Super Science City...should you allways try to build one?

[EscapedGoat]

I just finished a transcend game where I built a Super Science City(SSC) and I was a bit amazed at how much science was comming out of that city!

The city was 26 pop with half of them transcends, 12 crawlers crawling 7 energy each. It had all standard research facilities pluss the SPs: SC, ToE, NetBackbone.

Setting the slider to 100% labs to check out how much research it produced:

211 labs + 3043 bonus = 3254 research

For comparison my next best research city with the same pop and just normal facilities brought in:

88 labs + 350 bonus = 438 research.

Most of my 'normal' bases produced around 300 research under these settings.

Basically, the SSC produced as much research as the rest of my empire of 10 or so cities.

And this city wasn't even optimized for it, it didn't have merchant exchange and could have crawled in a lot more energy.

Seems like a SSC is a pretty good investment to me. Allthough the net effect of SC and ToE should be 4x research, the extra crawled energy makes it way more than 4 bases research output. What do you guys think? Good investment or not?

[Flubber]

Great investment.

Its simple really-- Do you take a bunch of middling numbers and multiply them by 2 or do you use the same resources to create a pretty big number that you can multiply by 4.

The SSC in a pure builder type game would probably fare quite well. The only other style that competes is ICS .

The only problem with the SSC concept is that SMAX is also a wargame and it has elements of "all your eggs in one basket". If your good base is at all vulnerable you have problems. In addition, many smaller maps are not suited to big energy parks since a lot of resources would have to be devoted to protecting those crawlers

[EscapedGoat]

Yes, it's a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket... but there really is no reason why you can't combine one SSC with some other approach like ICS!

You can just leave some room around your SSC and go nuts with CxCxCxC everywhere else it if you feel like it. Then you can get the best of both worlds.

[Dis]

I always try for it. But sometimes I don't get one of the 2 science SP's, and I never get merchant exchange.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by EscapedGoat
Yes, it's a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket... but there really is no reason why you can't combine one SSC with some other approach like ICS!
.

I've actually tried that out a little. All of the crappy bases exist only to create more colony pods or to produce crawlers and formers for the energy park. Very effective although I got bored with the micro management required.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Dissident
I always try for it. But sometimes I don't get one of the 2 science SP's, and I never get merchant exchange.

What faction gives you that trouble ? Since I started to have two or three bases pumping formers into my SP builder base I ususally get all SP's as Aki.

[EscapedGoat]

Yeah that's the main reason I don't like to ICS too...you might play less gameturns, BUT the turns take forever, and it's a lot of work! It's just clunky to play with bases that close, and turns take forever.

I am also not sure if CxCxC spacing really is optimal... I have a feeling CxxCxxC is a pretty competitive spacing scheme, and it is very easy if you forest everything, build treefarms and pop boom. You can have the same amount of boreholes anyway, and each citizen will eat 2 nutrients and be a drone regardless of where he lives. The advantage to CxxC is more citizens can use the same facilities, thus it's easier to amplify your basic income from squares. If you have 5 ppl in 2 bases or 10 ppl in 1 base, that's basically a toss up because the small bases get the base square as well, but you need 2x the infrastructure. The advantage to smaller bases is drone control from SPs, police and recreation commons, which are very cheap to run... The point is, no one should feel that they are being terribly inefficient by spacing wider than CxCxC...

[Senethro]

EscapedGoat: unfortunately, the 2 size 5 bases need half the infrastructure in total, because all their citizens are thinkers.

ICS: Good game, thanks for playing.

[Archaic]

I personally tend to avoid creating the energy park when creating any SCC like base, and just stick with the projects, using the space instead to ICS to a moderate level. So long as it's a central base, I tend to find that I don't have any problems with the fact that it's all my eggs in one basket, given that if anyone can manage to get a Planet Buster or invasion force in there, I've probably already lost the game anyway, since there's simply no way to get close enough normally with ICS that dense and that thick.

[Sikander]

I tend to do it as an afterthought. I don't typically make a big effort to get the Merchant Exchange for starters. I probably get it less than half to about half of the time (it depends on which faction I play somewhat). If I do get it I'll feed it extra crawlers and have them work those peripheral or otherwise unworked tiles in my ICS network. The two science doubling projects are generally pretty low on my list of priorities as well. I shoot for satellites and fusion first. When they come up I certainly will build them in the same base, but that base never is so impressive as to constitute such a huge percentage of my science production as is often reported for other people's SSCs. My research tend to be powered by lots of tight (but population maximized) bases with lots of specialists.

[Archaic]

Thanks for reminding me Sik. I tend to miss the ME too. Especially in MP, there's just more juicy projects to aim for at that point.

When I do get those science projects though, I always, *always* put them in the HQ. There's no point losing any potential extras to inefficiency.
As for their relative importance....I've generally been able to quicken my research rate by a whole turn with each of the projects, so it's certainly worth it to me, even though the majority of research is powered the same as Sik's, with lots of specialists spread over many tightly placed and highly populated bases. With my slightly non-standard beeline priorities too, I can usually arrange things so I've got the time to get the projects and build them while between major infrastructure development. Thus far, it's worked like a charm.

[Dis]

my ssc is rarely in my capitol. Ideally I'd like it to be. But often I end up building it in my best production city which is usually not my capitol.

[Commy]

Instead of building your Super Science city in your capitol, build your capitol in your Super Science City...

[Barinthus]

I assume to build a SSC is to build all research improvements along SPs that improve research?

[Dis]

yep.

Ideally, I'd like to build: Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network Backbone, and Space Ellevator. I'm not sure about the last one. It says it increase economy 50%- I'm not sure if they improves research at all. And of course, biology lab, network node, energy bank, nanohospital, research hospital, (is that it?).