Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: thedarkestcolors on February 26, 2016, 12:06:56 am

Title: drone riot question
Post by: thedarkestcolors on February 26, 2016, 12:06:56 am

I thought I read in the in game help that a drone riot starts when drones > talents. But when drones == talents, sometimes they riot sometimes they don't.

(this would make some sense if people can be partial drones.
1 talent -- 1/4 drone 3/4 normal -- 1 drone
would show as :D :) :mad: and because 1.25 drones > 1 talent ---> riot)

So now I'm always unsure if I should turn the drone into doctor in such a situation or if I can get away without doing so. Is there any way to predict what happens?
This happens especially often when founding new Bases at size 3 and there 1 doctor more or less can make quite a difference.

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 26, 2016, 12:12:37 am

I don't remember who it was who went through the game's code and posted the drone formula in detail - but it was incredibly byzantine.  Yitzi and/or Dio can tell you a lot more than I ever understood.

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: thedarkestcolors on February 26, 2016, 12:43:53 am

I just noticed that there is a number after Psych in the city screen (not sure if it came from smac --> smax or from yitzi's patch), I've seen it take the values 1, 0 or -1
when its -1 --> riot (continues or starts) next turn. Unfortunately it only represents the state at the beginning of the turn and doesn't change when assigning docs :(
[
EDIT: it can take values >1 & < -1 --> I assume its: talents - drones)
and it gets recalculated when leaving and reentering the city
]


Currently I have a captured, starving city with:
 :D :) :) Doc Doc
and it shows as Psych (-1) and its rioting so I guess docs can now be secret drones (at least I never noticed that before), making things even harder to predict

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 26, 2016, 01:12:56 am

This is what I was able to find about the drone formula in a quick search: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3540.0 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3540.0)

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: thedarkestcolors on February 26, 2016, 11:27:44 am

thanks! what I understand of it so far is that drones are a lot more complicated then I thought.. I will have to reread that a few times..

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: Nexii on February 26, 2016, 02:26:43 pm

Most likely it's superdrone (darker red) which count as 2 drones

Title: Re: drone riot question
Post by: Dio on February 27, 2016, 09:28:20 pm

Quote from: thedarkestcolors on February 26, 2016, 12:43:53 am

I just noticed that there is a number after Psych in the city screen (not sure if it came from smac --> smax or from yitzi's patch), I've seen it take the values 1, 0 or -1
when its -1 --> riot (continues or starts) next turn. Unfortunately it only represents the state at the beginning of the turn and doesn't change when assigning docs :(
[
EDIT: it can take values >1 & < -1 --> I assume its: talents - drones)
and it gets recalculated when leaving and reentering the city
]


Currently I have a captured, starving city with:
 :D :) :) Doc Doc
and it shows as Psych (-1) and its rioting so I guess docs can now be secret drones (at least I never noticed that before), making things even harder to predict

The way I understand the changes that Yitzi made towards the game involves changes in the appearance of drones. The original game did not implement the "super drones" correctly and only followed the regular drone rules. The present state of the game indicates that a superdrone requires two psych to turn into a drone, a drone requires two psych to turn into a worker, and a worker requires two psych to change into a talent. The changes in this indicate the fact that the game first applies drone reduction facilities then police/psych and lastly secret projects before it calculates the effects of Talent increasing powers (Paradise Garden, The Human Genome Project, Clinical Immortality, and Psych). Any (super)drones that remain after police and drone reduction facilites then experience the effects of psych (if any). The last section involves the application of talent increases. The way I understand it, the game had problems with handling the specialists that did nothing to remove the presence of drones in a base and this caused it to display the citizens in an incorrect manner.