Industry

[Yxklyx]

Hmm, if you're building a SP, you only need to switch to say something like Planned (to increase your Industry) a few turns before you think it will be built right? You don't need to be in Planned all the time? Since Industry just changes the cost you should be able to say change to Planned when the SP is 90% complete and then you'll get it built the next turn since Planned reduces the cost by 10%. So it seems that Industry bonuses don't really help continuously - only on the turns that something gets built.

[RedFred]

Switching to planned just to beat the other guy to an SP is something I'd prefer to avoid if I can help it, on account of the research hit.

I typically use short bursts of Planned for creche pop booms and not so much otherwise.

[Googlie]

OTOH, I've gone Planned for a few turns just for the industry boost - exactly to build that SP on a rush basis, or to fast-complete a Planetbuster or a bunch of facilities

As RedFred says, it's handy for a few tuers of pop-booming too if you have the creches and are running Dem, with adequate nuts per base

G.

[vitamin j]

If you can time it so everything gets built on the same turn, you're a better player than I! Then I guess just switching to planned as needed is probably a good idea. I tend to stay in planned a lot, esp early game. The faction-wide mineral savings from just 10% off is hard to get around... Add wealth and you're saving 20%. Plus the planned growth bonus is good under any circumstances. I can handle the efficiency losses, usually. After all, you can steal money and tech if necessary. I haven't had any luck getting my probes to steal minerals... (Well, you know, you don't generally capture units to disband them for half their mins...)

[Yxklyx]

Well yeah, getting everything built on the same turn is more difficult the more bases you have. The fewer bases you have the less efficient Industry becomes - if you only have one base then the Industry bonus only comes into play whenever that base builds something. If you just want the Industry bonus to speed SPs you can time that by starting a few of them at the same time. I just wanted to point out that unlike Efficiency, Industry doesn't help every turn - it's like a one-shot deal similar to disbanding units to add minerals to a build.

[Flubber]

I often used planned when trying to build a bunch of facilities at once and you don't have to time things. You just build up cash while in FM, switch to planned , rush your facilities in every base, taking advantage of the decreased rush costs. Next turn all your facilities show up and depending on the situation

1. remain in Planned (perhaps to boom) while popping out more facilities. 8-10 turns in planned can boom you nicely and let you pop out a couple of facilities more quickly.

2. switch back to FM (or green) for more cash/research for a while. I find for the more expensive builds like Treefarms or hybrid forests, the savings can be considerable, and more than compensate for the switch costs and lost research.

[Yxklyx]

I wonder why the designers didn't have Industry just increase/decrease the amount of minerals a base produced instead of increasing/reducing the cost. It would have made more sense no?

[Fitz]

Because then industry would affect support and eco-damage.

[Adalbertus]

Because then industry would affect support and eco-damage.

From the game balance, this might be a disadvantage. From a real-world point of view it is something I think this is exactly what happens.

[vitamin j]

Doesn't it really affect support anyway? If you're spending less mins on construction, you can afford to support more units, relative to someone without an industry advantage. It would be cool if industry settings directly impacted ecodamage...

[Yxklyx]

It just seems like a cheat that you can switch to and from Planned within two turns to take full advantage of Industry, as Flubber pointed out. It's not realistic - SE choices should not be things you frivolously change back and forth.

[vitamin j]

I think to do what Flubber suggests effectively is very energy intensive - you must have that free market cash flow to make it worthwhile for many bases. So there is a cost to that tactic. I admit it's a little screwy...

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Yxklyx
I wonder why the designers didn't have Industry just increase/decrease the amount of minerals a base produced instead of increasing/reducing the cost. It would have made more sense no?

Not at all, in my opinion.

The yearly mineral production of a base, is the amount of mineral that can be collected from terrain resources.
I don't think this is affected at all by the focus a society puts on Industry.

What the game represents, is indeed that with the *same collected resouces* (determined by which terrain you decide to put your citizens to work on, and how you did improve that terrain), a better Industry-oriented societary setting allows to produce more goods. This because of better usage of materials, of better efficiency in the industrial processes used to transform raw resources into finite products.

This doesn't necessary mean that you're producing more pollution-ecodamage.
First, the resources you take out fromt he environment are the same.
Second, although the production pace is higher, getting more usable construction material from the same raw resources means also less wastes, maybe also less energy waste and harmful by-products...

The effect of increasing production by increasing the overall process pace, thus also increasing the resources input, is not represented by SE variations, but by your decision to reallocate your workers/crawler on richer mineral-yielding tiles...

And of course, although this model is improvable, and thru all 1999 ther had been innumerable threads and debate on this issue, a game MUST NOT be a perfect representation/simulation of reality!!!
It should be a *smart* representation of reality, that is a modelisation faithful enough to give the impression of the variables at stake in the represented processes, but the most simplified possible to allow immediate playability without taking out depth from the game...

It's not realistic - SE choices should not be things you frivolously change back and forth.

Why???
That is YOUR opinion.

1st, as I said above, it's not my foremost concern if it's realistic, realism it's a mere plus.
2nd, from a game logic PoV, SE choices usually involve more than one factor. And you have to pay to change SE.
So to boost your Industry setting temporarily for a specific task, you have to pay twice the cost for switching, and also to live with changes in other SE effects for at least one turn.
Of course, this could be also improived in the implementation.
You could argue that the upheaval cost should be higher.
But I totally disagree that it seems like a cheat. It's a variable in a siplified model of an economic system, which you must learn to use at best weighing its costs and benefits.
It seems as much a cheat as using copters, or crawlers, or booming...
OH, sorry, I forgot that apolyton denizens are the ones who think the game it's better if you ban copters and crawlers and booming...

It is rather a cheat if you switch to Planned, take advatage of the better industry, and then swithc back in the SAME turn ("SE Quickie")
In this case: 1° you pay nothing as you get a refund in the same turn when you revert to original SE, 2° you don't suffer any collateral SE effect as practically all the other indicators take effect only in the NEW turn.
That is, you get something for nothing. THIS is really a design loophole. And it's practically the first "true cheat" that has been addressed and unanimously banned back at OWO times.


Probably the critical design choice made in the whole Industry/Production system, was this one:
When you switch SE, the already accumulated minerals stay the same.
But once collected minerals have been put into the underway item, they should be considered already part of it.
Thus if you have a 60% completed item under construction, it should remain 60% completed regardless of the effectiveness of the production line you'll use to complete it fromt there on (i.e regardless of the mineral cost = SE Industry).
This would have been at the same time more realistic AND more consistent and playable, with less room for cheats...

But that's the mechanism of the game and that's the way we must learn to play at our best...

[Flubber]

Wow I did not realize I would start a controversy. Marione I generally agree with your comments except for the following portion

Originally posted by MariOne



It is rather a cheat if you switch to Planned, take advatage of the better industry, and then swithc back in the SAME turn ("SE Quickie")
In this case: 1° you pay nothing as you get a refund in the same turn when you revert to original SE, 2° you don't suffer any collateral SE effect as practically all the other indicators take effect only in the NEW turn.
That is, you get something for nothing. THIS is really a design loophole. And it's practically the first "true cheat" that has been addressed and unanimously banned back at OWO times.

I am aware of SE quickies where you switch to power ( or simply out of planned or wealth) for only so long as it takes to cash a crawler for increased minerals (obviously a cheat) BUT I simply don't understand how a switch INTO Planned could ever be a SE quickie. I am probably missing something obvious but if I switch into planned a facility might show as completed (for that moment), but if I switch right back to something else then doesn't the cost revert back to the correct mineral cost (and now the facility may be 2-3 turns from completion).

I'm guessing that this is simply me misunderstanding what you meant but who knows, the game has suprised me before when I thought I knew something. But I thought the only SE industry cheat was in exploiting a temporary worse industry rating by the crawler cheat. Are there others that abuse industry?

[Yxklyx]

I think in the original game you could do this - this was later patched.

[vootguy]

So 4.0 doesn't allow this? How long does it take for SE choices to go into effect now?

[johndmuller]

Flubber,
Perhaps what you would do in an unethical brief foray into Planned is to Upgrade stuff, either for normal purposes, or as part of the SE Quickie gambit; you would get the cheaper prices that way would't you?

[vitamin j]

Wasn't there a thread detailing many of the bugs and cheats most relevant to MP? I think a specific persons name may have been in the thread title, but I could be wrong about that. It was definitely not the BIG bug thread. If one of the vets knows what I'm talking about and could point me in the right direction, that would be great.
Now that I think of it, it would very cool to have such a thread topped on the MP board - easy reference for old and new players. Instead of the forum wars thing which never gets posted in anyway, no offense.

[Yxklyx]

How was this a bug in the first place? Now, when you buy something while in Planned it fills up X squares of production - when you switch back to non-Planned, new empty squares of production are added. The number of production squares changes depending on your Industry rating. Perhaps it helps hurrying production when you have fewer than 10 minerals? For example you've got 9 minerals - switch to Planned then Hurry then switch back - perhaps you avoid the extra cost for Hurrying things when there are less than 10 minerals?

[Flubber]

The crawler quickie SE bug is fairly straightforward. The cost of a crawler in minerals is determined by the industry cost

-2 industry 36
0 industry 30
2 industry 24
4 industry 18 etc

The bug is that if say you were at +2 from Planned wealth and complete a crawlere, itcost you 24 minerals. If you do the Se quickie you could switch momentarily to green/power paying 135 ec IIRC for the switch. you cash your crawler for 36 minerals and then switch back to planned wealth getting an immediate refund of the 135 credits. so at the end of the turn a 24 mineral crawler was miraculously transformed into a 36 mineral one AT NO COST, if the player stayed in the new settinf to get the benefit, it is considerd a legitimate tactic since therer is an ec cost and other consequences.


johndmuller

I always thought that upgrade cost was based on the weapon, armour and special abilities ratings and was not directly linked to mineral cost. Later in the game, rovers with diferent weapons can have the same mineral cost but it still costs more to upgrade a 1-1-2 to the higher weapon strength. i will test your theory though since all I will need to do is check the cost for a "sample " of upgrades and then check again after an SEswitch. I will report back what I find.

[MariOne]

whew!
let's address your several issue in order!

Flubber:
you're right, it was in the excitement of the reply that I kept "to Planned" as per Yxlyx example.
I was just expounding the concept of frivolously changing SE back and forth.
It's true that the DOMINANT SE industry cheat was in exploiting a temporary worse industry rating, and in principle it's not working for just crawlers, but also if you disband any normal unit in to any normal item.

Yx:
This is a basic brick of the game design, it's not something it can be fixed, FurXs should redesign that whole part of the game (and if you think that they didn't want to export existing fix code from terranx.exe to terran.exe.... because they wouldn't have been able to charge you the cost of a new game for just a patch...)

voot: nothing has changed in SE

jdm (& Flubber): Upgrade prices are based on NEW unit's ROWS (plus W & A *increase*, all times 10ec), thus independent from your SE

Flubber again: good description of the SE quickies CHEAT (it's not formally a bug, it's a perceived loophole in a questionable design choice, FurXs would surely deny it's a bug. They even claimed that the Stockpiling Energy BUG was an intended feature, rahter than adim that they screwed the implementation of the turn upkeep and didn't intend to sweat to fix it! It becomes a CHEAT when you exploit it)
I would say tho that the concept is valid regarldess of the industry at the moment when you first built that crawler, eventually 100 turns ago.
If you benefit of a worse TEMPORARY setting, then it's a CHEAT (i.e. also switching from Wealth to Power and end in Knowledge, if that makes a sense. You should choose to cash the crawler under either the initial or final setting, but not an intermediate temporary advantageous one)

Yx: you almost got in the Bullseye the second time.
Indeed there IS a benefit for a temporary *better* industry related to Hurrying costs, but not because of the 10 minerals limit!
That limit actually is independent from your industry, that is it's NOT related to the first row length, but it always set a 10 minerals. This very often confuses also the most expert players!
The Hurry cheat exploiting better industry is in that the Hurry cost per mineral, for UNITS, depends on the amount of minerals missing to completion.

Example:
you're at 9min/row with Green
You must complete a 5 rows unit: 5*9=45
you have 10 accumulated: you miss 35!
Imagine that base produces only 3 mins (!!!). You'd need to pay for 32. With 35 missing minerals they cost 3.74 each (131 to complete), you'd have to pay 120ec for 32 minerals.

You switch to Planned, 8 min/row, the desired unit now costs 40 min. You miss now only 30.
With 30 missing minerals they now cost only 3.5 each!
You KNOW you'll revert to Green (if you don't revert to original you don't get the refund, and the trick is pointless), thus even if you could currently complete buying 27 mins, you OVERPAY for 32. They cost you 112ec, then you revert to Green, and you'll complete the unit just.
You spared 8ec for the SAME 32 minerals, for no other net final cost.

OK, it's a rather minor exploitment, but it's nevertheless a cheat.
And you only changed Industry by one level. It's also true taht normally many players already are at their best industry SE, and they can more likely worsen it rather than bettering...



to ALL:
here's Helium Pond's Consensus on Cheating
(PS: of course I strongly disagree with many of HP's opinions e.g. I'll NEVER agree that #12 is a cheat! Nevertheless, I think his intial approach is very mature and commendable (just that everyone can be aware of what needs to be discussed at the start of a game))

Here's a link to Bingmann's SMAC CMN site

[Flubber]

Originally posted by MariOne

Flubber:
you're right, it was in the excitement of the reply that I kept "to Planned" as per Yxlyx example.
I was just expounding the concept of frivolously changing SE back and forth

Thats what I thought but I wanted to be sure. AS to the rest of your post, thank you for an accurate description of the various features. I was pretty sure that industry rating was irrelevant to upgrade costs and your description of it as a function of mineral rows plus changes in weapons/armour ratings confirms this.

As to the SE quickies cheat, I referred to it as a bug as I think the game should attribute the minerals on a crawler cash or disband according to the SE settings at the end of the turn but it does not

[MariOne]

OK
that's philosophy, a bug should be something that was not intended to come out of the code working that way, or even working contrary to what stated in manuals or in in-game messages/statements indeed.
I think that attributing minerals to production on the moment that you issue the cash 'O' command it's easier to implement, and that's the way FurXs wanted it to work, not dawning to their minds what the consequences would have been...

Really, there was sufficient consensus that converting minerals already accumulated in items under production in oder to keep constant the "item completion %" during an Industry rarting change, was the simplest single-change solution to the whole approach of this problem.

[Fitz]

OH, sorry, I forgot that apolyton denizens are the ones who think the game it's better if you ban copters and crawlers and booming...

Hey, be nice to us poor Apolyton Denizens Mario.

Sometimes banning the factors that make for a power game can make the game more fun, and sometimes it just makes it boring. Depends on the people involved and the game involved. Just like I play Chess with a 1 queen in play limit, others play it with a rule that any pawn can become a queen, with no limit on queens on the board.

BTW, nice rationale on the mins produced vs cost reduction in regards to industry.

[johndmuller]

It seems that the proper way to handle the switching of SE settings is not all that simple. Both the maintain-the-min-quantity method and the maintain-the-percent-completion method are open to abuse. Perhaps some other quantitative valuation needs to be held constant so as to balance off the various elements. Maybe the performance of the build should reflect the manner in which it was built; maybe builds need to be acquired using all the different resources. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . . maybe it gets too complicated too easily.

Possibly some sort of compromise adjustment could be made to builds whenever you switch SE settings. For example, you would lose half of whatever ill gotten gains you accrued - so if the switch would have taken your build from 1/2 to 3/4 complete under the constant mineral method, your mineral count would be adjusted so it was 5/8 complete instead. The adjustments would take place right then and there too, when you make the switch, so reversed/repeated switches would be repeatedly/cumulatively penalized, killing that bird with the same stone.