Beeline to Hab Dome: Strategy or Superstition?

[Jamski]

Take an approach with both. Give some bases Energy Banks, Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests and Engineers only. Give other bases Nodes, Research Hospitals, Nanohospitals etc.

-Jam

[CEO Aaron]

Personally, I'm much more fond of engineers. Tech is nice, but it's not too hard to stay in the driver's seat, techwise, once your empire's functioning smoothly. Cash is much more flexible, imo.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Nice stuff guys, I will mess around with Hab Domes in my next game

Oh and by the way.... CEO Aaron have you goten any of the PM's I sent you conserning the next ACDG for SMACX and the Morgan Faction?

[CEO Aaron]

Whoops. I'm bad about checking my PMs.



There, I've signed up.

[jtsisyoda]

Originally posted by Jamski
Longevity Vaccine allows turbo ICS with the PTS, VW and HGP in Planned/Demo. Just plonk down bases and rush a node then a creche.

Its insane.

-Jam

That's a good idea, Jamski, but PTS wouldn't be essential, would it? At size one, rush the creche, then the node. You'd only be one turn behind.

[johndmuller]

I think that you need to get the population up to 2 or 3 the old fashioned way before the boom effect kicks in.

[Kody]

Golden age booms require size 3, since golden age needs size 3 or more to happen. Normal booming can happen at size 1.

However I think the real reason Jamski mentions the PTS is because when the base is planted you get far more production than a size 1 base. That assists in building the creche and node faster. With the 10 mineral additional rush buy expense even if you're rolling in money you probably want to wait until you have 10 minerals before rushing.

If you're struggling to expand in the midgame, you probably won't have excess money to spend on rushing everything. So having the extra 2 workers bringing in production helps building inital formers/facilities/military.

[Santiago_Claus]

Beeline to Vats, or first to Env. Econ.?

Eco Eng and Env Econ are 2 techs off the path of both Vats and Domes.

And yet ... surely the added time & tech cost of those 2 techs pay for themselves many times over before you'd ever have made it to Biomachinery without 'em?

[Jamski]

For SURE. You'd have to lift those restrictions - or face a very slow beeline.

-Jam

[CEO Aaron]

You need Tree Farms, not for the tree farms themselves, but the lifting of mineral and energy income restrictions. Besides, pop booming is SO much easier with tree farms.

[Santiago_Claus]

I sat down and constructed "the perfect tech tree". Here are the tech milestones. Number of prerequisites are in ().

Cent Eco --> Formers
IA (4) --> Supply
Env Eco (5) --> Full Production
Bioeng (3) --> Clean Reactors
Retroviral Eng (6) --> Factories
D:AP (2) --> Air
Biomach (1) --> Vats
PlaEco (1) --> AV
Fusion (3) --> Fusion Reactors
Mono Magnet (4) --> Monorails
Ind Nano (2) --> The Nano Factory
Tensile (8) --> Domes

There is a 2-tech detour for lifting restrictions plus a 1-tech detour on that same path that allows both Ascetic Virtues & Hybrid Forests.

I guess that means "Beeline to Habdome" in the strictest sense is folly. Getting it all down on paper it's nice to see the AV is very close to the Vats.

[Commy]

I have a rule about techs. You can't go two levels above the lowest tech you don't have. For example, I won't research a level three tech until I have all the level ones, and I won't research a level 15 tech until I have all the level 13s, and I also make sure that I get the weapons techs in order, so I don't have to research nonlinear mathematics while I'm using fusion lasers. This makes for a balanced tech game, and works pretty well. THis way you won't be forced to trade level 5 techs for level two techs.