Repost of Hurry cost summarization

[Fitz]

As short as I felt I could make this, here we go. Observations welcome.

Facility: 2 credits/mineral, double for below the first ten minerals (4).

Secret Project: 4 credits/mineral, double for below the first four rows of minerals completed (i.e. - dependent on Industry rating) (8), double again (16) for below the first ten minerals.

Units: cost to hurry = INT ((M^2)/20 + 2M) Where M = number of minerals left to complete the unit. INT means drop any fraction and only use the integer. Double for below the first ten minerals.

A couple of important points.

1. When I say double for below minerals completed, that means if you have less than amount complete (usually less than 10), the cost/mineral applies to ALL of the minerals left. If you've done 5 of 30 on a facility, the 25 left cost 4 for ALL of them (i.e. total cost = 100). Once you're at 10 of 30, the remaining 20 cost 2 each (i.e. total cost = 40).

2. Partial hurries are directly = to the (cost to hurry)/(minerals left), important for units only. You KNOW 1 mineral cost two for a faclity, but when a unit has 25 minerals left it may cost 100 (4/mineral), and when you have 20 left it may cost 60 (3/mineral). BTW, the cost for units isn't always an integer (11 to rush the last ten = 2.something / mineral).

3. Effective rushing: Never rush anything at less than ten minerals unless you really need it. Instead, do a two stage rush or wait a turn. Pay for enough minerals to get to 10 minerals on the next turn (i.e. +4 minerals per turn from the base, starting at 0 minerals, only buy 6). Then complete the rush the following turn at the lower cost. For secret projects, make this three stage (up to 10, up to 10%, then finish).

According to input below, overpay does not work. However, ten minerals of the current turn production WILL be carried over. Therefore, only partial rush if you get more than ten minerals a turn. If you get 30 mins/turn at a base, rush to complete-20, and you will have completed the production and carried over ten minerals.

Link to the original Hurry Thread in the General Forum. There is a table in this thread that included the Cost/Mineral and Total Hurry Cost for units based on how many minerals are left.

Edit: reflected some corrections from MariOne regarding SPs costs.

Edit: overpay changed to reflect posts below.
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited October 05, 2000).]

[WhiteElephants]

Thanks Fitz. Know wonder it never made sense to me. I was using the chart for facilities.

[Helium Pond]

Fitz, nice job, but you got one important thing wrong. For unit costs, the INT operation should not be applied, if INT means that you drop any fractions. All fractions/remainders, no matter how small, are rounded UP. A per-mineral cost of 6.125 does convert to 6 per mineral, it converts to 7 per unit. This is very important. I don't know what the mathematical expression is to indicate that.

Also, MariOne made some useful lists, of costs-per-mineral when the remaining minerals are 1-100. I modified the scripts.txt file so that these lists come up every time you use the Hurry menu. Googlie said he would post the modified scripts.txt file on his web site. I'm not sure if that's happened or not.

[Fitz]

HP, you misunderstood what that formula determines. It determines the TOTAL cost to hurry the unit, based on the TOTAL number of minerals needed to complete the unit. And the INT does apply in that case. Stick in 5 minerals, and you come out with 11.25 ec before INT, and that well known 11 ec after applying the INT. Always round the total DOWN for TOTAL cost of the hurry.

Now, as far as determining cost/mineral, I totally agree with you. All fractions are rounded UP. If the cost is 6.25/mineral, then the real cost is 7/mineral, if you want to use the easiest method of calculation. I did indeed forget to mention that.

On an end note, I'm not sure if that is totally true when multiplied by several minerals. If you pay for 4 minerals at once with a nominal cost of 6.25/mineral, do you need to pay 28 ec or 25ec? I would think the latter, put won't place money on it.

Edit: MariOne has correctly pointed out that you only round UP after multiplying the fractional cost per mineral by total minerals. (hard to dig out of his post )
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited September 19, 2000).]

[MariOne]

Concision: I'll strive for it: hard task for me!

As I was cited (thanks Fitz for qouting the original thread), I'll correct few lingering mistakes.
[it's your Spock/NewtGingrich speaking ;^)]

Domain of applicability: all my tests were performed in SMACv4. I now have SMAXv2 too but didn't (bother to) verify them again.

- friendly suggestion: Fitz, instead of saying "double for the first ten", it would have been easier and more precise: "double _below_ the first ten" or rather "double when you have _less_than_ 10 minerals accumulated"

- units formula reported here is perfect: Helium Pond, why do you have to complicate the matter? Your thirst for simplification made you lose the focus on precision

- indeed, you HAVE to round down the formula value, i.e. to drop any fraction, to have the exact cost for *completing* a unit

- Fitz corrected his aim "on his end note", as mark13 pointed out. You DON'T have to round up the cost per mineral. You round up the final (fractional) cost for a *partial* payment (as you obviously can only use integer ec amounts).

- actually, 25 missing minerals cost 81ec (I understand your was just an offhand example), that is 3+(6/25) ec each.

- WRONG STATEMENT:
"Secret Project: double cost for the first 10% of the minerals"
Actually, that limit is the only one which depends from your industry setting. The limit is: double cost below 4 mineral ROWS accumulated for a Project, REGARDLESS of the total cost of the project. That is,
below 40 minerals accumulated with normal industry,
below 36 minerals accumulated with +1 industry,
below 32 minerals accumulated with +2 industry,
and so on.
The limit of first 10 minerals accumulated is instead independent from your industry, for any item (it can be altered in alpha.txt tho).
[question: which tests did you perform to verify your 10% statement, Fitz?)

- STATEMENT TO BE VERIFIED (I'm pretty confident it's wrong, but memory of my tests is old)
"minerals overpaid are carried over"
Fitz's example: you miss 20 minerals and you produce 5. If you overpay for 25, next turn you'll have already accunulated (5 overpaid + 5 production) = 10 minerals. I think to recall that I tested this as FALSE.
Minerals overpaid, i.e. the ones shown in RED in your production box, are NOT carried over. In Fitz's example you should find only the 5 minerals from production, and the 5 overpaid (i.e. the ec you spent there) will get simply lost, wasted.
You CAN tho overpay for a facility, in order to SWITCH production in the same turn. This has a narrow range of convenience, but it makes sense under particular conditions.

- I did not exactly made lists from 1-100.
I noted down OBSERVED values in a list
I devised the formula from the values list.
I can now use the formula to build a handy table, of the *desired* dimensions. Anyone can do the same.
This means: when I have the table at hand, I can lookup instead of calculate, that's faster and easier.
But when I don't have the table at hand, I can anyway determine the values I need to know.

- With the formula, and knowing how to obtain costs for partial payments, you can indeed build a two variables table for any kind of hurry you want to do, so that you just have to lookup and not to calculate.
I have an excel sheet for it, but don't want to bother setting up my web page to post it on the web. Anyone interested let me know his e-mail somehow.
I also have a sheet to tell when it's "convenient" overhurrying a facility and switch to an expensive unit.


IMPORTANT:
When the formula/table is needed/useful?
It's useful for PREDICTIONS!
When the moment to hurry has come, it's the game itself that will tell you the cost!!! do'h!
But: if NEXT turn you'll have to hurry some crawlers, or some vital military units, and you're limit with your money reserves, you might need to know IN ADVANCE how much all those hurries will cost you. So that you know NOW how many reserves you can spend and how many you have to spare, or how many ec you need to ask to your allies!

DISCLAIMER: I reported all this for the sake of precision, I have no personal pride or hostility. You don't need to trust my words, I'm no one.
We're talking about figures here, and not about personal opinions. These are indeed facts, and not matter of discussion. Anyone interested in the issue, can put up a test by himself, and find out the truth on his own, should he have any doubt on what is written here (provided he is able to properly devise a test model...).
For this reason, I thank in advance anyone who'll correct me, pointing out any mistake should I have made in my tests (of course, bringing the proofs).

---

Forgive me as I failed in my concision goal.
As Fitz said, I just kept it "as short as I felt I could make this"...

PS: I can't recall where, but someone pointed out that there was a thread PRIOR to the one linked here, and addressing the hurrying issue in a simple and correct way from the start.
I was directed to both these ones by Aredhran, anyone cares to find and bump up the truly original?

[Fitz]

MariOne, my statement about 10% and SPs was unverified and taken from previous statements regarding such. And I noticed over the weekend it was incorrect. Thank you for the exact formula, and I will edit my original post.

Overpayment was what I was given to understand. I will test it, and see if it agrees, and edit the post (again) to reflect my verification.

[mark13]

Fitz,

I am pretty certain that you would only have to pay 25 ec, because the amount is rounded up AFTER the cost is multiplied by the relevant number of minerals.

[Dry]

Are you sure all units are equal? I may be wrong but I had the feeling that the formula was different for
- 'civilian' units (formers, crawlers, probe(?));
- 'military' units
- prototypes.


On overpay:
I am 100% sure that with my version (I don't know which one, I don't have the game here) overpaid production is lost.

[mark13]

Nope, I'm afraid on mine (UK v4) the overpaid minerals are, wait for it......carried over to the next production, assuming it doesn't exceed ten minerals. It does say this in the original SMAC manual (middle of page 63), although whether it changes with SMACX I'm not sure, as I don't have it.

All types of unit follow the same hurry cost formula, although facilities and SPs are different.
[This message has been edited by mark13 (edited September 27, 2000).]

[Aredhran]

Dry-
The unit hurry cost is the same for all units, no matter what they are.

Mark-
You must be mistaken. Overpaid production is *never* carried over. The only thing that gets reported to the following year's build is the actual base mineral production.

Example: You are producing, say, a supply crawler (3 rows). Your base production is 5 minerals so you're thinking, "I'll overpay for 5, so that next turn I'm already at 10 and can re-hurry without the double cost". Well, no such luck. The 5 overpaid minerals will be lost, and you'll only have 5 minerals reported to your credit (your base production).

Try it in the scenario editor, you'll see.

Aredhran

[mark13]

Sorry, I was indeed mistaken, I thought you meant the base production minerals for that turn.

I wonder if it's the same for the disbanding of units inside bases. It does say in the manual that up to 10 minerals can be carried over, although I am not certain of the validity of this.

[Fitz]

Alright, I've editted out overpay, changing it to reflect that 10 minerals from the bases production only can be carried over.

[MariOne]

Nice to see this thread still alive.

A credit to mark13: the manual actually reports that.
As the others tested, what the manual reports is tho wrong.
(in my SMAC manual it's at beginning of page 80. Ch.4, Colonizing Planet, after the 'Base control screen - section by section', in the 'Switching Production - how much do you lose' paragraph).
Manual says that after switching production to a cheaper item the excess of transferred minerals is carried over up to 10, just as overproduction. That's false. "Overaccumulated" red minerals are always lost, regardless of how you did accumulate them, either payment, production switch or unit disbanding.

Nice and neat post has become yours, Fitz.
I wonder, are we giving out too much of our knowledge?