***SMAC/X Facilities Guide***

[Santiago_Claus]

2 uses for Aquafarms:

1. New bases with Aquafarms can support more boreholes earlier, and allow you to delay building Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests.

I rarely build "pure sea bases"; I tend to go for coastal or "archipelago bases" where I can put boreholes on the limited land area and kelp/tidal everywhere else.

If your terraforming outpaces base growth, you can wind up with too many boreholes and not enough food. The Aquafarm raises the threshold at which this becomes a problem.

You could trawler, pop boom, or even pod boom your way out of this temporary problem, but sometimes it's easiest just to buy an Aquafarm. At 2 credits per mineral small buildings like the AF are super-cheap.

2. Increased population post-Habdome & Vats.

More population means more specialists and higher score, if you care about that. In addition, if you used trawlers before the late-game so as not to need the Aquafarm, when you eventually do build one your trawlers gain an extra morsel as well.

[Jamski]

Thankyou for the bumpage, I'm back to my normal "number crunching psycho" self as from tommorrow morning.

What a couple of weeks... you wouldn't believe it

You could trawler, pop boom, or even pod boom your way out of this temporary problem, but sometimes it's easiest just to buy an Aquafarm. At 2 credits per mineral small buildings like the AF are super-cheap.

Easier, lazier, less efficient.

I'm not wanting to encorage people to take the lazy option. Its better to have thought ahead, seeded your kelp and pop a trawler out. Sure, Aquafarms have their uses, but there are almost always better things to buy/build at the time, untill very late in the game... (in which case build nut sats instead of aquafarms and help ALL your bases) ...and post Habdome it doesn't really matter what you build does it?

My comments are mostly intended to aid in the early/mid games vs Human opponents.

-Jam

[AndiD]

I have another argument for Command Centers or even Naval Yards: quick repairs.

I found it very handy to build a CC in each "frontier" land base which is regularly being attacked in the early game (usually 1-2, seldom more). Early (builder) game means you are defending with a few lower morale synth armor garrisons in a perim defense against particle impactors with higher morale. Against the Hive with Command Nexus trying overruns it is _very_ nice when he has to pause a turn and every defender is back to 100% power.

The same applies for Naval Yards in coastal bases with the Pirates in the game... one turn pause and your Coastals are repaired. The side-effect that you get higher morale (with creche...) when producing a new defender right on the frontier is nice, too.

[Jamski]

Monoliths, baby.

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

If you are lucky enough to have monoliths nearby your border.

[Jamski]

I just love that word.

Monoliths

:bliss:

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

Boreholes, despite their name, are really quite exciting.

[Enigma_Nova]

The monolith has vanished
O_O
NOOOOOOOooooooo.......

[dacole]

Hey jam are you planning on putting this in a downloadable text file? Trying to capture it all from your post is a little hard, thanks!

Daniel

[CEO Aaron]

Jam: While having a monolith is great, it does have two drawbacks - One, it can vanish, as EN pointed out. Two, if you're out getting repaired, you're not defending your base. Too bad ya can't found a base on a monolith.

[furrykef]

Can I put this info in the wikibook? Of course this means it would be placed under the GNU Free Documentation License, meaning other people will be free to copy and modify it...but not without credit, I believe.

- Kef

[Jamski]

Sorry, but I'll have to say no untill the whole Wikibook becomes more secure. The way that anyone can add and edit all entries means that the Wikipedia in general is pretty unreliable and corrupted.

Sorry *shrug*

-Jam

[furrykef]

I don't think it's ever going to be more "secure", because it's already secure. Wikis, especially official WikiMedia sites such as Wikibooks, have a very efficient system for handling vandalism. A study done by IBM showed that most vandalism on the main Wikipedia was reverted within five minutes, for example. I dare you to find a part of Wikipedia or Wikibooks that's actually unreliable or corrupted

Trust me, I've made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of edits on wikis and almost never come across vandalism except when looking through the history of a page. We could discuss this on AIM or through PM, but I think most of your answers will be here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...mon_objections

The bottom line, though, is that many people keep track of changes through the Recent Changes page and will likely notice vandalism pretty quickly. And if nobody else does, I will, and I have the power to revert a page just like anybody else. A wiki's ability to be modified is a strength, not a weakness...just look through the history of the pages already in the SMAC guide of the wikibook. I've corrected others' mistakes, others have corrected my mistakes, and they have even added useful information of their own! Not once has the book been vandalized yet.

Moreover, the wikibook is going to need the information anyway, and that means I'd either write it myself (meaning information is more likely to be inaccurate as I'm not an expert player, so I'd have to waste other people's time as they correct my mistakes), or I'd find another source to copy which may be inferior.

Sorry to have gone on such a long little digression, but I'm just acting in what I think is in the best interest of everybody. Are you sure you don't want it in the wikibook?

- Kef

[Jamski]

Ah, go for it then. Four conditions : Use it word-for-word, and put it in its own subsection and credit me. Link back to Apolyton too.

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

Link back to Apolyton too.