Base location and special resources

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Did you ever have one of those games that you made a simple discovery and it rocked all your preconceived notions?

First off apologies to any of you that use the following approach but I just had to make mention of it after trying it.

I speak toward prebuilding condensors at your base square once you get Weather Paradigm. Wow!!

Using a typical 3 (2 empty between your bases ala 5 on the dice arrangement) square separation between all your bases allows ALL SQUARES TO BE RAINY even if you start on an arid world. This allows for base growth without having to terraform much and top it off with boreholes for mins and energy. Imagine incredible early game growth potential without having to wait for nutrient lifting or tree farms even in arid conditions.

Again apologies if this is over obvious to those that use this technique but sometime it's just so blindingly obvious that it's overlooked.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited February 21, 2000).]

[Viriato]

Ogie: I have to admit that I didn't have heard of that aproach. Thanks for sharing it.
It's amazing how one can learn something new almost every week after playing for so long.
I will test it as soon as I get the chance.

[Vi Vicdi]

Condensers are also exempt from nutrient restrictions, meaning if you get WP you can delay Gene Splicing in favor of some of the early military tech.

[Scott Johnson]

I see two potential problems with Og's idea re: condensors.

1) Don't condensors, like boreholes & mirrors, cause considerable eco-impact? That either means that you are reducing the number of boreholes that Chiron will tolerate, or you're inviting global warming.

2) Turn disadvantage. Sure, you're gaining the considerable advantages you mentioned, but how many turns are you losing while you wait for your formers to finish the job (and they are unavailable for other tasks)?

Really, Og, I think it's an intriguing idea; just being the ol' Devil's Advocate. ;- )

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Vi,

Now why couldn't you have told me that months ago? (just kidding) I just recently came to that realization as I was primarily a forester. Now with condensors and a possible 4 nutrients per square w/o nutrient specials early game larger cities is much easier. In fact I just put out a suggestion of the same earlier today in the "Someon Explain the Basics to Me" thread.

Always learning,

Ogie

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Hey Scott,

Glad to see you back around here. My thought on the turn advantage thing. In actuality I think it may be a gain. If you choose to forest, by going with the condensors at your base site you may actually be accelating forest growth in areas you wish to plant forest in due to raininess. Granted boreholes are former expensive, but coming from my latest frame of reference (Yang and +2 support running Police) I've got more formers than I know what to do with (allright maybe thats an exaggeration)but still the base plopped downin all rainies allows for growth without extra formering tasks. Later on you can go back and tailor as you see fit the important thing is to get those bases up and growing.

At least that my take on it. ;-)

Ps. On the eco damage front. Yeah I beleive they do cause problems for planet at least when they are within city limits (so in this case yes). Now I have to refine the use of condensor to be just outside city limits to crawler in nutrients and forest everywhere else except for 1 or 2 boreholes/city no more than that. Of course all the terraforming ecodamage issues go away with hybrid farms but that can be quite aways off.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited February 22, 2000).]

[Velociryx]

Catching up on some of the reading I missed....lol....I LOVE building bases on the special resources squares for one reason in particular: Short of building a Rec. Tanks, there is NOTHING you can do to further improve the (rather average) amount of resources you're getting from the base square....at least if you build over a resource bonus, you're netting yourself more than the norm, and unless I'm mistaken, if you build a soil enricher right next to said base, the base square is affected...been a while since I played around much with them, but i'll check....
-=Vel=-

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Vel,

I came round to this point of veiw as well after Zsozso's reply. OTOH though nothing rocks the early game as much as a roaded/mine on a mineral rocky special or a borehole (assuming you did get WP) on a energy or mineral special. Lots of resources that are normally hindered by resource restriction lifting and with far greater output then one could get at the base square.

Also (again OTOH) nothing really moves a population along like a rainy condensor/farm on a nutrient special. Pre Gene Splice it gives you 7 nutients. With that many nuts you can put others to the task of specialists and/or foresters/miners/boreholers.
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited April 06, 2000).]

[Enigma]

Ogie is right, especially about the mineral bonus + rocky squares. I condsider these more important than a landmark in the early game because a single square like this can provide the mineral equivelent of 4 squares. A base with a crawler on one of these has a huge boost.. all before the restriction boosting techs make boreholes or mines relevent.

[Adam_Smith]

I like to try and put my base on either a mineral or a nutrient special resource, but have another special resource with in the base area to use also. Ideally you have one of each. The next best is to have your base on a special nutrient bonus and have a monolith nearby.

The last game I played I put HQ on special mineral bonus and have two special nutrient resources in the bases area. I still lost though

[LoD]

As for the rocky/mine/road/mineral bouns issue - has anyone noticed that the mineral output from that square should be 6, not 7? OTOH, when you build a mine without a road, you get 5 mins.

LoD

[Enigma]

Yes.. same thing with condenser I used to think.. but there are so few possible situations for resources in SMAC that I think the game has special coding for several situations.. like mine+ min bonus. I have never seen ghost energy appear though. Condenser+farm+soil enricher+ nutrient bonus should give you a lot less than it does (10) but I have heard some people say that condensers increase food in a square by 50% or something like that. No really good formulas out there to figure all this out.

[LoD]

Come to think of it, it sounds logical - more minerals require an efficent transport system.

LoD

[Velociryx]

When I'm playing a game, my overall goal is to optomize every square on the continent for production, and my thinking on that goes something like this:

With my standard game, bases spaced three apart, the biggest weakness I have is in that my base squares (even after the construction of a recycling tank) are among the worst on the map by the midgame. Thus, any chance I get, my preference is to build the bases right over a special resource square, knowing that the best I will be able to do from that square is an additional 1/1/1 with the construction of a Rec. Tanks. If a square falls inside the productive radius of my base, most often, I'll want that square to be a forest, because that provides me with the most bang for the turns spent in former activity.

If a square lies outside a base production radius, and is being worked by a crawler, my goal becomes to analyze that square, and optomize it for the maximum possible production of whatever I'm hauling out of there, and not even worry about the (generally minimal) loss of the "off" factor of production (ie - if I'm getting seven nutrients via my crawler, I'll not mind overmuch the fact that I'm losing a one mineral and one energy from that square). Boreholes, being that they produce soooo many minerals AND energy are the exception to this rule, and are almost always constructed inside the production zone of a base, where they can be worked via workers to maximize the gain, and where that base's enhancements can mitigate the eco damage caused by its presence.

Thoughts on crawler defense: It depends on your game, but it seems to me, that the most vulnerable position to be in is to have a lot of crawlers supplying food to your base. One attack by an enemy sniping unit, and you could lose several points of population very quickly. Next most vulnerable would be your mineral producers, especially if you have a lot of minerals tied up in support costs....again, one sneak attack and your base mineral production could begin to fall off precipitously. Least worrysome, are attacks made against crawlers providing additional energy....true, it will slow down your research and cause your per-turn cashflow to drop, but it does nothing to risk the population of the base in general, nor your ability to replace the losses.

-=Vel=-
(early afternoon musings)

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Vel,

A couple of comments (my precaffienated early morning ramblings if you will).

I agree base sites tend to be the least productive of any square avaialble by mid game for most factions. This became exceedingly obvious to me in a Yang style Specialist base game with classic ICS spacing game. Not only did the number bases mean a disproportionate share of relatively low output squares (best case was 3/2/3 with tanks) but meant in order to really get the bang for the buck each of those miriad of bases needed to be making base facilities. Ouch that gets mineral intensive for 100% specilized bases (actually all but one worker on a borehole). Not that I am willing to scrap the 100% speacilist approach though. I still think there is a lot to be offered.

You may be asking yourself at this time why would you want that many specialized bases vs. the central dot on a 5 on a die. The answers are in that it allows a number of options.

1) For the same amount of crawlers (29 to convoy to the center) which is roughly 6 per each of the 5 bases one can make all 5 bases 90% specialist by harvesting condensor/farms/soil enrichers and assigning two workers to boreholes.

2) The approach allows engineers for maximum useful energy output at 5 per engineer times 14 population. Thats 90 energy at each base before multipliers!

3) SE choices normally thought to be insane such as Police/planned aren't all that harmful. True you'll lose the energy fromthe boreholes due to -4 efficiency but yyou still retain the base 90 fromthe specilists and the benefits of plus police/support/industry and growth are tremendous.

4) Drone issues are a think of the past witht hat many specilaists and a good police rating to keep those 2 workers in line.

Now ICS's with Morgan thats a different story. The untold bounties of energy from the base square make this the best possible square around. Run FM/wealth and your central base square is raking in dough. (Too bad Yang is so energy poor.)

Regarding your thoughts on sniping crawlers. Consider a specialist base for a sec. When I say a specialist base I am considering the city radius to be primarlily condensor/farm/soil enrichers with a crawler to bring in the nuts. 5 crawlers brings in enough nuts plus the central base square to support size 16.

Once at size 16 a lot of nice things start to happen. Extra nuts go into the tanks. If we assume that your nutrient crawlers are picked off and that you didn't have an interceptor ready to respond. Then the effect is hunger. Not bad until such time as it results in starvation. Even then it is not insurmountable b/c your specialists still are producing unlike your factories. you loose population until such time as you can replace them via redistributing your workers to the field to gain enough nuts to allow a pop boom. Then make them speiclists again. Net effect may be nothing if you can get that crawler produced and back out to the fields.

Now consider a loss of a mineral crawler or energy crawler the efect is immediate and harmful. Loss of minerals for this base can be crippling less so the energy loss.

Anyway just my thoughts (again from my precaffeinated mind).

PS. I'm still trying to sort out in my mind the benefits of a specialist vs conventional approach. On the one hand a conventional allows for growth without much fuss.Plant some trees and go on your way. Very former time friendly. But what that also means is comparitively speaking you end up using a lot of real estate. Consider three population points.

In a conventional city working in 2 forest 1 borehole with ultimately hybrids you'll net up to 6N/10M/13E (assuming +2 econ) but you will have used 3 squares of land.

In a specialist city you'll work 1 square the borehole and one crawlered square for total of 6N Crawler/6M/17E (assuming +2 econ majority of which is efficiency independent assumption is 2 engineers at equivalent 5 energy each) but more to the point you have only worked or crawlered 2 squares of land. This conservation of land at the price of a crawler seems to be to my mind the strength of the whole approach.

So on the one hand you have an easy way to expand at the cost of some territorial sprawl while a specialist (or more to the point a condensor/farm/soil enricher) approach allows for large base building at the cost of expensive t-forming with minimal land usage.

If I extrapolate the above out for the 18 squares of land you would net 60 M/78 E for conventional or 54 M/ 153 E for specialist base but in reality this example is flawed in that close spacing of boreholes will not allow this but the math starts to point out the trend that the output on the base radii squares ultimately favors a specialist (more to the point Specialized output using crawlers to harvest) approach vs. generalist production from predominantly foresting again at extreme expense of former investment.

I still don't know at this point which is better but perhaps now you can see why my proclivity to bulding as many formers as possible and my feeling on just how important the WP sp can be for this style.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited April 10, 2000).]