Ocean-forming?

[Kirjath]

I was just wondering if there was any general stratigies on oceanic terraforming. I'm really enjoying playing as the pirates and was wondering if there was a better way than simply "Autoimprove Home Base" untill it's done.

I know that late game the ocean can produce incredible ammounts of cash, but I'm still in the early game with this particular game.

Also, I just got the Weather Paradigm but still can't build anything on the ocean except on shelf. I thought I was able (as pirates) to build on even trench. Just wondering if I missed something.

Kirjath

[gwillybj]

Look at Datalinks2 in Pirates.txt:
Enhancements may be built in ocean and trench squares with the discovery of Advanced Ecological Engineering.

I've had Alien Crossfire only a short while, so I'm still learning its new tricks, but in the two (solo) games I (role)played as the Pirates, things went reasonably well this way:
I located my bases one space off the beach (in Ocean spaces) and terraformed the adjacent Shelf spaces, alternating Mining Platforms and Tidal Harnesses. I had Kelp Farms in every space, of course, and Bonus spaces were terraformed appropriately (Minerals mined, Energy harnessed).
When I got EcoEng2, I moved out into the trenches.
As I established more bases, I relocated my Headquarters a few times to keep it central (an attempt to avoid some of the inefficiency problems).

[johndmuller]

I seem to recall a post somewhere that offered the possibility that under certain circumstances it could actually be advantageous to scrap your HQ and do without one. I haven't tried this, but I assume that if it is true it would suggest that whatever inefficiency treatment you get without an HQ would be better than with an HQ. Presumably, the worst case for inefficiency would be having a widely dispersed empire where there was no clear focus of your energy production and/or what foci there were were spaced out far apart from each other. If any faction were prone to getting into this sort of pattern, it would most likely be the Pirates, so perhaps this would be something for the Cap'n to look into (unless the whole theory was developed with the help of too much xenorum and thus is BS).

[Kirjath]

gwillybj: Thanks, your right ofcourse. As soon as you mentioned looking at the text file, I realized that's what I should do.

johndmuller: I've never tried to get rid of my headquarters. I'll try that on a single player game tonight. I do have a central locus to my bases though. I have to be carefull to expand around that one base. It has three energy squares in its boundry and I am going to get the Merchant Exchange there soon. Later I hope to have the Super Collider, and the other energy bonus there as well. Start getting a tech a turn or so. Well, I can try at least.

Thanks for the help guys.

Kirjath

[Maniac]

Originally posted by johndmuller

I did this once in a PBEM game with the Pirates, when I had my bases spread all over Planet. I was running Democracy/Green/Knowledge at that time though, and thus had +4 Efficiency. Personally I wouldn't suggest it when you were for example running Demo/Planned/Wealth and had a efficiency rating of -1.

Some technical detail, if you don't have a HQ, IIRC your inefficiency is calculated as if your base is 16 squares away from the HQ.

[Chaos Theory]

I sometimes play on humongous maps, and there getting rid of your HQ is crucial, as your bases are on average quite a bit farther away than 16 tiles from any potential HQ. The catch is that, if your efficiency is -2, you lose ALL your energy to inefficiency. At 0 efficiency, you lose half, and at +2 you still lose 1/3, so you need high efficiency to make this worthwhile, even with a large empire.