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[Chaos Theory]

I'm talking primarily SP, but potentially MP if it gets that far and is still not decided. Every MP game I've played was decided when or before the Cloning Vats were claimed. In the case of MP, you can't assume you've grabbed the Cloning Vats, but if you haven't then you need to reach +6 Growth one way or another at least some of the time, and that time is a great time to spit out new bases.

I am not assuming orbital insertion, though it of course helps. Even simple needlejet colony pods can work wonders. If your opponent has orbital insertion then making new bases is riskier and may not be worthwhile, but I don't have much experience with late-game MP combat.

As for improving existing bases, what are they still building that you haven't purchased? Even in MP, it doesn't take long after I get engineers to buy every (useful) facility as soon as it becomes available, in about every city. What would you do to boost labs/energy by 25% that couldn't be bought in a turn or two? Crawl nuts/energy? For a SSC, fine, but for all the rest, why do you have the free space?

In the SE lines I listed, I started assuming Demo, because everyone but Yang will be using it, without a doubt this late. The per tile losses are losses to inefficiency-vulnerable energy per tile the base is from the HQ. I thought satellite energy and commerce were just as vulnerable to inefficiency as worked energy, am I wrong? Also, I know a planet rating > +3 still boosts Psi combat, so I assume an effic > +4 is still greater than +4 in the calculations. I suppose I could actually test these...

As for the sprawling, the point is that if you can't use fungus, it's much harder to sprawl to unclaimed territory.

[Chaos Theory]

As I thought, energy from commerce and satellites is subject to efficiency loss. Only specialist energy is immune, but specialist energy does not interact with economy either.

[Archaic]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
As I thought, energy from commerce and satellites is subject to efficiency loss. Only specialist energy is immune, but specialist energy does not interact with economy either.

That's totally the opposite from what I've heard. I don't have the time to playtest it ATM. Where are you getting this info from?

[Chaos Theory]

SMAX 2.0. I blew up my HQ, so that every base is 16 tiles from HQ. My total efficiency in a city was +4 from Demo + Creche, so I lost 1/4 of efficiency-vulnerable energy (rounded down, incidentally). With and without commerce I lost 1/4 of tiles + commerce. Then I launched 4 energy sats and in a size 4 city with an aerospace complex, I gained 4 energy and lost one of those to inefficiency.

[Jamski]

Am I right in thinking then that when you have enough bases, it would be beneficial to blow up the HQ?

-Jam

[Marid Audran]

This thread is about the University right?

I always thought they were the handicapped faction--like a handicapped thoroughbred racehouse in a gambling track. They are clear leaders in research--free nodes AND a +2 bonus to Research. And with the Knowledge choice in SE that's DOUBLED, with no real downside (-2 Probe is as bad as it gets with lax security).

The player behind the University has a lot of flexibility in how to dominate with this faction; they can switch gears between Momenum, Hybrid, and Builder as necessary. Their technological parity has a large slight of hand.

The extra drones are handled by the techniques that Transcend-level players attain, who are used to "every single citizen a drone in base" scenarios anyway, as well as surplus drones from large factions.

I strongly feel that the University was also meant to be the tutorial/beginners faction for those getting the feel of SMAC's mechanics. On lower difficulty levels drones aren't much of a problem anyhow, and the AI is tamed in various artificial ways.

It's hard to screw up a game with Zak. I find it too easy playing as them. To be fair though, the University is no worse than nearly every SMAX faction, which are by and large skewed in the "balance" department.

This is of course a SP perspective; in MP I suppose the players most skilled in probe rape can get the better of Zak and put him out to pasture, while filling their own datalinks up to the brim with Uni research. Uni's latent advantages are still hard to dismiss though--with the critical emphasis on tech b-lines Zak is the one with first dibs.

[Chaos Theory]

When the average point of energy comes from over 16 tiles away from the HQ, destroy your HQ and then every point of energy comes from exactly 16 tiles away from the HQ. On larger maps (Huge, ringworld, and larger), this can be very effective, but only if you have an effective efficiency of, say, +2 or higher. At 0 effic, you lose 1/2 your energy; at +2 you lose 1/3; at +4, you lose 1/4, etc. If your effic is too low, it's pretty pointless to expand so large.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
As I thought, energy from commerce and satellites is subject to efficiency loss. Only specialist energy is immune, but specialist energy does not interact with economy either.

Specialist energy is immune to first cut efficiency loss but not to second cut efficiency loss.

Which is to say if you are not at paradigm efficiency and choose to skew allocations of labs and econ this penalty will apply to energy contributions from specialists. As a consequnce if running a heavy specialist game & low efficiency game, (Say as an example Santi going police/planned normally a no-no but not so with a lot of specialists) leave the labs and econ balanced else your eaten alive with split penalties.

[Mr. Harley]

Archaic - For someone who was assuming all sorts of projects for strategies earlier, you're certainly forgetting the fact that Demo/FM/Wealth/Cybernatic also has +4 Effic, and unless you've got some stats from somewhere to show that you can get better results with higher Effic than with the already Perfect Economy +4 (Something I've never seen mentioned by anyone else), that pretty much cancels out most of your calcs.

Actually, higher efficiency can increase your power output by a small amount. The +4 efficiency, paradigm economy, only negates second tier losses, i.e. those from increasing research or economy to over 50% in the SE screen.

If you are a sprawler, you will see small increases in your power. I am playing a maximum map size Gaian campaign right now that I'm calling "Fungus Gnats" which I hope to post I guess in a year or so. I just tried shifting from +9 to +5 efficiency (shifted from Green to Planned) and saw the energy output change from 6614 to 6290. I didn't bother to check on the research. So you can increase energy/research with efficiency over +4, but very often the gain is minimal. You may be able to get more milage from other social choices, I plan to change once I get all my hover garrisons produced, I just starting to get pops in this game.

[Chaos Theory]

What's maximum map size? Is it Huge, 256x256, a custom size, or what?

[Petek]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
What's maximum map size? Is it Huge, 256x256, a custom size, or what?

I just bumped a thread in the Creation forum that explains how to create maps larger than 256x256. I once used this technique to create a 1024x1024 map.

Don't know what the theoretical maximum might be. It may depend on an individual system's available RAM and CPU speed.

[Chaos Theory]

1024x1024, wow! I knew about the technique you bumped, but if I made the map as large as 384x192 (9 times the area of Huge), the game took a minute to process changes to the map, and this is on a GHz machine.

[Mr. Harley]

Maximum unmodified map - I believe I put in 256x256.

[Kody]

I was just browsing.

I remembered this thread and started laughing. This was when I was double checking the go ahead for the war plans we were preparing against the university.

Yes, I dislike the university because of Archaic
Yes, but for a different reason that I'm writing in
No, I'm going to write in what I think here
I'm netural in the matter

That was the only original part of the poll. The original question was "Do we go to war against the university?". Due to some quick thinking I quickly changed to thread title (possible in the first 5 minutes) and quickly came up with a new post to explain away the strange poll.

[Vev]

There were many blunders.