Cost of mind control

Curiosity · June 28, 2003, 01:11

Thinking about playing the Angels has prompted me to experiment with the costs of subversion. I've only been working on bases so far, but the results are pretty unexpected;

1. The cost is proportional to the population, plus the number of combat units with attack greater than defence in the base square.
So, if you load a base with all your attacking troops then it's going to be very, very costly to subvert... plus one for the momentum players!

2. The efficiency at a base is one of main drivers of the cost of subvertion. For a far-away bases, +2 efficiency can be as good as +2 probe! Presumably, it modifies the 'distance' in some way. Fundie looks even worse for war now, in comparison to Demo!

3. Riots halve the cost. If you increase drone activity to the point of riots, then this applies in the same turn. On Transcend vs human players, this should normally only take one extra probe.

4. Cost is proportional to 1 + (No. of EC/1200).

I'll see if I can turn this into an exact formula, but I suspect that there are other factors, including who the base originally belonged to.

Any thoughts, or has this all been studied before?

Mongoose · June 28, 2003, 11:01

I know of no empirical work on this. (Doesn't mean it hasn't been done, of course. I was away for over a year, and missed quite a bit.) Are you certain the effect you ascribe to EFFICENCY is so, or is it an effect derived from distance? Perhaps there is a base specific EFF. value that applies, incorporating both faction EFF. and distance from HQ. For energy loss, the datalinks say that distance is capped at some value I cannot recall and am too lazy to look up in mid post. It's possible the cap does not apply to the base specific value for purposes of mind control. Hmmm....Interesting.

Curiosity · June 28, 2003, 16:12

I think the distance is modified by efficiency, much the same as with energy loss. For example, a far-away base may increase in cost to subvert by over 70% when a faction switches from 0 efficiency to +2. Creches work here, too.
I'll investigate the possibility of a distance limit, too.