Supply Crawlers - Alpha Centauri Forums

  Alpha Centauri Forums
  Strategies and Tactics
  Supply Crawlers

profile | register | prefs | faq | search

Author Topic:   Supply Crawlers

Smeagol posted 04-12-99 01:00 AM ET
Is there any limit to the number of supply crawlers a city can use? I understand they require no support but I'd like to use about 10 of them or so for a city to get 20 extra nutrients per turn. There is no limit to this, right?
woodelf posted 04-12-99 05:50 AM ET
I haven't found one, but if you send multiple crawlers to boreholes and mines I always get major eco damage, even outside my city's sphere of influence. Something to watch for...
If you want nutrients then make sea supply crawlers for shore-based cities and grab some kelp farms placed upon nut bonus squares. Nice way to make a city grow.
dbrodale posted 04-12-99 09:47 PM ET
No meaningful limit, in my experience. woodelf is right in pointing to the ecodamage from excess minerals, but using a lot of crawlers to boost energy and nutrient intake [more research, more people!] is perfectly valid ... downside being, of course, that a base located in a "field of crawlers" could harness all the resources from each tile and not simply one [as crawlers do] ... but to use crawlers in the "gaps" between bases is not a problem.
If anyone finds a limit to the number of crawlers, let me know ... since they are "units" like laser infantry (etc.), I would presume the limit for supply crawlers would also be the limit for total # of units, which must be pretty darn large.
d.brodale
Smeagol posted 04-12-99 10:01 PM ET
This makes the hive's growth bonus pretty insignificant, if you ask me... you can use a good deal of supply crawlers to harvest as many nutrients as you desire and grow every few turns. Of course you have to set aside a place in your empire to do this, but if planned correctly, this could work rather well.
woodelf posted 04-13-99 05:53 AM ET
As an aside: Be very careful about not letting your crawlers go unprotected. The AI loves to pound them whenever they slip aircraft through your defenses. It actually hurts to lose 4 min each time you lose a mining crawler. I won't even mention how much mindworms love them.
Harrdy S posted 04-13-99 09:42 AM ET
Hmmm... just one thought: Is the number of drones rised by Supply Crawlers? I have a main city (size 23) and about 8 crawlers supply my city with additional minerals/energy/nutrients. I think I have to many drones in this city. (I am peacekeeper...)
Another question (maybe a stupid one...): Which programm do you use to make screenshots?
Peace
S_Carton_Esq posted 04-15-99 03:36 PM ET
No, using crawlers does not add to the number of drones and that is why they are so usefull on the higher difficulty levels. Even if you can't let your bases get larger than size 2 without those no good drones rioting, each base can still be putting out 18-20 minerals a turn (which seems to be the point where ecodamage starts at the transcend level) by covering the base squares with supply crawlers (there will be plenty of unused squares for a base of size 2). You can use this production to get a couple of the early SPs that help with drone riots, and then let your bases grow to the point where it becomes economically possible to build rec commons (believe me, if you have to build rec commons in every base of size 2 your cash flow will dry up very quickly). Not to mention the fact that with the high rate of mineral production you can build energy banks very quickly. That's why I think that the proper use of supply crawlers is the key to the early part of the game. Of course, the down side is that they are very vulnerable to attack, so it helps to either be completely at peace while you are doing this or have garrisons of high-attack-value mobile units ready to wipe out anything that comes near the crawlers.
eladamir posted 04-15-99 03:51 PM ET
Am I the only one using crawlers to build wonders? I had a poorly played game and had 30 turns to win (until year 500) and so signed treaties with everybody, switched to research-heavy strategies and meanwhile built crawlers - and 4 turns before the end of the game I had about 60 and I built Ascent in one turn...
Also when building crawlers I usually give them empath defence and high armor but the opponent still likes killing them - someone has a solution for that? (other then protecting each one - maybe some sort of area defence or something with sensors to find enemies before they arrive)
TNTTony posted 04-15-99 08:29 PM ET
What is a supply crawler and how do I use them? I always see them in my queue screen but I'm not sure what it does? Can it give bases extra minerals etc for them to get larger.
Ghost posted 04-15-99 10:15 PM ET
Smeagol --
Whenever they dis the Hive, the Ghost will be there...
You're right, in a way. Supply crawlers help you grow pretty fast. However, it takes a little while to get/make them, and making lots of them takes lots of time unless you have high minerals. In the mid game, they are quite good... but once you get to the mid game, the Hive's growth isn't quite so good anyway.
Besides, Growth works better the more food you put into it. It is a bonus %, not a flat rate increase.
TTTony
Crawlers allow you to harvest one type of resource from a square, i.e. either nutrients, energy, or minerals. Go under Action on the individual crawler unit and pick. They are great because, as noted in the above, they require no support -- once made, they are "free." Also, you can take them apart and get back all the minerals you put in to make them. If you have nothing better to build in a particular place, you might as well make crawlers... it's like putting minerals in the bank and earning interest on them in whatever form of currency you like. If you then come up with an SP you need right away, boom, you cash in your crawlers and there you go... however, you might be better off keeping them around and relying on the extra income. One of the best things about supply crawlers is that you can use them to harvest just energy out of thermal boreholes from outside your city radius. This is nice because you then can get the 6 energy per year with no eco damage -- no borehole within base radius, no mineral casued damage. Plus, it is sometimes hard to find the proper place to put a borehole near your city, especially if you have terraformed up.
Another good use for crawlers is mining. Really good mining spaces (rocky ones) don't allow for farms, thus they tend to be only good at producing minerals. With a road and a mine on a rocky space you can haul in a lot of minerals via crawler, without wasting one of your all purpose city workers on an unbalanced sqaure.
Finally, crawlers allow you to use more of your pop for occupations besides workers, thus making Golden Ages much easier to come by.
--Ghost
Plato90s posted 04-15-99 10:45 PM ET
Since you can change the homebase of a supply crawler, it's a quick way for larger bases to transfer production capability to smaller cities.
BTW, the computer will not auto-design new crawler units. Once you get fusion power, be sure to redesign the crawlers from an infantry chassis to a speeder chassis with fusion power. It costs the same, but will give you more flexibility.
Bingmann posted 04-16-99 10:36 AM ET
Has anyone ever seen the AI use supply crawlers?
Bing
Plato90s posted 04-16-99 11:05 AM ET
Yes, the AI goes use supply crawlers, but not nearly as much as a human player can.
cousLee posted 04-17-99 02:51 PM ET
one warning regarding Supply crawlers. be carefull when using them to fill the gaps between bases. A poorly placed ST can allow the destruction of several bases if your enemy targets the ST with a Planet buster, instead of the base itself.
dawgchild posted 04-17-99 04:00 PM ET
i have some questions... i am getting the impression that you guys are saying that no matter how much minerals you mine with a supply crawler... it DOESN'T produce any ecological damage. is that right? what if multiple crawlers are using one borehole does that matter? k that's it. thanks.
Atombomb posted 04-17-99 04:30 PM ET
Supply crawlers just add minerals directly into the bases inventory window, and they do cause eco damage just like any other minerals. Larger cities will increase the amount of minerals you can harness without eco, so try to grab some food squares first.
D posted 04-17-99 06:55 PM ET
The one time I played and used a supply crawler I sent it to my friends base and selected energy from the menu and on its home base screen it showed a -1 nutrient on the Supply Crawler. Why?????
Plato90s posted 04-17-99 09:13 PM ET
When you use a supply crawler to transport resources between cities [as opposed to harvesting an open square], only one resource point is moved by each crawler. So the crawler showing -1 energy is moving one energy from your city to the other city.
Seems silly, though. Supply crawlers would be more useful in this role if you could move ALL the free resources in a single category to another city. I'd love to be able to funnel the entire mineral output of 5-6 smaller cities into a single mega-city. Or build all the energy and research bonus facilities in a single city and funneling all excess energy for 5-6 cities into that single science city.
eNo posted 04-17-99 09:44 PM ET
I think the reason why they don't allow you to funnel ALL the extra resources is because minerals could be dramatically increased by facilities. 5 extra minerals are conveyed to a city that has a robotic assembly plant, where it is turned into 7 minerals, it is then sent to another city with the plant and the 7 would turn into 10 and so on. I guess the it could be made so that conveyed resources from other cities are not affected by facilites.
What I don't understand is why only one supply crawler can work a square. Anybody have any play-balancing/realism ideas why?
dbrodale posted 04-17-99 10:49 PM ET
eNo -
So you do not replace your tile laborers with crawlers and set everyone to a specialist class ... think of what that would do!
Also, more general balancing for resource intake for crawlers outside a base's production radius - if the one resource limit were lifted, things would get out of hand pretty quickly ...
don
eNo posted 04-18-99 05:19 PM ET
Wouldn't it make more sense to put a productivity cap on a city and lift the supply crawler limit? Or put a limit on how many crawlers can supply a city?
Ghost posted 04-18-99 07:43 PM ET
There is a production cap... eco damage. It isn't a hard and fast "no going beyond this point" cap, but it makes you pay for your greed.
--Ghost
eNo posted 04-18-99 08:25 PM ET
True but eco-damage is only for minerals. What about energy and nutrient production?
Atombomb posted 04-18-99 09:15 PM ET
Actually if you were willing to make the risk, you could add enough bonus food to make your population grow, hence allowing you to produce more minerals without eco damage. Therefore, you could conceivably have a virtually unlimited mineral production. However, In my opinion I think is better just to make cities to cover the squares, then make satellites to gain bonuses. The exception is with energy, since energy is more helpful if it is all clumped in one base. Usually in my capital i try to make a few squares surrounded by echelon mirrors and on the highest level to go off an harness with supply crawlers. This makes huge gains for the city in energy, especially with a few key wonders present.
Plato90s posted 04-18-99 09:54 PM ET
Well, I can see your point about escalating mineral productions. But a supply transport of all free resources to another city can be limited to actual base resources.
Before calculating bonuses, SMAC has a base number, which is the production from base squares plus crawler plus orbital facilities. This is much like the display under the base map where the energy base count is separated from the bonuses.
Using this simple formula, base facilities won't count into transport.
Example....
City A has 6 mineral free after accounting for support. The 6 free minerals are moved to City B.
City B has 16 minerals from citizens, 4 from a crawler, and 6 from City A. Using Genejack factory, the total production turns into 39 [26 + 13 [Genejack 50% bonus] = 39]. Say there are 6 unit support minerals. City B has 33 free minerals.
But if City B moves mineral to City C [with base production of 20], the City C now has base production of 46 [20 + 20 [26 from B - 6 support] = 40 total]. City C has genejack factory and robotic assembly plant. The total mineral output for C is now 41 * 150% * 150% = 90.
googlie posted 07-09-99 02:39 PM ET
How did I miss this original thread - my favorite unit - supply crawlers
googlie
Lo_11 posted 07-14-99 07:17 PM ET
RE: Supply Units(SU) and Upgrades

Since fission(light blue reactor) SU's cost more minerals than fusion(red reactor) SU's, then (assuming you are NOT under attack) it is better to REPLACE the old SU's with new ones and send the old SU's to a special project where all of the original minerals can be used in their entirety.
If you use the Upgrade feature be sure that the SU you are replacing doesn't cost more than the SU you are subsituting.
Lo
P.S. - One of my favorite units is the Trance Scout Supply Foil. It convoys goods and watches for invasion forces!
Answer posted 07-14-99 10:35 PM ET
Why would you want to upgrade your supply crawlers? The newer reactor does not improve their performance.
ZyXEL posted 07-15-99 03:02 AM ET
Answer: new reactors cost less then old ones. So infantry with old reactor cost SAME as speeder with new reactor. Chassis is the key, not reactor(well it is, but... ah, forget it ).
�oki
-Crawler: what a great name !
Lo_11 posted 07-15-99 10:14 AM ET
Why upgrade supply units?
You are right that the old reactors will do the same job as a new reactor.
However, IF YOUR SU's ARE BEING ATTACKED by enemies of one sort or another, then design a new SU with a new reactor and the best armour available(if your enemies are not using PSI combat) and upgrade the SU that is most vulnerable to attack. The new reactor will give the SU a better chance of surviving the attack(fission=10p(powerpoints); Fusion=20p; Quantum=30p; Singularity=40p). The more powerpoints the more hits a unit can sustain in battle.
Lo
Beta1 posted 07-15-99 12:00 PM ET
I think the idea is to upgrade the design so you dont keep on building the expensive fission version instead of the cheap fusion version.
K posted 07-15-99 04:22 PM ET
A nifty use in the early to mid game is to line your coast with supply crawlers, and then no enemy(or mindworm) can attack your base, ever, until it is Amphibious.
also, I've found that a single base pulling in around 200 energy a turn with the max out reasearch facilities and SP's will mean a reasearch rate of one per turn.
Series II posted 08-02-99 10:26 AM ET
Bumping this one back up because I have became a HUGE believer in supply crawlers. I put them on every mine. I have each of my cities building 2-3 at least and building them early. In 20 turns you can have a new city bringing in 12+ minerals from the crawlers plus what the population is bringing in. It really helps out in building facilities.
Of course I ahve a lot more crawlers from my science and production cities bringing in energy/minerals.
They are great.
Beta1 posted 08-02-99 12:35 PM ET
A good use for crawlers is to increase mineral production at a sea base. One crawler sitting on a borehole or mine/mineral bonus square can really make those offshore colonies more useful.(I always surround them with kelp/tidal harness so minerals are the limiting factor in their development)
Series II posted 08-02-99 12:42 PM ET
Build a drop supply cralwer and you can just air drop it to the 'main land'. You do not have to worry about transports.
I have not tried this, but could you fill (every other square) of a nearby island with boreholes and have supply cralwers convey the minerals to cities and not ahve to worry about the eco/fungus problem for the boreholes?
Inix posted 08-02-99 04:28 PM ET
Protecting Your Supply Transports
If u put best armor/trance/aaa on your crawlers and stick them in a bunker they are damn hard to kill. Postition detectors around your bunkered suppliers if mworms r really getting on your nerves.
If the computer REALLY wont F*&^ off and leave your suppliers alone build an airfield and station needles of your own in the middle of your supplier field(s) and set patrols (or manually scout) supply killing bastards.
Naval suppliers cant get the bunker/detector benefit wich sux, but naval units r fairly fast (especially with that naval speed SP) u can position a few cruisers/skimships at key points and at the very least punish needles for killing your supplier, assuming u were not able to intercept. Use aircraft Carriers, once u get them (and they come so late WTF we have them now...), to shut down supplier harrasment by placing them in the middle of your supplier fields.
Series II posted 08-02-99 04:36 PM ET
I have a slightly different crawler defense. NONE!
Teir cheap and when they are attacked my military units are not. I do not put many on the front lines.
I am going to try something out soon with crawlers. I believe that the computer factions ignore the north and south pole. I am going to try and put a mag tube around the north pole and fill it with crawlers. I can react to any ground attack with 1-2 units on the mag tube. The factions are pretty far south, so I might have a line of 150 crawlers. All the energy squares going to my science city of course.
Zoetrope posted 08-03-99 02:21 AM ET
Series II: Deirdre has persistently attacked me by sending troops along the North Pole.
quizara tafwid posted 08-03-99 08:06 AM ET
Smeagol: The only limit to the number of supply crawlers you can have is that the SMAC architecture only supports you having up to 2^10 units (1024).
Harrdy S: Fullshot '97 (www.inbit.com) makes very good screenshots. It has a hotkey setup so you can make screenshots at anytime since it runs in the background.
ViVicdi posted 08-03-99 12:54 PM ET
Supply crawlers can "dope" a colony w/ energy so that it won't riot (if you have at least a 10% Psych allocation).
Supply crawlers work best when far from home (where inefficiency penalties mount for live bases) making the "drop" ability particularly useful. I like a remote arid wasteland of a plateau that the AI's won't build any bases on. Every game seems to have at least one "badland", arid and rocky, to build energy parks and mines on.
Also, if a Volcano or other choice piece of real estate is uninhabited you can build a base, eat the inefficiency penalties (maybe even build a "punishment sphere"), and thus lay claim to the land for remote mining purposes. (In my most recent single-player game Mount Planet is a remote island near the North Pole. I just had to drop a former & some crawlers on it!)
Also I have found that new bases desperately need food while older bases have ridiculous surpluses. "Drop" supply crawlers allow you to quickly reassign remote nutrients from older bases to newer ones.
Lastly, "Drop" formers go hand-in-hand with drop crawlers. And remember -- you can "drop" from a transport! Move the transport within 8 squares of your "tropical escape" and poof.
Inix posted 08-03-99 10:17 PM ET
Gee series II, i dont know what difficulty level u play on, but in the last few games i have played, TI, the rat bastards wont leave the suppliers alone, wich is why i have an overblown supplier deffense. And i dont c how u can just exept supplier after supplier getting wasted, i cant build more than 6 cities without the ineff drones, so i have to use a *very large* number of suppliers to keep up with mariams 5million cities (does comp get any ineff drones on trancend?). So i cant really afford to just have them getting picked off all the time. Building them doesnt take long but getting them to the spot can take a while and in any case i generally refuse to just let my stuff get killed without putting up a fight.
OldCodger posted 08-06-99 11:53 AM ET
I have a question about using supply crawlers in the now famous solar collector/echelon mirror park. Specifically, what terraforming operation do you do first? For example, do you raise terrain and then build solar collectors and echelon mirrors, or do you build collectors and mirrors and later raise terrain (or skip raising terrain altogether)? If you place a supply crawler on a square and later terraforming alterations improve the resource you are gather from the square, does the supply crawler automatically harvest the bonus?
Here is an example of what I am referring to. Suppose you build a solar collector on a square and then assign a supply crawler to harvest energy from it. Later, you raise the terrain which increases the amount of energy you can collect from that square. Will the supply crawler automatically harvest the increase in energy, or do you have to do something like "unconvoy" the crawler and then "re-convoy" it?
Thanks for any insight offered.
Natguy posted 08-06-99 02:35 PM ET
Does the harvest decrease if the crawler is outside your territory? In my current game I had my energy park (on the Sunny Mesa, conveniently) with crawlers and the necessary tech to get all possible energy. But when I checked, the crawlers (which should be making at least eight energy, definitely seven) were only making four! I noticed that those crawlers within my territory (the line zig-zagged its way through teh park) were producing the correct amount. Perplexed, I built a colony pod and established a city near the park, and lo! The crawlers were producing the correct amount.
Is this a widely known fact, or perhaps merely a fluke? I had not noticed this before, but this was my first energy field not in my territory.
Plato90s posted 08-06-99 02:40 PM ET
The reason for the energy discrepancy is the echelon mirrors. You pick up no benefit from echelon mirrors not in your territory. so the 4 energy you picked up is the solar collector + elevation. Once you built a city nearby, the 4 echelon mirrors come into play and gives you 8 total.
ViVicdi posted 08-07-99 02:51 AM ET
OldCodger:
Raise the land first, because that's your critical path -- it is harder to speed up this operation than the building of EM's and collectors.
After messing with the spreadsheet a little I think I like the "parallel ridges" idea best.
The "parallel ridges" idea is my attempt to solve an optimization problem based on two factors: one is that EM's on the edge of your park waste their outer edges, so they like maximum area-to-perimiter ratio (circle) while land-raising is most efficient when a single raise lifts a lot of underlying territory, sort of a minimize-adjacent-cells problem, which makes the diagonal ridge the most efficient solution.
Parallel ridges make a nice rectangle for the EM's to sit down into. Build your EM's staggered and interlaced -- like the knight's move in chess -- and only if they will provide 5 or more energy units.
ViVicdi posted 08-09-99 03:56 PM ET
Umm, that last part should read:
"... only if they are adjacent to 5 or more squares >= 2k in altitude."
Jonathan West posted 08-20-99 07:56 AM ET
I hadn't used SCs till I saw this thread. In a recent game I was going for Ascent, keeping one enemy base really small but in the game (tip: make sure you allow the enemy base to stay at size 2 or 3, otherwise a moindworm might kill it and win the game for you before you want to!).
I started to build SCs, then drop SCs (orbital insertion) with drop terraformers (to build forests where the drop SCs went - forest gives biggest nutrient bonus assuming city has Hybrid Forest). Then I built gravship SCs! and gravship terraformers. Brilliant! Now my terraformers could go wherever, sea or land, and "build" forest/kelp/bore hole/whatever, while the gravship SCs could sit over kelp. I had about 200 SCs, 120 of them gravships, with whole clusters over sea and remote islands.
City size of largest City reached 60 before I got bored and built Ascent. Also need to ensure you build eough satellites (I went crazy and built over a hundred orbital nutrient bonus sats. before reading their benefit is limited to size of City!!).
Also, SCs DO increase their benefit if terrafomring is built over them. Therefore, if City growth is your aim, with drop SCs start farming fungus. Drop in the terraformers to convert to forest.
sandworm posted 09-02-99 12:53 PM ET
up
FAAF posted 09-05-99 01:59 PM ET
I'm suprised that this hasn't been metioned before (or maybe i missed it) but sometimes SC can be useful inside a city boundry, to get those much neeeded minerals, especially in early game when you have to deal with population limits that dont allow you to use those reasorces and still have growth in your city. as these limites are removed then you can move the sc out.
Cyrex posted 09-05-99 04:12 PM ET
I think that when constructing an Energy/Nutrient/Mineral Park you should go all out on security. A block of land , 5X5 squares, can create the most securable area. Placing a Sensor Array at each corner, and high Defence units (preferably rovers) inside Bunkers as a perimeter creates an impentrable wall. (Add an airbase for good measure)If this seems like overkill then just think of the satisfaction it'll give you as you watch streams of enemy units pulverized against your walls.
On a related note, has anyone else noticed that a Mineral Bonus +Rocky Square +Mone +Road will grant you 7 Minerals without any techs at all?
Cyrex
MOfTheUniversity posted 09-14-99 06:35 PM ET
I never use supply crawlers (I've got the demo version so I get them so late in the game that they don't really help me out), but if I did, I'd give them my best armor. It may cost a lot, but it's worth it to see enemy gatling rover after gatling rover attack it with no effect !
Natguy posted 09-14-99 07:23 PM ET
You're big on armor, aren't you?
MOfTheUniversity posted 09-14-99 07:57 PM ET
Just on non-combat units. On combat units I don't use armor much because I like to appear, destroy a unit, and disappear.
Plato90s posted 09-14-99 08:30 PM ET
Putting armor on early isn't worth it. It adds substantially to the cost of the crawler when you are in a position with the least production.
Once you start getting fusion enginers and city sizes of 8-10 on average, then it's worth while to start replacing your infantry supply crawlers with moderately armored rover crawlers.
To close this thread, click here (moderator or admin only).


Hop to:

Contact Us | Alpha Centauri Home

Powered by: Ultimate Bulletin Board, Version 5.18
© Madrona Park, Inc., 1998.