Unit Hurry Cost Revisited!

[Chaos Theory]

As has been stated before, optimally rushing units is not as simple as counting. For a perfect hurry cost, you must divide two numbers and calculate at least a few decimal places, then multiply that by another number. You can estimate the cost to within a few ECs fairly quickly, but the exact cost requires a little thinking.

Example: you have a former in construction that has 9 mineral accumulated towards a total cost of 20 minerals. This base is producing 3 minerals per turn. The minimal hurry cost would be:

28 ec to rush all the way
/ 11 minerals remaining
* 8 minerals desired
= (28 / 11) * 8, round up
= 2.545... * 8, round up
= 20.36..., round up
= 21

[Snowflake]

Ok, in that example I would have rushed for 22 ecs which equal to appr. 8.6 minerals. Will that 0.6 mineral become 1 mineral and be carried over to the next turn?

[Chaos Theory]

Nope, if you overpay, but not enough to buy one more mineral than you intended, the excess is lost. Minerals purchased are rounded down.

[Santiago_Claus]

Heh, I never would've guessed Unit Hurry Cost would've generated so much discussion, although I should've guessed from the reams of posts generated last time.

At least no one this time around is confusing "polynomial" with "exponential".

Printed chart: this classic solution is both simple and accurate, but requires external hardware (paper) and has a limited number of entries.

However, limited entries isn't so big a deal: a 2x2-column cheat sheet could easily show ec buy values up to 100 units, and beyond a certain point buying becomes more expensive than shell-upgrading, anyway.

The "external hardware" is pretty lightweight, too. Certainly I've played countless games that required extensive notes, Star Control II coming immediately to mind, so a single piece of paper isn't the end of the world.

[Enigma_Nova]

F4 - production
Total minerals - Minerals accumulated = minerals left
Base
minerals left - production + 10 = optimal # of minerals
Hurry
Rush Cost / Minerals Left = Cost per mineral
Cost per mineral * optimal # of minerals = ECs to rush
(Round up the cost in the last step if it is not an integer)

Not too bloody difficult.

[Vev]

It is better to err on the safe side and increase cost/mineral if just estimating.

Right now I don't have access to SMAX but I was thinking of a scenario where you have a 80 mineral unit (why that expensive, dunno) and already have 12 minerals in the box and you output 67 minerals so you need to buy 11 more minerals to complete it optimally. Problem is I don't know the hurry cost.

Anyway hopefully someone can provide me the hurry cost for that.

[Snowflake]

For a 80 mineral unit with 12 min completed and base production 67 min, that is 79 min completed next turn without rushing. Since you are still in the 2nd row the rush cost is going to be relatively high and not worth it. I would simply find a crawler to rehome or convert a specialist to worker or something similar to produce 1 or 2 more mineral, so that the base could finish production the next turn without rushing.

Did I pass your test?

[Jamski]

I'd change to a 70 or 60 mineral unit and then upgrade it for 10 or 20 ecs.

-Jam

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Minute Mirage
Is there a problem with just using Nethog's table? I have it printed beside me when I play and it takes me only a few seconds to look up the cost of rush building.

...it's actually MariOne's table (see original threads)...
THANKS!

[MariOne]

Originally posted by anarchie
C = M^2 / 20 + 2M
U = C / M

U = M/20 + 2

it would all look that simple... except that the formula is NOT

C = M^2 / 20 + 2M

but actually

C = INT(M^2 / 20 + 2M)


and
INT(M^2 / 20 + 2M) / M
is NOT
= M/20 + 2
nor INT(M/20 +2)...

just for the sake of precision, if it's that you seek

if you content of approximation, others above have shown easier rule-of-thumb methods (depending on how many ecs you consider acceptable to waste)

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by Jamski
I'd change to a 70 or 60 mineral unit and then upgrade it for 10 or 20 ecs.

-Jam

I bet it'll be at least 30 ecs for you to upgrade your unit dear Jamski. And you'll take one more turn to do that unless you do mass upgrade from workshop which is prohibited in some circumstances.

[Jamski]

Then its cheaper to let the unit build. Its rarely economical to rush expensive units.

-Jam

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by MariOne
just for the sake of precision, if it's that you seek

If somebody really have some time to kill, perhaps he could calculate for us what kind of differences between the real precise formula and my approximate formula that we are looking at, at different circumstances.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by Jamski
Then its cheaper to let the unit build. Its rarely economical to rush expensive units.

-Jam

But you really should find that one mineral somewhere because you would be wasting about 56 minerals if you let it to be built in two turns.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by MariOne


...it's actually MariOne's table (see original threads)...
THANKS!

Yes, I know that you deserve the credit. However, the table I'm using is called "Nethog's SMAC(X) Rush Reference Chart" so it would be a bit confusing to call it MariOne's table, don't you think?