I'm sick of the drones!

[vishniac]

Thank you, vishniac! (I always like it when I discover quirks in the game.)

To suppress the drone in SMAX, you can't just turn it into a specialist.

My pleasure! Happy to contribute.

This game was not important in itself, I usually never play at talent but it's a testbed for my first MP game.

And I recently read about the strategy of having 'specialist bases' with crawlers providing food and minerals, and specialists giving economy or lab bonuses. Being an industrialist at heart, I find myself perplex at first: I love my bases to have high minerals and workers on multi-producing tiles. But I won't sneer at anything proven and written by experienced players.
That said: doesn't the problem above-mentioned hamper such a strategy? If you need doctors (even with RecCommons, HoloTheatre and police units) and can't use specialists to eliminate drones, you''ll need even more food and it must be very tile-consuming comparing to a normal good-producing base.

[vyeh]

My pleasure! Happy to contribute.

I'm glad to hear that. That is how we learn more about SMAC.

And I recently read about the strategy of having 'specialist bases' with crawlers providing food and minerals, and specialists giving economy or lab bonuses. Being an industrialist at heart, I find myself perplex at first: I love my bases to have high minerals and workers on multi-producing tiles.

The real benefit to specialist bases (except for eliminating war drones when fighting under FM) is that advanced specialist produce more energy than you can get from tiles, except for boreholes.

If you have a condensor on at tile, you can't have a solar collector or a mine. So you end up with condensor/farm/soil enricher (when you have the tech for soil enrichers) that produce 6-1-0 or 6-0-0 resources. In this case, if you crawl the square, you give up at most 1 mineral and you gain a specialist that 3 credits (technician) or 3 labs (librarian) or more (transcend).

Being an industrialist at heart, I find myself perplex at first: I love my bases to have high minerals and workers on multi-producing tiles.

There are diminishing returns to minerals.

(1) You can run into ecodamage.

(2) You can only carryover 10 minerals from one build to another.

(3) Stockpile energy converts 2 minerals to 1 energy.

While a forest or a monolith (the classic examples of multi-producing tiles) are useful in the early games, advanced terraforming (with the exception of boreholes) tends to steer one in the direction of single resource producing tiles. I've mentioned the condensor/farm/soil enricher. A mine on a rocky square can not have a farm or a solar collector, so it produces 0-4-0 (unless it is on a river.)

But I won't sneer at anything proven and written by experienced players.

You should question us. Sometimes, speculation gets repeated until it is accepted and put in the FAQ. I recently discovered that the proposition that monoliths disappear 1 out of 32 times they are used is false. (The odds change as year increases and it only applies to promotion, not healing.)

That said: doesn't the problem above-mentioned hamper such a strategy? If you need doctors (even with RecCommons, HoloTheatre and police units)

That's not true. In your example, if you have recreation commons, hologram theatre and no war drones, you can have four workers and an unlimited number of specialist. The specialist push the drones to the left, so you end up with three or four drones (depending on the bureaucracy drone situation) and the rest are specialists.

So you have three or four drones. The recreation commons quells two of these drones. The hologram theatre quells the other two drones. You end up with four workers, who are not drones, and the rest are specialists. Since there are no drones, there are no riots.

and can't use specialists to eliminate drones, you''ll need even more food and it must be very tile-consuming comparing to a normal good-producing base.

It is still true that a specialist is neither a drone nor a talent. If you have a base with all specialists (e.g. all thinkers), there are no drones.

Once you get satellites, you can get nutrients, minerals and energy from orbit. When that happens, a population point can bring in one nutrient, one mineral and one energy (before the effects of facilities are considered). So a condensor/farm/soil enricher, which produces six nutrients, when crawled can support six specialists. In addition to the credits or labs that the specialists produces, they also bring in six minerals and six energy. So a condensor/farm/soil enricher is better than a borehole, which also produces six minerals and six energy.

[Nims]

Edit: Got it.

[BlackCat]

(2) You can only carryover 10 minerals from one build to another.

Just make partial hurry 2 turns before finish - then there are no loss.

[vyeh]

The point is that if your base is producing 40 minerals per turns and you are building a basic former (20 minerals), you will lose 10 minerals.

[BlackCat]

That is of course true, but when my bases produces 40 mins, I'm also able to build super fungicide speeder formers and would NEVER build a basic former - hell, even a std speeder former would be preferable

If I needed some low cost units I wold find a more appropriate base - though, in dire need I wouldn't care about the loss.

[vyeh]

The only point I was making is that beyond a certain level of production, energy is more useful than minerals.

[vishniac]

Again, thanks for a the long and readily understandable answer!

I shall try this to see its advantages by myself.

[vyeh]

Mart has also pointed out the multiplicative factor of facilities.

Specialist bonuses get multiplied by facilities. So for example a librarian gives +3 labs, but with:
+ network node, +5 labs total
+ research hospital, +6 labs
+ fusion lab, +8 labs total.

There is a question, do you have a tile in base radius good enough to balance +5, later +8 labs from a librarian. It all depends on situation anyway, sometimes you may want just plain 2 nutrients instead (for example).

Of course, you might want just plain 2 nutrients if you don't have crawlers. If you have crawlers, you can have both the specialist and the plain 2 nutrients!

With the proper facilities a technician's 3 credits are also multiplied. With the proper facilities, it makes a lot more sense to have specialists generating credits and using those credits to hurry units and facilities rather than placing workers on a mixed nutrient/mineral square.