Why is a pop. boom helpful to you other than getting you #1 in pop.?????????????????

[Googlie]

Right on, b_c

And don't forget sea crawlers - if you put a kelp farm on a sea nutrient square, and if that base has the aquafarm improvement, the resulting pop booming is awesome - and turn these extra pops immediately into librarians/empaths/transcendii according to your tech status at the time

(and do the same with the ocean energy squares - build tidal harnasses on them and crawl the energy to a coastal science base and watch the multiplicative effect take hold)

G.

[mark13]

I don't tend to use crawlered nuts in, to be honest - maybe I should start, I don't know. I seldom use specialists either - I usually just build a tree farm, rec commons (assuming I have the VW) and jack the psych up to 20%. This is more than enough to quell any drones, and pop boom - what with the 2 nuts being brought in by each worker....

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

M13 et al.

The beauty of crawler/trawlers. I like to think of it as the ability to maximize output of a given square or set of squares. you'll find as you specialize you get more out of a given set of squares then you would otherwise.

Take for example a fully developed Size 16 base with Hybrid forests and recycle tank. This base will be delivering the following under normal econ situations.

base square - 3N-2M-2E
16 forest squares - 3N-2M-2E
Totals - 51N-34M-34E

Not considereing orbital improvements then the base consumes 32N to support the population leaving effectively 19N (free and wasted)34M-34E

Now consider the 20% psych and youve got 19N-34M-27E (assuming no efficiecny loss)

Contrast this with a crawler/trawler approach
Where 50% of the population is specialists (thereby still allowing golden age if you so choose)

Using Nutrient crawler/trawler (SMAC not SMACX so all crawlers/trawlers bring in 3 nuts)

Base square = 3-2-2
Workers = 8 yielding 24-16-16
Population requires - 32
Shortfall = 5 nutrients or 2 crawlers @30 mins each

Assuming Librarians base output is

1 free nutrient - 16 mins - 16 E + 24 E (labs from librarians) = 40 E

To bring the base on par with respect to mins add 4 crawlers on roaded, rocky mines. So for 6 crawers at 30 mins each you have devleoped that base equivalently to a size 16 hybrid base and have nearly 50 percent more energy to show for it. Whats more is you have used less squares in doing so.
(8 workers, 6 crawlers/trawlers, 1 base square vs. 16 workers and 1 base square or 15 vs 17).

I like to think of this a specialization of resource harvesting complementary to specialization of population. Meaning that you set to harvest single high yield resources by crawler that which will yield the best single resource. In mid game then this is a kelp farm (for SMACX aided with Aquafarm facility), rocky roaded mines ( I always work a borehole if possible), and tidal harness. Once soil enrichers come into play a condensor/farm/soil enricher is a beautiful motherlode of nutrients for but a single crawler.

Towards the mid to late game energy is what drives the game not mineral power. Anything that improves your energy output is a boon and specialization through nutrient harvesting is a key to that energy production. In fact I'll attempt to maximize my specialist ratio (normally to about 50% of base population again to allow golden age and +2 econ while running Demo/Green/wealth) through nutrient harvesting before I consider going onto conventional energy trawlering (energy trawlers of course being aided by +2 econ).

Og