Production cost measured in "rows"??

[ryc730]

I was reading Jamski's Facilities FAQ thread (great job, by the way!), and was immediately puzzled by the use of "rows" to measure production costs. Can anyone enlighten me with the rationale behind this? Thanks.

-ryc

[Sikander]

Rows are the constant cost of something in the build queue (actually tech works the same way), while the numbers in each row are variable based upon a faction's SE settings, in this case Industry. Thus a row for the University running all Frontier settings would be 10 wide (Industry 0), while it would only be 8 wide if the University were running Planned (Industry 2). The bottom line in this case is that a Scout Patrol (one row) costs 10 with an Industry rating of 0, and 8 with an Industry rating of 2.

Thus when making a general point about costs, people refer to the number of rows that an item costs rather than the number of minerals it costs, which varies depending upon what Industry rating you are running.

[Jamski]

The size of the rows is also affected by the map size. Larger maps have longer rows, smaller maps have less rows.

-Jam

[Snowflake]

Basically the number of minerals that are required to build an unit is different for different SE settings (and perhaps other factors), but the number of rows of minerals for the same unit are always the same. For example a scout costs one row of minerals and a crawler costs three row of minerals, etc. That's why people choose to talk about rows instead of mins when discussing costs.

[Illuminatus]

They are sort of a "universal cost", regardless of SE modifiers.

[Mongoose]

Planned is only +1 INDUSTRY, Sikander.

[ryc730]

Oh, okay. That makes sense. Thanks everybody.

-ryc

[Enigma_Nova]

No Probs.
Game of SMAC?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Mongoose
Planned is only +1 INDUSTRY, Sikander.

I guess I'm just too use to running wealth as well.