Colony Pods on XenoCities

[Darrell01]

For those of you who like to build colony pods and hit b in a city to increase the city size by one, here's a little tidbit of info.

If you...
1- terraform a Sea Base and bring it up to land,
2- the Sea Base was in deep ocean water, typically this might be Safe Haven
3- once you bring it to the surface it has Xenofungus under it,

you cannot add population to the city with a colony pod because you cannot build bases on Xenofungus.

[CEO Aaron]

Yet another reason to eschew sea colonies.

[Xian]

CEO Aaron, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now... do you never build Sea Colonies at all? Lately I've come to realize that they are a lot less usefull than I thought, the only reason I still build them at all is for the poulation they can bring by the midgame.

Are there any serious disadvantages to simply raising land instead of building Sea Cities ever?

[Darrell01]

Well, you can build a sea colony and raise the land. You get a free pressure dome. If you don't have a lot of money to spend on the hurry, you'll have to use your time. (turns) It comes out pretty close because you have to make a military unit, a transport, and a sea colony pod. To really make a noticeable profit, you'll need to place more than one sea base if you plan on raising the land. I cannot speak for CEO Aaron, but I do believe he uses condenser farms, boreholes, supply crawlers, and terraformers. The amount of food, minerals, and energy you can get on a land base far outmatches that you can get on a sea base using the aquafarms, subsea trunkline, and Thermocline Transducer. Ok, lets take a look.

Land Base
OFFFO F - Condenser Farm - 6 food
FBFBF B - Borehole - 6 minerals (6 Energy)
FFCFF C - City 3/2/2 +1/1/1 per population
FBFBF O - Corner - 6/2(4)/? crawled
OFFFO

Sea Base
OAAAO A - Aquafarm and 4 food and 3 energy
AMAMA M - Mining Platform 3 food 3 mineral
AASAA S - Sea Base - City 3/2/2 +1/1/1 per population
AMAMA O - Corner - 4/3/3 Crawled
OAAAO

The land base will have 16 food squares, so that's16 x 6 = 96 food. That supports 48 population. +48 more for the satallites and +3 more for the city, that's 99 population. If you add in the corners, that's 24 more population if they are farms. 123 people. Assuming for arguments sake they were all engineers because everything is crawled. So the city will reach 369 base energy and 246 base labs. The minerals are 24 borehole + 123 for the satallites, and 2 for the city. The energy is 123 for the satallites and 2 for the city.

The Sea Base assuming nothing it crawled except the corners, has 16 solar panels and 4 mining platforms. That comes out to 16 x 4 + 4 x 3 = 76 food + 16 more for the trawlers. That's 92 food, so 46 population +46 for the satallites and +3 more for the city. 95 kelp eaters, so that is only +95 minerals +12 for the mines = 107 minerals. The energy will be 16 x 4 for the tidal harnesses, +2 for the city, and +95 for the people, so 160 energy. However even though you beat the land base in energy, 20 of the citizens are fishing and mining, so they are not engineers. Now since you have 20 workers, some are dones, so you'll need about 3 empaths. So that's 95 - 20 = 75 specialists.
3 are empaths, +6 energy, and 72 are engineers, 216 economy, and 144 labs.

Those are the nitty gritty details. Of course, if you get the city up to 110, you probably have transcendi, which kinda evens them out, but not by much. This is probably why CEO Aaron doesn't like Sea Bases. I'm sure you could place the seabase out there if you know you are going to raise it up right away. Its not that they are that much unprofitable. The real kicker is sea formers cost a lot more in the beginning of the game and you already have 20 terraformers or so, and you don't get the +1 mining platform right away, so they are always low on minerals. And they need a probe team or 2, a couple of defending units, and boat transport units to move men around. This all costs turns, minerals, energy, and upkeep. And boats are expensive to build. CEO Aaron would rather just bring the land to him, rather than going to the sea.

[Darrell01]

PS - You can add base size to Pacted cities by B-ing a colony pod in their city. Kinda fun to do when they only have 2 non-facility cities that you have ICSed and surrounded them.

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Xian
CEO Aaron, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now... do you never build Sea Colonies at all? Lately I've come to realize that they are a lot less usefull than I thought, the only reason I still build them at all is for the poulation they can bring by the midgame.

Are there any serious disadvantages to simply raising land instead of building Sea Cities ever?

In general, no, I don't bother building Sea Colony pods. Not necessarily because they're not efficient or anything like that, but simply because they're difficult to defend and don't offer any particular advantages over a land base.

While it's true that a sea colony pod costs fewer mineral rows than a land base plus recycling tanks, bear in mind that the extra time spent building your pod is time my land base will be collecting nutrients and energy. Furthermore, you can't use base square improvements like sensor beacons or condensers on a seabase. But mostly, it's just that in order to defend your seabases, you need to invest in a navy. When a land base is threatened, every nearby base within 3 road squares can lend units to help its defense. Sea movement is considerably more constrained, and sea units are commensurately more expensive.

Now there's times when I simply don't have the choice, and lack the landmass to build enough land bases, and in those cases, I consider sea expansion to be a necessary evil, but eventually I do try to settle near land and raise terrain rather than exclusively go to sea. Raising land is so cheap and effective, I rarely find myself wanting to build sea colony pods.

[CEO Aaron]

Heh. Just read Darrell's reply. Yep, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

[Leon Trotsky]

What about building a sea base next to a landmass you are about to rise? You still get the free recycling tanks, and gets there faster than a colony pod.

[CEO Aaron]

Let's not get carried away, it's not that I'm saying that you can't make good bases with sea colonies, it's just that I don't like them. I'm far more fond of roading out to land bases and plunking sensor beacons under them for a free 25% defensive bonus. That doesn't mean I'll never use a sea pod in the manner Leon describes, just that it's not my first preference.

How much savings do you really get out of a sea colony? A land pod costs 3 mineral rows, a sea pod costs 7. So all youre really doing is front-loading the cost of your recycling tanks, which seems equitable until you realize that rush costs on units are higher than for base facilities, and the fact that a planted base still accrues nutrients and energy while it builds its base facilities.

[Chaos Theory]

Remember that fusion sea colony pods are much cheaper, either 3 or 4 rows.

[Mart]

Sea bases are better after getting fusion power. I do not remember the cost now for sea colony *2 reactor (4 rows?)

Some advantage of a sea base is that you cannot make air drop to it. So, sea bases in closed lakes (inland seas) are not that bad in defense when enemy cannot sail near it.