Do you guys use SM mode?

[joeclark77]

I use SM for when I make a stupid mistake in ship design. My view is to only use SM when you do something that you shortly later feel is stupid. Building a cargo vessel without a cargo handler for example; Or a deep space explorer that I forgot to put a jump engine on. It's important to me that I don't use sm to actually change the course of things though. It's like a second chance.

Oh yeah, the one mistake I make every single time is to build a tugboat without a tractor beam.  SM mode comes in handy for that.

[Theodidactus]

No, it's not.

Yeah I don't usually need it for conventional start.

[Wolfius]

Often enough. Setting up scenarios and RPing, mostly, as well as the odd bit of tidying things up(like rounding shipyard capacity to the nearest kiloton after continual expansion makes a mess of it).

Tho I used it more when learning, to correct beginner mistakes and derps, like the time I accidently deleted a battle fleet, or loaded all earth's mass drivers onto a freighter with mineral packets inbound("In breaking news, the Eastern Seaboard of the United States was obliterated in a tragic industrial accident last night! Yes, all of it. It's still early in the investigation, but inside sources suggest a typo in a shipping order was responsible.") - heh, after few incidents like that I used SM mode to transport my mass drivers around for a while.

I think the main use tho is 'simulated terraforming', where I'll note a planet's atmospheric composition, then use SM to fiddle with it, seeing how much of what I need to get the results I want and if it can be made habbitible at all, before using the aformentioned note to restore it to it's pre-fiddling condition, so I know what gas levels to use when terraforming it for real.

[Alfapiomega]

Yeah I don't usually need it for conventional start.

I just realized PaulM uses 5.57. So I am unsure what the amounts of resources are there on Earth. However as was announced there will be much more minerals at any start now so even less reason to do anything SM related.

[MarcAFK]

My conventional starts always use a staggering amount of sm mode preparation, generally I'll try to create systems that feel right for the year or scenario, alternate history ruled by #### flying saucers from the moon or perhaps early future after expansion to Jupiter with earth uninhabitable, or something. But basically the way I see it conventional tech is generally useless and nuclear thermal is very easy to obtain so almost no use is normally made of it, but if I start the game with heaps of specialised conventional tech, I'll still be using it for a while even after developing nuclear thermal, also I tend to delay researching nuclear thermal for a while, or I'll develop intermediary engine tech, by forcing myself to under engine my designs or temporarily adding 3x multiplier to conventional engines. I also tend to add certain systems to my conventional start to make the tech usable, things like box launchers, smaller engineering, fuel, boat bays etc I'll grab immediately so my initial designs can be complete.

[Panopticon]

I use it liberally at start up to set up my tech the way I want it and to set up colonies or other empires or what have you depending on scenario. After that it is pretty much used to fix mistakes in ship design, sometimes to try to correct problems with fleet movements, like the aforementioned fuel issue, or when I hit a five day increment while trying to move to missile range against an NPR and find my fleet is now at energy range and mostly dead.

I think it is a necessary tool for playing the game if you want to do anything outside the most basic stuff. I have noticed I am using it less in 6.3 for minerals though.

[Paul M]

I just realized PaulM uses 5.57. So I am unsure what the amounts of resources are there on Earth. However as was announced there will be much more minerals at any start now so even less reason to do anything SM related.

I use 6.1 and have been bouncing from mineral crissis to mineral crissis.  It take a lot of minerals to make your starting infrastructure.  It is possible in 6.3 this has been changed but I started with hmmm...maybe around 20-45,000 of each mineral and that is simply too little.  Far far too little.  At the moment there is a few thousand Tritanium with an availablity of 0.11 and that was my most abundent mineral.  I survived only due to the CMTs showing up in the comets.  Basically I got lucky with a few good asteriods in the ort cloud plus the comets being very mineral rich.

[Alfapiomega]

I use 6.1 and have been bouncing from mineral crissis to mineral crissis.  It take a lot of minerals to make your starting infrastructure.  It is possible in 6.3 this has been changed but I started with hmmm...maybe around 20-45,000 of each mineral and that is simply too little.  Far far too little.  At the moment there is a few thousand Tritanium with an availablity of 0.11 and that was my most abundent mineral.  I survived only due to the CMTs showing up in the comets.  Basically I got lucky with a few good asteriods in the ort cloud plus the comets being very mineral rich.

You don't, by any chance, follow my LP? Because I think I was in a much worse situation...