Hive and Zero Efficiency??

[Nethog]

I recently dusted off my copy of SMAC and started to play a new game at Librarian difficulty level as the Hive (this is the first time I had ever played the Hive). The problem (bug?) I am experiencing is with the Social Factor "Efficiency". Despite having selected "Police State" with a -2 Efficiency rating and "Planned" with -2 Efficiency when I to the Social Engineering screen my Efficiency is listed as "0". Does anyone know what the heck is going on? BTW, I am using SMAC version 4.0.

[buster]

This is a documentred feature. See the readme.txt.

Hive has efficiency immunity - meaning regardless of what SE choices you make efficiency will never go lower than 0.

[cbn]

Nethog

As buster points out, this is a factional advantage of the Hive. Since the Demo choice is impossible it provides a strong incentive to stay in the (penalty free) Police State and Planned social choices for most/all of the game. It is a reasonably powerful combination and I have found that the Hive is the only faction that I am comfortable having routinely in the PS choice. Many other factions spend most of their time in Demo and switch from FM(money, money) to Planned(pop growth) to Green (Great efficiency and less ecodamage-- maybe capture some natives)depending on the circumstances.



I think that the inefficiency immunity was designed with the idea that the Hive will be in a state of "-4" efficiency for most of the game and that the drone problems and energy loss that this would cause would cause would render the Hive very difficult to play. The Hive already suffers from the fact that +2 Economy is VERY difficult to achieve as are POP booms. So this immunity allows the Hive to avail of the PS/Planned combination without crushing ineficiency, allowing the Hive to have a formidable industrial/military capacity.

[Verrucosus]

Negative Efficiency & Bureaucracy

Has anyone else had the impression that a negative Efficiency value is ignored for all factions for purposes of Bureaucracy?

I often play the Peacekeepers on a standard map. Because of their intrinsic -1 Efficiency, the Peacekeepers should not be allowed to found ten bases without additional drones, but I have never received the Bureaucracy warning before founding the eleventh base. (I play the original SMAC v4 on Librarian level.)

Verrucosus

[mark13]

Verrucosus:

I think the reason for the delayed bureaucracy warning is simply the difficulty level you are playing on. On transcend, with the PKs on a standard map, I will usually get my first warning on the founding of the sixth or seventh base.

Edit - I made a bit of a mess of your name. Sorry

[Verrucosus]

mark13, thank you for replying so quickly!

If I apply the bureaucracy formula from the Datalinks and take Librarian level into account, the Peacekeepers should not be able to found more than seven bases:

BaseLimit = (8 - Difficulty) * (4 + Efficiency) * MapRoot / 2

Where:
Difficulty = Player's difficulty level (0 - 5)
Efficiency = Social Engineering Efficiency rating.
MapRoot = Sq. Root of # Map Squares / Sq. Root of 3200.

For a Peacekeeping Librarian running Frontier/Simple/Survival on a standard map, this should be:

Difficulty Level = 3
Efficiency = -1
MapRoot = 1

BaseLimit = (8 - 3) * (4 - 1) * 0,5 = 7,5

For a Transcend it should be:

BaseLimit = (8 - 5) * (4 - 1) * 0,5 = 4,5

My experience on Librarian and mark13's experience on Transcend seem to indicate that the game does not correspond to the formula as regards negative efficiency. This would be a rather simple correction by comparison to the complex issue the Eco-damage formula seems to raise, but it would be an important one: For the Peacekeepers, the bureaucracy drones are not that much of a problem because they are balanced by the additional talents. However, I could imagine that someone like Miriam who is not awfully concerned about energy because she tends to rely on probe teams and wants to spend her minerals building units rather than drone control facilities, the possibility to run Planned and even Police while getting to a reasonable number of bases without additional drones would be extremely helpful.

[Fitz]

I've always found it to work perfectly. For example, with the Peacekeepers on Librarian on a Huge map, I get drones at 12 bases.

(8-3)*(4-1)*1.6/2 = 15*16/20 = 3*4 = 12

With most factions, I get the warning after 16.

(8-3)*(4)*1.6/2 = 20*16/20 = 16.

On Transcend as a regular faction I get it at 10.

(8-5)*(4)*1.6/2 = 12*16/20 = 96/10 = 9.6

On transcend with gians, I get it at 14 (I think).

(8-5)*(4+2)*1.6/2 = 18*16/20 = 18*8/10 = 144/10 = 14.4 (hmm, maybe it's 15 then)

That's all the ones I have memorized, and they all calculate out afterwords. I didn't run the numbers until after I dragged the number out of my memory for each of these.

[Verrucosus]

Fitz, I have also found that the bureaucracy formula works perfectly for Efficiency 0 and above, but my game experience differs from yours for negative Efficiency. Having read your post, I tested it again with the Peacekeeper -1 Efficiency on a huge map (your first example) and I received the bureaucracy warning only when I tried to found base #17 (ie, as in your example for regular factions). This was again on Librarian.

I also tried to have a test on Transcend, but Sister Miriam did not know that I was just testing and captured my undefended bases before I had enough. Maybe, I'll try again this weekend, but perhaps I should rather leave my hands off Transcend for the moment.

Of course, I realise that if I am the only one to have this problem, it is extremely likely that there is just something special about my settings. I just cannot think of what it could be. Anyway, thank you for helping.

[Sikander]

I think Verrucosus is correct that negative efficiency for bureaucracy purposes equates to zero efficiency. I run into this all the time, where I am running planned (-2 eff.) and then add democracy (+2 for a total of +0). I still am limited to the same number of bases as planned until I move into FM, when I can build a bunch more due to the +2 eff.

[Fitz]

Maybe I assumed that the limit was twelve and never tried to exceed on Librarian. Hmmm...