Population growth facilities maintenance

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I just recently discovers that Hab Complex and Habitation Dome require substantial maintenance. That is pretty restrictive especially at Hab Complex stage when faction may not swim in money yet. Should these facilities require maintenance at all? They are forced on bases to grow beyond certain limit. There is no way around it and everybody pays. If anything, it discourages vertical growth which is quite oppressed in SMACX already.

I see maintenance as choice cost. Like if one wants to use Command Center benefits to have better soldiers they pay for it in maintenance for as long as they use the benefit. Even drone facilities are choice - you can either build them or use allocate more psych. Population limit facilities are not. Building them already is a burden. Should we zero their maintenance?

[bvanevery]

Well if you're not rich by the time of Hab Domes, you're lame.  No sympathy for that one.

How as a matter of play style, are you managing to be so poor, even in the Hab Complex era?  I've never noticed it as a cost difficulty.  I tend to either go Green and sweep the whole world of supply pods, or go Capitalist and just rake in the dough.  Either way is a lot of money.  Did you mod the supply pods so that they don't give any money or something?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Human can mange. I am more concern about AI who often suffer from all kind of stupid things including not being rich at any point in time.

You are missing a point. I am not talking about these facilities being affordable. In this regard one can talk about combined maintenance for all of them, not these specific ones.
I am talking about whether these specific ones need to be maintained at all since every base should have it. It is absolutely forced on everybody unlike other facilities. Even recycling tanks and recreations common are not forced like that.

[bvanevery]

I don't understand why your AIs are not rich.  Mine are.  Maybe you've got a Thinker Mod code problem with all the cash getting blown?

I don't agree that Rec Commons isn't forced in the real world.  People have to be kept happy somehow.  I don't think the AI is bright enough to do it with just police units, or I wouldn't have had to conjure up predefined units to specially get it to happen.

A small difference in my mod is Hologram Theaters only cost 2 to maintain.  It seems I never changed maintenance for Hab Complexes or Hab Domes.

[lolada]

Its certainly help for AI, especially for Morgan. I guess its ok to remove it to help bad AIs manage a bit more. Some AIs are doing great, but bad ones really struggle.

Not sure whats with AI coding, but AI production/terraforming in thinker can go terribly bad. Some AIs skip basic facilities or they get destroyed and terraforming was sometimes terrible - especially that fungus galore from eco-dmg. And then when AI go nuts with wars, as they always do, they spam so many units negelcting facilities.
Somewhere in there could be huge improvements for AI.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Helping AI was my point. Having good strategy is a difficult thing by itself with such versatile game even for human. Of course AI sucks one way or another. Thinker tries to correct it with changes here and there. I see it improves combat behavior. However, there is still room to make it even better. I'll remove maintenance for these facilities in my next release. Will see how it works out.

[dino]

AI on transcend pays only 1/3 of maintance cost.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Really?! Never knew that. Any reference on this information?

[Nexii]

I would say that overall, building costs and building maintenance are a bit high in the base game. Whereas creating new bases was much too cheap. Most powerful strategies did use booming but only to fuel ICS. This has the strange effect of obtaining facility techs long before they're very useful

It's a problem I saw too, and weakening forests to 0 E only makes it worse. I had the same thing going on when I reduced tidals. Tidal+kelp is very good relatively when condensor+borehole are nerfed

At +2 ECON maintenance shouldn't be a big deal though. I can see it being more of one if you aren't

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree that in vanilla ICS is very cheap. However, I don't think vertical or horizontal growth is a choice. You have both at the same time and expand in both directions. It is very nice design when one fuels another. How else players would populate whole planet?

Moreover, in vanilla they somewhat disconnected due to low colony mineral cost but not nutrient one. Therefore, a simple population growth can fuel the expansion. WTP doubles the colony mineral cost making vertical growth a prerequisite for expansion. Now one needs both growth and developed industry for that. Which means facilities, formers, terraforming, etc.

I wouldn't say building a base is cheap. Jut mere formal founding a base costs about 30-50 nutrients and 60 minerals plus travel time = about 100 resources. One could build a genejack factory instead for that. This new base is not a good member of the society yet. It needs defense, basic infrastructure, formers, terraforming, etc. It take a lot of time/money/minerals investment to make it actually contribute to your wealth and power.
Then you can lose colony in travel. Then you can lose base to worms. Even if you didn't lose it you can lose population. Then you can run out of good places. Finding a good spot for new base becomes more and more difficult. Then you lose efficiency to corruption and drones. These b-drones appear even in well established bases so expansion affects whole empire. It takes more and more to continue expansion with diminishing return. The ICS is not infinite. Even with cheap vanilla colony it wasn't. When it gets to conflict the proportionally built horizontal-vertical empire with cut through thin layer overextended one like a knife through butter.

The problem of ICS in vanilla was not in its indefiniteness, of course. But in ability to spread very quickly at the very beginning of the game before major conflicts start. Thus claiming big portion of territory with tiny bases and THEN start to grow them vertically. That was a winning strategy because smaller bases grow fast and with cheap colony this is only thing that fuels expansion. No need to even care if you colonies die en route. The production rate is just enormous.

Two things put a check on it in WTP. Higher mineral cost makes it twice as slow. Higher randomization gives wild life more chance to destroy colonies and weak bases. These make ICS strategy nonviable anymore. One simply won't be able to clamin enough territory to secure the victory.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I tend to write long posts. Do I?

In short. I disagree building costs are too high. Faction spends about 1/3-1/4 or production power on facilities. The rest is units. So facility costs are not that impacting.
I agree that maintenance could be too constricting. More precisely, the maintenance and EFFICIENCY+ECONOMY are not well balanced between each other. On a negative side of the spectrum faction go into negative balance while in positive they swim in money. Although, this is what costs/benefits of each SE model are for. They should balance each other.

[Hagen0]

The issue with growing tall in Smac is drone control. It is not so easy to pacify drones in a cost-effective manner.

Why do you say that ICS runs out of land? Large bases need more tiles per base unless tbf if you use specialists for drone control you can get away with less.

Morgan with the PTS can in fact ICS forever. It's a good way to play him.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The issue with growing tall in Smac is drone control. It is not so easy to pacify drones in a cost-effective manner.

I think it is quite opposite. More bases -> additional drones in all bases. The total drone control expenses are bigger for larger empire.

Why do you say that ICS runs out of land? Large bases need more tiles per base unless tbf if you use specialists for drone control you can get away with less.

Morgan with the PTS can in fact ICS forever. It's a good way to play him.

I didn't say you cannot. Please understand the idea and don't tear my words out of context.
I said the benefits of ICS diminishes with more bases you have. It gets more and more expensive and less beneficial. It loses its value beyond some point. Although one can still spam them forever. Nothing physically prohibits it.

[Hagen0]

I simply assume all bases are all drones. To stay below the b-drone threshold you need to stop expanding at 6-10 bases which is very low even if you pop-boom early.

I was precisely contesting the point that ICS gets less viable. If you have the PTS you can profitably ICS with Morgan until you win the game. A small base needs one police unit or a Recreation Commons to quell drones. Large bases require crawler/specialists, Psych expenditure or horribly inefficient buildings like Hologram Theaters.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree PTS adds great value to ICS. However, this is a special case as only one faction can have it. It cannot be considered a regular strategy everyone can use. PTS essentially triples colony value. This is this particular project issue. Not the expansion strategy issue.

Also b-drones do increase number of drones beyond base size by making super drones. It takes more to quell them comparing to simple drones. Expanding keeps impacting even after turning all population into drones.

I agree that keep expanding and keep base sizes under 4 is a viable strategy. I just don't believe it's a winning one in this mod. Let me know if you manage to consistently win this way.