Question re Ore and Makers

[Neoshade]

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I seem to be able to violate the whole E=MC^2 of ore.
What I mean is that I think I can lose ore by reprocessing it between anti-creeper and back through makers producing and vacuuming.
1) Is this intentional? If I make a lot of ore, then vacuum it up, do I lose a % by intention (because all transfer of energy is naturally lossy?)
2) If not, then perhaps you can make a variable to account for all anti-creeper and ore not-yet destroyed and check to see if it remains stable without further mining or battle (because the only way to lose/destroy ore/anti-creeper should be through anti-creeper contact with creeper)
I'm not sure weather it's charging, bursting, vacuuming or producing, but somewhere, I think I'm losing ore.

Waiting for CW3, I went back and rediscovered CW2.
So I've been playing around with the new features in CW2, and I thought I found a cool exploit: I will build several Makers, and set them to charge up, and thereby employ the otherwise sporadic production of ore - especially with a limited ore storage - before I start a fight.
With these Makers, I burst upon a creeper pocket, and after the fight, I vacuum up all the exrta. By the time I start vacuuming, I have already set up a new group of Makers between shields producing at 4x to prepare a "natural burst pocket" for the next pocket of creeper. All the time I'm mining ore and vacuuming and producing at balanced rate. However, I feel like all this vacuuming, storing and producing is somehow lossy, and I'm running out of ore/anticreeper faster than the earlier version where there was only the Product & Pocket technique.
So hence my question about lossy vacuuming and charging.
Lastly - There is a very clear bug in that priority for ore is given to Makers that are charging, VS those that are producing. Such that if I have a limited ore supply, and more Makers that are charging than producing, I will produce ZERO anti-creeper. This upsets the balance of play and increases micromanagement detrimentally. (micromanagement sucks. as much as I love the vacuum and charge options, they actually detract from the action)
Thanks for your attention, and I'm siked for CW3!

Split topic from inappropriate thread and changed Subject. -G,

[mpete]

very small amounts (<25 or so) of creeper/AC are rounded to 0, so at the edge of the AC, some of it is evaporating

as for makers receiving ore, i think that its ether build order or position based rather than the mode

[Hunter Seeker]

The priority for makers is not based on their current setting.  In my experience its the build order (the unit built first) that indicates priority.  This is true for priority between multiple "vacuum" makers when current ore storage is at or near maximum.  This is also true for both produce and charge, setting changes do not change the priority.  This is not a bug, consider it a feature.  I understand your problem with the makers.  When i experience that situation in my play-style i either stop my charging makers or producers.  If you wanted another option to keep production balanced would be to utilize the X1, X2, X4 options to force a production that is more balanced.  One way to avoid the micromanagement taking a lot of your time would be to assign all makers to the same ctrl-grouip and use that to change the X1 X2 or X4 setting.  I hope this helps.
As Mpete indicated typical loss between burst and vacuumed creeper is usually due to "evaporation" when very low amounts of creeper are destroyed.  This has been true for all CW games however it can be hard to notice.  Avoiding 'edges" where the creeper would evaporate would help you retain creeper through the process.

[Imposter]

assign all makers to the same ctrl-grouip

And I just learned this game has control groups...

Except I just tried it out, and they assign just fine, but when I try to then use that group, it thinks I'm doing a hot key for building structures....

[Grauniad]

Using the group is Shift-Number.