Efficiency and Children's Creche

2dfx · January 15, 2002, 22:41

When you have +2 efficiency on your social engineering and have a CC, does that mean that you have a paradigm economy in that city and have no penalties for going over 50% allocation for psych/labs/econ?

Also does it have any effect on bureaucracy drones?

moi · January 15, 2002, 23:31

i dont believe CC affects the allocation waste in the tax/lux/sci allocation. i'm not sure about the burocracy drones tho.

Ogie Oglethorpe · January 16, 2002, 00:27

2dfx,

The effect of the creches is such that efficiency losses are handled at a +4 level but as the lab/econ allocation loss is a global value based upon the +2 eff. (say -4% labs -8% econ), I believe the game applies these penalties as a constant across all bases regardless of individual base eff.

All base energies are essentially treated twice for eff loss. The first time for losses due to efficeincy due to distance from capital etc. and the second based upon the allocation penalty. I'm pretty sure all the game allows the creches to do is minimize the first eff. loss.

As for the effect on reduction of drones. I can affirm that yes it does indeed reduce the effect of drones. I know I have hadd cases where I had drones, specialized for a turn then rushed a creche, once the creche was built I was able to eliminate the offending drone (presumably due to better individual base efficiency)

Og

vitamin j · January 16, 2002, 01:55

You just gotta love the children's creche, maybe the most cost-effective facility in the game. +2 efficiency, +2 growth (pop boom anyone?), +1 morale and no negative morale effects in the base square. For 50 mins and 1 energy/turn. I think it's my favorite...

Adalbertus · January 16, 2002, 03:54

In my current game, I play Hive, builder style. For a long time, the global indicators (like social engineering screen) showed a net loss of some 20 EC, while I had some 100 or 200 EuroCents (or what is EC?) more each turn. This is not the Stockpile-Energy bug, because my buid queues were full. I had a lot of Children's Creches, which is normally the second build for me, after Rec Tanks. So the Creches may make the difference. Any idea by you mighty number-crunchers?

MariOne · January 16, 2002, 06:01

OO, if you have some energy allocated to Psych in the SE, the base building the Creche could simply waste less of the collected energy, thus have some more going into psych too, which could account for the drone reduction, apart the supposed-local direct effect on BureaucracyDrones formula.

I admit I have never tested the local/global scope of some aspects of Creches. The effects on growth is self-evidently local, but I don't have more details to add now offhand to your considerations above about the other effects.

Adalbertus, are you aware of the Maintenance bug?
It has been fixed in SMAXv2, but not in SMAC.
It causes the maintenance costs to be lower to what is displayed in the F2 screen.
At Thinker difficulty level you have 33% discount off the Maintenance expenditures.
Say, you set SE so that your gross income is 30, but you have 60ec maintenance costs.
Up to Librarian level, economy works as declared, and you have a negative balance of -30ec per turn
At Thinker level the 60ec maintenance cost you read is actually 2/3rds (33% off) thus you pay only 40ec for maintenance and your balance is of -10ec per turn.
At Transcend level the Maintenance cost is 1/3rd of displayed value (66% off), and in our example the 60ec would actually be 20ec costs, bringing your balance to a +10ec per turn instead of the -30 you read.

Adalbertus · January 16, 2002, 07:52

Quote:

Adalbertus, are you aware of the Maintenance bug?

Of course, not.

It will always remain for me a mystery of professional programming that they use entirely different routines for calculating the same thing (and not only in SMAC/X).

aaglo · January 16, 2002, 09:19

Adalbertus:

Are you sure you aren't getting any trade income? Or loan repayments? But I highly doubt that HIVE could make any serious income based on trade... but who knows; with huge bases and planetary governor...

mrdynamic · January 16, 2002, 12:58

I build one in all my bases just for the +.25 defense bonus .....

Adalbertus · January 16, 2002, 15:01

Quote:

Are you sure you aren't getting any trade income? Or loan repayments? But I highly doubt that HIVE could make any serious income based on trade...

No, I had not at that time (the only trade partner was Morgan who was on the way to be sucked up by Miriam). But this sort of income should be accounted for (and I think it is) in at least some of the displays (main screen, social engineering ...)

aaglo · January 17, 2002, 03:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Adalbertus
..(and I think it is) in at least some of the displays (main screen, social engineering ...)

Main screen: yes
social engineering screen: no
IIRC

MariOne · January 17, 2002, 10:52

aaglo, you don't see a breakdown item for commerce in F3 screen, but this doesn't mean that it's not accounted for.

In F3 screen you read "Gross Income". That sums all the "Economy" figures (lower center section in your basewindows) from all your bases. Those values INCLUDE the commerce, and INCLUDE the effects of Creches and the like.

In F3 you also read the running period balance from loans/credits.

You don't see the maintenance costs in the basewindows, but you can see it in lower left in F3 if you click on "bases", and the cost total is also reported above in the balance summary.

The result is displayed as NET income. The same value for NET income is the one you preview in SE screen.

All the economic effects are accounted for in the F3 screen.
The only bug affecting the accounting, is the Maintenance bug, that at top difficulty levels makes the game use a value for maintenace costs lower than it should be (the one displayed).

The Stockpile bug is different in the sense that is a new source of income which is "unexpected" because it will be generated at beginning of next turn. It does tho follow the economic rules (and for test purposes you can easily negate it putting a normal item in every Q).

Some player claimed that SMA_X_ introduced a new element of undocumented income, but no one was ever able to prove it or describe it (AFAIK).