Different ways to Harvest a forest ?

[mrdynamic]

The other day I built a borehole over a forest which, of course, destroys the forest. A message was then displayed that said 5 minerals returned to 'some base name'. Made me wonder if forests can be planted, and then harvested, returning minerals to the base using a former ? They only way I could accomplish this was by planting a enhancement over a existing forest. Is there a way to just harvest the forest ?

I know crawlers will get you a couple of minerals each turn, but is there a way, and would there be an advantage of just planting, then harvesting a large forest in 1 turn per square ?

[Lefty Scaevola]

Can be done, but you are tying up the production cost of the formers, which have other valuable fuctions.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Can be done, but you are tying up the production cost of the formers, which have other valuable fuctions.

I agree. You could have your formers waging an "f" versus "F" war with one another, reaping 5 min to the nearby base every few turns. But during the same period you could have the formers working together to road/mine a square for a crawler and get almost as many mins each turn.

Best use of the "free 5 mins" is when you have a forest grow under the square you're trying to borehole. Didn't need it there, but got the free mins anyway.

[Blake]

Formers cost 1 support per turn, forest + farm takes 8 turns, I count 8 support used for 5 minerals gain, for a net deficit of 3 minerals. And using more formers per tile wouldn't help either, because it would take 8 formers to plant a forest+farm in one turn... costing 8 support. Just maybe if you are a support rich faction (Hive, Believers) and have nothing better to do with your freely supported formers, and have no other units needing support, it would be economical to do. If you have clean on your former it would be economical to do (but at that tech, would you bother?!). Otherwise either put the former to work doing usfull terraforming, or disband it.

[Googlie]

18 to 24 months ago there was The Lumberjack Challenge - win a game by transcend by only planting and harvesting forests for minerals - no mines or boreholes allowed, no solars or tidal energy improvements.

Was won by meister flo, IIRC. It was fun - different - to play.

G.

[Gary]

Sounds like my usual style of play. Hey who can be bothered to work out the optimum enhancements for a square ? I've got factions to bash.