Bases: Close Together Or Far Apart?

[vitamin j]

MariOne: My eyebrows went up at one thing you mentioned.
"You don't need to build Hab facilities to get past hab limits"
Is it common and accepted practice in MP to pod boom bases past the normal limits? I think that's totally bogus. I think pod booming is bogus period. Would you direct me to the thread you mentioned? Thanks.

[Sikander]

A good analysis Marione, and one very germain to my current SP game where I am going with 8 squares per base. I am using a two squares apart (diagonal) spacing, and each base has a borehole on each corner. This spacing yields exactly what you are talking about, ie two boreholes and 5 farm / condensor / enrichers per base. I find this to be about the ideally efficient spacing to take advantage of the rapidity of ICS while still building bases large enough to be efficient in all phases of the game.

Early in the game, when you are limited to 2 per FOP per square these bases can still generate enough minerals to build crawlers every other turn, and thus can crank out the necessary infrastructure to prepare for a pop boom. Later on after restrictions are lifted these bases produce enough nutrients (23) to make your pop boom worthwhile, and to get you 10 specialists (I cheat a bit and use the empty land on the periphery and nutrient specials) per base very early. The next phase is the addition of soil enrichers, when I tend to get strict about the cheating (there are too many interior bases at this point and not enough periphery), but the extra nuts give you 33 per base not counting specials, which in turn gives you enough to boom up to the common upper limit of 16 population.

Using other schemes, I have sometimes pod boomed my bases up from here in order to take advantage of the food sats (and usually plenty of excess nut production within my larger base areas). With this scheme I have found that by the time I get around to that I am often not very far away from hab domes anyway. I can build quite a few of these size 16 w / 14 specialist bases even on a modest sized continent, and with a very high former to squares formed ratio I can afford to expand my continent. So I find myself continuing to invest in horizontal growth right up until hab domes are available, and not pod booming. While I am waiting to get hab domes I do build 16 of each type of satelite, and even more in anticipation of finally getting the hab limits lifted. One interesting thing that I have yet to try is to fill in my boreholes after I get Transcendii, and replace those squares with SE / Condensor / Farms. The payoff is a good deal higher with the orbitals in place.

Regarding a strict vs flexible spacing paradigm, I agree to an extent that you have to roll with the punches, especially in MP. However the closer you space your bases the less this is true. It is not that much trouble to simply pass over a base site for the moment and move two more squares to another, filling in the rocky / fungus square later as your formers are more numerous and caught up with their duties.

Vitamin J,

I used to think that pod booming was a bit sleazy, but when I did some calculation I realized that there is a definite cost associated with this practice, and I think it was a design decision to allow this rather than an oversight. Every population point costs you a bunch of minerals (and a population point from somewhere else). You could start another base with all of that investment, which with the PTS would start at 3 population. If you would rather simply use those resources to relocate a single population point, I see nothing wrong with it. It is certainly a good deal more expensive than allowing a base to rise naturally once you have lifted it's hab restrictions, the payoff being that you can do it sooner.

[MariOne]

VitJ, I am not an Apolyton PBEM player, I organise and play my PBEMs in another community, so I can't say fot the *latest* habits and practices here.
But in the Multiplaying forum there's this thread
PBEM Tournament Rules and Results
which I think that it's STILL the *valid* ruling reference for PBEMs organised here (as I never saw a thread decicated to pbem rulings outside of the tournament), it gets updated regularly by TauCeti, and it does NOT report anything abour forbidding pod booming.

The thread I was mentioning is this one:
Is this a cheat?
beware, the thread got hijacked to podbooming after Misotu's comment in the 3rd post.
I was mistaken in recalling that JAM posted there too, but I think that my initial objections and the superb treatment of the issue by Misotu should rule out any proposal of considering podbooming illegal as mere puritanism.
JAM instead answered me in this other forum:
bypassing Hab limits

Beware, and I am addressing this to the supporting Sikander too: I don't care if a practice is costly or convenient. I am only interested in determining the *rightfulness* (sp?) of an issue, in principle. If I think something is wrong, I won't allow it just because it's cost-ineffective. If i think something is legal, I'll fight against "banning it just because it's too much convenient" (see crawlers upgrading...)

Of course, it must not be a show-stopper, it should not totally wreck the balance and playability of the game. But I can accept that it "seriously" influences the balance of the game, while leaving it playable.

That thread represents also the enlightenment I received from Ogie Oglethorpe, as using bases like Organ's Factories in combination with the PTS (you don't necessarily need to use the produced pods for pod booming, you can also build new bases, but you'll run out of room eventually): I tried it with the Hive, it was impressive.
Now, when playing with the Hive, the PTS is the most important project I aim to.

___
Sikander, when you get to Transcendii, you can consider the game practically over, you'll harldy have time to convert your BHs into food tiles. However, I was indeed wondering.....
A BH gives you 6 energy + 6 minerals.
A Farmed+Enriched+Condensed tile gives you 6 food.
This "CAN" represent 6 more population, to be transformed in 6 minerals and 6 energy as well.
But this would require 18 more satellites (6 of each kind)!!! To get 6 more votes, and the same resources...
The trade off would then be between 18 satellites and 6 specialists, that is 18ec+12labs per turn with engineers.
But 18 satellites mean 216 mineral ROWS!!! It costs MORE than the Ascent itself to convert a single borehole into 6 nurtured and productive citizens!
(OK, you can content of feeding the specialists. In this case it is 72 mineral rows to be invested in sats to get 18ec+12 labs in place of 6 minerals & 6 raw energy every turn...)
Even halving the mineral investment with the Space elevator, it's not worth it, IMHO, it's just theory.
PS: I forgot to add one specialist, who was the citizen working the borehole. this doesn't change the above figures significantly, anyway

[vitamin j]

Sikander:
I don't see how spending 3 rows of mins and 2 rows of nuts to get say 8+ rows of nuts, not to mention neatly circumventing the cost/maintenance of a hab complex, really costs you anything. All pop points are not created equal. I believe colony pods are meant for founding new bases. You don't get more than half your investment back for disbanding any other unit, why should CPs be any different? Whatever... I guess if I'm gonna play MP I better sharpen my pod-booming skills and remember I don't need hab complexes.

MariOne:
Thanks for the links.

vitamin j

[MariOne]

Originally posted by vitamin j
Sikander:
.... I believe colony pods are meant for founding new bases. You don't get more than half your investment back for disbanding any other unit, why should CPs be any different...

MariOne:
Thanks for the links.

vitamin j

You're welcome :o)

Why? Because there is a command designed into the game and available in the Action Menu.
The 'B' command allows to build a new base OR to relocate a citizen into an existing base.

CPs are PEOPLE, not just material. That's what makes them different. And what about crawlers then? You can disband them like any other unit, OR cash them for full return into projects and prototypes. That's their feature. As adding to a base is one of the features of CPs.


Thus, if with this statement "colony pods are meant for founding new bases" you express your personal strategic belief, it's in your right, and in gerneral I also agree with you.
If you intend from a ruling PoV instead, then you're alone with your "VitaminJ view" of the game.
That's good for single player, where many others like to play their own self restricted mod (see Blake for one). But it's not justified in MP.

I also think that *generally*, if you have room available and not requiring a decade to reach, a CP gives better returns by founding a new bases.
But in peculiar cases you might find also convenient to relocate citizens from small fast-regrowing bases to big ones with already well-developed infrastructure.

And so far I didn't even talk of bypassing Hab limits.
Which after having considered the arguments in the provided links, should appear as evidently legal.
The fact that you don't strictly need hab complexes, doesn't negate that usually it's much easier to use them, especailly when you can pop-boom normally(remember, even after you bypass the Hab size, this doesn't set normal growth free without it).
With HabDomes, well that's different.
Imainge you already are using most of your tiles.
even building more crawlers, you'd harldy have the room to place them.
You have a base maxed at size 14 (+2 with AV, +2 if PK).
If it produces 20ish minerals and you have a normal income, you could produce a 3-rows unit every turn there.
If you can sustain for instance 6 turns of pop-booming, that base will stay at size 14 while you produce 6 CP.
Then, you can add in one turn those CPs and get a base 6 sizes beyond HabDome limits, say 50 or more turns before getting STS.

These are 6 extra specialist. You could have had 6 crawlers instead, but you might have lacked the tiles to put them on.
Or 18 rows worth of something else (note, this might happen well before orbitals). Which in the immediate could have been maybe more useful, but which 6 extra specialists in the long run would widely surpass in overall return...

So, it's an option, you have to weigh carefully, and also mainly influenced by your style.
But legal.
Unless all the players of a pbem agree to forbid it for their game.
But you know, the players of a pbem could also agree to ban Copters from their game, if they want....

[vitamin j]

Hey,
I wasn't trying to direct anyone or anything. I'm a relative newbie to MP, and I want to know what to expect. The fact that POP booming is available takes much of the bite out of POD booming being "illegitimate" or whatever, no doubt. I don't think the "it costs something" argument really holds water in most circumstances - if you're not pop booming, you basically get a bunch of nuts for free by moving a colony pod built in a small base into a larger base. I do have a problem with the exceeding hab limits part. It just smells bad to me, even if nobody cares. I think the "official" rules should address this, if they don't already.
I'm pretty sure I'll be recycling my hab complexes from now on, once they've outlived their usefulness, if they get built at all.

[knowhow2]

recycling habcomplexes could give you a headache later on. maybe you're striked by some pop-reducing weapon (like x) then the base won't grow back unless you build some new Habcomplexes even if you have enough food tiles. and by then building new habcomplexes hardly would be at high-priority.

[big_canuk]

Originally posted by MariOne
Sikander, when you get to Transcendii, you can consider the game practically over, you'll harldy have time to convert your BHs into food tiles. However, I was indeed wondering.....
A BH gives you 6 energy + 6 minerals.
A Farmed+Enriched+Condensed tile gives you 6 food.
This "CAN" represent 6 more population, to be transformed in 6 minerals and 6 energy as well.
But this would require 18 more satellites (6 of each kind)!!! To get 6 more votes, and the same resources...
The trade off would then be between 18 satellites and 6 specialists, that is 18ec+12labs per turn with engineers.
But 18 satellites mean 216 mineral ROWS!!! It costs MORE than the Ascent itself to convert a single borehole into 6 nurtured and productive citizens!
(OK, you can content of feeding the specialists. In this case it is 72 mineral rows to be invested in sats to get 18ec+12 labs in place of 6 minerals & 6 raw energy every turn...)
Even halving the mineral investment with the Space elevator, it's not worth it, IMHO, it's just theory.
PS: I forgot to add one specialist, who was the citizen working the borehole. this doesn't change the above figures significantly, anyway

Mario:

As always, your analysis is exhaustive, and superb. While I agree with you that it is not worthwhile to replace boreholes with condensers, post transcendii, it is strictly a matter of time, not a matter of tradeoff of sats, versus specialists.

My small nitpick, is that in your analysis, you neglected to factor in the fact that you only need to build 6 (or 18) satellites for *all* your bases to benefit. If one has 20 bases, then you get 360 ec and 240 labs per turn for 216 min rows (108 with the elevator). At 50 bases, it looks attractive at 1800 ecs and 1200 rps per turn.

But as you said, at this stage of the game, you have either won, lost, or have better things to do than put up nut, energy, and min sats.

bc

[MariOne]

< smacs his head >
of course...
< blush >

er....
I was thinking about all bases maxed out, with all equal population, and equal to the # of sats of each kind.

Of course, if you replace just one borehole, it's like I said.
And the other bases would not profit of those extra sats... till they also get more food.
I simply didn't consider that you can start replacing boreholes simultaneously in all your territory....

this happens when you think too much offhand, and not hands on...
< note to self: remember this when thinking about chicks too... >