Forest spamming vs condensors, echelon mirrors, etc

[Question]

Forest spamming is cheap, fast, and it doesnt care what the tile conditions are, so a hybrid forest will produce the same tile yields as a rainy + farm, rolling + mine and 1000m elevation + solar.

I was able to get really high energy rates with solar collectors + echelon mirrors, but that was in a perfect scenario (No space limitations, etc). It also had the downsides of really low nutrient/mineral production since those were very map dependant. It also assumed that you had a perfect 3000+m elevation base area.

In the save i basically took two test bases and tried to get the max yields possible, it didnt take long to figure out that forest + boreholes + supply crawlers would easily get more yields than the very expensive and time consuming echelon mirror + solar collector setup.

What kind of terraforming do you guys use?

[Nexii]

With defaults, size 14 limits you can do an array of touching bases for farm/solar.  Also a few condensors will give a lot more N and not cost all that much E.  Still forests and boreholes win out for efficiency.  Actually I think some setups with specialists and crawling all non-boreholes can be faster.

These are my current terraform settings to make a mix of styles better.  Overall farms and advanced terraforming take less FTs.


0,       ; Nutrient effect in mine square {-128 to 127, but the AI doesn't know how to handle
anything but -1 and 0}
-1,      ; Nutrients granted by condenser {-128 to 127; negative numbers add +50% instead}
Gene,    ; Technology to allow 3 nutrients in a square
IndAuto, ; Technology to allow 3 minerals in a square
OptComp, ; Technology to allow 3 energy in a square
2,      ; Convoy resource penalty  {-128 to 127}  // at least until crawler count for small bases can be capped


#TERRAIN
Farm,             None,    Kelp Farm,        None,     2,  Cultivate $STR0, f, F
Soil Enricher,    EcoEng2, Soil Enricher,    Disable,  2,  Construct $STR0, f, F
Mine,             None,    Mining Platform,  None,     2,  Construct $STR0, M, M
Solar Collector,  None,    Tidal Harness,    None,     4,  Construct $STR0, S, S
Forest,           None,    ...,              Disable,  4,  Plant $STR0,     F, Shift+F
Road,             None,    Road,             Disable,  1,  Build $STR0,     R, R
Mag Tube,         Magnets, Mag Tube,         Disable,  3,  Build $STR0,     R, R
Bunker,           MilAlg,  Bunker,           Disable,  4,  Construct $STR0, K, K
Airbase,          DocAir,  Airbase,          Disable,  8,  Construct $STR0, ., .
Sensor Array,     None,    Sensor Array,     None,     4,  Construct $STR0, O, O
Fungus,           None,    Sea Fungus,       None,     12, Remove $STR0,    F, F
Fungus,           EcoEng,  Sea Fungus,       EcoEng,   12, Plant $STR0,     F, Ctrl+F
Condenser,        Gene,    Condenser,        Disable,  8,  Construct $STR0, N, N
Echelon Mirror,   OptComp, Echelon Mirror,   Disable,  8,  Construct $STR0, E, Shift+E
Thermal Borehole, EcoEng,  Thermal Borehole, Disable,  12, Construct $STR0, B, Shift+B
Aquifer,          EcoEng,  Aquifer,          Disable,  8,  Drill to $STR0,  Q, Q
Raise Land,       Disable, Raise Sea Floor,  Disable,  12, Terraform UP,    ], ]]
Lower Land,       Disable, Lower Sea Floor,  Disable,  12, Terraform DOWN,  [, [[
Level Terrain,    EcoEng,  Level Terrain,    Disable,  8,  Terraform LEVEL, _, _
Monolith,         Disable, Monolith,         Disable,  8,  Place Monolith,  ?, ?,

#RESOURCEINFO
Ocean Square,     1, 0, 0, 0,
Base Square,      2, 1, 1, 0,
Bonus Square,     2, 2, 2, 0, * Mineral +1 if mine present
Forest Square,    1, 3, 0, 0,
Recycling Tanks,  1, 1, 1, 0,
Improved Land,    1, *, *, 0, "*" columns are ignored entirely
Improved Sea,     2, 1, 2, 0, * Mineral +1 with Advanced Ecological Engineering
Monolith,         2, 2, 2, 0,
Borehole Square,  0, 0, 9, 0,