Efficiency Drone Formula

CEO Aaron · February 5, 2003, 02:55

Having never gotten Vel's guide, I don't know if it contains the formula for how many bases can be supported before inciting efficiency drones. I checked the FAQ and search functions but never found anything on this topic. Can anyone enlighten me?

MariOne · February 5, 2003, 04:57

IIRC the game datalinks give you a fairly precise idea on those numbers.

Ned was the one investigating the matter, and IIRC you could find his reports embedded in one of the EcoDamage Column commenting thread. You might attempt to follow the link to the comment thread that "should" be at the bottom of that column, #175 IIRC.

Anyway, I suggest you search for Bureaucracy (I thought that even searching for just "Drone" should have let you find something...).

BTW, I got Vel's guide, but didn't read it thouroughly. I had the impression that he concentrated on strategies tho, and didn't include numbers tables.

OFFHAND, in the formula there is a factor regarding efficiency, say, something like (4+SEeff), and a factor regarding map size, referred to as MapRoot.
That I recall fairly well, and it's SQRT(MapTiles/3200).
As 3200=40x80, which is the #tiles of the Standard size, this means that for Standard maps the MapRoot factor is =1.
Small planets have 32x64 dimensions, and as both dims have a 0.8 factor to the Standard size, SQRT(0.8*0.8)=0.8, you have that the allowed #bases for Small planets is 0.8 that of a Standard one.
Similarly, the factor for a Tiny planet is 0.6, and for a Huge planet it's 1.6
A 48x96 planet would have MapRoot=1.2, a 56x112 one would have 1.4
A 44x88 would have 1.1, unfortunately for some reason Large size is 44x90, and the MapRoot factor for it is some irrational number slightly greater than 1.1

Sorry for not recalling the exact formula offhand, but opening the game will just do for you, check the datalinks!

I can tell you that for a 0-efficiency faction (i.e. no Gaians or PK, no SE Eff changes like Police/Demo, Planned/Green), on a Standard Planet you can build 7 bases before triggering the 1st warning.

What Ned clarified, is that for when you reach the 2nd warning (i.e. 14 bases), the #BD (Bureaucracy-induced Drones), every base will have ONE BD, with some added after each new one you found.
This mean that at 7 bases you have 0 BD, and at 14 Bases you have 14 BD. This means that MORE than 1 BD will have to be added for each of the 7 bases you'll be founding to get from 7 to 14.
Ned determined the pattern with which the BD are added in the preexisting bases, as (allegedly) that pattern is always the same, considering the base founding order and not the proximity to the newly founded bases as I initially thought.
ALL THIS is just what I recall about Ned's work, and frankly I never cared to check or investigate that deep in the matter, I just content to know the BD warning levels and deal with the extra drones as they come, without foreplanning about *specific* bases. That was always enough for me to manage my factions efficiently, and all know I'm a micromanagement freak.

MariOne · February 5, 2003, 05:33

Found the link in the column, just as I described.
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=21690

See Fitz's last post in that thread for the formula, which I paste here as well for your ease anyway.

Max bases without extra drones =
(8-Diff)*(4+Eff)*maproot/2

Where Diff is 0-5 (citizen = 0, transcend=5).
Eff is factions Efficiency rating from Social Engineering.
Maproot is 1 for standard, 1.6 for Huge.

Just like as I recalled

I thought there was also a Diff factor, but as I always play on Transcend...

So, at Transcend Diff factor is (8-5)=3
Assume base Efficiency
3*4*MapRoot/2

This gives 6 bases without drones on Standard Size.
I thought to recall you had 7, instead by founding the 7th base you DO get the 1st B/W (Bureaucracy Warning) AND the 1st BD (Bureacracy-induced extra-drone).
Take Gaians
3*(4+2)*1/2=9 BD-free bases
Take PKs
3+(4-1)*1/2=4.5 BD-free bases (i.e. the 5th base gets the B/W and triggers the 1st BD)

Take Thinker level, diff factor (8-4)=4
default factions
4*4*1/2=8 BD-free bases, B/W founding the 9th
12 BD-free bases with the Gaians, 6 with the PK.

Take Huge Planet, Transcend Level
3*4*1.6/2=9.6 thus the 10th base gets the B/W
B/W at the 15th for the Gaians, at the 8th for the PK.

Beware, the SE Efficiency changes DO have immediate effect on the presence of Bureaucracy Drones.
That is, if you have founded a lot of bases and you are suffering too much from BDs, switching from Planned to Green will bring your Eff factor from (4-2)=2 to (4+2)=6, instantly allowing you to have THRICE the bases without BDs. Yes, you would see all of those pesky drones diasppear on the next turn, at the cost of very bad growth and reduced productivity (but you'll have much more workers to use and much less EcoDamage).
You'll still see the size-induced normal drones, of course.

The same is true when you switch *into* a negative Efficiency SE choice.

MariOne · February 5, 2003, 05:56

BTW, if the formula gives, say, 9.6, I used BW for Bureaucracy Warning, this means by the 10th base you get a warning and a B-Drone somewhere.
Ned uses it rather as "Bases Without", which makes it 9.
9 bases without B-Drones
Warning & B-Drone by the 10th base
just to know what we're talking about

One other thing that I didn't investigate, is where does the 2nd warning fall if the formual gives a fractional result.
Take the 9.6 limit for Huge Transcend planets.
Will the game allow you 9*2=18 bases with only 1 BD each before starting the 2nd BD round, or will it calculate 9.6*2=19.2, allowing you 19 bases with only 1 BD, and give you the 2nd warning with the 20th base instead of the 19th???
Of course by the time you get to 19 bases, you'll surely have some advanced SE choice in effect, influencing your efficiency factor.

Also, IIRC, if an Efficiency SE change lowers your Bureacracy base limit below the #bases you already have, you will NOT *see* any warning, you just get the B-Drones "as if"...

Alex · February 5, 2003, 12:45

Capt Dizle · February 5, 2003, 15:10

Beware what you ask for you might get it.

CEO Aaron · February 5, 2003, 17:59

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks for the info, Mario, you're the man. I've never been a ICS type player before, so I can't recall ever having gotten the _second_ bureaucracy warning. Does the second warning denote an even larger rate of drone generation?

Also, if you're in Transcend, and all your citizens after the first are drones anyway, do the bureaucracy drones actually mean anything after the first non-drone is conveted? It seems like the higher difficulty you go, the less this kind of thing matters, since I don't think the game supports the idea of 'double-drones'. Once you get HGP and/or PTS (and VW if you're UNI), you can make as many bases as you like at no real penalty. Is there something I'm missing here?

MariOne · February 6, 2003, 04:46

CEO, I think the concept behind it, clarified by Ned, is that the "ground" tier of bases, upt to the 1st BW, has 0 BD each.
The "1st stage" tier of bases, after the 1st BW, will make ALL bases (including the previous tier) have 1 BD each when it's complete, i.e. right before the 2BW hits.
Similarly, each subsequent tier of bases will make ALL bases have (N-1) BDs right before the Nth BW hits.
Thus, if you have 6 BD-free bases, when you have 12 they'll all have 1 BD each, when you have 18 they'll all have 2 BD each, when you have 24 they'll all have 3 BD each, and so on.

About the effect of a BD# higher than base size, or simply higher than there are content citizens to be made unhappy, yes, somehow the game supports the concept of double-drones, or super-drones. Their handling is not exactly linear tho, in that some features treat them as a single drone, while others as a double one.
Besides, it was only SMAX that introduced a visual display of a superDrone (a more intense red), but I think that SMAC too kept account of them in some ways.

The PTS only applies up to size3 bases, that is, in a size 4 base you observe NO drone-pacifying effect from the PTS.
Happiness-related Project help you tackle drone Problems, also with relative ease. This doesn't mean that the extra drones are not present, and that they don't absorb the benefits of the said projects.

Anyway, I'm neither a true ICSer myself, and by the time I happen to hit the 2nd BW limit (which not necessarily, indeed rarely, comes with a visible warning, due to SE switches and eventually conquests, as I said previously) I usually have the necessary measures in place to avoid really bothering about it.
Besides, when you have so many bases, they are most likely highly specialist-intensive, and that way of managing citizens dulls very much the negative effect of drones.

That's also why I never made Drones my field of expertise...

Verrucosus · February 6, 2003, 11:06

At least in classic SMAC, a negative efficiency rating (as opposed to negative modifiers that are used in calculating the rating) seems to be treated as a zero rating for bureaucracy purposes. This is not documented in the manual or datalinks.

MariOne · February 6, 2003, 12:58

If you mean that with an hypothetical SE Efficiency of -5 you can't get a "negative number of BD-free bases", I'd say d'oh!

If you mean that if you have -1 SE Efficiency the (4-Eff) factor "seems" to be treated as (4-0)=4, I'd say that maybe it's not documented because it's not proven...
your "seems" is not supported by my experience, as I think to recall BWs occurring earlier when running the PK or when runnig a normal (non-Hive) faction with Planned but not Demo.

I might be wrong, but I don't know when I'll have time to bother testing it again....

Capt Dizle · February 6, 2003, 13:11

I never have understood why people thing that the loss of new base minerals from Demo is reason not to run it. It seems to me that the pluses from Demo always outweigh that.

Capt Dizle · February 6, 2003, 13:16

Oh, btw Mose, I saw your post in another thread about rover formers versus infantry formers. I think the rover formers are much more productive. It can't be shown in a simple equation (at least not by me), but there are times when they save so much time. Example, you need to shift formers over a long distance or you need to build roads in the construction of an energy park. As for the parks, having rover formers to build roads first essentially double the production time of the infantry formers who therefore should never have to waste a turn in moving. This of course comes in play mostly in SP games.

MariOne · February 6, 2003, 13:41

When your bases still produce less than 10 minerals per turn, when you don't currently need to unbalance your allocation too much, when you don't have that many bases yet, you can as well wait few turns to switch to Demo until you have plopped dow your underway Cpods.
Sometimes, when I have to build a wave new bases after being long in Demo, I consider the costs of switching out of it and back vs. the minerals I gain. Sometimes, if I manage to synchronise 4-5 new bases, it turns out that it's worth it.

Not mentioning when your research paths do grant you PlaNets *long before* you discover EthCalc

About Rover formers, well, by thoroughly examining them, I simply don't think they're *much* more productive. At least not the way I'm using formers.
Remember that at game start you usually rush your formers as first item when founding a base (IF you didn't switch to Demo yet!

), and that rushing a Former costs usually something in the 20ec (8 out of 10 missing minerals), where a Rover one in the same conditions would cost something above 50ec. Or *at least* two more turns production.
Provided that you have Mobility in the first place.
Later on, they might have their niche application, and indeed sometimes my rationality pushes me to build up to 2 or 3 Rover Roadbuilders, but I don't feel myself at a loss with the fleet of normal ones I usually have at that point, for the most part of TF average uses.
Remember also that on rock and fungus their advantage is negated.

A different pair of shoes is when you get Fusion.
There the choice between a cheaper basic TF-1-1*1, a 3-rows armored TF-3-1*2, or a 3-rows TF-1-2*2 becomes really tougher.
Not mentioning throwing the Superformer and/or the Clean ability in the mix, and the fact that I usually am short of DW slots...

Verrucosus · February 6, 2003, 14:52

I'm sorry my confusing post earlier.

The suggestion is that, if you have a negative efficiency rating the 4-Eff factor is treated as (4-0)=4.

I used the term "seems", because it is only based on my limited, but consistent experience. When I asked about it a long time ago in Nethog's thread "Hive and Zero Efficiency, http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=19777, the responses were mixed. Given the amount of details about bureaucracy drones presented here, I only wanted to repeat my suggestion to find out whether it had since been confirmed (or disproved).

Petek · February 6, 2003, 21:44

OK, I just started a new game of SMAX playing Lal. Huge map, transcend difficulty. With those settings a faction with an efficiency rating of zero can build 9 bases and will get the bureaucracy warning when building the 10th base. That's exactly what happened with Lal (and I never changed the initial SE choices: No demo or planned, efficiency remained at -1).

If I can raise another related issue about B-drones: I seem to get the first such in bases that are building SPs. Am I just being paranoid, or has anyone else observed that? I remember some previous posts that suggested that B-drones appeared randomly in bases.

Sikander · February 7, 2003, 01:57

Petek is quite correct, for B drones negative efficiency ratings are changed to zero for the purposes of this calculation. I notice it all the time in the early game as I switch SEs. It's a good thing too, as it allows Yang and Lal to still lay out a decent number of bases.

MariOne · February 7, 2003, 07:45

Oh, well, I should stand corrected then.
My memories must not have been that accurate, or not referred to consistent environment (i.e. other variables might hav influenced them).
Now that I think to it, a PlannedPK would have had only INT(3*(4-3)*1/2)=1 BD-free base on standard Transcend!
BTW, Yang has 0 Eff floor anyway, so that reasoning should be N/A to him.

I do KNOW that SE changes immediately influence your B-Drones distribution tho.
Do you mean that this works for waiving Green or Demo, but not for gettin into Planned? Or that only Gaians get Bureaucracy-penalised for getting into Planned, but not any other faction starting from 0 Eff?

In summary, your SE Eff changes DO influence your B-Drones, but the SE Eff value is floored at 0 for that purposed, as you all said.

MariOne · February 7, 2003, 07:53

Regarding the LOCATION of appearing B-Drones:
I never run *accurate* tests about the matter.

I *thought* that the locations were related to proximity to the newly founded base.

*Definitely* the new B-Drones do NOT always appear in the new bases (sometimes they do, sometimes they don't).

Ned sustains that the order is fixed, following some pattern based on the base founding order (default F4 sorting).
Some observations (dating 2 years ago) on my only SMAC pbem would partially confirm that (i.e. they don't deny it, but were not that accurately run to positively confirm it). Those observations, if my memory doesn't fail me again, would show that I definitely got B-Drones first in bases that were not building SPs.