Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: Yitzi on November 08, 2012, 12:27:23 AM

Title: What are all the benefits of ICS?
Post by: Yitzi on November 08, 2012, 12:27:23 AM

One of the main goals of the balance mod I'm planning is to depower ICS to the point where momentum players will want light ICS (2-4 spaces between bases), and everyone else won't want it at all.  So of course I'd need to know what the advantages of ICS are.  Here's what I've gathered, what I want to know is if I'm missing anything:
1. It's an early boost (due to lower travel time), and at 30 minerals apiece for typically 4-6 FOP, crawlers mean that you can turn that early boost into a permanent advantage that more than offsets the increased facility cost and bureaucracy drones.
2. Clean minerals are per-base, so more bases means more safe production.
3. By the time Hab Domes come into play, the game is effectively over, so a base can't use more than 14 squares anyway.
3a. For that matter, once you get satellites (even sky hydroponics labs), the most effective strategy is nutrients and specialists (which by that point produce 4-5 total energy worth each before multipliers); with farm/enricher/condenser and sky hydroponics labs, a 13-pop base can be supported on 2 squares plus the base square, so dense bases are highly desirable until hab domes.
4. With 2 or less support, support is per-base, so more bases means more troops, very useful in the early game for a momentum player (this one I'd want to keep.)
5. If you're not pop booming, it allows for faster growth, particularly useful for the Hive and Usurpers (who tend to play momentum.)

And one that I've heard but don't believe: Close-packed bases prevent penetration into your territory via Zones of Control.  The reason I don't believe it is that with a spread-out base network, you can build roads/maglevs only between your bases, and then (because zones of control will prevent the enemy from using the roads/maglevs), the simple time it takes to get there will prevent them from penetrating into your territory before you can respond.

So are there any other advantages to ICS that I missed?