Overpaying problems

[Mampfred]

In Vel's guide I read that overpaying can be a good concept when rush-building so I tried it but it doesn't work.

I am building a recycling tank and the next thing in my queue is a former. To complete the recycling tank I would have to pay 60 creds; I paid 100 creds but after the rectank is finished I don't have any additional minerals for the former. What am I doing wrong?

Do I need a certain industry rating or something? I tested it playing Morgan at the beginning of the game with SMAX version 2.0.

[MariOne]

I didn't read Vel's guide on that point, but simply put, it must be wrong or prone to misinterpretation...

As I had the occasion to remind the readers in a recent thread...

Excess ACCUMULATED minerals are NEVER carried over. They are wasted. This means all the minerals that appear in red in the production box.

Excess PRODUCTION is instead carried over to the new item you'll produce in the next turn, with a limit of 10 minerals.
This means that if you are, say, producing 17 net minerals in a base, and you pay for a complete hurry, 7 out of the 17 minerals you'll be producing next turn will be wasted, and you'll carry only 10 of them over. In such cases, you'd better pay for a partial hurry leaving those 7 minerals outlined to be completed, and the remaining 10 to be carried over, without wastes.

Overpaying could be convenient only in one case:
when you know that you'll be switching to another item *in the same turn* after you pay to add minerals.
Imagine you are producing a facility, and you realise that you NEED to get an expensive unit out of that base next turn (e.g a Trained Missile Interceptor, costing 7 rows IIRC).
Maybe you know you'll be already losing some minerals in the switch, and after it you'll be left anyway with more than 40 missing minerals to complete the unit. In that case, the missing minerals will cost more than 4ec each, IF you hurry the *unit*.
At this point, as minerals for a facility cost 2ec each, even after they'd be halved in the switch they'd cost 4ec each, which would be then marginally convenient.
But this is mere theory, in such situations you'd likely have alternate and more effective solutions.. usually...

[Lefty Scaevola]

10 minerals can be carried over. Thus the maximum over useful paywould be the amount to yield ten mineral after taking into acount the base's mineral production. If the base is doing 8 minerals overpay enough for 2 minerals. If the base is doing 15 minerals, underpay by enough for 5 minerals instead of 15 minerals. The 10 mineral balance is significant, because then you can rush buy in the next turn (though sometimes not in the "maitenace" phase at the start of the turn, you may need to acees the base during the regular part of the turn) without the premium price for not having ten minerals procution acrued.

[Mampfred]

Thanks for your answers but I'm still confused.

To point out more clearly what I mean I will quote the part of the guide I'm relating to:

"Let's say, for example, that you've got a new base off and running. Your first move is to spend 25 credits to rush the base's former out the door. Well and good, but when the former is finished, you've got no "carry-over" minerals in your production queue, and your tiny size one base is only cranking out 3-4 minerals a turn, which means that it'll be at least three turns before you build up a sufficient number of minerals to get you past that dreaded "first row" of minerals (where rushing ist at its most expensive). Therefore, if you know that after you build your former, you'll be wanting to move right on into building a Recycling Tank, why not overpay the price of completing the former, in order to get the maximum number of carry-over minerals (ten) in your production queue from the start? By overpaying, you set yourself up right away for being able to rush your next build at that base, which will greatly speed the base's early infrastructure."
In the following Vel explains how much you usually have to overpay and how this concept developed, it's on page 80 of the guide if anybody wants to read it himself.

Also Lefty says "If the base is doing 8 minerals overpay enough for 2 minerals." That seems to be pretty much like what is described in Vel's guide, but it doesn't work for me. My new built base is producing 3 mins/turn, and rushing a former costs 25 creds. If I pay e.g. 45 creds I still just have the 3 minerals I am producing anyway at the beginning of the next turn in the first row for the rec tanks I had in my queue afterwards.

What am I understanding wrong?

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
10 minerals can be carried over

This is what I said.
If you intend "wherever they come from" then you're wrong, as I had alreay explained above.

Indeed, leaning upon your own examples...

If the base is doing 15 minerals, underpay by enough for 5 minerals instead of 15 minerals

This is correct, exactly as I had described above.

If the base is doing 8 minerals overpay enough for 2 minerals

This is totally wrong.
Feel free to apply your assumption in your games: you'll find that you'll have 8 minerals accumulated in the next turn, and NOT 10.
The 2 you overpaid for are LOST.
You only carry over the PRODUCTION, not the already accumulated ones.

Please, I'm not lecturing you, this same wrong assumptions has been brought forth many times, and verified by many more experienced players than me.
So please, do NOT blindly believe to my words : go and try by yourself, it's easy to verify.

The 10 mineral balance is significant, because then you can rush buy in the next turn

This is the main point & purpose of the issue, thank you for explicitating it.
Of, course, your base must *produce* at least 10 minerals, as you *can't* fill up for the 10-limit by overpaying...
And this can't be achieved in the very early game.

[Lefty Scaevola]

It may be that the carry forward is limited to the lesser of 10 or the base production, next time I play I will experiment to see, typically I do not have enough money early in the game with small bases to overpay, because I am expanding rapidly and have several little bases to spread the money around, and I have to run a few turn at each base between rush buys. Perhaps only the underpay pay part when producing 11 or more is valid.

[MariOne]

Mampfred, cross-posted with your latter post (I'm posting from work, and doing it in the background in free time-slices in-between a workflow process i'm writing the definition of! )

You're not understanding anything wrong.

Despite all the respect and praise I tribute to Vel's skills, merits, and undoubtedly SUPERIOR strategic "vision" and approach to the game, the passage you reported above is WRONG in at least 3 points.
Probably Vel relied on common sense assumptions which he had not the time to cross-check and verify personally.

Things actually work as *I* humbly reported.
Best proof be it that the tests you did run by yourself, as any good gamer should do, support my observation on game's fact and mechanichs, and not Vel's.

Lefty: "It may be that the carry forward is limited to the lesser of 10 or the base production",
I still think that a simpler way to tell the same things you wrote now is
"only the production minerals can be carried over..." but english is not my language, so I'll accept corrections.

"Perhaps only the underpay pay part when producing 11 or more is valid"
The overpay part is NEVER valid.
If you're already producing 10+ minerals, it's also futile
If you're producing <10, then it simply doesn't work as many players naturally would imagine. INCLUDING ME, at first, until I verified it wrong.

I'm not riding a high horse: I just see you stumbling on the same root I also stumbled into in the past, and I'm lighting the known path and giving a hand to those who come after...

[Adalbertus]

In this subject, don't look at the AI bases. The AI seems to have unlimited carryover of minerals. Unfortunately, they don't seem to loose minerals when you rushbuy an SP one turn before they build it (maybe compensates for the fact that they do not get a notice when you are about finishing an SP). The only thing you take from the AI is turn advantage.

[Fitz]

I'll confirm Mairo's post, not that he really needs it.

Vel is wrong, and obviously typed this in Version 1.0 of his guide, when conventional wisdom was that overpaying worked. I expect he just never caught that he needed to edit it out in the later versions.

Either that or it worked in the original versions of the games, and was changed in one of the patches.

[Adalbertus]

Oops, why do I post in a thread created by someone from Düsseldorf? I'm born in Cologne

Long live the mutual hatred between cities ... as long as it doesn't get too serious.

[Mampfred]

Then I can understand very well why you moved to France; everybody knows that Cologne is inhabited exclusively by people who cannot afford moving elsewhere, even if it is just France

[Adalbertus]

Sings:
Ich mööch zo Fooß noh Kölle jon!
(I want to walk to Cologne)

Yes, the train connections from Nancy to Cologne are a near desaster (fastest was 5 hours, local express trains only).

everybody knows that Cologne is inhabited exclusively by people who cannot afford moving elsewhere, even if it is just France

As I've read in a newspaper, a crane operator at Rotterdam port earns way more money than I do as a physicist. And to earn even some, I had to go to France. And where are the people who are responsible for employing scientists at universities, and they don't do it? You guessed right: In Düsseldorf!

[Mampfred]

Hey Cologne also has a university you could work at (though it is understandable that you don't want to work there )
And why should the guys in Düsseldorf employ Colognist scientists if they also have the possibility to employ qualified scientists from Düsseldorf