Automatic Terraforming

[Grail Quest]

This has probably been asked, but I don't want to sift through about 30 pages of forums just to find it, and a cursory look at the FAQ did not reveal the answer.

My question is: what is the heuristic used for automatic terraforming?

(a) sometimes, a Former set to auto improve Home Base will suddenly stop and say "no orders", and wait for me to do something. If I set it again to auto improve home base, the flag sets to "a", but the Former simply skips the turn and does nothing.

(b) I have gone to the Preferences and enabled Formers to have free rein to do everything, including boreholes and stuff. I now have borehole technology for a while now, but I still don't see any.

(c) I would really hate to have to manually go into every base and tweak every Former. I have just one land former and one sea former per base, but right now I've got maybe 20+ bases. I don't want to micromanage at that level!

[RedFred]

You have heard of the random number generator? My theory is that the auto former has a built in random task generator. I love it when they build a circular road and then drive around in circles without forming anything.

A suggestion: never, ever use autoformer again. Your game will improve immensely if you actually have your formers doing something useful. Use the hotkeys and each former can be dealt with in the blink of an eye.

But if you are masochistic enough to continue using the auto feature, go into the preferences and at least limit the things that they can do. That way they are more likely to do something useful like make roads and plant forest.

[big_canuk]

Hazard warning: I am a micromanagement freak.

That said, I would hazard a guess that 99% of the serious players of smac *never* automate their formers. I tend to average closer to 4 or 5 formers per base, and never automate them.

Auto formers do not build enough forests, and build way to many mines. I think their "benefit algorithm" may not take into account the one energy from forests. Auto sea formers do work, if not allowed to build mining platforms.

But one of the secrets to terraforming is to use "gangs" of formers. That way improvements come on line quicker. (Say with 4 formers, 1 forest per turn for 4 turns, rather than 4 forests at the end of 4 turns).

If you like the less micromanagement style, then you probably are more of a conquest player. 2 formers per base may be enough. But do consider managing them. You will be able to do twice as much, with 1/2 the formers. It will make the rest of your game go much more smoothly.

If you have to automate them, then set them to exclusively make forest and roads. (This works in particularly arid areas). Just keep a few unautomated to make the occasional farm(where you don't have at least one 2 nut tile in the base radius), and to mine rockies, drill the occasional borehole.

bc

edit: x-post with RF

[Lefty Scaevola]

The only auto mated former fuction I use is "build road or mag tube to (insert base name or click hex)"

[Grail Quest]

Originally posted by big_canuk
Hazard warning: I am a micromanagement freak.

That said, I would hazard a guess that 99% of the serious players of smac *never* automate their formers. I tend to average closer to 4 or 5 formers per base, and never automate them.

You've got to be kidding! 4 or 5? Per base?
I've got the game for only maybe 1-1/2 weeks, but that sounds horrifying! Right now I'm playing Huge Map of Planet at one notch above Citizen difficulty. I've got almost a third of the map. Maybe (I haven't actually counted) 20-30 bases. Every base has 1 Former. About 1/2rds to 2/3rds have 2 Former (land and sea).
That's already up to 60 Formers. If I have 4-5 per base, I'll go nuts micromanaging them all.
[/QUOTE]

If you like the less micromanagement style, then you probably are more of a conquest player.

Well, yes. But I noticed that if I don't play aggressively, the computer cranks out colony pods like crazy and starts boxing me in, especially on the smaller Map of Planet.

2 formers per base may be enough. But do consider managing them. You will be able to do twice as much, with 1/2 the formers. It will make the rest of your game go much more smoothly.

What's the fastest heuristic _you_ use to control your formers? With 22 squares per base, how do you quickly decide what to build? Or do you spend a couple minutes per base per turn?

The problem with micromanaging is that I tend to lose sight of long-term projects. For example, if there's a war going on, my attention is on that and my strategic movements and production queues. Not on what each of my 60 formers are doing.

[Lefty Scaevola]

One your have a little bit of terraforming and development experience its than 1/2 to 5 seconds to decide each terraforming action.

[big_canuk]

Deciding what to do with formers, as Lefty says, usually takes but a second. Road, forest, maybe mine, clear fungus for land, and pretty well straight, move kelp, or move kelp/solar for sea.

Actually getting them to the tile in question efficiently often takes a bit more time for gangs, especially with the XD, trying to use the fungus, and then the road, to get all the formers to the tile, and still be able to terraform.

I do spend a couple of minutes per base, sometimes, but that is usually more juggling crawlers to maintain my pop booms, ensure production completes, and/or min/nut switching.

More time might actually be spent on deciding what to build next, and hurring builds, than on actually moving formers.

Once you get used to doing the terraforming yourself, you will enjoy it. You will be horrified by the decisions the AI would make on your behalf, and will not allow it to so handicap you.

[Mongoose]

I have only one word on automating formers:

DON'T!

[Blake]

I did do a bit of testing on automated formers once. By far the most important consideration is the altitude, followed by rockiness then rainfall. Formers also consider the presence of restriction lifting... so if you dont have gene splicing they wont build farms on rainy tiles until you get gene splicing.

Now it goes something like this: (I did this testing a long time ago, so could be wrong...)
<1000, flat, moist or arid. Always plant forest.
<1000 rolling, arid. Forests, ocassionally.
<2000, flat, forest usually, sometimes solar sometimes mine.
<2000, rolling, solar, usually.
2000+ Solar mostly.

Important things to note: Automated Formers change their behaivour after you get restriction lifting techs, in particular they'll tend to make more farms.
They only really plant forest on low altitude tiles, that is <1000. Anything higher and they go stupid.
The altitude is a more important consideration than the moisture when it comes to planting forests.

One hint, for best automated/AI former performance use these world settings:
30-50% water
High Erosion
Dense Cloud (high rainfall)

This makes a lot of flat land to encourage forest planting, it is heavy rainfall so there tends to be enough moist/rainy tiles to allow base growth before terraforming is in place.

Edit: I generally have 2-3 formers per base, they pave my territory in forest then get to work drilling boreholes (at a fairly leisurely rate). It takes me less than a second to decide what to do with a former. If no road & flat, build a road. If rocky - level or mine (depending if I'm using crawlers or not). Otherwise, forest . If the screen is smothered in forest move to drill / help drill a borehole.

[gwillybj]

me, too

what big_canuk and Mongoose said
Don't automate them, but don't get all in a big sweat what to do with them, either. Look at the situation, the terrain, your goals. Before too long, it gets to be almost "automatic " what orders you will decide to give them.
Most important:
Have Fun!

[Fearless_Mage]

i am a kind of war manic, so i just tell my formers to build roads and forest, and i agree, automatic formers are GAY. one game i had all mine auto, they just went up and down the map the whole game? whats with that???

[Grail Quest]

Can't even automate the simplest of tasks

Okay, I've now turned off total automation.

I wanted to build a road from Base A to Base B. So I use the "Build Road To" option.
There is a STRAIGHT LINE from A to B.
It starts building a little box.

ARGH!

[Blake]

One of the more amusing and unfortunate incidents I've seen with automated formers is during a LAN game with a newbie player, he was pirates and built some sea formers... and set them all on Auto. All they did the entire game was clear fungus (cant even remember if they cleared it, prehaps they just sat in it). My friend thought this slightly odd but it didn't occur to him to do anything about it. (like un-automating the formers, or even not automating newly built formers)

(Side note, this game ended when I planetedbusted all of the AI's, my friends HQ was destroyed by splash damage - it was an accident, I swear ))

[spartak]

How do we use hotkeys on the formers?

[spartak]

Oh and lol@blake "accident" my foot.