What exactly does the Living Refinery deliver?

[Ka Plewy]

I just checked there is no redcution in cost per unit.

There wouldn't, be, because that is governed by Industry rating.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Hercules



I just checked there is no redcution in cost per unit.

However the tremendous benefits of a +4 support rating cannot be overlooked. Wow!

THat was my understanding as well.

As for +4 support, it is great but I'm betting most people never see it since Demo is a natural SE choice for most factions. One of the fun things about the HIve is that POlice State is pretty much a given and opens up difefrent playstyles

[Hercules]

It is not just being the Hive (that could get you + 6 support),
but with the support fixed to 0 for a number of factions (depending with what you start), changing to Police and Power SE settings give you 4+ supported and yet no off putting penalty drop in commerce or research/industry (not sure which).

The wording for support (+4 and +6) is support 4+ units up to base level. it's a bit like the sats.

[Commy]

Having +4 support does have major advantages...

You don't have to depend on clean reactors...therefore giving you 2 choices...

You can just build units without clean reactors, and they'll be cheaper...or you can switch clean with another special ability...

Since you don't have to have clean reactors, you can very useful things such as...

Funguicidal Super formers
Air units with both SAM and AAA tracking
Empath and Hypnotic Trance
Antigrav struts on interceptors
Carrier subs

And many others...

On the other hand, I think most players will agree that its worth it to do democracy...even with -2 support...

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Flubber
As for +4 support, it is great but I'm betting most people never see it since Demo is a natural SE choice for most factions.

I find that Demo is over rated. While it is easily the best political choice, its real power lies in the efficiency bonus. The growth bonus can be circumvented by pop booming, so I don't even consider it when choosing a long term political SE choice. It is almost always the increased efficiency I pick demo for. This is one of the reasons I love the CyCon. With them I will sometimes abandon my normal tech B-lines and grab Doc: Loyalty early. Think about it this way: CyCon's eff bonus cancels out the PS eff penalty. Leaving a +2 Res, +2 Police, +2 Support. Now toss on top of that the AV for +3 Police rating (double police ) and the LR for a +4 Support rating, which by that time means like a dozen or so free units per city. All of that in exchange for a little energy lost and some more B-drone which are suppressed by the extra police anyway.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by livid imp


While it is easily the best political choice, its real power lies in the efficiency bonus. The growth bonus can be circumvented by pop booming, so I don't even consider it when choosing a long term political SE choice.

I agree although there are some advantages to earlier quicker growth with +2 or +4 growth before the boom is possible. Efficiency though can be huge.

Originally posted by livid imp

It is almost always the increased efficiency I pick demo for.

Me too

Originally posted by livid imp
This is one of the reasons I love the CyCon. With them I will sometimes abandon my normal tech B-lines and grab Doc: Loyalty early. Think about it this way: CyCon's eff bonus cancels out the PS eff penalty. Leaving a +2 Res, +2 Police, +2 Support. Now toss on top of that the AV for +3 Police rating (double police ) and the LR for a +4 Support rating, which by that time means like a dozen or so free units per city. All of that in exchange for a little energy lost and some more B-drone which are suppressed by the extra police anyway.

I think that this will work much better for the CYcon than most other factions but where do you sit on the next row of SE choice? They all seem tough ( I don't play cycon much so forgive me if one of these is their aversion)

FM-- you lose your police which seems to be a big part of your drone control but IIRC you can still run an offensive war without creating huge additional drone problems

Planned-- not bad but you are now into minus 2 on efficiency-- usually the reason I may be in Demo with planned is to keep this at zero

Green-- Efficiency back to decent levels but growth will be minus 3 ( this can be fine if you just finished a pop boom of some type or are planning one but really slow growth is generally pretty painful)

[livid imp]

If you go FM, you are at a -3 Police, which means you get a freebie military unit before pacifism kicks in. So with a little management, you can fight while running FM. CyCon is great for producing submissives. If it is a more native filled map, I'll go Green if nothing else, just to capture a few IoDs. Plus the extra eff while running Green is nice. I actually like the CyCons slow controlled growth since I'd rather just run a GA pop boom every so offen so the effects don't slip under my radar.

[joncnunn]

The Living Refinery SP arrives so late in SMAC that it can only be said as a "Nice to Have"

It will be useful for just about everyone.

If running a Democracy, it cancels out Democracy's support penalty

If running a Fundie govt, allows more support for your high morale troops.

If running a Police State govt, will probably be enough to reach up to base size support levels.

The only thing to watch out for with this SP is if your already at highest support level (or one level below then) there may be a better SC combo combined with this LR than what your aleady runnning.

[joncnunn]

With regards to police: -3 is a flat one drone if more than one unit supported from there isn't in a base. So if you have two, might as well have 100. (ignoring support issues.)

Gaians though start with a -1 police. (But can't choose FM anyway) And there's one civ (Spartans?) that have a +1 police.

In addition, the AV SP has a +1 police effect in addition to increasing pop limits by two. (An excelent SP)

[Commy]

Virtual World all the way...

[Hercules]

Ok I kinda think we have the picture now.

[Hercules]

But Hey don't let us stop exploring the virtues of + 4 Support and +2 or more Power

[MRT144]

it arrives too late as someone said. bythe time it becomes available youre already running huge mineral amounts (right?) and supporting extra units will reduce minerals per turn from 60 to 50 or 40, OH NOES!

[Flubber]

Originally posted by MRT144
it arrives too late as someone said. bythe time it becomes available youre already running huge mineral amounts (right?) and supporting extra units will reduce minerals per turn from 60 to 50 or 40, OH NOES!

Its true that late in the game I don't mind support. Heck many of my bases are producing more minerals than the mineral cost of the units I need anyway.

[CEO Aaron]

Just to drop in with the Morganite perspective, the Living Refinery is pretty nice to get, but ultimately not that big of a deal. Considering that by the time you get to build it, you'll already have clean reactors for your formers and garrisons (these are the only units worth making clean, btw, everything else should die in combat or be disbanded before the savings on support match the extra rows appended by clean will be recouped.) and probably genejack factories to boot. If you're not going to get to the +4 support threshold with this project, then you're really only building it for score.

IIRC, it costs 40 rows to build. For those 40 rows, you can have 13 crawlers, each of which can easily crawl a rocky/road/mine square for 4 minerals each, 6 with Genejacks. That's 78 minerals per turn. To get the equivalent benefit from support, you'd need to have at least 39 bases (assuming you're not getting the golden +4 support from it).

But that's not even as bad as it gets. Again, if my recollection is correct, Living Refinery is post Adv-Spaceflight, which means instead of crawling minerals directly, you can build Nessus Mining Satellites, and crawl nutrients for pop. Crawl a farm/condenser/soil enricher square for 6 nuts. With Sky Hydroponics labs aloft, each nut supports 1 population (the other being paid by a satellite), and each population also garners 1 mineral from the Mining station. Those 6 minerals become 9 minerals apiece from genejacks alone, more with robotic assembly plants.

Even if you ARE going to +4 or +5 support from building LR, you still don't actualize benefits unless you're actually supporting enough additional units to use those free minerals. Another way of putting this is that even if LR gives you 100+ free minerals, if you don't have the 100 unit built that use them, you're not really getting anything except peace of mind.

Now, you still need secure territory in which to place your crawlers, whatever materials you decide to crawl, so there is that advantage to the more passive Living Refinery.

IMO, the only way you're really going to see strong returns from LR is if you're using a VERY tight ICS strategy on a very large map, with virtually no vertical growth in your bases, all 3-pop bases harvesting trees and building only a recycling tank, cranking out nothing but colonies, formers and troops, til you cover the map like a rash.