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Explain to me this crawler trick of upgrading crawlers to get SPs done faster. And what is a pork barrel?
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The crawler upgrade trick takes advantage of the fact that you get the full mineral value of crawlers when you disband them (for anything....facilities, projects, prototypes, whatevers).
It's a common practice in some circles (including our gaming group here) to build cheap "shell" combat units and upgrade them to the exact configuration you want or need later--this is especially groovy once you get clean reactors, cos you can churn out an endless supply of clean laser or impact rovers and just litter your continent with them, upgrading them as you need to to a worthy combat configuration to meet whatever threat comes your way....if they die pre-upgrade, it's no great mineral loss, and whatever killed them has set up his own doom (and you can be almost assured that whatever killed your unit cost as much, if not more than your investment in the unit you lost). This maximizes military flexibility, as you can be assured of having *exactly* the type of unit you need to face whatever threat arises.
Another common (and wise) practice is to never transport "expensive" units across open bodies of water.
Trannies are slow and vulnerable. Losing a fully loaded transport with all hands can be a devastating mineral loss.
On the other hand, losing six trance scouts is no biggie, but when you're in range of your target, you can upgrade those units from the design workshop to Marines, and smack the cr@p out of your opponent without risking minerals unduly.
Same principle with the crawler, 'cept that the goal is to design some rediculously expensive crawler, upgrade a basic crawler to that configuration and then cash it in for the full mineral value toward the project you're working on (and some crawler configurations have a mineral cost that rivals the cost of SP's!).
Early game, unless you're facing stiff competition FOR a given project, it's almost always better to race your early crawlers TO the bases you're building the projects from, re-home them there, and use them to increase the Project Base's mineral counts.
You can gain a measure of insurance too, by keeping them "one turn away" from the project base, so that if you get a "such and so is about to compete the project" message, you can crash build it by cashing the crawler(s) in, but in the meantime, you're earning "interest" on the crawlers in the form of harvested minerals.
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Most circles here on 'Poly say it is best to crawlrush a project in 1-2 turns with the basic crawlers (early game, off course, and in PBEM).Comment
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Kody (are you reading this, K, if so please chime in) ran some simulations while managing the Hive in the current ACDG that indicated that for a +1 Industry faction it was cheaper - and faster - to rush the crawlers and then cash them in without upgrading.
LOL - I think I just said the same thing as GeoModderComment
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And, of course, it is better to keep the crawler working than to lose it on an SP.
If you're reasonably sure of getting the SP anyway, don't sink a million crawlers into it.
If you're short on crawlers and need an SP NOW, then doing the cash-upgrade thing is a good way to snag an SP.
If you're short on cash, but heavy on crawlers - cash the crawlers 2 turns before the project is done by your enemy.
A problem I suffer from is cashing crawlers when none of my opponents even have the prerequisite tech for the SP, or stalling so bloody long that the opponent gets the SP anyway even with my 100 crawlers around.
And, in general, if you plan to build an SP then it's better to build crawlers in its stead and cash them in when appropriate - that way you get a few extra minerals while the sacrificial supplies wait around.Comment
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Often i find that early game, especially when playing the hive, rather than build a ****load of crawlers ... ie. one in each city, i start building a project early, and all the other cities can continue building former/cp's etc. and coastal cities building transport foils - this way u are bound to get an alien artifact when u pop a pod or two and the isles aren't as interested in popping u. In turn, u can use this on the project.
Even if this does not happen, i think with a good industry faction like hive or drones, its just as effective to build the SP in one city and start on it early, as opposed to building 1 crawler each. This way each city can go about filling out its most critical objectives first- ie. like terraforming, or building a rec. centre.
In conclusion, i don't mean to discredit the crawler theory, but i feel that in practice sometimes it may be a little ineffective, despite its efficiency.Comment
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There's no way in my mind that you'll be able to build an SP in just one city as quickly as someone who builds crawlers in ten cities. Sure, you may get more infrastructure built, but I don't think compares to having the HGP or the VW.Originally posted by ChairmanSlick
Often i find that early game, especially when playing the hive, rather than build a ****load of crawlers ... ie. one in each city, i start building a project early, and all the other cities can continue building former/cp's etc. and coastal cities building transport foils - this way u are bound to get an alien artifact when u pop a pod or two and the isles aren't as interested in popping u. In turn, u can use this on the project.
Even if this does not happen, i think with a good industry faction like hive or drones, its just as effective to build the SP in one city and start on it early, as opposed to building 1 crawler each. This way each city can go about filling out its most critical objectives first- ie. like terraforming, or building a rec. centre.
In conclusion, i don't mean to discredit the crawler theory, but i feel that in practice sometimes it may be a little ineffective, despite its efficiency.Comment
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this is a valid point. But think about it this way, these are two different SP's. And the merchant exchange, the planetary energy grid, the empath guild, and the weather paradigm are others. If you are only playing against one or maybe two human opponents this give you time to sit back, let them get one of these projects (maybe first) whilst you have established an infrastructure in 11 cities by 2135 and are about to build an SP. Afterwhich you can then use the supply crawler tactic. This is how i play the hive, but i guess this choice depends on which faction you are playing, which factions you are playing against, and what technology you have. =)
Just my thoughts on the matter. Interesting nonethelessComment
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Explaination why crawlers can become more efficient than crawler upgrading. It's because crawlers are a cumulative effect, and investments improve with time.Kody (are you reading this, K, if so please chime in) ran some simulations while managing the Hive in the current ACDG that indicated that for a +1 Industry faction it was cheaper - and faster - to rush the crawlers and then cash them in without upgrading.
How it actually balances depends on several things. I was managing to pay 1.7EC/mineral in the game I was playing working on a 4 year build up for SPs.
Assuming that the upgrade cost is 1.833 I can see rush buying crawlers still being a very useful technique even at +0 industry rating. However, I won't pretend to know exactly when to rush buy or when to upgrade without carefully looking at the game and the person who's playing.Santiago_Clause wrote:
Unit cost depends on industry rating:
11: 1.666667
10: 1.833333
9: 2.037037
8: 2.291667
7: 2.619048
I can say that doing rush buying is the more mircomanagement intensive technique.Comment
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If you've saturated your territory with crawlers and you're building more solely for the purpose of building SP's, upgrading seems to be an obvious choice.
If your territory isn't saturated, and you rush-buy as many crawlers as you have ec's, then send them into the field, you get their use until you cash them in at the point when you have enough crawlers to complete the desired SP.
At that point, it makes sense to ask yourself this question: "Why burn 6 crawlers when I can upgrade and burn 2, keeping the remaining 4 out in the field harvesting?"
You've introduced a lot more variables which make that question less easy to answer. I can convert an almost unlimited number of ec's into minerals very quickly and cheaply by upgrading crawlers, but I don't get a stockpile refund like I would rush-building ... food for thought, indeed.
Something this discussion has reiterated is that there aren't a whole lot of SP's worth their weight in crawlers, at least not until diminished marginal utility kicks in.
Woe unto the player who must burn off his first few crawlers sniping a contested SP ...Comment
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I tend to take an extremely "minimalist" approach to crawlers, *rarely* saturating the continent with them. Just enough to give me food all 'round (generally I have two boreholes--not crawled, obviously--two farm/condensors (crawled), and will crawl all mines....and that's about it.
I'm an avid believer in kelp/tidal, build the aquafarm/transducer in every coastal or sea base (my sea bases get the "inner ring" with mines, and everything else with tidals, so they get all three sea-enhancing builds.
This, taken together with the 3-apart spacing I tend to use gives me a good blending of specialists and natives (since all territory not used as outlined above is forested), and I wind up with a core of solid-producing cities that have robust counts across the board.
tried to build a kelp farm in one game and found that I didn't need it. My cities were already maxed, and while I could have squeezed out more science by going pure specialist, the utility just wasn't there for me. Certainly don't need it to beat the AI, and I do not see tech advances (and specifically the speed in acquiring them) as an end unto themselves, so would rather take a more controlled approach. As it is, entering the era of sat launches, on average, I'm 18-24 techs ahead of the AI with this balanced approach....and that's a comfy enough lead for me...
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In my latest game, for example (blind research, tech stag), here are the tech counts in 2253:
Me (Lal) 24
Santiago: 13
Morgan: 18
Miriam: 15
Dee: 16
Zak: 16
Energy restrictions just came off (for me), and I expect to see this lead *explode* in coming years.
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EDIT: Yang had six techs before Miriam ate him....Comment
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