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**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 12:27

Code:

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Hab Complex



Production
Cost:

8
Rows ( = 80 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

2
ec/turn



Provides:

Allows
base sizes larger than seven.





Notes
: What is there to say? Every base needs one to grow above size
7 except with Lal(size 9) and Morgan (size 4) If you're at all
interested in vertical growth, then you'll have to build some
eventually. Having said that though, I just won a game on Transcend
using the Gaians without building any, and I won by diplomatic victory
in 2180. Lots of smaller bases with crawlers and specialsists can
perform very well in the early and middle game, and aggresive play in
this period can ensure that your "swarm techniques" end up saving you
the trouble of building the 8 rows and paying the 2 ec/turn needed for
the Hab Complex.




The most important consideration when building
Hab Complexes is timing. You don't want one sitting around in a size 5
base for turns and turns costing you money for no reason. In an ideal
world you'd look to see how many turns untill you grow to size 8, and
time the Hab Complex to be either finished then, or at least in a
position for you to rush it then.




Also, its hardly worth the cost for bases that
will only grow to size 8 and then stop. If you're really packing them
close together and concentrating on boreholes and mines, this happens
pretty often. You'll be paying 2ec/turn for an extra worker, who as
number 8 will be born a Drone, even on Citizen level. Consider it, and
don't do like I did in my first games of SMAC and stick them
everywhere, even in size 4 bases that were not growing because "I might
get enough sattelites up there eventually".

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Hologram Theater



Production
Cost:

6
Rows ( = 60 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

3
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Psych, quells 2 Drones





Notes
: To be brutally honest, if you didn't get the Virtual World,
you're going to need deep pockets here. Unless you're playing on one of
the easier levels, you will need to suppress your Drones somehow. You
may think the VW is expensive for a secret project you can build very
early, but those 300 Minerals = only 5 Hologram Theaters, and you don't
have to pay the upkeep (although you wil have to build some Network
Nodes, which you were planning on doing anyway, right?




Ok, Hologram Theaters are expensive, and before
you blindly build them, its always worth considering if there's another
way of dealing with your Drones. First alternative are Recreation
Commons - they cost less to build, they only cost 1 ec/turn but they
don't give extra Psych. Second alternative is to use more Police,
either more units, or a different SE setting. Third alternative is to
increase Psych spending on the SE screen, and the fourth easy option
for those early game Drones is to use specialists.




There's a fifth option, which is to play as Lal
and pinch the Human Genome Project, in which case Drones will be a
non-issue even on Transcend level. In this case Holo Theaters are a
pure waste of time and money. No question.




I'm really trying hard here, but I can't think
of a single situation in which you wouldn't be better advised to crawl
2 extra nutrients and make someone a doctor than to spend 6 rows of
minerals upfront ( roughly = 120 ec) and then another 3 ec/turn. There's
only a short window in which Holo Theaters are worth it, but when
Treefarms (also +50% Psych) and Research Hospitals (+25% Psych and -1
Drone) come along then I'd build them instead. You'll end up having to
shove some energy into Psych at some point in most games anyway,
there's no need to be ashamed of it.




Anyway this is about facilities, not Drone
control, and of all the facilities in this catagory, Hologramm Theaters
are the worst value. They do a good job, but not at those prices, and
not in my early game build queues. There's plenty of reasons to get
them free with the VW though.

Code:

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Naval Yard



Production
Cost:

8
Rows ( = 80 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

2
ec/turn



Provides:

+2
Morale for naval units, repairs units faster





Notes
: Owch. Big owch. I'm not convinced of the economics of Command
Centers, unless you can get them free with the Command Nexus, and Naval
Yards not only have a more limited application (Everyone except the
Pirates will build many less naval units than land and air units) but
they also require twice the upkeep costs. Unless you get the Maritime
Control Center and get them for free, or you feel you really must take
on the Pirates before Doctrine: Airpower, you are simply foolish to
build these. Actually, if you want to make a big enough navy to take on
the Pirates at surface level, you're pretty foolish too. They get these
Naval Yards for free, and can capture the ships you so expensively
trained up. If the Pirates are not in the game, then who exactly did
you want to use all these +2 Morale foils and cruisers against anyway?
By the time there's enough sea bases in the game that its worth
training your navy to attack them, its also late enough that you have
noodles and choppers, which do a much better job.




Use those 8 rows to build a couple of Foil
Probes if you really have to muck about in the water, and then spend
the cash you saved on causing a few problems for some other fool.

Code:

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Network Node



Production
Cost:

8
Rows ( = 80 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

1
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Labs, cash Alien Artifacts for tech.





Notes
: My second favorite facility. Ok, they're not cheap, and the
datalinks
are wrong, they'll actually cost you 1 ec/turn, not zero, which is a
shame. If you play as the University you get one in every base for
free, they are the prequisite for some of the later and greater tech
boosting facilities and they link up with 2 different Secret Projects
to become even more useful. 




If you're playing as the University you can
skip this, but the other
factions are almost forced to build them in order to try and match the
Uni's tech speed. They get a basic +2 Research on the SE table, making
their tech costs 20% lower, and the free Nodes make them reach that
lower target 50% quicker. They get you coming and going, so the other
factions are obliged to try to do something about it.




Like their sister facility, the Energy Bank,
they need to be built at
the right moment. They'll cost you 1ec/turn so unless they'll give you
at least 2 extra labs/turn you're not making a profit. That means bases
that are producing a basic 4 labs/turn or more will start to feel the
benefit, or even at 2 labs/turn its worth considering for factions with
low Efficiency ratings if they have lots of cash, but slow tech. Build
your Nodes too early, and you are throwing away expansion for little or
no return. Build them too late, and someone else will out-tech you. My
personal feeling is to either build them in core bases just after
getting Industrial Automation and getting the basic crawler
infrastructure out and building whatever early game Secret Projects you
might want, or to try and get them built quickly before IA so they
don't stop you from filling your build queues with crawlers.




Network Nodes have some other nice effects
though. They prevent the bad
random event from happening when you lose all accumalated labs, and
they give you a chance of getting the random event where "A Network
Node reports a tech breakthrough" and you get the tech currently being
researched. Network Nodes also allow you to cash Alien Artifacts for
tech advances, which is a bit of a waste, but useful, and they have a
very nice synergy with the "Network Backbone" and "Virtual World"
Secret Projects.

-Jam

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 12:32

Code:

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Perimiter Defense



Production
Cost:

5
Rows ( = 50 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

0
ec/turn



Provides:

+100%
Defense to base





Notes
:  The reason I always played Hive initally was because of
the
free Perimiter Defenses. In the early game they have immense value.
Before Sythnetic Fossil Fuels, the common early wars will be Impact (4)
weapons against Synthmetal (2) or Plamsa (3) armour. Plasma armour
behind a Perimiter Defense is not going to be pushed out by Impact
Rovers so easily. In fact, with just the first Impact Rover destroyed
attacking your Perimiters, the minerals/ecs lost by your opponent are
already nearly equal to what the Perimiter cost you, not to mention the
fact that you just saved your base. This tends to dissuade huamn
opponents from even attacking. You're threatening them with losing
before they even attack you.




Of course its not that simple,
because the threat of one Impact Rover probably will cause the defender
to build more than just one Perimiter Defense, since if the attacker
sees one base is protected and another is not, which is he likely to go
for? And if you have to build 5 or 6 Perimiters to scare off a couple
of rovers, the attacker has won a material victory. He's made you spend
250-300 minerals and the build queues of half a dozen bases for his cost of
50-60 minerals and two build queues. So turn this on its head, and you
have another use for Permiter Defenses - making your opponents build
them. The game is so balanced that the attacker will almost always have
the advantage without Perimiters, and the defender the advantage with
Perimiters. 




If you have the minerals to spare, the Citizens
Defense Force is one of the more expensive Secret Projects. Most "put a
facility in every base" SPs cost the same as (5 x facility), but the
CDF at 350 minerals costs (7 x facility) It does have the advantage of
putting a free Perimiter Defense in every base though, helping when
expanding ino dangerous areas and may save you cash compared to the
usual cat & mouse game between the attacker and the defender.
Compared to the other SPs up for grabs at this level. I'd rather take
the Empath Guild, PTS or Virtual World though.




Generally Perimeter Defenses are nice things to
have. They're cheap, cost no upkeep and can save your bases. The one
warning I would give is that they should only be built in the bases
that will need them, as they do still take up the 5 rows that could
otherwise be used to build facilities or units that will then return
nutrients, population, energy and minerals back to you and make you
more powerful in the long run. Remember, the sooner you build these
facilites and units, the better, while a Perimeter Defense is just as
good if it was built the turn before the attack or 100 turns before.

Code:

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Recreation Commons



Production
Cost:

4
Rows ( = 40 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

1
ec/turn



Provides:

Quells
2 Drones.





Notes
: Unless you're playing on one of the "baby" levels, or you are
using at least +2 Police per base, you're going to have to find some
way of dealing with Drones in the early game. Of all the facilties
available, Recreation Commons give the best cost:effect ratio, and are
available with one simple starting-level technology, Social Psych. A
1-1-1(police) unit is actually a lot quicker/cheaper to build, and with
decent Support on the SE table won't cost you anything in upkeep, but
not everyone has the ability to use Police.




Ok, let's look at the numbers. Recreation
Commons are actually one of the biggerst production-boosting facilties.
They enable 2 more tiles to be worked or two more useful (i.e.
non-Doctor) specialists to be made in the base. Before restriction
lifting that's a possible extra 4-4-4 against the inital cost of 40
minerals ( = 80 ec ) + 1ec/turn. Assumming maximum energy and mineral
production from the two workers (and the food is a bonus) then it will
take only 7 turns before the facility is making a mineral/energy profit
for you. And a big one too, with a possible coverted ec value of 11
ec/turn - all before restriction lifting. After lifting you can double
that value. Very few facilities offer such huge gains from such
moderate outlays.




All factions benefit from the use of Rec
Commons. Police-based Drone quelling is limited in the numbers it will
subdue, and Psych spending cuts into your Econ and Labs at 4 times the
cost of a Rec Commons (although other facilities will make Psych
spending more efficient in the long run) The trick, as always, is in
the timing. Ideally a base should build the Rec Commons exactly one
turn before it will grow to a size where Drones would riot, or exactly
one turn before building a new base that will push you over another
Buerocracy Limit and give you a B-Drone in that base. Always try and
stop Drone Riots before they happen. Losing a whole turn of production
is no way to win a game, especially against human opponents. There's
ALWAYS time to check your bases before pressing "End Turn".

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Recycling Tanks



Production
Cost:

4
Rows ( = 40 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

0
ec/turn



Provides:

+1
Energy, Nutrient & Mineral in Base Tile





Notes
: These become available with one of the basic first level
techs -
Biogenetics - which Lal starts with. All sea bases include Rec Tanks as
part of their pressure dome, so Cpt. Svensgard gets the benefits of the
facility without having to research the technology. Everyone else has a
dilemma :




Either you research Biogenetics straight away,
so you can take advantage of Rec Tanks in the early stages where they
are most useful, or you "beeline" for Industrial Automation, to get
there as soon as possible.




Why is there this dilemma? Why are Rec Tanks so
good? Well, the answer is simple. Imagine we have a "standard" size 1
base which is producing a total of 4-4-4. Adding a Rec Tank to the base
is a 25% increase for all the base's production and income. Not bad,
for a facility that's so cheap, and requires no upkeep. Look at it
another way - your first 4 bases with Rec Tanks will be as productive
as 5 bases without Rec Tanks.




Of course, you don't want to tie up your build
queues early in the game with expensive faculties when you should be
scouting, worm hunting, colony pod rushing and former flooding. That's
why the best way to build Rec Tanks is probably to rush them using the
free minerals* on the very turn you found a new base. The cost is
somewhere in the region of (40-10) = 30 minerals,assume the base can
produce 4 minerals per turn, so that's only 26 minerals that you need
to buy, which will cost you about 52ec to rush with normal Industry.
The Rec Tanks will only take 15 turns to pay off the equivalent of
those ec costs, while increasing the growth, research rate, and speed
of production right now. More growth and more production mean the next
base will be planted perhaps 1 turn sooner. That adds up in the long
term to big savings and more turn advantage, and after only 15(ish)
turns you're making pure tax-free profit from your rush building.




The other side-effect of Rec Tanks, which I
often find useful, is that a size 3 base with Rec Tanks can work 3
forest tiles for 6 nutrients, which are exactly what are needed. Before
restriction lifting this is one of the more efficient base builds,
especially if you can manage 3 forests on a river. Without the Tanks
the base would have to use a farm or crawl one nutrient, costing you
either a mineral or an energy credit.




*Note : Won't work so well with Democractic SE
choices, otherwise the 10 free minerals are really pretty nice.

Code:

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Research Hospital



Production
Cost:

12
Rows ( = 120 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

3
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Labs, +25% Psych, quells 1 Drone.





Notes
: This facility is always a problem. It comes with Gene Splicing
and
heralds the end or the true "Early Game" with the lifting of the
restriction on nutrient production. Those size 3-4 bases start growing
a bit, you have a decent infrastructure and  now you're faced with
the choices offered by the first of the "second tier" facilities* Here
is the moment when you really have to decide what direction you want to
build in. Do you want to go upwards, or outwards?




If you want to go outwards, then leave the
Research Hospitals for now,
apart from those bases you may have identified as science bases.
Crawling farms/condensors now the restrictions are lifted can really
give you the nutrients needed for a very rapid expansion horizontally.
Research Hospitals are expensive to build and maintain, and you want to
preserve outward momentum at this point, not shut up shop and enter
"turtle mode" The 12 rows of minerals needed means you can't simply
rush one at every base and then continue expanding, as you can with
Nodes and Energy Banks. You'll have to sit and build for 4-5 turns even
with a great cash supply. If you want to build vertically though, this
is generally a good time to take your foot off the "colony
pod/former/scout patrol" pedal and start to really develop your bases.




I have to say this again. They're not cheap.
And they keep costing you
3 ec/turn too, so don't build them unless you can afford them. They do
boost production in 3 different ways though, so in a large enough base
(never build in a small base) they more than pay for themselves.




Firstly the +50% Labs. Let's assume a nice size
4 base with the basic
facilities already in place, with 2 energy from each population, and
say 4 from the base (a moderate estimate) for 12 base energy. Then
let's take again the default 50/50 Econ/Labs distribution. In this
case, the Research Hospital is going to give you 3 Labs/turn at a cost
of 3 ec/turn. No loss, no gain either.




However, when that size 4 base grows to size 5,
let's imagine that it
develops another Drone, which is then quelled by the Research Hospital.
We now have to include the added productivity of an extra worker (let's
put him on a forest for 1-2-2) which (ignoring the nutrients) is worth
6 ec/turn. This defrays the upkeep cost of the Hospital, returns 3
ec/turn to our pockets, and gives us
an extra 0.5 Labs/turn (a whole +1 Labs/turn, with the Node that the
base should already have) As the base grows past size 5, you may have
to spend on Psych to keep them happy in there, so the 3rd bonus comes
into play, of +25% Psych.




So, the timing of Research Hospitals is pretty
simple. You should aim
to have them built the turn before reaching size 5 if running an FM
using faction, and any time between sizes 5 and 7 if using Police under
Planned or Green and planning on "turtling" for a bit, or if you are
planning on spreading like xenofungus before simply crushing everyone,
its best not to build them at all. Do one thing, and do it well, its
better than messing them both up.





One final thing to note - A Research Hospital
stops outbreaks of
Prometheous Viruses and Planet Blight at that base.




*Assuming a normal tech progression to
IA, then restriction lifting,
then D:AP

-Jam

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 12:36

Code:

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Thermocline Transducer



Production
Cost:

8
Rows ( = 80 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

0
ec/turn



Provides:

+1
Energy from Tidal Harnesses





Notes
: First thing to note is that before you lift the restriction on
Energy Production, this is completly useless to you. Don't build it.
Don't even think about the idea of building one. You
can't get more than 2 energy per tile* until Advanced
Ecological Engineering even if you are Morgan running FM and Wealth
with the Merchant Exchange.




After Adv Eco Eng, however, a facility that
gives +1 energy per square with no upkeep costs sounds too good to be
true. Its not. Rush one in any base that is working 2 or more Tidal
Harnesses. It will take a while till you are actually in profit from
it, but it can also be used as a way to convert minerals to energy
cheaply if you let it build naturally. If you are working 5 tiles with
Tidal Harnesses, it will only take 32 turns untill the mineral cost of
the facility is returned to you as energy to do with as you wish. (Much
less time if you have decent Industry and didn't pay so much in the
first place)




Any base that is sea energy based would be
stupid not to build one of these. Coastal bases with only 1-3 Tidal
Harnesses would probably not always recover the cost of building the
facility between the lifting of restrictions and the end of the game.
Better to build those Treefarms, I'd say.




*Except for Energy Resources specials,
of course.

Code:

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Tree Farm



Production
Cost:

12
Rows ( = 120 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

3
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Econ, +50% Psych, +1 Nut in Forest tiles.





Notes
: Coming two techs after Gene Splicing and the Research
Hospital
comes
the Tree Farm, and the lifting of the energy restrictions. Just one
tech before, your mineral restriction was removed, and all your
2-mineral crawlers moved off the forests and onto the
mine/road/rocky tiles you cunningly had just prepared with this tech
in mind, and doubled their production to 4 mins/turn. As a result you
suddenly hear*pop* and you know its time to start with the Tree Farms.
For my mind, this marks the end of the true "Early Game" and the
beginning of the "Mid Game", where all tiles can now be used to their
full effects, and all terraforming enhancements are possible except
magtubes.





Ok, first of all the main reason to build these
facilities is not for
the extra Econ or Psych. What we are after is the extra nutrient from
our forests, (they should be everywhere by now) which will give us the
+2 nuts/turn we need for a popboom. If we're playing a faction that
needs a Golden Age to popboom, then view the +50% Psych as the game
telling you to get into the SE screen and push that central slider to
the right.




Like Research Hospitals, they boost income by
50%, in this case for
Psych and Econ, the other two of the three energy catagories, and in
the same way they cover their own costs, as long as the base is
producing a base 12 energy after ineffieciency, with anything else
being profit. Tree Farms, however, are the one facility where I'm
inclined to ignore the maths. The extra nutrients translate into extra
growth, which is always good - see my comments on Children's Creches.
If you want to count every last ec though, then I'd say that the only
bases that are really too small to build a Tree Farm are any bases
under size 4 which are not directly working either at least 2 forested
rivers, or at least two forests under FM.




The "hidden" effects of Tree Farms are also
worth considering. Each
Tree Farm built increases the number of "clean minerals" for all your
bases by one, as long as it was built after the first fungal *pop* and
also reduces the Ecodamage at that base caused by terraforming within
the base radius. 




There's only two instances where I would
consider not building Tree
Farms as soon as they became available. Either if I was still pumping
units for an expansion or a war, or if I was running towards a future
"All Specialists" strategy, which was using only advanced terraforming
instead of any forests.

Code:

rectanksfaq


Biology Lab



Production
Cost:

6
Rows ( = 60 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

1
ec/turn



Provides:

+1
Lifecycle for Native Life,  +2 Labs/turn 





Notes :
There's only one reason to build a Biology Lab, and that is for the
+1Lifecycle Native Life gets when built here. Without a decent level
of  Lifecycle, your worms and locusts will just get mashed. If you
are planning on persuing an all-worm strategy, these facilities are
your Command Centers, and my comment about Command Centers apply
equally here, but more so, as Morale/Lifecycle is much more important
in psy-combat.




The +2 Labs per turn is insignificant unless
you're planning on building them everywhere, but I don't reccommend the
investment in Biolabs for the purpose of boosting your research. Paying
1 ec/turn for 2 Labs/Turn may sound like a good deal, but with your six
rows of minerals (worth about 120 ec) you could have built two crawlers,
which I guarentee will be able to crawl you more energy than the +1 you
gain from just the Biolab (which will make a profit in the 123rd turn
after its built)

That concludes "Early Game Facilities".

Any comments, corrections and so on will be very warmly appreciated, but can you do so in a new thread, to keep this one clear for "Mid Game Facilities" coming soon. Comments on the content that is

-Jam

**Lazerus** · April 2, 2004, 12:56

Jam, Jam, hes our boy if he can't do it noone ... will ...

**Jac de Molay** · April 2, 2004, 13:07

One thing.

Notes : Coming one tech after Gene Splicing and the Research Hospital comes the Tree Farm, and the lifting of the mineral restrictions.

Correct me if Im wrong, but don't you get the Tree farm with Environmental Economics, which lifts Energy restrictions? I thought it was Ecological Engineering that lifted mineral restrictions.

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 14:03

Yeah, that's what happens if you do stuff from memory. Its two techs after Gene Splicing, and with the lifting of all restrictions that you get Tree Farms.

I always research Gene Splicing --> Eco Eng --> Enviro Eco so I forget

I'll just edit that last one, eh?

[edit]I just fixed it (Jam'll fix it for you!)[/edit]

-Jam

**Illuminatus** · April 2, 2004, 15:10

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 15:59

Question : As I'm working on "Mid Game" Facs at the moment, where would people condsider the "cut-off" point to be, before "Late Game" starts?

Question : If you really like this would you pester a mod to sticky it?

-Jam

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 16:53

reserved for Mid Game Facs

Aerospace Complex

Bioenhancement Center

Code:

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Brood Pit



Production
Cost:

8
Rows ( = 80 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

2
ec/turn



Provides:

+1
Lifecycle for Native Life,  +2 Police for Base, -25% cost of
building Native Life, Ignores negative Lifecycle at base.





Notes :
This is one of the facilities most prone to abuse. If you build a Brood
Pit at every base, and manage to build the Asthetic Virtues SP as well,
you give yourself a massive +3 Police rating. This means you can run a
Free Market economy without any penalty, simply by threatening to throw
your citizens to the worms if they do not behave.




However, this facility is also very useful for
those Free Market-shunning Gaians, and the Planet Cult, as not only
does it give an extra +1 Lifecycle to Native Life (essential if you
want to build a worm army) but it also reduces the cost of training
worms by 25% - in effect for every 4 units you build, you get one free,
and they are all 12.5% more effective than usual.




Against the obvious benefits of this facility
must be weighed the downsides. A cost of 64 minerals is not too much,
considering this comes towards the end of the "mid game", nor is the 2
ec/turn a ridiculous sum, considering the money available at this
point. The downside is that by the time it comes, Native Life has
severly lost its effectiveness, as it encounters artillery, airforces,
Trance and Empath units, and perhaps even the Neural Amplifier.




The main use then for the Brood Pit is to pay 2
ec/turn to stop Drones springing up when your FM faction goes to war,
and as you can then send as many units overseas as you like, that
translates into 2 ec/turn to stop any number of Peacenik Drones you can
think of. Its a bargain, assuming you take advantage of it to actually
send masses of forces outside your borders.




If you're not running FM, or if you don't
intend to use this base as the home for expeditionary forces - simply
don't build these facilities.

Centauri Preserve

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 16:55

reserved for Mid Game Facs

Covert Ops Center

Fusion Lab

Code:

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Genejack Factory



Production
Cost:

10
Rows ( = 100 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

2
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Minerals, +1 Drone





Notes :
By the time Genejack Factories come around, dealing with Drones should
be yesterday's problem. The only exception may be if you are playing as
the University and you failed to get the Virtual World or the Human
Genome Project, then you might want to think twice about building these
facilities, otherwise its almost compulsory to eat that Drone and build
the Factories.




Let's take a nicely developing base at this
stage of the late mid-game and look at it. Assumming a normal regualr
base spacing, and assuming also that you built enough formers to turn
Planet into Swiss cheese (i.e. you made stacks of boreholes everywhere
the game would let you) then I'm assuming something like 24
minerals/turn as a minimum level. (that's just 4 boreholes placed at
the corners of the base)   Working on this base of 24 mins/turn,
the extra 50% would give the base 36 minerals/turn, an increase of 12,
which once we take off the 2 ec/turn upkeep (2 ec = 1 mineral) gives us
an extra 11 minerals/turn at that base. That means you'll be making a
net mineral profit in the 10th turn after building the Genejack Factory,
which is huge for a facility that only costs you 4 turns to build if
you don't rush it to completion (but you'll promise me to rush it after
2 turns, won't you?)




Only one word of warning. Ecodamage. Just keep
a rough count of where your clean mineral limit is, and if you're close
to it anyway, best not to build that Genejack. The *pop*s are one
problem, but rising sealevels are a real pain in the arse.




If you don't build Genejacks against the AI,
its not a problem, but if you choose not to against another human,
expect to be served cold.

Code:

rectanksfaq


Hybrid Forest



Production
Cost:

24
Rows ( = 240 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

4
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Econ, +50% Psych, +1 Nut & +1 Energy in forests





Notes :
Unlike their little brother, the Tree Farm, Hybrid Forests are not
"auto-build" facilities. The desicion whether or not to build one
depends very much on the kind of terraforming you're intending on using.




If you're planning on simply continuing with
the early-game forestry, and you are planning on placing workers on
your forests, not crawlers (i.e. you're lazy and/or have unlimited
space) then they're pretty much reccommended as the best way to make
this more relaxed and simple style work. Let's take a post-boom size 14
base as our example, with everyone working forests (for 28 nuts + 2 or
3 from the base tile = 31-2) By building a Hybrid Forest we increase
the base's raw energy income by 14, and bring the total nut production
to 45-46, which is a huge surplus. Now, the base can't grow anymore for
a long time, so we can use that surplus wisely, by taking 6 workers off
the forest and either onto boreholes (net increase of +3 energy and +4
minerals per worker) or make them into specialists (smaller increase,
but immune to efficiency penalties)




Let's assume they all go onto boreholes (like I
said, this approach needs some space) for a total ec/mineral eqivalent
net gain from the Hybrid Forest of 14 + (6 x 3 = 18) + (4 x 2 x 6 = 48)
- 4 = 76 ec/turn. And that's not counting the +50% Econ bonus which
raises that up to the eqivalent of a possible 114 ec/turn*




That's a lot, and this is the true power of
wide base spacing, that in the mid-late-game you can reap immense
amounts from each base. In this fairly average scenario, each Hybrid
Forest would start to make a net profit in the 6th turn after building,
and after then its all big profits.




However, if you're using many small bases,
packed closely together as most of the good players are doing these
days, then the use of Hybrid Forests is much more limited. In fact,
with the "ideal" small base fed by crawlers on farm/condensor/soil
enricher combinations, with the workers on boreholes, the only
advantages are the +50% Econ and Psych, and I have to say, if you don't
actually work any forests, this isn't the best investment.




Like the Tree Farm, when built, the Hybrid
Forest raises your clean mineral limit by one, which stays even if you
then scrap or lose the facility.




*If you have Paradigm Effic, and are
running 0% Labs.

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 16:56

reserved for Mid Game Facs

Code:

rectanksfaq


Nanohospital



Production
Cost:

24
Rows ( = 240 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

4
ec/turn



Provides:

+50%
Labs, +25% Psych, -1 Drone





Notes :
These facilities have exactly the same effects as Resarch Hospitals,
but cost twice as much to build (There are cheaper Secret Projects) and
cost a rather steep 4 ec/turn. Obviously the comments for Research
Hospitals apply, but with a number of differences.




With any facility that increases the total
production of your base, the actual result is dependant on the basic
production. In this case, for the Nanohospital to make a profit, you
need at least 10 base Labs, which will then give you a profit of 1
ec/turn which means only 480 turns untill the cost of building the damn
thing is paid off, a very long time indeed. 




In my opinion, as the Nanohospital is coming
quite late in the game, you need to have paid off those construction
costs within about 20-30 turns, or the game will have ended before
seeing a decent return for your investment. For the costs to be paid
back in 20 turns we need a base production (before all bonuses, but
with specialists) of 56 Labs/turn, and for 30 turns to pay it back,
we're looking at the more modest amount of 40 Labs/turn. These are
pretty hefty amounts of Labs, and therefore the Nanohospital is best
used in either bases filled with Librarians (or better specialists) or
in bases that contain either or both of the Supercollider or the Theory
of Everything, both of which will double the effect of the Nanohospital.




Another way to get huge Labs at a base is to
crawl masses of energy from land or sea based Energy Parks. 




These, even more so than Resarch Hospitals, are
definitely not for every base, even if you have cash to burn, there are
much better investments for moderate Labs bases.

Code:

rectanksfaq


Punishment Sphere



Production
Cost:

10
Rows ( = 100 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

2
ec/turn



Provides:

1/2
Labs, No Drones or Talents at Base 




Notes :
Right, you're running a lovely Free Market economy and you want to make
an airforce or invade another faction's bases. You have three choices,
to control all those Drones that will spring up to call for peace, and
they are to squish them using the usual techniques, change to Planned
or Green economics, or to use Punishment Spheres.




The ideal way to use Punishment Spheres should
be in combination with Genejack Factories. The extra Drone will have no
effect, and the extra minerals will pay the extra support costs for
you. For those who never had this idea before the plan works like this:




You move all the new units you build to the
Punishment Sphere base, and rehome them there with "Ctrl-H". The
Punishment Sphere base should have a high mineral/turn output as before
clean reactors it will have to support all your forces on its own. I
find that a couple of crawlers on rocky-mine-road tiles do the job.




Obviously the base has no need/use now for
Network Nodes, Reseach Hospitals, Nanohospitals, and similar facilites,
so you can scrap any you already built and make back some of the costs
of building the Sphere. Of course, best of all, and most effiecient,
would have been to never build these facilities in the first instance,
marking the base from the start to be your units' home.




Warning - If you get infliterated your
opponents will definitely try to knock out your Punishment Sphere base,
so either try to protect it as well as possible, or use multiple
Spheres, although this can seriously start to hurt your tech rate,
especially in any faction that cannot popboom through
Demo/Planned/Creche, as a base with no Talents can never enter a Golden
Age. If your single Punishment Sphere base gets captured (or even if a
probe destroys the facility) it can bring your invasion to a sudden and
deadly stop.




If running FM don't worry about the cost of the
Sphere. The 2 ec/turn is easily covered by the savings in Drone control
just at that base, even before considering the other bases that also
benefit, and the construction cost can be justified by comparing with
the cost of all the science facilities you didn't build in that base.

Skunkworks

Code:

rectanksfaq


Subsea Trunkline



Production
Cost:

12
Rows ( = 120 Minerals with normal Industry )



Maintainance:

4
ec/turn



Provides:

+1
Mineral from all Mining Platforms





Notes :
One thing that sea bases are always short of is minerals, while they
rejoice in great nutrient and energy production. At first glance the
Subsea Trunkline seems to fix this problem. But it doesn't, not really.




Ok, the question is just how many Mining
Platforms your sea/coastal base has. Personally my seabases are usually
nesting near the shore to plant boreholes, forests and mines to get
some minerals, but some bases have to plant Mining Platforms. If the
base has only 1 or 2 Platforms, then the Subsea Trunkline will cover
its running costs, but never its construction costs. With 3 Platforms,
it will take 120 turns, with 4 platforms it takes 60 turns and with 5
platforms it will need 40 turns. 6 Platforms = 20 turns. 8 Platforms =
15 turns. 




So, since they come quite late, I'd be very
reluctant to build these Subsea Trunklines except in bases with stacks
of Mining Platforms. That's maybe 1 or 2 bases per game, maybe...

**CEO Aaron** · April 2, 2004, 17:03

To my mind, satellites denote the transition to the endgame.

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 17:10

Advanced Spaceflight? Shards and Orbital Energy?

I'll buy that argument

-Jam

**Jamski** · April 2, 2004, 17:28

Rubin pointed out that I have used the rows--->mineral conversion rate for Tiny sized maps, and I'm editing all the numbers to reflect a basic 0 Industry rating on a Standard size map.

-Jam

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