Two Rush Builds per Turn?

[johndmuller]

I used to use the Build Queues all the time - that is, until I read some of the threads about the stockpile energy feature/bug. I still have an attitude about this because I liked to use the queues for facilities to reduce the MM and to put stockpile energy into the queue after units so I wouldn't build extra's by mistake and now I feel bad about both things whether I do them or not.

Anyway, I've been trying out not using the queues for facilities, and it seems that if you are set up to get the popup on completion of facilities, it is possible to get two rush builds on the the transition turn when you complete one facility and start the next. This is relevant to new (below 10 mins) bases (or in cases where one did not buy all the next 10 mins on the preceding turn) as it lets you buy most of your rush buy at the regular price on the 2nd buy (having bought up to the 10 level - at 2 times cost - during your first chance). My apologies if this is old news, but I have lurked and posted for quite a while without hearing of this.

Here's how it works:[list=1][*]Facility finished - select Zoom to base in popup box;[*]Change production to a new facility;[*]Buy enough mins (at double cost) to get to 10; exit base;[*]During movement phase go to base again;[*]Buy additional mins at regular price.[/list=1]

Using this method, one can rush build facilities in just one turn per facility if desired, without incurring much of a extra penalty. The rush penalty would be just what it costs to bring the base's min production up to 10 - for example, a new sea base would cost you 32ec (8 x 4) on the first round to get up to 10 and then the 2nd round would be only the regular price of 2ec/min bought. This can make a big difference in turns or money in getting a new base set up quickly with basic items like Perimeter Def's.

This only seems to work for facilities - if you change to a unit after the popup, it won't let you make the 2 builds (although I think you can get around this by making the initial new build a facility and then changing it to a unit during the regular turn) or if you had previously built a unit. In case you were wondering, it is not necessary to have abstained from rush buying on the preceding turn to be able to do the rush buy following the popup; as long as you keep buying facilities, it seems you can buy one as frequently as each and every turn using this method. I think that this behavior is the norm, but occasionally it will either forbid the extra build or allow one for a unit; perhaps some special stellar alignment intervenes.

I would assume that this represents an unplanned feature similar to the stockpile energy feature/bug. I only know for sure that it works in SMAC v4 SP, but if it should work in MP, I suppose that it would need to be considered in the pregame agreements.

[WhiteElephants]

Interesting. I typically rush build my facilities and in the mix of things sometimes I attempt to rush the next after zooming to the base. I'm not sure I've ever been able to rush build twice though. The computer usually tells me with a pop up box that I'm only allowed to rush build once a turn.

If you took procaution to have an extra 10 minerals after every facility built (as this is the maximum amount that would carry over) wouldn't this work out anyway?

In this case the 10 mins would carry over and the next turn you could rush build the facility at the cost of 2 per mineral because you would have already accumulated the first 10 mins in the carryover, if this is correct. The only drawback would be that you would need to have a base producing in excess of 10 mins, but you wouldn't be forced to buy those first 10 at the premium price they cost.

[John Paul Jones]

Interesting. I still use the old bug though that has sadly been carried over from Civ2. When rush-building facilities - buy a scout patrol for 50 creds to make up the first 10 minerals, then change to the desired facility and rush buy the rest - it's cheaper than buying it straight out.
The bug here is you can rush build twice (or more) if you switch between units/facilities/projects.

[John Paul Jones]

...or should that be Civ1 - yeah i seem to remember doing that with militias & temples
Could always edit the alpha.txt file to render the minerals exempt from loss from 10 to 0 - but why make it harder on yourself ?

[johndmuller]

The bug here is that you can rush build twice upon completion of a facility if you have the completion popup enabled - once when you get the popup and Zoom to Base where you change to a new facility and add the necessary mins to get to 10 (at double cost) and the second time at undoubled cost during the regular part of your turn.

The advantage only really applies to new bases where you are not yet producing 10 mins, so that you would ordinarily have to pay double cost to build the whole facility if you were of a mind to do that (as in an urgent need for a PD). With this bug, it is only necessary to pay double for the difference between the base min production and 10; the rest are at single cost. If you have a lot of credits, you can build up a base real quickly without wasting money, even as the base production is low.

It also seems to be limited in some way to newish bases; older established bases don't allow this trick. I don't know what the limits are, but it seems to work til beyond the point where you have the 10 min production (at least if you try reasonably hard to boost min production anyway).

I wouldn't say it was particularly useful for units (except for that little bit between base min production and 10, but it can save a lot of money and/or turns for facilities.

[SpacemanSpiff]

The reason this 'double rush' works is because, for some strange reason, the computer treats the begining on turn popup as if they were still in the last turn. This allows you to use last years rush to get you to them 'magic' 10 minerals that drops the rush build cost for the rest in half. And then you can use the current turn's rush build to finish the build.

It doesn't really gain you a whole lot, since next year, during the popup you won't be able to rush build, because it's still last year, and you already used your rush build for last year.

If you MM properly, you shouldn't need to double rush too often - but I can see it being helpful in thoses case that slipped through the cracks, but it won't help you in those cases where you didn't math wrong on you're rush build last turn and didn't get to 10 minerals, becuase you'll have used your last year's rush already.

It won't help you at all in the cases where you most consistently NEED to rush build at a city that doesn't have 10 minerals queued up - newly captured bases (or newly founded bases with a support rating that doesn't give you 10 free minerals), because you didn't get a popup for that base, since it wasn't yours at the start of the turn.

Spiff

[johndmuller]

The glitch I'm talking about works even if you rush bought on the previous turn. The time where this is a factor is when your base is producing less than 10 mins, so that you cannot carry foward enough mins to avoid the double cost rush buy; the savings come from the ability to finish the rush buy during the same turn, but at the normal (undoubled) cost. This doesn't seem to work for big old bases anyway, but it does seem to continue for at least a good while.

Try This Out:
Try building a new sea base and start rush building the cheap facilities at every opportunity, including the popup period, where you first change production to the next new facility (that is where you want to build only enough to get to 10 mins). Don't put anything into the queue and don't build or switch to units.

Later you will likely find that you can use this to start off your units (after building a facility), but without the quick start on the next (popup) turn; you will likely be able to return to double time facilities after that.

There is something inconsistent in the treatment accorded you when building facilities. In addition to this anomaly, one is usually, but not always, allowed to rush build facilities (but never units) despite drone riots.

[Misotu]

"The glitch I'm talking about works even if you rush bought on the previous turn."

Nope. In the later game, I'm often carrying forward 10 mins to enable me to rush every turn. When the popup arrives, and I try to put the rush in immediately, it tells me that I cannot make two hurry payments in a turn *because I made a hurry payment on the previous turn*.

I have to wait for the update to finish, and then go back to the base and make the rush payment.

I can believe that it will allow you to make a hurry payment on a turn update if you haven't done so on the previous turn. But I have never seen the mineral cost change as a result of doing this during the update time in the popup screen. I can see that you might be allowed to take advantage of the previous turn's rush ability under these circumstances, but I'm not sure it's a big deal.

You are allowed to rush a facility, but not units, when the base is in riot, but it makes no difference. The facility won't build for 2 turns, after the riot ends.

I don't think there's an issue here.

[johndmuller]

Have any of you doubters really tried this out?

I just started a new game as Morgan, so I would have more cash, using SMAC v4 SP on Transcend. I started out more or less normally, building formers and a few scouts; waiting until I had enough techs to be able to build 2 different facilities. When I had 3 or 4 bases I did the following in 1 of my bases:

-Finished facility #1 with a rush buy of max suggested amount;
-on the popup:
---changed the build to facility #2;
---did a rush build of the next 8 mins (prod=2mins) @32ec's to get 10 fully built;
---(yes it let me despite having rush built the previous turn)
-did a rush build of the remaining mins during the regular part of the turn;
-(yes it let me despite having done a rush build during the popup)!
-this can seemingly be continued until ??? if you have the cash, facilities and inclination.

I realize this is contrary to "the way things work"; that's why I'm making these posts (not because I like to read skeptical replies ) It is certainly possible that SMAX, MP and/or different patch levels of SMAC work differently, but it is *not* possible that I am imagining this - the game is not behaving the way we think it does.

Somewhere in the life of a new base, it stops letting you do this; also, whenever you build a unit, it doesn't let you do it either. I suppose the reason that I never noticed it before was that I already thought I knew the way it worked and didn't try to push it much; whenever I did, I just thought it was because I hadn't used my rush build from last turn; but......

At the beginning of the game, one doesn't have the cash to make this worthwhile, but if you are founding a bunch of bases later in the game when you have a lot of ec's you can develop them rapidly with little wasted expenditure on double cost mins, you can build 1 facility per turn for as long as ??? if you have the spare ec's and the only double cost mins are the ones you buy during the popup to make up the difference between the new bases production and 10 mins; once the base produces 10 mins of its own, there is nothing to be gained using this that you couldn't get under the old paradigm by making sure you bought 10 more than the minimum at the final build.

[Misotu]

Yes, of course I've tried these things. They don't work in my set-up.

Well, I would like a game save. Send me the save and tell me what to do to see what you're describing. Not because I don't believe you, but because it will save me loads of time trying to reproduce what you're describing

I am an energy fanatic and confirmed rush-builder - I've tried to do a load of stuff in the normal course of the game, including pop-ups, and received "you can't do that" messages. Not because I was trying to cheat, or push the envelope, but simply because I was trying to get on with it (!)

If you say you've seen it, then I believe you. But I haven't, and I have tried all of the things you describe. So a save game would really help: misotu@hotmail.com

[johndmuller]

So a save game would really help

Misoto: Sent you a save file; perhaps it will show whether there is a version difference.

Also tried this in MP mode - doesn't work there (as you probably know) as the popup window doesn't have the "Zoom to Base" button (at least not in my version), thus bypassing the pre-turn opportunity for the pre-rush-build.

[Misotu]

File received, thanks John. I tried the test you outlined, and it worked exactly as you described, ie 3 rush payments in 2 turns.

Much confused, I went back to some of my old SMAC games. And they are the same ...

Fascinating. So then I tried one of my very old single-player SMAX games. Bingo, up comes the message "only one rush payment per base may be made in a single turn".

So is this a SMAC-only bug I wonder? It's a VERY long time since I've played SP SMAC, I think I've only played SMAX since it was released. And then I have played SMAC challenge games, but they are all one city challenges, so I don't use the pop-up window because it's just an annoyance ...

If I think carefully, I would not be able to say whether this bug has always been in SMAC, or whether it has appeared as a result of a patch. It might be that I've only ever tried this in SMAX, without realising that was the case.

I've sent you my SMAX game John, you mentioned that you had the Planetary Pack. Give it a try and let me know if you get the rush-build error message I've described.

Just FYI, I bought the 2 games separately, so this isn't something specific to the Pack.