vyeh
Emperor
- Joined
- May 15, 2006
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I was searching 'poly's archives trying to find an article by Marione on upgrading crawlers as an economical way to rush secret projects (if I recalled correctly, you can add minerals to secret projects for less than 2 energy credits per mineral, a better deal than the 2 energy credits per mineral you spend to rush a base facility and a much better deal than the at least 2 energy credits per mineral you spend to rush a unit.
I stumbled across Rush Buying - Maximise your ECs today!, a very humorous and informative post by Kody.
I was fascinated by a paragraph about rushing multiple standard crawlers versus upgrading a crawler (perhaps a sample will persuade you to go to the archives):
Let's say you have a bunch of energy credits and you want to rush a secret project.
Probably the worse way to spend your energy credits is to use the "hurry button" with the secret project in the queue. You will spend at least 4 credits per mineral.
Two other options present themselves.
(1) You can keep building and rushing the supply crawler until you have enough supply crawlers to insta-build the secret project. Let's say you have a base that has at least 10 minerals per turn for production (the rest goes into support) and at the beginning you have 10 minerals in the production queue.
Turn 1: Change production to supply crawler and rush the supply crawler so you have 10 minerals carried over into the next turn.
Turn 2: Take the supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Now rush the second supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over into the next turn. The cost will be less because your first supply crawler is contributing at least one mineral.
Turns 3 and beyond: Continue this process until you have enough supply crawlers outside the base to build the secret project in one turn. Then switch the production to the secret project and contribute all the supply crawlers toward the secret project.
(2) You build supply crawlers and upgrade them.
Turn 1: Change production to supply crawler and rush the supply crawler so you have 10 minerals carried over.
Turn 2: Take the supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Rush the second supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over. So far, you are doing the same thing as the first option.
Turn 3: Take the second supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Take the first supply crawler and upgrade it to a supply crawler with armor and special abilities (special abilities, including the clean reactor -- note that you can add this ability to a supply crawler even though a supply crawler does not require support -- are better than armor because the upgrade cost counts armor twice -- for the increase in armor level and for the contribution to the mineral cost of the final unit). You will use the first crawler's movement point in the upgrade. However, a crawler with no movement points can still be set to convoy minerals, so go ahead and activate the already moved crawler and convoy resources ("o"). Rush the third supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over.
Turns 4 and beyond: Continue this process until you have enough upgraded supply crawlers outside the base to build the secret project in one turn (the last crawler may be upgraded within the base). Then switch the production to the secret project and contribute all the upgraded supply crawlers toward the secret project.
What Kody found was that it was better to follow the first option at the beginning of the game and the second option at the end of the game.
Although Kody used the stockpile energy bug to increase the effectiveness of option 1 (more units built means the stockpile energy bug makes a bigger contribution), it is not necessary for his conclusion.
I hope this post is interesting (I am not sure if Lefty Scaevola already knows this). As always, I welcome questions and I am sure Petek will also be happy to contribute answers.
I would certainly encourage beginners with a strong economy to try out option 1 at the beginning of the game and option 2 at the end. Both supply crawlers and unit upgrading are an important part of the game.
Edit: I found that article by Marione. In the DA forum for ACDG3, Kata had made a reference to Bible of upgrades and other old (missing) threads. This was a post that referred to a CGN thread. The relevant post copied a post from a deleted 'poly thread.
The punchline is an example Marione provided of an upgraded supply crawler (SC-12-8*3, Clean & Secure) that cost the same as the Ascent to Transcedence secret project. You build a SC-1-8*3 (it costs 5 rows, i.e. 50 minerals for the nominal 10 minerals per row).
The cost to upgrade from a 5 row supply crawler to a 200 row supply crawler is 2110 ec.
This is 10.821 ec per row or 1.08 ec per mineral for the nominal 10 minerals per row.
Note the CGN thread containing Marione's post was the comment thread to Secret Project Instabuilding an article in the SMAC Academy, which only discusses crawler rushing and not crawler upgrading.
I stumbled across Rush Buying - Maximise your ECs today!, a very humorous and informative post by Kody.
I was fascinated by a paragraph about rushing multiple standard crawlers versus upgrading a crawler (perhaps a sample will persuade you to go to the archives):
Kody said:
Let's say you have a bunch of energy credits and you want to rush a secret project.
Probably the worse way to spend your energy credits is to use the "hurry button" with the secret project in the queue. You will spend at least 4 credits per mineral.
Two other options present themselves.
(1) You can keep building and rushing the supply crawler until you have enough supply crawlers to insta-build the secret project. Let's say you have a base that has at least 10 minerals per turn for production (the rest goes into support) and at the beginning you have 10 minerals in the production queue.
Turn 1: Change production to supply crawler and rush the supply crawler so you have 10 minerals carried over into the next turn.
Turn 2: Take the supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Now rush the second supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over into the next turn. The cost will be less because your first supply crawler is contributing at least one mineral.
Turns 3 and beyond: Continue this process until you have enough supply crawlers outside the base to build the secret project in one turn. Then switch the production to the secret project and contribute all the supply crawlers toward the secret project.
(2) You build supply crawlers and upgrade them.
Turn 1: Change production to supply crawler and rush the supply crawler so you have 10 minerals carried over.
Turn 2: Take the supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Rush the second supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over. So far, you are doing the same thing as the first option.
Turn 3: Take the second supply crawler and move it to a square that is not being used that has at least 1 mineral and convoy those minerals to the secret project base. Take the first supply crawler and upgrade it to a supply crawler with armor and special abilities (special abilities, including the clean reactor -- note that you can add this ability to a supply crawler even though a supply crawler does not require support -- are better than armor because the upgrade cost counts armor twice -- for the increase in armor level and for the contribution to the mineral cost of the final unit). You will use the first crawler's movement point in the upgrade. However, a crawler with no movement points can still be set to convoy minerals, so go ahead and activate the already moved crawler and convoy resources ("o"). Rush the third supply crawler so 10 minerals are carried over.
Turns 4 and beyond: Continue this process until you have enough upgraded supply crawlers outside the base to build the secret project in one turn (the last crawler may be upgraded within the base). Then switch the production to the secret project and contribute all the upgraded supply crawlers toward the secret project.
What Kody found was that it was better to follow the first option at the beginning of the game and the second option at the end of the game.
Although Kody used the stockpile energy bug to increase the effectiveness of option 1 (more units built means the stockpile energy bug makes a bigger contribution), it is not necessary for his conclusion.
I hope this post is interesting (I am not sure if Lefty Scaevola already knows this). As always, I welcome questions and I am sure Petek will also be happy to contribute answers.
I would certainly encourage beginners with a strong economy to try out option 1 at the beginning of the game and option 2 at the end. Both supply crawlers and unit upgrading are an important part of the game.
Edit: I found that article by Marione. In the DA forum for ACDG3, Kata had made a reference to Bible of upgrades and other old (missing) threads. This was a post that referred to a CGN thread. The relevant post copied a post from a deleted 'poly thread.
The punchline is an example Marione provided of an upgraded supply crawler (SC-12-8*3, Clean & Secure) that cost the same as the Ascent to Transcedence secret project. You build a SC-1-8*3 (it costs 5 rows, i.e. 50 minerals for the nominal 10 minerals per row).
The cost to upgrade from a 5 row supply crawler to a 200 row supply crawler is 2110 ec.
This is 10.821 ec per row or 1.08 ec per mineral for the nominal 10 minerals per row.
Note the CGN thread containing Marione's post was the comment thread to Secret Project Instabuilding an article in the SMAC Academy, which only discusses crawler rushing and not crawler upgrading.
