Former/Crawler tips...

[CEO Aaron]

Yeah, sorry Qwerty88, but the Datalinks aren't the last word in how all facilities function. Tree Farms do increase your clean mineral cap, provided you've had a fungal pop before you build it. There is no reference to this feature in the Datalinks, but I assure you it works.

[Enigma_Nova]

Santiago_Clause:
I was turnplayer during one of the times The Hive disbanded, TYVM.

How it works involves how production is calculated, and gives you double crawler time.
It relies on the base you disband being -before- its sister base in the base list.

#start calculations for BASE A
Base A crawls n minerals and completes a colony pod.
Base A is disbanded, crawlers rehome to Base B.
#start calculations for BASE B
Same crawlers, rehomed to B, crawl n minerals.

The key is that the production calculations of Base A happen before Base B.

[kelvinhole]

Originally posted by Santiago_Clause
The greatest exploitation comes from swiss cheesing your available landmass with boreholes and cramming bases and condensors into the remaining space. Use crawlers on the condensors and workers on the boreholes.

If you don't want to do that, and I'm one of those who doesn't, it comes down to altitude. Why altitude? Because the resource we're after in quantity is energy, which is easy to get some of but difficult to get a lot of. Food and minerals lose their usefulness after a limited quantity (this is known as "diminished marginal utility") but the value of energy knows no avaricious boundary.

"Highlands and islands" is a good phrase to remember, because sea and high altitude tiles are your top performers.

The worst you can do is forest, and forest is pretty darn good. Forest is so good, in fact, that I don't build farm / solar unless I'm getting +4 energy or better from altitude and echelon mirrors. That means if at 2000m I don't have at least one adjacent mirror, or at 1000m at least two, I forest instead.

The "islands" reference: bases with access to water have a near-unlimited energy supply from the sea. Tidal harnesses with thermocline yield 4 ec's, which sounds modest until you realize just how FAST sea formers build them! The drawbacks are that you can't improve tidals and trawlers (sea supply crawlers) are costly before fusion.

After fusion, if you want more energy it's almost as easy as reaching out and taking it. Shelf squares (as opposed to unimprovable deep ocean and trench squares) are everywhere.

Coastal bases, defined (on a whim) as having at least 6 land squares and at least 3 ocean, have such a natural balance of resources -- land-based forests for minerals and ocean for food and energy -- they practically build themselves. Self-sufficient, they generate a very rapid return on a minimal terraforming investment. They are flexible; as you push crawlers into the forests or dig boreholes you can reassign more workers to the sea without starving of minerals.

A mostly-sea base will produce a lot of energy in a remarkably short time. You don't have any complicated, time-consuming raising of land or placing of mirrors to worry about, just build tidals everywhere and rake it in. The drawback is minerals. Plan specifically how you're going to bring minerals in or your vague dream, "I could drill a borehole on that island over there," will languish, and your high-tech sea base will wind up looking like medieval Paris.

The highland base is simply a base built at high altitude. I like to raise land in parallel 3000m ridges which interlock like a zipper to form a large 2000m valley between them. Terraforming costs are high (not as high as borehole swiss cheese, mind you), and you won't see really big energy numbers until you've formed a few turns. However, the energy output of a highland base is STAGGERING. 6 units per worker is average, and 8 is fairly common (7 and 9 if you run +2 econ or better).

Because higher altitudes bring drier weather, the highland bases sometimes need a little help with food, although raising terrain in ridges seem to alleviate this problem.

The final category of base location is the landlocked lowland base. Close-packed bases with condensors and boreholes are "optimal" here, but ... gah! Raise highlands instead.

If you can't raise the land (maybe you don't want to wreck the Manifold Nexus) you can "forest and forget", saving the real terraforming work for the highlands and coasts.

I'll mention condensors because they keep your population growing. Nutrients are the most valuable resource in the game, but have a hard limit -- a per-base population cap or "hab limit" -- for most of the game. Balance your nutrient production against your hab limit. Condensors are also a perfect candidate for supply crawlers because they concentrate production of a single resource.

A note on the Echelon Mirror: the EM is at the heart of the classic "energy park", which uses crawlers to harvest energy and is almost always built to maximize energy/area. Maximal output comes from alternating rows of EM's and solars atop a 3000m plateau laced with aquifers. Supply crawlers harvest the solars (and the EM's if you're hungry enough).

I build my energy parks in ridges and EM's in pairs to reduce terraforming time. I also throw bases down on or near the "park", sort of blurring the distinction between "energy park" and "highland base". Trading area efficiency for terraform time thus makes sense for me, since I have higher demand for energy producing tiles.

If you're putting EM's within your base radius, note that forest if adjacent will sometimes grow over them if you don't stack a farm. The same is true for condensors. Don't hold your breath, though. It's random.

EM's themselves only provide baseline energy, so you'd be well to choose the worst land (arid, flat ground for instance) to put your EM's on, and put solars on the better territory. Leave your workers off the EM's until much later in the game, when you can plant fungus on them and get a very well-balanced income. (If forest grows over them, so much the better.)

Fungus brings balance to highland and sea bases alike, but you won't get to enjoy it very long, because the game is pretty much over by the time fungus becomes profitable.

I hope some of this helped. I'm tired. :P

Great post, Santiago! Loved what you said about forests, they're the way to go!

[Jamski]

One important point - whatever forming strategy you go for. Make sure to give each base a farm. One single farm, at the beginning of the game. On a rolling river tile is nice. Later you can forest it, or condensor it or borehole it... but early on, you'll need those Nuts. If you have a nutrient special, or you can eat fungus for 2 Nuts, then you can forget the farm, but early on... your guys have to eat if they're going to grow. Fast growth = faster expansion...

-Jam

[Skanky Burns]

I find many of my standard strategies are... sub-optimal. I avoid growth in my cities. I armour my aircraft. I avoid choppers...

Still, I'm learning.

[Enigma_Nova]

Prepared to take a Tutorial PBEM, Skanky?
I've got 2 players waiting for a third over in the MP forum.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I have read a lot about Boreholes, Crawling Energy Parks etc being good, but what about earlier in the game, before these things are practical/even possible? What is a good idea to start with (apart from just forests, which aren't so hot if you want to actually GROW early on), and whenabouts should you be mass-producing formers to change things when you get the good techs?

[Chaos Theory]

Boreholes/condensors should be possible by roughly 2150 (earlier with the WP), and until then you need to build up a massive former force, ready to perforate Planet. Before you can build those, prepare new base sites, plant forest, clear fungus, and build roads.

[Qwerty88]

If you start on the Monsoon Jungle forests can be very practicle for starting out, then if most of your bases are extending into the sea were all enhancements are available to begain with you can sometimes have Tree Farms by the time you start adding more land bases, of course this stratagy does require a very lucky start so it rarely can be aplied.

[Santiago_Claus]

Jamski, I usually get those extra early-game nutrients either from a condensor / crawler or from the sea.

Forest-only will indeed hinder base growth early on.

Farms are really a waste if they can't be combined with a solar producing at least 3 energy from altitude + mirrors. (I don't include river, >1 econ, or ME in that calculation because forest also gains those benefits.)

EN:

Double-dipping crawlers ... that's something I missed from Kody's description of the binary pod boom. Even if you don't set the crawlers up in the right order, they fall into the correct order after the first disbanding. Pretty sweet.

[#endgame]

A rule of thumb I use for early on is:

Forest nut specials for 3/2/1
Else work a monolith for 2/2/2
Else work a rolling/rainy for 2/1/0
Else farm a rolling/moist for 2/1/0
Else forest an arid/whatever for 1/2/0

The key is +2 nuts for the quick expansion.
Rivers are always good.

[Qwerty88]

Good bug for rivers if you have a lot of formers (this may work for boreholes), even though you can't drill to aquifier next to a river, you can have to formers drilling to aquifier next to eachother. This can be useful on an island that you fully teraformed and still have extra formers from because you can make a row of formers drilling to aquifier, two terns later start the next row, two terns later (or when the first row finishes depending on your number of formers) start the next, and so on.

[#endgame]

It used to work for boreholes too, but was fixed in a patch.

[Qwerty88]

bummer, patches are supposed to be good, not evil like that

[Sikander]

I thought they fixed the drill to aquifer exploit as well, though I've never bothered with it myself.