known bugs for trascendi level ?

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
Some bug...
...but because it was too far it blows right in the middle of his land....

Indeed Pandemoniak.
If a PB gets out of fuel (i.e. uses up its movement before reaching a target or a friendly base/airbase/carrier), it just crashes, without exploding.

So that could not be the reason.
It must have hit a wild worm, or a concealed enemy unit, where it exploded.
It's just that this sounds a bit strange considering the all-seeing ability of the AIs! They didn't even mange to give a consistent behavior to their bugs!!!

___

Sik, I agree with most your observations, of course the issue is just too complex...
The advantages of a tighter-but-flexible spacing in the early game are undeniable. Even pre-limitations, you hardly get to make those bases grow past size 5 anyway. Thus, despite you get limited FoPs from tiles, even willing you'll hardly get to 7 sized bases before lifting limitations.
How long will that advantage last?
Wouldn't it have an avalanche effect, or would it just wane over time, when the burden of its cons kick in?

Would... it be viable to go for tighter spacing till you lift limitations, and then... "make room" by "transfering" population forn one base to another via pods, and make one base out of 2s in the midgame? (wild idea...).

[Adalbertus]

Pandemoniak,
For me, it looks like a quite strange thing. In my observations (might be SMAC 4.0, I'm not sure) the AI is able to do an orbital insertion with their Planetbusters. They hit a base which was certainly out of range and even if I completely cut it off with some military units, it hit the base. So it looks like a particularly stupid decision of the AI. (like "Oh, I'm in serious tr
ouble. Let's use a PB. Which is the best target? The Mindworm over there"-- not thinking about the distance to its own cities.

Attention, it's after midnight

About the base/borehole spacing:
- I think there is mainly one reason (assuming two-in-diagonal base spacing) to put the boreholes in the diagonal, namely ecodamage. Boreholes are the worst polluters, and they are taken into account for each base, even if they are not worked. In the diagonal, they contribute to to the ecodamage of two bases, if not, to three. This is an issue if you really want to stop base building at the second efficiency warning.
-It is possible to "shift" the base pattern along the edges of the tiles without sacrificing anything except an increased ecodamage.

B___B___B___B
_____________
__B___B___B__

becoming
B___B___B___B
_____________
___B___B___B_

for example. This conserves the density of bases (i. e. your efficiency of exploit of your land) and the borehole pattern, but this allows some more flexibility in the base pattern, e. g. to avoid problems with a monolith on a site which should have a base.
- Given the little advantage of the maximum density base spacing, there is another drawback: Twice the number of bases requires twice the effort in micromanaging ...

[Blake]

Ecodamage is a non-issue, simply build tree farms (after a pop), which you'll want to anyway. Or use pops to drive the ED down and reap the pearls (boreholes are immune to pops).

This thread wouldn't be complete without my take on base placement. It's a special form of infantry spacing and like others maximises borehole placement. However the terraforming requirements are much lower and the map is visually more pleasing, interestingly enough it is designed to be used without crawlers - except for the initial industry bootstraping.

It's also designed to be used without clean reactors, or atleast your bases produce so much minerals you wont need clean reactors (still clean non-combat units, ofcourse)

Look at the attached image to see the base placement, firstly note that the boreholes are drilled at maximum density, secondly the bases are placed 'clockwise' around the base radius of existing bases, in such a way that a base is never placed inside the base radius of another base. The pattern is very cyborgy

Each base works 10 tiles, 2 1/2 of these are boreholes, and 7 1/2 are forest. Ofcourse one cant have half tiles, so heres how it works:
The base works the 8 tiles immediately adjacant, and one extra tile.
This means there are two types of base, one works 3 boreholes, the other 2 boreholes and an extra forest.

With tiles producing 3 food:
(Tree Farm + Hybrid forest OR orbitals, rec tanks)
ForestBases grow to size 12. Produce 28 minerals, 22 energy plus three specialists.
BoreholeBases grow to size 10 and have 1 specialist and a spare food. Produce 32(!) minerals and 27 energy.

Adding +2 econ increases the energy by 10
Adding hybrid forests increases the energy by 7 (8 for forest).
For maxed out tile income of:
ForestBase: 24/28/39 (F/M/E)
BoreholeBase: 21/32/43

Note how massive the raw mineral intake is, you don't need clean and can build anything you like. In particular you can churn out excellent military units very very quickly and cheaply. Shell upgrading doesn't hold a candle to this sort of raw production, until rather late in the game.

How this strategy is designed to be used:
Works best for a free marketeer, start of with Forest'n'Forget (but don't forget!), go FM, build treefarms, pop-boom, build hybrids or orbitals and boreholes. The boreholes arent built until you have some extra food. You have a highly optimised number of tiles to work making facilities very effecient, in particular genejacks rule.
Variations:
Condense and crawl a few tiles to increase population. Especially as Hive with it's slow economy and lack of pop-boom (and hive can afford the formers).
Use kelp/tidal at coastal bases to accelerate growth.
If the game continues, and you get lots of orbitals, and hab domes, and are unhappy with the low food production, pave over the forest with condensors+enrichers.

However. I don't actually use the rigid base placement. Instead I'll place a base on sites which satisfy the following critera:
A) Between two boreholes (or even between 4 boreholes) - the boreholes dont need to be drilled yet, I plan them in advance.
B) Where it is adjacant to, but not inside another bases radius.

This means my maths is all a little out, but does provide figures very close to the real average resource output.

I am fairly confident saying this placement strategy gives the best Returns to Micromanagment ratio. It also requires around half the facilities as the denser packing, and gives much more minerals. Energy is much lower (due to less intensive terraforming and crawlering = less specialists), but consider that every mineral is really worth 1-2 energy. You also get to reap the benefits of +2 economy.

There is no significant weakness either, base placement is flexible, early terraforming is cheap, later terraforming uses spare former power, and often the borehole drive comes around clean reactors. Every base is within walking distance of 4 others. Bases are well suited to churn out units 'ready for action' (no shell upgrading nonsense). You are also impervious to crawler-raping-chopper runs.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MariOne

Sik, I agree with most your observations, of course the issue is just too complex...
The advantages of a tighter-but-flexible spacing in the early game are undeniable. Even pre-limitations, you hardly get to make those bases grow past size 5 anyway. Thus, despite you get limited FoPs from tiles, even willing you'll hardly get to 7 sized bases before lifting limitations.
How long will that advantage last?
Wouldn't it have an avalanche effect, or would it just wane over time, when the burden of its cons kick in?

Would... it be viable to go for tighter spacing till you lift limitations, and then... "make room" by "transfering" population forn one base to another via pods, and make one base out of 2s in the midgame? (wild idea...).

I started a game today in order to test out the denser spacing, but I didn't get very far. One thing that I did notice is that I can get more squares into production faster with the larger bases and supply crawlers than by building more bases. The cost (in time) of all those tiny bases building colony pods is pretty high (ie slow), even though I did rush in Rec. Tanks as quickly as I could. Whether I would have had enough industrial might to secure those crucial early game SPs was still an open question. These ICS strategies are really helped by SPs like the HGP, the VW and the WP. The HGP alone can make running FM much easier, and combined with the VW it allows one to build a large number of bases without worry.

On the other hand my energy production was very good. I was researching the Tree Farm Tech in 2149 when I quit (on a huge map) and was about twice as powerful as my nearest competitor on the power graph. This remains an open question IMO, as I am sure that I haven't even begun to optimize my game for a super dense-pack strategy.

One idea that does come to mind after reading your post is that one could go with a dense pack strategy (from the 8 tile base density to 4 tile density) later in the game, namely at the point where you get satellites. With twice the food and no way to grow until hab domes (other than fairly slow pod booming) it might be worthwhile to do so, and paving over the boreholes would certainly be worthwhile once you got those mineral satellites in place. In 13 turns (if you have the PTS, the AV, 16 satellites of each type and are booming) you could have two bases producing:

42 Nuts
18 Mins
18+ Raw Energy
80 Specialist Energy (with Engineers)

in place of one base producing:

66 Nuts
30 mins
30+ Raw Energy
70 Specialist Energy

This would mainly serve to rush ever more quickly to hab domes and the end of the game. It doubles your energy production for that period between the time when you get food satellites built until you get hab domes, albeit you will need to rush build a second set of infrastructure into your new base to get twice the benefit of that energy. Your population would double quickly, which would be amusing to see on the power chart. Much of the terraforming will already be done, with only one conversion of a borehole to a farm / condensor / soil enricher needed per base. Your cash flow should be good enough to buy whatever infrastructure you need, though you will have to be very careful to overpay by 10 minerals each time, because your minerals will be very poor (two per base!) until you have your mineral satellites in place.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Sikander


...you will have to be very careful to overpay by 10 minerals each time, because your minerals will be very poor (two per base!) until you have your mineral satellites in place.

Nothing to really say about the rest, there are many interesting options and different strategies, but in the end it's all just theory, as you'll never have time to get even NEAR to that in a real PBEM, and we know that pbem is the only real SMAC game.

I have started a new thread with the proper subject anyway, with a link to this one.
We might want to continue Base Placement Strategies discussion there, if you want.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56164

About your last statement tho, I have to point out:
you KNOW that if your base produces two minerals, all you'll EVER get from production carryover will be those two minerals.
You KNOW that overpaid minerals CANNOT be carried over. Only EXCESS PRODUCTION minerals will be. All the minerals shown in red in your box are just wasted money when you rnd your turn.
If your base does not produce at least 10 minerals, you'll never have 10 minerals carried over for the next turn.

This is not an opinion.
It's a well known fact, debated, verified and reminded in the past in more than a thread.