Taking advantage of surplus formers when completing a task

[Earthmichael]

Sometimes I do not have an even number of terraformers doing a task, for example, I will have 3 formers planting a Forest that needs 4 turns.  So on the second turn, all of the formers will blank out.  However, since I only needed 1 more forming turn for that second turn, the other two formers can be activated and given other orders.  (The first former will not activate, because it already acted this turn giving you the 4th turn on your Forest.)

Anyway, some might see this as a violation of the activating formers rule, but I do not.  Those two formers have done absolutely nothing on that second turn, so I definitely should be able to give them something to do.  And I do.

I have to say, I don't understand the rule about activating greyed out formers; I never have.  If a former had done something that turn, I do not know of any way to get the former to do something else that turn.  If the former has not done anything (because the first former or two finished the terraforming, and all of the other formers were effectively idle), then I click on the formers.  The ones that did work that turn do not activate, and the rest do.  I think it is perfectly fair to send those idle formers on to other jobs.

What is your thinking here?  Am I missing something?

[Geo]

I *think* sofar the formers that haven't worked in a turn always start blinking before the turn ends. At least in single player, and with Scient's/Yitzi's patch.

[Droom]

I may be wrong, and I have not tested this, but I do believe that if you go to the city screen that the former calls home, click on it's icon, it will activate. I works for control + H and other commands after a unit has moved.

[Earthmichael]

I *think* sofar the formers that haven't worked in a turn always start blinking before the turn ends. At least in single player, and with Scient's/Yitzi's patch.

If you have a bunch for formers doing something, so that they have a command, like building a mine, instead of using just the numbers of formers needed to finish the mine, and blinking the rest, all of the formers get seemingly used.  Like the example I gave earlier with 3 formers building a 4 turn Forest, on the 2nd turn, two of the formers will have done nothing, and can be directly clicked and given orders.  The formers that did something that turn will not accept being clicked on and will not accept any new orders.

Does that make more sense now?

[Earthmichael]

I may be wrong, and I have not tested this, but I do believe that if you go to the city screen that the former calls home, click on it's icon, it will activate. I works for control + H and other commands after a unit has moved.

I was not aware of the "city screen" activation.  That may indeed be an exploit, but I am not aware of it.

I am just talking about the straightforward case where you click on a former, and give it orders for the turn.

The greying out of "unused" formers only occurs when they are "on the bandwagon", i.e. the were terraforming something that got finished before they had a need to help, and instead of just blinking the formers, as the game should do, since they did nothing that turn, they just grey out like all of the rest.

The only difference is you can directly click on the formers that did not do anything that turn and give them orders.  If you click on a former that did something that turn, nothing happens.

This is something that might be a candidate for a bug fix.

I am just making people aware that they can give commands to formers that did not act that turn (like the 3 formers building a forest example, where you have 2 formers left on the second turn).  I am not talking about clicking on the icon in a city, or anything like that.  If there is an exploit like that, I don't really want to know about it.

[JarlWolf]

I wasn't even aware that this sort of rule existed, let alone it was an exploit. I guess I am too old and lazy to notice whats actually a bug as opposed whats part of the actual game. 

[Kirov]

I've been thinking about this issue as it is certainly more tricky than it looks. Your point is definitely reasonable, but after some deliberation I'm leaning currently slightly against it.

First, let's start with saying that without any doubt you don't exploit the referred bug. This bug works for any former and it goes like this: click on a greyed out former and tell it to build e.g. a farm. It will immediately start and display correctly 5 turns*. Now click on it again. Voila, the former cancels its orders and regains one movement point.

* I think I saw '4' once.


I'm quite certain there is no exploit you can use through the city screen. At least I wasn't able to replicate any. Clicking on a unit in the 'support' screen closes the base screen and centers the map on that unit, that's basically it.

However, I've never played like you as it is my opinion that losing all former moves on a given tile is a part of the design. Simply put, it's "waste" and it appears in many games (Age of Empires) where several peasants can work on one building at once: two guys are never twice as fast as one guy.

I believe that waste does take place in SMAC - consider a condenser which is worth 8 formerturns, but 3 formers will be doing one for 3 turns each. You could counter this argument that it's not waste, but simple rounding up where rounding is needed. To that I can only reply that it *feels* to me like an element of the designers' scheme.


That being said, perhaps I should mention here that when I move my crawler and it runs out of mp, I always activate it to make it crawl on the very same turn. I consider this a [poop]y interface, not an actual game rule. So there is that.

[Geo]

Oh, I'm not the only one whose [recycled] posts are edited.

[Kirov]

Sorry, I thought the filter is only for google indexing purposes and I'm outsmarting Web spiders by the exclamation mark.

Will remember in the future.

[Buster's Uncle]

We have young people and folks who don't want to see bad language, and there are limits.  Thanks for calling attention, Geo.

[Geo]

The First Amendment must be observed at all times. 

[Lord Avalon]

I don't think it's an exploit.  If a former didn't actually do anything, why shouldn't it be available to use?  I would like it if the game would show it active.  I probably have reactivated falsely inactive formers, not because I remember which square has excess former-turns, but just because I happen to check that stack.  I've played a lot of huge maps, so end up with a few to several dozen formers, and have also probably left potentially available former-turns unused.

[Earthmichael]

I think the ideal solution would be if it were possible to patch so that formers that were not needed to complete the operation get reset to the waiting orders state, to make it clear they are available, rather than the current default of being greyed out.

[Kirov]

I probably have reactivated falsely inactive formers, not because I remember which square has excess former-turns, but just because I happen to check that stack.

Wait a minute guys, let's make this thing clear. What do you two actually do in-game, in terms of mouse clicks and orders? At first I understood that EM opens his turn, finds a tile with excessive former-turns and clicks on the excessive units before they get inactive. We can now discuss it if it's ok or not. But if you activate already greyed-out formers, you need to do that through the way I referred to above, which is a clear rule violation to me. I'm sorry, but I can't condone any exploit of a well-known bug on arbitrary grounds, "because I think it's really ok this time". You may put yourself at a serious turn advantage over players who don't do the same, me including. So let's discuss that and post it somewhere in the Command Nexus section. Whatever the outcome, MP players need to know that.

As for clicking units before they use their movement, it all boils down to the issue if you support or don't the idea of "inefficiency" of former-turns. Personally, I think it's fair, reasonable and logical that one former uses 8 turns per condenser, but 3 formers work 3 turns. It's clearly there in the game when you use multiple formers, the total number of former-turns often increases. So I think I would vote for that, although I acknowledge the other point of view as perfectly valid. However, clicking inactive units to give and cancel another order is off the table in my opinion.

[Kirov]

Consider a situation I'm sure we're all too familiar with:

I put a sea former on a sea fungus tile and start to remove it. Then I open the next turn, only to see that on an adjacent sea fungus tile there is an IOD. So before I make any other move, I can cancel the removal order and try to escape with 1 movement point. But if I toggled through all my units and the sea former in question got greyed out, then it's my bad and my loss. No activation is possible and the former is going down.

Just you know, to make sure we're on the same page here.