ICS and all that Jazz

[Enigma_Nova]

Common Abbreviations Thread.
I've heard the term 'ICS' used quite a bit, but have been unable to find out what it means!

Would be useful to have a more concise abbreviation guide - The one in the FAQ doesn't have everything.

P.S. Pardon my n00bness... -_-;

[gwillybj]

ICS = Infinite City Sprawl
You plant as many bases as possible as close as possible (one space between). As soon as possible, use crawlers and satellites to gather resources, and make all of your citizens specialists.

[Jamski]

With the emphasis on as many bases (cities) as possible. If you run out of base names, that's a good start.

-Jam

[Enigma_Nova]

Is this a Sat-Heavy strategy? I don't see the bases as being too productive without Satellites.

[JustinSane]

I've actually got a question on this. It's a strategy that has long intrigued me, but I've never given it a serious try. I'm too scared of super-drones. I typically end up with about 20 large cities with Siklander spacing instead. How do you ICS players manage to keep anyone working? Aren't all your citizens doctors? It would seem really tough to pull off after about the fourth bureaucracy limit, which would come at base 37, right?

[Enigma_Nova]

There are Multiple Beaurocracy limits?
How do these, and "Super Drones", work?

[Adalbertus]

There is basically one bureaucracy limit (bl) which you will pass several times, in the case of difficulty transcend and a huge map, it is nine bases (bl = 9).
- If you have up to bl bases, there are no drones.
- If you found more bases, you'll get bureaucracy drones (b-drones) in your bases, until with foundation of the 2*bl-th base, there is one b-drone in each base.
- The same thing repeats between the 2*bl-th and 3*bl-th base, so technically with the 3*bl-th base, you would have two drones per base, but:
- b-drones (maybe also the other drones) "disproportionate" in pairs, so you don't get two drones, but a super-drone and a worker (or is it that once you have your base "full" of drones the next ones become super-drones? please correct me, if I'm wrong.)
- IIRC, between the 3*bl-th and 4*bl-th base and perhaps beyond you generate even more b-drones. But this is technically irrelevant, because the drone-appeasing facilities come in later and before that, you can't be worse than your base full of super-drones.

The thing is that super-drones take up two "points" of drone-calmers, Recreation commons can calm two drones but only one super-drone. But a single talent can compensate for a super-drone.

There was some elaborate post a year or two ago, which described exactly which base gets drones when you found your n-th base, but searching for this creates too much entropy and I wish to delay the cold death of the universe as long as possible (OK, I already had better excuses).

[Kody]

I always thought it was that facilities can calm a super drone, but the game is buggy and it displays the drone even though it doesn't cause riots.

I believed the main thing about super drones is they take up 2 pysch to convert into a drone and drones take 2 more pysch to convert into workers.

I think you only need to worry about super drones if you're.
1. After talents to offset drone problems or to golden age.
2. Using pysch to quell drones.

If you're using just police and drone quelling (not talent or pysch adding) facilities/Special Projects, then you don't have to worry about super drones.

So basically a rec commons will quell 2 super drones, but since pysch/talent effects is allocated to super drones before any other effect is taken into account. The pysch is all lost quelling the super drones that would have otherwise been quelled by the facility.

[Kody]

Hrmm okay maybe I'll give a more detailed explanation.

Bureaucracy Limits
Basically different maps have different bureaucracy limits. Also the difficult level and efficiency limit changes it as well. There's a formula in the Alpha Centuari help, but it uses the square root of the map and is mainly a pain to calculate. Personally, I would go for just opening the map editor setting the difficulty level and the map size to whatever map I want to calculate it for and plant bases until I get the bureaucracy warning. You can adjust the SE settings (that change efficiency) to see how it effects your bureaucracy limit too.

After you have the number of the bases for your first bureaucracy limit, bases start getting b-drones. The easiest way to think of bureaucracy effects is getting -2 pysch in bases for every bureaucracy limit you pass.

You don’t get -2 pysch in every base immediately when you pass a bureaucracy limit. Instead more and more bases start getting the extra -2 pysch until you reach the new bureaucracy limit. Basically there’s a global base list and a pattern that b-drones appear in your bases according to the global base list. The exact effect talked about in this post, this post isn’t that detailed (I think I left the detailed version in the hive private forum).

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=2299531#post2299531

The effect of pysch.

-2 pysch gives a drone. If you have all drones, then a with an additional -2 pysch a drone becomes a b-drone.

The university’s extra drones is really -2 pysch, the peacekeepers extra talents works out as a +2 pysch.

When you add pysch for every +2 pysch you add you convert a super drone into a normal drone. When all super drones are gone pysch will be used to alternatively change drones into a worker and workers into a talent.

Assume that you have all drones and 1 super drone. You give +8 pysch to that base.
(1) +2 pysch first goes to removing the super drone.
(2) +2 pysch is used convert first drone into worker.
(3) +2 pysch is used convert first worker into a talent.
(4) +2 pysch is used to convert second drone into a worker.
So you end up with 1 talent 1 worker and all the rest normal drones.

There is a limit to the amount of +pysch that will effect a base. That limit is 2 pysch for every population point in that base.

This limit only applies to listed energy pysch. Not to pysch which is gained from special faction abilities or from facilities/special projects that are unlisted in your base pysch. The facilities and special projects that often refer to giving you talents rather than adding pysch are giving you an +4 pysch (if you have all drones) that isn’t listed in your pysch energy. +2 pysch if it can convert a worker into a talent.

I like to think of it that way because a super drone and a talent cancel each other out into a normal drone and a worker respectively. So the game works as if adding talents is just adding pysch.

The effect of facilities, SPs, and police
If a facility quells a drone then it removes the drone whether it’s a super drone or a normal drone. If a super drone was quelled then there is a game bug that will display one more drone than you actually have in your base screen. The real effect of drones in this case can be found by pressing F4 (brings up base list if I remember correctly), and choosing the listing of bases showing your citizens.

Police work similar in quelling drones. They remove a drone whether it’s a super drone or a normal drone.

So if you don’t use talents effects or pysch to take care of your drones, bureaucracy limits mean absolutely nothing to you.

The effect or specialists
A specialist cannot be a drone. If you allocate specialists it does two things. Firstly, it removes a potential normal drone. What I mean by that is the negative pysch that caused the specialist to be a normal drone before won’t make one of your other drones into a super drone.

Secondly, it caps the amount of negative pysch that is applied to your citizens. So basically the bureaucracy -pysch and the university’s extra drones is capped to a maximum of a super drone for every citizen that isn’t a specialist.

Some people deal with drone problems by setting all their workers to specialists, or large portions of their works to specialists.

The catch with facilities and pysch combination

There’s a catch with the way facilities and pysch is calculated. The order is as follows.

1. Bureaucracy effects, factional drone/talent effects applied first
2. Energy pysch is applied (includes facility +percentage pysch)
3. Police units drone quelling
4. Facilities drone quelling
5. SP effects (unless the SP mimics a facility effect where it will instead be calculated in the facility area. eg -2 drones for the VW)

Now the main significance of the order is that pysch is added before police and facilities come into effect. That means that pysch is used up by super drones (these are mostly created by bureaucracy) and by the time the effect of facilities and police comes around all the pysch is already gone.

For example if you have a size 6 base with 4 super drones, and you can quell 5 drones with police and facilities. You need to allocate 10 pysch energy to remove that 6th drone. That’s because pysch needs to be first used up removing the 4 super drones first then the last 2 pysch can remove a normal drone. Since the police and facilities happen after pysch, the super drones need to be dealt with by the pysch before it can remove any normal drones.

This is why some people have problems with the bureaucracy limit. Simply because they needed to allocate pysch energy, which becomes wasteful the more super drones you get and when used in combination with facilities and police. It gets harder if you’re running freemarket and can’t use police. Relying completely on building drone quelling facilities can limit the growth of your bases. The way to get around lack of police is to allocate more specialists.

Also the other problem with extra bureaucracy super drones is it severely hinders your ability to golden age (used for pop booming with hive, morgan, and other growth impair factions).

Somewhere in the list of drone effects is the effect of facilities that add drones (gene jack factory), and the effect of pacifist drones. You’ll need to ask someone else the details of that as I was specifically studying effects that would be useful for the Hive. I think pacifist drones might be calculated after facilities, which means facilities can’t remove pacifist drones only pysch effects.

PS: Enigma_Nova & JustinSane join the ACDG and sign up for the Hive. The Hive needs more people interested in strategy.

[Kody]

I've actually got a question on this. It's a strategy that has long intrigued me, but I've never given it a serious try. I'm too scared of super-drones. I typically end up with about 20 large cities with Siklander spacing instead. How do you ICS players manage to keep anyone working? Aren't all your citizens doctors? It would seem really tough to pull off after about the fourth bureaucracy limit, which would come at base 37, right?

Combination of smaller cities, police, and specialists. The specialists don't have to be doctors to reduce the number of drones. See "The effect or specialists" in the above post.

Depends on which faction you're playing and what your current situation to how you balance reducing the city size, allocating more specialists or allocating more police (if your energy credit rich I guess also buying more drone reducing facilities).

Bureaucracy drones are mainly just a problem in relation to pysch usage.

[Minute Mirage]

I believe the pacifist drones come after the facilities drone reduction but before the SP drone reduction. Now, the catch is that the effect of the VW is counted among the facilities, but the HGP is counted in SP drone reduction stage.

A note about the University's extra drones: if I'm not mistaken, this ability doesn't create super drones, that is, on transcend level you'll only ever get -2 psych.

Another minor note: You can see the real drone situation in the Psych- screen in the base screen. You don't necessarily need to check it in F4.


Kudos for Kody for explaining all that!

[Main_Brain]

Also see:
HGP, Lonv+Planned, Dronereduced Factions, Teleph Matrix

[Jamski]

Kody

-Jam

[Vev]

But I like those drones ...
ESPECIALLY superdrones ...

[jtsisyoda]

Increasing efficiency from 0 to +2 increases the beauracracy limit (BL) by 50%. That's 6 to 9 on standard or large maps, and 9 to 14(?) on huge maps. Another +2 to efficiency increases the BL by the same amount... for example, 6 to 9 to 12 on standard/large. (I'm not positive on how fractions are rounded.)

Net efficiency of less than zero (like when running Survival/Planned/None) does not decrease the BL, though. That's helpful for Sven, Lal, and anyone who uses Planned economics before Democracy.