers.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I manual virtualy all my terraforming, even when set to do SIMPLE things like remove fungus the formers are idiots, every former set to auto fungus clearing will target the same patch of fungus on the other end of the continent, then they will laboriously move their over a decade and then the whole group will pick a different patch of fungus back on the other end of the continent and laboriosly move back their while ignoring fungus right next to them!!!!

I have had a bit of success with Auto Mag tubes, as they will thus be upgrading your existing road network to tubes without wasting time building mag tubes from scratch in inapropropiate places.