A Few Questions About SMAC

[Net Maverick]

Hello, everyone. I've just stumbled in onto this forum while browsing on the web, so I'm new. I have a few questions for all the ones here who are more experienced at this game than I am:

1) What is your take on base spacing? I understand that putting the bases too close together would breed competition for resources, but putting them too far apart would result in loss of energy due to inefficiency and it would be a more difficult task to defend your territory. So what is the average distance that you space your bases?

2) About how much minerals and energy would your average size 7 base be producing?

3) How do you guys get your bases to be producing 100 minerals per turn? This is simply amazing. Do you get this number via supply crawlers? If so, how many supply crawlers? This seems to be quite a stretch, since a rolling square would only produce 2 minerals with a mine. Say you have 14 workers, with, and each square is producing 2 minerals, with the exception of two boreholes, which are producing six. The base in question would be raking in only 36 minerals...excluding support costs. Your crawlers would need 64 minerals, and that can only be accomplished by planting them on more than 10 boreholes. If you have 3 industrial bases, you would need 30 boreholes. Also, about how many military units does your average base do your average base support?

4) Many people here seem to be fond of planting forests, but they only provide 1 nutrient in the early game...that is, pre-treefarm era. A citizens requires an intake of 2 nutrients a turn, and a square of forest would not be able to support the citizen working on it. How do you guys get forests to work?

5) Which SPs rank highest on your list (on SMAC, not the expansion)? The ones that you always race to grab?

Well, that's about all I can think of for now. Any and all responses would be greatly appreciated.

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Net Maverick (edited May 05, 2001).]</font>
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Net Maverick (edited May 05, 2001).]</font>

[mark13]

Hi, and welcome to the boards!

As to your questions:

1) There is a lot of debate about this issue, for exactly the reasons you have outlined. I tend to space my bases about 3-4 squares apart, which is a good compromise, IMO.

2) It depends. If you are using a tree farm, and have pop boomed the base to size 7 using forests, you'll be looking at 7x2 (for each forest worked) +2 for the base square = 16 minerals (minus whatever you happen to be supporting). This tends to be ideal, as it is just about on the threshold of early/mid game eco-damage.

3) Don't ask me - I very rarely play that late into the game - but I gather it is a combination of forests (or fungus in the late game), Nessus Mining Stations, and mineral-enhancing facilities (Robotic Assembly Plant, Nanreplicator etc.). You'll have to ask some of the late-game experts aroud here for that one though. BTW - I take it from the way the question was worded that you mine non-rocky squares - *never* do this. Forests produce more energy, save time for your formers, and are eco-friendly

4) Forests. Ah, forests....well, in many ways, I would consider them to be the *perfect* terrain type. The 1 nutrient limits population growth in the early game (helps control drone riots) whereas running FM, the square produces the maximum pre-restriction lifting resources of 2 mins and 2 energy. What more could you ask for? The nutrient deficiency is more than made up for with the 3 coming from the base square (assuming you have a Recycling Tanks in that base). Also, they are eco-friendly, and also grow - saving time for your precious terraformers to concentrate on other tasks.

5) Tough one. Depends entirely on the situation - if drones are your problem, the HGP can be the one to grab in the early game. If you need to raise land early on, the WP can be your best frend....whereas if you are the University, you *must* get the VW (assuming higher dificulty levels). If you build lots of small bases, the PTS can be invaluable also, whereas if you are planning to build an SSC (Super Science City) the ME is a must.

Decisions, decisions....

Of course, a lot of the mid/late game SPs are extremely valuable - the Cloning Vats and the Space Elevator come to mind. Among the most useless are generally regarded to be the Planetary Datalinks (unless you are playing Miriam, of course) and the Bulk Matter Transmitter. The Neural Amplifier doesn't generally rank among the must-haves either - it all depends on your style of play, I guess.

[Velociryx]

Hiya Maverick, and welcome to SMACing!

I'll give your questions a go:

1)I always space my bases 3 apart (that is: base...tile...tile...base), which enables an infantry unit, travelling on a road to hop from base to base without having to end his turn outside. Very handy thing, that.

2) This depends on your SE settings, but in my games, the answer is "however many I can get away with without having any eco-damage." Use crawlers to keep adding to your mineral suite until you see eco damage crop up, and then back off a bit. Alternatively, if the base is non-critical, give it at least ten, and let it go at that (all you need for rush-building).

3) You're right on the money 'bout the crawlers and massive mineral production, but you don't really need it. Mostly, it depends on how you structure your game. Keep in mind that these high mineral figures come pretty late in the game, and are thanks to one or more of the following factors: Orbital Mining Platforms, Robotic Assembly Plants, or any of the other "mineral enhancing" builds you can make.

4) Once you build Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests, Forest tiles become excellent, well balanced tiles, capable of supporting the worker assigned to that tile. In the pre-restriction phase of the game, an early forest produces as many minerals as an early mine, for far less turns spent terraforming, making them good investments in the earlier parts of the game, but later on, especially if you tend toward making extensive use of specialists, forests are actually one of your least attractive choices. Much better in that case to use farms, soil enrichers, and the like, and crawl massive amounts of food to your base to feed those hungry specialists, but if you're a fan of forests, and have a good effie rating via Social Engineering choices, the balance that forest tiles provide can do wonders for your bases.

Specifically though, as to how to make them work in the early game - mix workers assigned to forests with crawlers placed selectively on nutrient rich tiles crawling food to offset the loss you mentioned.

5) My favored SP's are: Any that provide a free facility (no maintenance costs if you get them via the SP), The Weather Paradigm (to cut down on terraforming times, and give you more options, more quickly), and the HSA for probe protection. Depending on the kind of game I'm running, the Planetary Transit is also nice to snag, but non-critical. By this point in the game, you pretty much know if you've won or lost, which is why I don't rank the others as high in importance.

::as he looks around the room::
Did I pass?

-=Vel=-

[bondetamp]

Base spacing depends on your style. Somepeople like few but large bases while others prefer them to be small and plenty. When I play, I usually prefer my bases to beone or two squares apart. I don't really worry that much about not being able to use the citizens to harvest, as I like using them as specialists. A thread you could look at is at http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum12/HTML/001247.html .

My average size 7 bases usually produce about 15-20 minerals. A few bases produce several times that. In my latest game (which had a terranx-crash:mad my capitol produced approx. 80 minerals minus support. I hadn't quite gotten to do much advanced terraforming, yet, apart from two borehols nex to the base, so it mostly came from crawlers working forests. My eco-damage was 230, though.

You need a few farms to get the base to grow. As Vel said, you should get a crawler on a farm/condensor tile, as this alone will support four extra citizens working forests.

I usually prefer playing UoP, and my favourite SPs are: Virtual World (which I always get), Weather Paradigm (vital, both for the speed and for the condensors) and Hunter Seeker Paradigm (after which I laugh and laugh of Morgan and his army of probes ). Any SP that gives free stuff, like Citizens' Defence Force, Virtual World (if you're UoP) and others are good.

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-bondetamp
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-H. L. Mencken

[bondetamp]

oh, and Vel! How is the Homm3 map comming?

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-bondetamp
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-H. L. Mencken

[Net Maverick]

Thanks everyone; both for the warm welcomes and the expert advice. But there are still a few more things that I need to clear up

1) Do you guys have rovers actively patrolling your territory? Or do you station them in a different sectors of the your empire on sentry, each with its own small area to defend? Also, do you use best-best-1 garrisons or 1-best-1 garrisons? I usually use the former, because you can attack an infantry unit that's one square outside your base, which is usually the case if your opponent doesn't want to attack with a -1/3 attack penalty...and I doubt many people have a large supply of elite infantry units.

2) I'm convinced that forests are the way to go when it comes to terraforming. So should I beeline to Environmental Economics after Industrial Automation? In the past, I've raced towards DAP, and then after that, Fusion Power; but then again, I wasn't woodland enlightened back then

3) Do you locate transport ships advancing towards your empire with patrolling cruisers or patrolling needlejets?

[mark13]

Not a problem at all - here goes:

1) I usually station a few rovers on sentry (in SP, that is) to pick of any AI intruders. I find 1-best-1 garrisons to be a lot cheaper, and more efficient - after all, a 1-best-1 garrison and a best-1-1 infantry costs the same as a best-best-1 garrison.

2) That is the beeline I usually take, although troublesome attackers may have to be dealt with with Air Power instead. A common tactic is to throw Tree Farms up and pop boom using just forests - makes for some mega-productive bases (even without crawlers).

3) I tend to use needlejets, as they are both cheaper and less vulnerable to any escorts there may be.

[Kuciwalker]

About supporting your supply crawlers, its a two-word answer: clean reactors. I ALWAYS build them as Clean Drop Supply Crawlers, so they can get there fast and not take support.

[JAMiAM]

Skywalker,

Crawlers do not require support. It is a waste to build them as clean reactor types.

[Net Maverick]

Chowlett:

Thanks for the advice...but I don't think I understand your point on not crawling boreholes...help me out here. If you mean mining a rocky square, which would give you 4 minerals with mine+road...then isn't 6 extra turns on terraforming (assuming you have the WP) worth +2 minerals every turn? Also, it's difficult to find any terrain improvements that gives you +6 energy...besides an energy park, which takes many turns of terraforming to construct...which brings me to another question: are energy parks worth their time and effort?

Mark13 and cbn:

I understand that a 1-3-1 unit and a 4-1-1 unit would be more flexible than a 4-3-1 unit, but one extra unit would mean one extra mineral expended on support. Does the versatility of the double unit overcome the mineral expense?

[cbn]

Two units (one attacker and one defender) for the price of a single best-best is always worthwhile IMHO. But you do raise a good point-- support. The reality is that you will not usually produce two units in the stead of your best-best garrison anyway-- but if you do it can be worthwhile. The minerals/build time/credits not used (on a best/best) can aid infrastructure, crawlers or other useful military. Lets face it, most garrisons do not attack anything,ever, so best-best is often a waste of minerals. Also, infantry attackers are best for hitting bases-- if you want to hit those coming at you, use rovers -- their mobility and ability to attack twice make them VERY effective.

Your support question is a good one though and is not limited at all by the choice of type of unit. Each time you think to build any supported unit you should ask yourself whether the unit has a use/purpose making it worth the support cost. The answer will depend on your assessment of the game. For me, support seems a small price to pay for another good unit to patrol and defend.

If support becomes an issue,you can deal with this by making some units clean. Currently I am playing Yang and running +2 Support so I hardly think about it (4 free units per base).

[Ned]

Net Maverik, No one really answered your question on >100 per base mineral production. Until the thread, which is still not complete, on Base Size and Pollution came along, very few of us understood the process. It is one thing to produce that many minerals in a base. It is another to do so without massive Eco-damage.

The ED limit is set by the formula,

Clean Minerals = 16 + # of (pops, CPs, TPs, TFs, HFs) + FACTOR,

where pops means fungal pops, CPs meand Centauri Preserves, TPs means Temples of the Planets, TFs means Tree Farms and HFs means Hybrid Forests. FACTOR is unknown and is still being researched. All pops, and facilities must be BUILT, not acquired by a faction. Subsequent events, such as giving away a base with a clean mineral facility, do not reduce Clean Minerals.

It is important to understand that the number of pops, etc., is not the number in a base, but the number in a FACTION.

The above is not in the Datalinks.

Hope this helps.

Ned

[Misotu]

It's interesting, understanding ecodamage ... not that I'll ever follow it, sadly. I give up on formulae beyond a certain point.

But what I am certain of is that a mineral strategy is always a poor second to an energy strategy. There's no need for 100+ minerals in a base - actually, there's rarely any need for more than 10. With serious energy, 10 mins is the magic number for rushing every turn. And with energy, there's no ecodamage once you have hybrids ...

[Chowlett]

quote: Originally posted by Net Maverick on 05-06-2001 01:02 PM Chowlett: Thanks for the advice...but I don't think I understand your point on not crawling boreholes...help me out here. If you mean mining a rocky square, which would give you 4 minerals with mine+road...then isn't 6 extra turns on terraforming (assuming you have the WP) worth +2 minerals every turn? Also, it's difficult to find any terrain improvements that gives you +6 energy...besides an energy park, which takes many turns of terraforming to construct...which brings me to another question: are energy parks worth their time and effort?

Yes indeed, the extra terraforming is worth it, but that's not what I meant. The point is you can only crawl one resource from a given square at any one time. By crawling a borehole, you are halving it's productivity. Much better to put a worker on it and crawl something else. In general, they generate so much ecodamage I would be loathe to build one and then waste half its potential.

[Sikander]

Net Maverick,

1) Base spacing:

I usually use one of three spacing schemes.

a) Two spaces apart (one intervening square) along the coast. I use this when I am playing on a moderately good sized continent, and I intend to use specialists heavily. I use the interior as a nutrient / minerals / energy park, while each base works approximately 5 squares (Shelf squares and boreholes).

b) Three spaces apart on a diagonal grid pattern. Blake turned me on to this pattern, which I use when I play a faction which needs to get Golden Ages to pop boom or get +1 energy per square. I will combine crawlers on farm / condensors and workers on forests and boreholes, aiming for a 50% mix of workers and specialists.

c) Two squares apart on a diagonal grid as above. This is an ICS type spacing, which I don't use all that often, usually when playing Morgan.

2) Mineral production:

If I am playing a faction which can fairly quickly get crawlers, then I tend to beeline for crawlers, and have my bases producing 16 mins apeice around the time that they are population 3 or so. Without crawlers, everything is dependent on population and mineral restrictions. I try to get 16 mins in the early game, and 30 mins or so by mid game. Later on you can really crank out minerals, but there is only so much you can build, and I tend to not spend much effort increasing mins after the midgame.

3) 100+ mins:

You get really high mineral counts by building facilities like Robotic Factories and Genejack Factories, each of which jacks up production by 50%. I generally don't build these except in sea bases, as they come pretty late, and I don't need that many minerals.

4) Forests:

In most games I plant them early to give me some minerals and energy. Then I replace them with farm / condensors / soil enrichers or boreholes. Forests are good producers early, and marginal after restrictions are lifted. My biggest problem with them is that they are not great squares to crawl, as their products are distributed fairly evenly.

5) Critical SPs:

I can usually get most of the early game SPs with most factions by beelining to crawlers. I very rarely get them all (at Transcend). I tend to like the HGP and the WP. Which one is more critical depends on the faction and situation I'm playing. The HGP is critical for early expansion, early FM, and for a number of factions to get easier Golden Ages so they can pop boom. After the first few SPs, I too like all those that give you free facilities. I like to build all I can. If I don't need an SP it still is worthwhile to deny it to the enemy.

6) Patrols and Military:

I would constantly patrol my territory, but I'm lazy. Instead I try to fill up my territory with crawlers and armored probe teams so that the enemy really has a hard time making a landing or penetrating more than one square into my territory. Once I get aircraft, then my copters (Best-1-X, radar) constantly patrol every approach and shoot up whatever comes by.

As for garrisons, I usually build trance scouts and upgrade them as needed. Every other base early on will also get a probe team (rover), with the border and seaside bases also getting an armored probe team (infantry). This is the way it stays until I get some persistent trouble from the AI, or I have reached my tech goals (MMI and Fusion) and have decided to go on the offensive. If I am under assault I will tend to cover every border square with either a crawler or an armored probe team, and build Best-1-2 rovers for counterattack in central areas, and artillery units (Best-1-1) in the border bases. This means that my probe teams force the enemy to stack or be bought, and my artillery pounds the stack. Then my rovers can concentrate and finish off the weakened enemy.

Please note that when I do not have clean reactors my military is small unless I am absolutely forced to mobilize. Once I get clean reactors, all garrison troops are made clean. Assault troops may or may not be clean depending on their prospects for survival, and the expected time until deployment. Thus in a slow build up, I tend to build clean drop troops etc.

7) Beelines:

I usually go for Centauri Ecology (formers), then for Ind. Auto (crawlers), then SOTHB, then I go for restrictions lifted. Then clean reactors, then for airpower or fusion (airpower if the AI troubles me, fusion if not).