29-10-2000 02:59									#1
	how do you control drones? Suffering from ads?

i usually play the gaians, and after about 10 population, my bases are all taken over by drone riots.

some bases riot even i build both hologram theatre and recreational commons, the other facilities weren't available because of my technology. and i can't use nerve stapling, because of my -1 police rating.

oh, questions, if you have your talents control the drones, do the drones work on the surrounding squares?

okay, back to the drone control thing, what does the game mean when it says like +50% psych? and what does contributing energy to psych on the social screen do?

oh, do talents have any other benefits besides drone control?

oh can someone give me a list of facilities or secret projects that reduce drones(not including those that give more talents)? i know of recreational commons, hologram theatre and punishment sphere.

about punishment sphere, it seems to me that at higher difficulties, you have to have this on all your bases to even remain control, is that true?

some more random questions, this is game is complicated!

i saw on another post, someone mentioned "releasing mind worms near someone else's base?" is that a special command, or did he just mean attacking enemies cities with captured or trained mind worms?



why is it that sometimes after i capture a city, it just disappears? no, i didn't order the unit to destroy it.

can you get more than 8 units of the same kind of resource from one square? because on some of my boreholes, it just says 8+.

	29-10-2000 04:12									#2
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OK, let's deal with all of your questions one by one....

A size 10 base, when left unmodified, will generally create a large number of drones on higher diffculty levels, it is part of how the game works. However, measures can be taken to ensure that any drone problems that may occur don't get out of hand:

- Build drone control facilities, such as Rec Commons and Hologram Theatres. These reduce the number of drones in your base by two.

- Assign police to the city. These help control drones, and under normal circumstances reduce the number of drones in your base by one each. However, there is a special ability, Non-Lethal Methods, that double the police effect of that particular unit.

- Create specialists, such as Doctors, Empaths and Transcendii. These increase the psych output of your base, therefore helping to alleviate drones. However, in order to do this, you must sacrifice a normal worker, and the resources he brings in. This is often the easiest way to alleviate riots in the early game, before special SPs become available.

- Increase psych allocation on your social engineering screen. A certain amount of your energy production will go to psych. 2 units of psych means one drone turned into a worker, or one worker into a talent.

- You can nerve staple, although this is officially an atrocity, and will result in 10 years of economic sanctions being imposed upon you. Not recommended if a lot of your energy production comes from commerce.

OK, if your talents control the drones, yes, the drones do work the surrounding squares.

Talents do have benefits beside drone control:

If the number of talents in any given base exceeds or matches the number of workers, and there are no drones, that base enters a Golden Age. During a golden age, a base will benefit from +2 Growth and +1 Economy on the SE table.

Secret projects, there aren't that many, the ones I can think of off the top of my head:

Virtual World, in which all Net Nodes count as Hologram Theatres in addition to their usual function, a necessity for the University....

Ascetic Virtues, gives you a +1 police rating.....

The Longevity Vaccine, if you run a certain type of government (can't remember which one)

And, later in the game, The Telepathic Matrix, in which drones will never riot at any of your bases. This generally comes too late to make a difference.

Funny, I was sure there were more.....apparently not.

Increasing psych by 50% - for this you must have a certain percentage of your allocation to psych. For instance - if you have 10% allocation, a base producing 20 energy will give 2 psych. Any facility that says so will give a +50% boost to this, the 2 thus becoming 3.

I have never built a punishment sphere and I wouldn't recommend it, because it basically halves lab production from that base. All you need to do is reserve a little energy allocation for psych, maybe 20%, and that should do the trick.

Releasing mind worms into the wild - LOL....
This is a very nasty tactic in which any captured mind worms you have can be turned back into the wild. The benefit of this is that it will usually go to the nearest base, and attack it, effectively letting you attack an enemy base without diplomatic penalty.

When you capture a city, the population decreases by one. The same happens when the last defender in a city falls, unless it has a Perimeter Defense. If a base's population was originally 1, and you walk in, that base's population will become zero, and cease to exist. You will still be able to steal a tech, though, if you have spoils of war on.

Any square that produces more than eight of a given resource is given the 8+ symbol. The only reason for this is because the game simply doesn't have a symbol for 9, 10, 11 etc. The actual taking of the resource is not affected at all.

Put simply though, controlling drone riots in the later game is all about psych allocation. True, some players get by without it (*ahem* Misotu ) but they have a difficult time of it. Come on Mis, prove me wrong....

Hope that helps....

Mark13

	29-10-2000 05:03									#3
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You forgot the Human Gnome!

	29-10-2000 05:19									#4
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For the Longevity Vaccine, you get -2 drones for planned, and -1 drone for green. Human Genome adds 1 talent to every base.

Edit: Self Aware colony adds a police unit at all bases, and Clinical Immortality adds 1 talent per base as well.
[This message has been edited by Kirnwaffen (edited October 28, 2000).]

	29-10-2000 12:10									#6
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As always, everyone's playing style is a little different.

First a word on P-spheres, I never build 'em unless running FM for extended periods. Even then I try to build as few as possible and produce or reassign home city to the p-sphere city.

My personal preference is 0% psych, but I'm not afraid to go 10%, and for extremely short periods crank it way up if I am doing a GA pop boom.

I totally agree with everyone else that the VW is huge. I'd much rather build net nodes than holo theatres.

There are several base psych enhancing improvements that have not yet been mentioned. I'll just say that tree farms and hybrid forests are two of my favourite and refer you to p.163 of the manual for the rest. Brood Pit in SMACX is the only one not included.

Maximizing your energy production is very important for other reasons, but if you are running 10% or more in psych it will directly help your drone problem. Even if you run 0% psych it can indirectly help to have lots of energy coming in.

	29-10-2000 15:54									#7
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MariOne:

The reason I didn't include the Human Genome:

quote: oh can someone give me a list of facilities or secret projects that reduce drones(not including those that give more talents)?

*smug look*

Mis, I often use psych in the late game - as it is the one thing guaranteed to put all your bases in a GA - when your energy productin is high enough. Soooo useful in making the leap form +1 to +2 economy....

Thankyou, Kirnwaffen, I forgot about the Self-Aware Colony (hey, I was tired )

I'll second the maintenance of Hologram Theatres. They can be a real pain in the proverbial, early to mid game, and the VW is a massive project to get, doubly so if you are the University, of course.

	29-10-2000 16:33									#8
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point taken, mark13, I was paying more atention to your answers than to the questions.
But above all, I couldn't let the occasion to say "Human Gnome!".

In my *superficial* tests, when faced with the option whether spend in psych to keep a base GA or spend the same directly into econ & labs, I came to the personal conclusion that is *generally* more effective not going for GAs.
Maybe you have a more in-depth analysis of it.

for the rest... I like Misotu (I second what she wrote, I mean!)

	29-10-2000 16:46									#9
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MariOne, sorry, there was supposed to be a smiley face in there, I just forgot - it wasn't a snipe at you!

But.....

You have a size 14 base - pop boomed a few turns earlier. You are running at +1 economy - Wealth only, at this stage - as you can't go FM (you are at war). OK, big dilemma - do I:

- Increase psych to 20%, enough for a Golden Age, and watch the extra energy come pouring in, or.....

- Increase labs/econ to 50/50 (or whatever) and stay with the +1 economy?

OK - let us say that the base is producing 34 energy ordinarily. Now, normally, 17 of that would go to labs, and 17 to econ.

You switch to 40/20/40, and a GA surfaces. Now, that base is now producing 14 extra energy (+1 energy/sq), and the base is producing 48 energy (more if you have crawlers out). 40% of this is going to labs - 19. This effect is multiplied if you have crawlers i the field - and increases with more energy (less allocation needed to get to a GA). That described is worst-case scenario. A nice side-effect of this is the extra +2 growth - which may allow you to pop boom to an even bigger base, depending on circumstances.

I would be interested to hear any other thoughts - something I have not considered (there must be something!)

	29-10-2000 20:33									#10
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Oops!

My bad. I too wasn't paying to close attention to the original question. But anyways, self aware colony is another one of those later projects that is a bit late to help. It does halve base maintenance too though, so it's worthwhile, especially with the added police.

My 2 cents on energy allocation:

I almost always find myself allocating at least 10% to psych after the first 150 turns or so. Otherwise, I find my drone control problems getting out of hand. Personally, I have a hard time using specialists unless it's an emergency, because I know that as a worker or talent, they could bring in those four extra resource points of any kind. Punishment spheres: out of the question. I won't sacrifice research for workers. I usually also allocate more to psych later, and try to get a few ga's in for the extra energy.

Anyways, just my two cents.

	30-10-2000 04:14									#11
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mark13: I also forgot a smiley!

As for psych/GA.
When I have 14sized bases, I seldom get up to put 10 workers on the field.
That is, generally I have at least 4 specialists.
So
- the extra energy (1 per *worked* square) is 10 or less
- that *raw* energy stil has to be cut by inefficiency

As I said *generally*, *at first glance*, the kind of bases I tend to produce won't significantly benefit of getting in GA, if not even lose something.
As for +2growth, I only recently got SMAX (and I'm not planning to begin new pbems for the next months), so I tend to reason in terms of SMACv4, where a GA's growth does NOT work towards booming.
OTOH if I build too much bases and/or I can't sustain food enough to mak'em grow all the way w/out serious drone problems, that is if I switch to SE Green before completing the booming in some bases, the GA +2GROWTH can be useful. You know of course that nutriens don't get wasted, so you don't need to keep GA all the time when not booming, you only need it around growth time, to lower the tanks threshold, that's what makes it useful.

	30-10-2000 05:02									#12
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MariOne, specialists do somewhat level the playing field, as you won't get as much (if any) of an advantage.

However, I am a player who likes to use a lot of crawlers, and although it is often advantageous to use specialists, I generally don't bother, except, of course, for newly captured bases. But consider this, it is not only your citizens themselves who bring in extra energy, it is the crawlers that city is supporting as well. This can be up to 20 extra energy which goes into the kitty.

If you run demo/green, efficiency is somewhat of a non-issue in your main bases (usually only about 1-2%). Of course, GA's +2 growth not helping pop boom is somewhat of a disadvantage, but I think the problem is fixed with the xfire patches (correct me if I'm wrong).

Another advantage with the GA strategy, of course - you don't have to worry about drones!!

Kirnwaffen:

Specialists, as MariOne has mentioned, can often be of great use. Consider this - you have a choice of:

- 2 energy, with a nut and a min thrown in, from the field (say)

- A librarian, giving +3 labs before all the boosts from the facilities that base has.

Now, normally, wih 2 energy, 1 would go to labs and 1 to econ. Therefore, you are getting three times the labs advantage you would from the extra energy. In an SSC, a librarian would be expected to net you up to 9 extra research points. This, multiplied by, say, one in each base, at 5 extra points......? That's a fair bonus.

I agree totally with you on punishment spheres. The only exception may be if you are running FM, and having a hard time with all the pacifism. You could build a punishment sphere, transfer support to that base, and not suffer any effects. I have never actually tried this, but there are several documented uses of it as a worthy tactic.

Ohh...dear, have I written that much? There are probably numerous fatal flaws in my comments, it's midnight, I'm tired....

	30-10-2000 05:49									#13
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There are points in the game that I have noticed when you can either change a worker to a doctor to quell drones or change two workers to librarians (or whatever) to eliminate the drone. Now I know librarians/engineers don't add to psych, but if you have enough of them you are effectivly changing a drone to a librarian rather than using a doctor to create a talent to balance the drones. I often find myself in the late game with cities that are over half specialists. The reason being that specialist benefits (energy/labs) are uneffected by inefficency and when your bringing in a lot of energy you will inevitably lose some to ineffiecency unless it's your capital we're talking about. So, rather than fight an uphill battle with a ton of crawlers which takes time to build (too much in my opinion) I prefer to switch workers to specialists and generate energy and labs that way.

As far as psych allocation goes, I never touch it. Nor do I build police units. I just stick with facilities and specialists.

Hydra, I think what you might be doing wrong is that you are trying to maintain growth through the accumulation of nutrients when your bases are that large. After size five (or maybe ever before) forget about trying to amass enough nutrients to fill up the nutrient tank (thing-a-ma-bobber) and drop your nutrients down to zero until you are ready for a pop boom. It takes way too long to move from size 5 to 6 that way when you can just have +2 nutrients and pop boom in one turn. Take those workers out of the field and change them to specialist to quell the drones and specialiast to add to energy and labs. You don't need to work every square in the bases radius to have a solid energy and labs producing base. The only problem you might have is coming up short in the mineral department, but that's where mines and crawlers or boreholes come into the picture.

	31-10-2000 02:39									#15
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You do get the % bonus if you have specialists that generate psych allocations such as a doctor's +2 would turn to +3 if you had a facility that adds +50%. Though you make a good point Fitz.

	01-11-2000 12:21									#16
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I find that my methods of quelling drones depend on the faction I am playing. If I am playing a faction which does not use free market, such as the Gaians or the Hive, I will make extensive use of facilities such as rec commons and holo theatres as well as specialized police units. With the Gaians in particular I very rarely allocate precious energy to psych - allocating 20% of energy to psych is not likely to get you a Golden Age as Yang or Deirdre! With the Gaians at least I never use punishment spheres; I haven't played the Hive enough to say.

On the other hand, if I am playing Morgan I'll be living by the Free Market. Police units are useless. Again I'll use rec commons and holo theatres as my drone controls of preference, but this time energy is abundant, and I'll allocate it to psych if needed.

But Morgan has an additional problem: air units. When you are running free market, air units create drones at the bases they are supported by. Lots of drones. Now, in single-player, or against human opponents who are merely trying to outbuild you and not to destroy your faction, and at lower difficulty levels, you don't need lots of planes and you probably have lots of secret projects which improve your population's happiness. In these conditions you can generate enough talents to offset the planes' drones reasonably easily.

On the other hand, if you are playing transcend against someone playing Marr or Santiago, and they have a fleet of aircraft with nerve gas pods heading your way, you need a large standing airforce. My preferred method of handling the associated drones is by building Morgan Punishment Spheres (TM) in a few of my bases and basing all the planes at those bases.

Which makes me really wonder about the morale of my air crews - here we have a faction which is generally devoted to energy credits, energy credits, and the pursuit of energy credits, except if you've been drafted into the air force, in which case your family is moved to a special base which is a mini-police state and threatened with torture if you don't behave . But that has nothing to do with playing the game.

WhiteElephants, remember Hydra is playing in the early-mid game as the Gaians. They're normally in demo/planned in the early game so their population normally booms almost incidently. They're not like Morgan where you have distinct phases of pop boom/slow growth.

[This message has been edited by Basil (edited November 01, 2000).]

	01-11-2000 21:16									#17
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Weighing in briefly on the plethora of benefits of specialization.

Kirnwaffen et. al.

Regarding the thought process that says taking a worker from the field and turning him into a specialist leaves resources on the table. This can be overcome by the "having your cake and eating it too" approach if you plan your terraforming to specialize towards specific high retruns of a given resource type and crawlering it back to the base. Take as an example a condensor farm or roaded rocky mine each yields 4 resource points of either nuts or mins and is ripe for crawlering rather than working. What this means is that one square that otherwise would have been worked say as a forest by a worker (say Hybrid farm level) yields an excess nutrient point (as 2 are required to support the worker, 2 mins and 2 energy) contrast that to a crawler and a specialist you've got 2 excess nuts (assuming condensor farm - 2 to support the specialist) and either 3,5, or 6 efficiency free energy points (depending on whether the specialist is a technician/librarian, engineer, or transcendi) in the short term is equivalent to hybrid foresting and in the long run specilization outperforms foresting for factions not depending heavily on trade energy income(say Yang or Cha Dawn).

Taken to the extreme a complete specialized base allows benefits of immunity to drone rioting as no population can be a drone etc.

On the subject of converting 2 citizens to specialist (librarians) vs. 1 as a doctor and the others working. As an example say at a size 7 base you have holo theatre, a police unit and rec commons. The above facilities and police allow 5 pop points drone free at transcend. In this case by reducing the effective workers to 5 by taking 2 pop points to specilization the drones are eliminated by the above effects. Likewise 1 doctor will eliminate one drone allowing the base to operate at size 6 workers. All in all unless you have a hab complex and are looking to further your base size most times I would recommend the 5 +2 librarian scenario (unless your in desperate need of mins) at least until such time as you are in postion for second round of base growth that is or have a really juicy square (say borehole ) that otherwise wouldn't be worked.

Onthe topic of psych allocation. In most cases I find it wasteful. There are times such as running FM that it almost becomes a necessity. Anything over 20% tho' is a big no no in my book. I've used the approach with other economies to get base into +2 (ie. +1 energy per square) and then back the psych down and still remain GA, which can be effective when running Demo/Green/Wealth as it allows paradigm eff and allocation of energy slammed all into research or econ. but for the most part I try desparately to keep psych at 0% whenever possible else the global waste of energy into psych where it isn't needed seems too excessive to me.

Jus my thoughts'

Og
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited November 01, 2000).]

	02-11-2000 01:56									#19
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Mis, strange, as I was about to deliver evidence to the contrary as you spoke. I was running Demo/FM/Knowledge, playing the PKs at 40/20/40, and, yes, the bases with creches and GAs promptly pop boomed. I got up to size 18 with Ascetic Virtues by the turn of the century, with +2 economy, +2 efficiency and +2 research, pop booming all the while. Very strange.

Was this a SMAC game or a SMACX game? Maybe it differs between the two, Firaxis couldn't be bothered to change it? Very, very strange.

	02-11-2000 02:29									#20
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Mis, did you have +2 nuts in the bases that weren't booming. If you have only +1 nut, you don't get a boom on the next turn.

	02-11-2000 08:52									#21
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Fitz, I don't claim to be an expert, but I do know you have to have two nuts

Mark, it was a SMAC game. And I am definitely not booming, in GA for three turns now in some bases (with 2+ spare food, Fitz ) and no growth.

Huh. Was your game SMAX or SMAC Mark?
[This message has been edited by Misotu (edited November 01, 2000).]

	02-11-2000 09:29									#22
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Mis,

That's the reason you're not booming: you're in a SMAC game. I saw a similar discussion around here somewhere, where it was discussed that the GA does not produce the boom in SMAC, but it does in SMACX. I'll see if I can find that thread.

Here it is.

Your even in it, Mis
[This message has been edited by Deimos (edited November 01, 2000).]

	02-11-2000 10:05									#23
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It was my thread.



LOL. Oh well. It *was* back in April :shuffles around on chair: and I guess I discarded the idea of mucking around with psych when I found that the GA didn't produce the pop boom. :more shuffling:

So I just ... er ... forgot.

Well, that's it then. No pop boom with GA in SMAC. Still ... I'm in a SMAX game as the PKs now

	02-11-2000 20:29									#25
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Well, you can look smug all you like, but you *don't* get a GA pop boom in SMAC, so the patch didn't correct the problem.

Actually, I think we had crossed wires (so to speak) - you were talking xfire only I assume, I was talking both.

I'm still running FM/Wealth with 20% psych in one SMAC game, because it is still delivering more benefit in research/income terms than any other setting. I'll switch back to planned for a few turns to boom when it makes sense. I am curious though about the boost to commerce. FM/Wealth alone in this game gives me +3 economy overall. With a GA, that should move to +4? But I see no difference in trade income between 2 bases, one in GA/one not, where the latter is generating less energy. They're generating the same from commerce.

How does the commerce thing work? Theoretically, my GA base should be at +2 commerce, the non-GA base should be at +1. I'm governor, so maybe that complicates it?

	03-11-2000 10:01									#26
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Misotu,

I have not even tried to sort out the ins-and-outs of the commerce thing, but I gather it goes something like this:

When two factions are in a treaty or a pact, that arrangement produces commerce. The bases of the two factions are then paired off, the highest energy producing base of yours with the highest energy producing base of theirs etc.

Through some ridiculously complex forumla (which I think is in the datalinks under advanced settings) the two bases are assigned a commerce 'value' (for want of a better word) which takes into account the commerce rating, SE economy rating, commercial techs discovered etc.

Oh, what the hell, I'll delve into the datalinks and copy it out, I've nothing better to do.....

1) First, all bases are ranked from top to bottom by energy output.
2) Bases are paired off rom top to bottom. If one faction has extra bases, these are ignored.
3) For each pair of bases, sum the combined economic output and divide by 8, rounding up.
4) Double if Global Trade Pact.
5) Now, for each individual base, the commerce formula is as follows:

(Value from step4) * (CommerceTech+1)/(Total CommerceTech+1)

6) Commerce Tech is the number of commerce technologies discovered (I think it means by your faction), plus commerce and faction bonuses.
7) Total Commerce Tech is the number of total economic technologies in the game.
8) Using the value from step 5, divide by 2 if no Pact (only a Treaty).
9) Add 1 if you are planetary governor.
10) Reduce to zero if economic sanctions are in effect against either faction (Really? )

Now, am I the only one that finds that description slightly vague? It doesn't say anything about GAs increasing commerce, I would think that is yet another feature Firaxis overlooked.

	03-11-2000 00:15									#27
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Notice under the formula portion it says 'plus commerce and faction bonuses'. That's where the commerce bonus from a GA comes in, as well as the Morgan bonus. If you looks at the economy tidbit that displays info (at the center bottom) there is a commerece rating #, that includes the morgan bonus, ECON bonus (assuming +3 Econ or higher), and GA bonus. Technically, you could think of the CommerceTech as being your commerce rating + 1 for each commerce enhancing tech you have discovered.

Sorry Mis, but you never know what people will overlook in this came. Nothing personal.

	03-11-2000 02:45									#28
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Oh, of course, I should have realised really - just me being thick as usual

Anyone noticed how this thread has gotten prograssively further and further away from 'how do you control drones?' Just a thought...

	03-11-2000 07:23									#29
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Sorry ... probably my fault as usual. I have a habit of doing this, but it's mostly because I don't really like starting threads

Um ... Fitz, I probably have overlooked something here but I'd be really grateful if you could tell me explicitly what it is (preferably with pictures and *very* simple numbers, not formulae) because I am not following this at all.

Seriously, I'm still confused as hell. Why doesn't +1 commerce make *any* difference???? Or does it effectively depend on base size/energy? In the sense that, if the numbers are really quite small (say 40-50 energy income in the base) then a +1 commerce bonus might not change your commerce income?

Help.

Please.

	03-11-2000 21:52									#30
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Misotu:

Just because 2 of your bases have the same energy and commerce rating, doesn't mean they'll get the same amount of commerce from your treaty/pactmates.

Each of your bases is paired with a base from the other faction. (Unfortunately, you aren't told which one.) Suppose your Base A is paired with Lal's Base X; and your Base B with Lal's Base Y. If Bases A and B both have the same energy output, but Base Y has much less than Base X, then the amount of commerce you get in Base B is going to be less than what you get in Base A, simply because Lal's Base Y isn't as energy-rich.


Likewise, if your Base C and Base D have the same energy output, but Base D has a higher commerce rating; and they're paired with two of Lal's bases; then Base D may not necessarily produce more commerce income, because the PK base that it's paired with may be producing much less than the PK base that Base C is paired with.

(Hmm, that probably just confused you even more... if so, I'm sorry. )