Terraforming questions

[Terraformer]

Is it worth it to turn these conquered alien bases into specialist bases? It seems to be taking a very long time to get any benefit from them. Right now i'm focusing on mineral and nutrient production since the inefficency is so high. I have them all punished for now so i don't have to worry about drones in them. I'm not building any lab facilities in them yet- the terraforming takes forever. Maybe i should have just keep the bases that I took on the monsoon jungle and starved/evac'd the rest. I have the cloning vats now so they are growing good- i'm just w8ting to get the tech for hab domes.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

These are lvl one population cities. Something is fixing the problem in some of the cities, but I'm not really sure what. I'm conquering the aliens if that info helps any.

Its the alien bases if I recall correctly.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Even the Pirates can benefit from a good landmass to help build up a good set of core bases for SSCs/military production houses. Practically I found the Pirates to be practically worthless because 1) they need a large oceanic map (70-90% ocean coverage), 2) once people start getting needlejets and choppers then the advantage of naval power is diminished slightly, 3) you have to beeline for destroyers (Doctrine: Initiative) because they're the real powerhouses, 4) land squares are much more productive (boreholes). Although you're immune to the chop & drop tactic, since air drops cannot be made into the sea. But pit a real good player with some solid landmass versus a real good player of the Pirates sticking to the "dream of oceanic conquest" and the landmass player will come out on top more often than not. Sure the Pirates are kind of overpowered, depending on how you look at it, but elite Spartan attack foils and marines can give you a run for your money, the Hive might overwhelm you with production power (or Domai), or the Believers if they got past their initial tech stag then they can blow the Pirates out of the water.

Pirates have an above average chance of being able to scout out and make first claim on the Monsoon Jungle (By far and away the best starting location ofr any faction) given their scouting craft. Furthermore tech flexibility is a veritable boon for turn advantage. One or two infantry platform tranpsorts allows you to move a former, pod, crawler (what have you) one space and begin forming, form a new base, move a crawler an additional space and crawl wihtout losing a turn due to unit movement. I would agree Pirates are best suited getting their land bases in order post haste for mineral productions and then are well suited to moving back into the ocean in mid to late game stages.

[Terraformer]

Yeah I'm running Police State and Green. That must be the problem. I switched to Green to compensate for the efficiency hit of Police State. I was running low on funds while fighting the ursupers. I just wiped them out, but I was planning on attacking the Caretakers next.

[Petek]

You may be running Green, which gives Sven -3 Growth. A Children's Creche will allow an individual base to grow under those circumstances. You also could switch out of Green or adopt Democracy to negate the growth penalty.

[Terraformer]

These are lvl one population cities. Something is fixing the problem in some of the cities, but I'm not really sure what. I'm conquering the aliens if that info helps any.

[551262]

Morgan: Needs Hab Complex to exceed size 4.
Lal: Can go up to size 9 before needing a Hab Complex.
Ascetic Virtues Secret Project: Increases the limitation of the bases by two, and grants +1 Police on the SE table. Most players are going for the +1 Police not the other thing.
Everybody else: Standard limitation is size 7. Hab Complex increases this limit to 14, and Habitation Domes unlock up to size...127.

Unless you are the Pirates, avoid oceanic bases, even for the nice energy boost from all the tidal harnesses (which can usually be lost in large quantities to inefficiency)* or for certain tactical reasons (far-flung naval base with Naval Yard or surrounding the continent with sea bases to help thwart/alert about invasions). Naval bases are particularly vulnerable to destroyer transports (6 movement points, 7 if Elite, and 8 (or 9) if you have the Maritime Control Center, which is a waste of time if there's not much water around) stuffed to the gills with marine troopers (best-weapon, no armor, Amphibious Pods), maybe a couple of battery units, foil or destroyer probes and some best-armour-AAA garrisons. They are also a favorite for probing away tech -- because they can be attacked outside the bases' "detection radius" of two squares.

Even the Pirates can benefit from a good landmass to help build up a good set of core bases for SSCs/military production houses. Practically I found the Pirates to be practically worthless because 1) they need a large oceanic map (70-90% ocean coverage), 2) once people start getting needlejets and choppers then the advantage of naval power is diminished slightly, 3) you have to beeline for destroyers (Doctrine: Initiative) because they're the real powerhouses, 4) land squares are much more productive (boreholes). Although you're immune to the chop & drop tactic, since air drops cannot be made into the sea. But pit a real good player with some solid landmass versus a real good player of the Pirates sticking to the "dream of oceanic conquest" and the landmass player will come out on top more often than not. Sure the Pirates are kind of overpowered, depending on how you look at it, but elite Spartan attack foils and marines can give you a run for your money, the Hive might overwhelm you with production power (or Domai), or the Believers if they got past their initial tech stag then they can blow the Pirates out of the water.

*: I suppose if you had a Huge map of Planet (I'll take the regular map of Planet just for the point of discussion, but if you got a lucky break on the random map generator it'll be the same) you could make a MEGA-SSC inside the Freshwater Sea. On the Standard map of Planet, it's usually right in the lower left-ish, and plopping down a sea base in there (crawl your minerals for the facilities you need), putting nothing but kelp farms and crawling the whole lot of it could be quite useful for a specialist powerhouse. +1 Nutrient every square + kelp farm = 4 nutrients per square. At that rate you should be able to get to like size 70. Make everybody a Engineer and you'll have a wonderful economy booster. Well, maybe not the same as the Monsoon Jungle, because with that you can throw a farm+soil enricher+condensor, and that leaves you with 6 nutrients per square, 8 for nutrient bonus squares. Can't get any better than that -- although I usually put down forests, for reasons I explained further up -- 2-2-1 every square isn't bad early on, and beats a farm+solar in production time.

[Terraformer]

Thanks for all the answers CEO Aaron. Right now i'm playing a SMAX game with Sven and i've come across a problem I haven't had before. I have a couple cities that won't grow. When I go to the city profile it says growth in one turn. But the next turn and the next and the next.... no growth. One of them is a city i made in the ocean, and the other is one i conquered.

[CEO Aaron]

Yes, supply crawlers and probe teams cost no support, so clean does nothing except make them more expensive.

As for soil enrichers, the answer is BOTH. Soil enrichers can go on every farm, regardless of other terraforming improvements you've placed.

Yes, it's both. A more eroded planet will have lower hills and less rocky terrain. So if you want a spikier map, go with weak erosive forces. I usually go with average.

[Terraformer]

I see in the game he has clean crawlers- I thought they were already clean?

Also are there any instances where you would use a soil enricher instead of a condenser since it takes less time to build? such as on already rainy squares?

Sorry I thought of another question. I tried searching about what the erosive forces option does and there was two different things that came up. Somewhere they said it made the terrain higher and the other one said that it affected the amount of rockiness. So which one is it? Or is it both? What is the difference in weak, average, or strong erosive forces?

[CEO Aaron]

Wow I guess the emails stop after a few posts. Lots of good info here. Where can I find more details on how to setup a specialist base? I figured out you use the punishment sphere and genejack factory, but beyond that I don't know much about them.

Plus isn't there an amount of bases that causes more drones in your entire empire? Course I think it's in the high 20's, so I guess it's not really an issue.

The best, most detailed example of specialist driven play I have seen is here: http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/7...s-Builder-Game

[551262]

Where can I find more details on how to setup a specialist base? I figured out you use the punishment sphere and genejack factory, but beyond that I don't know much about them.

Plus isn't there an amount of bases that causes more drones in your entire empire? Course I think it's in the high 20's, so I guess it's not really an issue.

The amount of drones that are attributed depends on the map size. Larger maps "allow" more bases before you get the popup saying that the empire is growing large and inefficient. As it says, increasing your Efficiency number on the Social Engineering window (E key) can increase this limitation. Certain factions have issues with inefficiency more than others.

If you're looking to use Super Science Cities, you'll want to avoid punishment spheres and genejack factories. Punishment spheres half your base's (individual to base) Labs output, and Genejack factories increase drone count. I guess if you have no citizens and all specialists then I guess yes the GFs probably won't hurt that bad but Robotic Assembly Plants are not that far around the corner, or if you're flying technological wise, get the Singularity Inductor secret project (it comes out around the time of quantum chamber reactors).

To make SSCs, it depends what you want to do with it, i.e if you want to crawl minerals with it and help with either cranking out crawlers, colony pods or military units. From there you make every square within the base radius that is not a rocky square a square with a farm and condenser, and later, soil enricher. Base facilities should be ones like the Energy Bank or Fusion Lab which are beneficial to increasing your base's contribution to labs/economy. Labs = tech and economy = the cash in your pocket. I suppose early on when you're building up the base then you'll need stuff like rec commons but later with all specialists you can disband it and line your pockets.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Specialist bases depend on crawling nuts so that virtually the entire base populationis a specialist. If this is the case then there are no workers to turn into angry drones. Higher tech specialists such as engineers and even better transcendi outperform working squares from energy output perspectives.

Also CEO Aaron is dead on the money ICS ie. pod production is much more effective than crawler production until such time as Pod production on your interior bases become hindered by transport time to the outermost fringes of your empire for new colony creation.

[Terraformer]

Wow I guess the emails stop after a few posts. Lots of good info here. Where can I find more details on how to setup a specialist base? I figured out you use the punishment sphere and genejack factory, but beyond that I don't know much about them.

Plus isn't there an amount of bases that causes more drones in your entire empire? Course I think it's in the high 20's, so I guess it's not really an issue.

[551262]

Assuming you get the WP and get condensers up early, aren't specialists also low-maintence?

Here's something to think about for Lady Sparta. Assuming a Standard size Planet, how many SSCs would she need to keep up with everybody else, ignoring stuff like the MJ, Uranium Flats, Pholus Ridge, et al?

If you play as Sparta, and you land on the landmass west of the Pholus Ridge, near the (Upland Wastes) the north of the Great Dunes, there's plenty of landmass there, and IIRC there's a good amount that is rocky. If you put bases with condensors galore and crawled the daylights out of rocky squares, had no citizens or talents, got the base up to like size...well, let's see: 20 squares are workable by a base, cut that by a 1/3 because of useful rocky squares. That means 14 squares are workable by crawlers sitting on condensors + farm + soil enricher. That leads 5 nutrients per square, times 14 which is 70 nutrients. 6 squares remain which leads 24 minerals which is kind of mediocre when tree farms + a couple of fungal pops as far as eco-damage is concerned. (But that base could crank out cheaper units, like pop out crawlers to cash into SPs). By my thinking, if you had let's say 6 SSCs like that, with ICS'd size 7 bases surrounding the core, that should be fairly defensible. Not sure how many turns before you'd get a tech though, but I find 4 turns per tech isn't that bad.

It would take a while to hit 70 pop bases, especially as a warmonger you're not likely to be gunning for Hab-domes anyways. (I personally like to shoot for Fusion Reactors and Plasma Shard for both cheap units and powerful guns) But I'm wondering how many turns I would get for a new tech via this method. I suppose the rest of the bases could be capped at size 7 and ICS'd with crawlers bringing in minerals for cranking out units.

I did do a test run once and found that with Sparta you can do quite well with relatively few facilities on size seven bases (14 gobbles more squares and has more eco-damage). Two 1-1-1 Police or better, 1-3-1 Trance Police with a tree farm and either NN+VW and you don't have to worry about drones. A Children's Creche doesn't do you any good when you're fooling around in Yang's playground, a rec commons is too expensive, and all that. Although I'm not entirely squared away whether loads of size 7 bases is better than fewer size 14s.