Supply crwlers

[Supply Crawler]

I'm sort of new playing SMAC and I'm very curious about the supply crawlers . I haven't had a chance to experiment. I have use them to accelerate the building of SP, but little actually crawling supply

How often do you use them? How important are they? How do you use them (tips)?


(Nice community you have here!)

[Yxklyx]

When I first started playing I never used them because I didn't know what they could do and the game was complicated enough - then I started experimenting with them - until I realised how easy they make the game against the AI so I stopped using them - never build them anymore for any purpose.

Any unit can be disbanded to help build a Secret Project or anything else for that matter. Crawlers are special in that you get the full mineral cost of the crawler back - with other units you get only half the minerals back.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

With the possible exceptions of formers they are probably the single most important unit in the game.

Uses are:

Early game min transporters - Immediately upon discovery of IA immediately have all bases begin crawler builds and place in high min squares (usually forest squares are the equal to best you'll have until advent of eco engineering. Since forestation is one of the easiest t-form activities this is the reason most folks forest like mad in the early game) you'll be pumping out crawlers until minimally all your bases have a minimum of 10 mins/base but more thanlikely your looking to achieve 17-18 mins/base and looking to have a fungal pop. 10mins a magic number because this means when you have energy credits rolling in you can rush buy a facility per turn at the cheapest 2 energy/min cost for facilities.

Mid game energy crawlers/trawlers - Once you have bootstrapped your industrial might via min crawlers you are looking to increase energy. Some advocate use of energy parks (I've used them but prefer other alternatives personally)

energy park = alternating rows of echelon mirrors and solar collectors.

I prefer trawlers (foil crawlers) harvesting tidal harness energy and usually only for my HQ which I taret to be my Super Science City in which I place every lab enhancing facility as well as Super Collider and THeory of Everything Sps)

Mid game nutrient crawlers/trawlers - Suppor the specialists. Specialists generally are equal to working square sinthe early game but really come into their own inthe mid to late game post fusionpower (Engineers and Transcendi). The idea is to place crawlers in high nutrient squares Condensor/farm/soil enricher areas to support a high population count and then making sizable if not all of your base population into equivalent high energy specialists.

Sea trawlers are helpful when equipped with radar special ability to see what is coming. All type of variants.

Of course upgraded best armor and specials crawler/trawlers when disbanded allow effective ways of buying SP's.

[RedFred]

Ogie hit the high points.

The low points (other things you can do with a crawler but that are usually a waste of a good crawler) include:

-Cash them in for rushing prototypes.

-Cash them in at half value for other rush builds

-Transfer one nut, nrg or min per crawler from one base to another.

[King_Kristian]

Supply Crawlers, I agree it is probably the most important unit after formers.
I usually play as Morgan and I always build The Merchant Exchange in my headquarters, then I have my HQ build a massive amount of crawlers and I send them out to various boreholes in my empire and I have them harvest energy from the holes.
As time progresses I build all research and economy boosting projects in my HQ along with several more crawlers.
This way I avoid ineffiency because it is the HQ and all crawlers get the bonuses from the HQ.
In my last game I had 18000 credits flowing into my accounts every turn and I gained a new tech every turn, because of my HQ.
I had about fourty crawlers around the planet by the end of the game and all of them were sending their energy to my HQ.
An unfortunate side effect was that the base spelled "take me" like nothing else in my empire, this had to be overcome by filling the base with a huge amount of defenders and all of them had clean reactor.

In short, Supply Crawlers are worth what they harvest, so use them on the best squares you can't reach and have the best improvements on them.

[knowhow2]

Originally posted by RedFred
-Transfer one nut, nrg or min per crawler from one base to another.

I pretty much know it all except for this particular part of crawlers function. Does it really work?

[RedFred]

Yes it works, but it is extremely silly. Which is why no one does it.

Why not just rehome your crawler to the base that needs the extra resource and crawl multiple amounts of one resource with that same crawler?

Example: silly method -> crawl one min from another base to target base leaving you +1 at the target base, -1 at the other base; not silly method -> rehome the crawler to your target base and place it on a mine or borehole for a net result of +4 or +6 mins to the target base with no losses to the other base.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Jus' a thought has anyone seen if transporting mins from one base to another if you can tansport more mins then the base has to provide. Doing so would allow generation of mins without taking up any squares. (I know I know its a cheat but jus kinna interested from a clinical POV).

For ex. Base 1 has 5 available mins
Base 2 is recipient.

Send 6+ crawlers homed from base 1 to base 2 carrying 1 min each.

Doable?

Og

[fluffy]

Originally posted by King_Kristian
As time progresses I build all research and economy boosting projects in my HQ along with several more crawlers.
In my last game I had 18000 credits flowing into my accounts every turn and I gained a new tech every turn, because of my HQ.

An unfortunate side effect was that the base spelled "take me" like nothing else in my empire, this had to be overcome by filling the base with a huge amount of defenders and all of them had clean reactor.

I think it spelt "planetbust me", more like! Any self-respecting AI faction would oblige.... how did you manage to survive?

[King_Kristian]

Orbital Defence Pods and probe team sabotage usually.

[Jac de Molay]

Since I usually play as Dierdre, I like the crawlers flexibility when it comes to harvesting fungus. I only build forest, but use crawlers to harvest food for my bases, taking advantage of the nut bonus for fungus. In mid to late game, I can then switch to mins or energy. I like the flexibility of that.