What exactly does the Living Refinery deliver?

[Hercules]

What exactly does the Living Refinery deliver?

In a current pbem I recently built this SP; good yes but what exactly does it deliver.?
Is it just the +2 support.

Here's the official text.

Decreases minerals required to support military units: +2 support on Social Engineering table.

So does the decreases minerals really mean just +2 Support, which means supporting some extra units free per base which itself depends on other settings to determine the effect.

And does it mean if you change all your units to clean, this SP becomes meaningless.

I ask because a search of Apolyton and Civgaming gives no clear guidance on this.

The other recorded benefit is that the democracy SE support setting of -2 negative is negated.

So is that it?

[Hercules]

I kinda assumed this SP would reduce my military maintenance costs by half or thereabouts. But that does not seem to be the way it works. So how does it work?

[Hercules]

Also other unit costs, such as formers and transports, how are they effected?

[Commy]

A lot of things in SMAC are like this...

The first part, the part about it reducing amount of minerals needed, is what it would do in real life...the game just represents this effect by giving you plus 2 support...that's all you get...

[Frankychan]

In regard to running Clean units, I'm quite sure as I haven't checked ingame yet, but I would assume that if you're running all clean units, it would basically null the effects of the Living Refinery.

But to convert every single unit under your command to clean units would cost a heck of a lot of credits...

[Chaos Theory]

As far as I know, the extent of its effect is +2 support. As to how valued this is by the game designers, consider what affects support:

Democracy: +2 growth, +2 effic, -2 support
Thought Control: +2 probe, +2 morale, +2 police, -3 support
Police State: +2 police, -2 effic, +2 support
Power: +2 morale, -2 industry, +2 support

In my games, getting the Living Refinery means taking my support from -2 to 0 (or, with Yang, +2 to +4), which facilitates another round of colony pods, by this time with drop pods.

[Lazerus]

It's mainly for the militaristic factions since it just increases support. So it lets anybody with an already high support hit the golden milestone of +4support, so all large bases can support like 14 units each no problem. It makes mass producing armies extremely easy since you don't need to tag on clean reactors (I've produced around 150+ choppers per turn for 10 turns doing this, fun but time consuming )

[BlackCat]

I really like this SP when I go for popboom because it nullifies the bad -2 support of Demo.

All units except clean/crawl/probe count in the support calc.

The +2 affects SUPPORT in SE wich have the following values (taken from helpx.txt) :

#;SUPPORT
#HELPEFFECT2
{SUPPORT} affects the support costs of military units. The lower
your score here, the more of your units you'll have to expend
$LINK to support.
^
^-4, Each unit costs 2 to support; no free minerals for new base.
^-3, Each unit costs 1 to support; no free minerals for new base.
^-2, Support 1 unit free per base; no free minerals for new base.
^-1, Support 1 unit free per base
^ 0, Support 2 units free per base
^ 1, Support 3 units free per base
^ 2, Support 4 units free per base!
^ 3, Support 4 units OR up to base size for free!!

[Archaic]

IIRC, the "reduces support" part of this SP means that every unit that requires support only needs 1/2 a mineral to support, not a full mineral.

[BlackCat]

Nope. It means that your SE SUPPORT setting goes from for example -2 to 0 meaning that instead of only supporting 1 unit and no free min, you can support 2 units and get 10 min for new bases.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Frankychan
In regard to running Clean units, I'm quite sure as I haven't checked ingame yet, but I would assume that if you're running all clean units, it would basically null the effects of the Living Refinery.

But to convert every single unit under your command to clean units would cost a heck of a lot of credits...

I never run ALL clean units since I can always find a use for a drop AAA for instance or a SAM artillery . . .

So if you get this SP you might stop building or upgrading to clean units. So its never useless. Personally, I see it as a "nice-to-have" but I never make a huge effort to get it

[livid imp]

Re: What exactly does the Living Refinery deliver?

Originally posted by Hercules
And does it mean if you change all your units to clean, this SP becomes meaningless.

This is true, but if you can do this, then you aren't playing hard enough. There plenty of units you can't make clean.

SAM Artillery
Deep Radar Artillery
Deep Radar SAM Jets/Choppers
Trance Empath Ships/Rovers
Deep Radar AAA Ships
Deep Radar SAM Ships
Etc. etc. etc.

And thoses are only early to mid game units. By the time you get the LR you have Carriers, Subs, Cloaking, Nano-cells, Anti-grav struts. There are more than enough reasons to want a decent Support rating even after making all your garrison/former/police units clean.

[Senethro]

How good is sam artillery? I imagine it does well because noodlejets have little armour? Does it hit stacks?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Senethro
How good is sam artillery? I imagine it does well because noodlejets have little armour? Does it hit stacks?

Its mainly built by most players for use against locusts ( and worms) since it does hit stacks and will deal out HUGE amounts of damage against them such that it is easy to mop up the stack.

But it can be used against needles/interceptors as well although if playing against humans, they are unlikely to stack many units. Planes are so vulnerable to SAM ground units that it is hardly even necessary to hit them with the arty barrage first.

[Flubber]

Re: Re: What exactly does the Living Refinery deliver?

Originally posted by livid imp


This is true, but if you can do this, then you aren't playing hard enough. There plenty of units you can't make clean.

SAM Artillery
Deep Radar Artillery
Deep Radar SAM Jets/Choppers
Trance Empath Ships/Rovers
Deep Radar AAA Ships
Deep Radar SAM Ships
Etc. etc. etc.

And thoses are only early to mid game units. By the time you get the LR you have Carriers, Subs, Cloaking, Nano-cells, Anti-grav struts. There are more than enough reasons to want a decent Support rating even after making all your garrison/former/police units clean.

All good units . . . The only one I almost never build is an empath trance unit but thats because my playstyle generally is to have dedicated offensive and defensive units rather than all-purpose units

My main inability to use clean comes from my use of the police and drop abilities usually in conjunction with AA defenses. For example, when I capture a base my first build is usually a scout that gets upgraded to police AA and stays there as the garrison. Meanwhile my droppers are probably Drop AA and Drop ECM (less prevalent)

To me, the most prevalent use for "clean" is on the formers. Once you make the formers clean, I find taht with most factions, the support issue is minimal and can be handled bases by base . After all, you don't want to wast cash on clean for units that would have been supported free based on the existing SE situation