Optimal Land Use: Cities, and Crawlers, and Formers, oh my!

[Earthmichael]

This is a thread of a discussion about the role of cities, crawlers, and formers, and the best use of the available land at different tech levels.  This is pulled mostly from "The State of SMAC 2", since it was largely off topic.  So I am going to try to move the gist of the discussion here.

If moderators can remove the off-topic discuss from "The State of SMAC 2" thread, that would be appreciated.  If they can also clean this thread up, that would be nice too, since I could not figure out how to maintain the dicussion other than pasting the other discussions as quotes.  Hopefully the discussion is still coherent, and more cohesive since it is all moved together.

[Earthmichael]

I don't think crawlers are overpowered, but rather rightly priced.  30 minerals to harvest 1 square seems fair (where a colony pod can harvest 2 squares and get other benefits for the same cost).  Crawlers are also very vulnerable to combat, particularly air units, and can be subverted.

Specialists also do not seem overpowered.  Until late game, you get at most 5 energy for a specialist, whereas in midgame your workers are typically getting 3/2/3.

Satellites are pretty expensive.  Yes, they provide a global benefit, but each satellite costs a lot.  Also, sats can be targetted by other players.  Still, if you want to weaken sats, make them only give half resources to each base regardless of whether you have an Areospace complex or not.  As for the probe team, it should only be able to affect a single sat, not the entire sat network at one time, if such a thing were implemented.

[Earthmichael]

I always thought it would be nice if a probe team had the option to take down/take over another faction's satellite net. The probe team could only do that in the HQ of a faction.

I agree with Earthmichael here.

I think the crawler have a pretty easy counter if you focus some military on destroying them.

Unless they're defended.  But even with a counter, they're way too cheap, at 30 minerals and no upkeep (in comparison, a worker costs 20-130 nutrients, more once you get hab domes, and has upkeep of 2 nutrients and 2 psych.)

I don't think crawlers are overpowered, but rather rightly priced.  30 minerals to harvest 1 square seems fair (where a colony pod can harvest 2 squares and get other benefits for the same cost).

Firstly, that colony pod is worth only 1 square, as you give up a population point (and thus a worker) when you build it.
More importantly, that colony pod then requires all those production-multiplying facilities you mentioned in order to get full benefit; a crawler uses the production-multiplying facilities of its home base, and is therefore better compared to another population point in that base.

Crawlers are also very vulnerable to combat, particularly air units, and can be subverted.

That still leaves them overpowered in times of peace (e.g. before contact).  Also, when the only possible responses to crawlers are to use crawlers yourself or to go to war, that leaves no room for a more worker-based builder playstyle.

Specialists also do not seem overpowered.  Until late game, you get at most 5 energy for a specialist, whereas in midgame your workers are typically getting 3/2/3.

Ok, I'll grant that; let's just agree then that advanced (4+ energy) specialists should come no earlier than Hybrid Forests (which are needed for that 3/2/3 you mentioned), and then the question of whether to move Hybrid Forests later (similar to the other similar 240-mineral facilities) is another issue.  (Before Hybrid Forests, however, 4-energy specialists are too much, since they make crawler+specialist too powerful as compared to workers.)

Satellites are pretty expensive.  Yes, they provide a global benefit, but each satellite costs a lot.  Also, sats can be targetted by other players.

Sats can't be targeted by other players until Self-Aware Machines, substantially after they can be first built.  Moving Orbital Defense Pods earlier in the tech tree and making them cheaper, and moving mineral and nutrient satellites somewhat later and making them somewhat more expensive (because those two snowball all too easily) would be all the "weakening" that would be needed.

[Earthmichael]

Firstly, that colony pod is worth only 1 square, as you give up a population point (and thus a worker) when you build it.
More importantly, that colony pod then requires all those production-multiplying facilities you mentioned in order to get full benefit; a crawler uses the production-multiplying facilities of its home base, and is therefore better compared to another population point in that base.

A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource.  They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that.  A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.

A city created by a colony pod can grow.  After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on.   Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities.  A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.

However, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role.  It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.  It can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ.  It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation.  But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.  It is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal.  I would hate to see this tool removed; I would rather see the concept broadened to other 4x games!

[Earthmichael]

A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource.  They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that.  A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.

Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially.  Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better.  Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square).  After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park").  Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well.  (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia).  Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.

A city created by a colony pod can grow.  After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on.   Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities.  A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.

And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.

However, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role.  It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.

And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.

It can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ.  It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation.  But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.

I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).

Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.

It is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal.  I would hate to see this tool removed

Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."

[Earthmichael]

Your analysis neglects the city square itself.  A city with no worker (just a doctor/empath/etc) still produces a lot of resources, particularly with Free Market/Wealth.  The extra resources added by the worker definitely make the total MUCH more than a crawler would give.  My crawlers typically provide either 2-3 N or 2-4 M or 1-3 E.  This does not seem overpowered to me; it seems fairly valued.

Normally, when someone says something is overpowered, there is apparently one overpowering strategy enabled by the overpowered item.  I don't see this at all for crawlers.  They can support any kind of strategy you want: large city, small city, builder, momentum.  So perhaps you can better explain to me what is the problem that you are trying to fix?

I am not familiar with the term FOP.   What does it mean?

[Earthmichael]

FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)

And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).

I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.

A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource.  They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that.  A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.

Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially.  Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better.  Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square).  After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park").  Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well.  (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia).  Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.

A city created by a colony pod can grow.  After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on.   Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities.  A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.

And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.

However, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role.  It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.

And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.

It can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ.  It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation.  But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.

I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).

Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.

It is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal.  I would hate to see this tool removed

Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."

[Earthmichael]

You miss a lot of factors here.

First, until mineral limits are limited, which does not occur until early mid-game, a crawler can obtain at most 2 minerals.  So it takes 15 turns for a crawler to multiply, AFTER it has made it to the square. 

Second, it might take 5-10 turns (or more) just to move from the city to the square being harvested.

Third, you have to have a suitable rocky square with 8 turns of terraforming to produce a mine.  There are not that many rocky square available, so that constrains how often you can do this.  Furthermore, a city can harvest this just was well.

But you have missed the real culprit here: Terraformers.  It is terraformers that are grossly overpowered.  And they cost only 2/3 as much as a crawler (or equal for a clean former).  Just a mere 4 turns, and a 0/0/0 square is turned into 1/2/1!  And the Former does not even have to stay in the square to maintain the improvement!  It is permanent!  The Former can move to another square and begin its magic!  It is the amazing Former than turns a 1 mineral rocky square into a 4 mineral square that can be exploited!

So now that we know the real culprit, lets unite!  Let's ban Formers from the game, or at least make them cost 100 minerals each!

[Earthmichael]

1. In actual play, if I have a reasonable city spot that I can defend, I will always preference a city over a crawler.

2. I typically build at least 4+ clean formers for every 1 supply crawler, even though they are the same cost, because formers are overall more valuable and give faster paypack.  Crawlers as just built for special purposes, to fill in games, or save cities the burden of having to bother harvesting a single resource square (so my city can harvest another multiresource square, or possibliy produce specialists instead).

3. EVERYTHING I build better have a pretty reasonable payoff, or I won't bother to build it.  A Genejack factory in a decent city has a far higher return than the same resources spent on crawlers.  Same with most energy multiplying facilities as well.

I don't know what got you on your rant about the cheapness of crawlers, but they are just not any cheaper than competing items, like colony pods, formers and resource multiplying buildings.  I think recycling centers are a much better value than a crawler because:
1. I get 1/1/1, something no crawler can give.
2. I don't have to terraform a square, or even have a square available.
3. It is a lot less vulnerable than a crawler.

And a recycling center is not the most valuable building by any means.  The mutliplying buildings can be MUCH more valuable.

I have never built huge numbers of crawlers; I have not played a game against anyone who does.  I do play with a large number of formers; my formers typically outnumber by crawlers by a factor of 5x or more. 

So I don't know who you are playing against to have such a bias against crawlers.  But I can tell you this: I doubt that they are playing a very good strategy if they are playing with that many crawlers, and you should be able to easily beat them by putting more focus on large cities.

[Earthmichael]

Fair point with the mineral limit restriction, but I did actually note moving to the square and improving it. The formers thing is obviously facetious, they require maintenance till quite far into the game, and unlike supply crawlers they don't actually harvest anything (workers have their own set of limits, as described previously). They DO enable supply crawlers to extract more, but they also are interesting units which provide a lot of choice in the game.

Bases are very different, requiring their own set of boosting facilities/drone control facilities which is much more expensive than crawlers as well as increasing inefficiency and Bdrones. It seems like a not all that useful comparison to make using simple FOP terms.

I'm not a crawler hater, it just feels like almost drawback free relatively fast doubling of production feels a bit.. overcentrilising (towards Crawler heavy builds), in a not quite interesting enough way. Games where I've used crawlers always seemed even more one sided than usual Transcend ones. However, I admit that I've not managed to get real time multiplayer working despite some trying (and pbem seems far too long term a commitment), so if crawlers are actually not top-class in the speed of payoff (accounting for limiting factors in other areas, like one of each fac per base, and issues with just making loads more bases) as I've been lead to believe then I don't have objections to them.

FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)

And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).

I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.

A worker in a city can fully harvest a square; a supply crawler can only get one resource.  They are fine for a single resource square, but most squares are better than that.  A worker can harvest 3/2/3 or 6/6 from a hybrid forest square or a borehole; a supply crawler gets only half or less of the value.

Keep in mind, though, that a worker requires 2 nutrients and 2 psych upkeep, which cuts into that substantially.  Once you've got hybrid forests, the worker may be slightly superior (until advanced specialists come along), and of course for your boreholes in the city radius (however many you can manage) the worker is better, but for the most part the crawler comes out better.  Let's compare:
-Early game to early midgame (no advanced specialists, no hybrid forests): With a worker, you can work a forest for 2/2/1, or a farm/solar for roughly 3/1/1 (and that's a fairly good square).  After discounting 2 nutrients for the worker and 1 energy to be multiplied into 2 psych to keep him happy, that's 0/2/0 or 1/1/0, as compared to 4 FOPs from a crawler (farm/condenser, or mine, or "energy park").  Free Market evens it out a bit, but not by all that much since it boosts energy parks as well.  (An "energy park" style approach doesn't work as well with workers, as energy parks are a lot less efficient when interrupted by squares that have neither solar collectors nor mirrors, such as bases.)
-Late midgame (advanced specialists, hybrid forests, and soil enrichers are all available): You can work a forest for 3/3/2 (before Free Market) or farm/enricher/solar for 4/1/1; after psych and nutrients, that's 1/3/1 or 2/1/0; engineers mean that nutrients are worth roughly twice as much as the other two types, so that's effectively 5-6 FOP (7 with Free Market or Eudaimonia).  Crawling farm/condenser/enricher gives you 6/0/0, for 12.

A city created by a colony pod can grow.  After 10 turns (with a 2N square available), it works 2 squares, and so on.   Furthermore, it can spawn other colony pods for more cities.  A supply crawler has no growth potental; it harvests exactly one resource, period.

And then the results of that harvesting can be used to build more supply crawlers to harvest more squares.

However, a supply crawler can serve a strategic role.  It can harvest squares that are small gaps between cities, rather than take the ICS approach and build another city.

And this is the sort of thing that it would do if depowered and cost-increased to be on par with workers, rather than giving more net benefit for less cost.

It can concentrate energy into a single city, perferably the HQ.  It can provide food to a base that otherwise would face starvation.  But I do not think these strategic roles in any way make it overpowered.

I'd say "concentrate energy into a single city" does, simply by making efficiency largely ignorable (and that's before considering stuff like the Supercollider and Space Elevator).

Oh, and another use: It can be used to get use out of squares that you don't want a base near for whatever reason.

It is just another great tool in a thinking man's arsenal.  I would hate to see this tool removed

Me too, but I do want it to only be of advanced strategic use (and maybe some ability to help finish projects quicker, though nothing as strong as it is now in that respect), not "the most efficient use of squares."

[Earthmichael]

Your analysis neglects the city square itself.  A city with no worker (just a doctor/empath/etc) still produces a lot of resources, particularly with Free Market/Wealth.

True, and that may itself be too much.  However, overuse of that feature is, by definition, kept in check by the factors that keep ICS in check, which you correctly identified as the need for multiplicative facilities for each base.

Essentially, what you're describing is exploiting ICS, which you yourself argued was not overpowered.  The goal here is that workers should be the best use of land outside of specific strategic cases such as you described, which means having ICS and crawlers both weaker than workers.

The extra resources added by the worker definitely make the total MUCH more than a crawler would give.  My crawlers typically provide either 2-3 N or 2-4 M or 1-3 E.  This does not seem overpowered to me; it seems fairly valued.

I think that's because you're not using your crawlers to their fullest potential.  Without mods to keep it under control, a crawler should be easily able to produce 4N (condenser+farm), up to 6N with AEE, 4M from rocky squares if you use mines, and 4E from energy parks (substantially less without energy parks, but nutrients+specialists are still a fairly strong way to get energy).
And remember, without crawlers you're looking at roughly 2 FOP anyway after subtracting costs (more with engineers or enrichers or hybrid forest), so 4N is still way too much.

Normally, when someone says something is overpowered, there is apparently one overpowering strategy enabled by the overpowered item.  I don't see this at all for crawlers.  They can support any kind of strategy you want: large city, small city, builder, momentum.

Any strategy except "use primarily workers, with crawlers for niche strategically-defined roles."

So perhaps you can better explain to me what is the problem that you are trying to fix?

In short, that most of the time, crawling a square is a more effective use than working it.

I am not familiar with the term FOP.   What does it mean?

Ete answered this one.

FOP=Factors Of Production (Energy, Mins, or Nuts)

And.. I do find Supply Crawlers are a very interesting addition to the game, but probably too cheap for their effectiveness overall. Unlike cities which require maintenance, increase inefficiency, require drone control, etc, they can pay for themselves pretty quickly and give strongly exponential increases in production power. A 4 min crawler (quite reasonable with enough formers) will pay for another crawler every 7.5 turns once in place (ignoring any Mineral boosting facilities, with a GJ factory it's 5 turns), which even accounting for former turns and time to move into position is a very impressive doubling time without any significant limiting factor (it's the lack of limiting factors which seems to be the issue, bases have all sorts of things slowing their exponential growth).

I like crawlers, but imo they are so cheap that even if they don't imbalance the game much in any particular direction (other than maybe towards people who get them sooner, or builders in general), they feel like they're the core of any competitive strategy. I'd prefer to play with Crawlers as a useful and interesting tool which can be powerful than with them as something absolutely required in huge numbers to win against a human. Reducing the doubling time by just upping the cost seems like the simplest way to do this.

Agreed; I think 10 rows is a good cost (comparable to the cost of another worker in a fairly large city.)  That means a module cost of 36-39, probably best to have it at 36.  (Also, it means banning higher-reactor crawlers.)

However, even that probably won't be enough; as I noted, workers are worth 2 net FOP in the early game, going up to 3 with AEE or 5 with hybrid forests, whereas crawlers are worth 4, up to 6 with AEE (and that's all nutrients, which are by far the best in the later game.)  Removing the condenser nutrient bonus would help a lot (which is why my patch allows it), but even so running the numbers I think it'd also be necessary to reduce crawler output by 1.  That way, crawling will be worth 2-3 FOP per square, comparable to workers.  (They'll still be useful for reaching areas outside base radii, of course.  And hurrying projects, though I think that also needs limits; finishing the Space Elevator the turn you get Super Tensile Solids might make for good fun in SP, but in MP it gives far too much of an advantage to teching factions.)

First, until mineral limits are limited, which does not occur until early mid-game, a crawler can obtain at most 2 minerals.  So it takes 15 turns for a crawler to multiply, AFTER it has made it to the square. 

Yes, before mineral limits are lifted, that doesn't help as much...but a feature that's unbalanced for most of the game is still unbalanced.
However, I figure that it might make sense to compensate for crawler depowerment by moving the mineral-lifting cap to Industrial Automation, so they can get full minerals as soon as you can get them.  (It's probably desirable anyway to have the resource-lifting techs be parallel rather than sequential, as having everyone beelining for the same 2 or 3 techs makes for a much less interesting game.)

Second, it might take 5-10 turns (or more) just to move from the city to the square being harvested.

I think we're generally looking at cases where it's harvesting inside the base radius.

Third, you have to have a suitable rocky square with 8 turns of terraforming to produce a mine.  There are not that many rocky square available, so that constrains how often you can do this.

True, but "condenser+farm to support 2 technicians, which then produce money to rush buy more crawlers" also has fairly low doubling time, especially once you get Tree Farms for +50% economy; at that point, 2 technicians are worth 12 energy per turn; rushing from 10 minerals on 1 crawler to 10 minerals on the next crawler costs 90, so that's still 7.5 doubling time.

Furthermore, a city can harvest this just was well.

But it needs to spend nutrients and psych on the worker.  If crawlers had a support cost, it would be a lot more even.

But you have missed the real culprit here: Terraformers.  It is terraformers that are grossly overpowered.

As compared to what?  Crawlers can be compared to working the square; formers are part of the game.
Formers would be grossly overpowered if using them instead of leaving the square "natural" weren't clearly how the game was meant to be played.  Crawlers are overpowered because using them inside the base radius instead of working the square is not how the game was meant to be played.

(That said, advanced terraforming is probably overpowered, and needs a nerf, probably of the ecodamage persuasion.)

1. In actual play, if I have a reasonable city spot that I can defend, I will always preference a city over a former.

What constitutes a reasonable city spot?

2. I typically build at least 4 clean formers for every 1 supply crawler, even though they are the same cost, because formers are overall more valuable and give faster paypack.  Crawlers as just built for special purposes, to fill in games, or save cities the burden of having to bother harvesting a single resource square (possibliy producing specialists instead).

At 3 FOP per specialist (even before thinkers and engineers), even dual-resource spots are often worth crawling.  Pretty much the only squares that aren't are forests and boreholes, and once you get engineers crawling nutrients is worth more than forests and boreholes.

3. EVERYTHING I build better have a pretty reasonable payoff, or I won't bother to build it.  A Genejack factory in a decent city has a far higher return than the same resources spent on crawlers.  Same with most energy multiplying facilities as well.

And once you've built all those?

I don't know what got you on your rant about the cheapness of crawlers, but they are just not any cheaper than competing items, like colony pods, formers and resource multiplying buildings.

Colony pods, formers, and resource multiplying buildings do not directly compete with crawlers, because to be of use they require base-suitable squares, unimproved squares, and raw FOP respectively, whereas crawlers require improved squares; what directly competes with crawlers is workers.  Compare crawlers to workers, and you'll see why they're such an issue.

I think recycling centers are a much better value than a crawler because:
1. I get 1/1/1, something no crawler can give.
2. I don't have to terraform a square, or even have a square available.
3. It is a lot less vulnerable than a crawler.

Yes they are, if you have enough workers for all your terraformed squares.  But you can only build one recycling center per base.

And a recycling center is not the most valuable building by any means.  The mutliplying buildings can be MUCH more valuable.

Also only one of each per base.

[Earthmichael]

I was comparing colony pods to crawlers; you are comparing workers to crawlers.  This is an apples to oranges comparison because you don't build workers.  The workers build up automatically.  You can't spend minerals to get more workers in a city (although a Children's Creche helps); You only build the colony pod.  So your only production decision is whether to build another colony pod, a supply crawler, or something else.

Specialists are not free; they cost you workers, which could harvest multiresource squares.  I almost never preference a specialist over a worker unless either do have any any other productive land to harvest, or I have a psych problem in that city.

Clean reactors are at the same tech level as mineral limits.  In fact, I usually preference obtaining clean reactors first.

I consider a spot with at least one 2/1 or 1/2 that has room to harvest at least 12 (but preferably more) squares is a good city spot.

[Earthmichael]

I was comparing colony pods to crawlers; you are comparing workers to crawlers.  This is an apples to oranges comparison because you don't build workers.  The workers build up automatically.

You "build" workers with nutrients.  Since there is some degree of flexibility as to how to terraform a square (and thus what type of FOP to get), that is a valid comparison.

Specialists are not free; they cost you workers, which could harvest multiresource squares.

Crawlers can also harvest multiresource squares; they just only produce one resource.  But if the difference is less than 3, or can be made less than 3 by appropriate terraforming, the specialist is still worth it.

Clean reactors are at the same tech level as mineral limits.  In fact, I usually preference obtaining clean reactors first.

I thought Environmental Economics (energy limits and tree farms) was one of the first beelines.

[Earthmichael]

Clean reactors are at the same tech level as mineral limits.  In fact, I usually preference obtaining clean reactors first.

Ecological Engineering (tier 4): 6 preqs
Bio-engineering (tier 5): 12 preqs
so in general, you're getting 4 mins a crawler long before clean formers are available, though perhaps some beelines skip mineral lifting for a very long time.

[Earthmichael]

though perhaps some beelines skip mineral lifting for a very long time.

Indeed they do...however, they also don't reach clean.  The MMI beeline does get you all of Bio-engineering's prerequisites (so it's only one more tech to grab bio-engineering for Clean)...however, well before that along the same beeline you have all of Ecological Engineering's prerequisites (assuming you also got Centauri Ecology for formers), and it's overall more useful (it not only lifts mineral restrictions, but also allows boreholes/mirrors/condensers if you didn't grab the Weather Paradigm, and of course it's only 1 after that for Environmental Economics for energy lifting and tree farms.)