Can a base be starved to death?

tonic · September 18, 2002, 08:07

I can't see how this can be done when a size one base always has 2 nutrients to break even. Perhaps only when random events are on and when some sort of pestilence strikes and reduces the nutrients to <2?

I certainly couldn't do it in an OCC game with random events turned off.

Flubber · September 18, 2002, 10:41

You "starve" the base down to size one and at that point your analysis is correct but you rush a colony pod to disband the base-- there is a pop up window that asks if disbanding the base is what you want.

IIRC this can only be done on the higher difficulty levels for reasons that have never been clear to me.

Clear Skies · September 18, 2002, 10:41

Why don't you just rush-build a colony pod when the base is down to 1 population? Then you get the 'disband base' option and poof! No more base! And you get a working CP to go off and found a new one.

Edit: gah, crossposted

Beaten to it by a few seconds.
Oh, and you need to have the Governor deactivated in order to be able to disband a base.

Chowlett · September 18, 2002, 15:42

Yep, the only situation this isn't possible is on Citizen and Talent difficulties, where (presumably to make growth easier) building a pod at population 1 doesn't cause the base to disband.

tonic · September 18, 2002, 21:11

Thanks all. I reckon this should be in the FAQ! I might take the liberty of doing so.

For the OCC condition that the base not be held for the following turn, it looks like giving it away to a friendly enough faction (or even back its original faction, as happened in a recent game of mine when every other faction was in vendetta mode) seems the only option.

Urban Ranger · September 19, 2002, 04:16

Chowlett,

I can't remember for the Citizen level, but you can definitely disband a base on the Talent level.

Clear Skies · September 19, 2002, 08:43

Citizen and Specialist, I believe, is when you can't. I remember because one of my friends was swearing when he found he couldn't disband his bases after over-ICSing...

Chowlett · September 19, 2002, 09:00

Ah, I meant Citizen and Specialist. I'd mis-remembered the order of the difficulty levels.

MariOne · September 19, 2002, 13:27

I'm only figuring it out offhand, but technically ther could be another way to starve a base without building a CPod.

You can lower the nutrients income of a base by convoying nutrients to other bases, using crawlers.

As I just come from thinking of it, I have of course never tested it.
I don't know what happens to convoy orders when the convoyed resource is negative in the base...
Are the orders upheld? Or automatically interrupted?

Not something you can achieve in one turn anyway. Provided you have all the needed crawlers in the base, you need to move them to other base(s), and wait the needed time for the existing nutrients in the tanks to be consumed (in Civ, if you had the granary almost full, it was easier to sell the Granary and let the base grow by one: you'd find yourself with an empt granary, ready to starve the base, rather than having to consume a whole granary of food before).

gwillybj · September 20, 2002, 22:20

The simplest way to starve the base without convoying nutrients out is to assign all the citizens as specialists so no resources are harvested (the nutrient display will show hunger). If non-nutrient spaces are available (minerals and/or energy only, especially minerals), assign workers (or crawlers - but I prefer workers) to them. As already mentioned, there must be no Governor.

I just can't bring myself to starve them, so I specialize only as many workers as is needed to prevent (stagnate) growth. I'll allow a nutrient deficit as long as it doesn't cause starvation.
Then I keep building Colony Pods (hence the need to work mineral spaces) and emigrating them to another base (either one already existing or by establishing a new base in a better location). I adjust the number of specialists as needed to maintain the stagnation. I'll hurry a Pod only if the ECs aren't needed for something important.

Sometimes it can take a while, but I have fun doing it this way - and the base is available for repairing active units.

big_canuk · September 20, 2002, 23:12

Oohh, I like that idea, gwillybj. Could be great for replacing bases in enemy lands with your own, especially if you have the pts.

Probably not worth it for high facility bases, or definitely not SP bases, but great for those do nothing bases with lots of terraforming.

bc

CEO Aaron · September 21, 2002, 21:20

Depopulating is great for any base, large or small, if its not in your grand design. Simply sell of the base facilities and shuttle out the citizens in colony pods. I've even disbanded the colony pods to get the base empty sooner.

Main_Brain · September 22, 2002, 06:37

@ gwillybj: This is of course totally wrong..
The Base Tile always provides 2 Food(w/o RT) If I recall correctly and i thought we were talking about BaseSize1 here?

gwillybj · September 22, 2002, 14:37

@ Main_Brain: Yes, you are correct. It cannot be starved because it is the base itself that provides the 2 Nutrients, so it would never lose that one last population point. The only way to be rid of it without obliterating it is to turn off the Governor, hurry a Colony Pod, and abandon the base. I was commenting in line with the thread's deviation from the original question which was in fact about a Size 1 base.

@ CEO Aaron: "I've even disbanded the colony pods…"
Makes me wonder why such an action was not anticipated and coded as an atrocity. After all, you are dumping 10,000 citizens out in the anoxic atmosphere to asphyxiate.

Straybow · September 22, 2002, 23:06

Well, disbanding any unit doesn't mean stripping the soldiers or crew naked and kicking them out into the wild. Disbanding a Colony Pod would be scrapping all the specialized equipment and letting the people make their own way to a friendly base.

MariOne · September 23, 2002, 04:43

Gwill, I'd like to point out that contrary to what you say I did NOT deviate from the original question.

Indeed mine was the ONLY reply strictly on topic.

The other posters correctly reported that you CAN'T *STARVE* a size-1 base, you can only *abandon* it by building the last Colony Pod.
Abandoning sorts the same effect in practice, but strictly speaking it's not like starving...

I was the only one to suggest the only way which *in theory* could bring to *starve* a size-1 base (apart from the random *uncontrollable* negative event reported by thread starter).
Whether *in practice* it is then easy or convenient to do it that way, this is quite a different matter.
I didn't even bother to check if the game actually *allows* that effect to take place, or if some safety mechanisms interrupts at last moment the orders convoying nutrients out of the starving base...

Clear Skies · September 24, 2002, 12:08

Of course, if you have the Planetary Transit system, a size-1 base in an awkward position can be replaced by a size-3 base in a much better position...
The PTS is a pretty cool SP, if you ask me. Used correctly, you can create massive amounts of population seemingly out of thin air - great for kicking that evil AI out of the Planetary Governor seat

Cybergod · September 24, 2002, 13:42

Plus add the Empath Guild...

I remember that there was a rule in patched SMAC that if modified lets you obliterate bases without it counting as atrocities. Do I recall this correctly?

Mongoose · September 24, 2002, 14:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Cybergod
I remember that there was a rule in patched SMAC that if modified lets you obliterate bases without it counting as atrocities. Do I recall this correctly?

I don't recall if it was in the original release or included in a patch, but yes, there is a switch in alpha.txt and in alphax.txt, which when changed between 0 and 1 sets obliteration to not be an atrocity

gwillybj · September 25, 2002, 00:01

MariOne

You are correct!
I humbly admit my error

The conversation is a bit convoluted, and I did not read carefully or think clearly before writing.

Spacecow · September 27, 2002, 14:42

An enemy unit could finish a size one city off... I'm not sure if a probe team can 'genetic warfare' a city to oblivion or not.

Cybergod · September 27, 2002, 16:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Spacecow
An enemy unit could finish a size one city off... I'm not sure if a probe team can 'genetic warfare' a city to oblivion or not.

You can also kill a size 1 city by attacking units in it with Nerve Gas (no matter how many units in the city)

MariOne · September 29, 2002, 09:09

OR... kill a size TWO base with Nerve Gas, if there's only one defender in base (1 citizen lost for halving b/c of gas, 1 lost b/c last dfeender killed. Buster found out this one).
It should even work with single-garrisoned size THREE base (as gassed populatilon is rounded *down*, gas makes size 3 become 1...), but I never tested it.

As you can't gas your own bases, all this has nothing to do with the topic