Base Facility: Command Center

“Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate.”

— Spartan Battle Manual

Upon building a Command Center, the player hears a reprise of Col. Santiago’s introductory quote.  A Command Center is a fairly expensive early game building that requires Doctrine: Mobility to build.  When produced, it grants two free experience levels to every land unit produced in the base.  It also allows units to heal back to full if they rest a single turn in that base, no matter how badly it was damaged.  Basically, as the quote would imply in this context, it lets the other factions experience something of what it is like to be Spartan.

In what is something of a common theme, even though this is tied to an early game technology, it isn’t likely that a player will want to build a lot of these facilities early.  They’re fairly expensive in terms of maintenance and build cost and they don’t really help start an economic snowball.  Even a player dedicated to an early rush would probably rather spend these resources on more troops.

But it follows that building Command Centers enable the Spartans themselves to double down on their faction advantages, enabling the construction of very highly promoted early game units.  Since units also gain experience as they fight and win battles, it means that a large early advantage can start to really snowball.  In SMAC, this quote from the Spartan Battle Manual is the truth.  So an early attack that isn’t a pure rush can definitely benefit from these.

Later on, the benefits of morale hit a cap at “elite”.  A unit can’t get any stronger than that, but when a unit does hit elite status, it gets an extra movement point in addition to a large combat bonus.  This is a huge advantage.  It means that now cheap infantry move as fast as rovers.  And the rovers themselves get an extra move, enabling them to speed through rough terrain or get the jump on enemies who believe themselves to be safely out of range.

In context, the game has a harsh anti-stacking penalty modified from the even harsher one employed by its predecessor.  All the units stacked on the same square take collateral damage if the top defender loses the battle.  This makes getting wrong-footed quite painful outside of a base.  And it also means that there are plenty of cases where it’s better to concentrate your unit quality.  Because of this mechanic, two units can’t always be made to serve in place of one excellent one.

Because this elite bonus is such a big deal, it means that factions that intend on doing a lot of land fighting past the middle game will do their best to achieve the ability to produce units with as much morale as possible, so that they can build up an elite core of extra-fast, extra-strong units.  The sooner a player can get there, the better off his faction is.  And basically every such strategy centers around selecting +Morale social engineering choices and then using facilities like the Command Center to grant additional levels.

Base Facility: Recreation Commons

“The entire character of a base and its inhabitants can be absorbed in a quick trip to the Rec Commons. The sweaty arenas of Fort Legion, the glittering gambling halls of Morgan Bank, the sunny lovers’ trysts in Gaia’s High Garden, or the somber reading rooms of U.N. Headquarters. Even the feeding bay at the Hive gives stark insight into the sleeping demons of Yang’s communal utopia.”

— Commissioner Pravin Lal, “A Social History of Planet”

Upon construction of a Recreation Commons, the player is treated to another passage from Brother Lal’s social history text.  And this one is a gold mine of potential insight.  In particular, it usefully describes what it might be like for someone with cultural sensibilities similar to the player’s most likely are to observe the societies the other faction leaders are building according to their ideologies.

Fort Legion is a Spartan base.  According to Lal, their Recreation Commons take the shape of a series of arenas.  It seems logical to infer that the games they host are probably most similar to modern mixed martial arts rings, where the idea is to determine through competition the best martial art and the finest practitioners thereof.  It follows that being able to physically dominate another in an encounter is a route to status and respect among the Spartans, as befits a warrior people.

CEO Morgan, on the other hand, builds what sounds like an analog to the Vegas Strip whenever he needs to entertain his people.  This is even true at Morgan Bank, an outpost of the Morganites that is presumably dedicated to high finance.  Intriguing, as financiers aren’t usually the kinds of people who prefer games of chance which they can’t rig in their favor.  It seems that it’s different among the Morganites: the willingness to take financial risks in pursuit of gain is likely something they highly prize.  Or, more cynically, perhaps it’s the lower classes who are gulled into complacency by Morgan’s casino operations as they relieve the workers of their meager wages.  Lal does not provide comment one way or the other.

Next, it seems as if Gaia’s High Garden might literally be a garden populated by Earth plants.  At least mostly.  The description of “sunny lovers’ trysts” implies that the Gaians have built something like a fancy English garden, complete with hedge mazes and little nooks with benches and fountains.  It doesn’t seem like that would be such a luxury, until you realize that it must be built under a climate-controlled dome to keep out the hostile alien sky.  After all, it’s not much of a lovers’ tryst if both parties have to wear spacesuits.

Lal’s passing reference to his own capital’s commons shows that his people are smart and boring.  Just as you’d expect.  One of the Peacekeepers’ special faction advantages is that they get one extra Talent per every four citizens.  Presumably this is modeling the sort of people who kick back and blow off steam at the university library with a copy of Lal’s new thousand-page discourse on comparative sociology and faction governance.

And last, Lal’s scathing description of Yang’s budding utopia gives no doubt that they’re blood enemies.  To hear Lal tell it, Yang’s society is a dystopia straight out of a ’70s science-fiction movie.  From his description, you can almost see the hundreds of shaved heads marching in to the blinding white cafeteria, each carrying their tray, and then all sitting down and devouring their tasteless gruel.  Every motion in unison.  Every motion as perfectly efficient as they can manage.

Every time I analyze one, I keep thinking how amazing it is that Reynolds is so efficient with these fictional quotes.  In just a handful of words, he’s given insight into a bunch of different fictional places, in the voice of another fictional character writing what might as well be a textbook.  And it all works!

Base Facility: Network Node

“I don’t know but I’ve been told,
Deirdre’s got a Network Node.
Likes to press the on-off switch,
Dig that crazy Gaian witch!”

— Spartan Barracks March

The first time the player builds a Network Node, he’s treated to an audio clip of what are supposedly soldiers on Planet during a marching drill.  The Sergeant calls out each line above and then the squad echoes it back.  It still makes me chuckle, even though I’ve heard it a million times.

Through this lighthearted interlude, we learn several more things about the world of SMAC.  First, and probably most noteworthy, Col. Santiago and her Spartans have a sophomoric sense of humor to go along with their espirit de corps.  In the future, the Spartans are still soldiers of the kind we’d recognize today.  Judging from this, in a lot of ways they’d probably be recognizable to any professional warrior from the past couple thousand years.

Second, the Spartans don’t seem to like the Gaians very much.  That they’re making fun of a foreign faction leader implies there’s tensions between the two factions even at this early date.  Yet, at the same time, the stereotype being reflected here is that Deirdre’s crazy, not that she’s evil.  Chances are that there’s possibly some skirmishing going on over prime colony sites or the like, but it’s pretty unlikely that they’d be calling this out during a war of extermination.

Third, it’s interesting that they refer to Lady Deirdre, pejoratively, as a witch.  That might have been put down to simple poetic license or as a PG-13 choice of epithet, if it were not for a few other indications elsewhere.  Given the Gaians’ New Age, mystic inclinations, allegations of witchcraft (in the Wiccan sense) are probably a fair cop.

Finally, from a gameplay perspective, it’s intriguing that the Spartans are making fun of the Gaians for building an infrastructure-oriented base facility.  In the game, a Network Node multiplies the energy allocated to labs in the base by 50%.  But to hear the Spartans tell it, all Deirdre does with it is to flip the switch on and off for fun.

This is interesting because of the relative faction strengths of the Spartans.  Because they have an exceptional military and an industry penalty, they’re usually better off building more units and fewer facilities, so that they can then go on to conquer a neighbor and take their carefully constructed bases away from them.  As the name has come to imply in English, they need to live a spartan existence on Planet in order to pull that off.

Therefore, this silly little marching chant implies that knowledge of this strategy is filtering down to the common soldiers.  Just as Yang makes sure to instruct his followers through re-education and small group study sessions to share with the workers the wisdom of the Chairman’s teachings, so too do the Spartans instruct even their grunts in certain tenets of High Command strategy.  Just as Napoleon said of his army, each man has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack: among the Spartans, talent is expected and encouraged to rise to the top.

Base Facility: Recycling Tanks

“It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.”

— Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Ethics for Tomorrow”

The player is generally confronted with a quote at three different points in time.  First, you see quotes whenever a technology is acquired by the faction through either research, espionage, or trade.  Second, you see quotes at the end of every secret project video.  And third, you see a quote every time a base facility of a new type is first constructed.  This quote is of the latter kind.

In the game, Recycling Tanks are a base facility that don’t cost any maintenance, add one to each yield on the base square, and that are fairly cheap to build.  They require the Biogenetics technology to build.

As the player, you generally want them everywhere as soon as you can manage, and it is often worthwhile to speed their construction along with energy credits to get new bases contributing as soon as possible.  By the mid-game they fade into the background.  You’re never excited to see Recycling Tanks go up in a base; they’re just always there.  A constant part of the background of life on the new Planet.

But the first time you build one, you’re treated to this little gem by the Chairman.  Of course the colonists can’t afford burials on the new planet.  Certainly not after they first land.  The air is toxic outside of the small base domes and it’s probably not safe to go outside to dig up the ground.  And nutrients are hard to come by, so cremation is definitely wasteful.

So, on Planet, Soylent Green is made of people.  And of course Yang is the guy to stand up and proclaim the positive utility of this course of action.  Some sort of burial ritual or commemoration is a human universal.  And, of course, there’s a strong taboo in virtually every human culture against eating other people.  But in the Hive, they just toss a corpse into the tanks without a whole lot of comment.  This is how a citizen serves after death.  It doesn’t matter how anyone might feel about it: it’s obviously the most efficient course of action.  The community will be stronger for it.

It’s one thing to hear Chairman Yang wax philosophical about his nihilistic outlook.  It’s another to see a casual application of his inhumanity.  Note that I don’t mean that last statement as a condemnation.  Yang’s entire angle is to mold humanity into something radically different.  Openly breaking taboos like these – not merely out of exigency or desperation, but as considered policy – is one of the methods by which Yang intends to craft the Hive into his utopia.

The other interesting thing about this quote is the collection that it is found in.  “Ethics for Tomorrow” is probably quite the read.  Knowing Yang, it’s probably required reading in the Hive, a la Mao’s Little Red Book, complete with each sub-collective required to study and apply the lessons using Maoist-style education techniques.

Technology: Centauri Ecology

“Planet’s atmosphere, though a gasping death to humans and most animals, is paradise for Earth plants. The high nitrate content of the soil and the rich yellow sunlight bring an abundant harvest wherever adjustments can be made for the unusual soil conditions.”

— Lady Deirdre Skye, “A Comparative Biology of Planet”

Centauri Ecology is the first worker technology.  The game labels it an exploration technology because it represents knowledge gleaned about the new Planet, but in practice it is the key early production technology.  It allows the production of terraformer units, which will serve the entire game long, aiding the player by enabling the improvement of tile yields (through farms and mines) and producing key infrastructure (like roads and sensor arrays).

As the quote tells us, Earth plants do quite well in the otherwise hostile climate of Planet.  Thus, one of the key operations that terraformers allow are the creation of forests.  Forests are an awesome terrain improvement that bring with them lots of benefits.  Among them is the fact that, once planted, they can spread automatically onto neighboring unimproved tiles.

The other thing worth mentioning that is unlocked by this technology is the ability for terraformers to remove the native fungus from a square.  The only native plant life that we see in the game is this strange red fungus that is difficult to move through (a fraction of move orders into fungus just fail) and that yields very poor economic returns.  Therefore, in the early game, the game encourages you to remove it and replace it, wherever possible, with Earth life or technology.

As befitting their expertise in biology and agronomy, the Gaians begin with this technology.  Presumably, the Gaians spent the entire first year after landing enthusiastically studying their new surroundings and this tech reflects the fruits of that labor.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Gaians have a couple of other small factional advantages that reduce their incentive to remove the fungus: they never suffer the movement delay through fungus squares; and they get an extra nutrient from fungus, which makes it less valuable to replace fungus with a better improvement.  Still, though, in the early game it’s still in the Gaians’ interest to terraform the new planet.  Just like all the other factions.

In fact, it is likely that “A Comparative Biology of Planet” was written soon after Planetfall.  Perhaps it was during that first year, when key discoveries were being made seemingly daily.  In any event, the purpose of the text is obviously to compare their new home to their old one and to figure out what lessons remain applicable and which need to be discarded or revised.

The other interesting thing about this quote is that this is the first time we see Lady Deirdre engaged as a working scientist, like Zakharov and Lal, in their own ways.  It will not be the last time.  In game, it is made clear by these quotes that she is the foremost expert on the ecology of the new Planet.

Technology: Doctrine: Mobility

“Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left.  Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.”

— Commissioner Pravin Lal, “A Social History of Planet”

Doctrine: Mobility is labeled in the game as an exploration technology.  It enables the creation of units using the rover chassis, which enables double-speed land travel over flat terrain or on roads.  In the early game, rover units serve as the backbone of both land exploration and attacking forces, and continue to see use until almost the very end of the game.

Interestingly, in SMAC, the technologies that enable the basic modes of propulsion we’re familiar with from Earth (wheeled transport, boats, airplanes, even hovercraft) are all represented as doctrines.  The idea is that the technologies themselves and their purposes are well-known; the real problem in the context of military operations on Planet is in tactics and logistics.  Therefore, the knowledge represented by Doctrine: Mobility isn’t just how to build a car’s drivetrain, though that’s certainly part of it.  It’s mostly about how to resupply a mobile column or how to keep the various far-flung units in contact so that they can effectively coordinate.

It’s worth mentioning that the Spartans start with this technology along with a scout rover instead of the other factions’ scout infantry units, reflecting their emphasis on military doctrine and preparedness.  Based on the above reasoning, this makes total sense.  Col. Santiago and the people that would have flocked to her are exactly the people who would have treasured copies of Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Leader in their e-readers.  Speed, audacity, and decisive force at the crucial point are prized.

But it’s also intriguing that this technology is represented by another social-science quote from one of Brother Lal’s works.  In game, the immediate effect of this technology is military in nature.  But the ability to transit between bases in rovers must necessarily effect the experience of daily life on Planet.  Quotes like this make it clear that the game as experienced is intended to be seen as a model, in some ways.  The world of the game feels more real, in some sense, when the player finds himself imagining what it would be like for a typical civilian colonist to get access to motorized transport.

Another intriguing thing about this is that Lal is again chosen to deliver this perspective.  Presumably, unlike his “History of Science”, “A Social History of Planet” was written well after Planetfall to describe the rapid changes in society stemming from the era of early colonization and up into the mid-game, when each of the societies manage to establish themselves more firmly on the alien world.  The fact that these words were presumably written in the in-game future (from the perspective of the player discovering the technology) gives the implied narrative of the game an added solidity.

Finally, the quote itself is both a truism and a clever point, as befitting the best of highbrow social theorizing.  Lal’s a sharp guy.  And it is both interesting – and true – that the ability to cross long distances rapidly changes both a person’s physical perspective and that of the resulting society.  Liberalism, in the sense represented by Lal, has historically fed off of this mobility and the resulting breakdowns in the sharp lines between the in-group and the out-group.

Technology: Social Psych

“If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility.  For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness–a good and wise life.”

— Plato, “The Republic”, Datalinks

Social Psych is a first-rank economic technology.  It lets the faction that discovers it build the Recreation Commons facility, which is a cheap way to manage drones in a base.  Essentially, the application of this technology is improved social stability.

Sister Miriam and the Believers begin with this technology.  This is supposed to represent the Believers’ skill at and emphasis on helping people cope with the stresses of colonization on the new planet.  Which is fitting, as according to the game lore, Miriam was the chief psychologist onboard the Unity.

But it is interesting that, for the first time since the introduction, we are presented with a quote that isn’t by one of the seven leaders.  In fact, it isn’t even fictional.  It’s a quote from Plato’s most famous work.  Why this one?  Why here, associated with this technology?

The answer is threefold.  Through the base management gameplay that was inherited from Civilization II, SMAC asserts that the well-governed city is one in which too many people are not unhappy.  Correspondingly, the best governed cities are those in which many people are wildly happy and no considerable number are truly unhappy.  This is implemented through the mechanics that underlie the game’s concept of city-wide golden ages and drone riots.  It would seem that Plato agrees with this assertion, judging by the quote.

Second, this quote from Plato is an element in a pattern that Reynolds will come back to time and time again.  The future technology that is discovered during the course of the game can be used to create actual, solid solutions to problems man has experienced since time immemorial.  The implication with this quote is that, after at least three thousand years of searching, it is finally Social Psych that enables us to discover the better way of life Plato speaks of.  Pretty deep stuff for a first-level tech.

Finally, there is another small detail here that is worth savoring.  When Plato speaks here, he’s clearly using a metaphor to try to get his listeners to measure wealth in terms of wisdom instead of mere cash.  But there’s a wonderful double meaning here that only exists in the context of SMAC.

See, in the gameplay, all energy that’s generated by the bases each turn can be routed in one of three directions: it can be saved as reserve energy for industrial use or covert activity; it can be sent to the labs to discover new technologies; or it can be spent in the psych budget to produce happy workers (or Talents, in the game parlance).  This means that in SMAC, the psych budget is quite literally “the wealth that makes happiness”.

I find myself saying this a lot, but I cannot resist saying it again: genius!  It’s like Reynolds just rolls out of bed and casually scores critical successes on even the smallest details.  I’m in awe.  And we’ve barely even started our exploration of the game.

Technology: Applied Physics

“Scientific theories are judged by the coherence they lend to our natural experience and the simplicity with which they do so. The grand principle of the heavens balances on the razor’s edge of truth.”

— Commissioner Pravin Lal, “A History of Science”

In the game, Applied Physics is the first military technology.  It lets the player build units with laser weapons, which are a strength upgrade over the standard guns that every faction starts with.  On the surface, the technology and its quote don’t have a lot to do with the practical effect.

What’s really going on here is that, in the last days of Earth (read: sometime between the present day of the player in the late ’90s and the time the Unity was launched) science proceeded apace.  New practical applications of physics were discovered in order to prosecute wars and build interstellar vessels.  Thus, the discovery of Applied Physics in the game represents the reclamation by the colonists of this science-fictional inheritance.

Onto the quote.  As we’ve already seen, Lal is a fierce conservative in the context of the Planetary colonization effort.  It’s an interesting contrast because the people on Earth who most share his ideology and predilections nowadays are almost invariably very liberal.  But Lal is most interested in preserving that liberal legacy on the brand-new Planet, which makes him functionally very conservative.  He is trying to enforce a particular kind of stability in values.

And so Reynolds quite appropriately chooses Brother Lal to give the quote for this rediscovered technology.  Lal speaks eloquently of the value of the scientific project, but it’s crucial that he does so in the context of a history lesson.  Why does Lal, unlike any of the others, write histories of Earth to his followers in order to teach his ideology to his followers?

In attempting to answer this question, we learn a couple more things about Lal and the Peacekeepers.  First, his people are conversant in the language of the academy.  But where Zakharov represents the politically-impotent STEM departments focused on bringing forth new miracles, Lal and his people are the social scientists.  They make their home where the academy intersects with power: public policy; non-governmental organizations; and transnational institutions.

Second, the quote is fundamentally a poetic restatement of Occam’s Razor.  In context, the broader thrust of Lal’s History of Science is thus highly likely to be a restatement or extension of Popper’s emphasis on falsifiability as the key criterion on which a scientific theory should be measured.  Where the other faction leaders would be much more interested in the scientific conclusions of the past, Lal is primarily concerned with the social process and institutions through which scientific truth was converged upon.

I keep finding myself saying this, but had virtually anyone else made this game, they would have tossed in a more martially-minded quote here.  After all, this is the laser gun technology!  But Reynolds instead saw this as an opportunity to let one of the leaders speak about the philosophy of science.  And, even then, he chose a leader who is not primarily defined by his relationship to the scientific method.  It’s such a small thing, really, but SMAC is all about taking the opportunities for genius wherever they arise.

Technology: Information Networks

“The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress.  Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.”

— Sister Miriam Godwinson, “The Blessed Struggle”

This quote should look familiar.  It serves double-duty in the game: both as Sister Miriam’s introductory quote and as for the introduction to the “Information Networks” technology.  Back then, we were looking at it in light of what we could learn about Miriam and her Believer faction.  But there’s still some insight to be found if we consider it from this new perspective.

Information Networks is the first pure scientific tech in the tree.  Practically, it lets the player build Network Node facilities in their bases, which are fairly expensive buildings in the early game that serve as a force multiplier for the energy produced by the base that’s routed to science.

This implies that the game is talking about the futuristic version of a modern corporate or university Intranet here when they refer to the datalinks.  At least at first.  As such, it makes complete sense that the University always starts with this technology.  They also start with a free Network Node facility in every base (though they have to pay maintenance on it).  Nerds built the Internet as soon as it was technically possible.  When dropped on a brand-new planet, there’s no doubt what they’ll make the first priority.

Since the technology that Information Networks represent are so vital to the University’s core conception, it’s interesting to imagine what Academician Zakharov might have to say instead of Sister Miriam.  Instead of warning of the dangers potentially lurking in the datalinks, perhaps he’d just celebrate the interconnection of everything as the technical foundation of modern scientific enterprise?  Or maybe he’d give a Lal-like defense of the power of the free exchange of ideas as the lifeblood of scientific advance.

Both of these are intriguing because, in the game, it is actually the University that has the most to fear from the datalinks themselves.  The closest the game comes to a model for cultural threat or foreign ideological corruption is through the spying missions that enable a faction to spend energy to subvert a rival faction’s bases (conquering them instantly) or bribe their soldiers (changing the loyalty of a unit in the field).  And the University’s spying penalties make their bases and soldiers cheaper and easier to subvert.

Technology: Industrial Base

“Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.”

— CEO Nwabudike Morgan, “The Ethics of Greed”

The “Industrial Base” technology is the first economic technology in the tree.  Intriguingly, it doesn’t provide any direct economic benefits.  Instead, its main immediate effect is to let the faction that discovers it produce units that have Synthmetal Armor.  In the game, armor advances help units passively defend.  So, from a gameplay perspective, building up a strong industrial base on Planet is really helping you establish and defend your initial gains.

The Morganites start with this technology.  A basic level of economic competence is assumed from CEO Morgan and the people who flock to his banner.  As such, they are able to rapidly set up efficient mineral processing and smelting on a brand-new, mostly unknown planet.  Coming up with solutions to these basic economic problems is in their cultural DNA.

All of that’s interesting, of course.  But I find the quote itself to be just amazing.  CEO Morgan is the only person, fictional or not, that I have ever heard give a principled rejection of the very ideal of sustainability.  To my knowledge, even Rand and her acolytes spend their energy sidestepping this by talking about human flourishing as the key value that should be maximized.

I mean, ever since Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London, people have been pushing for the preservation of some portion of the natural environment.  Whether they argue that the natural world has a positive claim to be left alone (like the Gaians would argue) or they’re more interested in the idea of stewardship and preserving the natural inheritance for future generations, basically everyone agrees that it’s better to live in a fashion that’s sustainable in the long run.

And here we have CEO Morgan railing against that entire tradition.  Instead, he’s venerating the positive value of greed.  In and of itself.  Certain libertarian types nowadays, when they talk about global warming or whatever, might argue in favor of increased economic growth because a larger economy can theoretically deal with ecological problems better than a smaller one.  Therefore, the future will be better off if we use some of those resources now.

But Morgan’s saying, in essence, “Screw it.”  It doesn’t matter what the future might bring.  Because we’re here now.  They’re not.  And time itself has a huge value.  So every last drop of value we’re not extracting from the environment for human use right now is a drop that we’re losing the entire compound stream of returns on forevermore.  Thus, it is right and proper to capture and realize that value stream.  The Ethics of Greed.

This radical logic is especially compelling given the scenario in which this quote is read.  The colonists have just landed on Planet.  They are facing an entire alien world ripe for consumption.  Chances are, if everything goes well, all the factions will be embarking upon a period of explosive radiating growth.  In these exponentially-growing conditions, small incremental gains now can yield wildly disproportionate value in what would otherwise be a quite short time.