Industry

[Yxklyx]

Hmm, if you're building a SP, you only need to switch to say something like Planned (to increase your Industry) a few turns before you think it will be built right? You don't need to be in Planned all the time? Since Industry just changes the cost you should be able to say change to Planned when the SP is 90% complete and then you'll get it built the next turn since Planned reduces the cost by 10%. So it seems that Industry bonuses don't really help continuously - only on the turns that something gets built.

[RedFred]

Switching to planned just to beat the other guy to an SP is something I'd prefer to avoid if I can help it, on account of the research hit.

I typically use short bursts of Planned for creche pop booms and not so much otherwise.

[Googlie]

OTOH, I've gone Planned for a few turns just for the industry boost - exactly to build that SP on a rush basis, or to fast-complete a Planetbuster or a bunch of facilities

As RedFred says, it's handy for a few tuers of pop-booming too if you have the creches and are running Dem, with adequate nuts per base

G.

[vitamin j]

If you can time it so everything gets built on the same turn, you're a better player than I! Then I guess just switching to planned as needed is probably a good idea. I tend to stay in planned a lot, esp early game. The faction-wide mineral savings from just 10% off is hard to get around... Add wealth and you're saving 20%. Plus the planned growth bonus is good under any circumstances. I can handle the efficiency losses, usually. After all, you can steal money and tech if necessary. I haven't had any luck getting my probes to steal minerals... (Well, you know, you don't generally capture units to disband them for half their mins...)

[Yxklyx]

Well yeah, getting everything built on the same turn is more difficult the more bases you have. The fewer bases you have the less efficient Industry becomes - if you only have one base then the Industry bonus only comes into play whenever that base builds something. If you just want the Industry bonus to speed SPs you can time that by starting a few of them at the same time. I just wanted to point out that unlike Efficiency, Industry doesn't help every turn - it's like a one-shot deal similar to disbanding units to add minerals to a build.

[Flubber]

I often used planned when trying to build a bunch of facilities at once and you don't have to time things. You just build up cash while in FM, switch to planned , rush your facilities in every base, taking advantage of the decreased rush costs. Next turn all your facilities show up and depending on the situation

1. remain in Planned (perhaps to boom) while popping out more facilities. 8-10 turns in planned can boom you nicely and let you pop out a couple of facilities more quickly.

2. switch back to FM (or green) for more cash/research for a while. I find for the more expensive builds like Treefarms or hybrid forests, the savings can be considerable, and more than compensate for the switch costs and lost research.

[Yxklyx]

I wonder why the designers didn't have Industry just increase/decrease the amount of minerals a base produced instead of increasing/reducing the cost. It would have made more sense no?

[Fitz]

Because then industry would affect support and eco-damage.

[Adalbertus]

Because then industry would affect support and eco-damage.

From the game balance, this might be a disadvantage. From a real-world point of view it is something I think this is exactly what happens.

[vitamin j]

Doesn't it really affect support anyway? If you're spending less mins on construction, you can afford to support more units, relative to someone without an industry advantage. It would be cool if industry settings directly impacted ecodamage...

[Yxklyx]

It just seems like a cheat that you can switch to and from Planned within two turns to take full advantage of Industry, as Flubber pointed out. It's not realistic - SE choices should not be things you frivolously change back and forth.

[vitamin j]

I think to do what Flubber suggests effectively is very energy intensive - you must have that free market cash flow to make it worthwhile for many bases. So there is a cost to that tactic. I admit it's a little screwy...

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Yxklyx
I wonder why the designers didn't have Industry just increase/decrease the amount of minerals a base produced instead of increasing/reducing the cost. It would have made more sense no?

Not at all, in my opinion.

The yearly mineral production of a base, is the amount of mineral that can be collected from terrain resources.
I don't think this is affected at all by the focus a society puts on Industry.

What the game represents, is indeed that with the *same collected resouces* (determined by which terrain you decide to put your citizens to work on, and how you did improve that terrain), a better Industry-oriented societary setting allows to produce more goods. This because of better usage of materials, of better efficiency in the industrial processes used to transform raw resources into finite products.

This doesn't necessary mean that you're producing more pollution-ecodamage.
First, the resources you take out fromt he environment are the same.
Second, although the production pace is higher, getting more usable construction material from the same raw resources means also less wastes, maybe also less energy waste and harmful by-products...

The effect of increasing production by increasing the overall process pace, thus also increasing the resources input, is not represented by SE variations, but by your decision to reallocate your workers/crawler on richer mineral-yielding tiles...

And of course, although this model is improvable, and thru all 1999 ther had been innumerable threads and debate on this issue, a game MUST NOT be a perfect representation/simulation of reality!!!
It should be a *smart* representation of reality, that is a modelisation faithful enough to give the impression of the variables at stake in the represented processes, but the most simplified possible to allow immediate playability without taking out depth from the game...

It's not realistic - SE choices should not be things you frivolously change back and forth.

Why???
That is YOUR opinion.

1st, as I said above, it's not my foremost concern if it's realistic, realism it's a mere plus.
2nd, from a game logic PoV, SE choices usually involve more than one factor. And you have to pay to change SE.
So to boost your Industry setting temporarily for a specific task, you have to pay twice the cost for switching, and also to live with changes in other SE effects for at least one turn.
Of course, this could be also improived in the implementation.
You could argue that the upheaval cost should be higher.
But I totally disagree that it seems like a cheat. It's a variable in a siplified model of an economic system, which you must learn to use at best weighing its costs and benefits.
It seems as much a cheat as using copters, or crawlers, or booming...
OH, sorry, I forgot that apolyton denizens are the ones who think the game it's better if you ban copters and crawlers and booming...

It is rather a cheat if you switch to Planned, take advatage of the better industry, and then swithc back in the SAME turn ("SE Quickie")
In this case: 1° you pay nothing as you get a refund in the same turn when you revert to original SE, 2° you don't suffer any collateral SE effect as practically all the other indicators take effect only in the NEW turn.
That is, you get something for nothing. THIS is really a design loophole. And it's practically the first "true cheat" that has been addressed and unanimously banned back at OWO times.


Probably the critical design choice made in the whole Industry/Production system, was this one:
When you switch SE, the already accumulated minerals stay the same.
But once collected minerals have been put into the underway item, they should be considered already part of it.
Thus if you have a 60% completed item under construction, it should remain 60% completed regardless of the effectiveness of the production line you'll use to complete it fromt there on (i.e regardless of the mineral cost = SE Industry).
This would have been at the same time more realistic AND more consistent and playable, with less room for cheats...

But that's the mechanism of the game and that's the way we must learn to play at our best...

[Flubber]

Wow I did not realize I would start a controversy. Marione I generally agree with your comments except for the following portion

Originally posted by MariOne



It is rather a cheat if you switch to Planned, take advatage of the better industry, and then swithc back in the SAME turn ("SE Quickie")
In this case: 1° you pay nothing as you get a refund in the same turn when you revert to original SE, 2° you don't suffer any collateral SE effect as practically all the other indicators take effect only in the NEW turn.
That is, you get something for nothing. THIS is really a design loophole. And it's practically the first "true cheat" that has been addressed and unanimously banned back at OWO times.

I am aware of SE quickies where you switch to power ( or simply out of planned or wealth) for only so long as it takes to cash a crawler for increased minerals (obviously a cheat) BUT I simply don't understand how a switch INTO Planned could ever be a SE quickie. I am probably missing something obvious but if I switch into planned a facility might show as completed (for that moment), but if I switch right back to something else then doesn't the cost revert back to the correct mineral cost (and now the facility may be 2-3 turns from completion).

I'm guessing that this is simply me misunderstanding what you meant but who knows, the game has suprised me before when I thought I knew something. But I thought the only SE industry cheat was in exploiting a temporary worse industry rating by the crawler cheat. Are there others that abuse industry?

[Yxklyx]

I think in the original game you could do this - this was later patched.