Two formers for one job

[Velociryx]

Ahhh....I should have seen that....indeed yes, on the particular kind of map I am most fond of, slow expansion is pretty much the order of the day. That works best on Huge planets, arid conditions, high levels of fungus, and high erosion.

What that gives you is very few 2n squares, forcing you to get a bit creative in the early game to even feed your people and grow decently, lots of flat tiles, facilitating quick road builds, and I've noted that forests tend to expand quite nicely on their own in those conditions.

So....the result is this: When you found a base, in almost every case, your worker is only giving you 1n from turn one, meaning that the base won't grow to size two for something like 24 turns....rush the former on turn one or two (assuming a bit of cash from worms or a nearby pod gives you the ability to do so), and your former has plenty of time to work before the base even grows.

Of course, there's a lot of variability here, and if you get lucky enough to find a nutrient special on that sort of map, then it puts you in the position of being able to launch a faster expansion, and in that case, I'll generally just do roads and the sensor (keeping my bases three spaces apart, so I can let a couple of my bases share the nutrient resource...switching out from one to the other to facilitate rapid growth from 1 to 2, and then having the workers allocated elsewhere for pod building.

On a more standard map, however, I generally shoot for 12-15 bases in the first fifty turns....

-=Vel=-

[RedFred]

[In response to an earlier question] Yes, Fitz, I am sure about the 'union thing' as Blake puts it. It is something to watch for when you are removing fungus or planting forest. One thing I am not sure about is late game fungus spreading. If you are already trying to make fungus in the tile in question, I haven't observed whether the former can recognize if fungus suddenly appears.

[Fitz]

RedFred, the reason I asked about the union thing is that a former crew does stop when you stack many on a square and one completes the job. But now that I think about it, the total former time on that job just reached 0, so it makes sense that it would stop in that case and not in the one you are decribing.

Vel, I really like your style, having gotten it to work, I just find it very hard to implement in conjunction with fast expansion, even on a huge map. The second time I tried it and got it to work, I was doing the 'ring a continent coastline" thing, and bases were only two squares apart. Even so, most of my first bases were left out of the sensor loop.

However, maybe I should try slower expansion in SP games. If I wait to produce a colony pod until a base site is already prepped for it, maybe the AI will have a chance by the mid/late game.

Incidentally, I'm thinking of playing a govorner challange, but haven't had the time to yet. Wasn't there a thread about that once?

[Velociryx]

Hiya Fitz, and thanks! It's a bit tricky and....off from the norm I guess. Takes some getting used to, and a good bit of practice to make it work consistently, but I find the advantages to be enormous indeed.

People are quick to point to the 2:1 difference in attack/defense factors and then naysay any and all defensive techniques, but I've got a fair amound of faith in my base defenders in general, and the multiplicative value of bases and base enhancements can more than overcome a comparable tech level X-Weapon, and the math supports this. Drop a plasma-armored trooper inside a base with a sensor and perim bonus and see what happens when the x-missile rover comes calling....and, to make the attack more realistic, give the attacker a 2-3 "step" morale boost over the defender, but also give the defender commjamming (figure a good defender will be ready for the obvious)....the x-rover is just so much scrap metal, despite the 2:1 "advantage" it has. The reason there's a 2:1 difference in attack and defense strength is because if that ratio was 1:1, it would be just plain suicidal to even consider attacking a defended base! But anyway, that's off topic...or, perhaps not off-topic (since part of the topic deals with sensor arrarys and the abovementioned is partly why I do it that way), but it's definately something of a tangent...LOL

Okay, it's a stream-of-consciousness day, what can I say?! As to the terraforming thing - again, quite right, that methodology would be slow and plodding on a "normal" world, but on the hellish, Dune-like planet settings I enjoy, that's about as fast as it gets, colonization wise, and under those conditions, I can even gang-terraform away a fungus square or two before I have to worry about my base growing! LOL....Those pre-game parameters can totally change the flow and tempo of your game! (what's really cool about playing under these conditions is it lets Yang get freakin' HUGE--I'm usually playing Morgan or Zak--as AI Yang almost always seems to start off near the Jungle, which is always a great landmark, but on an arid world, it's just outright broken!) Very fitting then, that the Yangster should have it, as it actually adds an element of danger to the game in the first 50 turns or so.

Terraforming on more normalized worlds:
Mostly, it will depend on the terrain you start around, but the first part of the equation in my original post remains the same: The creation of a 2n resource tile.

Assuming you build your former first, you actually don't need forests right away, as you'll get ten freebie mins when you found the base anyway, so you can focus your former's attention on building roads and the sensor after you get the 2n square working.

Even with a 2n square (doing this from memory, so this might not be exact), a base takes something like 11 turns to grow from size one to two, which means that you've got about that number of turns of former activity before the base grows.

Roads at 1 turn each *3 = 3
Travel time for three tiles = 3
Sensor 4
Farm 4 (if needed at either the existing base site or the future base site - if not, use the turns to plant a tree)

That, sadly, is more than the eleven turns or so it takes to grow from size one to size two, but, we're talking about the very early game here, and if you've just scraped together and spent fifty credits to rush build two formers, odds are remarkably good that you simply "ain't got" the cash to rush your pods to completion on the very turn that base growth occurs, so your formers will have a bit of extra time to prepare (of course, if you got it, spend it!)

Couple that (early game cash crunch) with the fact that you will not continue with perfect geometric expansion for very long (cos you'll be wanting to pull bases off of that to begin working on SP's and such), and you should have a situation set up where your formers can keep pace with the expansion you are doing.

Or....not?

-=Vel=-
[This message has been edited by Velociryx (edited May 04, 2001).]

[Fitz]

I finally see what my problem is. I build a solar collector on that first 2n square. If I also build a farm, it's even worse. Also, I think my build order (colony pod before defender) is important in this calculation. I'm pretty sure I also stick to one former at the initial base, and do rush the first couple of colony pods.

I new it was me and not your tactic.

I agree whole heartedly with your opinion on defense vs offense. Once you toss in AAA, Aerospace complex and a sensor, you have +225% to your defenders against air. ECM, perimiter & sensor is +175%. Naval is +100%. Add a tachyon for +100%, and attacking in the late game becomes ridiculous. Just remember a probe defender (probe-1-1) or two to stop the destruction of those facilities. I can never remember is dissasociative wave neutralizes the +50% X-bonus either.

When I have poor morale attackers, I even have problems attacking defenders at 2:1 if they are in forest or rocky with a sensor nearby.

That tends to moot vs the AI of course, since you rarely see 2:1 against them. It tends to be Shard vs Plasma for most of my games.

[Misotu]

Tau Ceti ran a test on diss wave - it definitely does *not* negate the impact of nerve gas, which is a bit disappointing. IIRC though, it fizzles all the other special abilities.

In the late game, the blink displacer does make attacking practical again ...

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....well, depending on the faction you're playing, an early solar collector might be a pretty good thing though, but yes, I can see how that would slow you down! I think I'd almost perfer a forest on a river tile (second best non-special in the game, netting you 1-2-2, compared to a monolith's 2-2-2).


Also, we gotta at least give a mention to "holy grail" sites, which will change even the best-laid plans:

Mineral special on a rocky tile: Forget everything but the food square and make putting a mine on that puppy your TOP priority!

Nutrient resource (on pretty much any terrain) - early game, you can't get much more out of the tile than if you forest it. Later, you'll want a farm/condensor/soil thingy so you can crawl food from it, but pre-restriction lifting, it's hard to top a forested nutrient special

Energy resource on a river tile: Forget terraforming, build your HQ there!



-=Vel=-

[SpacemanSpiff]

I've also noticed how formers will keep working on a task even after it becomes obselete - like continuing to plat a forest, when a forest has naturally spread there. But I've also noticed it in benificial situations, like a drill to aquifer continuing, when an ocean tile has sprung up next to it due to melting ice caps. I couldn't add any more formers to the task, but the one there, kept going and was able to start a river (and it wasn't trivial either - it paralled the shore, not just making a 1 tile river that dumped into the adjecent ocean)

I haven't done any experimentation, but it's possible that this could be abused, not just with making river, but starting two adjacent boreholes that both get compleated.

Spiff

[Sprayber]

The other day I was trying to plant kelp and I hit remove fungas by mistake, well my seaformer went ahead through the motions of removing fungas when there was absolutly no fungas there. Anyone have this happen?