How Many Formers?

[Enigma_Nova]

10 per base.
I take it that's Growth per turn in Borehole Plonk Mode?

[Chaos Theory]

E_N:
Care to rephrase that unambiguously?

[Enigma_Nova]

Pop boom: Faction gains 1 extra worker per turn
Boreholes cost 24 former turns per hole.

Farm/Enrich/Condenser vs. Borehole,
You'd -need- that many formers to get the terrain done ahead of the pop boom.

So it's Growth per turn Borehole Plonk Mode.
That gives me an idea...

/me goes off to CMN a custom alphax where all terraforming takes one turn, and nothing has prereqs

[smacksim]

As many formers as I can bear!

Got to love them and hate them because turns take so long, but just peek over the AI's shoulder and feel proud former team, feel proud.

As to numbers, it's initial: former->defender->rec tanks
by the time I've got drone control, I've got EC's, so it's : rec tanks->former->defender

Rec tanks are gold.

Around the time the first crawlers are trudging to their destinations, I've got 1-2 formers at 9-15 bases.

Once the initial bases have some minerals, I'll have 2-5+ formers per base until Clean, at which point, they all get upgraded (cost ~ 1200 ECs) This is a big cost, so I plan all along for it. If I'm not going to make the cost of upgrading to Clean, I'll 1. stop making formers. 2. make more ECs!

After Clean, I'll average 7 or so formers per base, depending on if I'm expanding like mad or just building up to a boom.

The Planetary Transit System makes things interesting. I don't really pre-form for new bases in either case, just build roads to the general area, if they're lucky! I'd rather terraform inside a base radius where the productive tiles are immediately used. Anyways, my cure for the PTS 'Citizens at half your ****** bases are starving you moron!', is to send crawlers with, or just ahead of the sprawling Colony Pod army. 10 transports with a CP and crawler in each will just seal the fate of most AI.

And if you'd like to play the Aldebaran mod that Vel mentioned above, I'll be reposting it this week (here and/or at Googlie's site, and/or at my own sites). It DOES push crawlers back a bit, which cuts down on turn length, but those poor formers, who will buy their beer?

-Smack

[Blake]

As usual the answer depends, for a faction like Hive that needs LOTS of terraformers, I usually start with 2-3 per base, then more formers get built as more bases get built. I probably wont build more later on, starting with such a huge population. For none-hive I start with 1-2 per base, altough if I have no buildable infrastructure I'll start eating up the support on more formers - atleast if I can build boreholes/condensors/rivers/raise land (ie beelined eco.eng or have WP)

When playing crawerless (or with crawlers, for that matter) I devote 1 or more high mineral base (ie working a borehole) to pumping out a stream of formers. These bases pump formers until they get down to about 5 minerals (for nut special + 2 boreholes + rec tanks, thats 12 formers), then resume infrastructure development. Later on when I mass-upgrade to clean these bases get freed of their support burden and often become my frontier industrial powerhouses (like candidates to get a fun sphere and be devoted to military production)

Generally my former population caps at 40-90, a lot depends on how quickly I get super formers (which is usually a priority for me), like once I get super formers I tend to stop building many more. Also I tend to build lots more upon getting clean. Once mag-tubes arrive I like to attack, with land bridge/tube/l337 infantry, I rarely ever upgrade formers with defense, they'll die to air anyway. They also don't need armor to defend a base against worms.

[#endgame]

I'd go for about 4 per base at least - 2 pre Clean Reactors, and 2 after. Also, build transports on infantry chassis. Load a former into the transport, move transport into empty square, unload former (if done right, the former will still have its move), build road. rest of the former army moves in and starts work (thanks Ogie!). Makes them about as handy as rover formers in the speed department.

[Santiago_Claus]

When I got to hab domes I had built 95 formers.

That's the benchmark: how many formers, not per base but just raw count, do you have by the time you reach certain technology milestones?

To start this exercise off I'll quote the first figure:

Upon discovering Super Tensile Solids (Hab Domes) I had 95 Super/Clean infantry formers and no other types.

[Frankychan]

Normally I play as the Hive, so I'll do 2 per base. When I can upgrade my formers, I'll make an additional one and just gangtackle any terraforming project with my formers, then disband the old ones.

Usually by then I'll have most of what I want already terraformed.

[smacksim]

Santi, I don't get it. Why measure former totals? On huge maps it's much different than just large. Sometimes we play for Transcendence, sometimes for fastest win. I think Formers/Base for a Huge/Transcendence game is the kind of game where I'll break 200 formers. Per base, it's not very high though, as those tend to be mad ICS games.

TechStag - Huge - Transcend - No Energy Park = ~200 formers.

-Smack

[Santiago_Claus]

Smacksim, I think you've answered your own question already: the number of bases is a factor which clouds the real picture of the number of formers built and thus the terrain area / time the player is able to manipulate. A raw former count was my attempt to control for the variable of base spacing.

What I'm curious to know is "how much terraforming power do you give yourself in order to reach your goals?" "Terraforming power" is independent of number of bases, except to the degree that usable territory affects that number. (Base sites themselves are also a factor, if one views building a base as an act of terraforming.)

Map size and research parameters (stagnation, blind, or double-blind) do seem critically important, and I totally overlooked both.

I built my 95 formers on a large map, directed research, and my goal was Transcendence. I drew the line at Super Tensile Solids because the earlier a former is built the more valuable it will have been. It didn't occur to me that tech stagnation increases the value of formers built later in the game.

[jtsisyoda]

I usually track it by city, because support is almost the only limitation to how many I build. But Santi has a point that base size and spacing variations can make that misleading. Maybe we should be measuring this as formers per square of territory?

[smacksim]

How about getting several variables and then seeing if they are at all related (Anova anyone?)

Standard Game (must define):

Formers/Base
Formers/Base/Each Faction
Formers Total @ Hab Domes
Formers Total @ Transcendence
Formers Total w/ Energy Park
Formers Total w/out Energy Park
Formers Total w/Weather Paradigm

And so on. If we made a little printable chart then players could measure their own stats from savegames and report back. It would be nifty to see a graph with even 10 sets of data.

-Smack

[CEO Aaron]

My advice is to eschew fixed formulae, and merely use 2 per base until you research clean. At that point, you can crank more as your terraforming model permits. Look at your total territorial development. Does it still need improvement? Make more formers.

[Whoha]

I try for 2 per base. Later on if I feel the need to spam them out I do that.

[Sikander]

In my current game I have 18 bases and 130 formers (clean & clean + super), in 2116. I probably had them all by about 2100 though, as I've been busy building orbital improvements, colony pods, facilities and military units for a while now.