What exactly is an energy park?

[Earwicker]

Also, while you've got all those formers playing around up there, remember to drill as may rivers as you can make run through the park for the extra energy boost.

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by Frankychan


Damn, this can't be good for the environment? How's the eco-damage? And how do you fend off all the mind worm attacks? When I make 1 borehole Planet gets all nuts and swarms my a**.

Have you read this article by Ned on Ecodamage? Inducing a pop before you reach tree farms really helps a lot.

http://apolyton.net/misc/column/175_ecodamage.shtml

[Uchuu-kun[SM42]]

Hold on another second. Crawlers can't harvest on echelon mirrors, can they? And if two echelon mirrors are adjacent, do they raise the energy of each other's squares?

[Maniac]

Echelon Mirrors produce the same energy as solar collectors (A on 1st Q), except that they don't profit from adjacent echelon mirrors (A on 2nd Q).

[Lazerus]

Yes frankychan planet does go mad with me, but i like to get my own back after all the annoying mind worm attacks that get sent at me. Besides the Hive needs the extra energy and minerals, spend a few upkeeping empath rovers/choppers and when those worms do come along more money !! and having each base make 3 formers, and thats even before clean reactors means the fungus soon gets swept away

The first pop raises starts off the 'clean mineral' cycle. Every pop/centuari preserve or tree after that raises the clean mineral limit by 1. So after awhile i can have a base with 100 minerals causing no eco-damage. Trust me you're going to have a great laugh once you get this sorted

[Uchuu-kun[SM42]]

Right, 's what I thought. Probably the best layout would be a staggered one; all the echelon mirrors are separated by at least one square, like this:

OOXOO
XOOOX
OOXOO
XOOOX
OOXOO

That way, you don't lose the +1 to poorly placed mirrors, and the overlap is greater than for aligned mirrors. I was going to make a program to check all this, but ran out of steam; an acquantance tried writing one in Delphi, but something's borked with it. Anyway, cheers.

[Alinestra Covelia]

When playing as the Hive, is it really that efficient to use energy parks in the first place? I usually build maybe one or two around my capital base, but once you get more than about five or six squares away in a many-based empire, I thought it:s just more efficient to use specialists and in-base facilities for multipliers.

[CEO Aaron]

Well, the only difference between Yang running an energy park and Morgan running an energy park is a mere 1 energy per square, which can be made up for if you've built the Merchant Exchange, so if you've built the appropriate tech-magnifying wonders, it can be just about as worth your while. The problem with relying solely on experts is, of course the hab/nutrient limits of your science city, but you can theoretically get around these by pod-booming and crawlering in nutrients.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I meant that with the Hive, you have such a large efficiency sinkhole that I thought it:s generally better to use specialists, especially given the time you have to invest in order to terraform the landscape.

And has anybody else wondered why building boreholes, echelon mirrors, and condensers is called *Terraforming*? When was the last time you saw a borehole, echelon mirror, or condensor on Earth?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
When playing as the Hive, is it really that efficient to use energy parks in the first place? I usually build maybe one or two around my capital base, but once you get more than about five or six squares away in a many-based empire, I thought it:s just more efficient to use specialists and in-base facilities for multipliers.

ANY faction is well suited to using E-parks tidal harnesses etc. if they choose to crawler the energy back to the headquarters base (as the heaquarters is immune to efficiency loss). Make the headquarters a SSC and heck even running at -3 efficiency you still get the energy (IIRC).

I agree tho' by and large Yang is especially well suited for specialization (save that he can't pop boom too well). His considerable support running Polic allows multiple formers per base thus allowing massive landscape remodeling.

[Hydro]

Other 'Terraforming' anachronisms: raising/lowering land and drilling to aquifer. The former (if you will excuse the pun) violates the law of conservation of matter and the latter is a software developer's hydrofantasy (oops - another pun).

On topic, I find it much more efficient to have casual (eg -utilizing available empty tiles) energy harvesting with lots of sea crawler harvesting. It takes much less work. By the time in the game when your formers have nothing else better to do than make labor intensive energy parks (a 6x6 farm would take ~216+ former-turns, depending on exactly what was constructed, super formers, and WP) the game is long over and you cruelly are toying with the other factions.

[gwillybj]

I have no problem with the game’s concept of Drill to Aquifer, or any other of the environmental engineering methods.

Up here in the northeastern U.S.A., they regularly "drill to aquifers" - they're called an Artesian Wells, where the underground pressure is such that a pump is not needed to extract the water. Oftentimes there is so much water that a pressure cap is not enough. They have to run a return pipe back down to the reservoir or, sometimes, get a permit to pipe the excess to a nearby existing stream.

Also, you don't have to go straight down to get to the ground water. On a hillside, you can go horizontally (or even slightly up) and just let the water run out. This is not an unusual practice in parts of the Middle East and the Arabian peninsula.

Granted, these various methods don't create a river of the magnitude depicted in SMAC, but the concept is still valid.

As for Thermal Boreholes, Echelon Mirrors, and Condensers: They are not impossible, just not feasible with current technology. If somebody doesn't nuke us all before we get the chance, these will eventually be realized.

[Hydro]

{{start off topic}}

gwillybj,

As a hydrogeologist I'll politely disagree with you on drilling to aquifers. Sure you can get water, but creating a river that would last for any length of time? Nope. What you could do is re-sculpt an entire terrain to make a new drainage basin, but then you'd disrupt a river somewhere else - robbing Peter to pay Paul.

And I still say that raising/lowering terrain violates the conservation of matter. Where does that mass come from, or go? Big, deep, dark mystery.

But then, if I can accept mindworms, telepathy, and a sentient planet, why can't I violate all sorts of other physical 'laws'? Maybe I'll just suspend disbelief.

{{end off topic}}

[Frankychan]

Okay I got good news and bad news... The good news is that I tried the energy park with crawlers and i was making some $$$ like mad (well, for me it was mad).

The bad news is that I tried what the article said and try to get a fungal bloom with pollution. Well, I put four boreholes around my test base with some surrounding mines and it fungal bloomed. Anyway, the mines and such were destroyed so I rebuilt them and I still had problems with pollution and mindworms.

...but this time the bloom had, oh let's say 12 DEMON boils. Actually 12 is pretty low. It got to the point where the comp was moving so many worms that I left the comp to get something to drink and they were still moving.

What am I doing wrong? (but at least the energy park works)

[Lazerus]

Well if that was your first pop you have waited really really late to do it (4 boreholes definately waiting too long) you need one done really early and then allowing pops over a gradual time to increase the clean limit and all those tree farms+hybrids+cent preserves to increase it aswell. I normally have my first eco damage pop around 2140-60 depending on a few factors, assuming i have 30 bases by the time its 2200 and they've all got some infrastructure thats a clean limit of around 50 minerals (guessing times and such here,been playing this way that long its subconcious now )

your clean mineral limit starts off at 15? something like that anyways and each pop only raises it by 1, other buildings also increase it by only 1, so it does take some time but be patient and don't do aim for too many pops in a row otherwise you will get those big pops with tons of worms sent by planet and maybe sea levels rising.

Also yes pops near the later stage of the game do become a massive nightmare, really should have a few empath choppers and elite-empath rovers dotted around your empire to quickly get to any site that pops, try having the odd clean trance defender in important bases aswell. Combine these with the 2 secret projects you can get for attack + defense and its time to cook

[CEO Aaron]

The important thing to remember when trying to increase your clean mineral limit is to get it over with _before you build any tree farms_. This makes each tree farm you build thereafter increase your clean minerals by one (as well as every Centauri Preserve, Hybrid Forest and Temble of Planet). It sounds as though you were trying to raise your clean minerals by continually forcing pops. While this can be a good plan, you need to ensure that you have lots of commando/elite empath units (rovers/hovertanks, please, air units can only pop fungus one at a time) there to clean up the vast amounts of worms you'll have at the base. In addition, don't rely on the squares inside the base radius to provide your minerals, ferry them in from mines build elsewhere (I like to plant mine in the polar region. People rarely go scouting up there, and there's plenty of rocky terrain).

As you've discovered, every successive fungal bloom is accompanied with a larger and larger 'pruning force' of native units, so this tactic will require a great deal of military commitment to make a go of it for long, however the income from all those planetpearls will make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

If you can't stand the heat of making your 'Judas Goat' base, consider simply tasking an idle base with the repeated production and scrapping of a centauri preserve. Each one built will provide 1 more clean mineral, and scrapping it will garner you 50 EC's. While not as profitable as a worm-farm, it's certainly much safer, and also will prevent any chance of global warming.

[Lazerus]

(I like to plant mine in the polar region. People rarely go scouting up there, and there's plenty of rocky terrain).

I did this against the AI ages ago and it became so unbelievably easy i promised myself never to do it again ... also the annoyance when global warming started later and around 10 bases had their mineral incomes halved