Energy Park

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I beliee that the uranium flats lose their special +1 if the land is raised.

[Frankychan]

hmmm, never tried that.

Although I've raised the Garland Crater to 3500m and it still give the original bonus.....although it should probably be renamed Garland Hill or something.

[Adalbertus]

Some incomplete obervations:
- Most landmarks lose their optical appearance when raised/lowered.
- I'm quite confident that the jungle, uranium flats, and pholus ridge lose their benefits also.
- The Borehole Cluster canges optically to conventional boreholes but they still work.

Anybody tried to lower the mound of Mount Planet?

[jtsisyoda]

A borehole in the crater doesn't get +1 minerals.

[johndmuller]

I believe that I've seen Mt. Planet tiles lose the 'Volcano' designation for as little as being 'lowered' by sea level changes (probably across a 1k threshhold though).

[Skanky Burns]

Well, my first experiment was a success. My capital city was the only city that had crawlers running out of it. By the end of the game that city alone was producing over 2000 energy each turn. I had enough stockpiled energy to buy the win. In no less than 9 cities.

[Urban Ranger]

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

I never had a use for energy parks... though I had never played on the Transcendi (?) level, either.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
- I'm quite confident that the jungle, uranium flats, and pholus ridge lose their benefits also.

AFAIK, just the Monsoon Jungle loses its bonuses.

Originally posted by Adalbertus
Anybody tried to lower the mound of Mount Planet?

You aren't allowed to do that IIRC.

[Lazerus]

You can lower mount planet, i normally have to in order to get my boreholes around the base.

[Mr. Harley]

Only the Hive would try to lower Mount Planet.

[Adalbertus]

I haven't tried that, but maybe it's possible to lower mound planet only by lowering a tile next to it.

Lazerus, if you did so, did the graphics change?

[Skanky Burns]

It is possible to lower mount planet by lowering the tile next to the crater. I just tried it. The crater disappears as soon as you lower it though.

[Santiago_Claus]

A few years back I developed what I called the "Parallel Ridge Energy Park".

It was an attempt to optimize two competing efficiencies: raising terrain in a straight line and deploying E Mirrors in a circle.

The biggest problem with it is a bug which has been in every version of AC and AC-X since 1998 which corrupts the map data whenever terraforming increases the energy output of a square while it is being remote-mined for energy. When the corrupted map data is referenced it causes an unhandled exception in TerranX.Exe (or Terran.Exe for classic AC).

The second-biggest problem is the E Mirrors shut down once they leave your territorial influence, so you must build "outposts" every so often.

The bugs and SMAC-X's ocean energy build conspire to make E Parks impractical, but here's how to build what I consider the greatest land-based Energy Park ever designed:

A Parallel-Ridge Energy Park is best constructed East-West 2.5 squares from a pole, but North-South construction is also possible. The pole squares are all rocky, so you get the added bonus of a convenient location to build mines, and a ridge along a pole has only one side to defend, as the poles don't "wrap".

Because SMAC East-West is diagonal, if you raise terrain in that line, you get a 3000m ridge with 2000m "teeth" adjacent. Our goal is to build 2 parallel ridges at 2.5 squares' distance so that the "teeth" interlock, creating a huge 2000m plateau between them.

Since the best way to raise to 3000m is to start at 2000m, let's assume the best way to get parallel ridges is to raise a 3000m "curve" from one ridge to the next. If you're raising a ridge Easterly and you want to curve South to build its parallel counterpart, raise Southeast, then South, then South. You are now on the line of the Southern parallel ridge, so raise to the West. The North edge of the South ridge should interlock with the South edge of the North ridge like a zipper.

What's most important is getting the distance just right so the "teeth" interlock without any wasted overlap. That distance is 2.5 units, measuring diagonals as 1 unit and horizontal / vertical as half a unit.

Also note that the ridges can be extended in parallel in either direction indefinitely (or until you circle the globe I guess). In fact, if you're using formers that have a move rate of 1, it is slightly more efficient to put 1 former on each of the 4 ends than put 4 formers on 1 end, because of the turns used up moving.

The placement strategy for E. Mirrors is a subject of another thread, because there are 3 different optimizations: build time, land utilization, and crawler utilization.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Santiago_Clause
A few years back I developed what I called the "Parallel Ridge Energy Park".

It was an attempt to optimize two competing efficiencies: raising terrain in a straight line and deploying E Mirrors in a circle.

The biggest problem with it is a bug which has been in every version of AC and AC-X since 1998 which corrupts the map data whenever terraforming increases the energy output of a square while it is being remote-mined for energy. When the corrupted map data is referenced it causes an unhandled exception in TerranX.Exe (or Terran.Exe for classic AC).

The second-biggest problem is the E Mirrors shut down once they leave your territorial influence, so you must build "outposts" every so often.

The bugs and SMAC-X's ocean energy build conspire to make E Parks impractical, but here's how to build what I consider the greatest land-based Energy Park ever designed:

A Parallel-Ridge Energy Park is best constructed East-West 2.5 squares from a pole, but North-South construction is also possible. The pole squares are all rocky, so you get the added bonus of a convenient location to build mines, and a ridge along a pole has only one side to defend, as the poles don't "wrap".

Because SMAC East-West is diagonal, if you raise terrain in that line, you get a 3000m ridge with 2000m "teeth" adjacent. Our goal is to build 2 parallel ridges at 2.5 squares' distance so that the "teeth" interlock, creating a huge 2000m plateau between them.

Since the best way to raise to 3000m is to start at 2000m, let's assume the best way to get parallel ridges is to raise a 3000m "curve" from one ridge to the next. If you're raising a ridge Easterly and you want to curve South to build its parallel counterpart, raise Southeast, then South, then South. You are now on the line of the Southern parallel ridge, so raise to the West. The North edge of the South ridge should interlock with the South edge of the North ridge like a zipper.

What's most important is getting the distance just right so the "teeth" interlock without any wasted overlap. That distance is 2.5 units, measuring diagonals as 1 unit and horizontal / vertical as half a unit.

Also note that the ridges can be extended in parallel in either direction indefinitely (or until you circle the globe I guess). In fact, if you're using formers that have a move rate of 1, it is slightly more efficient to put 1 former on each of the 4 ends than put 4 formers on 1 end, because of the turns used up moving.

The placement strategy for E. Mirrors is a subject of another thread, because there are 3 different optimizations: build time, land utilization, and crawler utilization.

Vi Vicdi?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Santiago_Clause
The biggest problem with it is a bug which has been in every version of AC and AC-X since 1998 which corrupts the map data whenever terraforming increases the energy output of a square while it is being remote-mined for energy. When the corrupted map data is referenced it causes an unhandled exception in TerranX.Exe (or Terran.Exe for classic AC).

Ah finally someone who also adresses the problem I mentioned earlier in this thread. Do you know any way to circumvent this bug and still be able to build energy parks? Due to this bug I have avoided building energy parks in all my games since I first encountered that bug.