Energy Park

[Snowflake]

I have never tried to build energy parks before and thought that it might be interesting to test the idea out now that one of my games has a nice mountain with 3500 attitude. I remember I have read through a thread where people have discussed the pros and cons of different designs of an energy park. But I couldn't find it using the search function. Would somebody still remember where to find it be so kind to direct me to it? Or better yet would somebody give me some ideas of different designs? I would greatly appreciate it!

[johndmuller]

It is unfortunate that one can't effectively search for old stuff, as there is quite a lot of good material available if you can find it. There is also a great deal of and the occasional tidbits of incorrect info to dilute your searching pleasure. Another difficulty is that links to some posts and threads which might attract one's interest in older threads are dysfunctional, perhaps due to database and/or software upgrades or reorganizations.

I've never made a study of it myself, but I have read some of those threads - I think the basic design is to create a big plateau at 3500m, fully solared with a good number of E-Mirrors (I would think it worthwhile to through in a few drill-to-aquifers too), the resulting energy crawled to your HQ most likely. In the threads, they discuss optimal ratios of solars to mirrors - it might be as high as 50-50, but I don't really remember for sure, in any case, it shouldn't be too hard to reinvent that wheel.

Other issues revolve around economics (like putting a base or bases nearby to keep the cost of raising terrain down) and protection (from those nasty envious enemies).

[Kody]

Honghu,

I left a design for a simple energy park in the terraforming plan for the Hive like 6 months ago (it's probably dusty but I know it's in one of the old threads forumid41 also a few members have copies of it). Also notice that I've indicated with labels where land-raising or land-lowering needs to occur for boreholes to be enabled on energy bonuses or on mineral bonuses. As well as other things…. I think I only used one mirror in that design and only a few solar panels. Basically early on I expected terraformers would be more busy with other terraforming and wouldn't want to spend lots of time building mirrors when other terraforming may be more important.

When there are sufficient improvements elsewhere and you are in the position to build the crawlers for the energy park (you have to use your judgement on this), then you may want to use the mirror design found at the following link.

(link…. link…. darn couldn't find the original post)
__________________________________________________ ___________________
Basically have lines of mirrors. For a 5x5 grid of squares.

I'll show a few different configurations.

E stands for Emirrors, X for solar
X E X E X
X E X E X
X E X E X
X E X E X
X E X E X
The bonus energy for each square
2 0 4 0 2
3 0 6 0 3
3 0 6 0 3
3 0 6 0 3
2 0 4 0 2
Total= 52

* The optimal configuration.

E stands for Emirrors, X for solar
E X E X E
E X E X E
E X E X E
E X E X E
E X E X E
The bonus energy for each square
0 4 0 4 0
0 6 0 6 0
0 6 0 6 0
0 6 0 6 0
0 4 0 4 0
Total= 52
* Notice how more mirrors doesn't actually improve the amount of energy you get.

E stands for Emirrors, X for solar
E E E E E
X X X X X
E E E E E
X X X X X
E E E E E
The bonus energy for each square
0 0 0 0 0
4 6 6 6 4
0 0 0 0 0
4 6 6 6 4
0 0 0 0 0
Total= 52
* rotating the design can be easily done

E stands for Emirrors, X for solar
E X E X E
X E X E X
E X E X E
X E X E X
E X E X E
The bonus energy for each square
0 3 0 3 0
3 0 4 0 3
0 4 0 4 0
3 0 4 0 3
0 3 0 3 0
Total= 40
* An example non-optimal design.




Of course when you only have a small energy park that is say about 3x3 squares, then you probably should consider doing it in Excel. Here's a template I was using before.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=33915_mirrors.zip

When deciding how you should make your energy park consider the following. They are ordered in priority.

1. How much terraforming time do you want to spend?
2. Rocky squares. Echilon Mirrors build time doesn't change when on different terrain. Solar panels double in build time when on rocky squares (they cost 4 normally 8 on rocky squares, applies for tidal harasses if the sea floor is rocky). So rotate the lines of panels/mirrors to reduce build time.
3. Try have solar panels not mirrors on rivers and energy bonuses. You won't be able to always have a crawler on every square of the energy park. This is because the opponent may pick them off, you may need to cash a few for SPs, divert some to food, or just be busy building facilities. So if you try and concentrate the energy onto particular squares then you'll be able to crawl more energy to your cities.
4. Don't forget that the mirrors themselves work as solar panels the only difference is they don't get the bonus energy from adjacent mirrors.

Other things to note:
Mirrors only work in your terrority.

http://www.apolyton.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2368224&highlight=mirror+energy#post2368224

[Skanky Burns]

Wouldn't it be more effective if some of those squares were thermals? Even without any bonuses (side-question: do Emirrors give any bonus to boreholes?) they give 6 energy.

[anarchie]

Not really. Energy parks are usually located outside a base's workable radius, so you can either crawl the minerals or energy, not both. It gives you some flexibility at a cost of former-turns.

[Kody]

For the 5x5 energy park assuming all above 3000m
Total= 52 bonus energy from mirrors. That's average of 2.08 bonus energy per square.

At 3000m 4 energy per square from solar added with the 2.08 bonus energy and that's 6.08 energy from each square not counting special/landmark bonuses or rivers.

Also boreholes can only be built 1 every 4 squares in optimal borehole spacing. From a pure energy perspective having a combination of boreholes and mirrors isn't that good as you lose more energy from having the borehole than you gain.

If you are at 0 elevation and have bases as well in your energy park. Then you can lose 7 energy in exchange for a borehole. So at lower elevation you can trade 1 energy for 6 minerals by building a borehole. At 3000m you lose 4 energy for the extra 6 minerals.

In later game when you're building your energy park you'll probably be more interested in energy than additional minerals as the energy from that park gets multipled by facilities.

[RedFred]

Most of the analysis so far seems to neglect a couple of points.

The first is that energy crawled must be balanced against terriforming time. That is, if your echelon mirror density is too high, it will take longer to get the energy.

The second is that you get energy out of the actual echelon mirror tile. Even if it is only one per 1000 m. my crawler production is usually high enough to justify crawling from the echelons.

The other thing worth mentioning in passing is that in SMACX sea energy parks are one energy per tile more productive than SMAC thanks to a new type of base improvement. Once you consider former time it is often preferable to go that route. That is... if you have a bunch of easily defended shallow sea tiles.

[Kody]

Ahh yes I forgot to mention that point about sea energy parks.

I'll leave details on sea energy parks up to other people to explain.

[Adalbertus]

Sea based energy parks have the advantage to be somewhat faster in construction (tidal harness is faster than Echelon Mirror, for large areas you'll need to raise every tile exactly once in both cases, land or sea) but averaged over large areas you'll get 5 energy/tile on sea and 8/tile on land. Plus, land crawlers are faster produced than sea crawlers. On the other hand, land raising in the sea is more expensive in EC than on land (96 vs. 18 or so).
Anyway, I guess I start a big energy park too late in the game, so that the decision is mostly based on if I can get a large chunk of land or of sea for the park. Nothing more annoying than a submissive who plants a base in the middle of your energy park.

[Maniac]

http://www.civgaming.net/smac/acad_tformopt.shtml

Says it about all AFAIK.

Btw, does anyone else besides me have the problem that the game always starts crashing when I move a unit over an energy park which I just finished building. We also encountered this problem at the end of the first Alpha Centauri Democracy Game, so it's not limited to me alone.

[Flare]

~grins~ I LOVE making land energy parks, but they are a pain. I often times just tend to crawler forest. With the Merchant Exchange & Hybred Forests, you can rake in a decent amout of energy. Granted, it is not what a good energy park will bring in, but it is a LOT less expensive, plus forest grows, but solar pannels & E mirrors do not. Also, it works well outside your borders.

[Snowflake]

Thanks everybody for the invaluable advices! This is quite enough to get me going I believe.

[Kody]

Just to dispell a misconception, chessboard pattern is not most efficent. 40 Energy with the chessboard pattern, whereas if you look at the other pattern it's 52 Energy.

E stands for Emirrors, X for solar
E X E X E
X E X E X
E X E X E
X E X E X
E X E X E
The bonus energy for each square
0 3 0 3 0
3 0 4 0 3
0 4 0 4 0
3 0 4 0 3
0 3 0 3 0
Total= 40
* An example non-optimal design. (chessboad pattern)

[johndmuller]

Kody, I resisted asking this earlier, but since you posted some more matrices, it put me over the edge, so to speak, and now I have to ask.

Would you be so kind as to explain how the vertical/horizontal layout in the posts correspond to the more diagonal layout of the game tiles. People posting in the format you've been using seem to take it for granted that there is a universal understanding as to how to map between this squared off representation and the map layout, but I must confess to being from a different universe if that is the case, so would you do an alien a favor and straighten diagonalize that out for me? Thanks.

[Snowflake]

On a 3x3 area, I suppose it would be better to have
X X X
E E E
X X X
than
X X X
X E X
X X X
? For the first one bonus energy will be 14 and the second one only 8. I do notice that the first design requires more teraforming time.