Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 02, 2019, 07:49:12 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases
This is a continuation of Fission Armor mod. I've decided to rename it and start a new thread because of few drastic changes.
I forked Induktio's Thinker mod with his generous permission and embedded it into my mod. Now I can tap into exe patching and fix some things previously not fixable by text patching. The most important one is unit cost calculation formula. I cannot express how happy I am to remove this pain in the ass that poisoned all my modding efforts until now! As a consequence, I've returned back all reactors as I can now correctly price them without breaking the game. Hence "Fission Armor" name is no longer relevant. I've renamed it to "Doer" without much thinking (no pun intended) as it compliments Thinker mod in my mind. Namely, Thinker mod teaches AI to think better. Whereas my mod adds more things for human player to do. I was also thought about "Thinker-Doer" combo, but "Doer" seems to be shorter and simpler. Let me know if you like new name.
This is Doer-20 version. I've play tested it a little and it is quite playable and satisfies me. There are few things on my TODO list. However, I believe there is no point to wait for perfection. Instead, I'll be releasing new version as long as I have time and will to do it. At the same time I hope to solicit user input to add or update my future releases based on it.
There is quite extensive README in the package that explains my reasons and modding ideas. However, it is worth reiterating once more that I want to highlight maximum number of game features already in the game. Most of them are extremely underpowered in vanilla and not appealing. This mod strives to make them appealing and must have in some strategies. Thus increasing play style variability = even greater replayability = even more fun!
I plan to do minimal changes for that purpose and do not plan to create completely new experience or new strategies. It should still feel like old good SMAX just better.
:)
Release repository for latest releases. This place is no good to keep history. It doesn't allow more than 5 attachments.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 02, 2019, 08:25:17 pm
Post by: bvanevery on December 02, 2019, 09:14:47 pm
Induktio licensed Thinker Mod under the GPL 2.0 (https://github.com/induktio/thinker/blob/master/License.txt). You don't need his permission to use his work. You just have to abide by the terms of the license. It's basically a "you must make source code available and license it the same way to others" license. Perhaps by "generous permission" you meant that he chose to license it under the GPL.
Also note that strictly speaking, his and your distribution of new game binaries is illegal. :D His use and your subsequent use of the GPL may not hold up in court in practice. He has the right to the existence of his own source code (I think? not sure about reverse engineering laws), but no right to compile binaries or distribute them.
You also don't need my permission to utilize substantial portions of my .txt modding work. You just have to abide by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. That means you have to credit me somewhere 'reasonable' as the author of my own work (not as the author of your derived work), and you can't make money off of your derived work.
Since I'm not messing with binaries, and Firaxis did give explicit permission to change the files I've changed, I'm on a better legal footing than you guys are. :D However EA could try to claim a right to distribute my work without compensating me, according to the license that comes with recent versions of the game. I don't know whether that would hold up in court or not. I haven't looked up any modder legal precedents in that regard. It's a nice theoretical issue. I have a hard time seeing it ever mattering in the real world, unless I become rich and famous, and well known for distributing my mod.
As for names: "Doer" suffers from a problem that it doesn't mean anything to most people. "Thinker" refers to a level of difficulty in the game itself, and it does sound like something having to do with AI. "Doer" doesn't sound like anything. Some people might infer that it's a follow-on from Thinker Mod. Most people have no idea that Thinker Mod exists, let alone any mod derived from it. Most people have never played SMAC at all. Getting people interested in SMAC in the 1st place, is mostly about telling people on /r/4Xgaming (https://www.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/) that it goes on sale at GOG (https://www.gog.com/) at least 4 times a year for $1.49. It's the best bang for the buck in 4X, so slowly, people come into the fold. I get noobs asking me if they should try my mod as they learn to play SMAC. Unfortunately I keep having to say no, go learn the original game first. I don't have any kind of "noob mode" for my mod, and my changes really don't mean much to someone who hasn't played before.
So, on to the wordsmithing:
Whereas my mod adds more things for human player to do.
What does it add for the human player to do? Not compared to Thinker Mod. Compared to the stock game. This is important as far as coming up with any short way of explaining it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 02, 2019, 09:23:15 pm
Picking name from game lexicon is a good idea. I'll try few.
Post by: bvanevery on December 02, 2019, 09:34:04 pm
Your goal would be to make something memorable. To people on /r/4Xgaming, because that's the only large source of new 4X TBS players that I've run into on the internet. The historical Civ-oriented forums like Apolyton etc. do not count. They do not have enough volume of new people to matter. I don't even announce on those other forums anymore. Got tired of crickets chirping when I'd make my mod releases. On Reddit, specifically /r/4Xgaming, I actually get response, interest, upvotes, and people trying out my mod. Nowadays I even get people giving me playtester feedback. They mostly don't bother to come here! Don't kid yourself, people aren't going to sign up for a new web forum for a new game unless they really end up loving the game. Some do, it does happen. But the point is, you need to be on /r/4Xgaming. That's the audience, the demographic, that you're trying to reach.
So, what's memorable over there? I'm not sure. But I've been recently advised, acronyms such as SMAC and SMACX are not memorable. I tend to assume that everyone in 4X gaming knows what they mean, and I'm wrong. They don't. Recently, I finally changed my ad copy for my mod releases. I spell out "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with Alien Crossfire expansion" at least once, at the top of the post.
So, "SMACX AI Growth mod" is only half good. Because people don't know what SMACX is. Then again, people have to figure that out to even use a mod, so it's not entirely bad either. If I were to do it all over again, using Alpha Centauri as part of the name might be smart.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 02, 2019, 09:47:23 pm
Alpha Centauri feature highlight mod
Alpha Centauri enriched mod
Alpha Centauri breathtaking development mod
Alpha Centauri blazing expansion mod
Alpha Centauri intense rivalry mod
Alpha Centauri flexible strategy mod
Alpha Centauri deep blue mod
Alpha Centauri lightspeed evolution mod
Alpha Centauri advantage race mod
Alpha Centauri strategical mastermind mod
Alpha Centauri dare ruler mod
Alpha Centauri mission control mod
Alpha Centauri Sentient conquest mod or probably even plain "Alpha Centauri Sentient Econometrics mod"
Alpha Centauri 4X Transcendence mod
Alpha Centauri The Will To Power mod - sounds cool
Alpha Centauri Stairway to Transcendence mod - another variation
Alpha Centauri the art of Social Engineering mod
Alpha Centauri elusive Power mod
Alpha Centauri Thought Control mod
Alpha Centauri Adaptive Doctrine mod
Alpha Centauri Controlled Biomachinery mod
Alpha Centauri Digital Sentience mod
Alpha Centauri Industrial conquest mod
Alpha Centauri Mind/Machine Interface mod - that has some sense in it
Alpha Centauri Neural Grafting mod
Alpha Centauri Nonlinear expansion mod
Alpha Centauri Polymorphic strategy mod - that does too
Alpha Centauri Sentient opposition mod - that does too
Alpha Centauri escape Singularity mod - that does too
Alpha Centauri Threshold of insanity mod - that does too
Post by: bvanevery on December 02, 2019, 11:49:24 pm
Alpha Centauri Thought Control mod
This one. If it suits you. It is memorable. It's also good enough to have become part of my avatar in this forum.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 03, 2019, 12:23:24 am
Alpha Centauri Thought Control mod
This one. If it suits you. It is memorable. It's also good enough to have become part of my avatar in this forum.
Interesting. I was thinking about "Alpha Centauri The Will To Power mod". Sounds powerful and highlights the never ending competition process. And The Will To Power unlocks Thought Control.
Do you still favor Thought Control over The Will To Power?
;)
Post by: bvanevery on December 03, 2019, 08:12:24 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 03, 2019, 02:43:16 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 03, 2019, 06:24:11 pm
Research seems to be rushing ahead too fast. Especially when faction get connected and start exchanging technologies. On default settings (100% research rate) I often end up with Fusion Laser having only 5 bases size 3-4 each. That is not enough production power to keep up with new discoveries. I set it to 50% in version 20 and this seems to deliver smoother technology progress. At least everybody have some time to develop before acquiring more expensive items.
Of course, it varies across different games and used factions. I believe slower research doesn't break the game as exponentially evolving factions will catch up with it pretty quick even if they experience slow down at some point. Whereas faster research is unfixable. There is in game mechanism to slow down research. Whole competition idea is to develop faster by all means.
This being said the acceptable enough discovery rate starts after acquiring terraforming and connecting with other players. Before that at the very very beginning when some don't even know terraforming yet, the discovery rate is noticeably slow. Many faction may struggle to get critical knowledge. To cope with that I decided to give 2-3 initial technologies to all factions. That should let them start quicker, build some facilities and units, overcome -2 POLICE hurdle, ignite early technology trading between players. In other words, give them some free stuff to start with - the rest they have to earn.
Post by: bvanevery on December 04, 2019, 01:26:47 am
In my mod, I have the play mechanic that aggressive research is for the Discover oriented factions. I've put weighted barriers in the tech tree to prevent non-Discover factions from going up the Discover learning curve. Recently I also accelerated the number of advanced research facilities available, because the University was clearly getting its ass whipped most of the time. The acceleration has made a noticeable difference in Discover faction viability. For some reason the Cyborgs in my current game are doing piles of research, even as I eviscerate their empire with chemical attacks. They got Nanohospital technology and it seems they weren't afraid to use it. I've seen various games where the AI didn't seem much into building advanced research facilities, even when they were available. In particular, some combo Thinker Mod + my mod stuff earlier this year. So I'm pleased to see an AI faction actually building the advanced research facilities. I don't think I've seen an Industrial Lab get built yet though. Seems to be Research Hospitals and Nanohospitals, which give happiness and more resistance to genetic warfare.
If focusing on Discover isn't actually an advantage in your mod, then you need to think about how a faction like the University is supposed to survive and thrive.
Almost forgot, I use Secret Projects heavily to obstruct factions from trading techs to anyone.
My version of "free stuff" is that there are no Secret Projects on Tiers 1 and 2. AIs will trade the early techs readily. Tiers 1 and 2 have turned out to be "broad" though, so it's not certain you're going to get everything without focusing on it.
I don't give factions any free techs unless they're essential to a faction's initial operations, i.e. the Pirates get E1 Doctrine: Flexibility.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 04, 2019, 04:49:19 pm
Post by: bvanevery on December 04, 2019, 07:54:08 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 04, 2019, 08:03:51 pm
Post by: bvanevery on December 05, 2019, 04:16:06 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 07, 2019, 10:08:38 pm
Now I am onto my new crusade - combat mechanics. So long it annoyed my with its flawed formulas. I am not sure if it worth efforts, though. It doesn't seem that game breaking or changing anyway. At least nobody bothers. Feel free to vote either way.
Here is the essence of the culprit.
1. Combat round roll probabilities.
Game does apply pretty simple algorithm to decide which side wins each combat round. I'm glad that at least here they opted out for simplicity. Unfortunately, this is one of rare places where probability math does matter. In short, displayed odds are calculated linearly by attack to defense ratio. Meaning when attacker total attack strength is twice as more than defender total defense strength game expectedly shows 2:1 odds providing same HP left on both units. Here is the twist: real combat formula does not give odds as displayed!!! D'oh. Isn't everybody tired to discover game design flaws over and over again?
Just for an example, 2:1 strength ratio produces 3:1 combat winning odds. Odd, isn't it? Combat odds formula is not even linear. Meaning it favors stronger side more than it should. That is the problem as it economically renders even slightly weaker units much more economically ineffective and forces mod designers like me and bvanevery to bring armor and weapon values as close to each other as possible. Otherwise, with linear formula it wouldn't be too bad to fight with weaker units as long as you can match their numbers proportionally.
2. Multi round combat.
Another math probability catch. Probability of winning in a multi round battle is a power of singe round winning probability. Meaning that even if you have a slightest advantage this advantage multiplies tenfold (for 10 round combat). Example, 2:1 strength advantage ratio gives you about 99.9% winning chance with both units using Fission reactor (10 HP). One would think that slight 11:10 advantage should result in some slightly above 50% win chance. Nope. With Fission reactor it's ~70%. And with Fusion reactor it's ~87%. Even worse with higher reactors. Impressive, isn't it? You can see how even slightest advantage matters with these formulas since winning unit can heal and thus winning unit owner incurs no loss.
The only way to fix it is to match complete battle win probability to what displayed odds screen says: the chance of each unit success is directly proportional to this unit strength all effects combined (attack and defense modifiers, HPs left, etc.).
Your thoughts?
Post by: bvanevery on December 08, 2019, 12:29:54 am
Psi combat seems to be particularly screwed up. I've developed a gut feeling for how many 'grains of salt" to take with the odds checker.
I think a lot of combat systems could work, if the displayed odds were actually true. A player gains instincts over enough iterations, if the phenomena are consistent.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 08, 2019, 12:40:50 am
I think the odds checker, which I always have turned on nowadays, is completely lying to me.
That is what I am trying to convey.
It does not agree with Part 2 of your analysis.
This is not my analysis. This is what people extracted from disassembled code before me. I am not running a discussion on how it is implemented now. This is just an example of how flawed it is. I plan to change it.
I think a lot of combat systems could work, if the displayed odds were actually true. A player gains instincts over enough iterations, if the phenomena are consistent.
That's the plan. Match actual odds with displayed ones.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 09, 2019, 04:43:09 am
Changes are in description. The most important of them are:
Conventional and psi combat now ignores reactor power. Combat is processed as if all units have 10 HP. This is done by hijacking psi combat mechanics that actually does ignore reactor power by original design.
Conventional and psi combat odds calculation now ignores reactor power to match modified combat mechanics. This is actually not only mod for conventional combat but a fix for psi combat. In vanilla psi combat ignores reactor power but psi combat odds calculation does not. Which is a bug that haunted and confused whole community for so long. I am curious why previous fixer like Yitzi and Scient didn't touch it.
Reactor contribution to unit cost calculation is simplified. Now each subsequent reactor drops whole unit cost by approximately 20%. This is configurable. This drop does not affect abilities flat cost.
-----------------------------
These are exe patches. I barely tested them to make sure calculation works correctly. However, there are plenty of other branches I didn't even traced due to limited time: battle involving artifact, probe, artillery, missile. If you see any discrepancies - please let me know. Thank you.
Post by: bvanevery on December 09, 2019, 06:58:33 am
Still working on my massive DAR, so not free to test this right now. Got some other life concerns too. But when I have time, I'll look at it.
Post by: dino on December 09, 2019, 09:15:24 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 09, 2019, 03:12:33 pm
Ok I finally get it now. A reactor gives you slightly cheaper unit costs, but that's it. No other benefit. That puts beginning of game units much more at parity with end of game units. Why upgrade?
Still working on my massive DAR, so not free to test this right now. Got some other life concerns too. But when I have time, I'll look at it.
Not sure what you mean by parity. End game units are much stronger. Acquiring next level item is always beneficial from both combat and economy point of view. Making end game units slightly cheaper makes them even more economically effective.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 09, 2019, 03:22:47 pm
Judging on thinker.ini, you've included an outdated version of thinker mod, or is it just outdated version of ini file by mistake ?
I checked it and it matches v0.9. Can you point specific things made you think so?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 09, 2019, 04:24:12 pm
Judging on thinker.ini, you've included an outdated version of thinker mod, or is it just outdated version of ini file by mistake ?
I checked it and it matches v0.9. Can you point specific things made you think so?
Never mind. I think you meant alphax.txt. It is not even outdated. It is from prehistoric times when Thinker didn't distribute it with own changes. Updated it. Here is it. Didn't tested it myself yet.
Post by: bvanevery on December 09, 2019, 05:52:07 pm
Not sure what you mean by parity. End game units are much stronger.
Only due to putting bigger weapon or armor on them. A Chaos Fission unit isn't going to have any less of a punch than a Chaos Fusion unit. The latter just costs less to build, if you're not dealing with minimum cost issues. I can see cases at least in the stock binary, where if only your reactor difference was implemented, a Fission version of something might actually be better than the Quantum version of something.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 10, 2019, 06:16:48 pm
I plan to fix some exploit related to unit hurrying and upgrading as discussed in http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21360.0.
Hurry cost for all production is flat - no initial mineral investment restrictions.
Unit hurry cost = minerals * 4.
Unit upgrade cost = difference in hurry cost.
These two combined solve crawler upgrade exploit to add to SP as well as any other hurry/upgrade exploits. They are no exploits anymore as all costs are linear. One just pay the full price of the upgrade target design regardless of how they ended up there.
Game does not allow downgrade to weaker weapon/armor so formula should never produce negative upgrade cost. However, in this mod higher reactors decrease unit cost so it is possible to get negative upgrade cost for only upgrading reactor. I need to implement this and test to see if it works.
Talking about changing hurry cost formula from quadratic to linear. I don't think it'll break anything. People already spend most of the money on hurrying facilities due to their lower higher hurry cost comparing to units. I never find myself hurrying units on a regular basis past initial exploration stage of the game. I don't think there are so much money in the game to turn flat unit hurry rate into an exploit. It is impossible to buy them all.
On a negative side it does not help to buy out last 10 minerals for unit. Vanilla: 15 credits, new: 40 credits.
On a positive side one can buy out complete expensive unit with enough money. Example for 100 mineral worth unit, vanilla: 700 credits, new: 400 credits.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 12, 2019, 07:00:35 pm
Problems
- Uneven research pace. First few techs come fast. Then stagnation. End game pace is very high.
- Tech trade hold off exploit. It is more beneficial to trade after research as each trade increases number of researched techs and makes next research tech more expensive.
#1 Analysis
Analyze or emulate average faction progress and use this as a baseline. It will never be exact as there are endless variations in games. However, it should reflect expected game stages and effect of map size correctly.
There are two important game stages to adjust: A) early game and B) finish run when map it fully occupied by bases. Finish run is not necessarily an end game. It could start much earlier on small maps.
A)
Early game is same on any map size until player actually hit map limits. Therefore, early techs cost should also be same regardless of the map size!
B)
Map size limits number of working tiles, obviously. After some point in the game whole map is occupied with bases, best terraforming technique is applied to each square, and all labs multiplying facilities are built. Then the only source of labs growth is base population growth which is quasi linear due to ever growing nutrient requirements for next citizen. So asymptotically labs grows about linearly proportionally to map size.
#2 Analysis
I don't think there is a bullet proof solution for this one. Even if we fix all tech costs based on their level (as dino suggests) player would still like to research cheaper technologies and trade more expensive ones. This time not based on research time appearance but based on their level. Either way player would try to minimize cost which is normal strategical choice. The only way to avoid this exploit is to price all techs same but this is unfeasible in 4X game. I believe the closest to this is to increase cost as proportionally smooth as possible. There will still be an opportunity to save small here and there but it will be also outweighed by losing trade opportunity saving big. After all, this is completely normal to avoid trading (and even researching!) unneeded technologies.
What vanilla design does wrong?
- Linear tech cost growth at the beginning when development speed is exceptionally slow. First two technologies can be discovered in 4-8 turns each. Subsequent tech costs quickly climb to 40-50 turns easily especially if you traded a lot of them at the beginning. That results in early game tech stagnation and lack of research maneuver.
Data analysis
Assuming we are playing toughest difficulty level which limits game play to 400 turns. Tech costs should be set then to let player finish all research by then with some challenge. Assuming one acquire approximately every second technology by non research means (pods, trade, stealing). The last statement is disputable, of course. With that in mind some average faction should be able to research the rest of 45 techs in less than 400 turns leaving some time for ascent to transcendence. That gives us 400 / 45 = ~8 turns per tech. I'd say 6-8 should be good enough baseline to be not too harsh on player. However, building twice larger than average empire is another mean to achieve this even without trading.
What we can do to fix it with minimal efforts?
- Set fixed cost to early technologies. Assuming average faction can come up with 2 labs at the very beginning first tech should cost 2 * 6-8 = 12-16.
- Cost for following early techs should grow very slightly. Say about 5%-10% for each next to avoid stagnation and discourage trade hold off exploit.
- Further cost growth should be somewhat exponential or otherwise accelerating with about 5-20% growth rate or so.
- Approaching map saturation growth acceleration should slow down.
- Past map saturation growth should stabilize on linear progression.
A) is supposed to alleviate not exact matching between tech cost formula and actual development due to either not perfect formula itself or exceptional variation in development. If player falls behind in research techs become cheaper and vice versa.
B) is supposed to limit loss for least fortunate. Factions behind in research get technologies cheaper.
Post by: dino on December 12, 2019, 10:01:19 pm
The best solutions, to various tech realted issues would imo be:
1) Have cost fixed and level based like in thinker mod and have the cost of each level match development speed to extend the research beyond 300 turns
2) Make AI agree to trade only equal level techs as baseline, +- 1lvl depending on diplomacy standing, +- 1lvl depending on how much more or less traded techs are weighted according to AI weights.
3) If trade would be not possible according to the above rule, AI should trade for money according to tech cost, adjusted by diplomacy, commerce and AI tech weights.
4) Make probe steal tech action have a cost like base mind control, it should cost half the cost of research as baseline, modified by probe rating like mind control.
As for the awkward solution with the first 10 techs in thinker revised cost formula. I think just having the first lvl techs cost 2 - 3 times more than the first tech in vanilla would be fine, as long as you speed up a bit early game development with one free former at the start ( thinker mod feature, could be modified to give it to the player too ) and make sure AIs will research Ecology as one of their first two techs. A free former is also a great feature, to help with overcoming a bad starting terrain.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 12, 2019, 11:19:52 pm
:)
Not sure they all are applicable to my modding either. I try to not create new experience. Rather fix some obviously sticking problems those render certain feature of the game unusable or deviating from original idea. I highlighted two of them in my previous post: research stagnation in the early game and the opposite in the later. These are problems in terms of this mode because this is not what one would expect from game. There, of course, could be deviations in research pace but not that big and illogical. So I am going to tune tech cost to smooth them to extent where it is not that noticeable problem anymore.
As for trading thing, I don't think this is a problem at all. Past the first 20 techs their cost grows very slowly. Next tech is about just 3-5% more expensive. Holding off the trade may win you these 5% at risk of losing trade opportunity and whole 100% of free tech. Ergo, is better to trade as soon as possible and as much as possible. You still can exercise it but its a normal strategical risk. Trade hold off is not some overpowered or must have strategy.
Now, the first 20 techs is another story. Due to this design flaw their average cost increase is somewhere 30%. This is something worth holding. After I fix this specific design flaw the hold off exploit will die by itself.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 12, 2019, 11:44:23 pm
1) Have cost fixed and level based like in thinker mod and have the cost of each level match development speed to extend the research beyond 300 turns
The rest of the game engine is not aware of fixed cost. It will be very difficult to integrate. This'll create more problems than it solves.
2) Make AI agree to trade only equal level techs as baseline, +- 1lvl depending on diplomacy standing, +- 1lvl depending on how much more or less traded techs are weighted according to AI weights.
Don't see a need. Why restrict it? AI is weighing trade benefit already and may reject worse offer. Level is not guarantee of need. You may desperately need level 1 tech and willing to give away level 5 for it and vice versa.
3) If trade would be not possible according to the above rule, AI should trade for money according to tech cost, adjusted by diplomacy, commerce and AI tech weights.
Even current rude rule of offering tech for 100 credits regardless of level does not have any devastating effect on game flow. Why bother with even smaller details?
4) Make probe steal tech action have a cost like base mind control, it should cost half the cost of research as baseline, modified by probe rating like mind control.
It does have cost already - vendetta! It's not monetary but not everything should be monetary in the game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 13, 2019, 01:15:42 pm
Post by: dino on December 15, 2019, 11:23:37 pm
W: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,13,16,20,24,30,
A: 1,2, ,3, ,4,5, 6 , 10,16,24, , ,
Shortly after Tachyon Field introduction, weapon rating equals armor.
With 1/3 combat round chance, the chance of defeating a defender in a base with a tachyon field is very small. AI won't be capable of conquering any bases imo.
I'd go with something like this:
W: 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12,16,20,24,30,
A: 1,2, , 3, ,4,6, 8, 10,12,16, , ,
The combat resolution function is fully disassembled by Scient, so very easily two binary tweaks could be done ( or better yet pull the whole combat resolution function into the mod ):
1) Reduce perimeter defense and tachyon field bonuses to +75%
2) Remove stack collateral damage, from defeating a unit
Results ?
Defending a base would have roughly same chances as vanilla, but easily knocking down with a small task force and little to no loses, a continous stream of AI units approaching without any tactics your bases would become no longer possible. I'm positive that AI would benefit from these changes a lot, while still giving a player some room to gain an advantage with clever tactics.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 05:32:19 am
I don't see much problem for more economically advanced AI faction to fight less advanced one. You are right that TF triples defense. That just makes attacker lose triple number of units more against same strength defenders in bases. Assuming they can supply three times more units to the front line they will advance without problems. And this is only the worst scenario for attacker. Outnumbering opponent means ruling the field between bases impeding enemy communications, and achieving artillery superiority. With artillery on their side, attacker halves base defenders HPs changing initial 1:3 odds to 2:3. And then with discovery of strongest weapon to 10:12. It's almost equal losses! Now you want to weaken defenders even more. If we do this we are back to attacker advantage and indestructible army nightmare.
I agree that all this math is merely an estimation and only play testing gives real picture. What I've observed so far is that even same strength defenders behind PD do not stop dedicated invader AI deploying enough units to battle. Thankfully that doesn't happen swiftly anymore as in vanilla when AI with slightest advantage ate neighbors for breakfast and grew out of proportions in a blink of an eye. In this mod I still see AI advancing occasionally but at slow enough rate when snowballing can be stopped.
Please feel free to share your play testing results. I'm also happy to provide modified version of the mod for you to test your theories. I am quite keep of such research too. :)
Post by: dino on December 16, 2019, 09:30:19 am
I assumed the odds of each round are adjusted for damage taken in the previous one. It'd 1/3 only if odds were always the same as in the first combat resolution round.
If that is the case with the combat function, please let me know, it's years since I've looked into it, I may misremember it.
The goal of the design presented is to make actively defending against AI ( by attacking incoming forces ) more difficult, without changing AI vs AI dynamics much.
Keep in mind that AI vs AI defender can replace/repair looses much faster and with thinker most factions remain of roughly equal power.
In vanilla AI mid game can conquer anything, *mostly* only after it gains a reactor advantage.
If you take reactor advantage out *and* tilt defenders odds so heavily as you did, in my opinion AI won't be capable of conquering anything.
Does AI use artillery to purposefully drop defenses to 50% ? With Tachyon field odds are already more in favor of the defender than in the early game.
If you calculate the odds, my proposal doesn't change base conquering odds at all from vanilla, only makes aggressor faction units take less damage in the open, from human defender attacks.
In my experience AIs with thinker are in permanent stalemate, I'd rather like to see more decisive actions between them, not less.
I'd love to have combat resolution function disassembled and it's source code as a part of the mod to tweak.
Or, you could just make 4 versions with binary tweaks: with/without collateral damage from loosing a unit in the stack and with 50%, or 75% facility bonuses.
With access to such tweaks I'd be interested in doing playtesting and experiments.
Some tweaks to the existing source code is the extend of my ability, if it comes to coding, so I can't make it happen myself ;)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 04:01:19 pm
If you have 1/3 *combat round* chance, then the chance of the whole combat is much smaller than that, since after each damage taken the odds tilt even more in favor of the defender.
You are absolutely right. The chance of a 1/3 weaker unit win a singe duel is zero. However, we are talking about an end game assault saturated with units and multiple attacks against a base per turn. It that scenario we care less about individual unit winning chances but more of mutual HP depletion. Each defender will be hit by multiple attacker. Some of them may die but they eventually kill a defender. Let's say AI 1 have 4 defenders behind TF and AI 2 attacks a base with 20+ attackers of about same strength as defenders all at the same turn. As a result AI 1 will lose all 4 defenders when AI 2 will lose 12 attackers on average. That is all war math we need: proportion of losses matches combat odds.
This being said the actual SMACX combat odds are different from those displayed! But this is another story and potential fix target.
Back to the discussion. Battle win chances matter only when lone units meat in wilderness. In large scale war where each side can sacrifice as many units in a single turn to defeat target unit only proportion of losses matters. In this regard slight increase in base defense does not negate invasion completely but only how little the invader can bite with the size of their current forces. I never tasked myself with fine tuning this. Feel free to do that research and I'll listen to your suggestions.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 04:10:49 pm
I assumed the odds of each round are adjusted for damage taken in the previous one. It'd 1/3 only if odds were always the same as in the first combat resolution round.
If that is the case with the combat function, please let me know, it's years since I've looked into it, I may misremember it.
That is correct. Odds are calculated "taking damage into account" - this is an exact phase on odds dialog. However, the proportion of HP losses stays the same. For example, same strength units have 1:1 odds. Now if defender is half damaged already, odds displays 2:1 for attacker. However, the proportion of HP losses is still 1:1. Since defender has only 5 HPs that means attacker will also lose 5 HPs on average.
All combined the HP losses are proportional to unit strength. When you extrapolate it to large armies that translates to number of units lost since each dead unit loses 10 HP each.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 04:22:31 pm
The goal of the design presented is to make actively defending against AI ( by attacking incoming forces ) more difficult, without changing AI vs AI dynamics much.
Keep in mind that AI vs AI defender can replace/repair looses much faster and with thinker most factions remain of roughly equal power.
In vanilla AI mid game can conquer anything, *mostly* only after it gains a reactor advantage.
If you take reactor advantage out *and* tilt defenders odds so heavily as you did, in my opinion AI won't be capable of conquering anything.
In vanilla actively defending against AI is already impossibly difficult. When my neighbor amasses forces and invades my territory this is a certain death. Switching all bases to building combat units doesn't help. The only plausible way to defend is to amass striker units and invade enemy territory before they do. The one who does first strike wins. There is absolutely no viable "defend on your territory" strategy in vanilla. Why do you want to make defense even more difficult? In my mod I see that I really can defend with minimal efforts against some barging forces. Of course, stronger forces would break my defense but at least I can defend to some extent while in vanilla any wandering attacker is a threat of losing base.
Let me repeat once more. Please play test it and share your experience. Theorizing is often quite off.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 04:25:50 pm
Does AI use artillery to purposefully drop defenses to 50% ? With Tachyon field odds are already more in favor of the defender than in the early game.
If you calculate the odds, my proposal doesn't change base conquering odds at all from vanilla, only makes aggressor faction units take less damage in the open, from human defender attacks.
In my experience AIs with thinker are in permanent stalemate, I'd rather like to see more decisive actions between them, not less.
I'd love to have combat resolution function disassembled and it's source code as a part of the mod to tweak.
Or, you could just make 4 versions with binary tweaks: with/without collateral damage from loosing a unit in the stack and with 50%, or 75% facility bonuses.
With access to such tweaks I'd be interested in doing playtesting and experiments.
Some tweaks to the existing source code is the extend of my ability, if it comes to coding, so I can't make it happen myself
Not purposefully. I never saw them amassing artillery fire against a base but they do use it in quantities they have. I guess we can tweak the percentage of artillery built by AI to aid them in that.
Collateral damage: you mean disable it completely? It is already disabled in bases. Do you want to disable it everywhere?
Facility bonuses: do you mean absolute values or on top of intrinsic base defense? I.e. just list these defensive bonuses:
- Intrinsic base defense (exposed in alphax.txt, default 25%)
- PD (hardcoded, currently 100%)
- TF (hardcoded, currently 100%)
Post by: dino on December 16, 2019, 05:34:42 pm
But after you increase armor ratio, you should imo proportionally decrease perimeter defense and tachyon field bonuses, or AI won't be able to deal with conquering bases, since it usually won't prepare an attack with artillery properly. While we are at artillery, I'd reduce max damage from arty to 50%, and max damage in the base to 70%, for the same reason: AI can't use it to the full potential, by nerfing it you even the playing field a bit, while still keeping artillery worthy of using.
These are my ideas to make it more difficult for a player, to fight against strong AI opponent, while keeping dynamics between AIs mostly unchanged.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 06:32:53 pm
Yes, vanilla game favor an attacker in the open so much, that you can keep destroying a stream of units from a few times bigger AI opponent with almost no loses with a pack of cheap rovers and clever tactics abusing predictability of the AI. By removing collateral damage and increasing armor to weapon ratio you could make it impossible.
But after you increase armor ratio, you should imo proportionally decrease perimeter defense and tachyon field bonuses, or AI won't be able to deal with conquering bases, since it usually won't prepare an attack with artillery properly. While we are at artillery, I'd reduce max damage from arty to 50%, and max damage in the base to 70%, for the same reason: AI can't use it to the full potential, by nerfing it you even the playing field a bit, while still keeping artillery worthy of using.
These are my ideas to make it more difficult for a player, to fight against strong AI opponent, while keeping dynamics between AIs mostly unchanged.
AI uses artillery and in large enough quantities just not concentrated fire. Tweaking build priority may naturally convert amount of artillery units into bombardment quality. However, concentrated fire is the major AI problem not only in artillery but in general.
I agree that increasing armor theoretically calls for decreasing other defense components if resulting defensive strength become too high. However, equally armored defenders behind TF is still not too high defense in my eyes. I want defense to be three times more effective in the end game. Huge end game production results in massive armies. Economical strength also greatly diverges toward the end of the game. It is not at all unusual for one faction to be 3-5 times more powerful. That results in 3-5 times more units with more advanced weapon. In such conditions triple defense is just bare minimum to slow down the invasion. Without it weaker factions would be all gone long before end game.
Again. This is my experience based on my play testing. I haven't seen TF in action yet but I noticed that PD in the early-mid game doesn't completely block invaders. They eventually break through. I'm afraid it'll worsen toward the end of the game. So TF is not a luxury.
I'll see if I can find and expose defense values anyway.
Post by: dino on December 16, 2019, 06:44:12 pm
Also by increasing defense so heavily you make it easier for the player to concentrate defenses in a base and defend without any looses, with enough defenders and these defense values even rover raids won't be necessary, because it'll be almost guaranteed that individual attacker will loose and only damage defender a bit, with enough units in the base not a single one will be destroyed and they'll quickly heal.
As you noticed AI can't into concentrating power, this is the whole point of my proposals, that player unlike AI can, so I am thinking about changes that would allow AI wear down player's defenses even when he concentrates power in a defending base.
I am also not worried about decisive victories in the mid and endgame between leading AI factions, with large empires arising, that could rival the player.
I'll see if I can find and expose defense values anyway.
I was browsing through Scient's database in IDA few years ago out of curiosity and remember reading through combat resolution function, both facility defense bonuses and the part applying collateral damage were disassembled with named variables. This is the main reason I hammer about these ideas. I don't remember if artillery combat was also there, but very likely it was.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 07:31:30 pm
changes that would allow AI wear down player's defenses even when he concentrates power in a defending base.
That is the root of all SMACX combat problems. You can theoretically tune combat odds to be very close to 1:1 in one scenario. However, number of scenarios and variations are huge. Due to other odds modifications you'll see them ranging from twice as low to twice as high all throughout the game. And even slightest (!!!) strength advantage above 20% (like 6:5) almost guarantees survival in a duel. So you see it is absolutely impossible to balance each and every duel properly. Most of the cases units on one side will just drop like flies due to balance currently tilted in favor of one of them.
Due to this impossibility I do not even bother to balance this. Here is what I am for: if somebody's units inevitably should drop like flies let it be attacker. I am completely fine with attacker units dying in large quantities not avenged. That means that there is a certain economical advantage threshold below which invasion is just a waste of resources as you correctly noticed. So one should achieve certain power before invading. That was my goal! Such threshold doesn't exists in vanilla.
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 07:33:09 pm
Post by: dino on December 16, 2019, 09:38:56 pm
In my opinion without reactor advantage, it's not effective in the conquest enough and you think it's too effective already.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 10:02:25 pm
It's interesting, that we see an opposite problem with AI :)
In my opinion without reactor advantage, it's not effective in the conquest enough and you think it's too effective already.
AI vs. human is completely different story.
If we are talking about AI vs AI both sides are equally skilled in combat, obviously. The problem is that both of them being quite sloppy it is often happens that one side that somehow amassed numbers already just beat the crap out of other who cannot organize proper defense. That being random you often end up with only one or two enormous factions those eat others by the mid game already. I am adding to defense to slow down such random beating to extent that most of faction can survive to the game end even if in shrink size.
That's all. I am slowing down conquest dynamic to match the game length.
Post by: dino on December 16, 2019, 10:53:40 pm
The problem is that both of them being quite sloppy it is often happens that one side that somehow amassed numbers already just beat the crap out of other who cannot organize proper defense.
It should be dealt with AI improvements, I have these ideas that I was thinking about trying to implement myself, but you can try too. It should took you 10 times less time then me.
The actual issues are:
1) thinker AI can sometimes remain completely without army even into midgame, if it has peace with neighbours and it's threat level was never ticked, no amount of unbalanced defense bonuses will fix that.
It's equally easy for a player, to steamroll such defended mostly by formers faction btw.
2) AI won't upgrade units,
3) Support level that gives free units up to the base size, is completely overpowered in the early and early midgame,
Solutions:
1) Modify thinker production code so it always produces some units up to certain producion percentage dedicated to support, regardless of the threat level. I was thinking of making it configurable via thinker.ini for easy playtesting and tuning, I was thinking something like 35%( ini variable ) +- 5%* ai_fight ( so 30 - 40% depending on faction ). Tradeoff is 30% slower development, but AI would always be prepared for defense.
2) If 1) is implemented and player try to gain advantage by developing without any army ( more then 3x smaller army ), make *neighboring* ai_fight 0 and 1 factions without treaty change diplomacy status to vendetta ( with exception of early game ), or heavily deteriorate their disposition toward the player, if you could access this value.
3) Implement unit upgrade with money, in simillar fasion thinker implemented facilities rushing with money.
4) Modify SE settings and faction bonuses, so SUPPORT3 is not possible until MilAlg
By reading through thinker code, I believe that all of these can be accomplished with modifications to existing thinker codebase, without any additional reverse engineering.
It's not the combat odds that are real reason for a problem you've identified, and such significant changes favoring defender odds won't really solve them, but will introduce other issues of their own.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 11:49:26 pm
Again. I am not defending my choice. Not much playtesting yet. I may be wrong.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 16, 2019, 11:52:32 pm
1) thinker AI can sometimes remain completely without army even into midgame, if it has peace with neighbours and it's threat level was never ticked, no amount of unbalanced defense bonuses will fix that.
It's equally easy for a player, to steamroll such defended mostly by formers faction btw.
You are absolutely right but this is completely different issue and completely different fix not fixable by attack-defense balance.
2) AI won't upgrade units,
Wha? I never knew that.
3) Support level that gives free units up to the base size, is completely overpowered in the early and early midgame,
Hmm. I tend to agree but how this is relevant to attack-defense balance per se?
Solutions:
1) Modify thinker production code so it always produces some units up to certain producion percentage dedicated to support, regardless of the threat level. I was thinking of making it configurable via thinker.ini for easy playtesting and tuning, I was thinking something like 35%( ini variable ) +- 5%* ai_fight ( so 30 - 40% depending on faction ). Tradeoff is 30% slower development, but AI would always be prepared for defense.
Makes sense.
2) If 1) is implemented and player try to gain advantage by developing without any army ( more then 3x smaller army ), make *neighboring* ai_fight 0 and 1 factions without treaty change diplomacy status to vendetta ( with exception of early game ), or heavily deteriorate their disposition toward the player, if you could access this value.
I think something like that is already present in the game. The weaker you are the bolder the AI. It doesn't happen instantly. They go through threats and extortion first then to breaking pacts, etc. To get strong piece human has to not attack first and have strong army. Besides, factions become generally more and more aggressive with time. They attack you sooner or later anyway. Besides or the above two it is insanely difficult to implement (properly). I am sure I won't bother with it.
3) Implement unit upgrade with money, in simillar fasion thinker implemented facilities rushing with money.
AI didn't rush facilities either? What do they do with all these money?
:)
I guess this is a good TODO.
4) Modify SE settings and faction bonuses, so SUPPORT3 is not possible until MilAlg
I think you overestimate its value. Yes it's good but not that insanely. For small early game bases "4 or up to base size" essentially means just 4. For medium size best unit producer game bases have 10-20 mineral production. The difference between 4 and base size is probably somewhere 2-4 at best and supporting 2-4 extra units is not that hurtful comparing to base mineral production.
It's not the combat odds that are real reason for a problem you've identified, and such significant changes favoring defender odds won't really solve them, but will introduce other issues of their own.
Yep. Combat odds is just one of the problem. I was disabling human indestructible snowball army exploit by this. Unfortunately, there is no other way to do it without making base defense noticeably stronger to turn cakewalk into a hard battle. So I suggest this change (attack-defense balance) stays at least to some extent and we'll work on other issues meanwhile.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 03:59:00 am
Here is the deal, dino.
PD and TF multipliers can be directly changed by 50% increment only. Let me know if you like to try this.
Another option is to completely override the combat calculation function. This way I can change outcome in a more granular way. Somewhere in 1/0x100 or something. However, overriding whole function means there are a lot of conditions and variables I haven't even see = a lot of different use cases and testing to make sure I didn't screw them up by changing just one case. Are you up to it?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 06:06:08 am
:)
I don't think there is a need for less than 50% step granularity but you'll tell me after tests.
Intrinsic base defense is in alphax.txt if you need to tweak it as well.
Post by: dino on December 17, 2019, 01:01:25 pm
I'll try to first give a shot to the values you've set and if I indeed encounter the issues I foresee, I'll start doing other experiments. With 50% granularity I'd go for PD 100% and TF 50% probably if had to change it.
As for skipping collateral from defeated unit, there is a check to skip it if inside the base, it should be enough to modify its condition and artillery percentages are already avaiable in vanilla alphax.txt which I forgot.
I was disabling human indestructible snowball army exploit by this.
I think if Inductio implemented magnets only usable on owned territory and gave AI a magnet network, it would be the best counter to the player snowballing.
Since it wouldn't be possible to conquer in a single turn more then the outer ring of less developed bases, which could be met with a retaliation of the whole remaining AI army in the next turn.
If you just increase defense rating to the point even player will struggle with conquest, how can you expect AIs to deal with it during their offensives ?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 09:46:47 pm
I'll try to first give a shot to the values you've set and if I indeed encounter the issues I foresee, I'll start doing other experiments.
I used vanilla values for default in thinker.ini, of course.
If you have plenty of time to test few games up to TF then sure do few games for comparison. Otherwise, I'd encourage you to test your theory first to get a taste whether it is something you expected or it is too much.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 09:59:10 pm
As for skipping collateral from defeated unit, there is a check to skip it if inside the base, it should be enough to modify its condition
Thanks for pointer. Will look into it.
I still cannot wrap my head around why you want to play with it? This one seems to be nicely designed and causes least problem. It is a natural defense against stack of doom when attacker can move ~100 unit stack of mixed attackers and defenders to the base and be sure none of their attacker will be even slightly damaged by preventive strikes from the base. Decreasing collateral damage from 100% in Civ 1/2 to 20% seems like a brilliant idea. Now you still can destroy whole stack but you need 5 successful attacks against it. If less then stacked attackers can still attack in their turn but with lower power.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 10:05:33 pm
Negative cost for reactor upgrade works! Cool.
Overall both costs seem a bit not affordable for frequent use especially in early game. This is fine for hurry cost as they were not affordable before too. Upgrade is higher for lower tier units and lower for higher tier so OK too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 17, 2019, 10:36:48 pm
I should limit refund with x2 or x1.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 02:38:18 am
Post by: dino on December 18, 2019, 09:10:10 am
I still cannot wrap my head around why you want to play with it? This one seems to be nicely designed and causes least problem. It is a natural defense against stack of doom when attacker can move ~100 unit stack of mixed attackers and defenders to the base and be sure none of their attacker will be even slightly damaged by preventive strikes from the base. Decreasing collateral damage from 100% in Civ 1/2 to 20% seems like a brilliant idea. Now you still can destroy whole stack but you need 5 successful attacks against it. If less then stacked attackers can still attack in their turn but with lower power.
For this reason I use only large stacks of speeders, or elite infantry, so I can move my stack and attack in the same turn with full strenght and without a risk of loosing from retaliation if I successfullly conquer the base. AI doesn't do this and their stacks are free game, so it's another nerf that should benefit AI much more than the human player. It doesn't also makes sense, why should in lets say a 25 unit stack, killing 20% units completely doom remaining 80% ? It's not even necessary, with the way multiround combat works, even killing just 2 units in a stack renders remaing force completely useless for a base assault. It's a feature for a casual player imo, that prevents him from getting bored, evolution of which bacame 1UPT which ruined the CIV series. Of course such a huge change may break the game in a way that I can't foresee yet, but I always wanted to try it.
I hope you didn't loose too much time doing me these favors. I don't have any more of such ideas, so hopefully I won't bother you with more tasks ;)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 03:11:30 pm
I still cannot wrap my head around why you want to play with it? This one seems to be nicely designed and causes least problem. It is a natural defense against stack of doom when attacker can move ~100 unit stack of mixed attackers and defenders to the base and be sure none of their attacker will be even slightly damaged by preventive strikes from the base. Decreasing collateral damage from 100% in Civ 1/2 to 20% seems like a brilliant idea. Now you still can destroy whole stack but you need 5 successful attacks against it. If less then stacked attackers can still attack in their turn but with lower power.
For this reason I use only large stacks of speeders, or elite infantry, so I can move my stack and attack in the same turn with full strenght and without a risk of loosing from retaliation if I successfullly conquer the base. AI doesn't do this and their stacks are free game, so it's another nerf that should benefit AI much more than the human player.
Exactly, man! For this reason. That is the whole point of any rule in the game - to counter some other tactics.
It doesn't also makes sense, why should in lets say a 25 unit stack, killing 20% units completely doom remaining 80%
You are right. Real life works differently. But this is irrelevant to game design. Let's avoid such arguments.
? It's not even necessary, with the way multiround combat works, even killing just 2 units in a stack renders remaing force completely useless for a base assault. It's a feature for a casual player imo, that prevents him from getting bored, evolution of which bacame 1UPT which ruined the CIV series. Of course such a huge change may break the game in a way that I can't foresee yet, but I always wanted to try it.
Sorry, I don't follow what ruined Civ series? The ability to kill all units in square with one attack? I thought this was a fresh innovation to introduce new distinctive tactical element in game comparing to predecessors. I recall it awed me in Civ1.
I hope you didn't loose too much time doing me these favors. I don't have any more of such ideas, so hopefully I won't bother you with more tasks ;)
Not at all. I like follow ideas and see what happens. This is all free time leisure anyway.
:)
At the same time it is better to have some sort of focus in mod. Otherwise, fixing never ends. That is why I am asking these stupid questions about whether some change is needed. Please forgive me.
For example, I can understand that stronger armor + TF may lead to conquest stalemate. That hurts aggressive factions and tilts balance to economical ones. This need to be tested, of course, but I understand there could be potential problem.
With collateral damage I don't see a problem. Not that it doesn't exist - I just cannot understand if it exists. So I'm happy to give you all the configuration parameters to try and prove your point.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 04:07:50 pm
Vanilla implementation: different formula for facilities and units, different multiplier for regular facilities and SP, formulas use penalty thresholds, thresholds are different for regular facilities, unit, and SP. That results in player read formulas in help or internet, count tiny squares on the screen with pencil to get number of rows and accumulated minerals, use pen/paper/calculator to come up with answer, use knowledge of carry over minerals to not overflow current production, and on and on. This all distracts from actual playing the game.
The only meaningful rule here is to price SP higher than regular facilities. That is understandable because SP are one of a kind and there is always race to build it. Therefore, higher price limits money bags from buying it outright using previously accumulated reserves. In other words, it assures SP building does not happen instantaneously so other factions can participate in race.
Other rules are just garbage. Obviously, no one has that much money to buy more than 90% of all production. One may buy Recycling Tanks in one base but not in another. Thresholds forces player to not buy stuff when it doesn't have 10 minerals invested in yet. What does it change? Now player will just pay for half of Recycling Tanks in both bases. Same amount of money spent = same amount of mineral production substituted. No economical impact. Sure that prevents player to develop a single base very quickly using whole empire resources. What is the application of this? Building drone facilities in captured bases? In this case it would be more logical to penalize rushing in captured bases specifically and not to introduce rule affecting the rest of empire.
Same story with unit rushing. Beyond 6 rows of minerals the cost becomes exorbitant and keep growing even if no one ever spend money on it anymore. I don't see a point making later game units much more expensive. At any game stage the unit you rush is the most important unit helping you to organize defense or something. Just make them all expensive and be done with it.
Post by: dino on December 18, 2019, 04:53:50 pm
[...] Real life works differently. But this is irrelevant to game design. Let's avoid such arguments.
[...] That is the whole point of any rule in the game - to counter some other tactics.
For me it's too abstract and gamey and such simple tricks not only working, but being necessary, ruin the fun, by overruling the economy buildup advantage, that is the real meat of a 4x game for me.
But even if you don't care about versimilitude much and are fine with these kind of board game like, not simulationist rules, you have to at least admit that AI can't into these kind of tactics at all.
And improving AI in this regard would be a huge task even with full source code, so on top of me liking more grounded in reality rules, I think it's necessary to provide a challenge.
With vanilla rules, I can indefinitely hold off an AI faction of equal power to mine, by dedicating only 10 - 20% of my economy to it, while AI will burn all it's production on the same war.
I want rules that would put me under enough stress, to loose turns advantage against other uninvolved in war AI factions if I get attacked.
Sorry, I don't follow what ruined Civ series?1 UPT = 1 Unit Per Tile, from Civ 5 and onwards, introduced because of all casuals complaing about stacks of doom. Civ 4 is the last one I've played and I refuse to even try the new ones on that account alone ( there are plenty other reasons, based on online discussions ). I want to play a strategy game, if I wanted an abstract board game, I'd stick to chess. In a strategy game economy and logistics should win the war and tactics should be able to only trip the balance.
Casual player can't stand when he ends up in unwinable position, while giving him tools to save the day even when confronted with superior power, provides him a great satisfaction. This the design goal behind 1UPT, or stack wipes, which allow wins against many times stronger AIs. What is the point of playing with rules like that, if you are a competent player ? I instead want to be destroyed, if I fail at "build" part of 4X.
[...] With collateral damage I don't see a problem.In a strategy game of this scale, a confrontation between two stacks of units of equal power, resulting in a total destruction of one side with almost no loses on the other, being solely determined by which side happened to be the attacker is not acceptable to me and against AI, it'll almost always the player be an attacker and that alone kills most of the challenge in war part of these 4x games imo.
Of course I may not like it in practice, when I actualy try it ;)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 05:54:51 pm
The thing is when real life concepts and idea and vision are reflected in such games but mechanics is different. Game simulates real life with some under the hood mechanics. That is the reality of game design and it is impossible to simulate 100% of every smallest realistic detail. That is what I meant. I don't call for wiping out each and every resemblance of life connection from the game. On the contrary. I love such elements a lot.
Here is an example.
Unit is given 50% bonus do defend against artillery in open. Game helps explains this bonus as "ability to maneuver under the fire". This explanation is a nonsense. Designers did not introduce a "ability to maneuver under the fire" concept first and then decided how much bonus should be. The bonus was introduced first. Most likely to equalize defense against artillery in all kind of terrain: open, rough, base, bunker. I guess they thought it is easier to modify just one case for bombardment than three = more code reuse or something. Then they tried to "explain" their decision in more or less lifelike terms. That is the normal way to build and advertise a game and add a story to it.
Now some people take this "maneuvering under the fire" for real as a game concept and start actually discussing it and develop it and propose mod changes based on this random wording. THAT is what I warn everybody against. Don't go this path.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 06:16:11 pm
With vanilla rules, I can indefinitely hold off an AI faction of equal power to mine, by dedicating only 10 - 20% of my economy to it, while AI will burn all it's production on the same war.
I want rules that would put me under enough stress, to loose turns advantage against other uninvolved in war AI factions if I get attacked.
True. Removing collateral damage helps AI attack human. However, it also helps human attack AI and in much greater proportions since human will exploit it better. You are solving one problem but creates bigger one at the same time. I am up for the challenge with my both hands but this one in particular is a questionable fix. Did you think about reducing it to 10-20% maybe? That would almost not hurt AI since it does not stack too much of them together but will still prevent human from humongous stacks of doom.
Sorry, I don't follow what ruined Civ series?1 UPT = 1 Unit Per Tile, from Civ 5 and onwards, introduced because of all casuals complaing about stacks of doom. Civ 4 is the last one I've played and I refuse to even try the new ones on that account alone ( there are plenty other reasons, based on online discussions ). I want to play a strategy game, if I wanted an abstract board game, I'd stick to chess. In a strategy game economy and logistics should win the war and tactics should be able to only trip the balance.
Casual player can't stand when he ends up in unwinable position, while giving him tools to save the day even when confronted with superior power, provides him a great satisfaction. This the design goal behind 1UPT, or stack wipes, which allow wins against many times stronger AIs. What is the point of playing with rules like that, if you are a competent player ? I instead want to be destroyed, if I fail at "build" part of 4X.
Ah, got it now. Wasn't familiar with the term.
100% agree. I always say that mere combat fiddling is nothing compared to sheer number/quality of units. Still you want some combat balance to provide you a cushion of protection from slightly stronger opponent. They should reach certain level of economical superiority before they start breaking through your defense. After that there is no stopping. So holding them tactically, politically or otherwise is the way to protect and develop economical advantage. Both global (economics, logistics) and local (tactics, maneuvering) are important.
[...] With collateral damage I don't see a problem.In a strategy game of this scale, a confrontation between two stacks of units of equal power, resulting in a total destruction of one side with almost no loses on the other, being solely determined by which side happened to be an attacker is not acceptable to me and against AI, it'll almost always the player be an attacker and that alone kills most of the challenge in war part of these 4x games imo.
Of course I may not like it in practice, when I actualy try it ;)
You got your tool now. Go and try it. At the same time feel free to propose a fix that'll make it more challenging to player. Like do not apply collateral damage to AI's units but to human's only.
Have you played Thinker mod a little? Or this one since it is based on Thinker?
In Thinker AI is so economically savvy that I am usually a weakest faction for long long long time. That is already pretty challenging. I believe no collateral damage modifications can counter such economical power superiority.
Post by: dino on December 18, 2019, 06:53:45 pm
Removing collateral damage helps AI attack human. However, it also helps human attack AI and in much greater proportions since human will exploit it better. You are solving one problem but creates bigger one at the same time. I am up for the challenge with my both hands but this one in particular is a questionable fix. Did you think about reducing it to 10-20% maybe? That would almost not hurt AI since it does not stack too much of them together but will still prevent human from humongous stacks of doom.As I explained, there is little that prevents me from safely using homongenous stacks of doom already and my stacks almost never suffer collateral from AI attacks, while I wipe enemy stacks quiet often. Removing them completely only removes this huge advantage from me, in return I gain an advantage of being able to use slower, but cheaper infantry units with +25% bonus on base assault, instead of only speeder chasis and that is only if I can't produce elite infantry anyway. Without collateral, a disorganised stream of AI units should have more chance of building up at my gates, into a stack that can overcome my defense.
I've played some early games with thinker, it's economy buildup is huge improvement over vanilla, but I still can destroy wastly larger AI forces.
Still you want some combat balance to provide you a cushion of protection from slightly stronger opponent.This is why I fully agree with increasing armor values, I was only worried that maybe you are increasing them a bit too much in mid-late game.
As for collateral I hope it won't change AI vs AI dynamics much, it should make it easier for AI to conquer a base, but also equally easier to take it back.
Lets rest this discussion for a week, or two, since like you've said, I have my tool and there is nothing more to add, it's time to try it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 18, 2019, 07:57:30 pm
AI sucked absolutely in vanilla. In Thinker it sucks significantly less against occasional troops. You cannot just sneak a pure attacker to city walls anymore. That adds some challenge. However, it still sucks against fully prepared assault.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2019, 03:51:38 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2019, 03:20:18 pm
Automated release procedure from project.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2019, 06:18:57 pm
infantry colony
Still think it should be somewhere 6, maybe 5 but not lower. 4 is too cheap. I played with 6 for long time now and it seems to be on target. Bases do not get depleted of population anymore and overall expansion now is more controlled and not explosive like. Still one can dedicate whole resources for colony building and expand exponentially but this impacts economical development. Players's choice.
speeder colony
9 is fine. It lowers down to 7 with Fusion reactor and then further down to 5 with Quantum. With slower expansion there is still plenty of colonies to build after Fusion reactor discovery.
foil colony
Generally developed sea bases seem to be slightly better than land ones. However, initially they grow very slowly due to lack of minerals. Even with Recycling Tanks included they are stuck on 2 minerals production until sea formers start building mining platforms. Their mineral production stays pathetic until they reach significant size. Surely coastal bases have no problem building hem at this cost but it is an impediment for AQUATIC factions. I think it would be fairer to price it same as infantry one.
scheduled change
infantry former
4 seems to be a cheap enough. This is a lowest cost that doesn't pose problem for +25% abilities. Besides, it is comparatively better than some combat 2-1-1 unit.
speeder former
6 is perfect. It lowers down to 4 with Fusion. Later on clean super rover former will be somewhere 5-7 depending on abilities cost.
foil former
Same considerations as for foil colony. Sea former is more effective in terraforming than its land counterpart. However, limited sea base mineral production makes it difficult to build. So, I guess, it makes sense to price it same as infantry one to reduce initial sea base struggle.
scheduled change
infantry supply
Currently 8 to balance its resource crawling use. Delivering 4 minerals from rocky mine pays off for its price in 20 turns. It is still lucrative but not that insanely when it cost only 3.
I am thinking to raise to 12 maybe to reduce its profitability even more.
Should its cost drop by reactor? I think that is acceptable. It'll match ever-growing base production proportionally.
scheduled change to 12
rover supply and other more expensive modifications
Probably won't be used for mineral supply but for SP building only. In this case it doesn't matter how much it cost.
foil supply
Speed is marginally relevant for reaching to crawling tile and also marginally relevant for SP aiding. With than regard I don't think we need to make it more costly on basis of speed. From another hand sea squares are less attractive for harvesting. Rocky mine provides 4 minerals, 7 with bonus. The best things to harvest on sea are only nutrients (3, 5 with bonus) and energy (3, 5 with bonus). All together there is no point in pricing it more expensive than infantry.
scheduled change
foil transport
Currently 6 but I am thinking whether it is too high cost especially for aquatic factions. From the other side it is a perfect vessel for early pods exploration that can pick up unity rovers and artifacts. Gun foil with cost of 1 can be used as a perfect first line explorer.
cruise transport
That naturally should cost more than foil version due to its speed.
infantry probe team
Is it even needed? I thought it may be cheaper option for defensive probe team that sits in the base all the time. However, it becomes too cumbersome to handle different types of them. Probably should remove predefined design. Human can still design and build it if desired.
scheduled change: remove predesigned unit
speeder probe team
Cost 6 seems to be on target taking further reduction in cost by higher reactors.
foil probe team
It cost same as speeder now. No change needed.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2019, 06:53:57 pm
Now with reduced cost some abilities becomes quite cheap. Need to rethink their price based on their corresponding reactor era.
Fungicide Tanks = 1.
Super Former = 3.
Price should reduce with higher reactors.
Hypnotic Trance = 32 (2 flat).
Empath Song = 64 (4 flat).
Shouldn't be affected by reactor same as native units. Price should be tied to native unit cost directly.
Clean Reactor = 32 (2 flat). Has nothing to do with anything but support. 2 flat rows pay off in 20 turns.
Non-Lethal Methods = 64 (4 flat).
Essentially provides second police unit without maintenance. Even better than clean reactor as extends police control beyond POILICE rating.
Algorithmic Enhancement = 4.
Essential enhancement that is going to be reduced by higher reactors anyway.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2019, 07:47:57 pm
There are ~90 technologies and 400 turns to retirements on highest difficulty. Should be no more than 4 turn per acquiring technology. Researching it is just one of the acquiring methods together with pod popping, trading, and stealing. Assuming one gets about half of them in non research way average research rate throughout the game should be somewhere 8 turns on hardest and somewhere 4 on easiest.
Starting conditions are same regardless of difficulty and map size. So should be initial technology cost. Minimal labs at the beginning with two bases is 2 if player is exceptionally unlucky. Otherwise, with rivers/energies/monoliths/SE it could be up to 4. With 3 labs as average staring research power a 12-24 cost tech can be researched in 4-8 turns.
Higher difficulty allows faster development for AI and assumes the same for the player. So difficulty should affect how fast technology cost grows. Somewhere 7% on easiest and 12% on hardest.
Map size determines when expansion stops. It should not affect the rate of exponential price increase but should define when this exponential rate turns into linear and further speed of this linear growth.
Proposed changes.
Replace <map size square root> to <map size> in original formula.
Set first tech cost to 18.
Set tech cost growth rate to 7%-12% based on difficulty.
Limit tech cost to <first tech cost> * <cost growth rate> ^ <number of researched techs>.
Last rule defines exponential growth. It will outgrow default quasi linear formula at some point and won't limit it anymore after that.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 20, 2019, 02:56:15 pm
- Cost of each tech depends on start game parameters only and never changes throughout the game. That 100% eliminates tech trade hold off exploit.
- Late game cost growth is proportional to map area as planned.
- Early game game cost growth between levels is relatively smooth: 20, 70, 220 for first three levels (this is 7 * 3 = 21 technologies, a quarter of all tree).
There is a big BUT, though. This is drastic change in game concept. It is not documented anywhere, new players are unaware of it, UI doesn't highlight it anywhere, blind research engine doesn't take it into attention when choosing tech for research. There are all sort of missing links everywhere in the game. And even if all those links are fixed there is still a conceptual disconnect. Players coming from vanilla need to be educated and trained on it. A huge work that I don't want to do.
:(
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 20, 2019, 03:21:01 pm
Vanilla chart is calculated using discovered tech cost formula on wiki for highest difficulty (5) and normal map. No correction for time or for being behind. Of course, it is a pretty loose approximation. I've tested it and it seems to match more or less. Starting values are actually somewhere at 20-28, ending are 4200 or so.
My idea was to simulate accelerated growth in the beginning and then more linear after whole map is populated. Accelerated and linear formulas are used and then minimum is picked. Of course, the timing when map is populated depends on map area. You'll see the intersection point moves left and right when you change slope of linear part. That being said this is soooo inexact science that it shouldn't even match the actual development. It'll adjust itself: development or cost will catch up with each other.
I've tried to model accelerated growth with exponent but it seems to grow very sharp at the intersection point. May produce noticeable rate change. The quadratic one is somewhat smoother.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 20, 2019, 03:29:27 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 21, 2019, 06:06:18 pm
First of all, big variations in tech cost do not seriously break the game due to accelerating labs income. That is how game designers got away with vanilla formula in first place.
Example.
Let's suppose labs income doubles every 50 years. Also let's suppose a player discovers all techs in 200 turns. Let's double all tech costs now. Does it also double research time? Nope. It'll take somewhere 250-300 turns to get them all - you can do the math yourself. Moreover, smaller discrepancies won't be even noticed on the other game variations background (map size, difficulty, game play).
The exact formula is not important. We just want to bend it here and there to remove stagnation pockets and speed-runs. If we want to get 85 techs by turn 300 we need to acquire one tech per about 4 turns. A lot of this acquisitions come from trades. So very very roughly one should able to research a tech per 6-10 turns throughout the game.
Here is my analysis on research pace problem. Let me know if you experienced something different.
- The first few technologies are on the money. They could be researched relatively quick in 4-10 turns.
- After about 5-10 techs their cost keep growing linearly but faction development is still in initial stage. Research rate climbs to 30-50 turns per tech. That is the first problem: early research stagnation.
- In the mid game faction development catches up with tech cost growth and research rate goes back to normal range of 4-10 turns again.
- Development accelerates toward the end game but the tech cost seems to be progressing slower. As a result late technologies got discovered in 2-3 turns easily. Some very advanced factions can discover even few techs per turn. That is the second problem: end game speed-run.
The conclusion is that we need some modified function that accelerates slower at the beginning, about same in the middle, and then faster at the end.
There are also two other concerns: world size and difficulty.
World size does not affect factions growth rate until available space is completely populated and expansion stops. From then on all factions combined progress is more of less linear due to population growth in already existing bases. The speed of such linear progress is roughly proportional to world size, obviously. Of course, this is not exact but rough approximation should do.
Difficulty is the tricky beast. A human player usually does not fall too much behind mainstream research. Trading, buying, and stealing helps to catch up quickly. For the same reason it is difficult to get too far ahead. Lack of trading, buying and stealing targets as well as total hate from other factions makes it difficult to advance further. That leads us to an interesting conclusion that human player research speed is defined mostly by that of other AI players! On a higher difficulties you generally get techs faster! I may speculate here as I never played on easy levels. Please correct me if this contradicts your experience.
Anyway, I think it makes sense to alter human player tech cost with difficulty but we should not alter it for AI players as they set up a research mainstream and everybody should research so many techs in allotted time anyway regardless of difficulty. So the world average research progress should not be affected by difficulty.
Now to my exercises. I tried exponential, quadratic, and cubic approximations. I've adjusted them so that their end game growth rate is the same and about twice as much as vanilla end game one for standard map librarian difficulty (solving problem #2). At the same time I adjusted them so that techs between 10-20 are about 3-5 times cheaper than vanilla (solving problem #1). The end game linear growth is proportional to world size. That defines how long accelerated growth continues before it reach desired end game growth rate. The bigger the world the longer accelerated growth continues.
All three approaches works more or less same for tiny and standard worlds. Mostly because growth stage ends somewhere in the middle. They start to diverge for huge maps as emulated growth stage may continue beyond the end of the game. Exponential is too fast, quadratic is too slow, cubic seems fine.
This being said, all adjustment parameters can be tweaked to match playing experience better. This is a matter of play testing. I am playing with cubic implementation now and I've got 25-30 techs by turn 100 which is absolutely perfect development rate.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 22, 2019, 02:29:04 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 25, 2019, 09:46:07 pm
Don't use version 28. I have to fix combat roll too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 29, 2019, 07:41:47 pm
- Fixed combat roll! Finally.
- Added more combat tweaking parameters.
- Odds dialog now displays TRUE winning odds. Another great achievement.
Combat parameters
Ignore reactor power for HP = 1. This is recommended setting for this mod. It organically works with unit cost and unit strength. Changing this value is not recommended. You essentially fall back to vanilla reactor power multiplied unit HPs.
Firepower multiplier = 1. This is the default vanilla behavior. Raising this parameters effectively decreases number of rounds, thus decreasing stronger unit winning odds. Play with it and see how odds change in new odds display dialog!
:)
Firepower randomization = 0. Highly experimental feature in attempt to emulate vanilla random damage that otherwise would come in chunks of firepower. Not tested. Could break disengagement for damaged units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 31, 2019, 06:17:21 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2020, 03:58:26 am
Finalized alternative combat mechanics based on dino's excellent idea. All the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. This being said I do not guarantee it works flawlessly. It still needs testing.
However, updated exactly calculated winning odds should have a great help in testing activity. Now they display an exact odds of winning an individual battle! Happy testing.
With this release out of doors I feel like major problems I was focusing recently are resolved.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2020, 04:12:29 am
Do you like how odds are displayed before battle? I don't. Computer tries to find closest whole number ratio to represent it. However, it results in all kind of numbers thrown at me and it may be difficult to navigate among them. Yes, it is easy to understand 3:2 or 2:1 odds. What about 217:158 or 22:15? Are they better or worse? To understand them I actually needs to divide them with the calculator. And that is what I want to get rid of.
I've been thinking - would it be beneficial for player to convert all odds to common denominator for ease of comparison? The natural choice would be 10 as denominator or 12 or 16 or 20 or 25 or some other not too big number that is easy for people to comprehend. This way all odds will be expressed in same denominator and a numerator will show the battle success chance. The bigger the number the better. Player then can build their own decision strategy based on a single number only.
For example all above mentioned odds would turn into: 3:2 = 15:10, 2:1 = 20:10, 217:158 = 14:10, 22:15 = 15:10. Now it is absolutely clear which odds is better or similar!
Post by: dino on January 02, 2020, 09:45:57 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2020, 02:42:39 pm
This requires changing the actual dialog text output format which is uncharted territory for me. I thought maybe I can get away with just tweaking two numbers instead.
Post by: dino on January 02, 2020, 03:39:44 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2020, 05:00:51 pm
I'll poke around a dialog to see if it is easy enough.
I also tried to play with denominator of 12 in my last release. Didn't like it. I think I prefer 10 or even 5 as I don't really care about ±10% or even ±20% difference in odds. I think other players too. The super precision vanilla offers is an overkill. It makes no bearing to check an exact value for every battle. I will also not get tired to reiterate that vanilla displayed odds super precision creates false sense of correctness while everybody knows the calculation itself is off by astronomical amount.
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2020, 08:07:08 pm
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 03, 2020, 04:55:03 pm
I was playing this version for few hours and I am very satisfied. It seems that everything what annoyed me in vanilla went away. Is it just I am overexcited playing my own creation? Could be. Will play some more and try to confirm my feelings. Feel free to share your play feelings too.
Few notes on recently added key features.
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=2.0
Adjust winning probabilities. Value of 1.0 emulates vanilla 2:1 strength ratio wins battle with 14:1 odds. Value of 2.0 seems to relaxing it pretty significantly. Now 2:1 strength ratio wins battle with about 4:1 odds. It seems that values over 2.0 are not needed unless you want to relax odds skew even more. Feel free to play with it. This is float number and not integer so you have whole degree of freedom with it. It is easier to test now when odds confirmation dialog shows exact winning probability percentage!
:D
collateral_damage_value=2
Collateral damage *10%. Dino recommended set it to 0. I am not yet convinced until he shares his play testing on this. But feel free to modify it.
repair_minimal=1
repair_fungus=1
repair_friendly=0
repair_airbase=0
repair_bunker=0
repair_base=0
repair_base_native=1
repair_base_facility=1
repair_nano_factory=1
Bunch of repair rate configuration values. Currently set to minimal 10% everywhere. Special SP for natives, base facilities and NF bump it by +10% each.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 04, 2020, 01:02:38 am
Remember that we don't care about battle odds in large scale war when many units fight many units every turn. In this case only round odds and total damage matters. Especially now when I reduced repair rate. Removing collateral damage may help too. With reduced repair rate AI does not need to attack base with many units simultaneously. Multi unit attack still may work even if it spans few turns.
Battle odds matter only for isolated battles when victor is safely repaired afterwards. Like natives encounters. For them I'd like to set parameters so that 1.a) base psi attack is not skewed too much, 1.b) psi attack with morale boost is still not a sure kill, 2.a) worm attacking Trance unit in base is not skewed too much, 2.b) same against morale boosted unit with sensor is still not a sure kill either.
Base psi attack odds in a field are 3:2 up to 2:1 with some morale advantage. Base defense in base against worm attack is 1:1 down to 1:1.5 against high morale unit in presence of a sensor. So we have a range of odds somewhere up to 2:1 which should not be skewed drastically. Divider values 2.0 - 3.0 seem to satisfy these criteria. Value 2.0 has "almost sure kill" threshold somewhere at 3:1. Whereas 3.0 gives chances to weaker unit up to 4:1 odds ratio. I am personally inclined to the latter because it is smooth enough yet it guarantees win somewhere after 5:1 anyway. However, the choice is not that critical for me.
Specially for bvanevery and other guaranteed kill defenders, I can just implement some odds threshold granting it. Nobody would probably care about weaker unit chances above 5:1 odds advantage. Simple solution.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 05, 2020, 05:33:21 pm
Then it rolls for integer between 0 and max damage. That roll will be an artillery damage.
That formula produces 0 for all strong enough defenders above certain threshold. With vanilla 3/2 artillery multiplier 1.5 times stronger defender is completely immune to artillery fire. That is kind of ridiculous limitation since base bombardment is an artillery primary role. This multiplier should be at least 5 to ensure artillery cat hurt Caretakers defender behind TD in presence of sensor (3 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 4.6875). At the same time too large multiplier completely destroys weaker units. Like if we set multiplier to 5 then any 4 times stronger artillery (4:1 odds) delivers 10 damage on average - enough to do maximal possible artillery damage in one shot.
I don't like the above but don't know any nice way to modify it yet, though.
Maybe use some logarithmic scale for max damage: 1:8 odds delivers max 1 damage, 1:4 -> 2, ..., 8:1 -> 7?
Another option is to fix max damage to 1-2-3 and use random roll for odds to determine whether damage is at all to be delivered? This way attack/defense ratio defines how often bombardment hurts unit and even weakest artillery have a chance to hit target sometimes though rarely.
For time being I just set it to:
5,1 ; Numerator & Denominator for artillery fire damage
Post by: dino on January 05, 2020, 07:38:15 pm
In your very extreme example, there would be 26% chance to deal 1HP damage.
I thought bonuses are additive ? Isn't it 1 + ( 2 + 0,25 + 0,25 ) = 3,5 ? In which case it'd be 33% chance for artillery hit.
***
In the previous post, aren't the axes on the graph mislabeled ? Shouldn't axis x be first round winning odds and y battle winning odds ?
I'm also excited to play your creation, so it's not only you...
Except you kept comming up with new stuff and I've kept postponing my playing, since I didn't want to burn my desire on unfinished product ;)
But since the last release, weeks of playing are guaranteed at some point and it's years since my last binge playing of SMAC.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 06, 2020, 01:27:18 am
Maybe leave vanilla, except for "max damage" < 1, generate a random float (0-1), if it's smaller than "max damage" defender receive 1HP damage.
In your very extreme example, there would be 26% chance to deal 1HP damage.
Unfortunately, it is all whole number operations. So "< 1" means "0". Theoretically I always can substitute whole code with my own custom function where I can do whatever I want. However, I usually like to try spot changing just some hex codes in ASM instruction to see if it fixes the problem.
Your solution seems logical. I'll see to implementing it if nothing simpler works.
I was thinking about similar but less sophisticated solution. We can add 1 on top of original calculations. This way max damage never fall below 1 and we get 50% chance of damage 1 (or 0) in worst case. Simple and acceptable enough. That creates a micro exploit, though. It is cheaper to build weakest artillery possible for base bombardment since it never gets less than 50% damage chance.
I thought bonuses are additive ? Isn't it 1 + ( 2 + 0,25 + 0,25 ) = 3,5 ? In which case it'd be 33% chance for artillery hit.
Some same type bonuses are. Different types usually not. You never guess until you read them on combat screen and verify with calculator. For example PD and TF bonuses are added to 1 (bare base multiplier) to compose a final base multiplier. So PD+TF = 1+1+1 = 3 multiplier. Faction ability and sensor are independent multipliers. I think. Never verified it, though.
In the previous post, aren't the axes on the graph mislabeled ? Shouldn't axis x be first round winning odds and y battle winning odds ?
Yep. Fixed.
I'm also excited to play your creation, so it's not only you...
Except you kept comming up with new stuff and I've kept postponing my playing, since I didn't want to burn my desire on unfinished product ;)
But since the last release, weeks of playing are guaranteed at some point and it's years since my last binge playing of SMAC.
What are you talking about?
All of my releases are finished and completely playable. I implement and test my ideas and then bundle them and release. They guarantee to deliver what is described in release notes. Of course, it could be not 100% bug free as there are a lot of shady use cases around. However, I try to not touch anything that has long spanning tentacles across the code to avoid unforeseen consequences. Anyway, if you find any bugs or whatever irregularity - let me know.
The fact that a lot of small game elements work together doesn't prevent modder from modifying just one of them at a time.
Don't let release frequency fool you. They are not in any way under cooked. Sometimes I spend weeks to resolve one single thing but with recent changes I was either lucky or just insanely good at cranking it.
:)
Post by: dino on January 06, 2020, 10:25:54 am
I didn't want to suggest, that they are undercooked, but that my interest in playing the game is limited.
In the past every time I went into binge playing SMAC it lasted about 3-4 weeks and then I was done for few years.
So each time you've annunced working on something of interest to me, I was like, "ok I'll wait untill it's done".
I just didn't want to get bored on just testing the game, before you were done with the combat engine.
So, the "issue" wasn't that releases were "undercooked" on their own, but that there was new interesting stuff still coming.
The last release, I consider to be a milestone which I really want to both test and have fun with just playing and artillery stuff is not essential enough to stop me.
I think you were expressing the same excitement, regarding this particular release.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 06, 2020, 01:28:50 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 06, 2020, 03:30:19 pm
There are no engine change. I just play with parameters.
Namely I've set collateral damage = 0 and combat probably divisor = 3.
The latter is new change. I played with divisor = 2 before but 3 seems more on a target.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 06, 2020, 04:17:59 pm
Remember that now you need to overwrite Script.txt as well to reflect dialog text changes. The file is bundled with release.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 06, 2020, 07:15:44 pm
Close strength battles are now produce close outcomes. Strength ratio of 3:2 and 2:1 give you somewhere 70-75% which is acceptable. No jumping from 0% to 100% as in vanilla.
Fighting significantly weaker or damaged opponents delivers 85-95% winning chances. Which is pretty acceptable too. As I mentioned before we can introduce some guaranteed winning threshold for 90-95% or so if anyone desires.
Native life is now relatively threatening as it should be. Previously the abundance of native life didn't require countermeasures investment. Now it does. When I send my patrol on exploration and encounter a worm with 75% chances to win I am thinking whether I want to go for easy money risking my unit or I get more by uninterrupted exploring. Same story with worms attacking bases. Worm base attack are half strength prior turn 50 -> 3:6 strength ratio against regular defender -> 100% immunity against such attacks in vanilla. Now there is about 25% chance to lose a defender in such attack. Player has to chose whether they want to build and maintain second defender or risk worm running over a base reducing population and production. Natives have even better chances fighting trance defender after turn 50: 2:3 = 35%. So having second defender becomes important. It could be a plain unit (not trance) to retaliate after trance unit is killed. When worm stopped next to base I do not always attack it if I have only one unit there. I usually prefer to convert my current production into second unit while current defender sacrifice buys me time to build it.
Morale now plays a tremendous role in improving my chances thus cutting on loses and achieving faster/wider conquest. At the same time even highly promoted units do die occasionally ensuring rotation and eliminating never-die-elite unit phenomena. It does pay off to build morale structures. It also pays off to build such structures to double repair rate in bases even if it is not instant anymore.
The flip side of smooth distribution is that my formers and transports occasionally survive natives attacks. Even if they still usually die I may use them to block natives path or protect bases to improve my chances especially with help of terrain and base defense bonuses. It is not futile anymore.
On non combat related features.
Map population is more gradual now, not as explosive as in vanilla. Expanding does takes resources. So faction either fights or develops or expands. It is difficult to do all at once now. Waging a war usually causes expansion delay. Makes faction leader to weigh options.
Technology does not stagnate around turn 50 anymore. It is steadily flowing. The range of building options is quite satisfactory at all stages of the game. Of course, one can have more or less depending on research inclination and investments and that is noticeable too. Research investment gives an advantage.
SP building feels like longer endeavor As SP should be. When I manage to get myself a high production bases I can easily compete for subset of SPs in early game even if I don't discover them first. If I don't - pity me. Artifacts still help but there are not enough of them to build first 4 projects for free as in vanilla.
I am playing Cult of Planet now. It has biggest inherent +2 PLANET rating which allows harvesting worms like crazy. Even Gaians with +1 PLANET could harvest quite a large native army in vanilla. In this mod this is put in check. Player still can go for work harvesting but due to adjusted battle odds they will incur some amount of losses. Survived worms will spread around harming improvements and bases requiring deployment of new troops to deal with them. Overall +1 PLANET doesn't allow building up an army quickly as 25% capture chance is negated by 33% battle lose chance. Gaians will lose units faster than acquire them. Of course, they can still build Scout Patrols to hunt for worms but that is an investment not a free stuff.
Cult with their +2 PLANET is still good for building native army but it won't grow tremendously fast. Still 10 worms/launchers by the turn 50 is a significant threat to neighbors which Cha Dawn can use.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 07, 2020, 04:18:26 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2020, 05:27:57 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_readme.md
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 10, 2020, 04:28:04 pm
* Land and sea borders should be 8 and not restricted by shore.
Treating land and sea territories as completely unconnected realms is good for Civ type of games where sea was uninhabitable. SMACX is remarkable in the way that everything is suitable for base. Why then somebody builds a sea base next to my border two tiles away from my coastal base and takes my resources for free? I don't like it and I believe borders should expand equally across land and sea alike. Maybe we can make them smaller like 7 or 6 instead of 8 but they have to protect at least base radius and then a little bit some. Three tiles around sea bases and one (!) tile around coastal base over sea are just ridiculous distances.
* Artillery damage rework.
* Artillery duel uses armor as well.
This is just to encourage players to use armored artillery. Otherwise, they will always carry no armor.
From game lore point of view it makes complete sense. Artillery damage depends on attack/defense ratio. Meaning armor reduces artillery damage. Artillery duel is nothing more as mutual bombardment. So more heavily armored unit should sustain less damage from enemy fire and more likely to survive.
The only problem could be that AI won't understand the great idea and won't add armor on artillery.
* Interceptor fight uses armor as well.
Same idea as above. However, I am not sure how much applicable it is. Even if it has same perfect sense the air-air combat is rare and usually they attack ground units. Adding armor specifically to withstand interceptor attack? Not sure.
* Remove planet pearls.
That is actually done already. I don't like this Mario style hitting monsters for money thing. Natives should be a threat not the money source.
* Get morale by losing HPs.
The more HP unit lost in battle the higher chance of promotion. Probably something like -5HP = 20%,,, -9HP = 100%. Or whatever other scale - doesn't really matter. The point is there should not be a freebies promotions when you ended up with tons of elites running over the map. The promotion should be tied to the chance to die. This way you still get elite units but in proportionally lesser numbers. Probably 5-10% of your units will be elite and this is how it should be.
Also with such setup morale facilities and MORALE SE rating becomes of great importance as it was not in vanilla.
* Remove a permanent morale boost from building unit in a base with Children Creche.
Eh. It's too many morale boosting facilities already. All of them combined provide +5 morale = enough to convert Green to Elite. What the hell?
* Set basic morale to Very Green.
Same idea. Too many morale boosting in this game. Let's start from the bottom and work our way up. Keep in mind that the transition from Very Green to Green is a biggest proportional bump in a game: 16%! Whereas Commando to Elite is only 9%. Why lose that important stage? Again this way morale boosting facilities and MORALE SE become extremely important.
* Set PLANET combat bonus to 20%.
* Set PLANET combat bonus applicable on both attack and defense.
* Set land native combat odds to 1:1.
Currently native warfare is kind of everybody's weapon. I recall myself to switch to worms when I get them and then to locusts. In vanilla this seems to be prevalent war forces. That is not fair for PLANET inclined factions. They should have some kind of a bonus comparable to INDUSTRY/RESEARCH that other factions have. Above changes will do just that. Still anyone dedicated enough can build native forces and fight natives all they like but +2 PLANET faction would have quite significant advantage over -2 PLANET one now. I think this is only fair because INDUSTRY/RESEARCH work every turn war or peace. While PLANET only at war time and only for natives and only when worms appear. The benefit should be strong enough to compensate occasional application nature of this effect.
* Increase morale facilities cost.
The seem to be very cheap for the 30% boost in unit strength. Building them before amassing an army is kind of must. Now after I fix quick promotion they will become an important source of army strength and, therefore, army economical effectiveness. 30% more strength = 30% bigger army = 30% INDUSTRY (for combat unit building purpose). I am thinking high maintenance too so they do not sit idle when not needed. The problem is that sea and air facilities are two in one. Raise their cost would affect ability to build defense against sea and air attacks.
I am thinking this:
Command center: 8/4. This makes it slightly difficult to build early in a game but not by much. Just two prices of Recycling Tanks. Well one should earn 30% army strength boost. And if army is not big maybe it is not worth to build this facility.
Naval yard: 8/4. Slightly less demand in sea unit upgrade but it gives defensive bonus too so sea defenders at this base are both morale upgraded and double protected!
Aerospace complex: 16/8. This is a exceptionally useful facility by itself. AAA tracking gives good enough initial anti-air defense. Building this facility not only gives morale bonus but also quadruples anti-air defense together with AAA tracking.
Few more sea upgrades.
* Introduce sea sensors.
They do not give combat bonus but they add visibility which is extremely important to track fact invaders.
* Make ECM to affect sea units as well.
Sea bases do not benefit from sensors and they are extremely difficult to defend. It is impossible to build front line without ZOC on sea. So every base is vulnerable and every need protection. ECM against ships gives them extra chance to survive massive attack from out of the blue. Or, at least, to resist longer to let defender scramble for counter measures.
* Increase morale level bonus to 25%.
Very experimental. Not sure if I want it. The morale system is not too broken now with fixed promotion. Still 12.5% is kinda measly bonus now when combat system is fixed.
Post by: dino on January 10, 2020, 08:09:23 pm
Just make coastal bases count as both, sea and land bases for the purpose of border spread, I think inland bases shouldn't be able to project influence over sea tiles and vice versa.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 10, 2020, 08:18:53 pm
> * Land and sea borders should be 8 and not restricted by shore.
That also always annoyed me, but the soultion is simple:
Just make coastal bases count as both, sea and land bases for the purpose of border spread, done. Inland bases shouldn't be able project influence over sea tiles imo.
Somewhere deep in theory you might be right. However, it is too fine grain distinction that will be difficult for AI to recognize. By AI I mean AI code that somebody need to alter to help AI place their bases on a coast. Let's make the rule simple. After all borders are just area of influence. The 8 tile radius is there to help out not to leave gaps in territory when bases are slightly scattered at the beginning.
You can see that sea radius of 3 is not enough for that. Different factions manage to stick their bases in between existing ones quite easily. Such mix should not happen even on sea. There should be some notion of territory you claim.
Post by: dino on January 10, 2020, 08:44:51 pm
As for AI, the vanilla code already favors *very heavily* placement of coastall bases and it's already a part of the thinker source.
Except thinker currently uses it only to give an initial goto order for a colony pod and then overrides this code the moment the pod leaves the base radius, to pop a new base as soon as possible.
I, for a long time think, that this is a mistake, the original code for base placement could be improved and then allowed to guide pods to a bit more distant, but better destinations and the gaps of empty arid terrain should be filled last. Benefits could be numerous: faster growth, faster land grab denying human player terrain to spread on without conflict and plenty of coastal bases like in vanilla.
In fact it's on the top of my list of things I wanted to work on, but unfortunately I was too lazy to start ;)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 10, 2020, 08:56:09 pm
Oh sure, I agree the radius on sea should be increased to 8, but as far as connecting the realms, coastal bases should be the bridge imo.
As I said I am completely agree with reasoning but it may be difficult to implement right. I propose to simplify it at least for first try and see.
As for AI, the vanilla code already favors *very heavily* placement of coastall bases and it's already a part of the thinker source.
Except thinker currently uses it only to give an initial goto order for a colony pod and then overrides this code the moment the pod leaves the base radius, to pop a new base as soon as possible.
I, for a long time think, that this is a mistake, the original code for base placement could be improved and then allowed to guide pods to a bit more distant, but better destinations and the gaps of empty arid terrain should be filled last. Benefits could be numerous: faster growth, faster land grab denying human player terrain to spread on without conflict and plenty of coastal bases like in vanilla.
In fact it's on the top of my list of things I wanted to work on, but unfortunately I am too lazy to start ;)
I think it does well already in Thinker. Even if the placement may not be impeccable the sheer number does the trick. After all you just need to cover all the ground with base radii to let workers in bases to chose best work tile. As for grabbing territory the Thinker AI on Transcend is amazing. They always squeeze me from every direction possible and even from sea. They go for landmarks first thing. They spread over ocean like plague. That is partially why I want territory to spread over sea: to protect human domain, not the AI.
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 12, 2020, 12:23:59 am
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Treatise_on_Morale#Reverse_engineered_Battle_Upgrade_formula
I just need to remove these immediate promotion for two lowest levels.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 16, 2020, 07:47:12 pm
I think I am going to release it even if it wasn't heavily play tested yet. There are few cool features there and I'd like it to be a milestone even if I need to modify it later in other releases.
Among most exciting things are:
* Unified promotion probability for all levels.
Removes micro exploit when player may jerk their MORALE rating to get easy promotions.
* Removed Very Green morale level defense bonus and its (+) display.
Yet another example how game engine thinks that anyone having too little of something automatically deserves a bonus. Ugh.
* PLANET combat bonus can now be applied on defense as well.
* 15, ; Combat % -> Psi attack bonus/penalty per +PLANET
* 1,1, ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
Specially for bv and others. These number may not be final. I am going to test how it works with PLANET offense/defense modification.
* Territory extends from sea base by same distance as from land bases!
* Territory extends from coastal base into the adjacent sea by same distance as from sea bases!
That is a real milestone!
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 20, 2020, 02:55:34 am
Post by: dino on January 20, 2020, 01:42:29 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 20, 2020, 03:53:00 pm
Inductio's idea to make tubes on enemy territory count as roads and make AI build tubes again.
It's on my TODO list. I meant anything that is a major annoyance and relatively easy to fix. So want to take a break now and play test the whole composition of changes.
The road stuff is kinda a complete game war style modification. It'll be a different game.
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 21, 2020, 04:17:14 pm
It'll change land combat logistics but not sea and air. Would it skew the tactics and strategy toward much heavier use of sea/air units? We should think about this too. I may be not desirable.
Post by: dino on January 21, 2020, 07:36:39 pm
With increased armor values, the combat outcome is no longer determined only by which unit striked first and with no stack wipes slow units are no longer as vulnerable as in vanilla, for this reason copters are no longer completely overpowering land forces, because their multiple attacks don't matter since after one strike they are too damaged to attack again and the assault of just 3 copters no longer can wipe a stack thanks to no splash damage.
So using land units will always be preferable over anything else whenever logistically possible, if they'll be more cost effective and they should.
That said thinker already doesn't build tubes anyway, so it doesn't matter and with all gameplay changes already implemented you could reenable tubes for AIs even without this feature and it'd already help them. Because each base assault costs many lost units now, and repairing damaged ones takes few turns, so unless you have few times units more then enemy, it's already impossible to take too many bases in a single turn and tubes would help AI to retaliate before you can repair your invading forces.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 21, 2020, 07:49:23 pm
Land units should cost less for the same firepower, I've added 1 to the cost value of everything below hovertank.
That said thinker already doesn't build tubes anyway, so it doesn't matter and with all gameplay changes already implemented you could reenable tubes for AIs even without this feature and it'd already help them. Because each base assault costs many lost units now, and repairing damaged ones takes few turns, so unless you have few times units more then enemy, it's already impossible to take too many bases in a single turn and tubes would help AI to retaliate before you can repair your invading forces.
Thinker AI doesn't build tubes????
Do you suggest to not implement this "no roads on enemy territory stuff" as no longer critical? I say I tend to agree. First strike is not decisive factor against prepared defense anymore. You still may take 1-2 bases by surprise but that's it.
Post by: dino on January 21, 2020, 10:34:25 pm
Tubes is an infrastructure, that requires power, access to control systems and actual train squads to function, it doesn't make sense to be able to use such infrastructure on enemy territory.
Nothing can prevent you from riding on the roads. From game balance point of view, without roads assault would be too tedious, too long and too difficult, with tubes it's too easy.
Yes, thinker AI on purpose doesn't build tubes, to prevent player from overtaking most of the bases in a single turn of coordinated assault, which I think would no longer be possible in your mod.
Edit:
When I think about it now, way more essential for preventing blitzkrieg, would be to make tubes cost 1/6 movement point, instead of free.
Since after you conquer a base, it's your territory and you could still ride tubes to the border of the next base for free.
As for no roads, if you implement one, you could easily implement both and make it configurable I guess.
But it would be an overkill imo, you would decimate approaching AI forces with artillery, before they could reach your bases.
Maybe make enemy road cost 1/2 movement point ?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2020, 12:19:42 am
make tubes cost 1/6 movement point, instead of free.
Interesting solution. I thought about this too. I don't like units traveling from coast to coast in one turn. I anticipate a lot of problems on this path, though. 3 is a magic number that is hard coded everywhere. Including decrease in strength for rush attack.
So 1/3 is a whole number in game mind whereas 1/6 is fractional.
:D
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2020, 07:51:00 pm
It's not that detailed as this one. However, it has some activity. I'll be posting there too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 24, 2020, 12:31:40 am
New idea: homeland defense bonus.
Post by: dino on January 24, 2020, 12:41:30 pm
In realistic strategy games you have things like 300% defense bonus on entrenched positions, if they model supply of munitions, so it's about making a breakthrough, pocketing enemies and starving them of supplies. If you get consistent 1:3 odds in SMAC, you'll make it impossible to conquer without 4:1 economy advantage, do you really want that ? Also homeland defense bonuses already exist, they're called sensor array and children creeche. You also need a lot of artillery to damage in the base and since you've made arty use defense rating in duels, attacking arty is at the same disadvantage during artillery duel as regular units during their base assault.
Just make AI mix in some decent proportion of arty units in later stages of the game, no extra bonuses required imo. The most important thing now, would be to make AI build enough units to dedicate around turn 40, something like 20-30% ( depending on AI fight ) of production to military support, even if not threatend and in later stages of the game it should be even more, also disband/upgrade obsolete units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 24, 2020, 03:57:33 pm
There is no reason to stack more and more defense bonuses, you'll make it impossible to conquer anything.
I don't think I stack more an more bonuses. This is the first one I've introduced.
If you get consistent 1:3 odds in SMAC, you'll make it impossible to conquer without 4:1 economy advantage, do you really want that ?
I don't think I get consistent 1:3 odds. I think I get consistent 1:1 with artillery and 1:2 odds without artillery at best. That is why I am still concerned about defense. If I consistently get 1:3 I stop worrying already. Haven't you read my post?
Also homeland defense bonuses already exist, they're called sensor array and children creeche.
Yes. Sensors are sort of homeland bonus. However, they need to be built and they are easy to destroy. They do not work on water. They are nice addition but unreliable and inconsistent between land/sea. The sudden border change may flip its ownership. Sensors built next to a border extend their influence 2 tiles into enemy territory which is kinda defeats their initial idea. That is why I reverted their bonus back to 25% to decrease discrepancy between land/sea combat and due to their unreliability and difficulty to control. Otherwise, sudden on/off jumps of 50% bonus would create much frustration. Such a small bonus does not turn odds upside down. The random difference in weapon and armor is much more volatile especially in early game.
Homeland bonus is free of all the above problems. It is free, persistent, consistent, logical (does not extend beyond borders). It is easy to understand and visualize since borders are already drawn on a map. It is there to help defenders from day 1 making it more difficult to catch anyone unprepared. I agree that combined with sensors 50% may be too much. Well we can lower it down to 25% then.
Children Creche is controversial thing.
- It works in bases only. The rest of the land is unprotected by it. I don't think it is fair to bring it into a homeland bonus discussion.
- It adds to both attack and defense. While defense for base garrison makes sense attack does not. One need to attack from base to get this bonus. Meaning that if you attack enemy unit that is adjacent to base but do it NOT from base square - you don't get the bonus. I hate such intricate rules.
- Another illogical thing is that you get bonus only when you run negative MORALE SE. Why on earth to lower your one bonus to receive another? I hate such intricate rules.
- CC morale bonus could be an interesting idea but formulas are exceptionally complicated and not at all transparent to user.
- Last but not least. It is bugged. There are so many articles about its usage and effect. There are so many attempts to fix or circumvent it.
You also need a lot of artillery to damage in the base and since you've made arty use defense rating in duels, attacking arty is at the same disadvantage during artillery duel as regular units during their base assault.
One artillery piece is enough. As long as it is unchallenged by enemy artillery it can halve health of all comparable defense strength units in base in ~10 turns. More pieces will just do it faster.
I didn't implement armor use for artillery duel yet. Duel has little to do with base bombardment. As soon as all duels are done only one side retains artillery and continues bombarding.
You are right that attacking heavily armored artillery is tough. Again this has nothing to do with the duel and using armor in duel. One could just armor their artillery pieces to make them more difficult to be knocked out by opponent counter strikes.
Besides, how all this relevant to homeland bonus? With artillery attacker increases their odds to 1:1. Without it it is somewhere 1:2. All these numbers are very rough estimate. What I am leading at is that even 1:2 is not enough protection against twice more economically stronger opponent. And 2 times fluctuations in economical power between factions is a completely common case. I don't want defense to be completely impenetrable but I want it to be at least twice as more effective as assault in any case. So in my understanding attacker's odds should not in any case be better than 1:1.5-2.
Just make AI mix in some decent proportion of arty units in later stages of the game, no extra bonuses required imo. The most important thing now, would be to make AI build enough units to dedicate around turn 40, something like 20-30% ( depending on AI fight ) of production to military support, even if not threatend and in later stages of the game it should be even more, also disband/upgrade obsolete units.
You already proposed it and it is on my TODO list. I like the idea but implementation may take some time. Have patience. For now let's work with simpler changes. If after implementing your idea they prove to be redundant we'll get rid of them. Piece of cake. For now they are not.
Post by: dino on January 25, 2020, 09:44:31 am
I've usually post on a gaming forum where people are edgy and annoying all the time for fun and needlesly carried some of this attitude here.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 25, 2020, 03:23:09 pm
:)
Don't hesitate to express your opinion even weird ones. Everything counts.
Reiterating the same, I am do not pretend this mod is the best mod of all times. ;)
Different people are seeking different experience. This one is for those seeking same as I do: highlighting existing but obscure strategies and features. Along the way I also try to fix logical bugs just to minimize frustration with the game. That is things should work the way the regular user would expect, how they are advertised in datalinks. They should also be overly complicated so it is impossible to memorize and use them.
Of course, things like "complicated" is highly subjective. That's why I am running my thoughts through people on this and other forums. Thank you for staying with me. I appreciate it.
:)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 25, 2020, 03:26:31 pm
I've usually post on a gaming forum where people are edgy and annoying all the time for fun and needlesly carried some of this attitude here.
What are these forums? Do they discuss SMACX? Would it be beneficial to cover this audience for my mod too?
Post by: dino on January 25, 2020, 10:58:11 pm
I'm pretty sure every SMACer from the codex knows about alphacentauri2.info, so not sure if there would be a point to that, though.
Kyrub was engaging with this crowd, when he was working on his SMAC 444 AI mod: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/smac-444-ai-patch-updated-p.56203/
Here is a general SMAC thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-unsurpassed-brian-reynolds-alpha-centauri-thread.101751/
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 04, 2020, 08:12:03 pm
Strange thing with voting there, though. I usually up-vote things I like and just skip things I don't. I don't down-vote. However, I noticed considerable amount of down-votes on my posts. Even those with relatively neutral (as I think) stuff. Like my last play test review post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/exth7d/smax_the_will_to_power_mod_release_43_play_testing/. In my mind I do not tell people what to do - just expressing my good and bad feelings to help other to get some overview on my mod. I understand that there are a lot of features and it would take many games to just understand what is it there. So I compress it for those who don't have time serving the community.
;)
Yet. There are people who are compelled to down-vote the review. I would love to understand the reason. Maybe it is wording or something?
UPDATE
Never mind. I think it is just a obfuscation algorithm there that randomly varies exact numbers. So it could show 0 or 1 down-vote or something like that. At least for this post it seems like it. Still some of my posts were considerably down-voted for real.
Post by: dino on February 06, 2020, 09:24:19 am
As for tubes, an obvious solution, which you've surely already thought about, but just in case: double all movement costs and points, make tubes cost one point.
Eventually, you could quadruple everything instead, but make tubes cost 1/12th of total movement points of a unit. This way you could ride max 12 tiles on tubes, but that would be independent from unit speed since it's transported, so tubes would still be something else than just better roads. If you coupled it with tubes not working on enemy territory it would be pretty satisfactory solution imo, but I get this idea is a bit too crazy to implement just in assembler, as you like it.
Post by: dino on February 06, 2020, 12:50:10 pm
So, I'd rather give 0,8 Attack disadvantage everywhere outside owned territory, due to supply difficulties.
As for defense, I'd introduce 1,25 Defense entrenchment bonus, to each defender that still has all its movement points ( was not moving, or attacking during its turn ).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 06, 2020, 06:57:30 pm
Regarding homeland security bonus it doesn't sit well with me, the main advantage of homeland is better logistics and there is already sensors array bonus.
Why it should be better logistic?
Logistics is a minor thing. It makes things faster/slower but unit movement speed never troubled me in scope of attacker/defender advantage. I agree that it can be adjusted here and there and we can have a dedicated discussion on it but it does not replace a discussion on combat bonuses.
I've already expressed my view on sensors. They sound cool but the they are easily destroyed as terrain improvements and are unreliable as such. The stronger bonus you give the more the urge of human player to target them first before engaging in actual hand-to-hand combat. AI doesn't recognize destroying them as a necessary preparation for assault. This becomes a stupid grinding step in a war which is advantageous to human only. Again we can discuss sensors too to see if we can make them indestructible, etc. But for now disabling their defensive bonus is a simplest thing to do.
So, I'd rather give 0,8 Attack disadvantage everywhere outside owned territory, due to supply difficulties.
As for defense, I'd introduce 1,25 Defense entrenchment bonus, to each defender that still has all its movement points ( was not moving, or attacking during its turn ).
You proposed attack disadvantage is same territory bonus conceptually. Even if you use not own territory it is still territory related. In my eyes your version is even more complicated. Your penalty also applies to fighting non-owner outside of your territory. That includes neutral territory. So you say somehow when two units fights somewhere far from their territories attacker should have disadvantage? Doesn't sound as easy rule to absorb.
Binding bonus to own territory confines it to quite local, marked, and visible location on a map.
I don't get your entrenchment bonus either. What is it for? What problem it solves?
Let me reiterate it again. Building a good game is a hard work. People think if they just throw myriads of weird rules into the game it'll be a super fun. Maybe probably to try them all out and then put the game back on a shelf. I've seen tons of such games in my life. It is not individual rules what makes the game. It is interdependence = how well they work together. You may modify one and then you have to modify another to compensate and so on. Sometimes you may trigger domino effect by that. Caution is required. I follow bv's advice to do conservative changes only. Meaning I change anything only if I can formulate a problem for player. The reason could be anything (convenience, ease, logic) as long as I act upon the reason and not my impulse.
Post by: dino on February 06, 2020, 08:25:30 pm
So I'm not bothering you with trying to implement them, if they don't resonate with you.
As for attack bonus, you are right, it was a brain fart on my part, I was thinking about something that would help defender more effectively when attacker has tech advantage. I've forgot that this bonus wouldn't be additive, but multiplicative with other bonuses, so it doesn't matter, same result as homeland bonus indeed, which as you said is applied to a clearly marked area of the map.
Civ games have entrenchment, it solves the same issue as all other defense increases you've implemented, but in more interesting way, that adds some new tactical consideration, with one simple rule. But you are right again, because generally defenders on homeland territory would be entrenched, except for fresh reinforcements and with increased armor in this mod, it'd be still effective to sit in a base and let enemy entrench while he awaits his reinforcements and strike him back only after surviving his assault, so the end result would be very close to your more abstract homeland bonus and not worth the hassle of implementing. It would also probably benefit player more than AIs.
I have to stop trying to be contrarian this much, but at least thanks to this exchange, I've warmed up to the idea of homeland bonus, because I've realised it serves the same main purpose as entrenchement bonus, which I always liked in Civ games.
***
Supply production and logistics is probably one of the most important things in a modern war and requirement to constantly sustain extensive supply lines, was the reason why there were frontlines in both World Wars, instead of stacks of doom confrontations like during older days. I'd love Civ like game, where units consume additional resources when fight, or move and require uninterrupted supply line to be fully effective.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 06, 2020, 09:10:11 pm
As far as I'm concerned you've fixed the combat already, we are just exchanging loose ideas about minutae details, mostly for the fun of it, at this point.
So I'm not bothering you with trying to implement them, if they don't resonate with you.
I like ideas, man. Give it more to me!
;)
I don't really care who's it is. The authorship doesn't give it any preference in TODO's list. My mod already has few of yours and others' ideas implemented. The only condition I require is some explanation about what does it fix and why it is better than others. Such discussion is very useful. I even put my own idea to the judge of other pretty often as you noticed when I cannot prove to myself its validity.
I believe such preliminary discussion is very important as we cannot play test every random idea - it is too time expensive.
Civ games have entrenchment, it solves the same issue as all other defense increases you've implemented, but in more interesting way, that adds some new tactical consideration, with one simple rule. But you are right again, because generally defenders on homeland territory would be entrenched, except for fresh reinforcements and with increased armor in this mod, it'd be still effective to sit in a base and let enemy entrench while he awaits his reinforcements and strike him back only after surviving his assault, so the end result would be very close to your more abstract homeland bonus and not worth the hassle of implementing. It would also probably benefit player more than AIs.
I have to stop trying to be contrarian this much, but at least thanks to this exceange, I've warmed up the idea of homeland bonus, because I've realised it serves the same main purpose as entrenchement bonus, which I always liked in Civ games.
Yes. Fortification it called. I liked it too. It was a nice trade-off between mobility and defense. There is no such mechanism in SMACX, unfortunately. I miss it. From the other hand, Civ 1/2 didn't have territory, though. So maybe this is a pay off for this change.
They are slightly not the same, though. Fortification can be used by assault army as well to capture strategical spots on enemy territory and to withstand following counterattacks and such. This is by far more tactical usage feature.
I agree that territory bonus is passive in nature. I would love to replace it with something more dynamic but no other option was good enough so far. The main problem is as usual: AI has to be trained in using this new tactical advantage. So passive bonuses work best for AI.
Don't try to stop trying to be contrarian this much. That drives the discussion. And the fact that people change their opinion as it goes is valuable by itself as it shows the idea influence and acceptance (or opposite).
:D
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 10, 2020, 09:44:17 pm
Thoughts about naval yard appearance time.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2020, 02:13:42 am
Hmm... just had my 1st problem. I was unable to task switch from the game to my web browser, or to the Snip & Sketch screen capture app. Couldn't even switch to Task Manager. It wouldn't stop me from playing, but it would stop me from writing an AAR, if I can't get this resolved. There's a certain workflow I do when I write one of these things. Well, I'll investigate if there's any difference of settings, or change in behavior starting again. I consider this weird, as I can do it with the stock game just fine.
Interesting. For reasons unknown to me, my SMACX AI Growth mod shortcut Properties are set to Run As Administrator. Whereas, no such Properties for the terran_mod.exe shortcut I made. And I see that the shortcut that was just installed for the squeaky new The Will to Power terranx.exe also is set to Run As Administrator. It must be what GOG thinks should be done. So I'll delete the shortcut I just made, and modify their shortcut to run terranx_mod.exe.
That worked. Now I can do standard Windows 10 task switching with CTRL-ALT-TAB just fine. Kind of a gotcha. Is this a known behavior?
Aftermath: I had no clue how to deal with the new mindworms, particularly with a -1 PLANET rating for the Usurpers. Fungal mazes are deadly. I quit the game after it got too itchy from me doing so badly. I don't think I'll do another AAR until I have a better idea what's basically going on.
Faction descriptions are buggy in some places. They don't say how SE stuff was modified for them, and say things like free Recycling Tanks when those aren't given out.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2020, 08:30:55 pm
Further playtesting is suspended until this imbalance is addressed. It is a dealbreaker.
Now having said that:
What happens when I drop my own SMACX AI Growth mod on top of The Will To Power?
[..]
So here goes: The Will to AI Growth mod. Version 43 of Tim's, version 1.41 of mine.
Unfortunately I ran into:
My bogus ability bit hack, which is used to prevent game confusion for unit upgradeability, unfortunately makes a Clean Former ridiculously expensive.
Questions:
- Are the high ability bits past Algorithmic Enhancement actually used for something in Thinker or Will to Power? It's weird that it introduces a big cost, when the stock binary just ignores it.
- Has the cost of a Terraforming Unit non-combat package been jacked up / hardwired in the binary? I see higher than expected cost even when I remove the bogus bit.
Post by: lolada on April 22, 2020, 10:46:04 am
Some notes about what makes thinker ai strong and interesting from what i can observe:
- primarily AI base spam - colony pods and close bases (obv they have more stuff and they defend better)
- huge terraforming effort (AIs without formers are quite pathetic.. Santiago seems particularly affected - and Weather Paradigm overpowerd SP)
- ai uses lots of probes, its quite a trouble for player
- and i guess many other things.. AI has more stuff and its vendetta all over the place so you have to deal with that
Still player can use few rovers and delay AI and once air units come.. its a bit of drag but AI dies pretty quickly and game is usually over soon. I usually play on max difficulty, played quite a few games with thinker mod.
That said.. WTP changes few of these base things
- colony pods are more expensive - i like that - it stops base spam race somewhat. What i don't like is Rover colony pod and AI building it early.. Its more expensive and does more harm than good. Also i see AI building rover pods in sea bases .. its dumb. Rover pods late.. maybe with level 3 reactor and when lots of bases are there already - if that can be done would be more sane
- terraforming - i think the best thing for AI would be to just give Centauri ecology to everyone at start of the game - its that important it would made AI much better overall. In cases where AI somehow skips the tech - they are cripped forever. I really liked that you moved Weather paradigm later and made it more expensive - its game breaking.
Forests: didn't play much yet - but i found them mostly useless for Gaians. Double nerf might be too hard on them but we'll see. Energy nerf really hurts + its 12 turns to build them. Gotta play non-gaians tho.. forests spread like plague so it could be deserved nerf. I planted few forests and quickly realized i don't need them (being gaians).
Fungus: seems maybe overpowered (playing Map of panet.. there's lots of fungus there) with Gaians and Manifold harmonics. With forest terraforming slowed and weaker.. i found using 2-1-0 fungus very atractive.. then energy ramp up quickly and these are quite good tiles.. with 2-1-2, 2-1-3 early.. then 3-1-2, 3-1-3 progress (gaians have +1 fungus). You get lots of them for free - weakness being mineral production and "plant fungus" action coming late. Thats good at this point its viable strategy. But then i saw Morgan building Manifold harmonics... and was surprised its that early - and its relatively cheap. Stole the tech and built it and its bonkers... Every tile is 4-2-5 (i'll see to add some screenshots later).. you can spam new bases in fungus areas and its quite awesome - that is once you switch to Green SE and +3 planet. Nice thing is Green has -2 Industry its quite a pain so it balances it somewhat. But anyway whole game my research is top and i have so much money i can buy fascilities all the time.
*Its plenty fun, but its broken a bit too early imo - i think Manifold Harmonics need to come later and needs to be a bit more expensive. Fungus also maybe gives too much energy too quickly. I like to see funguns usable.. so 2-1-2.. or 3-1-2 (with gaians) is good and fun.. but upgrades to 3-1-3, 3-1-4 should come a bit later - or better move later Manifold harmonics. Otherwise planet factions have no use for standard terraforming besides ocassional borehole or mine. I actually have big ecology problems with fungus bases only - and gotta spam centauri preserves.. (or tree farms without forests xD). Temple of planets is too expensive but i started building a few.. i probably should build tree farms they give nice bonuses anyway.
- unlocking resources techs at start - i think its a good move overall - its a bit unbalanced - i started near boreholes for example.. or Yang got into jungle areas. But AI without these techs is so crippled that it ruins the game. So i am good with that. Would be nice they start with formers as i said earlier.
- on probes - they might be too expensive early - it gets better with reactors a bit. AI starts using them more later and they are quite a pain. I actually built def infantry probes i n my bases.. otherwise AI mind-probe bases, steal techs and destroys stuff. Here i actually like that probe gets +50% def in base since it suits me : D. It would be interesting if probes could be modded that tech stealing is harder.. mind-probes also are often too cheap in far-away bases.
Actually in your mod you kind of weaken early AI a bit. Its good and bad at the same time. Gives player more options besides strict colony spam - still likely best tactic. I also could snatch for example Virtual world and Empath song. AI goes nuts on special projects.. for example with thinker mode Drones built weather paradigm and HGP before i could start it. Once they get WP they spam boreholes and they are at pop 10 very quickly.. then they stole a bit. So in sense base game is quite unbalanced with thinker. Reminds me of Civilization crap - where on highest difficulties its impossible to get wonders - and everyone juts conquers them.
Some other stuff:
Special projects and fascilities:
Weather paradigm - good change.
Command nexus - looks way too expensive. Took ages in my game - Morgan completed it eventually. I was on it for awhile but i decided to pick up different wonders. Maritime control - don't mind that.. it comes late so production is better.. and relative value is less. It might be actually good to reduce cost of these fasciities to 60 and project to 600.. Considering also how much you buffed defense in the game. In my game i was most of the time in war - and i built command centers quite late due to how expensive they are. I also wanted Command nexus but found it too expensive. (I don't like crawlers to speed up projects - feels like exploit).
Virtual world - was always too strong project. I'd bump that from 600 to 800.. and really move it later to midgame. Should be on discover tech so Zakharov picks it up if possible. Its free fascilities SP and very strong once - Hologram theaters are not that expensive, but they are 3 maintenance which is important. Or nerf HT maintenance to 2..
Network nodes, Energy bank, Biology lab - I really liked that you reduced cost - looks appropriate. Energy bank - SP that gives energy bank in each base - i think you moved it way too far in tech. The problem is that player has Energy bank in every city - since build style is promoted in mode - so this SP comes late and its very expensive. I am in 2280 i think i might build it - just to scrap energy banks in base and get the money back.. and to deny AI. It would be way more interesting if this project came earlier so we can "calculate" to delay energy banks and wait for completion of project. That said its very strong SP so it should not come too early.
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm - this is totally broken SP. Good that you made it more expensive. It just ruins AI.. i am not sure if AI will build probes with Alg. Ench. i think it might - but AI just suicides very expensive armored probes on me now. In vanilla they at least suicide cheap 0-1-2 probes and don't build them much. This project would be much more sane if it would just reduce AI chances for probe actions to max 50%. Is that possible? That or it should be removed from the game - or put to level 10 tech very late.
Lab doubling SP - should be 600 instead of 400 minerals probably. I still didn't get to build very late SP so no comment on that yet. They are in general overpowered, but game is kind of done by that point. For example +50% mineral SP are very strong - but i already build fascilities and have lots of minerals that i have trouble with eco damage and worm spam even with gaians and all fungus terraforming.
On combat
Its quite a long post so this is last for now. This is part where i have some issues.
- For one i like its hard to conquer AI - i know your goal was to make attacker invest 3x as much to defeat.. and i think you succeeded :).
- I also like that you made artillery useful, gj there. Looks in good place so far - i need to play more ofc.
- What i don't like is too much randomness in combat. Attacking 1def former in enemy territory on forest with 10-1-14 needlejet feels like 50/50 :D. I lots plenty of 6-1-2, 8-1-2, 10-1-2 and 13-1-2 rovers attacking into formers, foils and supply crawlers. Crawlers are at least armored and on forests and mines. Attacking anything in enemy territory is pain, doubly if the unit is in the base.
I need to take a look at combat formula, but this doesn't feel intuitively ok. Non-combat unit with no armor destroying needlejets and high tech rovers. Maybe its for the better, but it feels weird. It doesn't help that most of my combat was banging into Hive perimeter defense. 0-1-1 Formers with PD and base bonus and territory bonus.. actually often kill or badly hurt Chaos or better units.
- Another grudge is worms - i am fine with 1-1 combat.. but then it really is weird that worms are way better at killing high tech units than former. Imagine my surprise when my highly experienced Worm bumped into 0-1-2 Hive rover COLONY POD... got them i thought. Next turn i attacked and got demolished due to territory bonus and randomness. Colony pod ZERO damage, my worm dead. I feel psi combat is broken there - Alpha centauri is wonky there with whats non-combat sadly.. but native life should kill non-combat units, at least unarmored ones consistently. Its even worse when attacking into base.
It doesn't help that you actually made psi units more expensive - and brood pit comes late and reactors don't work on psi units. I learned to use cheap units to attack non-combat units and use worms to attack high-tech targets.. just not worth risking worms on non-combat units. If used like that it feels ok, but initial shock is.. well shock.
- I like that you removed those 3r, 3p armors. Good point there. Also it feels like there's too many armor and weapon techs - i felt forced to tech up all the time. Then its hard to build those units - Skunkworks - free prototype facilitie comes way too late. You might consider making prototypes 30% more expensive or just put this facility way earlier. Big issue here is that unit workshop and build screen becomes very convoluted and messy with all those variants of old and new units. Its bad for micro and quality of life. Once 64 unit designs are full you can't create new ones - so gotta cleanup and thats boring - and i am not sure if this will hurt what AI actually can build.
I guess thats enough for now.. I also like what you did with social policies.. its a bit of a mess at first, but i ended up using lots of them. Late onces also don't feel overpowered since they have significant drawbacks - and i still didn't get to SP that remove their drawbacks.
Great mod - having lots of fun, thanks for effort.
Post by: lolada on April 23, 2020, 08:13:14 pm
Territory bonus is kind of understandable for military units - they are "trained".. but it turns out that non-combat is real pain for PSI attack. I had quite a few situation where these units did way better than equivalent trained/experienced defensive units. I read about combat goals of the mod - and its ok i can see how you want for example to have 8 str attacker die vs former on forest in his land (having 2 str total)... so its like 4:1 and say 20% of cases attacker dies.
Anyway, this forces player to game system around a bit.. gotta have both normal units and worms.. attack high-tech units with worms and then attack civilians with conventional units. Also feels stupod. It would be good if PSI combat could be changed in a way to ignore these bonuses and just uses morale vs non-combat units (or something like that).
Post by: bvanevery on April 23, 2020, 08:22:28 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 16, 2020, 10:09:15 pm
😉
Sorry, I had to step away for a, err ... , few months probably? Something was wrong with notifications. I didn't get any on my email. Therefore, I thought it is dead and never bothered to check it manually. Will try to adjust my settings. Meanwhile, you always welcome to shoot me a personal email for questions and suggestions.
lolada, welcome to the forum and to my humble thread! Look at you. Your post made a front page! Congratulations.
I like your interest in this mod. Just have read your detailed analysis in this thread and currently reading your own here: http://31.22.7.81/index.php?topic=21438.msg124407. Amazing and exceptional work, I should say. Keep up on criticism. I feed on it.
😄
Let me digest it and I'll replay in following posts.
Actually, I was busy all this time working on Might & Magic 6 mod here: https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/10/17131.
I liked the mod myself and even played it few times to my own satisfaction. However, it didn't get much attention. As you can see almost zero activity on the thread. Lost interest for further evolution for such ungrateful auditory.
😪
I guess this is because adventure games do not require any balance to be enjoyable. At least not as much as strategical ones. There are plenty other fun experience mods out there attracting much more followers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 12:38:33 am
- colony pods are more expensive - i like that - it stops base spam race somewhat. What i don't like is Rover colony pod and AI building it early.. Its more expensive and does more harm than good.
What kind of harm? Does it harm you that AI build rover colonies???
I don't think they are good or bad. They are opportunity to use them right. In my games I used rule of thumb that it is time to use rover colonies when it takes >20 turns for them to reach destination. However, it is completely minor and each player will decide it for themselves.
AI tuning is possible but it is a very scrupulous work. Induktio has already done a lot of good work on that.
- terraforming - i think the best thing for AI would be to just give Centauri ecology to everyone at start of the game - its that important it would made AI much better overall. In cases where AI somehow skips the tech - they are cripped forever.
Possible. Another option is to just give them Former at start. Thinker mod *has* this parameter already.
Forests: didn't play much yet - but i found them mostly useless for Gaians. Double nerf might be too hard on them but we'll see. Energy nerf really hurts + its 12 turns to build them. Gotta play non-gaians tho.. forests spread like plague so it could be deserved nerf. I planted few forests and quickly realized i don't need them (being gaians).
Here is my rationale about forest: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#forest
In short, forest should *not* be even close in effectiveness and yield to the best improvements (rocky mine, rainy farm-collector). It is a barren land alternative to reduce poor bases suffering.
I tried its slightly more effective alternative and every time found myself planting it over and over again like crazy. When eventually with 1-2-0 and 12 terrraforming turns I stopped doing that. So, I guess, this is where it should be. As always, I'm open for suggestions.
Fungus: seems maybe overpowered (playing Map of panet.. there's lots of fungus there) with Gaians and Manifold harmonics. With forest terraforming slowed and weaker.. i found using 2-1-0 fungus very atractive.. then energy ramp up quickly and these are quite good tiles.. with 2-1-2, 2-1-3 early.. then 3-1-2, 3-1-3 progress (gaians have +1 fungus). You get lots of them for free - weakness being mineral production and "plant fungus" action coming late. Thats good at this point its viable strategy. But then i saw Morgan building Manifold harmonics... and was surprised its that early - and its relatively cheap. Stole the tech and built it and its bonkers... Every tile is 4-2-5 (i'll see to add some screenshots later).. you can spam new bases in fungus areas and its quite awesome - that is once you switch to Green SE and +3 planet. Nice thing is Green has -2 Industry its quite a pain so it balances it somewhat. But anyway whole game my research is top and i have so much money i can buy fascilities all the time.
*Its plenty fun, but its broken a bit too early imo - i think Manifold Harmonics need to come later and needs to be a bit more expensive. Fungus also maybe gives too much energy too quickly. I like to see funguns usable.. so 2-1-2.. or 3-1-2 (with gaians) is good and fun.. but upgrades to 3-1-3, 3-1-4 should come a bit later - or better move later Manifold harmonics. Otherwise planet factions have no use for standard terraforming besides ocassional borehole or mine. I actually have big ecology problems with fungus bases only - and gotta spam centauri preserves.. (or tree farms without forests xD). Temple of planets is too expensive but i started building a few.. i probably should build tree farms they give nice bonuses anyway.
It is pretty difficult to balance fungus with regular terraforming. They are completely opposite ways of harvesting resources. Even forest is not that opposite - it is still a terraforming. I agree it should have lower yield comparing to contemporary terraforming since it doesn't take investments. That is how I designed it to be. If you say it is still overpowered that means I miscalculated average game progress and we need to delay it back a little. Than you for observation.
Can you give me rough comparison of fungus vs. best terraforming production at different stages? Also your suggestions of what fungus production should at these stages comparing to regular terraforming.
Keep also in mind that negative PLANET reduces fungus output. For example, -2 PLANET subtracts 2 from *each* yield factor. So your 2-1-4 yield becomes 0-0-2. That is pretty devastating. That means that fungus relied faction is pretty much locked in positive PLANET rating rendering things like Free Market unavailable, etc. That is a huge impact too.
Yes, Manifold Harmonics makes fungus production booming. It was designed for that. If you think it is exceptionally overpowered we can make it more expensive to offset the benefit. Moving it for later just delays the inevitable.
- unlocking resources techs at start - i think its a good move overall - its a bit unbalanced - i started near boreholes for example.. or Yang got into jungle areas. But AI without these techs is so crippled that it ruins the game. So i am good with that. Would be nice they start with formers as i said earlier.
In my goals I state that I don't seek "balance". I enable feature usage. Which is exactly what I have achieved here. These native boreholes are going to be used immediately for full benefit. Instead of sitting idle for the 1/3 of the game. If you think Borehole Cluster landmark itself is too much we can remove it from the game. However, I don't think it makes too much impact. It is comparable to Crater and Volcano.
- on probes - they might be too expensive early - it gets better with reactors a bit. AI starts using them more later and they are quite a pain. I actually built def infantry probes i n my bases.. otherwise AI mind-probe bases, steal techs and destroys stuff. Here i actually like that probe gets +50% def in base since it suits me : D. It would be interesting if probes could be modded that tech stealing is harder.. mind-probes also are often too cheap in far-away bases.
It is very-very difficult to balance non combat unit abilities and Probes are the worst. I never ever even saw a complete and integral concept of balanced Probe abilities. They will be unbalanced one way or another. As always, I am open for small fix suggestions here and there.
By the way, I don't think 60 minerals is at all expensive for Probe team. It is about same as Colony Pod. Do you want their cost to grow proportional to most expensive known weapon/armor?
Command nexus - looks way too expensive. Took ages in my game - Morgan completed it eventually. I was on it for awhile but i decided to pick up different wonders.
Maritime control - don't mind that.. it comes late so production is better.. and relative value is less. It might be actually good to reduce cost of these fasciities to 60 and project to 600.. Considering also how much you buffed defense in the game. In my game i was most of the time in war - and i built command centers quite late due to how expensive they are. I also wanted Command nexus but found it too expensive. (I don't like crawlers to speed up projects - feels like exploit).
Facility replacement SP cost is very simple = ten times the facility cost. It's true for all such facilities and why it should be fair for some but not others? With that in mind I *do not* adjust SP cost to the stage of the game they appear in. Somebody just invest a lot of time/resources in them if they need it. You may be wise not to build it outright.
Now the cost of Command Center (and other morale boosting facilities) is another story. Change it and corresponding SP cost changes. See my rationale about it here https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#facilities-costmaintenance. I don't feel that 80 for Command Center is at all expensive. You don't need them at every base - only high productive ones. With 40 it is no-brainer to build it before *any* military unit (beyond Scout Patrol). Therefore, it should be increased to present a weighed choice. The fact that you were in war but didn't build it right away confirms that they are on a right spot now.
Making them 60? Eh, I don't think it is such a big deal for facility that you don't want in every city. It is so minor that one needs to play few games to feel the difference. And even that they may not.
🤔
Anyway, if you feel it is too expensive that it is impossible to build it - let me know and I'll drop the price. I'm open for negotiations.
Virtual world - was always too strong project. I'd bump that from 600 to 800.. and really move it later to midgame. Should be on discover tech so Zakharov picks it up if possible. Its free fascilities SP and very strong once - Hologram theaters are not that expensive, but they are 3 maintenance which is important. Or nerf HT maintenance to 2..
Another facility replacing SP. Boring. However, I like you brought maintenance into equation. Maybe I should modify my facility replacing SP cost formula to account for that. Say 10 times the cost + 10 times * 20 turns the maintenance? That would bring Virtual World to: 10 * 60 + 10 * 20 * 3 / 2 = 900. Does it sound right?
Network nodes, Energy bank, Biology lab - I really liked that you reduced cost - looks appropriate. Energy bank - SP that gives energy bank in each base - i think you moved it way too far in tech. The problem is that player has Energy bank in every city - since build style is promoted in mode - so this SP comes late and its very expensive. I am in 2280 i think i might build it - just to scrap energy banks in base and get the money back.. and to deny AI. It would be way more interesting if this project came earlier so we can "calculate" to delay energy banks and wait for completion of project. That said its very strong SP so it should not come too early.
Oops. Found a discrepancy in SP cost. The facility is 60 but SP is 800. Should be 600. And I also can move it earlier. Currently it is at 60% of the tech tree. Would 40% or 50% be good for you? Remember, it is also not early project in vanilla too.
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm - this is totally broken SP. Good that you made it more expensive. It just ruins AI.. i am not sure if AI will build probes with Alg. Ench. i think it might - but AI just suicides very expensive armored probes on me now. In vanilla they at least suicide cheap 0-1-2 probes and don't build them much. This project would be much more sane if it would just reduce AI chances for probe actions to max 50%. Is that possible? That or it should be removed from the game - or put to level 10 tech very late.
Probes again. 😒
Everything is possible but not worth investments IMHO. The problem that everything probe related is not an isolate fix. It is all interrelated. Propose an integrated view on how you think Probes should works and we'll talk.
Lab doubling SP - should be 600 instead of 400 minerals probably.
You mean Lab doubling *in single base* SPs? They do not scale. Compare to The Network Backbone, for example.
It doesn't help that you actually made psi units more expensive - and brood pit comes late and reactors don't work on psi units. I learned to use cheap units to attack non-combat units and use worms to attack high-tech targets.. just not worth risking worms on non-combat units. If used like that it feels ok, but initial shock is.. well shock.
Yep. Was quite novel for me too at first. Got used to it and my strategy also adjusted to it. Now it feels fine.
- I like that you removed those 3r, 3p armors. Good point there. Also it feels like there's too many armor and weapon techs - i felt forced to tech up all the time. Then its hard to build those units - Skunkworks - free prototype facilitie comes way too late. You might consider making prototypes 30% more expensive or just put this facility way earlier.
Yep. I proposed to cut number of weapons from 12 to 8. Wanna try?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 01:18:28 am
Also changed The Planetary Energy Grid cost and timing by lolada request.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 02:36:45 am
Here's what i was saying about combat problem with worms and psi combat. The way PSI combat works it turns out that its really bad idea to attack anything non-combat in enemy land due to territory bonus. Worm is relatively expensive and it actually badly loses attacking cheap formers for example. On screenshot in attachment formers are in base.. and its double bonus - and they are unarmored. Foils are also problem.. probes probably - AI at least builds armored probes.
You are substitute one problem with another. The psi is there for very specific purpose: to nullify weapon/armor. Thus, it is most useful against strong conventional units and least against others - especially non combat. I'm glad that you discovered this law. 😉 However, it has nothing to do with the mod. It will be exactly like that in vanilla or any other mod. Although, in vanilla it is unnoticeable just because 3:2 psi attack odds against half strength not combat unit turning to 3:1 + notorious vanilla multi-round-combat-always-win thing. By removing all these things my mod crystallized what always was there and should have been.
Territory bonus is kind of understandable for military units - they are "trained".. but it turns out that non-combat is real pain for PSI attack. I had quite a few situation where these units did way better than equivalent trained/experienced defensive units. I read about combat goals of the mod - and its ok i can see how you want for example to have 8 str attacker die vs former on forest in his land (having 2 str total)... so its like 4:1 and say 20% of cases attacker dies.
This is a game and any resemblance with real world is just for resemblance. Not for transferring rules from one world to another. I believe there is no need to multiply entities without need. Vanilla nerfed non combat units for some unknown reason and I've got rid of this nonsense.
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 03:21:19 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:00:02 am
10x the facility cost for an SP is quite high. You're often better off just building the facilities at that point. What's omitted is the opportunity cost. It takes one base longer to make the SP than individual ones. Ok, a human player can do mass crawlers to circumvent this but can the AI? The bigger opportunity cost for many SPs is all the labs spent. SPs should be a reward for investing in labs over other things like facilities or units. Otherwise there's not much advantage to being ahead of the curve, which leads to conquer being more of a dominant strategy over build. Or simply tech stealing because the SP race is so long.
At that point - yes. However, SP serves you for the rest of the game becoming more and more powerful as you build more bases. 10 times is just some estimate of the SP value at some point. I am not saying I picked right formula for SP cost. It is just very rough estimate. And this formula does not have a meaning behind it. Not that I actually tried to visualize the exact SP value or something.
You are theorizing about how SP cost changes the advantage? We can do that or we can play the game few times and get a feeling whether it cripples AI or not. In my games on highest difficulty it never feel like AI is at disadvantage. They keep slapping SPs left and right as usual. At slower rate, of course. But still I never can build more than 10-30% of SPs for myself. Thinker AI + Transcend bonuses = it is really a challenge to beat them even with crawler rush!
😜
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:13:37 am
Command nexus - looks way too expensive.
Actually, you know what? I think you may be right. My 10 times the facility cost is a good estimate for a facility that is beneficial for each base. Whereas, morale and defense facilities are not. So the cost of corresponding SP should be proportionally lower. I don't think cutting it in half is reasonable but somewhere at 75%? What everyone thinks? With exception of The Cloudbase Academy. It is beneficial at every base.
So that changes it:
The Command Nexus = 800 -> 600
The Citizens' Defense Force = 500 -> 400
The Maritime Control Center = 800 -> 600
The Cloudbase Academy = 1200 -> 1200
I also agree to more reduce the cost of Command Center and corresponding The Command Nexus a little bit more with regards that it is just a single purpose facility comparing to dual purpose Naval Yard. But not too much. Something like 70 maybe. That'll make The Command Nexus cost somewhere 500.
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 04:19:37 am
I make SPs expensive enough, that it's generally not possible to win a race with all of them. I've also diversified my tech tree weights enough, that you can't get the research in all branches of the tech tree all that easily. You can steal techs from others, and indeed I often use that strategy, but on Huge maps it may not be so easy. Sometimes you're on the opposite side of the map from the one who's churning out all the techs you don't have. Sometimes the map is a damn maze and you can't just sail a ship over there.
You can see how much I think various SPs are game changers by how much I've weighted them and how late I've put them. As of my mod version 1.43:
Code: [Select]
The Human Genome Project, 30, 0, Cyber, Disable, +1 Talent Each Base, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2,
The Command Nexus, 30, 0, Poly, Disable, Command Center Each Base, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0,
The Weather Paradigm, 40, 0, EcoEng, Disable, Terraform Rate +50%, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2,
The Merchant Exchange, 30, 0, IndEcon, Disable, +1 Energy Each Square Here, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
The Empath Guild, 60, 0, HomoSup, Disable, 2x Votes; Infiltrate Every Faction, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
The Citizens' Defense Force, 30, 0, Subat, Disable, Perimeter Defense Each Base, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0,
The Virtual World, 30, 0, Brain, Disable, Network Nodes Help Drones, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1,
The Planetary Transit System, 30, 0, EnvEcon, Disable, New Bases Begin At Size 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1,
The Xenoempathy Dome, 50, 0, Eudaim, Disable, Fungus Movement Bonus, 1, 2, 0, 0, 2,
The Neural Amplifier, 60, 0, WillPow, Disable, Psi Defense +50%, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2,
The Maritime Control Center, 40, 0, DocInit, Disable, Naval Movement +2; Naval Bases, 1, 2, 0, 0, 2,
The Planetary Datalinks, 30, 0, OptComp, Disable, Any Tech Known To 3 Others, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1,
The Supercollider, 30, 0, E=Mc2, Disable, Labs +100% At This Base, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0,
The Ascetic Virtues, 30, 0, Magnets, Disable, Pop. Limit Relaxed; +1 POLICE, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2,
The Longevity Vaccine, 40, 0, BioEng, Disable, Fewer Drones or More Profits, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2,
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, 50, 0, Algor, Disable, Immunity to Probe Teams, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0,
The Pholus Mutagen, 80, 0, AlphCen, Disable, Ecology Bonus; Lifecycle Bonus, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2,
The Cyborg Factory, 80, 0, MindMac, Disable, Bioenh. Center Every Base, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0,
The Theory of Everything, 40, 0, Unified, Disable, Labs +100% At This Base, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0,
The Dream Twister, 100, 0, SentRes, Disable, Psi Attack +50%, 1, 2, 0, 0, 2,
The Universal Translator, 30, 0, Integ, Disable, Two Free Techs, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0,
The Network Backbone, 60, 0, DigSent, Disable, +1 Lab Per Commerce/Net Node, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1,
The Nano Factory, 40, 0, IndAuto, Disable, Repair Units; Low Upgrade Costs, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0,
The Living Refinery, 60, 0, Metal, Disable, +2 SUPPORT (social), 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
The Cloning Vats, 100, 0, BioMac, Disable, Population Boom At All Bases, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2,
The Self-Aware Colony, 60, 0, SentEco, Disable, Maintenance Halved; Extra Police,0, 0, 0, 2, 2,
Clinical Immortality, 100, 0, NanEdit, Disable, 2x Votes; Extra Talent Every Base, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2,
The Space Elevator, 100, 0, IndRob, Disable, Energy +100%/Orbital Cost Halved,1, 2, 0, 2, 2,
The Singularity Inductor, 150, 0, ConSing, Disable, Quantum Converter Every Base, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
The Bulk Matter Transmitter, 100, 0, Matter, Disable, +2 Minerals Every Base, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
The Telepathic Matrix, 150, 0, Thresh, Disable, No More Drone Riots; +2 PROBE, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2,
The Voice of Planet, 100, 0, Thresh, Disable, Begins Ascent To Transcendence, 0,-2, 2, 2, 2,
The Ascent to Transcendence, 300, 0, Thresh, Disable, End of Singular Sentience Era, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2,
The Manifold Harmonics, 100, 0, SecMani, Disable, Bonus Resources In Fungus, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2,
The Nethack Terminus, 60, 0, HAL9000, Disable, Stronger Probe Teams, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0,
The Cloudbase Academy, 80, 0, Gravity, Disable, Faster/Stronger Air Units, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2,
The Planetary Energy Grid, 50, 0, PlaEcon, Disable, Energy Bank At Every Base, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0,
Bear in mind that you don't get any supply crawlers or thermal boreholes until Tier 6 in my mod, which might be considered the beginning of the late game. I generally buy my SPs with cash and Artifacts. It would be nice if the stock AI knew how to do that, but it doesn't.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:29:41 am
Didn't understand you race example, though. I think race is there because it is more valuable than just a bunch of individual facilities, isn't it?
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 04:45:17 am
My only weighting that seems to cause controversy, is putting the Planetary Transit System on the lowest tier of SP cost. I just don't see the value in starting bases at size 3. Half the time they die to size 2 anyways. If there is some strategy to superpower the game with this SP, I don't know what it is. After awhile I think making more bases is a darned nuisance. And based on all the things I've conquered and pacified, I don't think they pay very well. Past a certain radius I either Punishment Sphere or genocide, I don't want / need to develop more bases.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:56:55 am
* Command Center cost/maint is 6/2.
* The Command Nexus cost is 40.
* The Citizens' Defense Force cost is 40.
* The Maritime Control Center cost is 60.
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 06:15:14 am
I think there's a bit of a tendency to overrate SPs too. Yes they help all game but so do formers, crawlers, facilities. I had them actually decosted for awhile, though I put them mostly back to default prices with a bit of tweaking here and there. The point is that SPs are sort of the engine, the driver to focus on tech rather than expansion.
That's not to say free facilities aren't strong, they very much are. I designed my factions so that most get a free facility, because University's free network nodes were that good. Sparta gets free command centers as an example. It makes them fearsome but it's not so powerful they can't be beat. Because the other factions get an economic advantage.
One thing I wasn't sure about was why Empath, Clean, Hypnotic, and Non-Lethal had such high costs. They might as well be disabled in that case?
Post by: Induktio on May 17, 2020, 01:24:05 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:25:05 pm
One thing I wasn't sure about was why Empath, Clean, Hypnotic, and Non-Lethal had such high costs. They might as well be disabled in that case?
Hmm. You seem to be confused by my ability flat cost in mineral rows feature.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#unit-pricing-principles
Abilities now have both proportional (as in vanilla) and flat cost components. Since there is only one value for them in alphax.txt they are binary packed into it. To get flat cost you need to whole divide their alphax.txt value by 16.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 04:41:20 pm
If you're releasing a fork, you should update the MOD_VERSION #define accordingly. It's supposed to uniquely identify the version you are using while in game.
This one?
#define MOD_VERSION "Thinker Mod v1.0"
What should I put there?
The tech cost formula in this mod is broken. It ignores the actual faction SE Research rating completely, m->rule_techcost does not refer to the same variable in social engineering. Actual variable Faction->SE_research is not included.
Let me clarify this from your formula.
m->rule_techcost - faction specific tech cost modifier in percents?
f->SE_research - faction RESEARCH rating - initial or current?
f->tech_ranking - ?
*tx_game_rules & RULES_TECH_STAGNATION - technology stagnation option from alphax.txt?
tx_basic->rules_tech_discovery_rate - global tech cost modifier in percents?
(owned > 0 ? (owned > 1 ? 0.75 : 0.85) : 1.0) - what is the meaning of this?
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 04:57:20 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 05:13:22 pm
Did you do anything about the combat odds? I think they are fine as they are. Maybe they give a slightly too large advantage to the side with higher strength.
Well, of course! This is a cornerstone of this mod. Check readme.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#combat-mechanics
I did this because I don't think they are fine as they are and there is quite a piece of reasoning on that in readme with charts and stuff. This advantage is not slight. It's immense.
But for instance two Missile interceptors should be able to trade with one Chaos Interceptor.
Don't follow you. How is this "trade" happens in the game?
Another potential problem is Fusion reactor. It both makes units cheaper and gives them huge power boost.
Yes. It is. I encourage you to check my readme and enormous amount of posts at this forum related to this problem and potential solutions. I can also answer any specific questions you may have.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 05:24:09 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 06:19:39 pm
It doesn't appear to say what your combat formula really is. The example you give is a bit odd. A unit with 2-1 combat strength advantage should of course win with very high probability. However it should take damage in the process.
You mean multi-round combat calculations or just round odds? Round odds are just proportion of strengths as displayed in combat statistics window. The multi-round combat calculations with adjusted loss divisor is very complex. I don't put it in readme to not scare people. 🤣
There are sample charts visualizing different value of this parameter effect.
Vanilla: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21371.msg122835#msg122835
This mod: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg122935#msg122935
Post by: lolada on May 17, 2020, 06:40:19 pm
I'll start with native units, PSI combat and Planet rating - as i already commented earlier as i played a lot more with worms due to my AAR. Its mostly positive if not completely.. lets see where i get.
- Native lifeform is dangerous - thats great - but not too dangerous. Its really beneficial to have Trance units, and they rarely die. Think you got good balance there. It looks its hard to mod native units to be dangerous.
- Planet rating is valuable - it is in good spot. Its not too strong nor too weak - its also hard to stack. For example picking up Green is no joke with that -2 Industry penalty. I picked it up later in game just for that bonus attack and ended up picking Fundamentalism for 1 Industry to counter Green penalty.
- Its tough to attack into worms with negative Planet rating - thats cool. Positive in that sense helps a lot to reduce casualties. Someone like Miriam can have real trouble getting rid of worms as you can just attack them and hope for 3 vs 2. Artillery appears to be strong counter.. and empath units are valuable.
- Planet rating is also great for fungus resources. For example Miriam really suffers with -1 planet - in my game i was lucky to be near Manifold Nexus that moved Planet to 0 - so i could use fungus - its awesome for new bases once you have +2 food on it
- on combat worms seem to be well balanced - they were my best attackers in any tougher situation vs strong defenders or perim. defense. As they should be for planet based faction. I complained earlier, they are really not good for attacking non-combat units, but honestly, it looks like thats their main weakness. It keeps them in check - and its very wise to have conventional attack units to save worms from dying on formers or on low tech units. So they are not self-sufficient as they are quite expensive at 80 minerals. I suppose thats ok, i don't know how would i improve them without making them broken.
- i've seen ai building both empath and trance units - so they do counter worms. AI also spams probes and they can often kill worms in defense
- i also really like what you did with Biology Labs - great change
- i used ton of Spore Launchers - their cost is 4 minerals row.. so relatively cheap - they are great police unit for Cha Dawn. They are also quite good defenders.. in attack worm artillery is kinda meh, but they do a bit of damage sometimes. I much prefer conventional artillery for bombardment. Probably good move to leave them cheap - otherwise they wouldn't be really used. One might abuse them to ruin AI economy - but there's ton of ways to exploit AI i am not into that.
- Mindworms and Sealurks are 80 minerals, Isle of the Deep, Locusts are more expensive a bit - i'd say thats good - one can get them cheaper with industry rating; it restrict these units from being op. They are quite unique and with great abilities and for example they counter probe teams well
- That said - Brood Pit is awesome, but feels like it comes way too late - i think its E10 tech. Kind of sad that I can't use one of The Cult factions features until the end of the game. Its goal of the mod to make all features usable reasonably. Its very strong facility, especially for The Cult - but other factions would have to build those Brood Pits. With 25% Brood Pit discount i could really swarm enemies with worms this late in the game - they became unstoppable.
One suggestion could be to have Brood Pit earlier - maybe like tech 8, but nerf the facility with removing +lifecycle. I'd keep discount, that even could go to 10-15% or 20% instead of 25%. Or leave +lifecycle, but reduce discount a lot.. just bland +lifecycle without discount removes uniqueness from it. I could at this point produce Demon Boils (Elite) worms straight from some bases - thats kind of op - i had some special projects with +lifecycle.
I guess thats plenty for this post. The Manifold Nexus and fungus resource yields - i'll comment on that in separate post i think these could be changed somewhat, i am not sure how exactly yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 07:07:24 pm
🤣
SMACX is a very feature reach game. A singe introduction of psi combat is huge addition. Unfortunately, when you have so many alternative ways to wage a war it is almost impossible to balance them nicely that no one is OP. I didn't do much about psi except 1:1 land odds and somewhat elevated native units cost. The rest is updated combat odds resolution that seemed to do the trick. Now no combat alternative seems to be a universal weapon. Which is good enough. However, it is still open field for experiments.
I like you liked Biology Labs. That's my pride. 😛
Previously it was completely neglected facility.
Brood Pit is a very powerful facility as you correctly pointed out. We can move it a little earlier with caution. One way to offset its earlier usage is to set exorbitant maintenance on it. Thus player would suffer economically to offset advanced benefits.
I wouldn't do other modification to its features like native unit cost discount, life-cycle, police rating. My rule of thumb is to stick to original game features as much as possible. I am not introducing new experience. Merely fixing existing one.
So if you are fine with offsetting it with high maintenance we can try it out.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 07:15:26 pm
Btw, I really do think vanilla combat has its upsides. It is very unique favoring sting operations and hit-and-run over normal combat since you essentially can't reasonably build a stack of more than 3-4 units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 07:40:52 pm
You still could have told me. From what I got from the other thread you do only two combat rounds and then randomly assign the damage of the victor within the window given by round wins. Is that correct? It seems extremely random.
Vanilla combat works like that. There is a round odds that determine who wins the round randomly. Loser then incurs some damage. The battle then is the series of rounds with same odds repeated over and over again until one unit dies.
My modification is that after first round the round odds are changed so that last round winner has its losing probability decreased in fixed proportion. That proportion is a loss_divider and is exposed in thinker.ini. Obviously loss_divider = 1 does not change anything and, thus, works exactly as in vanilla.
Here is an example. Let's say two Scout Patrols fight. Their base round odds are 1:1. Meaning each unit has 50% winning chance and losing chance. Randomly first unit wins first round. If we set loss_divider = 2. Then victor losing chance in next round will be 50% / 2 = 25%. That makes its winning chance = 75%. This stays like that for as long as first unit keeps winning rounds. If at some round second unit wins the round it flips to second unit benefit and its winning chance becomes 75% and so on.
Don't try to find a logic in this. This is just formula we have come up with that keeps the same average damage proportion in large scales as in vanilla (that is important). At the same time it randomizes individual battle outcome a little bit more avoiding horrendous vanilla skews.
In other words, massive armies battle outcomes and average unit economical combat effectiveness stay the same as in vanilla with more randomized individual battle outcome.
Btw, I really do think vanilla combat has its upsides. It is very unique favoring sting operations and hit-and-run over normal combat since you essentially can't reasonably build a stack of more than 3-4 units.
Have you listened to Sid Meier's presentation on how they tune battle outcomes to satisfy players? Well, yea. This is kind of upside vanilla combat has. It has nothing to do with unique flavoring. The fact that you can use sting operations is just unplanned consequence of a massive cheating on all levels to give player sure advantage over AI and guaranteed win. Think about it. 100% first place out of 7 factions who have like triple economical advantage over you on toughest difficulty - what is it if not cheating on large scale?
Induktio and I worked on AI improvement. That also included removing all this "sting operations" stuff that AI is not taught to understand. Now game is much more fairer. You can easily lose on highest difficulty. And that is awesome for challenge oriented people like me. This increases game replay-ability 100-fold.
By the way, I removed collateral damage completely. Now you can stack infinite number of units without consequences and wage large scale war any way you like.
😎
Again. I am not discarding any opinions. Any suggestion is welcome. If you really think these sting operations are valuable addition to the game let's open a discussion and think how can we add them to the game without breaking human-AI balance. I'm up to it.
😉
Post by: lolada on May 17, 2020, 07:47:32 pm
On changing PSI i guess its ok - its hard to tell whats right balance. Nexii i think for example said he left psi at 3:2 and gave worms Rover chasis ^^ quite interesting solution - native worms now attack first hehe. That might be too strong in player hands.. but everything has its ups and downs.
Just checked this Brood Pit thing: so i got Centauri Genetics E10 Brood Pits technology - in 2393, so that is 293 turns in the game :D. Its on tech stagnation, blind research so it plays a significant part. Zakharov was wiped relatively early so that slowed things a bit. Most AIs were also using Fundamentalism, including me, so research was slowed. On that topic - apparently AI really like industry and it really likes morale - from what i can see from forums discussions. You Fundamentalism has +1 Probe, +1 Morale, +1 Industry, -2 Research - it might be favorite AI pick. Both Aliens and Drones used it a lot.. Deirdre also likes to pick simply Frontier. Roze preferred Democratic. But thats another topic.
Anyway by this point i solved most issues i had in the game - so it was mostly nice finisher tech to make the faction op. Worm spam + Locusts to finish the job. I got other E10 tech (Secrets of Alpha Centauri) with Temple of Planet much earlier - at M.Y. 2358 - just took a look there. 30+ turns is huge difference this late in the game. Centauri Genetics is kinda hidden behind lots of discovery, build and conquer prerequisite techs so that delays it. Swap these two ^^. I don't know i might be completely off here - its just one game, maybe too early for any changes.
More data, in 2393 my research (Explore/Conquer focus whole game):
Explore 77%, Discover 70%, Build 66%, Conquer 93%. It might be my crap RNG luck as i almost completed every conquer tech - some were likely very expensive. I have the feeling game has more conquer technologies than any others.
Lastly on topic of costs and maintenance. This late Brood Pit is very cheap with only 80 minerals and 2 maintenance.. its the cost of one mindworm. It could easily be 150 minerals, 4 maintenance - but it doesn't really matter too much. Temple of Planet is for example 220 minerals, 3 maintenance. At this point i had +560 energy credits per turn on 50% economy.
- I forgot to comment on Dream Twister and Neural Amplifier - there are obviously great and strong, but not too op. I got one, missed other and worms still die. They are ofcourse better but its no cakewalk - one must spam a lot of units to overrun AI.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 07:57:25 pm
It seems Centauri Ecology removes restrictions? I like that. You may have nerfed forests a bit too much. I'm not sure they are worth it at all anymore.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 07:59:35 pm
Here is another thing to think about for you. Look at this "sting operation" in this angle. What if we teach AI to recognize and use these "sting operation" properly. Now it will destroy your units left and right at any opportunity run back for healing and then return to the front line reinforced only to damage you even more without retaliation and losses at all? How would you like that? Would it be fun to play if AI would beat you into pulp even on lowest difficulty?
😜😝
AI is currently exceptionally dumb. We are trying to improve it and raise to some average human level to get ourselves a challenge. No more and no less. Fair conditions for all sides.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 08:04:41 pm
Do you still have stack damage? Did you change self destruct damage? Sorry for asking so many questions but your readme is not as detailed as I would like.
No. Stack damage is removed completely. However, this is configurable in ini file. You can revert it to vanilla if you like.
No problems with questions. I enjoy this game, forum, and talking to players. The more the merrier.
😁
It seems Centauri Ecology removes restrictions? I like that. You may have nerfed forests a bit too much. I'm not sure they are worth it at all anymore.
Correct about restrictions. Actually, skim my readme. There is a lot of reasoning why I did all these changes. You can find a lot of answers there. It is also a fun reading too.
😅
Forest is disputable thing as I said many times. Propose you way to modify it and add some reasoning and we'll go from there.
Even in this nerfed form forest is still usable quite a lot. You convert barren land into 1-2-0 in 12 turn. One factor of production per 4 terraforming turns. That is as good as building a farm. Besides, you have no better options in dunes. So it is far from being unusable.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 08:17:10 pm
Did you change self-destruct damage? Also I didn't say that the hit-and-run style combat in vanilla did not have counterplay. Of course it had. There were overpowered ways to go about it (helicopters) though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 08:20:17 pm
No problem ^^
No problems for Brood Pit maintenance? Please quote or mention what you are referring to. It is a flat forum without sub threads.
Anyway by this point i solved most issues i had in the game - so it was mostly nice finisher tech to make the faction op. Worm spam + Locusts to finish the job.
Are you saying native warfare is too OP at the end game? I would suspect so taking that conventional units become more expensive. However, didn't have a chance to test it much in end game.
From the other side it should be easily counterable by Hypnotic/Empath units along with AC. I believe AC does protect from Locust!
I got other E10 tech (Secrets of Alpha Centauri) with Temple of Planet much earlier - at M.Y. 2358 - just took a look there. 30+ turns is huge difference this late in the game. Centauri Genetics is kinda hidden behind lots of discovery, build and conquer prerequisite techs so that delays it. Swap these two ^^.
Secrets of Alpha Centauri and Centauri Genetics?
Centauri Genetics allows Locust - the most powerful native unit. I think level 10 is even too early for it. If anything it should be slightly delayed.
Explore 77%, Discover 70%, Build 66%, Conquer 93%. It might be my crap RNG luck as i almost completed every conquer tech - some were likely very expensive. I have the feeling game has more conquer technologies than any others.
That is completely normal. Conquer stays aside from others and many factions target it. Mostly your research focus is defined by Conquer or not Conquer. Therefore, if you focus on it 50% of the time it gets researched faster than other three.
Lastly on topic of costs and maintenance. This late Brood Pit is very cheap with only 80 minerals and 2 maintenance.. its the cost of one mindworm. It could easily be 150 minerals, 4 maintenance - but it doesn't really matter too much. Temple of Planet is for example 220 minerals, 3 maintenance. At this point i had +560 energy credits per turn on 50% economy.
Agree. Do you want to try it with 150/4?
- I forgot to comment on Dream Twister and Neural Amplifier - there are obviously great and strong, but not too op. I got one, missed other and worms still die. They are ofcourse better but its no cakewalk - one must spam a lot of units to overrun AI.
Agree on that too. They are not a golden pill. That is why they are moderately priced. Just 800 each.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 08:36:32 pm
I did read parts of your readme. Chatting with you is more fun though. :) The problem with your logic is that you compare desert tiles with normal terrain. (In vanilla bad land doesn't matter that much. In your mod it does.) If you have a rolling rainy tile a farm (4 turns) makes it a 3-1 tile with the option of adding energy yield. A forest instead is 12 turns for a inferior tile. My point is that you would not forest desert tiles. You would avoid the area in the first place.
Don't quite get why vanilla and my mod are different in term of terrain yield? I din't change anything on that.
You still get good and bad spots in vanilla, right? And you still can place base on bad spot when all good ones are taken, right? And these poor bases still don't grow beyond size 2? You still would prefer to plant forest there regardless of the cost?
If you want to avoid placing base there it is your strategical choice. Forest is not that good on nutrients so its cost wouldn't change you mind about base in barren land anyway.
Forest primary purpose is mineral yield. It is a main competitor of the mine, not solar collector. As an alternative terraforming method it should be inferior to mine in general. You can build 0-4-0 rocky mine in 12 turns. Why 1-2-1 forest with its OP spreading capability should be any cheaper than that??? And its energy yield is clearly an additional bonus not related to its primary purpose that makes it even better.
Did you change self-destruct damage? Also I didn't say that the hit-and-run style combat in vanilla did not have counterplay. Of course it had. There were overpowered ways to go about it (helicopters) though.
What is self-destruct damage? Don't remember doing anything on that.
Let me reiterate it. The hit-and-run combat style does not have a counter play. Human can counter it. However, only human opponent is AI who is not aware of this exploit. It does not use it does not counter it on purpose.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 08:39:03 pm
🤔
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 09:10:32 pm
Here you go with more expensive Brood pit. Didn't move it earlier yet. It is still L10 (78% in tech tree). Where do you want it? 50%, 60%?
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 09:22:37 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 09:25:23 pm
This one?
#define MOD_VERSION "Thinker Mod v1.0"
What should I put there?
Obviously, "The Will To Power mod v45" or whatever release number you're on. Unless you're trying to simulate / fool / exercise GPL freedom and have it appear to be Thinker Mod. ;lol
I don't have such difficulties, doing *.txt only modding of the stock binary. A player did ask me about displaying a version number the other day. I had to explain why I couldn't. It's to your advantage if you can.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 09:44:01 pm
Self-destruct damage is one of the reasons you can't build a stack. Any unit can be self-destructed in the field (even worms I think :)) ). They damage any unit on that tile and adjacent tiles for weapon strength * reactor level/2 rounded down. Units in bases are not effected. So self-destructing two fusion needlejets or a conventional missile and a laser needlejet will wipe out anything on adjacent tiles provided same reactor level is used. This is from memory from years ago so I can't guarantee it is perfectly accurate but should be about right.
I never saw AI used this. Should we ban this self-destruction? It doesn't matter whether you stack them or just placed close to each other. Self-destruction should still splash them.
I never thought missile could be self-destructed. Would it be a much more powerful usage of it than just direct attack?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 09:44:53 pm
This one?
#define MOD_VERSION "Thinker Mod v1.0"
What should I put there?
Obviously, "The Will To Power mod v45" or whatever release number you're on. Unless you're trying to simulate / fool / exercise GPL freedom and have it appear to be Thinker Mod. ;lol
I don't have such difficulties, doing *.txt only modding of the stock binary. A player did ask me about displaying a version number the other day. I had to explain why I couldn't. It's to your advantage if you can.
Where it is displayed? Some credits or something?
Post by: lolada on May 17, 2020, 09:50:55 pm
Version 46.
Here you go with more expensive Brood pit. Didn't move it earlier yet. It is still L10 (78% in tech tree). Where do you want it? 50%, 60%?
More expensive Brood Pit is logical and it pays for itself quite quickly anyway. I am fine with that. Now the main reason why would i want it earlier is due to The Cult of Planet faction. Its like one of their strength that get used very late. Thats the reasoning - now i am not sure on balancing side. For example if it comes earlier and its on 150/4 costs that balances it. Still Cultist get it for free!! So that cost change practically balances Gaians (or anyone using Mindworms) and changes nothing for The Cult of Planet.
Maybe you can try moving it one level earlier - to level 9 techs - i don't know how you get those % tech values -78% in tech tree. It E10 tech.. there is no E9 tech, E8 is Adv. Ecological Eng - Superformers. E7 are Isle of The Deep. Its definitely strong facility don't move it much if you decide to make the change.
Quote
Are you saying native warfare is too OP at the end game?No its fine i wouldn't touch it. Its strong if +Planet is stacked and its hard to stack. One must eat -2 industry AND -3 growth from Green and for example pick Cybernetic and eat -3 Police rating. Now police rating can be overcome, but its not easy pick - Cha Dawn for example has good police bonus and its a shame to ruin it with Cybernetic. He does have +2 base Planet so he can actually skip Cybernetic and have strong worms. It also means not picking Knowledge for example. Its fine i think.
Brood Pit on its own is not game-breaking, but in every base is strong - once i got it i could spam experienced worms quite faster - thats op. Good reason not to move it too early.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 17, 2020, 09:52:57 pm
It is useful to be able to disband units, but they should not deal any damage in the process. If you have access to the executable you could just change the behavior.
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 10:06:18 pm
Where it is displayed? Some credits or something?
From within a game, Menu.. Help.. Show Version Number. Might help someone verify that they've installed their mods properly. Not terribly important to me as I'm doing *.txt mods only. Players do have questions anyways, and tend to overthink / not recognize or understand the difference between binary and *.txt mods. I mean my installation procedure is "copy my files on top of your existing installation", that's it, not rocket science. But it all feels fuddly and fidgety to some people and causes a little concern.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 10:19:34 pm
More expensive Brood Pit is logical and it pays for itself quite quickly anyway. I am fine with that. Now the main reason why would i want it earlier is due to The Cult of Planet faction. Its like one of their strength that get used very late. Thats the reasoning - now i am not sure on balancing side. For example if it comes earlier and its on 150/4 costs that balances it. Still Cultist get it for free!! So that cost change practically balances Gaians (or anyone using Mindworms) and changes nothing for The Cult of Planet.
Maybe you can try moving it one level earlier - to level 9 techs - i don't know how you get those % tech values -78% in tech tree. It E10 tech.. there is no E9 tech, E8 is Adv. Ecological Eng - Superformers. E7 are Isle of The Deep. Its definitely strong facility don't move it much if you decide to make the change.
Brood Pit on its own is not game-breaking, but in every base is strong - once i got it i could spam experienced worms quite faster - thats op. Good reason not to move it too early.
Sooooo, do you want it earlier or not? I don't think Cult is OP by itself. Some strong boost in the mid game won't necessarily let them win outright. Moreover, we can increase maintenance even more so that even if they got it free they still have to pay for it.
I would generally agree to move it earlier.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 10:58:05 pm
It depends on the circumstances a bit. If you just have the missile self-destructing it will narrowly not kill anything adjacent. Also if you want to eliminate defenders of a base the self-destruct won't do anything. However, if you have two missiles you can eliminate any number of stacked units (or merely close) units. That was my point. Due to this, the way air power works and stack damage conventional warfare like in other civ versions is impossible in vanilla Smac. If you did not change the mechanic this still holds for your mod once weapon power reaches a certain point (Missile/Chaos weapons).
It is useful to be able to disband units, but they should not deal any damage in the process. If you have access to the executable you could just change the behavior.
Yea. I guess this is OP feature. Strangely, I never used it.
Let's remove it? Everybody agrees?
I don't think it worth balancing as anything that is relates to weapon strength only and ignores opponents armor completely is just a can of worms about to break the game.
Post by: lolada on May 17, 2020, 11:19:28 pm
Btw on that missile or destruction thing - it looks stupid strong to kill stack that way. I wouldn't like being the victim there and i doubt AI knows how to use it. So that can be removed.
I actually played a bit with Conventional missiles in the mod and i was pleasantly surprised. They are useful lategame with ton of bases. I just placed several far-away bases on missile production and used them to bombard targets at will. Singularity missiles move 20 tiles away - its awesome - and they could straight-up kill full HP defenders in bases in some cases. If defender has tracking and base aerocomplex missiles appear ineffective. Base without Aeroxomplex is quite vulnerable if i remember well. I can post some screenshots tomorrow.
Also they were great for sniping any units outside of bases. They are even cost-effective in some cases - since defense is so strong in the mod - attacking unit is in real trouble of dying - it makes sense to smash a missile into defender if it will kill him or at least badly hurt him.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2020, 11:38:39 pm
Yeah The Cult could use the boost - they really don't have much going for them except relying on worm warfare and police. Move it earlier, just not too much - after Isles of the Deep, before Locusts. In that case 2 or 3 maintenance is plenty - 4 is a lot for every base. Somehow i thought Free means no maintenance.. silly me !? The cost can stay at 150 min, it gives +2 police + other goodies after all.
The higher the cost and the lower the maintenance the more Cult benefits from getting if free. 150 seems too much. Nobody else will build it this way. I prefer to crank maintenance for specialized facilities like this one. This way Cult will get it immediately free but incur strong maintenance cost in return.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 12:41:41 am
Let's remove it? Everybody agrees?
I'm not going to miss it. It could now be my candidate for most obscure feature of the game, since it's something I've almost never remembered to do in the real world. I've drilled many Aquifers by comparison, and I almost always forget to do those.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 12:56:59 am
150 seems too much.
I disagree. The Brood Pit is a super giveaway. I've now made it cost as much as a Nanoreplicator and as much to maintain. 360 minerals, 6 energy per turn. And it comes at Tier 10 in my tech tree, same time as the overpowered Manifold Harmonics.
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Nobody else will build it this way.
I don't let the Cult have it for free at all. Aside from it being overpowered, the Cult was never going to get to it that late in the tech tree anyways. It's the same kind of game design mentality as the later Civ series "custom units for nationalities". So the Germans would get a special Panzer unit, and the Americans would get a F-16. Late game bennies. The difference is, that bonus regime is scaled across many nationalities for all time periods, so you can beat up your enemies with Aztec Jaguars, which are warriors that move 2, if you're so inclined. It's just a question of when you're going to "burst" your empire. I also think it's a kind of pointless gewgaw that merely adds flavor. SMAC is not so regular as to what you can do, or when. Like I said, the Cult never gets there, so this is only of benefit to a human player. And they don't need that kind of power for cheap.
The Brood Pit is dumb stuff that was introduced in Alien Crossfire. It's bad game design. They basically took a Police Station from Civ II and dialed it up to Eleven.
My Cult AI is currently underperforming, but it never had a Brood Pit in the real world, so that's not the issue. It tends to take up quite a bit of map space, and it's not easy to kill, but it never succeeds in the late game and it builds very few Secret Projects. Maybe because I made it Aggressive?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 01:15:07 am
Of course it increases POLICE but again you need to build police units to utilize that and it also cost maintenance. So 6 energy + 2 minerals (= 10 energy) just to quell 2 drones. For 10 energy you can quell 5+ drones easily. Of course, this is just rough estimate and there is "double police power" POLICE RATING, etc. However, this still seems like an overpricing.
Somehow I don't remember it becomes a game breaker in vanilla where it cost just 80/2.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 01:29:17 am
360/6 seems to be expensive.
I don't want this thing in the game. When I don't want something in the game, I "soft" retire it by pushing it very late in the game, and making it very expensive. So that if someone wants to sandbox the game, it's still there to be used, but that players won't be making rational decisions about winning the game, with this facility as a factor. Even when I had it not quite that expensive, it was "standard drill" for me to obsess in late game about putting the +2 POLICE facility in every single city. It's pointless busywork. It disrupts the careful requirements of making the player work for their Happiness. Players can still do it, but it costs more than other stuff, so players are curbed of the tendency to build every single Happiness facility they can get their hands on.
As I said before, it was a stupid lazy game design on Firaxis' part, whoever did this part of the expansion. It's not like the game needed mind-numbing numbers of mindworms to be produced, or they were terribly expensive units. It's not like there aren't enough other kinds of factories to build, or minerals to crawl. It shows a complete lack of interest in game balance, and is mainly just a gewgaw to try to tell a story about the Cult.
Clean Reactor Police units do not cost SUPPORT. It is a false argument. Also by the time the Brood Pit appeared in the game, SUPPORT is a non-issue. As you know, I put Clean Reactor at the beginning of the game, available to everyone from Turn 1, because the beginning is the only time it can actually have a meaningful impact.
The Covert Ops Center is also stupid, just not as stupid as the Brood Pit. The main reason I've left the COC alone is because it doesn't actually do much good and players can't remember to build it anyways. I did get rid of every single "base probe team boost" flag for the techs, as I believe you did too.
This game has 3X more junk in it than any game would actually need to be a commercially viable game. The ongoing act of shipping "expansion packs" results in pointless drivel like this. At least it gives us modders something to do, 20 years later. 2 years worth of low hanging fruit due to crap like this.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 18, 2020, 01:37:21 am
As for the Broodpit 360/6 does sound wildly excessive.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 01:47:12 am
Bunkers are another instance where obviously the AI has no brains at all. That's why they're not allowed in my mod.
Post by: Nexii on May 18, 2020, 01:47:20 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 01:48:48 am
In this regard it is not politically correct to just drop something from the game without it being clearly unusable. Other than that it is all very subjective. Similar way we can drop probes or psi. Will it make it less strategical? Not likely. However, it'll make it less feature reach and maybe less fun for some.
There are a lot of stupid features for sure. We cannot waste our time on each and every one of them without strong reason. I never thought that either BP or COC are of some threat to anyone. They never changed game much. At the point they are available the row economical power decides the win.
However, if we are moving it much earlier that may make a difference. Therefore this discussion.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 01:53:05 am
Overnerfing things with inane costing is worse than letting them be overpowered. It takes choice/strategy away in a much less enjoyable way.
I'm the game designer. I'm not personally interested in your "enjoyment" when it means a Happiness progression cannot be enforced. This is a game, with rules, and victory conditions. Not a sandbox. People use it as a sandbox, but I don't design it for sandbox. Nobody needs design for sandboxing, they just need a construction set of gewgaws to put in their virtual world. This is why Minecraft Alpha was a lousy game, yet plenty of people loved it anyways.
As the game designer, I do know better than you do. I wouldn't make a career out of it if I believed otherwise. Just as I can have better judgment than you do, about painting, or writing. Wouldn't do those things if I believed otherwise, if I thought the job should be outsourced to you the player. I'm very much opposed to "player driven" game experience. The designer is supposed to design, anticipate, and enforce these things. Failing to do so is abdication of game designer responsibility.
Notice my icon to the left. The choices are not an accident. I'm the designer.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 02:23:31 am
Overnerfing things with inane costing is worse than letting them be overpowered. It takes choice/strategy away in a much less enjoyable way.
Agreed. That is my rule of thumb. When I like to fix some irregularity I try to fix it with minimal changes so it doesn't not flip this problem to opposite side.
I tend to compare ROI and break even point for different facilities. Break even point in 20-40 turns is an acceptable range. Anything outside of this range is imbalanced to either direction. This is not an exact science but just a way of analysis.
Example for Brood pit original cost of 80/2. It has two benefits: native units building and POLICE. Let's say we have 20 mineral production and producing mind worm in 4 turns.
Native units bonus: +1/4 for cost +1/8 for lifecycle = 3/8 of production cost = 20 * 3/8 = 7.5 minerals per turn. But only while building natives.
Police bonus: -2 drones (which saves about 4 energy = 2 minerals).
Total profit while building natives = 7.5 + 2 - 1 (2 energy maintenance) = 8.5 minerals / turn.
Break even point = 80 / 8.5 = 9.5 turns. Insane return. However this is only when we are building natives.
At the same time when we do not build them we get: 80 / 1 = 80 turns. Pretty dull.
So if we are building it for just in case and do not build natives all the time but say 25% of the time then we get it on average: (10 * 1 + 80 * 3) / 4 = 60. Which does not seem very excessive.
Of course, this if very-very rough attempt on estimate. However, in lack of other reasoning this seem to be an acceptable ballpark estimate.
Conclusion: it is not OP unless you keep building natives here to the end of the game which is unlikely.
Actually same type of consideration is applicable to other morale boosting facilities as you don't crank units all the time.
Disclaimer. This is just a description of my train of thoughts. I don't pretend it is in any way an ultimate truth nor I want to persuade anyone.
Post by: Nexii on May 18, 2020, 02:35:54 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 03:02:03 am
As Nexii pointed out BP is exceptionally good to produce natives. However, natives are just subset of military which is a subset of production in general. So it has very limited applicability. It's +2 POLICE is also a nice addition that allows you to somehow easier maneuver on SE table. Yet, it should be built in each base for that benefit. So I doubt it is that overpowered even for original 80/2. I agree it is pretty useless to increase maintenance as you would need to dismantle it if you stop building worms. I propose something like 120/2.
As for moving it earlier I have following available options.
Centauri Genetics (L10) - current assignment
Secrets of Alpha Centauri (L9) - a little bit overloaded already but still possible
Bio-Engineering (L9)
Advanced Subatomic Theory (L8) - doesn't align with native techs but is pretty empty now
Eudaimonia (L7) - also almost empty
Gene Splicing (L6)
Centauri Meditation (L6) - nice match but overloaded already
Retroviral Engineering (L6) - could be thought as a more or less match
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 03:59:55 am
It has two benefits: native units building and POLICE.
3. Lifecycle bonus, cheaper native units, and POLICE. It is also a late game facility coming after all sorts of other facilities for the same purposes have already been granted. There's no point offering late game facilities that are cheap, it would just be "here's your new stuff" for having merely learned the tech. The economy of the game is already overheated by the time it comes into play. You don't tell rich people they only have to pay $5 for something.
There's no point having 4 levels of factory in this game either. Yet it does. In this respect, the game is poorly designed.
Post by: dino on May 18, 2020, 08:50:43 am
So, below some alternative solutions, some may be too difficult to ever implement, but who knows... I'm just an idea man you know ( everybody hates those ).
Satellites:
Max bonus without Aero Complex 1/4 base size and 1/2 with Aero, rounded down, balances both satellites and Cludbase Academy.
Advanced terraforming:
1) Condensers only increase raininess, no 50% food bonus, already implemented in Ytzii's patch and 4,4 Boreholes,
2) 1,1,2 forests - wood is not a useful material in s-f setting, but can be burned for energy ( or you could nerf it even further to 1,1,1 but it'd be too much imo ).
3) Remove a mining platform bonus from EcoEng and give it as aquatic faction bonus from the start instead of the current OP one, it'd balance both sea minerals in general and aquatic factions.
Crawlers:
1) Gather resourcess with 1 point penalty, already in Ytzii's patch.
2) No disbanding for 100% minerals to rush SP, but make one crawler transport 4 resource points between bases ( or 6 ).
With these nerfs beelining toward BUILD techs from the beginning would not be absolutely essential anymore and a factions that beelined military techs instead would remain a significant threat for a long period of time. Would make for a much more interesting and varied games. It would also significantly slow down late game.
Probe teams:
1) Add energy cost to tech stealing ( like half the cost to research +/- probe modifiers ), hijack base mind control function and dialogue window for that.
2) Give tech stealing/mindcontrol bases cost adjustable multipliers.
3) Do not grant a free prototype from stealing a unit, unless stealing faction has the required tech.
Natives:
Make each additional lifecycle granted by facilities ( biology lab and brood pit ) cost one additional mineral row for worms, spore launchers and sealurks and 2 additional rows for locust and isles.
Add 1 more row for each two "free" lifecycle bonuses granted by SP, SE, or faction bonuses for spore, sealurks and 1 row for every "free" lifecycle for isles and locust.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 09:03:47 am
I think cost should be no more than 3-4 turns in that stage for a good base - otherwise it won't be built. Its ok to build Command center 6-7 turn early on.. but on turn 200 there's no way i am using 6-7 turns in many bases building those facilities and still having to wait to build worms afterward. I can spam ton of worms instead from every base in those 12 turns and just finish the job. Police rating is not that valuable this late in the game - especially when you need to build police units as well.
So, that said, good bases in my last game at a time i got brood pits had around 50 minerals - i think i had one at 68 it was eco-damage cap at time.. many other weaker ones were 20 - 30. If you price BP between 100-150 minerals then it will get between 3-6 turns thats roughly ok - very best bases might get in in 2, weaker don't have to build it. You can probably go with 120 minerals if you find that ok, and no more than 3 maintenance. Its excessive to go over. Bvanevery wanted to move the facility out of use - i kind of don't like that argument, I'd like to see it used.
@tnevolin Maybe try putting it in Secrets of Alpha Centauri (L9) for start. It would be an upgrade and won't risk much being op.
I wouldn't put CoC in same bracket with BP. I built two in that game just to have stronger probes to win combat. Two bases can spam ton of probes and they don't cost support - worms do and you can't have them on fungus all the time. There's also no point to have CoC in many bases. One can have more expensive CoC in both minerals and maintenance.
Overpricing
About overpricing in the mods - there's no much point to it - you are both probably hurting AI. For example i find Aerocomplexes overpriced at 120/3 (for the time they appear) and just don't build them - or build them in 2-3 best bases eventually. AI wastes ton of time building them in most bases. Then i try to snatch Cloudbase or if i don't get it i don't really care. Its not that hard to spam more Food satellites or planes instead. I think its actually benefical for AI to have them cheaper as they are good defensive facility for them. Same goes for Naval Yard as they work as Perimeter Defenses.
For example overpriced special projects. The only really good reason to overprice something is that if you allow it early - but don't want to have it built early - like Command Nexus. If you put The Command Nexus at 1000 minerals and its so good - than the player will get it if he really wants it. I can just spam Crawlers and get any expensive special project - yes you made me invest in Crawlers but i get the op thing. But poor AI will waste tons of time on it and lose progress - Bvanevery said AI uses Crawlers to rush - but in any case they are not nearly as effective as player. For example Cloudbase Academy is expensive - that just means its easier to get for a player :D.
Special projects i can't get are actually cheaper ones - that AI builds before me. Thats important. Or one could teach AI to use multiple supply crawlers to rush very expensive projects. In that sense, 50 min base building special projects shouldn't take more than 15-20 turns. I wouldn't price later special projects more than 1000 minerals unless they are very best. The later project appear the faster it should be built. If its broken - then ok - but move it anyway to tech 10+. Very late best bases top 100 minerals.. and you won't be playing much with such power - its game over.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 09:59:14 am
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I dislike a bit the concept of making everything super expensive to balance, makes early game super slow and things are still OP later. Better to nerf OP stuff a bit instead, imo.I agree with this - but examples below are mostly not relevat to this mod ^^.
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Max bonus without Aero Complex 1/4 base size rounded down and 1/2 rounded up with Aero, balances both satellites and Cludbase Academy.No need for this in will to power mod. Satellites come late and bases are big already - its just more needless drag of spamming satelites. For vanilla it would be logical.
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1) Condensers only increase raininess, no 50% food bonus, already implemented in Ytzii's patch and 4,4 Boreholes,
Condenser are quite unique in its working if used normally - on bonus resources. A base ends up having one good nutrient tile and it can grow more and faster. I've seen people abusing it making rows of condensers. T-Hawk really exploited it well in his games. Now i hate ruining feature because someone exploits it. I'd just leave it as it is or maybe try experimenting with 8 eco damage like borehole - that would stop the spam. It might screw up AI ?!
1 condenser, 1 borehole per base being the goal - more and ecology is in trouble. I find it hard to use or place 2 borehole per base. If people still want to abuse terraforming let them do it.
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2) 1,1,2 forests - wood is not a useful material in s-f setting, but can be burned for energy ( or you could nerf it even further to 1,1,1 but it'd be too much imo ).
Forests as 1-2-0 are fine early mineral source. With Tree farm its 2-2-0 thats something but not great. It really makes you want have that borehole for energy. It also makes mines more interesting; solar collectors are actually much more interesting when forests are not strong - gotta move that research somehow. Then choice between 3-1-2 tile or 2-2-0.. You can use one for growth and then switch to more minerals when you don't want growth or energy. Anyway, making it 1-1-1 tile is kind of crap its good for nothing.
Fungus is also alternative to forests - keeping some for energy (fungus become 2-1-2 midgame and then 2-1-3). It leads to some tradeoffs - do you want minerals or energy, its hard to get both. Forests in vanilla give both and are basically the ultimate improvement. I'd like to play more with these forests - i kind of randomed twice in psi/fungus factions.
What could be maybe done is make Tree Farms and Hybrid forests somewhat cheaper. Hybrid forests come a bit late so its not smart idea to forest everything in the mod.
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3) Remove a mining platform bonus from EcoEng and give it as aquatic faction bonus from the start instead of the current OP one, it'd balance both sea minerals in general and aquatic factions.
- AI uses lots of sea bases it would be a shame to nerf minerals there.
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Crawlers:
1) Gather resourcess with 1 point penalty, already in Ytzii's patch.
2) No disbanding for 100% minerals to rush SP, but make one crawler transport 4 resource points between bases ( or 6 ).
No need for 1. Making Crawlers expensive solves this (they are 120 min). Noone will really build crawlers on anything except mines/condensers. Boreholes i consider best for base otherwise you lose 6 resources.
2) Yeah i would like this changed if possible - or if AI could learn to rush projects. That could be maybe obnoxious ^^. Anyway making projects too expensive is not good solution. I usually play with self-made rules.. like no crawler rushing. But when projects are that expensive there's no other way. If AI don't rush then its free taking for the player. Btw if projects are made cheaper - then one could place 6-8 energy credits for rush on them to stop abusing that. AI can't rush buy secret projects apparently.
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Probe teams:
1) Add energy cost to tech stealing ( like half the cost to research +/- probe modifiers ), hijack mind control function and dialogue window for that.
2) Give tech stealing/mindcontrol bases adjustable multipliers.
3) Do not grant a free prototype from stealing a unit, unless stealing faction has the required tech.
It would be interesting to nerf tech stealing - its op. At least AI is doing good work with probes, they defend and attack well. I would really nerf mind-probing bases its so obnoxious when you lose entire base + units in and around it. AI could actually spam less attacking probes - they seem crazy with it.
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Natives:I don't like this one. Isle of the Deep are very expensive - i think they are 120 min, Locusts as well. Sealurks are offensive unit at 80 minerals - and thats expensive as well. Sea/coastal bases are not exactly mineral rich. They die to stupid thing like formers and foils and probes, especially in enemy territory. And they often die vs combat units as well - if they get hurt AI counterattacks and wipes them with sometimes much cheaper ships (due to reactors). I had Drones spamming tons of cheap 3-3-4 ruining expensive Sealurks - you just can't get numbers to win naval war. Its dumb to tisk Isle of the Deep in combat - they have one purpose here and thats transport in dangerous waters.
Make each additional lifecycle granted by facilities ( biology lab and brood pit ) cost one additional mineral row for worms, spore launchers and sealurks and 2 additional rows for locust and isles.
Locusts don't really get extra combat advantage and they are expensive. They are good due to their movement/felxibility but thats about it - mindoworms are better and cheaper attacking unit. Locusts also get somewhat countered by AAA and interceptors.. mindworms don't - AI don't really spam trance units that much. By this time you also have magtubes for movement issues. If i spam locusts thats for micro convenience - i am too lazy to transport worms.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 10:26:25 am
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So that changes it:
The Citizens' Defense Force = 500 -> 400
The Maritime Control Center = 800 -> 600
The Cloudbase Academy = 1200 -> 1200
* Command Center cost/maint is 6/2.
* The Command Nexus cost is 40.
* The Citizens' Defense Force cost is 40.
I like these changes. I would consider nerfing Command centers to +1 morale. It makes SE choices stronger and goes with logic of making morale valuable in your mod. As for Naval Yards and Aerospace complexes they act as defensive facilites for AI. Player is not dumb enough to spam them - making them cheaper would help AI i think.
What are your thoughts on expensive projects - doesn't it make it just easier for player to get projects? That logic i mentioned in posts above - it gives more time to player to use supply crawlers.
What do you think about:
a) making projects cheap enough that first who gets it has best chance to build it. that would often mean AI gets it - not the player. projects are all over the place so presumably zakharov would not build every project. he's a wimp anyway. and i think AI can be told not to build more than n projects at a time?
b) disable supply crawlers project rushing completely (and make projects reasonably priced for building
c) is it possible to teach AI to plan/use multiple supply crawlers to rush secret project?
d) is it possible to teach AI to rush secret projects with energy credits?
The goal of all of these would be to level the playing field. The thing is that player can pick up any secret projects at will in late midgame. Making projects more expensive is counter productive - it just makes it certain that player will get it.
Post by: dino on May 18, 2020, 11:03:54 am
It's very relevant since the primary tool it uses to deal with issues is to increase mineral cost. And exe modding is also very within tnevolin's capabilities.
Some of my "revolutionary" ideas became a staple of this mod for me, like no collateral damage for example.
It's also relevant to me, since I use mostly exe tweaks and increased armors from this mod and play something very close to vanilla otherwise.
I suspect that a very low popularity of this mod is caused by wild changes to vanilla tech tree and few other aspects and most fans would rather play more familliar SMAC but with more challenge.
Early game is awful with all these huge costs for everything and make people bounce, less brute force approach and more subtlety would make this excellent mod good imo.
As discussed in a thinker thread, nerfing advanced terraforming and crawlers would help AI compared to the human player who can alway abuse it better.
I want less minerals and other resources at play in late game which would slow down late game without issues in early game, like increased costs generate, or without the need to move interesting toys into a very late game tech tree levels. The ultimate goal is to make AI competent with the same rules as player, without heavy cheats, ideally to the point that it is competent at one level below transcend.
> Forests as 1-2-0 are fine early mineral source.
Mines on rolling are already fine early 1,2,0 mineral resource, but ridiculous 2 mineral forest is so good that it's absolutely pointless to build mines, especially on rolling.
It's a leftover from civ games, that didn't had boreholes and mining platforms, or that many rocky tiles for a good mine, to generate minerals.
It's secondary, but from a versimilitude perspective wood is not a viable production material in a s-f setting, unlike in medieval times, but energy rich plants can be burned for energy.
So I'd imagine forests here as mostly fast growing energetic plants plantations and I think 1,1,2 with 8 turns cost would be perfect.
- AI uses lots of sea bases it would be a shame to nerf minerals there.
Removing EcoEng platform bonus is suggested to balance proposed land advanced terraforming nerfs.
> No need for 1. Making Crawlers expensive solves this (they are 120 min).
No need for expensive crawlers with gathering penalty and 1 mineral forest and it would hurt human player way more than AI.
Super expensive crawlers can be abused by human sniping, or stealing them from AI's making them waste resources this way.
And most importantly, huge costs for basic things are a true blight of early game in this mod.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 12:34:21 pm
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I suspect that a very low popularity of this mod is caused by wild changes to vanilla tech tree and few other aspects and most fans would rather play more familliar SMAC but with more challenge.
Early game is awful with all these huge costs for everything and make people bounce, less brute force approach and more subtlety would make this excellent mod good imo.
I don't think you are right about reasons for low popularity thing at all. My impression is that Alpha Centauri is kind of forgotten game with little audience. Even less people use mods and even less can install the mod thats not simple double click on .exe. Then even less want any kind of challenge or change to rules - its certainly hard to guess their wishes. Most players want it different a bit but not hard at all. Modders maybe know how many people use the mods - but i bet its very little. Each mod would get a fraction of players anyway.. there are several mods out there. And not like this mod is marketed around much - bvanevery for example did much better job at it - and good for him - thats how its done. Still its a bit said that such a good game don't have more players - remake would be cool.
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As discussed in a thinker thread, nerfing advanced terraforming and crawlers would help AI compared to the human player who can alway abuse it better.Its not exactly that simple with Thinker AI I believe. The AI is so good with borehole, condenser spam that player has to use it -_-. AI also spams lots of forests. Induktio really did a good job there. AI also spams supply crawler a lot and uses them even better than player.
How? Well to match AI's fanaticism for this spam you have to spam as well and it gets tiresome - every game you need to spam boreholes, condensers and supply crawlers and every game is kind of similar and micro intensive and it gets tedious. That said not having to micro ton of crawler - its a huge plus imo. Because it really gets tedious to move them around to optimal tiles as bases grow. In my opionon, Crawlers that are rarely and strategically used are much better for the game than 30 mineral vanilla spam versions. Bvanevery sad that he also moved them very late in tree.
On topic of nerfing condensers, boreholes for example - its just a feature.. you have to rebalance everything. Now modders do this already, Tim made things more expensive. If you nerf adv. terraforming then you have to make everything cheaper. Its same thing, two different solutions.
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Forest 2 minerals are ridiculous, it's better than mine on a rolling terrain and it's a leftover from civ games, that didn't had boreholes and mining platforms, or that many rocky tiles for a good mine, to generate minerals. I think 1,1,2 would be perfect.
For example i don't like this in this mod and here's the reasoning. Idea is we want terraforming to be used (all of it including mines and solar collector) and fungus to be used a bit as well. So thats starting point.
What goes wrong? In vanilla forests are so good with tree farms (2-2-1) that there's no point using Farm-Mine ever, and Farm-Solar is usually worse as mineral > energy. Once you get hybrid forest, you can remove all these for op 3-2-2 tiles. People like it - so there's vanilla for that. Its actually playable to just spam forest all and tech for tree farms and not bother with terraforming besides adv. terraforming.
Now forest need their place - you propose 1-1-2. But that competes out a lot of use of solar collectors. It also competes with fungus tiles. Fungus in the mod is 1-1-1 and 1-1-2 for quite some time. Then it gets to 2-1-2 its pretty sweet.. your forest would be 2-1-2 with Tree farms. Tree farms have other great bonus - can be upgraded and gives eco, psych and can remove eco damage. Its one solution ok - its not bad. One can use mines and boreholes for minerals.
If you have forest as 1-2-0 then they have obvious weakness; no energy and its not easily fixed. So you need to mix it up - and start to really like that farm + solar collector. Fungus is also really nice to use for energy. Later depending on terrain, if crap you may want to forest everything and have strong mineral, low energy forest base. It kinda leads to base diversity better than 1-1-2. Vanilla forests are op and kill diversity - they are 1 ultimate solution.
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I want less minerals and other resources at play in late game which would slow down late game without issues in early game, like increased costs generate, or without the need to move interesting toys into a very late game tech tree levels.
I see this - its two things actually. One - tech is too fast and i agree - every freakin civ game had this issue. I play with tech stagnation and blind research for that reason - i want to play lategame more, its cool. So thats my solution. Modders did make tech way more expensive than vanilla - but its still snowball without tech stag. Games are plenty long with tech stag and you can try everything - thats my recommendation. Now if modders try to make every game like that - other people might hate it - many like faster games.
Other thing is - less minerals is crap - i wouldn't want that nerfed. I keep wanting more minerals in Will to power. First you can't get much it takes time and then you are restricted by ecology and population as well. Mineral boosting facilities come a bit late and are expensive to produce.
Costs also prohibit you from building those sweet 16-10-1 units and its such a shame. I really like that these are made cheaper in mods. In vanilla its totally dumb to build these units.. way better to buld 16-1-1 and 1-10-1 or just 1-1-1 and upgrade. Thats gamey. Anyway it needs a balance, too cheap and its way too much micro and war.. too expensive and its a drag.
On units side will to power might be slightly too expensive at times - but they can be rushed - later there is so much money available that you don't know what to do with it. As for secret projects - i don't like that they are so expensive - it doesn't make sense. I don't think that fulfills reasonable purpose.
Post by: dino on May 18, 2020, 12:53:30 pm
Also tons of minerals makes building facilities, a no brainer late game when you can build anything in 1-3 turns.
Balancing costs for mid-late game mineral surplus and stalling early game is the major issue for me with WtP.
1,1,2 forests are different from fungus, since they don't require planet rating and can be exploited while running free market.
And with 2 minerals forests, mines are completely pointless, you want an early game 1,2,0 tile ? You have it already, a mine on rolling.
1,2,0 forest is still way superior to mine, with potential future upgrade, and borehole is superior to mine on rocky, why keep mines completely useless ?
Thinker with few lines edited in the source code can be easily adjusted to build less forests and more mines to facilliate changes.
For exmple flat non rainy - forest, otherwise either farm+mine, or farm+collectors.
Thinker also already generates way more nutrients than it can utilise, crawled 4,0,0 condensers won't hurt it and it should just be adjusted to build them only when most nearby tiles are non rainy.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 01:21:34 pm
It takes time to produce units - AI spams them - and units die A LOT if you try to attack in will to power. You don't have tons of units.. ever except in very end maybe. I was lacking units most of the game - mod is designed to favor defense, build style and infrastructure.. not units. Even rushing units in mod is doubly more expensive than facilities. I don't love too much micro and don't want too many units. I also don't want too few units otherwise you can't progress since defense is so strong.
Yes - early game is slower - but every vanilla game is same spam. T-Hawk did it perfectly. Here with these costs there's incentive to build some infrastructure before colony pod spam. And expansion gets easier with early fusion reactor.
Mines are not pointless. Mines are better source of minerals, they are best source besides boreholes. And you can't really use two boreholes often (eco damage) and they are not simple to setup due to terrain and build time. You can't place adjacent boreholes or build them on slopes. Even if you don't use them by base citizen mines are great for crawler usage (unlike boreholes where you waste 1/2 resources). And base use them when you don't want to grow - which is all the time on transcend because drones. Its often better to work mine than forest.
Forest are for growth + minerals and fit that scenario when you must have that +1 food to stop starving or simply want slow growth. And forests can turn barren land into 2-2-0 tiles and make nice military base for example. Btw Plant Fungus is quite late terraform option - its somewhere in midgame.. you can't just plant fungus like that. And it doesn't spread like forest.
I don't see the reasoning to use forests as energy producer? It even clashes with sea bases. Or you can Place one condenser and farm/solar terrain and it will have that similar yield. Another thing is that teching is too fast - i think you agree there. Why allow even more energy in the game and make things worse?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 02:01:59 pm
I dislike a bit the concept of making everything super expensive to balance, makes early game super slow and things are still OP later. Better to nerf OP stuff a bit instead, imo.
It depends. Some things could be easily and naturally offset this way. Not everything, though, I agree.
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Satellites:
Max bonus without Aero Complex 1/4 base size and 1/2 with Aero, rounded down, balances both satellites and Cludbase Academy.
They are already capped at base size. For base size 20 your improvement just reduces income of each resource by 10 (from 20 to 10). The excess resource production is different at the end game. The base size 20 produces like +20 nutrients, +60 minerals, +200 energy. Nutrient satellite is the most impacting one. Other two are no big deal with or without your restriction.
Would it be more logical to limit by current resource excess production, not by base size? Say 1/4 of it? In this case whatever satellite impact will never exceed any other means of production increase. Therefore, it never be OP.
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1) Condensers only increase raininess, no 50% food bonus, already implemented in Ytzii's patch and 4,4 Boreholes,
Agree with Condensers. Their proportional bonus forces me to place them on nutrient resources and I don't think game should force their placement. Although, I'd still give them some bonus to compensate for inability to build solar there. Like +1 nutrient.
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2) 1,1,2 forests - wood is not a useful material in s-f setting, but can be burned for energy ( or you could nerf it even further to 1,1,1 but it'd be too much imo ).
You defy its minerals focus. Would be a shock for many players. 😆
I think 1-2-0 in my mod is nerfing enough. Especially with longer terraforming time.
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3) Remove a mining platform bonus from EcoEng and give it as aquatic faction bonus from the start instead of the current OP one, it'd balance both sea minerals in general and aquatic factions.
I don't feel this bonus it at all OP. It comes later in the game and is a replacement for land boreholes and mines. Sea bases are exceptionally pathetic in production field. This is their price for excessive nutrient/energy production. However, I wouldn't go too far in depriving them minerals even more. With this bonus (and trunkline) base size 10 with platforms on half of its squares produces only 3*5 = 15 minerals. I don't think it is too much for past mid game. You need to produce there too. Not only facilities but sea units.
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Crawlers:
1) Gather resourcess with 1 point penalty, already in Ytzii's patch.
2) No disbanding for 100% minerals to rush SP, but make one crawler transport 4 resource points between bases ( or 6 ).
1)
Crawlers are similar to mineral multiplier facilities. You invest in them once and then get return forever. The problem with crawlers is that the return from them is not limited comparing to facilities (which you have limited number). Reducing individual input won't cancel crawler rush as long as they are profitable at all. Same type of solution is to make them more expensive - thus increasing initial investment and reducing profit/investment ratio as I did in my mod.
The more cardinal solution would be just restrict total crawler yield for base same way as for satellites. This would put a stop on their unlimited spawning.
2)
Don't get why you don't want rush SP with them. It'll make you build everything in a single productive base which will be vulnerable to PB later on. Besides on highest difficulty you probably lose the race to AI 99% of the time.
Transporting resources between bases is useless. It is much more effective just to build crawler in highly productive base, then assign it to poor base, and then crawl resources for it.
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3) Do not grant a free prototype from stealing a unit, unless stealing faction has the required tech.
Unit should have prototype. And you can reverse engineer from it. This is how game is made. What's the problem with stealing unit tech when you steal the unit? I think that is the most fun part. 😝
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Natives:
Make each additional lifecycle granted by facilities ( biology lab and brood pit ) cost one additional mineral row for worms, spore launchers and sealurks and 2 additional rows for locust and isles.
Add 1 more row for each two "free" lifecycle bonuses granted by SP, SE, or faction bonuses for spore, sealurks and 1 row for every "free" lifecycle for isles and locust.
Again, why is that OP? These facilities are similar to conventional units morale boosting ones. Do you propose to increase conventional unit cost too because of morale boost? 😕
Morale/lifecylce boost is essentially an equivalent to more units. You either have lesser casualties due to morale or produce more low morale units. By making them cost more you effectively negate this feature. I don't think 1/8 improvement is a game breaking thing.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 02:22:16 pm
Brood Pits and Cover Ops Centers
I think cost should be no more than 3-4 turns in that stage for a good base - otherwise it won't be built. Its ok to build Command center 6-7 turn early on.. but on turn 200 there's no way i am using 6-7 turns in many bases building those facilities and still having to wait to build worms afterward. I can spam ton of worms instead from every base in those 12 turns and just finish the job. Police rating is not that valuable this late in the game - especially when you need to build police units as well.
So, that said, good bases in my last game at a time i got brood pits had around 50 minerals - i think i had one at 68 it was eco-damage cap at time.. many other weaker ones were 20 - 30. If you price BP between 100-150 minerals then it will get between 3-6 turns thats roughly ok - very best bases might get in in 2, weaker don't have to build it. You can probably go with 120 minerals if you find that ok, and no more than 3 maintenance. Its excessive to go over. Bvanevery wanted to move the facility out of use - i kind of don't like that argument, I'd like to see it used.
@tnevolin Maybe try putting it in Secrets of Alpha Centauri (L9) for start. It would be an upgrade and won't risk much being op.
I wouldn't put CoC in same bracket with BP. I built two in that game just to have stronger probes to win combat. Two bases can spam ton of probes and they don't cost support - worms do and you can't have them on fungus all the time. There's also no point to have CoC in many bases. One can have more expensive CoC in both minerals and maintenance.
Good points about it. I priced it 120/4 which is close to your suggestion.
I do think BP and CoC are exactly the same type of facility in term of unit improvement. BP gives 3/8 to natives (1/4 cost + 1/8 morale) and CoC gives 2/8 (morale only). They are affecting different unit types so it is not easy to say which one should be costlier.
About overpricing in the mods - there's no much point to it - you are both probably hurting AI. For example i find Aerocomplexes overpriced at 120/3 (for the time they appear) and just don't build them - or build them in 2-3 best bases eventually. AI wastes ton of time building them in most bases. Then i try to snatch Cloudbase or if i don't get it i don't really care. Its not that hard to spam more Food satellites or planes instead. I think its actually benefical for AI to have them cheaper as they are good defensive facility for them. Same goes for Naval Yard as they work as Perimeter Defenses.
The AI is dumb. That is why it is giving production edge on highest levels. We should not play with facility prices just to aid AI. I don't think there is a way around it besides actually tuning the AI to do smart things.
For example overpriced special projects. The only really good reason to overprice something is that if you allow it early - but don't want to have it built early - like Command Nexus. If you put The Command Nexus at 1000 minerals and its so good - than the player will get it if he really wants it. I can just spam Crawlers and get any expensive special project - yes you made me invest in Crawlers but i get the op thing. But poor AI will waste tons of time on it and lose progress - Bvanevery said AI uses Crawlers to rush - but in any case they are not nearly as effective as player. For example Cloudbase Academy is expensive - that just means its easier to get for a player :D.
Special projects i can't get are actually cheaper ones - that AI builds before me. Thats important. Or one could teach AI to use multiple supply crawlers to rush very expensive projects. In that sense, 50 min base building special projects shouldn't take more than 15-20 turns. I wouldn't price later special projects more than 1000 minerals unless they are very best. The later project appear the faster it should be built. If its broken - then ok - but move it anyway to tech 10+. Very late best bases top 100 minerals.. and you won't be playing much with such power - its game over.
Good point. I should adjust their prices toward end game. However, I generally tried them to be build in 20-40 turns up to mid game at least. So that race condition could last longer.
With crawler rush it can always be built instantly regardless of the cost.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 02:48:50 pm
QuoteProbe teams:
1) Add energy cost to tech stealing ( like half the cost to research +/- probe modifiers ), hijack mind control function and dialogue window for that.
2) Give tech stealing/mindcontrol bases adjustable multipliers.
3) Do not grant a free prototype from stealing a unit, unless stealing faction has the required tech.
It would be interesting to nerf tech stealing - its op. At least AI is doing good work with probes, they defend and attack well. I would really nerf mind-probing bases its so obnoxious when you lose entire base + units in and around it. AI could actually spam less attacking probes - they seem crazy with it.
There is one single response on complaining about how probes are OP: Build more defensive probes (and COC)! They are for that purpose exactly!
😜
QuoteNatives:I don't like this one. Isle of the Deep are very expensive - i think they are 120 min, Locusts as well. Sealurks are offensive unit at 80 minerals - and thats expensive as well. Sea/coastal bases are not exactly mineral rich. They die to stupid thing like formers and foils and probes, especially in enemy territory. And they often die vs combat units as well - if they get hurt AI counterattacks and wipes them with sometimes much cheaper ships (due to reactors). I had Drones spamming tons of cheap 3-3-4 ruining expensive Sealurks - you just can't get numbers to win naval war. Its dumb to tisk Isle of the Deep in combat - they have one purpose here and thats transport in dangerous waters.
Make each additional lifecycle granted by facilities ( biology lab and brood pit ) cost one additional mineral row for worms, spore launchers and sealurks and 2 additional rows for locust and isles.
Locusts don't really get extra combat advantage and they are expensive. They are good due to their movement/felxibility but thats about it - mindoworms are better and cheaper attacking unit. Locusts also get somewhat countered by AAA and interceptors.. mindworms don't - AI don't really spam trance units that much. By this time you also have magtubes for movement issues. If i spam locusts thats for micro convenience - i am too lazy to transport worms.
Good point about how not exceptionally effective natives are in this mod. My rule of thumb for their pricing was in comparison between their cost and cost of units they are fighting against. Of course, one would love to send only cheapest units with psi abilities against them (Scout Patrol + psi counter = 30 minerals). This makes worms/sealurks about twice as ineffective against them. However, owner of natives would try to attack high end conventional units those cost 100-200-300 minerals depending on game stage. They are exceptionally effective against them! If we make them cheaper then native factions would use nothing but them with unchecked effectiveness. Next time try to compare how much mineral worth units you killed with them and compare with your mineral worth losses. I don't think it is even a waste to use them against colonies (60-90 minerals) or formers (40-80 minerals). The only worthy adversary for them are cheapest units like Scout Patrol (even without psi counters!!!). However, it is quite impossible to shield all of units in a field with counter-psi sentinels. Most of the time natives will be at least moderately effective (more with positive PLANET or against negative PLANET). This changes even more drastically toward the end of the game with costlier high end conventional units. Locust can kill needlejets in flight acting like interceptors. This is very well rounded multipurpose attacker/defender units. I don't think they need to be even cheaper.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 03:08:01 pm
I would consider nerfing Command centers to +1 morale. It makes SE choices stronger and goes with logic of making morale valuable in your mod.
You are forgetting about negative MORALE that halves effectiveness of these facilities. With just +1 morale there won't be anything to halve.
😂
As for Naval Yards and Aerospace complexes they act as defensive facilites for AI. Player is not dumb enough to spam them - making them cheaper would help AI i think.
Could be but they are both morale and defense even if AI build them for defense it get morale boost on top of it. 80 is not that expensive for these benefits at the time sea battles begin. I don't think fiddling with +-1 mineral row makes big difference.
What are your thoughts on expensive projects - doesn't it make it just easier for player to get projects? That logic i mentioned in posts above - it gives more time to player to use supply crawlers.
There is no way around it. If player managed to get far ahead they will get most of the rest of the projects anyway. Actually in my games even when I was ahead I could not get more than 50% of them. Just because they are too costly I couldn't amass enough crawlers to speed them up all at once! And even if I could steal them from AI they just switched to other available and still get something. With 7 of them keep building around they manage to get quite a significant chunk of them.
I'll review SP costs anyway.
a) making projects cheap enough that first who gets it has best chance to build it. that would often mean AI gets it - not the player. projects are all over the place so presumably zakharov would not build every project. he's a wimp anyway. and i think AI can be told not to build more than n projects at a time?
My idea was to give them longer time to build to instigate race. Meaning the one discovering it first not necessarily jut got it for free. At least some more other competitors may try to steal it.
Moreover, with short build time their supply will end very quick and other racers will just lose their production on unfinished project. Whereas, with longer build time there will be quite large selection of them at any given time. So even those lost the race to first can switch to next one and get it instead. This is what I've observed all the time. Each faction eventually get some project maybe not the one they started to build. This make it harder for human to get 100% of them.
b) disable supply crawlers project rushing completely (and make projects reasonably priced for building
That's a big-big discussion. All SP costs should be reconsidered. I recommend you start a separate thread for that and there we can gather opinions.
c) is it possible to teach AI to plan/use multiple supply crawlers to rush secret project?
Everything is possible! Isn't it already done in Thinker?
d) is it possible to teach AI to rush secret projects with energy credits?
I would guess so. Isn't it already done in Thinker?
The goal of all of these would be to level the playing field. The thing is that player can pick up any secret projects at will in late midgame. Making projects more expensive is counter productive - it just makes it certain that player will get it.
Again, I don't understand why you feel this way. I played my mod multiple times and it is NOT easy to grab any project of your liking in whatever stage of the game. Especially with blind research. Even with tons of crawlers waiting to rush it in one turn I not always can get myself what I want. Play it out few times and tell me if you feel different.
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 03:18:51 pm
But i must say armor probes come great against other units - and AI is bated to attack probes so they work great AI vs AI.
Note: armored probes have one great stupid weaknes - if they are under another unit - and they are not main defender. If unit dies probes are dead. I killed multiple times 2-3-4 neutronium armored probes this way - its ton of minerals wasted. Poor AI.
Btw i have a question:
Why does AI can subvert my bases when i have +4 Probe rating? I understood you have Scient patch in your mod - and its supposed to fix this issue - as i understand it. I checked AI did not have ench. probes (yet) - they should not be able to do that. They had Hunter-Seeker but thats irrelevant as far as i know. Its quite a big pain not to be able to use +Probe rating to stop mind-probes. (i have save games i could double check this if its needed)
ps. I'll try to make my case about secret projects - i see the logic in your reasoning - it has pluses and minuses. I will describe what happens in my games in new thread and why i think that super expensive projects beat the purpose. There's no need to change anything quickly we can discuss and see where it ends.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 03:42:46 pm
It's very relevant since the primary tool it uses to deal with issues is to increase mineral cost. And exe modding is also very within tnevolin's capabilities.
Some of my "revolutionary" ideas became a staple of this mod for me, like no collateral damage for example.
You are right. This is a primary tool because it is an easiest one and alphax.txt based. However, I don't mind exe modding providing this cannot be done with pricing alone.
Kudo to you, man. You made to my credits. 😍
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#credits
I suspect that a very low popularity of this mod is caused by wild changes to vanilla tech tree and few other aspects and most fans would rather play more familliar SMAC but with more challenge.
I don't think it is completely unpopular. I believe it is comparable to Thinker. So it has its share of challenge liking players. I check GitHub traffic and it is pretty steady. Like 1-3 views daily with occasional spikes.
Early game is awful with all these huge costs for everything and make people bounce, less brute force approach and more subtlety would make this excellent mod good imo.
Do you refer to vanilla or this mod huge costs?
As discussed in a thinker thread, nerfing advanced terraforming and crawlers would help AI compared to the human player who can alway abuse it better.
I would agree to that but that is a huge designer work. Don't want to start thinking about this first.
I want less minerals and other resources at play in late game which would slow down late game without issues in early game, like increased costs generate, or without the need to move interesting toys into a very late game tech tree levels. The ultimate goal is to make AI competent with the same rules as player, without heavy cheats, ideally to the point that it is competent at one level below transcend.
That is reasonable about late game. For me Civ2 used already too much of multiplier facilities and SMACX is even more. Yield skyrockets in the end game it is just flood.
Mines on rolling are already fine early 1,2,0 mineral resource, but ridiculous 2 mineral forest is so good that it's absolutely pointless to build mines, especially on rolling.
It's a leftover from civ games, that didn't had boreholes and mining platforms, or that many rocky tiles for a good mine, to generate minerals.
It's secondary, but from a versimilitude perspective wood is not a viable production material in a s-f setting, unlike in medieval times, but energy rich plants can be burned for energy.
So I'd imagine forests here as mostly fast growing energetic plants plantations and I think 1,1,2 with 8 turns cost would be perfect.
First of all, mine need to be on a rainy square to get 1-2-0. Otherwise it is 0-2-0. Besides, nobody builds them on not rocky tile anymore in my mod where restrictions are lifted.
Let's not argue whether wood is good s-f material. This is a game of alternatives so let make them alternatives.
Forest and fungus should be inferior to normal terraforming as they require less investment and produce less eco-damage. That is a trade-off. The 1-2-0 forest is already inferior to rocky mine 0-4-0. Three rainy farms (3-1-1) + three forests (1-2-0) = 12-6-3. Whereas four rainy farms + two bad rocky mines = 12-12-4. Second option is clearly superior.
I also do not absolutely mind to use forest for energy. However, then I need to review my fungus progression as it focuses energy too. Do you mind fungus to be more on a nutrient-minerals side?
Removing EcoEng platform bonus is suggested to balance proposed land advanced terraforming nerfs.
In this case it may work but it needs to be a complex well rounded design. I suggest to start a separate thread on this question alone.
No need for expensive crawlers with gathering penalty and 1 mineral forest and it would hurt human player way more than AI.
Super expensive crawlers can be abused by human sniping, or stealing them from AI's making them waste resources this way.
And most importantly, huge costs for basic things are a true blight of early game in this mod.
Gathering penalty doesn't solve it. You just make each individual crawler less lucrative. Whereas the crawler problem is in their unlimited usage. You can spawn 100 crawlers per base and place them out of the borders. Makes no difference whether they gather 4 or 3 resources. It is still abuse.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 03:54:33 pm
On units side will to power might be slightly too expensive at times - but they can be rushed - later there is so much money available that you don't know what to do with it.
I don't think they are expensive. The very high end mixed and naval units at the end of the game are 200-300 which is a piece of cake for end game bases.
Do not compare them to vanilla no armor infantry units. They are 60 minerals for 30-1-1*4. This is just ridiculously broken formula. My naval and mixed weapon/armor units are actually cheaper than in vanilla!
As for secret projects - i don't like that they are so expensive - it doesn't make sense. I don't think that fulfills reasonable purpose.
Been said many times. 😁
Start a new thread and propose your cost for all of them. Then we can have productive discussion.
Post by: dino on May 18, 2020, 04:02:55 pm
Crawlers:Quote1) Gather resourcess with 1 point penalty, already in Ytzii's patch.
2) No disbanding for 100% minerals to rush SP, but make one crawler transport 4 resource points between bases ( or 6 ).
1)
Crawlers are similar to mineral multiplier facilities. You invest in them once and then get return forever. The problem with crawlers is that the return from them is not limited comparing to facilities (which you have limited number). Reducing individual input won't cancel crawler rush as long as they are profitable at all. Same type of solution is to make them more expensive - thus increasing initial investment and reducing profit/investment ratio as I did in my mod.
The more cardinal solution would be just restrict total crawler yield for base same way as for satellites. This would put a stop on their unlimited spawning.
2)
Don't get why you don't want rush SP with them. It'll make you build everything in a single productive base which will be vulnerable to PB later on. Besides on highest difficulty you probably lose the race to AI 99% of the time.
Transporting resources between bases is useless. It is much more effective just to build crawler in highly productive base, then assign it to poor base, and then crawl resources for it.
With 1 mineral forest an 1 point penalty and even moderate cost of 3-5 mineral rows, economically viable crwalers usage would be limited to a smaller number of condensers condensers, rainy flat low elevation farms and rocky mines. So it'd naturally limit the amount of crawlers on the map without artificial hard limits.
If the amount of reasonable crawling spots was very limited this way and crawler could transport 6 minerals between bases like it can from special resource rocky mine, then crawling resources between bases to speed up something would be viable and less micro intensive than building, moving and disbanding them. Penalty feature is for the taking from Ytzii's patch, the rest would be difficult.
Agree with Condensers. Their proportional bonus forces me to place them on nutrient resources and I don't think game should force their placement. Although, I'd still give them some bonus to compensate for inability to build solar there. Like +1 nutrient.
Then it would change them from 6,0,0 to 5,0,0 what is the point in even making such insignificant change. They increase rainniness and count as soil enritcher before you can build them, that is already powerful enough and the feature is for the taking from Ytzii's patch, so shouldn't be much work.
You defy its minerals focus. Would be a shock for many players. 😆
I think 1-2-0 in my mod is nerfing enough. Especially with longer terraforming time.
Why the forest should have mineral focus and be superior than mining in that to boot ? You have mines on rolling for 1,2,0 in early game, why change forest into something it's already there ?
You don't have the issue with mines being useless in this game ? 2 energy is not too much, it's average of what solar gives at the cost of nutrients, which in early game is no joke.
And I have a new idea: benefits of normal facilities are limited to the base, but with most SPs it's RoI grow with the number of bases. Maybe make the cost of them scale with a map size ?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 04:18:29 pm
Less late game minerals, less builder micro, does it realy improve your game experience to have 20 - 30 units per base, as opposed to 10 - 15 ?
Also tons of minerals makes building facilities, a no brainer late game when you can build anything in 1-3 turns.
Balancing costs for mid-late game mineral surplus and stalling early game is the major issue for me with WtP.
I don't think WtP is different from vanilla in this regard. All the terraforming and multiplying facilities are in place. What gives?
1,1,2 forests are different from fungus, since they don't require planet rating and can be exploited while running free market.
And with 2 minerals forests, mines are completely pointless, you want an early game 1,2,0 tile ? You have it already, a mine on rolling.
1,2,0 forest is still way superior to mine, with potential future upgrade, and borehole is superior to mine on rocky, why keep mines completely useless ?
Thinker with few lines edited in the source code can be easily adjusted to build less forests and more mines to facilliate changes.
For exmple flat non rainy - forest, otherwise either farm+mine, or farm+collectors.
Man, you keep mentioning rolling mine. Are you talking about WtP??? Nobody build rolling mines there due to lifted restrictions.
🤣
Thinker also already generates way more nutrients than it can utilise, crawled 4,0,0 condensers won't hurt it and it should just be adjusted to build them only when most nearby tiles are non rainy.
Thinker? How?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 04:44:13 pm
With 1 mineral forest an 1 point penalty and even moderate cost of 3-5 mineral rows, economically viable crwalers usage would be limited to a smaller number of condensers condensers, rainy flat low elevation farms and rocky mines. So it'd naturally limit the amount of crawlers on the map without artificial hard limits.
If the amount of reasonable crawling spots was very limited this way and crawler could transport 6 minerals between bases like it can from special resource rocky mine, then crawling resources between bases to speed up something would be viable and less micro intensive than building, moving and disbanding them. Penalty feature is for the taking from Ytzii's patch, the rest would be difficult.
You decrease forest crawling this way but not rocky mines. They are plenty of rocky squares too. You can mine and harvest them all you like. lowering their yield from 4 to 3 is some impact but not enough to stop the rush. It does help to reduce it but I believe it is a half measure.
Agree with Condensers. Their proportional bonus forces me to place them on nutrient resources and I don't think game should force their placement. Although, I'd still give them some bonus to compensate for inability to build solar there. Like +1 nutrient.
Then it would change them from 6,0,0 to 5,0,0 what is the point in even making such insignificant change. They increase rainniness and count as soil enritcher before you can build them, that is already powerful enough and the feature is for the taking from Ytzii's patch, so shouldn't be much work.
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You are forgetting your own initial point, man. The point is they are not multiplying yield anymore! Therefore, it is irrelevant where exactly to put them - the absolute benefit doesn't change. How did you get 6,0,0? Raininess is limited by 2 nutrients + 1 from farm = 3 at most.
I agree that adding 1 nutrient to condenser square is not important anyway.
Why the forest should have mineral focus and be superior than mining in that to boot ? You have mines on rolling for 1,2,0 in early game, why change forest into something it's already there ?
You don't have the issue with mines being useless in this game ? 2 energy is not too much, it's average of what solar gives at the cost of nutrients, which in early game is no joke.
Forest SHOULD NOT have mineral focus. But it is how it is in vanilla! Any change will shock players to extent. It is preferable not to change rules without an absolutely compelling reason. That is what I meant.
And I have a new idea: benefits of normal facilities are limited to the base, but with most SPs it's RoI grow with the number of bases. Maybe make the cost of them scale with a map size ?
Makes sense. However, there are other considerations about their too high cost. See other posts.
Post by: dino on May 18, 2020, 04:51:34 pm
I mostly compare my proposals to vanilla, as in what could be changed from vanilla and put into the WtP, instead of what is currently there ( which is cost increases mostly ).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 05:01:35 pm
They still count as soil enritcher so it's 2+2 and that is where vanilla 6 comes from, 4 +50%
https://alphacentauri.gamepedia.com/Condenser
They do not count as farm or enricher. You need to build farm + enricher to get them there.
So rainy farm + condenser = 3 * 1.5 = 4.
Rainy farm on resources = 5 * 1.5 = 7.
I mostly compare my proposals to vanilla, as in what could be changed from vanilla and put into the WtP, insted of what is currently there ( which is cost increases mostly ).
Well then keep in mind there is not point discussing isolated features. They are all highly interconnected. Most problems can be solved one way or another and you don't want to duplicate solutions, etc. WtP is already quite finely balanced version. You are probably better off by looking at it and proposing changes rather than looking at vanilla and proposing changes for other mod.
😝
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 05:41:46 pm
* Brood Pit cost/maint is 12/3.
* Brood Pit is assigned to Secrets of Alpha Centauri.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 06:49:02 pm
Natives:
Make each additional lifecycle granted by facilities ( biology lab and brood pit ) cost one additional mineral row for worms, spore launchers and sealurks and 2 additional rows for locust and isles.
Add 1 more row for each two "free" lifecycle bonuses granted by SP, SE, or faction bonuses for spore, sealurks and 1 row for every "free" lifecycle for isles and locust.
Are you also going to do that for conventional units with Command Centers, Naval Yards, Bioenhancement Centers, and Covert Ops Centers? Because having more experienced units, is exactly the same play mechanic.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 07:11:12 pm
I suspect that a very low popularity of this mod is caused by wild changes to vanilla tech tree and few other aspects and most fans would rather play more familliar SMAC but with more challenge.
I think it's way simpler than that. Tim hasn't been advertizing his work on r/4Xgaming very long. And he hasn't finished it, despite saying he thinks he has. And he disappeared for 3 months, which means he wasn't pushing his product for 3 months. There's a reason I consistently release every month, it's to provide assurance and set a pattern for uptake. Even then, uptake is slow.
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Early game is awful with all these huge costs for everything
I have to admit, I did not like that. This feeling of everything being extremely constrained and hard to get ahead. By itself though, I could have accepted the challenge and continued onwards, doing what I can. After all, I restrict things too in my mod, just not as severely. Restrictions are necessary to force an experienced player to think of other ways to do things. Nobody needs to do a clever pillaging strategy of maneuver if they can just storm the front gate and have everything.
For me the dealbreaker is the mindworm combat. It doesn't work. There's no consistency in what's happening, it's random. Mindworms just march up to my early bases and destroy them, even when I build Sensor Arrays, train my units, and equip them with Hypnotic Trance. There's no basic contract in the game as to what I'm supposed to do to defend myself from them. I don't feel like being randomly abused despite having made preparations. I did an AAR and stopped (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21409.msg123575#msg123575) at the point of this abuse. If Tim thinks this version of mindworms is good, well I don't, and won't be playing. He can put that forth in the marketplace of ideas and see if other players think it's good.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 07:45:57 pm
The more cardinal solution would be just restrict total crawler yield for base same way as for satellites. This would put a stop on their unlimited spawning.
If you wanted to do lots of programming work... in a real industry, the utility of raw materials is restricted by the factories that can process them into manufactured goods. You could tie the number of crawlers that can be used, to the various facilities that have been built in a city. To process more mineral crawlers, you would need more factories. To process more energy, you'd need more energy bonus facilities, such as Energy Banks, Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests. I admit the game fiction goes a little haywire for energy, as you have to imagine some kind of biological processing, not just extracting oil from an ocean well. So maybe it's just better to tie it to factories and be done with it.
Food, I guess a city's size is the implicit storage. Tree farms again don't make much sense for that. So perhaps your cap idea is best there.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 08:03:07 pm
Forest SHOULD NOT have mineral focus. But it is how it is in vanilla!
Is it really the problem that forests give 2 minerals at the beginning of the game, or that Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests provide way too many benefits later on. You could work on the latter problem, since you're a binary modder. I mean, why give +1 nutrient every forest square? Why not a +25% or +10% food bonus? Like "you're growing more walnuts" along with the killer fungal vines.
And why does a Tree Farm or Hybrid Forest have to give a +50% ECONOMY yield? "Fungal coffee is a lucrative cash crop" ?
;hippy ;eek
NERF THE EFFIN' TREES
You have the power. Do it, do it, do it...
I'll be honest: in my mod, I solved all the minerals problems by pushing all the "minerals abuse" facilities later. Like factories, crawlers, and boreholes. This left me with Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest as the absolutely best things to do. I'm not 100% fond of that, but I've accepted that, because I'm not a binary modder. Progressions have to be kept under control or the game is a mess. This is what I ended up with.
And I think trees look pretty on the map. So I'm down with tree spam. I keep my existing trees even if I have the Manifold Harmonics and +3 PLANET. Sometimes I even plant new ones at that point.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 08:18:18 pm
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21451.msg125136#msg125136
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 08:56:34 pm
Post by: scient on May 18, 2020, 10:00:44 pm
Oh i built tons of probes - i actually think i build hundreds in single game :D. CoC is good i like that - its really worth it. One has to build ton of probes or you are dead on transcend. I actually think AI is doing itself a bit of disfavor by building too many armored probes - but thats hard to change. AI is using tons of probes to attack mine - they use expensive armored cruiser probes and suicide into 0-1-1 cheap infantry probes. Defending probe has +50% territory bonus. So in that sense it hurts them badly but the do apply constant pressure.
But i must say armor probes come great against other units - and AI is bated to attack probes so they work great AI vs AI.
Note: armored probes have one great stupid weaknes - if they are under another unit - and they are not main defender. If unit dies probes are dead. I killed multiple times 2-3-4 neutronium armored probes this way - its ton of minerals wasted. Poor AI.
Btw i have a question:
Why does AI can subvert my bases when i have +4 Probe rating? I understood you have Scient patch in your mod - and its supposed to fix this issue - as i understand it. I checked AI did not have ench. probes (yet) - they should not be able to do that. They had Hunter-Seeker but thats irrelevant as far as i know. Its quite a big pain not to be able to use +Probe rating to stop mind-probes. (i have save games i could double check this if its needed)
ps. I'll try to make my case about secret projects - i see the logic in your reasoning - it has pluses and minuses. I will describe what happens in my games in new thread and why i think that super expensive projects beat the purpose. There's no need to change anything quickly we can discuss and see where it ends.
Could you attach the saved games with a couple notes about which base(s) get subverted by who? Doesn't have to be anything detailed. I'll have a look and see if there was something faulty with my patch or something else at play. Thanks!
Post by: lolada on May 18, 2020, 11:13:36 pm
Oh i built tons of probes - i actually think i build hundreds in single game :D. CoC is good i like that - its really worth it. One has to build ton of probes or you are dead on transcend. I actually think AI is doing itself a bit of disfavor by building too many armored probes - but thats hard to change. AI is using tons of probes to attack mine - they use expensive armored cruiser probes and suicide into 0-1-1 cheap infantry probes. Defending probe has +50% territory bonus. So in that sense it hurts them badly but the do apply constant pressure.
But i must say armor probes come great against other units - and AI is bated to attack probes so they work great AI vs AI.
Note: armored probes have one great stupid weaknes - if they are under another unit - and they are not main defender. If unit dies probes are dead. I killed multiple times 2-3-4 neutronium armored probes this way - its ton of minerals wasted. Poor AI.
Btw i have a question:
Why does AI can subvert my bases when i have +4 Probe rating? I understood you have Scient patch in your mod - and its supposed to fix this issue - as i understand it. I checked AI did not have ench. probes (yet) - they should not be able to do that. They had Hunter-Seeker but thats irrelevant as far as i know. Its quite a big pain not to be able to use +Probe rating to stop mind-probes. (i have save games i could double check this if its needed)
ps. I'll try to make my case about secret projects - i see the logic in your reasoning - it has pluses and minuses. I will describe what happens in my games in new thread and why i think that super expensive projects beat the purpose. There's no need to change anything quickly we can discuss and see where it ends.
Could you attach the saved games with a couple notes about which base(s) get subverted by who? Doesn't have to be anything detailed. I'll have a look and see if there was something faulty with my patch or something else at play. Thanks!
Here i think i got it - its bugged on same turn when changed. Probe rating upgrades turn later. If you change SE to +3 or +4 and disband probes in my seabases AI will mindropbe them on turn end. Looks like its working ok if you defend the bases 1 turn, then rating kicks in. Shame i didnt know
Post by: Nexii on May 18, 2020, 11:41:38 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2020, 11:43:43 pm
Most SEs don't technically update until your next turn. It's a bit confusing because POLICE, ECON show their effects in your cities right away. I guess it's more manageable that way. Still it's much less harsh than Civ2 with its Anarchy period of no government
Not most but all. POLICE, ECON show their effect right away but they contribute to effect in the beginning of next turn.
Essentially, what you see in your bases now is going to applied on next turn.
It is confusion, I agree.
😕
Post by: Nexii on May 19, 2020, 12:15:48 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 19, 2020, 01:59:49 am
It's a bit funny because I had the same thing occur when I was testing COC and MC immunity. I set Data Angels to get +2 PROBE using the campaign editor free switch. Apparently even changing it that way doesn't take effect until the following turn. Something I came to learn is that if you look at a faction's SEs in social engineering (next turn) it can differ from the diplomacy screen (current)
Whatever you see on SE screen for yourself or for whoever else using editor as if they are looking at their SE screen. That shows what will be applied next turn.
Whatever you see for others on their SE info like diplomatic screen shows their current effect (the one that was applied at the beginning of their turn).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 19, 2020, 04:15:56 am
* Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
* Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.
* Borehole yield is 0-4-4.
Post by: lolada on May 19, 2020, 08:54:29 am
Anyway this maybe doesn't even need fix, once you know how it works its easy to play around; it may be obnoxious to try to change it. I've also noticed Planet rating doesn't upgrade combat odds on same turn. I saw food and minerals change display on same turn - but i guess that applies afterwards.
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# Version 49
* Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
* Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.
* Borehole yield is 0-4-4.
I can update my current v. 47 game i presume and continue with save? I was gonna test a bit forests and morgan and some other stuff. Gonna be interesting to see how this nutrient and borehole thing affects the ai and game pace.
Btw you have now couple of errors in readme file - I noticed Command Center is 60/1 in game, Brood Pit is 120/3 (like that more than 120/4).. you wrote here and in readme its 60/2.. you also have mistakes in readme with new special projects saying its 60 x 10 bases = and right side is 800.. there are 3-4 of these typos now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 19, 2020, 12:39:18 pm
I can update my current v. 47 game i presume and continue with save? I was gonna test a bit forests and morgan and some other stuff. Gonna be interesting to see how this nutrient and borehole thing affects the ai and game pace.
I can update my current v. 47 game i presume and continue with save? I was gonna test a bit forests and morgan and some other stuff. Gonna be interesting to see how this nutrient and borehole thing affects the ai and game pace.
I am changing functionality only. It is supposed to be save compatible. I myself keep updating versions and then continue from the save without problems. However, keep in mind that problems are still possible. Due to change in functionality you may end up with some impossible state that will never happen under new rules and then game wouldn't know how to handle it, etc. This is infinitesimal probability, though.
Anyway, store you previous game folder completely (save included) just in case.
Btw you have now couple of errors in readme file - I noticed Command Center is 60/1 in game, Brood Pit is 120/3 (like that more than 120/4).. you wrote here and in readme its 60/2.. you also have mistakes in readme with new special projects saying its 60 x 10 bases = and right side is 800.. there are 3-4 of these typos now.
Yep. Multiple hasty updates. Thank you for catching them.
You also may miss few updates. I slapped a lot of them in past days. Readme should match the latest.
Version 50
* Command Center cost/maint is 6/1. Don't know why I made it 6/2 before. It actually adjusted in game automatically to the level of reactor.
# Version 47
* Brood Pit cost/maint is 12/3. Updated in readme too.
Fixed SP costs to be in mineral rows.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 20, 2020, 02:08:25 am
# Version 51
* Default unit morale is Very Green.
* Forest terraforming time is 8 turns.
* Hologram Theatre cost/maint is 6/2.
* AI rushes SP when they can.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2020, 07:04:45 pm
* Removed dialog option for self-destruct.
* Accumulated nutrients and minerals are adjusted after GROWTH and INDUSTRY SE change to maintain the same completion percentage.
Thus eliminated the exploit of switching to higher INDUSTRY at the very end to build it faster.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2020, 11:48:31 pm
* Set borehole to 0-6-4.
* Fixed Condenser and Enricher calculation and display.
Be careful about this one. I did a lot of patching. Highly experimental.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 08:06:37 am
* Tube movement rate is a multiplier of road movement rate.
In addition to AI now started to build tubes, their movement rate is restricted also.
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 09:04:54 am
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Thus eliminated the exploit of switching to higher INDUSTRY at the very end to build it faster.I didn't count mineral boxes its kind of hard - i presume it works. But rushing edge/exploit is still there that i checked. If you switch to +Industry - and rush it then its way cheaper. Switching is -40 energy and rushing saves much more.
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Tube movement rate is a multiplier of road movement rate
What does that mean? ^^ Good to have tubes.
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* Set borehole to 0-6-4.
* Fixed Condenser and Enricher calculation and display.
Good borehole change - like that one. I'll check condensers and enricher. I was looking a bit at it last night AI really spams them a lot everywhere. They will certainly influence AI growth significantly.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 12:53:09 pm
I didn't count mineral boxes its kind of hard - i presume it works. But rushing edge/exploit is still there that i checked. If you switch to +Industry - and rush it then its way cheaper. Switching is -40 energy and rushing saves much more.
This is a feature, not exploit. When item is cheaper in minerals it is also cheaper in hurry credits. Direct proportionality. You can think of it as another benefit of INDUSTRY.
QuoteTube movement rate is a multiplier of road movement rate
What does that mean? ^^ Good to have tubes.
Look at last option in thinker.ini. This is how faster movement on tubes comparing to roads. Play with it if you like.
Quote* Set borehole to 0-6-4.
* Fixed Condenser and Enricher calculation and display.
Good borehole change - like that one. I'll check condensers and enricher. I was looking a bit at it last night AI really spams them a lot everywhere. They will certainly influence AI growth significantly.
Yea. As I said I don't have any preference on boreholes. This is more of fans suggested change.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 01:25:46 pm
I thought to let artillery duel uses armor as well. However, I don't think it is too relevant. Making artillery armored is still important to protect from direct counter-strikes from air and helicopter, for example.
Same for interceptor duel. No need.
* Make ECM to affect sea units as well.
Interesting feature but too stupid. One can add it to all sea units thus increasing defense against all opponents.
* Cloning Vats should not grant impunities.
That could be fruitful.
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 03:09:22 pm
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You can think of it as another benefit of INDUSTRY.This is what i call mental gymnastics ^^. Ah well ok I suppose i can stop myself from switching to industry just to exploit that - it should be self-rule.
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I thought to let artillery duel uses armor as well. However, I don't think it is too relevant. Making artillery armored is still important to protect from direct counter-strikes from air and helicopter, for example.
Same for interceptor duel. No need.
I've seen these in your todo list, but didn't think much about it - on first look it looks cool.. But it makes some sense to have these units unarmored - they are supposed to be vulnerable to damage. So I don't know would it be good to make them armored.. maybe better not.
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* Make ECM to affect sea units as well.I was thinking at first ECM works vs ship.. btw tooltip said somewhere it works against missile attacks? I thought it affects Missile weapons (there's weapon called like that). Anyway... EMC working vs ships is just yet another way to make player better than AI as AI won't be able to use it as well. So we might be better without this one.
I am also not sure that i like idea of armored formers (AI don't build them), Crawlers (AI builds them) and Probes (AI spams them).
Why?
- these units are non-combat but actually quite strong if armored.... looks stupid
- you get more often than you should spearman kill tank scenario.. Needlejet (or any strong attacking unit for that matter) should have 90% chance to kill Crawler.. not 50% or 30%..
* I think its not issue on transcend WTP - you can't just raid trascend AI in his land (Copters maybe being somewhat exception) you get killed if you stay in their land due to 50% territory malus. Copters also get killed by interceptors btw.. but they are much more deadly than other units when there's no interceptor defense. One can more easily raid weaker AIs.. It would be actually interesting to limit possible armor on NON-combat units to some lower level. Is it even possible?
- probes... its gamey and it takes some getting used to and it mifgt hurt AI a lot in the end
How do you play against mass probe spam? Took me a bit to figure it. AI likes to attack with 0-10-2 probes in midgame. You don't attack with military units - this is stupid units die. You bombard them a bit and attack with your 0-1-1 or 0-1-2 probe and kill it. If its in your lands you get +50%.. one can just let them attack you - you get 50% def. In their land its harder, but one can bombard more. Also Probe dies when military unit on same tile (or in base dies). There's risk unit will attack probe.. one can attack with probes to remove that 0-10-2 defender and then attack with normal units afterward.
What AI does is attacks them in panic - I've seen multiple times AI emptying his base suiciding into 0-10-2 probe on rough terrain. It would be often much better to have these units defend the base instead of attack.. but there's risk of mind-probe. I did not actually try this tactic - but usually when you have probe under strong defender AI suicides into defender trying to kill the probe. Its not that bad because due to +50% they often manage to kill defender in few attacks and probe beneath dies. But one can, i think, just bring unarmored probes and bait AI into attacking. I might experiment with this more.
So anyway once player gets used to it - you have to spam ton of probes - and one can just trade probes and kill AI probes with huge efficiency.
Basically it hurts AI in the end. It also hurts AI badly to create ton of 0-10-6 cruiser probes that die to 0-1-1 defenders. These probes are protected from unit attacks - that works AI vs AI mostly.. and it helps them on sea.. player would need to build expensive foil probes - but its just easier to spam 0-1-1 defenders and ignore probes on open waters.
So.. armored probes have one advantage - they are not easily countered by units. But they are huge drain on AI and once player figures it out - they are easily countered with unarmored probes. Armored probes likely do more harm than good to AI.
Same goes for example for that Rover Colony Pod - AI just builds more expensive colony pod when cheap is good enough. AI can't reason when is better to build more expensive one. I suggest removing that design - player can create it if he wants.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 03:46:19 pm
I've seen these in your todo list, but didn't think much about it - on first look it looks cool.. But it makes some sense to have these units unarmored - they are supposed to be vulnerable to damage. So I don't know would it be good to make them armored.. maybe better not.
That a strange way to word it. They are not supposed to be unarmored. Player can either armor them for +50% in cost or save on this. I was just thinking to give them incentive to use armor on artillery/interceptors/needlejets by factoring armor into combat advantage. However, it is not really that important. They already have incentive of protecting them from random retaliation. I think this is enough.
Factoring armor into combat calculation is an interesting idea but it flattens strategical combat. With that there won't be attack and defense anymore. Unit strength would be just sum of weapon and armor strength, always. This is how latest Civ games are made.
Naming them weapon and armor becomes kind of confusing. In Civ it was named attack and defense. Meaning that unit behaves differently in attack and defense which makes sense. In SMACX the weapon/armor (unit component) strength implicitly translates to attack/defense (tactical ability) strength. However, this implicitness is often forgotten and people start arguing about how stronger armor is able to defeat assailant???
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 04:15:17 pm
I am also not sure that i like idea of armored formers (AI don't build them), Crawlers (AI builds them) and Probes (AI spams them).
Why?
- these units are non-combat but actually quite strong if armored.... looks stupid
- you get more often than you should spearman kill tank scenario.. Needlejet (or any strong attacking unit for that matter) should have 90% chance to kill Crawler.. not 50% or 30%..
* I think its not issue on transcend WTP - you can't just raid trascend AI in his land (Copters maybe being somewhat exception) you get killed if you stay in their land due to 50% territory malus. Copters also get killed by interceptors btw.. but they are much more deadly than other units when there's no interceptor defense. One can more easily raid weaker AIs.. It would be actually interesting to limit possible armor on NON-combat units to some lower level. Is it even possible?
I think so but why? They already had this "non combat units defend at half strength modifier" that I mercilessly removed.
This sounds like one of those "players" requests Sid unsuccessfully tried to please with more and more quirked game behavior. They want game to do what they want. Like they are in a movie theater or something. They are not players, they are spectators.
I'm sure you'll be able to overcome it with advanced strategy and have fun learning it.
😉
Keep in mind that there is nothing unexpected in game. It should not resemble anything else. Not the life nor any other game. Why is it stupid when pawn kills the queen?
I don't see any problem in armoring non combat units for protection. Why on earth one would not??? That absolutely makes sense to invest into armored and Trance crawler and save on rebuilding and repositioning it over and over again.
If you need real life explanation imagine former squad transport not in truck but in refitted tank with all heavy weapon dismantled and only some light weapon left. Then in case of attack they can jump inside and sustain some not so heavy fire and maybe even damage enemy with their light weapon. Yes, it sounds silly to spend extra on protection in peace time but not at all when you work next to enemy line. Again some extra investment may save you other bigger investment in terraforming machinery, etc.
😉
- probes... its gamey and it takes some getting used to and it mifgt hurt AI a lot in the end
How do you play against mass probe spam? Took me a bit to figure it. AI likes to attack with 0-10-2 probes in midgame. You don't attack with military units - this is stupid units die. You bombard them a bit and attack with your 0-1-1 or 0-1-2 probe and kill it. If its in your lands you get +50%.. one can just let them attack you - you get 50% def. In their land its harder, but one can bombard more. Also Probe dies when military unit on same tile (or in base dies). There's risk unit will attack probe.. one can attack with probes to remove that 0-10-2 defender and then attack with normal units afterward.
What AI does is attacks them in panic - I've seen multiple times AI emptying his base suiciding into 0-10-2 probe on rough terrain. It would be often much better to have these units defend the base instead of attack.. but there's risk of mind-probe. I did not actually try this tactic - but usually when you have probe under strong defender AI suicides into defender trying to kill the probe. Its not that bad because due to +50% they often manage to kill defender in few attacks and probe beneath dies. But one can, i think, just bring unarmored probes and bait AI into attacking. I might experiment with this more.
Exactly, man. You started to figure it out. It is fine to play 5-10 games to get better and better. It is like that sacred moment when you just unpacked you first time SMAC disk!
😝
Yes: bombardment, counter-probes, elevated security, COC, blocking them with air and double stacked units along the roads to slow down their movement and bombard them even more. All the above allows to tilt your probes to enemy probes mortality rate to your favor probably somewhere 2-3 times. Which is the idea of more advantageous defense in this mod.
Basically it hurts AI in the end. It also hurts AI badly to create ton of 0-10-6 cruiser probes that die to 0-1-1 defenders. These probes are protected from unit attacks - that works AI vs AI mostly.. and it helps them on sea.. player would need to build expensive foil probes - but its just easier to spam 0-1-1 defenders and ignore probes on open waters.
Yep. AI is always less efficient. Use it wisely.
So.. armored probes have one advantage - they are not easily countered by units. But they are huge drain on AI and once player figures it out - they are easily countered with unarmored probes. Armored probes likely do more harm than good to AI.
Same goes for example for that Rover Colony Pod - AI just builds more expensive colony pod when cheap is good enough. AI can't reason when is better to build more expensive one. I suggest removing that design - player can create it if he wants.
That's that for AI algorithms. Thinker algorithms are noticeably better but still far from perfection. If you learn to constantly beat them all at Transcend every time - let me know and I'll work on AI to make it even more challenging.
😎
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 06:27:37 pm
The start with Morgan is quite slow. It is difficult to build Formers, guards and those expensive colony pods, Morgan's -1 support makes it worse. I nearly lost a base to wildlife for cutting corners. Managing the early game was however quite fun which is a good sign.
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 06:48:30 pm
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I started the game with Morgan. After some turns my bases somehow got a Talent each. I have no idea where those are coming from. (Also I am not sure how I would have managed happiness without those Talents on Transcend.) Do you know why they are there? I build Recycling Tanks and researched Progenitor Psych around the time they appeared.
The start with Morgan is quite slow. It is difficult to build Formers, guards and those expensive colony pods, Morgan's -1 support makes it worse. I nearly lost a base to wildlife for cutting corners. Managing the early game was however quite fun which is a good sign.
I picked up police state for awhile with morgan. And you have 0-4-0 mines from beginning in the mod to help with support. Then i got Living Refinery : ). I actually lost a colony pod in my game darn worms ^^ It gets easier when you get Fusion reactor - should be able to get to it quickly - its important to meet AI for trading.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 07:05:35 pm
I started the game with Morgan. After some turns my bases somehow got a Talent each. I have no idea where those are coming from. (Also I am not sure how I would have managed happiness without those Talents on Transcend.) Do you know why they are there? I build Recycling Tanks and researched Progenitor Psych around the time they appeared.
What SE you are using?
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 07:06:47 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 07:18:10 pm
I picked up police state for awhile with morgan. And you have 0-4-0 mines from beginning in the mod to help with support. Then i got Living Refinery : ). I actually lost a colony pod in my game darn worms ^^ It gets easier when you get Fusion reactor - should be able to get to it quickly - its important to meet AI for trading.
Hmm. It is strange to hear complaints about worms danger to colonies in WtP. How long ago did you play vanilla? All non-combat units have about 50% survival chance against worms in WtP and 0% in vanilla. They are just dead meat in a water there. Whereas in WtP I regularly see colonies, formers, and transports survive natives attacks.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 07:20:08 pm
Planned, everything else on default. I also installed Pracx over the mod executable.
It's "Planned +" in WtP. 😁
Everything with "+" has hidden +1 TALENT. Unfortunately, it is not visible on SE screen. Therefore I added this sign to name.
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2020, 07:25:06 pm
Yea. As I said I don't have any preference on boreholes. This is more of fans suggested change.
Frankly though, I have to wonder about the wisdom of nerfing the energy bit, when it's called a thermal borehole. It's not called a lava flow.
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2020, 07:28:54 pm
I thought to let artillery duel uses armor as well. However, I don't think it is too relevant. Making artillery armored is still important to protect from direct counter-strikes from air and helicopter, for example.
The problem with armoring artillery in the stock binary, is that another artillery piece bypasses it. This is totally unrealistic. Armored artillery pieces have been a thing at least as far back as WW II. They were generally called "Self-Propelled Guns", and their big distinction compared to a tank is they don't have a turret to adjust their firing. So with this unrealistic and expensive weapon, you just get clobbered for no good reason. This discourages putting any armor on it at all, due to the magical way of bypassing the armor.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 07:40:51 pm
Regarding the worms, making them weaker during base attacks is a good change. I almost lost a base because it was empty. With Morgan (really with any faction) it is often optimal play to forego base defenders and leave them empty on size 1. Of course that has its downsides
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2020, 07:43:11 pm
- these units are non-combat but actually quite strong if armored.... looks stupidIn the stock game, a unit that is armored is a combat unit. It does not suffer the non-combat defense penalty. There's nothing stupid about such units. In WW II for instance there were armored mine flayers that were used on the beaches of Normandy. They had a job to do in combat and they did it. Laying down roads or land bridges to kill your enemy can easily be a front line siege activity. And if you're still allowing your game to build Bunkers, that's something a Former does for you. I don't allow it because the AI is so stupid about building them, but if you do, that's something that Formers do under fire. Formers get attacked by mindworms and that's another reason to armor them, if you're so inclined. Sea Formers get attacked by enemy ships all the time.
If you literally mean such units "look" stupid, well that's an art direction issue, not a game mechanical issue. I think armored Former units look just fine.
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Needlejet (or any strong attacking unit for that matter) should have 90% chance to kill Crawler.. not 50% or 30%..
This is a problem with the 1) silly attack vs. defense system, which is an inherent flaw of SMAC. For instance AAA units have their armor leap out to shoot back at you, by some kind of magical woo. 2) Possibly compounded by what Tim's trying to do with combat odds and perception of danger.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 07:45:59 pm
Planned + seems very strong. +1 Industry and +1 Growth are already quite powerful.
Could be. There are multitude ways to shuffle SE models. We can discuss this too. List your opinion about each one of them in current WtP and then we can see about tweaking.
Post by: Nexii on May 22, 2020, 07:49:13 pm
Frankly though, I have to wonder about the wisdom of nerfing the energy bit, when it's called a thermal borehole. It's not called a lava flow.
Yea this is why at one point I had boreholes only giving energy and zero minerals. Realistically you're only getting heat out. Though it did seem a little weird that they didn't pollute at all with Tree Farm / Hybrid Forest. Theme wise I liked it, but it also highlighted how much better energy was than minerals. And it also made mineral facilities a lot less useful than they already were. Perhaps just cost decreasing them would suffice
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2020, 07:58:07 pm
In my own mod, I didn't care to change their output. I just put them late in the game, and made them take more turns to make. I like the outrageous "double sixes" appearing on the city screen. Aesthetically it indicates they're powerful and damaging as all get.
And I never build them anymore. I may harness the 3 existing ones, but new ones? I've got better things to do. I hand terraform every square, and a flood just wipes out all my hard work. I don't want them.
Post by: Nexii on May 22, 2020, 08:14:36 pm
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 08:38:35 pm
Its kind of tempting to have good and bad bases.. but thats what Civilization series has - and it has big downsides. If civilization loses its capital and 1-2 big important cities its game over. In Alpha Centauri AI can make 10 equaly strong cities and you don't even care which one is capital. Even crap terrain can be turned to good one with some forests and adv. terraforming - a borehole being important.
- I actually build some artillery with armor - arty is important in the mod - and after some time armor doesn't make it more expensive - base builds it in same number of turns anyway. Its useful when arty gets attacked - it happens sometimes.. unarmored arty is very vulnerable to needlejets for example.
- About worms.. they are fine.. fungal pops are dangerous.. single worms aren't really.. it happens that they kill units sometimes - unescorted colony pod is always at some risk
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 09:22:33 pm
I was able to stay in Police State with without Efficiency being much of an issue. Is there a effective second drone control (or Psyche facility) next to Recreation Commons? Do Children's Creches still increase effiency? From what I read they don't give Morale bonuses anymore, right?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 09:32:12 pm
Changed free market is also very good. Similar powerlevel to Planned+. I don't quite see the point of Green though. Seems only useful for a worm war.
I was able to stay in Police State with without Efficiency being much of an issue. Is there a effective second drone control (or Psyche facility) next to Recreation Commons? Do Children's Creches still increase effiency? From what I read they don't give Morale bonuses anymore, right?
They have their up and downs and this varies depending on game situation and game stage. There is no single preferable choice. As I said, state your thoughts about all of them and we will discuss.
Keep in mind that SE compete in single category. So it is a relative comparison of PS vs. Democracy vs. Fundamentalism.
Yes, Creches increases efficiency and growth but not morale.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 09:50:00 pm
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 10:06:13 pm
I really really don't like Power.. 2 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 Probe, -2 Industry everything is ruined by industry.. 1 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 probe, -1 Industry; .. or +2 Supp, +2 Mor, -1 Ind..: or something like that would be much more interesting.. What's the point in picking it when it makes producing everything so hard.. i'd rather have more units.
I wanted to post this from my current game. This is real issue - AI is going crazy on ecological damage and fungus pops a lot. I myself also went same strategy to increase clean minerals to test it.. and with high eco damage in few bases its worms and fungus popping often.. Anyway worms kill formers, break base defenses if you are not prepared. And if you don't have good planet you can screw yourself. Base yields are terrible in factions with negative planet. (They use crawlers.. but that +3 +4 food was before nerf +5 +6)
Conqueror Marr is really crap AI - it seems so. Angels are here doing bad also. Drones have positive planet and is saving them. (Zakharov died again - he's awful - he really needs a buff.. i think -2 Probe is huge nerf to him.. he needs help.. drones every 4 also are terrible).
(https://i.imgur.com/IXWQYj7.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/TCyKXMj.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 10:31:14 pm
I was comparing Green with Planned+ and Free Market which are in the same category. Planned+ and Free Market both have their place depending on the situation. Green, however, is +2 Planet +2 Effiency -3 Growth -2 Industry. So some very pedestrian advantages and utterly horrific downsides. I can see two situations when Green might be useful. If you attack someone with worms or when knocking out the last few techs before trancendence. In any other situation, switching to Green is approximately equal to retiring. :)
I believe you underestimate the value of EFFICIENCY. It grows directly proportional your empire size and even faster as it also reduce b-drones. It has almost zero value on 10 bases but on 50 it is enormous. Especially later in the game when total cash flow growth as well. It is the most uneven effect. I'd say it is impossible to live without positive efficiency past mid game. Otherwise, you will just won't have money to pay maintenance. That is how important it is. Of course, there are other ways to increase it. Children Creche is one. ECONOMY also may compensate for it. However, no other model has +2 EFFICIENCY alone.
-3 GROWTH is also a huge penalty since it stops bases from increasing population. However, anything above it is perfectly fine. Even -20% growth speed is no biggie for base with extra 2 nutrients surplus. On top of it you have Children Creche that guarantees you won't stop growing with Green.
-2 INDUSTRY is a huge penalty, though, throughout the game. So maybe I should give Green a slack here.
Post by: Nexii on May 22, 2020, 10:37:56 pm
It's only 3 less drones in your empire per 2 EFFIC on a normal map. On a huge map, about 5 less drones.
It has fairly quick diminishing returns, as it's a 1/x function. Creche gives +2 getting you over the worst part of the curve.
However being at negative EFFIC is crippling for the same reason, how the function curves.
EFFIC means less in the late game because specialists contribute directly to econ/labs/psych
Overall the first +2 EFFIC is good to have but it's nothing compared to +2 ECON or +2 GROWTH
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 10:38:35 pm
I really really don't like Power.. 2 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 Probe, -2 Industry everything is ruined by industry.. 1 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 probe, -1 Industry; .. or +2 Supp, +2 Mor, -1 Ind..: or something like that would be much more interesting.. What's the point in picking it when it makes producing everything so hard.. i'd rather have more units.
SUPPORT is 2-3 times better than INDUSTRY at the very beginning. Each level of SUPPORT saves you 1 mineral. Whereas each level of INDUSTRY saves you 10% of ... 2-4 minerals early bases produce, which is ... 0.2-0.4 minerals. Figure it out yourself. SUPPORT declines quickly as average production grows but it stays on par with INDUSTRY until bases reach 10 minerals production in about early mid game. If you managed to grab faction with bonus SUPPORT or if you crank it up by some other means (SE, project) you will have an extreme boost in first 100 turns. That is big impact. However, I can go with 1 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 probe, -1 Industry; Should be no biggie.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 10:38:39 pm
As lolada pointed out, the planet going to hell in a handbasket is another situation where Green is good.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 10:45:26 pm
EFFIC is more of a nice to have IMO. Unless you're playing on very large maps then it gets more valuable
It's only 3 less drones in your empire per 2 EFFIC on a normal map. On a huge map, about 5 less drones.
It has fairly quick diminishing returns, as it's a 1/x function. Creche gives +2 getting you over the worst part of the curve.
However being at negative EFFIC is crippling for the same reason, how the function curves.
EFFIC means less in the late game because specialists contribute directly to econ/labs/psych
Overall the first +2 EFFIC is good to have but it's nothing compared to +2 ECON or +2 GROWTH
Yes, its effect depends on empire size and, therefore, map size. It's difficult to balance all maps across. And yes, it is diminishing return. -4 EFFICIENCY is just appalling economy, -3 is about 10 times better than that but +4 is just 5-10% better than +3.
Agree on that. I may give it less value and reduce INDUSTRY penalty for Green.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 10:48:14 pm
It's true I haven't been in a late game situation yet. However, then you also have stuff like Cybernetic and Eudamonia. Moreover, there is Democracy for effiency. There is also the option of going specialist-heavy.
As lolada pointed out, the planet going to hell in a handbasket is another situation where Green is good.
Reducing Green INDUSTRY penalty in next version.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 10:55:43 pm
I really really don't like Power.. 2 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 Probe, -2 Industry everything is ruined by industry.. 1 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 probe, -1 Industry; .. or +2 Supp, +2 Mor, -1 Ind..: or something like that would be much more interesting.. What's the point in picking it when it makes producing everything so hard.. i'd rather have more units.
SUPPORT is 2-3 times better than INDUSTRY at the very beginning. Each level of SUPPORT saves you 1 mineral. Whereas each level of INDUSTRY saves you 10% of ... 2-4 minerals early bases produce, which is ... 0.2-0.4 minerals. Figure it out yourself. SUPPORT declines quickly as average production grows but it stays on par with INDUSTRY until bases reach 10 minerals production in about early mid game. If you managed to grab faction with bonus SUPPORT or if you crank it up by some other means (SE, project) you will have an extreme boost in first 100 turns. That is big impact. However, I can go with 1 Supp, 2 Mor, 1 probe, -1 Industry; Should be no biggie.
It doesn't quite work like that. Industry reduces the cost in a linear fashion. +1 industry is close to 10% more production but +2 industry is already +25% production, 3 industry is a 42% production increase and after that it gets crazy.
More importantly perhaps, early game you can make do with two free units if you don't build many scout patrols. Two formers, or a former and a scout patrol per base is OK. Later on support matter more but you mineral output should be higher then too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2020, 11:23:07 pm
Best +3 SUPPORT frees you 4 minerals. Whereas, best +5 INDUSTRY doubles your 2-4 mineral production (= 2-4 extra) which is barely comparable to SUPPORT benefit. So it is better. Even if INDUSTRY bonus grows like crazy. That just means SUPPORT is even more crazy bonus.
Post by: lolada on May 22, 2020, 11:29:28 pm
Its really harsh i support that -1 industry change.
Btw PLANET rating - its really bad in the mod to have negative rating due to fungus. And positive is ok.. its great for combat to stack. Only free market has -2.
Power
The thing is its not used early... you don't want to war early in your mod - you can't really vs transcend AI - its way better to defend and develop. Miriam can - but you don't need Power.. and Power is not really available that early. So you want to use power later when you are ready to fight and infrastructure is up.. but then -2 industry really hurts.. I will easily pick Fundamentalism over it, thought control is also better. You also want to build up infrastructure in 1/2 bases and it hurts.
+2 SUPP +2 MOR -1 IND -1 ECO // +2 SUPP +2 MOR -1 IND -1 GRO
This could be interesting for power push, its not hard to pick.. its possible to tank ECO and GROWTH
Thought control differs now more from Power => it has +2 Probe thats important and -3 support.. that matters. It may be hard to pick if you have low support.
ps. Support is good but i don't want to build units for quite some time.. 1 unit 1 former works well for lots of time. Then if i have +SUPP more and build up i really don't want to switch back and tank minerals. One must/should stick to it for quite some time. Mod is builder oriented, not war oriented.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 22, 2020, 11:51:43 pm
One former per base is not enough but you can support two in some. Terraforming costs are really high compared to the base game. (Or rather with the mod it is worthwhile to actually use the expensive early options. Mine + Road on a rocky tile is 12 turns, Farm + Solar is 10 turns and neither of those spreads by itself.)
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2020, 12:12:14 am
and after some time armor doesn't make it more expensive
I think in my mod, that's never ever true. My Infantry Speeder Hovertank chasses are on a 2 3 4 cost progression, so it is never possible to get a cheap unarmored powerful weapon unit. You pay through the nose for your weapons, if they're good weapons. Armor pretty much follows the same cost regimen. Getting both armor and weapon at the same time is expensive. Only ships seem to have reduced armor costs, which makes some hand wavy sense as they float in the water.
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- base builds it in same number of turns anyway.
To date I haven't been building big minerals bases. Too scared of floods. And my units cost. TANSTAAFL in my mod.
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Its useful when arty gets attacked - it happens sometimes.. unarmored arty is very vulnerable to needlejets for example.
Wonder how Air Superiority artillery holds up? It's very useful on offense, against stacks of Locusts. Haven't had much call for it on defense. I have build 3-Res Trance Artillery to deal with Locusts attacking. Not sure how it performed. Locusts were finally thinning out, round about when I designed it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 12:20:29 am
+2 SUPP +2 MOR -1 ECO -1 GRO
+2 SUPP +2 MOR -1 IND -1 ECO
+2 SUPP +2 MOR -1 IND -1 GRO
If you want to strengthen it significantly then I would just decrease INDUSTRY penalty. That's it. It is also makes sense to keep PROBE as it is only war oriented SE.
+2 SUPP +2 MOR +1 PRO -1 IND
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 12:36:41 am
The reason I was suggesting other downsides is that unlike -IND, -ECO and -GRO do not directly hinder the war effort.
Post by: Nexii on May 23, 2020, 12:38:55 am
My most recent version for Power is +2 SUP +1 MOR -2 ECO
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 09:53:59 am
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+2 SUPP +2 MOR +1 PRO -1 INDThis could be good.. I would definitely like to keep +2 Morale and i hate -2 Industry.. Probe can be gotten from other sources as well so I didn't mind losing it if Power proves strong. Power has another issue its coupled vs Wealth (great in peace-time) and Knowledge (3! RESEARCH 1 EFFICIENCY -1 ECO -2 PROBE.. great always.. Probes are weakness but that can be dealt with.. and ECO is often no big deal.
I think Knowledge is too good. Having EFF and RESEARCH in same slot and 4 points of its - its too good - especially with this downside. +2 Res +1 EFF is more sane. When picking Power one basically has to give up +3 Res +1 Eff or that nice Eco from Wealth and thats really hard to do.
Green is like Power for planet factions.. you gave it -3 growth -2 industry and i really didn't want to pick it for a long time ^^. Basically when i grew bases to 7+ and had enough production.. then i don't mind them not growing much more. Still Industry penalty made everything build longer and i went in and Picked Fundamentalism (+1 Ind) to counter it.. morale and probe help in right direction there.
Once you have good +Planet cheap Spore Launcher is better defense than any armored defender - it even cancels bombardments. And worms are better attackers eventually especially through Perimeter Defenses - so Green becomes viable pick. AI use both artillery and some empath attackers - so Spore Launchers are not all in one solution. I don't see myself picking Green unless I would go very heavy on war with native life.
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 10:18:47 am
(https://i.imgur.com/1NFzpAW.png)
It looks interesting to place tactical Condensers (there's no point spamming them too much they don't produce on its own tile as much food) to paint everything green and then insert Echelon Mirrors to boost all those tiles around. Thats in hilly terrain. Forests on flat terrain should eventually be better. I'll see if i can terraform nicely.. Some Aquifers on the way as well.
(https://i.imgur.com/khCEZUo.png)
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 10:48:17 am
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 11:08:47 am
-1 Eco on Knowledge makes it borderline unusable until future societies. Of course, Morgan can still use it.
Why - i think thats not correct? -1 energy in HQ at -1 ECO is nothing.. -2 ECO is not bad either its only -1 energy per base.. thats a small penalty. Unless you play every game with +2 Eco so you would lose that -1 energy per tile.. This basically means you pick up Free Market in every game - and then you don't want pick up Knowledge because you lose that energy.
@tnevolin Movement is bugged in last patch with magtube changes Infantry can move more than 3 tiles.. movement points state 9/9 and it decreases by 2.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 12:19:04 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 02:22:55 pm
I think Knowledge is too good.
It is. If you consider it in isolation. In theory. It gives you technological advantage and you beat everybody else. In practice, though, everybody else steal and trade technologies. So it is absolutely irrelevant how fast you researching it. Others will be just slightly behind.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 02:34:46 pm
Why - i think thats not correct? -1 energy in HQ at -1 ECO is nothing.. -2 ECO is not bad either its only -1 energy per base.. thats a small penalty. Unless you play every game with +2 Eco so you would lose that -1 energy per tile.. This basically means you pick up Free Market in every game - and then you don't want pick up Knowledge because you lose that energy.
Unfortunately, you don't know that when you design SE models. You cannot possible know when the change will take place. How high ECONOMY you already have at the moment. So one has to go on average - weighting different possibilities. With some assumptions, of course. It is not exact science. I did this and concluded that ECONOMY is about 2-3 times as good as INDUSTRY, for example. Taking that former is exceptionally jumpy, as you correctly said. The most uneven effect of them all. Some steps on rating scale are just tiny, some are enormous. It is difficult to average. And we can have an argue endless. My calculated average may be rough approximation. However, it is a ballpark of it. So, maybe, it is slightly off but I doubt it is significantly beyond this range. I can vouch ECONOMY is better than INDUSTRY at every point in the game. The ration may vary, though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 02:35:51 pm
@tnevolin Movement is bugged in last patch with magtube changes Infantry can move more than 3 tiles.. movement points state 9/9 and it decreases by 2.
It could be. Highly experimental feature. Send me the save and description.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 02:39:49 pm
I still fundamentally disagree about Knowledge. I think it is quite weak in its current form.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 03:07:06 pm
Is there a way to disable techtrading? I have started to make a diagram showing the tech paths in the mod since I had a hard time making informed tech choices. Does anything like that still exist? I don't want to duplicate effort. The tech paths really make no sense anymore from a lore perspective. I understand that gameplay is more important but that is a bit of a bummer.
Don't know if you can disable it by game configuration but I can disable it in mod if needed.
Are you asking about mod tech tree? Of course, I have it. How otherwise I would code it back in the game? In fact it is all in alphax.txt - all prerequisites are written there.
You also can consult in game help. It shows you only part of the tree for a single technology but you can track it up and down for couple of levels. This usually sufficient enough for short term decisions.
Yes, it does not make sense from a lore perspective. However, why do you care? Vanilla tech tree does not make sense too. Yet nobody bothered. How do you explain Nanometallurgy being dependent on Probability Mechanics? What the hell is Probability Mechanics anyway?
As I said before, I welcome any help with tech tree. This is a huge work, though.
I still fundamentally disagree about Knowledge. I think it is quite weak in its current form.
I hope you don't disagree with me. Because I think the same.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 03:22:25 pm
Touché about the tech paths. I remember the original tech paths to be somewhat less implausible though. As an example, you reassigned the Engineer specialist to Conquer tech Superstring Theory which is perfectly reasonable from a flavour perspective but strengthens Conquer techs over economy techs. This is a great way to balance but, say, Environmental Economics being dependent on Silksteel Alloys is really, really odd.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 03:33:47 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 23, 2020, 03:51:31 pm
It's hard for me to compare my version of knowledge because Wealth is much more powerful, it had to be boosted even more.
Yea before redoing the whole tech tree I'd have a goal. Either lore based or gameplay. Mostly it made sense to me lore wise, though in a few spots it sort of didn't. The biggest flaw I had right now was that weapons overtake armor in the midgame. 13-3 units are rather common. Then there's kind of a weapons stagnation as armor goes up to 8. The silksteel-photon-probability armors probably need some side economic benefits. Mag tubes are nice but the AI is probably right Drop is better a lot of the time
A tree completely (or almost completely) split into the 4 priorities might be interesting too. I don't know if it would work.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 04:05:29 pm
On another note, armor should not be as strong as weapons of the same tech tree depths. You have better modifiers for defense. Having unkillable units can be extremely unfun.
Post by: Nexii on May 23, 2020, 04:20:54 pm
I think the starting point would be to come up with themes, techs that are similar to one another. The Centauri techs are probably the most obvious. Those had a progression that made sense to me. Although there were maybe some flaws.
Some themes might be
Terraforming
Weapons/Armor
Genetics/Pop Growth
Economics
Research
One thing to note is that about half the tree is military techs. So military could be subdivided. Movement, Weapons, Armor, and Abilities perhaps.
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 04:36:11 pm
My first impression was there's too many weapons/armors but i got used to it quickly. One doesn't have to build latest variant, especially not the armor. Equality means its hard to conquer anything - I played Miriam and overrun Deirdre with 10 bases with Particle, Missile and Chaos weapons - all early. I didn't play Yang, Santiago or usurper Aliens i presume they can go to war early. Other factions look to me to be better at builder style. Once you go builder style it seems to me its hard to conquer anything before Fusion laser (10) or Shard Weaponry (13). Worms are no solution also because its hard to amass them. This is ok in general - different playstyle and its fun to play in lategame or endgame.
About SE choices - i must admit i am surprised by your logic, i rated 30% science + 1 EFF highly and Free Market lower partly because it goes into negative planet. So one can't use fungus - power of all these vary with time tho. I'll go experiment a bit and revisit my choices. Maybe i am taking some wrong things for granted. Gonna also see if i can crunch some numbers in few of my saves and see how it turns out in real game.
ps. i reverted to v.54 but i'll see to reproduce that road movement bug
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 04:50:34 pm
+2 Eco is substantially superior to having high effiency and research. Now, +3 research is a lot and I can see Knowledge teching slightly faster then Wealth/Free Market (but then maybe not). However, with all the cash from Free Market your development is much stronger. Mid and long term Knowledge can't keep up. The negative Planet rating means that Spore Launchers and Fungus Towers are a pain as you can't attack them. But Fungus squares are not tiles I would use anyway. Maybe I'm wrong about the latter. I haven't played enough to know how strong Fungus can get.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 05:38:07 pm
Environmental Economics being dependent on Silksteel Alloys is really, really odd.
Let me repeat in hundredth time. There are so many different technology flavors that is impossible to make all prerequisites sensible. Besides it almost never sensible for one color to be dependent on other color. Yet you have to do it. Otherwise, your color threes will never cross pollinate each other.
🙁
Think about it. It is like 80 technologies and 150 prerequisite dependencies. Were all dependencies absolutely crystal clear for you in vanilla? Were you able to quickly memorize whole tree? I never was and it never bothered me. Were you able to memorize Civ 1/2 tech tree even if it was supposedly reflecting a real technological progress? Was everything sensible to you then? How the hell you can develop Medicine from Trade + Philosophy? 😲
How the hell Space Flight was possible without Plastics in Civ 1? Oh well.
There are few solutions to it.
For one we can just darn rename them all and repaint tech tree from scratch!
Second one could be a finer tuning. Probably trying to preserve vanilla prerequisites because somehow people think they make sense. Ugh. Whatever.
Third one is a mix. Fine tuning + renaming where you see fit to smoother some big discrepancies.
As it doesn't affect game play I don't pay attention to it much. You are welcome to team up with me on it. I hear a lot of critics on this specifically but nobody volunteered yet.
😉
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 05:54:28 pm
An example: level 1 Conquer techs Applied Physics and Industrial Base are prerequisites for level 3 techs Industrial Economics and Field Modulation, respectively. That would immedialy make much more sense if you swich them around.
Good suggestion. Let me try it.
Perfect. It worked. Meaning nothing else is broken. Will be in version 56.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 05:55:25 pm
What do you say about the weapon armor balance? Weapons should be a bit ahead of armor, not as much as in vanilla maybe.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 06:11:16 pm
That being said I think FM > Planned > Green in your set.
That could be. However, there is no use to compare them in absolute value. The question is: how often did you prefer FM to Planned? If the answer is 95% of the cases then Planned sure need some review. If it's like 50%, 30%, and 20% for them, correspondingly, then it is fine.
It's hard for me to compare my version of knowledge because Wealth is much more powerful, it had to be boosted even more.
Sorry. This eluded me. What do you mean?
The biggest flaw I had right now was that weapons overtake armor in the midgame. 13-3 units are rather common. Then there's kind of a weapons stagnation as armor goes up to 8. The silksteel-photon-probability armors probably need some side economic benefits. Mag tubes are nice but the AI is probably right Drop is better a lot of the time
I take you are talking about vanilla here? Because I think I worked on evening it out specifically.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 06:19:00 pm
I found the tech tree in it's current form jarring flavourwise. There is a progression of armor and weapons techs but otherwise prerequisites that make some intuitive sense are the exception. Most prerequisites appear completely random.
That is correct. Weapon and armor are linked explicitly. I've also linked alien/psi/native related techs whenever I could. Everything else is just random. Meaning I didn't bother. The problem being that adjusting feature timing requires moving tech up and down the tree. So that these arbitrary links keeps breaking. It would be a nightmare to support them. However, now, when most feature timings are more or less settled, we can try to add some lore in it.
On another note, armor should not be as strong as weapons of the same tech tree depths. You have better modifiers for defense. Having unkillable units can be extremely unfun.
These defense modifiers were calculated in assumption equal weapon and armor strength. When you ask to weaken armor you are asking for tilting balance in favor of attack. There was a huge discussion on a topic. Feel free to review it. You are welcome to renew it if you think you have some new arguments. I will be glad to listen. However, keep in mind that there were so many arguing and it is more or less settled for this mod now. So you need really strong and thought through new arguments to shake it.
😛
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 06:36:45 pm
I think the starting point would be to come up with themes, techs that are similar to one another. The Centauri techs are probably the most obvious. Those had a progression that made sense to me. Although there were maybe some flaws.
Some themes might be
Terraforming
Weapons/Armor
Genetics/Pop Growth
Economics
Research
One thing to note is that about half the tree is military techs. So military could be subdivided. Movement, Weapons, Armor, and Abilities perhaps.
Excellent suggestion. It is actually somehow done in vanilla by coloring them and linking similar techs. We can sure do the same maybe with refined approach. They also should be color subsets to not cross color boundaries. Something like that.
Red
Weapon and conventional attack favoring features
Armor and conventional defense favoring features
Chassis (some of them)
Yellow
Infrastructure and minerals
Drones
Blue
Research
(no need for finer granularity - there are not much of research features at all)
Green
Native warfare units and related features (including native related attack and defense abilities)
Terraforming
Growth
Exploration (foil chassis)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 06:44:27 pm
Yeah it feels like there's way too many conquer techs.. but i don't know if that affects anything. Maybe factions with conquer focus have it harder to get non-conquer techs.
Yes. There are 27 out of 85 (32%) of them in WtP.
No. it doesn't affect anything. The technology color is just the one value with the highest priority. Industrial Base
is 3222 so it becomes conquer. However, it is equally good for everything else too.
My first impression was there's too many weapons/armors but i got used to it quickly. One doesn't have to build latest variant, especially not the armor. Equality means its hard to conquer anything - I played Miriam and overrun Deirdre with 10 bases with Particle, Missile and Chaos weapons - all early. I didn't play Yang, Santiago or usurper Aliens i presume they can go to war early. Other factions look to me to be better at builder style. Once you go builder style it seems to me its hard to conquer anything before Fusion laser (10) or Shard Weaponry (13). Worms are no solution also because its hard to amass them. This is ok in general - different playstyle and its fun to play in lategame or endgame.
Agree. I have the same impression too. It doesn't matter whether you play vanilla or any other mod. 20 weapon/armor components is just too much for 350 turn game. You essentially need to discover, design, prototype, and then upgrade entire army every 15 turns. That is impossible unless you play to do just that. 😂
I always proposed to decrease number of weapons from 12 to 8 at least. Didn't do it, though, as I was scared people start complaining immediately. This time for lacking of their preferred weapon. 🙄
About SE choices - i must admit i am surprised by your logic, i rated 30% science + 1 EFF highly and Free Market lower partly because it goes into negative planet. So one can't use fungus - power of all these vary with time tho. I'll go experiment a bit and revisit my choices. Maybe i am taking some wrong things for granted. Gonna also see if i can crunch some numbers in few of my saves and see how it turns out in real game.
Please be patient with this. Effect are so variate and circumstantial that nobody can just point a finger and say what is better and by how much exactly.
Even if you feel like it there are still two problems with it. First, you may be just wrong. Happens to everybody including me. I had to review my SE effect values few times along the road. Second, how to you even prove your judgement to others? I mean not the kind of reasoning with random wording to defend your point of view but the one that other people will accept. I tried to build a hard mathematical base under that and even posted some article on the net but nobody cares.
It takes some intellectual discipline and patience for such dialog. 😕
For now I suggest we don't dive into it but just vote. Propose some change and if others support it - I'll just introduce it. It is not such a big deal anyway.
ps. i reverted to v.54 but i'll see to reproduce that road movement bug
Is there something else in 55 that breaks you game play besides it? Send me your 55 problem save in PM.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 06:59:58 pm
Having the the Conquer techs interleaved with builder techs would be fine for me. But they should make just a tad more sense. A fig leaf like Industrial Automation having Silksteel Alloys as a prerequisite would be OK already. Most of the current ones do not even make as much sense as that.
They had to. You cannot make both prerequisites from the same group. You need to cross pollinate. When we are talking about themes these are just single chain of similar techs. Each one of them takes some random prerequisite as well.
+2 Eco is substantially superior to having high effiency and research.
Friend, I understand you feel this way. Can you prove it? Not to yourself but to others? I am not saying your understanding is incorrect but without proof the dialog is impossible.
Just propose the change instead and we'll vote.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 07:12:32 pm
Having the the Conquer techs interleaved with builder techs would be fine for me. But they should make just a tad more sense. A fig leaf like Industrial Automation having Silksteel Alloys as a prerequisite would be OK already. Most of the current ones do not even make as much sense as that.
They had to. You cannot make both prerequisites from the same group. You need to cross pollinate. When we are talking about themes these are just single chain of similar techs. Each one of them takes some random prerequisite as well.
What do you mean by same group? Is this a requirement in the game or a rule you set for the mod? How important is the position of a tech in the tech tree (type of prerequisites, type of following techs) vs level of that tech for you?
+2 Eco is substantially superior to having high effiency and research.
Friend, I understand you feel this way. Can you prove it? Not to yourself but to others? I am not saying your understanding is incorrect but without proof the dialog is impossible.
Just propose the change instead and we'll vote.
I was just discussing SE effects with lolada. I didn't propose or intend to propose a change.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 07:33:29 pm
I already made a suggestion. I will think on it some more.
Do you refer to this?
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg125498#msg125498
Sorry, I didn't get what model you want to change and how.
Do you value the system where each technology has one prerequisite from the previous tier and one prerequisite from the tier before that?
Yes. That is exactly how my whole tree is built. Such consistency makes it easy to understand the tech placement in a tree. With 14 levels you get level 7 somewhere mid game. Or in other words if you researched most of the level 7 techs than you are past mid point. 😀
Vanilla is not like that. It is complete mess where higher level tech may be easier to reach than some lower one in some cases.
What do you say about the weapon armor balance? Weapons should be a bit ahead of armor, not as much as in vanilla maybe.
Why?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 07:40:46 pm
What do you mean by same group? Is this a requirement in the game or a rule you set for the mod? How important is the position of a tech in the tech tree (type of prerequisites, type of following techs) vs level of that tech for you?
Neither. Me personally I don't care. However, others propose linking similar technologies. I am just pointing out that even then you cannot both prerequisites to be from similar group otherwise this group will not connect to anything outside it. So with best efforts one still ends up with some meaningless prerequisites here and there. There is no escape of it.
I was just discussing SE effects with lolada. I didn't propose or intend to propose a change.
Oh. Sorry. Never mind then. Somehow I compelled to answer each and every post here. 🙄
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 07:46:29 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 07:47:00 pm
I already made a suggestion. I will think on it some more.
Do you refer to this?
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg125498#msg125498
Sorry, I didn't get what model you want to change and how.
No, I meant the Applied Physics + Industrial Base switch.
What do you say about the weapon armor balance? Weapons should be a bit ahead of armor, not as much as in vanilla maybe.
Why?
Disregard this for the moment. I don't really have enough experience to say for sure. (Purely from calculation there seems to be no reasonable way to get a entreched defender out of a fungus field near your base or out of a base with perimeter defense. As I understand it, the combat power of units weakens when they get damaged. But I'd guess a defender behind a perimeter defense can easily kill several attackers in a row which means that combat becomes a fairly static affair.)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 08:43:40 pm
No, I meant the Applied Physics + Industrial Base switch.
Ah. This is in 56 already.
No, I meant the Applied Physics + Industrial Base switch.What do you say about the weapon armor balance? Weapons should be a bit ahead of armor, not as much as in vanilla maybe.
Why?
Disregard this for the moment. I don't really have enough experience to say for sure. (Purely from calculation there seems to be no reasonable way to get a entreched defender out of a fungus field near your base or out of a base with perimeter defense. As I understand it, the combat power of units weakens when they get damaged. But I'd guess a defender behind a perimeter defense can easily kill several attackers in a row which means that combat becomes a fairly static affair.)
From which calculation? I'd like to know it too! 😀
How the defender is entrenched if there are no bunkers anymore? Is it just staying on fungus? If so then it is about 2.25 times stronger than attacker with equal weapon strength. So? It'll take one artillery and one attacker. No casualties.
In base with PD it is about 3 times stronger than equal equipped attackers. This is little bit more challenging. One artillery to wear it down to 1.5 and then two attackers, one dies. So 1:1 losses. Not bad for defended base attack.
Or course, smart opponent won't let you just bombard the city and approach it without counterattacks. So attacker would probably lose 2-3 times more units capturing the base. This is the prize price. Do you find it too high?
From my experience when it is lower than 2 conquest becomes a single most lucrative enterprise which bored me in vanilla. Therefore, this mod. In WtP it is not the single successful strategy.
Yes, it means there are some stalemate zone when neither side is powerful enough to crush neighbor. And? Why is this so exceptionally bad? Do you prefer ever advancing front line? Vanilla had it and game effectively ended in 100-150 turns, every time. Unless human player hold it off on purpose. That is kind of waste of undiscovered techs in my opinion. I like to try them and use them and feel how they change game play, you know. Therefore, this mod.
I can assure you. Three times overpowering happens very often from game start and more and more as it develops. Think about that. The mere alliance of three factions against one in mid game and faction starts loosing bases. You don't even need that. Any fluctuation in unit concentration, recent conflict somewhere and faction cannot transport them to the new front line quickly enough and suffers consequences. Happens every time.
From the feeling of it. In vanilla someone always captures bases in conflict. In WtP it happens like 50% of the time which is pretty acceptable. There are no trench wars as other tries to picture it. Play on scenario editor and observe AI.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 08:52:04 pm
Here movement bug in v.55. - you can move that infantry 9 tiles in gaia start thanks to river.
Fixed in 56. Forgot about rivers. 🙄
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2020, 08:55:51 pm
Let me repeat in hundredth time. There are so many different technology flavors that is impossible to make all prerequisites sensible.
I think I managed it in my latest mod version 1.43 tech shuffle. I definitely had some trouble in the vicinity of Self-Aware Machines, but I eventually found a solution. There are basically 2 kinds of continuity: research continuity and narrative continuity. I prefer research continuity, the respecting of Explore Discover Build Conquer categories. I don't like it when I've come up with only a narrative continuity, and the research categories don't basically make any sense one after the other.
Quote
Besides it almost never sensible for one color to be dependent on other color.
This is false. Techs can be legitimately cross-listed in multiple categories. This requires a clear and consistent criteria for what different color categories represent. For instance in my mod, Explore green color represents happiness, growth, exploration, and indigenous life techs. This is quite overloaded, but it's not my fault. It's what the original game implemented. The only controversial change is putting happiness in with Explore. I think it's an obvious consequence of growth, you can't grow if you don't have people happy. I decided that Build is going to be about minerals and energy, wealth only. You can be happy and poor. You can be rich and miserable.
Over time, I decided that strict separation between Explore and Build is not generally valid. For instance if you have more workers, you're always going to make more money or minerals. Yet I don't want every research category to mean or imply every other research category. So I adopted a "half as much influence" doctrine. For instance my Social Psych gives the Recreation Commons. I assign it growth=4 because it's making people happy. I assign it wealth=2 because having more happy workers does make one more money or minerals. And because I want happiness facilities to be primarily in Explore, not Build.
Quote
Yet you have to do it.
Generally speaking that's not true. However, I do make abrupt "cliff" transitions when I actually don't want it to be easy to get from one tech to the next. It is possible to delay and semi-hide techs from being researched that way. I used to treat fusion reactors and genetic warfare that way. Lately, I'm not sure what's happening. I've had to change the categorical continuities around for other reasons.
Quote
Were you able to quickly memorize whole tree?
Some orderings and transitions make it easier or harder to remember than others.
Quote
I never was and it never bothered me.
That doesn't speak to the point of whether or not it bothers others. Being aware of one's own biases, is important when designing. It's not essential that you take other people's point of view into account, but failure to do so, can affect adoption rates.
For instance, the author of Dwarf Fortress is known to be autistic. He likes the ASCII text, labyrinthine menus, and extensive keyboard chord sequences to do things just fine. Although the game has had design influence, and has some notoriety, and even a sustainable business model, it's clearly not as popular as it could have been. This is because of the author's blind spots about what doesn't bother him, vs. what does actually bother a lot of other people. And apparently, RimWorld (https://rimworldgame.com/) has subsequently become the better title? I haven't really played either TBH.
"There's no issue" is a very different argument from "there's an issue, but I don't want to work on that, because I think it's too expensive for me to do."
Quote
Were you able to memorize Civ 1/2 tech tree even if it was supposedly reflecting a real technological progress?
Yes. But it took time, perhaps measured over a timespan of like 3 months of seriously incessant full time play. I had just quit my job...
Quote
Was everything sensible to you then?
Pretty much. The tree was grounded in when historical inventions actually appeared, more or less.
Quote
How the hell you can develop Medicine from Trade + Philosophy? 😲
This was one of the weak spots, as it didn't respect any kind of indigenous practices of "medicine". Everyone's had some kind of medicine, and some of it worked better for some things than Western medicine.
Quote
How the hell Space Flight was possible without Plastics in Civ 1? Oh well.
Not sure I understand why you think plastics are essential to space flight. But this is going sideways into a discussion of our knowledge of real tech history. SMAC of course isn't real tech history.
Quote
For one we can just darn rename them all and repaint tech tree from scratch!
I rarely do this to techs, but I have done this in a few instances.
For instance, I changed "Frictionless Surfaces" to "Single-Sided Surfaces" at one point, because I was trying to figure out a valid fiction for a Clean Reactor. I was moving things around in the tech tree and trying to repurpose the techs, without violating the quotes and voice acting that were inherently stuck with the tech. I decided that these lines were vague enough that they could be about something other than friction, this idea of "hiding a surface from itself". That a Clean Reactor could be some kind of conceptual Mobius Strip. It held up reasonably well at the time.
Well, my tech tree changed over time. :D The Clean Reactor went elsewhere. I decided the Single-Sided Surface was going to be my hand wavy explanation for how the 3-Pulse armor works. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but hey, it's tech! The real reason I kept it, is because I'd put my "personal stamp of style" into the game. I didn't feel like taking it out. It's one of the ways you can tell I modded this.
I have Phasers instead of Fusion Lasers. Having Fusion as a name for both a weapon and a reactor is damn confusing for automatic unit names, so I abolished it. It is obviously a nod to Star Trek.
I have Chronoton Guns instead of Quantum Lasers. Again, having a weapon and a reactor sharing a name is confusing. This is a nod to a Star Trek Voyager episode about "temporal incursions". The weapon is given by Temporal Mechanics. The next tech gives Graviton Guns, so there's a phonetic continuity.
Most recently, I have renamed "Orbital Spaceflight" to "Orbital Construction". Also "Advanced Spaceflight" is now "Orbital Supremacy". They're also both much later in the tech tree. This is to better explain what a Sky Hydroponics Lab is about. It's required to be the 1st available satellite if you want the satellite UI to work properly. Planet Busters and the missile chassis are not required to have that UI work, so AFAIAC now, those missiles no longer have anything to do with space flight. We can launch terrestrial missiles just fine without going into space. Such things are generally called cruise missiles. Indeed, they got called that in later Civ games. Orbital Supremacy gets my Orbital Defense Pods and Geosynchronous Survey Pods. The choice of name is a nod to the old board game [Supremacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_(board_game)). It is also something that militaries actually try to achieve, i.e. Air Parity, Air Superiority, Air Supremacy.
The challenge in all of this, is to try to utilize and respect the quotes, narratives, and world building that are already in place.
Sometimes I've welded a tech and a Secret Project together, because the right character was talking about stuff. For instance, Chairman Yang yabbering on and on about how to overcome yin yang dualism. He does it for Monopole Magnets. I decided that's a good place to weld the Ascetic Virtues. It's not a perfect tech relationship, but it's a good narrative relationship. I happened to want those things to come at about the same time, in the beginning of the midgame at my Tier 3. They were floating around each other, and they helped me solve some narrative and tech fitting problems at the time. I don't plan to take them apart again.
Quote
As it doesn't affect game play I don't pay attention to it much. You are welcome to team up with me on it. I hear a lot of critics on this specifically but nobody volunteered yet.
😉
Well as you know, I'm not teaming up with anyone to solve such problems. I do my own mod to toot my own horn as a game designer. Being deft at such rearrangements, respecting the previous quality of SMAC as a narrative work, is part of what I do well as a designer. I have my own specific tech tree results. I merely suggest looking at what I did in my tree, when contemplating such problems. Because frankly, I've done a better job of it, by far, than anyone else's work that I'm aware of. If someone did some bangup job of this sort of thing back in the stone ages of SMAC modding, well their work hasn't survived in anyone's mind in the present day. I suspect that I'm the only person who has put 2+ years into these kinds of "narrative and technical and balance" rearrangements.
Direct lifting of my tech tree, requires attribution per my CC-BY-NC license. Inspiration of course requires nothing. I hope to at least inspire.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:06:04 pm
Doctor, +2 Psych
Empath, +1 Economy, +2 Psych
Transcend, +1 Economy, +2 Psych, +1 Labs
Technician, +3 Economy
Engineer, +3 Economy, +1 Labs
Librarian, +3 Labs
Thinker, +1 Psych, +3 Labs
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:09:07 pm
Let me repeat in hundredth time. There are so many different technology flavors that is impossible to make all prerequisites sensible.
I think I managed it in my latest mod version 1.43 tech shuffle.
Is it published?
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 09:15:22 pm
Regarding artillery. Did you change that too? Artillery damage on an equal tech level on a unit in Fungus should be 0.
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 09:28:24 pm
Quote
How the defender is entrenched if there are no bunkers anymore? Is it just staying on fungus? If so then it is about 2.25 times stronger than attacker with equal weapon strength. So? It'll take one artillery and one attacker. No casualties.
In base with PD it is about 3 times stronger than equal equipped attackers. This is little bit more challenging. One artillery to wear it down to 1.5 and then two attackers, one dies. So 1:1 losses. Not bad for defended base attack.
Tim is right here - i just broke Drones Neutron (10) defenses - behind Perimeter Defense - with mostly 13-1-1 / I have also some 16-1-1 attackers (protected by some armored units). I bombarded them 2-3 turns and just smacked infantry in - out of 4 attackers only 2 died.. sometimes 3-4 die, but its still about equal and you get the base. Without bombardments its tougher. First few bases can be tough to take, but it eventually snowballs. I'll post save in attachment if anyone is interested to take a look - terraforming is interesting too. Its M.Y. 2367 so you can have fun with lategame wars - i recently became Planetary Governor and passed double trade agreement - its money galore now.
I don't think even Tree/Hybrid forest need cost reduced.. unless they get nerfed in effect - they are just awesome with +2 Eco. At this stage minerals are just to juicy i am using more and more forests. Tempting to forest everything again...
I even used Power + Thought Control during the war turned all units to very high morale level. Morgan don't really have too much problems with -2 Industry. One can prebuild lots of units and then switch to power for high morale...
Quote
Regarding artillery. Did you change that too? Artillery damage on an equal tech level on a unit in Fungus should be 0.Yes its changed - artillery has a chance to deal damage even when weaker - its in readme file. I suggest highly to keep artillery at max weapon it really helps. 2-3 units are enough usually - 2-3 turns of bombardment and then attack.
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2020, 09:30:57 pm
Let me repeat in hundredth time. There are so many different technology flavors that is impossible to make all prerequisites sensible.
I think I managed it in my latest mod version 1.43 tech shuffle.
Is it published?
No, but I think it is feature complete and I am beta testing it. If you want early access, I can make it so. I will publish before the end of the month anyways, unless I run into an unexpected disaster. Like separating Planet Busters from spaceflight somehow being deeply bugged. I don't think there's a reason to expect that, but it's the sort of thing that does require a playtest before final release. I suppose I could run an AI vs. AI game to speed up my confidence in that.
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 09:36:51 pm
Quote
Doctor, +2 Psych
Empath, +1 Economy, +2 Psych
Transcend, +1 Economy, +2 Psych, +1 Labs
Technician, +3 Economy
Engineer, +3 Economy, +1 Labs
Librarian, +3 Labs
Thinker, +1 Psych, +3 Labs
I'd like to see Transcend being strongest. Its lore thing, so most point to transcends, 4 total. Or at least 1 more then other best specialist.
Empath and Transcend are like advanced beings ^^. Their benefits are spread out so one might still prefer Engineer or Thinker.. bur if you doubt it i would move Transcend anyway to late game - later then now.
Empath, +1 Economy, +2 Psych =
Transcend, +1 Economy, +2 Psych, +1 Labs
Technician, +2 Economy
Engineer, +2 Economy, +1 Labs
Librarian, +2 Labs
Thinker, +1 Psych, +2 Labs
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:40:25 pm
Regarding artillery. Did you change that too? Artillery damage on an equal tech level on a unit in Fungus should be 0.
Yes. Artillery now does a attack/defense proportional damage. Even if this ratio is less than 1 there is a proportional probability for 1 damage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:46:18 pm
QuoteHow the defender is entrenched if there are no bunkers anymore? Is it just staying on fungus? If so then it is about 2.25 times stronger than attacker with equal weapon strength. So? It'll take one artillery and one attacker. No casualties.
In base with PD it is about 3 times stronger than equal equipped attackers. This is little bit more challenging. One artillery to wear it down to 1.5 and then two attackers, one dies. So 1:1 losses. Not bad for defended base attack.
Tim is right here - i just broke Drones Neutron (10) defenses - behind Perimeter Defense - with mostly 13-1-1 / I have also some 16-1-1 attackers (protected by some armored units). I bombarded them 2-3 turns and just smacked infantry in - out of 4 attackers only 2 died.. sometimes 3-4 die, but its still about equal and you get the base. Without bombardments its tougher. First few bases can be tough to take, but it eventually snowballs. I'll post save in attachment if anyone is interested to take a look - terraforming is interesting too. Its M.Y. 2367 so you can have fun with lategame wars - i recently became Planetary Governor and passed double trade agreement - its money galore now.
Nice report, lolada!
😎
That is what I noticed too. It is not that expensive to penetrate the defense with prepared attack. However, I don't want to increase defense even more. People will not like it. I better work on AI.
Yes. Whatever we do it'll snowball sooner or later as you kill all front line defenders. In WtP it just happens later and requires some technological and economical preparations.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:47:53 pm
Let me repeat in hundredth time. There are so many different technology flavors that is impossible to make all prerequisites sensible.
I think I managed it in my latest mod version 1.43 tech shuffle.
Is it published?
No, but I think it is feature complete and I am beta testing it. If you want early access, I can make it so. I will publish before the end of the month anyways, unless I run into an unexpected disaster. Like separating Planet Busters from spaceflight somehow being deeply bugged. I don't think there's a reason to expect that, but it's the sort of thing that does require a playtest before final release. I suppose I could run an AI vs. AI game to speed up my confidence in that.
I just want to look at your fixed tech tree if you have it completed already.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 09:59:43 pm
Empath, +1 Economy, +2 Psych =
Transcend, +1 Economy, +2 Psych, +1 Labs
Technician, +2 Economy
Engineer, +2 Economy, +1 Labs
Librarian, +2 Labs
Thinker, +1 Psych, +2 Labs
Doesn't it make Engineer and Thinker too weak? Their revenue is nothing comparing to working a tile. Nobody would like to use them.
Empath is currently at L6 which is fine.
I can move Transcend to L11-12
Engineer is L5.
Librarian is L4.
Thinker is L7.
Post by: lolada on May 23, 2020, 10:23:15 pm
Quote
Doesn't it make Engineer and Thinker too weak? Their revenue is nothing comparing to working a tile. Nobody would like to use them.
Hm whats the goal? I don't consider using specialists in general unless the base is working really weak tiles like 1-1-0 or 2-0-0 then i choose one thats good. If we want them to be used instead of tiles then we should determine some yield and balance around that.
I am fine with your numbers as well if you think mine were too weak. I presumed you wanted to nerf Transcens (they are op). Just then place Transcends at Tech11 thats enough to have them used to some effect - but keep them as superhuman ;cha;.
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2020, 10:40:52 pm
Part of the reason is that High Energy Chemistry -> Synthetic Fossil Fuels -> Air Power is intuitively understandable.
I have noticed that many techs do seem related, or at least can be seen as related. Which one should precede the other though, varies! In my work, it has varied with what I needed to get done in the tree. So for instance, I have C5 Doctrine: Air Power --> C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. I have the latter giving the Missile Launcher. That's a strength 6 weapon, and my weapons and armors are pretty strictly slaved to their tech tier.
I can't always maintain strict relationships and sometimes I have to hand wave. For instance C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels + C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics --> C7 Probability Mechanics. I can't tell you why synthetic fossil fuels or missile launchers would have a damn thing to do with this, only that it does. :D
There's really no helping it. I demand a strict weapon and armor progression in my mod, to control offense and defense and why you'd bother to invest in anything. But the original game skipped all over the place with the tech basis of subsequent weapons, as far as their power rating goes. Moreover, the numerical strengths of the weapons are slaved to the artwork for the weapons. Thankfully the same is not true for armor, but for weapons, you're hosed. If it's strength 6 or 7, it's drawn like a Missile Launcher.
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2020, 10:43:49 pm
I just want to look at your fixed tech tree if you have it completed already.
That's easiest to do by installing a clean copy of the game, then installing my mod on the clean copy. Then you can hit Datalinks in the game, and see how things actually appear to the player.
I mean, if you're some of brainiac that can instantly remember all the dependencies just by reading the text... most people including myself are not.
I'm about to eat dinner. I'll zip it up when I'm done.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 11:09:33 pm
QuoteDoesn't it make Engineer and Thinker too weak? Their revenue is nothing comparing to working a tile. Nobody would like to use them.
Hm whats the goal? I don't consider using specialists in general unless the base is working really weak tiles like 1-1-0 or 2-0-0 then i choose one thats good. If we want them to be used instead of tiles then we should determine some yield and balance around that.
I am fine with your numbers as well if you think mine were too weak. I presumed you wanted to nerf Transcens (they are op). Just then place Transcends at Tech11 thats enough to have them used to some effect - but keep them as superhuman ;cha;.
The goal is to make them less OP conservatively with as less as possible people being insulted by that change. 🤣
I don't use them too but others do. As well as AI who may not be aware of our change and continue turn them to specialists hurting itself.
I'll be more conservative with them then but move them to later. Less people will notice that. Anyway, I don't see much harm in giving them 4-5 eco/lab/psi past mid game. Any decent terraformed square is better than that.
Empath, +2 Economy, +2 Psych (L6) - seems fine
Transcend, +2 Economy, +2 Psych, +2 Labs (L9) - will be moved to L12. This is almost end of the game.
Technician, +3 Economy
Engineer, +3 Economy, +2 Labs (L5) - probably makes sense to move it to L9 somewhere
Librarian, +3 Labs (L4) - fine
Thinker, +1 Psych, +4 Labs (L7) - kinda fine too but may move it a little bit later too.
Slight improvement for Thinker as it feels kinda weak comparing to Engineer.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 23, 2020, 11:28:03 pm
Attached is the WTP tech tree.
Observations:
- I like a lot of the early tech progression from a gameplay perspective.
- Tech progression is consistently illogical from a flavour perspective, the late game in particular is a hot mess. ;)
- The alien technologies serve no purpose, make techprogression illogical (ie. Field Modulation grants Aqua Farms for some reason, it also makes no sense as an early tech) and worsen the problem that advances are spread out a bit too thin. (That's an issue with Smax not the mod.)
- A lot of overpowered advances seem to have been nerfed out of existence by placing them two seconds before Transcendence.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 11:51:04 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-57
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2020, 11:54:10 pm
Specialists are a fine choice for factions that have problems with Energy/Research from tiles (like Yang). They need to be decently strong to remain an option.
That's why I didn't dance on them too much. Just moved to later in 57. I guess this is a lesser evil.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 12:03:41 am
Attached is the WTP tech tree.
Observations:
- I like a lot of the early tech progression from a gameplay perspective.
- Tech progression is consistently illogical from a flavour perspective, the late game in particular is a hot mess. ;)
- The alien technologies serve no purpose, make techprogression illogical (ie. Field Modulation grants Aqua Farms for some reason, it also makes no sense as an early tech) and worsen the problem that advances are spread out a bit too thin. (That's an issue with Smax not the mod.)
OMG. How did you generate it? Nice work. Thank you. I probably may include it with the distribution. However, it is ever changing target. Would be difficult to support.
Yes, if you look at tech names and not features they uncover then it is completely illogical. Building completely concise and perfectly linked list of technologies is a hard work by itself even without regard to their features.
Vanilla is not better. It is just nobody criticized it taking it for granted as holy scripture that cannot be wrong.
How Progenitor Psych granting Aquafarm is at all different in making sense? I just moved it from one alien tech to another. These water facilities seem to be tied to alien tech in SMAX for some reason.
- A lot of overpowered advances seem to have been nerfed out of existence by placing them two seconds before Transcendence.
Yeah. That is how it was planned. Actually big part of it is user requests which makes sense.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 24, 2020, 12:43:33 am
I wonder if some of the overpowered mechanics can be salvaged.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 02:22:26 am
Yeah, that was my point. I'm not criticizing the mod here. Aqua Farms should be granted by some Former or Centauri tech. The were put with Progenitor Psych because Progenitor Psych needed something not because it made any sense. Progenitor Psych is a completely superfluous doubling of Social Psych and the game would be better without it. Almost all of the alien technologies are like that.
Somebody may make an excellent argument that all these water facilities came in SMAX. Ergo they were brought by aliens. Therefore, sitting in alien tech makes perfect sense. See. One can absolutely build irrefutable chain of conclusions and explain anything! 😜
I wonder if some of the overpowered mechanics can be salvaged.
Huh?
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 02:40:05 am
Attached is the WTP tech tree.
I guess you have an automated way of generating that. Does the tool have a public repository?
Do you have a way of making it fit more readably on a conceptual sheet of paper? When I look at it in a web browser, I have to jack it to 200% to make it legible. That by itself is not so troublesome, but I also have to scroll to see the whole thing. I believe I would be scrolling less if it was more fitted to the dimensions of a monitor screen.
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(ie. Field Modulation grants Aqua Farms for some reason, it also makes no sense as an early tech)
Aquafarm originally came with Progenitor Psych. Also an alien tech, and also doesn't make any sense. The reason it doesn't make any sense and the "Aliens brought it" argument is bogus, is there's nothing exotic sounding about an Aquafarm at all. Sounds like something we do on Earth. Furthermore Svensgaard gets the completion lines about it, not the Aliens. There's no Alien lore to go with its inclusion in an Alien tech. It's pretty much just lame expansion pack stuff, obviously there because they wanted to shove it in somehow, and didn't want to disrupt existing techs.
Also turned out to be overpowered and not something one should just give away as a Tier 1 tech. I recently moved it to Tier 5, same as Soil Enrichers. Only recently have I started to learn how to exploit an Aquafarm, because I wasn't getting my Tree Farms in the timeframe I was used to. I got so much food, that I started questioning why anyone would build Tree Farms, at least in a coastal city. I re-homed Aquafarm to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering, where I also give Soil Enricher, Hybrid Forest, and Super Formers.
Field Modulation has given 3-Res armor, but I think WTP doesn't give that armor at all, and I don't give it to the Aliens gratis for free at the start of the game. I nerfed them. They still have to get Field Modulation and Progenitor Psych to be aliens, that can't be avoided, short of not giving the techs at all. I've decided to give them the Cloaking Field (slightly renamed) and Hypnotic Trance, respectively. Cloaks are useless in practice. The AI just ignores them. They can allow one to avoid zones of control and that's not a completely useless ability, but it's not particularly worth paying extra for in most cases. Hypnotic Trance, well it's just my flavor that the Aliens figured this out, not the humans. I think both choices are lore fits.
I have Field Modulation as a Conquer 2 tech. I have Progenitor Psych as Explore 3. I'm making it a bit more difficult to get Trance in my mod, if you're not an Alien. This is to increase the early challenge value of dealing with mindworms. Trance is not a free ability in my mod, it costs 1, so even Aliens don't typically build Trance units at the beginning of the game.
Making PrPsych a Tier 3 tech, has the interesting play mechanical consequence that Aliens decide to talk to you, and not vice versa. Unless of course you're playing an Alien, in which case you decide how long you want to delay Rec Commons to avoid talking to the pesky humans.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 03:49:46 am
I have now posted a .zip of my mod 1.43 beta (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=20959.msg125539#msg125539) for those interested in my tech tree, or other aspects of my mod.
Thank you, man. Just reviewed it.
I don't want to offend you with criticism. However, since you claimed to polished your tech tree and tied all the ends with lore, I'll allow myself few cautious notes.
First of all, do you have your lore explained somewhere or you just feel it is right? If latter, then I would refrain from arguing about it as, obviously, everybody has their own feeling what is right. Especially, in the field of futuristic science fiction where everything is theoretically possible.
One example of that could be the very second tech in your list.
Industrial Base, Indust, 0, 0, 4, 3, Ecology, DocFlex, 000000000
I cannot yet absorb how anything industrial may stem from ecology. That is by definition a force opposing any industrialization. Flexibility, in its turn, is a military doctrine. There is kinda far leap from military operations to industrialization. I mean, anybody can build a conclusion chain between them saying something like: "ecology forced industry to be clean and thus improving on quality" or "military operations require advance in industry". Which may sound well for some and not well for some others.
Let me reiterate that I don't tell that your tree design is bad or good. I just illustrate how any design can be seen from either side. There is no definitive say whether some connection is good or bad.
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 04:03:51 am
The progression from say Centauri Ecology > Centauri Empathy > Centauri Meditation > Centauri Genetics > Centauri PSI > Secrets of Alpha Centauri is kind of obvious. But the secondary techs that each one should require is less obvious. There probably does need to be interweaving between the 'tech groups', for balance reasons and lore. Though maybe not as much as in the stock tech trees. I'd have to think about it.
I could see weapons and armor interweaving
research a bit with everything
native life, genetics, & nutrient terraforming
economics, industry, & mineral/energy terraforming
SE techs are harder to place. They probably should be scattered according to their benefits
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 04:22:27 am
First of all, do you have your lore explained somewhere or you just feel it is right? If latter, then I would refrain from arguing about it as, obviously, everybody has their own feeling what is right.
Well obviously I'm right and you're not. ;lol More seriously, I will argue such things, and have a firm basis for everything.
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I cannot yet absorb how anything industrial may stem from ecology.
I have assumed that my mod will be played by people who have already played SMAC. This might not be strictly true, there might be a few people who skip straight to my mod without bothering with SMAC much. I generally advise people to play SMAC first, to understand the original. Among other things, that's the only way they're going to know that I actually improved anything. Now a very experienced 4X TBS player, however, might want to just get on with "a better challenge and play experience" more quickly. So I've advised them to start with SMAC, but move on quickly. They might move on before they've mastered the tech tree, and that is the only corner case where I can see your point of view having any merit at all.
This is SMAC. Players know what Centauri Ecology is and that it gives Formers. Moreover, I made it a Yellow Build tech. It's obvious as rocks that Industrial Base is the next Yellow Build tech. You really should refrain from reading only text files, and instead crank up the game in a new installation like I suggested. So you are experiencing what a player sees. Not what you personally have come to internalize as a game designer and modder. You've got biases and blind spots.
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That is by definition a force opposing any industrialization.
Complain to Brian Reynolds. He gaveth usth teh Former, which ravageth The Land.
:adore:
:doh
Look seriously, it's not my agenda to completely redesign the experience of SMAC. Far from it. I preserve the experience where I can. You're supposed to know what a Former does already. It's not an organic permaculture tool. I'm not going to rename Centauri Ecology, there's no valid reason to do that. And who says I'm going to study its ecology to harmonize and sing kumbaya with it? I might want to rape the minerals out of it and strip the land. In fact, that's exactly what I had in mind, so I changed it to Yellow Build.
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Flexibility, in its turn, is a military doctrine.
It's actually a Green Explore tech in the original game. I've had it as a Red Conquer tech a lot of the time in my mod. Eventually I needed a Tier 1 Explore tech, so I changed it back. It is cross-listed as Conquer, moreso than the original game actually.
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There is kinda far leap from military operations to industrialization.
We've already established that you're wrong about DocFlex and you need to drop your personal preconception of it. It is Explore first, Conquer second. Always has been, except when modders did something to it. And we were wrong. ;lol
When / if you take tech tree transition design seriously, you are going to find that you have to satisfy a lot of constraints and you can't always meet them. You will run out of techs, for places you might like to have them in the tree. I'm currently working in a system with 6 Tier 1 techs. This has structural consequences. I've had more at Tier 1, and I've had less. The lowest was 5, and that was pretty cramped and dodgy.
Ha ha, the crossed out bit above, it seems I did change that. I just did it so long ago, that I forgot. In stock it comes with D1 Biogenetics. Not wrong in terms of narrative, sure you might come up with better ways to recycle that way. But it's wrong in terms of research focus. A Recyling Tank doesn't give you more research or LABS effectiveness. It does give you more food, minerals, and money, that's why I have it as a Build tech.
My D1 Biogenetics gives a Biology Lab. Which does give you more LABS effectiveness. See, I fixed what they did wrong.
Second strike-through. For got my B2 Industrial Base gives Capitalist economic model. How could I forget that?? ;morganercise
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There is no definitive say whether some connection is good or bad.
What the original game did, adds some weight to the decisionmaking. Except of course where they completely screwed it up.
Also, I differ from the original game on 2 basic policies. We've already covered where Happiness goes, I've made a different choice that I think is logical. The other is where do weapons and armors go. Unlike the original game, I do not sprinkle or toss any faction a bone. You want weapons or armor? You study Conquer. Period. The End.
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 04:32:25 am
So with that approach Centauri Ecology felt "explore" to me knowing nothing else about what it does. However you're right, formers aren't "explore" in their function. They're definitely build foremost. So perhaps Centauri Ecology shouldn't be the tech to get formers. Maybe then it should be the most simple sounding "build" tech. Which would be Industrial Base. So something as simple as the very first techs can be debated
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 04:52:51 am
So either some non-conquer techs need to give military benefits OR we accept conquer having the most techs.
I took the latter as "the high road" of game design. The biggest one that bugged me in the original game, was E6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. WTF is Deidre getting a Missile Launcher for? What did she ever do to earn such a thing? Nothing. In terms of lore or rational progress it's a joke, a travesty. And Deirdre doesn't even get the lines for the quote. Morgan does! So I was like, this is totally stupid, and this has gotta go. No "sprinkling" weapons and armors, just because we feel sorry for somebody.
My choice has had long term consequences. You might argue that my regime in 1.43, is the final resolution and logical conclusion to the problem. Now every faction has a unique combo of 1, 2, or 3 research foci. This is because a pure Conquer focus doesn't basically work, in my mod. I think the Spartans can pull it off sometimes, if they have good enough land to start with. And the Usurpers did ok with it, probably because of Directed Research. But nobody else has done well with it. So now there's a new Sheriff in town, and its name is Combo Research.
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So with that approach Centauri Ecology felt "explore" to me knowing nothing else about what it does. However you're right, formers aren't "explore" in their function. They're definitely build foremost. So perhaps Centauri Ecology shouldn't be the tech to get formers.
Yes making it all "Deirdre Green" was off in the original. But the name has recognizability for veteran players. There also aren't enough techs to just get new techs for everything, when you pursue all "warts" to their logical conclusions. You have to assign things, and as a default, it's better to stick to things players are a bit familiar with. My compromise was to change it from Explore to Build, based on function, not name. And that has been my consistent policy. I can only satisfy so many constraints at once.
I don't think I'd write a brand new game like this. It takes a lot of upheaval to move things around in the tech tree.
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Maybe then it should be the most simple sounding "build" tech. Which would be Industrial Base.
I've done that before. It's gone back and forth between Build 1 and Build 2. I've also left Centauri Ecology at Tier 1. The difficulty you run into, is needing to have prereqs for Tier 2 techs, and then Tier 3, etc. It's a lot of Tetris-like puzzle fitting. The result at Tier 1 may not be so much what's "ideally best" for techs at Tier 1, but because there are constraints being "felt" all the way up in Tier 3. You only have so many techs to work with. And they've all got hardwired quotes and voice acting, that you might ideally like to respect as well.
One of my constraints is I don't allow any SPs until Tier 3. So I have B3 Industrial Economics, giving the Energy Bank and the Merchant Exchange. I gotta have Build techs that lead in tiers up to that. This is pretty much why my Industrial Base is Tier 2.
I will think about whether you have proposed enough logic, that I could actually free up and repurpose Centauri Ecology for something else. Whether that would be beneficial. Freeing up a tech this "late" in my tech tree maturity, is always an interesting discovery. Logic pushes it to be "higher up the Explore tree" though, and I'm not sure I really need any techs there. Plus it still has to be fairly early, in terms of name transitions. Ecology before Empathy, certainly.
Hmm, playing "mental Tetris" in my own mod, I'm not seeing a basis for improvement that way. I have my B2 Industrial Base giving Capitalist, and that's a good government fit. I give out Politics and Economics on Tier 2. If Industrial Base went to Tier 1, Industrial Economics would have to slide down to Tier 2 and give Capitalist. I'd now need a B3 tech that gives the Merchant Exchange, and I don't have one. In the original game, Adaptive Economics might have filled that hole, but it's in use for my Socialist. That's the best narrative fit there is, the Aliens are clearly talking about Socialism. I have important Build stuff on Tier 4 and they're not moving anywhere.
So although I could comment on tech transition desires in WTP, I can't actually make use of such a suggestion myself. I have some constraints.
Ok this has caused me to stare at my early tech tree pretty hard. I'm not really happy with my E3 Cyberethics. Functionally it's fine, but as a tech name, it's a wart. More Tetris...
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 05:18:15 am
Also, I liked to pair every free facility SP with its facility. The ones that didn't felt odd to me. It was the feeling of your new tech being negated by the possibility of a future SP that you couldn't even start yet. Which didn't even make sense, if you can build it individually in each base, why is more tech required to build a superproject for all bases? The only place this strictly can't be done is Virtual World. But as long as VW's tech allows holo theatres, and NN comes before, I have less issue with it
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 05:31:00 am
So with that approach Centauri Ecology felt "explore" to me knowing nothing else about what it does. However you're right, formers aren't "explore" in their function. They're definitely build foremost. So perhaps Centauri Ecology shouldn't be the tech to get formers. Maybe then it should be the most simple sounding "build" tech. Which would be Industrial Base. So something as simple as the very first techs can be debated
A lot of it can be fixed with renaming. Say if we want the tech to unlock formers and we perceive terraforming as this tech major feature then why don't we just call it something like Basic Terraforming or Terraforming Base for simplicity sake?
I guess one group of designers came up with a set of cool names and then others just shove features in them as they see fit. Or it could be the same person on different days. 😅
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 05:38:43 am
Also, I liked to pair every free facility SP with its facility.
I've often done that, but it hasn't always been a good idea for the stock AI. Although Thinker Mod code might have more brains, I would assume stock behavior until proven otherwise.
For instance, if you give Hologram Theaters and the Virtual World in the same tech, the AI will uselessly build HTs when it doesn't need to, before the VW is completed. That's how I ended up with my E3 Cyberethics wart. It gives the HT on a parallel path, so that if you're Discover focused you build the VW, but if you're Explore focused you build HTs. The fallout of that kludge is Cyberethics is not a very good name for much. It does give the Human Genome Project and I'm hand waving that editing human genetics might be a sketchy idea. I actually wanted it to be paired with Research Hospital, but I decided that needed to be moved to Tier 4.
And this is the sort of thing you get into, over 2 years of modding.
Another example would be, I think Command Centers need to come a lot earlier than Tier 3 in my mod. I've got the Command Nexus at Tier 3. Even a Tier 2 tech can take a long time to get in my mod, because there are a bunch of them. Sure they are freely traded, but who says you ran into a willing trading partner?
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why is more tech required to build a superproject for all bases?
In the case of the Planetary Energy Grid, because it is too damn powerful to let it go that cheaply. And players may very well need an Energy Bank before it's appropriate to let them have an Energy Bank everywhere. I've fretted back and forth about the issue you raised though. I didn't like that I was not building Energy Banks, just in case I might finish the Grid. I often found myself building Tree Farms before Energy Banks, because there's no "Tree Farms everywhere" SP. My current compromise is that the Grid "lags" the Energy Banks. Tier 4 vs. Tier 3. And it's not so easy to climb up one of my tiers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 05:40:42 am
When using the stock tech tree, I found I had more the opposite feeling. That there were more techs than useful things to give them. Especially in the back half of the game. I guess I can see how pushing SPs later might reverse that.
Also, I liked to pair every free facility SP with its facility. The ones that didn't felt odd to me. It was the feeling of your new tech being negated by the possibility of a future SP that you couldn't even start yet. Which didn't even make sense, if you can build it individually in each base, why is more tech required to build a superproject for all bases? The only place this strictly can't be done is Virtual World. But as long as VW's tech allows holo theatres, and NN comes before, I have less issue with it
First of all, facility giving SPs is a lack of designers imagination. Indeed, there is not point in negating buildings. Besides, replacing the facility it is not unique. Others may just build them. Maybe for bigger cost/maintenance but still. Such SPs give just pure economical advantage. And there are like 10 of them. So you get more and more same exactly economical advantage. Boring.
So there is no point in perfecting them. We sure can place it together with facility. It won't change much. One can as well build it and then sell already built facility - again for economical advantage. Nothing changes much.
Second, well it is more tech required to build a superproject for all bases. At least this sentence sounds like that. It is nice to see you using a clearly opposing argument to you benefit. 🤣
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 06:42:16 am
Such SPs give just pure economical advantage.
Some give logistical or military advantage, when building or conquering a base. For instance if I have the Command Nexus, and I build a sea base, I don't have to worry about building a Command Center there, before rushing a defensive unit with some training. A Perimeter Defense upon conquest is definitely useful. Naval Yard and Aerospace Complex give defense bonuses, so having them everywhere automatically is useful. I don't have to spend extra turns rushing a defensive building.
Ok who's gonna hack up the Punishment Sphere Every Base SP? ;lol :whip:
Post by: Hagen0 on May 24, 2020, 01:01:18 pm
Would you be OK with a counterexample? I don't want to presume. It's your mod. What I noticed when thinking about it was that interleaving the early combat techs with builder techs has its downsides. The consequence is that you can can pursue builder techs as usual and get up-to-date military capability also because it is required.
One could require Conquer techs have their own path like bvanevery has it. Or you could give Conquer factions access to earlier stronger weapons in their tech path and add some weaker and later options for builder. For instance level 3 Superconductor for 4 power weapons in the red path and level 4/5 Nonlinear Maths in the builder path for 3 power weapons.
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 02:45:52 pm
I suppose the next step is to look at all the facilities, SPs, SEs, and unit options and categorize them similarly.
Post by: lolada on May 24, 2020, 02:54:24 pm
Also these conquer aggressive AIs are already quite terrible at infrastructure building.. or teching economy..
So the tree should be somehow setup to help AI get good performance.. player can manage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 03:51:01 pm
I considered making the armor techs and defensive unit ability techs DISCOVER. CONQUER would get the weapons techs, chassis aside from Foil, and the offensive abilities. EXPLORE and BUILD have a lot more units/facilities/etc.
Armor is both for conquest and protection from it. So is weapon. The defender should use a lot of attacks, bombardments, espionage, etc. to have effective active defense. And, therefore, attacker should armor their units, etc. Maybe the ratio could be slightly different. Like assailant could weapon/armor 50/50. Whereas, defender may emphasize on armored defenders in base for 60-80%. However, they need both weapon and armor. It is kinda difficult to conquer with contemporary weapon and [poopy] armor.
Again, don't be bought by the color/designation of the tech. Each has 4 values for each priority. The 4333 one could be conquer but it is practically everything. It is more explore than 0001.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 04:02:07 pm
I think you are bit defensive about this, Tim. ;) Of course, there will always be tech progression that makes little sense or is hand-wavy at best. The original tech tree is, however, much more reasonable than the current one of the mod. The majority of the prerequisites is plausible in vanilla.
Not at all. I don't think in term of paths. Practical gaming shows there is no isolated development. Everybody trades about half of techs. Plus high randomness with blind research. So one would research about 30-40% of what they like and the rest of it will be traded or randomly picked by blind research functionality.
The research priority let you research certain techs somewhat earlier but they do not let you run away researching only certain color. Probably only 1-2 levels ahead.
I would yet to see a tree designed with paths in mind. It would be interesting to study it.
My tree also links weapons and armor but I don't consider them a "path". It is just a prerequisites to make sure one don't get military items in order. Your path theory would predict pure conquest oriented factions run away in weapon and armor tech far far ahead of others then. That doesn't happen in practice. They are ahead by 1-2 levels comparing to other non-conquest faction with equal number of discoveries. And this gap stays the same throughout the game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 04:08:12 pm
This is nice talk in theory, but in practice we want AI to be good and for that AI needs access to good facilities and weapons. If its so directed that one AI goes for explore and almost never gets any weapons.. it could be piss poor AI that dies.
Also these conquer aggressive AIs are already quite terrible at infrastructure building.. or teching economy..
So the tree should be somehow setup to help AI get good performance.. player can manage.
Exactemundo, my friend!
Everybody needs everything or almost everything. Some faction may skip on some features here and there but majority of it are equally useful for all. People talk about research paths as if they want to give one player all weapons and another all facilities. The difference in factions is their behavior not the tool-set. You need pretty much everything for assault as for protection. There are just few things needed for specific purpose. Like PD is for protection only. Everything else is needed for everybody else: formers, weapons, armor, almost all abilities, 95% of facilities, etc.
I would encourage everybody to not look at tech single designation (color) but on its weights (4 numbers). The higher numbers in certain area will make this tech a desirable pick for some factions with corresponding priority. I have already adjusted them to aid AI who stick with their priorities for the whole game. Human can maneuver.
So just because human changes their priority often there is no point in having set paths in tree spanning from beginning to the end. Human will just jump between them as needed. The biggest problem of balancing the tree is to help rigid AI with research. The difficult part is not to give AI what they want according to their research priorities but to give them what they do not want! 🤣
Indeed I've observed this in almost every game. AI it fine pursuing their path. They never can run too far ahead in it but they constantly have some small advantage edge. At the same time they can seriously fall behind in essential stuff outside of their focus. And here is where we need to help them. Make some essential features accessible to everyone.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 04:22:05 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on May 24, 2020, 04:42:52 pm
Designing a tech tree is really hard with your requirement that each tech is prerequisite for one tech in the next tier and one in the tier after that. Each tier of techs has a one-to-one relation to 4 other tiers. That is amazingly restrictive. Perhaps you could relax the requirement for each tech in tier n to have a prerequisite in tier (n-1) and another in one of tier (n-1), (n-2), (n-3) with n-2 strongly prefferred?
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 06:07:49 pm
Or you could give Conquer factions access to earlier stronger weapons in their tech path and add some weaker and later options for builder.
It's not a bad idea. What I found outrageous in the original game, was that the Gaians were getting one of the most powerful early weapons from E6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. Like are you kidding me, Gaians?? FFS why?
I did not object nearly as much to the Morganites gaining strength 4 armor. I think sprinkling a modest defensive improvement is not nearly as much of a sin as sprinkling a powerful weapon.
The University getting a Chaos gun kinda bugged me, but at least it's in character for mad scientists to get powerful weapons.
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 06:16:33 pm
The idea for discover getting armor was more that I don't want 50% of the tree to be red techs. And yea it wouldn't mean they aren't a priority for conquer. They could be like 3,4,3,3 or the like. It's not too much of a stretch, you aren't going to conquer the world with high armor alone. Whereas with weapons and speed you could.
So I started from the other direction as well. For everything a tech can make available, categorizing as conquer, discover, build, or explore. Not surprisingly conquer had the most at 57, discover 46, build 50, and explore 51. This with the view that terraforming is build, defense is discover, anything growth/drone control is explore. This isn't so far off that a tech tree couldn't be a quarter of each. Just means putting a few more benefits in each conquer tech.
Roughly 204 tech grantable abilities and 86 techs means on average a tech will give the ability to do 2 new things. With some granting 3. This I found a bit interesting since it felt like many conquer techs in the stock tree only allowed one thing like a weapon upgrade.
And yes Synthetic Fossil Fuels is definitely a red tech :)
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 06:26:02 pm
This is nice talk in theory, but in practice we want AI to be good and for that AI needs access to good facilities and weapons.
You are risking genericizing all factions to playing exactly the same way. This is already a problem in straight Thinker Mod. The AI abuses boreholes and condensers, forcing a human player to fight fire with fire to keep up. You might not complain about the fiction of most factions, but for Gaians it's completely tone deaf. They're supposed to be able to compete by having a viable alternative asymmetric tech tree. This takes careful design. In the original game, giving the Gaians an easy strength 6 Missile Launcher was a design cop-out. Whatever they had imagined they were going to do with AI mindworm play, it clearly didn't work in practice. So they activated an escape hatch where the Gaians get a more powerful weapon than they deserve.
My own tech tree isn't just for continuity of narrative and lore. It has been subjected to lots of playtesting over 2 years. Things are as they are because the power of factions and AI performance in stock is mostly working.
Playtesting is in fact why development has taken 2 years and not all gotten done sooner. There has to be a certain amount of time lag of playing games to see what happens, getting the occasional player feedback, and making design adjustments accordingly. So many of my mod releases, I thought I was done and had covered everything! Somehow, I've kept finding dusty details to squeeze yet more performance out of the game. I keep thinking I'm really a lot closer to done now. Yet, 1.43 is a more substantial revision than usual. Well if I've calculated right, at least I'll have finally put "the satellite problem" to bed.
The biggest AI performance problem I've noticed lately is that indeed, for 2 factions a pure Conquer focus was not working. In 1.43 I'm making a big change of diversifying faction research thus:
Explore - Cult
Discover - University
Build - Morganites
Conquer - Spartans
Explore, Discover - Gaians
Explore, Build - Pirates
Explore, Conquer - Caretakers
Discover, Build - Angels
Discover, Conquer - Usurpers
Build, Conquer - Drones
Explore, Discover, Build - Peacekeepers
Explore, Discover, Conquer - Hive
Explore, Build, Conquer - Believers
Discover, Build, Conquer - Cyborgs
This does risk genericizing AI play. However it's a more sophisticated take than having all of them implement exactly the same strategy. When facing random opponents, there is now likely to be a coverage of different strategies. One immediate observable effect is there's more Discover research in general, which heats up the rate of tech research. I don't know yet whether I'll have to rebalance anything in the Discover tree to compensate. It could take several releases to reach a verdict or maturity on that.
The only reason these strategies have any diversity in my mod, is because I've been working towards more and more strongly separating Explore Discover Build Conquer in my mod. If they actually did very similar things, then diversity wouldn't matter nearly so much. How much diversity to implement, is a matter of design. I have a strict pure Conquer policy on weapons and armor, and I will never change that, having pursued that kind of design to its logical conclusion. I do concede now, that it's not the only valid weapons and armor design. The original game was goofy though and did many things wrong with weapons and armors, such as giving away powerful stuff inappropriately.
Post by: Nexii on May 24, 2020, 06:37:31 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 06:46:36 pm
It is kinda difficult to conquer with contemporary weapon and [poopy] armor.For the human player it's trivial. Build rails. The AI doesn't know how to do rails based conquest, so it's at a disadvantage. Rails is a tried and true method as far back as Civ 1.
Some humans do the exploit of building a Truck unit, to drop off unarmored units that are going to fire. I'm not into that kind of abuse. Again, the AI doesn't know how to do it. I did try implementing a Truck predefined unit, but the AI had no clue.
I have been known to use armored Drop Transports once I have orbital insertion capability. Technically they could be used much earlier in the game as a kind of paratrooper, just at a much more limited range. Range could in principle be extended with Carriers, but I almost never do Carrier based combat. Yet another area the AI doesn't understand, too exploity for me.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 06:59:47 pm
Practical gaming shows there is no isolated development. Everybody trades about half of techs.
An unfinished SP can be used to block the AI from trading a tech with anyone. My tree is designed around this. SPs block the most important techs. All the players can trade everything just fine on Tiers 1 and 2, so everyone gets their basics and Politics and Economics choices in a pretty reasonable period of time, even if separated by great distances. But Tier 3, the tech trading door slams shut. You simply aren't going to get "stuff" anymore. You may say "half" of techs get traded, but it matters very much which half. Techs are not all created equal, and SPs are the means to block them from spreading too fast.
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I would yet to see a tree designed with paths in mind. It would be interesting to study it.
This is of course my mod, since forever, since the very beginning. In 2 years you really haven't checked it out in any great detail? The differentiation between paths has only gotten stronger in the past year.
If you mean you're looking for a mod that separates tech tree portions even more strongly than I did, well I don't think that's real world. There's only so many techs.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 07:12:26 pm
People talk about research paths as if they want to give one player all weapons and another all facilities.
This is inherent to the game having different victory conditions. There's supposed to be a faction that can sit back and Transcend. There's supposed to be one that can sit back and make money. There's supposed to be one that can sit back and grow population to the nines. The AI has trouble with some of these things in practice, and could stand improvement of its code. The human player still has all these choices though, and does not have to play Conquest Victory every single game.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 07:21:36 pm
Designing a tech tree is really hard with your requirement that each tech is prerequisite for one tech in the next tier and one in the tier after that. Each tier of techs has a one-to-one relation to 4 other tiers. That is amazingly restrictive.
I doubt there's any actual problem. A game designer simply has to do the work. My regime is 2 techs on Tier N, are prereqs for 1 tech on Tier N+1. All techs must be completed in my tree to Transcend. There are no dead ends. Yes, if I decide a tech has to be moved somewhere else, I end up having to move a bunch of techs around to accommodate that. It's work. But it's not "amazingly" restrictive, I do the work as a game designer just fine. After 2 years of this drill, I'm of course rather good at it. It may look intimidating to someone who hasn't committed to such a rigid design premise, but it isn't rocket science impossible stuff. I think of it as "playing Tetris" with the techs.
I've kept a CHANGELOG of every such shuffle I've made for 2 years. Except I usually don't detail dependency changes, only the Tier movements. You'd have to run a diff tool to see dependency changes, if you cared. Rarely will anyone care. Even if they do, it's too much work to talk about dependency changes in a CHANGELOG. Detailing the Tier movements is enough documentation.
So if you want to get an idea exactly how much mental work is involved, the record is all there. It's doable; I did it. I proved it can be done, at X amount of development cost over time.
I wouldn't design a brand new game from scratch with this kind of tech + narrative regime. It does impose a substantial production burden that I'd rather not be paying the time cost of. How to completely reconceptualize tech advancement, in a way that more easily fits with narrative development and changes, is an exercise for another time. This game has to be done something like this way.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 07:42:23 pm
defense is discover,
Wat? That's a completely arbitrary decision. Discover is about increasing your LABS output. I don't get why scientists would be the only ones interested in defense.
I could see Conquer primarily being concerned with offense. And all the other 3 categories being sprinkled with their own various defenses. The stock game sorta did this anyways. It's the sprinkling of offense in the stock game that greatly offended me, not so much the sprinkling of defense.
Whether sprinkling around defense would be a good idea in the real world, would be a matter of design and testing. In my own mod, I simply evolved towards offense having very limited capability over defense. I've got Sensor Arrays giving +50% defense bonus, not +25%. I don't give a +25% attack bonus on bases to infantry. I don't give ships any kind of "in port" defense penalty. Sometimes that's made ships into super-defenders. However it hasn't been enough of a problem when the AI does it, for me to revisit it yet. If a playtester actually complained, maybe I'd act on it. Gotta leave a few "rough edges" to do for some minor monthly release in the future. ;lol
Seriously, it's important to have a long term advertizing campaign where releases are regular. "Monthly" seems to be the quickest non-burdensome doesn't cause people to gnash teeth schema on Reddit. Any more than that and they'll turn against you as a shameless self-promoter / spammer / community non-participant / drive-by guy.
The point of release cycles and advertizement, is so for all this game design effort you do, someone actually plays it. Otherwise, what's the point? I could put this much effort into perfecting a personal painting or sculpture maybe, as I'd have the physical object afterwards, to admire myself. But I can't sit around admiring my version of SMAC so easily. In fact, after 2 years quite the opposite. Always at risk of being completely burned out!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 08:27:31 pm
This is of course my mod, since forever, since the very beginning. In 2 years you really haven't checked it out in any great detail? The differentiation between paths has only gotten stronger in the past year.
I looked at it but didn't study. Can you tell me some of your paths besides weapon and armor?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2020, 08:40:01 pm
Currently I stick to paradigm when each tech has one major feature from vanilla that is mentally best associated with it. Other features can be reassigned arbitrarily to deal with conflicting priorities when features from same vanilla tech need to be placed in different levels. It seems that even having just a single feature association doesn't let building tree at will. So I like to review my primary associations and leave only those making perfect bond like Air Power and Needlejet. Thus releasing bunch of other tech and making them absolutely free of any locking for ease of manipulation.
Step 2.
Rename some techs for better sense. Like Centauri Ecology to Basic Terraforming.
Step 3.
Rearrange free techs in tree for aesthetic.
Step 4.
Reassign features back to techs to keep their place in history.
Here is the current list of all primary (hard) association those I don't break no matter what. This list is about to be substantially reduced. Feel free to vote.
type feature a d technolgy
1 unit types Foil chassis
Troop transport, Pressure dome Doctrine: Flexibility
1 unit types Speeder chassis Doctrine: Mobility
3 terraforming basic terraforming, Terraform unit, restrictions lifted Centauri Ecology
4b facility - drones Recreation commons Social Psych
4d facility - energy Biology lab Progenitor Psych
7 weapon Laser 1 Applied Physics
8 armor Synthmetal armor 1 Industrial Base
1 unit types Heavy artillery Polymorphic Software
2 ability Hypnotic trance Secrets of the Human Brain
4a facility - military Perimeter defense Doctrine: Loyalty
4b facility - drones Hologram theatre Polymorphic Software
4c facility - misc Recycling tanks Biogenetics
4c facility - misc Children's creche Ethical Calculus
7 weapon Particle impactor 2 Nonlinear Mathematics
8 armor Plasma steel armor 2 High Energy Chemistry
1 unit types Mind Worms Centauri Empathy
4d facility - energy Network node Information Networks
4d facility - energy Energy bank Industrial Economics
7 weapon Gatling Laser 3 Superconductor
8 armor Silksteel armor 3 Silksteel Alloys
1 unit types Spore Launcher Bioadaptive Resonance
4a facility - military Naval Yard Doctrine: Initiative
4j facility - size limit Hab complex Industrial Automation
5 reactor Fusion Reactor Fusion Power
6 secret project The Virtual World Planetary Networks
7 weapon Missile launcher 4 Synthetic Fossil Fuels
8 armor Photon wall 4 Photon/Wave Mechanics
1 unit types AAA Tracking Advanced Military Algorithms
1 unit types Sealurk Centauri Psi
3 terraforming Thermocline transducer Adaptive Economics
4e facility - ecodamage Tree farm Environmental Economics
6 secret project The Planetary Datalinks Cyberethics
7 weapon Chaos gun 5 Superstring Theory
8 armor Probability sheath 5 Probability Mechanics
3 terraforming advanced terraforming Ecological Engineering
4d facility - energy Research hospital Gene Splicing
4e facility - ecodamage Centauri preserve Centauri Meditation
4f facility - minerals Genejack factory Retroviral Engineering
6 secret project The Citizens' Defense Force Intellectual Integrity
6 secret project The Supercollider Applied Relativity
7 weapon Fusion laser 6 Organic Superlubricant
1 unit types Needlejet chassis, Air base Doctrine: Air Power
4e facility - ecodamage Hybrid forest Planetary Economics
4j facility - size limit Habitation dome Super Tensile Solids
5 reactor Quantum Chamber Quantum Power
7 weapon Tachyon bolt 7 Unified Field Theory
8 armor Neutronium armor 6 Matter Compression
9 social enginering 42 Eudaimonic Eudaimonia
1 unit types Hovertank chassis Nanominiaturization
2 ability Marine detachment Adaptive Doctrine
2 ability Carrier deck Nanometallurgy
3 terraforming Mag tube Monopole Magnets
4f facility - minerals Robotic assembly plant Industrial Nanorobotics
4h facility - prototypes Skunkworks Advanced Subatomic Theory
6 secret project The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm Pre-Sentient Algorithms
1 unit types Copter chassis Mind/Machine Interface
2 ability Clean reactor Bio-Engineering
4b facility - drones Brood pit Secrets of Alpha Centauri
4d facility - energy Nanohospital Homo Superior
4e facility - ecodamage Temple of Planet Secrets of Alpha Centauri
7 weapon Quantum laser 9 Quantum Machinery
8 armor Antimatter plate 7 Matter Editation
1 unit types Locusts of Chiron Centauri Genetics
4a facility - military Bioenhancement center Neural Grafting
4a facility - military Flechette defense system N-Space Compression
5 reactor Singularity Engine Singularity Mechanics
6 secret project The Dream Twister The Will to Power
7 weapon Graviton gun 10 Applied Gravitonics
1 unit types Gravship chassis Graviton Theory
4b facility - drones Paradise garden Sentient Econometrics
4g facility - space station Sky hydroponics lab Orbital Spaceflight
4i facility - movement Psi gate Matter Transmission
7 weapon Singularity laser 11 Controlled Singularity
8 armor Stasis generator 8 Temporal Mechanics
4g facility - space station Orbital power transmitter Advanced Spaceflight
6 secret project The Network Backbone Digital Sentience
6 secret project The Self-Aware Colony Self-Aware Machines
7 weapon String disruptor 12 String Resonance
4c facility - misc Subspace Generator Secrets of the Manifolds
6 secret project The Cloning Vats Biomachinery
6 secret project The Voice of Planet, The Ascent to Transcendence Threshold of Transcendence
Transcendent Thought
Post by: Hagen0 on May 24, 2020, 09:03:48 pm
Weapon and armor techs are clustered too much in the early game. The consequence is that you have something advanced like Probability Mechanics too early in the tech tree. They could also gain from being spread out a bit. The initial place of Synthetic Fossil Fuels among the green techs (maybe after Gene Splicing like in vanilla tech tree) was better. I would add an requirement to a high level conquer tech so that you can't skip the previous weapon techs that way.
The other flavour problem is that you stacked many problematic techs into the endgame where they also don't fit narratively. Orbital Spaceflight is not such a high level concept for example. If satellites should remain out of consideration they could be assigned to some late game tech instead.
You mentioned that these things were discussed.Can you link a thread? I am curious why Bio-Engineering and Non-Lethal methods are so late among other things.
Since there are armor techs missing in the midgame it would be possible to make Photon/Wave mechanic armor 6 strength, push Probability Mechanics back and make the corresponding armor 8 or 9 strength. Neutronium Plate could be 12. That also comes too early narravitely atm.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 09:37:46 pm
I looked at it but didn't study. Can you tell me some of your paths besides weapon and armor?For instance nowadays there's a pretty strongly differentiated "indigenous life forms only combat" section of the tree. If you're not studying Explore, you're not getting up it. It's long. It goes all the way from E3 Centauri Genetics to E8 The Will To Power. Then continues with D9 Secrets of Alpha Centauri and D10 Secrets of the Manifolds.
Some of the Conquer sections of the tree are on their own "isolated eddies" to make it only rewarding for a pure Conquer researcher. Like the C7 Mind/Machine Interface, C8 Self-Aware Machines sequence. This is possible because there are so many Conquer techs. The main trunk of Conquer, where you now get your Planet Busters, is now more pure lately.
Post by: lolada on May 24, 2020, 11:14:13 pm
Looks like progression is really quick up to level 2-3-4-5-6.. then it stalls a bit. 8 comes later and 10 a bit behind .. armor seem to go quick 2-3-4.. then some pause and 5-6- thats for awhile but not much and then comes armor 10 (neutronium). Bulk of war happens to be at armor 10.. weapons go up to 13 - 16 and quite later 20? 24 vs armor10.. when finally comes armor 16 which is really strong..
Its my observation from few games.. just feeling nothing exact. Feels to me i never build any weapons at lvl2-3.. then if i get in war build 2-3 units of level 4 and before real fighting begines.. its at 5 or 6 weapons.. and armor is 3-4.. Then depending on RNG one can get armors very quickly i had siutation with weapon 6 armor 6 for quite some time. Equality is intended i get it - but it feels like due to trading and transcend these techs and weapons get researched very quickly.
Early weapons look like they could be spaced more - or maybe 1-2 removed but its not necessary in any case.. spacing a bit would work.. armor the same. Then one could add maybe armor 12 to fill the gap a bit.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 12:30:31 am
Weapon and armor techs are clustered too much in the early game. The consequence is that you have something advanced like Probability Mechanics too early in the tech tree.
What's the problem with Probability Mechanics? Did it really appear too early in your games? If so just let me know and I'll move it couple levels up.
Orbital Spaceflight is not such a high level concept for example. If satellites should remain out of consideration they could be assigned to some late game tech instead.
What level do you like Orbital Spaceflight to be?
You mentioned that these things were discussed.Can you link a thread? I am curious why Bio-Engineering and Non-Lethal methods are so late among other things.
Check all topics I've started. They are all about different problems regarding this mod.
Bio-Engineering is a tech - a placeholder for features. It really doesn't matter where it is in the tree except aesthetically looking tree that it. Non-Lethal methods double police power for zero maintenance. It's an incredible ability. There is no counter or price to pay to compensate it. That is why it is late in the tree.
Since there are armor techs missing in the midgame it would be possible to make Photon/Wave mechanic armor 6 strength, push Probability Mechanics back and make the corresponding armor 8 or 9 strength. Neutronium Plate could be 12. That also comes too early narravitely atm.
armor techs missing in the midgame??? 😲
Are you talking about WtP?
I didn't understand how you propose to reshuffle them. Can you just list them names-levels?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 12:39:49 am
Early weapons look like they could be spaced more - or maybe 1-2 removed but its not necessary in any case.. spacing a bit would work.. armor the same. Then one could add maybe armor 12 to fill the gap a bit.
There are 12 weapons and 8 armors. Weapon will always change little bit faster. Yes, we can drop 4 weapons and space them more even. I personally don't see problem in having them in the game. You don't need to use each and every.
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 01:01:16 am
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 01:02:57 am
4d facility - energy Biology lab Progenitor Psych
I don't buy this one at all. Xenobiology is not the Alien's story. It's Deirdre's. I can understand using it here if you wish, but to declare it an ironclad hard association, that's just wrong. Doesn't fit with the game's lore.
Myself, I've ended up assigning this to Biogenetics. It's biology. However, I've also at times used Biogenetics as my Police State technology. It has a relevant quote / voice acting from Chairman Yang. "We hold life to be sacred..." Over time, using Biogenetics as my Discover 1 tech with a Biology Lab, won out.
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2 ability Hypnotic trance Secrets of the Human Brain
It's of course not wrong to do that, but there are other places you could do it. I've done it in Progenitor Psych and Centauri Empathy. Currently I've welded the Virtual World to Secrets in the Human Brain. I think that's a good lore fit. I've done the Virtual World elsewhere though, like Optical Computers.
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4a facility - military Perimeter defense Doctrine: Loyalty
This is one of those cases of "familiarity with the stock game". There's no inherent relationship between between loyalty and a defensive wall. One could imagine a relationship, such as keeping people inside, but that's not really what a Perimeter Defense implies. I decided a Perimeter Defense is a kind of armor, for cities, and gave it at the same time as I give Plasma armor.
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4b facility - drones Hologram theatre Polymorphic Software
I don't see any inherent relationship between these ideas at all.
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4c facility - misc Children's creche Ethical Calculus
Another "familiarity with the stock game", not inherent.
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1 unit types Mind Worms Centauri Empathy
Not wrong, but I repurposed Centauri Genetics from later on.
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1 unit types Spore Launcher Bioadaptive Resonance
I guess you don't have 3-Res armor. I do, so I just gave Spore Launcher at the same time as mindworm. I don't see a good reason to give them out in different techs.
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4j facility - size limit Hab complex Industrial Automation
This is stock game familiarity, and not inherent.
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6 secret project The Virtual World Planetary Networks
A reasonable idea, and I've probably done it. However, I use this for probe teams and Police State. Chairman Yang is watching you!
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1 unit types AAA Tracking Advanced Military Algorithms
I put it in Doctrine: Air Power. I don't believe that anyone should get "a chance" to prepare for Needlejets. That chassis is substantially more expensive in my mod anyways. The AI doesn't send them out like flies.
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3 terraforming Thermocline transducer Adaptive Economics
Although there can be a relationship, I just don't see it as inherent or exclusive. I want Adaptive Economics for my Socialist. I think it's the obvious place for Planned as well.
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6 secret project The Planetary Datalinks Cyberethics
It's stock game familiarity. It doesn't actually make any sense at all. Hasn't made sense in my mod lately either. Cyberethics doesn't have much to do with anything!
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4f facility - minerals Genejack factory Retroviral Engineering
Not wrong, but I did Bio-Engineering.
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6 secret project The Citizens' Defense Force Intellectual Integrity
More stock game familiarity. Makes no actual sense at all. The quote / voice acting is Zhakarov talking about what people prefer to be true, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely or possible. Just isn't relevant to survival militias patrolling perimeters. I repurposed I.I. as a Discover tech. Like I'm guessing it probably was at some point in their development. There are some clues that they had some rebalancing troubles, like Optical Computers not doing anything.
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7 weapon Fusion laser 6 Organic Superlubricant
Familiarity; doesn't actually make any basic sense. I repurposed it as the basis for hovertanks.
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4e facility - ecodamage Hybrid forest Planetary Economics
Ask yourself why this would really have anything to do with trees.
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1 unit types Hovertank chassis Nanominiaturization
Again, why. Nanites magically float things because...?
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2 ability Carrier deck Nanometallurgy
Never made a damn lick of sense, and was clearly mapping a Civ II military progression into SMAC. Totally inappropriate, we're not making a transition from battleships to aircraft carriers. I put it in Doctrine: Air Power, even though it makes that tech a bit overloaded.
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4h facility - prototypes Skunkworks Advanced Subatomic Theory
Doesn't matter that much where you put this. I put it with Neural Grafting, which is still when you get 2 abilities in my mod.
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1 unit types Copter chassis Mind/Machine Interface
Never made one lick of sense. It's just a military progression.
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4a facility - military Flechette defense system N-Space Compression
Flechettes are small darts. Doesn't have anything to do with compressing anything.
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4b facility - drones Paradise garden Sentient Econometrics
Why? Is the garden made out of robots or artificial intelligences? Out of money and businesspeople?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 01:09:28 am
You could make some armors prereqs for weapons and vice versa. That might solve the "armor too far ahead" or "weapon too far ahead" problems
We are talking about one faction weapon against another faction armor. So if the first one is up to date with both weapon and armor it doesn't help the other a bit.
😆
I don't see "armor too far ahead" or "weapon too far ahead" as problems. This is a game with the free flow of information and that is what you get. You cannot just prescribe everybody a narrow technological path.
Why are you compelled to solve these problems at all? You don't get enough fun from the game? Something bothering you or you get bored? What is your problem statement?
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 01:20:18 am
I don't see "armor too far ahead" or "weapon too far ahead" as problems.
Weapon too far ahead leads to a cakewalk, a colonial style slaughter.
Armor too far ahead doesn't lead to much of anything. Territory remains more static.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 01:25:49 am
I don't see "armor too far ahead" or "weapon too far ahead" as problems.
Weapon too far ahead leads to a cakewalk, a colonial style slaughter.
Armor too far ahead doesn't lead to much of anything. Territory remains more static.
You lost the context. We were talking about weapon to far ahead comparing to armor in discoveries in general. It is not that one faction is too far ahead in weapon that other is in armor. They both will have strong weapon and weak armor. Not necessarily one will kill another.
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 01:30:54 am
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 01:37:46 am
Weapon too far ahead leads to a cakewalk, a colonial style slaughter.
Armor too far ahead doesn't lead to much of anything. Territory remains more static.
Yea this. I found that in the stock tech tree, you'd get Plasma-3 early enough. Which works fine against Impact-4 and Missile-6. The problem arose when weapon tech would rise up to Shard-13 before any more armor upgrades. I think because that branch had Advanced Spaceflight, Fusion Power and the like. Going for Photon-6 defense just wasn't as effective. It was a reason many people considered air units "OP" when often what was going on was that armor just wasn't keeping up.
I'm not saying they have to always be 2:1 exactly all game or anything. Or 1:1 if that's what your mod is built around. But it is a consideration
The other thing is if armor lags behind it becomes even less valuable as a tech to pursue. As well as any defensive modifier techs. If you're going to get smashed by 3:1 weapons anyways what's the point in AAA for example.
If weapons are hopelessly low, then it diminishes the value of morale facilities/SEs and faster chassis. If there's nothing to pick off then you might as well just build lots of defensive infantry, and then go economic
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 02:18:53 am
They both will have strong weapon and weak armor.
In AI vs. AI combat this leads to volatile warfare where 1 faction can totally tip over and overrun the other. Particularly on smaller maps where combatants fight at close range. This arises because even though factions may have similar offensive weapons, they do not have similar productivity. Big offense and no defense basically leads to "time to die" conditions for someone.
It is not desirable from the standpoint of challenging the human player. It tends to result in maps where the AI factions have wiped each other out, making it easier for the human player to sweep in and clean up.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 02:34:04 am
type feature a d technolgy pri
1 unit types Foil chassis
Troop transport, Pressure dome Doctrine: Flexibility 1
1 unit types Speeder chassis Doctrine: Mobility 1
1 unit types Cruiser chassis Doctrine: Initiative 1
1 unit types Needlejet chassis, Air base Doctrine: Air Power 1
1 unit types Gravship chassis Graviton Theory 1
2 ability Hypnotic trance Secrets of the Human Brain 1
2 ability Empath song Centauri Empathy 1
3 terraforming basic terraforming, Terraform unit, restrictions lifted Centauri Ecology 1
3 terraforming advanced terraforming Ecological Engineering 1
3 terraforming Mag tube Monopole Magnets 1
3 terraforming Soil enricher Adv. Ecological Engineering 1
4a facility - military Perimeter defense Doctrine: Loyalty 1
4d facility - energy Network node Information Networks 1
4e facility - ecodamage Centauri preserve Centauri Meditation 1
4f facility - minerals Genejack factory Retroviral Engineering 1
4g facility - space station Sky hydroponics lab Orbital Spaceflight 1
4g facility - space station Orbital power transmitter Advanced Spaceflight 1
4i facility - movement Psi gate Matter Transmission 1
5 reactor Fusion Reactor Fusion Power 1
5 reactor Quantum Chamber Quantum Power 1
5 reactor Singularity Engine Singularity Mechanics 1
6 secret project The Human Genome Project Biogenetics 1
6 secret project The Planetary Datalinks Cyberethics 1
6 secret project The Supercollider Applied Relativity 1
6 secret project The Planetary Energy Grid Adaptive Economics 1
6 secret project The Theory of Everything Unified Field Theory 1
6 secret project The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm Pre-Sentient Algorithms 1
6 secret project The Nano Factory Industrial Nanorobotics 1
6 secret project The Longevity Vaccine Bio-Engineering 1
6 secret project The Neural Amplifier Neural Grafting 1
6 secret project The Pholus Mutagen Centauri Genetics 1
6 secret project The Cyborg Factory Mind/Machine Interface 1
6 secret project The Network Backbone Digital Sentience 1
6 secret project The Self-Aware Colony Self-Aware Machines 1
6 secret project The Bulk Matter Transmitter Matter Transmission 1
6 secret project The Cloning Vats Biomachinery 1
6 secret project The Voice of Planet, The Ascent to Transcendence Threshold of Transcendence 1
7 weapon Laser 1 Applied Physics 1
7 weapon Quantum laser 9 Quantum Machinery 1
7 weapon Graviton gun 10 Applied Gravitonics 1
7 weapon Singularity laser 11 Controlled Singularity 1
7 weapon String disruptor 12 String Resonance 1
8 armor Silksteel armor 3 Silksteel Alloys 1
8 armor Photon wall 4 Photon/Wave Mechanics 1
8 armor Probability sheath 5 Probability Mechanics 1
8 armor Stasis generator 8 Temporal Mechanics 1
9 social enginering 42 Eudaimonic Eudaimonia 1
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 02:38:42 am
I went through all the techs and re-read their quotes. I think a big reason the tree is confusing is that for many techs, their quote/speaker doesn't really match the priority (conquer, build, discover, explore) it had been assigned. Prime example is Superconductor. Has Morgan as a speaker about the economic criticality of superconductors. But it's somehow a conquer tech? I ended up re-categorizing a lot of techs into different priorities. Only problem was a few too many ended up in the discover pile. So a couple have to be moved over.
Technology is a box to place features. It means nothing by itself. Superconductor enables weapon. Thus it is a conquer technology so conquest oriented faction can get to this weapon. It doesn't matter what Morgan said about it. This is just a scenery.
I agree it does sound more scientific or maybe science-industry application related. So we can repurpose it for some other feature and keep research instead. That's all.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2020, 02:51:05 am
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 03:00:26 am
Yes, there are some like Silksteel Alloys as a good example. It has to be Discover since armor is discover in my model, and there's no other tech to match Silksteel armor with. I was able to slot an equal amount of techs into each priority with a little bit of tweaking.
I feel like there's much less than 50 of these 'hard-associations' in the game. Maybe 25 or so but I'll see as I go through. There might actually be more since there's so many benefits. I think it's best to first categorize every tech and every benefit as conquer, discover, build, explore. That helps with matching techs to benefits. An explore tech should give only explore benefits for example.
It's definitely a lot of work to redo a whole tech tree. I'll pass mine on when I'm done. It will probably make a lot of sense to me but perhaps not others. Sometimes writing up a bit of 'how' techs are categorized can help too.
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 03:02:33 am
Technology is a box to place features. It means nothing by itself. Superconductor enables weapon. Thus it is a conquer technology so conquest oriented faction can get to this weapon. It doesn't matter what Morgan said about it. This is just a scenery.
I agree it does sound more scientific or maybe science-industry application related. So we can repurpose it for some other feature and keep research instead. That's all.
Yea my point is that the weapon would then be placed on a tech that sounds more conquer. There's no 'reason' that Superconductor has to grant Gatling Laser unless I'm missing something in the lore? Techs do have meaning as they have quotes. Quotes by Morgan should lean build, war quotes from Sparta should lean conquer, theoretical ones from Zak should lean discover. And so on.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 03:04:52 am
(Retroviral Engineering -> Genejack factory, supposedly they engineer viruses to jack genes)
To be pedantic, the "GENEtically enGineered worker, or GENEJack" is Chairman Yang's gift to industry. He explains it as a contraction, not necessarily as a mechanism. I suppose you could infer the method is retroviral, based on when the Genejack Factory appears. But, the preceding tech is Bio-Engineering, and that's when Yang gives his big pitch about "Why do you insist the human genetic code is sacred or taboo? It is a chemical process and nothing more." Retroviral Engineering just has some spokesperson for the University lying through his teeth to a commission of inquiry. Since it's Yang's baby, and some kind of genetic engineering, I felt perfectly comfortable giving it with Bio-Engineering.
And I thought it was dumb that Clean Reactor was given with Bio-Engineering. Like, wat?
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 03:08:21 am
There's no 'reason' that Superconductor has to grant Gatling Laser unless I'm missing something in the lore?
In fact, the quote / voice acting is Morgan going on about how "superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible". It could be repurposed as a Build tech. I'm not sure this observation is of use to me, as I'd need to put the Gatling Laser somewhere else, but it might bear some contemplation.
;morganercise
Synthetic Fossil Fuels is also Morganic quote / voice acting. Again, not sure how it helps me, because I need to give the Missile Launcher somewhere. "More fuel = more missiles" is an ok hand wave. I've had it under Doctrine: Air Power at times, but that tech gets too crowded.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 03:28:32 am
It will probably make a lot of sense to me but perhaps not others.A lot of your Discover techs are not going to make sense. It's not about armor, it's about faster research. There's no more reason for Discover to be about armor, than for Explore or Build to be about armor. Why should I be forced to study Discover to have a viable defense in the game?
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 03:42:48 am
Plus Discover has a problem that Explore and Build don't. Explore gets a big population, and Build gets higher productivity per population. Both of these give them a chance against Conquer. Whereas Discover gets nothing to increase its chances. At least not directly. Being a bit ahead in pure techs won't in practice give it enough staying power. That's how I see it.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 05:10:47 am
I think if you don't want Conquer to be about defense, it makes far more sense to sprinkle the defensive techs evenly through Explore, Discover, and Build. Of course, you could determine what works out in practice. If your Explore and Build factions get slaughtered, you'll have your answer.
Incidentally I'm in the middle of implementing your "Industrial Base should be for Formers" idea. If it works out,
Generally speaking, recycling Conquer techs where possible, by consolidating them, might be a good strategy for cutting down their sheer bulk in the tree. I don't think it's going to disrupt this stage of my game.
Post by: Nexii on May 25, 2020, 07:39:12 am
The resonance weapons might end up being explore, but requiring more tech to get than their conquer equivalents.
Have to start matching most techs with what they will give. Then the order will kind of fall out of that. At least I hope. A complete tech tree rebuild is definitely a lot of work.
The ecological engineering techs are tricky to place. Even the stock game wasn't sure. Ecological engineering was explore but advanced ecological engineering was build. Same with environmental economics. A lot could go either way. Probably it'll be Tree Farm, Hybrid Forest, Aquafarm = explore (main benefit is nutrients). Whereas terraforming improvements will fall into build, aside from maybe Condensor/Enricher. Even those might end up as build.
And yea some facilities are tough to place. Bio Lab is about 50% discover and 50% explore.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2020, 08:32:16 am
I don't usually give a vehicle and a weapon. It's what I needed to do to free up Superconductor, and I don't think it will "hurt".
I have flip-flopped on Ecological Engineering many times. Currently I've got it as the thing that lifts nutrient restrictions, so it's Explore. But it's like wealth=3, growth=4.
You can make something tech=4, growth=3, like the Biology Lab. I also give all the indigenous life form stuff power=1, because you can kick someone's ass with a mindworm. I just mainly want it to be Explore with only a small chance of being picked up by Conquer. I have a lot of 1, x, x, 4 techs in the Explore part of my tree.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 06:37:18 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 06:49:07 pm
Did a similar thing too so that I wouldn't hit the same branch for the second prereq.
A lot of additional work in matching up the techs logically to all the benefits. I think it's in a pretty good place although the order might only make sense to me lol. It's going to feel like playing a new game I think. It was very hard to place some technologies especially closer to the end. I used the lore and tech shorts to some extent as well.
My categories ended up being:
Explore: anything PSI, pop growth, pop control
Build: terraforming, energy, minerals
Discover: armor, defensive abilities, labs/research
Conquer: weapons, offensive abilities, chassis
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 07:24:59 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 07:32:24 pm
I wish there was a way to programatically graph the tree. Drawing it out would be a lot of manual effort.
Best bet to view it probably is in-game, just have to back your alphax.txt up first
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 07:34:38 pm
Post by: lolada on May 26, 2020, 07:56:18 pm
Movement is still bugged in v.58
first save:
Unit seems to be able to move diagonally on river tiles for < 1 movement point. In std game it can go so along the river, no shortcuts.
second save:
Somehow that Colony Pod in Halls of discipline can move 4+ tiles. Its weird like its rounding ?! on some tiles it spend 2/9 on other 3/9 points.
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 08:30:02 pm
Had to redo it but your way was better for visualization.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 08:52:04 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 09:00:59 pm
Yea I have Eudaimonic late, after Cyber and TC. It's also very powerful (+2 grow, +2 planet, +2 econ, +2 research) with no downsides. It's either make future societies powerful and late or more tempered and earlier. I like the design of them being more powerful for now. I know a lot of people want them earlier, that's understandable too.
Air comes earlier but in general the armor techs come a little before the weapon techs now rather than after. That is to say it's hard to maintain 2:1... 3:2 or so seems more typical. I may also boost up AAA to 150% or 200%. Though I do have air units costing more that's negated by fusion reactors. With Yitzi costing I had it such that air was a lot more expensive at any reactor level, but that's gone now
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 09:12:57 pm
Edit: I wonder if it would be a good idea to make Formers available from the start. You sort of can't play the game without them. Would help Miriam a good deal.
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 09:21:11 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 09:35:04 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 10:00:25 pm
I have made a tech tree up to level 6 with your restrictions. Some techs had to be shifted by one level. I also spread out weapons and armor a bit more on purpose.
Looks nice!
Keep in mind, though, that this is not a generic requirement for tree building. You can use whatever rule or no rules at all. I picked this one just because it is simple to follow and it allows me to keep fixed number of nodes per level. It is also quite simple to track from tree point of view as both of your prerequisites are as near as possible.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 10:04:04 pm
My tree also ended up being 7 per level (up to level 11) and n-1 / n-2 prereqs. It has to narrow a bit at the end with more n-1 prereqs and less techs at level 12 and onward
Did a similar thing too so that I wouldn't hit the same branch for the second prereq.
A lot of additional work in matching up the techs logically to all the benefits. I think it's in a pretty good place although the order might only make sense to me lol. It's going to feel like playing a new game I think. It was very hard to place some technologies especially closer to the end. I used the lore and tech shorts to some extent as well.
My categories ended up being:
Explore: anything PSI, pop growth, pop control
Build: terraforming, energy, minerals
Discover: armor, defensive abilities, labs/research
Conquer: weapons, offensive abilities, chassis
This is nice division. Pretty close to what I was thinking some time ago.
What is pop control? Drones control?
How do you actually assign technology to group. What parameter do you set for it to get into Explore or any other priority?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 10:10:26 pm
Unfortunately no, I did all the planning in Excel. There is the in-game graph you can click through but it doesn't really give a 'big picture'. I changed what many techs grant also, not just the ordering.
I wish there was a way to programatically graph the tree. Drawing it out would be a lot of manual effort.
Best bet to view it probably is in-game, just have to back your alphax.txt up first
I agree this is a lot of work. Especially, when you keep changing versions. I don't think there is a need. What one can get from this "big picture"? I use it to track a development to a single target technology. And, to be frank, it is not really such a big help in it. I always can check immediate prerequisites in game and 99% of the time this is what I only need. When I plan the tree I only need to know which level each tech is to make sure I place them right. Plus I make sure they are do not cluster too much. I.e. there is no easy way for some high level tech. However, the latter is impossible to catch visually, anyway. So I have a program for that.
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 10:11:39 pm
Biogenetics, Biogen, 0, 0, 0, 1, None, None, 000100000
The highest numbered priority of the 4 will be what kind of tech it is considered. I believe if you set equal priorities it takes the last. The order is conquer, discover, build, explore. The numbers can be greater than 0 or 1 to fine tune beelines or make the AI prefer key techs more.
Yea pop control is drones control. Although I do have punishment sphere and police state as conquer exceptions.
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 10:20:27 pm
I agree this is a lot of work. Especially, when you keep changing versions. I don't think there is a need. What one can get from this "big picture"? I use it to track a development to a single target technology. And, to be frank, it is not really such a big help in it. I always can check immediate prerequisites in game and 99% of the time this is what I only need. When I plan the tree I only need to know which level each tech is to make sure I place them right. Plus I make sure they are do not cluster too much. I.e. there is no easy way for some high level tech. However, the latter is impossible to catch visually, anyway. So I have a program for that.
Yea if you're really worried tech diving/beelines you can do both prereqs at n-1. Meaning for example a level 7 tech takes 2 level 6s.
I did n-1, n-2 for the tree up until the end. So a level 7 tech takes a level 6 and a level 5. So you can never get too far ahead down one path, but there is the option to dive a little. As long as you don't continually alternate the same branch it's pretty hard to get way ahead in any one category. It will be kind of obvious you'll see a lot of the same number as the +# as you go across
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 10:22:13 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 10:25:23 pm
Not talking about AAA tracking. You need that too and it would be excellent on Optical Computers. I meant the SAM ability needed to attack flying targets. If you do not have that you just die vs needlejets even with AAA tracking mainly because you can't attack land units under a needlejet so they can just walk up to your bases with infantry or probes and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Yea I have SAM one tech before DocAir. That's more lenient than the stock tech tree which requires DocAir. If that's not enough for you, you could move it back to AdapDoc at C3
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 10:28:00 pm
If I could relax the n-1/n-2 to sometimes allow n-2/n-2 or n-1/n-1 (all techs still retain 2 prerequisites) that would already help a lot.
I'm not sure if n-2, n-2 will always work if intermixed. It should I think but it might mean some levels will have more techs than others
Post by: Hagen0 on May 26, 2020, 10:37:05 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 26, 2020, 10:41:38 pm
I see what you mean. It would need to be n-1/n-1 and n-3/n-1 one level above as a variant to keep the structure.
Yea on second thought it always pushes the parent tech down. So n-2, n-2 would become n-1, n-1
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:15:22 pm
@tnevoling
Movement is still bugged in v.58
first save:
Unit seems to be able to move diagonally on river tiles for < 1 movement point. In std game it can go so along the river, no shortcuts.
second save:
Somehow that Colony Pod in Halls of discipline can move 4+ tiles. Its weird like its rounding ?! on some tiles it spend 2/9 on other 3/9 points.
Excellent catch! Thank you for being on top of that. That was an experimental feature and we uncovered few more game quirks (or my omissions) with your help. 😉
Apparently, I forgot that river flows only straight on Alpha Centauri, never diagonal. So I didn't check the direction and only source and destination squares have river.
For the second one I didn't check for base in square. Apparently, game does not mark base square as having road/tube but it does count it as having one.
Both fixed now.
# Version 59
* Fixed advanced movement on river. River direction is always straight across tile edge - never diagonally.
* Fixed advanced movement when leaving or entering a base. Previously base didn't count as having road.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:19:13 pm
Ok. Where there's just a # that's for n-2. For n-1 I wrote it out.
Had to redo it but your way was better for visualization.
Looks pretty colorful. I assume this straight line of red techs in the middle is the weapon path?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:23:17 pm
One key aspect of balancing out Needlejets is to put Air Superiority well before Doctrine: Air Power so that factions without Air Power can fight Needlejets.
I would also give them AAA too for early protection.
Oops. Hagen0 just replied the same few messages below. Just saw it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:29:41 pm
It's set in #TECHNOLOGY section of alphax.txt
Biogenetics, Biogen, 0, 0, 0, 1, None, None, 000100000
The highest numbered priority of the 4 will be what kind of tech it is considered. I believe if you set equal priorities it takes the last. The order is conquer, discover, build, explore. The numbers can be greater than 0 or 1 to fine tune beelines or make the AI prefer key techs more.
Yea. I know how it works. I am curious how you specifically divided them in groups? Did you set yourself a rule to use certain gap between different values to make sure it is well aligned with the color like if you set Discover value to be 4 other values cannot go near it to not spoil the grouping? Or it is completely arbitrary? Meaning in conquer you can have equally any of 4333 or 4000 or 1000, etc.?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:31:53 pm
If I could relax the n-1/n-2 to sometimes allow n-2/n-2 or n-1/n-1 (all techs still retain 2 prerequisites) that would already help a lot.
You cannot have n-2/n-2, unfortunately. At least one of them should be n-1. 🤣
Darn. Again I am reading too slow. Nexii has already answered that.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2020, 11:49:31 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 27, 2020, 12:07:29 am
Yea. I know how it works. I am curious how you specifically divided them in groups? Did you set yourself a rule to use certain gap between different values to make sure it is well aligned with the color like if you set Discover value to be 4 other values cannot go near it to not spoil the grouping? Or it is completely arbitrary? Meaning in conquer you can have equally any of 4333 or 4000 or 1000, etc.?
I have them all with one 1 and rest zeros, except Biogenetics and Industrial Base, which are 1112 and 1121. Haven't gotten too fancy yet with it. You can't get too far ahead in any one area so even a single focused faction will pick up techs outside their priority.
But yes, 4333 and 4000 and 1000 would all be considered conquer. The first would get more priority by non-conquer factions and blind research. The second would get more priority for conquer factions over say other 1000 techs.
Tech tree is a ton of work. I recommend doing what Hagen0 did in Excel if you ever do. I used a similar method but simplifying it helped as a double check in the end
Post by: Nexii on May 27, 2020, 12:20:05 am
Looks pretty colorful. I assume this straight line of red techs in the middle is the weapon path?
Yea more or less, up to weapon 8. orbital spaceflight is 10, advanced spaceflight 12.
Though you can't go directly down that line, each one has the n-2 prereq. It's kind of an aggresive line since it's mostly armor prereqs
Post by: bvanevery on May 27, 2020, 06:18:24 am
One key aspect of balancing out Needlejets is to put Air Superiority well before Doctrine: Air Power so that factions without Air Power can fight Needlejets.
What's so important about that? I'm very unsympathetic, I really don't care. I'm perfectly good with you playing the role of the Spanish Communists being bombed into oblivion by the German Luftwaffe doing their weapons tests on you. Why should you get this big early leg up? At least when it's the AI attacking, they do like what, kill a few Formers? Who cares?
If it's multiplayer, well I'd fully expect you to steal a tech. And if you can't do that, you should die.
I balanced my Needlejets by making the chassis more expensive. My weapons aren't cheap either.
Post by: lolada on May 27, 2020, 02:48:55 pm
Thing is that defenders having territory and base bonuses means needlejets have hard time attacking armored units. Even if they kill armored unit they need to heal few turns afterwards.. and AAA generaly stops them in tracks. Tim recently made Aerospace Complexes cheaper (120 => 100 minerals) that might help somewhat.
Air units (Copters included) seem good for sniping lightly armored units or ships mainly, but risk dying to interceptors vs advanced AIs.They can snipe armored units in the open in general, but will likely need to heal.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 27, 2020, 03:39:28 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 27, 2020, 06:16:29 pm
Air chassis cost same as speeder. That makes them cost same as unarmored speeder units.
AAA bonus is 50%. It is plenty enough with AC and air/land interceptors in play.
Even with these changes air inits will be still slightly less effective in direct assault but they will keep their use in reconnaissance and early response. Also in disputing enemy supply lines and land improvements add usual.
For example, one can sacrifice few stained aircrafts to destroy a single strong boat next to weak base to win time for reinforcement.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 27, 2020, 06:18:00 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 27, 2020, 06:22:37 pm
Here the proposal.
Air chassis cost same as speeder.
I don't get why anyone would ever embrace a paradigm where a plane is as cheap as a ground unit to make. It makes no real world sense at all. Seems to me to be totally a game mechanical fiat, that someone wants to shift the game around to pew pew pew lotsa lotsa Needlejets. It should be a military simulation, not a bunch of Real Time Strategy toys.
Post by: lolada on May 27, 2020, 07:52:42 pm
They are currently ineffiient at attacking for example armored crawlers or probes. AI Probes are heavily armored and hard to kill. Crawlers are armored as well - but usually not with latest variant - but they are often placed on rough terrain. Formers tend to be easy targets - but there's risk of interception.
Post by: bvanevery on May 27, 2020, 08:42:14 pm
I admittedly haven't been playing WTP since I consider the early mindworm fighting to be broken. I don't know if your comment is arising out of Formers winning combats against planes way too easily. I would consider that a problem.
The other major problem with planes is they provide near perfect cover for advancing ground units. I don't know if Thinker Mod or WTP "fixed" that. You could win the game by spamming Gun Needlejets if you were so inclined, to cover for other ground troops.
Post by: Nexii on May 27, 2020, 09:27:07 pm
Post by: lolada on May 27, 2020, 09:44:39 pm
The problem is basically Needlejets can hardly kill anything - attacking bases is most often a suicide. They can pick of units but as you said they get hurt even by formers - early weapons more, later they do clear them nicely once you get for example fusion laser (10). They still have trouble killing anything at latest armor - even in open ground - speeders for example are better with +25% and cost less - speeders can kill 2 units per turn. They are better in killing formers for example - but they lack range. For base attacks cheap infantry 10-1-1 or something like that is way better - AI tends to spam aerocomplexes and there are AAA units. Its likely good idea to nerf AAA to 50%-
Even with buff they won't be good at base attacks - so they seem to be mostly harass unit - they should be at least decent at that role. Even many ships have AAA..
Post by: Hagen0 on May 27, 2020, 10:28:17 pm
Post by: Nexii on May 27, 2020, 10:36:20 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 27, 2020, 10:43:32 pm
Also note that war in Smax is rarely profitable anyway.
If you are referring to vanilla SMAX then I beg to differ. I found it the most profitable endeavor specifically because attacking is very economically effective. Even in WtP it is still profitable against weak or unprepared opponent. Even if you managed to conquer only 1/3 of neighbor territory by throwing everything you had on them and then forged a piece with them you already have twice more bases and will overpower them sooner or later. The problem is that it spoils your relations with others. So you likely won't meet any other unprepared faction.
Post by: lolada on May 27, 2020, 10:46:59 pm
Could try allowing artillery ability on air units ;PI actually tried to create one but couldn't :( Overpowered?
Post by: Hagen0 on May 27, 2020, 10:56:08 pm
Also note that war in Smax is rarely profitable anyway.
If you are referring to vanilla SMAX then I beg to differ. I found it the most profitable endeavor specifically because attacking is very economically effective. Even in WtP it is still profitable against weak or unprepared opponent. Even if you managed to conquer only 1/3 of neighbor territory by throwing everything you had on them and then forged a piece with them you already have twice more bases and will overpower them sooner or later. The problem is that it spoils your relations with others. So you likely won't meet any other unprepared faction.
It's a matter of opportunity cost. Even if you can win a war your situation would almost always be better if you had developed peacefully instead.
Post by: Nexii on May 27, 2020, 11:09:58 pm
I actually tried to create one but couldn't :( Overpowered?
They're buildable if you enable in alphax.txt but they don't work unfortunately
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 27, 2020, 11:20:54 pm
* AAA Tracking cost is 2.
Changing effect requires code patch. So being lazy I've changed the cost instead. I believe it pretty much does the same.
Neddlejet 6-1-? vs. armored infantry 6-6-1 in open = 1:1 both in combat odds and economical losses
Neddlejet 6-1-? vs. armored AAA infantry 6-6-1 in open = 1:2 in combat odds and 1.5:2 in economical losses
Neddlejet 6-1-? vs. armored foil 6-6-4 = 1:1 in combat odds and 1.5:1 in economical losses
Neddlejet 6-1-? vs. armored foil 6-6-4 = 1:2 in combat odds and 2.25:2 in economical losses
So AAA still makes units slightly more effectively protected against air attacks. However, not that significantly that one should slap it on each and every of them. There is a high chance such unit will fight in non air combat and then this ability will be just a waste of minerals. So it is beneficial to use it but only under heavy air pressure.
At the same time using air superiority is still a best way to deal with enemy air fleet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 29, 2020, 04:00:49 pm
* Fixed adavanced movement cost again. This time everything that is treated as road movement is corrected to have road movement cost.
I think I'm done with fixing this. 🙄
Apparently, there are many other movements treated as roads. For example, natives in fungus, etc. This time I just let game calculate movement cost and if it believes unit is moving along road (cost = 1) I change it to correct road movement cost except when it moves along tubes. That should fix all available road like movements!
Please take this update if you already have # Version 55 of above.
Post by: lolada on May 30, 2020, 02:09:08 pm
Some observations - this is Pirates at -2 efficiency ruining lots of their lead ^^. Did you maybe consider modding a bit efficiency formula so its not that evil on negative side?
(https://i.imgur.com/fbGjC3c.png)
Here is much closer city to HQ.. quite inefficient, but we know that i guess. Here Pirates are ruining themselves with - Support. I looked at other bases as well - their production is really crap. AI with good support is much better, like Miriam - guys in SE choices are discussing this. Going light with support minuses would improve AI a lot (Thought Control is -3, Democracy -2).
(https://i.imgur.com/pfrWXfZ.png)
I also posted this screenshot due to AI using 1-0-0 tiles or 0-1-0, 1-1-0, this would be nice to improve if possible. Its maybe for Induktio? AI could use specialist - Engineers are quite nice and available now for example and they are using these crap tiles.
Gonna see to try to finish this game to see lategame changes.
Some terraforming - looks cool. Seems that condenser nerf is real nice thing - its not worth to spam them mindlessly as before - i went on and place more echelon mirrors because the land was already green. Forests are useful as well and quite nice with +2 Economy.
(https://i.imgur.com/gO2OXqW.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 02:39:21 pm
Some observations - this is Pirates at -2 efficiency ruining lots of their lead ^^. Did you maybe consider modding a bit efficiency formula so its not that evil on negative side?
Definitely, I am up to it. However, first we need to understand what is going on here. Why they are 100% corruption with only -2 EFFICIENCY???
Do they have HQ? How far is this base from it? Please send me a save.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 02:46:26 pm
Here is much closer city to HQ.. quite inefficient, but we know that i guess. Here Pirates are ruining themselves with - Support. I looked at other bases as well - their production is really crap. AI with good support is much better, like Miriam - guys in SE choices are discussing this. Going light with support minuses would improve AI a lot (Thought Control is -3, Democracy -2).
That is true too. However, keep in mind that SUPPORT is strong but its increments are just +1 unit support at a time. So it doesn't matter if faction has +1 SUPPORT bonus. It does help very little comparing to good terrafoming, for exampe, that can easily give you +4 minerals or something like that.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 02:51:29 pm
I also posted this screenshot due to AI using 1-0-0 tiles or 0-1-0, 1-1-0, this would be nice to improve if possible. Its maybe for Induktio? AI could use specialist - Engineers are quite nice and available now for example and they are using these crap tiles.
Yes. I replied there. The thing is that AI may not be taught to prefer engineer (+3 eco) to 1 mineral as it didn't hurry production in vanilla. Also hurrying in vanilla is not always flat. So all in all 1 min could be better or equal to 3 eco. In WtP it is somewhat relaxed so 3 eco could be slightly better all the time.
Post by: lolada on May 30, 2020, 03:22:32 pm
Basically its just that -2 efficiency is strong - you could come up with some formula/function that scales linearly in negative values, current one is very punishing. Aliens do the same they like to pick Planned and they tend to lag a lot in tech by late midgame. You SE choices are fine, imo, you have at two places -1 efficiency its nothing.
Same with Support - its great stat to have - the thing is that dumb AI does not know when to stop producing useless units. Go through Pirate bases their production is sad - three bases next to my continent have 9/10/11 pop and total of 4 usable minerals eghm.. its hard to balance them - pirates are leading the game from beginning. Looks like they could use some +support..
Post by: Hagen0 on May 30, 2020, 03:23:28 pm
Same thing with support. The core issue with the Pirate base in the picture is not support cost but that the resource input is low.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 03:44:18 pm
Basically its just that -2 efficiency is strong - you could come up with some formula/function that scales linearly in negative values, current one is very punishing. Aliens do the same they like to pick Planned and they tend to lag a lot in tech by late midgame. You SE choices are fine, imo, you have at two places -1 efficiency its nothing.
It may be feasible to implement but first we need to decide how exactly to change it. It is quite convoluted currently and affects *many* things. Any change to it is unpredictable.
Same with Support - its great stat to have - the thing is that dumb AI does not know when to stop producing useless units. Go through Pirate bases their production is sad - three bases next to my continent have 9/10/11 pop and total of 4 usable minerals eghm.. its hard to balance them - pirates are leading the game from beginning. Looks like they could use some +support..
That is a different story - to make AI not producing useless units. I don't know how to do it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 04:07:57 pm
Specialists are great if you have drone or efficency issues. Otherwise working tiles is better. It would be preferable to fix AI working bad tiles by improving its terraforming.
Same thing with support. The core issue with the Pirate base in the picture is not support cost but that the resource input is low.
Golden words, man. Terraforming beats everything. It worth to improve it first then thing about everything else.
Post by: Nexii on May 30, 2020, 06:55:44 pm
-1 EFFIC -> Anarchy
0 EFFIC -> Despotism
1 EFFIC -> Monarchy
2 EFFIC -> Fundamentalism
3 EFFIC -> Republic
Infinite EFFIC -> Democracy, Communism
So as you can see -4, -3, -2 are completely off the scale. Unmodded Police State and Planned were not good for anyone but Yang. I suppose other factions could do Demo+Planned just to boom, but Planned on its own wasn't very good.
I had a better EFFIC formula in mind in the Thinker thread. There's other issues. EFFIC was meant to prevent ICS through B-drones but that mechanic wasn't sufficient.
Post by: Hagen0 on May 30, 2020, 07:01:06 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 07:40:04 pm
I had a better EFFIC formula in mind in the Thinker thread.
Can you share a link? I am lazy to read it all over again.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2020, 07:52:51 pm
Here saves.. posted two if you want to have some fun trying to win war vs Miriam ^^ she's brutal, but its quite fun. In later save i have pact with pirates so you can peak into their bases.
Basically its just that -2 efficiency is strong - you could come up with some formula/function that scales linearly in negative values, current one is very punishing. Aliens do the same they like to pick Planned and they tend to lag a lot in tech by late midgame. You SE choices are fine, imo, you have at two places -1 efficiency its nothing.
Answer on your first question is: the calculation is correct. Look up inefficiency formula in advanced concepts. It is often quite possible to lose all energy to an inefficiency when you are far from HQ.
Another thing is that this formula is quite stupid and doesn't account for map size. But this is a different topic.
Post by: Nexii on May 30, 2020, 08:25:24 pm
Can you share a link? I am lazy to read it all over again.
Yea it was more the idea. I hadn't put the actual formula. It would basically replace B-drones but work on a similar concept. Each base beyond your EFFIC cap would get inefficiency applied at an increasing rate.
The B-drone formula is BASE LIMIT = (8 - DIFFICULTY) * (4 + EFFIC) * MAPROOT / 2
As an example this is 6 bases on transcend (5) at 0 EFFIC on a normal map (1)
The idea was that each base beyond the cap would suffer inefficiency. In this case the 7th furthest base from the HQ would be the first affected. It would go down quite quickly for each base beyond that. Something like 5% per base on large maps, 10% on normal maps, 20% on small maps. So a base beyond the 16th on a normal map would produce no energy. Tying it to MAPROOT would make the most sense.
Post by: lolada on May 30, 2020, 10:55:40 pm
I know how the formula works so I have no issue with it - just avoid getting -2 or worse.. -1 is somewhat tankable, but obviously bad. One could chart those functions formula is not complicated. I was experimenting a bit at some points in my AAR game to see how it affects game practically: at -1 EFF loss was about 12% of energy thats ok-ish, -2 around 45%+ lel, didn't try -3... and we know -4 is total loss.
Btw @tnevolin Pirates are really awful with production - you should give them back that +1 mineral on sea at some point earlier. It takes ages for them to get that tech for +1 mineral platforms, they still don't have it. They have strong start, but midgame and later they are terrible. I'll submit the save if you want to take a look. This is first save where I have Zakharov playing good ^^.
ps. Zakharov is using Green.. Power was also used thats going good. Lal is using fundamentalist and thought control ^^.
Post by: Nexii on May 31, 2020, 12:54:38 am
Perhaps going to 0% energy is a little much. Creches could get you back to some given %. And those far bases would still produce minerals. IMO it's the only way to curb ICS.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 31, 2020, 02:43:35 am
Btw @tnevolin Pirates are really awful with production - you should give them back that +1 mineral on sea at some point earlier. It takes ages for them to get that tech for +1 mineral platforms, they still don't have it. They have strong start, but midgame and later they are terrible. I'll submit the save if you want to take a look.
It is either that or they are unstoppable with + 1 mineral. When I play with them as AI they *always* were about twice as strong as others. Now they are comparable. It makes them much worse OP than absence of it makes them weaker. Currently, without this bonus, it is difficult to compare their development path with land factions. It is completely different world. Water world. 😂
Seriously, though. I believe early game sea bases are just above the medium level. Terraforming is exceptionally easy and fast. In 10 turns you convert **any** tile into 3-0-3. Tough to buy units initially but if you hurry facilities (2 energy -> 1 mineral) this yield is about equivalent to 3-1-1. Which is comparable to terraformed rainy rolling land tile. You can run out of rainy rolling tiles on land but not on sea. So with smart management you get fast growing rich infrastructure bases. Plus you start getting mineral production just because of sheer population - directing some of them to platforms. The fact that AI is not tuned well to play aquatic is another story.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 31, 2020, 02:46:44 am
Yea that's another aside. Econ and labs from specialists shouldn't avoid EFFIC penalties. Psych I suppose has to avoid it or bases could riot forever.
Perhaps going to 0% energy is a little much. Creches could get you back to some given %. And those far bases would still produce minerals. IMO it's the only way to curb ICS.
Econ and labs from specialists does not avoid EFFIC penalties. It is just these penalties are not for eco/psy/lab. It is for raw energy intake. So the game is correct in its calculations.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 31, 2020, 02:50:13 am
This is really ugly system - reminds me of civ 3 corruption, nobody wants useless bases.
The corruption was specifically introduced to hurt big empires and penalize city spamming and conquest. It seems it did the trick. Again the fact that human would exploit spamming and conquest much better than AI is a different story. If we teach it - people would stop complaining that corruption makes their life harder. They would turn opposite and start complaining to make corruption worse to stop AI in its unlimited spamming and conquest.
Post by: Nexii on May 31, 2020, 04:17:04 am
Post by: lolada on May 31, 2020, 04:17:09 pm
I suppose it's a subjective thing. I don't really feel that effic/b-drones really slow down ICS all that much. Between minerals and specialists being exempt. Plus most bases don't suffer that much inefficiency since it's by distance. As long as you don't run low EFFICYes I agree it does not really slow down ICS that much / it nerfs it ofcourse, after a while even pop 1 cities start with a drone. It kind of forces player to keep EFF in positives. Thinker AI for example spams bases similar to player - but is not as smart to keep away from -2, -3 EFF. In that sense changing negative EFF effects to be not too punishing is a good idea.
I kind of like Alpha Centauri EFF system and drones - its not too restricting - its way better then what some Civilization games did. This talk is just about helping AI, player can do perfectly fine.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 31, 2020, 09:16:25 pm
I change terms and instead of corruption use usage. Meaning the effective energy usage produces more of it. Energy intake is split in three chunks.
1. Everybody gets 50% of energy regardless of EFFICIENCY rating. This is just to pay maintenance. Otherwise big negative values cause economical loss which is completely devastating to AI.
2. EFFICIENCY rating adds up to 25% from -4 to +4 linearly. I.e. one level gives 1/4/8 = 1/32 of total.
3. HQ adds up to 25% based on the distance from it. 25% in HQ, 0% at distance of 30 from it. This is about half way each side from the center of the normal map. Adjusted by mapsquare for different map sizes.
That achieves the following.
The worst rating still let you pay maintenance maybe just barely.
Large empires equally benefit from each EFFICIENCY level.
Compact empires are protected from bad ratings. HQ has 75% at -4 and 100% at 0 as well as all nearby bases.
Chunk split is subject for discussion.
Post by: lolada on May 31, 2020, 09:26:18 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on May 31, 2020, 10:23:28 pm
Post by: lolada on May 31, 2020, 11:32:59 pm
So The Ascent to Trascendance cost 3000 minerals and Pirates are building it in base with 11 mineral per turn.. And rush it 106 turns to completion.. for approx. 4000 gold.
I had it way more completed and it costed 14000 to rush..
Looks like it would be a good idea to somehow limit AI rushing ^^. Would it be possible to limit SP rushing only when project is 50% complete with minerals..? So one cant rush like this. AI transcend has big discounts - that could be changed as well if first suggestion doesnt work?
(https://i.imgur.com/YqeavAb.png)
AI rushing SP works quite well for other projects its cool they can get them. But this one eghmmmm.
Post by: Nexii on June 01, 2020, 05:13:55 am
It would fix the EFFIC scale. Right now my SE set doesn't allow for lower than 0 for that reason.
Though I think it doesn't do much to slow down ICS. 75% efficiency at any distance from the HQ at +4 EFFIC is a lot. I do think Thinker AI and various speedruns demonstrate how strong ICS is. That horizontal development (base count) is more to blame for the energy/research explosion than vertical (facilities, SPs).
Rather than hammer far bases with terrible energy or mineral production, I do wonder if dynamic colony pod costs would work. That is the cost of a pod goes up by some amount of minerals for every base & colony pod you have...to match how citizen costs go up in nutrients
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 12:43:11 pm
I reallly dislike the added randomness in the combat system. The armor/weapon equality in early game had the effect I anticipated. I had Roze's heavily armored units sitting next to my forest/sensor for 10+ turns. Neither side could attack so we were just staring at each other.
Sorry, man. Cannot understand how randomness relates to heavy armored unit not attacking you. 😕
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 12:49:03 pm
So The Ascent to Trascendance cost 3000 minerals and Pirates are building it in base with 11 mineral per turn.. And rush it 106 turns to completion.. for approx. 4000 gold.
I had it way more completed and it costed 14000 to rush.
Looks like it would be a good idea to somehow limit AI rushing ^^. Would it be possible to limit SP rushing only when project is 50% complete with minerals..? So one cant rush like this. AI transcend has big discounts - that could be changed as well if first suggestion doesnt work?
Amazing. Looks like we found a last ingredient for challenging AI. Thank you for idea and congratulation on solving this. 😄
We probably just need to remove whatever AI restriction left to let human win and this should do the trick.
Based on numbers above it seems that they rushed it way past 50% completion. Did they?
I don't understand why you want to limit this again after you just proposed it. This is the last project. You should be able to overtake AI by far by this point as you did in previous games.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 01, 2020, 12:58:31 pm
Combat outcomes felt completely arbitrary. (I understand they aren't really.) By giving the winner of each combat round a bonus you inreased the volatility of combat. You can easily see the same moderately close fight won by each side taking hardly any damage. It also has the effect that you have a hard time wearing down units. I lost 2 Empath rovers vs the same 1 HP fungus tower since my planet rating was low.
The armor issue is a matter of taste. I don't like the way you can't remove units sitting in your territory. On the other hand, it does give a boost to Morale as experienced units are worth more than in vanilla and it forced me to build more units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 01:08:06 pm
Hmm, 3% energy per effic isn't too bad. It might need a little more than that. Not much though any more than 5% would be overkill
Corrected numbers. I didn't think straight before.
1. Fixed guaranteed income: 25%.
2. 0-50% for EFFICIENCY, 1/2/8 = 1/16 = 6.25% per level.
3. 0-50% for HQ proximity.
This way HQ has 100% at 0 EFFICIENCY. So no energy loss at the game beginning. At the same time the worst case (far base, -4 EFFICIENCY) is dropped from 50% to 25%, which I believe is more modest.
It would fix the EFFIC scale. Right now my SE set doesn't allow for lower than 0 for that reason.
What do you mean? You cannot physically set it lower?
75% efficiency at any distance from the HQ at +4 EFFIC is a lot. I do think Thinker AI and various speedruns demonstrate how strong ICS is. That horizontal development (base count) is more to blame for the energy/research explosion than vertical (facilities, SPs).
It may change overall pace of the game one way or another but what more important is relative change per each level of effect. In vanilla change from -3 to -4 was just absolutely unbearable. Whereas the one from +3 to +4 was just unnoticeable. I hope this new system will level them up a little.
75% at each base with +4 EFFICIENCY may be a lot but try to get to it. One would need to sacrifice a lot of everything else. So it's a fair price.
Rather than hammer far bases with terrible energy or mineral production, I do wonder if dynamic colony pod costs would work. That is the cost of a pod goes up by some amount of minerals for every base & colony pod you have...to match how citizen costs go up in nutrients
Yes, that is a good suggestion. I always thought reducing the price of non combat units with reactors is uncompensated. Why do so if overall production grows?
How do you suggest it should happen? Just proportionally to game time? Like double in 100 turn, triple in 200, ... ? Wouldn't it effectively stop further expansion especially on large maps?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 01:23:48 pm
Combat outcomes felt completely arbitrary. (I understand they aren't really.) By giving the winner of each combat round a bonus you inreased the volatility of combat. You can easily see the same moderately close fight won by each side taking hardly any damage. It also has the effect that you have a hard time wearing down units. I lost 2 Empath rovers vs the same 1 HP fungus tower since my planet rating was low.
Yes it should feel less predictable with added randomness. That what randomness is for. I can assure you that it doesn't impact you on a large scale. Meaning if you attack fungal towers 10 times in a game you average losses stay the same. Whereas, PLANET rating **does** affect your average losses.
I am sorry if you feel frustrated about losing units in appeared sure cases more than you get happy when your units win in impossible cases. You can crank my randomness configuration parameters in thinker.ini to make it look more like vanilla.
The armor issue is a matter of taste. I don't like the way you can't remove units sitting in your territory. On the other hand, it does give a boost to Morale as experienced units are worth more than in vanilla and it forced me to build more units.
Are they enemies? Can you bombard them? If they are friends - ask them to leave politely. 😉
Post by: lolada on June 01, 2020, 01:47:06 pm
Quote
We probably just need to remove whatever AI restriction left to let human win and this should do the trick.Not appreciated you need to take comments more seriously. Ok maybe its me - i need to better explain it - i presumed you would know what i mean.
Based on numbers above it seems that they rushed it way past 50% completion. Did they?
I don't understand why you want to limit this again after you just proposed it. This is the last project. You should be able to overtake AI by far by this point as you did in previous games.
This is about the argument bvanevery used - players have expectations. This is violating it ***heavily***, you can only go so far. Now there's some tolerance, we get used to something, so it takes a while to accept change, and we get used to that and its ok. This is for example your combat.. its more random. but for example i got used to it after 2-3 games and its good.
Now... Do you want to force player to always insta rush The Ascent to Trascendence or risk losing the game? I presume no.
Do you want players to delay and bank 15-20k ducats before completing Voice of Planet.. so they can insta rush The Ascent on turn 1 to deal with insta loss?
Is it ok to expect from player to have to rush last project? Personally i really don't like it.. its like saying to win you need last tech +20k gold or you lose.
Some backwards AI with pathetic production instantly completes the game winning project for 4k gold. That is not good design... there are many things wrong here, here's some:
- AI gets access to project it shouldn't have (vanilla allows everyone to build this project once Voice of Planet is done)
- AI heavily cheats with rushing.. like i sad he rushed 90+% production with 4k gold... while the player needs many times more
- its the ultimate project - what is allowed for other special projects should not be allowed for this one - and there is good reasons for that i hope i don't have to explain that
Now don't confuse this with AI rushing projects - its a great change - it makes the game better, AI is competitive. Player rushes the projects, so can AI. Its a fair game, player rush one, AI other. One can't get them all - and its fun to fight strong AIs..
There are reasons why this works, there are restrictions:
- faction must have a technology!!! Its a big thing.
- faction must have energy.. and energy is limited during most game duration! (even if AI cheats)
- it has consequence! (spent energy means no energy for rushing other things.. can't rush units of followin secret projects)
The Ascent to Trascendence breaks these rules:
- no tech requirement: anyone can build it.... eghm its ok for vanilla for its terribad AI
- yeah AI needs to have energy but it cheats its ass of.. and at late endgame there's ton of energy
- no consequences.. insta win button
So The Ascent to Trascendence needs to be somehow dealt with differently to be reasonable thing. Some suggestions:
- require tech to build it.. then its fair game if player wants to risk AI rushing it.. (fine by me.. its easy solution)
- disable rushing it completely (its 30 ish turns or less fine by me)
- limit rushing it (fine also..)
- or limit rushing every project if you want.. (my original suggestion, fine by me..)
- nerf transcendence AI rushing cheat _significantly_ (i wouldn't do this.. AI needs help for getting lategame projects)
- you can leave it be - but thats lazy thing (i really wouldn't like this)
Why not fix it properly when so much other things were already improved?
ps. no harsh feelings haha ^^
Post by: Nexii on June 01, 2020, 01:58:28 pm
Colony pod cost would be something like
30 + X * MAPFACTOR * (# of bases + # of colony pods)
X would be some constant. Yea there is the issue of higher reactors reducing the cost a lot. It's a similar issue with crawlers and in some ways it's why I preferred Yitzi's cost formulas. Also unit costs can't grow too much due to native life always having constant cost
Re: Ascent. It was always kind of broken but few games went so long due to imbalances that it was never a huge concern.
I think it's more fitting with the lore to have no tech requirement. As essentially all factions 'ascend' you just become a less dominant part of the ascended entity if you don't win the race. So probably no rush for Ascent makes the most sense. VoP IMO should have granted some bonus to Ascent production - Space Elevator/satellites kind of idea.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 01, 2020, 02:00:49 pm
Regarding the combat. I don't mind unpredictable combat winners that much. It's the way the winner often takes low or no damage that I really dislike. As I said you can for the same battle have the attacker win and take no damage or the defender win and take no damage. It's very hard to plan for and early game with few units it can screw you over. Overall, the current combat implementation is worse than the vanilla one.
Post by: lolada on June 01, 2020, 02:12:43 pm
Quote
In the current form of the game of course you buy the Ascent to Trancendence in one turn. I appreciate why you don't like it but that is true for all Secret Projects. The way you can use your whole faction to pre-build them is somewhat silly.
Regarding the combat. I don't mind unpredictable combat winners that much. It's the way the winner often takes low or no damage that I really dislike. As I said you can for the same battle have the attacker win and take no damage or the defender win and take no damage. It's very hard to plan for and early game with few units it can screw you over. Overall, the current combat implementation is worse than the vanilla one.
No its not the same - there's big difference between regular secret project and game-winning project. If its the same why then allow everyone to build it without tech ??? It can't be treated the same.. it should not.
Tim is right about combat from what i can observe - in average you win.. he has formula you can't argue math and win really. You can sometimes lose unexpectedly or win unexpectedly - thats randomness, but with proper preparation you will consistently win. If you want to take base with one 1-3-1 defender bring in 3 attackers you will take it like 95%+ of time. Yeah it will fail sometimes.. if you are unluck and deal zero damage on first attack - smart thing is to retreat or risk losing all of them. Take note that healing is nerfed heavily - if you bring enough units they will break through anything. I bet several 4-1-1 units can break though 1-24-1 defender due to chance.. and he can't heal quickly. Then smart solution is to bring 1-2 artillery units - really helps reducing casualties.
Vanilla taught us often one xp 4-1-2 is enough to take early bases.. with 5-6 of these experienced player can conquer the map. In WTP just to random chance you will lose them all in 20+ fights. And its a good thing.
Post by: Nexii on June 01, 2020, 03:47:03 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on June 01, 2020, 05:00:39 pm
Post by: lolada on June 01, 2020, 06:06:59 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 11:48:47 pm
Not appreciated you need to take comments more seriously. Ok maybe its me - i need to better explain it - i presumed you would know what i mean.
What are you talking about? I was genuinely excited by your test results. No sarcasm was intended. It is sad if you understood it differently. I hope your feelings are not hurt.
For long time few modders me included tried to make AI more competitive and still didn't reach the level where it beats the human consistently. This one was an amazing discovery that was overlooked by others. Thank you for your idea!
This is about the argument bvanevery used - players have expectations. This is violating it ***heavily***, you can only go so far. Now there's some tolerance, we get used to something, so it takes a while to accept change, and we get used to that and its ok.
This is the same argument Sid explained in his video about modern game design. Actually pleasing customer is not a modern concept at all but it seems Sid, being mathematician and slightly out of this world, discovered it for himself in quite late age. Everybody else in the industry knew that all along.
I know what is customer expectations. Throughout my career I used to collect them and formalize them into a business requirement documentation all the time. I should note that, with all proper respect to you and other users, you won't find there words like "violating" or "heavily" or "tolerance" or any other emotional colored words. Just because it is impossible to convert them into code. This may sound Star Wars episode I - ish but it literally "does not compute".
I would definitely like to hear your and others opinions. That is why I asked these questions. Let me repeat them move formally.
1. Generally speaking, do you expect to certainly win on highest difficulty all the time? If not all the time then what percentage?
2. If not at highest level, then what is the difficulty level you expect to win all the time?
3. Do you expect win the race for The Ascent to Transcendence all the time? If not all the time then percentage or times?
4. Do you expect AI to get to the level when it competes for AtT? Do you prefer it to compete but still get it to yourself?
Now... Do you want to force player to always insta rush The Ascent to Trascendence or risk losing the game? I presume no.
Do you want players to delay and bank 15-20k ducats before completing Voice of Planet.. so they can insta rush The Ascent on turn 1 to deal with insta loss?
Is it ok to expect from player to have to rush last project? Personally i really don't like it.. its like saying to win you need last tech +20k gold or you lose.
Some backwards AI with pathetic production instantly completes the game winning project for 4k gold. That is not good design... there are many things wrong here, here's some:
Come on, man! It was just first try of new feature. I didn't even know what could happen and neither did you. That is what play testing is for. Now when we know it we can sit and think if this is something we want. You are immediately attacking it as if I designed and tested whole game and you bought it and now you are not satisfied. I believe we are both designers in this case.
- AI gets access to project it shouldn't have (vanilla allows everyone to build this project once Voice of Planet is done)
What do you mean? AI built AtT before Voice of Planet is done? Then this definitely a bug and need to be looked into. Please send me a save.
- AI heavily cheats with rushing.. like i sad he rushed 90+% production with 4k gold... while the player needs many times more
This looks like another bug. I didn't understand first the completion percentage. However, you said 11 production * 101 turns to completion = about 1100 minerals. So it should cost about 4k credits. Please send me a save to look into it.
The Ascent to Trascendence breaks these rules:
- no tech requirement: anyone can build it.... eghm its ok for vanilla for its terribad AI
- yeah AI needs to have energy but it cheats its ass of.. and at late endgame there's ton of energy
- no consequences.. insta win button
So The Ascent to Trascendence needs to be somehow dealt with differently to be reasonable thing. Some suggestions:
- require tech to build it.. then its fair game if player wants to risk AI rushing it.. (fine by me.. its easy solution)
- disable rushing it completely (its 30 ish turns or less fine by me)
- limit rushing it (fine also..)
- or limit rushing every project if you want.. (my original suggestion, fine by me..)
- nerf transcendence AI rushing cheat _significantly_ (i wouldn't do this.. AI needs help for getting lategame projects)
- you can leave it be - but thats lazy thing (i really wouldn't like this)
Why not fix it properly when so much other things were already improved?
You think this is vanilla bug? I never experienced AI to build it out of order but this need to be checked.
Everything can be fixed we just need time and testing and post analysis. Don't expect it in a single iteration. A little patience. 😉
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2020, 11:59:56 pm
Colony pod cost would be something like
30 + X * MAPFACTOR * (# of bases + # of colony pods)
Didn't get your MAPFACTOR. I though you proposed to make them more expensive with time. Which is a great idea in my opinion.
Re: Ascent. It was always kind of broken but few games went so long due to imbalances that it was never a huge concern.
I think it's more fitting with the lore to have no tech requirement. As essentially all factions 'ascend' you just become a less dominant part of the ascended entity if you don't win the race. So probably no rush for Ascent makes the most sense. VoP IMO should have granted some bonus to Ascent production - Space Elevator/satellites kind of idea.
I think this is by design and intended to help **human** player in first place. So they don't feel behind the race and can compete for this project with all the crawlers they can build. Since vanilla AI does not hurry SP with credits and uses crawlers poorly, human had all the chances to beat it even if being greatly behind in development and technology!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 12:27:26 am
In the current form of the game of course you buy the Ascent to Trancendence in one turn. I appreciate why you don't like it but that is true for all Secret Projects. The way you can use your whole faction to pre-build them is somewhat silly.
I agree that pre building them is silly. However, I believe putting all your faction efforts into it makes sense.
I don't know how to disallow prebuilding (either with crawlers or cash). It seems to be a big embedded game feature.
Regarding the combat. I don't mind unpredictable combat winners that much. It's the way the winner often takes low or no damage that I really dislike. As I said you can for the same battle have the attacker win and take no damage or the defender win and take no damage. It's very hard to plan for and early game with few units it can screw you over. Overall, the current combat implementation is worse than the vanilla one.
Unfortunately it is how probability and multi round combat work. Damage (un)predictability is mathematically equivalent to winning (un)predictability. The more unpredictable the damage to victor the more unpredictable who wins.
Let's say two units with relative strength 2 and 1 are fighting. How badly do you want weaker unit to be damaged if it wins? 80-90% all the time? What if they both have 1 HP left?
I'm sorry but you really don't understand the problem I have with the combat. It's not that you can win or lose unexpectedly. It's the way the damage dealt to the victor is so volatile. The bonus for winner of the last combat round makes combat outcomes more extreme, making results that should be extreme outliers (like the weaker unit winning without taking damage) commonplace. If you are attacking with weaker units this is particularly problematic. If you attack say with 2 vs 3 odds you can easily lose 3 units in a row without making a dent or the first one can win without problem. It's too much.
Here also replying to your similar claim in another post.
You are absolutely right that my formula increases combat outcome volatility. This is what it is for and this is an intended effect. 😜
Before you start criticizing this let me tell you that this was done specifically to counter vanilla extremely low combat outcome volatility. Yes, vanilla designers did this on purpose to implement the same exactly functionality you advocate in your posts. They solved their "phalanx cannot beat the tank" Civ1 problem but opened can of other worms.
Well, some of WTP mod players thought that it did it too much probably to an abusive level making combat exceptionally not volatile. So there was a huge-huge discussion about how much of that stolen volatility should be re-introduced back into WTP. It is very difficult to tell where the sweet point is. So I left it as an adjustable parameter. And you will notice that many people there play WTP with their own setting of this parameter. So WTP is somewhere in between Civ1 and vanilla in this regard. You don't need to criticize the idea itself but you can propose a sweeter point on a Civ1-Civ2 scale if you don't like the current one. Remember, you can always switch it off completely.
Better yet, review all what have been said on the matter to not repeat same questions.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 08:34:29 am
Quote
What do you mean? AI built AtT before Voice of Planet is done? Then this definitely a bug and need to be looked into. Please send me a save.No I mean i built it.. AI doesn't even the tech. But it then happened that AI rushed complete AtT at 90+% for
Quote
I was genuinely excited by your test results. No sarcasm was intendedHaha well i considered that.. shortly lol. My bad.. i thought you just glanced over it like its nothing. its kind of important imo.
Quote
This looks like another bug. I didn't understand first the completion percentage. However, you said 11 production * 101 turns to completion = about 1100 minerals. So it should cost about 4k credits. Please send me a save to look into it.Now I am confused ??? Ah I'll see later to check saves again and i'll upload them. The project is 3000 minerals.. I don't remember what Pirates Industry was... they might have used several crawlers and then rushed with energy.. maybe they rushed it multilpe times -_- weird. I don't understand now how they could even get to 1000 mins to completion their production was so crap. I though Transcend AI can rush cheaper?! Oh crap.. gonna take another look at saves.. something doesn't add up here.
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What do you mean? AI built AtT before Voice of Planet is done?- No.. I meant now in your mod it is not ok anymore to give AI access to AtT, like in Vanilla. But maybe scratch that.. need to check saves again.. i thought AI can rush-buy SP for cheap. If AI pays 4 gold per mineral its a fair game..
Still its a bit weird.. for example 3000 minerals with 40% discount is 1800x4 = 7200 energy to fully rush AtT - thats all you need. Its cheap for insta win lel ^^ i had 7k gold just AI just caught me sleeping.
Quote
1. Generally speaking, do you expect to certainly win on highest difficulty all the time? If not all the time then what percentage?
2. If not at highest level, then what is the difficulty level you expect to win all the time?
3. Do you expect win the race for The Ascent to Transcendence all the time? If not all the time then percentage or times?
4. Do you expect AI to get to the level when it competes for AtT? Do you prefer it to compete but still get it to yourself?
1. No not ^^ actually its really reasonable to lose early game if spawned close to AI. I had a few close calls. I almost lost diplomatic victory - AI got double vote SP. Once player has enough space its hard to lose - maybe due to this transcendence rushing thing. It surprised me.
2. I feel i can win 90+% on Thinker and below :danc:. Thinker seems way easier than Trascend. Its possible to lose real bad early start.
3. Actually this trashed my expectations. I think player can win AtT race every time once it knows AI can insta rush it. Basically you just prepare crawlers and money and win instantly.
4. Well I somehow expected that 11 production city can't complete AtT.. my bad. I would actually prefer to have to build AtT completely manually without Crawlers and energy rush, that would be real race. But AI would need to know to use the best city and industry settings for that feat.. i guess thats out of scope.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 08:55:27 am
Quote
Let's say two units with relative strength 2 and 1 are fighting. How badly do you want weaker unit to be damaged if it wins? 80-90% all the time? What if they both have 1 HP left?
In general i like combat and got used to it. it happens sometimes, very rarely, that for example 16-1-2 just dies to 0-1-1 former dealing zero damage ;lol There is so many fights.. even if it is 1/200 its kind of notably since disparity is so big. i just take it for granted i know it can happen.. i played Diablo 2 ^^. Every few months you get that 1 in a million item or rune. Lottery.
-One could use trickery to check damage levels and guarantee that Former gets hurt certain %.. but i don't know if thats good idea or would introduce bugs or predictability.
1. Something reasonable - tweaking formula a bit:
Say that former (rough terrain+territory) has 10% chance to damage 16 attack rover and it hits it actually.. So Rover is damaged 10%. Next round former odds are reduced to 5%.. It hits it again..- unlikely but it will happen. Rover is damaged 20%. Next round 2.5%... next 1.25 .. and then if odds<1 round to zero. So even in very unlikely scenario Former will get 4 hits and damage Rover to 40% and at that point Rover is guaranteed to hit the Fomer. So its 40% to 10% atm.. Once this happens just restart loop and goes same to starting 10% odds again. In this case Former can kill Rover.. very unlikely.. but it has to take at least 20% damage.. Also implicates that 90% already hurt former must lose vs healthy rover. In that sense combat would be predictable.
Ie. 1% HP Worm in WTP combat could not really kill healthy attacker like ever with this combat logic... it can now, i've seen Morgan smashing 5 needlejets into my 50% damaged locust and losing all of them before finally killiing it in 6th attack. I also lost 2 full hp rovers with miriam at (-10%) attacking 10% hp worm - and thus losing freshly settled base.
Basically one could eliminate the chance completely that Former 0-1-1 can kill 16 dmg Rover without taking damage. Similarly this would lead to things like that 4-1-2 attacking 1-3-1 defender guarantees some % of damage. That looks interesting and fun. I bet there is some downside to this :).
2. Or some mix... take your combat now - if one units wins n in a row (say 3..) reduce odds 50%.. so you actually get a scenario where one unit cant cleanly kill the other under certain odds. This would mean that superior units will pretty much always be at least 10% damaged on iteration 4, 5, or 6 of combat before it resets.. But it would be more realistic to see unit hurt a bit after every combat.
3. Alternative idea is to give attacking/defender units penalty for fighting multiple times in same turn. Say 1-3-1 unit gets attacked and kills attacker taking zero damage. On following attack (on same turn) it gets 10-20% penalty.. so it gets weaker. On 3rd attack is 20-40% weaker. This should lead to guaranteed damage - death if attacked multiple times. Attackers like Rovers and Copters then likely should be nerfed similarly. This is probably way more complicated than suggestion 1. But I think hagen0 expects something like this.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 01:55:04 pm
No I mean i built it.. AI doesn't even the tech. But it then happened that AI rushed complete AtT at 90+% forcheap(i am not sure anymore) and won the game. What this mean is that if player wants to win - you delay Voice.. prepare crawlers.. money and have to rush it on turn 1.. or you really risk losing the game.
Share the save, please.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 02:51:25 pm
This could be an endless discussion. With all my respect to your feelings and appreciation for your participation in discussion I believe this is not worth worrying about.
Yes. There is some randomization in games to represent a chance. Usually nobody ever complains about the degree of randomization or the specific shape of probability distribution function but only about fairness to all players. People can as well play roulette, black jack, or any board game like monopoly with a pretty archaic cubic random number generator and I never heard anybody complained about too much or too little randomization. Or requests to replace 6 side dice to 12 side dice because the former is not random enough. 😕 DnD uses latter not because they seek some special type of randomness but because they need more granularity in options per turn.
Random effects do affect the game outcome but they nullify itself on a larger scale. Sometimes it takes few turns, sometimes few games. Monopoly and poker, for example, are heavily random games. It takes few games to let more skilled one win more often. The combat in turn based games is not like that. It equalizes own randomness on a course of few turns. Civ1 has a highest possible combat volatility with each unit either live or die. Yet million of gamers enjoyed it for decade and nobody even noted that you can lose a well built empire in the middle of the game due to combat volatility. Randomness becomes already irrelevant after about 20 battles and one usually conducts like 1000 of them during the game.
There are also plenty of other random factors in a game those much, much, much more impactful due to their unique nature and strong effect. Take an initial placement for one. It could directly lead to misery or prosperity - no matter how good your play skills are! That is what worth worrying about if one is so concerned about amount of randomness.
Let me reiterate once more. Did you enjoy playing Civ1 for years? Did you complain about combat volatility back then? Probably not. New system introduced in Civ2/SMACX changed the combat significantly to the level that new combat tactics appears. Unusual at start but we got used to it and enjoyed it again for decades. WtP combat is just somewhere in the middle of Civ1-Civ2 scale. No new principles at all. I feel like most of the complaints are because it does not feel like vanilla combat. Yes, it feels different and maybe shocking at start. It took me like 5-10 WtP games just to get used to it and adjust my play style and strategy to it. Now it's organic. I love it. I love my new strategy. And I don't want to go back! 😝
Try it out. You may love it too.
Civ1, Civ2, and WtP combat formulas produce same exactly results on large scale after 20+ combats or so. New formula was devised to counter worm hunt abuse mostly (kill and heal). Now when weapon/armor is equalized, defense got their bonuses, healing rate is lowered and land psi attack advantage is removed it is not that important anymore to keep it. You are free to dial it down to vanilla version or something in between for your liking. I don't think it is really worth to spend time on proving (😕) which value is good or how exactly we should change combat outcome. It's minor.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 03:48:40 pm
* Changed default value of alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=2.0.
Here you go. I've changed the default value for alternative combat so it should feel less volatile now. I believe lolada or dino just set it like that for themselves already so it should be good sweet spot.
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 04:46:56 pm
Didn't get your MAPFACTOR. I though you proposed to make them more expensive with time. Which is a great idea in my opinion.
mapfactor is just scaling by the size of the map. By # of bases+colony pods makes more sense than time. Time means they get expensive whether you have a large empire or not. And it would force players to do all their expanding early on.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 04:57:24 pm
I don't feel these restrictions are good because it is difficult to enforce them and they are actually can be easily broken. One can start building them on adjacent squares and get adjacent boreholes. Slope restriction is also easy to break with raising and lowering land to get borehole sitting on slope after that. So I don't think I'll bother restricting AI terraforming with them. I can also remove them for human if community so desire. However, this is minor thing either way even if human has them and AI don't. This effectively doesn't restrict their quantity.
The more important thing about boreholes is that they are really effective. For twice longer construction time one get 1.5 more minerals that mine produces plus 6 energy. Obviously, AI would spam them in large quantities instead of mines given the opportunity. We cannot blame it because it is a right thing to do and sure path to victory. They need to be either nerfed or somehow restricted in quantities.
Condensers and echelon mirrors are free of this problem. They are really nicely designed supportive structures. They do not replace farms and solar but act in symbiosis with them increasing their yield.
Boreholes are not symbiote but a competitor of mine. Poor poor mine - it has so many competitors like forest and borehole. 😢
I believe this is not easily fixable. Whatever borehole yield will be it will either replace mine completely if it is more profitable or won't be used at all if not. The only sufficient solution I see now is to make it less mineral producing but more of energy. Something like 0-2-4. This way all previous improvement combinations will have their unique attractiveness.
- farm-solar = nutrient/energy. Not affected by SE.
- fungus = nutrient/energy. However, its yield is technology related not terrafroming. It is also affected by PLANET rating as well as The Manifold Harmonics. So it is not a direct competitor of farm.
- rocky mine = mostly minerals and sometimes 1 nutrient on rainy tile.
- forest = nutrient/mineral with all facilities 3-2-1. One of the most unique improvements as no other is focused on this combination.
- borehole = nutrient/energy. Also unique yield combination. In its 0-2-4 form it is not completely superior neither to forest nor mine nor farm-solar. It is still comparable to mine if we convert energy to minerals 2:1. They both will be equivalent to 4 minerals. So borehole will be better if you want to shift focus from minerals to energy.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 05:03:58 pm
Something is bugged in my save i think ?! it says 14k to rush my project.. but it can't be.. Project cost is 2400 minerals with my discount.. that should be 9600 energy? I noticed this rush change during game some point but ignored it.. a bug? maybe i could hunt down what caused it.
Here for example save in 2320 - i can rush Dream Twister for cca 2800 energy (720 mins).
M.Y. 2367 save is me working halfway on Voice of Planet.
p.s map is weirdly terraforormed due to global warming
re: on combat - well i didn't change any factors - i guess i can try with 2.0 and see if it "feels" less volatile.. i got used to 3.0
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 05:11:24 pm
One thing about making boreholes more E focused is that it doesn't really leave much improvements that give M. Mines aren't that great by the midgame at 0-4-0. Forests end up being more for N than M or E. Fungus was redesigned to be N and E. I think 0-5-5 or so is ok for boreholes. They just need to require more tech. A lot of terraforming improvements just come way too early. To use a Civ2 analogy, it's like getting Supermarkets and Superhighways while still in the medieval era.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 05:16:14 pm
Quote
borehole = nutrient/energy. Also unique yield combination. In its 0-2-4 form it is not completely superior neither to forest nor mine nor farm-solar. It is still comparable to mine if we convert energy to minerals 2:1. They both will be equivalent to 4 minerals. So borehole will be better if you want to shift focus from minerals to energy.
Did you forget ecological impact? And river impact - they ruin river flow. Boreholes are awful for eco damage, take long time to build, have restrictions that work well. They are not available early. If someone wants to cheat/exploit boreholes with terraform up down.. i wouldnt bother trying to prevent it.. if someone wants to have fun that waz with their game they are free to do so.
Yeah they are competitor of mines, but you can for example take a look at my saves there and see i have lots of mines and basically 1 borehole per base. There's not even 1 borehole in new bases. Whats the problem with borehole > mine as long as there are restrictions and eco damage?
btw. if you take a look at save - AI is really having trouble with eco damage and fungus - that is a big problem imo. AI does not control eco damage well - it ruins its land with fungus and does not remove it aggressively. Take a look at Lal's land he's using ton of 2-0-1 tiles at endgame. Zakharov has Manifold sp.. but who knows he might have ruined himself the same - i presumed he planted fungus. I've seen the same with usurper aliens - AI is really heavily affected if having negative planet - it can't easily get rid of worms and eco damage is higher so their development is even worse... with negative planet fungus gives low res.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 05:24:42 pm
mapfactor is just scaling by the size of the map. By # of bases+colony pods makes more sense than time. Time means they get expensive whether you have a large empire or not. And it would force players to do all their expanding early on.
Scaling by the size of the map and by the # of bases+colony are two completely different things. Do you want them both contribute to the effect or these are just two options?
I think scaling by faction achievement makes less sense then by time. It penalizes factions achieved more. Why? Just to equalize everybody regardless of their efforts/skills/luck? There are quite a lot of such penalties in the game already.
ICS is the worst at the very beginning of the game. Later on everybody becomes preoccupied with other things and it naturally fades down. It still going on but not in explosive exponential way.
The purpose of making colonies and other non combat units more expensive with time is to model combat unit getting more expensive with their better weapon/armor. Non combat units do not get upgraded like that. So you may end up producing more than one former/colony/probe a turn after mid game especial with reactor decreased cost. This is not a big deal per se as everybody will be on same page. Just a mere inconvenience and unmatch with other contemporary units/facilities. Therefore, simple increase in cost with time should do it.
I was actually thinking to increase all non combat modules cost with time to make it more fairer and to not break cost balance with combat units. Something like gradual increase by approximately 50% every 100 turns. Combined with 20% reactor cost drop every 75-100 turns it will give about 30% factual increase per 100 turns or so.
Here sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34
With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 05:28:14 pm
re: on combat - well i didn't change any factors - i guess i can try with 2.0 and see if it "feels" less volatile.. i got used to 3.0
Ah. That was probably dino then.
No worries. I've already set it to 2.0 by default in last version. It is still adjustable by users, though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 05:32:44 pm
I saw boreholes as more as a replacement for mines.
Yep. Agree on that. See my notes in some previous post.
Along with nerfing boreholes we could also increase output of mines with tech same way as for platforms to make them more relevant in later game. Maybe even couple times with two techs: 4-5-6. However, the amount of minerals with all multiplier facilities is already quite large in late game. I would prefer to nerf borehole rather than beaf mine.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 05:37:22 pm
Quote
Here sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speeder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34
With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.
I'll put up stop sign here ;stupid :D What do we want to gain with these changes?? ICS stop? Why not just let players colonize finish with it and proceed the game.. i am not sure that colonizing something whole game is better. If you want to stop ICS why don't just restrict base distance to 4+ tiles or something?!
Colony pods more expensive - i don't know is there a point to it?? i mean its natural to expand early on and then you want to build infrastructure and units. If I continue expanding i delegate colony pod building to fringe weak bases - i want my main strong bases to work on more important things.
You may even make things worse - if you made it that expensive later - then player will just rush it to colonize early while its cheap. And AI will be way worse since they don't know the difference.
Formers - basically i build better formers - speeders so its expensive.. or one can armor them to protect them from air attack. AI builds grav formers.. They die more and AI is having trouble terraforming fungus for example - they need formers. Making them more expensive doesn't help.
Transport - thats a nerf to AI as well imo --- player will build up 2-3 transports.. AI spams them.
Speeder Probe - AI LOVES to spam them and they spam really expensive variants like neutronium probes. Making them more expensive is bad idea.. It would be good idea to actually teach AI not to build them so much!
Supply - AI builds armored variants.. they do pay off faster later, but there's less turn in game.. i don't see the point. It would also affect rushing?!
I think making these units more expensive is likely worse for the game overall.
Making units slightly cheaper at start ... maybe.. At this point it is worth it to rush Recycling centers for example i think.. Maybe even Rec Commons. If you make Colony pods too cheap then it will be vanilla colony spam again. Making formers slightly cheaper might be good idea - since they are hard to rush (4 energy.. per min).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 05:47:28 pm
And river impact - they ruin river flow.
Hmm. Just tested this in scenario. Placed bore on a river - it doesn't change it a bit.
Yeah they are competitor of mines, but you can for example take a look at my saves there and see i have lots of mines and basically 1 borehole per base. There's not even 1 borehole in new bases. Whats the problem with borehole > mine as long as there are restrictions and eco damage?
The problem is that these restrictions are only in human mind. They are not physical restrictions. AI will spam them as it sees fit disregarding ecodamage and causing global warming for everybody. However, I agree with you on that fungal pops destroy improvements boreholes included. So maybe I was too harsh on them. 0-4-4 would be more on target. And we should teach it to regard ecodamage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 05:52:28 pm
QuoteHere sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speeder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34
With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.
I'll put up stop sign here ;stupid :D What do we want to gain with these changes??
Whew. Thank you man. I was afraid I had to implement these changes to satisfy users. 😌
I agree there is no real need for that. At least nothing major.
Now I will remove myself from this discussion hoping you'll forge some agreement with Nexii.
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 06:00:08 pm
Anyway.. quick experiment on one of my save.. right side is with river.. i removed old borehole and placed new one directly on river.
(https://i.imgur.com/MLAPeq5.png)
+1 for teaching AI to control eco damage
Post by: lolada on June 02, 2020, 06:15:22 pm
Quote
Now I will remove myself from this discussion hoping you'll forge some agreement with Nexii.
Moving them later - since they are quite op - might be good idea. Not too late tho.. There is The Weather Paradigm - its way too strong if it unlocks Boreholes too early only for 1 faction. On plain Thinker AI mod - The weather paradigm is like the best wonder in game. The Weather Paradigm loses lots of value if its not available early - its already tech level 3 in your mod and 600 minerals. Or one could remove boreholes from weather paradigm and just unlock it at some later tech.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 06:19:27 pm
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 07:14:46 pm
Re: boreholes, their ecodamage from terraforming isn't really all that much. It's 2/8 from working an improvement and 8/8 for the borehole itself. So only 1.25 minerals of ecodamage. Then you have tree farm which cuts terraforming ecodamage in half and hybrid forest which reduces all of it. It all counts I suppose but the vast majority of ecodamage is from mineral production. And that's probably fine really, given how little the UI explains ecodamage mechanics.
Yea WP was always among the very best SPs in game. Only Cloning Vats compared in terms of power.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 02, 2020, 10:17:51 pm
Are you able to fundamentally change mechanics like support and eco-damage to make them less ICS-friendly? Sounds tricky.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 10:34:28 pm
Thanks for adjusting the combat formula. I will finish my current game and then give the version a whirl.
No need to wait. You can change this parameter in your current version as well. This is only computational change so save backward compatible. Besides, as I pointed out before, it won't change the tide on big scale only your experience in isolated combat. So no harm to try it in the middle of the game.
Are you able to fundamentally change mechanics like support and eco-damage to make them less ICS-friendly? Sounds tricky.
Absolutely. However, it costs time, which I don't have much. Therefore, I tend to ponder about all potential future changes before implementation, as you probably already noticed on this thread. So come up with some well rounded solution and we will give it a thought.
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 11:05:44 pm
I think a 100% distance formula could be fine to retain for EFFIC. Here's idea #2 for a simplified efficiency:
EFFIC = 1 - (4 - EFFIC) * HQ DISTANCE / 200, min of 25% max of 100%
-4 EFFIC would lose 4% efficiency per 1 distance (8/200) from the HQ
0 EFFIC would lose 2% efficiency per 1 distance from the HQ
+4 EFFIC would have 100% efficiency at any distance
The 200 factor could be adjusted by map size, but it's probably roughly what it should be for a normal sized map.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 11:07:29 pm
Here - thats 1 turn before they rush Att. 106 turns to go.. 11 minerals per turn. Pirates are at +1 industry (fund + planned + power + thought police). If you click next turn they will fully rush it.
Amazing work, man. You did a great service to community as I discovered another undocumented quirk which I wasn't aware of and, I believe, nobody else as well. At least Induktio missed it in its hurry cost calculation too.
About AI first. They have a special code that cuts 1 mineral from row if human is leading. Then they also get -1 if some other special condition happens. Then they also get -1 or -2 if other special condition happens. That is all in addition to INDUSTRY effect so it overpass its -5 maximal benefit. That is how your Pirates got 4 minerals per row. Cheaters. 😁
Correspondingly, their AtT cost is 300 * 4 = 1200. This leaves them 1200 - 41 = 1159 minerals to go and 1159 * 4 = ~4636 credits to hurry it. They had 6k on turn before so this all adds up.
Now to the fun part. Apparently, when VoP is built in any base it additionally doubles all hurry costs! Projects, facilities, units - everything. Looks like designers also understood the abundance of credits at end game and tried to slow down natural unstoppable hurrying at finish line. That is why your hurry cost is double of normal if you calculate it. Whereas Thinker hurry code does not account for it and mistakenly calculates AI hurry cost without this VoP factor.
I tested this VoP effect in base UI screen for both human and AI factions. It works for both. I am not sure if this also accounted for in AI base upkeep code that does not use UI. However, I tend to believe it does. Otherwise, it would be a huge discrepancy between AI hurrying it itself and scenario editor hurrying it on behalf of AI which should mimic AI abilities 1:1.
With that being said it becomes obvious that hurrying projects in late game is much much easier than building them with minerals due to overwhelming cash flow. In this regard it would be logical to increase project hurrying cost even more. They are too valuable to just buy them as units. Say facilities are x2, units are x4, and projects are x8. And, of course, VoT doubles all the above numbers. What do you think?
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 11:13:12 pm
Then theres other considerations, like that you can rush a facility and swap to SP. Again an additional penalty has to be applied...
Granted SPs are always the best to rush so I'm kind of mixed on it. It's not like 8E:1M is all that efficient... my custom PKs have 2x rush costs so I have a bit of a feel for it.
Minerals should be the best for something whether it's units or SPs
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 11:15:47 pm
Well forcing a bigger space between bases does solve a lot of the ICS. And it makes EFFIC more relevant
I don't see how it restricts human who usually place bases quite far apart comparing AI who often put 3 bases on a crater. At the same time human is biggest ICS abuser.
I think a 100% distance formula could be fine to retain for EFFIC. Here's idea #2 for a simplified efficiency:
EFFIC = 1 - (4 - EFFIC) * HQ DISTANCE / 200, min of 25% max of 100%
-4 EFFIC would lose 4% efficiency per 1 distance (8/200) from the HQ
0 EFFIC would lose 2% efficiency per 1 distance from the HQ
+4 EFFIC would have 100% efficiency at any distance
The 200 factor could be adjusted by map size, but it's probably roughly what it should be for a normal sized map.
-4 EFFIC would lose 4% efficiency per 1 distance (8/200) from the HQ - you mean lose 4% energy intake?
If so then it makes sense.
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 11:25:15 pm
I'd say Thinker AI uses ICS quite well, it puts bases 3 distance apart from what I've seen. More extreme ICS can do 2 distance apart I suppose but I think its debated some what's ideal. Forcing 4 tiles apart might feel a bit overkill but it would stop it hard.
Perhaps for SPs they can't be rushed with anything till 25% complete with minerals. I do think that was sort of their intent with the 4x rush cost till 4 rows are complete thing. Only problem was it still allowed rushing the early part, and it didn't really scale up for the more expensive SPs.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 11:36:05 pm
* VoP doubles hurry cost. This is now correctly calculated in AI hurry code.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 11:40:37 pm
Perhaps for SPs they can't be rushed with anything till 25% complete with minerals. I do think that was sort of their intent with the 4x rush cost till 4 rows are complete thing. Only problem was it still allowed rushing the early part, and it didn't really scale up for the more expensive SPs.
Any restriction for minimal hurrying threshold is unclear. Why it is 10 in vanilla? Why not 20, 50? What difference does it make? I never understood the significance of this number but I had to remember it to exploit it properly.
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 11:43:16 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 02, 2020, 11:53:09 pm
Post by: Nexii on June 02, 2020, 11:56:48 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 03:00:01 am
Post by: lolada on June 03, 2020, 08:23:55 am
Quote
Say facilities are x2, units are x4, and projects are x8. And, of course, VoT doubles all the above numbers. What do you think?
What a mess ^^ i've seen they had only 4 mins in a row.. cheaters :D. I don't know how its calculated but sure they needed it their production was awful. I was also thinking about 8 E per mineral for SP - i'd say do it and we can test it. If it turns about bad i'll complain :). The thing is player can hurry important project with crawlers and then rush the rest with energy. AI is in general too dumb for that. But AI gets these ridiculous production discounts so they hurry it 100% with way less energy. This 8E might level the fields somewhat.
On topic of requiring x% amount of minerals before being able to rush SP. It makes some sense since it guarantees one can't snipe them in single turn and the faction with better production can win the race. For example this AtT thing would not happen. And there would be a race - 1 turn rush is not a race; with current system Morgan is the king.
There's Crawler rush thing - but it is for most of the game quite an investment to dump crawlers into SP. I'd ban crawlers from rushing SP just because i find it unfair to AI. But its not too bad, in current implementation player can snipe some important SPs with crawler+energy, but there's enough projects and tech disparity that AI gets lots of them and thats quite nice.
Terraforming
I'd say it should be #1 priority to improve AI terraforming - they need to have enough minerals or they are really really bad. Got to teach them to remove fungus and terraform if they don't have PLANET > 0. Even then AI should know that each base needs at least x amount of minerals. For example 5 - 10 - 20 early, mid, late.. thats the way i think about it at least - in general each base needs to have a minimum amount to complete facilities in reasonable time. Then AI needs to know when things get worse to re-terraform terrain.. once fungus pop everywhere i don't see them removing it. Fixing eco-damage would help them a lot, i've seen them doing 60+ eco-damage thats worm-pop every turn until the base is ruined.
Mines: if mine would not reduce output of food by 1 it could be decent on rolling tiles for some bases. Civ3 had that.. AI still needs to know not to build mine on every tile ^^. Low altitude Rainy rolling tile could be 3-2-0 or 4-2-0 later.. solar would add just 1 or 2 energy (with economy or mirror).. while on hill tiles one could build solar collectors. You can maybe teach AI to prefer solar collectors on higher altitudes, mines on lower rolling tiles.
ICS
I must say i don't really see the issue. I simply don't ICS because its anti-fun and tedious and AI does not do it either. Recently i played on small maps because even on normal maps its easy to get 30 cities 4-tiles-apart and it becomes tedious to play. Basically i tend to match AI in cities and add a few more and just stop. If i add new ones to fill the space i space them more apart, later often 5-6 tiles because it really doesn't matter much once you have 30+ of them.
I don't use governors they are just awful - Induktio said that code is not reversed yet.. until its rewritten i think they are useless. You can force bases 4 tiles apart i won't mind.. i turned off monsoon jungle in maps anyway the thing is unabalanced.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 12:57:32 pm
Rushing
On topic of requiring x% amount of minerals before being able to rush SP. It makes some sense since it guarantees one can't snipe them in single turn and the faction with better production can win the race. For example this AtT thing would not happen. And there would be a race - 1 turn rush is not a race.
It's a healing of a dead. If one can hurry projects easily for x8 cash this is clearly the problems of too much cash or too small project cost or both. Project is supposed to be expensive to be not rushed in one turn no matter with crawlers or cash. Restructuring the payment scheme is just hiding it under the carpet.
There's Crawler rush thing - but it is for most of the game quite an investment to dump crawlers into SP. I'd ban crawlers from rushing SP just because i find it unfair to AI. But its not too bad, in current implementation player can snipe some important SPs with crawler+energy, but there's enough projects and tech disparity that AI gets lots of them and thats quite nice.
Same thought here. I believe project should be built by whole faction but crawlers are bad implementation of it.
I think the problem of buying projects with cash is that it is collected from all bases into a single pool. Whereas, mineral production stays with bases. It doesn't matter when hurrying common production as all bases would build it anyway. Helping some bases with common pool of money is fine as this happens in small increments to bases here and there which is a good way to partially channel combined income to help the neediest. Project is a different story. One want to channel a big part of empire production for a single building into a single base. It should be so huge than theoretically even common cash income pool should not be able to cover it.
Here is what I came up with. When faction starts building a project all bases contribute some percentage of minerals to it. No need to build and relocate tons of crawlers for that. Easy, automatic, and natural for both human and AI. Now it is really whole community who erects it.
With that in mind we can easily price them proportional to whole empire strength and to not be afraid anymore they are not affordable for AI to build it in a single base.
1. We can make it back expensive again. Especially late game ones.
2. We can scale late game project proportional to map size.
3. With two above in mind we should probably rearrange them in time/cost so that cost corresponds appearance time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 01:00:19 pm
Terraforming
I'd say it should be #1 priority to improve AI terraforming - they need to have enough minerals or they are really really bad. Got to teach them to remove fungus and terraform if they don't have PLANET > 0. Even then AI should know that each base needs at least x amount of minerals. For example 5 - 10 - 20 early, mid, late.. thats the way i think about it at least - in general each base needs to have a minimum amount to complete facilities in reasonable time. Then AI needs to know when things get worse to re-terraform terrain.. once fungus pop everywhere i don't see them removing it. Fixing eco-damage would help them a lot, i've seen them doing 60+ eco-damage thats worm-pop every turn until the base is ruined.
Mines: if mine would not reduce output of food by 1 it could be decent on rolling tiles for some bases. Civ3 had that.. AI still needs to know not to build mine on every tile ^^. Low altitude Rainy rolling tile could be 3-2-0 or 4-2-0 later.. solar would add just 1 or 2 energy (with economy or mirror).. while on hill tiles one could build solar collectors. You can maybe teach AI to prefer solar collectors on higher altitudes, mines on lower rolling tiles.
Yeah. It's all makes sense. The only thing that rocky tiles do not harvest any nutrients and on top of that mine reduces the nutrient output confuses me. What is the purpose of it? Some historical reason from Civ1? Well now it makes rocky mines pretty pathetic comparing to forest and boreholes. Don't know what to do with it.
Post by: lolada on June 03, 2020, 02:15:53 pm
Quote
Yeah. It's all makes sense. The only thing that rocky tiles do not harvest any nutrients and on top of that mine reduces the nutrient output confuses me. What is the purpose of it? Some historical reason from Civ1? Well now it makes rocky mines pretty pathetic comparing to forest and boreholes. Don't know what to do with it.
I always imagined the mine to be destructive.. if you take plain grassland and smack a mine on it you destroy lots of that land.. crops can't grow, polution etc - and thats why it goes -1 food. And its a balance thing also.
Civ games do not have production blocks like eco-damage so what they did is simply control amount of minerals available. Now Alpha Centauri can uniquely break this by using crawlers or spaming something like 4 boreholes. Thats hard to balance - so they likely run away from these concepts in later games.
Anyway.. i don't know why you consider mines less valuable that much? They are ok for long time in my book. Eventually you may want to replace them all but i don't see the problem there as long as they are useful for a long time. In AC new inventions replace old ones.. its natural.
Take a look chronologically.
1. they build fast and are better source of minerals then forest, its double 4 vs 2
- forest has only 1 food and that is slow.. if you want production badly mine is better
- then other scenario is that you don't want to grow at all.. base would starve.. or go in drone territory - i switch and use mine because i don't want food at that time - when i want to grow i switch back to forest
2. Crawlers come... its way better to crawl mine than forest..
3. Boreholes come - yeah borehole > mine but its way harder to build and has restrictions. So some mines will go away but they are still useful. Nexii surprised me a bit saying that borehole only adds 1.25 of minerals eco-dmg.. but its felt anyway..
4. Mineral production % boosters (like Genejack).. Mine > forest.. it adds 2 minerals instead of 1..
5. Tree farms - its a big investment.. but this 2-2-0 tile is usually better than 0-4-0 so one might want to remove mines. Provided that you can grow which is not easy. Lategame yo u can so eventually you may want to remove all mines. But its quite a job to remove them - one has to level the rocky tile (8 turn default) and plant forest.
5a) special case - green/fungus factions (The Cult and gaians) will likely want to have mines and borehole whole game due to lack of minerals..
6. Eventually by the endgame one might remove all mines from land and use Hybrid forests but thats trading raw production for science/energy and specialists.. which is ok i guess.. its time of star trek replicators
#
On case of farm/mines combination, if mine -1 nutrient effect is removed.. rainy rolling tile can go 4-2-0 with soil enricher.. while hybrid forest is 3-2-1. One could prefer that and work extra tile or specialist. Actually way earlier rainy farm/mine is 3/2/0 and that is > tree forest 2-2-0 yield. But it causes small amount of eco-damage. One can and likely should use the mix as there's usually a number of flat 0 mineral tiles around the base so there's space for both mines and forests.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 02:56:40 pm
Forest also seem to be fine now with 1-2-0. Somewhat weaker than other combinations like rolling rainy farm-mine 2-2-0 (that is kinda neat, actually).
This is borehole that is not.
Let's look at advanced terminating from extended features point of view. We'll consider how each option is a) unique and complementary to others, 2) naturally limited by itself so there is no need to restrict it somehow with additional weird rules, and maybe 3) engage strategical thinking.
aquifer
Awesome feature. Unique. Does not replace any other improvement but complement them by adding extra moisture and energy. Self restricted. You can have only so many of them and bonus is minimal. Strategical placement is important.
condenser
Another awesome and super balanced one. Unique for artificial moisturizing. Only river does the same but in very limited and unpredictable manner. Complements farm/enricher. Self restricted as rainfall has a limit. It is also quite strategical as there is no need to place it everywhere especially in totally arid areas. Forest is better there.
mirror
Unique and complementary to solar. Strategical in a way to require right placement around other solars. Slightly off in self restricting area. Surrounding single collector with mirrors adds 8 energy to it or +3 on average per tile for large energy fields of collectors+mirrors. In addition to +4 possible energy from altitude it's a big source of energy overflow past mid-game.
Probably we should restrict the total combined bonus from altitude and mirrors by +3. This way mirror will be sort of artificial high-tech substitute for taking collector at higher altitude and there won't be much need to raise all the terrain all over the place out of golden fever.
borehole
Not unique or complimentary. Same singe tile improvement replacing mine. Not too much strategy in placement either except to put it on most unusable tiles. So it works similar to forest completely disregarding terrain. Bad, OP, and hard to balance feature. I guess designers wanted three advanced options and were out of cool ideas. 😞
As you see, borehole is the only not harmonic thing out there. That is why it is so much discussion around it and pain to balance it. I am really thinking to just remove this abomination from the face of earth.
I am testing it now as 0-2-6. With such yield and longer construction time my AI formers seem to prefer it to mine sometimes but not always.
Post by: lolada on June 03, 2020, 03:22:24 pm
Mirrors are ok-ish, i build them for fun mostly, i don't see them as op at all. Not like there's space for solar/mirror farms and if someone wants to do it its nice to have the option. When talking about restrictions, i like to go on relaxed side. There's literally no case where one can surround mirror with solar collectors.. there's always flat tile or rocky tile i'd rathe have mine or forest on it. So Mirror usually adds few points of energy and thats nothing spectaculura.. its like maybe a bit stronger mine tile. Often condenser > mirror.. so there's that. If the land is already green enough mirror can come into place.
On topic of boreholes.. they are in weird place. One thing to note - they are awesome solution for flatland bases with no rocky tiles.. coastal ones especially. Easy quick 6 minerals.. energy doesn't even matter, its just nice. In that sense they compete away for example mineral sea platforms. So if you remove boreholes you will give way more space to forests certainly - otherwises bases can't get minerals. Not sure if its possible to make sea tiles useful for minerals. So here - boreholes are op certainly. Farm/mines combos might be used here if you remove that -1 nutrient.
Another thing is that this will certainly weaken mineral production of lots of bases - it might be good idea.. might be reeeealy bad for AI.. possibly. The thing with AC is that many bases are strong so losing 1-2 of capital ones is not terrible. If most bases turn to crap then taking someone cap and production base might be game over. AI also handles production badly - they go into big support problem so they really need raw minerals.
- Borehole with 0-2-6 yield hm seems quite awful to me honestly ^^. Not sure i would build them.
- Removing boreholes completely would help with eco-damage.
- Another idea is - since they are cool - just moving them to something like tech 10. So lategame one can use them a bit its fun.
- btw what about giving base tile an extra mineral to help AI?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 03:34:00 pm
Short term plan.
Solar collector energy yield limit is 4, including altitude and mirror effects, excluding bonus resources and SE effects. This wont affect tidal harness as its max energy output is 4 already. This will render combining land raising and building mirror fields useless. They still will be useful separately. Preferably mirrors will be cheaper option.
Borehole is 0-2-6. This is kinda artificial attempt to balance them instead of completely removing it. This way they are formally not superior to rocky mines and not inferior to farm-solar combo.
Post by: Nexii on June 03, 2020, 04:24:41 pm
Echelons were never that OP because they took more former turns than condensor+borehole and produced less. Add up the turns for farm+enricher+raise+solar/mirror, it's like 4+8+12+(12+4)/2. 32 turns plus the EC cost to raise. Solar raise is somewhere around 4-0-6 and borehole is 0-6-6. Though often borehole fills in extra land with forest, so that has to be averaged in.
Solar seems a little stronger than it is because a lot of the surplus N ends up wasted. Kind of like with sea bases. It's mostly borehole and condensor that need nerfing down. Condensor probably doesn't need any N boost at all on the condensor tile. Borehole should probably be 0-4-4 or 0-5-5, somewhere around there. I think boreholes do need to produce M, otherwise M ends up being very scarce. Alternatives could be to boost the M of forests, mines, or fungus.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 04:55:40 pm
On topic of boreholes.. they are in weird place. One thing to note - they are awesome solution for flatland bases with no rocky tiles.. coastal ones especially. Easy quick 6 minerals.. energy doesn't even matter, its just nice. In that sense they compete away for example mineral sea platforms. So if you remove boreholes you will give way more space to forests certainly - otherwises bases can't get minerals. Not sure if its possible to make sea tiles useful for minerals. So here - boreholes are op certainly. Farm/mines combos might be used here if you remove that -1 nutrient.
Yeah. That is the problem with forest and boreholes. They are both new additions and they are both mineral focused. Together with mine this is three mineral oriented improvements. Forest is also adding nutrients so it is somewhat complementary and unique comparing to mine or borehole. While two of them is easy to balance three of them is too much to handle. There are no other group of competing improvements like that.
Nutrient penalty for mine is fine. This is payment for minerals. I understand this. What I don't understand is that rocky tile does not produce nutrients at all. Why? This is a complete waste of rainfall.
- Borehole with 0-2-6 yield hm seems quite awful to me honestly ^^. Not sure i would build them.
They are still good for energy. Better than average tidal harness or solar collector. Best high altitude collector-mirror field can get up to 7 energy but this is rare and costly to raise everything. So they will be an excellent energy source.
- Removing boreholes completely would help with eco-damage.
Not by much with their reduced output. Nobody will spam them. Besides terraforming ecodamage is completely curable.
- Another idea is - since they are cool - just moving them to something like tech 10. So lategame one can use them a bit its fun.
Eh. Not a solution IMHO. Just swiping it under the carpet. It doesn't matter when you undergo complete terraforming replacement it is still bad design.
Post by: Nexii on June 03, 2020, 05:13:50 pm
For N: condensor/farm, kelp, forests
For E: borehole, tidal, echelon/solar
For M: mines, borehole, forest
Plus fungus but that's kind of a wildcard
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 05:16:16 pm
Well you can remove the -1 N for mines in alphax.txt. I have for awhile as sea mining platforms were very bad compared to tidal harnesses. Let's see, 1 M and -1 N, or 3 E...not a hard decision. I even gave mining platforms +1M. But I also reduced kelp by 1N. I might go back on this one yet, sea has to be considered for mines I guess is all I'm saying. I've also tried 3-0-2 and 3-2-0 for sea tiles. Right now I have sea at 2-3-0 and 2-0-3 (plus any facilities).
I wouldn't bring sea bases into mineral discussion. They are mineral poor and energy reach for reason.
I think boreholes do need to produce M, otherwise M ends up being very scarce. Alternatives could be to boost the M of forests, mines, or fungus.
I don't think they are scarce on land even without advanced terraforming. It depends on how many you need. About every third tile is rocky so building a rocky mine per every two farms gives 20 minerals for 12 population base. 40 with two factories. And even that may already produce high ecodamage. This is what stops people from borehole spamming, not the scarcity by itself.
If you think bases need more minerals we can just move multiplying facilities somewhat earlier. They were originally placed late because of boreholes and mineral abundance to curb ecodamage! Now with nerfed boreholes moving them earlier won't harm.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 05:27:05 pm
Looks like opinions are more or less around 1) nerfing borehole and focus it on more of minerals/energy but not both, 2) nerfing energy flow past mid game.
Short term plan.
Solar collector energy yield limit is 4, including altitude and mirror effects, excluding bonus resources and SE effects. This wont affect tidal harness as its max energy output is 4 already. This will render combining land raising and building mirror fields useless. They still will be useful separately. Preferably mirrors will be cheaper option.
Borehole is 0-2-6. This is kinda artificial attempt to balance them instead of completely removing it. This way they are formally not superior to rocky mines and not inferior to farm-solar combo.
Update.
1. Borehole stay nerfed like that.
2. No touching collectors/mirrors.
3. Moving mineral multiplying facilities a little bit earlier to give players a chance to beef up mineral intake in case they found it insufficient. They are still expensive so no use to build them everywhere. Also there is still ecodamage that strikes back early production centers.
Post by: lolada on June 03, 2020, 05:38:29 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on June 03, 2020, 07:01:37 pm
Looks like opinions are more or less around 1) nerfing borehole and focus it on more of minerals/energy but not both, 2) nerfing energy flow past mid game.
Short term plan.
Solar collector energy yield limit is 4, including altitude and mirror effects, excluding bonus resources and SE effects. This wont affect tidal harness as its max energy output is 4 already. This will render combining land raising and building mirror fields useless. They still will be useful separately. Preferably mirrors will be cheaper option.
Borehole is 0-2-6. This is kinda artificial attempt to balance them instead of completely removing it. This way they are formally not superior to rocky mines and not inferior to farm-solar combo.
Update.
1. Borehole stay nerfed like that.
2. No touching collectors/mirrors.
3. Moving mineral multiplying facilities a little bit earlier to give players a chance to beef up mineral intake in case they found it insufficient. They are still expensive so no use to build them everywhere. Also there is still ecodamage that strikes back early production centers.
Sounds good to me. I'd not even make them so expensive. The opportunity cost of building a facility over formers/colony pods is always considerable. I would hardly build any in the early game if they were not so cheap to rush-build.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 07:36:34 pm
* Borehole Square, 0, 2, 6, 0.
* Retroviral Engineering is level 5.
* Advanced Military Algorithms is level 6.
* Industrial Nanorobotics is level 7.
* Planetary Economics is level 8.
* Power SE model is reassigned to Superstring Theory (L5).
In essence - nerfed boreholes minerals and moved factories a little bit earlier.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 07:39:55 pm
Sounds good to me. I'd not even make them so expensive. The opportunity cost of building a facility over formers/colony pods is always considerable. I would hardly build any in the early game if they were not so cheap to rush-build.
Any production multiplying facility should be somewhat expensive by definition.
Genejack Factory is just 10/2 - very cheap comparing to benefits.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 03, 2020, 08:31:07 pm
Hit end turn on the save file to replay it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 03, 2020, 08:45:45 pm
I'm playing an older version. However, when I researched Quantum Power the game asked me to upgrade my units. The upgrade costs were negative and I made a ton of money, almost 1000 credits. Is this intended? :)
Hit end turn on the save file to replay it.
Very intended! 😀
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#unit-hurry-cost-and-unit-upgrade-cost
Feel free to scan readme. It is big I admit it. However, I tried to explain all key features there as clear as possible.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 05, 2020, 04:05:25 am
* Merged with Thinker 2.0.
A lot of changes. Proceed with caution.
Post by: lolada on June 05, 2020, 07:53:12 am
Quote
# Version 65
* Merged with Thinker 2.0.
A lot of changes. Proceed with caution.
;b; ;b; ;b; ;b; :danc: :danc: :danc: ;b; ;b; ;b;
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 07, 2020, 10:26:01 pm
I have started to work on terraforming AI to give computer some boost. Induktio has already done a lot on unit movement in Thinker. I hope to extend this a little in terraforming part only for now.
I use the computer worked tile placement algorithm to determine which changes will be accepted by base. For that I actually change map modeling future improved state and then recompute base to let it use these new improvements. Whether modification will be accepted or not depends greatly on base needs and governors settings. In this regards this algorithm lets AI decide which improvements they need based on their current model and base settings. Of course, it may accept more than one possible improvement options. In this case I weight them by each resource. Currently I set nutrients = 1.0, minerals = 1.0 and energy = 0.5. For nutrients and minerals I count additional surplus. For energy I summarize total economy, labs, and psych. This approach allows to automatically account for any multiplying factors as well as corruption. So essentially I project the net worth of given improvement.
I bundle some terraforming action into options so they correctly compare with other options. For example, farm/enricher + mine or farm/enricher + collector or rocky mine + road. I think this makes it fairer to compare them with a single purpose improvements like forest or borehole.
One best option for each tile is determined they are ranked by their benefit for nearest base (or the one that benefits from it). Then they are distributed among the available former in this region. Highest ranked target are distributed first then second, etc. This way all bases have a chance to claim some work to be done for their benefit and no base is left behind (providing there are enough former for that. Also bases with ongoing terraforming have their requests lowered to more or less distribute number of construction sites per base.
roads
That is a real pain and weak point of algorithm. It is impossible to weight them as resources since they serve different purpose. Thank you for lolada whi proposed some dynamical adjustment to road weight. Current approach is like that.
First, there is just a flat value for road/tube. Meaning if the best yield improvement mineral worth value is no better than road value - the road is prefered.
Second, there is an additional value for base connection network. So if potential road connects bases it has an increased value and likely will be build much sooner. Now how to determine where this connecting path goes is a big problem. I didn't want to overload computer with some super algorithm calculating this. I'll appreciate if someone can provide a cheap workable solution. Currently I did it in pretty sloppy way. Each base has four roads sticking out of it in four cardinal directions (N,S,W,E) 2 tiles long. I hope that these roads will somehow intersect with similar roads from other bases thus connecting them. Pretty pathetic. 🤣
On top of that I also try to connect unconnected roads on opposite side of the tile. This is all heavily untested now. Need to see how it works out.
condensers
That one is easy. I just explicitly increase moisture around it and base tells me how beneficial it is.
echelon mirrors
That one is easy too as yield calculation automatically account for any collector nearby.
rivers
That one is kinda hard to model mostly because it flows unpredictable. To lessen my pain I just add 2,4,6,8 additional rivers around aquifer depending on aquifer altitude. Not too exact but I don't think it requires super precision.
Post by: vonbach on June 07, 2020, 10:57:10 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 08, 2020, 01:36:07 am
I am working on computer enemy AI. And I make it to do right things by completely overriding its decisions the way I just described in post above.
If you meant human player automation helper then I didn't touch it and probably never will and probably no other modder ever will.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 08, 2020, 04:31:45 pm
There are still some erratic behavior when nearby bases change their immediate needs by changing workers placement, growing in size, etc. I don't know if it makes sense to build for future. Meaning still build something even if it is currently not accepted by base due to not enough workers.
Post by: lolada on June 08, 2020, 07:18:27 pm
We do plan ahead a bit - so if i see that former can't improve specific tile that base is working atm i go and check if the base will grow soon. In that case i improve the best tile i can ahead of time. Its ok for base to have one extra tile improved than it can work. It can be used for micromanaging production/growth.
I presume AI will improve more food likely - while player will maybe go and improve mine - because its important to check if the base can grow more due to drone problem and Hab Complex limitation. If base can grow improved tile is usually one with the food.
Typical situation where i go and prepare base ahead of time is usually capital/production base - to ensure i have max production and growth so i can snipe secret projects.
Anyway, only if base can't grow or grow very slowly - i go and send former to other base to travel 1-2 turns.. rarely more than that - maybe in lategame. I build bases close so there's no need to travel much. Later i use more of speeder formers so they can travel far quickly.
Another thing is when former does not have good tile to work - say mid to lategame - i go and team them up to build smth like boreholes faster. Or they go build roads towards enemies or clear fungus. This is the time to build sensors or raise terrain for example.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 08, 2020, 07:41:59 pm
Even with 3 formers per land base they never ran out of tasks for me. If they have nothing to do I do aquifers, mirrors, raise land on shores to get more territory, etc. Never ends. Water ones are different story. One probably need one water former per two bases and even then they will eventually sit idle.
Post by: Induktio on June 09, 2020, 12:30:49 pm
Terraroming AI
I have started to work on terraforming AI to give computer some boost. Induktio has already done a lot on unit movement in Thinker. I hope to extend this a little in terraforming part only for now.
I use the computer worked tile placement algorithm to determine which changes will be accepted by base. For that I actually change map modeling future improved state and then recompute base to let it use these new improvements. Whether modification will be accepted or not depends greatly on base needs and governors settings. In this regards this algorithm lets AI decide which improvements they need based on their current model and base settings. Of course, it may accept more than one possible improvement options. In this case I weight them by each resource. Currently I set nutrients = 1.0, minerals = 1.0 and energy = 0.5. For nutrients and minerals I count additional surplus. For energy I summarize total economy, labs, and psych. This approach allows to automatically account for any multiplying factors as well as corruption. So essentially I project the net worth of given improvement.
I'm not sure the changes you're describing here will result in meaningfully better AI behaviour. Maybe it's necessary if you drastically changed the cost benefit for some terraforming improvements in this mod. Though implementing cost benefit calculations is something really tedious to do in this kind of situation. Some of the changes might duplicate behaviour that is already implemented in Thinker's former logic (can't be sure based on the description).
I've been testing a lot of different approaches when it comes to build order and terraforming strategies implemented in Thinker. To get any meaningful results it basically requires A/B testing of both versions simultaneously. I think the way to do it is to have two similar AIs play against each other on a symmetrical map (disable secret projects etc) and then watch which one of them will grow the fastest. Then you might get quite a good idea which approach is clearly better or worse. You could also run a regular game with all AIs but that is so random it's basically meaningless without a large sample size. But then again, I won't be developing stuff for forked versions only.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 09, 2020, 11:36:13 pm
* Fixed the bug when there are more formers than tasks. Apparently that actually happens sometimes.
* Devised simplified road network algorithm. It seems to work fine. The balance between improvements and roads can be tuned with parameters and it is the best that could be done, I guess. It is pretty difficult to compare and evaluate them.
* Properly calculated water regions accessibility. Now sea formers can get out of bases and cross through own bases connecting different water regions. Neat!
* Tuned construction and traveling time parameters a little. Now they seem to travel less and do sane things 90% of the time.
Observed that they build farms a lot and but not always second improvement on it. Maybe it is just not enough formers and they got distracted on other priorities or bases grow fast due to lot of farms?
Post by: lolada on June 10, 2020, 08:32:52 am
Quote
Observed that they build farms a lot and but not always second improvement on it. Maybe it is just not enough formers and they got distracted on other priorities or bases grow fast due to lot of farms?
Basically they value food a lot - maybe they should though. Its hard to tell what is the best approach. Take this scenario: base is working two 1-1-0 tiles:
a) Do you farm + solar first one for 2-1-2? Do you build a road before moving away?
b) Do you farm - move a tile or two - farm other? No roads for example. And then solar those farms when there's no good food tiles.
So you lose on energy but get more food 6+ turns faster. Its a trade of cca 6+ food for 12+ energy - and if city grows with that food then advantage snowballs. Energy could boost up research/rushing so that could turn out better - but in general its likely that food is better choice. I hate moving formers through rough terrain so i at least want roads so i can move back quickly - but thats maybe not optimal.
*Roads tend to grow in value the more cities and units there are around. If AI meets another AI it should really have its road network so it can reinforce during wars.
- I think AI spams a lot of formers - they have eventually a ton - maybe early they don't have enough so they go and for awhile spam farms, but that is how it goes i suppose
- They do grow quickly and AI cities can grow more than player's so they tend to spam farms way more
*one thing you can do is value energy slightly more - then they build solars more often on good tiles (+2/+3 energy) before moving to another food tile - not sure if it is a good idea overall - but it makes them move less work more
*food is hard to balance: AI likes to grow and then use the doctor or psych slider. And then they realize they have drone so they build Rec Commons. Player predicts this - so he doesn't focus food - no reason to grow - until he can build Rec Common and once base can actually grow - focus more back on food. Its interesting optimization - maybe some kind of it can be done for AI.
For example i like to have at least 2+ food if base can grow.. usually I don't go more then +4 +5 (lategame is different). Instead of boosting more food i boost production or energy. For minerals i like to have min 5-6 once base gets to size 3-4 so it can build facilities. AI too often ruins its bases with low min production and - support.
I am not sure how valid/good is using slider early on for drone issues - i think its bad idea in general, at least before Holo Theatres. AI likes to grow and uses slider more. I use it only if i have to to work extra mine for secret project. Slider for psych later on looks much more interesting because there are psych boosting facilities (like Holo Theatre) in play.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 10, 2020, 01:15:19 pm
*one thing you can do is value energy slightly more - then they build solars more often on good tiles (+2/+3 energy) before moving to another food tile - not sure if it is a good idea overall - but it makes them move less work more
You mean value energy more comparing to nutrients not minerals? Yes, I thought about it. Current weights are 1.0, 1.0 ,0.5. So if we don't touch minerals/energy ratio but want to value energy more comparing to nutrients we need to lower them like 0.8, 1.0, 0.5. I need to try it and see, you can try it too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 10, 2020, 01:17:33 pm
Post by: lolada on June 10, 2020, 02:45:15 pm
Some tweaks are appreciated, doesn't have to be perfect. Can you mod what tiles governor choose to work?
Weighting over time.. thats my main issue with roads :
- roads early do not matter much - roads later are really important; magtubes are really important for example;
- roads matter for empire - so i don't care much if level one base can get 1 food or min, if i have 15 bases.. but i really want it to be connected to road network - i want road connections way more for protection and quick improvement of the base
Quote
I am also thinking to take base needs for example and emphasize on preventing disasters. For example, start valuing nutrients more when it is close to starvation, minerals - when it is close to support limit, energy - when it is close to maintenance limit. I don't know if AI does this too but anyway algorithm can help it.
That would be helpful. As i mentioned - i really want like 2+ minerals very early, 5+ minerals for base size 3-4 usually or base just stalls with production. This is really hurting AI - it focuses food and then ruins production with - support. So this is nice area to improve if possible.
(if you can teach AI to rush buy more in lower production bases - that would good tweak; high prod. bases can build on its own). Maybe its possible to code these weights in somehow..)
- food needs to go 2+ - if the base does not have 2+ food i try to build farms; 0 food is only ok if base can't grow due to drones or using doctors already. "using doctor (or empath)" might be good metric for AI - if base is using it then there's no much need to spam more food. I also like to have some food in food box to prevent starvation.. being at 0 food is disaster waiting to happen. But that's governor micro.. not terraforming
- energy i pick up what i can from tiles - its the least important - i tend to want some +energy for rushing, but i usually look at SE settings and tweak that rather than tiles/terraforming
I tried 0.6 for energy and it seemed enough to me to make formers build more of those solars on +2/+3 tiles - thats like breakpoint. 2 energy > 1 min or 1f (if you value 1f = 1m) in that case. From what i observed formers often built farm+solar and them moved.. on 0.5 they tend to farm/farm/farm. They still built farms before solars as they should on 0.6. Setting it to 0.7, i presume, would for example make them really like those 2-1-3 tiles. It would be interesting to test at what point they build solars before farms - thats one scenario i would try to avoid.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 10, 2020, 03:41:13 pm
Can you mod what tiles governor choose to work?
Probably. However, The logic is more or less good already and it is so complex that I am afraid I won't be able to do anything better in observable lifetime. Do you have a specific complaint against vanilla governor?
Post by: lolada on June 11, 2020, 08:59:50 am
Quote
Probably. However, The logic is more or less good already and it is so complex that I am afraid I won't be able to do anything better in observable lifetime. Do you have a specific complaint against vanilla governor?
Then you can teach AI governor some of these tricks/tweaks. To work minimum x minerals if possible, or to avoid/reduce growing if using doctors/empath and focus more energy/production instead. And terraforming AI can improve tiles according to base needs. These two things are quite connected.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 11, 2020, 01:54:15 pm
Then you can teach AI governor some of these tricks/tweaks. To work minimum x minerals if possible, or to avoid/reduce growing if using doctors/empath and focus more energy/production instead. And terraforming AI can improve tiles according to base needs. These two things are quite connected.
They are interdependent for sure but they not connected in direct way. It's not like governor tells formers what to do. They have their own AI. 😉
IMHO vanilla terraforming is bad but vanilla governor is good. Like "To work minimum x minerals if possible" thing is actually executed by them. If you give them range of different yield combination tiles they will never pick everything but minerals. They'll pick quite a reasonable mix. Sometimes they emphasize more of one or the other but never avoid one of the resources completely. You can test this in scenario editor.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 11, 2020, 07:06:49 pm
I am thinking to allow everybody to build in ocean squares without restrictions. Don't see point in them. Really, with EcoEng2 one can also raise ocean floor to make it a shelf. Another quite useless restriction.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 12, 2020, 10:20:27 pm
Also quite good mix of mines, collectors, and forests. Didn't test advanced TF yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 14, 2020, 11:09:33 pm
I always found myself terraformed everything before EcoEng. Then just long wait with this huge formers fleet that becomes a burden. As soon as advanced terraforming options open I have to immediately double and triple my former fleet just to place these new improvements around. Huge work. Human may understand the fluctuation in formers demand but AI may not. So I am thinking - would it be better and more smooth transition to introduce these new terraforming options gradually and not all at once? This way both human and AI will have something to work on for the whole game without pauses and surges in demand.
I am thinking this sequence
aquifer
Introduce it quite early. It doesn't compete with other resources, serves as more roads, adds a little bit of energy that may be needed for early-mid game tech progress. It also introduces a little bit moisture here and there - good as a preparation for later condenser placement planning.
borehole
In WTP 0-2-6 version they are not incredible source of minerals but quite good for energy. They would serve as a third normal single tile terraforming option along with farm-collector (N+E), forest (N+M), mine (M). It'll give some minerals + energy for bases with already good nutrient supply. Nice but not overpowered option. Maybe just slightly better than rocky mine but not absolutely superior. They are also good early because collector-mirror fields are not yet established.
condenser
Base are growing and land has better coverage with worked squares. Time for mass area effects. In first quarter of the game they would just not work to their max power. Besides, extra nutrient in 9 squares is a very powerful tool. About close to mid game ocean colonies start to significantly outgrow land ones and this should help latter to keep on growth race. Moreover, bases become noticeably populated and growth slows down. So at this time nutrients are not that impacting but still good.
mirror
Bases grow even more and large middle part of your empire become almost covered with collectors. This is a time to use mirrors for their full potential.
raise/lower terrain
Don't know. I don't feel like it is super powered tool at any stage in the game. Slow and costs money. If anyone wants to build a bridge to other continent why stop them? Why wait for the 2/3 of the game and amass military to suddenly poor it unrestricted on other continent? If players want conflict - let them have it early and built it up gradually without all this suddenness. It is also useful to reshape landmass: close unwanted small lakes, adjust shoreline, create channels if one lacks access to other water region, etc.
Update
I think condensers and mirrors can be allowed at the same time. There is no much sense in separating them. They are both area affecting tools.
Terrain raise/lower can be offered quite early, though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 14, 2020, 11:14:24 pm
Of course, with different yield (like the one in vanilla) they may be very very attractive.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 17, 2020, 02:19:03 pm
Wrote a path calculating function that accounts for ZOC. Now it correctly sends formers to destination even if it requires circling around bunch of fungal towers to reach it. Of course, quite often terraforming needs change. So former got redirected to another location. However, it is still usable to let them not stuck in ZOC. In case a destination is completely unreachable due to ZOC coverage algorithm sends them to next best terraforming site. Tested it out and it works great.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 19, 2020, 11:18:32 pm
Post by: lolada on June 21, 2020, 08:29:08 am
Borehole construction time is now does not match its reduced output (0-2-6). I am thinking to either cut the construction time or increase energy output a little like to 0-2-8 or 0-2-10. It should be still relatively strong improvement for that time investment but should not compete with rocky mine in minerals.
That was my first reaction as well. I though Boreholes would be ruined, but there's still usually a crappy tile for them so they are quite useful. That said due to how multipliers work I wouldn't go over 6 energy, its quite unbalanced. Once you have 8 or 10 yield with energy bank/ network nodes for example the faction that gets a tech runs away quickly.
On the other side terraforming time is really long, its as long as secret project build! I'd reduce that number maybe even to 16. Other improvements are built much faster except Aquifier i think. That one could be shortened as well.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 21, 2020, 02:43:59 pm
That was my first reaction as well. I though Boreholes would be ruined, but there's still usually a crappy tile for them so they are quite useful. That said due to how multipliers work I wouldn't go over 6 energy, its quite unbalanced. Once you have 8 or 10 yield with energy bank/ network nodes for example the faction that gets a tech runs away quickly.
On the other side terraforming time is really long, its as long as secret project build! I'd reduce that number maybe even to 16. Other improvements are built much faster except Aquifier i think. That one could be shortened as well.
It is incorrect to compare terraforming time to project build time. Yes, building one borehole takes long. However, with large former fleet you assign some part of them to boreholes and in 24 turns you get 20 of them. So the average game time you spend per terraforming item is quite small.
Energy overflow everybody talks about happens only at the very end of the game. Before that it is surprisingly not abundant. At least for AI factions. They build more mines and forests than collectors and even less collectors-mirrors fields and they do not massively raise land to improve energy output. Some of computer factions also has quite a small former fleet. So I don't think extra 2 energy (=1 raw lab = ~2 labs after multiplication) per borehole per 24 turn terraforming is going to push their research forward uncontrollably. Even if this happens we can adjust research cost to account for that but I don't think we'll ever notice that.
Borehole was only distinctive in vanilla as an overpowered item for long terraforming time. Other than that it is pretty unimaginative because there were already huge number of other pretty cool and innovative terraforming actions like fungus and forest. Reducing its mineral output made it not OP comparing to mine/condenser/mirror. Therefore, it is no longer remarkable in any way. I propose to move it slightly (just slightly) to OP side keeping it somehow remarkable.
If we cannot figure out how to make it remarkable I'd even return to its original output to keep it imbalanced but restrict construction location to some special places like specifically arid at lowest elevation (to be closer to mantle probably) instead of stupid no slope restriction. That would make game interesting as player constantly tries to convert them to high wet tiles to increase farm-collector output. With that restriction there will be need to place bases near such land and preserve it and making it so by lowering terrain!!! That would be interesting. 😉
In vanilla there is absolutely no need for lowering terrain anywhere on land or ocean! Waste.
As for aquifer I don't think its construction time is too long. It is super feature that adds extra output to the land without removing any existing items. Pretty OP already in my mind.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 21, 2020, 03:06:54 pm
I like SMACX because it has tons or cool features already. The only problem is that just because of such diversity they quite often shadow each other producing inferior options. I just try to revive these underdogs to multiply game attractiveness tenfold. That is why it is easy to work with it as imagination part is already done before my time. 😄
Take aquifer/condenser/mirror, for example. They are very distinct/unique/unmatched features. They do not shadow any other improvement but complement them. It would be nice to have all of them like that. Even forest and fungus are pretty nice. They do not override conventional terraforming completely just complement it for barren terrain.
Borehole is not like that in this sense. It overrides rocky mine completely making it obsolete. I am trying to decouple them and keep their flavor intact at the same way. Borehole is already unique in output composition. No other improvement focuses on minerals+energy together.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 21, 2020, 05:41:12 pm
I will keep improving it in future. However, it feels mature enough for first production iteration.
# Version 67
* New AI terraforming algorithm. See readme for notable changes. Off by default. Set ai_useWTPAlgorithms=1 to enable it.
# AI Terraforming
New AI terraforming algorithm replacing Thinker's. These are few notable changes among many.
* Works best tiles first.
* Properly selects best basic improvement option between rocky mine, farm-mine, farm-collector, forest.
* Quickly connects new bases to road network.
* Tries to prevent population loss by emphasizing nutrient development around poorly fed bases.
* Tends not to build forest/kelp and not to remove fungus next to existing forest/kelp due to its potential spreading.
* Properly places aquifer 2 squares from existing rivers to maximize river coverage.
* Properly places condenser to match existing rainfall pattern to maximize rainfall coverage.
* Properly evaluates additional benefit of condenser/mirror to be used by nearby bases.
* Prefers better improvement with equal completion time (construction + travel).
* Prefers quicker improvement with equal benefit (shorter construction time + less travel).
* Redistributes former orders to minimize construction + travel time. Takes former abilities (fungicide, super) and speed into account.
* Checks existing improvements and don't build more of them if equal of better one is still unused around base.
* Doesn't plant fungus.
* Doesn't raise/lower terrain.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 24, 2020, 04:09:51 pm
I removed their defensive bonus just because human obviously destroy them first before base assault. They are relatively short range and easy to destroy with either artillery or just direct infiltration on enemy territory with help of probes or even with air units. Lame. Therefore they became quite useless without defense bonus and with their short sight range.
The territory defense bonus I've introduced replaces sensor defense bonus. So we are covered in defense bonus area. However, sensors are still there to build and we may as well give this feature some mean.
Defense bonus can be returned to it to make them valuable again if we can fix their flaw somehow else. Some thoughts on this. Feel free to express yours.
One thing can be done is to keep it as is without defense bonus but increase their sight range to turn it to great detector (what it should be based on its name). Like 10-20 range sight. This way they can be placed close to border and can see far out of own territory and inform about converging enemy forces. This allows organizing countermeasures which is much better than 25% defense bonus. This would be especially useful in ocean to detect fast approaching enemy vessels.
Another way to protect them from destruction is just to make them indestructible. End of story. 🤣
When land ownership changes they are automatically destroyed so conqueror doesn't get defense benefit from counter attacks.
Another way to protect them somehow is to don't let air unit destroying improvements at all. That makes penetrating enemy territory behind the base before attacking it problematic.
Another way is to make them long range and give them defense bonus. This way sensors deep in the territory will benefit border bases as well.
Out of these the option with extended range and no defense appeals to me most. Least amount of changes. There is no need to destroy them on approach anymore. The bonus is quite good too - they will reveal all units even those hiding in fungus. It will also be a great way to uncover the map early on. Especially over the impassable obstacles like channels or beyond non pact borders, etc.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 25, 2020, 08:10:27 am
A friend and I are thinking of playing a PBEM game using this mod. Such a game would no doubt take weeks or months to come to fruition; however, I understand that this mod is still in development and new versions are coming out quite frequently.
Would you say that the current version is stable and complete enough to play a game with?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 25, 2020, 12:59:39 pm
I believe Version 64 should be stable. After that I merged with Thinker 2.0 and then modified terraforming. Both are pretty big changes. Both do not directly affect game play experience. So you can safely skip them.
Also lolada is playing it now. Look at his post: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21438.msg124407#msg124407. Confirm with him which version is he playing and how stable it is.
I understand PBEM but how do you play SMACX this way? Do you enter editor more and reproduce your opponent faction state? This could be pain to control every base and reposition every unit.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 25, 2020, 01:26:52 pm
The game actually does have a PBEM mode; I believe it was added in one of the later official patches. You set up the game like you would a single-player, adding the requisite number of human players (the rest will be AIs). Then you play your turn as normal, and when you finish, the game prompts you to save and exit, at which point you can send the save file to the next player, who loads up the game and plays their turn, and so on.
It's a little rough in some places (you can't trade bases with other players, Council votes are a bit quirky, probe teams are bugged in that the attacker gets to choose whether to provoke vendetta or not, and actually eliminating players requires them to commit suicide by obliterating their bases), and it relies on a degree of house rules and honour system to run well, but it does run pretty well, all things considered!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 25, 2020, 03:46:29 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 25, 2020, 07:53:19 pm
* Bases contribute about 50% of their production to secret project construction. Contribution proportion is configurable.
* Every turn the popup shows project completion percentage for each project that was using bases contribution. Neat!
Finally! A long awaited feature (by myself too).
All factions (human included) bases contribute some proportion of their production to the project. For multiple projects only the one in the oldest base get this contribution. Proportion is configurable and can be turned back to zero to disable it completely. Now AI with their appalling unit handling does not need to rush them with crawlers. Project get help from all bases across all continents. Great help to AI. This also helps human in the same way. However, the option of helping project with crawlers is there too if human wants to rush them even faster.
Since project progress may be quite fast with such contribution I display a popup with exact percentage of project completion every turn. I found it very nice and informative. Much more useful than vanilla last minute warning. I don't consider this a cheat as anyone with infiltration still sees completion progress. It is a matter of convenience reminder.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 25, 2020, 07:54:37 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 26, 2020, 02:02:02 am
I will keep only meaningful connection. Plus I may introduce new ones between relevant technologies. I also can swap the order if there is a reason. Here is the list below. Let me know if it makes sense.
doctrines
Doctrine: Flexibility - Doctrine: Mobility - Doctrine: Loyalty - Doctrine: Initiative - Adaptive Doctrine - Doctrine: Air Power
Flexibility goes first as ocean exploration is critical while fast land units is not.
centauri and alien
Centauri Ecology - Progenitor Psych - Field Modulation - Centauri Empathy - Bioadaptive Resonance - Centauri Meditation - Centauri Genetics - Centauri Psi - Sentient Resonance - Secrets of Alpha Centauri - Secrets of the Manifolds - String Resonance
I am mixing them because they are sort of interconnected in vanilla already. It is like a mix of what human race learn about planet sentient life and what aliens already know about it. Let me know if someone feel like they should not be connected at all.
computers
Information Networks - Planetary Networks - Polymorphic Software - Cyberethics - Optical Computers - Pre-Sentient Algorithms - Digital Sentience - Self-Aware Machines
I could move some of them if needed to reposition some features.
industry/economics
Industrial Base - Industrial Economics - Adaptive Economics - Industrial Automation - Environmental Economics - Planetary Economics - Industrial Nanorobotics
biology
Biogenetics - Gene Splicing - Neural Grafting - Bio-Engineering - Biomachinery - Retroviral Engineering
science
Applied Physics
Nonlinear Mathematics
High Energy Chemistry
Synthetic Fossil Fuels
Superconductor
Fusion Power
Advanced Subatomic Theory
Applied Relativity
Unified Field Theory
Superstring Theory
Graviton Theory
Applied Gravitonics
Photon/Wave Mechanics
Quantum Power
Quantum Machinery
Singularity Mechanics
Temporal Mechanics
Probability Mechanics
Super Tensile Solids
There are too many of them. Most likely they won't be in that specific line. I can also split it on "pure science" and "applications".
psychology
Social Psych - Secrets of the Human Brain - Homo Superior - The Will to Power
nanotech
Nanominiaturization - Industrial Nanorobotics - Matter Editation - Matter Compression - N-Space Compression
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 29, 2020, 01:23:52 am
For no explicable reason, I keep losing money every turn. The SE and F3 screens claim I should make ~6 credits a turn, but when it's my turn I don't get any. Last turn I got a nice windfall of 20 credits for selling a comm frequency, and this turn it was gone again.
Shame on me for not taking the advice to play with an earlier version, I guess, but I've no idea how a bug like this could arise from editing the AI terraforming algorithms.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 02:53:08 am
This is most likely not terraforiming AI as it applies to AI factions only. I believe it is new hurry production feature that I introduced recently. I'll let you know after save analyze.
I also believe all features are runtime so they should be save compatible. You can save game and stash whole directory aside just to be extra safe. Then install earlier version. It should continue working without problems. That is in theory. I tried this few times during debugging and didn't notice any problems. However, anything can happen in first time.
Another thing is multiplayer. I believe you are first to test it out in this mode. Nobody did this before. Thank you for testing it and I will try to fix whatever problems you discover. Just send them over.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 29, 2020, 03:49:11 am
I'll PM you my password, since the game is ongoing. Note to open multiplayer saves, you need to go through the multiplayer menu and select PBEM mode.
I've since installed version 66 and so far the bug is not present.
And no worries, like I said, I understand the mod's still in development and bugs can happen. :)
I'll open a new thread soon to document how the game goes.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 02:07:16 pm
Thank you for opening the multiplayer for me. I never knew it existed. It stares at me from the main menu but my eyes slip over it for 20 years. It would be fun to play. 😊
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 02:37:54 pm
-> Mind Worms, Centauri Meditation -> Sealurk, Centauri Genetics -> Isle of the Deep, Centauri Psi -> Locusts of Chiron.
Hope this is fine too.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 29, 2020, 03:40:21 pm
Fix version 69.1.Kudos for coming up with a fix so quickly!
Thank you for opening the multiplayer for me. I never knew it existed. It stares at me from the main menu but my eyes slip over it for 20 years. It would be fun to play. 😊
And heh, no worries. Maybe we could try to round up some other players on this forum. I'd offer to play a 1v1, but I'm already playing one and it's occupying me enough for now. Maybe when the turns start to slow down, I'd be open to starting another one.
I would not recommend playing such a game with Will to Power, though. Simply put, it's one thing to spend 20 turns building a colony pod by yourself, it's another thing to spend 20 turns building a colony pod while having to bounce saves back and forth.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 03:48:36 pm
We should probably design a specialized fast game mod for multiplayer. Everything is cheap. Terraforming is short. Units move far. Total probable 50-100 turns whole game.
Although it will be a challenge to balance it. With far moving units one can bite a big piece of neighbor before they can retaliate.
Wait a minute. I know such fast paced game - chess!
🤣
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 04:08:31 pm
Update
I renamed it to version "techtree" as it is not yet tested by myself. Any help in finalizing it is greatly appreciated. Also I started another topic on some more tree revamping and stripping toward purer lore.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21485.0
* Large technology tree redo for more sensible dependencies.
* Research Hospital: 8/2. Decreased cost/maint a little bit more to aid with drone quellying.
* Aquafarm: 16/4. Also moved later as it is a most OP out of aqua facilities.
* The Citizens' Defense Force cost is 60.
Not backward compatible due to technology tree change!
Here is the big tech tree revamp in response to it being not sensible in lore way. In this version I tried to link technologies in a more or less understandable way. I also tried to keep topic progressions like centauri, industry, economics, nanotech, genetics, etc. I also tried to associate features to more or less matching tech. I hope it now looks more sensible way. Please check it out and let me know. I planned it to be a first draft. Then I planned to tune it according to player comments.
Keep in mind, though, that it is physically impossible to make every technology connection and every association perfect. Technology topics should cross pollinate each other to avoid silos of completely separated topics. Therefore, every now and then some Photon Mechanics would depend on Social Psychology. I tried to minimize such cases but there is no complete avoiding them. There are too many topics and sometimes they stretch thin in some level so I had to play with what I have.
Some changes I found better matching than in vanilla.
Probe teams Optical Computers
Faster and more compact computers allow mobile probe teams.
Heavy artillery High Energy Chemistry
Vanilla software->artillery didn't make any sense. Now artillery depends on advanced chemistry to send projectiles farther.
Comm jammer Applied Physics
First, it appears quite early to counter fast units. Second, radio communication technology now depends on banal physics. That makes more sense than Advanced Subatomic Theory.
Amphibious pods Adaptive Doctrine
The Maritime Control Center Adaptive Doctrine
Adaptive Doctrine seems to be an enhanced version of Doctrine: Initiative and makes The Maritime Control Center to appear later than corresponding replaced facility.
The Space Elevator Advanced Spaceflight
Makes perfect sense, not like in vanilla.
Polymorphic encryption Polymorphic Software
Just cool name matching. I always wondered why they didn't in vanilla. Two different designers came up with same adjective and didn't tell each other?
Post by: Tayta Malikai on June 29, 2020, 04:17:54 pm
I agree that Thinker-WTP are designed for better human vs. AI experience. However, I'd say vanilla is also slow game from the mid game on. So either way it'll be a 400 turns bouncing back and forth.Eh, not really. From what I've seen, most multiplayer games end well before 2300. Once you unlock cruisers and air units, you can really seize the initiative and start rolling over people. The challenge lies in getting to that point without being rolled over yourself.
We should probably design a specialized fast game mod for multiplayer. Everything is cheap. Terraforming is short. Units move far. Total probable 50-100 turns whole game.
Although it will be a challenge to balance it. With far moving units one can bite a big piece of neighbor before they can retaliate.
Wait a minute. I know such fast paced game - chess!
🤣
A fast game mod would still be an interesting project, mind. I wonder how it would work in terms of game flow. The key phases in a game I'd say are early game, where things are chaotic and anything can happen; the middle game, where you've pretty much built most if not all of your key bases and facilities; and the late game, where either you're trashing your opponents' key bases and facilities, or they're trashing yours.
Nevill wrote a nice mod that was more geared towards multiplayer, which I found reasonably balanced. Part of the reason we started playing WtP was actually to see if we could combine the two somehow. Maybe he'd have something to say about such a project.
EDIT: There is also the question of distribution of techs. In most games, you're very unlikely to see anything past level 9. Granted, this is an issue in singleplayer too; dunno yet whether WtP addresses this. The other question here is how much a faster base and territory development will contribute to faster techs.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 04:58:01 pm
Eh, not really. From what I've seen, most multiplayer games end well before 2300. Once you unlock cruisers and air units, you can really seize the initiative and start rolling over people. The challenge lies in getting to that point without being rolled over yourself.
Yes. 400 turns is an exaggeration even for single player. I just meant that WTP or not the number of turns is about the same. Although faster expansion makes game faster, I agree.
Nevill wrote a nice mod that was more geared towards multiplayer, which I found reasonably balanced. Part of the reason we started playing WtP was actually to see if we could combine the two somehow. Maybe he'd have something to say about such a project.
Definitely. Direct me to this mod and we'll see about it.
EDIT: There is also the question of distribution of techs. In most games, you're very unlikely to see anything past level 9. Granted, this is an issue in singleplayer too; dunno yet whether WtP addresses this. The other question here is how much a faster base and territory development will contribute to faster techs.
That is a problem of all strategic games regardless of vanilla/mod. The development is exponential. It is immensely difficult to balance it such that no one can overcome any one until all techs are discovered. Usually it happens earlier. I'm opening a new thread on tech tree redesign. One of the topic it to cut it significantly.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 29, 2020, 06:30:32 pm
As for vanilla Smac multiplayer, the only serious MP game with reasonable settings I played ended by resignation of all other factions in turn 121 due to overwhlming military and economic dominance of the leading facction (he was Morgan with Cloning Vats, Helicopters, Monopole Magnets, probably also Satellites (would have to look that one up)). The serious MP game with unreasonable settings ended by resignation in turn 67. I would be very surprised if MP games between competent players last past 150-170 turns. WTP probably increases turn count by delaying the broken stuff way deep in the tech tree.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 07:12:41 pm
I'm playing Civ4 as my other 4x game and it has fairly efficient mechanics for avoiding snowballing. One is a (very) roughly quadratic increase in city maintenance, the other is an enormous defenders advantage in warfare.
"an enormous defenders advantage" - that should effectively prevent invasion efficiency. However, it plays toward snowballing, not against. There is no invasion stopping once assailant crossed threshold to efficiently overcome resistance. That what snowballing is. It is not that the conquest is easy. It is that the conquest becomes easier as it goes.
The second one probably does work against snowballing. However, I cannot understand how this is mathematically done. Does the city/empire has overall maintenance which is not the sum for each facility?
Did you actually feel it prevents it? There are a lot of constraining factors in all Civ/SMACX games specially designed to prevent snowballing but they fail.
As for vanilla Smac multiplayer, the only serious MP game with reasonable settings I played ended by resignation of all other factions in turn 121 due to overwhlming military and economic dominance of the leading facction (he was Morgan with Cloning Vats, Helicopters, Monopole Magnets, probably also Satellites (would have to look that one up)). The serious MP game with unreasonable settings ended by resignation in turn 67. I would be very surprised if MP games between competent players last past 150-170 turns. WTP probably increases turn count by delaying the broken stuff way deep in the tech tree.
I believe so with all the anti snowballing fixes it has.
Although Civ like games were not designed with multiplier in mind. Starcraft is much better in it as it is dedicated multiplayer game. I believe these two niches do not intersect well. SMACX multiplayer will always be far from perfect experience.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 29, 2020, 07:37:50 pm
In Civ4 the primary means of snowballing is conquering additional territory with a lead in military techs. The defenders advantage enables to fight a technologically superior force to a certain extent and thus slows leading civs down. In Smac you can grow very quickly without increasing your territory with certain key techs. Of course, powerful economic techs also exist in Civ4 but they are not anywhere near in power to advanced terraforming/pop-booming/satellites. Moreover, there is far more available space on a Smac map (with sea bases, raise land and the ability to make use of marginal land).
The maintenance system in Civ4 works like as follows: each city pays a maintenance cost in Gold which scales with total population, numbers of cities and distance to the capital. Settling into financial ruin is a real possibility. At some point expansion must be curtailed until key economic techs are researched. On higher difficulties this point comes quickly (4-10 cities depending on a range of factors). Smaller empires can keep up with bigger ones in research due to lower costs for a while. Eventually they will have to expand though. Facilities/buildings do not have any maintenance cost.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2020, 02:53:56 am
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21481.0
Redo base growth rate
Vanilla rule requires 10 * (pop + 1) nutrients to grow another worker. Due to this the growth rate decelerates with base size rapidly. That naturally discourages growing bases. If it would accelerate or, at least, stay constant faction would have incentive to invest into bigger bases. The nutrient surplus per worker is a function of terraforming era. In the beginning it is from -1 (arid farm) to +1 (rainy farm) which is zero in average. So nutrient surplus per base stays more or less constant. Therefore it does not make sense for early, new, or undeveloped bases to increase nutrient box size proportional to population. From the other hand, the late game (condensers and enrichers) surplus per worker is about 2 and later 3 with satellites. Then it does make sense to increase box proportionally to population size.
From the experience, small bases in early game grow quick then stagnate exhausting all nutrient rich spots then skyrocket in late game again to to advanced terraforming.
I propose to keep nutrient box constant until certain base size then start adding rows.
4 until size 7 then +1 per population
Another option is to just grow it much slower than population size for small bases.
4 for size 1 then add 1 row per 2 population until size 7 then +1 per population
Another option is to increase box size faster with population.
4 for size 1 to 7 then +1/pop to size 13 then +2/pop
PTS fix
Planetary transit system is supposed to easily transit people across globe. So that people from older bases can travel to new bases to populate them quickly. So let them! 😉
Each founded base attracts up to 2 more citizens from other bases (could be home base or just most populated bases). That helps to establish new colonies for the cost of existing ones. This project will still be quite beneficial helping to distribute population to empire outskirts and supporting expansion. However, in this case more citizens in new bases are actually born somewhere before get there and not magically created from thin air as in vanilla.
Post by: Hagen0 on June 30, 2020, 07:06:26 pm
My take on the nutrient requirements for growth is that your numbers are still way to high. I would revert growth to level 2 to 2 rows of nutrients and keep it at 2 rows until size 3 or 4 and then increase it to 3 rows for the next 3 (or 4) levels of growth , then 4 rows and so on. The decrease in early development speed your mod introduces is fundamentally a bad idea. It bogs down the early game without addressing the real causes of snowballing which is not early expansion speed but rather a bunch of broken mechanics (pop-booming, Satellites, +2 Eco kinda) and secret projects (Weather Paradigm, Planetary Transit System, Cloning Vats).
To change the balance of horizontal growth vs vertical growth it is sufficient to increase the efficiency of facilities, especially drone control facilities.
I guess my ideas are fairly fundamentally opposed to what you have been doing.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2020, 09:19:50 pm
The decrease in early development speed your mod introduces is fundamentally a bad idea.
You seriously feel my mod is slower than vanilla??? I don't even know how to respond. 😲
Check the readme. Almost every modification is there for faster and smoother game progression, removing stagnation and hindrances. Faster technology progression, removed resource limits, earlier and cheaper facilities, less maintenance, etc. You probably didn't play vanilla for long time and forgot how painfully it stagnates between turns 50-100 with all resource restrictions still there and 40 turns per research breakthrough.
The elevated cost of colony pod is there for reason to add economical development as expansion prerequisite as well and don't fuel it by mean of sole nutrient intake. And even that elevated cost is practically just correction on accelerated development. Bases grow fast in size and mineral output with immediately available rainy farms and rocky mines. Minimally terraformed WTP base builds 60 cost colony as fast as pathetic vanilla one builds 30 cost one.
My take on the nutrient requirements for growth is that your numbers are still way to high. I would revert growth to level 2 to 2 rows of nutrients and keep it at 2 rows until size 3 or 4 and then increase it to 3 rows for the next 3 (or 4) levels of growth , then 4 rows and so on.
Could be. This is still idea in discussion. We need to try it out and see.
without addressing the real causes of snowballing which is not early expansion speed but rather a bunch of broken mechanics (pop-booming, Satellites, +2 Eco kinda) and secret projects (Weather Paradigm, Planetary Transit System, Cloning Vats).
We will fix everything. One thing at a time. With community help everything is possible. Stay on channel and contribute ideas and play testing feedback! 😎
To change the balance of horizontal growth vs vertical growth it is sufficient to increase the efficiency of facilities, especially drone control facilities.
There are more factors to it. Keep in mind I don't want to force anybody to grow vertically or horizontally. Let them if they like to. I am just fixing some OP aspects so they do not shadow other interesting aspects of the game.
Early facility cost/bonus is not a show stopper for base growth. You can build Scout Patrol, Recycling Tanks, Recreation Commons, and Hologram Theater in 40 turns. That is pretty much everything young base needs to grow up to size 6. Yet, this alone does not make it a size 6 base. And it also does not turn it into production center. Terraforming does. It beats everything. With WTP terraforming bases do not have problems building their facilities in between units.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 01, 2020, 12:08:17 am
There is no turn 50-100 stagnation in vanilla Smac if you can follow a builder beeline. If you get attacked and need particle weapons and/or plasma armor you get delayed substantially but resource lifting techs should still be done before turn 80.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 01:51:09 am
I need to recall my arguments due to probably wrong wording. There is no point to discuss how fast anything happens in a game. It it would be the ultimate point then we should resort to dice/crap/roulette one turn games.
Let me rephrase it.
Which mod features you find interesting and which not?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 01, 2020, 02:29:54 am
What I personally would like from your mod is balancing out some of the overpowered options. It's what I had hoped to find here. Interesting trade offs between a variety of options in terms of base development and social engineering would be even better. Sorry for being so vague. Some of your solutions for unblanced vanilla items are good (like Fusion, resource restrictions). I don't like how some options are just delayed until the end of the game. That is not fun.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 03:35:35 am
There are a lot of OP things delayed to the end of game until they are fixed. One thing at a time. Feel free to propose a next one to fix.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 01, 2020, 04:09:21 am
Will get back to you later RE: Nevill's mod and multiplayer balance, it's been a busy work week.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 01, 2020, 09:11:49 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 12:31:17 pm
What I personally would like from your mod is balancing out some of the overpowered options.
Do you consider ICS an overpowered option?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 12:32:34 pm
Interesting trade offs between a variety of options in terms of base development and social engineering would be even better.
What are they? Can you give an idea or at least an example of some?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 02:03:04 pm
Yes, I would like to see Colony Pods reverted to 3 rows and early base growth to 2 rows as well. I think formers at 2 rows is also better.
Thank you.
I may try to do this just. However, I would love to understand what are you looking for in general. Please help me understand. Obviously, different people have different preferences. Some like blue shade of SMAC and despise green one of SMAX. Others are absolute opposite. If you can tie your proposals with how game gets better or worse in general for everybody somehow - that would be an awesome start.
Regarding the speed. This is not real-time shooter. I don't believe the number of event per turn matters at all. The number of event per unit of playing time - maybe. This is not a Starcraft type RTS where you build 10% of the time and then fight other 90%. This is classical 4X where expansion, growth, and development happens throughout the game. It is quite natural that number of bases/units/events per turn increase with progress. You have 2 bases and 2 units at start and then 50 bases and 200 units sometimes later. The duration of a turn increases over time as it takes longer to manage stuff. That is pretty normal way of things. There is no wasted time where you just stare at the screen waiting for something to be built. Player keeps doing things and this is all that matters.
Is number of event a turn a concern really? If so then let's say we speed up development to make more events happening within a turn. Start with 10 units, 10 bases of size 10 with infrastructure already built, etc. Discoveries happening 4 times a turn, there is great choice to select from facilities/units/SP in each base, they are all have decent production, etc. Would that make you happy? After all there is an accelerated start option that does just that. This is not a sarcasm. I am seriously asking whether you find this type of game start interesting.
Keep in mind, though, that this is a development game. So you throughout the game one either progresses 2 bases, 2 units -> 50 bases, 200 units or 20 bases, 20 units -> 500 bases, 2000 units with accelerated start. The development slope doesn't change and if you have more at the beginning you'll end up with proportionally more at the end. Faction grows from tiny to huge. The whole game time and development speed is balanced to make manageable at the end. The small initial size is the logical consequence of that.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 01, 2020, 06:45:32 pm
I don't find accelerated starts appealing at all. However, I'd be in favor of starting with a former, 2 colony pods and 2 scout patrols as in IP games.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2020, 07:35:00 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on July 01, 2020, 10:54:01 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 04:34:01 am
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/raw/fastgame/releases/TheWillToPower-fastgame.zip
Its your time now to test balance implications. Enjoy it but please also do these to compose a comprehensive feedback.
1. Check all features are working as described in changelog. Especially, please thoroughly test base growth formula. It should take all things into account: base size, Children Creche, GROWTH rating, golden age, and everything else that affects nutrient row size. I'm sorry, I just slapped staff together and didn't test all possible cases.
2. Play test it with different factions. It would be nice if you can play through the whole game or at least until the late game past advanced terraforming. That is to make sure these changes do not make later game worse.
Watch Morganites in every game too. You can play them or just observe AI. They should suffer growth restriction while other faction bases skyroket. That is another balance implication for them.
I did move Hab Complex much earlier especially to help them out. You may play with it and reassign Hab Complex back to Industrial Automation to see how much this throw them back comparing to other factions.
Unfortunately, I've already started working on tech tree revamping. So this version is built on top of new tech tree. It should not matter much for your particular purpose. However, be aware of this too. Let me know if it doesn't work well.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 05:05:11 am
I understand you want to speed it up. However, all game engine and design was around the whole game play time in mind. Everything is tailored to that. To make it faster we need to revamp the whole fabric of the game universe to fit it into say 200 turns if we want to double the speed. It is too much work with high chance to break things even more. I'd say we should work with what we have with minimal non too invasive changes.
Anyway. You have your tool now and we are anticipating your game report. You may feel it different. 😉
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 06:38:49 am
* Both human and AI get extra colony and former as controlled by free_formers, free_colony_pods in thinker.ini.
* techtree version changes included.
* The Planetary Transit System fixed. See Readme for details.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 02, 2020, 08:04:15 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 12:38:13 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 01:28:50 pm
Give bases 5 extra nutrients each turn instead of instant growth. This is an awesome bonus at the beginning but it diminishes with base size and terraforming development. It'll grow early game base size 1 in 5 turns but for late game base size 20 with 40-50 nutrients surplus won't benefit of it much.
This makes population boom and The Cloning Vats not that OP anymore. Now we can move project back in its place in technology tree and don't worry about triggering population boom anymore. It still is beneficial especially in early game but it is equally harder to trigger it in early game too. By the time it could be routinely triggered by CC + GROWTH + golden age it is averagely beneficial.
Update
I am thinking to keep population boom mechanics as above. At the same time let's decouple The Cloning Vats effect from population boom so they can have cumulative effect. That'll be fun to use both. 😄
CV is perceived as a population producing machinery. Let it convert part of production power into additional nutrient surplus (which in game terms equals to growth). Same way population boom adds nutrients but independent effect so they both can be active at the same time.
I am thinking the base should convert some percentage of its surplus minerals into nutrients. Say 20%. This way base with 20 mineral production makes 4 extra nutrients. I think this is fare for SP without maintenance comparing to golden age that requires some investment to be induced.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2020, 04:49:05 pm
* Population boom fixed. See Readme for details.
* The Cloning Vats fixed. See Readme for details.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 03, 2020, 12:47:16 pm
I will probably finish a game not before the weekend.
I think I found an easy and elegant solution for your perceived slowness problem. This is base square producing 4 nutrients. It approximately makes early bases grow about twice as fast. Especially those on not so good land. For very green land and for later game with advanced terraforming it won't be a big addition anyway. So it makes early game faster but doesn't affect mid-late game much. I've tried it and it indeed makes early development faster. It is also somewhat equalizes different starting locations by giving this to everybody.
Another thing I did is disabled modules discount with reactor. Only weapon and armor now get discount. That allowed me to lower cost for colony to 4 without the fear that it becomes overly cheap with future reactors.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 03, 2020, 04:45:04 pm
* Base Square produces 4 nutrients;
* Reactor does not discount module cost.
* Foil chassis cost = 2 (same as infantry).
* Cruiser chassis cost = 3 (same as speeder).
* Colony Module cost = 4.
* The Cloning Vats does not grant impunities.
* The Cloning Vats help entry is updated.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 03, 2020, 05:06:52 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 03, 2020, 05:26:13 pm
That's interesting. Did you leave growth at 4 rows then?
No. I didn't change nutrient box. It is hardcoded everywhere and I don't want to mess with this mechanics. The fact that it is increases requirement with population makes perfect sense. More workers (theoretically) bring more food surplus. So increasing requirements counter increasing surplus. This doesn't work only at the very beginning and for new undeveloped bases when average food surplus per worked square is zero so the nutrient accumulation is defined by base square yield only and is constant. By doubling this yield we effectively double growth speed for early and new bases solving your development speed problem but this bonus dilutes when base growth and get land developed around it later on. So no breaking game in general. Neat! Isn't it? 😉
Try it out. It is already released.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 03, 2020, 09:40:11 pm
Start with extra nutrients is pretty smooth with Lal but I'd guess it's a Nightmare with Morgan or Zak and annoying for most others. Since you reduced the food needed for growing to size 2 I'm not sure the extra base food is necessary. Formers and Colony Pods are still a bit expensive.
New tech tree looks pretty good but I'd have to play some more to form a deeper understanding.
Also there was an odd psych breakdown in one of my bases. This is Lal (so +2 psych from his ability) past the first bureaucracy limit (so should be at most -2 psych from that).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 03, 2020, 11:22:35 pm
You are mixing two different approaches: reduced growth requirement and extra food at base. Former is specially for your testing. It is not included into any other release. Latter is what I myself introduced to the latest release as an alternative to reduced growth requirement. They should not be in the same version together. Please check.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 03, 2020, 11:32:23 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 12:17:05 am
Post by: Hagen0 on July 04, 2020, 12:21:29 am
Edit: I think I understand what is going on there. The +2 psych from Lal's faction ability turns one drone into a citizen. Then that citizen is made into a doctor and I end up with the doctor, one drone and and a citizen due to the +2 psych from the doctor. This is really unintuitive behaviour. I should have +4 psych total but due to the way the layers of the drone control mechanic work I only get 2.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 01:53:21 pm
Why do you say it is not intuitive? When you transition from first screen to second you get plus one doctor and minus one drone as expected.
You do have +4 psych from Lal + doctor and -2 psych from bureaucracy = +2 which quells one drone. Now you have only one. Everything adds up.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 04, 2020, 02:32:07 pm
Did you change tech costs to be fixed, or dependent on tech level in some way?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 04:18:49 pm
It doesn't add up. I have +2 psych which should lead to 2 citizens, one default on Transcend, one from the +2 psych. I get what is going on there but the +2 psych from Lal's ability is wasted in this situation.
I see where is your source of confusion. Transcend doesn't give you 1 default citizen. The correct formula is: base on Transcend produces p-1 drones. That may sound exactly the same but it is not in case with specialists as on your second screen. Turning worker in specialist does not eliminate drone by itself! You can test it out yourself and turn this doctor to engineer and you'll end up with two drones as on screen 1.
So you 3 base produces 2 drones. Lal turns first citizen to talent. Then bureaucracy adds another drone to the base to make it total 3 drones.
On a first screen one drone turns talent back to content. So you see one content and two drones.
On a second screen doctor generates 2 psych those quell one drone. So you see just one.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 04:19:49 pm
Did you change tech costs to be fixed, or dependent on tech level in some way?
It's fixed by level.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 04:32:41 pm
* The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm prevents regular probe action but don't destroy it.
* Human probes cannot sabotage defensive facilities either by targetting them or by random sabotage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 08:38:41 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 05, 2020, 03:35:56 pm
I've been playing a WTP PBEM game with Tayta, and so far my experience is... a very mixed bag. There are mechanics changes I applaud, there are some choices I can understand that are clearly a matter of taste even though I am sceptical about them, and there are some design decisions that make me squint really hard at them when viewed through the prism of Player vs Player games. But all in due time.
Today's post was caused by a... bug, I think? We are using a version 66 of the mod due to another bug introduced in v67 and up. Not sure if it got fixed yet.
Zakharov suddenly got a minerals boost in his bases that I can't really explain by anything.
Here are his bases on turn 2211:
https://i.postimg.cc/QMnCxRQs/Zack-1.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/QMnCxRQs/Zack-1.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/xCwdLMp4/Zack-2.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/xCwdLMp4/Zack-2.jpg)
And here are the same bases on turn 2212:
https://i.postimg.cc/xddqQ0bt/Zack-3.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/xddqQ0bt/Zack-3.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/ydgdJvjR/Zack-4.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/ydgdJvjR/Zack-4.jpg)
You can clearly see he has 6 mineral rows instead of 8. His SE settings are the same though (PS+FM+P)...
https://i.postimg.cc/sXhjf1f9/Zack-5.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/sXhjf1f9/Zack-5.jpg)
...and even if they weren't, INDUSTRY changes should no longer work that way. They certainly don't for me.
Needless to say, with him getting a speedbump of 10 turns on every project, he wipes his shoes all over my long-term plans.
...not that he is making much use of his production. He doesn't even upgrade his defenders, which is how most of his bases are protected by 1-2+-1 ECM infantry. If it weren't for "don't touch AI bases" homerule, he'd have long fallen by now, and the new territory rules would mean he'd have no way of getting them back. But AI behavior is perhaps for another post.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 05, 2020, 04:06:40 pm
Please send me your saves.
Number of minerals per row is calculated by original code. WTP has nothing to do with this. Keep in mind that AI cheats on you in many places. Like this one, for example. On turn 2211 he has correct number of minerals per row if you are playing on highest difficulty: 7 + 1 for -1 INDUSTRY = 8. On next turn some cheating started. I cannot tell you exactly when and how they cheat but I did see a lot of related code.
It is easy to check. Just load the 2212 turn in the unmodded version and observe. You can probably run terranx.exe (not modded exe) or better yet just run clean vanilla install.
Also feel free to mention whatever good or bad things you noticed in the mod before you forget. It is also easier to discuss them one by one. People do have different taste and preferences so discussing it matters. Keep also in mind that some of the later additions are inspired by other players. So you may just experience a clash of preferences.
Post by: Nevill on July 05, 2020, 06:05:30 pm
I don't know where the cheating occured, but I've never seen this kind of cheating before. And I tend to keep an eye on AI opponents and what they are building, because you have a lot of time during PBEM. I've not looked at the code though.
Right, the good and the bad. Where do I even start.
I should probably preclude everything I write below with a warning that I've been playing SMAX for a long time, and always with Multiplayer in mind. It is probable that I use and/or abuse some features of the mod in a way they weren't intended to.
The game is slow as molasses compared to vanilla. I can't decide whether it is a bad or a good thing. It's different, that much is certain. Perhaps too different from the original to comfort. Colony pods priced at 60 put a dampener on expansion, and they are easy to lose, so you need to build and support escorts overloading the already low support.
On one hand, I feel your pain about how much ICS poisons the well and skews the gameplay towards it. On another, I think it went too far in a different direction as of v66. I haven't started expansion until I reached Fusion tech, and that was because the price of CPs got lowered to 50 and the formers to 30 which I think are the sweet spot for the kind of changes you intended. You reverting the cost of CPs back to 40 seems to support the notion, although I have not played later versions of the mod.
The problem with ICS is that the game incentivises low-pop bases. A high population base has no benefits over a bunch of low-pop ones early in the game. And it can't even build Colony Pods very efficiently because the time needed to reach high pop gets higher the more pop you already have. The fastest way to pump CPs is still a 2-pop base sitting on 2 rocky mines and switching to a 3-food tile (Nutrient+forest) every other turn.
I can't say I have a solution ready for this; will have to see what you are proposing with alternate growth formulas. In absense of those, though, I think capping CPs at 50 would be a decent move.
Formers at 40 is a much more drastic change. We have less bases resulting in lousy support and meaning we have much less minerals to play with with every new former. I don't know what your design philosophy on them was supposed to be. If you wanted to reduce their number to 8-10 when before we had 50, then congratulations, you did it. I am just not sure why. It... reduces the micromanagement I guess?
Losing a former can set a faction back by ages, and it slows an already slow game to a crawl.
Also, the mine decreasing food production by 1 in a tile is one of the original's design decisions I could never understand. Farm+mine take 12 turns to terraform, and the result is still hideous. Why build a mine anywhere but on a rocky tile?
The decision to move EcoEng to a tier 6 tech and tie all of the advanced terraforming options to it means that for half the game you can't even do anything interesting with terraformers.
Reducing energy in forests... while I understand how it came to be (hybrids are really overpowered), now they are a weak choice. I played Gaia, and I produced my first forest in 2160s. I think delaying the Hybrid forests could be a better solution.
Absense of condensers means that population growth is very hard in absense of pop-booming, meaning the factions that lack it (Morgan, Hive) are gimped.
Absense of Echelon Mirrors (never thought I'd say anything good about them) and raise/lower terrain options means that energy production options are really limited. Boreholes are not available until later... and when they become available they instantly obsolete all other options. I settled a borehole cluster halfway across the map and the base at 3 pop produced 27 energy (~8 lost) with all the trade. My 7-pop HQ produced 15.
Sea bases are gimped. Well, they were gimped in original, no big surprise there, but here they are crippled extra hard. How do you produce minerals in them? Subsea Trunklines are 6 level tech, cost a ton (and you don't have minerals to build them), and mines giving -1 to food production means that you have to build an aquafarm to make them semi-viable. In essense, sea bases leech resources off land ones, because it is impossible to build anything in them. Maybe very late in the game things change due to additional +1 mineral, I don't know. For now they are just a tool to deny enemy territory and cheat your way into victory at sea with subpar units. Just build a base where you want to win your battles. Cheaper than building up the military.
Fungal production is... lacking. From the readme:
Quote
Get it to at least 1-1-0 yield relatively early in the game to allow minimal support for barren land and sea bases.Well, this is false. No tech gives fungus +1 minerals, they give it +food or +energy instead.
Focus on energy yield in the mid game to compliment forest instead of competing with it.
Use green/alien technologies for fungus production to streamline research priorities for green/PLANET factions.
Technology | Fungus production effect | Comment
---------- | ------------------------ | -------
Centauri Ecology | +1 nutrient |
Progenitor Psych | +1 mineral | reassigned
Field Modulation | +1 energy | reassigned
Bioadaptive Resonance | +1 energy | reassigned
Centauri Psi | +1 nutrient |
Centauri Meditation | +1 energy |
Secrets of Alpha Centauri | +1 energy |
Centauri Genetics | +1 mineral |
Since I am playing Gaia I can say that a good fifth of my worked tiles are fungus since it produces 3-0-2 (at Bioadaptive Resonance ATM), and there are no better options for food available, since there are no condensers. Sea bases definitely aren't getting anything out of it.
Maniford Harmonics is going to be OP, I can tell. It's why Zakharov's cheating prompted me to post, I was so incensed.
Projects and their evaluation from a MP standpoint is another matter, for another long-winded post.
Also, a design choice I don't really get is the balancing of POLICE around -1 as a new center. With the explanation given that... Brood Pits will give you +2 later? When are those Brood Pits due? And while we are at it, shouldn't it mean that Broodpits are the ones that need fixing, not factions?
As it is, it just looks more than a bit ugly... and unnecessary, I think? Look at what it means for SE... you get +1 Police with Police state, -2 Police with Wealth, and 0 Police with them both. No other changes for other SE (up until Cybernetics/Thought Control).
Well, why not give Police State +1 POLICE, and Wealth -2 POLICE, and have essentially the same result but without every faction looking same-ish? Then you can mod Brood Pits to only give +1 POLICE and have everything work just as it does in v66?
SE changes is another big topic I want to touch on later. I think I found them very questionable. I am Gaian, and I can't think of the circumstances when I'd run Green. Maybe (maybe) with Manifold Harmonics, but I wouldn't count on it. It is a SE for lategame energy production, and your mod doesn't have nearly enough options to produce energy up until mid-game and boreholes. Kinda a weird combination, boreholes with Green economy. :D
What else, what else. Oh, the slowing down really got some areas harder than others. I miss Non-lethal methods, but I understand your reasoning, even though I am running Wealth and can't make use of them anyway. I think of police units in original as an alternative to facility-based drone handling, and suffice is to say, 1 unit quelling 1 drone doesn't really compare to Rec Commons + Holo Theater. The drawback of police is that it is hard to switch to another method once you are using it, and it really precludes SE switching. In your mod I hardly use police at all.
But I find myself missing some of the things I really got used to in the original. Research Hospitals were too close at Gene Splicing, which was only nominally a Tier 3 tech as it only required 2 tier-1 and 1 tier-2 as prereqs. 120 minerals was too much investment for too little gain at that point. You have reduced its cost... and then moved Gene Splicing to tier 6 tech, removing facility out of the player's grasp. As it is, I can build Genejack Factories sooner than Researh Hospitals. I pop-boomed to 7 pop before I reached there. And... one can get used to that, but then why did you reduce the cost if you consider them mid-game tech?
Cost of units would be a reason for another rant. Generally, I find war to be impossible to wage now. Oh, I can steamroll an AI just fine, it can't really do anything. But investing 100 minerals into a cruiser only to see it die against a +50% territory-enhanced bonus out of nowhere? It is more expensive than most structures.
I know the game was ridiculously skewed towards overwhelming offense, but this swings it too far in the opposite direction. I kinda want the balance to be in favor of defenders at a base, and a parity in the field if one utilizes the terrain correctly. Meaning a 3-to-2 att-over-def advantage, brought to 3-to-3 with the help of terrain and/or abilities (ECM, forests, fungus, rocky tiles), and 3-to-4/5 at bases with Perimeter Defences and sensors. As it is, war is all but impossible in the early game without crippling yourself... and midgame against a human who has even halfway decent scouts it will fail as they can resupply much faster and can catch enemy units in their territory with a flat +50% bonus. Losing a state of the art 6-armor unit to a much cheaper horde of 4-weapon ones is not very fun.
Native life. You wanted to make it more dangerous, but now that I can't hunt them down they are more annoying than anything. They still can't get past trance units, so what they do is eat an occasional former which sucks because losing formers sucks that much harder now. Native life for players... yeah, no. No one uses NL in multiplayer (with the exception of Locusts as an air unit that can capture bases with no ground support) precisely because they get countered by a trance scout and an empath rover. Dependence on Life Cycle facilities which are few and far between, not to mention expensive, makes them a really situational choice when others pump out cheap units with +2 Morale upgrades. Sure an IotD can both attack and transport troops, but attacking with 1:1 odds is a good way to lose those troops, and even if you win you are slowed down by damage, so the next cheap ship will pick you off. I've found the worms' price point to be decent at 4 mineral rows, and I gave them ECM to protect them from rover harass. I still don't use them as anything but guerilla fighters since once the enemy wises up to it artillery makes them go splat really easily. Conventional units are oftentimes better. But then military is generally more expensive in your mod.
I can't think of why I'd use anything other than locusts with the way you priced them.
There are some changes I can't do anything but laud, though. The INDUSTRY exploit has finally, FINALLY, been fixed. I don't even begrudge it that I found it out the hard way by switching to +INDUSTRY civics and failing to complete the project I wanted. Or the reactors not giving additional HP, or the combat not being centered on a per-round model that takes the attacker's advantage and whack a defender over the head with it.
Ok, to to summarize the contents of this post for ease of replying.
1) Slow game speed caused by high cost of CPs and formers. Early game was just us passing turns back and forth.
1a) Some techs come in well past the time when you could make use of them. Research Hospital is one, but advanced terraforming, Subsea Trunkline and others come to mind.
2) Not enough variance in terraforming caused by moving EcoEng to midgame. Could be spread out better among different techs.
2a) Not enough options for energy production. Boreholes still superior to everything.
2b) Minerals are hard to get in general. If you don't have a lot of rocky tiles, you are out of luck as forests are your best bet.
2c) Not enough minerals in fungus. This even contradicts the readme?
2d) Default -1 food on mines exacerbates this. Sure I can change it on my end, but I wonder about your reasons.
3) Sea bases are useless for early to mid game. No minerals, high cost of improving facilities.
4) POLICE rating centered at -1 clogging faction displays when the same effect can be achieved with different means. General uselessness of Police after moving NLM away.
5) Extreme cost of combat units coupled with massive defender's advantage make war against humans infeasible. Territory rules are exploitable, turning Colony Pods into semi-combat support units.
5a) Native life costs. I am not spending 80+ minerals on a unit to have it go splat against a scout.
Oh, would it be a good time to mention I don't undertand ability costs? At all. The readme mentions streamlining this, and I am just not seeing it.
What does it mean to have "cost 2"? In original it means to have the cost be 50% higher with ability than without it. Here, a 5-1-1*1 unit (50 minerals) with AAA costs 80 minerals, and 6-1-1*2 (50 minerals) with AAA costs 70. Same base costs, different result. I guess it's because of reactors reducing the cost after abilities come into play, but it makes it hard to predict what the cost is going to be without the workshop.
...and I don't even know what the cost factors of 16 and 32 are. I assume it's 1 mineral row and 2 mineral rows, respectively?
Post by: Nevill on July 05, 2020, 09:18:10 pm
I think you might be interested in this pic.
Somehow Hive got an 1-tile enclave in the middle of my territory. Are you sure this is supposed to happen?
Here's the screenshot and the save. The password is the same as in the above post.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 05, 2020, 09:59:15 pm
Thank you for feedback.
Here are my two saves. My password is "worm". I do not know Tayta's password, he'll have to chime in if you want to play those turns yourself.
I've loaded your save in original game and it shows 6 minerals per row as in your second screenshot. So it is vanilla feature.
The game is slow as molasses compared to vanilla. I can't decide whether it is a bad or a good thing. It's different, that much is certain. Perhaps too different from the original to comfort. Colony pods priced at 60 put a dampener on expansion, and they are easy to lose, so you need to build and support escorts overloading the already low support.
On one hand, I feel your pain about how much ICS poisons the well and skews the gameplay towards it. On another, I think it went too far in a different direction as of v66. I haven't started expansion until I reached Fusion tech, and that was because the price of CPs got lowered to 50 and the formers to 30 which I think are the sweet spot for the kind of changes you intended. You reverting the cost of CPs back to 40 seems to support the notion, although I have not played later versions of the mod.
The problem with ICS is that the game incentivises low-pop bases. A high population base has no benefits over a bunch of low-pop ones early in the game. And it can't even build Colony Pods very efficiently because the time needed to reach high pop gets higher the more pop you already have. The fastest way to pump CPs is still a 2-pop base sitting on 2 rocky mines and switching to a 3-food tile (Nutrient+forest) every other turn.
I can't say I have a solution ready for this; will have to see what you are proposing with alternate growth formulas. In absense of those, though, I think capping CPs at 50 would be a decent move.
Yes. People keep saying it is slow(er). And I also don't know how to limit ICS abuse some other way. Maybe it is meant to be and I shouldn't be very restrictive about it. Anyway, I added some speed in latest versions by giving base square 4 nutrients and lowering CP cost to 40. Although reactors do not change module cost anymore, just weapon and armor. So they do not affect basic CP unit production.
Another thing is that only you guys, who play MP, started complaining about it recently. Number of actions per turn doesn't bother single player much.
Formers at 40 is a much more drastic change. We have less bases resulting in lousy support and meaning we have much less minerals to play with with every new former. I don't know what your design philosophy on them was supposed to be. If you wanted to reduce their number to 8-10 when before we had 50, then congratulations, you did it. I am just not sure why. It... reduces the micromanagement I guess?
Losing a former can set a faction back by ages, and it slows an already slow game to a crawl.
I guess this is a remnant of trying to equalize cost of land and sea formers before I even start changing exe. The practical reason is that abilities increase unit cost by 1/4. So fungicide tanks slapped at 20 cost former are free. Didn't know how to circumvent around it. Maybe double costs of all former related abilities? I'll try it out in my next version.
Also, the mine decreasing food production by 1 in a tile is one of the original's design decisions I could never understand. Farm+mine take 12 turns to terraform, and the result is still hideous. Why build a mine anywhere but on a rocky tile?
I don't either. Most likely because designer valued minerals a lot. You can see it in any other themes throughout the game. All mineral improvements come last and they cost more. There is also another restriction - rocky tile does not produce nutrients from farming at all! That is even harsher.
Do you want these restrictions removed?
The decision to move EcoEng to a tier 6 tech and tie all of the advanced terraforming options to it means that for half the game you can't even do anything interesting with terraformers.
Not by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%. I agree it could be moved earlier. I think I moved it there because trading places with Environmental Economics. Somehow I thought tree farm should appear before boreholes. I'm not fixated on that, though, and can revert it.
Reducing energy in forests... while I understand how it came to be (hybrids are really overpowered), now they are a weak choice. I played Gaia, and I produced my first forest in 2160s. I think delaying the Hybrid forests could be a better solution.
I've already delayed it. There were long discussion about it. Vanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself. I decided to nerf it based on many users input. Mostly to give life to other options like rocky mines. In vanilla people plant forests left and right and don't bother about rocky mines. Now they are more or less on pair, I think. However, if you believe it becomes inferior without energy - let me know. I may change this.
Absense of condensers means that population growth is very hard in absense of pop-booming, meaning the factions that lack it (Morgan, Hive) are gimped.
Absense of Echelon Mirrors (never thought I'd say anything good about them) and raise/lower terrain options means that energy production options are really limited. Boreholes are not available until later... and when they become available they instantly obsolete all other options. I settled a borehole cluster halfway across the map and the base at 3 pop produced 27 energy (~8 lost) with all the trade. My 7-pop HQ produced 15.
Not following you. Are you talking about complete absence of them in a game or delay?
Sea bases are gimped. Well, they were gimped in original, no big surprise there, but here they are crippled extra hard. How do you produce minerals in them? Subsea Trunklines are 6 level tech, cost a ton (and you don't have minerals to build them), and mines giving -1 to food production means that you have to build an aquafarm to make them semi-viable. In essense, sea bases leech resources off land ones, because it is impossible to build anything in them. Maybe very late in the game things change due to additional +1 mineral, I don't know. For now they are just a tool to deny enemy territory and cheat your way into victory at sea with subpar units. Just build a base where you want to win your battles. Cheaper than building up the military.
They are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later. Let me know if it makes a difference.
Fungal production is... lacking. From the readme:QuoteGet it to at least 1-1-0 yield relatively early in the game to allow minimal support for barren land and sea bases.Well, this is false. No tech gives fungus +1 minerals, they give it +food or +energy instead.
Focus on energy yield in the mid game to compliment forest instead of competing with it.
Use green/alien technologies for fungus production to streamline research priorities for green/PLANET factions.
Technology | Fungus production effect | Comment
---------- | ------------------------ | -------
Centauri Ecology | +1 nutrient |
Progenitor Psych | +1 mineral | reassigned
Field Modulation | +1 energy | reassigned
Bioadaptive Resonance | +1 energy | reassigned
Centauri Psi | +1 nutrient |
Centauri Meditation | +1 energy |
Secrets of Alpha Centauri | +1 energy |
Centauri Genetics | +1 mineral |
Since I am playing Gaia I can say that a good fifth of my worked tiles are fungus since it produces 3-0-2 (at Bioadaptive Resonance ATM), and there are no better options for food available, since there are no condensers. Sea bases definitely aren't getting anything out of it.
Remnant of changes. I'll fix the readme. I removed mineral yield from it at all to make a counterpart of forest and conventional terraforming. Otherwise, they are pretty difficult to balance. Let me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.
Maniford Harmonics is going to be OP, I can tell. It's why Zakharov's cheating prompted me to post, I was so incensed.
Yeah it will be with +3 PLANET. Try it out and let me know if this alone lets you win the game. I'll change it then.
Projects and their evaluation from a MP standpoint is another matter, for another long-winded post.
Project cost was always the topic for suggestions. I just raised them to some extent to make racing more interesting. Their relative cost is up to play testing. Feel free to suggest changes.
Also, a design choice I don't really get is the balancing of POLICE around -1 as a new center. With the explanation given that... Brood Pits will give you +2 later? When are those Brood Pits due? And while we are at it, shouldn't it mean that Broodpits are the ones that need fixing, not factions?
As it is, it just looks more than a bit ugly... and unnecessary, I think? Look at what it means for SE... you get +1 Police with Police state, -2 Police with Wealth, and 0 Police with them both. No other changes for other SE (up until Cybernetics/Thought Control).
Well, why not give Police State +1 POLICE, and Wealth -2 POLICE, and have essentially the same result but without every faction looking same-ish? Then you can mod Brood Pits to only give +1 POLICE and have everything work just as it does in v66?
You are absolutely right. Either factions get -1 POLICE or all SEs within certain row - The effect is the same. I thought it is better to give to factions to not modify default choice (none). Besides, there is already a lot of negative police modifiers in vanilla. I didn't want FM have -3 POLICE just to compensate its other bonuses.
Anyway, I can change that. And you are right that modifying faction is more complex thing for players.
SE changes is another big topic I want to touch on later. I think I found them very questionable. I am Gaian, and I can't think of the circumstances when I'd run Green. Maybe (maybe) with Manifold Harmonics, but I wouldn't count on it. It is a SE for lategame energy production, and your mod doesn't have nearly enough options to produce energy up until mid-game and boreholes. Kinda a weird combination, boreholes with Green economy. :D
That is another absolutely open topic. I've already changed a log of SE choices based on user input. So you may as well blame them and/or propose your changes.
But I find myself missing some of the things I really got used to in the original. Research Hospitals were too close at Gene Splicing, which was only nominally a Tier 3 tech as it only required 2 tier-1 and 1 tier-2 as prereqs. 120 minerals was too much investment for too little gain at that point. You have reduced its cost... and then moved Gene Splicing to tier 6 tech, removing facility out of the player's grasp. As it is, I can build Genejack Factories sooner than Researh Hospitals. I pop-boomed to 7 pop before I reached there. And... one can get used to that, but then why did you reduce the cost if you consider them mid-game tech?
Because even for mid game tech it is too much. eco/lab/psi facilities are about 4 times weaker in benefit than mineral ones.
Cost of units would be a reason for another rant. Generally, I find war to be impossible to wage now. Oh, I can steamroll an AI just fine, it can't really do anything. But investing 100 minerals into a cruiser only to see it die against a +50% territory-enhanced bonus out of nowhere? It is more expensive than most structures.
I know the game was ridiculously skewed towards overwhelming offense, but this swings it too far in the opposite direction. I kinda want the balance to be in favor of defenders at a base, and a parity in the field if one utilizes the terrain correctly. Meaning a 3-to-2 att-over-def advantage, brought to 3-to-3 with the help of terrain and/or abilities (ECM, forests, fungus, rocky tiles), and 3-to-4/5 at bases with Perimeter Defences and sensors. As it is, war is all but impossible in the early game without crippling yourself... and midgame against a human who has even halfway decent scouts it will fail as they can resupply much faster and can catch enemy units in their territory with a flat +50% bonus. Losing a state of the art 6-armor unit to a much cheaper horde of 4-weapon ones is not very fun.
Define fun. Not losing units?
Stronger defense is a cornerstone of this mod. And I doubt you can steamroll an equally developed AI just fine. Of course, AI has appalling war tactics but you still sacrifice units to god of randomness. That is a price for free bases.
Forget vanilla where you can take whole opponent faction with just 10 needlejets. This mod requires a fully prepared assault with artillery, defenders, mixed units, fast units, air support, probes, shore bombardment, etc. With all of this your losses will be minimal and you will be able to advance with constant reinforcement from production centers. That is tough but doable. People play tested this and found it quite reasonable balance.
Now if you are saying you cannot occupy weaker faction with all the war preparation you can possible make then we can return to this topic again.
Native life. You wanted to make it more dangerous, but now that I can't hunt them down they are more annoying than anything. They still can't get past trance units, so what they do is eat an occasional former which sucks because losing formers sucks that much harder now. Native life for players... yeah, no. No one uses NL in multiplayer (with the exception of Locusts as an air unit that can capture bases with no ground support) precisely because they get countered by a trance scout and an empath rover. Dependence on Life Cycle facilities which are few and far between, not to mention expensive, makes them a really situational choice when others pump out cheap units with +2 Morale upgrades. Sure an IotD can both attack and transport troops, but attacking with 1:1 odds is a good way to lose those troops, and even if you win you are slowed down by damage, so the next cheap ship will pick you off. I've found the worms' price point to be decent at 4 mineral rows, and I gave them ECM to protect them from rover harass. I still don't use them as anything but guerilla fighters since once the enemy wises up to it artillery makes them go splat really easily. Conventional units are oftentimes better. But then military is generally more expensive in your mod.
I can't think of why I'd use anything other than locusts with the way you priced them.
Pardon me. Are you saying native life feel less dangerous that in vanilla???
As for using them for assault I disagree they are useless. Yes, they can be countered by trance/empath ability but so is ECM against rovers. The mere fact they ignore all defensive structure makes them an excellent alternative choice against highly defended bases. Just +2 PLANET gives them +30% attack and defense! With that setup you probably lose less of them than conventional units against walled base. They have plenty of other benefits and in my play testing I used them effectively providing conditions.
As for the price, I think 4 is too low for such versatile unit. Maybe 8 is too much - I don't know. I can review it and reduce it by your recommendation.
And it doesn't really matter what is psi land attacker:defender ratio is. With long siege they will be attacking your worms as often as you them. Unless, you plan for a single turn base capture without retaliation. And that exactly what want to prevent in this mod! 😉
There are some changes I can't do anything but laud, though. The INDUSTRY exploit has finally, FINALLY, been fixed. I don't even begrudge it that I found it out the hard way by switching to +INDUSTRY civics and failing to complete the project I wanted. Or the reactors not giving additional HP, or the combat not being centered on a per-round model that takes the attacker's advantage and whack a defender over the head with it.
Glad, I did something right. 🙂
Keep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism. I welcome constructive critics when people offer a solution that is supposed to be better than existing one.
1a) Some techs come in well past the time when you could make use of them. Research Hospital is one, but advanced terraforming, Subsea Trunkline and others come to mind.
2) Not enough variance in terraforming caused by moving EcoEng to midgame. Could be spread out better among different techs.
That is adjustable. I also spread advanced terraforming across levels in latest releases. Aquifer and boreholes appear much earlier.
2a) Not enough options for energy production. Boreholes still superior to everything.
2b) Minerals are hard to get in general. If you don't have a lot of rocky tiles, you are out of luck as forests are your best bet.
If you are talking about boreholes mineral output then I reduced it for reason. Otherwise, with them minerals will be too easy to get in general as you can drill them left and right. Rocky mines at least restricted to rocky squares. So one should cherish them. I think it is fair. Land base covers 20 workable tiles. You are saying not having a single rocky tile is a common situation? I never saw that.
If you think there is still not enough minerals - let me know how can you fix it (with boreholes or otherwise) without overdoing it.
2c) Not enough minerals in fungus. This even contradicts the readme?
Fixed docs. Now you legally don't get minerals in fungus.
2d) Default -1 food on mines exacerbates this. Sure I can change it on my end, but I wonder about your reasons.
Is it changeable in txt? Never knew that. I just didn't touch this feature. Haven't you observed it in vanilla?
3) Sea bases are useless for early to mid game. No minerals, high cost of improving facilities.
Again vanilla feature. Have you played vanilla and didn't notice the same thing?
We can move trunkline a little earlier but they will still suck on minerals in early game.
4) POLICE rating centered at -1 clogging faction displays when the same effect can be achieved with different means. General uselessness of Police after moving NLM away.
Thank you for suggestion. I'm about to fix that.
5) Extreme cost of combat units coupled with massive defender's advantage make war against humans infeasible. Territory rules are exploitable, turning Colony Pods into semi-combat support units.
Are you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.
In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.
What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?
Oh, would it be a good time to mention I don't undertand ability costs? At all. The readme mentions streamlining this, and I am just not seeing it.
What does it mean to have "cost 2"? In original it means to have the cost be 50% higher with ability than without it. Here, a 5-1-1*1 unit (50 minerals) with AAA costs 80 minerals, and 6-1-1*2 (50 minerals) with AAA costs 70. Same base costs, different result. I guess it's because of reactors reducing the cost after abilities come into play, but it makes it hard to predict what the cost is going to be without the workshop.
...and I don't even know what the cost factors of 16 and 32 are. I assume it's 1 mineral row and 2 mineral rows, respectively?
It would be. I'll add this to description. I'll also add comments in alphax.txt.
Unfortunately, there were no place to store flat ability cost. So I repurposed same int value. First 4 bits are for standard proportional cost. Second 4 bits are for flat cost (number of mineral rows).
So the cost 2 is, as usual in vanilla, means +25% * 2 = +50% unit cost increase.
The cost 16 means +1 row on top of the price. And so on.
You see some differences in it due to rounding. Vanilla adds rounding at every step. That is why their formulas are incredibly complicated. I calculate everything without rounding and then round at the very end. Thus you may see slight variations in cost. I'll try it to make it so people do not complain about small discrepancies.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 05, 2020, 10:03:31 pm
Oh, and speaking of territories.
I think you might be interested in this pic.
Somehow Hive got an 1-tile enclave in the middle of my territory. Are you sure this is supposed to happen?
Here's the screenshot and the save. The password is the same as in the above post.
This is how vanilla calculates it. WTP has nothing to do with it. Weird, eh? There is a lot of weirdness to discover in vanilla code. 😃
Here I reproduced it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 12:50:33 am
# Version 77
* Sea Formers is given by Ecology.
* Sea Formers is given by Ecology.
* Terraforming Unit cost = 2.
* Spore Launcher is enabled by Field Modulation.
* Fungicide tanks cost = flat 1 mineral row.
* Super Former cost = 2.
* Unit cost is rounded before ability cost factor is applied so same ability added to the same cost units result in same total cost.
* Needlejet chassis cost = 4.
* Gravship chassis cost = 6.
* Decifer ability cost to human readable text in Datalink.
* Unit cost is rounded before ability cost factor is applied so same ability added to the same cost units result in same total cost.
Before I rounded just final result. Now I added another rounding in between. Let me know how critical it is for you. The more roundings in between the more we fall into evil path of vanilla "whole numbers at every step".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 01:02:56 am
Posted this question on reddit. Feel free to express your thoughts.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 01:10:22 am
Actually, I have already distributed advancing terraforming across different techs in my recent versions. Check em out.
Last number is (very) approximate sequence at which said tech will be discovered.
aquifer Field Modulation 16
Technology to build roads in fungus Field Modulation 16
Thermal Borehole Superconductor 23
Raise/Lower Land and Sea Floor Ecological Engineering 40
Condenser Ecological Engineering 40
Echelon Mirror Ecological Engineering 40
Tree farm Environmental Economics 35
So aquifer and borehole come quite early, then tree farm, then rest of them. Is this fine with you?
Same story is with Subsea Trunkline. It is now on level 4 tech about 26% down the tech road.
Thermocline transducer Superconductor 23
Subsea Trunkline Fusion Power 26
Aquafarm Nanominiaturization 55
Post by: Nevill on July 06, 2020, 01:33:48 am
One thing I'll say in advance, is that you often compare things to vanilla. That's not what I mean when I give my feedback. Vanilla does a lot of things wrong; that's why you made the mod in the first place.
Re: mines give -1 food:
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I don't either. Most likely because designer valued minerals a lot. You can see it in any other themes throughout the game. All mineral improvements come last and they cost more. There is also another restriction - rocky tile does not produce nutrients from farming at all! That is even harsher.Do you want these restrictions removed?There is a parameter in alphax.txt that removes this feature. I was wondering if you had something in mind when you left it unchanged, because you made your own adjustments to alphax.txt.
It's the first thing I remove when given a choice because it limits terraforming options with no good reason.
I never cared about farming rocky tiles. Seemed logical enough.
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Not by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%.Not in MP where people beeline to it. One thing Thinker did that changed things significantly was introduce tech tiering. Now beelining to Tier 6 out of the box is impossible. So it is 2220s when I can finally get my hands on the tech I used to get in the 2150s in vanilla and... I think in 2170s in Thinker?
It wouldn't be so bad if I had anything to do with formers in the meantime.
Personally, I am coming around to the idea of not having a fleet of 100+ formers just to drill boreholes (yes, MP games can get stupid when it comes to seeking advantage). I think high cost formers (i.e. low number of formers) could work with reduced terraforming times and earlier access to advanced options. Not sure if this is where you want to take it, though.
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Vanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself.Yes, but only a decent output. Increase the terraforming time, and condenser+farm coupled with a rocky mine is a comparable option, giving 4-5-0 to 2-4-2 (or with modded 0-2-6 boreholes and Tree Fams, 4-3-6 vs 4-4-2). It's really only the Hybrids that make forests too much.
I've been around for most of the discussions about how OP forests are, but I think one can find a balance between advanced terraforming and forest-and-forget.
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Not following you. Are you talking about complete absence of them in a game or delay?A delay that I find a bit unreasonable.
See, one consequence of removing energy from forests and moving energy-producing terraforming far away is that it closes off certain playstyles. In my game, I found myself unable to do much with my bases that weren't on a shore or near a cliff. This is the state of my bases as of 2200:
https://i.postimg.cc/0jnKf0WZ/Gaia-1.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/0jnKf0WZ/Gaia-1.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/vHP6xX6Z/Gaia-2.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/vHP6xX6Z/Gaia-2.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/tCRxg8Jc/Gaia-3.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/tCRxg8Jc/Gaia-3.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/1RrFsym6/Gaia-4.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/1RrFsym6/Gaia-4.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/9MVfnqqk/Gaia-5.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/9MVfnqqk/Gaia-5.jpg)
Note the differences between bases that have access to the shore, and the ones that don't. Also note the base in the Borehole Cluster. Really says it all about boreholes.
(Also note the sea base that has all the energy in the world... and 2 minerals to build facilities)
The only bases I managed to pop-boom are the ones on the shores (Tidal Harnesses can be put anywhere on the shelf) and the ones on the Mount Planet. The rest didn't have enough energy to invest in psych. My early research was done with Biology Labs, which were the second facility I built after Recycling Tanks. One man's trash... :D
Now I realize that factions that can run Free Market can probably take off with its help, but inland factions would be utterly dependent on starting conditions for energy production. Allowing more energy in forests (while increasing the terraforming time) and/or allowing earlier access to echelon mirrors, and raising terrain would expand the number of strategies available.
You have moved these around, so I suppose the point is moot until I get to test a newer build.
Re: sea bases
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They are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later.Yes, the same as in vanilla, and maybe even a bit worse, what with Aquafarms and Trunklines being made more expensive. And it caused me to never build one in vanilla because it was more cost-efficient to raise a sea floor and put a land base instead.
Subsea Trunkline isn't even that much of a good building. It means that the base would either be unable to take full use of the facility, or unable to produce energy. It's just that without it, sea bases can be written off for much of the midgame, and it would be a shame, seeing how they are made available from the start. I think it should be made much cheaper and available earlier for me to consider colonizing seas.
As of right now, sea bases make for decent outposts due to them projecting territory which the mod converts to combat advantage.
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Let me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.I think having 2-1-1 on a non-terraformed tile would be decent for early midgame (tier ~5-6 techs, so by Centauri Meditation?) when other, much better choises are available if you have former turns to spare.
But fungus is just something that is nice to have. Nothing crucial about it. It's something you mine when you have nothing better to mine.
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Define fun. Not losing units?Stronger defense is a cornerstone of this mod. And I doubt you can steamroll an equally developed AI just fine. Of course, AI has appalling war tactics but you still sacrifice units to god of randomness. That is a price for free bases.Nah. It's getting to play with a lot of them.
SMAC is a game of snowballing, and right now I have a choice of building a cruiser, or a couple of facilities, or a top-tier one that would allow me to snowball harder. And when I see the opponent building those facilities, and then sinking my top-of-the-line cruiser with trashy foils two tech levels behind, I don't bother.
The army is slow to build, and even slower to resupply.
My definition of fun is, hmm...
This is a screenshot from the MP game of Binary Down played sometime last year. The year is 2180. I play Usurpers, Auriga plays Caretakers, and there are another 4 human players in a loose alliance. I've been at war with Auriga from the first moment we met somewhen in the mid-2140s. Since then he destroyed about 60 of my units, and I 80 of his.
https://i.postimg.cc/Wz7Fpw0g/Usurper-units.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/Wz7Fpw0g/Usurper-units.jpg)
https://i.postimg.cc/vBfxksBP/Caretaker-units.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/vBfxksBP/Caretaker-units.jpg)
The attrition rate averages at about 4 units per turn.
I have ~200 units under my control, 90 of them formers. 5 cruiser transports filled with twenty 6-1-1 marines. About 12 probe teams... those are the ones that survived, I think I had more.
The average naval combat looked like this:
https://i.postimg.cc/zvNH1cHq/Naval-combat.jpg (https://i.postimg.cc/zvNH1cHq/Naval-combat.jpg)
Absolute chaos and hordes of units ambushing each other from fungus, sinking incoming transports, baiting enemy forces and trying to sneak a force past the patrols. And dying by the dozens.
All made possible by cheap units that are easy to restock and throw back in the meat grinder.
I know, this seems to be a design decision. If I wanted to play Binary Down I'd play it. But building a unit for 10 turns to have it destroyed in one is different from building 10 units per turn and throwing them away to die.
I don't think I can afford building a massive army at this point in game, and we seem to be entering midgame with Tier 6 techs.
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Pardon me. Are you saying native life feel less dangerous that in vanilla???I am saying NL is absent from player-to-player combat. I don't build them, even though my -4 Morale and +1 Planet would suggest otherwise.
Right now I am getting through Centauri Psi and think not "oh sweet, I can make Sealurks now!", but "I need to push through to Centauri Meditation and grab the Xenoempathy Dome".
I am leery of suggesting what they should cost because... well, right now they are in tune with "war is super-expensive" design philosophy. I am just saying everything costs too much, and I am much better off not going to war at all.
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If you are talking about boreholes mineral output then I reduced it for reason. Otherwise, with them minerals will be too easy to get in general as you can drill them left and right. Rocky mines at least restricted to rocky squares. So one should cherish them. I think it is fair. Land base covers 20 workable tiles. You are saying not having a single rocky tile is a common situation? I never saw that.If you think there is still not enough minerals - let me know how can you fix it (with boreholes or otherwise) without overdoing it.Boreholes I actually agree with you on. I'd even probably lower their energy output, and make them a bit faster to build. 0-2-6 at 16 turns sounds reasonable... but maybe it's because that was what I set it to in my own mod. :P
As for minerals... with negative mine/food dependency switched off and faster condensers available 3-2-0 (rainy-rolling) tiles are a possibility. It's a lot of work, and the output isn't much, but it is something.
Assuming condenser takes 12 turns, and forests are 1-2-1 at 8 turns...
Condenser + Forest*2 =(6, 5, 2) vs (farm+mine)*2 + (farm+solar) = (6-9, 5, 1-3) with 28 vs 34 terraforming turns. Sounds reasonable?
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Are you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?Did you have this discussion before? Could you link to it?
Vanilla is far from perfect, but I don't think it was ever intended to not count reactor discounts. The costs went up until chaos units at 6-8 mineral rows, then a Fusion reactor would have the unit costs roll back to 3 mineral rows. Somewhere at the point of Shard tech the costs would go up again, and the quantum reactor would have it roll back once more, except the game was over by then and nobody got to see it.
As far as I remember vanilla, I mostly waged war with units that cost no more than 7 mineral rows.
The fuss about absolute costs is that it is far more convenient to sit back and build up, and watch your opponent in case they build a military, then build up a (smaller) defense force and build up some more. You are never in a hurry against AI, but you need to keep developing to stay ahead of competition when it comes to human rivals, and the economic/opportunity cost of war seems too much.
The point at which you can invade is a point at which you are already winning by a wide margin.
Eh, we'll see. I like some of the changes, like how you made armor cheaper so an armored unit would cost you less than 2 separate ones, or the different price rules for combat units and modules. But the pace of the game is not something I am used to.
P.S.
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Keep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism.I am not sure how to take that. Do you think I am being nonconstructive?
I mean, there isn't much else to say when I happen to dislike one of the aspects of the core idea behind the mod, except to try and explain why I think that. It doesn't even mean I dislike the entire mod.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 04:30:33 am
One thing I'll say in advance, is that you often compare things to vanilla. That's not what I mean when I give my feedback. Vanilla does a lot of things wrong; that's why you made the mod in the first place.
What else to compare to? I am not making new game just enhance existing one. Too little time to do otherwise.
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Re: mines give -1 food:
There is a parameter in alphax.txt that removes this feature. I was wondering if you had something in mind when you left it unchanged, because you made your own adjustments to alphax.txt.
It's the first thing I remove when given a choice because it limits terraforming options with no good reason.
No. I didn't have something in mind when I didn't change that. As I didn't have anything in mind when I didn't change a thousand other original configuration parameters. 😀
Going to disable it in next version. I agree with you on that.
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QuoteNot by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%.Not in MP where people beeline to it. One thing Thinker did that changed things significantly was introduce tech tiering. Now beelining to Tier 6 out of the box is impossible. So it is 2220s when I can finally get my hands on the tech I used to get in the 2150s in vanilla and... I think in 2170s in Thinker?
It wouldn't be so bad if I had anything to do with formers in the meantime.
Personally, I am coming around to the idea of not having a fleet of 100+ formers just to drill boreholes (yes, MP games can get stupid when it comes to seeking advantage). I think high cost formers (i.e. low number of formers) could work with reduced terraforming times and earlier access to advanced options. Not sure if this is where you want to take it, though.
I've heard you. Will keep this in mind. I don't believe Thinker rearranged a tree. It just set fixed cost based on level. So does WTP.
I am giving aquifer and boreholes early. Can also give condensers and mirrors but they require large concentrated work fields and one probably doesn't have too many of such even by 100th turn.
Play it if you have time and let me know if you still have nothing to do with formers.
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QuoteVanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself.Yes, but only a decent output. Increase the terraforming time, and condenser+farm coupled with a rocky mine is a comparable option, giving 4-5-0 to 2-4-2 (or with modded 0-2-6 boreholes and Tree Fams, 4-3-6 vs 4-4-2). It's really only the Hybrids that make forests too much.
I've been around for most of the discussions about how OP forests are, but I think one can find a balance between advanced terraforming and forest-and-forget.
Restoring forest yield and moving HF later in future versions.
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Re: sea basesQuoteThey are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later.Yes, the same as in vanilla, and maybe even a bit worse, what with Aquafarms and Trunklines being made more expensive. And it caused me to never build one in vanilla because it was more cost-efficient to raise a sea floor and put a land base instead.
Subsea Trunkline isn't even that much of a good building. It means that the base would either be unable to take full use of the facility, or unable to produce energy. It's just that without it, sea bases can be written off for much of the midgame, and it would be a shame, seeing how they are made available from the start. I think it should be made much cheaper and available earlier for me to consider colonizing seas.
As of right now, sea bases make for decent outposts due to them projecting territory which the mod converts to combat advantage.
I'll see about decreasing aqua facilities cost. However, sea bases produce 3 energy per tile from game start. That is 1.5 times more than 1 mineral when building/hurrying facilities. So the trade-off for building facilities is quite good. These 3 energy will be equal to just 0.75 minerals when building units. So sea bases quite capable to build their infrastructure on hurrying alone. They are poor for unit production that's true.
Sea bases is a long going discussion as well. You can open it again if you like. I perceive them comparable to land ones. And I believe if you give them 2 minerals per tile there won't be need for land bases at all. So we should tread cautiously about giving them more minerals.
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QuoteLet me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.I think having 2-1-1 on a non-terraformed tile would be decent for early midgame (tier ~5-6 techs, so by Centauri Meditation?) when other, much better choises are available if you have former turns to spare.
But fungus is just something that is nice to have. Nothing crucial about it. It's something you mine when you have nothing better to mine.
Deal. 1 mineral but no more!
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SMAC is a game of snowballing, and right now I have a choice of building a cruiser, or a couple of facilities, or a top-tier one that would allow me to snowball harder. And when I see the opponent building those facilities, and then sinking my top-of-the-line cruiser with trashy foils two tech levels behind, I don't bother.
The army is slow to build, and even slower to resupply.
I know, this seems to be a design decision. If I wanted to play Binary Down I'd play it. But building a unit for 10 turns to have it destroyed in one is different from building 10 units per turn and throwing them away to die.
I don't think I can afford building a massive army at this point in game, and we seem to be entering midgame with Tier 6 techs.
I agree with you that game is more flexible with cheaper units. You build them quickly then change production if you like. There is no line to draw there. It is up to personal preferences.
There are two arguments against very cheap units, though.
1. You may fall into another extreme - too many units to manage. Combat units mostly die on front line. However, one still need to set build orders, check bases every time they are built, deliver them to front line, and maybe board-transport-unboard them if on different continent. Dividing unit price in half doubles mouse clicks for above. And then game becomes so boring that 90% of the time you do same logistics over and over again instead of strategy and tactics. That is what some of my users say. Not me. For them unit should be reasonably prices so you can build them in 5-15 turns at any stage of the game. With many bases one will still produce few of them per turn.
2. There should be at least some minimal cost distinction between units of different strength. So the player building better units spends more time on them even nominally. I don't say this is some mandatory rule but it is a logical design in my understanding.
In vanilla all infantries X-1-1*4 with singular reactor cost 6 rows regardless of weapon value. I claim this a bad design and a lot of players agree. I've already compacted weapon cost to grow slower than vanilla. SMACX has 13 weapons. So even with step 1 cost increase you are bound to end up with 13 mineral rows for high end unit. WTP weapon cost accelerates a little so the highest weapon costs 20. Vanilla top weapon cost is 40. With highest reactor cutting cost in half you'll spend 10 mineral rows for 30-1-1 unit. It is absolutely not expensive for late game bases with 50 mineral production or more. They will build such unit in 2 turns. Of course, speed cost a little more and armor cost a little more, etc. So you will be building super puper armored units in 4-6-8 turns instead. Sounds reasonable.
I believe what you experienced with long to build units is the delayed development phenomena. Vanilla keeps all the good weapons and armors in the second half of the game. So player can evolve their empire quite significantly before units becomes expensive. I've corrected this skew in WTP. Now you get weapons/armors at the steady rate. So you may get an expensive unit but unable to produce it quickly. Build cheaper units then. There is always a choice.
Summarizing above.
Try to invent a pricing model that makes different strength unit priced more or less proportionally differently (before reactor discount) and at the same time all units are cheap. I'll be interested.
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I am leery of suggesting what they should cost because... well, right now they are in tune with "war is super-expensive" design philosophy. I am just saying everything costs too much, and I am much better off not going to war at all.
That is the point. 4X games like Civ were designed to have a good mix of economy and conquest. Unfortunately, SMACX fell into conquest end of spectrum quite deeply to the level of boredom. I have restored the balance. That is all. I believe there are more of "less build, more fight" games like Starcraft out there where you can have battles of 200 units simultaneously. Civ games are tailored for few units combat. That is how they are designed. It would be a mistake to redo this.
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Assuming condenser take 12 turns, and forests are 1-2-1 at 8 turns...
Condenser + Forest*2 =(6, 5, 2) vs (farm+mine)*2 + (farm+solar) = (6-9, 5, 1-3) with 28 vs 34 terraforming turns. Sounds reasonable?
I am with you on this.
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QuoteAre you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?Did you have this discussion before? Could you link to it?
I don't think there is a dedicated one. Probably beginning of this thread + some special thread I've created if you like to comb through them. However, these were mostly discussion about how to fix it properly rather than what exactly is broken there. The general understanding is the whole unit cost algorithm is broken beyond repair. Check out just the vanilla cost formula and try to design different units there and you see how ridiculous cost you can get both too low and too high.
Civ 1/2 had a very balanced system where cost was assigned to the whole units taking all its strengths and weaknesses into account. And it worked. SMACX trying to standardize everything prices individual components instead and then employ a huge algorithmic machinery to cope with that and to generate Civ like cost for whole unit but fails miserably. And reactors is a story in itself.
I'd suggest to not argue with my unit cost formula in general. Instead let me know if you believe some units are priced incorrectly relative to other units. Then we can fix it.
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Vanilla is far from perfect, but I don't think it was ever intended to not count reactor discounts. The costs went up until chaos units at 6-8 mineral rows, then a Fusion reactor would have the unit costs roll back to 3 mineral rows. Somewhere at the point of Shard tech the costs would go up again, and the quantum reactor would have it roll back once more, except the game was over by then and nobody got to see it.
No. It wasn't. The reactors are there to cover their algorithmic incompetency. Look at their unit cost formula. It is so huge and so sloppy. One good developer could fit a better algorithm there and waste less lines of description. It is just cannot exist without reactors cutting unit cost 16 (sixteen) times and quadrupling unit power at the same time!
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The fuss about absolute costs is that it is far more convenient to sit back and build up, and watch your opponent in case they build a military, then build up a (smaller) defense force and build up some more. You are never in a hurry against AI, but you need to keep developing to stay ahead of competition when it comes to human rivals, and the economic/opportunity cost of war seems too much.
I've already answered on a point of being flexible in building by shortening production time. Try to come up with better cost arrangement across all components and we'll talk again. So far I'd say this mod model is better than vanilla's but maybe not yet 100% perfect.
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The point at which you can invade is a point at which you are already winning by a wide margin.
That is your vanilla snowballing conquest talking in you. Yet, you somehow prefer not to compare with vanilla. 😉
Learn new strategy, man. This is a different game. Here is one hint. Due to enhanced defense you can quite effectively defend from weaker opponent. With that in mind, you don't need to amass enough force to wipe them out completely. Just taking 1-2 bases is enough. They won't be able to retake them. They you can wait a little to accumulate new tiny invasion group and repeat. Of course, they won't like you very much but this is a viable strategy - better than wait half a game to invade.
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Eh, we'll see. I like some of the changes, like how you made armor cheaper so an armored unit would cost you less than 2 separate ones, or the different price rules for combat units and modules. But the pace of the game is not something I am used to.
No. You are not. Let me reiterate this again. Vanilla holds best weapon/armor for later until you are so strong economically that building them is a piece of cake. Plus reactors, of course.
WTP gives you components at regular intervals. Quite often few first components are unused because you have nobody to fight yet. This may seem like a waste but it is not. Because sometimes, just sometimes, you actually may need this particle impactor for early conflict. And there you have it. True that you probably won't be using them all in one game because they are pouring at you like shower. But that is fine.
We can try to speed development up a little. I am working on it and you can help out too.
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P.S.QuoteKeep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism.I am not sure how to take that. Do you think I am being nonconstructive?
No. I was literal. There is a lot of nonconstructive stuff going around. You are quite constructive. I like that.
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I mean, there isn't much else to say when I happen to dislike one of the aspects of the core idea behind the mod, except to try and explain why I think that. It doesn't even mean I dislike the entire mod.
Absolutely, man. You did a pretty good job already. Speak up and be heard.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 06, 2020, 06:40:52 pm
The combat is the one thing I dislike most about the mod. It seems excessively random due to having so few units with high combat volatility. I would also like to see combat unit costs reduced substantially.
Regarding energy input, I agree that boreholes have no competition. (You can do something like raise land + crawled solar collectors/echelon mirrors later but that requires The Supercollider special project to be reasonable.) Early on, if you have no river your energy input is extremely low. Reducing solar collector build cost would be an option. Perhaps reduce mine construction time also.
Vanilla Smac is not a very combat-focused game. While it is very easy to wreak havoc on factions with a moderate force it is next to impossible to conduct war in a manner that benefits you as opposed to hurting someone else (1vs1 and early rover rushes being exceptions). Moreover, a conquered base in enemy territory is a huge liabillity against enemy drones.
Post by: Nevill on July 06, 2020, 07:07:41 pm
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My experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that.Why, use the offensive outposts (TM)! Fight fire with fire; if they are skulking around at the edges of your territory, expand your territory just before you attack them. They lose their +50% buff, and you get one. Sensor arrays and their puny 25% on defence, eat your heart out!
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SMAC has a problem in that it is almost impossible to recover from a blow dealt to one of your production bases. Something you invested in for decades can be taken away in a matter of turns, and even if you retake the base, rebuilding it requires a disproportional investment.
As such, multiplayer games for the players tend to be over once the first base falls. The players are rightfully desperate to hold on to their bases, and unless it was a surprise attack the fall of a base means that all resources have been exhausted.
There are no tales of heroic resistance in SMAC. It can be pretty frustrating to play and develop your faction for months without contact, and then lose it all in five years when the militaries clash and the victor emerges.
That is a rather disappointing ending to an otherwise tense game.
I try to keep an open mind about what the new changes mean for the game. I suppose this mod could help the faction dig their heels in, though I am not sure if it wouldn't just delay the inevitable. I suppose this could be most pronounced in games with more than 2 players where others can help the aggrieved party rebuild and retaliate.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 07:08:41 pm
My experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that. Thinking about it in a 1vs1 scenario you could probably have a very slow, very strategic war which could be interesting. In SP the inability to control my factions boundaries is frustating.
Are you talking about vanilla experience or WTP?
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The combat is the one thing I dislike most about the mod. It seems excessively random due to having so few units with high combat volatility. I would also like to see combat unit costs reduced substantially.
🙄
That same question is raised over and over again. Please watch Sid Meier's presentation on game psychology here.
This is no mean to offend you. Just saving pile of yours and mine time. Millions of players ask this same exactly question about combat randomness and volatility. Sid answered it pretty much clearly. So check if it answers your concerns first.
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Regarding energy input, I agree that boreholes have no competition. (You can do something like raise land + crawled solar collectors/echelon mirrors later but that requires The Supercollider special project to be reasonable.) Early on, if you have no river your energy input is extremely low. Reducing solar collector build cost would be an option. Perhaps reduce mine construction time also.
I've reduced boreholes build time. I also enabled aquifer relatively soon. This combined should give extra energy.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 07:18:54 pm
SMAC has a problem in that it is almost impossible to recover from a blow dealt to one of your production bases. Something you invested in for decades can be taken away in a matter of turns, and even if you retake the base, rebuilding it requires a disproportional investment.
As such, multiplayer games for the players tend to be over once the first base falls. The players are rightfully desperate to hold on to their bases, and unless it was a surprise attack the fall of a base means that all resources have been exhausted.
There are no tales of heroic resistance in SMAC. It can be pretty frustrating to play and develop your faction for months without contact, and then lose it all in five years when the militaries clash and the victor emerges.
That is a rather disappointing ending to an otherwise tense game.
Surprisingly, Nevill, I was expecting to hear that from a single player perspective. While from multiplier perspective you should understand and feel that a bonus for one side is a penalty for another and you can be on any. When you dislike fast war resolution do you dislike it as both victor and victim? Would you, as assailant, prefer defender to be able to "recover" from any of your attempts to destroy their economy so the war never ends?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 06, 2020, 07:21:40 pm
You linked that video before. I do not understand what it's supposed to say. I am not talking about randomness in general. I am talking about your mod in particular. I already explained once how the combat formula you invented makes extreme combat outcomes more likely than they should be. That in itselves would still be OK if you did not have so few units.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 06, 2020, 07:33:29 pm
QuoteMy experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that.Why, use the offensive outposts (TM)! Fight fire with fire; if they are skulking around at the edges of your territory, expand your territory just before you attack them. They lose their +50% buff, and you get one. Sensor arrays and their puny 25% on defence, eat your heart out!
I get what you are saying but it doesn't really apply. They are 6 other factions. The AI declares war on me without reason or potential gain because it is stupid. Now I have random armored drones/rovers or boats running about annoying me. Boats standing offshore in some fungus patch bombarding my terraforming are particular troublesome. Only reasonable counter I found is to put some unit on that tile and ignore the bombardement . Note that their faction does not gain anything from this. I could deal with one faction doing this but not with 4 of them.
Post by: Nevill on July 06, 2020, 07:41:09 pm
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Would you, as assailant, prefer defender to be able to "recover" from any of your attempts to destroy their economy so the war never ends?I don't think it's possible in the current engine.
Most of my 1v1 duels tend towards a "burn, don't even pillage" policy. The aggressor doesn't have to worry about holding on to the captured territories. They can put the base to the torch without losing move points; they can starve the populace to avoid dealing with drones; and the capture of the base leaves it a husk of its former self, so upon recapture you get barely a couple of facilities back.
Losing a developed base is a massive setback for the owner, and taking it doesn't inconvenience the victor any. So in that sense I get what you are trying to do. It's just that your solution sacrifices other gameplay elements that I like.
I think Civ IV did it pretty well when it comes to city conquest, but then it isn't fair to compare the different games... and it's been a decade since I played it, so my memory is foggy. But I remember having a lot more trouble with waging wars, where invading a city was the easy part.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 10:18:06 pm
The quote was about WTP.
You linked that video before. I do not understand what it's supposed to say. I am not talking about randomness in general. I am talking about your mod in particular. I already explained once how the combat formula you invented makes extreme combat outcomes more likely than they should be. That in itselves would still be OK if you did not have so few units.
Oh. Sorry about posting it twice.
It is supposed to say that there is a difference between probabilistic and perceived fairness. The more random the outcome is the more it is perceived unfair to some players. Yet probabilistic fairness stays the same. So you may feel something and somebody else may feel different. What to discuss here?
There is a config property in thinker.ini: alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider. Set it to 1 and you'll get the plain vanilla combat mechanics.
By the way, you can search your feelings in regards to whether they are induced by vanilla experience or not.
Have you played Civ 1? Do you understand its combat mechanics? If yes, ask yourself: did you feel the combat is unfair to the frustration level? Did you stop playing it because of this?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 10:25:12 pm
QuoteWould you, as assailant, prefer defender to be able to "recover" from any of your attempts to destroy their economy so the war never ends?I don't think it's possible in the current engine.
You evaded the question by answering a different one. I asked about your preferences irregardless to this mod or whatever engine. What would you prefer in your dream game?
Post by: Nevill on July 06, 2020, 10:43:03 pm
I don't want an opponent to be able to shrug off any attempts to harm their economy. But I find the current meta - the one where an empire folds like a house of cards the moment a couple bases fall - unsatisfactory.
In a dream game the most intense phase of war should come after an initial invasion.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 06, 2020, 11:05:05 pm
And extreme volatility is bad whatever the video says. If I lose a 4 vs 3 combat strength fight that's OK. Losing two 4 power units against that 3 power defender should be exceedingly rare and losing three 4 power units against that 3 power defender should be about as likely as winning the lottery. The advantage of this above avoiding making people feel miserable is that you can properly plan. This is suppose to be a strategy game after all. Civ4 ensures this by scaling combat power with unit health. So if the 3 power defender wins but is heavily damaged it will be cleaned up by the next unit with near certainty.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 11:27:44 pm
The question was somewhat provocatively phrased, so I tried to expand on it by listing my grievances.
I don't want an opponent to be able to shrug off any attempts to harm their economy. But I find the current meta - the one where an empire folds like a house of cards the moment a couple bases fall - unsatisfactory.
In a dream game the most intense phase of war should come after an initial invasion.
I don't yet understand your grievances. Even more I don't understand why such grievances apply to this mod which on purpose designed so this said house of cards falling much less likely to occur comparing to vanilla where it happens all the time.
As you said yourself there is a point where an empire folds like a house of cards. You even said yourself when exactly this happens. So, I assume, you have full awareness of how it work. Now you complain about why this is happening to you while you knew this is going to happen and you did nothing to prevent it. I don't see how I can help here. My only advice would be - do not let that happen! Do something! It does sound stupid because it is obvious.
In simple terms there could be two cases when your empire folds like a house of cards.
1. You were capable to withstand the assault not losing any critical bases but you weren't prepared. Then this is your fault and bad play. There are thousand ways to lose the game. This is just one of them.
2. You were prepared but they still overcame you. Then it is time to surrender. Their economics, weaponry, and military is overwhelming to the point when no defensive bonuses can save you. They won the game before the assault.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 11:48:43 pm
I have never played Civ1 but I do play Civ4 regularly and have absolutely no issue with the the randomness.
And extreme volatility is bad whatever the video says. If I lose a 4 vs 3 combat strength fight that's OK. Losing two 4 power units against that 3 power defender should be exceedingly rare and losing three 4 power units against that 3 power defender should be about as likely as winning the lottery. The advantage of this above avoiding making people feel miserable is that you can properly plan. This is suppose to be a strategy game after all. Civ4 ensures this by scaling combat power with unit health. So if the 3 power defender wins but is heavily damaged it will be cleaned up by the next unit with near certainty.
What do you mean by "that's OK"? Is it your approval of game mechanics being satisfactory to your liking? If so then I don't see use in discussing personal preferences. Turn this feature off and enjoy.
Post by: Nevill on July 06, 2020, 11:53:36 pm
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Even more I don't understand why such grievances apply to this mod which on purpose designed so this said house of cards falling much less likely to occur comparing to vanilla where it happens all the time.They don't. I was talking about SMAC in general, and I even said as much:
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I try to keep an open mind about what the new changes mean for the game.
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Losing a developed base is a massive setback for the owner, and taking it doesn't inconvenience the victor any. So in that sense I get what you are trying to do.The usual 1v1 game logic goes like this:
1) Losing a developed base is a disastrous setback in SMAC that is not easy to recover from.
2) The defender tries to protect their bases with everything they've got
3) The most fierce battles occur at the base outskirts since it is safer to catch an attacker in the field
4) If the attacker manages to take a base despite 3) it often means the defender simply doesn't have units to repel them... and even if they do, they are crippled
5) Defender surrenders, game ends
The way I see it, you make an attacker undergo massive economic setback to mount an invasion, so even if they succeed in taking a base the game is still somewhat even. This is what I tried to tell Hagin0.
...there is no need to be defensive all the time, surely?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 06, 2020, 11:59:03 pm
QuoteEven more I don't understand why such grievances apply to this mod which on purpose designed so this said house of cards falling much less likely to occur comparing to vanilla where it happens all the time.They don't. I was talking about SMAC in general
Sorry. Didn't catch this at first.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 07, 2020, 12:03:16 am
The way I see it, you make an attacker undergo massive economic setback to mount an invasion, so even if they succeed in taking a base the game is still somewhat even. This is what I tried to tell Hagin0.
Aha. Got it now. Glad we are on a same page.
...there is no need to be defensive all the time, surely?
Hmm. I don't feel defensive. Most of the time I am just trying to clarify what other people meant. That takes a lot of time and a lot of inconvenient questions. Usually because people don't want to raise these inconvenient questions themselves. So they may feel hurt by them while, in fact, I merely seek pure knowledge like Zakharov.
Post by: Nevill on July 07, 2020, 08:12:53 pm
Manifold Harmonics gives me 5-1-4 on fungal non-terraformed tiles. I can't top that; I might as well just disband my formers. But no, I will need formers to plant even more fungus.
Wild life got really annoying when I first built Genejack Factories and went from 24 minerals to 36 with eco-damage rising up to 30+. I got besieged by worms in double digits as I had some turns with two fungal pops in a row.
Wouldn't wildlife be a bigger threat if collateral damage for them were disabled? It is set to 100%, so for now you only need to win once to have an entire stack of worms disintegrate. This is what made them easy pickings in vanilla... sure the Planet can spawn 20 mind worms a pop, but a couple empath rovers can clean it up nicely.
Do they no longer get lifecycle upgrades from killing their neighbours?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 07, 2020, 09:13:05 pm
Post by: Nexii on July 07, 2020, 10:01:13 pm
I liked the idea of bases forced to be more distant.
I've thought a lot about it too. I think in some way, smaller factions need a sort of boost. Rather than everyone getting a big defensive boost, maybe a boost to both attack and defense but only for battles in your territory. It's that or penalize empires more for getting big... either economically or crippling captured cities for longer.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 02:13:12 am
Rather than everyone getting a big defensive boost, maybe a boost to both attack and defense but only for battles in your territory.
That is what territory bonus in WTP does.
Post by: Nexii on July 08, 2020, 04:13:57 am
My idea was something like EFFIC but for military effectiveness. The further from your capital, the weaker your troops get. Call it the difficulty of logistics. It's sort of an extension of how they envisioned Children's Creche working
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 04:26:31 am
The diplomacy thing is very well written in SMACX already. Nobody like aggressors. The only thing that with snowballing vanilla war strategy allies cannot stop aggressor in time. With WTP enhanced defense it's possible.
If we don't consider alliances and diplomacy then the game is over when one loses its first base regardless of attack/defense balance.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 04:30:18 am
More lore stuff. I even renamed some techs for better match with existing lore things. Have a look.
# Version 78
* New technlogy tree version. Hopefully more lore sensible.
* Frictionless Surfaces renamed to Quantum Computers.
* Super Tensile Solids renamed to Applied Plasmadynamics (for plasma shard).
* Organic Superlubricants renamed to Cold Fusion (for fusion lab and fusion laser).
* Aquifer is enabled by Field Modulation (level 2).
* Thermal Borehole is enabled by Superconductor (level 3).
* Condenser is enabled by Ecological Engineering (level 4).
* Echelon Mirror is enabled by Environmental Economics (level 5).
* Hab Complex is enabled by Industrial Economics (level 3).
* Other technology wiring and association see in alpax.txt.
* Removed -1 POLICE shift from all factions. Now this mod does not require tweaking with factions anymore.
* SEs modified to give more negative POLICE ratings.
* SEs modified to give higher GROWTH ratings. This is now safe as population boom is fixed and doesn't break game anymore.
* Borehole Square yield is 0-2-6. Borehole construction time is 12.
* Forest yield is reverted to 1-2-1. Instead moved HF later in tree and restored its original cost/maint.
* Tree Farm cost/maint = 12/2.
* Hybrid Forest cost/maint = 24/4.
* Nutrient effect in mine square = 0.
* Centauri Genetics gives +1 mineral in fungus. By request of players to have some minerals in it.
* Biology Lab cost = 6.
* Fungicide Tanks cost = 1 row of minerals.
* Weapons and armors are shifted little bit later and distributed more evenly across the tree.
* Armor value progression adjusted to keep up with contemporary weapon.
* The Weather Paradigm cost = 40. Lowered due to plenty of advanced terraforming options are now available early.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 08, 2020, 08:45:09 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 02:56:50 pm
Overall, I feel like cheap colony + cheap former + accelerated growth is too fast development. I'll probably revert or reduce some of these modification in next release.
At the turn 80 Hive has built WP, built condensers and boreholes all over the place and has ~20 bases.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 04:44:32 pm
I will revert them to previous values and recommend MP players to set them up in alphax.txt for faster pace experience.
Namely:
Base tile yield: change to 4,1,1 or even give more minerals and energy if desired.
Former cost: change to 2.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 08, 2020, 06:30:05 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 06:45:03 pm
Formers I am thinking between 2 and 4. Testing both cases now. Currently inclined to keep it at 2 as well. Expensive formers slow down vertical growth. They also get killed sometimes, etc. Player do not need to produce them in unlimited quantities anyway. So former cost impacts everybody equally.
I'll also change all former abilities to flat cost to avoid any rounding on top of such low cost. For example, Fungicide Tanks add 1 mineral row, Super Former adds 4 rows, etc.
So, it seems the only change I revert is base tile yield. Still testing and welcome your input too.
Post by: Nevill on July 08, 2020, 07:09:05 pm
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Later on pure expansion is not that profitable anymore. B-drones activity in all bases require drone facilities, etc.It is something that is less relevant for Transcend. B-drones start popping up after 6th base on a Standard-sized map, and after that all your citizens are drones no matter how many bases you have. All the b-drones affect is the Psych slider because it takes 50% more energy to convert a superdrone to a talent, and the base can only make use of pop*2 psych points.
Meaning that the biggest drawback of b-drones is the inability to enact Golden Age, which is necessary for pop booming... except it got nerfed. So there is less incentive to keep the number of bases down.
The MP game is wrapping up. The Manifold Harmonics broke it over the knee like I thought it would. There are no terraforming options comparable to 5-1-5 tiles, and the fungal production techs are clustered together so closely I increased my yield by 3 resourse points in 10 years.
It's 2230, and I research level 7 techs in 2 turns. It takes Zakharov 12 turns even with all the cheating he gets up to.
MH is a late game project that should be built at a point when bases get most of their yield from satellites and are fully terraformed. By then it doesn't matter as much if your tiles are producing 5-1-5 or 6-2-7. It sure matters when the alternatives are 1-2-0 or 3-1-2 (forest and farm+solar, respectively).
Not sure if anything I have to say about the tech tree is relevant, since the new version seems to shuffle things around. I did not like the v66 implementation, because abilities/facilities I could use got moved up the tech tree, and I had almost nothing to play with for 100 years; the game only opened up with Genejack factories and me being able to build things faster, which got me to increase my park of formers and build more improvements so I would actually need facilities with multipliers... and then I started researching techs at a rate faster than I could implement the discoveries. Currently my highest weapon in Chaos gun at 6 power, but I expect to have Quantum weaponry at 16 in a decade.
Oh, and I think Naval Yards I got from the Maritime Control Center fixed my ships in 1 turn. I definitely recall a probe ship at -90% skip a turn and be repaired the next. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 08, 2020, 07:12:08 pm
What incentivises base spam is not the cost of colony pods. They are not that cheap to begin with costing 30 expensive to rushbuy minerals and one population. It's the way support works which means that more bases means lower support costs, growth past size2/3 requiring prohibitive amounts of food and and the issue of drone control. Growing even to size 2 on Transcend requires a police unit and growing to size 3 is heavily discouraged.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 07:53:08 pm
I didn't like the base tile yield increase to begin with. In particular, if you want to reduce ICS a bit it seems wrong to increase base tile yields.
The base tile yield was a response to MP game slowness complaint. Definitely, it supports ICS but there are many contradictory conditions there to work with. Anyway, I didn't like it myself and reverted back. So the question is closed.
What incentivises base spam is not the cost of colony pods. They are not that cheap to begin with costing 30 expensive to rushbuy minerals and one population. It's the way support works which means that more bases means lower support costs, growth past size2/3 requiring prohibitive amounts of food and and the issue of drone control. Growing even to size 2 on Transcend requires a police unit and growing to size 3 is heavily discouraged.
I agree that there is a finer mechanics at play here that need to be further researched. For now I believe ICS by itself is not that big of a deal since AI does it at high enough rate too at the beginning.
I also agree with growing restriction there but I don't see how it can be simply fixed without introducing any weird rules. Base has limited worked squares and letting it grow vertically without limits may exhaust this pool of available workable tiles. We are out of ideas about incentivising vertical growth.
One option that we have already discussed is to make all eco/psy/lab multiplying facilities to multiply by 100% instead of 50%. Give Node, Bank, and other facilities relatively early so base can bump its cash and lab output quite significantly. Then increase research cost proportionally to require a lot of developed bases to move it forward at good rate. In this scenario thinly spread empire would fall behind in research.
Another option is to introduce base size defense modifies as in Civ 3 (as I remember). Sort of "citizen defense forces". 😊
I.e. the bigger the base the more difficult to fight units in it. Then adjust weapon/armor and defense modifier so that current +100% (base + territory) is achieved at about size 6-10. Then smaller bases will be an easy prey. One has to explicitly grow them to increase their defensive value. This also solves a "first base capture crashes the victim" problem many people told about. In this case it will be increasingly difficult to move into center of empire. So the invasion may naturally stop somewhere in the middle.
Post by: Nexii on July 08, 2020, 07:53:33 pm
I was trying to find the mechanic. But I think in Civ2 the base square got resource bonuses when the city reached certain sizes. That seems liked a good way to reward larger cities. I wonder if there are any other creative ways to reward larger cities. I think they were kind of on the right track with specialists only in bigger cities. But specialists have a lot of flaws too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 08:01:16 pm
The MP game is wrapping up. The Manifold Harmonics broke it over the knee like I thought it would. There are no terraforming options comparable to 5-1-5 tiles, and the fungal production techs are clustered together so closely I increased my yield by 3 resourse points in 10 years.
It's 2230, and I research level 7 techs in 2 turns. It takes Zakharov 12 turns even with all the cheating he gets up to.
MH is a late game project that should be built at a point when bases get most of their yield from satellites and are fully terraformed. By then it doesn't matter as much if your tiles are producing 5-1-5 or 6-2-7. It sure matters when the alternatives are 1-2-0 or 3-1-2 (forest and farm+solar, respectively).
Thank you for testing that. I see that my arguments were flawed. I'll move it later to the tree. Somewhere at 60-90% would be fine?
I don't think it worth reverting it to Secrets of the Manifold as this second last tech before ToT. So there won't be enough time to enjoy it.
Not sure if anything I have to say about the tech tree is relevant, since the new version seems to shuffle things around. I did not like the v66 implementation, because abilities/facilities I could use got moved up the tech tree, and I had almost nothing to play with for 100 years; the game only opened up with Genejack factories and me being able to build things faster, which got me to increase my park of formers and build more improvements so I would actually need facilities with multipliers... and then I started researching techs at a rate faster than I could implement the discoveries. Currently my highest weapon in Chaos gun at 6 power, but I expect to have Quantum weaponry at 16 in a decade.
I am constantly working on it. Even though the tree itself got rearranged sometimes, I have my own table of feature appearance times and try to stick to it. In latest versions you got advanced techs appearing one by one quite early. So, I guess, you'll have something to do whole game.
* Aquifer is enabled by Field Modulation (level 2).
* Thermal Borehole is enabled by Superconductor (level 3).
* Condenser is enabled by Ecological Engineering (level 4).
* Echelon Mirror is enabled by Environmental Economics (level 5).
I also distributed mineral multiplying facilities more evenly in the tree. Genejack Factory appears somewhere 30-40%. Base needs much less mineral surplus for these facilities to be profitable than any energy multiplying facilities. Besides, boreholes are nerfed. So some multiplication of minerals should not be over the board.
Oh, and I think Naval Yards I got from the Maritime Control Center fixed my ships in 1 turn. I definitely recall a probe ship at -90% skip a turn and be repaired the next. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen?
Interesting. Don't know. I think not by default but Maritime Control Center may do it. I'll check it out.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 08, 2020, 08:14:01 pm
Incentivising vertical growth doesn't require anything extreme. You'd need to reduce nutrients required for growth and buff drone control options a bit maybe. Increasing the economy buildings multipliers would have serious unintended consequences. I can almost guarantee that. (One that comes to mind is building super-economic bases with crawled energy.) If you want to buff facilities in general why not abolish maintenance costs? This would also make drone control better.
Post by: Nevill on July 08, 2020, 08:43:38 pm
There are the following strings in thinker.ini:
reactor_cost_factor_0=100
reactor_cost_factor_1=80
reactor_cost_factor_2=65
reactor_cost_factor_3=50
And this is from the readme:
unit cost = [PI cost + (SI cost - 1) / 2] * reactor factor * abilities factor + abilities flat
reactor factor = reactor cost / Fission reactor cost
I assume it takes reactor factor = 100% for fission, and then applies discounts according to the values above.
However, changing reactor_cost_factor_0 to anything other than 100 does not actually change the cost of fission units, but changes the cost of units with other reactors.
What do these numbers stand for then?
Personally, I'd like to test the game with the values of 70/60/50/40 from what the current costs are, but I am not sure how to go about it.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 08, 2020, 09:34:43 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 08, 2020, 09:38:37 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 10:13:30 pm
Incentivising vertical growth doesn't require anything extreme. You'd need to reduce nutrients required for growth and buff drone control options a bit maybe. Increasing the economy buildings multipliers would have serious unintended consequences. I can almost guarantee that. (One that comes to mind is building super-economic bases with crawled energy.) If you want to buff facilities in general why not abolish maintenance costs? This would also make drone control better.
Reducing growth requirements is the same as giving more nutrients at base tile = faster growth. That requires to cope with growth problems much more often than usual. I'd say it creates more problems than solutions. At least I feel like I want to slow their growth down by producing more colonies! The opposite to growth incentive.
We need encourage base size not how fast it gets there. I agree that increasing multiplication effect is not good as everything is already balanced out. However, that could be said to any other "solution" - it will break fine tuned balance in some way. Same happens with abolishing maintenance costs. Everybody will end up with over extra money = faster building = at some point everybody has nothing to build anymore.
I don't think we need to fight this ICS thing. Try to play on large map and you'll see how difficult it becomes to spread beyond say 20-40 bases.
I agree that SUPPORT encourages more smaller bases to support more units total. Maybe we can think of something in this direction?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 10:21:00 pm
Is there a way to play with the cost formula?
There are the following strings in thinker.ini:
reactor_cost_factor_0=100
reactor_cost_factor_1=80
reactor_cost_factor_2=65
reactor_cost_factor_3=50
And this is from the readme:
unit cost = [PI cost + (SI cost - 1) / 2] * reactor factor * abilities factor + abilities flat
reactor factor = reactor cost / Fission reactor cost
I assume it takes reactor factor = 100% for fission, and then applies discounts according to the values above.
However, changing reactor_cost_factor_0 to anything other than 100 does not actually change the cost of fission units, but changes the cost of units with other reactors.
What do these numbers stand for then?
Personally, I'd like to test the game with the values of 70/60/50/40 from what the current costs are, but I am not sure how to go about it.
I've updated description. Hope this is more clear.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#unit-cost-formula
reactor cost factor = reactor cost / Fission reactor cost
So Fission units cost never changes. I assumed people would take Fission unit cost as a base for further discount. If you want to reduce all costs including Fission then it probably would be clearer to reduce the cost of components, correspondingly.
However, I can change formula to use absolute reactor value and not relative to Fission if you like to test that.
Post by: Nevill on July 08, 2020, 10:35:11 pm
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However, I can change formula to use absolute reactor value and not relative to Fission if you like to test that.If it wouldn't be too much trouble.
Post by: lolada on July 08, 2020, 10:35:43 pm
Really interesting changes to secret projects, looking forward to that. Terraforming as well.
On topic of growth and formers/colony pods - i am split on that.. Maybe its better that they are cheaper and early game goes faster - its valid thing to do. Colony pods and formers being expensive does change start in sense that its way more important to build facilities like Recycling Tanks and Recreation Commons compared to vanilla. Vanilla colony pod ICS-like spam is boring and tiring to play. It would be still different to play in WTP though - as rushing units is expensive.
On topic of combat volatility, well i guess it can be easily modded by user - i got used to it. There's something good in chance of losing super advanced experienced units - otherwise game become cakewalk for player and interest is lost much quicker.
Hard to comment on the rest - some AI in general grows very quickly.. maybe even too quickly while others stagnate. Lots of it was due to ecological damage and bad terraforming - that might be changed. Hard to say without more playtesting now.
Post by: Nexii on July 08, 2020, 10:36:38 pm
4 FOP a tile means 2 goes to food, 2 is leftover, say 1M and 1E. But that pop also requires police or facility to control. Leaving with even less remainder, 1M per extra pop. Compared to the first pop in another base at 7 FOP (5 net) it's little wonder ICS is so good.
Easing drone control (i.e. SE POLICE) is one way, though its tricky. A lot of times I've modded Police State to be too powerful.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 11:29:25 pm
* Reactor value is weapon/armor percentage multiplier.
Enjoy
* Now actually renaming technologies. Didn't work first time.
After I renamed them I realized that the old artifacts are still there: picture, description, quote. Picture I (or somebody else) may draw, description is just text but quote is voice - difficult to modify. But first lets test them. If they happen to be well named then we can think about description/picture for them. Otherwise, we can rename them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 11:34:49 pm
Make it add FOP proportional to base size maybe? Like +1 each FOP for each 4 pop? So only 4+ bases benefit from it?
Post by: Nexii on July 08, 2020, 11:47:28 pm
I considered more +TALENT options in my SE set too, to ease drone control a bit.
I think a big reason facilities aren't great early is the low tile production before you get things like condensor, borehole, tree farm. +2 ECON or not makes a huge difference when production is still low
Post by: Nevill on July 08, 2020, 11:53:22 pm
I know my ICS, and I'll say that nobody has time for them. Oh sure, they can be part of a strategy for some factions like Morgan (who has money to hurry them up) or Lal (who has the tech out of the gate), but it's only at a couple bases... and usually somewhere that is either capable of building them (a mineral bonus), or has trouble growing (no nutrient bonus), or both. Otherwise it's better to build Colony Pods and formers. The payback may be fast, but not faster than a new base can provide. And by the time you stop building bases the bureacracy drones start rearing their heads, and you have RecCommons to build... and then Creches, and then Network Nodes to keep up with the research.
It isn't rare that I enter 2200s with only about three or four RecTanks to show for it. I usually build them as part of pop-boom prepwork, because that's where a single food point can make a difference.
Just give more attractive terraforming options, and the base squares won't be the only thing worth harvesting.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 08, 2020, 11:55:36 pm
Sample rule:
SUPPORT rating - minerals per unit support
-4 - 4.0
-3 - 3.5
-2 - 3.0
-1 - 2.5
0 - 2.0
+1 - 1.5
+2 - 1.0
+3 - 0.5
Then each pop above 1 base size takes -0.1 off this value. So with SUPPORT = +3 any 6+ pop bases have free support.
This is just random numbers example. We can adjust SUPPORT and base scales so they never free but quite small instead.
This proportional approach actually should be pretty good as it will keep SUPPORT very important throughout the game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 12:00:23 am
Probably just more tech for what it does.
Huh? 😕
Post by: Nexii on July 09, 2020, 12:07:29 am
With pods at 60 its a different story I think they're very close then
Formers at 20 are also a bit ridiculous for what they do, but unformed land isnt an option for anyone...
But yea, the low base terraforming is really the culprit. Early game options should be 5 FOP probably or so
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 12:24:45 am
Wait, what? You are blaming ICS on RecTanks?
I know my ICS, and I'll say that nobody has time for them.
Yes, he does. And I agree that it does fuel ISC. Maybe partially but still.
Based on your description it seems you don't play RecTanks right. They are extremely useful especially in low mineral bases. Let's take an extreme example - zero mineral surplus. Don't know how it happened. Maybe no rolling tiles around, whatever. Then you cannot build nothing there. Not even former to plant a forest. +1 RT mineral increases your production speed by infinity. Well, let's take less extreme example: 1 mineral surplus. RT is about same cost as colony. So you can either build one colony per 40 turns or build RT and then build them one per 20 turns = it pays itself off in 40 turns and then doubles your production speed for free. Regardless of mineral surplus it pays its mineral cost in 40 turns with extra nutrient and energy on top of that. It's a quickest payoff investment in game.
The above is valid even if you don't pop pods. If you do then sooner of later you pick one that completes RT construction instantly. The longer you build it the more chance for this to happen. They you also just collect credits from it to spend on hurrying. Facility is twice as cheap to hurry than unit.
Also whatever you said about extra base producing more than extra RT is not entirely correct. When base issues a colony it looses its production power by 1 worker it happens immediately and lasts until new colony reaches its destination. Say 10 turns or so. Then new base adds 2 worked tiles. That covers your losses in about 5 turns. So 15 turn of payoff. While RT is a plain addition comparable to 1 worked tile that pays off in 20 turns or so. On top of that while you built it your base also accumulated production potential and now can spit out colonies even faster. Remember that mineral production is roughly proportional to pop+1. So if you don't build colony while you were building RT you just accumulated 1.5-2 times more production power.
I am not proving my theory is correct. I am just saying that they are pretty close and only computer simulation can show the difference.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 09, 2020, 12:44:57 am
Post by: Nexii on July 09, 2020, 12:45:19 am
And the base square itself is 4 production
So a base should cost more
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 12:55:32 am
It is a very situational facility.
I normally play with pods off, but when I have them on I try to game the odds and put something heavy in the queue.
In the mod... it depends on which version we are talking about? I can talk about the game I just played. With Colony pods costing 60 there is no ICS to speak of. By 2150 I had 5 bases, 3 of them had Rec Tanks. All conditions were as I said - high mineral yield, not enough food, trading extra minerals for a facility that allows faster growth. By 2180 I had 10 bases, and only one extra Rec Tank was added. I had bigger concerns by then. By 2230 I had 25 bases (we played with a few houserules and put a hard limit on the number), and the game was all but won.
Quote
So you can either build one colony per 40 turns or build RT and then build them one per 20 turns = it pays itself off in 40 turns and then doubles your production speed for free.It isn't free, is what I am trying to say. For these minerals you can pop out a Colony Pod and truly double your production by building another base, which would grow and pop more Colony Pods. It's an opportunity cost.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 01:10:03 am
RT is 1-1-1 = roughly 2.5 minerals equivalent. Sure it's pure mineral payoff time is 40 turns but it adds more on a side in terms of nutrients and energy. Nutrients are directly beneficial as they speed up growth = more people and minerals. Plus some energy for research. So it's composited payoff time is about 40 / 2.5 = 16 turns give or take.
Now let's look at colony. N mineral cost (30, 40, 60 - depending on version). It takes one worker out of the producing base. So its negative benefit in addition to colony cost itself. This negative benefit lasts until colony travels to destination. Say 10 turns roughly. With regular 2-1-0 (undeveloped) square its about -3 * 10 = -30 FOP loss. Then you build new base and gets 6.5 mineral worth FOP right there (I count energy = 0.5 min). So the bonus you get now is 6.5 - 3 (pop decrease loss is never goes away) = 3.5. Then payoff time = (N (cost) + 30 (-1 pop loss)) / 3.5 = 17, 20, 26 turns (by colony cost version). Well, it is pretty much obvious that the colony payoff time is no better than RT one. Even for vanilla.
This is a rough estimate. So numbers can vary up and down. But the idea is - you are forgetting population reduction loss in producing base and travel to destination.
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 01:31:13 am
Quote
It takes one worker out of the producing base. So its negative benefit in addition to colony cost itself. This negative benefit lasts until colony travels to destination. Say 10 turns roughly. With regular 2-1-0 (undeveloped) square its about -3 * 10 = -30 FOP loss.A regular square is 1-1-0 (you'd have to luck out for rainy-rolling tiles), and the extra worker eats 2 food it produces. So the raw benefit of an extra pop is 1 mineral per turn, if that.
And if we are talking ICS (aka base spam), the travel times are 5 turns, if that.
So the "loss" is ~5 FOP.
That's just the first thing I noticed. There are also nuances, like how building CP does not always result in loss of pop - if the base is on its last row of food it produces a CP and immediately grows back, losing nothing in the process.
And that's just a CP. The worth of a former that just magically adds FOP by improving existing tiles is even harder to measure. All in all I find that Rec Tanks are a crutch to the expansion, not a necessity.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 01:40:31 am
I stand corrected about the population loss impact. Indeed workers need to eat. That was rough estimate only. I can revise it and verify of course.
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 01:48:20 am
In vanilla, RecTank start is viable for Morgan (who otherwise suffers from low support and lack of minerals) and Lal (who has something to build while researching Formers). The rest are better off expanding.
I've played exactly one WTP game, and ICS is stopped dead in its tracks by an enourmously high CP cost. I've built a few RecTanks just to help pump bases and formers out, but I have outlined those numbers above.
Tayta was the one who did the RecTanks start (being Lal), and he came worse off, though there were a lot of other factors, of course.
Post by: Nexii on July 09, 2020, 01:52:50 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 01:58:36 am
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 02:16:38 am
Haven't played any games with 4 mineral rows yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 02:33:41 am
Not sure what you mean by the same game, but I've played a lot of multiplayer games. Does that count?
If one of your human opponents constantly employed RT strategy then you can average how better/worse it is. Otherwise, if everybody resorted to spamming then there is nothing to compare to. It is just guesswork.
Tayta was the one who did the RecTanks start (being Lal), and he came worse off, though there were a lot of other factors, of course.
Yeah. Unfortunately, it is very randomized so one game doesn't prove anything. 😟
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 02:34:42 am
6 seems too high. 5 is probably the highest you can go without crippling the early game too much unless you drastically change mineral yields.
Haven't played any games with 4 mineral rows yet.
In this case let's leave it at 4, don't be worried about ICS too much and think of other options when they pop up into our heads.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 02:54:30 am
Two options.
I'll calculate total support for all base units together. After all this is what that gets subtracted from mineral intake. Nobody cares about individual unit support breakdown. Keep in mind these are just examples and coefficients may need tuning, of course.
1. Direct cost
total support = #units * SUPPORT cost
SUPPORT = cost/unit
-4 2.00
-3 1.75
-2 1.50
-1 1.25
0 1.00
1 0.75
2 0.50
3 0.25
Since base mineral production is roughly proportional the population, bigger and more developed bases can support more units (SUPPORT rating adjusted).
2. With free tier
Same as above but units up to base size are free support. And, therefore the SUPPORT cost may be harsher. I.e. some slack in beginning but bigger penalty for excessive number of units.
total support = #excessunits * SUPPORT cost
#excessunits = #units in excess of base size
SUPPORT = cost/unit
-4 4.00
-3 3.50
-2 3.00
-1 2.50
0 2.00
1 1.50
2 1.00
3 0.50
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 03:42:18 am
Oh, and I think Naval Yards I got from the Maritime Control Center fixed my ships in 1 turn. I definitely recall a probe ship at -90% skip a turn and be repaired the next. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen?
# Version 81
* \[fix\] Repair rate in base with corresponding facility configuration setting didn't work.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 03:50:40 am
* The Manifold Harmonics is enabled by Sentient Resonance (~80% in research tree).
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 03:14:35 pm
I think I'll pick the first version with flat support per unit. Moreover, I'll distribute support across bases proportionally by their mineral intake. Similar to facilities maintained from a single pool. I think it is fair and help both AI and player when some bases have too many units assigned. There won't be need to send them to new home base for reassigning. I hate cases when an ally keep transferring units to me and they all get assigned to the closest base and every turn they all die because base support is exhausted already. 😠
AI may have similar problems.
I will not redraw the support symbols on units in base view. Instead I'll recalculate support value per base and set it. So it may not match what individual units support shows.
Another option would be to reassign units between bases proportionally to bases mineral intake. This will mess up home base assignment if anybody cares about it.
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 07:34:44 pm
Quote
I hate cases when an ally keep transferring units to me and they all get assigned to the closest base and every turn they all die because base support is exhausted already.Isn't this a case of a dysfunctional mechanic?
When a base exhausts its support, it shows negative mineral income on the production tab, similar to how negative growth appears when a base experiences hunger. Except that unlike stored food/growth indicator, the production progress never goes down.
I think the game was supposed to detract minerals from current production, and only disband units when there are no production minerals left (similar to how a base loses pop when there is no food left), but the current implementation goes straight to disbanding units, which is how you get a situation you describe.
So I have two questions.
1) Is it possible to make minerals work like food (if you get negative income, wait until you have exhausted your current supply before you start losing pop/units)?
2) Do you have an example in mind when you say you'd distribute support "proportionately"? As in, it will always be a fraction of the current mineral production?
I think Civ IV did have a system like this, with all units funded from treasury. It's a cool idea, but I'd like to see some numbers to better understand how it compares to what we have.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 09, 2020, 07:58:46 pm
You have a certain amount of free units depending on empire size and chosen government. Any above that cost one gold per unit I believe. You pay additional 0.5 gold per unit which is outside your territory.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 08:12:58 pm
1) Is it possible to make minerals work like food (if you get negative income, wait until you have exhausted your current supply before you start losing pop/units)?
I don't think so. The relation between nutrients and population is not the same as between minerals and units. I'd leave it like it is. It works pretty logically even though it disband units immediately this is not a big deal. Just don't go overboard.
2) Do you have an example in mind when you say you'd distribute support "proportionately"? As in, it will always be a fraction of the current mineral production?
I think Civ IV did have a system like this, with all units funded from treasury. It's a cool idea, but I'd like to see some numbers to better understand how it compares to what we have.
I meant proportionally to mineral intake. Let's say we have base A with 10 minerals intake and base B with 5 minerals intake. Base A owns 1 unit. Base B owns 2 units. Let's also say we are on 0 SUPPORT. So each unit consumes 1 mineral. We have totally 3 units = 3 minerals to support totally. Now base A produces twice as more minerals as base B. Then we need to distribute support between them as 2:1. Therefore, base A is burdened with 2 mineral support and base B with 1. This guarantees that as long as combined units support is no greater than combined bases mineral intake they won't die regardless of which base they belong to.
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 08:36:29 pm
You might want to consider when exactly support costs for new units will be applied now that it affects bases other than the ones building units. There is nothing more frustrating than building something expensive and essential, and coming up one mineral short when you need it most. It also causes mineral production loss in bases with mineral intake in double digits, as only 10 minerals carry over to the next queue item.
Since turns resolve from the oldest bases to the newest, a bunch of new units on smaller older bases might cause a SP delay on a more productive base, with no way to plan around it.
Is it possible to do "support reassignment" after production orders for the turn complete on all bases?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 09:30:55 pm
Since turns resolve from the oldest bases to the newest, a bunch of new units on smaller older bases might cause a SP delay on a more productive base, with no way to plan around it.
Is it possible to do "support reassignment" after production orders for the turn complete on all bases?
What? You lost me.
Post by: Nevill on July 09, 2020, 10:00:22 pm
How it works now:
Base 1 builds a scout; loses 1 mineral intake worth of support.
Base 10 builds a scout; same.
Base 20 completes a Sectet Project as was projected last turn.
How it may possibly work:
Base 1 builds a scout; Base 20 loses 1 mineral intake worth of support; production for Base 20 resolves later in the turn.
Base 10 builds a scout; mineral loss still goes to Base 20 because it is the most productive one.
Base 20 loses an amount of mineral intake that is impossible to predict; Project is delayed 1 turn.
Planning ahead is an important part of a strategy game, and I find this might make it harder as base production can no longer be estimated from the base screen itself.
Of course, the mod already introduces these elements with base contributions which are impossible to estimate correctly across 20 bases, and have to be found out empirically. So "not my problem" can also be a valid answer.
Edit:
What I asked you if it would be possible to do this:
Base 1 builds a scout
Base 10 builds a scout
Base 20 completes a Sectet Project
Support calculations happen
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 09, 2020, 10:37:49 pm
By the way, since you counting every brick, would it be beneficial to add an exact cost/produced numbers in contribution popup? Maybe also estimated number of turns, etc.? Would it help much?
Then with this support thing it'll be drastic too as it changes support model from per base to per faction globally. And yes, producing something in one base will possible affect other bases production.
Regarding your request here is how it works in vanilla.
support is calculated for existing units
yield is calculated
based on the above the intake - support = surplus is calculated
surplus is added to production
check on completion - change production
possibly new unit got produced - support is updated to be displayed correctly for next turn production
So whatever surplus you see in base screen is what is going to be added to production. It won't be affected by newly produced units. At least this is my understanding. Is this what you worried about? This can also be tested to make sure it works as needed.
Now support is easy to work with since it already has a visual representation so it can be (re)calculated at any moment to give an actual picture and prediction for next turn. I was thinking about similar adjustment for "contribution" feature but it is much more difficult to visualize as there is no visual slot for it. I surely can just decrease the surplus by contributing amount but it'll puzzle user as yield won't add up.
Post by: vonbach on July 10, 2020, 01:03:30 am
Post by: Nevill on July 10, 2020, 01:43:23 am
Quote
By the way, since you counting every brick, would it be beneficial to add an exact cost/produced numbers in contribution popup? Maybe also estimated number of turns, etc.? Would it help much?Well, it needs to be somewhere.
Right now it's impossible to see anything in the base screen (the mineral bricks are too small for expensive facilities), so I have to resort to hurrying up, dividing the cost by four to get the number of minerals left, writing it down (in the base name), and doing the same thing next turn to calculate the difference with the raw base production. That's how I find out the amount other bases are contributing.
I don't know what you can do with the tools you have. Having a breakdown available at the beginning of the turn would at least help eyeball it, but if you could make this popup come up at anytime the player wants and calculate the projected contribution amount for the next turn, that would be swell. I need to know when my project finishes every time I reassign workers.
Sometimes you really need that project, and can afford to let some bases starve for that final push... but you have to know it's worth it.
Quote
So whatever surplus you see in base screen is what is going to be added to production. It won't be affected by newly produced units. At least this is my understanding. Is this what you worried about? This can also be tested to make sure it works as needed.That's how it works in vanilla, yes. A newly produced unit can't detract from production at the base it was produced on.
I was worried about what happens mid-turn with the new proposition of assigning support proportionally. Base production resolves one by one, so if a base produces a unit and support for it is assigned to a different base further down the list, the first step of the algorithm you listed will count the new unit among existing ones, reducing the surplus in the space between the end of the last turn and the beginning of the current one.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:01:20 am
What does this mod change exactly? I'm a bit late to this party.
Are you asking what it has changed? If you just want to skim it - read changelog. 😊
Otherwise, I can answer specific questions.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:34:34 am
Right now it's impossible to see anything in the base screen (the mineral bricks are too small for expensive facilities), so I have to resort to hurrying up, dividing the cost by four to get the number of minerals left, writing it down (in the base name), and doing the same thing next turn to calculate the difference with the raw base production. That's how I find out the amount other bases are contributing.
The F4 screen shows exact numbers of accumulated minerals and total cost.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:43:39 am
I don't know what you can do with the tools you have. Having a breakdown available at the beginning of the turn would at least help eyeball it, but if you could make this popup come up at anytime the player wants and calculate the projected contribution amount for the next turn, that would be swell. I need to know when my project finishes every time I reassign workers.
Sometimes you really need that project, and can afford to let some bases starve for that final push... but you have to know it's worth it.
I don't know yet myself. A lot of discoveries every day. Maybe I can adjust actual surplus in all bases to display right amount. Then your F4 screen and base screen could even estimate number of turns left. This way it sticks and you can see it any time in F4 screen. Sounds convenient.
I just don't know how to explain user why surplus doesn't match base yield in base screen. Maybe use one of these notification lines when they say something like "production boom" in right top corner?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:53:57 am
I was worried about what happens mid-turn with the new proposition of assigning support proportionally. Base production resolves one by one, so if a base produces a unit and support for it is assigned to a different base further down the list, the first step of the algorithm you listed will count the new unit among existing ones, reducing the surplus in the space between the end of the last turn and the beginning of the current one.
You are right they are resolved one by one. So I probably need to emulate physical reassignment like if user manually set different home base.
So at the turn unit is built it does not affect support.
And then after complete production cycle I may reassign them between bases and correct bases corresponding support. Then you'll see correct prediction as you yourself set home bases for few units at the beginning of the turn.
This is all tedious work but if you, guys, help me test it, I'm up to try it.
The question is - does the game need this change. I am not satisfied with any of my proposed support changes. They use fractions and SMACX is pure whole number game (emulating board game with dice). So I don't really want to mess with fraction and rounding. This will be tough to explain users. I'll keep this on my back burner but for now I really question this idea value.
Post by: vonbach on July 10, 2020, 03:10:31 am
Quote
Are you asking what it has changed? If you just want to skim it - read changelog. 😊
Otherwise, I can answer specific questions.
Well I'm tying to figure out how it changes the game. Like how it changes the AI.
It looks interesting but if I want to change this back I'll probably need to reinstall
from GOG.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 10, 2020, 04:15:39 am
I just don't know how to explain user why surplus doesn't match base yield in base screen. Maybe use one of these notification lines when they say something like "production boom" in right top corner?On the base screen, would it be possible to simply extend the minerals surplus readout, adding another component for minerals inbound from other bases?
So it would read +X+Y, where X is local surplus and Y is minerals from other bases.
This format could also be extended to other mechanics, like how Cloning Vats work now, where the base receives its regular nutrient surplus X and also the minerals-to-nutrients surplus Y. There is certainly enough room on the base screen for it currently.
Well I'm tying to figure out how it changes the game. Like how it changes the AI.You can always keep multiple versions of the game floating around and just label them by which mods are installed. They're only like half a gig each.
It looks interesting but if I want to change this back I'll probably need to reinstall
from GOG.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:02:02 pm
QuoteAre you asking what it has changed? If you just want to skim it - read changelog. 😊
Otherwise, I can answer specific questions.
Well I'm tying to figure out how it changes the game. Like how it changes the AI.
It looks interesting but if I want to change this back I'll probably need to reinstall
from GOG.
There are many changes. Which one you are referring to, specifically? If all of them then sure, clean GOG install is the way to go. For most of controversial changes I also make a configuration parameters. So you can switch them off.
It is impossible to tell how it changes the game without actually trying and feeling. The mere combat mechanics (which this mod revolves around and that was introduced like eons ago) changes game play so drastically that people still keep mentioning it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:05:42 pm
On the base screen, would it be possible to simply extend the minerals surplus readout, adding another component for minerals inbound from other bases?
So it would read +X+Y, where X is local surplus and Y is minerals from other bases.
This format could also be extended to other mechanics, like how Cloning Vats work now, where the base receives its regular nutrient surplus X and also the minerals-to-nutrients surplus Y. There is certainly enough room on the base screen for it currently.
Good idea. However, it means putting some new graphical field there. Not sure how easy it is. Let me poke it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 10, 2020, 02:36:52 pm
On the base screen, would it be possible to simply extend the minerals surplus readout, adding another component for minerals inbound from other bases?
So it would read +X+Y, where X is local surplus and Y is minerals from other bases.
This format could also be extended to other mechanics, like how Cloning Vats work now, where the base receives its regular nutrient surplus X and also the minerals-to-nutrients surplus Y. There is certainly enough room on the base screen for it currently.
You gave me an idea by that. I usually don't like to introduce new game elements like new interface or rule. Prefer to stick to existing one and modify them smallest way possible.
Even though I conceptually like new rules for popboom and CV, they introduce questionable arbitrary rules and change in UI. Would it be better you think to replace this new "+nutrients" popboom rule to Bumper crops event instead? Conceptually it is exactly the same (+nutrients). Quantitatively it is slightly different but not much (+1 nutrient per worked tile instead of flat +5). This way we will completely reuse existing game mechanics as well as completely transparent UI - everything is visible and marked.
CV can be then reverted to permanent popboom (= bumber crops) as well instead of minerals to nutrients conversion. Even though conversion is quite lore matching (biomachinery = machinery -> food/people) it is still some revolutionary new mechanics in game that didn't exist before (sort of stockpile energy but to nutrients). So new players may not grasp it easily.
Update
Still not quite satisfied with that. GROWTH rating should work with growth box width (= population growth speed), not with nutrient surplus. Maybe +6 GROWTH just makes growth box even narrower? Say 4, as it would normally be? Then CV just subtracts one too. So they can both be in effect simultaneously reducing growth box width to 3 combined? It's still a huge bonus: +20-25% increase in growth speed.
Update 2
I guess we can reuse original GROWTH mechanics in this way. Vanilla GROWTH is capped at +5. Anything above it triggers popboom. What if we allow CV to contribute to GROWTH (+1 or +2) and move cap to +9? This way popboom mechanics is still there but it more difficult to achieve with all SE, CC, golden age and CV contributing toward it. One needs +10 combined GROWTH which can be achieved by CC + golden age + 6 GROWTH from SE or by CC + golden age + CV + 4-5 GROWTH from SE.
Seems pretty logical and completely reusing current mechanics. Base view don't need any UI modifications.
Post by: vonbach on July 10, 2020, 10:27:15 pm
Quote
There are many changes. Which one you are referring to, specifically? If all of them then sure, clean GOG install is the way to go. For most of controversial changes I also make a configuration parameters. So you can switch them off.
Honestly i'm more curious what the EXE file changes. Pretty much I'd like to know what cant be easily removed.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 12:00:34 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 12:48:16 am
Test version for new CV and popboom mechanincs
* The Cloning Vats gives +2 GROWTH rating instead of triggering population boom directly.
* GROWTH rating upper cap = 9. This makes population boom very hard to achieve.
* Base nutrient view now displays population boom message when appropriate.
* Planned: --EFFIC, ++GROWTH, +INDUSTRY, -RESEARCH.
* Eudaimonic: ++ECONOMY, --EFFIC, ---MORALE, ++GROWTH.
Experimental version. I'll appreciate if anyone tests it and/or give me feedback how logical and interface convenient that is.
The big idea is that popboom is still there. However, GROWTH cap now 9 instead of 5. Therefore, it is quite difficult to achieve. One need to collect five +2 GROWTH bonuses out of possible six: 3 SE choices, CC, golden age, CV. One of the SE choices is Eudaimonic which is 50-60% down the tree so it is not possible to trigger it until then or until obtaining CV which is also past mid game.
All these bonuses have +2 GROWTH so any faction +1 GROWTH innate bonus won't be enough to replace any of above for popboom triggering purpose.
Popboom is still abusable to extent. Setting all three positive GROWTH SEs may be nasty but extreme faction population boom may offset negative effects in 10-20 turns. Do you still want it or should we disable it completely? After all +9 GROWTH is by itself a super beneficial setting increasing population growth 10 times. If so then we can relax GROWTH requirements and make some SE/CV to deliver only +1.
The Cloning Vats gives +2 GROWTH rating instead of triggering population boom directly. As you could guess already.
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 01:21:06 am
The penalties for some of the economic choices are a bit extreme -4 Police for FM. Green has -3 growth and an Industry penalty.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 04:36:01 am
I'm trying out your mod now. Very oddly even though I changed the alpha file I can use my custom factions.
Factions are controlled by their own files. I didn't touch them. So that customization is up to player.
The penalties for some of the economic choices are a bit extreme -4 Police for FM. Green has -3 growth and an Industry penalty.
Eh. SE is an open field for experiments. There are myriads of possible combinations. I can even adopt somebody else's model. No biggie.
-4 Police for FM is extreme for you? Err, how about -5 in vanilla?
Police specifically has very long negative spectrum. Anything but -5 is quite tolerable.
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 12:12:06 pm
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Factions are controlled by their own files. I didn't touch them. So that customization is up to player.No I mean they worked without me altering the alpha file at all.
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-4 Police for FM is extreme for you? Err, how about -5 in vanilla?
Police specifically has very long negative spectrum. Anything but -5 is quite tolerable.
I always considered it to harsh. I always modified it.
Tech seems to come faster in this mod by quite a bit.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 01:08:48 pm
QuoteFactions are controlled by their own files. I didn't touch them. So that customization is up to player.No I mean they worked without me altering the alpha file at all.
You are confusing me. When was it different? They are supposed to be completely independent.
Quote-4 Police for FM is extreme for you? Err, how about -5 in vanilla?
Police specifically has very long negative spectrum. Anything but -5 is quite tolerable.
I always considered it to harsh. I always modified it.
Are you saying FM doesn't deserve that much penalty?
Tech seems to come faster in this mod by quite a bit.
First few tiers are somewhat cheaper than in vanilla. Later on they get more expensive. You are supposed to acquire one per 4-5 turns by all means. Count how many you have every 50 turns or so to make sure you are on track.
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 01:43:12 pm
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You are confusing me. When was it different? They are supposed to be completely independent.
Its odd I can use my custom factions but I cant change them in and out without altering the file.
Quote
Are you saying FM doesn't deserve that much penalty?I always thought the FM penalties were much too harsh.
Planned was overpowered for its penalties in the base game.
Just like Democracy.
I'm to the point of removing most if not all penalties to make life easier for the AI
in my games.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 02:03:25 pm
QuoteAre you saying FM doesn't deserve that much penalty?I always thought the FM penalties were much too harsh.
Planned was overpowered for its penalties in the base game.
Just like Democracy.
I'm to the point of removing most if not all penalties to make life easier for the AI
in my games.
Some society effects are difficult to perceive. Even harder to analyse and compare. ECONOMY is clearly visible and people always thought +2 of it is a big boost.
How do you want to change it?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 11, 2020, 03:46:38 pm
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 07:39:13 pm
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How do you want to change it?
I usually do something like remove the Police penalty altogether.
Though sometimes I just remove all the penalties from all the choices.
Quote
Free Market is powerful enough. There is absolutely no need to make it even better.
The whole game has a left wing bias. Free Market and Planned is a good example.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 11, 2020, 07:57:18 pm
The whole game has a left wing bias. Free Market and Planned is a good example.
It does? As a Communist, I don't exactly find the extreme stereotypes of Yang and the Hive to be a particularly flattering or fair portrayal of my own ideology. Brian Reynolds needs to try a lot harder to cater to me.
Free Market means every tile you work gives +1 energy, a great boon. To work a tile, you need population. To keep the population happy, you need police (tiny mineral investment and maybe support) or psych facilities (larger mineral investment plus maintenance fees) or specialists (so you give up a tile) or some combination. If you're raking in the energy and it's easy to keep your population pacified with a less severe Police rating, what's the downside?
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 08:09:33 pm
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It does? As a Communist, I don't exactly find the extreme stereotypes of Yang and the Hive to be a particularly flattering or fair portrayal of my own ideology. Brian Reynolds needs to try a lot harder to cater to me.
Communism produces corpses and oppression. It's worth noting that any society that ever existed under Communism hates it like poison.
Planned is pretty much the best choice in the game. Growth and Industry for and Efficiency that Democracy cancels out.
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Free Market means every tile you work gives +1 energy, a great boon. To work a tile, you need population. To keep the population happy, you need police (tiny mineral investment and maybe support) or psych facilities (larger mineral investment plus maintenance fees) or specialists (so you give up a tile) or some combination. If you're raking in the energy and it's easy to keep your population pacified with a less severe Police rating, what's the downside?
Free Market also has ridiculous penalties attached to it. Sure you get more money but with the police penalties you'll be spending most of it just keeping the population from rioting. If anything Free Market should get the Growth and Industry bonuses representing the people actually having opportunities.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 11, 2020, 09:10:55 pm
Communism produces corpses and oppression. It's worth noting that any society that ever existed under Communism hates it like poison.
Planned is pretty much the best choice in the game. Growth and Industry for and Efficiency that Democracy cancels out.
Guess I'm under my corpse quota! Since you brought up something factually incorrect, I'll point out that polled Russians generally are positive towards the USSR and even somebody as bad as Stalin has had better approval ratings than the current and previous US presidents. Not sure where your info comes from, nor really interested in further off topic debate other than to say Reynolds certainly hasn't been at any of the leftist meetings I go to and if he did I think us SMAC fans would have some critiques rather than thanking him for a free PR blitz. The game is not biased towards me, a believer.
The reason stock Planned is overpowered is because positive Industry is itself extremely powerful and it makes it a little too easy to line up +6 Growth. Democratic Free Market is great if you're at peace and are at your pop ceiling. Don't need growth until Hab facilities, don't need industry when you can rush build.
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Free Market also has ridiculous penalties attached to it. Sure you get more money but with the police penalties you'll be spending most of it just keeping the population from rioting. If anything Free Market should get the Growth and Industry bonuses representing the people actually having opportunities.
Right, that's why I said the penalty is there for exactly that reason. It annoys me that Police is so crucial how happiness is modeled, though. In the stock game it's not too effective to run an aggressive Free Market Police State. Eisenhower called it the military industrial complex. On Earth that combination makes a lot of money, produces a lot of industrial equipment, and keeps a lot of people down. On Planet, you'd still have pacifist drones I think in stock. Crazy!
Post by: Hagen0 on July 11, 2020, 09:23:03 pm
You can fight wars in Free Market if you reassign your units to an all specialist base (or a base with a Punishment Sphere but that is less elegant) that pays support via crawled minerals.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 11, 2020, 09:28:01 pm
You can fight wars in Free Market if you reassign your units to a all specialist base (or a base with a Punishment Sphere but that is less elegant) that pays support via crawled minerals.
True, but using specialist bases for that is too gamey for my tastes IMO. If you're going to do it, I think you should either force yourself to Punishment Sphere up or deal with the issues it causes. That's just my personal play style, though. I've never actually built a Punishment Sphere in 20 years of intermittent play!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 10:08:03 pm
Though sometimes I just remove all the penalties from all the choices.
Well that is much more unorthodox than anything else. How would you make SE ratings go to negative at all?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 11, 2020, 10:28:50 pm
I had to remind everybody that this is a game and mod discussion thread. Please refrain from touching any sensitive topics unrelated to the game itself. Stay away from it by a large margin. If in doubt whether your post is going to hurt ones feelings - DON'T. Also do not respond to any such post. Just ignore it.
You can always open a new topic or PM if you feel an urge to express something like that.
Post by: vonbach on July 11, 2020, 11:55:35 pm
Though sometimes I just remove all the penalties from all the choices.
Well that is much more unorthodox than anything else. How would you make SE ratings go to negative at all?
Its an old idea that I saw used to help the AI. I like to use it sometimes. Basically you don't make SE ratings go negative because there are no penalties. Just different bonuses. Usually I just limit the penalties.
Recently what I've done for my economic is give all of the economic choices at least one point of economic rating.
So it looks something like this.
Police State, Chaos, ++POLICE, +SUPPORT, -EFFIC
Democratic, InfNet, ++EFFIC, +PROBE, --POLICE
Fundamentalist, Psych, ++GROWTH, +EFFIC, +MORALE, -RESEARCH
Simple, None, None
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, +EFFIC, --PLANET, --POLICE
Planned, PlaNets, +ECONOMY, +INDUSTRY, +POLICE, -GROWTH
Green, DocFlex, +ECONOMY, ++PLANET, ++EFFIC, -SUPPORT
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 12, 2020, 12:55:49 am
NO TOLERANCE TO FLAMEThe management would like to officially endorse this post...
I had to remind everybody that this is a game and mod discussion thread. Please refrain from touching any sensitive topics unrelated to the game itself. Stay away from it by a large margin. If in doubt whether your post is going to hurt ones feelings - DON'T. Also do not respond to any such post. Just ignore it.
Post by: Trenacker on July 12, 2020, 03:09:00 am
First, we are all used to talking about economic theory as economic practice. The capitalism of the macroeconomics textbook is not the capitalism of the real world. The communism of the ideologue is not the communism of the real world. They are attenuated. In fact, capitalism in practice is often so attenuated that it is functionally indistinguishable from the “Planned” economy option. Even the United States, which is so often presented as the exemplar of Free Market capitalism, has parastatals (e.g., AMTRAK). This means that the “Simple” economy type, about which we receive no information, may best approximate the condition of absent regulation.
Second, in modern political vernacular, certain segments of the American population wholly misunderstand capitalism, which makes it hard to define for purposes of games sold to that same market. In fact, we are often comfortable with the monopolistic and oligarchical systems familiar to us, and have worked them into our popular understanding of capitalism so that their rough edges have become blunted and indistinguishable. This is why so many Americans persist in believing that our medical system does not already exhibit the same anti-competitive tendencies they hope to avoid by rejecting the “socialism” of a single-payer model.
Here are the economic options I came up with to solve this issue:
- Simple – An economy based on barter, without the benefit of systematic intervention of any kind.
- Unrestricted – A market without controls on market behavior other than contract enforcement.
- Command – A market governed by a central planning authority. Individual initiative is discouraged.
- Free Market – A market that leaves most decisions to consumers but does act to preserve fair competition and some socially undesirable outcomes.
- Planned – A market that protects defined interests but otherwise permits individual initiative and choice.
- Green – A market organized within the narrow limits of what is environmentally sustainable.
I used this (https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/economic-systems/) web article, written by Prateek Agarwal, as the basis for my classifications and descriptions.
Post by: vonbach on July 12, 2020, 07:22:34 pm
All of them should be good at making at least some money. Thats why I give all of them at least one point
of economic rating.
Wealth should be where the real penalties lie.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 13, 2020, 12:57:45 am
I've never liked the super specialized economic systems with only one good for money and so on.All of them help you to make money, though. Planned lets you invest for the future by building infrastructure and expanding your tax base; Free Market lets you reap the rewards of that investment by effectively giving you money based on your population (since 1 worker = +1 energy from the tile they work); Green starts to shine once you've built a sprawling empire and make most of your money from facilities and trade (and in this mod, can even be more profitable than FM, thanks to fungal yields). They're tools to manage your faction, not an entire idealized system in themselves.
All of them should be good at making at least some money. Thats why I give all of them at least one point
of economic rating.
Wealth should be where the real penalties lie.
Also, from an aesthetic perspective, I find having multiple SE choices use the same modifiers to be somewhat ugly.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 07:06:39 am
Does this seems clear enough? Additional info at the mineral surplus row and in production completion turns.
Keep in mind that project contribution does not modify mineral surplus. It redistributes accumulated minerals up to max contribution calculated for given base surplus as long as there are accumulated minerals to distribute. Meaning if next turn an item will be built exactly without carry out minerals and new item starts with completely clean production box (no accumulated minerals yet) - there won't be anything to distribute.
This redistribution happens **after** production phase. For project base it works same way as adding crawler to project. Meaning even if you managed to complete project with crawlers or contribution it will be built on **next** turn.
Even though it doesn't change the surplus it does change how soon item will be built. Therefore, I recalculate correct number of turns in production box with account to contribution (negative or positive).
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 13, 2020, 07:22:32 am
However, I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation on how the mechanics work. Does this mean that building a project will cause production to slow down at other bases?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 03:58:47 pm
However, I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation on how the mechanics work. Does this mean that building a project will cause production to slow down at other bases?
Definitely! Other bases direct part of their production power toward the project. That is why I call it SPC: Secret Project Contribution. The amount that is subtracted from other bases accumulated minerals is summed up and added to project base accumulated minerals.
I understand it is hard to grasp initially because UNfortunately, there is no exactly same mechanics in vanilla. I had to invent it in parts. Here. Let me reiterate it again.
Every turn bases do their production phase as normal. I.e. surplus is added to accumulated and, if item is completed, next item is placed into production and excess of minerals carried over, etc. All the standard stuff.
After all bases resolved their normal production, program checks if faction builds a project in any of the bases. If more than one faction bases build project - the one with minimal id is picked (usually oldest). This is called project base. Other bases are called contributing bases.
Program calculates the amount of contribution for all contributing bases. The formula is: (surplus - threshold) * proportion (rounded down). Both threshold and proportion are configurable so this feature can be turned off if desired.
The contribution is subtracted from accumulated minerals pool but not more than total accumulated minerals there are, of course. For example, if production just completed without carryover minerals there won't be anything to contribute.
Contribution from all contributed bases is summarized and added to project base accumulated minerals. This effects same way as adding so much mineral worth crawler to the project. Meaning even if it completes the production the project will be erected on next production phase (next turn).
-----
In the base view the information about SPC is estimated for next turn in assumption nothing changes in bases output. Same way as vanilla estimates production turns for completion.
Post by: Nevill on July 13, 2020, 06:43:42 pm
@Nevill and all.It took me a bit to understand because the time to completion is exactly the same 2 turns with contribution (9 +14 out of 16) and without it (14 + 14 out of 16).
Does this seems clear enough? Additional info at the mineral surplus row and in production completion turns.
What I wanted is an estimate of how much production will be contributed to the project in total. Unfortunately, now that I understand the mechanic, this is impossible to count as SPC are not added consistently (they are only added if the base does not complete production and has minerals to contribute). So I am no closer to understading when my project is going to be built, though it helps to know what is going on on the rest of the bases.
I think it could be an interesting feature if one could "Stockpile minerals" as one stockpiles energy right now. This action could direct half of the base's minerals to the SP.
The benefits:
* Only bases that are designated to contribute would contribute. I don't want certain bases to contribute minerals away from completing drone quelling facilities, because if those aren't finished on time those bases won't be contributing at all.
* The output is consistent and predictable. 3 bases produce 60 minerals, come hell or high water I will get 30 minerals extra out of them.
The drawbacks:
* AI won't be able to use this.
* Since the mechanic is absent from vanilla, there are constraints in implementation. Can't choose a project to contribute to, can't choose a base if multiple projects are in production (always goes to the 1st one) etc.
Overall, it's an interesting experimental mechanic, but it feels rough around the edges.
And then we run into another aspect, namely, contributing too much makes project races non-existent. It's most noticeable with crawlers - the first to research the tech builds the project on the same turn by disbanding crawlers into the project. In fact, crawlers are projects built on multiple bases. Instead of building a 600-mineral project, build 5 crawlers. Then choose a project, 1 turn, done. Up to and including Transcendence.
Do we want people to build projects even faster?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 13, 2020, 07:09:50 pm
Personally, I'd prefer removing all options for factionwide building of Secret Projects.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 07:33:58 pm
It took me a bit to understand because the time to completion is exactly the same 2 turns with contribution (9 +14 out of 16) and without it (14 + 14 out of 16).
Yea. Could be a bad example for numbers. I just wanted to solicit feedback on interface elements.
What I wanted is an estimate of how much production will be contributed to the project in total. Unfortunately, now that I understand the mechanic, this is impossible to count as SPC are not added consistently (they are only added if the base does not complete production and has minerals to contribute). So I am no closer to understading when my project is going to be built, though it helps to know what is going on on the rest of the bases.
You are too harsh on that. This is merely a best estimate. Same as regular time to completion estimate in vanilla. These vanilla numbers you see are not a guarantee as production fluctuates with many reasons: pop changes up and down, new terraforming, destroyed terraforming, drone riot stops production, partial production buying with cash, etc. The bigger number of turns to completion the wider are variations.
I sure can subtract from surplus directly making it (a little) more stable flow. However, you are forgetting the main purpose of this is to help AI. And AI doesn't care about exact number of turns as long as it is relatively easy and quick. I can turn this option for human off to not confuse you at all so you'll resort to stockpile crawlers as before. Do you prefer that?
I think it could be an interesting feature if one could "Stockpile minerals" as one stockpiles energy right now. This action could direct half of the base's minerals to the SP.
The benefits:
* Only bases that are designated to contribute would contribute. I don't want certain bases to contribute minerals away from completing drone quelling facilities, because if those aren't finished on time those bases won't be contributing at all.
* The output is consistent and predictable. 3 bases produce 60 minerals, come hell or high water I will get 30 minerals extra out of them.
The drawbacks:
* AI won't be able to use this.
* Since the mechanic is absent from vanilla, there are constraints in implementation. Can't choose a project to contribute to, can't choose a base if multiple projects are in production (always goes to the 1st one) etc.
You already can stockpile them in form of crawlers. Why invent a bicycle? This feature is added for single purpose only: to help AI who is appalling with crawlers handling.
Overall, it's an interesting experimental mechanic, but it feels rough around the edges.
I guarantee you it will be regardless of all optimization I make because it's a new mechanics not 100% easily integrate with original code. Once again - it is not primarily for human player. I think we can even switch it off by default if you think it is too confusing and distracting.
And then we run into another aspect, namely, contributing too much makes project races non-existent. It's most noticeable with crawlers - the first to research the tech builds the project on the same turn by disbanding crawlers into the project. In fact, crawlers are projects built on multiple bases. Instead of building a 600-mineral project, build 5 crawlers. Then choose a project, 1 turn, done. Up to and including Transcendence.
You are substituting terms here. Anyone (AI including) can just stockpile crawlers and build all projects in 1 turn. That mechanics is still there.
I also think you exaggerate this. One can sure save and rush build one project to demonstrate the technique. However, I don't think it is possible to stockpile that much to rush build every project one can. This is too much burden for faction even in vanilla even less in WTP. Just for argument sake play Zakharov to get all projects earlier and try to build them all. Then tell us how it was.
Do we want people to build projects even faster?
You keep misunderstanding that. This feature does not give any free minerals just deliver them quicker to destination comparing to crawlers. One can dedicate 100% of whole faction production to crawlers-projects building and this is practical maximum. This feature won't break this limit. In fact pre-stocking crawlers can build projects in 1 turn as you illustrated yourself. Cannot be faster.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 07:36:35 pm
Personally, I'd prefer removing all options for factionwide building of Secret Projects.
You mean only by single base efforts? We have discussed this before. What is your reason?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 13, 2020, 07:54:33 pm
As for your idea, it makes building stuff a real chore especially if you want to rushbuy something as you have to calculate in advance what the SPC would be unless I misunderstand something. You also can't react properly to emergencies (like an attack) without changing production in the SP base and thus losing all progress.
The ai won't be able to plan setting up a Secret Projects properly but their gigantic bonuses should take care of that problem. Once you can't build projects in a single turn the ai has a chance.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 08:06:02 pm
Single base is not an interesting optimization problem. One just pick a strongest production base for them all.
I agree about emergencies and stuff. I think I'll withdraw this change. It is too much cumbersomity for unclear benefit.
😓
Post by: Nevill on July 13, 2020, 08:10:20 pm
Quote
I sure can subtract from surplus directly making it (a little) more stable flow. However, you are forgetting the main purpose of this is to help AI. And AI doesn't care about exact number of turns as long as it is relatively easy and quick. I can turn this option for human off to not confuse you at all so you'll resort to stockpile crawlers as before. Do you prefer that?Ah, you mean, a separate toggle for AIs/players? Perhaps.
My perspective is that of a MP player, so I am trying to tell you why it makes things more difficult for me. I don't care what AIs do. If they fare better with this option on, sure, let them have it.
Quote
Once again - it is not primarily for human player. I think we can even switch it off by default if you think it is too confusing and distracting.I didn't consider that.
I can turn it off myself, it's no problem. A mod needs to present its features, so no need to switch it off.
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I also think you exaggerate this. One can sure save and rush build one project to demonstrate the technique. However, I don't think it is possible to stockpile that much to rush build every project one can. This is too much burden for faction even in vanilla even less in WTP. Just for argument sake play Zakharov to get all projects earlier and try to build them all. Then tell us how it was.Vanilla or modded?
I don't think I am exaggerating. I hate this mechanic so much I ban crawlers as a houserule in my games nowadays. It makes the game more fun. Most projects still go to human players anyway.
And I didn't say I'd get all projects. The early game is structured in a way that lets AIs breeze through tier1 to tier4 techs at a speed humans would be hard pressed to match. They stall around tier 5-6 though, and that's the point where all projects belong to humans.
In our MP game (that is still ongoing as we decided to play it out to the end - I will have some fun screenshots to share) the AIs built 6 projects in total between them, and I have not built a single crawler. If I did, they'd get about 3 or 4, tied to the techs before I got crawlers.
Granted, I had my probes do some legwork to sabotage Zakharov's cheating, and killed off 2 of his projects that were nearing completion, Manifold Harmonics being one of them.
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You keep misunderstanding that. This feature does not give any free minerals just deliver them quicker to destination comparing to crawlers.I am not, I just heavily dislike crawlers, which tends to color my views of this feature.
To answer your question, the new display is informative enough for what it does.
Edit:
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What other race you want to reduce it to?SPs should be a mix of tech, production and economical race.
Someone has money, so let them use that. Someone has a lot of minerals, let them use that and pray they fend off all the worms. Someone has industry. And someone has tech and gets a headstart.
1-turn building reduces all of that to a simple question of whether you are 1st to the tech.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 08:22:46 pm
It was a nice idea to give AI virtual crawlers to speed up their project building. However, it seems to present many other problems those need to be solved as well. In the end they get tied into one big knot that eats a lot of my and community time. Apparently goal does not worth the mean.
Previous enhancements in this mod already make project building somewhat easier for AI (higher cost on a top of AI +3 inherent INDUSTRY at highest difficulty, AI spending cash to speed them up, etc.).
I guess based on the fact that human still get a lot of projects even in this mod the next step would be to actually teach AI to race for them rather than change rules hoping they help anemic AI to get more of them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 08:35:06 pm
Edit:QuoteWhat other race you want to reduce it to?SPs should be a mix of tech, production and economical race.
Someone has money, so let them use that. Someone has a lot of minerals, let them use that and pray they fend off all the worms. Someone has industry. And someone has tech and gets a headstart.
1-turn building reduces all of that to a simple question of whether you are 1st to the tech.
An excellent suggestion. We all are trying to achieve that by all means.
I don't see how 1-turn building reduces it to anything. To accumulate fleet of crawlers one need minerals and money as well. The thing that such accumulation is too easy for human and does not impact their overall economical development is another story of how relatively mineral/money cheap projects are. So it is a cheap project price that reduces it to tech race not the ability to use crawlers.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 13, 2020, 08:47:57 pm
If you plan to build an important Secret Project it may already influence founding positions of your bases. For instance, you may want to found a base so that it has access to both of your mineral resources even though it misses the river which you otherwise wouldn't do. You can join colony pods to an existing base to increase it's output, stockpile food before research is done so that you can run a deficit for a while later on, chop forests with your formers to chave off a turn, trade for money to be able to rushbuy more minerals.
Post by: Nevill on July 13, 2020, 08:49:24 pm
Quote
So it is a cheap project price that reduces it to tech race not the ability to use crawlers.No. It's crawlers, specifically.
When choosing between building a project and a crawler, there is no point in choosing a project.
Let's have a look at two identical bases building a project that costs 600 minerals. One builds the project, the other builds 5 crawlers. Even if crawlers don't do anything and hold position, they will complete the project simultaneously. Crawlers in the meantime can produce resources and speed up the production of the next crawler.
This is on one base. When you add to it the fact that you can build crawlers simultaneously on several bases reducing the build time proportionally, no human player would start a project they don't intend to finish instantly. There are no considerations like "this base won't be able to change production for the next 20 years, I better make sure everything is set up and defended".
It wouldn't be half as bad if the crawlers' ability to contribute to projects was removed or reduced from the current 100%.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 08:53:30 pm
So you are proposing to ban them from project rushing. That'll reduce it to a single base build + some cash help. I think it is generally fairer toward smaller empires who still have strong bases.
However, wouldn't it force faction to use their strongest base for all projects? Thus concentrating them in a single base. Vulnerable to planet buster. Is it bad or fine?
Post by: Hagen0 on July 13, 2020, 08:59:26 pm
The Planet Buster is a issue but that is more a problem with Planet Busters themselves.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 09:06:54 pm
Btw, you can rush projects using other units as well at a 50% discount. That's still a bit much.
Depends on the project price. It should be so doubling it's cost hurts faction significantly.
The Planet Buster is a issue but that is more a problem with Planet Busters themselves.
How are you going to cancel the ability to destroy a base? Disable them completely? There is too much logic tied up with it.
Post by: Nevill on July 13, 2020, 09:10:31 pm
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However, wouldn't it force faction to use their strongest base for all projects? Thus concentrating them in a single base. Vulnerable to planet buster. Is it bad or fine?Since I ban crawlers from most of my MP games, I can actually answer that.
1) You have several candidates for the title of the best base during the game. You can't have a base be out of commission for years on end and still be your best base.
2) You will want several production-intensive bases, as you will often be building several projects at once. Usually 2-3 at a time. Even when you don't have a suitable tech, you still build a "dummy project" to switch to once you research something.
3) Busters are unwieldy. They are too expensive and vulnerable for what they do. It's hard to sneak one in on an opponent that expects it and checks the units tab/sends out patrols. They cause massive eco-damage. And they can't land in empty bases. I don't remember when I built a buster last time; you need an army to deliver it close to the opponent... and if you have that, why not have more of the army instead? You only need a single land unit to capture the base and obliterate it.
That goes for vanilla, of course. With your changes I can't predict how it would affect things. For one, extra defense would make it easy to protect a buster even in the vicinity of enemy territory.
Concentrating projects in a few bases is a risk, yes. It is a decision, though. Putting all the eggs in one basket makes it so that you only need to protect one basket, after all.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 13, 2020, 09:33:58 pm
Here is just my opinions but I worked them out based on other people feedback.
Ability to help SP turns one base built mechanics into whole faction build mechanics which is different by order of magnitude production power. This change is not nicely treated in this game where almost everything is tied to a single base economy. And it probably never will.
Ability to crawl resources is another extravagant feature that contradicts there very basic "yield per worker" principle. Everything rotates and is balanced around it. Extra yield from crawlers is an oddball which will never can be integrated nicely in it.
Ability to redistribute resources between bases is under powered and probably not needed at all. I never used it.
Ability to contribute to prototypes is a small version of contribution to the project. Again rarely used.
Overall we can safely ban them without impacting much of Civ/SMACX basic mechanics. I'll go for it in my next versions.
If anyone has compelling reason to keep them - feel free to express your thoughts. However, keep in mind that you have to build a consistent system seamlessly integrating all of crawlers features into basic game concepts without much breaking them.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 13, 2020, 10:08:42 pm
The only thing I can bring up in favor of crawlers is that they are iconic and make up a part of what is unique about Smac compared to other civ games. However, they do break a lot of stuff.
Post by: Nevill on July 13, 2020, 11:27:20 pm
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Ability to help SP turns one base built mechanics into whole faction build mechanics which is different by order of magnitude production power.This is the most breaking feature, I find.
Others can be balanced. Yitzi made crawlers cost extra support. The redistribute feature could be useful if we could pick the amount - certain bases have excess of resourses that can be shared, it's just creating a 30-mineral unit to transfer 1 mineral is stupid when you can easily make it harvest twice that from a nearest forest instead. But those are things that can be fixed by putting a multiplier in front of them. A 1-mineral boost is trivial, but a 5-mineral one is worth considering, perhaps, especially on a project base. A 5-nutrient boost could help smaller bases grow quickly.
But hurrying things 1-to-1 needs to go.
...can it simply be disabled? Just commented out or something?
Crawlers are unique units that I'd rather try to fix than ban; it's just that it's beyond my capabilities to fix them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 12:26:21 am
Yitzi made crawlers cost extra support.
What's that? They supported by 2 minerals? It doesn't change the crawling benefit. Just makes it less so. I don't like producing extra worker at will that can work any square on earth. This makes all the base placement strategy and hard work to grow population go down the toilet.
...can it simply be disabled? Just commented out or something?
Yea. Just disable this unit. I'll do it in next version.
Crawlers are unique units that I'd rather try to fix than ban; it's just that it's beyond my capabilities to fix them.
Don't bother. They are unique in a way that they are from some other game. They break so long and hard polished balance since Civ1. I honestly don't see anything strategical about them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 12:52:48 am
* Disabled crawlers.
* Version cloning_vats_and_population_boom changes are included.
* Project contribution mechanics is removed.
Here. 30 minutes of packaging and all problems those I tried to solve for the past month are gone. What a relief! Now I can actually play it a little.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 14, 2020, 01:20:49 pm
Don't bother. They are unique in a way that they are from some other game. They break so long and hard polished balance since Civ1. I honestly don't see anything strategical about them.
SMAC is unique in a lot of ways, though. ;) Strategically it is devastating to an automated economy if you come in and destroy all the crawlers. Suddenly all of the specialists need to go back to working the fields or bases starve. It's just that crawlers are so powerful, and the AI is so dumb, that you rarely have to suffer that kind of setback but you can inflict it on the AI.
My own house rule is a 2 crawler max per base to keep things reasonable. They should cost some upkeep, too. Maybe energy since they are robots and need power to crawl stuff back and forth to the base. There is a lot broken about them, unfortunately. I don't know the right answer.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 02:17:10 pm
One is probably not related to mod but just funny. I'm playing Deidre and at some point close to mid game, when everybody are already divided into alliances, friendly Santiago suddenly asked me to deliver a tech in a pretty blunt manner (as she can): "I'll have it and I'll have it now!". Having few worms at a border and Gaian's +1 PLANET I decided to have a fight so replied: "you can take it out of my dead fingers" or something along this line. In response their next proposal suddenly was a pact. Not against somebody just a pact. I, of course, accepted it but was quite surprised. Never saw something like that before.
😲🤣
Another observation is how great native warfare is against nature haters in this mod. I am at war with Morgan who runs FM, obviously, with -3 PLANET. Together with my +1 PLANET I have a devastating +60% advantage in 1:1 combats. Thanks to PLANET defense bonus/penalty in this mod. My response to those complaining about too costly natives in this mod that it is all circumstantial. Sometimes it's not worthy to build them. Sometimes it is. Leave it as one of the possible strategic options when the difference between attacker and defender planet ratings is great.
Post by: dino on July 14, 2020, 03:57:56 pm
Crawlers are iconic and fun to use, the issue is that they are so overpowered in vanilla that the most efficient way to play is to build an army of them which lead to annoying micro.
I've proposed a way to nerf them long ago:
1) One resource point penalty from Ytzi's patch, eventually regular support: so it's not worth it to put them on 2 resource point tiles and even 4 point tiles are debatable if you have enough population to work all tiles.
2) No SP rushing, just disband for 50% minerals like every other unit: so there is no point in building more then you need and park them on [poopy] tiles until they can be used to rush SP
3) 5 rows cost: with nerfs above it'll very often be a subpar choice compared to colony pod, or many facilities.
That's it imo, crawler use would be limited to a very situational high yielding tiles and even that not always, much more fun then outright cutting such iconic feature.
Secret Projects prebuilding and cooperative building:
It should all be allowed, but at 50% penalty:
1) No crawler rushing, just regular disband.
2) 50% retool penalty like every other building, no retool penalty was there mostly to not frustrate casual gamer. No risk no fun and it'd be optional anyway.
3) Cooperative building was already there: just stockpile energy in other bases and rush with money, 50% minerals wasted though, but if you really want SP, then you really want it.
Your cooperative building is adjustable anyway, so I'm fine with it too.
Population growth and countering ICS:
Pop-boom was a mechanic that made growing large bases a bit more viable compared to ICS. Without it it's better to just go all forest, boreholes, mines and not bother with larger bases. Since growing the same population in large bases costs like 4 times more nutrient resources. I'd try middle ground, keep changes to popboom, but stop increasing nutrient rows after certain adjustable base size treshold, I'd try a cap at 5 nutrient rows. It's still much slower then pop-boom, but with colony pod cost it makes resource cost of growing pops in large bases comparable with growing them through ICS.
I'd also tie free unit support with population instead of per base:
SUPPORT
0 - one unit per base + one per 5 pops ( means two units at base size 5 )
1 - one unit per base + one per 3 pops
2 - one unit per every other pop
3 - one unit per each pop
Alternatively per 5,4,3,2 pops if you think vanilla up to base size at SUPPORT 3 is too strong.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 04:43:32 pm
Crawlers:
1) One resource point penalty from Ytzi's patch, eventually regular support: so it's not worth it to put them on 2 resource point tiles and even 4 point tiles are debatable if you have enough population to work all tiles.
2) No SP rushing, just disband for 50% minerals like every other unit: so there is no point in building more then you need and park them on [poopy] tiles until they can be used to rush SP
3) 5 rows cost: with nerfs above it'll very often be a subpar choice compared to colony pod, or many facilities.
That's it imo, crawler use would be limited to a very situational high yielding tiles and even that not always.
Thank you for suggestions, dino. I applaud people trying to save crawlers by any mean. However, there are so many controversies about them that any nerfing attempts look no better than original abomination. By two reasons.
#1
This was a standalone invention artificially introduced into the game. No previous logic or game development or problems demanded it. And now we are introducing more artificial constraints again not having any relation to game lore but only to crawlers themselves in attempt to beautify it. This is like inventing a car that can go 600 mph which is totally inapplicable to any road or even race track existing on Earth. And then forcibly limit its speed to 160 mph max. Err, why bother?
#2
It would be worth spending time on it if there would be something worth saving about crawlers. There is none. All of their features are either completely unusable or overboard. Read your own suggestion above. Bolded and colored by me. You are nerfing both OP features to make them inferior as other two. You do not fix any of their feature but forcing player NOT to use them at all effectively removing them from the game. So why taking such complex route if you want just disable them.
Don't let that "iconic" thing cloud your judgement. In my mind the worm is a rightful SMACX icon. It is even on the load splash screen if you haven't notice. 😉
Breathe in, breathe out, close your eyes, imagine yourself Brian Reynolds listening to someone proposing such innovation to the game. What would you answer them now when you know everything about crawlers?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 05:03:46 pm
Secret Projects prebuilding and cooperative building:
It should all be allowed, but at 50% penalty:
1) No crawler rushing, just regular disband.
2) 50% retool penalty like every other building, no retool penalty was there mostly to not frustrate casual gamer. No risk no fun and it'd be optional anyway.
3) Cooperative building was already there: just stockpile energy in other bases and rush with money, 50% minerals wasted though, but if you really want SP, then you really want it.
Your cooperative building is adjustable anyway, so I'm fine with it too.
Yep. That all existed there. I introduced my mineral contribution not because I wanted another mean of cooperation but to outweigh human crawlers abuse that AI cannot respond to properly. Now when crawlers are gone there is no need for such complicated feature. I removed it already together with crawlers.
Rushing with money seems very fair. One can involve whole faction economy power in it but waste half of the money due to 4:1 conversion ration instead of normal 2:1. I'd even raise to 8:1 for project for that exactly reason to make it even fairer for smaller factions.
Post by: dino on July 14, 2020, 05:10:00 pm
A faction that starts, or was cornered into mostly dry area will be in a huge disadvantage without them, so they are necessary for game balance.
And the problems with them are:
1) Unnecessary secondary ability to rush SPs - get rid of it.
2) The're OP to the point it's preferable to put swarm of them and try to work every single tile unworked by the base.
Get rid of just these two and there is no point in building and micromanaging swarms of crawlers, but you can still put a few on mines to overcome being nutrients starved and unable to work mines with pops.
And both changes are very simple, nothing convulted about them: Disable SP rushing and add resource penalty from Ytzi's patch, or regular support cost.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 05:43:18 pm
Population growth and countering ICS:
Pop-boom was a mechanic that made growing large bases a bit more viable compared to ICS. Without it it's better to just go all forest, boreholes, mines and not bother with larger bases. Since growing the same population in large bases costs like 4 times more nutrient resources. I'd try middle ground, keep changes to popboom, but stop increasing nutrient rows after certain adjustable base size treshold, I'd try a cap at 5 nutrient rows. It's still much slower then pop-boom, but with colony pod cost it makes resource cost of growing pops in large bases comparable with growing them through ICS.
I think you are substituting the matter of discussion here. The controversy is not between big and small base sizes. It is pretty fine to have a whole spectrum of them across the empire. The clash is between player strategies. One is to develop bases (terraforming, facilities) as soon as possible to make them grow faster in all ways (population, yield, etc.). Another is to abandon any development completely until the large territory is covered with undeveloped bases. The latter is called ICS. The important distinction is in development that goes alongside with base growth. I.e. when you get next worker - terraform for it instead of making a colony out of it and remove the burden. Then capitalize on combined yield by building multiplying facilities, etc.
If you look at it from this perspective you understand that specifically early pop boom is an instrument of ISC strategy. More precisely: spam colonies - pop boom until bases cannot grow anymore on undeveloped land - spam again - ... (repeat).
Pop boom is anti-development paradigm. It makes bases grow insanely fast without any investment into infrastructure. That is why ICS and pop boom (together with PTS) is so OP strategy that does not require any of the base evolution mechanics. That is why people complain about the above because it makes otherwise feature reach game boring.
Pop boom should be aligned with other game concepts with investment/benefit balance. Meaning if it so good it should cost enough to offset it, don't start it early, etc. Better yet it should be tied to base nutrient surplus to gradually elolve from it instead of just ignoring it completely.
From that few obvious things stems out:
Nothing should trigger pop boom directly like CV. That is fixed in this mod.
Pop boom should not be achievable early in the game to not fuel more already OP ISC strategy. That is fixed in this mod.
Pop boom preferably should be triggered at the point when population growth is already quite fast to make investment into GROWTH worthwhile even without triggering it. This is more of less already done in this mod but some tuning may be in order. Play testing will show.
Let me illustrate the last argument. Investing into GROWTH by the mean of SE choices cost some negative consequences. In vanilla +5 GROWTH doubles base growth rate. Nice but comparable to advanced terraforming to get twice as more N surplus. Yet player pays for such growth with other penalties. Then a single addition of +1 GROWTH makes bases grow about 10-20 times faster! That is a huge jump. So progressive investment in GROWTH makes it about no change (slightly worse or slightly better) on a range between 0 and 5. Then a single +1 step and - boom! Literally. 🤣
In this mod this is at least happening at +9 GROWTH when growth benefit is already immensely huge: 10 times increase in growth. If popboom then doubles this speed it is not that huge of a jump comparing to vanilla case.
Regarding your proposition about growth box size. Yes. There are talkings about this around. This is still pretty uncharted territory, though. Both in term of players experience and game mechanics modding. We still can approach this but need stronger foundation maybe with some calculation on how it changes the game pace, etc.
Post by: dino on July 14, 2020, 08:13:41 pm
But to grow from 1 to 7 costs 27 nutrient rows, while from 7 to 13 it's 63 rows, 2,3 times more nutrients.
So going for 2 size 7 bases, instead of one large, you can either get there much faster, or spec way more tiles for minerals production and still get there equally fast.
Turn advantage in getting tiles worked makes smaller denser bases a clearly winning strategy without popboom. Capping rows at some point would soften it a bit.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 09:21:37 pm
That worked more or less fine for Civ1 with its max +1 nutrient surplus per tile. Unfortunately, Civ2 and further SMACX abused it insanely up to +3 surplus per tile (farm + enricher + satellite). Capping rows at some number will blow base sizes out of proportion. You'll end up with 30-40 size bases easily. Remember, that everything is balanced already in hardcoded way. Game expects you needing Hab Complex and Hab Dome at some points, etc.
I noticed that large bases start overtaking smaller ones at some point when they start building multiplying improvements and other enhancement stuff. Smaller bases just don't have an incentive to build them yet while larger bases keep stamping them one after another doubling and tripling their total production. So the only questionable period when large bases are not that attractive is early game.
As I said before, I don't see much harm in early colony spamming. That is absolutely normal thing to do. Moreover, the game is designed to support this because there is almost nothing to build in bases at the time. Later on everybody naturally switch to bigger bases when there is something to build there.
We should only be concerned if such spamming lasts whole game and leads to victory.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 09:27:49 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 09:45:01 pm
Gaian's with their +1 N in fungus starting get bigger nutrient output from it than from farms. I don't know if this will be a general concern for other factions. Maybe trade fungus N and E advancement so it gets E before N?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 14, 2020, 10:48:55 pm
* Armor value is adjusted based on its position in the tree.
* Borehole Square, 0, 2, 4, 0. Further reduces energy flow and limit its usage to barren lands.
Sorry. I've distributed armor but forgot to adjust its value. Now it should be more matching to the weapon.
Post by: Nevill on July 15, 2020, 08:21:12 am
I know you haven't changed it, but I am getting some exorbitant prices. In 7k credits range.
And this tile cost less to lower a few years ago than it does now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 15, 2020, 12:46:33 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 15, 2020, 05:24:46 pm
Notes:
* The beginning was excruciatingly slow, and there was very little to build, and very little to build it with. It's probably fixed in later versions with the new tech tree and former/CP costs, but we'll see.
* We played with the following houserules: Economic victory only, no attacking each other's bases (with the exception of outposts), no attacking AI bases, and no more than 20 bases (again, with the exception of outposts we don't intend to develop). The rule about attacking AIs was rescinded in 2230. Crawlers were banned.
* The game didn't take off until 2200s. We had too few minerals otherwise. I had two bases in Mount Planet, and they could manage about 18 minerals at sizes 5-6. The rest languished at about 10-12 minerals at best.
* Planetary Transit System in 2195 was the first turning point, kicking me up from 20 pop to 48 (16 bases), and then to 60 in a few turns. If we were allowed more bases, I probably could win the game on the back of this project alone. Interestingly enough, new implementation is probably detrimental to the player, as it is much more difficult to grow high-pop bases than low ones (the nutrient requirements grow proportionately, while the workers eat most of the produced food).
* Population boom was another turning point when the game picked up the pace closer to what I am used to. The only reason we could popboom was me building the HGP in 2187, and Tayta being Lal. Else bureacracy drones would not have allowed us reach a Golden Age. I assume it would be harder to do now under the new rules.
* Genejack factories (researched in 2212) were a big factor why the game finally opened up.
* The ecological facilities were not available for most of the game. Tree Farms came too late, and were never used except as an ECON boost facility since forests sucked. Centauri Preserves also came too late. Others weren't even researched. There were times ecodamage started to hit triple digits, and I was playing Gaia.
* Worms were therefore a nuisance. Which I would consider a change for the better, except they were still too easy to kill due to 100% collateral. It took a while before they started to spread out and require real forces on hand to deal with them. They also fare poorly against +50% base bonus. After being flooded by mass waves of worms, spores and locusts, the free mineral cap got raised to a more comfortable level via fungal pops, and they didn't trouble me again.
* Me and Tayta met circa 2180s, and declared war on each other. I got to pact with his neighbours over our mutual dislike towards him, and got them to declare war on him. Even after we pacted, the AIs pressed him pretty hard, although they were very inconsistent about it. Sparta sat on an army for 20 years before sending an invasion force his way. The rest sent mostly a token force... and probes to buy bases with.
* AI used probes to mixed results. Armored probes were annoying, but could mostly be fended off by defensive ones. Also, there was an assortment of probe-related bugs or quirks, like sea probes being stranded on land after mission completion.
* AI doesn't seem to understand defensive probes. They don't protect their bases, which I used to my advantage to beat Zakharov to the Manifold Harmonics race.
* After Manifold Harmonics the game was basically won, as I broke the tech/energy barrier. I was researching latest tier techs in 2 turns, and teched from Chaos gun (6) to Quantum Shard (16) in 12 turns, from 2230 to 2242.
* ...but we still decided to play it out, if only to see how we can break it further. And we did. We repealed U.N. charter, and I planned to do a little gassing, as no amount of defenses could help against the bases just disappearing. But that was mostly for Tayta who was on the same continent with most AIs. Me, I needed to deliver my troops to enemy bases, first, and the territory bonuses + arty strikes made that difficult. So I was planning to use amphibious pods and invade them from outside their bombardment range, and using Sea Formers to get the fleet to the inland bases.
* I stopped 1 turn away from researching DocAir on principle. I wanted to break the game purely with ground-based tech. I assume it would have simplified the war further, but not by a big margin.
* I finally found a way around this mod's combat, which I consider unsatisfactory due to extreme mineral costs and therefore low number of units. Upgrades! Build a lot of cheap basic units, and then mass upgrade them to better models. I produced about 50 6-1-1*3 troops (40 minerals each), loaded them up on transports, and sent them along with ~30 ships to the far reaches, gradually upgrading them to 10~-1-1*3 and then 16~-1-1*3.
* Then a more elegant solution presented itself. A retroviral plague kills about half of base-pop, and reduces defenders to anywhere between 10 to 50 percent health. Facilities protecting against it are high in the tech tree, and AI never built them. Perimeter defences as of v66 can be switched off. Even with perimeters on, a defender reduced to a near-death state falls easily. Since all other means of combat were prohibitively expensive, my army composition got somewhat probe-heavy.
* But that's not all! I didn't even need that many units to wage wars! Apparently, if a base tile falls below sea level, and the base doesn't have a Pressure Dome, it loses max(3, half) population, meaning a base under size 4 simply drowns. So all I had to do was plague/gas the base until it hit size 3 or less, then lower nearby terrain, ignoring any and all defences the base had as it was washed away.
* It took approx 20 years from the early 2240s when I started building units to 2265 when the last AI base on the planet fell. I'll just post 2 pics of the Planet before and after. See the gaping holes in the Sunny Mesa, the Moonsoon Jungle and the Uranium Flats? That's where my formers scythed through the land as it if were butter. I only needed 12 of them to perform the action in a single turn.
* Miriam was the toughest to crack, since not only did she have Perimeter Defences and Neutronium armor, but she also had loads of probes, sometimes several per base. They were all sitting there protecting her, rendering my strategy ineffective, as it relied on offensive probing. I resolved that by connecting her continent to mine. All of her probes stupidly moved out of their bases, leaving them defenceless (to attack me, I assume?), and she was killed in about 5 turns after that.
* Between the former warfare and the global warming, the Planet flooded quickly. It was an apocalyptic sight, a fungal wasteland interspersed with boreholes and man-made seas, with signs of human habitation and terraforming, but few bases besides what initially belonged to us.
Still, it made cornering the economy only cost 10k after all rivals have been eliminated, and after passing the turn 20 more times the game was done.
A separate sidenote. There is an aspect of collateral you might want to consider.
The mod has collateral damage switched off. What that leads to is that instead of a high-def unit (that can still lose), the best defenders are... scouts! Who would almost certainly lose the engagement, but would also protect other units from harm. In vanilla, collateral serves the purpose of discouraging 1-tile deathstacks. Picking a scout for a defender would sabotage the stack due to collateral damage. Here it is a superior and cheap choice allowing your units to close in on enemy positions.
It also goes for scout artillery. So what if they can shell your forces? Just send in a lot of throwaway 1-1-1 arty units; they would cover you from all sides. It is much better than losing your expensive heavies.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 15, 2020, 06:54:18 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 15, 2020, 07:22:02 pm
It's mostly to protect your units against AI retaliation. AI has 3 to 5 defenders per base. Some of them armored, some of them attackers. It's mostly the latter you need to watch out for, as defenders could be dissuaded with a single synthmetal/plasma unit.
You only need to defend against a couple attacks, then you take their base. That's 3-5 scouts. Whatever support they cost, they are going to free it after they die, and they die fast. And you have (previously captured) bases around that can't build much else, and you don't care for their support. So scouts make the perfect fodder to shield the invasion.
It sucks a lot more to lose your top-tier attack or defense units, and unlike scouts, those can't be easily rebuilt.
To give a practical example, here is my turn 2250. The invasion of Hive is in progress. Most of their bases have either fallen or sunk, but their capital has a bunch of grounded probe foils due to the bug I mentioned, and they can't move out. Because of that, I had to siege it conventionally.
I could always drown the base, and use a transport to get the marines close, but it's too deep inland, and my formers (to the left) are busy mopping up the rest of Yang's bases. So I get scouts from the surrounding bases, and attack into the perimeter until it eventually falls. Sure I lose units on attack, but at least I lose nothing important to retaliation... and the bases around are not producing anything important anyway.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 15, 2020, 07:36:29 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 15, 2020, 08:01:20 pm
I pretty much stopped research after discovering Quantum Mechanics to lower troop costs. I didn't see much point as the game was going to end soon.
I have Xenoempathy dome, so I use fungus as roads. And I spent 90% of the game on a tiny island ~8x15 tiles wide and halfway across the globe from Hive, so I wouldn't get anything out of faster transportation anyway. I had cruiser transports with Maritime Project, that seemed to suffice.
Post by: Hagen0 on July 15, 2020, 08:25:02 pm
Post by: Nevill on July 15, 2020, 08:33:44 pm
It means that my infantry would have to attack with a haste penalty. Considering I picked infantry as my primary unit for the +25% bonus vs. bases, and that even with the borderline cheating strategy I still lost about... let's check, 29 out of 53 as of 2265... I don't think one should do that often.
And yes, vanilla 1-turn magtube invasions are known, and the reason I have to come up with houserules to reign them in. Our first game with Tayta where we limited the number of bases had me invade an AI, have it submit, then gift them the bases (about a dozen of them) back returning within the limits, all within a single turn. Tayta didn't have infiltration, so he didn't even notice. :D Took me 100+ formers to pull off.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 15, 2020, 08:56:38 pm
Not going to answer each and every note but I'll review them for potential future changes.
Your house rules are pretty restrictive. It's like a different game with them.
Regarding the early game speed. I've changed former to 2 and colony to 4. It is as close to vanilla as possible. I also give away 2 formers for all factions at start. Centauri Ecology enables both infantry and foil formers for AI to not bother inventing DocFlex for that. Human can reverse engineer foils from it but this is anyway level 1 tech so whatever.
With that being done I don't think anybody can blame this mod to be slower than vanilla anymore. On a top of that it enables aquifer at level 2 and borehole at level 3. Though, borehole is quite stripped from its vanilla counterpart. Then the rest of eco engineering comes at level 4. I think TF is level 4-5 too somewhere. So there are plenty terraform options to play with.
Now remember this is evolutionary game. Naturally early bases are few and small and their production is low. Then it gradually increases. It wouldn't matter giving plenty of building options since one cannot realize them all together immediately anyway. It'll take time. I don't think it is wise to blame a very iconic 4X game for initial production starting at near zero values. That is kinda cornerstone of such games.
I understand that when you PBEM you spend short time on turn and long time wait. Single player experience doesn't have this problem. User just click next until something get built. Even then I still cannot understand how the amount of action per turn makes PBEM game any more interesting or boring. You carry out as many actions as you need and then you wait for next turn. The wait time doesn't decrease as game progress! On the contrary, it may only increase as opponent needs more time to handle more stuff.
Sacrificing cheap units to protect a stack
I'm pretty puzzled what do you find bad about it? That is a strategy all right. I am exceptionally glad that this mod forced you to invent another strategy. That a pretty huge leap forward comparing to vanilla where you just strategyless pounding bases with needlejects.
As Hagen0 pointed out this is not free exploit. You need to support them, build them and constantly deliver to front line as they die in every counterattack. AI is still pretty dumb about combat. If it would concentrate enough attackers or keep more defenders this strategy may not work.
Regarding some other exploits you mentioned like PTS or MH. They are mostly fixed or repositioned in the tree. Thank you for earlier insights.
Unit cost
That question was already raised hundred of times. There are 13 weapon levels from 1 to 30. They corresponding cost goes from 1 to 20 in WTP. With reactor discount it is from 1 to 10. Can you propose a cheaper cost progression?
Fusion reactor is level 4. Quantum is 7. So 6 level unit is probably 5 rows, 9 level is somewhere 6-7 rows. That is pretty much cheap for mid game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 16, 2020, 12:58:52 am
Mineral multipliers
Distributed more evenly and start very early. Recycling Tank repurposed to mineral multiplier. Cost/main increased slightly for all.
Recycling Tank (repurposed, 6/2)
Genejack factory (10/4), ~ level 4
Robotic assembly plant (20/6), ~level 7
Quantum converter (30/8), ~level 10
Nanoreplicator (40/10), ~level 13
total: 250%
Energy multipliers
Hologram theatre (psych 50%)
Energy bank (economy 50%)
Network node (labs 50%)
Tree farm (psych 50%, economy 50%)
Hybrid forest (psych 50%, economy 50%)
Fusion lab (economy 50%, labs 50%)
Quantum lab (economy 50%, labs 50%)
Research hospital (psych 25%, labs 50%)
Nanohospital (psych 25%, labs 50%)
total: psych 200%, economy/labs 250%
Effect
RT become a real helping facility instead of vanilla's toy.
Creates incentive to grow bigger stronger bases (multiplier!).
More early minerals -> more formers build and support -> quicker aquifers and boreholes -> more terraforming in general -> more energy as well -> earlier benefits to erect Energy bank and Network node.
More minerals -> more units = relatively cheaper units.
Corrections needed
Facility costs need to be increased here and there. Otherwise may end up with nothing to build.
Research cost need to be increased to maintain a steady pace.
Support may need to be rethought in a way of extending to all units proportionally. Otherwise it will quickly lose value.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 16, 2020, 08:29:40 am
The house rules were certainly restrictive. The main ones (Economic Victory only, no attacking AIs) were only introduced for this game, as an effort to see if we could play in ways other than just racing for the biggest weapons we could and winning the game in a single battle. In particular, I think the no-attacking-AIs rule was introduced because, in past games, it was too easy to gain an advantage by conquering the AI (Nevill won our first game outright by wiping them all out, and would've done the same in the second if I hadn't attacked first). That might not be as big of an issue now, with wars being expensive and territory bonuses blunting offensives.
I know we've been going on a lot about the pace of the game, so I'll try avoid belabouring the point even more. But I really did feel that there was a severe dearth of things to do in the first 100 turns of the game. It was to the point that my first reaction to Nevill's suggestion of starting another game was dismay. I really did not want to go through that stage of the game again, and normally I consider the early game to be the fast and fun part of the game.
It's true that one experiences a certain shock, going from the end of a well-developed game back to the beginning again, but I don't think that was the case here. We'd just come from another multiplayer game using Nevill's mod (which can basically be considered vanilla+ for balance purposes), which never got past 2150, and I found the pace there to be notably faster and more eventful. And this was with one player sometimes taking a week to submit his turns!
While the stated goal of the mod is to make players think outside the vanilla box, and arguably succeeded in that, I'm not sure the end result was terribly interesting in terms of the needed tactical complexity and options available. My tactics consisted of two parts: genetic warfare to cripple a base's defenders, and an endless cavalcade of rovers to nerve gas the base into oblivion. I occasionally sunk a few bases with terraformers, but nowhere near the extent Nevill did.
As a result, there was very little need to use infantry (for the +25% vs bases), land transports (to allow troops to attack without hasty penalties), sea or air transports (to enable striking deep into enemy territory in a single turn), artillery (it had very lackluster results when I tried to use it to soften defenders; gene warfare was far superior), missiles (to eliminate troublesome defenders, at a price), or probes to disable Perimeter Defenses (which they can't do anyway in recent versions of the mod). All tactics that I found very useful in the past, even necessary to avoid a prolonged slog feeding units into a grinder, but not here.
Now, it could just be the case that atrocities are overpowered. And there is a barrier to using them, in the form of sanctions, behooving you to repeal the Charter first. But if you are committed to wiping out the AIs anyway, why not use them?
This would certainly have been harder to pull off if the AI used defensive probes properly. And nerve gas could be nerfed by making it more expensive: Nevill has it priced at Attack/Defense in his mod (cost factor -1), which is effectively +50% for offensive units. That seems more commensurate with its power.
That said, I will definitely have a look at what the latest versions do with the tech tree and give it a fair shake, and revisit the topic then.
I will round off by saying that while PBEM absolutely involves a lot of waiting, that just makes having meaningful stuff to do on your turn even more important. I don't mind playing 2 turns a day when those are some of the most intense turns of the game.
RE: Planetary Transit System, I had this radical idea to change it so that it granted free Psi Gates at bases, because Psi Gates are really cool but nobody ever gets to use them, ever. But then I realized it would just be a net buff for human players over AI, which would be undesirable.
So here's another idea: change PTS to grant +1 GROWTH faction-wide, like a Cloning Vats-lite.
There's precedent for projects with duplicate effects in the game (Human Genome Project vs Clinical Immortality, Supercollider vs Theory of Everything), so it wouldn't be out of place. My understanding of the new pop-boom mechanics is that the threshold to pop-boom got raised to +9 GROWTH, and the ways to achieve this are Democracy (+2), Planned (+2), Children's Creche (+2), Golden Age (+2), Cloning Vats (+2), and... one more? Can't remember exactly, but I know it was supposed to be "you need 5 out of 6 ++GROWTH effects to pop-boom now". Anyway, if PTS is changed to give +1, this offers another avenue to reach +9, while not being terribly overpowered in itself, and still giving factions a way to boost their population growth earlier in the game. It also gives a way to help factions like Yang and Morgan, who can't boom as easily due to being unable to use Democracy and Planned respectively.
EDIT: Found the post where you talked about this. Eudaimonic also gives +2 now, and the threshold to boom is actually +10. That actually makes this idea more viable, as a single +1 effect won't be enough to push anyone over the limit. Except Yang, but since he loses the +2 from Democracy it evens out.
On a different note: I recall you expressed interest in it, did you get to try multiplayer out yet? Since we've now finished the game and don't yet have any particular plans, maybe something could be organized.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on July 16, 2020, 10:50:51 am
- The changes to territory exerted by coastal and sea bases are great. AIs no longer clutter up the coastlines with dozens of crappy sea bases.
- I didn't think to take advantage of the INDUSTRY exploit, and now that it's fixed, I don't have to worry about it anymore.
- Streamlining hurry cost formulas is a quality-of-life change I didn't know I needed. Now I can tell at a glance how much energy I'll need.
- Unit upgrade costs now work more like I expected them to work, too.
- Equalizing the cost of land and sea formers and CPs is great. I just wished it was equalized in the other direction. xP
- Upgraded reactors no longer affecting unit HP - YES.
- It is now more affordable and sensible to put at least a modicum of armour on offensive units now. I don't usually go higher than Synthmetal, though.
- Increased combat randomness makes offense less dominant. I think setting it at 2.0 feels just right.
- I miss being able to hunt worms for money, but I think it's for the best. It rewarded being a big polluter too much.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 16, 2020, 01:08:41 pm
First, let me thank both you and Nevill again for such throughout feedback. I couldn't expect anything better. A lot of positive and negative = much to think about.
😆❗
I won't be answer everything in a single post but I'll keep reviewing it and maybe adding my reflection to some of the points periodically.
I've already replied to Nevill about game pace and that I've reverted costs of former and colony more toward original vanilla values. I've tested it myself a little and found it acceptable.
As I said before, I don't really afraid of explosive expansion at the very beginning of the game as it is indeed something quite expected and designed for. I wouldn't call it ICS as long as it is mixed up with some base development and fades out gradually as there are other development options appears with tech progress.
Post by: Nevill on July 17, 2020, 12:43:38 am
I am trying to understand how armor affects the cost. A synthmetal 1-2-1 unit costs just as much as a plasma steel 1-3-1. A photon rover 1-5-2 costs as much as a probability one 1-6-2.
I thought pricing 4-1-1 and 1-4-1 units the same was the point? Yet the former costs 4 rows, while the latter is only 2. What is going on?
And yes, I see the adjusted armor values in alphax.txt. Something doesn't add up.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 17, 2020, 02:11:19 am
There is a bug in unit cost calculation. I fixed it in upcoming version. Now checking what other versions are affected.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 17, 2020, 02:23:50 am
* [fix] Unit cost were calculated incorrectly sometimes.
* Recycling Tanks now increases minerals by 50% instead of improving base tile.
* Recycling Tanks, 6, 2.
* Clean minerals = 24.
* Research is 1.5 times slower.
* Fungus yield reshuffled to give energy before nutrients.
* Weapon and armor appearance and value/cost are adjusted to match each other progression.
* Some facility costs and maintenances are increased especially later ones.
* Some SP cost are increased slightly based on increased corresponding facility cost above.
* Lower tech get preference in blind research and AI pick.
Here is the fix and some other changes. Sorry about that. The bug affected versions 80-86. I've removed them. Although, all the changes introduced in them are in latest version. They didn't disappeared.
Post by: dino on July 19, 2020, 01:56:01 pm
I'm not saying I'm against, but I'd like an option to revert to vanilla in principle, in case I find I don't like some feature.
You have these lines repeated twice in the ini file btw:
; attack and defense bonus when fighting in own territory in percents
territory_combat_bonus=50
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 19, 2020, 03:33:51 pm
* recycling_tanks_mineral_multiplier configuration parameter is added.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 19, 2020, 10:13:01 pm
* Police State, DocLoy, --EFFIC, ++SUPPORT, ++POLICE, --PLANET. Returned --EFFIC and ++SUPPORT to it and also extra PLANET penalty. Should be a little bit more interesting like that.
* Democratic, EthCalc, +EFFIC, --SUPPORT, ++GROWTH, --PROBE. Reduced SUPPORT penalty. It seemed too harsh especially at the beginning.
* Fundamentalist, Brain, ++MORALE, ++PROBE, +INDUSTRY, --RESEARCH. Removed +TALENT, added +MORALE to make it more combat oriented and different from Police State drone quellying focus.
* Cybernetic, Algor, +EFFIC, -----POLICE, ++PLANET, ++RESEARCH. More benefits and more penalties. Before it was too not interesting.
* Thought Control, WillPow, ---SUPPORT, ++MORALE, ++POLICE, ++PROBE, ++TALENT. Added extra TALENT to it. Should be an ultimate war time drone solution. It's pretty good at that but other than war it is not good for anything. So I don't think it become too OP.
Increased effects of SE models here and there to make their bonuses/penalties stronger for more distinct profile.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 22, 2020, 01:37:35 am
* AI tries to kill spore launcher near their bases.
* 0, ; Combat % -> Artillery bonus per level of altitude. Forgot to remove it earlier. I find it too cumbersome to measure altitudes of every tile around the battlefield. It is too not visual.
Ignoring spore launcher is a major drawback for AI.
Post by: dino on July 22, 2020, 10:20:04 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 22, 2020, 02:03:29 pm
Thank you for catching it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 22, 2020, 06:16:32 pm
* [bug] Base screen population incorrectly shows superdrones those are not on psych screen. They do not affect drone riot. This is fixed.
That annoyed me for long enough. Fixed today!
The drones and superdrones algorithms are insanely complicated. Yitzi did a good job by fixing and modifying them. It would be nice to import his changes. Unfortunately, Yitzi patch is not a pure patch. It's a mod as well. It would be a nightmare trying to merge it with this one. 😟
Post by: lolada on July 22, 2020, 07:30:00 pm
Quote
* [bug] Base screen population incorrectly shows superdrones those are not on psych screen. They do not affect drone riot. This is fixed.Thank you! This is one of the most irritating bugs forcing me to micro more ^^.
Quote
* AI tries to kill spore launcher near their bases.
I noticed this also - this is important fix. Spore launchers bombardment ruins AI especially if it catches early colony pod in the base, AI can get stuck for many turns before getting any bases going.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 23, 2020, 05:23:20 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 24, 2020, 11:22:06 pm
* Equally distant territory is given to base with smaller ID (presumably older one).
That makes the exploit of pushing border line by placing new base close to it is less effective.
I am also thinking about making territory impossible to take by placing new bases next to it as it is done in Civ2 if I remember correctly.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 25, 2020, 02:18:21 am
Readme says you got rid of planetpearls. Could have the Merchant Exchange restore the feature, which would make it a bit less boring of a secret project.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 25, 2020, 02:38:12 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 25, 2020, 04:20:08 am
Worth asking: does Will to Power do anything about the awful faction placement algorithm?
WTP is built on top of Thinker which does. Still variations in placement could be huge. It is impossible to account for everything and make everybody equal.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 25, 2020, 05:48:57 am
Good to start with two formers. I normally use a modded version of the game that replaces the Mining Laser unit found in the Unity Wreckage with a 'Unity Agri-Bot' which is a former on wheels, representing some top-of-the-line equipment brought from Earth. Mining Laser is a bad joke, so this makes the Wreckage a bit more interesting. Unity Agri-Bots would make more exciting starting units than the two basic formers. Being able to build the former 'weapon' without any prerequisites would be good.
No additional starting colony pods. See it can be modded in the thinker.ini but what's the reasoning? Seems more likely to slow down the early game than anything else.
Faction placement algorithm was noticeably improved over the default on the huge map of Planet.
Next part is theory on how the game could work rather than commentary on the mod but I'd like your opinion:
SMAC is successor to Civ and CivII. Those games simulate history, in which tribes slowly expand for thousands of years due to primitive technology and high mortality. Childbirth was risky work in the stone age. SMAC uses the same mechanic. I've been pondering for some time, the idea of a SMAC which simulates a small band of highly talented colonists with high technology and high fertility struggling to utilize the resources found on the world.
Basic concept is default population growth would be much higher but, correspondingly, new colony pods would cost an enormous amount of resources. Much easier to expand a base than found a new one! Presently, each population represents 10,000 colonists. This means, with eight landing pods, the UNITY carried 160,000 passengers. Prefer the idea of each population representing 1,000 colonists. Of course, this means bases would be capped at 7,000 without a hab complex, which seems a little low and doesn't line up with high default growth, so suggest raising this value up to 12.
I've done some testing with this concept and it proved a lot of fun but I never finished the mod.
Have talked about this idea before but not, I think, in this thread. Let me know what you think.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 25, 2020, 05:55:32 am
Quote
Basic concept is default population growth would be much higher but, correspondingly, new colony pods would cost an enormous amount of resources. Much easier to expand a base than found a new one!
I've tried this. People didn't like it. They want spam colonies.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 25, 2020, 05:57:11 am
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 25, 2020, 06:19:33 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 25, 2020, 01:18:22 pm
What mechanic did you implement for faster base growth?
Not faster growth, just costlier colony as you proposed: "new colony pods would cost an enormous amount of resources".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 25, 2020, 01:58:24 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 25, 2020, 02:16:22 pm
* Pressure Dome increases minerals by 50% instead of improving base tile. Same effect as for Recycling Tank since it replaces it.
Missed this at first. Poor sea bases. 😢
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 27, 2020, 07:46:11 pm
* Native life abundance modification.
* Frequency of appearance is based on difficulty level rather than native life level.
* Natives appears more often.
* Natives do not suddenly die every 8th turn.
This is in attempt to put early expansion in check. I don't absolutely mind expanding and spamming colonies. However, it often seems like an empty space to take. I would send and unprotected colony into wilderness and build unprotected base and leave it for few turns, etc. Too cakewalky. This change should build up a fight a little bit.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 27, 2020, 07:59:47 pm
The Gaians could benefit from an extra nutrient on forest tiles. Have tinkered with giving them free forests but this gives too much energy, especially in the early game. Default 2-2-1 forests are powerful, so reduced the Gaian population cap from 7 to 4, which fits nicely into their low population, low environmental footprint theme.
By the way, unit and facility costs in Will to Power seem much higher than they used to be. Seems to force the player towards the new version of recycling tanks.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 27, 2020, 08:22:41 pm
unit and facility costs in Will to Power seem much higher than they used to be. Seems to force the player towards the new version of recycling tanks.
Used to be in previous versions or in vanilla? Combat unit cost hasn't changed. Colony and former cost was reduced. What gets higher? Can you give examples?
With new version of recycling tanks following mineral multiplier facilities cost increased and not even all of them. I also increased some late game super multipliers like fusion/quantum labs, etc. Not by much, though.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 27, 2020, 08:27:39 pm
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 27, 2020, 10:17:37 pm
Solar Collector, None, Tidal Harness, None, 4, Construct $STR0, S, S
But, in game, it takes 6 turns. Is that value hardcoded?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 27, 2020, 10:21:58 pm
Four turns to construct a solar collector in alphax:
Solar Collector, None, Tidal Harness, None, 4, Construct $STR0, S, S
But, in game, it takes 6 turns. Is that value hardcoded?
Nope. It does require 4 turns on flat land. +2 for each rockiness level.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 27, 2020, 11:21:45 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 28, 2020, 04:40:29 am
* Further modification to native life formulas.
* Native life generation frequency is configurable.
* Sea creatures generation frequency is configurable.
* Native sudden death is configurable.
I think it needs more elaborated explanation.
First of all, I think I figured out why people are talking about ICS and what is the main problem here. Expansion is a good thing. Actually, it is one of the X-s in 4X 😊. It complements base growth not contradicts/competes with it. Indeed, for better development one needs to increase population by both expanding number of bases and grow them at the same time. Moreover, expansion does not stop at any point in the game until all planet surface is occupied. Of course, the cost/value of expanding changes over time depending on how easy is to grab the next available land spot and how good is it and how difficult is the conquest, etc.
So why ISC term and why people see it's an exploit? I'll tell you why. The exploit is not in colony cost but in the unchecked early expansion. To understand why it is unchecked try to compare it with mid game with likely non stop war. Would it be wise to send a colony toward the enemy line to claim the nice land spot? Nope. This would be a complete suicide and, thus, complete waste of invested resources. Then why colonies travel long distance unprotected and bases thrive happily with only one defender (or even without one)? Obviously, because the pressure from natives is so small that it is much cheaper just spam colonies unprotected. About 5% of them die. Another 5% of newly established bases die as well. This is still economically better than over protect each colony and base. That is why it is called spamming. It is essentially an undisturbed pregame bases distribution. They one who spams them quicker claims more land and advantage for following war stage. Human players exploit this since they know how weak native threat is. AI does not as they use same algorithm and keep building protective units even on early stage. This pregame - game switch is easy to notice when human player faction existed quite a long time with bare protection and then suddenly they need to beef up their defense with more units and defensive structures against their aggressive neighbors. At this moment expansion suddenly stops completely and most bases are refitted to combat units. Economy takes a drastic turn.
I am all for expansion. However, this transition from "take free land as fast as possible at all cost disregarding defense" to "protect your bases at all cost - everything to defense" seems too sharp for me. As I said, it is like a pregame and game and each has its own strategy. Something is not right here. Then I realized that native life is there to substitute peer pressure in absence of peers. It essentially should play this role and checks everybody's expansion into wilderness until such check is transitioned to opposing factions. The only problem is that it does not play that role well. It is too weak and does not force player for pay extra attention to defense. I believe by turning number of native units up we can close the gap between wimpy vanilla native pressure and real enemy faction. I believe it would help AI a lot as it is already prepared for that with their algorithms while forcing the human player to match their defense to that of the AI against more frequent worm attacks.
I have tested it a little on maximal settings when land natives is created every turn and didn't see any problems for AI to expand. They successfully keep building new bases while fighting natives at the same time. Rarely bases got wiped but not at noticeable rate. So, I guess, it is pretty much fine from the strategy point of view and doesn't just block expansion completely.
About parameters.
I have reverted it back to be dependent on native life level rather than difficulty level. I think it makes perfect sense as native life level does modify the score significantly! So it should control the native life abundance.
Vanilla tries to create natives N times per turn. There are certain criteria as where native unit can appear. If all of these tries are unsuccessful unit is not created. Apparently, the more tries the more often units are created. Vanilla scale is 2-4-6 for each level of native life. I've changed it to 4-7-10 which is about 1.5-2.0 times higher. Now even the average level should present at least some challenge.
Keep in mind that this is all nonlinear dependencies. Needs some play testing and play feeling to get the right amount. Please do not complain that game becomes harder at the beginning. This change is supposed to make it so. The question is whether you feel any difference between native life levels and whether these differences match the ultimate native life final score modifiers: 0.75-1.00-1.25, correspondingly. 25% is are big modifier so game should become significantly more difficult with abundant native life.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 28, 2020, 06:59:29 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 01, 2020, 01:34:28 am
* [fix] Late starting factions (aliens and Planet Cult) never got their extra colony). Now they do.
That was the secret why Cult most of the time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 01, 2020, 01:34:40 am
* Alternative inefficiency formula.\
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#inefficiency
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 10, 2020, 12:14:30 am
In this regard I think we could reduce combat randomization if there is still high demand for it. We could roll it down to 1.5-2.0 or even disable it completely and use pure vanilla multi-round combat calculation with highly predicted outcome. Make your vote.
Clarification for those late to the party. The average amount of HP each unit loses is a reciprocal of their corresponding strengths. For example, two units fighting at 2:1 odds. Second unit will keep losing 2 HPs per each 1 HP first unit loses. If both players keep stamping similar units and send them to battle with same odds above second player needs twice as more units to sustain the pressure without front line advancing in either direction. The resulting economical impact is depends on relative cost of each unit as well.
The bigger or smaller randomization of each combat mentioned above does not change that said economical combat effectiveness. It just makes individual combat outcome less predictable. That's all.
Massive faction to faction battles were never affected by this randomness anyway.
Post by: Nevill on August 12, 2020, 02:21:48 pm
# Version 70This was a cool idea on paper, however it turns the SP into a net detriment for the player.
* The Planetary Transit System fixed. See Readme for details.
First, it is much easier/faster to grow a base from size 1 to size 3 than it is to grow a base from size 3 to size 5. Taking two citizens away from developed bases is taking away 8+ rows of food to save time collecting 5 rows of food. Developing vertically instead of horizontally already is a pain than leads to a bunch of size-2 bases, there is hardly a need to make it more difficult.
Second, the biggest bases are likely your Project bases. The ones you are building a Secret Project in, and where you can't easily adjust or fix production. Taking citizens from there and causing a massive delay without you having a say in it is rage inducing.
If the intention was to demonstrate how it becomes easy for people to move around... how about new bases starting with the average number of citizens across all bases, but no greater than 3? That way if your bases are underdeveloped, you will gain no new colonists, but if you have a solid backbone of size-4 and size-5, then a fraction of these people bands together to settle a new size-3 base. You don't have to take pop away from any single base, but there still has to be some extra pop in the empire to take advantage of the project.
The biggest exploit of the project in vanilla is giving pop out of nowhere, and allowing a faction to quantiple in size near instantly. And I have the games to prove it (going from 27 to 150 pop in 20 turns). Requiring your Empire to have some meat on its bones should limit this behavior. Of course, you can probably game that by growing your bases to size-3 and then settling a bunch of base which would also be size-3, but getting there won't be quick and by that time you might be focused on developing existing bases rather than settling new ones.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on August 12, 2020, 02:29:01 pm
Sure, it's a bit boring, but it's also a decently balanced benefit for an early game Secret Project that isn't going to break the game while still being worth pursuing. It also means more now that the bar for pop-booming got raised even higher.
Post by: Nevill on August 12, 2020, 02:35:47 pm
I just wanted to point out a problem with its current implementation (sabotaging projects), and offer an alternative which should be consistent with what the project is stated to do, and which I can see no effortless way of exploiting, at least at first glance.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on August 12, 2020, 02:43:40 pm
Ultimately, as long as you can't simply spam CPs to turn 1 pop into 3 at exponential rates anymore, it should be fine. You've won enough games on the back of that project already. :P
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:00:18 pm
Okay, I want to give my 2 cents about this:# Version 70This was a cool idea on paper, however it turns the SP into a net detriment for the player.
* The Planetary Transit System fixed. See Readme for details.
First, it is much easier/faster to grow a base from size 1 to size 3 than it is to grow a base from size 3 to size 5. Taking two citizens away from developed bases is taking away 8+ rows of food to save time collecting 5 rows of food. Developing vertically instead of horizontally already is a pain than leads to a bunch of size-2 bases, there is hardly a need to make it more difficult.
Second, the biggest bases are likely your Project bases. The ones you are building a Secret Project in, and where you can't easily adjust or fix production. Taking citizens from there and causing a massive delay without you having a say in it is rage inducing.
If the intention was to demonstrate how it becomes easy for people to move around... how about new bases starting with the average number of citizens across all bases, but no greater than 3? That way if your bases are underdeveloped, you will gain no new colonists, but if you have a solid backbone of size-4 and size-5, then a fraction of these people bands together to settle a new size-3 base. You don't have to take pop away from any single base, but there still has to be some extra pop in the empire to take advantage of the project.
The biggest exploit of the project in vanilla is giving pop out of nowhere, and allowing a faction to quantiple in size near instantly. And I have the games to prove it (going from 27 to 150 pop in 20 turns). Requiring your Empire to have some meat on its bones should limit this behavior. Of course, you can probably game that by growing your bases to size-3 and then settling a bunch of base which would also be size-3, but getting there won't be quick and by that time you might be focused on developing existing bases rather than settling new ones.
I agree it is too harsh fix that makes it detrimental now. There is a fine line between it is being overpowered and detrimental. Even with your proposition empire can grow very fast when you have a lot of 5+ size bases. Meaning it'll have the same effect as in vanilla somewhere after past mid game. Which is still OP even if triggered only after some point in time.
I don't really know how to fix it. I agree that arbitrary taking citizens from already developed bases is not a good idea especially for human but what else can be done?
Any fiddling with citizen is bound to be either OP or UP. Take one citizen from existing base to make two in new one? Generate two citizen in new base but do not quell a drone? Quell drones but don't generate citizens? Maybe quell drone regardless of size but not generate citizen?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:01:11 pm
I'd also like to restate my idea of just making PTS give a faction-wide +1 GROWTH bonus, similar to what Cloning Vats does now.
Sure, it's a bit boring, but it's also a decently balanced benefit for an early game Secret Project that isn't going to break the game while still being worth pursuing. It also means more now that the bar for pop-booming got raised even higher.
Nice Idea. So PTS = 1/2 of CV.
Post by: Nevill on August 12, 2020, 04:17:10 pm
Quote
Meaning it'll have the same effect as in vanilla somewhere after past mid game.And that is not a problem.
The problem with this project is going from 30 pop to 150 pop in the blink of an eye relatively early in the game, but that is just going from 30 size-1 bases to 50 size-3 bases. 30 +120pop.
Past midgame the same 20 extra bases (are there enough places for them past mid-game?) would give you +60 to your 200+ pop. Nothing groundbreaking.
Plus, the value of new bases decreases sharply as time goes by. In 2230s you want an already developed base churning out units and buildings fast; it takes too long to catch up the new one to the same point as the game speeds up significantly. Nor do you want to build Colony Pods on your developed bases that take a long time to grow.
The timing of the effect matters.
One other project that I felt was mistimed as of v66 (don't remember where it is now) is the Universal Translator. 2 techs are worthless in the beginning when you can steal/trade them from other factions, or research them in just 20 years. They are absolutely priceless when those techs are tier-8/tier-9, as having a few years on your opponent can give you a big advantage in the mid-late game, giving access to another reactor, or a high-tier Future Society, or some important facility, or letting you get a headstart on a project.
20 years in early game is ~60-100 minerals; 20 years in midgame is 600-1000 minerals, and you could do a lot more with those, which is why the project is only meaningful in that phase of the game - that's when you can take advantage from it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:20:45 pm
That may turn it backward when young undeveloped bases would quickly feed big developed ones with extra citizens those they capable to grow quickly. However, it still require these bigger bases to build happiness infrastructure to support such grow. Another restriction we can add to avoid this is to allow citizen to travel from bigger to smaller bases only to not exploit difference in grow citizen cost. This way the -1 drone in small bases would naturally attract unsatisfied employees from struggling bases. Moving drone to another base is a positive effect since this drone is not only useless but it is also a burden requiring forking resources to deal with it somehow. So it will be a benefit at least in short term.
Still not absolutely ideal as maybe one would want to keep drones at big bases anyway hoping to quell them relatively quickly but for small price of this project this seems like an acceptable effect.
Moreover, we will more likely move drones from bases with most drones in them which are difficult to deal with in near time anyway.
Another condition could be to more drones only after certain number of turns, like 2 to make sure these drones are more or less permanent, etc.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:26:01 pm
QuoteMeaning it'll have the same effect as in vanilla somewhere after past mid game.And that is not a problem.
The problem with this project is going from 30 pop to 150 pop in the blink of an eye relatively early in the game, but that is just going from 30 size-1 bases to 50 size-3 bases. 30 +120pop.
Past midgame the same 20 extra bases (are there enough places for them past mid-game?) would give you +60 to your 200+ pop. Nothing groundbreaking.
Plus, the value of new bases decreases sharply as time goes by. In 2230s you want an already developed base churning out units and buildings fast; it takes too long to catch up the new one to the same point as the game speeds up significantly. Nor do you want to build Colony Pods on your developed bases that take a long time to grow.
The timing of the effect matters.
A valid point. I guess we should try it out.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:28:33 pm
One other project that I felt was mistimed as of v66 (don't remember where it is now) is the Universal Translator. 2 techs are worthless in the beginning when you can steal/trade them from other factions, or research them in just 20 years. They are absolutely priceless when those techs are tier-8/tier-9, as having a few years on your opponent can give you a big advantage in the mid-late game, giving access to another reactor, or a high-tier Future Society, or some important facility, or letting you get a headstart on a project.
20 years in early game is ~60-100 minerals; 20 years in midgame is 600-1000 minerals, and you could do a lot more with those, which is why the project is only meaningful in that phase of the game - that's when you can take advantage from it.
Absolutely fine with me. When do you want it and what should it cost?
Although, I believe stealing intensifies toward the end of the game. More bases in general + more enemies + more sea bases = more entry points.
Post by: Nevill on August 12, 2020, 04:28:46 pm
Quote
I have a wild idea. What if we pursue the idea of free citizens traveling across the empire at any time? Not necessarily at the base creation time. For example, let disgruntles citizen those otherwise turn into drones travel to better places in other bases those have excess of happiness and where extra citizen does not become a drone yet?It would be inventing a mechanic for the sake of a single project which only a single faction would be able to build.
Plus it runs into the problem of the contribution mechanics in that a base should be a self-contained, independent entity. All effects should be evident from looking at the Psych tab and should not depend on situations in other bases.
Quote
Absolutely fine with me. When do you want it and what should it cost?I'll have to check the new tech tree, but in general the later it comes, the more valuable it is, unless it comes too late to matter.
So anywhere from tier 5 to tier 8, and ranging from 400 to 600 would be my guess.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 04:31:16 pm
QuoteI have a wild idea. What if we pursue the idea of free citizens traveling across the empire at any time? Not necessarily at the base creation time. For example, let disgruntles citizen those otherwise turn into drones travel to better places in other bases those have excess of happiness and where extra citizen does not become a drone yet?It would be inventing a mechanic for the sake of a single project which only a single faction would be able to build.
Plus it runs into the problem of the contribution mechanics in that a base should be a self-contained, independent entity. All effects should be evident from looking at the Psych tab and should not depend on situations in other bases.
Yeah. I feel the same already. Too complicated. 🤔
I guess, we'll go with your average base size approach for now.
Post by: dino on August 12, 2020, 06:15:19 pm
Or make PTS do something completely different but thematically fitting: give +SUPPORT
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2020, 06:20:08 pm
Maybe just keep PTS as original, but reduce bonus pops to 2 ?
That is possible. However, that'll just halves the benefit. Are you sure it brings it from broken to not broken?
Post by: dino on August 16, 2020, 09:03:59 am
It can be considered OP only because of popboom changes, in vanilla game you could pump colony pods from booming bases, to achieve simillar result.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 16, 2020, 09:57:20 pm
* AI build more defensive units based on: the combined strength of enemy attacking units, their distance from own bases, the diplomatic status, whether the player is human/AI.
This is a beginning of small incremental AI improvements. Any tests and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Keep in mind that it is far to sophistication. Small incremental improvements are meant to be simple and stupid. The purpose is no to grow an excellent sparring partner but to raise AI to the level when it is tough to beat at highest difficulty.
This change in particular computes total attacking strength of other faction units.
Excluding natives.
Excluding all psi attack units. Meaning this is for anti-conventional defense only.
For land and sea units counting only those in the same region with own base.
Any unit that is able to reach own base in 4 turns is counted for its full strength. Any farther units are contributing proportionally less threat. I.e. unit within 8 turns contributes its half value, etc.
Faction innate attack and defense bonuses are accounted for.
Pact units are excluded (this is to avoid overbuilding defense when allied units are traversing through own territory).
Treaty units are counted at 0.25.
Truce units are counted at 0.5.
Vendetta units are counted at 1.0.
Then the above value is compared to total own units defense value.
If the defense value is less than attack value the needs for building more defensive units arises. The worse matching the more the urge.
The idea is to match vendetta faction attack potential with equal own defense potential. That with +50% territory and +50% base should give enough protection.
Also AI tries to build units in bases with at least average mineral_surplus.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 16, 2020, 10:39:23 pm
* Simplification in PTS functionality: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#the-planetary-transit-system.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 16, 2020, 11:28:32 pm
* Combat units are reassigned to avoid oversupport. Configuration parameter: unit_home_base_reassignment_production_threshold.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 20, 2020, 05:43:36 pm
Post by: lolada on August 29, 2020, 12:00:31 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 29, 2020, 01:21:01 am
ai_useWTPAlgorithms=1
Post by: lolada on August 29, 2020, 11:34:19 am
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21510.new#new
Post by: MercantileInterest on August 29, 2020, 04:34:46 pm
QuoteI have a wild idea. What if we pursue the idea of free citizens traveling across the empire at any time? Not necessarily at the base creation time. For example, let disgruntles citizen those otherwise turn into drones travel to better places in other bases those have excess of happiness and where extra citizen does not become a drone yet?It would be inventing a mechanic for the sake of a single project which only a single faction would be able to build.
Plus it runs into the problem of the contribution mechanics in that a base should be a self-contained, independent entity. All effects should be evident from looking at the Psych tab and should not depend on situations in other bases.
Yeah. I feel the same already. Too complicated. 🤔
I guess, we'll go with your average base size approach for now.
A very intriguing idea, if you mean a mechanic that lets the player manually redistribute his citizens across his bases. You've reached your population cap? Send excess citizens to smaller bases. Nutrient failure? Evacuate half the base. Captured enemy territory? Move the inhabitants back to your own empire.
In scenario editor, you can manipulate population with - or +. Imagine, after you build PTS, you select a base window and press either - or + (doesn't matter which.) Another window opens, showing all of your bases and a field to enter a number. If you enter the number 3 and select Gaia's Landing, 3 citizens will be sent from whatever base you were looking at to Gaia's Landing.
Might add a check to keep this from breaking population caps. Might not.
AI would have a hard time handling this. Perhaps it could have a different effect for them, closer to what Nevill has in mind.
Post by: MercantileInterest on August 29, 2020, 04:54:15 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 29, 2020, 09:50:06 pm
QuoteI have a wild idea. What if we pursue the idea of free citizens traveling across the empire at any time? Not necessarily at the base creation time. For example, let disgruntles citizen those otherwise turn into drones travel to better places in other bases those have excess of happiness and where extra citizen does not become a drone yet?It would be inventing a mechanic for the sake of a single project which only a single faction would be able to build.
Plus it runs into the problem of the contribution mechanics in that a base should be a self-contained, independent entity. All effects should be evident from looking at the Psych tab and should not depend on situations in other bases.
Yeah. I feel the same already. Too complicated. 🤔
I guess, we'll go with your average base size approach for now.
A very intriguing idea, if you mean a mechanic that lets the player manually redistribute his citizens across his bases. You've reached your population cap? Send excess citizens to smaller bases. Nutrient failure? Evacuate half the base. Captured enemy territory? Move the inhabitants back to your own empire.
In scenario editor, you can manipulate population with - or +. Imagine, after you build PTS, you select a base window and press either - or + (doesn't matter which.) Another window opens, showing all of your bases and a field to enter a number. If you enter the number 3 and select Gaia's Landing, 3 citizens will be sent from whatever base you were looking at to Gaia's Landing.
Might add a check to keep this from breaking population caps. Might not.
AI would have a hard time handling this. Perhaps it could have a different effect for them, closer to what Nevill has in mind.
Yep. I was excited by this idea at first but it is completely new mechanics that would require tons of time to program it. 😒
And we also need to teach AI that, which is even more time. Not worth it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 29, 2020, 10:10:16 pm
The formulas and numbers I came up with are disputable but I found them a good first iteration estimate to evaluate OP/UP SE models.
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Social_Engineering_Mod
Post by: Tayta Malikai on August 29, 2020, 10:35:14 pm
Might be good to include the before and after SE configuration lines, so we can see how the numbers correspond to the changes, if you aren't already doing that.
Post by: MercantileInterest on August 29, 2020, 10:43:09 pm
Noticed one of the AI's formers leveling a rocky site with a mineral resource instead of mining it. Strange behavior.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 30, 2020, 03:41:25 am
Oh huh, that was you who wrote that? I quite enjoyed it the first time round. I even tried using the suggested changes themselves, although they didn't really gel with me at the time.
Glad that you've enjoyed it.
That was long ago when text modding is only what I could work with. I found some of my initial assumptions quite questionable. However, I have stopped working on it completely as I didn't believe anyone was reading it at all.
😢
Might be good to include the before and after SE configuration lines, so we can see how the numbers correspond to the changes, if you aren't already doing that.
Well, I've included vanilla and v. 117. So they are essentially an absolute before and an absolute after. Anything else you would love to see there?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 30, 2020, 04:08:40 am
The conversion between energy and minerals - that is what still bothering me. Even though it seems that I have established energy reserves to minerals conversion ratio it doesn't correctly describe relation between RESEARCH and INDUSTRY. With time I hardened my view on this that all major effects can be reduced to either RESEARCH and INDUSTRY (or combination of them). However it is quite difficult to devise clear relation between these two. I don't mean a direct ratio like 1 RESEARCH = 0.5 INDUSTRY. As you can see in the article, all my formulas include a lot of other factors. And that is completely fine. Effect values varies greatly with various factors. The purpose of this exercise is to understand how the relation between different effects vary based on these other parameters.
So the big question here is what do you think relation between RESEARCH and INDUSTRY? Feel free to throw different ideas.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 30, 2020, 04:56:28 am
😁
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 30, 2020, 07:56:42 pm
* [bug] Tile yield calculation didn't set base. That caused crash for tile yield computation with collector on it and adjacent mirror when base is not set sometimes. Strangely it didn't bite me earlier.
I just caught this today. Before it didn't bother me at all. So, apparently, this but manifests itself quite rarely and you may not even experience it once. It happens during AI turn. If it does - use this version for fix.
Post by: MercantileInterest on August 31, 2020, 03:45:39 am
Sent locusts to bomb Lal's boreholes. He never attacks my locusts with his ground units but when the AI sends locusts to attack me, I can attack them with my ground units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 31, 2020, 03:49:15 am
AI likes to build land formers in sea bases. You having the same issue or did I somehow cause it by tinkering with the txt?
I didn't play with production priorities. So - either vanilla or Thinker.
Sent locusts to bomb Lal's boreholes. He never attacks my locusts with his ground units but when the AI sends locusts to attack me, I can attack them with my ground units.
Locust uses gravship chassis so it is attackable by ground units. The fact that AI didn't attack yours is just poor AI programming as usual. It's pretty dumb. Even in Thinker it is just less dumber than in vanilla.
Post by: lolada on August 31, 2020, 08:52:26 am
Actually, when we are on the topic you, guys, may help me with this a bit. I found that most important SE effects can be reduced to either mineral intake or energy intake. I do not worry about PROBE or non combat PLANET benefits. Their weights can be adjusted by eyeballing and playing experience.
The conversion between energy and minerals - that is what still bothering me. Even though it seems that I have established energy reserves to minerals conversion ratio it doesn't correctly describe relation between RESEARCH and INDUSTRY. With time I hardened my view on this that all major effects can be reduced to either RESEARCH and INDUSTRY (or combination of them). However it is quite difficult to devise clear relation between these two. I don't mean a direct ratio like 1 RESEARCH = 0.5 INDUSTRY. As you can see in the article, all my formulas include a lot of other factors. And that is completely fine. Effect values varies greatly with various factors. The purpose of this exercise is to understand how the relation between different effects vary based on these other parameters.
So the big question here is what do you think relation between RESEARCH and INDUSTRY? Feel free to throw different ideas.
I find that in practice Industry > Research and its heavily skewed. Research is important up to a point, you have to get those key techs.. for example resource unlock, advanced terraforming, probe teams for example. But once you get that many techs are actually not important and unit/facilities spam takes over to win. You can research a lot but not have industry to build those expensive units and get overrun by military industrious AIs like Hive.
Another huge thing is Probe teams - AI builds tons of them, so does the player - and tons of techs get stolen. So factions with weaker research have excellent catch up mechanism. There's no good industry catch up mechanism.
One observation is that industry AIs are doing excellent (Hive, Drones) while research ones like University tend to get first to die. There are other factors, but in general it seems to work this way. One can argue that Zakharov does not die due to Research bonus.. but look at it this way - his bonus is not good enough to make up for his weaknesses. Meanwhile industry AIs are usually able to get enough techs and spam tons of secret projects, units and facilities to overpower other factions. Santiago for example tends to perform badly crippled by -Industry. Miriam with -Research is often very strong AI.
Player can shift the trend and use research quite well - most new players really like to play University. Still the easiest game i had are with factions like Hive and Drones they are just great.
I would not underestimate Probe and Planet rating they matter a lot especially for AI. Player can ignore these and with good play play around the minuses, but AI gets ruined. Worms often ruin -planet factions and Probe teams are significant investment. Its not just random worms around - which can deal huge damage in right circumstances - but also later fungus blooms and worm spawns which ruin terrain and then kill defenders and base facilities.
Having high probe rating really helps and negative is really really bad. One of the reasons why University is so pathetic in the mod is due to AI probe team spam.. Uni is just easy to subvert and steal tech from.
Post by: lolada on August 31, 2020, 09:30:37 am
Quote
Reworked my SE weights article. Made it more concise and to the point. Also added some contemporary WTP examples.
The formulas and numbers I came up with are disputable but I found them a good first iteration estimate to evaluate OP/UP SE models.
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Social_Engineering_Mod
Great work ;b; this is really impressive. I took somewhat detailed look in prior version as well. Its huge amount of information and its all very complicated so its hard comment generally. We could discuss interesting parts. I am a bit currently out of a loop with new SE changes (you changed some things recently). Gonna comment a few things I found interesting last time i looked at this.
SUPPORT AND POLICE rating
This pairing is interesting. Support is really good stat early to mid game and since its non-linear its potentially OP if stacked to max and played in military playstyle. What striked me about pair is that Police is actually quite useless without enough Support. Police requires investment to build units and thats already asking for a lot. Then if you don't have support its -1 mineral flat drain and thats a big no no. Higher police means -2, -3 mineral drain and thats even worse.
So I think +Police rating is kind of crap if not combined with enough +Support. One could try to combine it, but then there's opportunity cost of not picking something else. Support on the other hand on its own is really good and as you pointed out quite a few times, its better than Industry for quite a while.
Growth
I think you had 2.0 rating all the way in prior article ? Not sure, its now rated 2.0 1.4 0.7 over time.. i guess in general that's good, but it bugged me earlier. I would emphasize that ratings could be judged differently for player and AI. So what's the deal.
For one, AI can grow much more than player on Transcend (drones issues).. so player does not need to rate growth highly for long period of game. Its actully a bit binary for the player if optimized.. Secure room for the growth (for example build Holo Theaters everywhere.. grow quickly.. turn back SE to something else).
Same goes for Probe and Planet ratings. AI really needs these to be neutral or positive or its very bad for them. Player can handle it.
Some random comments
Quote
Apparently, Fundamentalist is a complete waste of a SE slot, which is also corresponds to community opinion.
- In general, but its great for early rush/war as temporary pick. Can be game decider.
Quote
Power seems to be under-powered as well especially later in the game when SUPPORT value deteriorates.
Not sure if you changed it again after you buffed it with change to -1 Industry (from -2), but I remember it was quite good at that point. Having very high morale units is no joke, its really important in WTP. So once you have strong economy and are ready for war Power is excellent pick up.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 31, 2020, 08:24:37 pm
I find that in practice Industry > Research and its heavily skewed. Research is important up to a point, you have to get those key techs.. for example resource unlock, advanced terraforming, probe teams for example. But once you get that many techs are actually not important and unit/facilities spam takes over to win. You can research a lot but not have industry to build those expensive units and get overrun by military industrious AIs like Hive.
Another huge thing is Probe teams - AI builds tons of them, so does the player - and tons of techs get stolen. So factions with weaker research have excellent catch up mechanism. There's no good industry catch up mechanism.
One observation is that industry AIs are doing excellent (Hive, Drones) while research ones like University tend to get first to die. There are other factors, but in general it seems to work this way. One can argue that Zakharov does not die due to Research bonus.. but look at it this way - his bonus is not good enough to make up for his weaknesses. Meanwhile industry AIs are usually able to get enough techs and spam tons of secret projects, units and facilities to overpower other factions. Santiago for example tends to perform badly crippled by -Industry. Miriam with -Research is often very strong AI.
That is absolutely my impression too. RESEARCH is no match for INDUSTRY. I usually tend to approximately evaluate it as RESEARCH = 1/2 of INDUSTRY. Different evaluation techniques gave me a range of somewhere 0.3-0.7 for RESEARCH/INDUSTRY. As for other factor affecting this I also agree with you that it may become slightly less important as game progress. Especially because INDUSTRY is a completely proportional factor: 10% increase in it results in 10% more stuff built over the course of the game. Whereas 10% increase in RESEARCH doesn't give 10% more tech over other factions, even without stealing, due to the ever-growing tech cost. The player will be just 4-6 techs ahead all the time.
I would not underestimate Probe and Planet rating they matter a lot especially for AI. Player can ignore these and with good play play around the minuses, but AI gets ruined. Worms often ruin -planet factions and Probe teams are significant investment. Its not just random worms around - which can deal huge damage in right circumstances - but also later fungus blooms and worm spawns which ruin terrain and then kill defenders and base facilities.
Having high probe rating really helps and negative is really really bad. One of the reasons why University is so pathetic in the mod is due to AI probe team spam.. Uni is just easy to subvert and steal tech from.
Oh, no. I don't underestimate them. I am just saying it is hard to compare them to some economic effects like INDUSTRY but I don't worry about them as they have direct applications and can be evaluated from the "feeling" of it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 31, 2020, 08:47:27 pm
Growth
I think you had 2.0 rating all the way in prior article ? Not sure, its now rated 2.0 1.4 0.7 over time.. i guess in general that's good, but it bugged me earlier. I would emphasize that ratings could be judged differently for player and AI. So what's the deal.
For one, AI can grow much more than player on Transcend (drones issues).. so player does not need to rate growth highly for long period of game. Its actully a bit binary for the player if optimized.. Secure room for the growth (for example build Holo Theaters everywhere.. grow quickly.. turn back SE to something else).
It's difficult to evaluate precisely as it is a far future investment. All other effects are immediate. Yes, its weight definitely varies depending on evaluation method and point of view. If was usually higher than 1, though. Don't remember ever valuing it 0.7. Probably a mistake. I'd say 1.5-2.5 somewhere. Again, very depending on game stage. Quite useless at the end (except to buff the score).
My evaluation have nothing to do with their usage strategies. Just with overall bonus "fairness" they bring with them. Obviously, time and game state dictate the choice.
QuoteApparently, Fundamentalist is a complete waste of a SE slot, which is also corresponds to community opinion.- In general, but its great for early rush/war as temporary pick. Can be game decider.
Agree. But again, I am not saying it won't ever be picked. I just wanted to increase a proportion of time it picked to match other choices.
QuotePower seems to be under-powered as well especially later in the game when SUPPORT value deteriorates.
Not sure if you changed it again after you buffed it with change to -1 Industry (from -2), but I remember it was quite good at that point. Having very high morale units is no joke, its really important in WTP. So once you have strong economy and are ready for war Power is excellent pick up.
That was vanilla analysis. In WTP it has one less INDUSTRY penalty. That seemed to do the trick.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 01, 2020, 03:56:16 am
* SE reworked a little.\
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Social_Engineering_Mod
Inspired by recent conversations and feedback.
Post by: lolada on September 01, 2020, 09:36:12 am
Some initial thoughts:
Police state: +2 Supp, +2 Pol, -2 Eff, -1 Ind - quite nice combo here for early game, like this one. Also interesting for Hive.. this -1 Industry will balance them a bit.
Democratic: +2 Eff, +2 Gro, -2 Supp, -1 Pla - quite balanced here, growth is great, Eff not as much as before and Supp really hurts so its not no-brain pick. -Pla is also annoying it matters. Overall good.
Fund: +2 Mor, +2 Probe, +1 Ind, -3 Res - quite good war pickup, Research penalty is bit hefty. Although I was a lot in Fundamentalist in some game, I didn't mind -2 : ). Probe team helps. This is actually really good pick on transcend since you are 95% of time in war. Ind bonus is really nice to have.
Free Market: +2 Eco, -4 Pol, -2 Pla, -1 Probe - this might be now balanced gotta play a game. Its one trick pony: +2 Eco is obviously awesome, but then you have to use psych slider. Planet and probe minuses are quite a downside. Kind of like it at first glance. Its interesting since it hurts probe rating and with ton of money you want to use probe teams. Also -2 planet from -3 is likely good move since AI really struggles with worms.
Planned: +2 Gro, +1 Ind, -2 Eff, -1 Supp - This might be new default go to pick in WTP mod for factions that do not pick Free Market.
Green: +2 Eff, +2 Pla, -2 Gro - If Efficiency is not strong this is really hard to pick since - 2 growth is annoying. Planet is nice when in war and having lots of units. So i guess this is lategame pick for green factions.
Power: +2 Mor, +2 Supp, +1 Gro, -2 Ind - Power is quite strong pick once you have enough units built - since building them at -20% is bad idea. Its kind of fitting that it has -Industry to make it hard to build facilities and secret project. Its interesting, like it. +Growth helps a bit offset prod penalty.
Knowledge: +2 Eff, +5! Research, -2 Probe - OK, this looks NUTS :D. As far as i know going over +5 works.. with +7 (as Uni..) you should have 70% cheaper research or am i wrong? I don't know about this it looks over the the top.. something like +3 was plenty strong. Maybe it works out, i might play a test game with University for fun. It may work - did you actually play the game with this bonus? I agree that research was no a great pick earlier compared to Wealth for example.
Btw can we do something about -2 Probe here (esp for University).. Its -4 for them and in general -2 probe kills AI due to nonlinear effects. I wouldn't mind having -1 Eco, or -1 Ind here instead with maybe -1 Probe. Zakh could also have -1 Probe at default since he's weak.. so he ends up with -2 total once he has Knowledge picked up. Other AIs seem to rarely pick knowledge (at least in earlier patches).
Wealth: +2 Eco, +1 Ind, -2 Mor, -1 Pol - this one was always nice pickup. I suppose its interesting because it clashes with Knowledge and Power. For example compared to Power its at -4 morale disadvantage so good luck in war. Knowledge is also more interesting with +5 Res.. if its not broken ^^.
Cybernetic: +2 Eff, +2 Pla, +2 Res, -4 Pol - This one feels weird to me - for example it really does not go well for The Cult and Cha Dawn - he is +Planet and Police themed and this has -4 Police. Cybernetic could have strong -growth. +Eff and +Res are fitting, I guess planet can go here.
Eudaimonic: +2 Eco, +1 Gro, -1 Eff, -3 Morale - AI likes to pick this one and its not as good for them as it looks like. I'd nerf this morale bonus to -2 since AIs end up on very green units lategame from my experience. I wouldn't mind +2 Growth here its future society after all. So lazy fat guys enjoying in life, still efficient, but hates fighting ^^.
Thought Control: +2 morale, +2 Pol, +2 Pro, -3 Supp - I used this one a lot - you sometimes pick this one for Elite units basically and tank the Support or balance it with another SE choice. Its strong for war. There's also Living Rafinery which give +2 Supp and helps tank this effect. In a way I don't like this theme, but am not sure how to improve it. You somehow made it work with Cybernetic and Eudaimonic.. so i guess its ok.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 01, 2020, 02:09:09 pm
Looking at changes to SE. I am a bit bit confused, how do you get 3.0 weight for Green for early game for example? It has +2 EFF, +2 PLANET, -2 GROWTH. Its actually quite bad pickup especially since EFF is not as strong as before.
+2 TALENT - that's how. 😁 Unfortunately, it is not shown on the SE screen. 😟 I should subscribe this in words (fixed now). Now looking at it I am thinking if I overdid this. Maybe just +1 should be enough.
Fund: +2 Mor, +2 Probe, +1 Ind, -3 Res - quite good war pickup, Research penalty is bit hefty. Although I was a lot in Fundamentalist in some game, I didn't mind -2 : ). Probe team helps. This is actually really good pick on transcend since you are 95% of time in war. Ind bonus is really nice to have.
As you analyzed yourself, RESEARCH is no match for INDUSTRY - maybe twice of even thrice weaker. I have listened and increased overall RESEARCH values (both positive and negative) as this supposedly won't break the system much in general. The rest of the effects are very good war combo. So extra tech penalty shouldn't matter. Even Believers will steal enough tech for them using military superiority.
Free Market: +2 Eco, -4 Pol, -2 Pla, -1 Probe - this might be now balanced gotta play a game. Its one trick pony: +2 Eco is obviously awesome, but then you have to use psych slider. Planet and probe minuses are quite a downside. Kind of like it at first glance. Its interesting since it hurts probe rating and with ton of money you want to use probe teams. Also -2 planet from -3 is likely good move since AI really struggles with worms.
I am sure about PLANET because 3 * 10% = 2 * 15% combat bonus now. Not for the rest of changes. Even though I feel it has too harsh POLICE penalty it completely prevented using this choice during the war in vanilla. Not so much now. This choice is very nonlinear and controversial so I would rather relay on play testing feedback.
Green: +2 Eff, +2 Pla, -2 Gro - If Efficiency is not strong this is really hard to pick since - 2 growth is annoying. Planet is nice when in war and having lots of units. So i guess this is lategame pick for green factions.
Hidden +2 TALENT. Sorry I didn't highlight this next to diagram explicitly. Again, I was trying to give it some early usage but maybe overdid it.
Knowledge: +2 Eff, +5! Research, -2 Probe - OK, this looks NUTS :D. As far as i know going over +5 works.. with +7 (as Uni..) you should have 70% cheaper research or am i wrong? I don't know about this it looks over the the top.. something like +3 was plenty strong. Maybe it works out, i might play a test game with University for fun. It may work - did you actually play the game with this bonus? I agree that research was no a great pick earlier compared to Wealth for example.
Again, current opinion is RESEARCH is not that powerful and game breaking as we both agreed. I have removed hidden tech cost modifier. So University doesn't have their +20% hidden bonus anymore neither other factions get hidden inherent penalties. Now RESEARCH cost exactly as advertised on SE screen. This also makes it slightly weaker. So, I guess it won't break it much. After all everything researched is going to be stolen by others anyway. So this advantage is kinda quasi temporary. We'll see.
Btw can we do something about -2 Probe here (esp for University).. Its -4 for them and in general -2 probe kills AI due to nonlinear effects. I wouldn't mind having -1 Eco, or -1 Ind here instead with maybe -1 Probe. Zakh could also have -1 Probe at default since he's weak.. so he ends up with -2 total once he has Knowledge picked up. Other AIs seem to rarely pick knowledge (at least in earlier patches).
-2 PROBE ruins the faction? I never thought that effect is too devastating in general. Fine, opponents can buy your bases twice as cheap but remember, subversion cost growths with number of bases subverted. So they are not going to buy twice as more bases, just 1.5 times more. And after that even happen that benefit runs out and puff - nobody cares about negative effects anymore. Besides, it is very short scale and it doesn't stack. So any more negative values add nothing to penalty. That is my understanding only, which may be skewed as any other.
Cybernetic: +2 Eff, +2 Pla, +2 Res, -4 Pol - This one feels weird to me - for example it really does not go well for The Cult and Cha Dawn - he is +Planet and Police themed and this has -4 Police. Cybernetic could have strong -growth. +Eff and +Res are fitting, I guess planet can go here.
Don't get it about the theme. It is almost how it is in vanilla. I just increased penalty a bit. May revert it back as well - no biggie. Negative GROWTH is an option here. However, then POLICE won't have enough negative numbers across SE choices and we really have to have them here and there due its quite long negative scale and +2 POLICE from Brood Pits later. So if take it off this one, we should reassign it to somebody else: Knowledge, Green?
Eudaimonic: +2 Eco, +1 Gro, -1 Eff, -3 Morale - AI likes to pick this one and its not as good for them as it looks like. I'd nerf this morale bonus to -2 since AIs end up on very green units lategame from my experience. I wouldn't mind +2 Growth here its future society after all. So lazy fat guys enjoying in life, still efficient, but hates fighting ^^.
I redistributed one GROWTH to Power. Extra one here would make reaching pop boom easier for native +1 GROWTH factions then. Not a big deal, though. One still need to collect quite a number of these bonuses to trigger a boom.
Keep in mind, though, that extra GROWTH requires some more of other penalties to balance it. If you fine with this, I can change it.
Post by: lolada on September 01, 2020, 03:09:06 pm
Quote
+2 talent green
I see.. maybe, you probably did not. I used to think Human Genome Project is great with its + talent.. i played with your mod and from what i can this + talent thing is really useful only very early on. As you expand and grow it turns into kind of invisible bonus, almost irrelevant due to super drones and base spam (at least on Transcend). So +2 Talent is likely not much better. Using +1 Talent to buff some weak group is mostly ineffective imo.
Quote
-2 PROBE ruins the faction?
From what I observed Zakharov is useless : ). The only game where he was good is one where he was isolated for a time and managed to get Hunter-Seeker. In one game Morgan subverted his 3 biggest bases next to HQ it was kind of sad. In general any AI clears him from the map pretty easily since they steal his units (this is serious power shift once this happens), his techs and then even his bases. And he gets wrecked by drone issues in general so he can't even grow as others -_-.
I believe any -Probe is quite bad for AI since everyone is using so many probe teams. Even losing them in battles is a pain because AI build very expensive advanced armored probe teams. AI often suicides combat units, even lots of base defenders (which can be exploited) to try to kill armored probes.
Quote
Research and other changesLets see how it works. I am really not sure about switching anything in future society, just presented some of my thinking there. It all seem to work decently so maybe no need to change it. -3 Morale Eudaimonia.. that really looked too harsh - check maybe some lategames I had impression AI is often stuck at very green morale.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 01, 2020, 03:25:51 pm
I see.. maybe, you probably did not. I used to think Human Genome Project is great with its + talent.. i played with your mod and from what i can this + talent thing is really useful only very early on. As you expand and grow it turns into kind of invisible bonus, almost irrelevant due to super drones and base spam (at least on Transcend). So +2 Talent is likely not much better. Using +1 Talent to buff some weak group is mostly ineffective imo.
Extra talent is a huge early game bonus. Equivalent to +1 POLICE AND +1 SUPPORT combined! Yes, it deteriorates with the course of the game due to large cash flow and ability to channel it into psych easily. So, obviously, it help models those are quite weak initially but then grow in strength - like Green.
Quote-2 PROBE ruins the faction?
From what I observed Zakharov is useless : ). The only game where he was good is one where he was isolated for a time and managed to get Hunter-Seeker. In one game Morgan subverted his 3 biggest bases next to HQ it was kind of sad. In general any AI clears him from the map pretty easily since they steal his units (this is serious power shift once this happens), his techs and then even his bases. And he gets wrecked by drone issues in general so he can't even grow as others -_-.
I believe any -Probe is quite bad for AI since everyone is using so many probe teams. Even losing them in battles is a pain because AI build very expensive advanced armored probe teams. AI often suicides combat units, even lots of base defenders (which can be exploited) to try to kill armored probes.
I agree to reconsider PROBE weight. Currently it is about as RESEARCH. Do you think it should be higher?
One reason Zakharov does bad is that his RESEARCH bonus is not really that amazing, as you proved yourself, and he has nothing else to use but all the penalties: -2 PROBE, extra drones, etc. Besides, his research priority is Discovery - that doesn't give him much super weaponry or infrastructure advantage.
QuoteResearch and other changesLets see how it works. I am really not sure about switching anything in future society, just presented some of my thinking there. It all seem to work decently so maybe no need to change it. -3 Morale Eudaimonia.. that really looked too harsh - check maybe some lategames I had impression AI is often stuck at very green morale.
Very green in late game??? They what - do not build morale facilities at all? Anyway, adding one MORALE back will just turn them green instead of very green. No big difference.
My impression is strangely opposite. I mostly see AI commandos and elites running around. But well, let's see.
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 02, 2020, 08:40:24 pm
I set bases to produce no default resources in the txt. 0-0-0. If you build on a mineral resource, this becomes 0-2-0. If you build on an energy resource, this becomes 0-0-2. If on a jungle tile, 1-0-0 but, if you build on a nutrient resource, this stays 0-0-0. Any idea why?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 02, 2020, 09:03:59 pm
For making the AI smarter, consider adding a check so it starts guarding its bases with psi defenders once orbital insertions become available (either by pre-req tech or someone building the space elevator.) -50% combat on the turn your unit drops out of orbit is crippling against psi defenders. What I always do in multiplayer anyway when someone builds the space elevator.
That is actually a normal strategy at any point in the game as long as PLANET advantage is better than weaponry advantage. It applies equally to attack and defense, obviously.
I set bases to produce no default resources in the txt. 0-0-0. If you build on a mineral resource, this becomes 0-2-0. If you build on an energy resource, this becomes 0-0-2. If on a jungle tile, 1-0-0 but, if you build on a nutrient resource, this stays 0-0-0. Any idea why?
Never observed it. Send me a savegame.
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 02, 2020, 09:22:26 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 02, 2020, 10:46:31 pm
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 03, 2020, 12:13:03 am
2+2 = 2x2
Puzzling to add a feature that makes no difference.
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2020, 12:40:38 am
For making the AI smarter, consider adding a check so it starts guarding its bases with psi defenders once orbital insertions become available (either by pre-req tech or someone building the space elevator.) -50% combat on the turn your unit drops out of orbit is crippling against psi defenders. What I always do in multiplayer anyway when someone builds the space elevator.
In my mod, the AIs tend to make a lot of mindworms and spore launchers if the game goes to late game, because conventional weapons and armors in my mod are rather expensive the more powerful they get. Unfortunately the "asymmetry" game mechanic of SMAC makes the indigenous life form the One True Weapons Platform of the game. They have almost no disadvantages, the main one being merely that they're slow. On land that can be solved with rails, and with enough Formers, anything can become land.
I never think about Psi Defense armor because I don't see why it's useful compared to building a mindworm.
I've noticed that Spore Launchers are extremely effective air defense against Conventional Missiles. The missile doesn't get to just blow them up, it has to fight psi combat.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 12:51:02 am
Setting population nutrient intake to 1 is an interesting idea. It solves highly unequal base growth speed on rainy and moist land. You should advertise it yourself and don't wait until someone accidentally discovers it.
😁
Currently the base on moist land grows slow initially and even slower with each new citizen. It cannot develop decent mineral output just because there is not enough food to exchange for minerals. Bases on rainy land grow faster initially and keep growing at the same rate regardless of size. Their nutrient output increases with size so there is a plenty of food to work forests and mines. They have decent mineral output that increases proportionally to base size. In this regard jungle is the most OP landmark of them all. It makes all tiles rainy plus one nutrient on top. There is so much food that it just has to be converted to minerals at accelerated pace to avoid overgrowing. Moist land base cannot afford to work even a single forest without halving growth speed and get their minerals from random rolling tiles only (= 0.5 minerals/pop). Rainy land base can afford extra forest per population (= 2.5 minerals/pop) and jungle base can afford a rocky mine per population (=4.5 minerals/pop)! So seemingly not so big 50% increase in farmed tile output (2,moist -> 3,rainy) results in enormous 400% increase in mineral output (0.5 -> 2.5). And even more for jungle bases. I believe this is too much of luck factor that needs to be mitigated somehow.
This is a big power of extra nutrients those can be converted into two minerals each.
Set citizen nutrient intake to 1 solves this problem. It benefits all bases but proportionally more to worst ones. High nutrient bases would grow even more but not that much due to ever-increasing growth demand. Whereas previously stagnated bases start to grow normally. Mineral intake disproportion lowers down to 2.5 -> 4.5 (80%) - 5 times less disproportion!
This setup also allows to nullify base tile input altogether as MercantileInterest did exactly. That removes unfair bonus to smaller bases, which, in turn, instigates need for growth. Enormous empires consisting of barren size 1 bases becomes less attractive.
That, of course speeds up the whole course of the game significantly and may uncover some other nasty problems but I am willing to try it out.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 12:52:22 am
Ok but why? In your txt, you set base nutrient yield to 2.
2+2 = 2x2
Puzzling to add a feature that makes no difference.
Why what? This is ORIGINAL VANILLA game feature. Not mine! I cannot explain why it is designed like that just disassembled it for you.
And yes, it is not noticeable when base nutrient input is set to 2. Maybe somebody's sloppy programming and testing. You can experiment with different base nutrient yields and discover this dependency yourself.
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 03, 2020, 02:24:03 am
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 03, 2020, 02:58:57 am
Colony Module, Colony Pod, 0, 8,28, -1, None,
That comes out to about a hundred minerals to build a colony pod. No small amount but you'll be growing faster and you start with four formers, so it's not as big a number as it would be with other setups. You also start with two other colony pods, for a total of four. These extra units are made possible by your ini file. (There's not room to add them all in the faction txt.) Am very grateful you made this possible. Without these bonus units, early game would be tedious.
Another advantage of bases growing much faster than before is that it reduces the competitive edge to pop-booming, while still leaving the option intact. This new growth dynamic also fixes the planetary transit system.
Your reactor cost reduction formula is also extremely useful. Before, fusion reactor made my overpriced colony pods far cheaper, thereby ushering in an age of mass cities anytime anyone discovered the tech.
For your mod, if you reduce the nutrient intake to 1, you might want to try increasing this line:
10, ; Nutrient cost multiplier
You have a better grasp of game mechanics than I do but I'm trying to capture a slightly different experience. You should try multiplayer sometime. A lot of game components start to make sense. You put deep pressure hull on your ships. Cloaked hovertanks are the most absurd fun. Psi armor and weapons become very useful.
Scattered thoughts but I'm grateful for all the options you've made available.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 03, 2020, 03:03:05 am
No small amount but you'll be growing faster and you start with four formers, so it's not as big a number as it would be with other setups. You also start with two other colony pods, for a total of four. These extra units are made possible by your ini file. (There's not room to add them all in the faction txt.) Am very grateful you made this possible. Without these bonus units, early game would be tedious.
Does that mean that these lines
Code: [Select]
; Spawn this many extra formers/colony pods for every computer faction at the game start.
free_formers=0
free_colony_pods=0apply to all factions contrary to what the comment says?
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 03, 2020, 03:04:46 am
A key to add extra scout patrols might be useful, so the extra colony pods could be guarded. Am currently using version 102. Version 103, apparently, made the worms more plentiful and aggressive in early game, which makes me wary of using it. On the other hand, extra scout patrols might allow the player to harvest pods too quickly.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 04:11:21 am
Sorry about that. I somehow interpreted 'original feature' as 'this is my original idea! Great feature isn't it?' Looking back, obviously not what you said.
No worries. I wasn't offended. Sorry about little confusing wording.
When I imagined your confusion about why I would introduce such an "original" feature. I actually had a good laugh.
🤣
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 04:22:21 am
Kind of you to say. Hadn't thought of nutrient intake 1 in those terms. Simply think that faster base growth but slower colony pod production better mimics what an actual settlement of an alien planet would look like. Fights ICS too. I also set farms to add +2 nutrients rather than the old +1.
Well, I did. Thank you for mentioning +2 farms. This plays to the same end and could be an alternative (or cumulative) to 1 intake. I would probably think like 10 times before I introduce both of these features as default but one of them - surely intriguing option.
Another advantage of bases growing much faster than before is that it reduces the competitive edge to pop-booming, while still leaving the option intact. This new growth dynamic also fixes the planetary transit system.
Indeed.
Your reactor cost reduction formula is also extremely useful. Before, fusion reactor made my overpriced colony pods far cheaper, thereby ushering in an age of mass cities anytime anyone discovered the tech.
In last versions reactors do not discount non combat modules. So pure colony keep its cost forever. The armor on it becomes cheaper, though. Doesn't make much sense for colonies but does for formers, transports, colonies.
For your mod, if you reduce the nutrient intake to 1, you might want to try increasing this line:
10, ; Nutrient cost multiplier
Excellent idea! See, you should really present them altogether as a package.
👍
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 04:27:57 am
Does that mean that these linesCode: [Select]; Spawn this many extra formers/colony pods for every computer faction at the game start.apply to all factions contrary to what the comment says?
free_formers=0
free_colony_pods=0
Yes, starting from this one.
Code: [Select]
# Version 70
* Both human and AI get extra colony and former as controlled by free_formers, free_colony_pods in thinker.ini.
Sorry about the confusion. I have inherited these parameters from Thinker but didn't change the description when I have extended them to human.
Will do now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 04:33:06 am
Version 103, apparently, made the worms more plentiful and aggressive in early game, which makes me wary of using it.
You are always can dial it down at game creation time. Roughly, new native life is about one level higher than in vanilla. So new rare = old normal, etc.
In vanilla even normal native life is a mosquito bite and rare is unnoticeable. So I just shifted them one level up for bigger challenge but lowest level still feels like normal vanilla, I guess. Didn't test it very extensively.
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2020, 09:54:29 am
Moist land base cannot afford to work even a single forest without halving growth speed and get their minerals from random rolling tiles only (= 0.5 minerals/pop).
Tree Farms are going to be available by midgame, unless you got rid of them. Also you can't just grow as fast as you want, you have to keep people happy. Your claims about relative growth rate are overstated. You actually need minerals to survive and defend, that's another reason for traditional forest.
Post by: lolada on September 03, 2020, 11:11:05 am
Quote
I agree to reconsider PROBE weight. Currently it is about as RESEARCH. Do you think it should be higher?
Yes, AI needs to value it higher. And it is non linear. -1 is worse than +1 and -2 is terrible to have... while +2 is quite good and +3 is OP great stopping probe team actions.
I think probe teams need nerf in general - they are one of broken / hard to balance features of the game. I would consider even removing -2 Probe completely and hard limiting it at -1.. Or nerf that cos reduction to -10%, -20% instead of -25%, -50%. Then also SE should have more +probes and less -probes.
Or shift Probe rating to +1 as base, as you did with Police i think. Compared to vanilla all factions would be more resistant to probe attacks. While at it reducing AI willingness to build probe teams (or attack with them) slightly, might not be the worst thing to do.
-Support-
- Btw similar logic could be done for support. Everyone having +1/+2 is interesting try - it would speed up the game and make AI better in general. Also having -1 Support is way worse than having +1 which does nothing until you actually build a unit.. while having +3 i think is kind of op. Minuses are harsh in AC2 in general, but its part of fun. Just giving some ideas.. in the end having everything perfectly "balanced" might be boring and bland and make a worse game.
Quote
Very green in late game??? They what - do not build morale facilities at all? Anyway, adding one MORALE back will just turn them green instead of very green. No big difference.
My impression is strangely opposite. I mostly see AI commandos and elites running around. But well, let's see.
Kinda.. military factions like to stack morale, non military eudaimonia and other -morale SE choices.. they likely prefer other kind of facilities as well. My lategame in AAR was me having elite units killing AIs very green units for a long time. AI was actually stronger when it did not have access to Euidaimonia and -3 morale :D ironic.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 02:11:08 pm
Moist land base cannot afford to work even a single forest without halving growth speed and get their minerals from random rolling tiles only (= 0.5 minerals/pop).
Tree Farms are going to be available by midgame, unless you got rid of them. Also you can't just grow as fast as you want, you have to keep people happy. Your claims about relative growth rate are overstated. You actually need minerals to survive and defend, that's another reason for traditional forest.
You are right. I didn't make my statement clear. These two effects: accelerated growth and more minerals from reassigning workers to forests/mines are mutually exclusive, of course. And because of other needs players tend to channel extra food to the latter. That is why I am mostly comparing extra mineral from working non farm tiles. But even then the difference is huge.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 03:03:23 pm
QuoteI agree to reconsider PROBE weight. Currently it is about as RESEARCH. Do you think it should be higher?
Yes, AI needs to value it higher. And it is non linear. -1 is worse than +1 and -2 is terrible to have... while +2 is quite good and +3 is OP great stopping probe team actions.
I think probe teams need nerf in general - they are one of broken / hard to balance features of the game. I would consider even removing -2 Probe completely and hard limiting it at -1.. Or nerf that cos reduction to -10%, -20% instead of -25%, -50%. Then also SE should have more +probes and less -probes.
Or shift Probe rating to +1 as base, as you did with Police i think. Compared to vanilla all factions would be more resistant to probe attacks. While at it reducing AI willingness to build probe teams (or attack with them) slightly, might not be the worst thing to do.
-Support-
- Btw similar logic could be done for support. Everyone having +1/+2 is interesting try - it would speed up the game and make AI better in general. Also having -1 Support is way worse than having +1 which does nothing until you actually build a unit.. while having +3 i think is kind of op. Minuses are harsh in AC2 in general, but its part of fun. Just giving some ideas.. in the end having everything perfectly "balanced" might be boring and bland and make a worse game.
Thank you for expanded answer. I agree that most effects are nonlinear and that is the salt of the game. Everything flat makes it boring as you said. Remember universal paradigm: we don't fix OP things, we are fixing UP things. In this context fixing OP thing makes sense only if this lets other UP things come out of its shadow. The "balance" is a vague word. More specifically, we should pay attention to things those are not countered by some other strategy. Whereas negative PROBE is quite stoppable by counter probes those can be slow (infantry) -> 50% cheaper and 50% stronger due the territory bonus = twice as less investment needed to counter enemy probes.
Those weights, I was asking about are just flat values to help me and other mod designers to come up with SE effects combinations. I am not trying to actually fix SEs. 🤣
Post by: lolada on September 03, 2020, 03:27:54 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 03, 2020, 05:22:16 pm
One idea i keep forgeting. SE weights obviously change during game.. so you have early, mid, late. Important factor also is peace/war and (advanced) not just blindly diplomatic status, but actual severity of threat to player/AI (nearby oponnent or very distant AI, strong opponent vs feeble one). Morale/Probe are not so important in peace.. but during the war they really matter. AI tends to be most of the game in war ^^ so it makes sense to value them accordingly.
You sight penetrates into depth of the idea, man! Yes, they are not flat values but formulas based on other variables. Peace/war (or grades of that) is being one of them. There are plenty others like average base energy intake vs. mineral intake, base size, base count, etc. Many of them. Luckily, most of them gradually develop over the course of the game so we can box their values into more or less narrow range based on game stage. These early/mid/late stages are actually a bundle of such parameters. I could list them all but it is beyond the scope of the article that just explains the method.
The peace/war parameter, though is a different one. It is not tied to game stage and can change drastically there and back between turns. So, formally, I need to split each stage column in two. And this is actually what I did at early technique experimentation stage. Fortunately, I have discovered that I don't need such distinction for my purposes. Just the average would do. So I have introduced another game stage parameter for the average war/peace percentage proportion. Since it is just a percentage, one can dial it up and down emulating the threat in between war/piece edges. So currently this war percentage is incorporated into game stage. I understand it is not at all precise but I am not seeking precision with this technique. Only very rough approximation.
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2020, 07:57:37 pm
And because of other needs players tend to channel extra food to the latter.
Another problem for the human player is babysitting the UI. Why do I do a combo of 2-1-2 farmland and 1-2-1 forests? Because when I click on the city resource display to automatically reposition workers on squares, that's what works. I can't be bothered to manually fiddle with worker allocations on squares, except when there's a crisis that needs to be solved. It's too much manual labor. The game is going to invalidate whatever I arranged somehow anyways. I can't "lock" my decisions, or specify any policy of what to allocate when the city grows again and I'm not babysitting it. Way too much micro.
So a human player's growth, is not usually governed by some pure resource trajectory possibility, like "all food" or "all forest". It's governed by whatever worker allocation algorithm is running.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 04, 2020, 04:50:50 am
* Experimental nutrient balance version.
* 1, ; Nutrient intake requirement for citizens
* 15, ; Nutrient cost multiplier
* Base Square, 1, 1, 1, 0,
All alphax.txt changes only.
A little play test feedback. Initially bases seem to grow slowly but somewhat faster later. That is an expected and planned consequence. ICS still occurs but it is equally beneficial to spam at any base size no need to do it in smallest size bases only. Here is mathematical confirmation of this point.
Number of turns to grow new population from current size
Ocean tile yield without and with aqua farm is equal to rainy and jungle yield, correspondingly.
Vanilla (nutrient multiplier: 10)
Code: [Select]
1 2 3 4 5 6
Moist land (surplus = 2+0*pop) 10 15 20 25 30 35 -> grows infinitely with further base size increase
Rainy land (surplus = 2+1*pop) 7 8 8 8 9 9 -> approaches 10 with further base size increase
Jungle (surplus = 2+2*pop) 5 5 5 5 5 5 -> approaches 5 with further base size increase
This version (nutrient multiplier: 15)
Code: [Select]
1 2 3 4 5 6
Moist land (surplus = 1+1*pop) 15 15 15 15 15 15 -> approaches 15 with further base size increase
Rainy land (surplus = 1+2*pop) 10 9 9 8 8 8 -> approaches 7.5 with further base size increase
Jungle (surplus = 1+3*pop) 8 7 6 6 6 6 -> approaches 5 with further base size increase
As you can see, jungle and rainy bases growth rate progression doesn't change much. The growth rate was stable before and is after. Moist bases growth progression was declining before and is stable now, though. It stabilizes at about half of rainy base rate, which is exactly fair. However, the important thing is that it does not fall into stagnation at all! Which is a very good change. Now most of your bases will exhibit steady growth.
I think it is a great finding by MercantileInterest. With that ICS becomes non issue as it is completely fine to spam colonies at any point in the game and at any base size with about same impact to population growth. No need to specifically use extremely small undeveloped bases for that purpose only.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 05:29:02 pm
One approach is to shorten gravship range to penalize all-surface-unlimited-fuel chassis. Something like 4. This would not hurt conventional units as they already have 2x-reactor range advantage over locust. So singularity gravship would move at 4+2*4=12, which is is a pretty decent rate for non-refueling unit.
Another approach is to raise cost of locust to offset Brood Pits cost reduction effect. I was thinking about gradual price increase for all natives with time. Something like base + 1 * turns/50. I.e. add one mineral row every 50 turns. This way their cost may grow like that, for example. At the year 300 with Brood Pits locust still cost about 50-75% of best contemporary armored infantry or speeder, yet possessing much better mobility. So this cost progression is not that steep but still smooths the effect of natives being too costly initially and too cheap later.
Code: [Select]
turn 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
worm/launcher/sealurk 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
isle of deep 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
locust 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 05:34:27 pm
Post by: Nevill on September 05, 2020, 07:43:02 pm
With that ICS becomes non issue as it is completely fine to spam colonies at any point in the game and at any base size with about same impact to population growth. No need to specifically use extremely small undeveloped bases for that purpose only.The math model equalizes bases without bonuses.
In practice, this means the Colony Pods will still keep getting spammed from low-pop bases near a nutrient bonus, because +6 surplus food can let the base grow in 3-4 turns from pop 1 to pop 2, or never lose that 2nd pop in the first place. It's the fastest possible growth rate.
But at least building one on a developed base wouldn't be as devastating to its growth, true.
Gating it through minerals like Mercantile Interest does sounds like a necessary step to have the desired effect.
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Somebody reported that Locust is a most effective combat unit at later game. It moves freely due to gravship chassis, quite combat effective with extra PLANET, and relatively cheap with Brood Pits. Apparently it shadows other ways of waging war. Probably need to do something about it.It's only Locusts. And yes, it is a powerful unit, mostly due to the good range that lets you send a good concentration of forces anywhere on the map, while defenders are limited in what they can fortify.
The thing is, it's barely usable without Brood Pits, and requires a large investment in Lifecycle facilities. It's towards the end of the game that it gets powerful, and by that time a couple extra mineral rows is nothing.
(it is also vilnerable to missile barrage; and those are cheaper)
This is a delaying measure ensuring you can't use a unit until late in the game.
I have a couple things to ask. First, can the attack & defend bonuses in one's own territory be decoupled from each other? I feel like while giving defend bonuses is fine to boost the defender, attack bonuses have an undesireable effect. I'd like to be able to test that theory.
Second regards a certain AI/rules exploit.
About 10 years ago I created the ultimate challenge scenario of fighting against 5 AIs, pacted, their starting locations covered with Monsoon Jungle, all assisted by satellites pre-placed in orbit, against a team of a human and an AI. The idea was that AI bases in jungle would grow explosively, triggering bonuses from satellites, and causing them to develop several times faster. They had Fusion tech by 2160s, and all of the Secret Projects were theirs.
I did win the scenario (it wasn't my goal to make it unwinnable), but I had to use a certain exploit to do that. The gist of it is that ZoC rules that add tactical depth to the game, but they have a clause that a unit can move freely to a tile with another unit. Probe teams, cloaked and Air units have another clause that lets them ignore ZoC rules. But even if they are exempt from certain rules, they still contribute to others. This often leads to sending a probe team ahead (moving freely) and then moving your army to the same tile, then moving them further ahead by one tile and repeating, letting your units bypass enemy units they wouldn't normally be able to.
Another exploit is that the rule about only air superiority units being able to attack Needlejets somehow means that no unit in a tile with a Needlejet can be attacked by units without air superiority.
Which I used to my advantage by avoiding fighting and covering my units with Needlejets to send a strike force towards enemy bases, and then gradually killing them one by one. Even if they outnumbered me 10-to-1, they couldn't do anything about the invasion as I bypassed their armies.
This leads me to the following two questions.
a) Can ZoC rules check for units in a tile that are NOT a probe, a cloaked, or an air unit when deciding if a tile is eligible for movement?
b) A Needlejet over a stack of units prevents any of the units in the stack from being attacked unless the attacker has air superiority. Is it possible to attack other eligible units in the stack (not Needlejets) when this happens?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 08:49:35 pm
The math model equalizes bases without bonuses.
But at least building one on a developed base wouldn't be as devastating to its growth, true.
That is correct. It is just a first approximation. No need to dive deeper. This is just to illustrate that this model treats base sizes fairer regarding colony building than vanilla. Actually, any model that produces some excess nutrient per worker would. Growth rate still slows down with size due to working less and less productive tiles - bonus or no bonus. Base with single rainy tile and rest of moist would still be more effective producing colonies at size 1. The proposed modification makes this effect less pronounced for bigger base sizes.
I played it a little and it feels pretty smooth. No stagnated bases and others are growing at about the same pace as in vanilla.
QuoteSomebody reported that Locust is a most effective combat unit at later game. It moves freely due to gravship chassis, quite combat effective with extra PLANET, and relatively cheap with Brood Pits. Apparently it shadows other ways of waging war. Probably need to do something about it.It's only Locusts. And yes, it is a powerful unit, mostly due to the good range that lets you send a good concentration of forces anywhere on the map, while defenders are limited in what they can fortify.
The thing is, it's barely usable without Brood Pits, and requires a large investment in Lifecycle facilities. It's towards the end of the game that it gets powerful, and by that time a couple extra mineral rows is nothing.
If you feel like couple of extra mineral rows is nothing than you have already won the game and nothing means anything including the size of your army. Before that, though, any extra cost may be a matter of life and death. I don't understand why you want to completely discard this. Even if twice as small army will still be able to take bases one by one it will still do it at halved speed or one can afford less enemies at the same time, etc. That is the matter of the right cost. If you think the cost grow progression is too flat it can be more steep. That was just an example of idea proposal.
This is a delaying measure ensuring you can't use a unit until late in the game.
I beg to differ. This is intentionally quite opposite. To encourage native unit usage throughout the hole game, not only at the end. With this formula they are exceptionally cheap at the beginning.
First, can the attack & defend bonuses in one's own territory be decoupled from each other? I feel like while giving defend bonuses is fine to boost the defender, attack bonuses have an undesireable effect. I'd like to be able to test that theory.
You mean different configuration parameter for each? I guess so.
I am not sure it is fair to drop attack bonus altogether, though. One side invading other territory. Another side protects it. Both parties are constantly exchanging strikes participating in both attack and defense combats. It is a mistake to assume that assailant only attacks while victim only sits in bases and gets beaten. The protector is not a victim they are retaliator!
That is why territory bonus affect both sides. Essentially it translates into "defender is 50% more combat effective on own territory" regardless of particular micro combat moves nature. That is actually very noticeable in artillery duel. Its outcome should be irrespective of who initiated the duel. Now if you drop the territory attack bonus then defender's artillery should just passively wait assailant's artillery attack to cash their territory bonus. Pretty lame mechanics encouraging defender to sit in bases and allow invader to cut deep in their territory destroying communications and land improvements.
Bonus value can be reduced if you believe it is too much.
a) Can ZoC rules check for units in a tile that are NOT a probe, a cloaked, or an air unit when deciding if a tile is eligible for movement?
b) A Needlejet over a stack of units prevents any of the units in the stack from being attacked unless the attacker has air superiority. Is it possible to attack other eligible units in the stack (not Needlejets) when this happens?
I believe so. Didn't touch this mechanics yet, though. Let me look at it.
Post by: Nevill on September 05, 2020, 09:07:06 pm
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It is a mistake to assume that assailant only attacks while victim only sits in bases and gets beaten.But terrain bonuses only ever help one side. Forested tiles help on defense, not on attack. It is not without precedent.
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That is why territory bonus affect both sides. Essentially it translates into "defender is 50% more combat effective on own territory" regardless of particular micro combat moves nature. That is actually very noticeable in artillery duel. Its outcome should be irrespective of who initiated the duel.I only thought about conventional attacks when I wrote that.
Essentially, can this be made to work like Alien Defense/Offense do? For conventional attacks that use armor only. Caretakers' defense does not proc in arty duels.
Conventional vs. conventional uses weapon vs armor. Apply +50% def to defender.
Arty vs. conventional uses weapon vs armor. Apply +50% def to defender.
Arty vs. arty uses weapon vs weapon. No bonuses apply.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 09:44:57 pm
QuoteIt is a mistake to assume that assailant only attacks while victim only sits in bases and gets beaten.But terrain bonuses only ever help one side. Forested tiles help on defense, not on attack. It is not without precedent.QuoteThat is why territory bonus affect both sides. Essentially it translates into "defender is 50% more combat effective on own territory" regardless of particular micro combat moves nature. That is actually very noticeable in artillery duel. Its outcome should be irrespective of who initiated the duel.I only thought about conventional attacks when I wrote that.
Essentially, can this be made to work like Alien Defense/Offense do? For conventional attacks that use armor only. Caretakers' defense does not proc in arty duels.
Conventional vs. conventional uses weapon vs armor. Apply +50% def to defender.
Arty vs. conventional uses weapon vs armor. Apply +50% def to defender.
Arty vs. arty uses weapon vs weapon. No bonuses apply.
Yeah. You got a point. So far since Civ1 defender didn't get any attack bonuses. I think I'll either remove this bonus on attack or make it separately configurable.
About the artillery, though. Are you sure they should not use territory bonus? In this case anyone with more units will easily get artillery superiority even on other territory and then they'll just bombard bases left and right halving defenders' health. Not much use for territory bonus after that.
I agree that giving defenders attack bonus is unseen of in the world of Civ-SMACX but aren't we trying to fix/balance the broken SMACX defense and make it more active rather than relaying on passive defense sitting on territory feature multipliers (forest/bunker/base)?
Beside artillery there is also probe combat. So adding flat territory bonus allows us to not break our heads about tactics intricacies - when does it apply and when not. This is also helps AI greatly - no need to teach it combat type distinctions. It just gets flat bonus for any type of combat regardless of who initiated it.
Sorry for being stubborn. 😁
I agree having two parameters instead of one had its merits. However, this code splitting adds extra work and am not entirely convinced that these two parameters will actually be very actively used by people. So hesitant to start working on it yet without feeling that it actually improves game play. Feel free to keep pounding on me, though.
Post by: Nevill on September 05, 2020, 10:16:53 pm
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About the artillery, though. Are you sure they should not use territory bonus? In this case anyone with more units will easily get artillery superiority even on other territory and then they'll just bombard bases left and right halving defenders' health. Not much use for territory bonus after that.Hmm. Not sure. Since they are a separate case, perhaps a separate toggle? Nah, too much work.
I would expect logistics to take care of this, at least in multiplayer. The defender has the benefit of consolidating their forces more easily provided they aren't taken out in the first few turns.
I have a different idea about artillery. I have long complained about a bug with artillery duels between sea and land units only lasting for 1 round/shot. The answer I got from the community was that it wasn't a bug, but a feature. Special rules of engagement and all that.
Personally, I didn't think so. But should we assume this true, and that it is a possible game mechanic... can it be applied to all artillery duels?
I think allowing for arti duels to be extended over many turns could be interesting. I am not certain how it would play out, but one thing I estimate is that accompanying conventional forces with arty to prevent bombardment will become a necessity, without the batteries being so fragile as to fall apart in their first battle. It would also allow the defender to make use of shorter supply lines if their artys aren't destroyed in a single turn - that, and there are repairs for every turn they aren't fighting.
It works pretty decently for ships, not allowing them to bombard shorelines with impunity, but not destroying them outright with retaliatory strikes either, instead turning into a prolonged positioning war.
I didn't ask about this since in my opinion it's taking a bug and making a mechanic out of it, but it bothers me that we currently have different rules for land vs. sea only. Plus, the fact that the ships could be attacked directly (vs armor) and via bombardment (vs attack) never sat well with me either.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 10:45:19 pm
a) Can ZoC rules check for units in a tile that are NOT a probe, a cloaked, or an air unit when deciding if a tile is eligible for movement?
If we go this path it is better to make it simple and do not make ZOC calculation dependent on some other unit type/ability in target tile. Besides from more complex development it is also more cumbersome for rule perception and application for human. One should check what are units in target tile, are there units of certain type or with certain ability among them, etc. Meh.
Indeed, logically speaking, why would ZOC rule for unit depend on how unit in target tile managed to get there? Was it able to ignore ZOC or was it just caught there by enemy units, etc.? Imagine you have an uninterrupted line of probes leading your army in the depth of enemy territory. Now you are saying this aint right to send combat units down this path. What if these probes are actually other combat units just perfectly caught up in the ZOC. Same logic should prevent the rest of your army come down this path as well.
Post by: Nevill on September 05, 2020, 11:02:26 pm
I am against air units contributing to ZoC rules as they should have no bearing on the situation below.
Also, I would be fine with a line of probes giving a line to follow, but I am not with a single probe letting all your units bypass enemy ZoC. A line of probes is not something that happens; a single probe is what happens all the time. Since probes ignore ZoC rules, I believe they also should have no effect on them.
I included cloaked units for the consistency's sake, because this is where the agrument breaks down. But you disable cloaked units anyway.
If it is hard to differentiate between units in a tile, I understand.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 05, 2020, 11:32:09 pm
AI work off battle odds, no? If the probability to win is high, attack; if not, do not. They don't care about types of combat as it is.QuoteAbout the artillery, though. Are you sure they should not use territory bonus? In this case anyone with more units will easily get artillery superiority even on other territory and then they'll just bombard bases left and right halving defenders' health. Not much use for territory bonus after that.Hmm. Not sure. Since they are a separate case, perhaps a separate toggle? Nah, too much work.
I would expect logistics to take care of this, at least in multiplayer. The defender has the benefit of consolidating their forces more easily provided they aren't taken out in the first few turns.
I have a different idea about artillery. I have long complained about a bug with artillery duels between sea and land units only lasting for 1 round/shot. The answer I got from the community was that it wasn't a bug, but a feature. Special rules of engagement and all that.
Personally, I didn't think so. But should we assume this true, and that it is a possible game mechanic... can it be applied to all artillery duels?
I think allowing for arti duels to be extended over many turns could be interesting. I am not certain how it would play out, but one thing I estimate is that accompanying conventional forces with arty to prevent bombardment will become a necessity, without the batteries being so fragile as to fall apart in their first battle. It would also allow the defender to make use of shorter supply lines if their artys aren't destroyed in a single turn - that, and there are repairs for every turn they aren't fighting.
It works pretty decently for ships, not allowing them to bombard shorelines with impunity, but not destroying them outright with retaliatory strikes either, instead turning into a prolonged positioning war.
I didn't ask about this since in my opinion it's taking a bug and making a mechanic out of it, but it bothers me that we currently have different rules for land vs. sea only. Plus, the fact that the ships could be attacked directly (vs armor) and via bombardment (vs attack) never sat well with me either.
I say you are overthinking this man. Everybody tends from time to time. This is a game. Don't make their rules more complex than it needs to be. Repeat this mantra when you head is spinning of endless design opportunities: "Simplify". 🙏
Seriously, though. Look at this mod. 90% of changes it just a flattening some over-engineered vanilla formulas. And people say it feels good.
Does this territory bonus works the purpose - making invader to spend more to break the defense line? Yes.
Do player actually really really care that the underlying mechanics does not mimic vanilla exactly? Nope, as long as such mechanics is transparent and easy to grasp.
It is simple and works. Everything else could tuned by bonus value.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 06, 2020, 02:24:01 am
I am against air units contributing to ZoC rules as they should have no bearing on the situation below.
Do you mean this for needlejets only or for copters and gravships too? Two latter ones can be attacked by ground units without air superiority as I remember.
Checked the code. Map tile has a special attribute: whose unit is in it. It is pretty sloppy programming as there could be multiple allied units in there. Then it is not clear who owns the tile. Whatever. This attribute is used in ZoC functions. I don't want to alter this attribute - it is hardcoded and used everywhere.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 06, 2020, 02:29:42 am
# Version 124
* Unit cannot ignore ZoC moving to the tile occupied by friendly unit. Configuration option: zoc_move_to_friendly_unit_tile_disabled.
Also this.
# Version 125
* Returned Cloaking device into game: cost = 2, enabled by Quantum Computers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 06, 2020, 07:36:24 pm
Reiterating the goal: this is to make currently stagnating bases a chance to have some nutrient surplus for growing and supporting mineral yield. Maybe not that much as fertile ones but some. Growth I have already analyzed and both intake=1,farm=1 and intake=2,farm=2 options are equal in this regards. Meaning fertile bases will grow at the same rate but less fertile one will get their chance too. Mineral production support I have not analyzed before - doing this now and it seems that intake=2,farm=2 option produces less excessive mineral output. Namely, mediocre base mineral output goes up significantly and becomes like the vanilla fertile one, fertile one become goes up 35%, and very fertile goes up 15%.
# Version 126
* Experimental nutrient balance version #2.
* Citizen nutrient intake = 2. Reverted to vanilla.
* Farm nutrient bonus = 2 (both land and ocean).
* Nutrient cost multiplier = 15.
* Base Square produces 1 nutrient.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 06, 2020, 10:38:58 pm
a) Can ZoC rules check for units in a tile that are NOT a probe, a cloaked, or an air unit when deciding if a tile is eligible for movement?
A further thought to this. Should land unit be able to board a land/air transport even if both source and destination are ZoC? What if this is a cloaked transport?
Actually, never mind. Here is it.
# Version 126
* Further refinement to ZoC rule. Unit ignores ZoC only if target tile is occupied by own/pact unit that does not ignore ZoC by itself: probe, cloaked, air.
I didn't account for land and air transport because I never used them and don't even know how to load units there. Anybody knows? How to load land units to land/air transport? How to load sea units to land/sea/air transport? How to load air unit into land/sea/air transport?
Post by: Nevill on September 07, 2020, 12:03:14 am
To board a transport you need to be in the same tile as the transport, and press "L". Air transports can only be loaded at airbases, I believe. Even though choppers are considered "crash landed" at the end of the turn, they can't pick up units, and neither can gravships (I'd say it's an oversight, but it is what it is). Sea transports can be loaded anywhere; you either load them at a base (the only place land and sea units can occupy simultaneously), or move units from a shore to the transport.
Sea units can not be loaded anywhere. Air units can be loaded on land/sea units with a carrier deck. An air unit can not be loaded on an air unit.
Movement itself is subject to ZoC rules, i.e. under unmodified rules you can always move to a tile with a land transport from an adjacent one, since an occupied tile is eligible for movement. That does not change with the new rule, except for cloaked transports, which are... quirky, to say the least.
Cloak/deep hull are buggy, and I don't mean it in the sense that AI can see through them. Cloaked units project ZoC, which negates cloak as a enemy trying to move in their vicinity reveals them. Cloaked units can't stack, even with other cloaked units, without becoming visible. This means that, for example, a submarine transport carrying missiles is always visible, and loaded cloaked transports are no longer cloaked.
Cloak would need to ignore all ZoC rules to be viable, but there are limited uses for such units even in their buggy state. They can't be scouted from air, for example, unless you bump right into them. I'd make the ability cheap and available early because it's hard to make proper use of them.
In the current game with Tayta (WtP v122 with a few changes) I made it available at Applied Relativity. We'll see if anyone would use them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 07, 2020, 12:52:16 am
Cloak/deep hull are buggy, and I don't mean it in the sense that AI can see through them. Cloaked units project ZoC, which negates cloak as a enemy trying to move in their vicinity reveals them. Cloaked units can't stack, even with other cloaked units, without becoming visible. This means that, for example, a submarine transport carrying missiles is always visible, and loaded cloaked transports are no longer cloaked.
Cloak would need to ignore all ZoC rules to be viable, but there are limited uses for such units even in their buggy state. They can't be scouted from air, for example, unless you bump right into them. I'd make the ability cheap and available early because it's hard to make proper use of them.
If you mean only multiplayer usage then losing cloaking by stacking could as well be a feature explainable from both development simplicity and some lore. Cloaked unit is supposed to be stealthy, moving along hiding out of roads, etc. Stacking units makes them a concentrated army so you lose the cloaking. Also prevents concentration of cloaked units in enemy territory. I think this is fair.
As for cloaked unit exerting ZoC then I agree this is unneeded. Design oversight. But ZoC in general is extremely bugged and sloppy feature.
Post by: Nevill on September 07, 2020, 01:14:15 am
If you mean only multiplayer usage then losing cloaking by stacking could as well be a feature explainable from both development simplicity and some lore. Cloaked unit is supposed to be stealthy, moving along hiding out of roads, etc. Stacking units makes them a concentrated army so you lose the cloaking. Also prevents concentration of cloaked units in enemy territory. I think this is fair.I don't think there is a justification for cloaked transports not retaining their cloaked properties after picking up troops.
I am mostly mad that I can't have my ballistic nuclear submarines. ;q;
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 07, 2020, 01:58:51 am
I am mostly mad that I can't have my ballistic nuclear submarines. ;q;
Sorry, missed this point. I am with you. It still will be only for multiplier? Is missile cloaked by itself?
Post by: Nevill on September 07, 2020, 02:12:54 am
Missiles can't have abilities. I mean, they can, if you assign those to a base unit in alphax.txt, but otherwise they can only have different reactors.
So no, they aren't cloaked.
A lot of interactions in this game haven't been thought through. For example, if you destroy an inbound air transport, its cargo will just drop to the ground unharmed. I can also think of several interactions with air superiority and artillery that don't make sense, or air superiority and psi-armor needlejets...
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 07, 2020, 06:02:21 pm
Solid lines are vanilla model: citizen nutrient intake = 2, farm nutrient bonus = 1, kelp farm nutrient bonus = 2, nutrient cost multiplier = 10, base tile nutrient bonus = 2
Dashed lines are new nutrient model version: citizen nutrient intake = 2, farm nutrient bonus = 2, kelp farm nutrient bonus = 3, nutrient cost multiplier = 15, base tile nutrient bonus = 2
Corrected. It was base tile nutrient bonus = 1 before.
Few things to notice.
1. Moist bases were falling into stagnation in vanilla. The bigger their size the slower they grow. In new model they exhibit steady growth, which was the intent of this modification. Nice!
I cut my chart at about 140 turn. The moist base stagnation is visible already but it is becomes just awfully slow by turn 200 and beyond.
2. Rainy bases growth rate stays steady and doesn't change much from vanilla. Which is also good - no major game breaking besides fixing stagnated bases as intended.
3. Super fertile bases (jungles or ocean with aquafarm) were growing about twice as fast comparing even to rare fertile ones. They are slightly slower in new model.
4. Due to all bases more or less steady growth rate that is not dependent on base size there is no more ICS problem. Colonies can be produced by a base at any size and this will equally impact base growth. No more need to spam them from smallest undeveloped bases. Moreover, it is now better to spam them from bases with CC. Meaning if base has enough nutrient surplus and can work some mineral tiles for decent mineral output it makes sense to build CC first then spam colonies at about 20% higher rate in general! 😊
5. The #1 + #3 also tune down the Jungle OP problem. Apparently faction landed on Jungle develop about twice faster than any other. It was perceived as very unfair random luck advantage. In new model the difference between different fertility lands is less pronounced. Rainy bases grow about 50% faster comparing to moist one and jungle bases are about another 50% faster on top of that. So it is still absolutely fair difference but not as enormous as in vanilla.
Overall, I claim this an astounding success. 🎉
Kudo to MercantileInterest for original idea. 👏
Post by: dino on September 07, 2020, 08:06:06 pm
1) 1 nutrient on a base tile, with a 2 nutrients intake is a horrible idea:
A base on arid terrain will starve, which thinker ai does often. A base on a moist terrain won't accumulate a single nutrient untill it builds a farm, at witch point the difference will be the same as vanilla.
Only after growing a pop and starting to work a second farm the disadvantage becomes smaller than in vanilla. So, effectively you've made moist worse then vanilla in the most critical period of the early game landgrab.
Base Square, 2, 1, 1, 0,
2) Seanutrients
Without popboom and with nerfed boreholes and condensers, you've made seabases OP, with very fast growth in comparison to land.
I've always considered nerfing seanutrients, but it'd be too harsh, but leaving them as they are and bumping land farms is exactly right imo.
Land gameplay is more interesting, don't force me into the sea early, by making it better than land in early game.
Improved Sea, 2, 1, 3, 0,
3) ICS
Without popboom and without crawlers, ICS is the only viable strategy, just look at your graph.
Spamming bases to each work only 7 tiles, will give you 100 turns of advantage on putting all tiles to work, so growing tall is absolutely not an option now.
Solutions:
Bring crawlers back, but nerf them: no SP rush, one resource penalty.
Useless long term, can't spam them too much early and then get all minerals back when no longer needed by rushing SP.
But are a great help in the early game, for a faction that got low on nutrients area at the start of the game and can't grow population fast.
Constant growth rows: I'd suggest 5 rows x 10 nutrients.
And make AI to not start building colony pods until the base grow to 2 ( eventually untill expected time to growing a pop is smaller, than to build a pod, but with AI bonuses it's not necessary ).
Growing tall would net you the same exponential growth as ICS and open investment opportunity into resource multiplying facilities. It'd be still slower than vanilla popbooming.
While investment into colony pod, would give a return in a free support, base tile yield and opportunity to grab land before competition.
Requiring constant 50 nutrients to build a colony pod, would result in a slower early game landgrab, compared to 30 nutrients currently in the mod.
But there would be still enough to do, while you are waiting for a base to grow to 2, build a former, military units, etc.
While total time required to put all tiles to work, whether by ICS, or growing tall, would not be faster than with ICS of size 7 bases currently.
Seriously, I like the idea of getting rid of popboom, but without constant nutrient rows, early popbooming with GROWTH 6 is a must, to not be forced into ICS as the only viable strategy.
I'd call constant rows with tall bases a "soft" popboom and you still have to grow them tall first anyway for the effect to kick in.
While after you run out of workable tiles the effect would start to diminish with each pop growth and there is no point at which it is faster than ICS, or vanilla popboom.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 07, 2020, 11:09:55 pm
1) 1 nutrient on a base tile, with a 2 nutrients intake is a horrible idea:
I meant to change it back. This is a remnant from my previous experiments. Corrected in my post. Good catch.
Without popboom and with nerfed boreholes and condensers, you've made seabases OP, with very fast growth in comparison to land.
This nutrient balance modifies both land and sea farms uniformly not changing the land/sea bases balance. So, I guess, you refer to the mod in whole?
There is no pop-boom and boreholes for some time in game. Vanilla and WTP are similar in this regards. So you are saying vanilla/WTP sea bases are OP at the beginning? Hard to agree, honestly. Let me know in how many of your previous games you started building sea colonies as soon as you got Flexibility and never build a single land one since? If the answer is zero, then you are like 99% of other players who prefer to populate land first. They would be quite surprised to find out how OP sea bases are and that they are missing an incredibly OP strategy to colonize ocean first. When this trend changes I agree to seriously discuss this topic.
Out of three features you mentioned only condensers are directly related to land/sea growth difference. This doesn't apply until you get them and even after that one loses only 1 nutrient (2 if on nutrient resource) per condenser. Not that big of a deal. I can make them generate extra nutrient in its tile if you think it is restores the balance.
3) ICS
Without popboom and without crawlers, ICS is the only viable strategy, just look at your graph.
Spamming bases to each work only 7 tiles, will give you 100 turns of advantage on putting all tiles to work, so growing tall is absolutely not an option now.
You lost me. I didn't get your math. Nobody was trying to disable ICS or growing tall strategies. They are still there. How one can expand without building colonies? Why growing tall is not an option now? Is this modification prevent them from growing? It seems to be quite the opposite. Growing tall wasn't an option in vanilla for not so fertile bases. This model allows them to grow faster. Thus securing better/quicker pay-off from growing.
How crawlers are related to grow-expand choice when they are not using base population in any way?!
I agree that easy achievable pop-boom demands fast expansion to cash max benefit but wasn't this the OP strategy that we tried to fix for long and somehow fixed already even before this nutrient model?
Bring crawlers back, but nerf them: no SP rush, one resource penalty.
Useless long term, can't spam them too much early and then get all minerals back when no longer needed by rushing SP.
But are a great help in the early game, for a faction that got low on nutrients area at the start of the game and can't grow population fast.
Crawler is just extra resource with no involvement to population whatsoever and with no penalties except initial cost. If you want to limit one of them per base then just beef up base tile yield - a free crawler for everyone to jump start the base growth. Give it like 10-10-10 yield and share your play testing experience. Maybe it will be indeed the mother lode nobody just thought about before.
Constant growth rows: I'd suggest 5 rows x 10 nutrients.
And make AI to not start building colony pods until the base grow to 2 ( eventually untill expected time to growing a pop is smaller, than to build a pod, but with AI bonuses it's not necessary ).
Growing tall would net you the same exponential growth as ICS and open investment opportunity into resource multiplying facilities. It'd be still slower than vanilla popbooming.
While investment into colony pod, would give a return in a free support, base tile yield and opportunity to grab land before competition.
Requiring constant 50 nutrients to build a colony pod, would result in a slower early game landgrab, compared to 30 nutrients currently in the mod.
But there would be still enough to do, while you are waiting for a base to grow to 2, build a former, military units, etc.
While total time required to put all tiles to work, whether by ICS, or growing tall, would not be faster than with ICS of size 7 bases currently.
Seriously, I like the idea of getting rid of popboom, but without constant nutrient rows, early popbooming with GROWTH 6 is a must, to not be forced into ICS as the only viable strategy.
I'd call constant rows with tall bases a "soft" popboom and you still have to grow them tall first anyway for the effect to kick in.
While after you run out of workable tiles the effect would start to diminish with each pop growth and there is no point at which it is faster than ICS, or vanilla popboom.
I found these other suggestions not directly related to the quoted post. Would you mind to split them in smaller chunks and discuss them separately?
Post by: dino on September 08, 2020, 09:52:19 am
What I was saying is that improving farms helps with both making moist better and growing pop in general, but it's still not enough to make tall bases a viable growth strategy in the absence of popboom.
Even with vanilla popboom, it is not that clear whether growing tall bases makes sense, without popboom there is no contest, your graph is a clear illustration.
Trying to build sparse bases to work ~14 tiles per base is a loosing startegy by a huge margin, because growing two bases to 7 is 100 turns faster than growing one to 14.
Constant rows would make ICSing slower, while growing large bases faster, but still slower than vanilla popbooming.
So both strategies would be equal in terms of growth speed, with advantages in different areas.
Tall makes multiplying facilities more profitable, while investing in colony pods allows to get the best tiles worked faster and support more units.
I've just repeated the same arguments, with hopefully clearer wording, so I'll end it here and won't bring this topic in the future.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 08, 2020, 01:42:04 pm
Expanding vs. building is a big topic. We can continue on this path. However, I don't think everybody are on the same page with this. There is no a single understanding among people whether anything is broken here and if yes, what exactly, and how this should be changed to make game better, etc. We all can still continue expressing our thoughts on it.
My humble opinion is that over expanding is not a problem. This is absolutely natural thing to do and AI should do the same and then the smartest one wins.
Post by: Nevill on September 09, 2020, 11:48:53 am
How to reproduce: create a land unit with Nerve Gas pods, let it run along a road to have less than a single move point left, attack a scout. Neither the Hasty penalty nor the Nerve Gas bonus will be featured on the display, although they will be a part of the formula.
Attached is a picture of a 2x-1-2 rover with Nerve Gas Pods (+50%) and Very Green morale (-25%) attempting a hasty (-33%) attack on a enemy base. (and yes, I am sure it has a hasty penalty and the gas is used - it started in Library of Planet this turn)
Edit: also, I know this is not WtP... but can something be done about the bug where capturing a base from a faction with FREEFAC creates that facility in a different base? The turn before the one on the screen capturing the Revelation Base from the University not only didn't give me a Network Node or a Perimeter Defence on the base, but erected a Perimeter Defence in Library of Planet next door, belonging to the enemy faction. And I can't even tear it down with a probe anymore!
Post by: Nevill on September 09, 2020, 02:53:01 pm
; Set the amount of collateral damage other units in a defending tile will receive when losing.
; Example: 3 = normal damage (vanilla behaviour), 0 = disables collateral damage entirely.
; Only non-negative values are allowed.
collateral_damage_value=3
Does nothing. I can't enable collateral damage back. Am I doing something wrong?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 09, 2020, 07:59:04 pm
WtP bug: a number of attack modifiers do not display in battle odds as of v122.
How to reproduce: create a land unit with Nerve Gas pods, let it run along a road to have less than a single move point left, attack a scout. Neither the Hasty penalty nor the Nerve Gas bonus will be featured on the display, although they will be a part of the formula.
Indeed. A great discovery. It turns out that these two modifiers have their own processing code outside of battle computation! A very hard-coded game. 😢
So my nice battle status alignment pushes these two out of visible scope. How sad. I'll remove this alignment feature since it is just cosmetic and fixing this would require some code duplication. Let me know if you feel this feature is so nice that it is worth extra work keeping it.
# Version 130
* AI base production and unit movement adjustment.
* Base tries to build native protection if insufficient.
* Unit in the base tries to hold to maintain native protection.
* Base tries to build colonies if there is room for colonization.
* [bug] Battle status summary alignment messes up with Hasty and Gas modifiers. Feature removed.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 09, 2020, 08:08:55 pm
Edit: also, I know this is not WtP... but can something be done about the bug where capturing a base from a faction with FREEFAC creates that facility in a different base? The turn before the one on the screen capturing the Revelation Base from the University not only didn't give me a Network Node or a Perimeter Defence on the base, but erected a Perimeter Defence in Library of Planet next door, belonging to the enemy faction. And I can't even tear it down with a probe anymore!
You are kidding? This indeed is one nasty bug. Can you send me a save? Without save it would be very difficult to track this as this doesn't manifest itself all the time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 09, 2020, 08:15:10 pm
Separate post:
; Set the amount of collateral damage other units in a defending tile will receive when losing.
; Example: 3 = normal damage (vanilla behaviour), 0 = disables collateral damage entirely.
; Only non-negative values are allowed.
collateral_damage_value=3
Does nothing. I can't enable collateral damage back. Am I doing something wrong?
Hmm. Works as advertised for me. Would you mind sending me your save where you are testing this and thinker.ini? You can use PM if easier.
Post by: Nevill on September 09, 2020, 08:26:04 pm
Here's the save, my password is "buzz".
Note that upon capture Revelation Base should have a Perimeter Defence (because I play Hive) and a Network Node (because Tayta plays Uni), even though it didn't have them before. Half the time it will function as intended, but sometimes the game will assign those facilities to random bases. This time, it sent the Network Node to one of my bases on the mainland, Proletarian Knot. It certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the turn, you can check the save.
However, so far I only encountered the game sending facilities to your own bases. I've never seen it build facilities for the faction you captured the base from.
Post by: Nevill on September 09, 2020, 08:43:42 pm
Hmm. Works as advertised for me. Would you mind sending me your save where you are testing this and thinker.ini? You can use PM if easier.Sorry, this one is a false alarm. For some reason collateral damage is disabled for tiles that contain Colony Pods. Vanilla behavior. Live and learn.
Since we touched on the subject of collateral... can you clarify when non-combat units such as formers or probes are damaged or destroyed once combat units in the tile are killed off? Sometimes formers receive damage, and sometimes they are completely annihilated. Sometimes you can defend a base with a dozen formers, and sometimes the defenders are wiped out on a third attack by a copter. What gives?
An unarmored probe is always destroyed if the base tile has no combat units left. What about an armored one?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 09, 2020, 10:03:14 pm
It is a very well-known bug. Basically, when you capture a base with FREEFAC, the free facility appears on a random base. It is hard to reproduce, because it doesn't occur every time. I can send you the saves before and after.
Not very well-known by me. Indeed we keep discovering things after 20 years of playing.
Note that upon capture Revelation Base should have a Perimeter Defence (because I play Hive) and a Network Node (because Tayta plays Uni), even though it didn't have them before. Half the time it will function as intended, but sometimes the game will assign those facilities to random bases. This time, it sent the Network Node to one of my bases on the mainland, Proletarian Knot. It certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the turn, you can check the save.
I didn't get it. Why captured base should get a Perimeter Defence and a Network Node??? Are you describing two different cases depending on who captured it?
However, so far I only encountered the game sending facilities to your own bases. I've never seen it build facilities for the faction you captured the base from.
So you are saying it is a first time it sent it to enemy base? I'll have a look.
Found it. Also found few other things for captured base along the way.
HQ is always destroyed
Pressure Dome is never destroyed
Other facilities can be destroyed in some case (except Total Thought Control?). If so then:
FAC_RECREATION_COMMONS is destroyed
FAC_RECYCLING_TANKS is destroyed
Other facilities has 1/3 chance to be destroyed
I confirm that after above destroying code creates free facilities for both capturing and captured base factions. Weird design. Why would conqueror get a free facility from captured base faction?
The problem is that it put them in some base which is not set properly in the code. Therefore, the behavior is nondeterministic. Most often this is the last (most recent) base of capturing faction since this faction just finished their production cycle. However, it could be anything.
Voila.
# Version 131
* \[fix\] Captured base now properly receives free facilities from both capturing and captured factions. Didn't work in vanilla.
Post by: Nevill on September 09, 2020, 10:07:26 pm
I didn't get it. Why captured base should get a Perimeter Defence and a Network Node??? Are you describing two different cases depending on who captured it?All (most) bases captured from the University have Network Nodes as part of the University's perk. If the base didn't have a node for some reason (probe sabotage?), it is sometimes rebuilt upon capture (could be a bug, could be a feature).
All bases captured by the Hive get Perimeter Defences as part of the Hive's perk.
We have two cases combined here.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 09, 2020, 10:09:08 pm
Sorry, this one is a false alarm. For some reason collateral damage is disabled for tiles that contain Colony Pods. Vanilla behavior. Live and learn.
I'm afraid our lives are not that long to learn everything about AC. 🤣😟
Since we touched on the subject of collateral... can you clarify when non-combat units such as formers or probes are damaged or destroyed once combat units in the tile are killed off? Sometimes formers receive damage, and sometimes they are completely annihilated. Sometimes you can defend a base with a dozen formers, and sometimes the defenders are wiped out on a third attack by a copter. What gives?
An unarmored probe is always destroyed if the base tile has no combat units left. What about an armored one?
I had impression all unarmored probes are destroyed once last non probe unit is destroyed in tile (base included). Formers seem to behave like any other combat units receiving their collateral damage as usual. Beyond that I didn't test it extensively and it seems that you already know more than me. You should update wiki article on this site. It was an interesting finding.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 10, 2020, 09:39:39 am
I didn't notice native life spawns being significantly more frequent. Barely any mind worms on the mainland. There were a couple IotDs, but those I believe were spawned by us mucking around in the fungus. The optimal way of dealing with isolated worm attacks remains a scout turtling inside the base, which as I've mentioned before I'm not a fan of.
-SUPPORT for Planned hurts, but it was and remains the clear early game choice, so it's understandable. The -INDUSTRY for Police State deterred me from picking it, but I'm particularly sensitive to those penalties, and it was too early to have a lot of units out, so I didn't yet determine when a good trade-off point was.
Field Modulation (E2) really needs something else to incentivize picking it. Drill to Aquifer isn't relevant at this stage of the game, as it is both expensive and mostly benefits factions with lots of worked tiles; one is still trying to put down enough farms, mines, and roads. And the two techs it gates are both further in the tree (tiers 4 and 5), and unlock less obviously useful things.
I'm not sure what would make a good pick though. My idea was making 3-pulse armour accessible there (ECM is already unlocked at B1, and 4 armour at B2), but I recall you're not a fan of the special armours.
Speaking of armour, I can't help but feel you might've gone a bit overboard in buffing defense values. With 4 armour available at tier 2, buffed by the territorial +50% and possibly even further by a base's +50%, it would be virtually impossible to break through the enemy's defense with anything less than 6 attack (C5) backed by nerve gas. And by then the enemy would've upgraded to 6 armour available at B4.
Of course, this may be intentional as an AI buff, in which case there's not much I can say, seeing as we agreed to develop the two realms separately. ;lol
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 10, 2020, 02:41:09 pm
Nevill and I finished another test game of the mod, version 122. Game was over by 2150 after three days of gameplay. See, not all MP games require months upon months of play! :P
This is like 50 turns? Interesting. Was it just somebody early luck or this is how dumb AI is?
I didn't notice native life spawns being significantly more frequent. Barely any mind worms on the mainland. There were a couple IotDs, but those I believe were spawned by us mucking around in the fungus.
The generation code is very convoluted. I believe there is a limit to it. Meaning it is not possible to generate 10 times more worms than in vanilla. Probably 2-3 times at most. Their spawning spots are also quite dependent on map configuration. Some factions are affected more than others. It is quite difficult to quantify.
The optimal way of dealing with isolated worm attacks remains a scout turtling inside the base, which as I've mentioned before I'm not a fan of.
Don't understand. You are not fun of protecting your bases at all?
-SUPPORT for Planned hurts, but it was and remains the clear early game choice, so it's understandable. The -INDUSTRY for Police State deterred me from picking it, but I'm particularly sensitive to those penalties, and it was too early to have a lot of units out, so I didn't yet determine when a good trade-off point was.
I'll check the Nevill's table you posted somewhere in this tread and try to match it. I am for any particular configuration here as long as they are more or less usable. The big problem with many of them is that they can be very strong early but wimpy later and vice versa.
Planned is strong early with ++GROWTH. And then it diminishes in value as growth value declines slightly as game progress but --EFFIC becomes a huge penalty. Adding -SUPPORT may level it out. Make it slightly less strong initially.
For Police State I think you were the victim of your emotions. It is still clearly very strong early choice. Merely ++SUPPORT and ++POLICE give you two free support police units = two less drones. It is twice cheaper than Recreation Common and requires no maintenance/support. Or you can employ them on top of RC thus having two extra workers without any pacifying investments. For base size 4 it is about 50% secured intake in nutrients, minerals, energy combined. Compare with +10% of minerals only.
Field Modulation (E2) really needs something else to incentivize picking it. Drill to Aquifer isn't relevant at this stage of the game, as it is both expensive and mostly benefits factions with lots of worked tiles; one is still trying to put down enough farms, mines, and roads. And the two techs it gates are both further in the tree (tiers 4 and 5), and unlock less obviously useful things.
Sure. I am taking suggestions. This is the problem of many technologies out there. Even when I tried to distribute feature more evenly there are still some perceived less desirable.
I would disagree about Drilling to Aquifer. I believe it is in place. Even though it may not be needed at massive scale it may be quite useful situational. And when it is useful it is the most useful early advanced improvement. See for yourself.
1. Absolutely free energy on top of what you have already without any penalty attached. That is often quite needed to pay the bill early.
2. Instant free roads when you formers are busy with yield terraforming mostly. Invaluable for speeding up expansion. Beating opponent by one turn in claiming territory - what a sweet taste of victory! 😁
3. Occasionally river tiles increase their moisture level = extra free nutrient.
On average you get like +3 energy, +3 roads, +1 nutrient with just one 18 turns drill operation. Of course, not all these tiles will be useful immediately but compare this to corresponding conventional improvement timing: 3-9 for road + 4-8 for energy + 4 for farm = 16.
Besides, it's not that much of a burden to build 1-2 extra formers those can do this in parallel. I often even re-purpose existing ones from bases not in immediate need of more improvements.
I'm not sure what would make a good pick though. My idea was making 3-pulse armour accessible there (ECM is already unlocked at B1, and 4 armour at B2), but I recall you're not a fan of the special armours.
I don't mind a special armor just don't see much use in extra item. They are not all used up in every game anyway. If anything, it would be better to reduce number of weapons. They are popping up too often.
Theory and practice are different things. Game development varies quite strong. The weapon-armor development progression I charted on paper is quite jagged in each particular game. Extra smoothing on a paper won't help. It may seems 4 armor is a bit early at level 2 and I have tried to move it later but I have discovered that early weapons get discovered much faster than armors - mostly because some factions are focused on conquer technologies. With cheap early tech cost it is pretty easy to pass along this 2-3-4-5 weapon progression and I quite often see it happening. This is 6 weapon and 6 armor that may not get discovered for quite some time. Anything before that is a quick run not worthy of over balancing.
Speaking of armour, I can't help but feel you might've gone a bit overboard in buffing defense values. With 4 armour available at tier 2, buffed by the territorial +50% and possibly even further by a base's +50%, it would be virtually impossible to break through the enemy's defense with anything less than 6 attack (C5) backed by nerve gas. And by then the enemy would've upgraded to 6 armour available at B4.
Of course, this may be intentional as an AI buff, in which case there's not much I can say, seeing as we agreed to develop the two realms separately. ;lol
You are still using vanilla thinking where even slightest edge in combat strength was everything. In WTP (with slower healing and more randomized combat) two 2-armor units are about the same as one 4-armor one. The latter being just slightly better in terms of combat performance and maintenance. So discovering 4-armor is not a double jump. Maybe like 20-30% jump or so. With limited early production you can just build so many combined armor worth units.
I often caught myself thinking the same way when I have quickly discovered 2 and 4 armors but not prototyped them yet. Then someone unexpectedly invaded my territory and I need to scramble for defense. My vanilla experience tells me to prototype and build few 4-armor units because anything weaker is just garbage! And then I tell myself - wait, I am playing different game where this problem is leveled up already. So I start prototyping and building weaker units in larger quantities and it works out much better. I can build first of them quicker and, therefore, respond quicker to slow down invasion wave and don't let it approach my production centers. Weaker units are also flexible. With just 2 of 4-armor units I am guessing which key points to defend risking to miss an attack in unexpected direction. With 4 of 2-armor units I spread them widely covering all bases for first response protection which is often succeeds against few units opportunity attacks. And if not I can pull in the rest of them from vicinity to close the gap. With fewer of stronger units I can save couple of bases but the rest of my empire can be devastated. So it is a situational choice. More viable strategies to choose from.
The territory bonus could be reduced to 25%. I don't mind. However, this is practically only thing stopping invaders from roaming victim territory. It seems that bases are strong but territory is weak. Would you agree to reduce base defense instead? Now it is 50%-100%-150% for different levels of defense, correspondingly. With territory bonus (+50%) already in effect, would it be fine to reduce base defenses to 0%-50%-100% instead? This effectively reduces base defense against natives, though, as territory bonus is not applicable to them. Need some thinking.
And yes, this was intentional as AI buff too as you reported yourself that you still can cut through even this tough defense.
In human-human game the mere 30% economical advantage is a sure win even though it may be delayed by defense overemphasis. In single player game AI factions powers could differ by 100% easily due to starting conditions. Therefore the difference in bonuses. I'd say human-human combat don't need any flat defense bonuses except tactical ones (terrain, bunker) as humans beat each other on tactics mostly.
Post by: lolada on September 10, 2020, 07:42:46 pm
Quote
The territory bonus could be reduced to 25%. I don't mind. However, this is practically only thing stopping invaders from roaming victim territory.
This is correct - i think this bonus is important because it allows AI to counter player. You can't roam AI land carelessly you get killed - gotta plan your movement and bring in defensive cover. I would not change this.
Quote
would it be fine to reduce base defenses to 0%-50%-100% instead?
Possibly, base defense is likely a bit too strong. You can change it slightly and playtest a bit. Its better to err on high def side - as if you make it too low it goes towards vanilla easy - get a few rovers and blitz AI. Here one really wants infantry for those +25% base attack. So don't lower too much.
One shot from my game regarding terraforming. AI should put more emphasis on removing fungus, they like to road it : ). Checked inside their bases fungus yield is minimal. Its Miriam after all she starts with negative planet. edit: Ps. rechecked - save in attachment. Its funny AI is actually working all improved tiles. I must say I am impressed, i might have complained too quickly. . I thought there's more fungus tiles.. that fungus nutrient bonus triggered me ^^.
They are currently working only 1 unimproved tile in land base - i bet they'll improve it soon. One sea base is working some 1N ocean tiles, but the other one has tiles improved They seem to like mines thats ok i guess. Interesting.
(https://i.imgur.com/4PGfeze.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 10, 2020, 08:00:26 pm
About base defense. I think 50,100,150 are pretty minimal numbers. Bases are extremely valuable not only because they are production centers but also because they exert territory bonus around themselves! So having them defended at 50-100% higher than surrounding territory is normal. You are forgetting about artillery, man. Everybody are. Serious assailant probably outnumbers the victim. So they sooner or later achieve artillery superiority and then halve unit strength in bases for free of charge! Then relative strength of defenders at base against attackers assuming equal weapon-armor and all bonus combined (territory + intrinsic, PD, TF) will just turn to 1.1, 1.5, 1.9, correspondingly. So no economical advantage is needed to conquer faction without PDs and just 50% economical advantage against faction covered with PDs. This is edge of snowballing.
As far as I noticed, they place mines and harness on ocean about 50-50. It may vary slightly but never only one or another. Which is smart, I presume.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 11, 2020, 01:01:05 pm
This is like 50 turns? Interesting. Was it just somebody early luck or this is how dumb AI is?Mostly luck, a bit of the quirks of playing MP.
I was University, Nevill was Hive. In the 2120s we both learned from pacts with Morgan that we were on coasts across a relatively narrow ocean from each other; not long after we had both probed each other.
My starting location was pretty sweet, 2 rocky mineral bonuses and rivers all near each other. If I was smarter at the time, I would've beelined RecTanks first thing and gotten a base with 20+ minerals in the 2130s. Nevill took a look at my setup, decided he couldn't compete with that, and threw everything into building a task force of 3x-1-2 nerve gas impact rovers to transport across the sea and wreak havoc on my bases.
My defense was not good enough, some poor decisions were made, and by 2150 he had his rovers on both ends of my territory, ready to cut all my 1-pop bases to pieces. I decided to surrender at that point, since even if I beat off the attack somehow, he still had control of the seas and I had no way of getting to him. So the game ended in 2150.
The AIs were basically irrelevant to the game, except for the Believers starting right next to me and posing a fatal distraction. My advantage in tech and tactics would've allowed me to steamroll them early, if Nevill had allowed me - indeed, I knew I had to attack them early, before they could build any proper forces.
Save game is attached if you feel like looking at it. Password is "raygun".
(https://i.imgur.com/J5KXGaI.png)
I'll check the Nevill's table you posted somewhere in this tread and try to match it. I am for any particular configuration here as long as they are more or less usable. The big problem with many of them is that they can be very strong early but wimpy later and vice versa.I know, I basically said as much in my post. Those weren't meant to be complaints about the configuration, I just wanted to convey how I felt about making such a choice. I didn't say it wasn't a positive thing.
Planned is strong early with ++GROWTH. And then it diminishes in value as growth value declines slightly as game progress but --EFFIC becomes a huge penalty. Adding -SUPPORT may level it out. Make it slightly less strong initially.
For Police State I think you were the victim of your emotions. It is still clearly very strong early choice. Merely ++SUPPORT and ++POLICE give you two free support police units = two less drones. It is twice cheaper than Recreation Common and requires no maintenance/support. Or you can employ them on top of RC thus having two extra workers without any pacifying investments. For base size 4 it is about 50% secured intake in nutrients, minerals, energy combined. Compare with +10% of minerals only.
Don't understand. You are not fun of protecting your bases at all?My issue with it is that it's too passive. If the baseline odds of a psi-attack are 1:1 and there is no possibility of a reward, why would I send my unit out to attack first and risk getting killed, when I can have him idle and gain the benefit of +50% from being in a base? And of course, once Trance units come around, this calculus only strengthens.
Unfortunately, while vanilla encouraged attacking first, it also made it too easy to farm worms for money. >_> So I guess there's no easy solution for this one.
I would disagree about Drilling to Aquifer. I believe it is in place. Even though it may not be needed at massive scale it may be quite useful situational. And when it is useful it is the most useful early advanced improvement. See for yourself.I would point out that Drill to Aquifer also becomes a liability once global warming turns river tiles into deathtraps. :P
But sure, maybe one is just meant to come back and pick it up later once they're in a position to use it. I can understand that.
You are still using vanilla thinking where even slightest edge in combat strength was everything. In WTP (with slower healing and more randomized combat) two 2-armor units are about the same as one 4-armor one. The latter being just slightly better in terms of combat performance and maintenance. So discovering 4-armor is not a double jump. Maybe like 20-30% jump or so. With limited early production you can just build so many combined armor worth units.I don't think I have ever been in a situation where I had to pick and choose which bases to defend from AI attacks. It's usually pretty predictable when and where they will attack from.
I often caught myself thinking the same way when I have quickly discovered 2 and 4 armors but not prototyped them yet. Then someone unexpectedly invaded my territory and I need to scramble for defense. My vanilla experience tells me to prototype and build few 4-armor units because anything weaker is just garbage! And then I tell myself - wait, I am playing different game where this problem is leveled up already. So I start prototyping and building weaker units in larger quantities and it works out much better. I can build first of them quicker and, therefore, respond quicker to slow down invasion wave and don't let it approach my production centers. Weaker units are also flexible. With just 2 of 4-armor units I am guessing which key points to defend risking to miss an attack in unexpected direction. With 4 of 2-armor units I spread them widely covering all bases for first response protection which is often succeeds against few units opportunity attacks. And if not I can pull in the rest of them from vicinity to close the gap. With fewer of stronger units I can save couple of bases but the rest of my empire can be devastated. So it is a situational choice. More viable strategies to choose from.
I'd also protest that I did in fact build "lesser" ECM scouts and 2-defenders this game when I had 4-defense available! It just wasn't enough to save me from Nevill this game. :P
You are forgetting about artillery, man. Everybody are. Serious assailant probably outnumbers the victim. So they sooner or later achieve artillery superiority and then halve unit strength in bases for free of charge! Then relative strength of defenders at base against attackers assuming equal weapon-armor and all bonus combined (territory + intrinsic, PD, TF) will just turn to 1.1, 1.5, 1.9, correspondingly. So no economical advantage is needed to conquer faction without PDs and just 50% economical advantage against faction covered with PDs. This is edge of snowballing.You mentioned artillery in your latest post, that was something else I wanted to
I think this is a consequence of all the defense bonuses. +100% with roughly equivalent weapons/armour means the chances of landing a hit during the one round of engagement are not very good.
"But Tayta! Attacking with artillery is risk-free, so if it was made stronger it would break the AI! You are just not using enough of it!" Well, not for that price I won't be. They cost the same as regular units, so I might as well just build those and throw them at the base instead. Losing units doesn't matter to me, winning the battle does.
I suppose it'd be worth it if the AI stacked a lot of defenders in a base, so the artillery would have a chance to hit every one of them... but I didn't face that sort of opposition when I played. Nevill I think faced a lot more defenders when he was taking on the Hive and Believers in the first game.
To be honest, I think we have definitely reached the point where we'll just end up talking at cross-purposes, since our objectives with this mod are so different. I might end up playing a singleplayer game with WtP and my custom factions in the future, otherwise, there probably isn't much else for me to say regarding game balance at this point. That doesn't mean I don't like the mod! Just that we have different ideas about what it should do. :)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2020, 03:07:41 pm
My defense was not good enough, some poor decisions were made, and by 2150 he had his rovers on both ends of my territory, ready to cut all my 1-pop bases to pieces. I decided to surrender at that point, since even if I beat off the attack somehow, he still had control of the seas and I had no way of getting to him. So the game ended in 2150.
That clears it. Initially I thought someone actually reached winning goal by that time.
Don't understand. You are not fun of protecting your bases at all?My issue with it is that it's too passive. If the baseline odds of a psi-attack are 1:1 and there is no possibility of a reward, why would I send my unit out to attack first and risk getting killed, when I can have him idle and gain the benefit of +50% from being in a base? And of course, once Trance units come around, this calculus only strengthens.
Unfortunately, while vanilla encouraged attacking first, it also made it too easy to farm worms for money. >_> So I guess there's no easy solution for this one.
Then I misinterpreted your words: "The optimal way of dealing with isolated worm attacks remains a scout turtling inside the base, which as I've mentioned before I'm not a fan of." in a way that you don't want to protect your bases at all.
Yes, due to 1:1 odds and no reward, there is no point to go hunting worms out there. I guess, spore launchers are only things worth attacking directly as they destroy crops. Worms are going straight to bases and die most of the time.
I would point out that Drill to Aquifer also becomes a liability once global warming turns river tiles into deathtraps. :P
Is there anything else I don't know about this game? Why river tiles specifically?
But sure, maybe one is just meant to come back and pick it up later once they're in a position to use it. I can understand that.
Yes. This mod changes pace of research and their application. In vanilla it is very-very hard to get a needed technology even level 2-3-4. One tries to pick the right path and allocate more to labs just to get it 2-4 turns earlier because all infrastructure is ready to accept it. And then once you get it you immediately put it to use. WTP early research flow quite steadily. I don't even feel the urge to allocate super much to labs hurting economy sometimes. Usually research come somewhat before they are needed. This is now infrastructure that needs constant development to keep up with research. Feels more dynamic this way, I think. So yes, it happens a lot when something you already know is sitting idle (or barely used) for some time. That was actually one of the mod cornerstones. I found development restrained by technology quite unproductive in vanilla.
You mentioned artillery in your latest post, that was something else I wanted tocomplaintalk about. Now, maybe I'm just using it wrong, or I'm too used to vanilla or something, but I swear to god, artillery barely ever does anything when I use it. 2-attack artillery repeatedly failed to scratch a scout hiding in the Believers' base. Then of course Nevill used it on my 2-defender and got lucky in knocking off 10%, which tipped the odds enough for his rover to beat it... randomness, ho! <_<
Artillery damage is proportional to [artillery bonus * artillery strength / defender strength]. Standard artillery bonus is 3/2. So 2 strength artillery against 1 strength defender in a base is about 3/2 chance to scratch 10% off it. You were just unlucky two times. I don't understand how being used to vanilla is relevant here because in vanilla it is worse: at some point where defender is 3/2 stronger than artillery they are invincible. Like 2 artillery against 2 defender on a rocks cannot hurt it.
You are right that this is tiny amount. However, I think this is fair. It would be not right to let artillery take off 50% of the strongest defender in a single turn. It takes time to wear them down. It pays off when used in large quantities. And, yes, it is an investment that theoretically will pay off unless opponent has artillery too. And yes, it may be useful against bases with multiple defenders only, etc. It may be easier to fight poorly defended bases without it. So I am not saying one have to use it all the time. It's a special purpose tool.
And anyway, who needs artillery when there is gene warfare? :V
I guess gene warfare beats artillery if you can sneak enough probes in base and don't care the sanctions and such. I need to research it. Maybe make artillery stronger or gene warfare damage units lesser.
To be honest, I think we have definitely reached the point where we'll just end up talking at cross-purposes, since our objectives with this mod are so different. I might end up playing a singleplayer game with WtP and my custom factions in the future, otherwise, there probably isn't much else for me to say regarding game balance at this point. That doesn't mean I don't like the mod! Just that we have different ideas about what it should do. :)
Looks like most of the conflicting SP/MP options are in text configuration. I can just create MP alphax.txt version and we can evolve it from there.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 12, 2020, 10:23:06 am
That clears it. Initially I thought someone actually reached winning goal by that time.
I think even if we were to go on another AI-cleansing crusade like the first game, it'd still take at least 100 turns to build the needed infrastructure and actually get the units over to the AI bases. Though I've heard some players were able to speedrun Transcendence much faster than that... but that's a different story, methinks.
Is there anything else I don't know about this game? Why river tiles specifically?
For reasons which I don't really understand, when global warming triggers, a lot of river tiles suddenly have an altitude of 10 metres, which makes them susceptible to sinking. Many former turns have been spent on trying to raise land so that bases founded on river tiles don't sink and drown half their population.
It's still greatly worth it to settle river tiles, of course, just something a prospective faction leader needs to be aware of in the mid 23rd century.
Artillery damage is proportional to [artillery bonus * artillery strength / defender strength]. Standard artillery bonus is 3/2. So 2 strength artillery against 1 strength defender in a base is about 3/2 chance to scratch 10% off it. You were just unlucky two times. I don't understand how being used to vanilla is relevant here because in vanilla it is worse: at some point where defender is 3/2 stronger than artillery they are invincible. Like 2 artillery against 2 defender on a rocks cannot hurt it.
You are right that this is tiny amount. However, I think this is fair. It would be not right to let artillery take off 50% of the strongest defender in a single turn. It takes time to wear them down. It pays off when used in large quantities. And, yes, it is an investment that theoretically will pay off unless opponent has artillery too. And yes, it may be useful against bases with multiple defenders only, etc. It may be easier to fight poorly defended bases without it. So I am not saying one have to use it all the time. It's a special purpose tool.
I think this was actually a big mis-remembrance on my part, sorry. I forgot that I'd been playing Nevill's mod that buffs artillery noticeably (3/1 compared to 3/2). So it's not really a fair comparison.
I guess we'll see if lolada and other players have better luck using it in their games.
I guess gene warfare beats artillery if you can sneak enough probes in base and don't care the sanctions and such. I need to research it. Maybe make artillery stronger or gene warfare damage units lesser.
It could probably stand to be nerfed a tiny bit. Taking off 50-90% from all defenders with a single probe action is a huge advantage, could possibly be worth it even if the Charter was still in effect.
If this is something you can edit, I'd suggest making Biology Labs or some other appropriate facility count as a "defensive structure" for the purposes of blunting HP damage, as described here (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Genetic_warfare). In your mod they are maintenance-free, which is good for AIs; in Nevill's mod they are not, which is better for humans.
Looks like most of the conflicting SP/MP options are in text configuration. I can just create MP alphax.txt version and we can evolve it from there.
I'd say that's the best way to address these sorts of things going forward.
I think our next game is going to involve simply porting Nevill's config files into Will to Power and seeing how it goes from there. Might as well work with what we've already got, right? We can see about building something more official with the results from that.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 12, 2020, 11:14:25 am
I noticed while writing Money and the Will to Power that you removed the technobabble flavour text from the various weapons and armours. Was there a particular reason for doing this? I had to go wiki-trawling to find it instead. :P
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 01:39:52 pm
I guess gene warfare beats artillery if you can sneak enough probes in base and don't care the sanctions and such. I need to research it. Maybe make artillery stronger or gene warfare damage units lesser.
It could probably stand to be nerfed a tiny bit. Taking off 50-90% from all defenders with a single probe action is a huge advantage, could possibly be worth it even if the Charter was still in effect.
If this is something you can edit, I'd suggest making Biology Labs or some other appropriate facility count as a "defensive structure" for the purposes of blunting HP damage, as described here (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Genetic_warfare). In your mod they are maintenance-free, which is good for AIs; in Nevill's mod they are not, which is better for humans.
This seems to be an only article about it on the Net and it still does not explain modification to unit damage. Or I didn't get it. Will look into the code then.
I think our next game is going to involve simply porting Nevill's config files into Will to Power and seeing how it goes from there. Might as well work with what we've already got, right? We can see about building something more official with the results from that.
Would you mind sending me your text configuration for initial version?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 01:48:00 pm
Okay, now here is a truly petty complaint from me.
I noticed while writing Money and the Will to Power that you removed the technobabble flavour text from the various weapons and armours. Was there a particular reason for doing this? I had to go wiki-trawling to find it instead. :P
I am Sorry for that but I didn't even know items has tehcnobabbles. I thought this is for technologies only. Where can I see them?
Post by: lolada on September 12, 2020, 02:03:24 pm
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 12, 2020, 02:28:48 pm
Sorry, but I think we'd prefer to wait until we've finished the game. We haven't played with it in a while and there's a bunch of stuff that WtP enables to test the balance of.I think our next game is going to involve simply porting Nevill's config files into Will to Power and seeing how it goes from there. Might as well work with what we've already got, right? We can see about building something more official with the results from that.
Would you mind sending me your text configuration for initial version?
The text that is displayed in the game is found in helpx.txt.Okay, now here is a truly petty complaint from me.
I noticed while writing Money and the Will to Power that you removed the technobabble flavour text from the various weapons and armours. Was there a particular reason for doing this? I had to go wiki-trawling to find it instead. :P
I am Sorry for that but I didn't even know items has tehcnobabbles. I thought this is for technologies only. Where can I see them?
There is also a second copy of the flavour text in flavor.txt. AFAICT this is not displayed in the game and is just for fans' reference.
It's not really much to look at, mostly just buzzwords applied to the various items to enhance the sci-fi verisimilitude of the game. But it was useful as a writer resource nonetheless.
Hey Tim how is Planetary Transit System working now (i am playing v 121)? Datalink says "Any new bases start at pop 3. One drone less in bases smaller than pop 3". I thought you changed it somehow?I think the datalinks haven't been updated in a while, mostly because a) it's bothersome to do so, and b) Tim is releasing and tweaking new features all the time. Changelog and past convos here indicate that PTS was changed to have new bases begin with (avg base size of faction - 2) citizens.
EDIT: Speaking of which, the version number doesn't seem to have been updated in a while either, being currently listed in-game as 74. The date does seem to be correctly listed as 3 September 2020, though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 03:51:10 pm
Hey Tim how is Planetary Transit System working now (i am playing v 121)? Datalink says "Any new bases start at pop 3. One drone less in bases smaller than pop 3". I thought you changed it somehow?
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#the-planetary-transit-system
Sorry. I often miss the help update. Some things are actually changing quite often and take some time to settle. I usually update change log, then readme, then help - in this order. So the help quite often gets very behind. Keep telling me about discrepancies if you find them.
I will also gladly accept help articles or any other in game description in full or parts if anyone would like to author them. 😁
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 04:15:45 pm
I am Sorry for that but I didn't even know items has tehcnobabbles. I thought this is for technologies only. Where can I see them?The text that is displayed in the game is found in helpx.txt.
There is also a second copy of the flavour text in flavor.txt. AFAICT this is not displayed in the game and is just for fans' reference.
It's not really much to look at, mostly just buzzwords applied to the various items to enhance the sci-fi verisimilitude of the game. But it was useful as a writer resource nonetheless.
I still have no idea what you are talking about. Is this just item datalinks help? Never willingly changed it, obviously. Maybe some side effect caused it? Do you mind sending me a file and/or screenshot where you see difference with vanilla. I'll see if I can fix them.
EDIT: Speaking of which, the version number doesn't seem to have been updated in a while either, being currently listed in-game as 74. The date does seem to be correctly listed as 3 September 2020, though.
Damn. The version number! I'll update it now. Thank you.
Yeah. I really have short time spans to deal with it. So prefer to release as often as I finish a single feature rather than bundle them (and bugs) together. There is also a risk next time I'll forget what I was doing. 🤔
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 04:31:05 pm
I guess gene warfare beats artillery if you can sneak enough probes in base and don't care the sanctions and such. I need to research it. Maybe make artillery stronger or gene warfare damage units lesser.
It could probably stand to be nerfed a tiny bit. Taking off 50-90% from all defenders with a single probe action is a huge advantage, could possibly be worth it even if the Charter was still in effect.
If this is something you can edit, I'd suggest making Biology Labs or some other appropriate facility count as a "defensive structure" for the purposes of blunting HP damage, as described here (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Genetic_warfare). In your mod they are maintenance-free, which is good for AIs; in Nevill's mod they are not, which is better for humans.
Verified unit damage formula on a wiki is correct.
Well, as any of vanilla formula it makes sense but pretty simple. Unit gets ~75% damage which then may be reduced by facilities down to 75%/4 = ~18%. I do not count previous base attack as we consider this a base capture preparation so it happens only once per base. Early game attacks until facilities are there are most devastating. It is about twice as effective defense reduction as bombardment. However, it has extremely severe consequences. After probably 5 or so of such attacks all other factions declare perpetual vendetta on you and you also lose trade income forever.
Besides, by the time genetic warfare is enabled by Retroviral Engineering (level 9) everyone can build Research Hospital (level 3 or 4?) and reduce damage to 25-50% - no more than artillery. No fixing is needed.
This is in current version but we always can adjust it to make sure hospital comes earlier.
Post by: lolada on September 12, 2020, 05:15:02 pm
BUG: So i presume this is bug but i noticed that sea bombardment - with ship - can kill sea alien creatures - like Lurkers completely. So they die there's no artillery fight. Now i bombarded Miriams Foil full of units with 12 weapon foil and it died. Is it intended?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2020, 06:29:42 pm
Thanks for info.
BUG: So i presume this is bug but i noticed that sea bombardment - with ship - can kill sea alien creatures - like Lurkers completely. So they die there's no artillery fight. Now i bombarded Miriams Foil full of units with 12 weapon foil and it died. Is it intended?
50, ; Maximum % damage inflicted by arty versus units in base/bunker
99, ; Maximum % damage inflicted by arty versus units in open
100, ; Maximum % damage inflicted by arty versus units at sea
Sea units can be destroyed by bombardment by design. I imagine designer's chains of thought was: naval units can inherently bombard because their only weapon is deck artillery. So it wouldn't matter whether they engage at close range or at distance they should be able to achieve the same effect.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 13, 2020, 01:13:25 pm
I still have no idea what you are talking about. Is this just item datalinks help? Never willingly changed it, obviously. Maybe some side effect caused it? Do you mind sending me a file and/or screenshot where you see difference with vanilla. I'll see if I can fix them.(https://i.imgur.com/tGYyvFR.png)
This is the text I am referring to. Left is with WtP's helpx.txt, right is with the vanilla helpx.txt restored.
Here are the relevant text entries from helpx.txt. I think it will be slightly more effort than simply copy-pasting it at the end of WtP's helpx.txt, since it does include all the text entries, just... empty. And in a different order. Can I ask what changes have been made to the helpx.txt that is distributed with WtP? Depending on the answer, it may be easier for me to do it myself.
Code: [Select]
#;Infantry
#CHASSISDESC0
{Infantry} units move slowly but are inexpensive and have important advantages in battle. Infantry units gain a +25% combat
advantage when attacking enemy bases directly.
^
^ Speed: 8 km/h
^ Modality: Manual/Tracked
^ Dimensions: N/A
^ Modifiers: +25% vs. base
#;Speeder
#CHASSISDESC1
Mobile {Speeder} units can move quickly across Planet’s surface. Speeder units gain a +25% combat advantage when attacking
in open terrain. They can also $LINK<Disengage=10> from combat when surprised by slower enemy $LINK<Infantry=40000>.
^
^ Speed: 102 km/h
^ Modality: Wheeled
^ Dimensions: 7.7 × 3.6 × 2.9 m
#;Hovertank
#CHASSISDESC2
The ultimate in ground effect transportation, the {Hovertank} is never penalized for moving through difficult terrain—it
never costs more than one move for a Hovertank to enter a square. Like $LINK<Speeder=40001> units, Hovertanks gain a +25%
combat advantage when attacking in open terrain.
^
^ Speed: 227 km/h
^ Modality: Aircushion
^ Dimensions: 6.9 × 3 × 3 m
^ Modifiers: +25% in open
#;Foil
#CHASSISDESC3
{Foils} can be used to create effective sea transports and sea patrols. Foil transports are slower than other types of
foils, so they have one less movement point per turn.
^
^ Speed: 62 km/h
^ Modality: Airfoil
^ Dimensions: 162 × 24.25 × 17.5 m
^ Modifiers: None
#;Cruiser
#CHASSISDESC4
With sufficient industrial infrastructure, large {Cruiser} units can be produced. These larger vessels make formidable
naval units as well as the most efficient transports.
^
^ Speed: 115 km/h
^ Modality: Naval Keel
^ Dimensions: 200 × 50.5 × 20 m
#;Needlejet
#CHASSISDESC5
{Needlejets}, the signature aircraft of the 23rd century, appear in Planet’s skies once Planet’s growing industries begin
producing high grade jet fuel in sufficient quantities. Powerful, but limited in range, Needlejets can be used to defend
the skies, project air power, and explore Planet. Needlejets must return to a friendly base or airbase every other turn for
refueling. Needlejets may only attack once per turn.
^
^ Domain: Air
^ Speed: 766 km/h
^ Modality: Fixed-wing aircraft
^ Dimensions: 18.6 × 12.5 × 4.4 m
^ Modifiers: Require refuel every two turns
#;Copter
#CHASSISDESC6
{Copters}, with their maneuverability and ability to land temporarily in rough terrain, make formidable combat units.
Copters should return to a friendly base or airbase at the end of every turn for refueling. If it is unable to do so and
must land temporarily in the field, it incurs 30% $LINK<damage==7>.
^
^ Speed: 523 km/h
^ Modality: Rotary
^ Dimensions: 15.5 × 6 × 4 m
^ Modifiers: Range unaffected by fuel
#;Gravship
#CHASSISDESC7
{Gravships}, the juggernauts of the distant future, provide all the advantages of aircraft with none of the range
limitations. Gravships can move swiftly over land and sea, and need never return to friendly bases for refueling.
^
^ Domain: Air
^ Speed: 1021 km/h
^ Modality: Gravitron booster
^ Dimensions: 22 × 8 × 6 m
^ Modifiers: Range unaffected by fuel
#;Missile
#CHASSISDESC8
{Missiles} can be used to mount powerful $LINK<Conventional Payloads=60023>, $LINK<Fungal Payloads=60025>, $LINK<Tectonic
Payloads=60024> or spectacular quasi-nuclear $LINK<Planet Busters=60016>. Missiles pack a powerful punch, but are of course
eliminated when they attack.
^
^ Domain: Air
^ Speed: 232.5 km/h
^ Modality: Assisted airflow
^ Dimensions: 15.5 × .5 × .5 m
^ Modifiers: Destroyed on impact
#;Hand Weapons
#WEAPONDESC0
A unit’s weapon strength determines its combat strength it attacks. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Projectile}
^ Ammo: 7.62 mm U.N. standard
^ Muzzle velocity: 1100 mps
^ Rate of fire: Varies; max 120/min
^ Max range: 550 m
^ Target acquisition: Visual
#;Laser
#WEAPONDESC1
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Projectile}
^ Active medium: Diode
^ Type: Fiber-coupled
^ Pulse duration: 5 nsec
^ Wavelength: 193 nm
^ Peak power: .84 GW
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): .76 sec
#;Particle Impactor
#WEAPONDESC2
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Projectile}
^ Ammo: 10 mm caseless Kinetic Energy
^ Muzzle velocity: 2500 mps
^ Rate of fire: 1100/min
^ Max range: 2700 m
^ Target acquisition: Optical
#;Gatling Laser
#WEAPONDESC3
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Energy}
^ Active medium: Neodymium-glass
^ Type: Conductively cooled stacked array
^ Pulse duration: 2 nsec
^ Wavelength: 107 nm
^ Peak power: .96 GW
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): .52 sec
#;Missile Launcher
#WEAPONDESC4
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Missile}
^ Ammo: Mk. 12(t) ‘Sabre’ missile
^ Velocity: Mach 2.2
^ Rate of fire: 6/min
^ Max range: 90 km
^ Target acquisition: IR signature
#;Chaos Gun
#WEAPONDESC5
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Projectile}
^ Ammo: 9 mm caseless Field Disruptor
^ Muzzle velocity: 3000 mps
^ Rate of fire: 10/min
^ Max range: 11 km
^ Target acquisition: Field Differential
#;Fusion Laser
#WEAPONDESC6
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Energy}
^ Active medium: Neodymium-YAG
^ Type: Actively cooled stacked array
^ Pulse duration: 15 nsec
^ Wavelength: 573 nm
^ Peak power: 2.4 GW
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): .14 sec
#;Tachyon Bolt
#WEAPONDESC7
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Energy}
^ Active medium: Molecular hydrogen
^ Type: Active liquid coolant
^ Pulse duration: 1 usec
^ Wavelength: 680 nm
^ Peak power: 5 GW
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): .07 sec
#;Plasma Shard
#WEAPONDESC8
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Missile}
^ Ammo: 15 mm Mass-energy shell
^ Muzzle velocity: Varies; max 4000 mps
^ Rate of fire: 160/min
^ Max range: 16 km
^ Target acquisition: Charged particle
#;Quantum Laser
#WEAPONDESC9
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Energy}
^ Active medium: Temporal field distortion
^ Type: Crystal diffusion
^ Pulse duration: N/A
^ Wavelength: .005 nm
^ Peak power: Varies
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): N/A
#;Graviton Gun
#WEAPONDESC10
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Projectile}
^ Ammo: 2 mm 3-stage particle-accelerated
^ Muzzle velocity: 9800 mps
^ Rate of fire: 2000/min
^ Max range: 1.4 km
^ Target acquisition: Nanoremote
#;Singularity Laser
#WEAPONDESC11
A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
^
^ Weapon Mode: {Energy}
^ Active medium: Temporal boundary
^ Type: Singularity induction
^ Pulse duration: Relative
^ Wavelength: .001 nm
^ Peak power: N/A (approach inf.)
^ Burn rate (1 m steel): Relative
#;Resonance Laser
#WEAPONDESC12
The {Resonance Laser} is a laser with additional $LINK<resonance=42> technology attached to the wave form; it receives a
+25% bonus when engaging in a $LINK<Psi Attack=60015>
^
^A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
#;Resonance Bolt
#WEAPONDESC13
The {Resonance Bolt} is a $LINK<Tachyon Bolt=60007> with additional $LINK<resonance=42> technology attached to the wave
form; it receives a +25% bonus when engaging in a $LINK<Psi Attack=60015>
^
^A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
#;String Disruptor
#WEAPONDESC14
The {String Disruptor} is built of a combination of temporal disruption and $LINK<Progenitor=36> $LINK<Resonance=42>
technology taken to its highest degree and is the strongest weapon in the game.
^
^A unit’s weapon determines its attack strength. The more powerful the weapon the stronger the attack.
#;Psi Attack
#WEAPONDESC15
The {Psi Attack} weapon allows a $LINK<non-native life form=30> to attack conventional units using $LINK<Psi combat=38>.
^
^ Active medium: Patterned energy
^ Type: Compelled dissociative
^ Range: Line of sight
^ Peak power: Inverse to distance
^ Target acquisition: Psi lock
#;Planet Buster
#WEAPONDESC16
The quasi-nuclear {Planet Buster} is the future’s ultimate $LINK<atrocity=1>. Planet Busters destroy everything within a
radius equal to their reactor size, often leaving immense craters.
^
^ Designation: Mk. 714 Plasma bomb
^ Active kill radius: 2000 km
^ Explosive force: 296 Gt TNT
^ Target acquisition: Charged particle
#;Colony Module
#WEAPONDESC17
The {Colony Module} can be used to create custom $LINK<Colony Pods=30000>. Units with Colony Modules can build new bases.
If a Colony Module is installed on a sea-going unit, bases can be constructed at sea. A Colony Module also costs one
population of the base it is built from in addition to the minerals listed. If this would cause a base to have zero
population, the choice is given to disband the base or wait until it has reached two population. Colony Modules can be
added to an existing base to increase the base population by one using the ‘Join Base’ command ‘B’. This operation can be
used to increase the size of the base beyond the limits imposed by lack of $LINK<Hab Complexes=100024> and $LINK<Habitation
Domes=100025>.
^
^This module can be added to all chassis except $LINK<missile=40008>.
^
^ Complement: 1000+
^ Composition: Prefab plastic
^ Hydroponics rating: indefinite
^ Armament: Sidearms only
#;Terraforming Unit
#WEAPONDESC18
Units with the {Terraforming Unit} module can be used to improve and shape the terrain of Planet.
^
^This module can be added to the $LINK<infantry=40000>, $LINK<speeder=40001>, $LINK<hovertank=40002>, $LINK<foil=40003>,
$LINK<cruiser=40004>, and $LINK<gravship=40007> chassis.
^
^ Crew: 367
^ Composition: Bonded steel/ceramic
^ Armament: Sidearms only
#;Troop Transport
#WEAPONDESC19
The {Troop Transport} module allows a unit to transport other units. It reduces the movement of land and sea units by one
and air units by 50%+1.
^
^Only sea-going units can transport more than one unit at a time. A $LINK<foil=40003> can transport a number of units equal
to twice its reactor value. A $LINK<cruiser=40004> can transport a number of units equal to four times its reactor value.
^
^Transports can normally transport only ground units, but sea-going transports can be given the $LINK<Carrier Deck=80007>
special ability to allow them to transport and refuel air units.
^
^Air transports can only load passengers in a base or airbase. Choosing the ‘Unload Transport’ (‘Shift+U’) command from the
action menu will allow the passengers to unload while the air transport is in flight.
^
^ Capacity: 500 troops + support
^ Composition: Hardened plasteel
^ Hydroponics rating: ST
#;Supply Transport
#WEAPONDESC20
The {Supply Transport} module can be used to create $LINK<units=30005> that harvest or transport $LINK<nutrients=31>, or
$LINK<minerals=27>, or $LINK<energy=14>. Any unit with the Supply Transport module has no $LINK<support=130002> cost.
^
^Selecting the ‘Convoy’ (‘O’) option on the ‘Action Menu’ brings up a menu from which can be selected the resources to
convoy:
^ • if a supply transport is placed in a friendly base then it delivers available resources from its home base to the
one where it is currently located
^ • if a supply transport is outside a base, it delivers available resources from the square it occupies to its home
base each turn
^
^The unit cannot deliver resources from a square already being worked by a base’s citizens.
^
^Convoy resources receive the benefits of facilities and secret projects in their home base that increase the resources
collected.
^
^Supply transports disbanded in friendly bases yield their {full} mineral value towards the construction of a secret
project or $LINK<prototypes=37>.
^
^This module can be added to all chassis except $LINK<missile=40008>.
^
^ Capacity: 2575 mt
^ Composition: reinforced plasteel
^ Armament: Sidearms only
#;Probe Module
#WEAPONDESC21
The {Probe Module} can be used to create $LINK<units=30006> able to engage in espionage. Any unit with the Probe module has
no supply cost.
^
^Probes can infiltrate and subvert enemy bases and units. They can steal enemy research information, energy credits,
sabotage base facilities, assassinate key enemy personnel to slow research, free captured faction leaders from
headquarters, and conduct genetic warfare (with the discovery of $LINK<Retroviral Engineering=140075>). Move a probe up to
an enemy base or single unit to engage its powers.
^
^Probes can ignore any $LINK<Zone of control=53>. Probe can also defend your bases against their enemy counterparts. If a
probe is present in a square when an enemy probe tries to enter, a combat is resolved between them. The probe with the
highest $LINK<Morale=130004> level usually wins. Probes often receive morale increases when they complete missions
successfully. The higher a probe’s morale level, the more likely it is to survive more risky missions.
^
^Both $LINK<Comm Jammer=80009> and $LINK<Hypnotic Trance=80018> can be added to units with Probe Module for no cost.
^
^This module can be added to the $LINK<infantry=40000>, $LINK<speeder=40001>, $LINK<hovertank=40002>, $LINK<foil=40003>,
and $LINK<cruiser=40004> chassis.
^
^ Complement: 16
^ Counterintel suite: ShieldSafe V 6.0
^ Armament: Cyberlinks/mind control
#;Conventional Payload
#WEAPONDESC23
The {Conventional Payload} weapons package can be used to create conventional missiles. It can be used only with the
$LINK<Missile=40008> chassis. Conventional missiles attack at the following strengths:
^ $LINK<Fission Plant=50001> = 9
^ $LINK<Fusion Reactor=50002> = 18
^ $LINK<Quantum Chamber=50003> = 27
^ $LINK<Singularity Engine=50004> = 36
#;Tectonic Payload
#WEAPONDESC24
The {Tectonic Payload} weapons package can be used to create Tectonic Missiles. It can be used only with the
$LINK<Missile=40008> chassis.
^
^A Tectonic Missile detonation causes an earthquake that raises the target terrain by one to four levels of
$LINK<altitude=0>, depending on the reactor type. A $LINK<Fission Plant=50001> raises the terrain one level, a
$LINK<Singularity Engine=50004> up to four levels. Tectonic missiles are considered delivery platforms instead of combat
units, and so may not target bases or units.
^
^To target a square, move the missile to the desired target (cannot be a sea square) and press the ‘I’ key.
#;Fungal Payload
#WEAPONDESC25
The {Fungal Payload} weapons package can be used to create Fungal Missiles. It can be used only with the
$LINK<Missile=40008> chassis.
^
^A Fungal Missile detonation destroys any improvements in the square. Additionally, the detonation covers one to four
squares of terrain with $LINK<fungus=18>, depending on the reactor type. A $LINK<Fission Plant=50001> covers one square, a
$LINK<Singularity Engine=50004> four squares. The detonation may also trigger $LINK<native life forms=30> from dormant
spores. Fungal Missiles are considered delivery platforms instead of combat units, and so may not target bases or units.
^
^To target a square, move the missile to the desired target (cannot be a sea-square) and press the ‘I’ key.
#;Super Former
#ABILDESC0
{SmartSettler V2.0 software upgrade}
^
^Can be used only with $LINK<terraforming units=60018>.
#;Deep Radar
#ABILDESC1
{Mk. 45 Sensor array upgrade}
#;Cloaking Device
#ABILDESC2
{Type IV Refraction/diffusion shield}
^
^A {Cloaking Device} allows a unit to avoid detection by enemy units unless they actually attempt to enter the same square.
#;Amphibious Pods
#ABILDESC3
{Hoverpod LCs}
^
^Units with {Amphibious Pods} may also move and attack across the channels between sea bases and continents.
#;Drop Pods
#ABILDESC4
{Aircushion LCs}
^
^A unit must begin its turn in a friendly base or $LINK<airbase==90008> in order to make an airdrop.
^
^Airdrops may be made within eight squares. With the discovery of $LINK<Graviton Theory=140022> or the construction of
$LINK<The Space Elevator=110027>, units with Drop Pods can make orbital insertions anywhere on Planet.
^
^Non-combat units lose all movement after an air drop or orbital insertion. Combat units may move after an airdrop, but if
they attack, a 50% combat penalty applies. Airdropped units may take up to 30% $LINK<damage=7> (except when dropped into a
friendly base), but will always survive the airdrop.
#;Air Superiority
#ABILDESC5
{Mk. 66 fire control sensor}
^
^Air units with {Air Superiority} gain a +100% combat advantage when attacking other air units in flight, but incur a -50%
penalty if they attack ground or naval units.
^
^Ground or Naval units with air superiority do not gain the 100% bonus vs air, but they do not get the 50% penalty vs other
ground or naval units either.
^
^Air-to-air combat is resolved by comparing attack factors—the armor value is ignored. A ground unit equipped with Air
Superiority can attack an adjacent Needlejet chassis at sea. A Naval unit equipped with Air Superiority can attack an
adjacent Needlejet chassis on land.
^
^A $LINK<Needlejet=40005> unit with air superiority is able to {scramble} against an air attack or hostile $LINK<air
drop=80004> within a two square radius. The interceptor needs to be stationed at a base or airbase. Use the skip turn
(‘Space bar’}) or hold command (‘H’) to allow the interceptor to scramble.
#;Deep Pressure Hull
#ABILDESC6
{Reinforced Silksteel chassis}
^
^A {Deep Pressure Hull} allows a sea unit to move underwater making it difficult for enemies to detect, unless the attempt
to enter the same square.
#;Carrier Deck
#ABILDESC7
{Bonded alloy flight deck}
^
^A {Carrier Deck} allows a sea-going transport to carry and refuel air units.
#;AAA Tracking
#ABILDESC8
{Mk. 190 FUBR fire control system}
#;Comm Jammer
#ABILDESC9
{Type IX ECTS EMP pulse generator}
^
^The {Comm Jammer} ability interferes with enemy tactical command and control, thus throwing enemy mobile offensives into
confusion.
^
^Free to add to units with $LINK<Probe Module=60021>. When attacking, it also prevents the defender from
$LINK<disengaging=10>.
#;Antigrav Struts
#ABILDESC10
{Gravitron repulsor pylons}
^
^Allows all ground units to, like $LINK<hovertanks=40002>, avoid movement penalties for difficult terrain.
#;Empath Song
#ABILDESC11
{Psi lock software upgrade}
#;Polymorphic Encryption
#ABILDESC12
#;Fungicide Tanks
#ABILDESC13
{Boron defoliant system}
^
^Only available for $LINK<terraforming=60018> units.
#;High Moral
#ABILDESC14
{Advanced Warfare Training}
#;Heavy Artillery
#ABILDESC15
{Reactor chamber upgrade}
^
^An artillery unit is only able to attack by Long Range Fire. Only available for land units.
#;Clean Reactor
#ABILDESC16
{Reactor emission containment system}
#;Blink Displacer
#ABILDESC17
{Temporal distortion field}
#;Hypnotic Trance
#ABILDESC18
{Psychic amplification module}
^
^Free to add to $LINK<Probes=60021>.
#;Nerve Gas Pods
#ABILDESC20
{Mk. 1 VX delivery system}
^
^Can only be used against non-$LINK<Native life forms=30>. When used against units inside a base, if combat is successful,
50% of the bases’ population will be killed. If the population of the base is one, it will be destroyed.
#;Repair Bay
#ABILDESC21
{Modified Supply Transport module}
^
^Can only be used with $LINK<troop transports=60019>.
#ABILDESC22
{Stunjack cannon & training for police}
#;Soporific Gas Pods
#ABILDESC24
Employs a combination of standard sleep-inducing gas and a soothing wave-form/broad band resonance.
^
^Ineffective against $LINK<Native life forms=30>.
#;Dissociative Wave
#ABILDESC25
Enemy units get no combat bonuses from their own special abilities when
attacking a unit equipped with this high-energy field that temporarily disrupts delicate electronic equipment. The unit
equipped with dissociative waves can tune its own special equipment to “ignore” this field. The field generator is bulky
and hard to manipulate during mobile engagements, rendering it ineffective as an attack weapon.
#;Marine Detachment
#ABILDESC26
Ship equipped with this ability can capture an enemy ship 50% of the time, if the defender is reduced to 30% or less combat
strength without being destroyed in the process. Marine squads are trained in the art of ship capture, which involves fast
moving and a knowledge of where to strike the enemy vessel to cripple its command structure and avoid self-destruct
mechanisms.
^
^Any units being $LINK<transported=60019> on a ship are also captured.
#;Fuel Nanocells
#ABILDESC27
#;Algorithmic Enhancement
#ABILDESC28
Enhanced Probes can also infiltrate bases and units regardless of social engineering choices or $LINK<The Hunter-Seeker
Algorithm=110015> Secret Project, although they still have a high probability of failure.
^
^$LINK<The Nethack Terminus=110034> grants the equivalent to all of a faction’s probes.
#;No Armor
#ARMORDESC0
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: N/A
^ Tensile strength: N/A
^ Density: N/A
^ Thickness: N/A
#;Synthmetal Armor
#ARMORDESC1
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Chobham (modified)
^ Tensile strength: Base
^ Density: 2.3 kg/l
^ Thickness: 250 mm
#;Plasma Steel Armor
#ARMORDESC2
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Mass-energy composite
^ Tensile strength: 5 × base
^ Density: 2.5 kg/l
^ Thickness: 520 mm
#;Silksteel Armor
#ARMORDESC3
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Bonded
^ Tensile strength: 23 × base
^ Density: 2.5 kg/l
^ Thickness: 520 mm
#;Photon Wall
#ARMORDESC4
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Refractive field
^ Tensile strength: 46 × base
^ Density: N/A
^ Thickness: 2 m
#;Probability Sheath
#ARMORDESC5
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Phase adjustment
^ Tensile strength: 97 × base
^ Density: N/A
^ Thickness: N/A
#;Neutronium Armor
#ARMORDESC6
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Kinetic diffusion
^ Tensile strength: 198 × base
^ Density: 4 kg/l
^ Thickness: 755 mm
#;Antimatter Plate
#ARMORDESC7
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Reactive
^ Tensile strength: 560 × base
^ Density -4 kg/l
^ Thickness: Var.
#;Stasis Generator
#ARMORDESC8
A unit’s armor strength determines its combat strength when attacked. The stronger the armor the better the defense.
^
^ Type: Temporal field distortion
^ Tensile strength: N/A
^ Density: N/A
^ Thickness: N/A
#;Psi Defense
#ARMORDESC9
{Psi Defense} armor confers the same defensive ability possessed by native units such as $LINK<Mind Worms=30008>. A unit
equipped with Psi Defense engages in $LINK<Psi combat=38> when attacked.
^
^ Type: Pattern refraction
^ Resistance: Proportional to distance
^ Density: N/A
^ Thickness: N/A
#;Pulse 3 Armor
#ARMORDESC10
{Pulse 3 armor} is a combined-defense system that gives the benefit of $LINK<Plasma Steel armor=70002> and sends out
continuous streams of random ECM “white noise” to foul communications of mobile units which confers a 25% defense bonus
against $LINK<Speeders=40001> and $LINK<Hovertanks=40002>.
#;Resonance 3 Armor
#ARMORDESC11
{Resonance 3 armor} combines the physical protection of $LINK<Plasma Steel armor=70002> with $LINK<Progenitor=36>
$LINK<Resonance=42> technology that confers a +25% defense bonus when attacked by units which employ $LINK<Psi combat=38>,
such as $LINK<Native life forms=30>.
#;Pulse 8 Armor
#ARMORDESC12
{Pulse 8 armor} is a combined-defense system that gives the benefit of $LINK<Neutronium Armor=70006> and sends out
continuous streams of random ECM “white noise” to foul communications of mobile units which confers a 25% defense bonus
against $LINK<Speeders=40001> and $LINK<Hovertanks=40002>.
#;Resonance 8 Armor
#ARMORDESC13
{Resonance 8 armor} combines the physical protection of $LINK<Neutronium Armor=70006> with $LINK<Progenitor=36>
$LINK<Resonance=42> technology that confers a +25% defense bonus when attacked by units which employ $LINK<Psi combat=38>,
such as $LINK<Native life forms=30>.
#;Fission Plant
#REACTORDESC1
A unit’s {reactor} determines its {power}, the amount of $LINK<damage=7> the unit can absorb in combat before it is
eliminated. More advanced reactor technology also tends to make complex units cheaper to build.
^
^ Rating: 32655 kW
^ Throughput: 29377 kW
^ Efficiency: 89.99%
^ Discharge: 52 r
^ Fuel source: U-235
#;Fusion Reactor
#REACTORDESC2
A unit’s {reactor} determines its {power}, the amount of $LINK<damage=7> the unit can absorb in combat before it is
eliminated. More advanced reactor technology also tends to make complex units cheaper to build.
^
^ Rating: 68003 kW
^ Throughput: 62821 kW
^ Efficiency: 92.38%
^ Discharge: 67 r
^ Fuel source: Ionized deuterium
#;Quantum Chamber
#REACTORDESC3
A unit’s {reactor} determines its {power}, the amount of $LINK<damage=7> the unit can absorb in combat before it is
eliminated. More advanced reactor technology also tends to make complex units cheaper to build.
^
^ Rating: 147893 kW
^ Throughput: 141977 kW
^ Efficiency: 96.01%
^ Discharge: 21 r
^ Fuel source: Deuterium-tritium mix
#;Singularity Engine
#REACTORDESC4
A unit’s {reactor} determines its {power}, the amount of $LINK<damage=7> the unit can absorb in combat before it is
eliminated. More advanced reactor technology also tends to make complex units cheaper to build.
^
^ Rating: >4000000 kW
^ Throughput: Var
^ Efficiency: Var
^ Discharge: N/A
^ Fuel source: Vizorium-5
# ; This line must remain at end of file
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 13, 2020, 03:31:13 pm
This is the text I am referring to. Left is with WtP's helpx.txt, right is with the vanilla helpx.txt restored.
Here are the relevant text entries from helpx.txt. I think it will be slightly more effort than simply copy-pasting it at the end of WtP's helpx.txt, since it does include all the text entries, just... empty. And in a different order. Can I ask what changes have been made to the helpx.txt that is distributed with WtP? Depending on the answer, it may be easier for me to do it myself.
Ah. Got it now. Thank you for visual aid. I don't know why it happened. Need to check. One suspicion is that because I've changed weapon strengths.
I didn't change help.txt structure. Just edited some articles. Will get back to you.
Update. I have clean installed SMACX from GOG and it does not have flavor text in help. Trying to figure out what is going on.
Post by: Nevill on September 13, 2020, 05:24:56 pm
An AI former is building a road on top of a road.
(click to show/hide)
Not sure what caused it. This could be vanilla behavior, but WtP did try to improve AI terraforming strategies.
Save is attached. Configuration is non-standard for WtP, so I'll attach thinker and alphax.txt too. I'll PM the password if the save is of interest.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 13, 2020, 06:38:44 pm
PK faction here has just a single base. This may skew things. Also first former is working not own territory. WTP doesn't send formers to others territory. Maybe it flipped just recently. Need to check. I'll have a look.
Yes, PM me the password. I'll look at them anyway. However, it would be also nice to have saves of before they started to work these improvements so I can track how they got this assignment.
Post by: Nevill on September 13, 2020, 06:40:57 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 13, 2020, 07:51:34 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/tGYyvFR.png)
This is the text I am referring to. Left is with WtP's helpx.txt, right is with the vanilla helpx.txt restored.
Here are the relevant text entries from helpx.txt. I think it will be slightly more effort than simply copy-pasting it at the end of WtP's helpx.txt, since it does include all the text entries, just... empty. And in a different order. Can I ask what changes have been made to the helpx.txt that is distributed with WtP? Depending on the answer, it may be easier for me to do it myself.
Yes. These are in flavor.txt file. However, it seems to contain SMAC version items only. It does not contain "String Disruptor", for example while your code does have it. So maybe you have some SMAX version of flavor.txt file which GOG version does not! Please send me the file name where you get this from and which version you recovered to see them in help.
I have clean reinstalled GOG Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack. See attachment. It does not have blurbs in either version: SMAC or SMAX.
I have also inspected the code. It does not have any reference to flavor.txt. It does not have any code besides loading text from helpx.txt and displaying it in help.
Along with only SMAC version of flavor.txt in GOG version, I may speculate that that feature was discontinued with SMAX addon to not bother with the update. Or it was just discontinued in GOG version. Or it could be other way around - you are using some patched version that somehow introduced this feature. Either way, I'd like to know your version to continue investigation.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 13, 2020, 08:43:05 pm
This probably should make you happy.
# Version 136
* Merged with scient's 2.1 help.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 14, 2020, 12:57:55 am
Still, thanks for taking the time to figure that one out. Now I can peruse technobabble flavour text for my shiny new weapons and armour in the middle of the game all I want! :danc:
Post by: lolada on September 14, 2020, 10:39:29 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 01:20:19 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 01:50:53 pm
Anybody saw something like that? Formulas disassembled or something?
Post by: lolada on September 14, 2020, 02:15:08 pm
Quote
Would you tolerate them building roads on your territory?
Well when they enter you can't really tell them to piss off unless you are way stronger, AI doesn't like that. I wouldn't mind a former or two, more would be a pain, nobody wants invasion. In civilization games there was need to road cvilizations for trade network that was interesting.
Maybe to define that better - AI could road towards neighbor's closest city, if they can assign only 1 former thats ok. Now that can be good or bad: good if AI is stronger or friendly; bad for them if they are weaker obviously. You could teach AI to road towards player every time. Its maybe iffy, just an idea, roads should not be 10+ tiles long etc.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 02:45:19 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 06:43:59 pm
This is something from our current MP game with Tayta, so I'll hide the screen under a spoiler.
An AI former is building a road on top of a road.
The 2nd former is building a solar... on a tile that has a mine... possibly built by the same former. Why did it build a mine first and then changed the priority to a solar later? There are unterraformed worked tiles in the vicinity of the base, shouldn't it be more busy with those than remodeling an already terraformed tile?
Not sure what caused it. This could be vanilla behavior, but WtP did try to improve AI terraforming strategies.
Save is attached. Configuration is non-standard for WtP, so I'll attach thinker and alphax.txt too. I'll PM the password if the save is of interest.
I have added a check for formers to cancel their action if improvement is already there. This is to prevent building road on road.
For the second former I could not figure out what is going on. I've debugged it against recent version and it was given an order to build farm on (48,14). Yet, in your version it builds collector on top of a mine that it just completed. Could be AI version differences. Tell me yours. I do not promise I will restore it to test this as I am quite lazy on that but still.
I see you are playing on relatively small map. That is the secret to you fast games, I guess. 😉
Post by: Nevill on September 14, 2020, 07:41:08 pm
The map is probably Standard, not small. But Tayta was the one who created the game, and I don't remember how to check the size.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 08:19:51 pm
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 15, 2020, 12:10:18 am
v122.It should be a Standard. It just feels small because we're so close to each other and have no real impetus to reveal the other half.
The map is probably Standard, not small. But Tayta was the one who created the game, and I don't remember how to check the size.
Large may be better for MP games where we want to build up first, but last time you made it a Large and we still started near each other anyway, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 15, 2020, 04:23:18 am
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21522.0
# Version 139
* All Brood Pit morale effects are disables same way as for Children Creche.
I guess it wasn't easy noticeable because BP comes quite late and psi units are not usually used as defenders by human. Nevertheless, the design is just awful. It is much more transparent without it.
Post by: lolada on September 15, 2020, 07:23:39 am
Quote
and psi units are not usually used as defenders by human.
Oh try Spore launchers as def ^^.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 15, 2020, 01:32:32 pm
So I figured I'd actually play some singleplayer for once. And if I'm doing that, why not go ahead with that game of 'custom factions in WtP' I promised I'd do a while ago?
In the interests of a fair playtest, I invite Tim to select one faction which I will play, and one faction which will be excluded from the game. Link to thread (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21515.15) for convenience.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 15, 2020, 02:05:41 pm
They are all quite unique and interesting to play. Except maybe Metastate Alliance. They are overly unique in the way they do not participate in counsel. Which is kinda huge part of the game fun. There are so many proposals.
For blind pick I'd take Omega Foundation for matching picture. 👌
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 15, 2020, 02:19:51 pm
Omega Foundation it is. I don't promise to put the same amount of effort writing this one as Money and WtP (which I still have to finish, after all), but since it's not a multiplayer game I can at least provide screenshots.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 15, 2020, 02:37:10 pm
I never blame anybody for anything. At least try not to. There are so many definition of fun and balance, for that matter. Besides, factions never were my main modding/balancing focus for the simple fact that anyone can come up with bunch of custom factions like you did.
I also applaud your attempts to make them distinctively unique. Mere juggling SE innate bonuses quickly exhausts possible combinations and gets boring. I am already playing with Binary Dawn faction included on top of original 14. Maybe will add up yours as well after this play test.
One advice: Decide on who to keep and make them a 7-pack. This is a standard number for other faction modders. People often like to test your complete set at once and they will have hard time thinking whom to exclude like you just had. Besides, it'll require 8 play tests or more to try out all possible combinations.
Post by: Nevill on September 15, 2020, 03:28:01 pm
Any restriction for minimal hurrying threshold is unclear. Why it is 10 in vanilla? Why not 20, 50? What difference does it make? I never understood the significance of this number but I had to remember it to exploit it properly.I missed the initial discussion of the feature in the thread, but I can answer that right away.
The hurrying threshold is the same as the default retool threshold. Removing it opens the way to a minor exploit I found myself using in our recent game with Tayta.
Hurrying facilities costs 2 credits per mineral. Hurrying units and projects costs 4 credits per mineral. Retooling is free for the first 10 minerals.
Assuming 10 minerals in a row, it means that hurrying a scout from zero to full costs 40 credits, but hurrying first 10 minerals of RecCommons and then switching production to a scout costs 20 credits, with the same result.
Assume we are building a transport (30 minerals). Hurrying it as a unit costs 120 credits. Hurrying a Children's Creche (50 minerals) costs 100 credits, and retooling afterwards loses half of the minerals over the first 10, i.e. we have the same 10+(50-10)/2 = 30 minerals for cheaper.
First 10 minerals should cost 4 credits regardless of what is being built... which requires facilities to have a 10 mineral hurry threshold.
In the example above, with the hurrying threshold enabled, we get: 1*40+4*20 = 120 credits for Creche.
I believe it might have been there to prevent retooling abuse... at least in part. Plus to ensure that if you want to build anything in one turn that can't be built on its own, you will have to pay through the nose.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 15, 2020, 03:45:08 pm
I understand free retooling threshold should be there. Otherwise, human pays penalty immediately after previous production ends and they want to assign something else to produce. I'll probably change the hurry formula as you proposed to avoid this micro exploit.
Nope. I cannot. It is hard-coded so it is either double or nothing. Can revert penalty threshold back. No big deal. Still units cost fill be flat (doubled as usual if below penalty threshold).
Won't be able to hurry Recreation Commons outright in new bases but I can live with it.
There always will be exploit around hurrying. Even in vanilla where project hurry price is doubled for the first 4 rows (=8) one can hurry facility from 1 row to 8 row for 2 and then retool it with 50% penalty effectively reducing the price for first 4 project rows to 4.
Speaking of which, the only way to avoid any exploits is to remove all retooling penalties and remove all hurrying penalties at all and make hurrying price x4 for everything uniformly. This does hurt vanilla experience where building-retooling-hurrying was a mini-game in itself. However, what the heck? It doesn't seem to impact the core of the game significantly.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 16, 2020, 04:47:09 am
I think the best solution for this is to just put the 10-minerals hurry threshold for facilities back. It at least obliges you to have some minerals production in a base before you start rushing expensive stuff there.
I also applaud your attempts to make them distinctively unique. Mere juggling SE innate bonuses quickly exhausts possible combinations and gets boring. I am already playing with Binary Dawn faction included on top of original 14. Maybe will add up yours as well after this play test.Heh, thanks. The way I went about it was to start by slapping every vaguely-relevant modifier on each faction, essentially LARPing them, and then going back and whittling them down to their core characteristics. Nevill gave me some balance suggestions in that regard.
One advice: Decide on who to keep and make them a 7-pack. This is a standard number for other faction modders. People often like to test your complete set at once and they will have hard time thinking whom to exclude like you just had. Besides, it'll require 8 play tests or more to try out all possible combinations.
I could always include some advice on which factions to exclude. The reason for having 8 factions is that a lot of them could be described as being the odd one out - Omega can't be played effectively by the AI, Meta gums up the Council mechanics, PTC doesn't really know what it's doing, and so on. So I figured the player should get the choice of what sort of game they want to play.
Post by: Nevill on September 16, 2020, 09:27:16 am
The ability to start building a facility, hurry the first 10 minerals for 20 credits, and then switch to building a unit at no penalty is definitely exploitative. You essentially gain an advantage of 20 credits on every unit built. That's significant given how much 20 credits is worth early in the game.It is pretty minor, actually. You make it sound like it is significant and every unit nets you 20 credits, but you have to pay 20 credits to save 20 credits.
It's precisely because 20 credits is a lot in the early game you don't waste it hurrying units. I did it, what, two or three times in all of the 40 turns we played, and the most I paid was 10 credits at a time. Mostly when a base needed a police scout, or when a worm was sighted nearby.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 16, 2020, 09:40:56 am
It is pretty minor, actually. You make it sound like it is significant and every unit nets you 20 credits, but you have to pay 20 credits to save 20 credits.I often hurry units by a single turn (to a maximum of 12 credits for 3 minerals) to get them out a turn faster, because my understanding is that tempo is important and getting stuff out ASAP is critical (what gets called "turn advantage"). If I was allowed to hurry the first 10 minerals for cheap, I'd get a lot more value for my money.
It's precisely because 20 credits is a lot in the early game you don't waste it hurrying units. I did it, what, two or three times in all of the 40 turns we played, and the most I paid was 10 credits at a time. Mostly when a base needed a police scout, or when a worm was sighted nearby.
Now, granted, maybe this is inefficient of me and I should just stop hurrying units altogether, and save the money for hurrying facilities later instead. I didn't consider that before. But it is an advantage compared to what I was doing before.
EDIT: So I tried re-enabling the doubling threshold for singleplayer... but it turns out it applies to units as well, making it cost 8 energy per mineral. Yikes!
I guess I will have to change it back and just avoid abusing the exploit for now.
Post by: lolada on September 16, 2020, 12:15:29 pm
Quote
The ability to start building a facility, hurry the first 10 minerals for 20 credits, and then switch to building a unit at no penalty is definitely exploitative. You essentially gain an advantage of 20 credits on every unit built. That's significant given how much 20 credits is worth early in the game.
Jeez i rush a toooon, all the time, usually waste no credits and quick calculate exact amounts.. i look for bases that take longest so that i get the most in turn saved and what not... but rushing 20 for facility then switch to unit. That would be so annoying - but i guess it would be super useful for formers and at the start of the game. Now i need not to use this ::) .. i am barely avoiding using industry exploit to rush secret projects.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 16, 2020, 12:36:38 pm
Jeez i rush a toooon, all the time, usually waste no credits and quick calculate exact amounts.. i look for bases that take longest so that i get the most in turn saved and what not... but rushing 20 for facility then switch to unit. That would be so annoying - but i guess it would be super useful for formers and at the start of the game. Now i need not to use this ::) .. i am barely avoiding using industry exploit to rush secret projects.Haha, sorry about that. xD
I thought the INDUSTRY exploit was patched in this mod, though?
Post by: lolada on September 16, 2020, 12:43:05 pm
Post by: Nevill on September 16, 2020, 01:12:18 pm
Either you keep the numbar of minerals constant, no matter what the INDUSTRY setting, which causes a 20-rows mineral project to autocomplete with 160 minerals after switching to +2 INDUSTRY.
Or you shift the number of accumulated minerals with the length of the row, which makes 200 minerals shrink to 160 after a switch... or expand 160 minerals to 200 after switching back. Which opens the possibility of exploiting energy reserves.
Under the old system you can't misuse credits directly (you can do it by upgrading Crawlers, but there are no crawlers in the mod, so it's irrelevant). You could build units for cheap and disband them while on Power for an extra 2 minerals per row, I suppose. You could pay ~640 credits for WP instead of 800 (ignoring the hurrying thresholds here for ease of calculation), and switch from 0 to a +2 INDUSTRY next turn. Money for SE changes are not refunded.
Under the new system, you can do the same (Switch to a +2 INDUSTRY, pay 640 credits for 160 minerals, switch back to 0 INDUSTRY to "stretch them" into 200 minerals), refunding the money. In a way, it opens the way to a more severe exploit... but unlike the one above, which is just a part of the gameplay, this one has to be maliciously abused to make use of it.
Not sure it's a better approach, but it bothers me less.
Post by: lolada on September 16, 2020, 01:36:04 pm
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 16, 2020, 02:24:55 pm
Post by: Nevill on September 16, 2020, 03:17:56 pm
Quote
Version 49Can you clarify the reasoning about those? I thought SE didn't multiply yield, and that only Condensers added their +50%.
Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.
I think this worked better in vanilla when it was an undocumented feature, and all it needed was documentation. It encouraged Condenser + Farm for a 4-1-0 yield, plus Farm + Solar around the condenser to get some use out of rainy tiles, and Echelon Mirrors to enhance solars. It also made Condenser + Farm + Soil Enricher / Borehole competitive with Hybrids later in the game. I think the multiplication effect let it scale rather nicely.
Post by: lolada on September 16, 2020, 03:28:23 pm
Food is mostly ok in this game, condensers are doing their job when they are available on time.. often its way easier to spam Tree forests. Soil enrichers are also good but come quite late. If anything AI is growing too fast early.
Post by: Nevill on September 16, 2020, 03:33:14 pm
The max output a condenser can give a tile with no bonuses at the early stages of the game is 4. (3 from a rainy farm +50%). A fair amount compared to the former-turns invesred.
I think you complained about the lack of terraforming diversity in the next thread? This *is* the alternative to spamming tree forests. Well, this, and nerfing boreholes so they aren't the all-time superior terraforming choice.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 16, 2020, 04:17:35 pm
I could always include some advice on which factions to exclude. The reason for having 8 factions is that a lot of them could be described as being the odd one out - Omega can't be played effectively by the AI, Meta gums up the Council mechanics, PTC doesn't really know what it's doing, and so on. So I figured the player should get the choice of what sort of game they want to play.
In this regard I'd recommend to make them actually playable by both AI and human. It does limit your imagination, of course. However, this way somebody will actually play them or play with them in a game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 16, 2020, 04:32:42 pm
I am pretty sure its still worth it to switch industry and rush with energy credits, switch back; not sure what Tim last changed. He fixed it partially; i think he fixed that you could actually complete the thing by switching back or forth.. or smth like that.
WTP recalculates accumulated minerals proportional to INDUSTRY change. So the number of turns left to completion stays the same. I didn't take hurry into account. That is correct. If one wants to hurry project in one turn it is cheaper to switch to higher INDUSTRY before that.
I can go further and recalculate hurry price for INDUSTRY = 0. So the price will be dependent on basic item mineral cost and completion percentage but not on current INDUSTRY rating. That would be a very nontransparent to user, though. Currently they are paying for each mineral brick in production screen now. With this correction they will not see what they are paying for.
I would just leave these exploits there and let people use them if they up to it.
The better way for INDUSTRY and GROWTH would be not to reduce the target box but to directly multiply the contribution. Then it would affect the current turn only and won't create these tangling between consents across turns.
But this is technically impossible. The whole game is penetrated with this mechanics. 😟
Either you keep the numbar of minerals constant, no matter what the INDUSTRY setting, which causes a 20-rows mineral project to autocomplete with 160 minerals after switching to +2 INDUSTRY.
Or you shift the number of accumulated minerals with the length of the row, which makes 200 minerals shrink to 160 after a switch... or expand 160 minerals to 200 after switching back. Which opens the possibility of exploiting energy reserves.
Under the old system you can't misuse credits directly (you can do it by upgrading Crawlers, but there are no crawlers in the mod, so it's irrelevant). You could build units for cheap and disband them while on Power for an extra 2 minerals per row, I suppose. You could pay ~640 credits for WP instead of 800 (ignoring the hurrying thresholds here for ease of calculation), and switch from 0 to a +2 INDUSTRY next turn. Money for SE changes are not refunded.
Under the new system, you can do the same (Switch to a +2 INDUSTRY, pay 640 credits for 160 minerals, switch back to 0 INDUSTRY to "stretch them" into 200 minerals), refunding the money. In a way, it opens the way to a more severe exploit... but unlike the one above, which is just a part of the gameplay, this one has to be maliciously abused to make use of it.
Not sure it's a better approach, but it bothers me less.
Not entirely correct. Let's say you have 200 mineral worth project. You are contributing 10 minerals/turn and accumulated 100 minerals already. It is 10 turns left to build and 400 credits to hurry it outright.
Now if you switch to +2 INDUSTRY.
Vanilla
Box size shrinks to 160 and there is still 100 minerals accumulated. So it is 60 minerals left to accumulate = 6 turns left to build and 240 credits to hurry.
WTP
Box size shrinks to 160 and there is now 80 minerals accumulated. So it is 80 minerals left to accumulate = 8 turns left to build and 320 credits to hurry.
As you see WTP completely mitigates building exploit and halves hurrying exploits in case you buy it and switch back. So it is somewhat better than vanilla in this regards.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 16, 2020, 04:54:00 pm
Looking at the earlier changes...QuoteVersion 49Can you clarify the reasoning about those? I thought SE didn't multiply yield, and that only Condensers added their +50%.
Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.
I think this worked better in vanilla when it was an undocumented feature, and all it needed was documentation. It encouraged Condenser + Farm for a 4-1-0 yield, plus Farm + Solar around the condenser to get some use out of rainy tiles, and Echelon Mirrors to enhance solars. It also made Condenser + Farm + Soil Enricher / Borehole competitive with Hybrids later in the game. I think the multiplication effect let it scale rather nicely.
Condenser is supposed to change moisture around. Naturally their primary placement strategy was to create a network of condensers to cover tiles in most effective way with as little condensers as possible. This effect is also supposed to limit their usage as one cannot make tiles more rainy. Condenser by itself should not do anything else besides moisturizing.
Multiplying (???) food output is a very strange lore wise inexplicable effect. Moreover, it clashes with above placement strategy forcing players to place them on nutrient resources without regard to its moisture coverage area. I found this strategically unsound. It also allows to get more and more food from them by placing more of them even on already rainy land.
SE I was just corrected to match documentation. In vanilla it adds 50% which won't have any effect on arid+farm.
Besides, food multiplication on top of another multiplication creates too much food toward the end of the game. I believe improvements should add some flat value, not multiplying stuff. This creates too tricky mechanics and micro-strategical exploits those are not really needed.
On top of all the above this was also inspired and heavily discussed with thread participants. It is a product of multi-mind review. 🙂
Which doesn't prohibit us to reopen the discussion and revert/modify it as needed.
Post by: Nevill on September 16, 2020, 06:45:07 pm
Not entirely correct. Let's say you have 200 mineral worth project. You are contributing 10 minerals/turn and accumulated 100 minerals already. It is 10 turns left to build and 400 credits to hurry it outright.The more you build with minerals instead of credits, the less you get out of it.
Now if you switch to +2 INDUSTRY.
[...]
As you see WTP completely mitigates building exploit and halves hurrying exploits in case you buy it and switch back. So it is somewhat better than vanilla in this regards.
Vanilla requires you to actually change SE settings and stay that way for the next turn so they could take effect. So to make full use of it you have to pay ~80 credits for the SE changes, and another 80 to change back, though often you would plan your game so that you don't have to.
Modded version allows you to outright cheat by paying with credits at a cheaper rate with no other effects on the turn. Just switch to a higher INDUSTRY setting, hurry things in one go, then switch back on the same turn as if nothing happened - the box will stay full. If you can save up 320 credits to change 3 settings at once, you can hurry things up to 40% cheaper assuming a +4 INDUSTRY rating and building them from scratch.
The halving of the hurrying exploit stems from the fact that bases that don't have accumulated minerals benefit in full, and those that have completed their production have zero use for it. But exploits can always be targeted.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 16, 2020, 07:45:17 pm
Another change I proposed it to make hurry cost not at all dependent on INDUSTRY rating. That is logical but not too transparent to user. However, user will be given a final price anyway so may work for certain not so meticulous users who doesn't count every brick and just rely on whatever computer says.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 01:30:22 am
1. Hurrying cost is not dependent on INDUSTRY setting. It is calculated as if INDUSTRY = 0. May produce some penny fluctuations due to rounding.
2. Hurrying cost is same flat x4 for everything regardless of already accumulated minerals.
I understand this may be perceived as huge simplification for those used to play vanilla hurry mini-game with calculator on a table. However, this seems to be an only possible way to get rid of these micro exploits here and there. Besides, I don't see this seriously disrupting the main course of the game. After all, more drastic innovations were introduced in this mod already with moderate success.
Positive things
No exploits of hurrying and switching between categories (facility->unit, facility->project).
Building stuff is no longer INDUSTRY dependent which was a concern I kept hearing over and over again. Now INDUSTRY effectively affects mineral production, as it should. Whereas, ECONOMY + EFFICIENCY affect cash production, as it should. INDUSTRY is slightly less powerful now because of this.
Equal price for each production brick eliminates need for spending planning. Now player can buy what is needed rather than save for future facilities hurrying.
Possible implications
Rich faction used to hurry a lot will overpay due to facilities hurry cost increase by about 25% on average. Could be noticeable drawback if they buy about half of their production which is hardly achievable even for Morgan.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 17, 2020, 01:52:05 am
Is it possible to expose the energy cost per mineral in thinker.ini, or is it hardcoded?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 02:21:16 am
Post by: lolada on September 17, 2020, 07:50:59 am
I am about to introduce alternative hurry mechanics in light of all discovered exploits with production and hurrying.
1. Hurrying cost is not dependent on INDUSTRY setting. It is calculated as if INDUSTRY = 0. May produce some penny fluctuations due to rounding.
2. Hurrying cost is same flat x4 for everything regardless of already accumulated minerals.
I understand this may be perceived as huge simplification for those used to play vanilla hurry mini-game with calculator on a table. However, this seems to be an only possible way to get rid of these micro exploits here and there. Besides, I don't see this seriously disrupting the main course of the game. After all, more drastic innovations were introduced in this mod already with moderate success.
Positive things
No exploits of hurrying and switching between categories (facility->unit, facility->project).
Building stuff is no longer INDUSTRY dependent which was a concern I kept hearing over and over again. Now INDUSTRY effectively affects mineral production, as it should. Whereas, ECONOMY + EFFICIENCY affect cash production, as it should. INDUSTRY is slightly less powerful now because of this.
Equal price for each production brick eliminates need for spending planning. Now player can buy what is needed rather than save for future facilities hurrying.
Possible implications
Rich faction used to hurry a lot will overpay due to facilities hurry cost increase by about 25% on average. Could be noticeable drawback if they buy about half of their production which is hardly achievable even for Morgan.
For my playstyle rushing is very important and i did find 4 energy per credit quite punishing for units.. 2 was likely way too cheap in comparison. I almost never hurry units - or just hurry them near the end, while i tend to hurry facilities very often. I would consider going mixed - 3 energy per credits for everything, or just try to expose the variable in .ini.
What are implications?
Currently its quite hard to build up the army and that leads to slower game. One has to build infrastructure then rush it, grow, its hard to produce units until bases are at least 10-20 minerals. I don't see myself going to war before i have Recycling + Genejack.. thats +100% minerals.. and even then production is not great because its hard to get decent population due to drone issues.
Going with same X energy per unit and per facility would help rushing them so one could start attacking earlier. Then there might be trade off.. do i rush infrastructure or units? 4 energy feels like a lot, I'd like to experiment with 3 energy per min, it would maybe speed up the game a bit in war department.
BUGS
1. Tim there's really annoying bug with Hunter-Seeker. Once you have it and AI tries to probe your base - popup that pops up saying "X factions probe team was returned ... by hunter-seeker".. pops up like 15 times in a row. Happened to me twice i thought popup in on infinite loop and that i would not be able to continue the game. I held enter in the end until it closed. This is WTP only bug.
2. Another bug is when AI return your probe "unharm.. action when choose not to kill them if you are not at war" - it return the probe in capital. If the probe is Foil and capital has no coastal access.. its a bummer. I heard about this bug from other people also - it happens also in your mod. So this is vanilla bug i think.
Post by: Nevill on September 17, 2020, 09:21:33 am
You are right. That in-turn exploit is there. I don't know what to do with it, though. Revert industry fix back?My position as a player is that every change that can't outright be stated to be a bugfix should be optional. This, however, increases the amount of work you have to do, unless you can just do (If Var = 0 use vanilla code, else use modded code) for everything.
Another change I proposed it to make hurry cost not at all dependent on INDUSTRY rating. That is logical but not too transparent to user. However, user will be given a final price anyway so may work for certain not so meticulous users who doesn't count every brick and just rely on whatever computer says.
This exploit doesn't bother me much, because I won't be using it, and if we are talking MP then there are far worse things one can do to cheat... like edit alphax.txt on the fly and take advantage of those changes on your turn only.
I'll probably still use your version given the choice. I just miss "the first 10 minerals cost the same regardless of what you build)"
As for the new mechanic, I am conflicted. It devalues early credits, which are few and far between as it is (lolada may be onto something with 30 credits per mineral row), and it is somewhat less intuitive than a flat pay-per-mineral. That said, SMAC taught me to calculate how much is 11/17 of 48 in my head, so again it wouldn't bother me much, and it should get rid of the exploit.
I would appreciate it if the current cost per mineral was displayed somewhere in the pop-up, but that might confuse even more people...
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 03:01:53 pm
1. Tim there's really annoying bug with Hunter-Seeker. Once you have it and AI tries to probe your base - popup that pops up saying "X factions probe team was returned ... by hunter-seeker".. pops up like 15 times in a row. Happened to me twice i thought popup in on infinite loop and that i would not be able to continue the game. I held enter in the end until it closed. This is WTP only bug.
Was it AI probe trying to get into base? If so, maybe it was just trying again and again. I should reduce their turns to zero so it doesn't repeat.
Also keep the save if you can so we can verify it's fixed.
2. Another bug is when AI return your probe "unharm.. action when choose not to kill them if you are not at war" - it return the probe in capital. If the probe is Foil and capital has no coastal access.. its a bummer. I heard about this bug from other people also - it happens also in your mod. So this is vanilla bug i think.
This is vanilla's. Sometime sea units are returned to land bases. Never looked at it but will add to my todo list.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 06:06:39 pm
From one side I am grateful for all of your feedback - often quite constructive! From the other side, the backlog needs prioritization. I encourage everybody to use GitHub issues: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues. I will also gradually move everything I can from text files and forum thread to there. However, if you enter them right there it'll speed up things.
It also helps to keep dedicated discussion thread about the specific issue as well as verify that similar issue is already filed and avoid duplicates.
Post by: Nevill on September 17, 2020, 07:53:12 pm
Quote
Base tries to build colonies if there is room for colonization.Was something broken? Haven't tested new versions yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 08:00:49 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 17, 2020, 08:57:40 pm
1. Tim there's really annoying bug with Hunter-Seeker. Once you have it and AI tries to probe your base - popup that pops up saying "X factions probe team was returned ... by hunter-seeker".. pops up like 15 times in a row. Happened to me twice i thought popup in on infinite loop and that i would not be able to continue the game. I held enter in the end until it closed. This is WTP only bug.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/3
Post by: lolada on September 22, 2020, 08:04:26 am
Later on I moved former there and accidentally unit over that tile and my unit killed my former.. ::) and that killed fungal tower.
I've also seen elsewhere native alien units killing one of their kind in bombardment i think. That happens also, saw it a few times.
(https://i.imgur.com/erJtadb.png)
Post by: Tayta Malikai on September 22, 2020, 09:19:02 am
Never seen native units killing each other, but the game text claims that native Spore Launchers will attack other Spore Launchers, so it seems intended.
Post by: Nevill on September 22, 2020, 09:59:57 am
I think I've seen that sort of behaviour with "capturing" Fungal Towers too. But it was a long time ago.This might have to do something with the bug that has artillery units attack each other, even when they are on the same faction, or even attack themselves (a ship trying to bombard a tile and sinking itself is pretty funny though). There was also code for artillery to protect nearby territory from bombardment... I think, which could result in all sort of weirdness.
Never seen native units killing each other, but the game text claims that native Spore Launchers will attack other Spore Launchers, so it seems intended.
I'll try to run a couple tests this evening, see if I could replicate any of them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 22, 2020, 12:30:40 pm
territory, tame Spore Launchers may also engage in artillery duels with units of their own faction.
Post by: Nevill on September 26, 2020, 12:53:26 pm
faction_placement=1
It's several games in a row that I start within 8 tile distance from another faction.
Not sure if it should go in Issues, since I don't even know if it isn't just my confirmation bias. But if you want, I'll open a thread there instead.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 26, 2020, 05:36:59 pm
Can you please take a look if WtP did anything to change/undo the starting location changes made by Thinker?
faction_placement=1
It's several games in a row that I start within 8 tile distance from another faction.
Not sure if it should go in Issues, since I don't even know if it isn't just my confirmation bias. But if you want, I'll open a thread there instead.
Nope. Never touched it. I also observe pretty close starting locations sometimes. I'd say it is no biggie as long as each faction is not constrained in other directions. Remember that due to randomness in map generation it is not possible to give everybody an absolute equal location. There always will be some fluctuations.
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 27, 2020, 04:49:07 am
For example, I order a former to build a farm. This takes four turns. At the end of the fourth turn, the former will complete the farm but be unable to move. However, if I order him to build a road and then cancel the road order, he'll gain one movement point, which I can then use to terraform faster or go somewhere else.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 27, 2020, 06:02:13 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 27, 2020, 06:53:26 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-145
The main goal of this iteration was to teach AI expand faster = spam more colonies instead of wasting time on expensive 20 turn combat units. It seems to be doing pretty decent job now. Most of early production is colonies, formers, explorers, and some cheap facilities. See test screenshots on how fast it covers the normal map. Naturally, expansion slows down when faction engages in war but that is expected. Feel free to try it out and comment.
Warning/Disclaimer
A lot of code modification. Even though I tested it to run there still could be game crashing bugs. Please treat it as experimental and don't embark on PBEM games with it. Yet.
Other notable things
Fixed MercantileInterest's bug. It was pretty difficult to design a fix approach to it as the code (as usual) is very hard-coded, convoluted, and interdependent. Luckily I found one case where I can just exhaust all the movement point to eliminate exploit. It seems to work for human at least.
Move Hab Complex one level down to the level 2 tech. Previously I still observed cases when factions in need couldn't get it in time (Morganites, Jungle, Aquiatic). I hope this is not a big deal for everybody.
Sea explorers were permanently stuck in land port. Heinous bug affecting both AI and human. You can easily reproduce it by building sea unit in land port and set it to explore by "/" key. It won't ever leave the port. Whereas if you manually move it out of the port in the ocean and set it to explore there it'll start exploring. A lot of people didn't know about it as people rarely use this order. Yet it impacts AI as well. Now sea explorers are kicked out of port when healty.
Post by: Nevill on September 27, 2020, 07:01:18 pm
(this exploit could double terraforming speeds)
But can you please call it v146 instead, because I downloaded v145 yesterday to start another MP game, and this was what was written in the readme:
# Version 145
* AI: Added land improvement demand computation.
* Global production hurry happens before production phase to produce fully completed items.
* Fixed Thinker production unit mineral cost calculation. Previously it didn't account for prototypes/Skunkworks and Brood Pit.
* Added predefined units: Trance Formers, Trance Sea Formers.
* Hab Complex is now enabled by FldMod (level 2). Sea and jungle bases still struggle to get it in time.
* Restored vanilla emergency retooling after base attack. That was previously overriden by Thinker.
* AI production: added multiplying facilities.
* AI production: added psych facilities.
* AI production: added population limit facilities.
...were there other code changes besides the two bugs since then? Should I upgrade to the latest build?
Edit: there were, apparently. I see a few new parameters in thinker.ini. NVM, I'll just update to the "latest" v145 then.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 27, 2020, 09:05:02 pm
Cool. Special thanks go for fixing the double terraforming bug. If only you knew the temptation... :)
(this exploit could double terraforming speeds)
Are you talking about same bug MercantileInterest mentioned? He said this only can be used at the end of terraforming action. Are you saying it can be used at every turn? Please post reproducible scenario.
But can you please call it v146 instead, because I downloaded v145 yesterday to start another MP game, and this was what was written in the readme:
# Version 145
* AI: Added land improvement demand computation.
* Global production hurry happens before production phase to produce fully completed items.
* Fixed Thinker production unit mineral cost calculation. Previously it didn't account for prototypes/Skunkworks and Brood Pit.
* Added predefined units: Trance Formers, Trance Sea Formers.
* Hab Complex is now enabled by FldMod (level 2). Sea and jungle bases still struggle to get it in time.
* Restored vanilla emergency retooling after base attack. That was previously overriden by Thinker.
* AI production: added multiplying facilities.
* AI production: added psych facilities.
* AI production: added population limit facilities.
...were there other code changes besides the two bugs since then? Should I upgrade to the latest build?
Edit: there were, apparently. I see a few new parameters in thinker.ini. NVM, I'll just update to the "latest" v145 then.
Crap. Sorry. Mixed them up. Let me try to restore it.
Separated 145 and 146. You don't need to upgrade. 145 is completely workable too. 146 just has more stuff and more tuned AI but this is never ending process anyway. So you can pick any. Of course, all other things equal the later version is better.
Post by: Nevill on September 27, 2020, 10:07:50 pm
Are you talking about same bug MercantileInterest mentioned? He said this only can be used at the end of terraforming action. Are you saying it can be used at every turn? Please post reproducible scenario.Pre-requisites: have a road network connecting the tiles you need to work on.
Assuming a borehole takes 16 turns, order 8 formers to drill a borehole. Hit next turn. It will complete, and the formers will be out of moves. Order them to do something else, then cancel order. They will all gain 1 movement point. Move them to a new tile, and order them to drill a borehole. It will complete next turn. Repeat.
8 formers will be drilling one borehole a turn where normally you'd need 16.
Edit: do check, though, if your solution allows a former to resume a terraforming action if it was cancelled on accident. Because that is what they are supposed to do, too.
(they can also carry over their work, i.e. work on one tile, then move to another and keep their progress, but that could be inintended)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 27, 2020, 11:47:53 pm
I believe it is fixed. However, I didn't test it extensively. Sort of side task.
Post by: MercantileInterest on September 28, 2020, 05:48:30 pm
Are you talking about same bug MercantileInterest mentioned? He said this only can be used at the end of terraforming action. Are you saying it can be used at every turn? Please post reproducible scenario.
It can also be used for movement.
Former is out of moves. Order him to move to adjacent tile. He won't because he has no moves but, next turn, he'll slide over and finish that turn's move. Order him to terraform, cancel, and he'll get another move.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 28, 2020, 06:18:28 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 30, 2020, 08:19:04 pm
Currently extra prototype cost is a fixed percentage of unit cost regardless of how many prototyped components are in it. That allows saving on prototyping by combining all new components (weapon, armor, chassis) in one unit. Building such unit immediately prototypes all included components. Another problem is that extra prototype cost is proportional to unit cost thus making prototyping same component cheaper on overall cheaper unit. I.e. it is cheaper to prototype weapon and armor on chassis unit. It is cheaper to prototype new chassis on Scout Patrol, etc.
I propose to rework this formula to eliminate the need for such fiddling and exploits. Helps AI as well.
Proposed formula
extra prototype unit cost = sum of extra prototype component cost for each prototyping component
extra prototype component cost = component cost * extra prototype cost percentage from alphax.txt
There are three extra prototype cost values in alphax.txt based on triad type. They surely can be attributed to chassis. There are no special percentage applicable to weapon and armor, though. I think taking average of the triad extra prototype costs is the most logical as weapon and armor can be used for any triad.
Extra prototype cost is not affected by reactor price reduction it is just a flat addition. This way prototyping component always costs the same. No room for exploit or fiddling.
The above formula also somewhat lowers overall cost of prototype unit as it applies to a single prototyping component only and not to the whole unit. We can increase extra prototype costs to 100% to still keep extra prototype cost significant.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 01, 2020, 06:17:40 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-149
The modification was very obscure due to original convoluted, scattered, and hard-coded implementation. I will appreciate if someone will do a second look at it and test different scenarios: different percentage, different composition of prototyped and not prototyped components, in different places: design workshop, call design workshop from base item picker screen, actual values for unit cost, etc.
However, when modifying extra prototype cost percentages in alphax.txt, keep them all equal due to the vanilla bug.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 02:57:24 am
lockup |
Version 148, per your recent post in r/4Xgaming. After customizing my random map, I never got a faction selection menu. I get dumped into the Cyborg selection and it locks up. To install, I first did a clean install of GOG SMAC and SMACX in a folder named "C:\GOG Games\The Will To Power". Then I copied the stuff from /core on top of it. Then I copied the stuff from /factions on top of it. Started the game by clicking directly on terranx_mod.exe in its directory.
I just recently played Thinker mod 2.0 release combined with my own mod just fine. So it is not an underlying Thinker bug. At least, not in 2.0 release. I don't know what Thinker your 148 is using.
I noticed your #CUSTOMFACTIONS in alphax.txt is not empty. It contains:
Code: [Select]
#CUSTOMFACTIONS
atlantis
bree
empath
genesis
ghost
republic
templarThese don't exist in a normal alphax.txt. Before I did the clean install, I tried overwriting a really old WTP directory, from May of this year. I was getting parse errors about bree and ghost and republic, I think. That's why I tried a clean install.
Will try another clean install with only /core. It may turn out that you have divergences between /core and /factions and are not achieving real world test coverage of these during installation. I would recommend that you ship the factions that you intend to have as the experience of your mod, and not complicate the number of steps / permutations that a user can install with. If this works when only installing /core, I will be proven correct. Stay tuned.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 03:46:13 am
what it should look like |
Ok first I thought I should verify that the clean install actually works, without any file changes. I installed to "C:\GOG Games\The Will To Power core only". This is where I got to. I think you can see that when the Cyborgs are displayed, there's supposed to be a faction selection menu above them. This wasn't happening in the modded game. I changed everyone to RANDOM, started the game, drew Yang, landed on the planet, and saved the game.
I then went into Alpha Centauri.ini and added "DirectDraw=0". Restarting the game, I have it correctly displaying on my laptop's widescreen.
I then adjusted all my Preferences to my usual. I saved the game to retain them. Then I dumped everything from 148 /core into the game directory. Then I started terranx.exe to verify that the normal game still works. Well, it doesn't exactly. I got the following screen:
ghost faction parser error |
Oddly, then I did get dumped into the game's main menu. I quit and started terranx.exe again, to make sure I'm straight on what's happening. This time I got the Firaxis logo, and then the following error screen:
genesis faction parser error |
I'm a little surprised that the error is indeterminate, with different spurious #CUSTOMFACTIONS called out from run to run. Clicking on the OK button, I got errors about "republic" and then "empath". Then it repeated again with "genesis" then "republic" then "empath". Then I got dumped into the game's main menu. I loaded my saved game just fine. So terranx.exe does work, but it's getting upsetting / scary errors due to the spurious #CUSTOMFACTIONS entries in alphax.txt. I think you need to delete those.
Now I finally try clicking on terranx_mod.exe. I again get 6 parsing errors, this time with "templar" and "atlantis" and "republic". Get dumped to main menu. Start Game.. Customize Random Map.. Standard Planet.. 50-70% of Surface.. Average Erosion.. Average Life Forms.. Average Cloud Cover.. Transcend.. Customize Rules.. OK because rules haven't changed.. and, BANG:
no faction selection menu |
It's bugged. And it isn't about the DirectDraw. I bet it's about #CUSTOMFACTIONS. Note that I get Roze because I had RANDOM factions selected last time. I'll probably get a new one every time now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 02, 2020, 04:01:33 am
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 04:10:11 am
I have verified that removing the #CUSTOMFACTIONS entries, does solve the problem. Faction selection menus appear as they're supposed to, in both terranx.exe and terranx_mod.exe.
You'll want to edit your post on r/4Xgaming appropriately. Such as linking to new stuff.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 02, 2020, 04:12:23 am
I believe that's indeed a custom faction problem - probably the #FACTIONNAME in a faction's file not agreeing exactly with the ID line under #CUSTOMFACTIONS in Alphax.txt, or maybe just the filename. Naturally, you only need to check any recently installed factions...
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 02, 2020, 04:23:14 am
I believe I have to abandon any other mods tryout while in development. Thank you for quick help!
Removed all custom factions from alphax.txt. Repackaged release 148. Deleted also all custom faction files from AC directory. Now it seems to launch without problems. Please verify.
I don't think I need to change links in post since I just replaced same exactly files. Just downloaded by the link, unpacked, and all customfactions are gone. So it should be good. In fact you may try to download it by this link and verify.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 04:33:33 am
A way these errors creep in, is when you open multiple copies of alphax.txt to visually compare differences between sections. It's pretty easy to get mixed up about which file you're looking at, editing, and saving. I try to exercise "close out discipline". My default habit is to close everything, then only open 1 file at a time, presuming I can get things done that way. It's the state I always try to return to. But people make mistakes.
Currently watching paint dry with "C:\Will To Power 148 revised" installation directory. Will edit upon results.
Also you'd need to edit version 149. I found that when originally looking to see if you had solved a bug.
Went to r/4Xgaming and clicked on link in your original post. Verified that alphax.txt lacks any entries for #CUSTOMFACTION.
Installed /core only to "..revised" directory. Copied my previous Alpha Centauri.ini so I don't have to keep futzing that. Firing up terranx_mod.exe. Faction selection menu does come up, no problem.
Will now try adding /factions. Started over, avoided Quick Start, did the usual specification drill. Faction menu comes up. I set everything to RANDOM again. I draw Zhakarov, and you drop me on the Monsoon Jungle??? I'm totally gonna playtest this one.
the giveaway |
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 02, 2020, 04:42:39 am
Also you'd need to edit version 149. I found that when originally looking to see if you had solved a bug.
I have repackaged it too already. It obviously had same problem.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 04:59:34 am
These factions do not appear to be modded at all. At least, their Help descriptions are those of unmodded factions. What if anything has changed? I mean I installed from /factions, so I was expecting changes.
I can't believe you earthquaked the nice land around my capitol.
quality completion scumming |
In my mod, I've become rather used to completing Recycling Tanks by popping pods, as an early game strategy. Well I didn't have them available. But a Pressure Dome has the same value! Sure you want to be giving that away immediately? I've never thought about it in my own mod either, but then I tend to have Recycling Tanks available quickly. That said, I think I started with Doctrine Flexibility as my bonus tech. My mod doesn't have any bonus techs, except I give that to the Pirates. I make everyone work for their baseline.
Actually it doesn't look like my Pressure Dome completion provided the benefit of a Recycling Tank. How did you pull that off? Or have I never noticed that the original game lies about it? Or does it only provide the equivalent of a Recycling Tank when at sea? That must be it. There goes my completion scumming career.
lousy fungal towers |
MY 2119. I lost 4 Scouts trying to take out a really minor Fungal Tower. The usual "use 3" drill clearly doesn't work. I'm quitting this game. I got put in a rockfight with the Data Angels breathing down my neck. I got lucky with a Battle Ogre, just happened to get one as their Battle Ogre was coming to my 2nd city to do it in. I'm not used to the close infighting of Standard maps anymore, it's been awhile. And I can't very well throw all my forces away on a freakin' fungal button. Colonists also take noticeably longer to produce. I'll probably be able to completion scum some of them, just like I do with expensive Sea Colony Pods in a normal game. But I'll tell you, having an earthquake on my nice capitol start was really irritating. I will regroup with lessons learned. "Don't count on the land".
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 06:08:01 am
invisible helpers |
Ok this is pretty obnoxious. Forests take twice as long to build. I figured they're still worth it anyways, especially since at the beginning of this mod, I don't have to work to make any Formers to get started. But what is the point of making them, if lots of mindworms and spore launchers are going to immediately get stirred up and destroy them? I certainly don't have enough Scout coverage to prevent these incursions, so this feels like a real ass pull. Well I guess we'll see.
I was gonna settle Mount Planet. And the Morganites had to be sitting on it already, right next to me. I'm really not used to Standard maps, where anything that's any good, has someone already crawling right on top of it. In fact I almost wonder if the faction placement algorithm is designed to put deliberate stress on these worthwhile terrain features? I wouldn't put it past it. I had an inkling that something lame was about to happen, as I'd seen a supply pod just west of me, disappear. I didn't have to advance towards it, but like a moth to a flame, I did anyways.
So I met Morgan. And because I'm really a wuss, I made peace with him. More to the point, because I don't know what the hell is going on with this game, and I fear the unknown. I might need Morgan's generous supply of free units at some point. Although this jerk isn't trading me any tech in the short term. I guess we're not doing the Tier 3 Secret Project thing in this mod, so factions will be more guarded about early stuff.
Somehow I've already got Lasers available. And obviously, not the slightest bit of productivity to actually build them. So I don't see much point.
I'm leaving my faction's research at the default settings, to see what the AI gets to experience. Does the tech tree make sense from their standpoint? Or does it seem weird, and interfere with their progress?
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 06:18:09 am
lost in transit |
The amount of fungus is obnoxious, because the mindworms and spore launchers are so dangerous. I've been wandering around trying to find somewhere "clear", as the territory next to the Morganites, was not suitable. This is obviously an absolutely lousy "strategy" / development. Optimal strategy would be settling the 2 colonists on defensible land as quickly as possible. Did it with my capitol, but obviously not with my 2nd. And fungus in front of me, was a factor in that continuing westward movement as well. This is really cramped and dangerous.
So to add icing to the cake, the fully non-nerfed Caretakers are north of me. And bellicose, demanding my blood. They are probably going to kill my 2nd colonist because I can't get back across the fungal gap fast enough. And I didn't have a hope of wiping out that feeble fungal tower. This is probably again going to turn into one of these "lessons learned" games. The only thing I've done well so far, is completion scum a Command Center.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 06:42:11 am
weird nauticality |
I look at my production options and at a glance, I find myself wondering why I can't make a Transport. Well it seems I don't have Doctrine Flexibility. And that makes me wonder why I can make a Sea Former.
design scumming |
To punish the game for punishing me, I design an armored Impact Foil, using the Sea Former chassis as my transformative base. I mean, I'm going to need every trick in the book to come back from this lousy start, right? Not that I can afford to build the thing, but I am an arch completion scummer. It would be interesting to see a binary modder put limits on my abuse, although it remains to be seen if I can actually get far enough ahead with such tactics, to make up for the strategic realities. I'm not exactly confident.
What am I doing with Impact weapons already anyways? That was awfully quick. I only just built my 2nd city! Maybe I could completion scum some awesome units and really clean up. Then again, I don't know how powerful an Impact weapon is in this combat system.
In my mod, I don't give a Sea Former predefined unit right off the bat with Centauri Ecology. I wait until a Tier 3 tech, when I lift the Nutrient restriction. And I'm only giving it as a safeguard against a game bug. The game is supposed to design a Sea Former unit for the AI, but sometimes it fails to do so. I have a Clean Sea Former as a fallback, in case the game doesn't, and at a time when it's useful to have such a thing. There's really not a lot of point in sea development before then. Unless you're the Pirates, in which case as an AQUATIC faction, you got those units already hardwired designed anyways. So I don't have to do anything for that case.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 06:52:54 am
quite the early food |
That's a shockingly high amount of food and minerals to get from a coastal minerals special. I'm not done with the mine yet. I guess we'll see if this turns to any real advantage. After all, I'm mainly relying on completion scumming to get anything done. I just picked up a Battle Ogre and landed it on the Caretaker capitol. It is defended by 2 Scouts, so I'm supposing that Tim nuked all the Resonance Armor stuff. I remember he doesn't like it? Well my Aliens don't start out with any special armor either, so we agree on that. I hope I can wipe these jerks out. Wonder when chemical weapons are available? I would definitely use them with impunity on the Caretakers and Usurpers, both in this game.
Um, my odds against an in-base hatchling were only 24%, so I had to retreat. At least I should be able to tear up their land with this chunk of armor.
I thought I was brilliant shooting at a Colonist, with 83% odds to win. And I died from that? Well if this happens often, I'm going to say the odds calculator is lying. I'm noticing these alien territory defense bonuses. Whatever.
I'm also getting swamped by seaborne mindworms, clearly from someone else's pot stirring. Why should I be so lucky with my position. It keeps me making trained Scouts just to deal with them, instead of making Colonists and founding new cities. I actually had to leave my capitol vacant, to kill off a weak one that was threatening my precious independent Former.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 07:35:05 am
the spam |
Well that's about enough of that. Morgan had the good graces to reveal more of the map to me. Which makes me feel so basically dejected at my utterly paltry position, that I really can't see continuing with this one. Sleep, or anything else really, sounds more appealing at 2:30 AM. The AI spams cities like crazy, and I'm back on barely trying to produce Scouts! Which at least are sorta working, but I have this sinking feeling by the time I get up to the Caretakers, they're just gonna execute me. I'll pass.
A bad wandering with the 2nd colony pod, clearly makes this game untenable, due to the AI's base settling spam. Activating the Scenario Editor and revealing the map, I can also see there's clearly not enough land, for what I've been up to. This is not a Huge map. Looks like I'd have to be awfully pushy and/or spammy myself, to make headway. And playing on a 50%..70% water map, might be a mistake. Not enough land.
Another thing I'm noticing from the map reveal, is many of the supply pods are gone. I'm wondering very much why the oceanic ones, seemed to be popped at my expense. Just showering me with mindworms. Why don't they go somewhere else?
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 03:38:34 pm
25 percent loss |
Look, that's 1/4 of my civilization you just wiped out there. It takes a long time to make colony pods, and you've got raging mindworms. I'm trying to get all of 5 feet to settle another city. It's only MY 2129, kinda early to be completely taking the piss out of me. I've been spamming Scouts non-stop too. They do prevail often enough, I think the combat is ok compared to several months ago. I'm a bit shocked that Formers seem to be the hardiest things in the universe against even Battle Ogres but whatever. But having to do continuous Scout spam to keep the mindworms off and pop the pods, doesn't exactly leave a lot of production left over for Colonists. Which are massively expensive.
how the spammers do |
Most factions have managed 4 cities by now. 1 has 3, 1 has 5. Everyone's better than I am. The moral of this story seems to be that they're getting a free pass and I'm not. A leading Scout is clearly required for even the shortest settlement trip. I sent my colonist out on its own, due to the pressure of fighting so many mindworms and having been in pretty much armed conflict with them the whole time. So plenty of dead Scouts.
Quitting this game. We'll see if I do better in some future one, but this is looking grossly unfair as far as what the AI factions have to deal with, vs. what I have to. Why aren't the mindworms destroying them left, right, and center? Do I have a mindworm magnet on me?
magic walkers |
How is it that none of the AI factions have lost a single colonist? Total units lost in general: Free Drones (me) 4, Datatech 4 (1 is an Ogre), Spartans 2 (1 Ogre), University 5, Cyborgs 2 (11 active Scout patrols!), Hive 3, Usurpers 6 (1 Ogre). The pattern is Ogres are always gonna die. I gotta wonder though, does the AI have some pathfinding cheat where it always knows where mindworms are, and steers the colonists out of harm's way? It would explain a lot. I sure don't believe that the AI is pushing out Scouts any harder than I am.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 02, 2020, 03:46:52 pm
These factions do not appear to be modded at all. At least, their Help descriptions are those of unmodded factions. What if anything has changed? I mean I installed from /factions, so I was expecting changes.
Which factions are you talking about? Those in /factions folder? They are modded but just slightly. Some tech and units and could be even innate SE are different for them. However, since some point I deemphasized faction modding leaving it to others.
In my mod, I've become rather used to completing Recycling Tanks by popping pods, as an early game strategy. Well I didn't have them available. But a Pressure Dome has the same value! Sure you want to be giving that away immediately? I've never thought about it in my own mod either, but then I tend to have Recycling Tanks available quickly. That said, I think I started with Doctrine Flexibility as my bonus tech. My mod doesn't have any bonus techs, except I give that to the Pirates. I make everyone work for their baseline.
Actually it doesn't look like my Pressure Dome completion provided the benefit of a Recycling Tank. How did you pull that off? Or have I never noticed that the original game lies about it? Or does it only provide the equivalent of a Recycling Tank when at sea? That must be it. There goes my completion scumming career.
RT now multiplies minerals as other factories. PD does not give RT benefits anymore. Read a description for details.
Ok this is pretty obnoxious. Forests take twice as long to build. I figured they're still worth it anyways, especially since at the beginning of this mod, I don't have to work to make any Formers to get started. But what is the point of making them, if lots of mindworms and spore launchers are going to immediately get stirred up and destroy them? I certainly don't have enough Scout coverage to prevent these incursions, so this feels like a real ass pull. Well I guess we'll see.
There is somewhere more native life but not to the level when they destroy improvement faster than you build them. This actually applies to all improvements, not forests only.
This mod does play different than vanilla and out of all people out there you should be aware of this. 🙂
So yes, some difference in approach and strategy is expected.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 05:43:59 pm
To me the measure of "plays differently" will be if the AI consistently cheats. Which can mean in-practice phenomena that the AI doesn't have to pay for, that the human player does. The one I'm most watching in this regard, is whether the AIs are magically immune to having their colonies killed by the hordes of mindworms. I will be firing up Scenario Editor to review the AI's casualties after every game that I quit. If the AI simply doesn't take colonist casualties, that's awfully suspicious. Especially compared to the stock binary, where moving colonists badly and leaving cities in places where they routinely get killed, is de rigueur. Yes I'd like an AI that colonizes "better", but I don't want it given a huge cheat to do it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 02, 2020, 09:06:39 pm
The one I'm most watching in this regard, is whether the AIs are magically immune to having their colonies killed by the hordes of mindworms.
Their colonies are not immune to be killed. They have about 50% survival chance after turn 15 and I occasionally see them (and other units) killed by worms. Turn the scenario editor and you'll see it.
I also constantly see their bases wiped out by worm attacks including the cases when worms kill defender and then wipe out the base.
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2020, 10:16:45 pm
I'd also like to know if the AIs are receiving anything like the offshore swarms of mindworms that I am. It is possible that it's the accident of where your landmass is compared to others. Exposure to oceanic interlopers doesn't have to be at all equal, and might be a kind of unfairness that no placement algorithm computes.
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2020, 04:40:52 am
anti Green Gaians |
I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions. I really wish you'd make that go away. It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2020, 04:59:19 am
polar island |
I did better at my early spread this game. Once again I got stuck on a small land mass with the Morganites. Once again my desire for peace, caused me to do an about face and threatened to cut me off from land. Fortunately, the Morganites weren't as on the ball as whatever happened in my previous game. They had settled Morgan Industries and Morgan Aerodynamics. After backtracking to my side of the border, UN Commerce Committee became my 2nd city. That extended my influence enough that I was able to do more settlements to extend my land. This was mainly powered by a fairly productive capitol. Without that it wouldn't have worked. I did grab part of the Uranium Flats but Morgan did a better job of pushing north. I did better pushing southwest.
My rate of growth has been sad though. Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide. The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories. Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing. I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty. GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ? Well why not do that in Planned then?
Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make. Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything? I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them. I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually. They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times. I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage. Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.
No, I haven't read all the notes on how the mod actually is supposed to work yet. As an experienced player and modder, I'm not really sure why I would, right off the bat. I have tried looking at Help entries for some facilities.
So I'm faffing around with Scouts, Gun Foils, and Formers. Those, I seem to be able to afford. I've planted lots of forests despite double the time to complete. I haven't noticed any problem with that. I think the immediate availability of 2 free Formers, offsets the production effort compared to what I'm used to. The forest spread looks comparable to what I'd see in my own mod. This island just has an obnoxious amount of fungus on the bottom of it. Some of that was from supply pod blooms.
I didn't get quite as many mindworm invasions this game, and I think the explanation is real simple. Poles are safer, being nearer the center of the map is dangerous. So the game is basically unfair that way. I seriously doubt the faction placement algorithm takes that into account, and I simply got lucky being on the bottom of the map.
I did radiate some Gun Foils this time, unlike last game. That enabled me to kill a few Sealurks, that otherwise would have messed with me harder. It did nothing an Isle I tried to intercept at all. I died, barely scratching it. So that mindworm landed, but killing it on shore did not turn out to be that big a deal. I will confess though: I do save scum some. IMO the mindworm spam is dialed up too high. Since the game is unfair in this regard, I counter by dialing the fairness to what I think is actually appropriate. I don't owe this game the death of an early city, when 4 mindworms decide to appear on my island at once, in different places that I can't readjust to. That was the worst it got though, which is a lot better than the previous game.
I seriously have no clue about the Secret Projects. They're way too godawful expensive to even consider starting them. There are no supply pods generating the usual beaucoup de Artifacts, so I'm not going to be hurrying them that way either.
I don't really have a clue about tech advantages, so I'm just doing a typical "fill out the early city facilities" thing, hoping that proves to be a meaningful course of action. If it isn't, then I imagine I'll get clobbered. Then I'll quit the game, activate the Scenario Editor, and diagnose what went wrong.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 03, 2020, 03:57:51 pm
You're right I should witness an AI only game to see what's going on. Because the death count in my game, looked like their colonies didn't take a scratch. Be advised that if the AI gets to perform perfectly for the first 30 turns of the game, and the human is given a super deadly hard time by comparison, that does pretty much establish a fundamentally game conditioning imbalance. So it's not a casualty count on Turn 200 that matters.
I'd also like to know if the AIs are receiving anything like the offshore swarms of mindworms that I am. It is possible that it's the accident of where your landmass is compared to others. Exposure to oceanic interlopers doesn't have to be at all equal, and might be a kind of unfairness that no placement algorithm computes.
I did not introduced any special treatment for AI in WTP. Nor Thinker does to my knowledge. All combat chances are calculated regardless of combatants affiliation.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 03, 2020, 03:59:16 pm
I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions. I really wish you'd make that go away. It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.
I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 03, 2020, 05:18:24 pm
My rate of growth has been sad though. Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide. The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories. Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing. I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty. GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ? Well why not do that in Planned then?
As I stated before, things like SE modeling is not a cornerstone of this mod and they can easily be tweaked without losing overall playability. So I am open to suggestions in this area. Current modeling is quite close to what Nevill uses in his mod. Surprisingly, we just came to about same solution independently. I didn't have a time to review it in details and adapt, though. Would appreciate a community help on that.
Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make. Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything? I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them. I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually. They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times. I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage. Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.
People are constantly complaining about this and I cannot understand why. How much is incredible? They are about same as in vanilla or lower. See below change from vanilla to WTP.
Code: [Select]
Colony Pod 3 4
Rover Colony Pod 7 6
Sea Colony Pod 7 4
Formers 2 2
Sea Formers 4 2
Transport Foil 3 4
Speeder Probe Team 3 6
1-2-1 2 2
1-4-1 3 4
1-6-1 4 6
1-12-1 12 12
2-1-1 2 2
4-1-1 2 4
6-1-1 2 6
12-1-1 4 12
2-2-1 3 3
4-4-1 4 6
6-6-1 7 9
12-12-1 21 18
1-1-2 2 2
2-1-2 2 3
4-1-2 3 6
6-1-2 5 9
12-1-2 9 18
1-1-3 2 2
2-2-3 4 6
4-4-3 6 12
6-6-3 12 18
12-12-3 17 36
1-1-4 2 1
2-2-4 2 3
4-4-4 4 6
6-6-4 7 9
12-12-4 17 18
See above. Most of the units are about the same cost except pure attackers. This is not WTP attackers are costly. This is vanilla attackers are exceptionally stupidly priced. Attacker 12-1-1 costs 4 versus defender 1-12-1 costs 12 ??? P-lease. 🙄
That was discussed multiple times already.
Currently speeder chassis is 50% and hovertank is 100% costlier than infantry. I can make it 25% and 50%, correspondingly, if it matters to someone. However, I believe they are fairly priced with their triple speed (9 tiles over roads, 27 tiles over tubes) and three attacks per turn.
No, I haven't read all the notes on how the mod actually is supposed to work yet. As an experienced player and modder, I'm not really sure why I would, right off the bat. I have tried looking at Help entries for some facilities.
I didn't insisted you do. Just referred to it when you asked about specific change. Feel free not to.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on October 03, 2020, 06:43:03 pm
I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions. I really wish you'd make that go away. It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.
I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.
It doesn't. Thinker will let the AI choose its not-priority model if it makes more sense at the time, but the AI will still be pissed if you don't choose it yourself. If Morgan needs efficiency, he will run Green, but he will be pissed if you run Green or Planned. So the AI can be pragmatic even if it means being a bit hypocritical. It will not disregard a faction's social opposition. Morgan still can't run Planned.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 03, 2020, 09:10:10 pm
**Experimental**
*Original functionality is scattered across the code and is heavily hardcoded. This modification may make game crash or display incorrect results.*
* All direct mineral contributions are scaled to basic mineral cost multiplier in alphax.ini. That effectivelly ignores INDUSTRY rating impact on such contributions.
* Alien Artifact is cached at base contributing to project or prototype production.
* Unit is disbanded at base contributing to current production. This is actually already scaled in vanilla so no changes were needed.
* Hurrying production. Hurrying cost is not dependent on INDUSTRY rating anymore.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 04, 2020, 03:05:23 am
To my understanding, setting social_ai=0 in thinker.ini will disable this behaviour.I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions. I really wish you'd make that go away. It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.
I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.
It doesn't. Thinker will let the AI choose its not-priority model if it makes more sense at the time, but the AI will still be pissed if you don't choose it yourself. If Morgan needs efficiency, he will run Green, but he will be pissed if you run Green or Planned. So the AI can be pragmatic even if it means being a bit hypocritical. It will not disregard a faction's social opposition. Morgan still can't run Planned.
It should remain on by default, though. The player isn't shackled to any particular SE choice, neither should the AI be. They have enough disadvantages as it is.
I wouldn't say it quite follows Nevill's balancing scheme. The way I understand it, you seem to be trying to make each choice balanced in itself, hence why Police State and Planned have SUPPORT and INDUSTRY offsetting each other, and Democracy gets -PLANET; as well as making each choice viable at every stage of the game. Nevill is more focused on balancing the potential benefits within a category against each other and enabling pretty synergies across categories, while accepting that some options are just going to be dominant at certain stages of the game. Nobody is going to pick Democracy and lose their 10 free minerals at the start of the game; likewise, even nerfed Planned is still the only real sensible choice to kick off the initial round of base building.My rate of growth has been sad though. Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide. The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories. Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing. I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty. GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ? Well why not do that in Planned then?
As I stated before, things like SE modeling is not a cornerstone of this mod and they can easily be tweaked without losing overall playability. So I am open to suggestions in this area. Current modeling is quite close to what Nevill uses in his mod. Surprisingly, we just came to about same solution independently. I didn't have a time to review it in details and adapt, though. Would appreciate a community help on that.
What I'm trying to say is that it's fine if some choices are clearly stronger than others, as long as it's not all the time. The risk is that the choices become too balanced and we end up with situations like this, where it's unclear what to pick because every choice hurts too much somewhere.
That said, there remain some convergences: in his latest version of the mod, Nevill made Police State give +2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT, -1 GROWTH, -1 PROBE. So there is some scope for "yes, it's strong, but we might as well give it some downside to make it not as strong". The -INDUSTRY he gives for Free Market is an example of this too.
I think a key question here is how many minerals bvanevery is getting at each of his bases in 2177. It is pretty difficult to break double-digits if you weren't lucky with mineral bonuses, and I don't see any of those in that screenshot. Conversely, a single rocky mineral can turn your faction into a relative industrial powerhouse.Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make. Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything? I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them. I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually. They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times. I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage. Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.
People are constantly complaining about this and I cannot understand why. How much is incredible? They are about same as in vanilla or lower. See below change from vanilla to WTP.Code: [Select]Colony Pod 3 4
Rover Colony Pod 7 6
Sea Colony Pod 7 4
Formers 2 2
Sea Formers 4 2
Transport Foil 3 4
Speeder Probe Team 3 6
1-2-1 2 2
1-4-1 3 4
1-6-1 4 6
1-12-1 12 12
2-1-1 2 2
4-1-1 2 4
6-1-1 2 6
12-1-1 4 12
2-2-1 3 3
4-4-1 4 6
6-6-1 7 9
12-12-1 21 18
1-1-2 2 2
2-1-2 2 3
4-1-2 3 6
6-1-2 5 9
12-1-2 9 18
1-1-3 2 2
2-2-3 4 6
4-4-3 6 12
6-6-3 12 18
12-12-3 17 36
1-1-4 2 1
2-2-4 2 3
4-4-4 4 6
6-6-4 7 9
12-12-4 17 18
See above. Most of the units are about the same cost except pure attackers. This is not WTP attackers are costly. This is vanilla attackers are exceptionally stupidly priced. Attacker 12-1-1 costs 4 versus defender 1-12-1 costs 12 ??? P-lease.
That was discussed multiple times already.
Currently speeder chassis is 50% and hovertank is 100% costlier than infantry. I can make it 25% and 50%, correspondingly, if it matters to someone. However, I believe they are fairly priced with their triple speed (9 tiles over roads, 27 tiles over tubes) and three attacks per turn.
For comparison, here is a screenshot from a singleplayer game (with Nevill's alphax.txt) I'm currently playing to pass the time between multiplayer turns. Coruscant and Cyberdyne Systems both have 8-9 minerals, which is respectable enough to build 30-mineral Impact Rovers and Speeder Probes in 4 turns and a 20-row project in 25 turns. Hoth and Purity of Essence both have 11+ thanks to mineral bonuses, which will be pretty nice to build projects or military units with. (Not that I'd want to build projects on my border with human players around...)
(https://i.imgur.com/Dy5qghF.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 04, 2020, 05:54:25 am
What matters is relative cost of offensive and defensive units and other classes as this may give advantage to attacker or defender respectively.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 04:05:28 am
I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions. I really wish you'd make that go away. It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.
I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout. She was Planned. Ridiculous. This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part. He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 04:16:12 am
can't move Former to safety |
I'm not at all happy that you're making my Formers unable to change their orders and move off when a mindworm slides up next to them. I assume you deliberately changed the game to behave this way.
The opening of your game is very very dangerous with mindworms. Furthermore, you have made one of the best methods for mitigating early too-close fungus, planting trees right next to it, take a long time to execute. So now you've deliberately nailed my foot to the floor, to make me die. This is 1/2 of my terraforming production you think is a great idea to kill, before I've even had a chance to found my 3rd city.
I am quitting this game. And if the pattern of too much fungus, too many Formers getting whacked, continues too much, I won't be playing again until you do something about this. I get the idea of wanting mindworms to be "dangerous and a challenge", but you need to balance that against slapping the player around, when they're fresh out of the chute and haven't managed to do anything yet. There's this thing called player agency, we expect to have it. If I'm just going to get a bunch of random BS handed to me at the opening of the game, which severely determines everyone's early expansion rate, I'll be passing on that kind of game experience.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 04:27:24 am
gtfo |
WTF is this? Turn 5. This is still revised version 148. Have you jacked the maintenance cost of Pressure Domes through the roof or something?
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 04:37:20 am
the swarms |
Can you give it a rest with the indigenous life forms already? This is Turn 2. I'd like to get my 2nd colonist underway, without it being a shooting gallery, or being gratuitously obstructed. If it turns out that some other faction has started right next to me, well... I do have faction_placement=1. If it means the same thing under Thinker as under WTP, this is rather unexpected. Did you put an instantly spawning fungal tower just south of me? This could be a rather quick game, so I suppose I'll be finding out soon enough.
Give a player too many crap starts, they're gonna stop trying. Unless you're just doing a high pass filter for players who only like "monster" challenges.
diversion to the Jungle |
So the immediate effect of such an incursion, is you're making me drop what I'm doing to deal with the spore launcher, rather than going out and popping pods like I want / am supposed to be doing. You're putting me behind the competition, at a time when every single lost turn counts a great deal towards my growth.
I see that I'm sitting on the edge of the Monsoon Jungle. Somehow I'm having my doubts that that's going to turn out to be a good thing, but we'll see.
why spore launcher spam |
This is the 2nd spore launcher that has popped up in pretty much the same place. It just appeared this turn. I moved 2 Scouts to reveal more of the map south of it, to see if there's a fungal tower. Nope. What's up with this? Deirdre turned out to be in the hood, wandering a Scout around in the north. I don't know what her closeness is, as I can't see a border. I am not inclined to believe that she was waltzing around to the south. It is far more likely that this spore launcher came from an offshore Isle. However that doesn't really explain the 1st one. The Pirates are not in this game, so sea disturbance shouldn't have been happening on Turn 2. I'm not seeing how the spore launcher would have wandered in from another direction. Either it came by sea, or it is spawning here. Why?
pretty early Isle |
This is the same turn. I hadn't finished moving my units, when I took the previous screenshot. Now I see an Isle to the northeast, carrying a mindworm larva. Although Deirdre could be now churning the water up that way, I have to wonder if they just spawn on their own and come right in.
quality partner |
Next year, Deirdre signs a Pact and rubber bands me with a free Social Psych. She does not have any naval units, nor any record of one having died. The Isle appears to be spontaneous.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 05:15:31 am
my patreon |
On the positive side, Deirdre has rubber banded me again with another tech. On the negative side, she's got 4 cities to my 2. I'm supposed to be the one sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, with the food advantage. Deirdre's insight from the Unity crash site, reveal that Lal is south of me, and will be competing for the Jungle. I hope to avoid meeting him while I take it over. But this mod is so dangerous, who knows if that's even realistic?
the evidence of sea spam |
Look, this smells an awful lot like you've got some timer that's just dumping Isles pretty quickly into the oceans, to go abuse everyone on the land with. I'm cranking up the Scenario Editor to verify this one way or the other. Game over.
Caretaker pot stirring |
Hmm. The Caretakers could have been causing some of my woes, although they can't have caused the Turn 2 incident. 3 Sealurks and 3 Isles currently in evidence.
alien armada |
The Caretakers have had at most 3 ships in service at once. I have my doubts that that's enough to cough up 6 live sea threats.
I am thinking you have cranked up indigenous spawning rates somehow. This does not result in evenly distributed landfall. Some shores get really fried.
I also find out other factions have 3 or 4 cities. I have 2, despite the Jungle.
beginning naval spam |
In MY 2119 the Caretakers only had 1 Gun Foil. Their sea stirring is fairly recent. I don't have a good sampling of auto saved games before then. In MY 2110, nobody had any ships at all.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 05:59:02 am
doing you any favors |
This games I'm just going to watch the AIs slug it out. To get that started, it's necessary to play at least 1 turn before switching over control. On my 2nd turn I managed to pod complete a Synthmetal Garrison, so I felt I had to play yet another turn to keep the AI from getting confused about what it should be producing. Sadly I forgot about the Morganite SUPPORT penalty in these nearly ummodded factions, so I don't know if that completion was actually all that helpful. It was the most expensive thing I could complete though. In MY 2103 I finished moving all units, set the production to Colony Pod, and started merely observing the Hive. I set the editor to Omniscient View [Y] to see everything that's going on. I'm particularly interested in sea spawning rates.
I got really tired watching this, so I set the laptop aside and left the game running. I couldn't sleep though, due to something I ate. Waking up again, I turned off the Omniscient View [Y] so that it would run faster. I waited until MY 2200 and then stopped the run. Here is the state of the world:
century pox |
I'm not really seeing how I'd compete with this amount of colonization. Boreholes must also come awfully early, because everyone's got them.
secret achievements |
Not sure what to say about the Secret Projects. My impression has been that they're godawful expensive.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 05, 2020, 02:22:33 pm
I notice you don't have mineral bonuses, but in WtP the resource limits all come off with Centauri Ecology, so why not build rocky mines? Those would give far better mineral yields than forests, for the same terraforming time investment.
I am somewhat curious how you managed to end up with 700 credits in your game as the Peacekeepers next to the Morganites, though. o_O
I will admit that I don't seem to be experiencing quite as many fatal encounters with native wildlife as you're reporting (though I've seen my fair share of IotDs dropping off worms, and Sealurks eating scouts in my coastal bases). Nevill reportedly experienced a lot more, but that hasn't stopped him from building up a sizeable force to take me on by the 2140s (nor me building one to resist him). But then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life. We also play with Unity Pods disabled to curtail their various cheesy effects.
These screenshots are from a singleplayer game I played with WtP 141, using the provided alphax.txt and thinker.ini. I am playing as the Omegas, who most notably have +2 RESEARCH and -2 GROWTH.
(https://i.imgur.com/gwEVkLN.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/S9I1UVb.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 02:40:36 pm
Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout. She was Planned. Ridiculous. This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part. He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics.
Planned is not Gaiains aversion.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri/Factions
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 02:54:45 pm
I'm not at all happy that you're making my Formers unable to change their orders and move off when a mindworm slides up next to them. I assume you deliberately changed the game to behave this way.
This is fix for this one.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg127454;topicseen#msg127454
Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.
The opening of your game is very very dangerous with mindworms. Furthermore, you have made one of the best methods for mitigating early too-close fungus, planting trees right next to it, take a long time to execute. So now you've deliberately nailed my foot to the floor, to make me die. This is 1/2 of my terraforming production you think is a great idea to kill, before I've even had a chance to found my 3rd city.
They are twice as weak until turn 15 and they also are affecting all factions not yours only. It is made on purpose to make native life setting put a protection burden on a player since it adds astounding 25% to total score. Should as well be worth earning.
It's all configurable by native life setting when you create a map. The amount of worms is about one level higher than in vanilla. Turn it down to rare to reduce their numbers and make game easier. You would need less protection and lose 25% of the total score. This is a trade-off.
Can you give it a rest with the indigenous life forms already? This is Turn 2. I'd like to get my 2nd colonist underway, without it being a shooting gallery, or being gratuitously obstructed. If it turns out that some other faction has started right next to me, well... I do have faction_placement=1. If it means the same thing under Thinker as under WTP, this is rather unexpected. Did you put an instantly spawning fungal tower just south of me? This could be a rather quick game, so I suppose I'll be finding out soon enough.
Give a player too many crap starts, they're gonna stop trying. Unless you're just doing a high pass filter for players who only like "monster" challenges.
I don't mean to be rude or joking about it but such filter/configuration exists. It is called native life. Seriously, though, please set it to rare and check it out. Let me know if you feel like it is too much even on rare. Then I should dial it down a bit.
Although, it is strange you cannot just kill native at the very game beginning. They are twice weak until turn 15 and chance winning against them with any Very Green unit is 85%.
So the immediate effect of such an incursion, is you're making me drop what I'm doing to deal with the spore launcher, rather than going out and popping pods like I want / am supposed to be doing. You're putting me behind the competition, at a time when every single lost turn counts a great deal towards my growth.
It does not hurt the competition as it applies to all factions equally. Others suffer the same exactly amount as you do. The development may seem slower comparing to what you use to. That's true.
I am thinking you have cranked up indigenous spawning rates somehow. This does not result in evenly distributed landfall. Some shores get really fried.
This is how vanilla moves ocean natives to shores. Due to map configuration some places are attacked more often. Usually the most advanced outpost or those in close bay focusing all sea native movement to narrow point. I didn't change anything there.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 03:03:27 pm
I see the Pirates don't get a free mineral in the ocean shelf squares. Well, that might be ok. I did get to start with 2 minerals deposits. But I didn't really get a chance to test further because:
WTF is this? Turn 5. This is still revised version 148. Have you jacked the maintenance cost of Pressure Domes through the roof or something?
Oops. This is actually my bad. Here the fix.
# Version 152
* BUG: Forgot to revert Pressure Dome maintenance back to 0 when detached Recycling Tanks functionality from it.
You can also manually change Pressure Dome maintenance to 0 without updating version.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 03:30:00 pm
then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life. We also play with Unity Pods disabled to curtail their various cheesy effects.
That a huge change. You are essentially playing an incomparably different game with it. 😊
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 05:28:13 pm
I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.
I do not believe in Smallpoxing. Smallpoxing players can all go to hell. Everything become so godawful tedious that way. SMAC's game design does indeed have the major weakness, even a fundamental flaw, that it allows Smallpoxing. Some game mechanics like EFFIC and Bureaucracy try to mitigate it, but they fail to do so. The kind of AI spam where the map just gets covered in little bases, is not considered a feature by a substantial number of us 4X TBS players.
Quote
why not build rocky mines?
Historically, eco-damage. Usually it's deadly. If WTP nerfed the eco-damage, I wouldn't consider it a feature.
Quote
I am somewhat curious how you managed to end up with 700 credits in your game as the Peacekeepers next to the Morganites, though. o_O
I have absolutely no idea how to properly spend money in WTP. A big reason I quit is because I'd had all my cash sitting around uselessly for such a long time. I'm over my fear of Recycling Tanks as a kind of factory though. They don't seem to do eco-damage.
Quote
But then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life.
Um, well duh. You're not even playing Tim's WTP then. I am! And railing at it. To condition him to change it to make it playable. It was definitely way worse off a few months ago. I do survive enough combats now. It's this "pinning my foot to the floor" in conjunction with other stuff, something's gotta change. No I haven't read through Tim's responses yet, I'm processing all of this in order.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 05:56:48 pm
Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout. She was Planned. Ridiculous. This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part. He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics.
Planned is not Gaiains aversion.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri/Factions
When the AI plays the Gaians, they're supposed to follow their Preference. That's Green. They are not supposed to choose anything in the category other than their Preference. They will spend all their time chewing out factions that don't follow their Preference. I actually call it their Compulsion, not their Preference, but if Preference is the standard lingo, fine whatever. Deidre chews your ass off for not being Green, even to the point of declaring war on you. Well if she's also Planned, that's just [poop]. It really divides the player base into people who actually care about the original game, and people who don't. I'm not in this modding biz for just a tech demo. I don't want all the factions generically playing the same way and telling me a bunch of nonsense.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 06:28:29 pm
I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.
I do not believe in Smallpoxing. Smallpoxing players can all go to hell. Everything become so godawful tedious that way. SMAC's game design does indeed have the major weakness, even a fundamental flaw, that it allows Smallpoxing. Some game mechanics like EFFIC and Bureaucracy try to mitigate it, but they fail to do so. The kind of AI spam where the map just gets covered in little bases, is not considered a feature by a substantial number of us 4X TBS players.
That is pretty controversial discussion. I agree with bvanevery here that 20 tiles base coverage calls for better usage of it. Some small variation around it like not covering 1-2 tiles here and there or overlapping 1-3 tiles between bases is no big deal. However, the dense base placement has its merits. For one, shorter travel distance so player wins 1-2 turns per base. For another, heavier bonus usage like AI placing 3 bases on crater. Both the above let player develop initially slightly faster. Not too much but the benefit is clearly there. The downside of congested placement manifests itself only after mid game when bases growing beyond size 10 cannot get more nutrients and minerals. Although, these drawback and not that immediately impactful as super land fertilization + satellites allow even congested bases to grow to size 20 albeit slower. So, obviously, the bonus comes very early while payoff is delayed to the second half of the game where it can be already won by applying the above strategy! That's why people like it.
Master of magic has interesting design in regards to city placement. First, they do not allow them closer than 3 tiles. Second, they yield is defined by whole city territory land yield combined from the turn one. So any overlap with other cities essentially immediately reduce the growth and production potential for both overlapping cities. So, usually, it is more effective to make them as less overlap as possible.
I don't think such restriction makes sense in SMACX due to one-by-one worker tile engagement mechanics. Besides, someone may really want to fill some small gaps later on in the game. Why should we restrict that?
Quotewhy not build rocky mines?
Historically, eco-damage. Usually it's deadly. If WTP nerfed the eco-damage, I wouldn't consider it a feature.
Mine has some eco-damage as any other basic improvement including roads. It's very minor. Advanced improvements are the worst.
For this logic one should avoid improving anything at all including farms and collectors.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 06:32:56 pm
Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.
I hope this doesn't mean the workaround is save scumming. Because if I'm just supposed to inspect my whole map for mindworm dangers every turn, then reload the game before I even start moving, that's gonna get real old real quick.
Quote
They are twice as weak until turn 15
Like that's gonna do me any good. You made colonists so expensive that I hadn't even managed to get a 3rd city settled yet. Your execution of my Former occurred on Turn 22, I checked the screenshot. It's 8 turns to make a forest. 15 - 8 = 7. You're saying I get to make one forest and then you're going to start killing me. Even though I haven't gotten anything done yet.
What's happening here, is you're stacking multiple systems of difficulty for the player, to make it more challenging. And not noticing that these difficulties are stacking. You can't just keep doing more production expense, more terraforming delay, more difficulty in fighting, and more mindworms, and have this all come out peachy for the beginning of the game. It's turning into random "why am I gonna die now?" and that's not an opening scenario, that's rolling a die and hoping you got a 6.
Quote
and they also are affecting all factions not yours only.
Specious because it's becoming pretty clear that the AI has at least a 2X resource advantage over me. Yeah if you can chuck out many new Formers easily it's not a problem if some get blown up. When you can't do that, it is.
Quote
It is made on purpose to make native life setting put a protection burden on a player since it adds astounding 25% to total score. Should as well be worth earning.Score?? I don't play the bloody game for a score! I play to win it, and I pat myself on the back if I do it in a shorter time. If you think player actions are all generally motivated by achieving a higher score... well please remove that bias when you design your stuff. Go ask people in r/4Xgaming how often they're trying to get the highest possible score, vs. just trying to win, maybe in less time.
Quote
It's all configurable by native life setting when you create a map.
Let's put it this way. When I pick the Average setting, you're suppose to do something average. Not some hell fest. I don't mind if you want to crank it up some, because maybe the stock game isn't challenging enough. But I didn't tell you Average so that you can just wail on me.
Quote
The amount of worms is about one level higher than in vanilla. Turn it down to rare to reduce their numbers and make game easier. You would need less protection and lose 25% of the total score. This is a trade-off.
Or I could just not play, because you've made a bad decision imposing too much. I don't mind fighting mindworms. I do mind fighting mindworms that can't be fought, because it's the beginning of the game and I've been denied the tools to do it. Like you know, Scouts need to be used for scouting. I don't have the production to form a tight defensive perimeter of Scouts around a Former. I don't have the time to make Sensor Arrays, I have to risk Formers in the 1st place to make them.
Quote
I don't mean to be rude or joking about it but such filter/configuration exists. It is called native life.
Use it like it's meant to be used. Redesign isn't you cranking everything to Eleven.
Actually, you're a binary modder. Rename the menu entries if Average doesn't mean Average anymore. And name it something clear like "asskicker" or whatever.
Last night I learned that Diablo II's difficulty levels were named Normal, Nightmare, and Hell. I'm pretty sure I never played Hell. I probably did play Nightmare after graduating from Normal. I also learned that because I played the game fairly late, I benefited from all the patching and rebalancing they did meanwhile. The game upon release was rough, to the point of poor little kids not being able to beat the damn thing. Fortunately I was not a little kid, I was probably 31.
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Although, it is strange you cannot just kill native at the very game beginning. They are twice weak until turn 15 and chance winning against them with any Very Green unit is 85%.
You killed my Former on Turn 22. I couldn't move away. Nor could I see the mindworm come in the 1st place. Game design wise this sort of thing has been called "Tomato Surprise", an unpleasant form of casserole where someone takes the lid off and says "Surprise!!" Nothing you can do about it, you've been served.
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It does not hurt the competition as it applies to all factions equally.
BS. They didn't get any spore launcher on Turn 2, I got that random event. I'm not interested in the start of the game, in practice, being a bunch of die rolls with a high dynamic range of which factions are going to get it good or bad. I don't want to play Civ II starting on an ice floe at the North Pole either. Been there done that. It's just crap game design.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 06:34:59 pm
When the AI plays the Gaians, they're supposed to follow their Preference. That's Green. They are not supposed to choose anything in the category other than their Preference. They will spend all their time chewing out factions that don't follow their Preference. I actually call it their Compulsion, not their Preference, but if Preference is the standard lingo, fine whatever. Deidre chews your ass off for not being Green, even to the point of declaring war on you. Well if she's also Planned, that's just [poop]. It really divides the player base into people who actually care about the original game, and people who don't. I'm not in this modding biz for just a tech demo. I don't want all the factions generically playing the same way and telling me a bunch of nonsense.
Really? I wasn't aware the preference is a hard choice in vanilla. Let me check it out and maybe I'll fix it in Thinker/WTP.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 06:46:45 pm
First, they do not allow them closer than 3 tiles.
Freeciv has that as a configuration option. I've played with it. I don't remember it making the game any better. For one thing, you have these really annoying "missed corner squares" that nobody's working, and that enemies can sneak into. It's just aesthetically pretty ugly that you can't do the fittings right. There is an extent to which Civ-style games are Builder games, and nasty map appearances rub some of us players the wrong way. The metaphor of calling these city dispersions Smallpox is not accidental. It's repugnant to some of us, like a disease.
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For this logic one should avoid improving anything at all including farms and collectors.
Mines have always done more eco-damage than farms or collectors, unless you changed something.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 06:48:22 pm
Really? I wasn't aware the preference is a hard choice in vanilla. Let me check it out and maybe I'll fix it in Thinker/WTP.
It is absolutely impossible in the stock game for AI Deirdre to choose any economy other than Simple or Green. Ditto every other faction's Preference / Compulsion. Yang will not ever be Fundamentalist when played by the AI. Nor will Lal. Miriam will never be Police State or Democratic.
Induktio decided he'd put the AI players on the same footing as the human player. It was a very bad decision on his part, and one of the main reasons I haven't been able to work with him as a developer. There's no respect here for the original system of diplomatic balance, the play mechanic, of someone going to war with you because of your ideology. It throws ideology out the window, as a mere placeholder for whatever choice is going to give you the most performance on the SE table. Opportunism becomes the only ideology.
And it sucks narratively too, having Deirde get in your face about you needing to be Green, when she's Planned.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 06:48:39 pm
Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.
I hope this doesn't mean the workaround is save scumming. Because if I'm just supposed to inspect my whole map for mindworm dangers every turn, then reload the game before I even start moving, that's gonna get real old real quick.
# Version 153
* Added configuration option for former wake fix: fix_former_wake.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 06:57:48 pm
re: native life
There are configuration parameters for this too.
; Native life number of tries to create it at random location: tries = constant + multiplier * <native life level>.
; Higher number of tries increases the chance of native appearing. The dependency is not linear and chance is obviously capped at 100%. So there is no point in making these values too high.
; constant parameter; allowed values: 0-255 (vanilla = 2)
native_life_generator_constant=4
; multiplier parameter; allowed values: 2,3,5 (vanilla = 2)
native_life_generator_multiplier=3
I agree that frequency of native life is not something important in this game. It is not needed too much with enhanced AI. I'll probably disable this modification in future releases by default.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 07:04:36 pm
QuoteFor this logic one should avoid improving anything at all including farms and collectors.
Mines have always done more eco-damage than farms or collectors, unless you changed something.
All disassemblers before me saying all basis land improvements contribute same exactly value to eco-damage. I didn't check if myself but I can reverify it as well if you show how did you come to this conclusion.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 07:08:23 pm
All disassemblers before me saying all basis land improvements contribute same exactly value to eco-damage. I didn't check if myself but I can reverify it as well if you show how did you come to this conclusion.
Even if working a tile contributes the same eco-damage, having more minerals does more eco-damage. Furthermore, forests reduce eco-damage. So clearly, from an "I don't want to get flooded out" standpoint, forest-and-forget is way better than mines. Generally I don't make Mines until I've got Hybrid Forests underway. I need food to work the mines conveniently anyways, and the HF gets rid of a lot of the eco-damage. Definitely doesn't get rid of all it like the docs might lead you to believe though.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 05, 2020, 08:35:41 pm
I would point out that the tools to deal with the consequences of eco-damage (i.e. Empath Song units to kill worms and formers to avert global warming) become more affordable if you have more minerals to build them with.I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.
I do not believe in Smallpoxing. Smallpoxing players can all go to hell. Everything become so godawful tedious that way. SMAC's game design does indeed have the major weakness, even a fundamental flaw, that it allows Smallpoxing. Some game mechanics like EFFIC and Bureaucracy try to mitigate it, but they fail to do so. The kind of AI spam where the map just gets covered in little bases, is not considered a feature by a substantial number of us 4X TBS players.Quotewhy not build rocky mines?
Historically, eco-damage. Usually it's deadly. If WTP nerfed the eco-damage, I wouldn't consider it a feature.QuoteI am somewhat curious how you managed to end up with 700 credits in your game as the Peacekeepers next to the Morganites, though. o_O
I have absolutely no idea how to properly spend money in WTP. A big reason I quit is because I'd had all my cash sitting around uselessly for such a long time. I'm over my fear of Recycling Tanks as a kind of factory though. They don't seem to do eco-damage.QuoteBut then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life.
Um, well duh. You're not even playing Tim's WTP then. I am! And railing at it. To condition him to change it to make it playable. It was definitely way worse off a few months ago. I do survive enough combats now. It's this "pinning my foot to the floor" in conjunction with other stuff, something's gotta change. No I haven't read through Tim's responses yet, I'm processing all of this in order.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but eco-damage only takes place once you go over a certain number of minerals, yes? And that number is 16 in vanilla and 24 in WtP, unless "clean minerals" means something different than actual minerals? If so, then a couple of rocky mines at key bases shouldn't be breaking the bank.
And yeah, I'm not overly enamoured with the mod as it is, that's why I don't play it that way. :V
Just as you don't like smallpoxxing, I dislike the meta of "huddle your scout in the base and hope to take the hit" to deal with native life.
I can sort of understand the experience you're looking for: a more narratively-informed campaign that retains significant decision-making while avoiding mechanical tedium. Nothing wrong with that, I used to play for that too before I converted to MP. It's just that WtP seems to have been developed to deal with players like me, who suck all the fun out of the game in the eternal hunt for turn advantage.
Even in your own mod, you seem to rage-quit way more games than you finish. Not that there's anything wrong with dropping a game that becomes unfun, of course.
Even if working a tile contributes the same eco-damage, having more minerals does more eco-damage. Furthermore, forests reduce eco-damage. So clearly, from an "I don't want to get flooded out" standpoint, forest-and-forget is way better than mines. Generally I don't make Mines until I've got Hybrid Forests underway. I need food to work the mines conveniently anyways, and the HF gets rid of a lot of the eco-damage. Definitely doesn't get rid of all it like the docs might lead you to believe though.Isn't this exactly the sort of "forests are the OP terraforming choice" thing that everyone tries so hard to prevent? :P
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 08:49:12 pm
I was gifted the Manifold Nexus immediately. I'm surprised that my mindworm larvae have only about a 50/50 chance against other larvae, so it doesn't look like some massive captured army of mindworms is gonna happen. I catch one, I lose one.
I did a rather quick 2 cities next to each other settlement, because my capitol was landlocked and it was a way to get ocean access. When I learned how to make Formers, I was again surprised at being able to make Sea Formers without knowing how to make other kinds of ships. But my oceanic exploration has been minimalist so far. I made friends with the Spartans and have had enough room to expand into.
I'm surprised to find out that Sea Colony Pods cost the same as regular Colony Pods. I suppose a Pressure Dome does not include the functionality of a Recycling Tank? In general I would not favor sea settlement as the stock AI is merciless about subverting sea bases. It's a major liability. However my particular oceans have some mineral deposits in them, and it will form a nice perfect circle around my capitol. So I'll be making a hybrid land / sea empire.
save scum certainty |
Overall the mindworms have been rather quiet compared to previous playtests. Something had to have been tweaked. However it is still possible to get in a situation that's only going to end in save scumming. I actually did manage to build some forests with some Sensor Arrays on top of them in the vicinity of my capitol. But of course I have many things I need to accomplish, and making perfect mindworm screens against any contingency can't be one of them. There simply aren't enough resources to accomplish that, they have way too much freedom of movement.
This mindworm, it suddenly appears next to my base. I've got a Scout and 3 Artifacts in it. The Artifacts could leave via the extensive roads I've made, but I'm simply not going to hand over a hit on the base to this mindworm. Now maybe mindworms don't hit as hard as I'm used to. I do have walls and a Sensor Array, so maybe I'll be ok. But if I'm not, I'm not putting up with it.
Turns out there was less to worry about than I thought. I took 0 wounds, which is hard to do in most combats. So, standard drill will probably be to link the roads, plant the obligatory patch of forest upon a flat arid / moist square, put a Sensor Array on top of that, and then move on to other terraforming duties. It's what I was doing at all my bases anyways, just to get the trees going, and now I know it's useful for defense.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 05, 2020, 09:09:55 pm
And yeah, I'm not overly enamoured with the mod as it is, that's why I don't play it that way. :V
Marketing alert: not overly enamored customer! 😮
Let me see if that can be changed. 🤔
Are you talking from SM or MP point of view?
Are these main changes you dislike or there are others?
units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money
All these changes are not that important for game play except maybe psi odds but even this can be though about. I can make them not modified by default (still optionally can be turned on).
I think most of minor tweaks here and there are no longer required with AI expanding very good.
Just as you don't like smallpoxxing, I dislike the meta of "huddle your scout in the base and hope to take the hit" to deal with native life.
Do you mean to not keep units at bases at all? I guess whether attack them or let them attack - some units at base still needed.
Even if working a tile contributes the same eco-damage, having more minerals does more eco-damage. Furthermore, forests reduce eco-damage. So clearly, from an "I don't want to get flooded out" standpoint, forest-and-forget is way better than mines. Generally I don't make Mines until I've got Hybrid Forests underway. I need food to work the mines conveniently anyways, and the HF gets rid of a lot of the eco-damage. Definitely doesn't get rid of all it like the docs might lead you to believe though.
Isn't this exactly the sort of "forests are the OP terraforming choice" thing that everyone tries so hard to prevent? :P
Forest is very versatile and very good from so many angles. That's why people keep talking about it being OP. Just doubling its terraforming time is a very minor penalty that does not make it less powerful due to its spreading ability. Still if people like plant forest more than they like to play a game they can create custom alphax.txt. Forest is completely configurable there.
It's just that WtP seems to have been developed to deal with players like me, who suck all the fun out of the game in the eternal hunt for turn advantage.
That is probably true. I am myself is like that. That is why I am not even trying to create new experience mod. Just making game more strategical looking and feeling.
With that in mind, I have tough time linking your aspire for turn advantage to specific things preferences like psi combat odds, money from natives, etc. The latter is purely fun related.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 09:32:25 pm
I would point out that the tools to deal with the consequences of eco-damage (i.e. Empath Song units to kill worms and formers to avert global warming) become more affordable if you have more minerals to build them with.
Um, no, you can't avert Global Warming by running any number of Formers around. And my mod starts with Clean Reactors available, so I think I know how infinite numbers of Formers work. Global warming comes from how many minerals you decide to pump out, how many eco-mitigating facilities you build (which you can't start the game with), how many egregious damagers like Thermal Boreholes you avoid building, what you make for your SE choices, and how many atrocities you refrain from. That's it. There's no amount of trees that you can plant to stop a flood. I play forest-and-forget all the time, it is the only thing I play. I still know when I can tip it over into a flood, even doing that.
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If so, then a couple of rocky mines at key bases shouldn't be breaking the bank.
Probably won't. Who says I'm going to do that? When I build mines, I build all of the mines. All of the Rocky squares that I've been blowing off, until after I've got Hybrid Forests underway. Before then, that's what Minerals Specials are for. I have my giant mines in the early game where they're supposed to be, bang for the buck. Not just everywhere, increasing my global flooding chances.
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Just as you don't like smallpoxxing, I dislike the meta of "huddle your scout in the base and hope to take the hit" to deal with native life.
That's how I remember it used to be. I'm scouting aggressively now. They're cheap, and they're supposed to die sometimes. I'm winning often enough to feel that my scouting is worth it. Even before Tim tweaked the settings somehow in the version 154 I'm playing.
It's coming after my Formers, when I've only got 2 and don't know how to make Formers yet, that I can't abide! You cripple me on those, you put me way behind other factions.
And per my previous post, I can't abide getting a sudden attack at a base that I had no way to prepare for and can't do anything about. Fortunately, I seem to have a remedy. It may not work as well if I'm not starting as the Hive though. We'll see how well Sensor Arrays do with some other faction.
With the other factions spamming colonists as aggressively as they are, there is definitely not time / productivity to double up base defenses with more Scouts. Everyone's gotta go do a job out in the field. Supply pods have to be cleared, lest they turn out to contain awful crap that destroys the inbound colonist, or a base you just settled.
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I can sort of understand the experience you're looking for: a more narratively-informed
Map aesthetics and narrative are not the same thing. Map aesthetics do have an intersection with map productivity. I am biased towards large, late game cities. You've got a mini-screen with 20 worker assignable tiles on it for a reason. It's supposed to be what you fill your cities out to. You (I? most players?) spend an awful lot of time per city adding gewgaws to it. I don't want to do that forever, 2 or 3 times as many cities as I do with the "bigpox" playing style. I know my cities aren't optimal in all dimensions in the early game. But I do claim territory better than smallpoxers, for one thing.
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campaign
That's almost a swear word in 4X TBS, by some people's reckoning. Many would contend that if you're not playing on a randomly generated map, all in one go and not episodic / chapter driven, you're not playing 4X.
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I used to play for that too before I converted to MP. It's just that WtP seems to have been developed to deal with players like me, who suck all the fun out of the game in the eternal hunt for turn advantage.
I don't know if you've tried my mod, but I've dealt with it as well. You simply don't get to have all those boreholes, supply crawlers, and condensers you love to have as a MP exploiter, until much later in the game. There's a good chance someone could kill you with a different, and IMO real strategy, before then. I like to imagine someone's hovertanks whooshing in, just as you've finished your 1st borehole.
But I haven't really heard of any MPs testing my mod. It's not a secret around here that a few years ago, I didn't get along with others in the MP sub. I did find out that they knew of exploits that I didn't. But what I couldn't abide, was the "calculator head" mentality of how they think a game is supposed to be played, like it's all a spreadsheet and there are only mathematically correct answers.
I give away cloaks and deep pressure hulls, rather early. This is one of the ways I'd know if MPs ever did anything with my mod, because they'd probably say something about it. Those things are useless against the AI because it just cheats.
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Even in your own mod, you seem to rage-quit way more games than you finish.
There's rage-quit and then there's sleep-quit. You'd have to refresh my memory on what I've done lately. I remember mostly sleep-quits. 3 AM brings out some real honesty about how much a game is worth, vs. all the other games you've played in your life over and over again. If it's the same old [poop], I'm going to bed.
I seem to remember recently doing some AARs with "high concepts" for various odd tactics, that didn't work. That's not even rage-quit or sleep-quit. That's this-sucks quit. I think I've recently played a lot of sleep-quit games that you've never heard anything about, because I didn't write them up.
Isn't this exactly the sort of "forests are the OP terraforming choice" thing that everyone tries so hard to prevent? :P
Tim does, I don't. I guess that's one of the ways mods can be different. I am not in favor of games ending in global floods. I hand terraform every square and that's work for me. I don't want a game that's just gonna ruin my work. Factories tend to do that. Forests don't. So I'm not penalizing the forests. Forests also look good, in proportion, on the pink and red map. I am strongly "Earth biased" and will not simply pink over my civilization just because it becomes the most profitable thing to do at some point. Old trees, they stay. I might not plant new ones, in the outlying territories. In real life I have spent plenty of time in National Forests and National Parks. I have some of the Greener in me.
Boreholes are for [jerk, sphincter]s! ;lol ;buttdance ;morganercise
Of course, so are Recycling Tanks, and you can see my quip on the left sidebar. Truth be told though, the Chairman is not as near and dear to my heart as he used to be.
Post by: bvanevery on October 05, 2020, 09:45:12 pm
Just doubling its terraforming time is a very minor penalty that does not make it less powerful due to its spreading ability.
So far I'm inclined to agree. Doubling the time at first seems like, "Ok Tim, whatever" ::) but it doesn't change the fact that 1 forest + 1 farm is the optimum for making new colonists at the beginning of the game. So I'm still going to plant my damn forests, in the same flat arid / moist otherwise useless spots that I was going to plant them. It's just that now, I may only plant one patch of forest, and rely more on it spreading over the long term, than the sort of forest, forest, forest drill I might be more used to. Paying more careful attention to the optimum resource availability for my bases, since the forest resource is more expensive. A few forests is optimal. Lots of forests, will never be utilized until Tree Farms come about. And I've got other things to do, like laying roads.
;hippy ;rockon
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 02:23:27 am
* Reverting few things to vanilla defaults. They still can be changed in thinker.ini. People seem to like vanilla preferences.
* 3,2, ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
* disable_planetpearls=0
* default_morale_very_green=0
* Forest terraforming rate = 4
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 04:58:44 am
difficult Hive research |
MY 2169. I have been unable research the tech for Police State. This is surprising as I've retained the faction's default Build, Conquer research focus, and Doctrine: Loyalty is a C2 tech. I haven't previously been able to trade it from anyone else either, despite 2 allies and 2 treaties. It warrants analysis about its research weights in alphax.txt, but right now I'm busy playing. I have not had access to Police State this whole time, so every city is currently building a Rec Commons, and my expansion has pretty much stopped. I've previously gotten all kinds of techs from trading, but not that one.
In the stock game, it bugs me to no end that Santiago has better POLICE potential than Yang. It just ain't right! I fixed that in my factions. It also mitigates this problem of Yang not learning Police State for awhile, should it happen for some reason. I do have all of my Politics and Economics choices on Tier 2 of my tech tree, and in the research categories that various factions need to get to them. Sometimes however, because my tech tree is fairly broad at the beginning, they do not manage to get to what they need for awhile anyways. This is part of why I usually playtest from the AI's perspective, not ever changing their default research strategy. I need to see what kind of pain the AI Yang is going through.
I've got Fusion reactors, but I recreated the Fission Scout unit, because Fusion reactors are just double the cost and no benefit vs. a mindworm. I'm still in the "garrison with Scouts" stage of the game, despite all the fancier armor and weapons available. There's no way I'd have the minerals to make any of the more advanced stuff. I think it is a mistake for the Unit Designer to retire the Fission Scout so quickly. On the other hand, perhaps the AI factions can afford to be wasteful in ways that I cannot.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 05:21:42 am
foil probe hell |
MY 2172. My ally and next door neighbor the Spartans recently went to war with the Cultists. I don't know where they are. I agreed to the war because having the Spartans as a reliable ally should be useful. Well I didn't think about losing my sea bases that way. In my mod, I might be kissing my base goodbye now, although I'm uncertain how the relative closeness to my capitol will affect things. In this mod, I was enticed by the equivalence between land and sea colonist prices. But if this turns out to be the same kind of pure liability, I'll be quitting this game.
There's no way I would have ever had the ability to defend any sea base from probe team attacks, this early in the game. I haven't even gotten a Rec Commons completed in there yet, and all kinds of people throughout my 13 city empire are getting unhappy. I've only got 2 Gun Foils, 1 of them a clone of the 1 I sent out. I think 1 may have been killed by an Isle after popping a pod. In other words I couldn't possibly have more than a rinky dink navy at this point. Well, unless Gun Foils are also police units in this mod. I'm not used to that. I could lash out at a Foil Probe Team if I actually saw it before it struck, as in the case this time. There's no reason I have to see it first though. Also if I have to leave a base to do that, it's exposed.
Well let's see...
game over |
Like in my mod, putting out sea bases early is a complete waste of time and resources. One could "bait" another faction with a throwaway base if one was trying to infiltrate and steal a tech. The AI will cross the entire map to mind control bases, even an Enormous map, which in my mod is even bigger than a Huge map. I did DOUBLE the cost of all probe team actions to try to curb this problem. That's partially successful, it's definitely not as bad a problem as it used to be. Near my capitol in my mod, I may not actually be taken over. Or it may take a really big wad of cash to do it, which might be a fair trade.
The basic problem is that probe team mind control costs are totally broken in the stock binary. They're way overpowered, and have been the subject of probably 50% of my rage quits in the past, before I started modding. Single biggest flaw in the game, most in need of fixing. I mean, look at the screenshot, my capitol is 7 squares away. WTF.
It's been a long time since I've played with a Yang with severe ECON penalties. I'm not sure how that works into the takeover formula. But I would note that the original game didn't enable foil probe teams. They may have noticed this problem during production and didn't have a nice answer for it. So just dusted it under the rug?
I don't have any intellectual commitment to the settings of 154, so I will install 155 now. However I would worry that restoration of the 3:2 mindworms might make them back into the One True Weapons Platform again. I will suspend judgment on that for now, but it's a problem I've noticed in my own mod. Did all this nice conventional weapons, armor, and chassis rebalancing work, only to have it ruined by this gaping hole in the combat system.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 05:47:34 am
Quote
Doctrine: Loyalty, DocLoy, 3, 2, 2, 2, Mobile, Psych, 000000000
It's basically not going to get researched. It's not regarded as being worth all that much. Now the first problem is, it's rather important to the Hive. So if it's not regarded as particularly Conquery, it nevertheless needs to find a way to be more important the Hive, or just be easier to get period.
The 2nd thing is, it gives the Command Nexus, so the Conquer rating is simply straight up wrong. Having a free Command Center in every base is a pretty good capability. Now one might argue that great increases in Secret Project costs, make some of these SPs not as valuable. But it still has value for conquest, so I just can't see a proper universe where the weight is that low.
Heh, now the funny thing is after all that analysis, I notice that Police State has a -1 INDUSTRY penalty that the Hive is affected by. That's a pretty crummy deal really. I'm not going to call it unrealistic, but it's an unbalanced crummy deal. Why would I want to be a Police State and take that kind of hit to my productivity? POLICE ratings don't actually become a good deal until they're +3 and all units get double effectiveness. And I'm assuming the Hive's getting its EFFIC never lower than 0 bonus. If you take -2 EFFIC, forget it, you'd have to be a moron to pick Police State.
Post by: dino on October 06, 2020, 01:05:06 pm
It makes it too easy to defend bases in early game, while saving resources on defender units. Defending formers from threats, or hunting enemy ones is also fun in itself.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 06, 2020, 03:08:58 pm
I'm just going to refer to them in general because it's too tedious to keep track of all the quote brackets.
RE: not enamoured:
Code Red! A customer left a review of less than 10 out of 10! ;lol
So far I've played three games of WtP out-of-the-box: the v66 MP game with Nevill (that I still have to write the conclusion for) that ended in mass atrocities and global flooding; the v121 or something MP game with Nevill that ended in him nerve-gassing me to death; and a v141 SP game with my custom factions that I should get back to at some point, if only so I can brag
After that we decided to switch back to playing his mod with WtP features. It's actually been going pretty well, despite our appearances in the thread to grumble about this and that.
RE: not liking scout huddle meta:
That's not what I mean. I usually have police units there to keep order at the beginning of the game in any case.
I just find it dissatisfying that if a worm appears next to a base, it's actually worse to try and proactively get rid of the problem, because you won't benefit from either base defense bonus or sensor defense bonus. Of course, one could argue that taking steps like boosting morale, building Trance units, and building sensors is proactively dealing with the problem. Let's just call it a playstyle difference.
In that light, I'd say the best and least obtrusive change to this is restoring the 3:2 psi attack ratio. Not only does it encourage striking first, it also means sitting back and doing nothing comes with a risk.
I wouldn't restore the planetpearls, though. I like having them enabled to give one something to do with scouts in their spare time, but I don't think they suit WtP. Getting stacks of cash from farming wildlife is a little bit silly, after all.
RE: early game mechanics changes:
I'm not complaining about you changing them back (mostly), but I think it's worth talking about the reasons for them in the first place.
I don't know what the rationale was behind having units start at Very Green, but I assume it was to curb the appearance of instant Elites that becomes commonplace in mid-game. In vanilla this required Command Centre + Bioenhancement Centre + [monolith, High Morale ability, or +MORALE effects]. WtP requires you to arrange more of these to achieve the same effect, and Bioenhancement Centres come much later. It's a laudable approach to the issue.
However, this also leads to -MORALE effects becoming much less impactful, because it's not as if you can go any lower, right? One might as well just stay in Wealth and Eudaimonic all the time and use the productivity to build bigger and better weapons. Though I'll admit that I don't know if this is as effective now that armours got megabuffed. We'll see.
I also heavily disagree with reverting forest times. Forests at 1-2-1 with 4 turns to complete are OP. At 8 turns they are quite well balanced with mines: forests provide a little food and energy on top of the minerals to help support workers, and spread themselves, but mines can be combo'd with farms and can produce more minerals.
Discussions of eco-damage don't really concern me, as I've never found the consequences to be extraordinarily threatening. Yeah you lose a couple of tiles here and there, so what, most of my bases are inland and I can just raise the land again. Lots of worms spawning? That can be painful, but by that time you can easily turn your mineral output to churning out the needed Trance and Empath units to fend them off. And then the clean minerals limit is raised and they stop spawning so much.
RE: AI Growth mod and multiplayer balance:
I downloaded it to look at it, but I don't really like the aesthetic, so I never played it. To my knowledge, the MP community I follow wasn't overly impressed when someone suggested using it for a game.
Supply Crawlers are unbalanced and should be banned. Boreholes are not so unbalanced once the yield is nerfed down to 0-2-6 or similar. I'm not really sure what the problem with condensers is. If you build it on a regular tile with a farm you get 4 nutrients, which is nice, but hardly breaks the game.
RE: Police State:
-EFFIC effects are a lot milder than they were in vanilla, so even -4 EFFIC from running Police State+Planned is not so bad at the beginning at the game. I agree having the -INDUSTRY from PS cancel out the +INDUSTRY from Planned feels pretty bad though. Likewise for -SUPPORT from Planned offsetting ++SUPPORT from Police State. Yes, it's a potent early game combo, but one generally migrates to other options once energy provides more bang for your buck.
But hey, I shouldn't knock it until I try it, and so far in my WtP-as-is SP game it feels okay. I will reserve my complaints until after I have conquered at least one AI. :P
RE: removing non-combatant penalty from units:
This is controlled by this line in alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
0, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unitI feel that this isn't super impactful to the game though, since it is much cheaper to put armour on these units now.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 03:48:31 pm
One might as well just stay in Wealth and Eudaimonic all the time and use the productivity to build bigger and better weapons.
In a stock binary game, getting somewhat ahead on weapons tech compared to the enemy's armor, and using low morale units, works just fine. And in any event, the 3:2 mindworm is the One True Weapons Platform. In addition to kicking the snot out of nearly everything, it bypasses Perimeter Defenses. Green and Wealth is a pretty frequent SE choice for me.
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Yeah you lose a couple of tiles here and there, so what, most of my bases are inland and I can just raise the land again.
You haven't been through the whole Planet diving underwater then. The play mechanic, or bug, of rivers turning into permanent valleys of death, is also very annoying.
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RE: AI Growth mod and multiplayer balance:
I downloaded it to look at it, but I don't really like the aesthetic, so I never played it.
That's a pretty generalized objection. What specifically about my sales pitch on my development home page turned you away? Please tell me you at least skimmed it, to come up with your distaste.
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To my knowledge, the MP community I follow wasn't overly impressed when someone suggested using it for a game.
Some of the key community members hate me, so I see little reason they'd give it a chance. Also, I took the primary abuse toys away, so some probably don't want their usual game plan ruined.
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I'm not really sure what the problem with condensers is.
They are combined with Boreholes and Mines. Hasn't Thinker mod taught you this?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 03:49:03 pm
I continue the game with version 154. Some surprises: Fungicidal Tanks cost 0, Gun Foils count as police units.
Gun Foils is a combat unit, isn't it? Why shouldn't it count as a police? It is original vanilla thing I didn't change anything there.
Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enough by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.
I've got Fusion reactors, but I recreated the Fission Scout unit, because Fusion reactors are just double the cost and no benefit vs. a mindworm.
Higher reactors reduce weapon/armor cost. Obviously, they are not useful for non combat not armored units. They also increase minimal cost of the unit to reactor level. This is vanilla feature that I didn't touch. So not beneficial for extremely cheap units like Scout Patrol as well.
The basic problem is that probe team mind control costs are totally broken in the stock binary. They're way overpowered, and have been the subject of probably 50% of my rage quits in the past, before I started modding. Single biggest flaw in the game, most in need of fixing. I mean, look at the screenshot, my capitol is 7 squares away. WTF.
Usually people call feature broken if human can use/exploit it by AI cannot. So this one is clearly not as AI uses it quite effectively.
There is no need to raise base subversion cost as it grows anyway with the number of subverted bases to the level where faction cannot subvert any more. So it is a pretty limited used feature. Besides, there are very good defenses against it. First, protective infantry/foil probe. It costs 4 and 2.25 times more stronger against attacking probe (+50% territory, +50% base). Second, you can subvert base back. Recently subverted bases are quite cheap to the original owner.
I don't have any intellectual commitment to the settings of 154, so I will install 155 now. However I would worry that restoration of the 3:2 mindworms might make them back into the One True Weapons Platform again. I will suspend judgment on that for now, but it's a problem I've noticed in my own mod. Did all this nice conventional weapons, armor, and chassis rebalancing work, only to have it ruined by this gaping hole in the combat system.
Exactly! That is why I got rid of it in first place long time ago. But, apparently, people feel strongly nostalgic about it. So I'll keep vanilla settings in alphax.txt and anyone can change it to 1:1 or whatever else value they desire.
Now that my game is over, I turn to the problem of why the Hive doesn't research Police State. Well, I think the answer is clear enough in alphax.txt. It seems that Tim is using a regime where a "really important" tech in some category, has weight 6. So there are various Conquer techs, that I think I learned, with this weight. The problem is that Doctrine: Loyalty is not regarded as very important as a Conquer tech. It is:QuoteDoctrine: Loyalty, DocLoy, 3, 2, 2, 2, Mobile, Psych, 000000000
It's basically not going to get researched. It's not regarded as being worth all that much. Now the first problem is, it's rather important to the Hive. So if it's not regarded as particularly Conquery, it nevertheless needs to find a way to be more important the Hive, or just be easier to get period.
The 2nd thing is, it gives the Command Nexus, so the Conquer rating is simply straight up wrong. Having a free Command Center in every base is a pretty good capability. Now one might argue that great increases in Secret Project costs, make some of these SPs not as valuable. But it still has value for conquest, so I just can't see a proper universe where the weight is that low.
Don't blame me. One cannot possible to beeline research path for all possible priorities combinations. Sooner or later faction exhausts available focused technologies and need to research something else to advance. That is normal. Conquer oriented factions got their Applied Physics and Nonlinear Mathematics in quick succession already. No need to give them anything beyond that right away.
I think you misjudge Doctrine: Loyalty offensive value. It gives Perimeter Defense to everybody. So it is a powerful defensive tech in first place. Only one faction will build The Command Nexus out of it. Moreover, Command Center helps both defense and offense. So all in all this tech is about 90% defensive and 10% offensive. It is pretty correct to not let conquer focused factions to research it very early. Otherwise, it'll steal their good research spot without much need.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 04:29:51 pm
Small request, I'd like removing 50% combat penalty for non combatant units to be optional, I find formers doubling as perfectly functional defenders boring and abstract.
It makes it too easy to defend bases in early game, while saving resources on defender units. Defending formers from threats, or hunting enemy ones is also fun in itself.
Are you talking about this setting in alphax.txt?
0, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit
Sure. I can revert it to original value. No biggie. However, these are considerations I cancelled it in first place.
It would make sense and would change game strategy, as you mentioned above, toward protecting non-combat units IF the non-combat term would be sanely defined in a game. Vanilla treats all non-weapon and 1-armor units as non combat. Meaning that slapping 2-armor on a colony/former/transport suddenly turns it into combat unit (?) and increases its defense 4 times (?). Given that 2-armor is not that expensive one may convert their non-combat units to combat pretty cheaply increasing their defensiveness 4 times! Cost in parenthesis.
former 0-1-1 (2) => armored former 0-2-1 (3)
colony 0-1-1 (4) => armored colony 0-2-1 (5)
transport 0-1-4 (4) => armored transport 0-2-4 (5)
The problem is that not that it is not doable. It is. The problem is that AI doesn't do it on purpose. So it'll stay as human player toy/exploit only.
Besides, I don't think formers are match against some minimally advanced conventional weapon even without this extra penalty. Even 2 strength weapon at level 1 tech gives attacker 85% winning chance and 3 strength weapon at level 2 gives 90% winning chance and it gets better with stronger weapon. I never experienced a slightest problem hunting enemy formers even in relatively early game. So they still need protection either by other units or by armoring them. But again: AI does not protect them either way. They die without a fight in vanilla and WTP equally.
I also don't get why you would defend bases with formers instead of scouts. 😲
Formers are more expensive and way more valuable working in a field. Of course, if you always can detect enemy approaching and pull it into base for defense that works but you wont. This is too risky. Sometimes they can catch you by surprise. I prefer to keep at least one scout at base and let formers do their job. It's more effective this way.
The worse problem is anti-native defense. Think about it. Player does not run economical competition against natives. They just pop up at a regular intervals. This vanilla combat penalty makes formers and colonies extremely vulnerable to worms attacks. Now if you slap 2-armor on them they psi defense magically doubles even though armor is suppose to be ignored in psi combat. Apparently, with this setting it is not! That is not right.
Let me reiterate this. I absolutely welcome the idea for combat units to perform poorly in combat. Many other games have this concept. But the sloppy SMACX implementation creates more problems and exploits than it solves. So, I think, it is much cleaner without it. Not that it changes anything significant in a game anyway except the fun knocking formers with Scout Patrols. Which you won't experience quite often anyway unless you declare war at first encounter which you probably don't want to do.
Let me know what you think.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 05:46:29 pm
RE: not liking scout huddle meta:
That's not what I mean. I usually have police units there to keep order at the beginning of the game in any case.
I just find it dissatisfying that if a worm appears next to a base, it's actually worse to try and proactively get rid of the problem, because you won't benefit from either base defense bonus or sensor defense bonus. Of course, one could argue that taking steps like boosting morale, building Trance units, and building sensors is proactively dealing with the problem. Let's just call it a playstyle difference.
In that light, I'd say the best and least obtrusive change to this is restoring the 3:2 psi attack ratio. Not only does it encourage striking first, it also means sitting back and doing nothing comes with a risk.
If you count vanilla values: base defense (+50%), sensor (+25%), Hypnotic Trance (+50%) = 2.8 - it is still better than attacking 3:2 = 1.5. So even in vanilla it pays to wait for worm attack when it right next to the base. In both vanilla and WTP it may be useful to kill it in outskirts to prevent improvement destruction. You just have significantly large chance of dying in WTP doing that which I find this a fair price for deliberate proactive actions. Use Empath units for that. They are quite good and get promoted with experience.
So yes. In WTP it is somewhat more difficult to deal with worms. One have to invest at least something in the war against nature. This is more of because increased combat randomness than anything else. No matter the odds there is still a chance to die. So I am pretty fine to revert them to 3:2. It reduces native protection investments but not to zero.
This is done in latest version.
I don't know what the rationale was behind having units start at Very Green, but I assume it was to curb the appearance of instant Elites that becomes commonplace in mid-game. In vanilla this required Command Centre + Bioenhancement Centre + [monolith, High Morale ability, or +MORALE effects]. WtP requires you to arrange more of these to achieve the same effect, and Bioenhancement Centres come much later. It's a laudable approach to the issue.
However, this also leads to -MORALE effects becoming much less impactful, because it's not as if you can go any lower, right? One might as well just stay in Wealth and Eudaimonic all the time and use the productivity to build bigger and better weapons. Though I'll admit that I don't know if this is as effective now that armours got megabuffed. We'll see.
You are right on both accounts. Second one is case based, though. One indeed doesn't suffer from -MORALE effects IF they also do not use any other morale upgrade means: facilities, monolith, High Morale, and most importantly - promotions. Otherwise, negative MORALE will diminish such means. So whatever you said is true if one stays in negative MORALE for the duration of the game and never fight! Which is quite not possible especially for AI.
Think about it. MORALE is the only mean to reduce morale. Everything else increases it. Promotions increase it unlimitedly. There is no way but up. I cannot really imagine a game when faction units never ever get any morale upgrade.
Think about it from opposite side too. Yes, lowest morale ignores negative MORALE effects. However, from another side, highest morale ignores positive MORALE effects. The period of the game where faction may be not affected by negative MORALE is quite short, the number of units is small and the conflicts are rare. On the opposite side, the period of the game where faction may be not affected by positive MORALE is the rest of the game past BC, the number of units is big, and conflicts are permanent. So the latter problem is much more compounded.
Finally, since it is just one morale level, I am not particularly attached to it. So can be either way by players' preference.
I also heavily disagree with reverting forest times. Forests at 1-2-1 with 4 turns to complete are OP. At 8 turns they are quite well balanced with mines: forests provide a little food and energy on top of the minerals to help support workers, and spread themselves, but mines can be combo'd with farms and can produce more minerals.
I am too but gave up under pressure of unhappy customers. I can now reset it to 8 now when one happy evens out unhappy one. 😛
Discussions of eco-damage don't really concern me, as I've never found the consequences to be extraordinarily threatening. Yeah you lose a couple of tiles here and there, so what, most of my bases are inland and I can just raise the land again. Lots of worms spawning? That can be painful, but by that time you can easily turn your mineral output to churning out the needed Trance and Empath units to fend them off. And then the clean minerals limit is raised and they stop spawning so much.
I agree. There are plenty of means to counter global warming. Including raising land and solar shading. That works for me all the time. Of course, counsel could decide to sink whole planet. Deal with it. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. That is a game. It is not that you doomed from the beginning. There is always a chance.
Moreover, this is not even about WTP vs. vanilla. It is ever existed thing nobody plans to change.
the MP community I follow
Would you care introducing me there? I may not be MP player myself but I like this game and like to follow discussions.
I'm not really sure what the problem with condensers is. If you build it on a regular tile with a farm you get 4 nutrients, which is nice, but hardly breaks the game.
There were problem with them multiplying nutrients by 50% in their tile. Without this ability they are limited by max moisture and not imbalanced at all.
RE: Police State:
-EFFIC effects are a lot milder than they were in vanilla, so even -4 EFFIC from running Police State+Planned is not so bad at the beginning at the game. I agree having the -INDUSTRY from PS cancel out the +INDUSTRY from Planned feels pretty bad though. Likewise for -SUPPORT from Planned offsetting ++SUPPORT from Police State. Yes, it's a potent early game combo, but one generally migrates to other options once energy provides more bang for your buck.
I am not angry just quite puzzled.
I really don't get what is everybody's problem about round numbers? How does it matter if certain combos reduce certain effect to zero and not say to +1 or -1 or to whatever other number?! Why it is so frustrating see some options have opposite effects? It is not enough effects to make it never happen. Sometimes some effects will be moving in opposite directions. Of course, if someone is dedicated to maximize certain effect than they would look for certain options to avoid negative contributions but other than that it is pretty much irrelevant.
It's true that Police State and Planned have opposite SUPPORT and INDUSTRY effects. Do you want this to change specifically for that not to happen? Then other combination will clash. I am all for fiddling with SE but there are much stronger considerations than above.
Post by: dino on October 06, 2020, 07:39:14 pm
Are you talking about this setting in alphax.txt?
0, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit
Yes this, but please don't revert anything.
I've just forgot it's from alphax.txt, couldn't find it in thinker.ini and thought you hardcoded it.
If I can edit it for myself, I'm fine, it was a mistake on my part, sorry for bother and thanks for a pointer.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 08:04:46 pm
Gun Foils is a combat unit, isn't it? Why shouldn't it count as a police?
In SMACX I believe only land units count as police. I don't think they believe you can do law enforcement from the sea or air.
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It is original vanilla thing I didn't change anything there.
I think that's true in SMAC. Original game with 7 factions only. And I thought it was that air units counted as police, but not ships. I haven't played original SMAC since forever, so I'd have to crank something up to verify.
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Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.
It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time. It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.
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They also increase minimal cost of the unit to reactor level. This is vanilla feature that I didn't touch. So not beneficial for extremely cheap units like Scout Patrol as well.
The problem is that the automated unit designer now nukes the Fission Scout unit, which is half the cost of the Fusion Scout Rover unit, at the beginning of the game when we're mainly fighting mindworms. This is a mistake. The stock binary does not do this. My guess is you've inherited this misfeature from Thinker's upgraded unit designer. Which definitely, as a piece of code, has advantages over the stock designer, but here we see there's a misfeature. An automated designer should not just make units more expensive.
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Usually people call feature broken if human can use/exploit it by AI cannot. So this one is clearly not as AI uses it quite effectively.
Really? You're in favor of AI players buying bases off of you for nothing?
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Besides, there are very good defenses against it. First, protective infantry/foil probe.
You're not listening. It's too early in the game to have made any kind of defense. You've created this pressure where the AI factions are spamming colonies nonstop. I can't do that and defend bases from easy AI probe team attacks.
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Second, you can subvert base back.
Destroying my facilities, units, and growth in the process and denying me the use of resources I put out.
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Exactly! That is why I got rid of it in first place long time ago. But, apparently, people feel strongly nostalgic about it. So I'll keep vanilla settings in alphax.txt and anyone can change it to 1:1 or whatever else value they desire.
If you don't take a stand about it, nobody will ever use your variation. Anyone could have already set their alphax.txt to 1:1 over the years, they never did. You are seemingly way too quick to back off of your ideas as a designer. Don't you worry that you'll somehow make your mod not terribly distinguished from base Thinker? I would.
The right thing to do would be to adjust your approach until it actually works. You haven't tried toning down mindworm frequency and seeing if that alone is enough. When players complain, you have to try to intuit the ultimate source of their complaint, and do something about that. Never just cave into player demands. Players are like children. The goal isn't to do what the child says, the goal is to make them happy. Now around here, admittedly, we have quite a bit more sophistication than the average player feedback on the internet. That doesn't mean you should cave into something quickly.
I'm also really surprised that you backpedaled on forests, just after I gave you an endorsement on your approach. Who exactly are you afraid of?
You also have received other suggestions for mindworm problems:
- try rename the native life form difficulty levels appropriately, to how you're actually using them
- solve the Former "nailed my foot to the floor" problem somehow in the code, so that I don't have to save scum it
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Don't blame me.
Of course I blame you for tech research weights. Didn't you write them? If you inherited them from Thinker, well then I will blame you for keeping them, now that I've pointed out the problem that it causes in this 1 case.
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One cannot possible to beeline research path for all possible priorities combinations.
The paths of a Build Conquer faction at the beginning of the game are much more predictable than "all cases".
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Sooner or later faction exhausts available focused technologies and need to research something else to advance.
That's a nice theory. It doesn't work in the real world. The time bound on reaching that point is way too long. And it also doesn't have to happen, because of trades.
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Conquer oriented factions got their Applied Physics and Nonlinear Mathematics in quick succession already. No need to give them anything beyond that right away.
I actually think your speedy weapons priority is very much a mistake, because I as a human player, certainly don't have the productivity to actually manufacture those weapons. And the point isn't what all Conquer factions need, the point is what the Hive needs.
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I think you misjudge Doctrine: Loyalty offensive value. It gives Perimeter Defense to everybody. So it is a powerful defensive tech in first place.
You don't have to bundle all these benefits into 1 tech. I certainly don't.
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Moreover, Command Center helps both defense and offense. So all in all this tech is about 90% defensive and 10% offensive.
Are you really stating that Conquer, in your mod, is for offensive weapons and abilities only? If so, that's very different than how I categorize Conquer. In my mod, Conquer is for all the conventional stuff you use to kill opponents. Weapons, armor, and military abilities. You want any of those, you study Conquer. What are you putting defensive capabilities into, if not Conquer? It has to be part of some other category. And if so, your weights on Doctrine: Loyalty are still wrong. You have made Explore, Discover, and Build have even less weight than Conquer, 2 vs. 3.
I suggest you put Police State somewhere where the Hive is actually going to find it, at the beginning of the game.
If you need "narrative lore" suggestions, I use Planetary Networks. To me, Police State is a continuous surveillance state. You use a network of spies all over the planet for that.
I also used Biogenetics for a time, because it's Chairman Yang voicing the lines. I did not give away other stuff in that tech, I gave Police State.
Of course you can also keep it in Doctrine: Loyalty, but put the Command Nexus and/or the Perimeter Defense somewhere else. I use Polymorphic Software for Polymorphic Encryption (a lame ability) and the Command Nexus (not so lame). The idea being that the commands are being issued over some kind of futuristic encrypted internet. I put Perimeter Defense the same place I put Plasma Armor and the Citizens' Defense Force.
It still needs to be reweighted, regardless. It's not currently findable.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 08:11:49 pm
Sorry for musical chair.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 08:25:35 pm
I think I will rollback 155 release completely. Too hasty slapped.
I agree. I really don't know what you were thinking. I also wondered why you wanted to put some things in Thinker.ini, that were normally put in alphax.txt. I theorized about whether you had special AI code changes or something to handle the new realities.
In my next test of 154, I guarantee you I will not make any early sea bases. Unless I get the Pirates, lol.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 08:50:27 pm
I also wondered why you wanted to put some things in Thinker.ini, that were normally put in alphax.txt.
Eh? Which one?
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 09:06:41 pm
* 3,2, ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
* Forest terraforming rate = 4
You said you were putting switches in Thinker.ini, whether you actually meant that or not.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 06, 2020, 09:10:15 pm
These:* 3,2, ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
* Forest terraforming rate = 4
You said you were putting switches in Thinker.ini, whether you actually meant that or not.
Ah. Misspoke probably.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2020, 10:41:59 pm
kind of obnoxious |
However the rose parade ends in my southernmost, most frontier facing city. I survived the first Sealurk hit just fine. I'm not exactly pleased with a second Sealurk immediately attacking me as well. Makes me think that the ocean spawn rates are still kinda dumb. "Coastal scouring" is not a good play mechanic. If I wanted to sign up for that, that's one thing, but I didn't. I picked the "Average" number of native life forms, as I always do in all the other games. I can't think of any game where I've had to deal with 2 Sealurk hits in a row, but of course, I usually play Huge maps so my observations are selective. I've had 2 Isles full of mindworms land on me plenty of times, but there's usually a delay where you can see that happening and do something about it. "Coastal scouring" is another one of those "Tomato Surprise" play mechanics.
I don't know if Isles and Sealurks are independently controllable as to their frequency, but there should be more Isles than Sealurks. In previous games I've done a postmortem on, I've seen the overall distribution of them as being 50/50. I do not yet know if this map has a particular way of focusing indigenous sea traffic to this location. But in general, these Standard maps do focus the sea traffic somewhere. That's pretty annoying because there's nothing you can do about it, and no way to see that it's gonna happen, when you first settle an area. Other than oh, I'm on the coast, so slam me.
MY 2152. Surprisingly though, the Sealurk did not attack my empty city. After suffering a 1 turn delay due to the rioting, on the 2nd turn I was able to complete my Former. I've heard that Formers end up counting as super defense units in this mod, so I'll leave it in city while I wait for another Scout to get built.
wtf Medusa |
MY 2153. So much for the "super defender" theory. My Former survived the first Sealurk hit. Then I got a second hit? So there have been 3 Sealurks to take me on, in this little tiny area, over the span of 4 turns? That's not cool, at all. I've never seen such a thing happen in any game I've played. Granted, I never play with Abundant life forms. I found out in my modding a long time ago, that it would cripple the AI factions' expansion irrevocably. Thinker / WTP probably doesn't have that limitation. Anyways I do not want to play an Abundant Sealurks game. This is not a feature.
At least this nonsense hasn't happened to me on land, for whatever reason. I have my doubts that even a single Isle has landed on my shores.
MY 2156. After bringing in a Green Scout from another city, finally the damn thing attacks and dies.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2020, 12:38:10 am
Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.
It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time. It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.
I am now realizing that once you learn Fungicidal Tanks, you can upgrade the Former design to Fungicidal Formers, and all extant Formers will become Fungicidal Formers. That makes Fungicidal ability, awfully cheap. There's not a lot of delay from the start of the game, until you can do this. 60 years maybe. I don't know how I feel about that. It falls under the heading of "fungus danger issues".
Makes me wonder if I could have always done the same thing with Deep Radar ship designs in the stock binary, and never thought of it before.
I also notice that after these design upgrades, the old designs are not obsoleted. In this case that's not a feature, as it creates clutter in the unit designs. Free Fungicidal Tanks is strictly better in all circumstances.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2020, 01:05:09 am
supply pod puts Transport in enemy city |
I got a cool bug. I popped a supply pod on shore, and it put a Unity Transport inside of a Morganite city. I only have a Treaty with them. It is tempting to leave it there! But for all I know it could eventually wreak havoc with the game, and I might also be able to fish some supply pods out of the sea with it. I've attached a saved game.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2020, 01:44:40 am
Planet is cheating |
Ok, this is highly annoying. The Isle landing was expected. It's a leftover from trying to pop pods in the Sargasso. But this turn, that larva to the north of Time of Salvation suddenly appeared as well. I saw it spawn in the 2 square fungal patch just to the north, and then move onto the forest. This is all conveniently timed with me having a 60% wounded Gun Foil in there. The Scout that was also in there, got wiped out by a Sealurk 2 turns ago. 1 turn ago it attacked again and that's why my Gun Foil is down to 60%. Planet is hammering this city. And, I say it's cheating. It is deliberately spawning a reinforcement, when there's no particular reason for that to be happening, other than to make my life difficult.
I don't have mindworm larvae appearing anywhere else in my empire. I've got all kinds of Fungicidal Formers removing fungus from around my cities too, to make them safer. Most were already pretty safe due to the forests I planted earlier, which have been spreading at fungal expense. I have only 2 Fungal Towers in my territory, and they're nowhere near where this larva appeared.
Finally, if you're wondering if the Isle itself carried that worm and somehow dropped it up north, it didn't. It came from the south by southwest, the Sargasso. I know exactly where it started and watched it move. It did not land up north and then move 2 squares south.
Cheater!
It's not going to surprise me if the original binary code has dirty tricks like this buried in it.
can do nothing |
I saved my game in anticipation of save scumming. But witnessing the wipeout, and the loss of my base's population, there's no way I'm going to be able to do anything about it. Here's a demonstration of why. Note that in addition to all the usual disadvantages, this Miriam has the game's default of -1 PLANET. I got rid of that in my modding, because I think it's a stupid throwaway jab at Christians. Nowhere else in any of the quotes or videos, does Miriam intone that she's against Planet. That's someone else's story, mainly Morgan's.
I am quitting this game. I find this "shores are super dangerous" play style highly annoying, and it seems to be getting worse in recent years, not better. I want to know what geography has shielded me from problems or not, and how well I have grown compared to the AI factions. The Scenario Editor can tell me these things now. Finally, I am more interested in testing other factions at the beginning of this mod, as I believe they are all under-tested. Another game might show whether I got lucky on land with the mindworms.
the odds calculator lies |
Well I'll be... what's BUncle's word, dipped? I wasn't going to bother with the combat, it said I was going to die. I just wanted to know how wounded the larva would get in the process. Well it seems that WTP's renovation of the odds calculator isn't quite working. I seriously doubt I got super-lucky here. I have had my suspicions for quite awhile now, that something is off about what the odds calculator has been telling me.
I'm still quitting. I still don't like "coastal scorching game". I still want to know if oceanic and faction placement geometry has made my life easier or harder. And whether my spread, which "felt fine" to me, is actually competitive. The power graph doesn't seem to think so.
relative growth |
I have 10 cities. Several factions have on the order of 17 cities. The Cyborgs did worse than me with only 9 cities. They got "8-balled" behind the Caretakers and Usurpers. Fungal barriers seem to have interfered with the other factions doing that to me. Geographically I was relatively isolated. I am polar, which could explain sea safety on my west coast most of the time, until it wasn't. Godwinson's Hope, the one that got hammered by 3 Sealurks, is not quite equatorial but is more mid-map. Perhaps Sealurks funnel into narrowing east-west bays.
I would point out, that to have 17 cities, I'd have to be getting in the face of the Morganites or Usurpers on land. Or else expanding by sea, which is unacceptably vulnerable to summary takeover by probe teams. You're basically giving sea bases away when you make them early. Can't abide that.
With enough Fungicidal Formers, and some trained units to eliminate Fungal Towers, I could probably put 10 more "bigpox" cities within my land. That's assuming the Morganites and Usurpers didn't have time to press my borders. However, I do see a Morganite colonist moving in on one of my spots. The AI is incredibly spammy and pushy about land borders, it's really irritating. The game doesn't have a "firm" border idea the way Civ III does. Can you imagine if Mexico decided it just wants a little bit of Texas, now?
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 07, 2020, 04:25:41 am
Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.
It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time. It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.
I am now realizing that once you learn Fungicidal Tanks, you can upgrade the Former design to Fungicidal Formers, and all extant Formers will become Fungicidal Formers. That makes Fungicidal ability, awfully cheap. There's not a lot of delay from the start of the game, until you can do this. 60 years maybe. I don't know how I feel about that. It falls under the heading of "fungus danger issues".
Makes me wonder if I could have always done the same thing with Deep Radar ship designs in the stock binary, and never thought of it before.
I also notice that after these design upgrades, the old designs are not obsoleted. In this case that's not a feature, as it creates clutter in the unit designs. Free Fungicidal Tanks is strictly better in all circumstances.
Whether the game suggests new units upon researching tech, or obsoletes old units, is configurable in-game under Menu -> Game -> Preferences.
I personally disable both functionalities because
The old unit upgrade formula is based on (difference in weapon strength + difference in armour strength + mineral row cost to build the new unit).
The new unit upgrade formula is simply the difference in mineral rows between the old unit and new unit.
Initially I praised this for being more intuitive, but further playtesting has found some issues with it. For instance, the idea of being able to get mass refunds from upgrading to cheaper models has always felt a little weird to me. It was much worse when you could upgrade your entire terraforming fleet to fusion and quantum reactors for the refund, which thankfully got patched by making reactors not discount equipment costs.
However, Nevill found that in some cases you could intentionally build more expensive models of units, and then upgrade them to cheaper models, effectively allowing you to convert minerals to energy at a rate of 2 credits per mineral. Compare this to 1 credit per 2 minerals for using the Stockpile Energy order.
This also leads to the case that bvanevery found, where units that cost exactly the same (i.e. those with abilities that cost the same) can be freely converted from one to the other at zero cost, requiring only a single turn to do so (and not even that, if you use the unit designer to do so). I am not sure if this is desirable or not. Perhaps some fixed cost could be added to upgrade costs? Even a 10 credit minimum would discourage free conversions unless it was truly necessary.
As it is, I would say to keep the new formula on for SP but disable it for MP.
Speaking of which, since you asked, the community whose games I follow is RPGCodex. Probably one of the only groups of active players still around. They can be a rather... colourful bunch though.
Links to the SMAC discussion thread (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-unsurpassed-brian-reynolds-alpha-centauri-thread.101751/), and to various MP games which were documented and recounted by means of lavishly-made propaganda, which inspired my own attempt at such:
Vanilla Game 1 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-1.91970/)
Vanilla Game 2 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-2.92864/)
Vanilla Game 3 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-3.100614/)
Binary Dawn Game 1 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-1.123497/)
Binary Dawn Game 2 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-2.126329/)
Binary Dawn Game 3 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-3.129491/)
Binary Dawn Game 4 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-4.132258/)
Sadly the current game in progress is inaccessible due to internal forum drama.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2020, 06:45:14 am
For instance, the idea of being able to get mass refunds from upgrading to cheaper models has always felt a little weird to me.
Yeah I just encountered that. Only got a total of 40 credits back from 2 units, because I'd been a cheapskate about what I built, but that's one hell of a recycling program!
quittin' time |
I had a rather cynical idea before this game started, that the safest place to project naval force from, would be one of the Poles. So I planned to make an inland only empire with only a polar city spitting out Gun Foils. Well la dee da, the game makes me Caretakers on a smallish island. I proceeded with my plan anyways. An earthquake slightly enlarged my island to the west. It took me some time to realize that I could fit 1 more city over there.
The AI factions filled up the water with sea base spam. That wasn't how I imagined my development would go. They can do that faster than I can get through the choke point of only 1 naval base. A long time later, I got the Raise Land ability, so I made a base to cut off the Pole. I don't think I was getting indigenous sea spam by then though. I was surprised to recently get Locust spam.
Sealurks do seem to get stuck in east-west bays. They may tend to accumulate in any east-west indentation in a land mass, such as the funnel I had in my last game.
I made no Social Engineering choices for most of the game, because all of the Politics and Economics choices seemed pretty awful. Eventually I stole Cybernetic from the Cyborgs. No police or meaningful force projection seemed like a good trade for my situation. I then belatedly realized that Roze is Democratic, not into Thought Control like in my mod. So I sycophantically went for that. Ditto Free Market to please my ally Morgan, since by that point I could make it +0 PLANET. I thought about going for Power to suck up to the Spartans, but I had a Living Refinery to finish first.
Then I quit the game, because it's 1:30 AM now. The amount of base spam, and the size of the enemy cities, is overwhelming. By comparison I have practically nothing.
My original plan was to get Doctrine: Air Power, then make chemical attacks on everyone around me. But Morgan allied with me again instead of being a jerk, and things sort of went like that. The Cyborgs were too far away to hit, and it's not useful to clear them out. I'm also now realizing there would have been so much Whack-A-Mole to do, that it just wouldn't be worth it. What a drag!
I can't really tell if my fighting position was viable. Although I did prototype various weapons, I had way more stuff than I could ever use. I had an "empire" that was still half Scouts. The Spartans managed to land some Empath Fusion Scout Rovers on me at one point. I repelled them, mostly by nearly destroying them with super artillery, then sending peons at them. I actually lost 1 mindworm larva because I was in denial about which square they moved to. It didn't matter, it just rubbed it in my face how useless my captured mindworms were most of the time.
I could have gone Green to piss off Morgan, then inflicted Marine coastal harm on all his cities clogging me. But, whatever. I don't think alliances help me much as an Alien. Not like Morgan gave me any free units, and I pretty much had to buy my tech.
Tech research cost, seems to work differently. I think I read that lower tier techs cost less than higher tier ones, and that it's not dependent on how many techs you previously researched. This meant it was always wise to fill out the lower tier techs first, before committing to stuff that takes longer to learn.
I fumbled around with "Where are the Fungicidal Tanks?" for quite some time before realizing they were part of Synthetic Fossil Fuels. I never thought that made much sense and modded it out a long time ago.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 07, 2020, 10:38:46 am
It feels bad because it doesn't feel like you're getting ahead. This is the issue with overbalancing things. If all options appear equally good and bad, one might as well not pick any of them, and then what's the point of unlocking them?RE: Police State:
-EFFIC effects are a lot milder than they were in vanilla, so even -4 EFFIC from running Police State+Planned is not so bad at the beginning at the game. I agree having the -INDUSTRY from PS cancel out the +INDUSTRY from Planned feels pretty bad though. Likewise for -SUPPORT from Planned offsetting ++SUPPORT from Police State. Yes, it's a potent early game combo, but one generally migrates to other options once energy provides more bang for your buck.
I am not angry just quite puzzled.
I really don't get what is everybody's problem about round numbers? How does it matter if certain combos reduce certain effect to zero and not say to +1 or -1 or to whatever other number?! Why it is so frustrating see some options have opposite effects? It is not enough effects to make it never happen. Sometimes some effects will be moving in opposite directions. Of course, if someone is dedicated to maximize certain effect than they would look for certain options to avoid negative contributions but other than that it is pretty much irrelevant.
It's true that Police State and Planned have opposite SUPPORT and INDUSTRY effects. Do you want this to change specifically for that not to happen? Then other combination will clash. I am all for fiddling with SE but there are much stronger considerations than above.
So essentially, yes, it is bad if too many options cancel out to zero. That's not to say it can't ever happen. I have run Fundamentalist (++PROBE, +MORALE, +INDUSTRY, --RESEARCH) together with Knowledge (+EFFIC, ++RESEARCH, --PROBE, -POLICE) in the past, and still come out ahead overall (+1 INDUSTRY, +1 MORALE, +1 EFFIC, RESEARCH and PROBE cancel out).
Other cases where SE effects cancel out are also not considered bad because you gain something desirable in exchange. The main examples of this in vanilla are Democracy+Planned (+4 GROWTH, EFFIC cancels out), Democracy+Green (+4 EFFIC, GROWTH cancels out), and Police State+Green (+2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT, +2 PLANET, -2 GROWTH, EFFIC cancels out). This isn't quite the same in Nevill's mod, but the point remains: yes, there are downsides, but on the whole you get (or appear to get) more than you put in, which makes it a worthwhile and satisfactory investment.
That being said, I played a little further on my v141 SP game and gave it a chance, but Police State is actually really bad right now. Why? It provides very little benefit compared to its costs.
- One unit suppresses one drone. To match a RecCommons you will need 2 units. Most of the ++SUPPORT is eaten up just supporting police units. Support that goes to police units is not available to build former fleets or armies.
- Clean Reactors and Non-Lethal Methods which might affect this calculation are not available until tier 9, which is so late that it might as well not matter for the sake of balancing an early game SE setting.
- And to top it off, it kills your INDUSTRY and EFFIC, so you can't even take advantage of what extra productivity you might gain.
And I'm playing as the Omega Foundation, which can at least teleport units between bases to juggle support. Other factions aren't so lucky.
Honestly, I'd just get rid of the -INDUSTRY penalty for Police State entirely. Democracy is still better once you set up all your bases and start to transition into the mid-game, but at least PS won't totally suck before then.
Screenshots from the game. I have not encountered any sort of native wildlife apocalypse, though some Spore Launchers and Sealurks did pay me a visit. Recycling Tanks have been built in key bases and will be essential to grabbing projects, which I intend to accelerate by building probes and disbanding them. Some Biology Labs have been built to speed up research. My budget is down to the wire due to maintenance costs and -EFFIC, which is why I plan to build one more base and then switch to Democracy. Overall I am nicely keeping pace with the AIs in spite of their various production advantages.
(https://i.imgur.com/FTeMQch.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/mgZh8ul.png)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 07, 2020, 05:13:55 pm
The old unit upgrade formula is based on (difference in weapon strength + difference in armour strength + mineral row cost to build the new unit).
The new unit upgrade formula is simply the difference in mineral rows between the old unit and new unit.
Initially I praised this for being more intuitive, but further playtesting has found some issues with it. For instance, the idea of being able to get mass refunds from upgrading to cheaper models has always felt a little weird to me. It was much worse when you could upgrade your entire terraforming fleet to fusion and quantum reactors for the refund, which thankfully got patched by making reactors not discount equipment costs.
However, Nevill found that in some cases you could intentionally build more expensive models of units, and then upgrade them to cheaper models, effectively allowing you to convert minerals to energy at a rate of 2 credits per mineral. Compare this to 1 credit per 2 minerals for using the Stockpile Energy order.
This also leads to the case that bvanevery found, where units that cost exactly the same (i.e. those with abilities that cost the same) can be freely converted from one to the other at zero cost, requiring only a single turn to do so (and not even that, if you use the unit designer to do so). I am not sure if this is desirable or not. Perhaps some fixed cost could be added to upgrade costs? Even a 10 credit minimum would discourage free conversions unless it was truly necessary.
As it is, I would say to keep the new formula on for SP but disable it for MP.
Yes. It is purposefully designed like that. Reducing waste in minerals conversions through disbanding and rebuilding units and also waste in mouse clicks and player attention. Game does all accounting giving you all the benefits you deserve not a penny less.
I can remove the refund completely to reduce sudden spikes in money flow.
Sadly the current game in progress is inaccessible due to internal forum drama.
Drama?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 07, 2020, 05:20:26 pm
I am even thinking now whether I should show my face up there. 🤔
"
The RPG Codex is a forum for butthurt edgy teens who are "too cool for mainstream RPG's". The result is that they spend all their time playing old RPG's (but not that old) whilst slandering new ones (which they still play anyway). They stalk developers and modders such as Tessera and Wesp5 (who are all apparently German for some reason according to them) and have a weird obsession with many Bioware developers who they delve into the personal and private information of. The stalking of Tessera and Wesp5 has continued for 7 years by several insane individuals who use the Codex.
90% of the posters on the forum could have their own entries on Encyclopedia Dramatica due to how insane they sound. The Codex also hates the RPG Watch which is actually the real place for sophisticated RPG discussion and not the Codex where you're more likely to find a racist or homophobic thread.
"
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 07, 2020, 06:06:48 pm
That being said, I played a little further on my v141 SP game and gave it a chance, but Police State is actually really bad right now. Why? It provides very little benefit compared to its costs.At the moment I am using it purely as a stopgap measure until I can get RecCommons built in all my bases. Then it will be off to Democracy and never look back.
- One unit suppresses one drone. To match a RecCommons you will need 2 units. Most of the ++SUPPORT is eaten up just supporting police units. Support that goes to police units is not available to build former fleets or armies.
- Clean Reactors and Non-Lethal Methods which might affect this calculation are not available until tier 9, which is so late that it might as well not matter for the sake of balancing an early game SE setting.
- And to top it off, it kills your INDUSTRY and EFFIC, so you can't even take advantage of what extra productivity you might gain.
And I'm playing as the Omega Foundation, which can at least teleport units between bases to juggle support. Other factions aren't so lucky.
Honestly, I'd just get rid of the -INDUSTRY penalty for Police State entirely. Democracy is still better once you set up all your bases and start to transition into the mid-game, but at least PS won't totally suck before then.
You have described the problem of police in general that every police unit requires support. This is not a problem of any SE model that grants POLICE rating. Although, supporting police definitely make POLICE rating less valuable in general.
On the police usage in general.
Do you think it is absolutely inferior to use police comparing to psych facilities and psych allocation?
On Police State tweaking.
I agree that we may want to remove INDUSTRY penalty from it as it makes it even less appealing in later game.
What about making it +1 SUPPORT and +1 INDUSTRY instead? That may make it slighter better in later game.
From the other side, INDUSTRY is already taken by Fundamentalisms. Tweaking SE is so tough task. 😢
Maybe this one will work: --EFFIC, ++SUPPORT, ++POLICE, -GROWTH (replacing INDUSTRY penalty with GROWTH one)?
May be closer to Nevill's version (+2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT, -1 GROWTH, -1 PROBE). However, I think, original EFFICIENCY penalty may be more suitable for PS than PROBE and not that bad in WTP with reworked inefficiency.
Post by: dino on October 07, 2020, 11:35:55 pm
I am even thinking now whether I should show my face up there. 🤔
Maybe the codex does not scale to your level ?
But seriously, what you do is for experienced SMACers, not for newbies and every SMACer from the codex or anywhere else at least lurk here and would interact with you if he wanted.
As for upgrades I also don't like 100% refund that flood you with money when upgrading reactor.
Simple solution would be to refund 50, or 75% of the original unit cost depending how much better than disbanding you want upgrade to be.
You could make upgrade refund percentage adjustable, so no one would complain about it anymore.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 07, 2020, 11:58:30 pm
I am even thinking now whether I should show my face up there. 🤔
Maybe the codex does not scale to your level ?
But seriously, what you do is for experienced SMACers, not for newbies and every SMACer from the codex or anywhere else at least lurk here and would interact with you if he wanted.
No. I meant I am scared to become a target of uncontrolled internet attacks.
Here - you mean AC2? Not so sure about it. Until like a middle of this year I wasn't even sure this is an ultimate AC resource since there are a lot of other related communities out there. Their content is no match to that one but one would understand this only after exploring the content. The forum frequency interactions from the other side could be much quicker in other places. So thread here could not be even noticed unless we cross post to lure people here.
I also disagree my mod (or any other in this regard) is for experienced players. This is not a chess kind of game and neither mod around is more difficult to play master than vanilla. The play mechanics is essentially the same with just some tweaks in some parameters those largely skipped by newbies. Moreover, I believe part of my work is play mechanics simplification to reduce amount of quirks player need to remember and be aware of. So from this point of view it should be even easier to master than vanilla.
Just skimmed their forum a little. Look at that. They are aware of WTP! 😁
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-unsurpassed-brian-reynolds-alpha-centauri-thread.101751/page-32#post-6874700
Post by: dino on October 08, 2020, 12:23:15 am
"The codex does not scale to your level" is an inside joke from the days when Bethesda inroduced in Oblivion an ultimate retardation of unlimited level scalling of all content to player character level since lvl 1.
So unlike Oblivion the codex does not scale to low level of other communities and their users ;)
Worry not, encyclopedia dramatica entry is a joke, written by a codexer most likely and I was dissapointed that you took it seriously ( if you did ), hence the joke.
That said I'm sure that every smacer from the codex at least lurks here.
Post by: Nevill on October 08, 2020, 12:39:14 am
I could probably make this kind of thread in Issues, tell me if you want it there instead.
1) Alien Artifacts don't appear to add anything to the projects, even if they write they do. How to reproduce: have an artifact, press Space, choose to contribute. Nothing happens.
2) I see that AI options in the multiplayer section are different from the ones in SP. SP seems more advanced. Why is that? Why is there a difference at all?
MP has these ones:
(click to show/hide)
SP has these:
(click to show/hide)
They aren't even the same parameters!
I am trying to compile a new version of my mod to introduce a new player, and am torn on which one to use.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2020, 01:44:20 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 08, 2020, 02:33:13 am
I could probably make this kind of thread in Issues, tell me if you want it there instead.
Feel free to add them directly to issues for those you can easily formulate (i.e. not requiring additional discussion).
1) Alien Artifacts don't appear to add anything to the projects, even if they write they do. How to reproduce: have an artifact, press Space, choose to contribute. Nothing happens.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155
2) I see that AI options in the multiplayer section are different from the ones in SP. SP seems more advanced. Why is that? Why is there a difference at all?
Well, obviously, because I forgot that I am supporting it! 😂
Here.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-156
Either download this version or use SP ones in current version and tweak them.
From now on they may start to diverge. Naturally, it is pretty difficult to tune-test them without playing the multiplier so I would need your feedback on that as only active MP users for now. Or you or Tayta can just send me MP config updates for including in future versions.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 08, 2020, 04:40:51 am
From what I've played with it so far, -GROWTH is a reasonable alternative penalty for Police State, and works better at moderating the PS+Planned combo. It also suggests an interesting combination with Green to effectively arrest your population growth on demand. And it may even be desirable to slow down pop growth if you are already having trouble keeping drones in order.That being said, I played a little further on my v141 SP game and gave it a chance, but Police State is actually really bad right now. Why? It provides very little benefit compared to its costs.At the moment I am using it purely as a stopgap measure until I can get RecCommons built in all my bases. Then it will be off to Democracy and never look back.
- One unit suppresses one drone. To match a RecCommons you will need 2 units. Most of the ++SUPPORT is eaten up just supporting police units. Support that goes to police units is not available to build former fleets or armies.
- Clean Reactors and Non-Lethal Methods which might affect this calculation are not available until tier 9, which is so late that it might as well not matter for the sake of balancing an early game SE setting.
- And to top it off, it kills your INDUSTRY and EFFIC, so you can't even take advantage of what extra productivity you might gain.
And I'm playing as the Omega Foundation, which can at least teleport units between bases to juggle support. Other factions aren't so lucky.
Honestly, I'd just get rid of the -INDUSTRY penalty for Police State entirely. Democracy is still better once you set up all your bases and start to transition into the mid-game, but at least PS won't totally suck before then.
You have described the problem of police in general that every police unit requires support. This is not a problem of any SE model that grants POLICE rating. Although, supporting police definitely make POLICE rating less valuable in general.
On the police usage in general.
Do you think it is absolutely inferior to use police comparing to psych facilities and psych allocation?
On Police State tweaking.
I agree that we may want to remove INDUSTRY penalty from it as it makes it even less appealing in later game.
What about making it +1 SUPPORT and +1 INDUSTRY instead? That may make it slighter better in later game.
From the other side, INDUSTRY is already taken by Fundamentalisms. Tweaking SE is so tough task.
Maybe this one will work: --EFFIC, ++SUPPORT, ++POLICE, -GROWTH (replacing INDUSTRY penalty with GROWTH one)?
May be closer to Nevill's version (+2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT, -1 GROWTH, -1 PROBE). However, I think, original EFFICIENCY penalty may be more suitable for PS than PROBE and not that bad in WTP with reworked inefficiency.
I'm fine with keeping the --EFFIC. -PROBE matters more for multiplayer where the threat of bribery is more tactically relevant and can be forgotten by careless players. As I learned to my detriment in the last game... (Protip: make sure you stack more than one unit inside bunkers to prevent bribery!)
As for the concept of police in general...
You're right that it suffers greatly from the need to support the police units. Since the idea of policing drones is to allow you to work more tiles, this means the usefulness of police depends on tile yields - keeping in mind that workers still need food to support themselves. Trading 1 mineral of support in exchange for 4 minerals from a rocky mine could be worth it. 1-2-1 from a forest, probably not as much.
On the other hand, compare it to the efficacy of facilities. Two police scouts cost 20 minerals to build and 2 minerals to support*. A RecCommons costs 40 minerals to build and 1 energy to support. The former is cheaper upfront, but the latter is a better investment long-term. Holo Theatres are more expensive (60 minerals and 2 energy), but by the time you build you should have more minerals to do so, and the +50% Psych bonus makes them even more useful later on.
*Even if the scouts themselves are support-free, they come at the expense of supporting formers or armies, so I think this is a fair basis of comparison.
I'm less certain of the relative efficacy of Psych spending, as I am still not fully across this aspect of the game. But it only really becomes an option later on anyway once you have the energy income to support it. With 2 Psych needed to turn a drone into a worker (and another 2 to turn them into a talent), you really need multiplying facilities to get the best out of it.
So at the moment, it seems like police are best used to complement facilities and Psych, rather than supplant them. Much like I am doing in my current SP game.
I think it would really require Non-Lethal Methods to be returned to early in the tech tree in order to make going police-heavy viable as a mid-term alternative to facilities. (In the long term I would expect most factions to switch fully to facilities and psych anyway, as they become more efficient and provide other benefits. This is probably around the Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests era of the game.)
Nevill does something pretty interesting in his mod, which is to make Scout Patrols with Clean Reactors available from the beginning of the game. (The more recent RPGCodex games also make this change.) This makes police scouts a lot more affordable than facilities, and lets you coast on Police State for quite a while without building facilities, though of course you will need to eventually to grow your population higher. It is a fairly major change though, not sure if it would fit with the rest of WtP.
Post by: Nevill on October 08, 2020, 06:24:43 am
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155 (https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155)I have v156, and it doesn't work there.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 08, 2020, 07:28:06 am
Fortunately there is a way around this. It involves an advanced technique known as the support base. As the name suggests, you build extra bases with the explicit purpose of soaking up unit support costs, allowing you to maximize output in your important bases. Three bases are at 15 minerals now, and I should be able to push it to 20 soon.
I have also begun work on Hologram Theatres in bases approaching size 4. This will allow me to trim more fat by disbanding excess scout patrols. The maintenance costs will be covered by drilling more boreholes and building tidal harnesses everywhere. The good news about switching to Democracy is that not only did it remove the hated -INDUSTRY penalty, it also allows me to actually have an energy income (going from 1/turn to 20+/turn with 60% Econ). Power to the people!
Post by: lolada on October 08, 2020, 08:26:34 am
I think there's way too much morale in the game. Its either too strong in pluses or in minuses in both SE and facilities. Spartans have +2 Morale, but i don't even have to pick Power or build Bioenhanced facilities because my morale is topped all the time. Actually optimal thing looks like to pick Euidaimonia with its -3 Morale since it will be great anyway.. and economy would be fantastic. You can have it all.
Its not at all hard to max morale in midgame.. Meanwhile lots of AIs like to pick all the -Morale options, forget to build facilities and ruin themselves to Very Green even during wars.
So i suggest to go much easier on + and - morale (especially on negative.. AIs like Euidaiomania with -3) and maybe to even revert starting morale very green because of dumb AI. Just start the player on very green if possible or you feel like its needed. Help the AI to have decent morale most of the time.
There needs to be some balance here.. ideally it should be hard to get to great or terrible morale.. with most faction staying most of the time around disciplined. If in war they could notch up a bit here they would be much better. In general, SE points are hard to get.. like Support.. Growth Police rating, but there's so many Morale sources around (for the player.. AI is somehow ignoring them).
Worms are much harder to level up for example because their facilities give only +1 cycle. Nerfing Command Centers and other morale facilities to +1 (decrease maintenance) is one way of improving situation.
Its a complex issue - i feel balance would be better if the morale disparity is reduced a bit.
Planet is similar but better balance, either you end up in very red or very green; both end of spectrum are strong. Lots of -worms really ruins faction vs worms and eco damage. Ecology is quite a big issue for both player and AI. In lategame SE stacks and its possible to have tons of +planet (+facilities) which is kind of op; we discussed some of this earlier.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 08, 2020, 02:05:10 pm
No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.
Could also just be bad luck, seeing as the Peacekeepers in lolada's Spartan game built quite a few projects, and AIs built some projects in bvanevery's games too.
Still, regardless of the cause, I now have the Human Genome Project under my belt and will soon have the Weather Paradigm as well, still very strong projects in spite of the price increases. Both will enable me to economize further on drone control and formers.
(click to show/hide)
An amusing incident. I probed the Edenists a while back (and lost the probe that I planned to disband to speed up projects, go figure), and saw they were building something very expensive in a fledgling coastal base. So I sent in a probe foil and sabotaged it. 90 minerals gone just like that. 8)
(click to show/hide)
I am now at war with the Edenists, which was only a matter of time due to my Planned economy, so my immediate goal will be to secure continental supremacy, which should give me enough security to outstrip the other factions in the tech race. Not sure what projects I will pursue yet, though the Living Refinery is definitely a priority to ameliorate that accursed ---SUPPORT penalty.
I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 08, 2020, 02:12:43 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155 (https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155)I have v156, and it doesn't work there.
That may be my bad. I have rolled back versions 155 and 156 completely and now I am incrementing version counter again. So 155 and 156 have completely new and different zip files now on github. I understand this is rookie mistake and I didn't thought it through. I should probably completely remove and skip these numbers to not confuse people. Sorry for hasty work. My only excuse is an awesome responsiveness. 😛
Here. I just did this. Renamed 156->158. Please test it out.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 08, 2020, 02:20:38 pm
So I made the switch to Democracy+Planned, and hooooly bajeezus, this is painful. Every single unit costs minerals to support; I can either have formers, or I can have an army. No such thing as a free lunch in this mod!
Fortunately there is a way around this. It involves an advanced technique known as the support base. As the name suggests, you build extra bases with the explicit purpose of soaking up unit support costs, allowing you to maximize output in your important bases. Three bases are at 15 minerals now, and I should be able to push it to 20 soon.
I have also begun work on Hologram Theatres in bases approaching size 4. This will allow me to trim more fat by disbanding excess scout patrols. The maintenance costs will be covered by drilling more boreholes and building tidal harnesses everywhere. The good news about switching to Democracy is that not only did it remove the hated -INDUSTRY penalty, it also allows me to actually have an energy income (going from 1/turn to 20+/turn with 60% Econ). Power to the people!
You see. SE choices at time have pretty strong effect. However, each and every of them should bring more benefits than penalties with right use. They should be all more or less beneficial on average. Some could be more than others given the circumstances.
Support bases? Interesting technique I never used. I didn't get to the support yet as it is not that bad in vanilla. However, I am thinking to introduce proportional support. I.e. each unit requires X minerals to support. Less with higher rating and it could be fractional number rounded after you multiply it by number of supported units. It is quite difficult to implement so I'll probably do it very not soon.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 08, 2020, 02:40:54 pm
In my Spartan game I have some issues with Morale mostly, Power SE, and Planet is a bit weird.
I think there's way too much morale in the game. Its either too strong in pluses or in minuses in both SE and facilities. Spartans have +2 Morale, but i don't even have to pick Power or build Bioenhanced facilities because my morale is topped all the time. Actually optimal thing looks like to pick Euidaimonia with its -3 Morale since it will be great anyway.. and economy would be fantastic. You can have it all.
Its not at all hard to max morale in midgame.. Meanwhile lots of AIs like to pick all the -Morale options, forget to build facilities and ruin themselves to Very Green even during wars.
So i suggest to go much easier on + and - morale (especially on negative.. AIs like Euidaiomania with -3) and maybe to even revert starting morale very green because of dumb AI. Just start the player on very green if possible or you feel like its needed. Help the AI to have decent morale most of the time.
There needs to be some balance here.. ideally it should be hard to get to great or terrible morale.. with most faction staying most of the time around disciplined. If in war they could notch up a bit here they would be much better. In general, SE points are hard to get.. like Support.. Growth Police rating, but there's so many Morale sources around (for the player.. AI is somehow ignoring them).
Worms are much harder to level up for example because their facilities give only +1 cycle. Nerfing Command Centers and other morale facilities to +1 (decrease maintenance) is one way of improving situation.
Its a complex issue - i feel balance would be better if the morale disparity is reduced a bit.
Planet is similar but better balance, either you end up in very red or very green; both end of spectrum are strong. Lots of -worms really ruins faction vs worms and eco damage. Ecology is quite a big issue for both player and AI. In lategame SE stacks and its possible to have tons of +planet (+facilities) which is kind of op; we discussed some of this earlier.
I agree there is an issue with morale. It is not THAT bad just something to look at. The issue is that total combined spectrum of bonuses and penalties is about twice as wide than allowed morale levels. SE MORALE: -3 to +3, facilities: 0 to +4, monolith: 0 to +1, High Morale ability: 0 to +1, and promotions those are theoretically unlimited but let's say on average unit is promoted twice until dies so: 0 to +2. That totals at -3 to +11 = 15 levels! Whereas there are only 7 unit morale levels. It doesn't matter which way you shift that huge number of morale bonuses they will quite frequently cap at bottom or top. I wouldn't worry about this much as many other effects get capped and wasted and this is normal. This one is the worst, though.
One solution is to remove some morale bonuses from the game. I wouldn't go this path as they all are give unique game flavor.
Another one is to widen the unit morale range. I wouldn't go this path either as it is insanely hardcoded everywhere in the code. So it is just unfeasible.
Halving facilities bonus is not good for two reasons.
1. MORALE <= -2 halves these bonuses. So if you halve them initially there won't be anything to halve anymore.
2. The total number of lifecycle improvements by facilities is already equal or more than morale facilities. So reducing them even more would be unfair imbalance between conventional and psi units.
Reducing amount of MORALE effects in SE choices is an option and it may slightly mitigate this but still won't solve the main issue. We do want to be able to crank MORALE by SE to both -3 and +3 anyway.
Once again, I do not think this is game breaking issue. AI is doing just fine. I often see their elites running around. Yes, they may either fall into deep - or deep +, but why do we as human players care? They are normal game variation. It would be dull to see all units on average all the time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 08, 2020, 02:52:42 pm
No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.
They focus expansion more now underprioritizing everything else. This definitely could be tuned if you think they lose more disregarding projects. They still build them in powerful bases.
Generally, I believe, expansion grows their power more as they become quite strong economically and military. This is better than building projects and then give them up to greedy neighbor. This is disputable. Let me know if you can beat AI now easier or not at all.
I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.
Yay!
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 09, 2020, 02:34:08 am
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.
EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.
Support bases are mostly useful for Morgan in vanilla, who starts with -1 SUPPORT and is likely to hit -3 from running Democracy to maximize the gains from Free Market / Wealth. And he is already incentivized to spam bases, since under those settings he stands to make a tidy +7 energy per base. Not to be sneered at.So I made the switch to Democracy+Planned, and hooooly bajeezus, this is painful. Every single unit costs minerals to support; I can either have formers, or I can have an army. No such thing as a free lunch in this mod!
Fortunately there is a way around this. It involves an advanced technique known as the support base. As the name suggests, you build extra bases with the explicit purpose of soaking up unit support costs, allowing you to maximize output in your important bases. Three bases are at 15 minerals now, and I should be able to push it to 20 soon.
I have also begun work on Hologram Theatres in bases approaching size 4. This will allow me to trim more fat by disbanding excess scout patrols. The maintenance costs will be covered by drilling more boreholes and building tidal harnesses everywhere. The good news about switching to Democracy is that not only did it remove the hated -INDUSTRY penalty, it also allows me to actually have an energy income (going from 1/turn to 20+/turn with 60% Econ). Power to the people!
You see. SE choices at time have pretty strong effect. However, each and every of them should bring more benefits than penalties with right use. They should be all more or less beneficial on average. Some could be more than others given the circumstances.
Support bases? Interesting technique I never used. I didn't get to the support yet as it is not that bad in vanilla. However, I am thinking to introduce proportional support. I.e. each unit requires X minerals to support. Less with higher rating and it could be fractional number rounded after you multiply it by number of supported units. It is quite difficult to implement so I'll probably do it very not soon.
It's also especially effective for the Omegas here, since they can complete units and instantly teleport them to where they're needed and reassign the support in a single turn.
Fractional support costs sound interesting, but I think I'd have to see how it fared in action to make a judgement on that. So probably not anytime soon. :P
At the moment the system is pretty intuitive. One unit uses one mineral, but the first X are free.
That reminds me: you extended the scale of GROWTH and RESEARCH effects, right? You may wish to update alphax.txt to include SE entries for the new levels, so that it's clear in-game that you continue to benefit from higher ratings.
Yes, I've noticed the AI has been building a lot of Creches and Hab Complexes. I am definitely behind in population, which was to be expected since I have -2 GROWTH, with 46 pop compared to Stewards' 88 and Traders' 76. But as the kids like to say, it's not the size, it's how you use it.No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.
They focus expansion more now underprioritizing everything else. This definitely could be tuned if you think they lose more disregarding projects. They still build them in powerful bases.
Generally, I believe, expansion grows their power more as they become quite strong economically and military. This is better than building projects and then give them up to greedy neighbor. This is disputable. Let me know if you can beat AI now easier or not at all.I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.
Yay!
It turned out that this version still had Pressure Domes at 2 maintenance, which caused the AIs to unfairly lose a lot of money since they just love to spam sea bases everywhere. I have now fixed this, we'll see if they do anything dangerous with the extra funds.
However, I believe I have identified a major cause of the AI's industrial underperformance. And it is a problem that other modders have struggled to deal with. But some of the changes WtP makes seem to have made it worse.
Simply put, the AI builds too much crap. Many of their bases that produce decent minerals are clogged up with useless scout patrols and slightly less useless formers, CPs, and military units. Then they run Democracy and/or Planned and the problem gets even worse. Considering how I'm already struggling with distributing support costs appropriately, I don't expect the AI is going to handle this much better.
Here is an example of what I mean:
(https://i.imgur.com/iLnfcaq.png)
This would indeed be a decent project base... if 11 out of 16 minerals weren't taken up by support.
I suspect the cause of this is the support reassignment mechanic, which reassigns support from low-mineral bases to high-mineral ones. This is actually the opposite of what should happen. You want lesser bases to take the hit so that your main ones can focus wholly on projects, prototypes, or big-ticket infrastructure items like Genejacks or Tree Farms. Then you use the enhanced output from your heartland to bring the provinces up to par.
I think this may also be sufficient reason to argue for removing the -SUPPORT penalty from Planned. It both annoys the player and impairs the AI.
Speaking of SE... this is caused by Thinker and isn't affected by WtP, but if you are planning to fiddle with the AI's SE decision-making process (please make this optional btw, force_AI_social_preference or something, because I heavily disagree with bvanevery on this), I would like to request that you also look into how SE immunities (the faction cannot go below zero in the specified SE modifier) are handled. At the moment the AI doesn't know how to handle these, since Induktio wasn't aware of how immunities (as opposed to impunities) worked.
The result is that the Edenists, who have +2 SUPPORT and immunity to POLICE, have a bad habit of comboing Police State with Free Market. This is very suboptimal for them, because they already have SUPPORT near the cap, and their POLICE will still be at zero anyway.
This only really affects modded factions though, so I understand if it's not a priority. I can probably fix the issue on my end by giving the Edenists Secrets of the Human Brain for free so they can run Fundy instead.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 09, 2020, 07:45:59 am
I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.Making a separate post for this bug.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.
EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.
The cause of the bug is in helpx.txt. The entry for Tachyon Field contains a line that is too long for the game to handle. Thus it crashes.
This can be fixed by breaking up the offending line as follows:
Code: [Select]
#; Tachyon Field
#HELPFAC5
Disables base intrinsic defense bonus.
^Adds 50% defense bonus to units at base against all conventional attacks cumulative with other defensive facilities.
^This effectively raises unit defense bonus to 150% when combined with $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>, $LINK<Naval Yard=100028>, or $LINK<Aerospace Complex=100029>.
^Defensive facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>.
^
^Can only be constructed in a base which already has a $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>.As a side note, helpx.txt currently contains a typo in the Perimeter Defense and Tachyon Field entries: "^Defensife facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>."See, I don't just complain about balance, I can find bugs too! ;) ;lol
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 09, 2020, 04:26:06 pm
I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.
EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.
Wow. Thank you for discovering and testing that! I confirm that is reproducible in the latest version too. Will have a look.
Apparently SMACX has limit on string length in help. Didn't know that and that bit me.
# Version 159
* BUG: Too long line in help entry caused game crash. Fixed Tachyon Field, Growth, Industry entries.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 09, 2020, 05:52:54 pm
That reminds me: you extended the scale of GROWTH and RESEARCH effects, right? You may wish to update alphax.txt to include SE entries for the new levels, so that it's clear in-game that you continue to benefit from higher ratings.
I have extended GROWTH but not RESEARCH. For later I planned to because of large bonus given by Knowledge but didn't get to it yet.
All entries were updated, correspondingly. Some of them just crashed the game due to very long lines. Thank you to discovering this. I just slapped new release that fixes it. Check out new colorful help entries with a lot of supplementary information! 😊
It turned out that this version still had Pressure Domes at 2 maintenance, which caused the AIs to unfairly lose a lot of money since they just love to spam sea bases everywhere. I have now fixed this, we'll see if they do anything dangerous with the extra funds.
Yea. Sorry for oversight. This should be updated in newest version.
However, I believe I have identified a major cause of the AI's industrial underperformance. And it is a problem that other modders have struggled to deal with. But some of the changes WtP makes seem to have made it worse.
Simply put, the AI builds too much crap. Many of their bases that produce decent minerals are clogged up with useless scout patrols and slightly less useless formers, CPs, and military units. Then they run Democracy and/or Planned and the problem gets even worse. Considering how I'm already struggling with distributing support costs appropriately, I don't expect the AI is going to handle this much better.
Here is an example of what I mean:
This would indeed be a decent project base... if 11 out of 16 minerals weren't taken up by support.
I suspect the cause of this is the support reassignment mechanic, which reassigns support from low-mineral bases to high-mineral ones. This is actually the opposite of what should happen. You want lesser bases to take the hit so that your main ones can focus wholly on projects, prototypes, or big-ticket infrastructure items like Genejacks or Tree Farms. Then you use the enhanced output from your heartland to bring the provinces up to par.
I think this may also be sufficient reason to argue for removing the -SUPPORT penalty from Planned. It both annoys the player and impairs the AI.
I agree about support distribution. I should remove it. It was intended to help a human player to keep gift units. AI tends to give them at same exactly location close to the border and some specific base so this base gets overloaded with support and units just disappear. Support distribution is suppose to reshuffle these given units across the other bases.
However, as you pointed out, it gets abused by AI. It doesn't happen because of redistribution per se but by mindless unit production in weak bases but redistribution allows it to happen for longer. So I am going to cancel this feature anyway.
Generally speaking, reducing amount of crap can be done by building not crap. And that is the work in the progress. Both production choice and moving units is a very deep AI tuning work. So will continue on that.
Speaking of SE... this is caused by Thinker and isn't affected by WtP, but if you are planning to fiddle with the AI's SE decision-making process (please make this optional btw, force_AI_social_preference or something, because I heavily disagree with bvanevery on this), I would like to request that you also look into how SE immunities (the faction cannot go below zero in the specified SE modifier) are handled. At the moment the AI doesn't know how to handle these, since Induktio wasn't aware of how immunities (as opposed to impunities) worked.
The result is that the Edenists, who have +2 SUPPORT and immunity to POLICE, have a bad habit of comboing Police State with Free Market. This is very suboptimal for them, because they already have SUPPORT near the cap, and their POLICE will still be at zero anyway.
This only really affects modded factions though, so I understand if it's not a priority. I can probably fix the issue on my end by giving the Edenists Secrets of the Human Brain for free so they can run Fundy instead.
I don't know either and I have to look up the difference all the time but I am aware of it. 😊
Will see what I can do.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 09, 2020, 06:16:37 pm
I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.Making a separate post for this bug.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.
EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.
The cause of the bug is in helpx.txt. The entry for Tachyon Field contains a line that is too long for the game to handle. Thus it crashes.
This can be fixed by breaking up the offending line as follows:Code: [Select]#; Tachyon FieldAs a side note, helpx.txt currently contains a typo in the Perimeter Defense and Tachyon Field entries: "^Defensife facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>."
#HELPFAC5
Disables base intrinsic defense bonus.
^Adds 50% defense bonus to units at base against all conventional attacks cumulative with other defensive facilities.
^This effectively raises unit defense bonus to 150% when combined with $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>, $LINK<Naval Yard=100028>, or $LINK<Aerospace Complex=100029>.
^Defensive facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>.
^
^Can only be constructed in a base which already has a $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>.
See, I don't just complain about balance, I can find bugs too! ;) ;lol
Yep. Figured it out too. Thank you for deep investigation! You cannot even imagine how invaluable such contribution to any development. That is why you earned a dedicated credit line. 👏
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/README.md#credits
Post by: bvanevery on October 12, 2020, 04:13:45 am
I find that Social Engineering choices do not look like they are worth making, at least before midgame. Why take these penalties? I also "gain" animosity from some faction for disturbing their ideology. Generally not worth it.
the spam rate |
MY 2174, I quit this game. I was the Free Drones.
Starting next to the Monsoon Jungle, this is about the best spreading I'm going to do. The AI will always have a consistent 25% to 100% advantage in city count over me. I am certain to be one of the smaller empires. The city spam is so bad that I don't see any viable way to play the game except to do likewise at the beginning of the game. Aesthetically, it is inelegant and unpleasing. Game mechanically, it's forced busywork for awhile, not at my own pace.
At some point, the realities of borders coming together, and Bureaucracy penalties, and the need to start building Rec Commons, stops my growth. The fill rate of the AIs will continue unabated. So, I'm starting to be able to predict how geography will inevitably lead to a specific border. This implies that the relative strength of AI empires is primarily determined by the starting land masses. I seriously doubt that sea bases contribute much to empire strength.
I typically build 1 garrison unit, 1 Former in most cities. The need for land Scouts is not infinite as all pods soon get popped. Captured indigenous life forms aren't nearly as useful as in other mods, as the new psi combat tends to get one's mindworms killed half the time they fight another mindworm. The big rolling armies of snowballing mindworms just aren't gonna happen. A few Gun Foils can be used to clear the sea, but there won't be many supply pods for long, so not much point in a navy.
Once colonial expansion isn't viable anymore, the typical progression is now Rec Commons, Recycling Tank, Children's Creche. Might build a Command Center or two. A high production Command Center gets a Skunkworks on it. I find a lot of waiting around while my empire is in the "big, thin, feeble" stage. I avoid pissing anyone off, because I'm obviously not strong in any way, and probably the other factions aren't either. Like I said, no point in making social engineering choices because their penalties look worse than their bonuses.
Tech generally outstrips what I imagine I'd do with it. I've yet to get to the point of feeling like I've built up a surplus of units worthy of taking over a neighbor. The game is always making my skin crawl before then, because of the intense level of spam, and I quit.
I really don't like all the colony spam and don't know how much longer I'll have the patience to see what I can do in such an environment. I think it's pretty over the top, and does not represent sophistication, only a huge AI resource input. I suspect that the colony spam determines the game, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to know for sure.
One thing odd about this game compared to some others, is I really didn't have any problems getting dusted up by mindworms. Maybe it's the close proximity of the Cult of Planet as an ally earlier in the game. They may have shielded me from abuse.
I trade pretty indiscriminately, not worrying about whether a tech grants a Secret Project. SPs are expensive enough that nobody will finish them for a long time. I tend to hold onto cash and do massive rushes of SPs, to the extent that I can actually make the cash.
Post by: MercantileInterest on October 12, 2020, 06:16:19 am
Am now trying the game with planetpearls deactivated. Initial impression: favourable. Wondering whether it might make sense to keep the mechanic solely for Planet Cult. Here's how they're currently set up:
TECH, CentEmp, SOCIAL, +PLANET, SOCIAL, --ECONOMY, SOCIAL, -INDUSTRY, FREEFAC, 35, FUNGMINERALS, 1, WORMPOLICE, 0, UNIT, 8, FUNGENERGY, 1,
The hope is to give them a low-terraforming fungus reliant playstyle, distinct from all the other factions. Planetpearls mechanic doesn't really 'make sense' but neither does the Cult harvesting more resources from fungus at the same technology level as other humans. Still worth it for the sake of unique playstyle.
You added this line to the ini:
; Arbitrary tech cost scale to adjust tech progression.
tech_cost_scale=1.0
Must be a discussion of how this works somewhere in the thread?
Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?
Post by: bvanevery on October 12, 2020, 08:18:43 am
Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?
There's no point early game. The early techs go by really fast, even when you're a -2 RESEARCH faction.
Which techs you want to research, is a question only applicable to directed research. Which by default, is only an Alien ability / advantage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 12, 2020, 02:59:25 pm
Like I said, no point in making social engineering choices because their penalties look worse than their bonuses.
Hmm. You are saying this mod choices are worse than vanilla's? Like, for example, Fundamentalist became less appealing in WTP?
Tech generally outstrips what I imagine I'd do with it.
That is intended to give player some options to go about building if they want to. However, if you feel like it is too much and tech runs away too fast and most of the discoveries are sitting there idle for a long time - let me know for adjusting tech rate. Can you share some of your saves along the way so I can see how many tech you have by turns?
I really don't like all the colony spam and don't know how much longer I'll have the patience to see what I can do in such an environment. I think it's pretty over the top, and does not represent sophistication, only a huge AI resource input. I suspect that the colony spam determines the game, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to know for sure.
That is right. Colony spam determines the game. This was there before and this is nothing we invented. However, people frown upon my attempt to slow it down by conventional measures like Colony cost increase. They said it slows down the game/expansion and makes in uninteresting especially in MP. I already split SP and MP configurations. Maybe now I can keep Colony cost higher in SP. I bet this will keep expansion speed proportionally slower.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 12, 2020, 03:17:25 pm
Given the prevalence of worms, an option to add extra scout patrols could be useful.
I don't think anyone needs it. It's only 10 minerals worth a gift unit available to everybody at start whose support overwhelms its cost in 10 turns too. Colonies are given to even out faction expansions because the variance in first base nutrients and minerals could be quite significant. Formers are given to even out early terran work because not everybody could get Centauri Ecology immediatelly and terraforming is another important base growth factor.
Scouts everybody can build. It's not like some faction is deprived by this. Besides until the turn 15 worms are essentially no threat for any unit. I quite often use colonies and formers to block them from reaching my early empty bases.
Am now trying the game with planetpearls deactivated. Initial impression: favourable. Wondering whether it might make sense to keep the mechanic solely for Planet Cult. Here's how they're currently set up:
TECH, CentEmp, SOCIAL, +PLANET, SOCIAL, --ECONOMY, SOCIAL, -INDUSTRY, FREEFAC, 35, FUNGMINERALS, 1, WORMPOLICE, 0, UNIT, 8, FUNGENERGY, 1,
The hope is to give them a low-terraforming fungus reliant playstyle, distinct from all the other factions. Planetpearls mechanic doesn't really 'make sense' but neither does the Cult harvesting more resources from fungus at the same technology level as other humans. Still worth it for the sake of unique playstyle.
The problem with planetpearls as with any other exploit is that human can use it but AI cannot. So if we give this ability to one faction it'll suck as AI but will have enormous advantage as human. Very difficult to even out.
You added this line to the ini:
; Arbitrary tech cost scale to adjust tech progression.
tech_cost_scale=1.0
Must be a discussion of how this works somewhere in the thread?
I exposed it for my own tuning that's why I didn't advertise it. It is a simple scaling factor much like "Technology discovery rate as a percentage of standard" from alphax.txt. Now having said that I am thinking this is redundant.
Yes, anyone can crank this or similar alphax.txt parameter to make tech go faster or slower.
Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?
Estimate research time is show in F2 screen. If you are asking about estimate at the direct choice tech picket screen before you started to research it then it is difficult to do. I've already checked it and it is quite hardcoded there. Besides, bvanevery has already replied to this one. The only good thing to change would be to mention tech level everywhere because now it is missed in some places making me guess how high level this tech is.
Post by: bvanevery on October 12, 2020, 10:04:51 pm
Hmm. You are saying this mod choices are worse than vanilla's? Like, for example, Fundamentalist became less appealing in WTP?
Fundamentalist looks like the only Politics or Economics choice that could be worth making. But with a -3 RESEARCH penalty, it is definitely not worth making at the start of the game. I have not made it far enough into midgame to feel comfortable with "I don't need any more research, I'm just gonna clobber nearby enemies with what I've got."
Green could be a choice when one doesn't care about growing anymore. But when is that going to come? And +PLANET ratings are not valuable now, from a "forming a mindworm army" point of view. You cannot steamroller to gain many mindworms. Anything you capture, you will just as quickly lose trying to fight other mindworms. So the basic advantage of Green, just doesn't exist.
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Can you share some of your saves along the way so I can see how many tech you have by turns?
Will do, at some point when the state of the game is "snapshot worthy".
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Colony spam determines the game. This was there before and this is nothing we invented.
You've exacerbated it, turning the beginning of the game into compulsory action.
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However, people frown upon my attempt to slow it down by conventional measures like Colony cost increase.
In version 154, colonists are noticeably more expensive than the stock game. I compensated as best I could and achieved the spread that I could. The disparity is 25% to 100% more cities for the AI factions, depending on what land mass they start on, and who their neighbors are. So IMO, increasing colony cost hasn't solved anything.
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They said it slows down the game/expansion and makes in uninteresting especially in MP.
In MP they are surely correct. Seriously misfeatured.
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I already split SP and MP configurations. Maybe now I can keep Colony cost higher in SP. I bet this will keep expansion speed proportionally slower.
I think the AI factions don't care and are immune to such tweaking. It only penalizes the human player.
The AI factions need to gain a resource improvement other than colony spam. Your mod has made me think about how I de facto achieved that in my mod, by sheer trial and error. Turns out I gave everyone more land by making Huge maps my default recommended playing surface. I gave everyone more SUPPORT by making Clean Reactors available from the beginning of the game. You have to decide whether you want units faster but lose SUPPORT, or slower but retain SUPPORT. It's a tradeoff, and at the beginning it's not clear whether one or the other is inherently better. The few factions that start the game with higher SUPPORT do have an advantage at the beginning. The advantage wears off as the game progresses. Probably doesn't matter by midgame when Genejack Factories are starting to come online.
What slows my expansion down, is unhappiness. I don't think the AI currently has that problem. Perhaps it needs to be more of a problem for the AI. So that it will stop smallpoxing and produce real cities.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 18, 2020, 10:38:21 pm
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8661.0.html
Post by: bvanevery on October 20, 2020, 07:11:17 am
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 20, 2020, 12:56:20 pm
Working on OpenXcom mod now. Could be not responsive here.You're working on TFTD, huh? Hats off to you.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8661.0.html
Been too busy with work and playing multiplayer to comment much here. One of those games is with Nevill's modded WtP and another is with MercantileInterest's modded WtP, so at least the mod is being put to good use!
You can follow the latter game here (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/alpha-centauri-multiplayer-brutal-dawn.135503/) on the Codex. Though the game just started, so there's not much to follow yet.
I haven't played a lot of singleplayer as a result, but it continues to progress, if slowly. I built the Living Refinery, which helped my SUPPORT rating somewhat, and then took a break from projects to work on facilities and gear up for the invasion of the Edenists. With police being unattractive as of v160 (updated from v121 mid-game, nothing seems to have broken), I find my bases to be capped at size 6: 2 RecCommons + 2 HoloTheatre + 1 police + 1 Human Genome Project. I'm teching to Research Hospitals now, but it looks like this is the point where I need to start putting more budget into Psych (ideally boosted by Tree Farms) if I want to grow any higher. Going Green might also be a good choice to gain +2 TALENT. Free Market is obviously not a good choice right now, since I'm in the middle of invading someone.
So far I built a single Genejack Factory, which let me achieve 30 minerals in my HQ. It would be higher, but the extra drone meant I had to turn one worker into an Engineer. I do like how buffed those became, dunno if it's balanced, but I like it!
Wealth was already a strong SE choice in vanilla, probably the strongest, and it only got even stronger here. I'm not sure buffing it to +2 INDUSTRY is really necessary. Neither of the penalties, -2 MORALE and -1 POLICE, hurt very much in comparison.
(https://i.imgur.com/FTx7gOy.png)
As for the actual invasion itself... as of 2209, I have taken my first base through force of arms. (Probe teams don't count.)
The attack force consists of 4 8-1-1 infantry, 3 (8-1-1) artillery pieces, 3 armoured personnel carriers (land transports), and 3 speeder probe teams.
Artillery stays on my side of the border and shells the base. APCs drive up to the base, and the infantry attack at full strength. Most of the enemy garrisons are only 2-defense units and fall easily to my 8-attack units. They have ECM, but that's why I use infantry.
This was actually insufficient to take the base in a single turn, but since the enemy lacked units to counterattack with, I just attacked again next turn and this time took the base. Probes then move up so that the enemy doesn't subvert it back.
(https://i.imgur.com/ZCfBxcr.png)
Minimal losses taken so far.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 20, 2020, 02:45:36 pm
Been too busy with work and playing multiplayer to comment much here. One of those games is with Nevill's modded WtP and another is with MercantileInterest's modded WtP, so at least the mod is being put to good use!
Do you mind sending their configuration to me? I'll just include them as MP versions.
You can follow the latter game here (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/alpha-centauri-multiplayer-brutal-dawn.135503/) on the Codex. Though the game just started, so there's not much to follow yet.
Did I understood it right that you are playing all 7 humans? That should be too much of excitement. 😊
I always wanted to gang up with nerds. But don't invite me. I don't have much time to spare on this and will ruin your experience.
If this is the case, though, the "enemy" you are describing in this post - is it other human player?
With police being unattractive as of v160 (updated from v121 mid-game, nothing seems to have broken)
Are you talking about policing in general or Police State? I didn't see PS even changed since v121.
So far I built a single Genejack Factory, which let me achieve 30 minerals in my HQ. It would be higher, but the extra drone meant I had to turn one worker into an Engineer. I do like how buffed those became, dunno if it's balanced, but I like it!
What specifically was buffed? Genejack Factory, Engineer, psych facilities?
Wealth was already a strong SE choice in vanilla, probably the strongest, and it only got even stronger here. I'm not sure buffing it to +2 INDUSTRY is really necessary. Neither of the penalties, -2 MORALE and -1 POLICE, hurt very much in comparison.
So, err, is too much or too little in your perception? I think people tend to overstate INDUSTRY and other clearly visual effects because they are transparent to user. Like +1 INDUSTRY is roughly 10% production increase. However, as it was already proven many times, some effects much surpass mere 10% bonus. Like +2 ECONOMY or early SUPPPORT, maybe even POLICE in need time, etc.
I have added extra INDUSTRY to make it more lore abiding. This was originally product of Industrial Automation, after all. Before I felt it quite undistinguishable.
Do you want to change it somehow? How is replacing -1 POLICE with -2/3 PLANET? Forces player to strengthen anti native defense and constantly replenish base defenders.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 05:42:30 am
first dck move |
Version 161. MY 2147. An Isle materializes from nowhere and kills my Sea Colonist. These are my territorial waters. All of the connecting waterways have been extensively searched. There isn't so much ocean for anyone to sail across. I have my doubts that any other factions stirred up this Isle, as I popped all the sea supply pods earliest. So this must be a materialization right next to me, out of nowhere, to bother me. That's just "Tomato Surprise" game design and it's not fun. I spend a long time making stuff at the beginning of the game, but my player agency is just randomly removed. There's nothing that could have been done about that, at all.
I am supposing that mindworm sea spawning is still cranked up pretty high in this version.
Generally in Civ games, Barbarians aren't allowed to just spawn next to your cities. There's a reason for that. The player should be able to see things coming and have some chance to react.
I don't remember this sort of thing happening in my own mod. I do play that on Huge maps, and this is a Standard map. If something else tiresome happens in this game, I will abandon it as "sufficiently tested", and try playing on Huge maps. Maybe it will make a difference.
I can't possibly manufacture the units from all the techs I've got. I'm barely into terraforming my earliest cities, and still scouting my immediate environment. Save attached. Tech goes way too fast. Or else, units awarded by tech go way too fast, take your pick.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 06:02:13 am
second dck move |
MY 2152. A Sealurk kills one of my Independent Sea Formers from the beginning of the game. This is not surprising at this point, as I've seen some of these things prowling around here and there. The AI factions are stirring the pot and settling in the water. Yang put a Gun Foil out near me too. I won't call it a tragedy yet as I've begun making other Sea Formers. However if that Sealurk trashes my nearby base, I'm quitting. That unit is Disciplined, the product of earlier hits on it. I don't have the production to just have multiple defensive units. Taking away the +1 minerals is probably a more correct direction than not, but now I do tend to have piles and piles of useless food and no productivity. I've smallpoxed the minerals bonuses so that's a start, but it's still not a lot of minerals and I can't just have defense / stuff.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 06:26:26 am
third dck move |
MY 2167. It looks like the Gaians are about to do something to me with a Foil Probe Team. If it takes over my city, I'm done. I don't even know how to make a probe team. Tech feels pretty stagnant now. I need a Skunkworks to make the super expensive prototypes, and I don't have that capability yet. The AIs have all been really hostile to me, except the Free Drones, who allied with me. I just talked to them, hoping for free tech. They didn't give us po boys anything, and they want war with the Usurpers. I declined as I have no manufacturing strength. I'm trying to just make Tidal Harnesses to go with the flow of what's easiest for the Pirates. Maybe there's something I can do with a lot of food and money.
MY 2168. Surprisingly, the probe team sailed right past me. I must be a non-entity. All of my cities are now producing Sea Colony Pods, because I have no productivity and SUPPORT left really. I've got a few Gun Foils which can keep other Gun Foils away. I'm garrisoned with mostly untrained Scouts. The graph says I'm half as good as all the other empires and they're not basically wrong. With such low productivity, I don't see how it could be otherwise, as there are not enough supply pods in the ocean to profit much from early Completions.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 06:53:31 am
that's enough of that |
MY 2182. I'm quitting. The spam rate of sea colonists is way too high for this to be tenable. The usual advantage of the Pirates is they can do something that other factions can't. I have no such advantage in this mod, with the spawn rate being so high. The Usurpers, in particular, have a size 9 sea base. Everybody's basically better pirates than the Pirates.
I managed to get some Completions from unpopped sea supply pods in the northeast corner of the map. The topology was such that I had to round a lot of twisty land masses to get there. While I was sweeping out half of them, Yang started sweeping the other half. This is not enough to compensate for the overwhelming spam advantage.
Everyone is in a Truce, except for Domai's Pact. Which would have lasted about another 5 seconds, because I wouldn't do the war he wants.
Wall clock time was 11:15 PM start, 1:45 AM quit. 2.5 hours to pffft.
Colony spam needs to be dialed down.
Not sure what Pirates should be given to make them a worthy sea power again.
Post by: Nevill on October 22, 2020, 09:16:54 am
Can the hurry message display both full hurry costs and the partial hurry costs for "Total Minerals Left - Current Production" so that people would know exactly how much payment is needed to finish the production next turn based on the current production rate? This is something extensively used in multiplayer where turn advantage is very significant. It would be a massive QoL improvement as currently people are playing with calculators in hand.
Edit:
I've not posted this anywhere else, but I'd like to discuss if any of these would be easy to modify.
a) Can the price of hurrying facilities/units be made customizable? Currently it's 2/4 under a new formula for a neutral INDUSTRY setting, but it'd be nice to experiment with other values.
b) Can the hurrying threshold for the first X minerals get reinstated on a universal basis? Basically, hurrying up to retool penalty threshold should cost the same regardless of what you are hurrying, else we get what is currently going on in our multiplayer game where people start building RecTanks, hurry the first 10 minerals for cheap, and then switch production to a unit, saving quite a bit of money.
(this is why I am considering making the hurry values equal)
c) Can the retool penalty threshold / free minerals scale with INDUSTRY? It's a set number currently, but we are moving towards counting everything in rows. So settling a new base would provide you with a free mineral row rather than flat 10 minerals.
Post by: dino on October 22, 2020, 09:50:41 am
You need to play on lower difficulty, or at least with higher ai cost_factor on transcend.
> Not sure what Pirates should be given to make them a worthy sea power again.
I've proposed giving aquatic factions extra mineral on mining platform, that normally requires tech prerequisite for free from the start.
Weaker than their vanilla buff and would give them advantage only during early game.
I'd suggest to start a separate thread for lets plays, since other discussions can get drowned in them, especially now that Tim will be less active.
Tim seems to be very interested in any feedback, so I'm sure he would be following our adventures in a separate thread too.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 04:34:52 pm
> Colony spam needs to be dialed down.
You need to play on lower difficulty, or at least with higher ai cost_factor on transcend.
Nah. It's insane. "Harder than usual Transcend" is fine, one would kinda expect that. But on a Standard sized map, this isn't even a basically good play experience. Opinions will vary. I will try Huge and see if it's equally bad.
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I've proposed giving aquatic factions extra mineral on mining platform, that normally requires tech prerequisite for free from the start.
Compared to stock, this could be thought of as removing Pirate minerals from Tidal Harness squares. And requiring a Mine before any minerals are gained.
Quote
I'd suggest to start a separate thread for lets plays, since other discussions can get drowned in them,
Nope. I'm not doing this to have funzies with Let's Plays. I'm doing this to report the major problems I see in the design, with exact examples.
I can't really follow other people's exceedingly detailed discussion of other issues and I don't even try. One never knows how much feedback one is going to get from everybody, or when they're gonna get it. Sometimes it pours. And if Tim's been bombarded with a gazillion things, I often stop commenting, reading, or giving any input until it dies down. This time around, this is when I had the time and patience to do the Quality Assurance. It just happened to come when others were talking about a lot of other things.
My own mod thread is super quiet. I'm either doing something right or wrong. :D
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 04:57:29 pm
MY 2182. I'm quitting. The spam rate of sea colonists is way too high for this to be tenable. The usual advantage of the Pirates is they can do something that other factions can't. I have no such advantage in this mod, with the spawn rate being so high. The Usurpers, in particular, have a size 9 sea base. Everybody's basically better pirates than the Pirates.
The native life generator parameters are turned back to vanilla values in 161. It does not produce more of them.
The only modifications are that it generates more of sea natives comparing to land ones. It was 1:5 in vanilla. Now is about 1:2.
Another modification is that natives do not die often so they can live long enough to reach someone bases.
These two parameters may slightly increase number of native attacks comparing to vanilla but I don't think by much. If this is still perceived to be too high, I can revert them too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 05:06:53 pm
I've made this request in the Issues section on GitHub, but I'll repost it here as well.
Can the hurry message display both full hurry costs and the partial hurry costs for "Total Minerals Left - Current Production" so that people would know exactly how much payment is needed to finish the production next turn based on the current production rate? This is something extensively used in multiplayer where turn advantage is very significant. It would be a massive QoL improvement as currently people are playing with calculators in hand.
Saw it. Thank you. Very nice and neat way to report it. Now it is on my TODO list.
😁
a) Can the price of hurrying facilities/units be made customizable? Currently it's 2/4 under a new formula for a neutral INDUSTRY setting, but it'd be nice to experiment with other values.
Cannot tell from the top of my head. These multipliers were hard-coded in ASM and only values are 2 and 4. However, I solved other tough problems in the past so may this one as well.
b) Can the hurrying threshold for the first X minerals get reinstated on a universal basis? Basically, hurrying up to retool penalty threshold should cost the same regardless of what you are hurrying, else we get what is currently going on in our multiplayer game where people start building RecTanks, hurry the first 10 minerals for cheap, and then switch production to a unit, saving quite a bit of money.
(this is why I am considering making the hurry values equal)
Yep. Long going problem with it. Theoretically possible but it'll introduce serious complications in formulas where we would need to count first minerals separately, etc. And they are somewhat interlaced in different places (human hurry, AI hurry, partial hurry cost, etc.).
Still doable with due diligence and someone helping to cover all test cases.
Yes, uniform hurry cost multiplier for everything would make this problem go away. That is fine between facilities and units but project will still need to cost more. So no easy solution.
c) Can the retool penalty threshold / free minerals scale with INDUSTRY? It's a set number currently, but we are moving towards counting everything in rows. So settling a new base would provide you with a free mineral row rather than flat 10 minerals.
Nice idea in general. I'll look into it.
I think it is time to open a dedicated thread on these industry-hurry-retooling can of worms. Too many small things connected to each other. Need some universal and straightforward solution.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 05:18:37 pm
> Colony spam needs to be dialed down.
You need to play on lower difficulty, or at least with higher ai cost_factor on transcend.
Nah. It's insane. "Harder than usual Transcend" is fine, one would kinda expect that. But on a Standard sized map, this isn't even a basically good play experience. Opinions will vary. I will try Huge and see if it's equally bad.
Which colony spam are you talking about - yours or AI's? If yours, then raise Colony cost. If AI's then either again raise Colony cost or switch to lower difficulty where their production power is not that high. All the configuration options are there.
The "Transcend should be beatable" argument is a complete contradiction to Thinker-WTP purpose.
QuoteI've proposed giving aquatic factions extra mineral on mining platform, that normally requires tech prerequisite for free from the start.
Compared to stock, this could be thought of as removing Pirate minerals from Tidal Harness squares. And requiring a Mine before any minerals are gained.
Aquatic factions are very-very-very special beasts. It does require serious play testing to even pin point their problems or OPs. I don't think we are at this point yet. Even without extra mineral they develop quite well in my games. I also can develop well when playing them. Not without difficulties but they do not suck completely. Don't see a need in buffing them yet.
QuoteI'd suggest to start a separate thread for lets plays, since other discussions can get drowned in them,
Nope. I'm not doing this to have funzies with Let's Plays. I'm doing this to report the major problems I see in the design, with exact examples.
I can't really follow other people's exceedingly detailed discussion of other issues and I don't even try. One never knows how much feedback one is going to get from everybody, or when they're gonna get it. Sometimes it pours. And if Tim's been bombarded with a gazillion things, I often stop commenting, reading, or giving any input until it dies down. This time around, this is when I had the time and patience to do the Quality Assurance. It just happened to come when others were talking about a lot of other things.
My own mod thread is super quiet. I'm either doing something right or wrong. :D
Thank you, man. I appreciate any feedback and even more play testing.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 07:31:25 pm
The native life generator parameters are turned back to vanilla values in 161. It does not produce more of them.
The only modifications are that it generates more of sea natives comparing to land ones. It was 1:5 in vanilla. Now is about 1:2.
This totally sucks for the Pirates though. They typically won't do land, playing to their supposed strengths in the water. Going from 20% of the native life form budget in their waters, to 50% of the budget, is a 150% increase in native spam coming their way.
The big problem with that early Isle is I could not see it coming. It just spawns right next to my Sea Colonist and immediately kills. Perhaps if such spawners had a movement delay. For all I know that might be nontrivial to code though. I'm not sure why lots of Isles at sea don't move around for awhile, on bigger maps, but it's a thing.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 07:42:07 pm
The "Transcend should be beatable" argument is a complete contradiction to Thinker-WTP purpose.
Transcend should be an enjoyable serious challenge for an experienced hardcore player. And it's something you should have configured right out of the box. What's right or not, that's what we're debating. Telling me to set it myself, hey, I've got an entire mod where I "set it myself". It's the play experience you put in front of other people, that's relevant. Compare "batteries included" vs. "batteries not included, roll your own".
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Aquatic factions.... Even without extra mineral they develop quite well in my games.
Of course they do. The AI is loaded with production bonuses and set to spam heavily. Human player has a tiny fraction of production resources by comparison. This human writing to you, also gets deadly bored having to spam zillions of colonies to keep up with the AIs, that don't get bored doing that.
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I also can develop well when playing them.
How are you playing them then?
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Thank you, man. I appreciate any feedback and even more play testing.
NP. Think I'm gonna try Huge and Pirates again in a minute. I want to know if sea spam is governed by map size.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2020, 08:32:59 pm
NP. Think I'm gonna try Huge and Pirates again in a minute. I want to know if sea spam is governed by map size.
Huge map, 30%..50% land mass. Oceans look perfectly reasonable for the Pirates compared to my own mod. Started at 2:50 PM.
early sealurk too strong |
MY 2126. Only a half hour into the game, barely have had time to do anything. Only settled my 1st city that actually has minerals a few turns ago. Sealurk summarily crushes my Scout, and I think that Scout already had an attack to strengthen it up a little bit. The 150% increase in the native spam the Pirates get, is not fair.
I would quit this game and call all playtesting "done", were it not for the fact that I finally completed a Gun Foil just to the south. In a city with no particular productivity, just overwhelming amounts of food, so it took quite some time and it's lucky it's ready. Nevermind available here when needed, because I made it to go exploring. So I will kill the Sealurk, or garrison and let it attack if necessary, and then slug on with the game. But clearly, the Pirates have been given serious disadvantage and that should be corrected somehow.
Techs as usual are more than I can make stuff with.
The secret to the extent I've spread so far, is setting up Completions of sea colony pods.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 08:50:57 pm
The native life generator parameters are turned back to vanilla values in 161. It does not produce more of them.
The only modifications are that it generates more of sea natives comparing to land ones. It was 1:5 in vanilla. Now is about 1:2.
This totally sucks for the Pirates though. They typically won't do land, playing to their supposed strengths in the water. Going from 20% of the native life form budget in their waters, to 50% of the budget, is a 150% increase in native spam coming their way.
The big problem with that early Isle is I could not see it coming. It just spawns right next to my Sea Colonist and immediately kills. Perhaps if such spawners had a movement delay. For all I know that might be nontrivial to code though. I'm not sure why lots of Isles at sea don't move around for awhile, on bigger maps, but it's a thing.
You made a point. I'll revert it or try to tone down. This is minor thing. Nothing to hold on.
Vanilla generator was probably designed in SMAC time not accounting for aquatic factions. So I always felt vanilla Pirates do not suffer enough natives comparing to their land colleagues.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 09:03:04 pm
Telling me to set it myself, hey, I've got an entire mod where I "set it myself". It's the play experience you put in front of other people, that's relevant. Compare "batteries included" vs. "batteries not included, roll your own".
Didn't mean to offend you or disregard the question. I meant it is configurable and can be done. I am not yet prepared to change default, though, as many people asking for opposite things. So we either should find some compromise or relay on people configuring it for themselves. I cannot create personal configuration for every user.
I propose you change it, play it out, and share your opinion whether it made it better.
QuoteAquatic factions.... Even without extra mineral they develop quite well in my games.
Of course they do. The AI is loaded with production bonuses and set to spam heavily. Human player has a tiny fraction of production resources by comparison. This human writing to you, also gets deadly bored having to spam zillions of colonies to keep up with the AIs, that don't get bored doing that.
I meant relatively to others AI.
QuoteI also can develop well when playing them.
How are you playing them then?
I don't think I have a special secret for them specifically. Just use whatever they are good for: fast movement, population and cash flow. Build harnesses, buy a lot of stuff with cash, also expand far and look for juicy spots everywhere before others claim them. That include both ocean and land placement. I quite often find some unpopulated isles or peninsulas with ruins, crater, volcano and jump populate it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2020, 09:11:34 pm
# Version 163
* Reverted all native life generator parameters to vanilla. Native life should be back to normal.
* native_life_generator_constant=2
* native_life_generator_multiplier=2
* native_life_generator_more_sea_creatures=0
* native_disable_sudden_death=0
* Scaled tech cost up a little. It seems that research are coming in too quick succestion. This'll also give some value back to RESEARCH.
* tech_cost_scale=1.25
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 23, 2020, 01:23:20 am
Yep, I am in two games with 7 human players right now, the one I linked to being one of them. The other one, a Binary Dawn game, is nearing the 2150s and just starting to get interesting.Been too busy with work and playing multiplayer to comment much here. One of those games is with Nevill's modded WtP and another is with MercantileInterest's modded WtP, so at least the mod is being put to good use!
Do you mind sending their configuration to me? I'll just include them as MP versions.
Did I understood it right that you are playing all 7 humans? That should be too much of excitement.
I always wanted to gang up with nerds. But don't invite me. I don't have much time to spare on this and will ruin your experience.
If this is the case, though, the "enemy" you are describing in this post - is it other human player?
It requires a lot of discipline and patience to get everyone to make their turns every day, though.
And nah, the screenshots I've been providing are from my singleplayer game with custom factions, a good ol' AI bash. I'm mostly posting these to provide a counterpoint for bvanevery's reports that the mod is too hardcore. ;)
I can possibly get around to sharing Nevill's config, since he posted an earlier version here at some point. MercantileInterest would probably prefer to release his mod on his own time.
Also, I can report that in both Nevill's and Merc's WtP games, we are currently getting flooded in worms... and it is awesome.
I'm not sure what effect changing the SE table has during a game, so I didn't update past v160.With police being unattractive as of v160 (updated from v121 mid-game, nothing seems to have broken)
Are you talking about policing in general or Police State? I didn't see PS even changed since v121.
The -INDUSTRY for Police State is possibly bearable now that I have Wealth giving me +2, but I'd lose too much energy to inefficiency, and most of my bases aren't big enough for me to really need that. In any case, I'd only be able to suppress another 2 drones per base, which might be worth it if I didn't have the Human Genome Project... but at this point, I might as well just put the energy into Psych and keep the drones happy that way.
Non-Lethal Methods really needs to be earlier in the tech tree to make going police-heavy viable. Even more so if you're turning tech costs up to 125%.
Speaking of which... I'm playing a research-heavy faction, and it still takes me 12 turns to research a tier-5 tech, as of 2210 running Democracy+Planned+Wealth. I think this is the same issue I reported in Money and the Will to Power, where early-game productivity is so slow that more tech isn't very useful at that stage, so I went Fundy and put all my energy into Econ and Psych (though this came back to bite me when I fell seriously behind in research).
I suppose 125% tech costs is good enough to align the tech race with the industrial race. Easier than diving deep into the particularities of the early game economy.
Engineers provide +5 energy now (and +1 labs). This is what I meant.So far I built a single Genejack Factory, which let me achieve 30 minerals in my HQ. It would be higher, but the extra drone meant I had to turn one worker into an Engineer. I do like how buffed those became, dunno if it's balanced, but I like it!
What specifically was buffed? Genejack Factory, Engineer, psych facilities?
I think replacing the -1 POLICE with -1 PLANET would be acceptable. Democracy and Free Market already give -1 and -2, so more would be just overloading things, and it would somewhat nerf the Democracy+Green+Wealth combo. By the time one gets to Wealth they should be able to provide sufficient anti-native defenses anyway.Wealth was already a strong SE choice in vanilla, probably the strongest, and it only got even stronger here. I'm not sure buffing it to +2 INDUSTRY is really necessary. Neither of the penalties, -2 MORALE and -1 POLICE, hurt very much in comparison.
So, err, is too much or too little in your perception? I think people tend to overstate INDUSTRY and other clearly visual effects because they are transparent to user. Like +1 INDUSTRY is roughly 10% production increase. However, as it was already proven many times, some effects much surpass mere 10% bonus. Like +2 ECONOMY or early SUPPPORT, maybe even POLICE in need time, etc.
I have added extra INDUSTRY to make it more lore abiding. This was originally product of Industrial Automation, after all. Before I felt it quite undistinguishable.
Do you want to change it somehow? How is replacing -1 POLICE with -2/3 PLANET? Forces player to strengthen anti native defense and constantly replenish base defenders.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 23, 2020, 01:42:55 am
Non-Lethal Methods really needs to be earlier in the tech tree to make going police-heavy viable. Even more so if you're turning tech costs up to 125%.
Speaking of which... I'm playing a research-heavy faction, and it still takes me 12 turns to research a tier-5 tech, as of 2210 running Democracy+Planned+Wealth. I think this is the same issue I reported in Money and the Will to Power, where early-game productivity is so slow that more tech isn't very useful at that stage, so I went Fundy and put all my energy into Econ and Psych (though this came back to bite me when I fell seriously behind in research).
I suppose 125% tech costs is good enough to align the tech race with the industrial race. Easier than diving deep into the particularities of the early game economy.
Exactly! Getting lazy. 🤣
I suppose the curve is more or less satisfactory on a whole game duration basis. One still can get into temporary stagnations and sped runs but only due to circumstances and not all the time as in vanilla.
Engineers provide +5 energy now (and +1 labs). This is what I meant.
Maybe just a little comparing to vanilla. It still should not be a good replacement for regular land worker without much inefficiency. But well, play with it and let me know if it OP.
Also, I can report that in both Nevill's and Merc's WtP games, we are currently getting flooded in worms... and it is awesome.
Yea. I though this would keep expansion in check. An alternative to higher Colony cost. With worms around player has to channel a considerable amount of production on native protection, lose colonies and bases, etc. This is essentially same as doubled-tripled colony cost but people complain less about this than about flat colony cost raise because they don't see it as a single number in front of their eyes. People. 🙄
Anyway, look at this section in thinker.ini and feel free to crank different values. These are just some parameters for native life generator. I didn't reprogram generator itself. It is pretty stupid.
Keep in mind that player can modify native live at map creation time.
Code: [Select]
; Native life number of tries to create it at random location: tries = constant + multiplier * <native life level>.
; Higher number of tries increases the chance of native appearing. The dependency is not linear and chance is obviously capped at 100%. So there is no point in making these values too high.
; constant parameter; allowed values: 0-255 (vanilla = 2)
native_life_generator_constant=2
; multiplier parameter; allowed values: 2,3,5 (vanilla = 2)
native_life_generator_multiplier=2
; Sea native are generated more often than in vanilla.
native_life_generator_more_sea_creatures=0
; Native do not suddenly die every 8th turn.
native_disable_sudden_death=0
Post by: bvanevery on October 23, 2020, 04:02:35 am
fast movement, population and cash flow.
I did not experience any substantial cash flow. You might be biased towards playing the Pirates as Free Market. First I went Green, and I needed Children's Creches to make growth possible with -3 GROWTH. Later I went Democratic, because my benefactor Roze was Democratic, and so was my hostile neighbor Lal.
I did not have fast movement. Can't afford to build hardly anything. Population skyrockets, which actually feels more like a liability.
Quote
Build harnesses,
I built about 50% harnesses, 50% mines.
Quote
also expand far and look for juicy spots everywhere before others claim them.
I think you are colony spamming as though you're an AI.
Quote
That include both ocean and land placement.
The Pirates are supposed to be strong in the water. I felt very weak in the water. I don't think they should have to be a land power, to make them work. That makes them pretty generic. Being a coastal power, well, I can try. Historically the fear has been being crushed on the coast by a land power that just brings some huge horde in.
feeble |
MY 2227. This is the point at which I quit. A locust comes and trashes me. I don't really see why it's trashing me. I surely did not have much productivity in that city. I've never had time to garrison with stuff that would resist Locusts. Most of my bases still only have Scouts in them. I was even Democratic Green with a +1 PLANET rating, so if that gives any defensive advantage, it didn't help. I think this is part of the "too many native life forms in the ocean" problem.
Going vertical just doesn't seem viable. Building Hologram Theaters and Hab Complexes sucked out all the money I'd accumulated. AI tends to start encroaching on my borders with all the spam. Building any Secret Project was never possible. Other factions completed a few of them.
I was behind on tech for a long time. Roze rubber banded me with gifts a lot, which sort of rubs it in my face that I'm doing badly. Eventually I got probe teams. Then I was able to catch up to the level of the non-technical factions. The University was off the chart somewhere, piles of tech. No idea if they could actually make use of it. Don't care as they stopped being hostile fairly early, think I took a size 1 city from them. Or maybe just they got bored with fighting.
I don't know how much actual time was into this game. I took a break for a long time because lying around with my laptop was bugging my body. The game was mostly about trying to keep up with my population, and it didn't work.
I can try the spammy approach, provided native life doesn't kill me badly in the beginning. I'm unlikely to enjoy it, and it may end up being my last test.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 23, 2020, 01:41:50 pm
Nah, 6-row colony pods was pretty absurd. You'd be stuck doing nothing for more than a dozen turns while they built.Also, I can report that in both Nevill's and Merc's WtP games, we are currently getting flooded in worms... and it is awesome.
Yea. I though this would keep expansion in check. An alternative to higher Colony cost. With worms around player has to channel a considerable amount of production on native protection, lose colonies and bases, etc. This is essentially same as doubled-tripled colony cost but people complain less about this than about flat colony cost raise because they don't see it as a single number in front of their eyes. People.
Anyway, look at this section in thinker.ini and feel free to crank different values. These are just some parameters for native life generator. I didn't reprogram generator itself. It is pretty stupid.
Keep in mind that player can modify native live at map creation time.
With more worm spawns, there's a more active component to the game. They're a force of nature, but one you can directly do something about, through building scouts to hunt for them, fungicides to clear fungus, sensors to give their defense bonus (well, not in WtP I suppose). You get to actually move stuff about on the screen, which is more fun than sitting and waiting for stuff to build.
Most importantly, you get an easy, impersonal target to complain about hindering your game progress. "Damn worms ate my colony pod!" is a sentiment everyone can get behind, and better for player engagement than "oh boy, everything takes ages to build, how exciting". Yes, it's player psychology, and no, it doesn't make sense sometimes. As you say: people! ;)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 23, 2020, 02:35:55 pm
Nah, 6-row colony pods was pretty absurd. You'd be stuck doing nothing for more than a dozen turns while they built.
With more worm spawns, there's a more active component to the game. They're a force of nature, but one you can directly do something about, through building scouts to hunt for them, fungicides to clear fungus, sensors to give their defense bonus (well, not in WtP I suppose). You get to actually move stuff about on the screen, which is more fun than sitting and waiting for stuff to build.
Most importantly, you get an easy, impersonal target to complain about hindering your game progress. "Damn worms ate my colony pod!" is a sentiment everyone can get behind, and better for player engagement than "oh boy, everything takes ages to build, how exciting". Yes, it's player psychology, and no, it doesn't make sense sometimes. As you say: people! ;)
You absolute precisely elaborated on my single word statement. 🤣
Post by: Nevill on October 23, 2020, 05:24:49 pm
I made the following request in the Issues thread:
Quote from: Nevill
Continuing the trend of "making WtP complonents optional" I'd like to request a partial restoration of an old behavior.And was suggested to move the discussion here.
Specifically, the ability costs. One of the most-used cost factors was -1, or attack/defense ratio, making certain abilities free for pure defense units, and less costly for balanced ones. I find that an extra row is a poor substitute for that.
First things first, I'd like to point out that I do not argue for the ability costs to be changed for the WtP mod. But I would like to make those changes myself in my games. Essentially, I want an under the hood change to restore vanilla functionality because I think it had the right idea.
Quote from: tnevolin
I like the free police idea. However, that makes all mixed attackers units (armor >= weapon) also free. Wouldn't it be a too much of a giveaway?I don't think it'd be too big of an issue because they won't be top of the line, and additinal armor/weapons would add some extra costs by themselves. I'll need to see this in game to decide if it is too much or not, but right now the negatives are modded out.
Oh, and by the way, it's attack/defense rounded down, so a 8-8-x unit would cost +25% higher, but a 6-8-x would be free.
I would like to make the game follow the logic of Attack:Defense ratio being 3:2 at any given tier. You can see it in vanilla starting from tier 2 (4 Impact / 3 Plasma), to tier 4 (6 Missile / 4 Silksteel), to tier 5 (String 8 / 5 Photon), to tier 7 (Fission-Tachyon 10-12 / 7 Probability), though it breaks down in the upper tiers. So a weapon value lower than the armor would mean the unit's penetrative power is pretty weak, and it mostly qualifies for a defensive unit.
I disagree rather vehemently with WtP's philosophy of blanket defence bonuses, and believe that defence units should be specialized. Thus I like to lower base/territory bonuses, and promote free-er special abilities for defenders.
They aren't entirely free, as at the very least they take away an ability slot. So you'd have to choose between a clean defender, or an AAA/trance one. Having both would cost you +25% even when the abilities themselves cost 0.
Quote from: Nevill
Make Deep Radar cost something for land units.Alas, something must have been broken, because Deep Radar ability ignores the "Cost increased for land units" flag, and is free for land units. Or rather, the flag no longer works as it should.Quote from: tnevolinIt is still like that. I never changed it.
Bottom line:
* I find WtP's flat cost modifiers useful for some abilities. Definitely would like to see it on less critical abilities like fungucidal tanks which should not be free but shouldn't cost much more.
* I'd like to see the -1 (attack/defense) cost modifier functionality restored, and possibly have a similar one, except instead of vanilla +25%/+50% it could add 1/2 mineral rows for higher attack/defense ratio.
* I'd like to see the "Cost increased for land units" flag working again
* I'd have some uses for the "cost increases for speed" flag, though not many
* I don't think I've seen any other negative flags used except for vanilla's -7 to discourage armored artillery, which I find stupid.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 23, 2020, 06:56:00 pm
First things first, I'd like to point out that I do not argue for the ability costs to be changed for the WtP mod. But I would like to make those changes myself in my games. Essentially, I want an under the hood change to restore vanilla functionality because I think it had the right idea.
I have introduced negative ability values into unit cost calculation (and this weird increased land cost ability flag too). Didn't test it yet. Feel free to try it out.
That also should fix Deep Radar for land units. That what was broken.
Quote from: tnevolinI like the free police idea. However, that makes all mixed attackers units (armor >= weapon) also free. Wouldn't it be a too much of a giveaway?I don't think it'd be too big of an issue because they won't be top of the line, and additinal armor/weapons would add some extra costs by themselves. I'll need to see this in game to decide if it is too much or not, but right now the negatives are modded out.
Oh, and by the way, it's attack/defense rounded down, so a 8-8-x unit would cost +25% higher, but a 6-8-x would be free.
Yes, I rounded it wrong in my head first. 🙂
Don't mind this idea in general at all. However, keep in mind that Clean Reactor itself becomes available only later in the game.
I would like to make the game follow the logic of Attack:Defense ratio being 3:2 at any given tier. You can see it in vanilla starting from tier 2 (4 Impact / 3 Plasma), to tier 4 (6 Missile / 4 Silksteel), to tier 5 (String 8 / 5 Photon), to tier 7 (Fission-Tachyon 10-12 / 7 Probability), though it breaks down in the upper tiers. So a weapon value lower than the armor would mean the unit's penetrative power is pretty weak, and it mostly qualifies for a defensive unit.
Need more elaboration on that. Are you talking about unit pricing OR weapon/armor value progression?
If unit pricing: Currently cost for secondary statistics is halved. Do you want armor to be counted secondary statistics until the 2/3 of the weapon and then it becomes primary?
If value progression: Currently weapon and armor values are discovered at about the same rate. Do you want best armor to progress roughly at 2/3 of best weapon throughout the game?
I disagree rather vehemently with WtP's philosophy of blanket defence bonuses, and believe that defence units should be specialized. Thus I like to lower base/territory bonuses, and promote free-er special abilities for defenders.
They aren't entirely free, as at the very least they take away an ability slot. So you'd have to choose between a clean defender, or an AAA/trance one. Having both would cost you +25% even when the abilities themselves cost 0.
I beg you pardon. I have not introduced any de-specialization in WTP. It is all SMACX custom design philosophy you are blaming! Where, on
Please enlighten me.
* I find WtP's flat cost modifiers useful for some abilities. Definitely would like to see it on less critical abilities like fungucidal tanks which should not be free but shouldn't cost much more.
It was +1 row before. Then with base former cost decreased to 2 I counted 50% cost increase too excessive. Can return back if you believe it is important ability for some dedicated fungus removal units.
* I'd like to see the -1 (attack/defense) cost modifier functionality restored, and possibly have a similar one, except instead of vanilla +25%/+50% it could add 1/2 mineral rows for higher attack/defense ratio.
That is probably possible but I don't understand why flat cost should be at all involved when you are talking weapon and armor values. It won't scale.
* I'd like to see the "Cost increased for land units" flag working again
Done.
* I'd have some uses for the "cost increases for speed" flag, though not many
That all probably can be introduced too.
* I don't think I've seen any other negative flags used except for vanilla's -7 to discourage armored artillery, which I find stupid.
Exactly. There is too much of customization and yet, this customization doesn't let you customize to your liking. Dead end design path.
On a personal note, I believe you are wasting time trying to make SMACX unit work like Civ 1/2 predesigned units with imprinted abilities. SMACX philosophy is completely mind blowing different. Essentially player is presented with components (weapon, armor, chassis, ability) with unique qualities and such qualities should be already balanced within the individual component itself. Meaning, you need to consider each component in isolation and see if all its parameters are balanced between each other. Most of the time it is a price vs. benefits. The constructed unit cost can be modified based on component combination too but this still doesn't make it unique. There could be large number of other, slightly differently designed units, very similar to this one.
Any attempt to fix certain component combinations will just mess up the whole free design idea as vanilla did. Look at their unit cost rules? They are just insane. Very convoluted, non-transparent to user and they still result in tons of stupid edge cases and exploits. So in trying to restrict their own free design paradigm they didn't achieve the desired goal!
In short, I recommend to keep all unit cost formulas as flat as possible. Any implications of that are absolutely minor and doesn't affect the overall strategy. May result in shifting certain unit group production proportion. That's all.
For example, Deep Radar cost 1 for land units. This essentially denies radar to land units. What significant difference does it make? Human doesn't see AI units in fungus 2 tiles away? I cannot even formulate how specifically this may tilt the strategy. Even less define the magnitude of such changes.
Post by: bvanevery on October 23, 2020, 07:20:42 pm
mineral sprawl |
Version 163. Huge map, 30%..50% land. Pirates vs. random opponents. MY 2190. This is likely the maximum extent of the empire for quite some time. It is based on the principle that only mineral specials count in the ocean. Almost every city is sitting on one. Nutrient specials are worthless because food is abundant. Energy specials aren't all that special because energy in the ocean is reasonably plentiful. It can be worth acquiring energy specials once minerals are exhausted, such as to puff out a border, or encroach upon a coast.
It's hard to read, but I began at Safe Haven in the upper left corner of the screen, sitting on an energy special. I spread south to the minerals that were available. Then I spread east to more minerals. In that direction I eventually came in contact with the Hive in the water. I also started feeling that my -1 EFFIC limit was going to constrain me from doing much more than that anyways. I anticipated that Safe Haven would not be centrally located and waited sometime before deciding where to rebuild my HQ. I'm currently doing that at Frigate Base, which is in the "hook bay" at the tip of the peninsula. It's close to dead center of my empire.
I don't think I've had a single spontaneously spawning Isle or Sealurk after me. I did have some when clearing out nearby sea supply pods, but that is to be expected. In particular, the Sargasso Sea required a lot of Gun Foil work. Sea expansion has been relaxed and not painful like previous games.
If someone complains that the indigenous sea threat is too easy now, they might have a point, but I'm fine with it as is. My empire is garrisoned with untrained ECM Scouts. As usual, I have not had time to come up with anything better. I've got 1 Command Center in my whole empire, down south by the Caretakers. It hasn't cranked out any real units out yet, because I have to build Hologram Theaters everywhere to keep people happy.
I have made no SE choices, as the ones available are not worthwhile. I might go Democratic if I had that available, but I don't. Lal and I are allied and he recently gifted me Fusion Power. It will be a few more turns before I can beg again.
Like the previous games, I'm catching up to other non-tech factions using foil probe teams. I used to be at war with both the Caretakers and Usurpers, but the latter just offered a Truce. Even though I had a bunch of foil probe teams en route to steal from them, I took the Truce. They will divert to steal from the underside of the Caretakers instead. It's a long route because once they steal, they end up at that little sea base with the Command Center right on the edge of Caretaker territory. Then they have to sail all the way around the peninsula to get back into action. It's like rounding Cape Horn. But there's not that much left to steal, so it should be fine.
Although I kept the idea of coastal settlement in mind, taking sea minerals is clearly a better option for the Pirates. Competing against a massively spamming land mass of dense AI cities, is not. Lal is my ally, so not any practical need to compete with him. The Caretakers started beyond my logistical reach, but are smallpoxing the land mass. My plan is to colonize the peninsula at some point. It is bare of competition, and logistically I can control it better than the Caretakers can. Thus, my empire growth is "naturalistic" according to priorities. Sea minerals are first. Then, it's a question of what "rounding out" the empire looks like, as well as who's bothering me.
For instance, the Truce with Yang just expired, and he recently allied with the Caretakers against the Usurpers. If it comes to naval war though, I'll soon be ready. I've acquired Doctrine: Initiative somehow and so can defend and attack better on water than anyone else can right now. The problem is getting everyone happy enough to be able to have some production and make the ships. I did build a Skunkworks and I do have reasonable ship designs completed, if not the most advanced tech.
Tech rate in this game has been fine, no issues.
Post by: bvanevery on October 23, 2020, 07:34:51 pm
For example, Deep Radar cost 1 for land units. This essentially denies radar to land units. What significant difference does it make? Human doesn't see AI units in fungus 2 tiles away? I cannot even formulate how specifically this may tilt the strategy. Even less define the magnitude of such changes.I nerfed the armament of Battle Ogres MK I, because they trashed me a few too many times in the beginning of the game when I only had Scouts to defend with. It wasn't just the Caretakers and Usurpers doing it, they were getting popped out of supply pods too, and somehow finding their way to screw me over. I reenvisioned the Ogre Mk I as a scouting unit. I gave them Deep Radar. Now they're actually useful at the beginning of the game if you get them. You tromp slowly over the land, surveying the fungus, instead of just plowing through the fungus and getting killed.
I put Deep Radar on my Unity Foil, Unity Transport, and Unity Lifter units. The latter is a transport chopper with a huge fuel supply. All of these are darned useful for early scouting, before Deep Radar becomes available for sea units.
I wish the stock binary would stop bugging me with Heavy Artillery designs that have Deep Radar, and Scout Rover designs. They just cost more, they're not useful. They waste design slots and force me to go purge designs. If you run out of design slots, you can have things like the game forgetting you used to know how to make Planet Busters. Yes I can turn off the automated unit designer, but then I lose convenience for many other cases. So either way, the stupidity creates work for me.
Post by: Nevill on October 23, 2020, 08:25:49 pm
The forum ate my reply, so I'll not be going into details as retyping is a pain.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear
Need more elaboration on that. Are you talking about unit pricing OR weapon/armor value progression?The latter.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear
I beg you pardon. I have not introduced any de-specialization in WTP. It is all SMACX custom design philosophy you are blaming! Where, on Earth Alpha Centauri you saw *any* specialized unit? I cannot even think how you envisioned such specialization to be possible with the design workshop. 😲WtP gives +50% for base defense and +50% territory out of the box. I believe the modifiers should only go that high with specialized units, i.e. units with special abilities.
Please enlighten me.
You haven't removed them, but I'd like to see them utilized more often. That's why I increase the need for them while lowering the costs.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear
It was +1 row before. Then with base former cost decreased to 2 I counted 50% cost increase too excessive. Can return back if you believe it is important ability for some dedicated fungus removal units.I am a fan of your "do it yourself" approach. I like the customization. If you think it's best to make them free, so be it. Fungus is twice as hard to remove in my mod, so getting x2 efficiency for x1.5 cost is a bargain.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear
That is probably possible but I don't understand why flat cost should be at all involved when you are talking weapon and armor values. It won't scale.I like the idea of SA units being slightly higher in cost than vanilla ones. I like the idea of defensive units being cheap. That's why I wanted -1 mod back. But not all SA are worth paying 25% or 50% for. They don't need to scale.
That was the idea behind flat costs, no? I just want to apply the same logic, "free for defensive units, not free for attackers, cheaper for balanced".
This feature is me pushing my luck. If it's too much work, just ignore my musings.
Quote
That all probably can be introduced too.You mean, reintroduced? It's the old "-4" value.
It would scale poorly with air chassis (x3 times the cost for jets?), so I'd probably use it with land units only.
Quote
For example, Deep Radar cost 1 for land units. This essentially denies radar to land units. What significant difference does it make? Human doesn't see AI units in fungus 2 tiles away? I cannot even formulate how specifically this may tilt the strategy. Even less define the magnitude of such changes....I was actually considering making AAA cost 1 for land units. Have you ever seen AAA put on planes? And ships get completely outclassed when jets take to the field.
Don't know if it would help, but it's worth a try.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 23, 2020, 08:52:14 pm
Quote from: Alpha Centauri BearNeed more elaboration on that. Are you talking about unit pricing OR weapon/armor value progression?The latter.
That essentially makes contemporary defense proportionally weaker. Are you sure it won't tilt current balance? Even with 1:1 ratio Tayta can chew through AI defense.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri BearI beg you pardon. I have not introduced any de-specialization in WTP. It is all SMACX custom design philosophy you are blaming! Where, on Earth Alpha Centauri you saw *any* specialized unit? I cannot even think how you envisioned such specialization to be possible with the design workshop. 😲WtP gives +50% for base defense and +50% territory out of the box. I believe the modifiers should only go that high with specialized units, i.e. units with special abilities.
Please enlighten me.
You haven't removed them, but I'd like to see them utilized more often. That's why I increase the need for them while lowering the costs.
Still don't see what base defense (which is even a vanilla feature) of territory bonus (which resembles vanilla sensor) have anything to do with unit specialization. They all could evolve and be modified independently.
Also your specialization paradigm is very vague. I may comprehend the idea but need some concrete SMACS example. The "some unit have defense bonus" specialization is already there. It is called stronger armor.
That was the idea behind flat costs, no? I just want to apply the same logic, "free for defensive units, not free for attackers, cheaper for balanced".
The flat cost is for flat things not scaling themselves with weapon and armor. Like Psi combat bonus. Whatever other multipliers directly dependent on weapon and armor should naturally be proportional.
I can add it too - no problems. Not all negative number are exhausted yet. But you said it yourself. Out of these 7 negative values probably just one is used ever. Is there a point in them at all?
QuoteThat all probably can be introduced too.You mean, reintroduced? It's the old "-4" value.
Then it is already there. I've incorporated all negative ability costs from alphax.txt.
QuoteFor example, Deep Radar cost 1 for land units. This essentially denies radar to land units. What significant difference does it make? Human doesn't see AI units in fungus 2 tiles away? I cannot even formulate how specifically this may tilt the strategy. Even less define the magnitude of such changes....I was actually considering making AAA cost 1 for land units. Have you ever seen AAA put on planes? And ships get completely outclassed when jets take to the field.
Don't know if it would help, but it's worth a try.
AAA is not allowed for air units. Obviously. So you can just make it cost 1 in general.
Why ships are outclassed? They are about the same defense value for same price. And you can add AAA on them for fraction of the cost.
Post by: bvanevery on October 24, 2020, 06:14:07 am
the mighty fungicidal gun foil |
Version 163. MY 2203. This city recently produced a Transport, and then was trying to produce a Sea Colony Pod. I've been shelling it with my ship since forever, and I shelled it again this turn. It switched production to the Fungicidal Gun Foil. What's up with that? It's a bug I've seen in the stock binary on occasion, Fungicidal Tanks being put on things that shouldn't have them.
MY 2204. That ship killed my Gatling Plasma Foil. How the heck did it do that?? It only took 30% damage. That main armament is pretty seriously bugged.
MY 2206. I see another such ship crawling around, about to attack one of my sea bases. Maybe the Gun Foil design has been weirdly upgraded?
MY 2207. It attacked one of my Synthmetal armored Fungicidal Fusion Sea Formers. It did 20% damage and died. So, I guess having my own Fungicidal Tanks wins the exchange?
Same year, my newly minted Chaos Skimship fried the crap out of the other unit that killed my older ship. It's now rushing another one to try to shoot me next year. Well it really shouldn't be able to win an artillery duel with me. I have Synth armor, so I wouldn't expect it to be able to win on a direct assault either.
MY 2209. It was finally built and attacked. It died without inflicting a scratch. I don't know how to explain that earlier victory against my lesser unit.
Post by: bvanevery on October 24, 2020, 07:51:09 am
aquatic |
MY 2221. At 2:45 AM I've lost faith in this exercise. Nothing is especially wrong with my position, it's viable. But the world is full of spam. Nobody really fights. I spend all my time trying to get the most basic infrastructure together for my cities. I think the accident of my research sequence may have led to gross inefficiencies. I just kept the Pirates' default research options, whereas I think beelining for the Recycling Tank and the Children's Creche is probably optimal. The Caretakers have moved halfway up the peninsula, which is still not worth colonizing because it's hard enough to hold my existing empire together.
The game slows down between turns, and that's annoying. I'm not sure how slow, probably not so much, but it makes one aware of the game just dragging on. It's all micro about building up facilities, and no action.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 24, 2020, 08:41:13 am
It's not really a 1:1 ratio, though. For one thing, my best weapon is 8 and the AI's best defense is currently 6 - and far from all their defenders have that much armour. Since it's trivial to get infiltration on AIs (seriously, just ask Nevill how much struggle it was to infiltrate each other in our games, and how it usually ended up costing me the game), I can easily target bases with weak defenders: the AI can't garrison them all, or preempt my strike*. Then I have artillery to soften them up: I find 3 is enough to make sure every defender gets hit at least once. Finally, I have infantry riding APCs into battle, which allows them to make full use of their +25% against bases (as opposed to rovers, which receive minus 25% on top of being more expensive). So the odds are somewhat more in my favour than a simple weapon vs armour comparison would suggest.Quote from: Alpha Centauri BearNeed more elaboration on that. Are you talking about unit pricing OR weapon/armor value progression?The latter.
That essentially makes contemporary defense proportionally weaker. Are you sure it won't tilt current balance? Even with 1:1 ratio Tayta can chew through AI defense.
Frankly, I don't think any amount of symmetrical defense buffs will allow the AI to withstand a combined arms attack like this. Even if they can no-sell an offensive, they can't really attack back.
I'd have to dig up the screenshots, but remind me to show you the last duel I had with Nevill (my Morganites vs his Peacekeepers). Essentially, I built bunkers in rocky terrain and held him off for over a decade with the combined +50% (rocky) + 50% (bunker) + 25% (sensor) + 25% (territory) bonuses. Since probes don't allow bypassing ZOC anymore, he had little choice but to deal with them the hard way. In the end, he broke through because I didn't build enough counter-artillery batteries, couldn't figure out how to actually get rid of his stack of death so I could get a breather, and made one careless move that let him bribe a single defender in its bunker (traitors compromising defenses, a tale as old as time).
*Actually, that was something else I wanted to mention. In my past few games with WtP (modded or otherwise), the AI has been curiously unwilling to attack bases of mine that have at least somewhat decent defenses (e.g. a 2-defense unit, possibly with ECM or behind a Perimeter). It makes it rather easy to guard chokepoints against even superior numbers, and leaves their units easy pickings for me since they mill about uselessly outside the base. A base with a 4-defense unit might as well be invulnerable as far as the AI is currently concerned.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 24, 2020, 01:11:03 pm
as opposed to rovers, which receive minus 25% on top of being more expensive
Eh? Vanilla didn't have any penalties for base attack.
Frankly, I don't think any amount of symmetrical defense buffs will allow the AI to withstand a combined arms attack like this. Even if they can no-sell an offensive, they can't really attack back.
That is an old war tricks: force concentration against weak spot. AI cannot do that nor counter it.
*Actually, that was something else I wanted to mention. In my past few games with WtP (modded or otherwise), the AI has been curiously unwilling to attack bases of mine that have at least somewhat decent defenses (e.g. a 2-defense unit, possibly with ECM or behind a Perimeter). It makes it rather easy to guard chokepoints against even superior numbers, and leaves their units easy pickings for me since they mill about uselessly outside the base. A base with a 4-defense unit might as well be invulnerable as far as the AI is currently concerned.
Guys, tuning an AI is a huge and endless work. It is like writing a chess program capable to beat the world champions. The only difference is that SMACX is much more difficult to handle since it is brand new game not thoroughly analyzed in tons of books yet.
Thinker did noticeable work on that: a few steps on the path. WTP added some more steps, etc. It will never be perfect. Recently I've tilted it toward expansion trying to mimic human strategy. It did well acquiring more economic power quickly but reduced amount of early conflicts, obviously. I think it is good as early conflicts just slow down the expansion and let others (human) grow stronger. Yet it could be toned down slightly if people think it is a mistake. I have also added some defense focus so that it would not be big empires with absolutely empty bases easy to conquer. You tell me if AI succeeds in it.
Besides, it is all single turn single unit heuristic. No multi turn strategy, no unit coordination, no plans. Teaching AI to fight properly would be very difficult.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 24, 2020, 01:18:05 pm
Aren't they considered an exploit? I understand the infantry base attack bonus is given in compensation of it incurring hasty penalty every now and then which is obviously eliminated by using APC. Should we remove infantry base bonus? They are already balanced enough by their price.
I mean: either this or APC. One should go.
I also don't see much use for "mobile in open" bonus. Mobile unit already has benefit of their mobility. Meaning it will be attacking enemy infantry twice more often. It seems like pure lore introduced bonus just to add more "realistic" elements in the game. Same as attacking along the road, artillery altitude bonus, etc. I believe they all just clutter the tactics and complicate computations which is, as always, benefits human only. Simple rules let AI heuristic survive.
Post by: bvanevery on October 24, 2020, 05:30:28 pm
Should we remove infantry base bonus?
Yes you should. I did. People will still use infantry because they are cheaper. Also they are not subject to ECM penalty.
Thinker mod AI can move units around in APCs? If it can, we'll that's new, and an accomplishment. If it can't, then APCs shouldn't be allowed / provided. I don't offer predefined APC units for anyone to contemplate, because the AI doesn't know what to do with them.
You should still get rid of the infantry on bases attack bonus.
Post by: bvanevery on October 24, 2020, 05:40:35 pm
I also don't see much use for "mobile in open" bonus. Mobile unit already has benefit of their mobility. Meaning it will be attacking enemy infantry twice more often.
Actually in the field, what will really happen is the mobile unit will start at a range that infantry can't get to it, move 1 square, and attack once. It's not more attacks, it's better attacks.
Quote
It seems like pure lore introduced bonus just to add more "realistic" elements in the game. Same as attacking along the road,
Even the original game doesn't activate this bonus.
Quote
artillery altitude bonus, etc.
I got rid of it. I wasn't a big fan of artillery units on shore, having an inherent advantage over units at sea. I mean, tell that to the Americans doing battleship bombardment of the Japanese in WW II. It should be about size of guns, not land being somehow magical. The final straw was when I noticed the bonus was being applied to Ocean Shelf attacking Deep Ocean. It's the same ocean, you're both on top of it! That's a bug and it had to go.
Quote
I believe they all just clutter the tactics and complicate computations which is, as always, benefits human only. Simple rules let AI heuristic survive.
Very likely true. Unless the obscura of the equation happens to benefit the AI and not the human in some weird way. I'd always vote for simpler rules when planning an AI. When I finally figure out what my commercial effort is going to be, most of this "facilities chrome" is going bye-bye. The AI isn't going to sit around figuring out how to smallpox or 20 production steps to getting a viable base together. It's gonna fight, and that problem is hard enough.
Post by: bvanevery on October 24, 2020, 05:53:45 pm
Besides, it is all single turn single unit heuristic. No multi turn strategy, no unit coordination, no plans. Teaching AI to fight properly would be very difficult.
Needs an entirely new game with a sane rules basis for doing the AI cogitation. A lot of work, and a difficult problem to monetize. I'm crazy enough to try. My 'monetization' is living out of my car.
Post by: Nevill on October 24, 2020, 06:48:28 pm
Recently I've tilted it toward expansion trying to mimic human strategy. It did well acquiring more economic power quickly but reduced amount of early conflicts, obviously. I think it is good as early conflicts just slow down the expansion and let others (human) grow stronger. Yet it could be toned down slightly if people think it is a mistake. I have also added some defense focus so that it would not be big empires with absolutely empty bases easy to conquer. You tell me if AI succeeds in it.Not really. They expand really well now, but can't seem to defend their holdings. Currently I am in a game with Yang who only builds scouts and colony pods despite having access to very cheap Plasma armor. Aggressive factions should have some standing army, at least.
Quote from: Alpha Centauri Bear
Aren't they considered an exploit? I understand the infantry base attack bonus is given in compensation of it incurring hasty penalty every now and then which is obviously eliminated by using APC. Should we remove infantry base bonus? They are already balanced enough by their price.APCs make infantry not so cheap, demand support, and there is rarely enough of them in one place. They are a strategic asset to augment the offensive, not a brute force solution.
I mean: either this or APC. One should go.
I also don't see much use for "mobile in open" bonus. Mobile unit already has benefit of their mobility. Meaning it will be attacking enemy infantry twice more often.
The base bonus, I am less sure about. In vanilla game rovers completely dominated the field, because of their mobility advantage and armor/defensive techs being so pathetic no one bothered with them.
Now, introduce some armor, and maybe "mobile in the rough" penalties, and they become a situational unit instead of a go-to all-purpose solution, and the infantry may still have a niche even with the base bonus removed.
"Mobile in the open" bonus is best left alone. With more armor in play the rovers can only attack once before they are damaged and have to be towed back, and they can't penetrate defensive terrain as well as infantry could. However, they can protect open ground, necessitating the opponent to use rough terrain to navigate the map instead of just bulldozing straight through it.
AI not being able to make use of complex features is not reason enough to remove those features, because humans tend to enjoy reasonable complexity.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 24, 2020, 07:39:45 pm
Should we remove infantry base bonus?
Yes you should. I did. People will still use infantry because they are cheaper. Also they are not subject to ECM penalty.
Thinker mod AI can move units around in APCs? If it can, we'll that's new, and an accomplishment. If it can't, then APCs shouldn't be allowed / provided. I don't offer predefined APC units for anyone to contemplate, because the AI doesn't know what to do with them.
You should still get rid of the infantry on bases attack bonus.
Exactly. Unit proportional economical advantage is defined by their cost. There is no need messing with base attack/defense bonuses as they are quite finely tuned already. I am going to do it right now.
APC = ground transport. Troop Transport is just a module that could be slapped on any chassis even needlejet. That was already there in vanilla.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 24, 2020, 08:11:23 pm
Currently I am in a game with Yang who only builds scouts and colony pods despite having access to very cheap Plasma armor. Aggressive factions should have some standing army, at least.
I never could understand why everybody thinks Yang is aggressive with its GROWTH (!) and INDUSTRY (!) bonuses as well as its free Perimeter Defense (!). It is a well protected economical paradise - an opposite of an aggressive faction that conquer to survive.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 25, 2020, 12:29:30 am
25% (sensor) + 25% (territory) bonuses.
Just collecting feedback on that. Do you find sensor bonus a better replacement for territory bonus? In my mind they are fragile and they also not inherent - require some efforts. Moreover, sensor is incompatible with second level improvement so may be difficult to find a good spot for.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 01:52:20 am
Moreover, sensor is incompatible with second level improvement so may be difficult to find a good spot for.
Not a valid objection. You have to make your fortification vs. cultivation tradeoffs. So it ever was in all sorts of games.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 01:00:49 am
I never could understand why everybody thinks Yang is aggressive
Your Hive is set to Aggressive personality, as is vanilla. If you don't want that, change it. I did.
Quote
with its GROWTH (!) and INDUSTRY (!) bonuses as well as its free Perimeter Defense (!). It is a well protected economical paradise -
Hardly. Your Hive has -2 ECON, as does vanilla.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 01:08:30 am
Thinker mod AI can move units around in APCs? If it can, we'll that's new, and an accomplishment. If it can't, then APCs shouldn't be allowed / provided. I don't offer predefined APC units for anyone to contemplate, because the AI doesn't know what to do with them.
APC = ground transport.
Yes, everyone talking here knows that. Why did you think anyone misunderstood? Doesn't matter.
The stock AI does not know how to move units around in APCs. It's a human player exploit only.
I highly doubt that Thinker mod AI knows how to move units around in APCs. I haven't seen it do it.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 25, 2020, 03:16:25 am
Yes, we should do well to keep the scope of the project in mind. It's not "unbeatable AI", it's "AI that is challenging enough to require some effort to beat". I guess I'm just skilled enough that it's not that challenging for me. 8)*Actually, that was something else I wanted to mention. In my past few games with WtP (modded or otherwise), the AI has been curiously unwilling to attack bases of mine that have at least somewhat decent defenses (e.g. a 2-defense unit, possibly with ECM or behind a Perimeter). It makes it rather easy to guard chokepoints against even superior numbers, and leaves their units easy pickings for me since they mill about uselessly outside the base. A base with a 4-defense unit might as well be invulnerable as far as the AI is currently concerned.
Guys, tuning an AI is a huge and endless work. It is like writing a chess program capable to beat the world champions. The only difference is that SMACX is much more difficult to handle since it is brand new game not thoroughly analyzed in tons of books yet.
Thinker did noticeable work on that: a few steps on the path. WTP added some more steps, etc. It will never be perfect. Recently I've tilted it toward expansion trying to mimic human strategy. It did well acquiring more economic power quickly but reduced amount of early conflicts, obviously. I think it is good as early conflicts just slow down the expansion and let others (human) grow stronger. Yet it could be toned down slightly if people think it is a mistake. I have also added some defense focus so that it would not be big empires with absolutely empty bases easy to conquer. You tell me if AI succeeds in it.
Besides, it is all single turn single unit heuristic. No multi turn strategy, no unit coordination, no plans. Teaching AI to fight properly would be very difficult.
That said, I have lost to Thinker AIs before. One was an early worm rush by Stewards, the other was a Progenitor Victory by the Metastate. Of course, back then I didn't know as much about
The reason I talk about "symmetric defense buffs" is because any mechanics changes you make will apply just as equally to players. Except that players can make better use of them. The armour buffs are a case in point: the AI having a couple of 6-defenders is an inconvenience for me, but me having a couple of 4-defenders is insurmountable for the AI.
Ironically, it may very well be that moderately privileging attack over defense (as Nevill advocates) would allow the AI to make more meaningful counterattacks.
I do agree that an early focus on improving the economy is a good way to go. Even a +25% territory defense bonus pushes the bar for an early attack higher, so they (and the player) can mostly develop in peace for a while.
I can report that the AIs in my game are all making tonnes of cash now. Almost all of them make 50-80 credits a year, with hundreds in reserve. They are also very competitive when it comes to tech: I suspect I only remain on top because my faction has nice research bonuses. The bright side is that this means I also benefit greatly from trading techs with them.
I forget, do AIs get bonuses to maintenance and research on Transcend?
The AI might even have remembered how to build projects now that support redistribution is disabled. Stewards are building the Maritime Control Centre in an 18-minerals base. Might be too late for it to recover, though; I don't plan to start a new game anytime soon to find out, unfortunately.
Re: APC.The AI barely knows how to use transports as it is. Does that mean transports should be removed entirely?
Aren't they considered an exploit? I understand the infantry base attack bonus is given in compensation of it incurring hasty penalty every now and then which is obviously eliminated by using APC. Should we remove infantry base bonus? They are already balanced enough by their price.
I mean: either this or APC. One should go.
I also don't see much use for "mobile in open" bonus. Mobile unit already has benefit of their mobility. Meaning it will be attacking enemy infantry twice more often. It seems like pure lore introduced bonus just to add more "realistic" elements in the game. Same as attacking along the road, artillery altitude bonus, etc. I believe they all just clutter the tactics and complicate computations which is, as always, benefits human only. Simple rules let AI heuristic survive.
The same dynamic exists with sea transports and Amphibious Pods. A sea transport moves up to a coastal base, marines attack directly with +25%. APCs just allow you to do the same thing on land.
If you really want to get rid of it though, go into alphax.txt and change the "transport capacity" parameter for the land-based chassis to zero. That will render them unusable.
Of course, if you did that, I'd just have to build armoured infantry and march them alongside the attackers to take on the enemy bases. Same price, just takes more turns.
The main benefit of APCs is in multiplayer where it is essential to carry out your attack before the opponent can react. Using them against AIs is mostly just extravagance.
As for the infantry bonus vs bases, I'll defer to what Nevill thinks about this (in general, not just this mod). I wouldn't object if it was reduced to a token +10% or something.
Requiring effort is the point, as bvanevery says. You make the decision to invest former-turns to shore up your defense. This is what any strategy game is built on.25% (sensor) + 25% (territory) bonuses.
Just collecting feedback on that. Do you find sensor bonus a better replacement for territory bonus? In my mind they are fragile and they also not inherent - require some efforts. Moreover, sensor is incompatible with second level improvement so may be difficult to find a good spot for.
I recall you argued before that sensors are too easily gotten rid of by an attacking force. Allow me to offer the counterargument that this is also the point. Having to divert aircraft and artillery to attempt to bomb sensors with 50% chances means they are not being used to directly attack enemy forces. More effort, more investment, more turns, a higher bar to clear for a successful attack. Small advantages matter.
The same argument also applies to using probes to disable Perimeters. Far from being an easy fix, it requires investment and effort on the part of the attacker.
Admittedly, with the AI's use of defensive probes being unreliable, it does somewhat make sense to disable this ability for singleplayer games.
Also, they are not so easily gotten rid of if you place defenders on top of them. Even better, put them inside bunkers or forests with the defenders. Now they can't be gotten rid of without assaulting the bunker.
I believe you can also build a sensor and then place a base on top of it to retain the bonus, but this is definitely an exploit.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 05:22:00 am
that's the empire |
Version 166. MY 2187. This is the point at which I quit. I've only got 8 cities, only 1 of which is any good. I theorized that Recycling Tanks and Children's Creches were the keys to productivity, based on the last game I played. I used the Usurpers to beeline for them. I managed to Complete some of those facilities with my early supply pod popping. Well... the AI spam is overwhelming, and gives me very little feeling of agency over the game. I had thought I'd overrun poorly producing cities with better producing ones, but it takes so long to get a city into production shape, it just doesn't work out.
Caretakers press against me and hassle me. Cyborgs used to be allies but got snitty about wars I didn't want to fight. Now this turn they declare war on me as well. If I could handle it, it still feels like a desperate situation, and not at all fun. I really don't like being curb stomped by gazillions of AI cities. Either I figure out a way to destroy all this spam, or I give up and say this is dumb, not for me.
A strange thing about this game, is I didn't build any Formers for a very long time. I built much of my road network with only the 2 original Formers. That was a consequence of the "get the cities productive" strategy.
Possibly, there is no value in making peace with neighbors. They will just deploy the AI's overwhelming colony production advantage, smothering you.
I think a Recon Rover rush is the next thing to try. If that can't clear out the unwanted guests, then I think I'm done. This is like trying to fight WW II when you're Switzerland.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 25, 2020, 05:42:25 am
Yes, we should do well to keep the scope of the project in mind. It's not "unbeatable AI", it's "AI that is challenging enough to require some effort to beat". I guess I'm just skilled enough that it's not that challenging for me. 8)
That said, I have lost to Thinker AIs before. One was an early worm rush by Stewards, the other was a Progenitor Victory by the Metastate. Of course, back then I didn't know as much aboutexploitingplaying the game as I do now.
I don't think fun project will ever get to the point where AI is unbeatable on the easiest difficulty level.
Ironically, it may very well be that moderately privileging attack over defense (as Nevill advocates) would allow the AI to make more meaningful counterattacks.
Vanilla promoted exactly this "active defense" as of some sort brilliant idea. Didn't work out for AI.
Most people loved snowballed vanilla conquest. Even though they got bored with it the nostalgy lives deep down in our souls. This is a clever self-deception to return that intoxicating sense of commanding powerful invincible army destroying everything in its way. Maybe even just a little. Maybe just a hint of it. Maybe just a smell of it. 😉
AI is dumb and does what it is programmed to. It will not automatically use any mean to help itself you give it until it is added to the program. End of story.
This is what all the dances are about. We are modifying game rules to adapt them to whatever AI currently know how to do. Not the other way around.
I forget, do AIs get bonuses to maintenance and research on Transcend?
What's maintenance bonus?
AI gets bonus on research in vanilla but not in WTP.
The AI barely knows how to use transports as it is. Does that mean transports should be removed entirely?
Don't fail to unconstructive generalization demagogy. It very depends on whether it makes game better or worse which we are trying to establish.
We are steering away from vanilla offense imbalance by making assailant work for their conquest. It seems to be fruitful. General feedback is that game became more interesting this way.
Land transports and infantry base attack bonus are clearly steps in opposite direction making base capture easier. That is why I am running this discussion to convince myself and others one way or another. So far I am inclined against infantry bonus and giving it a try in recent release. Not sure about land transport. So just talking to myself out loud observing this from different angles.
From the lore point of view, transports are supposed to help units to cross something they are not themselves capable to. They were not supposed to contribute any advantage to the battle by specifically their transporting ability. So far the sea transport transporting normal land units is a perfect representation of these paradigms.
Game designers extended transporting ability on other chassis in their run for global standardization. Yet, only land unit can board the transport. So land transport carrying land units on the same body where they can travel themselves makes no sense lore wise. The air transport carrying land units would make sense but Gravship is the only air chassis capable to serve this purpose without restrictions. So it seems extending this ability on other triads is just another unused design idea that would lurk there unnoticed in oblivion if people wouldn't make an exploit of it.
You are right the exploit is minimal in SP game as many people just don't bother building them. And it is no issue in MP as rules are same for everybody. So I'll wrap it in the way that I'd like to disable this but leave it for others to decide.
The same dynamic exists with sea transports and Amphibious Pods. A sea transport moves up to a coastal base, marines attack directly with +25%. APCs just allow you to do the same thing on land.
The comparison in incorrect. This is an actual ability! 😁 And it has its own cost which can be adjusted based on benefits. And it was reviewed from this specific point of view multiple times. And AI uses them, etc.
The main benefit of APCs is in multiplayer where it is essential to carry out your attack before the opponent can react. Using them against AIs is mostly just extravagance.
Exactly. Such mean to instantly concentrate forces for strike and crush the enemy wherever you like it invalidates the mere attempt to build balanced and economical front line defense. To counter this one should need to keep defensive strength in each potential attack target base equal to all invasion forces combined which is not feasible. It is much cheaper just to keep striking: you ate my base, I ate yours. We are falling back to vanilla madness where constant advancement in either direction was the most effective way to go even if player kept loosing from other directions. I have worked hard on eliminating that and deliberately slowing the conquest so that "permanent advancing" strategy loses its economical advantage.
However, again, this is minor and I don't have strong feeling about it.
Just collecting feedback on that. Do you find sensor bonus a better replacement for territory bonus? In my mind they are fragile and they also not inherent - require some efforts. Moreover, sensor is incompatible with second level improvement so may be difficult to find a good spot for.Requiring effort is the point, as bvanevery says. You make the decision to invest former-turns to shore up your defense. This is what any strategy game is built on.
I recall you argued before that sensors are too easily gotten rid of by an attacking force. Allow me to offer the counterargument that this is also the point. Having to divert aircraft and artillery to attempt to bomb sensors with 50% chances means they are not being used to directly attack enemy forces. More effort, more investment, more turns, a higher bar to clear for a successful attack. Small advantages matter.
The same argument also applies to using probes to disable Perimeters. Far from being an easy fix, it requires investment and effort on the part of the attacker.
Admittedly, with the AI's use of defensive probes being unreliable, it does somewhat make sense to disable this ability for singleplayer games.
Also, they are not so easily gotten rid of if you place defenders on top of them. Even better, put them inside bunkers or forests with the defenders. Now they can't be gotten rid of without assaulting the bunker.
I believe you can also build a sensor and then place a base on top of it to retain the bonus, but this is definitely an exploit.
That is a good point and a lot of defense strengthening do require efforts: defensive structure, bunkers (when they are enabled), removing rough terrains in front of bases, and most of all building more units for that matter! 😋
The problem with them is that they require very complicated micro management and micro tactics to make them work as you just described. And that what I don't like in such simple 4X cost-benefit paradigm game. All features are more or less stand alone. Player make the determination whether some feature is beneficial for its price and, if yes, it pays off back in more or less consistent manner. Of course, similar effects may increase each other to extent but that is also a part of "feature is beneficial for its price" deliberation. Like having both PD and TF makes base much more protected than only one of them. Features are never 100% interdependent. Imagine that Genejack Factory and Children Creche work only if they are both built in base and not each one by itself. That would be unnecessary complication too much for a game.
Same story for sensors. Their usage is too complicated and too dependent on many other conditions comparing to other defense means those just work out of the box: armor, base bonuses, defensive structures, terrain, bunkers, territory in WTP.
As for territory bonus, as I said, I don't mind reducing it to 25%. Need to try it.
Let also look at it from this angle. You said it is possible to protect sensor from destruction by placing it at base or bunker tile. Now let's think further in this direction. Would player do this for all bases and bunkers being in a clear mind and capacity? Well, of course! So they would preferably end up having all their bases and bunkers extending 5x5 extra 25% protection around them. Then what the hell? Just give this bonus to bases and bunkers and be done with it. Saves tons of mouse clicks and also frustration when you forgot to put it under the base and cannot correct it after. Sheesh.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 25, 2020, 05:53:58 am
Possibly, there is no value in making peace with neighbors. They will just deploy the AI's overwhelming colony production advantage, smothering you.
Did you try conquering their thinly stretching empires? People say with faster expansion AI does not build enough defenders. Maybe this is the key?
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 06:48:59 am
Did you try conquering their thinly stretching empires? People say with faster expansion AI does not build enough defenders. Maybe this is the key?
No, I "bigpoxed" and the "recycling tank" production strategy simply doesn't work. I had the right idea putting a Command Center next to the Borehole Complex, but I need to radiate cheap units. If there's any solution at all.
No commercial 4X game spams cities like this. I've played a lot of them over the years.
Well, at least I tested the hypothesis of Recycling Tanks + Children's Creche being the golden path. They aren't.
My concern is that if I do find a solution, it's going to demonstrate that the AI is a one trick pony and a house of cards. That the only thing it's got going for it is this fixation on spamming colonies. Which sucks rocks for the player if you don't know how to react to it, and is probably going to be a complete pushover if you do.
Post by: Nevill on October 25, 2020, 06:58:31 am
I never could understand why everybody thinks Yang is aggressive with its GROWTH (!) and INDUSTRY (!) bonuses as well as its free Perimeter Defense (!). It is a well protected economical paradise - an opposite of an aggressive faction that conquer to survive.It's his personality (which is an actual parameter in faction files), and the way the AI plays in vanilla. Yang is the only one who can go toe-to-toe with Miriam when she goes on a crusade.
People would be upset if Gaia started drilling boreholes left and right, and so Yang not raising an army raises eyebrows instead.
Note that I talk about relatively early game, the 2150s. Yang has a lot of bases, but all of them are protected by scouts. He has plasma armor, he just isn't using it. And he is in at least one vendetta.
Can you tell me which parameters answer for expansion? I noticed three parameters:
expansion_factor=100
ai_production_expansion_coverage=20.0
ai_production_expansion_priority=2.0
Are there any more that determine when AI needs to expand? It's pretty good for times of peace, but they need to better react to hostile environments.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2020, 09:05:10 am
Morganic fiefdom |
Version 166. MY 2166. I quit the game at 4:45 AM on account of fatigue. I played as a random faction, and with the Pirates in the game, so that I would not get them. Also because that would have 6 factions on land instead of 7.
I started in isolation and pursued essentially the same bigpox strategy. That seemed to be the natural flow. The difference is this time I emphasized developing minerals. Much as with the Pirates, minerals are the only things that count. Farmland produces such a huge quantity of food that one hardly needs to worry about nutrient specials. Energy, I doubt it matters. For some reason I had lots of energy this game, much more than I used. I don't entirely think it's lack of competition for supply pods, although that contributed. I did not go Free Market for fear of mindworms. On the last turn, I had quite the horde coming for me, and it was annoying. I had Trance Scouts to wear them out, so it was merely a hassle.
I'm having doubts that a Recon Rover can terrorize much of anything. I have a sinking feeling that the +50% friendly territory defensive bonus is going to nullify any attempt to rush. I suppose they could pillage.
Starting far away from the AI factions is definitely less hectic. I'm undecided if it's a strategic advantage. For instance, I wasn't close enough to anyone to start the war I had in mind.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 25, 2020, 01:57:59 pm
I never could understand why everybody thinks Yang is aggressive with its GROWTH (!) and INDUSTRY (!) bonuses as well as its free Perimeter Defense (!). It is a well protected economical paradise - an opposite of an aggressive faction that conquer to survive.It's his personality (which is an actual parameter in faction files), and the way the AI plays in vanilla. Yang is the only one who can go toe-to-toe with Miriam when she goes on a crusade.
People would be upset if Gaia started drilling boreholes left and right, and so Yang not raising an army raises eyebrows instead.
Note that I talk about relatively early game, the 2150s. Yang has a lot of bases, but all of them are protected by scouts. He has plasma armor, he just isn't using it. And he is in at least one vendetta.
Heh. Now I understand why everybody think he is aggressive. Because it is set so to be.
However, now I think it is a mistake for him to be set like that. They have no inherent bonus supporting that. They should be better off growing large population and building infrastructure sitting behind PDs which allows them to have half of usual defense from start.
Can you tell me which parameters answer for expansion? I noticed three parameters:
expansion_factor=100
ai_production_expansion_coverage=20.0
ai_production_expansion_priority=2.0
Are there any more that determine when AI needs to expand? It's pretty good for times of peace, but they need to better react to hostile environments.
expansion_factor=100
Thinker parameter used to determine base number limit. Should have less or no effect anymore now when production choice for colonies is largely overridden.
ai_production_expansion_coverage=20.0
ai_production_ocean_expansion_coverage=40.0
An expansion demand calculation parameter. One colony (en route or in production) is demanded per so many populatable tiles around the faction bases. Populatable tile is the one not claimed by others, not within other base radius, etc. Each tile weight it is also reduced by distance to nearest own base so closer spots have highest demand impact while the rest of the globe is not that much. Actually, now I realized I need to reduce it quadratically (1 / distance ^ 2), not linearly (1 / distance) as I am doing now as the number of tiles also linearly grows with distance. A fruitful discussion! 😁
The demand goes between 0 and 1 depending on number of colonies already there (en route or in production) those partially satisfy it. No more colonies are built when player already have so many to cover all the populatable tiles around.
This does not define how dense AI will be placing colonies. Merely the demand for them. Ocean usually being less populated and easier accessible has lower demand.
Actually, this is one of the models you (or others) may help me with. I was trying to compute the top number of colonies (land/sea) that faction needs to not overproduce them. The above formula may be a little crude. However, this is just heuristic. Should not affect AI much even if one colony is mistakenly left unused at the end.
ai_production_expansion_priority=2.0
This the multiplier helping colony production beat other production choices. So with this value it converts demand scale (0-1) from above into production choice priority scale (0-2).
I am currently playing with the last one to see if it reduces spamming to the level where they build something else as well. The coverage parameter may need some tweaking but it logically does not control the urge to build colonies. Merely the potential need for them.
Post by: Nevill on October 26, 2020, 07:36:46 am
Heh. Now I understand why everybody think he is aggressive. Because it is set so to be.Not just that. Hive bonuses in vanilla lend themselves incredibly well to ICSing and the Zerg playstyle of creeping spread. They can't pop-boom, but they have free bonuses from Planned and Police State, which gives them +3 Growth, +2 Industry, +2 Support and +2 Police. What it translates into is a lot, A LOT of bases, set no farther than 3 tiles apart from each other to be able to move/rehome scouts that work as a cheap police option, and share terraforming between bases. Since they only get credits from the tiles they work, it is incredibly important to settle bases on rivers and never let forest/solar tiles go to waste. And when you get 10 minerals refunded from your 24 minerals colony pods, you want to spam those. It is not rare to see chain colony pod production, with the new base starting on a new CP right away while a police scout is retransferred from another base.
However, now I think it is a mistake for him to be set like that. They have no inherent bonus supporting that. They should be better off growing large population and building infrastructure sitting behind PDs which allows them to have half of usual defense from start.
Which results in tons of small, underdeveloped bases with no infrastructure at all (there are no drones, why bother?), only busy with producing colony pods, police scouts and formers... and occasional rec tanks. Hive can also afford to skimp on defences as police scouts behind perimeters are not easy to bypass, and the sheer bumber of closely-positioned bases prevents blitzkrieg conquest.
What this also means is that while they are underdeveloped, Hive is unsurpassed at producing a horde of cheap, untrained units and swarming its neighbours. A size-2 base can produce 5 minerals on forests, which allows it to build a 2-row unit in ~3 turns, and a 3-row unit in ~4 turns on Wealth. And with how many bases the Hive have, it's a lot of units.
Hive can completely dominate early game, and gets a second breath with a fusion reactor which makes everything cheap in vanilla. That's why people think it's aggressive; because it plays best as a conquest faction, not a builder one. It's only if they fail at murdering their neighbours, that it's time to try a different tack and build up.
Take away cheap units, and yes, a builder is the only thing you'll have left. But that is a departure from the original behavior.
Post by: bvanevery on October 27, 2020, 07:39:25 am
sea exertion |
Version 166. MY 2231. 3:15 AM. This is the point at which I quit. Once again I played bigpox against the smallpox. I had a perfectly viable empire, and I actually managed to produce some untrained sea units without any Genejack Factories. The Cult of Planet was the 1st hostile empire to come near my territory.
I found that my own Isles were completely useless against their units, but they could pillage. I pillaged the heck out of cities I eventually took over, which was a mistake, and a big part of why i finally quit. I found that my ships could blow away their Sea Formers without much difficulty, so it would have been better to go around killing those. As is, they rapidly rebuilt everything I pillaged in their back waters.
Their Isles were surprisingly resistant to being killed, perhaps because my ships weren't trained. Eventually I wore them out by sheer brute force, and then they only had various kinds of Scouts on defense. Those are extremely easy to kill with Chaos guns. The Cult put up no real defense. Sometimes it would manage to get an artillery piece built, but we'd duel for awhile and then finally I'd kill it. Most of the Cult's defensive value was the sheer bloodymindedness of their friendly territory bonus.
Shortly before I quit, someone framed me for doing something to my ally Domai. The dialog box said he declared Vendetta on me. I forgot to check whether that was true. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn't receive my hails. Although I had my cities sufficiently garrisoned, having a sudden front with him annoyed me. This is the other part of why I quit. A frame job like this is highly unusual. I've hardly ever seen it happen.
Allies don't really fight for a damn, unlike in the stock binary. At least in stock, they might contribute to taking over some bases, if you soften them up first. I think all the AI factions are too busy spamming. It's super obsessive, and not convincingly effective. Granted I quit, but now that I know what's going on, it doesn't look difficult to wipe out sea bases.
Another thing that annoyed me, is the Cultist colonists that escaped on land. They just founded new cities, which means yet more work for me to clean up. It would have been better to bring a mixed force to prevent that. However this also implies controlling the land, and the geography was such that that never happened. In a sense, I think I overestimated the Cult's ability to bother me. I didn't accomplish much, slugging away at them. But I did steal a fair amount of tech before I caught up.
I made no SE choices for quite awhile. Then when I was finally battling the Cultists, I went Fundamentalist. Later, I went Green. That made my people a lot happier and was a good move, despite the loss of growth. By then I had Children's Creches in most places so it wasn't so bad.
I swept up an awful lot of supply pods. I believe I accumulated 10 Artifacts, which I didn't use for anything. Other factions seemed subpar at sweeping up land supply pods. The seas did get emptied though.
Too many sea bases and no real defense of them, seems like a problem to me.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 27, 2020, 12:48:25 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 27, 2020, 05:11:11 pm
Some (relatively) minor changes from development point of view but they may affect AI behavior, of course. I don't think drastically, though.
Want to push these out to free my mind for other pending issues.
Also few words about these three priority parameters.
Vanilla and Thinker use deterministic if-else approach to suggest production. That is simple but difficult to tune as tiny modification in condition may just flip to another option without much explanation to the designer. Vanilla being even worse as its code is in ASM.
WTP uses a standard artificial intelligence design when each choice is given a priority and the highest one wins. This way the competition is easy to debug and, more importantly, each option can be evaluated in isolation using its own algorithms, etc. It works fine so far. However, I like to mix it up with Vanilla-Thinker choices too to 1) introduce my changes incrementally and 2) dilute WTP choices just in case they are not very nicely tuned so AI behavior doesn't change abruptly between versions.
Unfortunately, vanilla and Thinker do not provide priorities to compare with. Just a single suggestion as I stated above. Therefore, I have arbitrary assigned priorities to them for my own convenience.
Units are medium since I didn't work much on unit building and need legacy code do that.
Projects are high since I don't have project handling code yet. So I trust legacy code on that.
Facilities are low since I have done some facilities already and want them to take priority if I decided they should be built.
I am also thinking on calling in any AI designer on reddit. Not that I cannot do anything without them but this may speed up things and let some talents to be put on use.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 03:28:00 am
Enjoy!
These are new popups. I've created text myself. Feel free to suggest more catchier text if you like.
The formula for probability is linear as everything else in SMACX.
Code: [Select]
exposing probability = 0.05 + 0.01 * PROBE
Numbers are configurable. With numbers above -5 PROBE never exposes a spy. Although, this is quite an extreme value for this effect.
This works well with one caveat: probability. It may vary in pretty wide range. Once a 20 times it could just work on turn 1. Or it could sick for 40 turns sometimes. PROBE rating affects this but random fluctuations are wider than average PROBE effect which would be difficult to notice. People don't like it.
Nevill proposed a fixed turn counter that may be a more deterministic alternative to it but it requires to put it somewhere in saves which is quite finer work. So please test this one first and see if it is satisfactory.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 04:42:21 am
For those interested.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 29, 2020, 07:35:14 am
Nice work. I guess I'd better catch up on all the talk going on in Issues. Lots of topics being opened up there.
The popup text you propose is technically fine, seeing as it conveys the essential information. That said, if you wanted to follow the game's style (and implied lore) more closely, I'd suggest something like this:
Code: [Select]
#SPYEXPOSEDENEMY
#xs 400
#caption Operations Director
We have discovered and neutralized a $FACTION0 infiltration of our networks!
^They no longer have access to our datalinks.
#SPYEXPOSEDOURS
#xs 400
#caption Operations Director
Our infiltration of the $FACTION0 networks was discovered and eliminated!
^We have lost access to their datalinks.
Post by: Nevill on October 29, 2020, 09:41:08 am
I would propose something like Probability = 25/(5 - PROBE), with a PROBE rating of +5 and up setting the probability to 100%, and making the infiltration expire next turn. It provides a more linear spread from -40 to 0 turns (-5 to +5 PROBE), and makes running FUNDY to purge the spies more meaningful, and FUNDY + THOUGHT CONTROL even more so.
I admit, though, that it lacks the elegance of simplicity the above formula provides, and for most of the game that has to deal with +1/+2 PROBE ratings the difference between 14.3 turns and 12 turns is not that pronounced.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 01:23:25 pm
The popup text you propose is technically fine, seeing as it conveys the essential information. That said, if you wanted to follow the game's style (and implied lore) more closely, I'd suggest something like this:
Awesome! Updated.
Anybody knows what "#xs 400" is? I thought this is a dialog diplay/size/position but they still display differently even if they have same number.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 02:00:25 pm
It's a decent formula. My objection is that it scales a bit poorly with extreme PROBE values. As in, there is not a lot of difference between +1 PROBE and +2 PROBE, as all it does is reduce mathematical expectations to 16.6 and 14.3 turns respectively. It takes +5 PROBE to halve the expected duration to 10 turns.
I would propose something like Probability = 25/(5 - PROBE), with a PROBE rating of +5 and up setting the probability to 100%, and making the infiltration expire next turn. It provides a more linear spread from -40 to 0 turns (-5 to +5 PROBE), and makes running FUNDY to purge the spies more meaningful, and FUNDY + THOUGHT CONTROL even more so.
I admit, though, that it lacks the elegance of simplicity the above formula provides, and for most of the game that has to deal with +1/+2 PROBE ratings the difference between 14.3 turns and 12 turns is not that pronounced.
You meant expected duration in your formula, I suppose. The probability is a reciprocal of duration.
Yes, you are repeating my argument that PROBE scale is very short and each step is supposed to matter a lot but with linear formulas (for either probability or duration) tailored for [-5, +5] interval, values near zero will be unnoticeable. I would propose to hand craft it for better reflection on vanilla scale.
Something like that.
default duration = 20 turns
Then each step up/down on a scale divides/multiplies it by 1.5 comparing to previous one. Multiplication coefficient can be adjusted/configured. This way we don't have cap. High rating shortens duration very much but does not guarantee next turn effect.
Code: [Select]
-4 101
-3 68
-2 45
-1 30
0 20
+1 13
+2 9
+3 6
+4 4
Mmm. Maybe 50% step is too much. We may try different options.
Post by: Nevill on October 29, 2020, 02:41:48 pm
You meant expected duration in your formula, I suppose. The probability is a reciprocal of duration.Nah, I meant probability in percents, but then lost the word "percents" somewhere. This is what my formula means for different PROBE ratings:
+
Code: [Select]
PROBE / Expected Duration / Probability
-5 40 (2.5% prob)
-4 36
-3 32
-2 28
-1 24
0 20 (5% prob)
+1 16
+2 12
+3 8
+4 4 (25% prob)
5+ Next turn guaranteed (100% prob)
Nice and gradual.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 04:13:00 pm
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Probe_Team_Success_Rate
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 04:17:07 pm
Nice and gradual.
Indeed it is. I don't absolutely mind to try it.
However, you said yourself that most of the time player PROBE is in [-2, +2] range. So it won't have noticeable effect on spy exposure probability.
Post by: MercantileInterest on October 29, 2020, 04:26:18 pm
I used to think I wanted such a feature. Now, am not so sure. In multiplayer, it's really hard to infiltrate a competent enemy. You may only get one chance.
Some ideas related to infiltration:
When a faction is elected planetary governor, enemies lose their infiltration, as the new global bureaucracy roots out spies. Wouldn't work on aliens, of course, as they don't participate in elections.
+3 Probe rating makes a faction immune to infiltration, though not to other probe activity. Mostly would work for Believers running fundamentalism.
Building Hunter-Seeker Algorithm removes all enemy infiltration. To re-infilitrate, rivals would either have to use that probe special ability or knock out the secret project.
Building the Empath Guild provides the territory map for all rivals. You can already see everything inside their bases but very finicky to have to go through the datalinks.
Probe teams have to manually remove enemy infiltration by traveling to enemy HQ and conducting a special operation.
Definitely not requests. Just possibilities to think over.
Post by: bvanevery on October 29, 2020, 05:05:15 pm
When a faction is elected planetary governor, enemies lose their infiltration, as the new global bureaucracy roots out spies.
Wat? Why? That has no real world logic at all. Government bureaucracies are not a counter-espionage dept. If anything, they are more opportunity for spies to infiltrate, as you'll need to administer the whole globe and not just your own empire.
Since there's no realistic justification for it, I can only consider it in terms of a pure game mechanical contrivance. And I do not see, why winning the Governorship should have such a hefty bonus attached to it. You already get other benefits from being the Governor. Why should an election be play mechanically compounded by the threat of you losing infiltration somewhere? You're deciding who to vote for, now you're going to vote for the other guy just because you need to keep your infiltration? This is not a good idea.
+3 Probe rating makes a faction immune to infiltration, though not to other probe activity. Mostly would work for Believers running fundamentalism.
Is this going to be another one of those things the AI ignores and cheats at, like deep pressure hulls and cloaking devices? If so, I don't want it. And if the AI is actually made to play "blind", well how is it really going to do that?
Your theme seems to be rules variations of value to multiplayer. Not cool being on the receiving end of this stuff in single player. I would suggest, some kind of server settable rules.
Quote
Building Hunter-Seeker Algorithm removes all enemy infiltration.
No thanks. The play mechanic of getting your infiltration done before the enemy finishes the HSA, is pretty important in single player IMO.
Quote
Building the Empath Guild provides the territory map for all rivals.
No, unless infiltration itself also gives you the player's world map. And seeing how that currently requires its own probe team mission, and you have to steal all the techs before getting the world map, and it's a theft with diplomatic consequences not a harmless action, I don't see why anyone should get a free handout on this.
Quote
Probe teams have to manually remove enemy infiltration by traveling to enemy HQ and conducting a special operation.
There is no simulation logic to this. It is only a play mechanical contrivance. So, is this play mechanically an interesting thing to do? Maybe in multiplayer, you think it's great fun for everyone to be defending their "flag" at their "home base". Maybe that's fine. In single player, this sounds like a drag. And again, what's the AI going to do when I blind them? Can they even be blinded or do they just cheat?
I think the question of "how can infiltration be removed?" is worth asking, but I do wonder if it's anything other than a multiplayer concern.
Post by: bvanevery on October 29, 2020, 05:41:49 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-170
Enjoy!
Infiltration may randomly expire every turn. Infiltrated faction PROBE rating increases probability in exposing infiltrator.
infiltration_expire
infiltration_expire_probability_base
infiltration_expire_probability_probe_effect_multiplier
What verifiable effect does this have on the AI, when their infiltration expires? Is this just a way to grief me in single player and make me do busywork, when the AI has no consequences? I don't want that.
Similarly I would like the AI to be unable to see my cloaked and submerged units. Right now, I believe it cheats like a mad dog.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 05:46:49 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-170
Enjoy!
Infiltration may randomly expire every turn. Infiltrated faction PROBE rating increases probability in exposing infiltrator.
infiltration_expire
infiltration_expire_probability_base
infiltration_expire_probability_probe_effect_multiplier
What verifiable effect does this have on the AI, when their infiltration expires? Is this just a way to grief me in single player and make me do busywork, when the AI has no consequences? I don't want that.
All players are equally affected PC and human alike. You have two popups: for yours and theirs infiltration removed. Check my screenshots.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 06:20:05 pm
Initially probe team plants like N redundant devices. Every turn counterintelligence has a chance to discover and disable one of them. The chance grows with PROBE rating as usual.
Regarding popups there could be two options. Either show them every time device is disabled or just last time when faction loses datalink connection for good. In second case it may be beneficial to show this number somewhere in informational screens. Don't know where yet so probably go with first approach.
I am thinking like 4 devices initially, average 5 turns to discover it, -1 day per PROBE rating. So, on average it'll match last Nevill scale proposal but will be more compact - meaning it'll still to average more and won't just discontinue at day 1.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 07:45:13 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-173
I'll appreciate if you test it from the save/load point of view. Does the save/load maintain the number of devices? Does it set it up properly on infiltration? Especially in between human turns in MP game.
Post by: bvanevery on October 29, 2020, 09:37:11 pm
All players are equally affected PC and human alike. You have two popups: for yours and theirs infiltration removed. Check my screenshots.
The issue isn't whether a dialog box pops up and a game event is triggered. The issue is whether the AI always ignores infiltration status and can actually see everything at all times. I suspect this is how the game is actually written. If so, there's no such thing as "equally affected PC and human alike".
five year infiltration |
I know I infiltrated the Pirates in MY 2000, because I happened to notice the evenness of the time. 5 years later, on the turn between MY 2004 and 2005, my infiltration is gone. I checked their SE and they're Fundamentalist Simple Survival. The effect of this rule change is that a Fundamentalist government almost can't have its stuff looked at by me, the human.
The Cultists got rid of my infiltration after a substantially longer period of time. Currently they are Fundamentalist Planned Survival. I don't know what they were when infiltration was eliminated. They may have changed to Fundamentalist for all I know, triggering the infiltration purge.
These factions are my nearest neighbors. I did lose foil probe teams doing infiltration, and having to reestablish it is busywork. I'm playing on a Huge map and there's a lot of unit pushing to get to distant factions. If infiltration with them went kablooey, that would be a serious PITA.
As usual I'm trying the tiny "natural" bigpox arrangement vs. the overwhelming sprawling AI colonization spam. I'm starting to build Chaos Battleships to blow away the Cultist sea bases. I noticed you're not letting me Repeal The U.N. Charter right now. I don't actually want to live with all this useless sea base crap. The game is expecting me to either deal with the immense tedium of capturing and owning all these bases, or to forego conquest until some time in the future. Eventually someone will be in land contact with me, but that is not now. And it doesn't seem like my bigpox has any advantage compared to the overwhelming spam, if I can't use it to strike. It's like sitting around just waiting for the game to beat you, because it's too boring to do otherwise.
Another thing that's a serious PITA about this, is "turning off the lights" about what another faction's tech is, means I don't know what I still need to steal. Which means I could go halfway around the world for nothing.
Post by: bvanevery on October 29, 2020, 10:06:37 pm
Replaying the turn, 2 shellings with Chaos Battleships results in 40% damage on the target. Yes it works but it's a bunch of tedious extra mouseclicks that I shouldn't have to do. The game should not be spamming all these bases with Invincible Scouts. It should have to put real troops in them, or lose them.
Oh, and get this. On land, in my territory, I just shot a Hardened Chaos Silksteel unit at some interloping Scout, experience level unknown, on Flat terrain. And I took 70% damage from that! Ridiculous.
The combat balance is borked. It needs fixing.
In the followup battle for the sea base next year, I shelled once to knock the Scout defender down to 50% wounds. Then my Chaos Battleship took 70% wounds to kill it. Ridiculous. I have 6 to 1 gun strength. This should be a summary execution. It doesn't matter if WTP wants to "be different" about this, the numbers are dumb.
the punchline |
2 turns later, the Pirates mind control the base I didn't even want, but felt I had to deal with because of all the hostility and spam. This is beyond tedious and I'm not dealing with it anymore. I am done playtesting anything, pending changes to the combat odds and the mind control cost. And you know I don't think much of the infiltration quickly going away either in single player. Lotta dealbreakers going on here.
If the Pirates had to lose a great deal in order to have the base, like for instance proportionate to the expense of the Chaos Gunship and Gun Cruiser I just put in it, and had to defend it with real troops to begin with, well that would be one thing. But as is, the AIs just spam. They pay nothing for what they're doing, and it's actually stupid to take anything over. It's like cutting my own nose to spite my face. Later for that.
The base in question is about equidistant between our capitols.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 29, 2020, 10:59:36 pm
Would you mind turning randomness to vanilla level and check how it feels?
As for expiring infiltration this is a new feature so give it some taste and feel from other players as well. I don't think 20 turns is too long or too short. The difference is in concept. Previously player didn't have to think about maintaining infiltration. Now they do. Another errand.
Actually, I think, based on your feedback, we can differentiate duration for computer and human players. Like computer infiltrations never expires because they bypass them anyway. Human to human can stay at 20 turns. Human to computer can be like 50 turns to add this element to SP games but to not overburden player with it.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 02:11:48 am
Would you mind turning randomness to vanilla level and check how it feels?
Alright... but let's be clear. With too much randomness, you're going into totally stupid "Phalanxes kill tanks" territory ala Civ II. I hate that crap. And I hate everyone who's ever tried to have me on with some kind of contrived retcon explanation for why it "could work". It's so bad it's not even funny.
Chaos Gun vs. hand weapons should have a very predictable result. They're supposed to explode into little tiny pieces of gibs scattered all over the landscape, that mindworms maybe move in and gobble up. I'm supposed to adjust my sunglasses and blow smoke off the end of my massive weapon.
If you don't have that image in your head of relative weapon strengths, you're doing it wrong. No, the Scouts are not going to get a bunch of clever rocks together like MacGyver and pull some "stunning upset". In war, when you're that badly outmatched, you die.
Quote
I don't think 20 turns is too long or too short.
5 turns is too short. Pretty darned lame. As a rule of thumb, I don't think I should have to do busywork for another 20 turns, but I won't swear to that without playtesting. It's the conceptual time interval for a solar flare, or another vote on the Governorship, or other Planetary Council matter, or a Truce expiring.
Quote
Human to computer can be like 50 turns to add this element to SP games but to not overburden player with it.
Why jank the player every 50 turns though?
Why drop an asteroid on the player's head? You had that one?
Why crash the network and destroy 3/4 of the player's money, or all their research? I've had the energy market crash when I had the Planetary Energy Grid.
What's missing here is a meaningful notion of counterespionage as a play mechanic. Random jankings ain't it.
Is it even possible to blind the AI player, in any way? Can cloaking devices ever hide units from the AI?
The problem with this current approach, is the defender doesn't have to lift a finger. They raise their PROBE rating, and they just start getting magical benefits, without having to produce any units or send them anywhere. The offender / espionager has to do busywork, particularly on a Huge map. The defender should have to do busywork too, spending resources to perform counterespionage.
I propose, the defender's counterespionage strength should be somehow proportionate to the number and quality of probe teams it has in defensive positions. Meaning, inside the defender's bases, and possibly also their distribution. Every city would have a "probe defense" rating. Add them all up, and compare them to the offender's probe strength, computed somehow. Offender should have a big advantage because infiltration is way easier than rooting out a few spies. If the counterespionage is greater, meaning in practice a lot of probe team units compared to the offender, then infiltration is ended.
This still needs a meaningful way for the AI to be blinded though.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 03:00:19 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
Hope that's what you meant by the "vanilla" setting. You have a lot of settings for things. It's not presently a fault... I just wonder if at some point, it might be good to take stock of all of that, and decide how many adjustable knobs to really present to a user.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 03:18:54 am
Beginning test of WTP 174 with one change to thinker.ini:
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
Hope that's what you meant by the "vanilla" setting. You have a lot of settings for things. It's not presently a fault... I just wonder if at some point, it might be good to take stock of all of that, and decide how many adjustable knobs to really present to a user.
Yep. That's the one. It also has this comment few lines above.
; vanilla = 1.0 (or just disable alternative combat mechanics above)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 03:25:32 am
Why jank the player every 50 turns though?
Don't have the definitive answer. Maybe make them work for that a little instead of relying on early game infiltration forever. Sometimes factions becomes enemy, don't like each other, go to war, etc. It is much more difficult to sneak probe into hostile faction base. So naturally player will have less visibility into more fierce enemies those don't want to be infiltrated.
Maybe you are right and it doesn't make sense to use this against computer. Only human-human. Thus, effectively, leaving it only MP feature. I'll see what Nevill and Tayta say on this.
You idea about counterespionage is tempting but this is completely new and kinda huge mechanics that hardly fit game code.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 03:49:58 am
Maybe make them work for that a little instead of relying on early game infiltration forever.
Spoken like someone who doesn't play on Huge maps and hasn't had to push a Foil Probe Team to the far side of the
The other bothersome thing is, I bet you're not going to give me any chance to refresh my infiltration before the 60-ish turns are up. Nope, I'm guaranteed to have an interruption in service.
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You idea about counterespionage is tempting but this is completely new and kinda huge mechanics that hardly fit game code.
I don't know the game code, but I assume that counting up units is not difficult. Then the problem is filtering them based on being in the owner's cities.
invincible fungal buttons bad start |
I quit this game after 19 turns due to fungal tower buttons. I had 3 of them, bottling up my starting location and ruining my access to land. I did not immediately settle either, I walked 2 squares south to put Decision: Manifold down. 1 of the towers, I killed, but I lost a unit. The 1 to the west, it got in the way of where I wanted to put my city. In a previous game when I settled next to a fungal tower, in not that many turns I got totally creamed by mindworms, so that ain't happenin' again. Doesn't matter if they come from the tower or somewhere else on the continent, the lesson is that being next to a bunch of fungus like that is bad. That was a Morganite game that I didn't ever post about.
I prepared more Scouts to kill the tower in the southeast. By the time I was ready to do that, it had become invincible. It's only a button but it's got some kind of jank setting that makes it super tolerant to punishment. In other games I've lost like, 5 Scouts attacking a fully grown fungal tower, and I was actually shocked that the 5th Scout prevailed at that point. I expected to lose all 5 at that point, and it was going to trigger a quit.
Buttons should not be so tough. It should be possible to remove them near your starting position.
The 3rd colonist, backtracked, went all the way around before that Monolith got popped, went west again, and didn't really find anything good, because there's just too much fungus to have a nice place to settle. This is boring / counterproductive / on a slippery slope towards starting me in Civ II on an ice floe up at the North Pole.
If the buttons were killable, I would have settled next to the stalk, because of those 2 Rainy Rolling squares. I would have produced Scouts, killed the stalk, popped the pods, probably gotten at least 1 resource special, and would have just grunted my way through fungus removal.
I don't think the faction placement algorithm makes any kind of consideration for the quality of the land one is placed on. This isn't the 1st time I've been in this kind of predicament. It has now gotten old.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 03:54:14 am
I actually found a way to deal with genetic plague. Woo-hoo!
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 04:16:27 am
I did not find any WTP specific setting for fungal towers. I believe that the difficulty killing them, is due to the land psi combat ratio being set to 1:1, and the Very Green starting morale of the Scouts. I think this means that even fungal buttons are going to be pretty obnoxious, starting out. It takes awhile to come up with a Command Center, and Empath Song doesn't come for some time. Although massive suicide tactics might be acceptable for some early game problems, that's not going to solve anything in the first 20 turns of the game. They're just really in the way.
Does the game have any ability to blow up or destroy certain kinds of units within some radius of the player's starting location? I really don't think these things should exist at close quarters. They're too much of a problem.
Or else have the faction placement algorithm take fungal towers into account.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 06:20:48 am
certainty |
Combat odds are what I'd expect from such a lopsided contest. I took 10% damage, which is appropriate for an easy battle.
2nd Scout undamaged |
However the 2nd Scout received no damage at all. I couldn't find a setting for that at first, but once I searched for the word "collateral" I found collateral_damage_value=0. Is that a Thinker inheritance or a WTP choice? I'm not in favor.
BTW when winning a battle with multiple units in the stack, the message "Target destroyed. Collateral damage to 1 unit." still appears, even though no collateral damage is done.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 07:12:29 am
kinda brief |
I think I infiltrated less than 10 turns ago. I don't know exactly how much. I'm wondering if I have any chance to put a new device in, or do I just have to wait until all are discovered?
cannot infiltrate |
Have to wait.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on October 30, 2020, 07:52:47 am
And bvanevery brings up a good point. I think we also need the option to "refill" the infiltration timer back to full by performing Infiltrate Datalinks again.
I personally don't feel it's particularly difficult to infiltrate the AI at any given point in time, and having infiltration provides the player with a massive advantage, as it further enhances those concentrated force attacks I went on about before.Why jank the player every 50 turns though?
Don't have the definitive answer. Maybe make them work for that a little instead of relying on early game infiltration forever. Sometimes factions becomes enemy, don't like each other, go to war, etc. It is much more difficult to sneak probe into hostile faction base. So naturally player will have less visibility into more fierce enemies those don't want to be infiltrated.
Maybe you are right and it doesn't make sense to use this against computer. Only human-human. Thus, effectively, leaving it only MP feature. I'll see what Nevill and Tayta say on this.
You idea about counterespionage is tempting but this is completely new and kinda huge mechanics that hardly fit game code.
Admittedly, I only play Standard maps, since I find Huge to be too tedious.
But even so, isn't it only reasonable that you have a hard time keeping tabs on a faction all the way on the other side of the planet, compared to one next door? The Planetary Governorship becomes even more valuable then, representing the infrastructure needed to keep surveillance over such a distance.
The one thing I would comment is that it likely feels more tedious to keep re-infiltrating in SP, because you play more turns within a given real-time span. So it feels like one didn't get as much value out of their probing. In that light, a longer infiltration timer for AI factions seems like a reasonable compromise.
As for MP, I'd say it's a great addition because infiltration provides a huge advantage to the player who has it. It still does, but at least a single probing (particularly if one player manages to probe and the other doesn't) isn't going to decide the fate of the game now. The player who got probed has the potential to counter-play by building more probes, upping their PROBE rating, and waiting out the timer before making any big moves. Of course, being afraid to attack for 10-20 turns is a risk in itself... but that's all part of the fun.
I can also see the potential for diplomatic shenanigans in larger games, where players who form a coalition are forced to share intel in order to keep the advantage over their opponent.
Of course, we'd have to test this in a game before making any judgements about it. ;)
The counterespionage idea described above seems kind of redundant. Any (multi)player worth their salt is going to have probes stacked in most of their bases anyway, since getting probed is such a big threat (and not just getting infiltrated; tech steal, sabotage, and mind control are pretty dangerous too). I guess this would force you to build more probes in SP? But I have no idea whether infiltration affects AI decision-making at all, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 08:38:53 am
Admittedly, I only play Standard maps, since I find Huge to be too tedious.
But even so, isn't it only reasonable that you have a hard time keeping tabs on a faction all the way on the other side of the planet, compared to one next door?
You aren't appreciating how tedious it is to get this done once.
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The Planetary Governorship becomes even more valuable then, representing the infrastructure needed to keep surveillance over such a distance.
You simply aren't going to get that, just because you desire it. In my mod for instance, depending on who you start as, it may be impossible in practice until you complete the Empath Guild. Which in my mod is solidly late game. The Governorship in early to mid game typically either goes to Lal, or to the biggest population grower. Either Svensgaard or whoever is sitting on the Monsoon Jungle.
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The counterespionage idea described above seems kind of redundant. Any (multi)player worth their salt is going to have probes stacked in most of their bases anyway,
I have to do probe team defense even in single player in my mod. I haven't played WTP long enough to see whether the same conditions hold in it. It is exactly because it's necessary, that I came up with the idea.
icked out |
4:20 AM is when I called it quits. The game might be viable, but the graph says I suck. In any event the spam is legion. I was in the middle of finishing Tree Farms, with some cities starting on Fusion Labs. I found the -4 PLANET extremely irritating. Even though nothing bad had happened yet, all sorts of alarm bells were going off in my head about all my work was just going to get flooded out. For the longest time I was unwilling to alter my budget, to deal with the -4 POLICE that I wasn't used to. Basically just lots of vague feelings that everything about this sucks. Like it's making me itch.
Why should I fight such a silly map? Is there anything to prove or be gained by doing so?
I never did make it to naval combat, because Morgan's steerage towards ECONOMY, didn't seem appropriate to naval warfare.
Aesthetically this style of game reminds me of "single city victory" games against Civ II or Freeciv. Although those might have been "starting 2 cities" games, depending. Tiny civilization, massive world of nonsense all around. Usually those are won by finishing key Wonders before others do, and thereby getting ahead on tech. I'm doubting that's possible in this mod, unless the AI is a lot stupider in the endgame than I'd expect.
So really I've only tested Missile vs. Scout, per above. That combat on my home turf at least did not seem goofy.
I really hate Democratic giving a PLANET penalty. It makes no sense, and it just gets in the way of pretty much everything I want to do.
Post by: Nevill on October 30, 2020, 08:46:23 am
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Maybe you are right and it doesn't make sense to use this against computer. Only human-human. Thus, effectively, leaving it only MP feature. I'll see what Nevill and Tayta say on this.MP games are played with computer factions too. Even though it usually doens't take much effort to infiltrate an AI, resourses dedicated to the task are ones that are not used against a rival human, and a human can use their probes to protect their AI ally. There are tools that let you substitute a human player with an AI and vice versa in an ongoing MP game. I'd say it makes sense to leave it functioning against a computer with the same effects it has on human players.
As for whether it should be a feature in SP games... It's a feature. Those who don't like it can turn it off.
As for MP, yes, a dedicated defence makes infiltrations (or any kind of probe actions) notoriously hard. This is why this feature is needed. Early game there just isn't enough resourses to cover yourself from all directions, and that's where most infiltrations occur. Providing detailed information on your capabilities and army movements because of something that happened 100 years ago is absurd. If I invested in a solid defence, I expect it to at least inconvenience you before you break through. Giving people more chances to do spy play/counterplays spices up the game considerably.
Re: randomness. Actually, I've long wanted to ask this. What does it mean that WtP "increases randomization"? Are the displayed battle odds still accurate? I am seeing quite a bit of miracle wins, though I would hesitate to say if they occur more often than their odds would indicate.
I'll have to build a map for mass combat testing, put like a hundred units that have 80-20 odds, and compare the theory with the actual results.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 09:01:36 am
It's a feature. Those who don't like it can turn it off.
Don't be blase about game defaults. Too many points of "friction" for players, cause them to stop playing mods. It's like, how many things have to happen that the player thinks are gross, before they don't want to deal with them anymore? Different things have different levels of weight in this regard, but they all add up.
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Well, why have territory bonuses and raise base bonuses?
Are you talking about various defense bonuses in this mod? I think the territory bonus is silly high. It's like magic. Germans would have loved that at the end of WW II! Oh you can't overrun us so good, it's our territory. Ya vu.
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Providing detailed information on your capabilities and army movements because of something that happened 100 years ago is absurd.
The timescale of the game is generally absurd. All sorts of things in the game wouldn't take a year to do. So the argument is not about the passage of time, it's about the acceptable amount of back and forth between human players in the game. In single player there's only 1 human player to be pleased. In multiplayer it's up to y'all to agree on what "acceptable time" is. It's not real, it doesn't take 10 years either to do probe missions. It's just your rules about "how many turns have to elapse" before something changes.
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I am seeing quite a bit of miracle wins, though I would hesitate to say if they occur more often than their odds would indicate.
The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time. It shouldn't. Ever. Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground. Big organic puddle.
Lots of games over the years have done dumb things with randomness, and large portions of the player communities have absolutely hated the devs doing that stuff. Really high dynamic range of randomness is not appreciated by all kinds of people.
Post by: Nevill on October 30, 2020, 09:20:18 am
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Don't be blase about game defaults.iOS vs Android, which is better and why? I don't play the game on default settings. I read the readme for the descriptions of game features I would or wouldn't like, and then enable and disable them as I see fit.
I don't have much of an opinion on whether it should be on in SP games. I'll be leaving it on in my games, but that's because probing AI is never a big deal for me.
The feature is a modification of vanilla mechanic, and as such is a controversial change. I can see the argument for why one could want it off by default. I am of the opinion that if the mod went to the trouble of changing some aspect of the game, it may as well show off its goods.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 11:02:37 am
I read the readme for the descriptions of game features I would or wouldn't like, and then enable and disable them as I see fit.
Which makes you a "tweaker". This is not everyone's orientation towards playing a game. Many players expect "batteries included". They're not going to go in and figure out a bunch of default settings and fix them. Many people think that's the game designer's job, and they move on if the job isn't being done.
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I am of the opinion that if the mod went to the trouble of changing some aspect of the game, it may as well show off its goods.
Quality Assurance establishes whether one is showing off goods or shooting oneself in the foot. It's in the realm of opinion, but I wouldn't have done 48 releases if all my iterations were flawless gifts. Many of those releases were on a monthly cycle, not multi-daily like Tim's currently working.
piles o fungus |
Before I started this game, I thought I would try to put out Formers to deal with all the fungus. The reason I hate the current Democratic is because it's basically unsafe. So, at what point does my empire become safe? When fungus is cleared away and nearby fungal towers are dead.
Well this game, there's so much fungus I'm just living inside this big maze. My first 2 bases, Alpha Prime and Chi Plains, I had to fiddle to get them settled without fungus next to them. And after that, it couldn't be done. For the amount of fungus, I didn't suffer too many attacks, but I'm pretty paralyzed compared to the usual AI spam everywhere else. I manged to get a Command Center with a Completion, but pumping out trained Scouts, really doesn't make that much headway against mindworms.
Quit at 6:45 AM. I don't know how long I was playing. I find these big fungal starts irritating. This isn't a 'normal' amount of fungus. 2 games ago I had the same problem with the Usurpers. TBH it limited my expansion with the Morganites too. My verdict is, there's too much fungus for the Average setting.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 12:55:06 pm
However the 2nd Scout received no damage at all. I couldn't find a setting for that at first, but once I searched for the word "collateral" I found collateral_damage_value=0. Is that a Thinker inheritance or a WTP choice? I'm not in favor.
Yes, that's the one. The message is still there because this value could be anything above zero too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 12:57:31 pm
I think I infiltrated less than 10 turns ago. I don't know exactly how much. I'm wondering if I have any chance to put a new device in, or do I just have to wait until all are discovered?
Depending on which version you are playing. The average time for device was 5 turns for everybody then I changed it for infiltrating computer to 15. See what "infiltration" options you have in Thinker.ini.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 01:02:46 pm
Of course, being afraid to attack for 10-20 turns is a risk in itself... but that's all part of the fun.
Why would one be afraid to attack because of this? Infiltration doesn't give away map and troops outside of bases.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 01:06:33 pm
I really hate Democratic giving a PLANET penalty. It makes no sense, and it just gets in the way of pretty much everything I want to do.
What would be your suggestion then?
Post by: Nevill on October 30, 2020, 01:54:24 pm
Why would one be afraid to attack because of this? Infiltration doesn't give away map and troops outside of bases.It gives away the composition of troops, their movement direction, and a lot of other data that help the infiltrating faction determine their relative positions and organize a response. Usually that stops most attackers dead in their tracks unless they have an overwhelming advantage.
Of course, back in the day we managed to have meaningful parties in Hotseat mode with players having a direct visual of what the other is doing, so it's not insurmountable, but it's a big deterrent. Especially if one of the factions doesn't have infiltration and can't guess what counter the other is preparing to their attack.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 02:29:10 pm
Re: randomness. Actually, I've long wanted to ask this. What does it mean that WtP "increases randomization"?
Oh, my friend. You are about to tap into very heart of this mod. 😉
Here. Have a look.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg122935#msg122935
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21371.msg122824
Sadly, nobody rereading these threads anymore. They had interesting development at times.
In short, the WTP randomness is somewhere between Civ2/SMACX one where a 30% advantage always wins and Civ1 one single round combat win-or-lose where Phalanx can beat Tank occasionally. Both of the above are disliked by users. Therefore, this change. You'll see miracle wins but not that often as in Civ1. If you remember playing Civ1 - nobody called them "miracle" ones at the time. This is also configurable as any other feature.
Are the displayed battle odds still accurate?
Displayed battle odds are absolutely mathematically accurate and this is another WTP gift to users. They were NOT accurate in vanilla and no other mod bothered to change that.
Moreover, they are also expressed as simple percentage rather than ratio of two (random?) numbers.
I am seeing quite a bit of miracle wins, though I would hesitate to say if they occur more often than their odds would indicate.
I'll have to build a map for mass combat testing, put like a hundred units that have 80-20 odds, and compare the theory with the actual results.
I would discourage you from that. They were already tested multiple times by independent researchers. I have also debugged whole combat routine, of course. So it seems to be working right.
What you are facing here is not a statistical incorrectness but human perception and subconscious human desire to win all the time. This is another game aspect discussed many time. In short, the more randomness player see = the more they see things they don't like = miracle losses! They don't care about miracle wins - they don't leave much impression. However, unforeseen bad things accumulate and compound player frustration. So we are mostly managing and dancing around player expectations rather than correct mathematical models.
The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time. It shouldn't. Ever. Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground. Big organic puddle.
Lots of games over the years have done dumb things with randomness, and large portions of the player communities have absolutely hated the devs doing that stuff. Really high dynamic range of randomness is not appreciated by all kinds of people.
Here is the perfect example of such frustration.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 03:46:16 pm
The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time. It shouldn't. Ever. Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground. Big organic puddle.
This is WTP on current settings (2.0). Where do you see 25% losing chance for chaos gun against scout?
I understand you may not like this feature or this configuration or this mod or the combination of all the element compounding your frustration or anything else maybe not related to anything resulting in your bad mood. What is the need for exaggeration and such pronounced hatred like this abomination should be abolished from the face of the Earth? I would understand the constructive criticism when you don't like some feature/setting and ask it to be changed or removed or replaced with something else. However, it is difficult for me to stay calm and detached trying to extract those from all the blaming. It's not easy. I have feelings too.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 04:16:51 pm
And bvanevery brings up a good point. I think we also need the option to "refill" the infiltration timer back to full by performing Infiltrate Datalinks again.
Good point indeed. However, vanilla didn't have a notion of partial infiltration. So the option is gone after being used. I'll look into it.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 05:53:29 pm
The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time. It shouldn't. Ever. Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground. Big organic puddle.
Lots of games over the years have done dumb things with randomness, and large portions of the player communities have absolutely hated the devs doing that stuff. Really high dynamic range of randomness is not appreciated by all kinds of people.
Here is the perfect example of such frustration.
No, it's just stupid and there are plenty of analogs from military history to demonstrate why it's stupid. Like in WW II, Germans and Soviets had big guns on their tanks, which could actually knock each other's tanks out. Western Allies didn't, they had pea shooters by comparison. Very hard time penetrating the armor of the "real" tanks. Allies would have to put 10 Shermans on 1 Panther to get a kill, and they'd still lose 3 tanks.
Chaos Gun vs. Scout hand weapons and no armor, is a fundamental mismatch where the Scouts cannot win. Not unless you've got 3D urban fighting ala Chechnya where individual soldiers can get into super close combat with the enemy. Tactical board games like Squad Leader back in the day actually modeled these ranges of combat, with "close combat" being a very distinct thing, and awfully hard to get done with all this ranged machine gun fire sweeping the landscape.
The mismatch here is a game designer who thinks that 6 vs. 1 means "there's always a chance to win, and it's 1/7th of the time", and a player who thinks "It's a massive ass weapon that destroys everything in front of it, and the enemy has nothing comparable to fight back with". How do you think an Apache helicopter works in Iraq? It stays at standoff range and fires Hellfire missiles at the target, totally obliterating it. Your strength 5 weapon is a Missile Launcher, what do you think all those Scouts do, just duck? You'd need some damn good armor to survive all that! And a Chaos Gun is worse, it's getting towards quasi-Star Trek levels of energy output.
The "victory / defeat is always possible" interpretation of odds, is wrong design. It doesn't model anything in the real world, it's a pure game mechanical contrivance. There is a point at which the weapons mismatch is so great that you simply cannot win. And allowing 30% wounds against the victor, in a 5-6-1 vs. 1-1-1 matchup, is quite generous, for the magic talisman of merely standing on Rocky ground.
What is the need for exaggeration and such pronounced hatred like this abomination should be abolished from the face of the Earth?
Because over and over again, I've had to go "15 rounds" with designers who don't get it. Numerous people tell them why their randomness sucks rocks. Yet they double down and invent excuses why it's plausible or intentional or desirable. I've had this fight in the Battle for Wesnoth community, with the designer of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, probably others, and now you.
There's no simulation justification for "always can win, always can lose, it's just rolling dice and odds". Players have reasonable expectations about the possible and impossible, based on the weapons described and the numbers of opponents in combat. What the always win / lose stuff does, is gaslight those expectations. I've done enough tactical wargaming to know that this is not how things work. Odds systems are a gloss and slop over real combat, where you move every soldier and calculate the trajectory of every bullet fired. When the mismatch is big enough, you get crushed. A combat system should model that.
Instead of whatever "asymptotic system of victory comparison" you have in your mind, consider the attacker and defender as sliding windows of opportunity. There's a point at which those windows are gone, they're closed. This is the simple model of offset constants, where certain victory and defeat are defined.
Another way of saying it, is the dynamic range of combat results cannot be arbitrarily high. That's not war, that's a fantasy.
This is WTP on current settings (2.0). Where do you see 25% losing chance for chaos gun against scout?
Oh, I don't know, in the ocean, with about 3 bazillion sea bases defended by merely a Scout, getting a magic home territory bonus. Nazi land is blessed by the Volk and all that. Or the Boxer Rebellion people who thought their chi made them immune to bullets. I have no doubt that the home territory bonus is way too high. But it's a separate issue from the fundamental "always can win / lose" combat randomness.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 06:21:02 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-176
Hope this'll close the renewal problem.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 06:37:32 pm
I can certainly turn it back to vanilla setting. I don't think this is a big deal now with slower healing and more steady weapon/armor progression. And also with equalized psi land odds. Should be fine.
Let me know if anyone is against it and likes to keep higher randomness?
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 07:13:44 pm
I really hate Democratic giving a PLANET penalty. It makes no sense, and it just gets in the way of pretty much everything I want to do.
What would be your suggestion then?
The path of least resistance is to simply get rid of it. However before doing that, one should consider what's at stake.
In the original game, the max PLANET penalty you could get was -3, and that was all from Free Market. In your mod, the max you can get is -4. Are you intellectually committed to that for some reason? Do you think that's a good or important thing to have? I have no experience here because my mod has been either at a max of -2 or -3. I eventually decided on -3, with my Free Market giving -2 and Cybernetic my new evil anti-Planet idea at -1. Eudaimonic is my pro-Planet choice, so they contrast. -2 is definitely easier but still can get you in trouble with global flooding. -3 per the original game is acceptable, has not made the game any more awful than it ever was.
I also only give out PLANET bonuses +1 at a time. It's on a strict diet. I don't need massive PLANET penalties to compensate for big PLANET bonuses.
If you insist on -4 PLANET, then if the penalty is removed from Democratic, it would have to go somewhere else.
You have 2 realistic ways to grow in your early to mid game. Either Democratic or Planned. Judging by how I've seen the AI factions perform, it seems important to get +2 GROWTH at some point to keep up with them. I've had quite runty bases compared to them, due to all the various ways I have to exert myself to make any headway. So the main thing at stake is GROWTH.
For some reason you've decided that Democratic gets PLANET penalized for daring to grow. Planned doesn't get the same treatment, I don't know why. It's not GROWTH hurts PLANET, as one does it and the other doesn't. It's not a lore fit: Planet doesn't like people holding elections? I would have thought INDUSTRY hurts PLANET, ala Planned, would be more obvious for the lore. But of course Planned harms EFFIC and that's the original game's lore, so you've got penalties piling up. I didn't particularly care for that lore and got rid of it. I went to Socialist and changed EFFIC to JUSTICE. So some of this hinges on what you think Planned means, as a matter of lore.
Neither my Democratic or Socialist gives GROWTH at all. I didn't want pop booming to be easy in the early to mid game. I'm going to take it as a given that you're intellectually committed to keeping GROWTH in both Democratic and Planned. If that is not the case, then we have a different discussion.
I think that's enough preamble.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 30, 2020, 07:17:38 pm
I think that's enough preamble.
Did you come up with the suggestion?
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2020, 09:55:45 pm
I think that's enough preamble.
Did you come up with the suggestion?
You have to read what I wrote, think about it, and state what your priorities are. There was one operative suggestion in there, which might not be an appropriate choice for you, depending on your goals.
Post by: bvanevery on October 31, 2020, 01:02:37 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
I am convinced that WTP has somewhat too much fungus for Average setting. This has been shown in my last 3 games. Fungal mazes, and a limited clear starting area cut off by a big fungal wall from the rest of a continent, pretty commonly occur. I do not see any Thinker.ini parameter that controls this. Looking in alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
#WORLDBUILDER
1, ; Fungus (Fungus coefficient based on LIFE selection)is the same as in the stock game. Is there some hardwired setting in the WTP binary now?
Otherwise I hypthothesize that this phenomenon is an artifact of the faction placement algorithm. It just plops me down somewhere bad, in the name of keeping factions equidistant from each other. Thus I will try
faction_placement=0
on the idea that the current attempt to balance faction starting locations, may actually do more harm than good, due to lack of attention to the quality of the starting position. We shall see. If I've still got fungus in my face, then that's not the answer.
I got the Gaians, somewhat skewing the concern. Initial landing spot does look lush though, with Rainy Rolling river squares nearby. The random opponents are an all human cast, including the Cult of Planet and the Pirates. That means continental pressure will not be as high, unless of course I get 8-balled behind some faction. That does happen sometimes with the stock placement algorithm, even on a Huge map. We shall see.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 31, 2020, 02:43:55 am
I could not find a bug in a code that sends sea units into land bases. Code seems correct. Anyone encountering that send me a save, please.
Post by: bvanevery on October 31, 2020, 04:07:22 am
Interesting.
I could not find a bug in a code that sends sea units into land bases. Code seems correct. Anyone encountering that send me a save, please.
I don't recall any recent discussion of this, and was wondering if you replied to the wrong thread. However maybe you've now investigated a known problem in the stock binary, and are asking others to be on the lookout for it in WTP. In which case, will do.
Post by: bvanevery on October 31, 2020, 04:20:13 am
Beginning test of version 177.
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
faction_placement=0
green pastures |
The land given to me was beautiful. Note also the absence of any nearby fungal towers. The sequence to the east, I believe some of them were the results of fungal pops. Did not have any notable mindworm problems. I'm quite surprised that these Gaians have -2 MORALE, making a Command Center seemingly worthless for training troops, although I'm doing so anyways. It did not affect mindworm fighting in practice, as I mostly just used my mindworms on whatever I stirred up. Supply pod popping was pretty easy, in part because I don't think I had real competition on my large land mass.
MY 2164. This is the point at which I finally met everybody. Also I've got Recycling Tanks capability, so all cities are building that. The hope is that some of them will gain Completions as I continue to pop supply pods. I will be needing a lot of Formers to work the land I've already settled. I could also expand more as I haven't exhausted the good land. I don't know how the political developments will work out in that regard. Yang could go to war with me, but he's not close by land or water. I've got 3 allies up north, but they might start fighting each other.
This doesn't prove that the stock faction placement algorithm gives good land, but it certainly did this time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 31, 2020, 12:47:38 pm
Interesting.
I could not find a bug in a code that sends sea units into land bases. Code seems correct. Anyone encountering that send me a save, please.
I don't recall any recent discussion of this, and was wondering if you replied to the wrong thread. However maybe you've now investigated a known problem in the stock binary, and are asking others to be on the lookout for it in WTP. In which case, will do.
Somebody did at some point and it was hanging in my TODO list.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 31, 2020, 01:26:37 pm
Post by: bvanevery on October 31, 2020, 03:10:32 pm
Found another quirk. Command Center increases probe team starting morale. I think it is too much with them already starting at Disciplined and with high impact of probe morale on their success rate. Probably will remove it.
+1. I removed all base probe team morale improving techs because of this sort of thing.
Post by: bvanevery on November 01, 2020, 06:06:30 am
defenseless Morganites |
MY 2266. Cha Dawn has been overrunning Morgan for quite some time. Morgan never fought back, and never used a probe team to liberate a base. There was never anything wrong with Morgan's empire size, technology, or money supply. What gives? Cha Dawn is Fundamentalist Green Power, which gives +2 PROBE. That doubles the cost of Morganic probe team actions, but Morgan had the money to do something sometime. The Cultist capitol is also not particularly close to the conquered cities.
I am wondering if this is an instance of colonization obsession destroying an empire's military viability. Not much else on the map has changed hands.
My own empire is fine, and no larger than it was. It's bigpox. Cities don't have the population of AI cities though. I'm Democratic Green so my GROWTH is 0. I have lush land, Children's Creches everywhere, and I'm now completing Tree Farms. Some cities have finished building stuff and are spewing mindworms for lack of anything better to do. They're starting to converge on a nearby Hive base that was taken from the Pirates. Yang has attempted to advance overland towards me, but they're terribly slow with plenty of fungus in the way.
I have not seen any Needlejets this game, which makes me wonder if they're very very late in the tech tree.
This is a very slow game. It would go a lot faster if I was at war with the Pirates, but they're actually my 1 ally. Miriam recently signed a Truce after long hostility, and everyone else is in Vendetta against me. Nobody is in direct land contact with me yet. I see that Monopole Magnets is a late game tech, so it will probably continue to be slow.
I'm starting to steal from whoever I can. I didn't bother until my cities finished their stuff, and now it's only worth using Cruiser Probe Teams, as I have few nearby land targets. I also got the Empath Guild done somehow, so I don't need infiltration. I've got various other SPs, which surprises me. Maybe bigpox is worth something after all.
I had enough Formers that they ran out of things to do. So first they built roads on Rocky squares, and then when those were all done, they finally built Mines. I got some fungal pops around my Merchant Exchange city, and a 4 mindworm burst. I dealt with it, and got a Tree Farm and a Centauri Preserve going there. No more pops. I'm starting to cash in my Formers to save on Support, as I don't need to develop anything more and suspect that Advanced Ecological Engineering will be along soon. Hmm, except there are all these military prereqs for that. Maybe I shouldn't liquidate all the Formers then. I've got the Xenoempathy Dome so it isn't hard to move around now.
It's 2 AM, 1 AM if you count the end of Daylight Savings Time. Sleep is preferable to continuing this slow game for now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 01, 2020, 01:56:38 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-179
Post by: bvanevery on November 01, 2020, 05:34:17 pm
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 05:17:12 am
don't do as I say |
MY 2273. After a lot of oceanic theft I finally learn Power. I wonder whether my buddy Svensgaard will approve of it. In my mod he pursues Wealth, but in WTP and the stock game his agenda is Power. This is listed in his faction profile. Well what is he actually pursuing? Wealth. If I soon learn Wealth or Knowledge as well, it's going to be really annoying if he's criticizing me about that, while doing Wealth himself. "Fat and weak, gonna carve you up." Uh huh. Dialog will go stupid.
These gaffes aren't quite as jarring with the Alien Crossfire factions, because most of them did not have strong enough characterization to be convincing in their ideologies. But with the original 7 game characters, it's pretty much dealbreaker territory. For instance:
Chairman of God |
This is completely stupid. If Yang isn't pushing Police State, then who would?
CEO McJerkface |
This is also completely stupid. He's Green?? I'm Green, I'm Deidre. He went to war with me over this. He used to be my ally. It isn't just narratively jarring, it breaks the diplomatic system.
This was a very bad game design choice on Induktio's part, done in the name of AI performance only. I strongly urge you to get rid of this in WTP. I believe we've had this conversation already, some time ago. But now I jog your memory with actual screenshots of how ludicrous this is.
For whatever reason, the Cultists, Data Angels, and Believers actually chose their correct agendas. At least right now. Believers aren't hard to figure out, as just about everyone wants the benefits of Fundamentalist. I'm surprised that the Data Angels are Democratic, as it's not a popular choice among factions. The Morganites are the only other ones that did it. Maybe they wanted EFFICIENCY, but they also got their butts kicked. Nobody wants to do Police State.
Not surprising what the Cult chose, as Green isn't a controversial choice. In fact, almost everyone has gone Green, me included! The only exception is Svensgaard, who has chosen Simple economics. Free Market and Planned are hated, with good reason. The AI knows they're bad choices, and so do I.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 06:04:31 am
reckoning of worms |
MY 2275. This is the only land city within combat range of my empire. Without rails it's been a fair amount of unit pushing to get these mindworms and spore launchers into position. The time to attack is now because they're going to produce an artillery piece next year. I managed to bring up 5 Spore Launchers for the final push and have done a bit of damage with the shelling. 1 boil, 7 pre-boils, and 1 larva are ready to go in. Whatever the outcome of this battle, it will be illustrative of how the WTP combat system actually works. Note that Yang is Fundamentalist Green Knowledge, so his MORALE doesn't suck and he's got a +2 PLANET defensive advantage. I have +2 PLANET offensive advantage so that cancels out.
I did way better than the odds calculator would have me believe. I lost 2 worms during the initial onslaught. Then I got warnings about 23% odds of victory, but I won both of those battles. The 1st one made me 60% wounded, the 2nd only 20%, which is not what I'd expect if the odds are against me. Something is wrong with the calculator for psi combat.
Well the city's mine now. Nothing really to do except keep chucking out mindworms from my cities. Nothing better to build yet. Guess I'll see how much of Yang I eat up that way.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 02, 2020, 06:07:48 am
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 08:23:33 am
It would be nice to see them weighed a bit more, or else the factions being incentivized to run their preferences in some fashion. Yang being immune to negative PS effects was, perhaps, the most obvious example, but it could be more subtle. Lal running Democracy out of the box would be crippling, but if his faction had a Robust, SUPPORT, he could likely survive it as "Morgan with benefits", and the extra pop would give him some minerals to work with.
We want an AI that could at least pretend to be moderately sensible. If we give FM -5 POLICE, PLANET, INDUSTRY and GROWTH, we don't want Morgan shooting himself in the foot. Which means, we want them to at least look at the options they have available instead of plopping on whatever is written in their faction files.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 09:20:33 am
I. My next biggest beef is probably with the way the game handles orbital facilities, boosters, and the like. I think the code which runs orbital defences is a mess that is easily abused. I am not scient, so I can't disassemble it, but I can list my own observations. Currently at work, so I can't load the game and verify it just yet, but from what I remember...
Flechette defense systems get two chances to shoot down a Buster instead of one. Two messages appear instead of one.
Orbital defense pods have two chances to shoot down a Buster. The first shot makes them deployed, and the second one sacrifices the Pod. (?)
Orbital defense pods react to Fungal and Tectonic missiles, and they can't be told to ignore them. It is thus a common tactic to exhaust their number by using lesser missiles before launching the big ones.
Unlike Fungal and Tectonic missiles, Busters can't be detonated over terrain, which leads to one of the stupidest methods of defense by vacating the area of units and hoping it would crash harmlessly finding no targets.
I will check this in-game and update the info if it is not as I remember it.
What would we like to see?
1) Personally, I'd like busters to be treated as other special missiles in that you can detonate them anywhere. I'd also like it if moving a buster into a base time with no unit didn't produce a message "can't capture the base", but detonated the buster over that tile instead. Same with the other two special missiles.
2) I'd like for Flechette Defense Systems to attempt to shoot down a buster first... once, with a 50% chance per any FDS in range as advertised.
3) I'd like for orbital defense pods to either not react to tectonic/fungal missiles, or only using their "free" shots and never sacrificing themselves in the attempt.
II. My second biggest beef is how selective some combat mechanics are, which I suspect is partially due to bugs. I'll have to dig for specific examples, but it has to do with Needlejets, Air Superiority, Artillery, Psi combat and the like. I mean, you do know about the bug that, say, a <SAM> Chaos Needlejet with Psi-armor would use their weapon but forse a enemy to use a Psi-weapon (power=1) instead? Or the inability to attack units under a needlejet if you don't have <SAM>. Or the weirdness in collateral damage when units of several types are mixed. I had an entire list of those things noted down... somewhere. I'll try to dig it back up.
Perhaps the worst was how in sea duels a unit with less defensive value would be picked in certain cases, i.e. out of the two ships 1-4-4 and 4-1-4 the first one would be picked for an artillery duel (and swiftly sunk, of course).
Of the other things bothering me I can recall the strange collateral damage wildlife suffers (if your land unit kills one unit in the stack of land units, all those units get killed. Not true for jets), which makes ecodamage a joke as you kill them all quickly... and you may even capture them as a stack, though I haven't seen this before the endgame.
Or how scrambling works for <SAM> Interceptors, in that an air unit can lure them out of a base by attacking a nearby unit, making them scrable, and then cancelling the attack.
Or the cloak ability sometimes failing due to the game inexplicably keeping track of some units that you should have no vision of. Have you notices that, sometimes, a mind worm that killed your forward scout is visible through the fog of war even though you have no one in the area? This kind of thing.
Does anyone have things like these?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 02:09:13 pm
MY 2273. After a lot of oceanic theft I finally learn Power. I wonder whether my buddy Svensgaard will approve of it. In my mod he pursues Wealth, but in WTP and the stock game his agenda is Power. This is listed in his faction profile. Well what is he actually pursuing? Wealth. If I soon learn Wealth or Knowledge as well, it's going to be really annoying if he's criticizing me about that, while doing Wealth himself. "Fat and weak, gonna carve you up." Uh huh. Dialog will go stupid.
These gaffes aren't quite as jarring with the Alien Crossfire factions, because most of them did not have strong enough characterization to be convincing in their ideologies. But with the original 7 game characters, it's pretty much dealbreaker territory. For instance:
This is completely stupid. If Yang isn't pushing Police State, then who would?
This is also completely stupid. He's Green?? I'm Green, I'm Deidre. He went to war with me over this. He used to be my ally. It isn't just narratively jarring, it breaks the diplomatic system.
This was a very bad game design choice on Induktio's part, done in the name of AI performance only. I strongly urge you to get rid of this in WTP. I believe we've had this conversation already, some time ago. But now I jog your memory with actual screenshots of how ludicrous this is.
For whatever reason, the Cultists, Data Angels, and Believers actually chose their correct agendas. At least right now. Believers aren't hard to figure out, as just about everyone wants the benefits of Fundamentalist. I'm surprised that the Data Angels are Democratic, as it's not a popular choice among factions. The Morganites are the only other ones that did it. Maybe they wanted EFFICIENCY, but they also got their butts kicked. Nobody wants to do Police State.
Not surprising what the Cult chose, as Green isn't a controversial choice. In fact, almost everyone has gone Green, me included! The only exception is Svensgaard, who has chosen Simple economics. Free Market and Planned are hated, with good reason. The AI knows they're bad choices, and so do I.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I've put this on TODO list.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/21
From a purely gaming perspective I prefer the AI to be flexible when it comes to SE settings over the strict adherence to the narrative. I'd like Morgan to be able to run Green from time to time, and Yand to run Fundy for INDUSTRY. I do it myself, after all.
It would be nice to see them weighed a bit more, or else the factions being incentivized to run their preferences in some fashion. Yang being immune to negative PS effects was, perhaps, the most obvious example, but it could be more subtle. Lal running Democracy out of the box would be crippling, but if his faction had a Robust, SUPPORT, he could likely survive it as "Morgan with benefits", and the extra pop would give him some minerals to work with.
We want an AI that could at least pretend to be moderately sensible. If we give FM -5 POLICE, PLANET, INDUSTRY and GROWTH, we don't want Morgan shooting himself in the foot. Which means, we want them to at least look at the options they have available instead of plopping on whatever is written in their faction files.
You are right that wise SE choosing contributes to computer player intelligence and overall strength. However, this restriction is limited to only one category. That is not that devastating especially if we keep this in mind and make these choice more sensible for them in general. After all if we make every computer player to pick a best choice they lose their personality. Their rigidness is part of the game fun too. I agree on this with bvanevery.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 02:13:36 pm
I did way better than the odds calculator would have me believe. I lost 2 worms during the initial onslaught. Then I got warnings about 23% odds of victory, but I won both of those battles. The 1st one made me 60% wounded, the 2nd only 20%, which is not what I'd expect if the odds are against me. Something is wrong with the calculator for psi combat.
Psi combat is calculated same way as any other one taking units strengths into account. They just ignore weapon/armor. Displayed odds are correct.
Are you playing on vanilla setting for alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider? Even if you are, you may still see some randomness not that often than in WTP default but still. One cannot escape it completely. 😊
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 02:15:23 pm
Multiplayer lacks the ability to give away bases to other human players. I have to think about what the implications of this might be. Helping your ally retake his bases would be easier, for one.
Never new it is prohibited there. I would think it is to avoid humans gang up and build super empire.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 02:19:25 pm
Humans can gang up and build super empires anyway, it just requires an agreement between two players and a rover to capture bases. Of course, a lot of buildings get lost in the transaction.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 02:43:38 pm
I do it myself, after all.
You making a choice about it, and the AI making choices about it, are not the same thing / symmetric at all. Not only does it bust the narrative, but it busts the diplomatic system. Putting pressure on you to comply with their ideological bent, is a core game mechanic. You as the single human player have never been able to tell the AIs what their ideology should be. It's always them to you.
Quote
Lal running Democracy out of the box would be crippling,
First off, you can't. It takes some time to learn the tech for it in WTP. Second off, by the time it's available, it's not.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 02:48:14 pm
Psi combat is calculated same way as any other one taking units strengths into account. They just gnore weapon/armor. Displayed odds are correct.
No they are not. The empirical evidence is my mindworms are winning WAY more than the odds say they should. Odds say I should be suffering many defeats and depleting my forces. Instead I'm getting something closer to a traditional cakewalk, although not as bad as vanilla.
I guess it's going to take some screenshots to convince you.
Quote
Are you playing on vanilla setting for alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider?
Yes. I have consistently made note of my settings at the start of recent test games. If the odds display is not taking this variable into account, that could account for the discrepancy.
Or, could it be that the use of a PLANET rating for defense is calculated wrong somehow? This is mindworm combat, somehow the problem is mindworm specific.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 02:59:06 pm
Quote
After all if we make every computer player to pick a best choice they lose their personality.I would make a note that there already is an option to randomize faction personalities and agendas, right in the game rules.
I am not opposed to it, but I do not want to lose what gives Thinker its name. Maybe a toggle?
Not a hill I would die on, though. And I understand that supporting multiple types of logic isn't the way to go, so I'll concede the point.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 03:24:25 pm
I would make a note that there already is an option to randomize faction personalities and agendas, right in the game rules.
It's your choice to ruin their narratives that way in favor of variety. It's not a default. It doesn't deserve privilege or equal treatment, any more than cheating with directed research does. It gives the game some life extension for some people. And they still insist on their actual ideologies, whatever those randomly happen to be.
Quote
I am not opposed to it, but I do not want to lose what gives Thinker its name.
That's quite the exaggeration. And the name of this mod isn't Thinker. It's Will To Power.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 05:41:44 pm
Also I want to remind you a hard truth of life (game). There are bottomless pit of bugs/flaws/exploits there. We won't be able to ever fix them or even tap into them all. It is not effort cost effective to go through entire list. We must focus on the most frustrating issues and then maybe move on to next one in rank, etc. As you stated yourself, you just ignore some minor exploits as they are not worth your game time.
My next biggest beef is probably with the way the game handles orbital facilities, boosters, and the like. I think the code which runs orbital defences is a mess that is easily abused. I am not scient, so I can't disassemble it, but I can list my own observations. Currently at work, so I can't load the game and verify it just yet, but from what I remember...
Keep in mind these are pretty late game things. Game is probably already decided at this point. So even if there are many inconsistencies there they are not on everybody's hot list. Any exploit at this point is pretty much not decisive. See my feasibility point above.
Flechette defense systems get two chances to shoot down a Buster instead of one. Two messages appear instead of one.
Are you sure it is not *two* of them acting? They have a wide coverage. Need to test.
Orbital defense pods have two chances to shoot down a Buster. The first shot makes them deployed, and the second one sacrifices the Pod. (?)
That is how it is designed. They sacrifice themselves only after all shots of all pods are exhausted.
Orbital defense pods react to Fungal and Tectonic missiles, and they can't be told to ignore them. It is thus a common tactic to exhaust their number by using lesser missiles before launching the big ones.
I think it is also by design as game consider all of them to be offensive weapons. Do they cost less than buster so it is cheaper to sacrifice them?
Unlike Fungal and Tectonic missiles, Busters can't be detonated over terrain, which leads to one of the stupidest methods of defense by vacating the area of units and hoping it would crash harmlessly finding no targets.
I never detonated them over terrain. How is it done? Some keyboard shortcut? If so, then maybe it could be extended to busters. However, busters could attack units only since Civ1 - historical reasons.
II. My second biggest beef is how selective some combat mechanics are, which I suspect is partially due to bugs. I'll have to dig for specific examples, but it has to do with Needlejets, Air Superiority, Artillery, Psi combat and the like. I mean, you do know about the bug that, say, a <SAM> Chaos Needlejet with Psi-armor would use their weapon but forse a enemy to use a Psi-weapon (power=1) instead? Or the inability to attack units under a needlejet if you don't have <SAM>. Or the weirdness in collateral damage when units of several types are mixed. I had an entire list of those things noted down... somewhere. I'll try to dig it back up.
This even a bigger can of worm than first one. No surprise multiple combat mechanics mixed together is impossible to balance. These sharp edges will stick out here and there all the time. We can fix only a limited amount of them and only those extremely OP and abused.
Perhaps the worst was how in sea duels a unit with less defensive value would be picked in certain cases, i.e. out of the two ships 1-4-4 and 4-1-4 the first one would be picked for an artillery duel (and swiftly sunk, of course).
Did you mean the opposite?
Of the other things bothering me I can recall the strange collateral damage wildlife suffers (if your land unit kills one unit in the stack of land units, all those units get killed. Not true for jets), which makes ecodamage a joke as you kill them all quickly... and you may even capture them as a stack, though I haven't seen this before the endgame.
That's an original feature to protect tender soul of casual player and don't let them be frustrated by losing to some randomly popped worms. That can be changed, of course, to beef up the challenge. I'll add it to TODO.
Or how scrambling works for <SAM> Interceptors, in that an air unit can lure them out of a base by attacking a nearby unit, making them scrable, and then cancelling the attack.
Never experienced it. I think in case of scrambling player is not even given the chance to alter decision. Not even odds dialog. Please show a case if you think you can recreate it.
Or the cloak ability sometimes failing due to the game inexplicably keeping track of some units that you should have no vision of. Have you notices that, sometimes, a mind worm that killed your forward scout is visible through the fog of war even though you have no one in the area? This kind of thing.
Yeah. It does keep track of "invisible" units. That's an well known thing. Impossible to fix globally as it is scattered across the logic all over, as you noticed. We can focus on some individual cases, though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 05:46:28 pm
The interface to give away a base just isn't there in MP. Normally they are given via a faction dialogue, which is not possible between human players in PBEM.
Ah. Maybe that's the reason. It may require immediate decision of both participants or something. However, how then humans can exchange techs and money and other stuff? Does it happen during somebody else's turn as if just someone is calling you? Should other human be network connected?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 05:52:16 pm
Psi combat is calculated same way as any other one taking units strengths into account. They just gnore weapon/armor. Displayed odds are correct.
No they are not. The empirical evidence is my mindworms are winning WAY more than the odds say they should. Odds say I should be suffering many defeats and depleting my forces. Instead I'm getting something closer to a traditional cakewalk, although not as bad as vanilla.
I guess it's going to take some screenshots to convince you.
Yes. Please post them if you have them.
I just didn't think they will be anything different from conventional combat as it is the same calculation routine. However, if you are saying they may be off - I'll certainly have another look into it.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 02, 2020, 05:53:00 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 05:54:38 pm
QuoteAfter all if we make every computer player to pick a best choice they lose their personality.I would make a note that there already is an option to randomize faction personalities and agendas, right in the game rules.
I am not opposed to it, but I do not want to lose what gives Thinker its name. Maybe a toggle?
Not a hill I would die on, though. And I understand that supporting multiple types of logic isn't the way to go, so I'll concede the point.
Definitely configurable. Probably vanilla by default and then people can mess up with it as they like.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 07:54:36 pm
However, if you are saying they may be off - I'll certainly have another look into it.
I started taking screenshots but was unable to duplicate the problem. My PLANET is different now, due to Cybernetic. I lost a truly ridiculous quantity of mindworms taking over only 2 of Yang's cities. The home territory bonus is mostly to blame, it's pretty over the top. Conversely, it is ridiculously profitable to wait for the enemy to try to attack inside your own territory. I don't think this "hard wall" of magic difficulty on one side or the other of the border, is a good idea. But anyways, I don't have a photo gallery of mindworm problems to show you now. Maybe the phenom is more noticeable at lesser PLANET ratings. Maybe I had a consistent run of good luck. Maybe the MORALE of Yang's troops has changed. I'll just have to wait and see.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 07:57:27 pm
Unlike Fungal and Tectonic missiles, Busters can't be detonated over terrain, which leads to one of the stupidest methods of defense by vacating the area of units and hoping it would crash harmlessly finding no targets.
I don't see the problem. Not being in range of enemy weapons is Warfare 101. PBs are mainly meant to destroy cities. You can see cities readily on the map, they're not hidden. If you don't allocate enough movement to get to a target city + some possible deviations while changing your flight plan en route, you're stupid and deserve to have your missile crash.
Incidentally in my mod a Missile Chassis can hit anything on a Giant planet, although it will take you 4 turns to get there.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 10:10:49 pm
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Are you sure it is not *two* of them acting? They have a wide coverage. Need to test.Sorry, false alarm. Observed in vanilla install, but not in WtP. Presumably fixed by latest scient's patch. I must have missed it.
Pre-patch, the actions were completed twice, i.e. the FDS and pods shot twice. Now everything works as advertised.
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I think it is also by design as game consider all of them to be offensive weapons. Do they cost less than buster so it is cheaper to sacrifice them?Much cheaper, yes. But now that most of it works, I no longer have that much of an issue with it.
Oh, and Fungal/Tectonic missiles are not considered combat units. They have this button "Deploy payload", but they can't detonate over units. I was hoping busters could get the button from them, and the spec-missiles could get buster logic (i.e. deploying payload when moved on enemy units).
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No surprise multiple combat mechanics mixed together is impossible to balance.Not balance. Outright bugs. Like collateral damage to needlejets from artillery duels.
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Did you mean the opposite?No. Ship artillery duels are done with weapons. I've seen lesser weapon defend when a bigger one was available. I'll try to replicate it.
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Never experienced it. I think in case of scrambling player is not even given the chance to alter decision. Not even odds dialog. Please show a case if you think you can recreate it.I misremembered. It was not the odds dialog, but a diplomatic one.
Steps to recreate:
1) be not at Vendetta Status (Truce/Treaty).
2) Attack a unit in scrambling range of <SAM> unit.
3) The unit scrambles.
4) You get a prompt to break truce/treaty, which you can decline.
5) The jet stays scrambled outside of the base.
6) Repeat with all other jets, leave the base with no defenses.
You should get the prompt before you attack a unit, not after the other faction's jet scrambles.
Save attached. Rose has a couple jets/copters near Santiago's bases, and is at peace with her. Try attacking her formers.
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I don't see the problem. Not being in range of enemy weapons is Warfare 101. PBs are mainly meant to destroy cities.The problem is that right now busters can't destroy cities if there is no unit inside. The attempt simply produces the message that air units can't capture bases. If they can't be made to detonate over empty bases for "historical reasons", then making them function like other special missiles could be a workaround.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 02, 2020, 10:27:45 pm
Steps to recreate:
1) be not at Vendetta Status (Truce/Treaty).
2) Attack a unit in scrambling range of <SAM> unit.
3) The plane scrables.
4) You get a prompt to break truce/treaty, which you can decline.
5) The jet stays scrambled outside of the base.
6) Repeat with all other jets, leave the base with no defenses.
Agreed. That is definitely a mixed steps those need to looked into.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 10:34:13 pm
You can make a psi-attack interceptor and see what happens. You will be using the psi-power stat of 1, while the enemy will use their full weapon stat. Instead of psi-combat you get a slaughter.
The rules for psi-combat mix with rules for air combat and produce buggy results. There is quite a few of these odd interactions.
You could probably avoid them by marking air superiority as unavailable to Psi units. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of psi interceptor.
Post by: bvanevery on November 02, 2020, 10:36:14 pm
The problem is that right now busters can't destroy cities if there is no unit inside.
Well that indeed is a cheat. A correct solution would seem to be to make a city targetable and explodeable, as though it's a unit. That would work for a neutral or enemy city, as you're not able to move your units into them. It's problematic for an allied city, although I think requiring the alliance to be broken first would be acceptable, and not aberrant compared to all other kinds of attacks on allied units one might make. Breaking an alliance does magically transport units, you don't get to just backstab them in place. In other words, no Order 66.
No idea about the doability of this correctness.
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 11:03:09 pm
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No. Ship artillery duels are done with weapons. I've seen lesser weapon defend when a bigger one was available. I'll try to replicate it.'k. Can't reproduce artillery duels, but can do this.
Load the save and directly attack the tile with two enemy cruisers, 12-1-6 and 1-12-6. Use a gatling 5-1-6 cruiser for this. Instead of picking the unit with better armor and easily fending off the attack, the game will pick the unarmored one to defend, which will lose immediately.
Also. Pick a free tile in a 2-tile range of a enemy cruiser or artillery. Bombard it. See what happens on successful bombardment.
(a -100% hasty penalty, resulting in the immediate death of your ship, as it expended the moves and can't defend. It is not supposed to happen, I think. If there is supposed to be an artillery duel, then let them duel before the moves are expended)
Post by: Nevill on November 02, 2020, 11:18:02 pm
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Ah. Maybe that's the reason. It may require immediate decision of both participants or something. However, how then humans can exchange techs and money and other stuff? Does it happen during somebody else's turn as if just someone is calling you? Should other human be network connected?
It is done via a messaging interface. It works like Steam trade. You put down items you want to trade, the other player puts down his, and presses accept. If you change anything in the offer, the other player's acceptance is revoked. If both players hit accept, the transaction commences.
As you can see, there is no button to gift them a base.
The interface is not ideal, and is subject to abuse. For example, I may offer another player 200 credits during my turn, and then spend everything on hurrying, leaving the treasury empty. If the player clicks accept, they won't receive the money. As most things in MP, it relies on an honor system to function.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 12:01:05 am
I updated the save. Try to attack the formers with <30>-?-8 (SAM-Psi-Interceptor), and see what Power value the enemy interceptors use. It's the value for PSI combat, not their weapon stat, rendering them completely helpless.
You can make a psi-attack interceptor and see what happens. You will be using the psi-power stat of 1, while the enemy will use their full weapon stat. Instead of psi-combat you get a slaughter.
The rules for psi-combat mix with rules for air combat and produce buggy results. There is quite a few of these odd interactions.
You could probably avoid them by marking air superiority as unavailable to Psi units. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of psi interceptor.
OMG. That is so messed up. Definitely a bug.
Good thing I've got rid of all Psi items in this mod. 😉
I had a very disturbed gut feeling about them not being right and, apparently, they are!
Where is the save by the way? I don't see it attached to any of your posts.
Post by: Nevill on November 03, 2020, 12:28:55 am
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 04:31:30 am
slog |
MY 2304. This is the point at which the game wore me out. In theory, my position is viable. In practice, I don't make headway with even +4 PLANET, and other factions blithely keep making additional techs. I'm tired of sending out probe teams to steal stuff. All I see is spam as far as the eye can see, and the AI factions mostly don't conquer anything. The Morganites and the Cultists keep trading sea bases, as they have several cities in the water that have no defense. Otherwise, this is a boring game of hurry up and wait. The actual waiting between turns seems long enough to be objectionable too. I'm not strictly sure how long it is, but it's long enough for me to become conscious of my fatigue, at waiting for anything interesting to happen.
The lack of rails is a big problem on a Huge map. It takes a long time to push units around, and that gets seriously old.
The home territory bonus is way too high and has to go. I won't be testing the current default option any longer. It makes the game static.
The AI colony production has to be capped. It's too ridiculous. Morgan should never have been PWNed by Cha Dawn like that.
I just did a count of the Hive. 75 bases, I think almost all of them produced by the Hive. The Pirates had a modest 36 bases I think, and No Minerals in most of them. The Believers have 85 bases, almost all produced by them. They managed to produce units, despite having a large number of sea bases.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 06:07:36 am
expansion_factor=50
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
I got the Data Angels. I just realized that the expiring infiltration directly affects them in a big way. It's not like my mod where "any techs known to 3 factions" is automatic. I did that because the AI can't reasonably be expected to be competent at infiltration, particularly on Huge maps.
fungal vortex |
MY 2139. This proves that the stock faction placement algorithm can stick one inside a fungal maze. However I do seem to have gotten compensating features out of it. It was possible to settle cities initially without having to touch the fungus. The Borehole Complex was immediately nearby, and the minor benefit of the Sunny Mesa.
Oh shoot! I think I'm accidentally playing the Map of Planet, due to some inter-game menu selections I clicked on. I didn't recognize it at first, because I may have never played a game on it. If I did, it was back in the stone ages, and then of course I did random maps ever afterwards. I don't think this is even a Huge map, so I'll have to start over.
A Standard map would explain why everyone is already in contact and why we just elected Santiago the Governor. Thought that was odd, getting it done so fast.
Ok I'm not sure this proves anything about the stock faction placement algorithm at all. I did find the fungus to be unusually border-like, with solid walls of it preventing egress. Like I'm in a pen. Clearly it was hand designed to be that way.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 03:17:43 pm
The lack of rails is a big problem on a Huge map. It takes a long time to push units around, and that gets seriously old.
I agree this is a drawback for larger maps. Did you invent hovertanks already?
Should I move it earlier? I think it won't be too harmful since the movement is limited on tubes now. It's level 11 now. Say level 7-8, maybe?
The home territory bonus is way too high and has to go. I won't be testing the current default option any longer. It makes the game static.
I am thinking to lowering it to 25% and, maybe, giving sensors their 25% defense back. This'll return sensor war concept back into scope again. Ugh. Tough decision.
The AI colony production has to be capped. It's too ridiculous. Morgan should never have been PWNed by Cha Dawn like that.
In which way? By number of bases AI can produce total? That sounds too crude. What if someone captured AI base, will it go out and found new one as now it is one below the cap? Sounds kind of stupid. Need some more economical limitation.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 03:25:15 pm
I got the Data Angels. I just realized that the expiring infiltration directly affects them in a big way. It's not like my mod where "any techs known to 3 factions" is automatic. I did that because the AI can't reasonably be expected to be competent at infiltration, particularly on Huge maps.
They do not need infiltration to get techs in Thinker/WTP with their default configuration.
SHARETECH, 3
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 03:47:29 pm
I agree this is a drawback for larger maps. Did you invent hovertanks already?
Nope. Neither did anyone else, from what I've seen.
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Should I move it earlier? I think it won't be too harmful since the movement is limited on tubes now. It's level 11 now. Say level 7-8, maybe?
Just looked at my tech accomplishments. I stole various Tier 8 techs, that's it. I'd honestly put Monopole Magnets on Tier 6 at the latest, which is equal to Quantum Power. It just shouldn't be that exotic a capability. In my mod the mag tubes come quite early, only Tier 3, but I'm not saying that's necessary for your mod. I should be able to basically get it done at some point though, without having to wait the whole game for it to happen.
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I am thinking to lowering it to 25%
I will be testing 15%, equal to a tier of PLANET bonus. I really don't believe anyone should have a magic advantage.
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and, maybe, giving sensors their 25% defense back. This'll return sensor war concept back into scope again. Ugh. Tough decision.
My Sensors are 50% and that was originally your idea, a long time ago. I like them that way just fine. It's a real drill to remove them from enemy installations. It's a real choice to decide where to place them for your own benefit, and to remember to do it. In fact, I may have achieved what you were trying to achieve with your territory bonus. The difference is my method is not magic, you can get rid of the Sensors. In fact the stock binary loves to shell Sensors, which is why you have to be careful about where you place them. Front line Sensors, you're gonna get a warning that someone's shelling you, that's about it. You have to put them behind your cities, for them to be long term effective.
I see no reason for you to be fretting about 25%. You should at least try 15%, equivalent to a PLANET bonus.
The exploit about settling on top of a Sensor, well if the land inside a city got shelled, that would solve that. Or erase all terrain improvements when the city is settled. I don't know the doability.
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The AI colony production has to be capped. It's too ridiculous. Morgan should never have been PWNed by Cha Dawn like that.
In which way? By number of bases AI can produce total? That sounds too crude.
Regardless, I can test that. It's quite obvious to me that the AI is developing empires at least twice as large as it should on a Huge map.
And way too much emphasis on useless water, but I don't see a parameter for that. In fact the right exploit for the current nonsense, is probably sea conquest. Ships can get out there and do the damage a lot faster than on land. Watching the Morganite Cultist endgame was pathetic, they just traded empty cities.
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What if someone captured AI base, will it go out and found new one as now it is one below the cap? Sounds kind of stupid. Need some more economical limitation.
I don't know how the code works. From its description I guessed that it's talking about making new bases, not about whether it's willing to capture bases. This is how I play as a human anyways. I don't spam forever, there's no point. You're going to get a zillion bases in conquest, that you're going to have to put Punishment Spheres on at a minimum.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 03:50:51 pm
They do not need infiltration to get techs in Thinker/WTP with their default configuration.
SHARETECH, 3
Then their faction description is wrong. Here's what you have:
Code: [Select]
^Gain any tech known to 3 other factions with whom Angels have infiltration: {Wide-ranging covert activities}I have SHARETECH, 3 in my mod and this is how I describe it:
Code: [Select]
^Gain any tech known to 3 other factions: {Wide-ranging covert activities}
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 03:57:50 pm
Thinker main goal was to improve AI and WTP continues on this path as well. I have heard a lot of complaints about some OP exploits humans can do but AI cannot. Teaching them to AI is usually the best way to resolve that problem. However, this is also the most difficult option. In absence of which, we usually resort to limiting such exploits to equalize human vs. computer capabilities. ICS was one of the most notorious one everybody tried hard to limit. Yet now when I was able to teach computer do the same, making it no more exclusive human exploit, it doesn't seem to be unconditionally liked. What is going on, guys? Were you hypocritical when you complained about it and demanded this problem to be solved for good? I have spent quite substantial amount of time and mental efforts on it. Was it for nothing? 😄🤔😢
Let me know if this is the right direction and/or something need to be done with spamming as well, regardless of AI success.
Keep in mind that neither Thinker nor WTP planned to put any limit on AI improvement posing themselves as challenging mod. So the argument that game becomes unbeatable on toughest level, while pretty valid for game attractiveness in general, is not applicable to this mod.
About AI disregarding defense while expanding without limits. That is true. Building more colonies obviously impacts combat units. This allowed me to amass an army and easily cut into neighbor territory. I plan to work on defense more. However, even in current state I can eat some number of surrounding bases and I may even match other factions in number of bases but it takes long and I had to put everything into building combat units so this seriously delays my economical development. By the time I an about to eat next faction they become very strong and easily block my advancement. Tayta reported that she can continuously beat them all conquering whole planet, though. I would love to see her SP game progress just out of curiosity.
Nevertheless, it seems that AI grow stronger comparing to previous settings, overall.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 04:33:09 pm
My Sensors are 50% and that was originally your idea, a long time ago. I like them that way just fine. It's a real drill to remove them from enemy installations. It's a real choice to decide where to place them for your own benefit, and to remember to do it. In fact, I may have achieved what you were trying to achieve with your territory bonus. The difference is my method is not magic, you can get rid of the Sensors. In fact the stock binary loves to shell Sensors, which is why you have to be careful about where you place them. Front line Sensors, you're gonna get a warning that someone's shelling you, that's about it. You have to put them behind your cities, for them to be long term effective.
I see no reason for you to be fretting about 25%. You should at least try 15%, equivalent to a PLANET bonus.
The exploit about settling on top of a Sensor, well if the land inside a city got shelled, that would solve that. Or erase all terrain improvements when the city is settled. I don't know the doability.
Yes. Before I introduced territory bonus. I wanted combined protection from them to be about 50%. Which is what you have achieved with your configuration anyway.
I understand there is a drill. I cannot say if I like it or not. It may be interesting but I don't want any drill to become too convoluted to shade the main game course. For that same reason I oppose complex hurry formula to exclude this unnecessary mini game from the scope and many other things of that sort. Beside, the strongest argument against it is that AI does not build them effectively now. It can be taught but it is another hard task comparing to ease of upping territory bonus.
There is nothing magical about them as about any other bonus in the game. Base bonus was increased from 25% to 50% and everybody seems to agree with it. A combined "territory" bonus is stable stays at 50% in all modded variations too, which speaks for its necessity. The only variations are between splitting it between inherent (territory) and buildable/destroyable one (sensor). It's either that or armor should be stronger than weapon instead which nobody seems to like. I am all for sensor bonus as long as we can come up with its sensible lifecycle and rules - not to use it under base, work out the destruction rules, etc. It may be set indestructible or something like that. Anything would do as long as it doesn't seem like an exploit or laughingstock either way.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 04:39:54 pm
And way too much emphasis on useless water, but I don't see a parameter for that. In fact the right exploit for the current nonsense, is probably sea conquest. Ships can get out there and do the damage a lot faster than on land. Watching the Morganite Cultist endgame was pathetic, they just traded empty cities.
I would obviously appreciate anyone finding current AI weaknesses. So far everyone says it lacks defense but this is not yet a definitive one until people can beat it with same strategy on a regular basis.
QuoteWhat if someone captured AI base, will it go out and found new one as now it is one below the cap? Sounds kind of stupid. Need some more economical limitation.
I don't know how the code works. From its description I guessed that it's talking about making new bases, not about whether it's willing to capture bases. This is how I play as a human anyways. I don't spam forever, there's no point. You're going to get a zillion bases in conquest, that you're going to have to put Punishment Spheres on at a minimum.
I mean what if AI stopped to build bases because we set a hard limit on it. Now someone, doesn't matter who - a human or another faction, capture one of AI's bases. Then they can found another one under limit. Allowing them to build another base just because they lost one is stupid rule in my mind.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 05:01:06 pm
ICS was one of the most notorious one everybody tried hard to limit. Yet now when I was able to teach computer do the same, making it no more exclusive human exploit, it doesn't seem to be unconditionally liked. What is going on, guys? Were you hypocritical when you complained about it and demanded this problem to be solved for good?
I think you're making the mistake of thinking that all player demographics and game design goals are created equal. The executive summary is, there's a species of player whose only goal in life is to abuse the Meta.
I do not care what the MP crowd wants. I don't even like some of the people that hang out in the last bastion MP community for SMAC. Our animosities are discoverable in the archives, and have to do with things like ultimate minimaxing and flogging people that this is some kind of moral imperative to play the game this way. I think ICS is completely disgusting, a logical abuse of the game's system. Ultimate minimaxers came up with it and it's gross.
The phenom is not limited to SMAC. The Freeciv crowd came up with minimax dances, Celebration booms, early use of Diplomats as a poor man's Caravan until those were researched. Then Caravan abuse of trade routes to make stupendous profits. So, Miniaturization by 0 A.D, then game over.
Been there done all that, to understand the mentality, and even played some competition games. That's really the only 4X MP I've done. It was ok, it was chummy, the main reason being that the people I played against were not that good. So even though we knew all those things in theory, people weren't able to put them into hardcore practice. I could do things more like my usual play aesthetics and not worry about somebody pulling a mondo minimax trick out of their ass.
MP animosity isn't limited to SMAC. In the Battle for Wesnoth community, the design tensions between single player campaigns and multiplayer arenas were palpable. The latter would always insist on unit ability level-ups being shorter and dumber, because a MP match wouldn't go on long enough for all the leveling up. All they care about is what's "fair" between human opponents, who are going to destroy everything straightaway. Whereas, when you're fighting 25 scenarios in a row in a campaign, and giving the whole thing a RPG-style narrative overlay, you want more scope for what can happen over that time. You don't care what's fair to the computer, that's just your source of resistance for the single player's puzzle solving and narrative benefit.
The endgame is I got run out of that community over issues of showcasing 3rd party campaigns, as the MP crowd had far more power over core development. Career-wise it was not worth it to fork a pile of GPLed code, so that was that. Learned some things about shared authorship and moved on.
I will always design for SP first and there's no contradiction in that for me personally. I would only ever make accommodation to someone's MP sensibilities if they playtested my SP work and identified a cogent problem and it was readily solveable for MP without compromising SP objectives. They get the back seat, that's my party line. SP more important than MP, and I will never budge on that.
Even when I go to make a new game for commercial release, I will never budge on that. The game industry has far too many jerk productions catering to the almighty social media and MP flagellations for in-game skin purchases "to look cool" with your peers, rampant toxicity, racism, and sexism in the player bases, etc. Proper AI has gotten the short end of the production stick for decades. Ideologically AI is what I want, not the MP "oh we'll just fight humans" crap. There's a business case to be made for trying to compete in the marketplace on that basis, because it bypasses toxicity and "gaming as a service" business problems.
The downside / risk being, that monetizing AI R&D is a hard problem. A lot of players seem to think they're "owed" a stellar AI for free, as part of the game when it ships. As you and I both know, this has nothing to do with the production reality of making it possible. Even the lowest hanging fruit easily consumes 2.5 calendar years of development, nevermind any new fancy algorithmic work.
So the big experiment is, are there enough people in the niche of 4X, who would actually pay for a strong AI, that open their wallets where their mouths are? Assuming the AI also respects game design concerns, and doesn't just trounce you with goofy resources, or endless tedium ala sea base spamming. AIs don't get bored pushing stuff around the map, humans do.
I think within "boutique" 4X, it may be possible to get the customers. At the scale of Civ 4X, I don't think it's possible though. I think Civ is popular because by all 3rd party reports I've received, Civ 6 is an easy dumb game. Brains went out the window somewhere along the way. Instead they endeavored to be popular, which probably means "a history toy". This has a lot to do with why the attempted narrative formula of SMAC has never been revisited either. The unwashed masses don't get philosophy and ideology and science fiction and stuff. They get Stone Age to Space Age / Nukes. Everyone's trying to reenact WW II, relive Hiroshima, and possibly start WW III.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 05:25:12 pm
I cannot say if I like it or not. It may be interesting but I don't want any drill to become too convoluted to shade the main game course.
The stock AI already knows the drill of shelling the crap out of Sensor Arrays. That's a strong argument in favor of retaining the play mechanic.
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Beside, the strongest argument against it is that AI does not build them effectively now.
You think the stock AI doesn't build enough Sensor Arrays? I think it builds a sufficient number of them to be annoying, and to have to work for my victories. I don't know if it's easy to convince the AI to build even more of them, but I'd expect it to be the mere increase of a terraforming weight somewhere in the code.
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There is nothing magical about them as about any other bonus in the game.
An unearned bonus is magical. Hitler's home territory is magically dangerous to attack? FFS why? It was actually dangerous because they actually put lots of anti-tank guns with a defense in depth towards the incoming Western Front invaders. Nothing magical happened on the Eastern Front either, the Soviets simply did the vast majority of the dying in WW II.
A Sensor Array is easily destroyed. That makes it non-magical. It's this game's version of a Fortification.
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Base bonus was increased from 25% to 50% and everybody seems to agree with it.
"Everybody" is too strong a word. You didn't ask me, for instance. The magic home territory bonus that nobody can do anything about, it's the most obvious thing to object to. Combat is clearly dialed up way too high for arbitrary defense, when a Scout is defending against a Chaos Gun. It just says that making bases is the only important way to advance a battle line. If I trim the fat from the territory bonus, and find that Scouts are still kicking ass they shouldn't, then I'll look at what other defensive bonuses you've given things.
Code: [Select]
It's either that or armor should be stronger than weapon instead which nobody seems to like. Again, "nobody" is too strong a word and you didn't ask me. It's not a secret that my mod favors early game defense. The combo of Huge maps extending early conquest distance, Clean Reactors available immediately, Synthmetal Garrisons being Tier 1 and not requiring a prototype, Lasers being Tier 2 and requiring a prototype, and prototypes being expensive, makes a Recon Rover rush pretty much impossible. You could probably go pillage but you're not going to be taking enemy AI bases right away. They don't garrison with 1 Scout, they garrison with piles of real armor.
I don't care what the MP crowd wants. MP players probably don't want to play on Huge maps at all. I know what's necessary to make a challenging experience against the stock AI. It needs time to "sink down roots". And I don't mind having some time to myself to twiddle out my roads, railroads, and forests either, because it's not just a MP deathmatch to me. It's a Builder game. I want to make an empire that looks cool, that isn't some ICS eyesore. I want my cities where they're supposed to be, the way that utilizes and covers the land. And I don't want to be kneecapped because the AI got a ridiculous resource boost to spam bases, at a cost I cannot possibly match. Nor would I want to be bored pushing that many bases anyways.
Post by: Nevill on November 03, 2020, 05:28:37 pm
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Thinker main goal was to improve AI and WTP continues on this path as well. I have heard a lot of complaints about some OP exploits humans can do but AI cannot. Teaching them to AI is usually the best way to resolve that problem. However, this is also the most difficult option. In absence of which, we usually resort to limiting such exploits to equalize human vs. computer capabilities. ICS was one of the most notorious one everybody tried hard to limit. Yet now when I was able to teach computer do the same, making it no more exclusive human exploit, it doesn't seem to be unconditionally liked. What is going on, guys? Were you hypocritical when you complained about it and demanded this problem to be solved for good? I have spent quite substantial amount of time and mental efforts on it. Was it for nothing?ICS is a dividing notion. It's a strategy that is widely disliked, yet everyone has to do to stay competitive. Obviously staying competitive is much more of a concern in an MP game.
I am talking from v160 experience where the extra aggressive expansion wasn't toned down, and I had complained it was a bit too much. I would like to amend the statement. Something seems to be wrong with Yang, specifically. All other factions are doing exceptionally well. Research stagnation is a hazard for most AIs, but so far they show no signs of it. And there is no other remedy to it but to work more energy tiles; all the multiplying facilities in the world won't help you if there is nothing to multiply.
Yang, well. He is not doing so hot. He is building scouts and Colony Pods, Colony Pods and scouts. At least he built a single trance plasma garrison in each of his bases so far.
Here, let me show you.
I like what the builder factions (Domai & Miriam) are doing with their empires. They are actually ahead of us humans by quite a margin.
From a pure efficiency standpoint, I like the aspect where AI makes better decisions within the confines of the game mechanics. But I also get how it interferes with the faction personalities and lack of the unique feel if they are taught the most efficient way to play.
Quote
In which way? By number of bases AI can produce total? That sounds too crude. What if someone captured AI base, will it go out and found new one as now it is one below the cap? Sounds kind of stupid. Need some more economical limitation.
The drive to expand could get lower with more bases, and higher with other factors (competitive strength, stagnation, number of game turns).
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 05:40:41 pm
Allowing them to build another base just because they lost one is stupid rule in my mind.
No it isn't. It's a regulation valve. "When this threshold is reached, stop doing this garbage and start doing something that's actually productive and beneficial." In the real world of engineering stuff, you put regulation valves on things. Doesn't matter if you'd rather have a human in charge, making perfect sapient big brain decisions about everything. An AI is a machine. Sometimes the coffee drip maker is set to an aperture hole of a certain size, because that's the drip that will make coffee. The carburetor aperture is a certain size because that's the fluid flow rate that will spin the engine.
Game design, is designing and testing such regulation valves, to see if they work in the real world. That's how you burn up 2.5 years on the iterative design of a SMAC mod, doing nothing but low hanging fruit. It doesn't matter that this is how values are given, what matters is if it's the right value, when hand tuned.
Do you know how much better my gas mileage got when I hand tuned my carburetor with a $20 stupid tool I had to buy? No I didn't like having to buy that stupid tool. But damn if it worked.
And if I paint a painting, I have to decide whether this field of color over here, is going to be a little bit more green or a little bit more blue. There is no basic difference in process. Only in the number of steps I take to achieve a result. It's my judgment which determines whether I've arrived at a result.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 03, 2020, 05:47:31 pm
The drive to expand could get lower with more bases, and higher with other factors (competitive strength, stagnation, number of game turns).
It could be done easy multiple ways. I didn't ask how to limit it. I asked for some economical reason not to do it. Otherwise, we'll just force AI to give up on beneficial expansion while human continues to do it - a setback to vanilla state.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 07:05:29 pm
Otherwise, we'll just force AI to give up on beneficial expansion while human continues to do it - a setback to vanilla state.
What part of current expansion not being beneficial, did you fail to understand? It's obvious that the AI is incompetent at defending sea bases. Only your Territory bonus is holding it up. The Pirates had No Minerals. The Morganites and Cultists were completely incapable of garrisoning anything, they just had empty sea base rockfight exchanges. I didn't invade by sea because sea bases are worthless. Also they are highly vulnerable to mind control, the AI is quite fixated on doing that to sea bases.
I also don't believe any AI empire needs to be larger than 40 bases on a Huge map, to be a threat. That's based on guesswork from previous Thinker games a long time ago. At some point the AI needs to put its productivity into units that can harm other factions, and not new bases. This is why I'm currently testing the new parameter, and not speculating. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the current regime is grossly incompetent, and boring for a human being to mop up.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 07:20:33 pm
expansion_factor=50
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
isolated land |
Sparta Command was settled first, then Ironholm on top of Mt. Planet. The fungal tower on Mt. Planet was there to begin with, but I settled there anyways. I did not end up getting much victimized by mindworms, possibly because my land is isolated from other factions and nobody's been stirring the pot. I only just met Cha Dawn at sea this turn, MY 2165. I asked for 3 other commlinks and so far he hasn't had any.
I scouted and expanded until I learned Recreation Commons. Then I started on those, hoping to gain Completions while doing further scouting. Shortly afterwards I learned Recycling Tanks. I've Completed one of those so far.
I was unable to explore the land south of Sparta Command for quite some time. West and East were the most obviously visible pods and decent looking land, so I went for those first. The middle fungal tower that's southwest of Sparta Command, it came from a popped pod and messed up my connectivity to Mt. Planet. I used to have a road through there. My empire has been expanding in 2 distinct halves, with Assassin's Redoubt the most recently settled city, curving up from underneath the fungal wall.
I'd say this proves that the stock faction placement can stick you in a bit of a fungal maze. However, it also gave me pretty lush land at the same time. I do wonder if the supply pod pops somehow measure the quality of the land, or if it's random chance whether you get dealt an adversarial fungal wall. I got all kinds of great forest popping to the far east, which as you can see, has spread rapidly. Then I got that fungal tower which cut my empire in half.
The smaller patches of trees inside my empire, are ones I planted. I'm trying to undermine the fungus. I have not had time to make Scouts to destroy the fungal towers. Popping supply pods is always a higher priority, as is setting up Completions. I managed to complete a Command Center at Sparta Command on like turn 3. So when it gets done with Recycling Tanks, I suspect its job will be to put out suicidal Scouts that can get rid of those towers.
The open question for faction_placement=0, is whether you can get stuck with a fungal maze and dry scratchy land. I haven't seen that happen yet, and my count is 2 games for 2. I figure my aborted Map of Planet game doesn't count.
The Spartans aren't as affected by mindworms as other factions would be. Mainly I've lost Unity Rovers that went far afield and popped a mindworm from a pod. I haven't lost anyone in my home territory. That's because it was easy to Complete a Command Center, since the Spartans start the game with that capability. I did the same thing with the Data Angels in a previous game. So all of my Scouts are trained + they have a MORALE bonus. Whereas, the Unity Rovers are not trained.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 09:55:20 pm
Code: [Select]
^Prototype units do not cost extra minerals.But this is weird, I also see this entry in spartans.txt:
Code: [Select]
FREEPROTO, 0, Has some alteration been made that's bugged the Spartan's ability? There are a few thinker.ini variables affecting prototypes, but they don't obviously govern this.
Morganic spread |
I looked around for an ally and came up with Morgan. From him I got a couple of techs, but not the Skunkworks I need. Here you can clearly see he's got a huge pile of bases, and doesn't need to be spamming any more to make a tough empire. I checked his city count using F4 and currently he's got 34 cities. Checking his unit production, he's got 2 Colony Pods and 1 Sea Colony Pod in progress. 1 active Sea Colony Pod trying to settle somewhere.
Don't know how it'll go with the Free Drones next door. Currently they have a Treaty.
Morgan is pursing Democratic Free Market Wealth, so at least his SE choices are in character. Hope it helps him.
Cult of Planet- Police State Simple Survival
Domai, Zhakarov - Democratic Planned Survival
Svensgaard - Fundamentalist Free Market Survival
Yang - Police State Simple Survival
I'm nothing. I only have Police State, Democratic, and Planned as choices, and those don't yield good combos.
I have cleared most of the fungal towers from my empire and am approaching the last one. I have not popped any more pods lately, as my ECM Scouts have been busy with the towers. I only have the meager number of cities as shown in my previous screenshot. I managed to get the Human Genome Project done, so I'm really not under any obligation to spread more. I used some Artifacts for that and spent a pretty good wad of cash I'd been saving. I'm now poor and have 3 copies of the Command Nexus underway.
Post by: bvanevery on November 03, 2020, 10:33:29 pm
Pirate empire |
MY 2205. Yang gets uppity with me, and he was at war with Svensgaard, so I have another ally now. I'm so po that he catches me up on some techs and gives me a free one as well. I still can't build a Skunkworks though. I just realized I actually have the tech for it, I'm just not allowed to build a Skunkworks. I'm not supposed to need it, so previous observations about prototype cost, clearly indicate a bug somewhere.
Checking F4, the Pirates have 28 bases. Only 1 is showing No Minerals. So far so good. Checking units, they have 1 active Colony Pod and 1 in production. 5 Sea Colony Pods and 2 Fusion Sea Colony Pods in production. They're not done settling.
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 12:02:15 am
With only a +15% territorial defense bonus, one of the Cultist cities defended by mere Scouts, is getting properly shelled by mere Gun Foils. If I get any weapon prototype done at all, that sea base is gonna die. I'm finally bulldozing through the buggy expense of the prototypes that should be free for me, or documented as not being free, case may be. I thought about starting over, and not playing the Spartans, but I'll see how this game goes for now.
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 01:48:16 am
fusion foil no ability |
ff empath cost 16 |
ff high morale cost 1 |
ff hypnotic trance cost 16 |
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 03:32:44 am
Morganic battle |
MY 2243. My allies the Morganites lose their 1st city to my enemies the Free Drones. Has Morgan produced enough units to actually fight or defend? Nope. Almost his entire empire is Scouts. He's displaying gross incompetence. Using F4 his city count is now 54. 3 active Colony Pods, 2 in production. 1 Rover Colony Pod in production. 5 Sea Colony Pods in production. 1 active Quantum Sea Colony Pod. 1 Fusion Sea Colony Pod in production. This says to me that expansion_factor is still dialed up too high, or that it doesn't work. I will quit this game and dial it down to 25, to see if that helps.
my Spartan extent |
My empire is fine. I'm not in direct contact with anyone. I've got a huge land buffer like last game. I do have a Fusion Foil which is finally killing Scouts in that 1 Cultist sea base. They never made any response, other than to try to regarrison their base with more Scouts, or the occasional artillery piece.
At this distance it is not profitable to make war, so I've been concentrating on building my infrastructure. I went Fundamentalist only as I didn't think other choices were all that good. Democratic might be useful for GROWTH now, but previously I didn't want to lose SUPPORT or have to deal with a PLANET penalty. I made 2 feeble mindworms which are sweeping out some supply pods.
I don't want to play the Spartans again until they can make use of a Skunkworks, or don't need to pay extra for prototypes. As is, they're at a disadvantage for getting prototypes done.
my builderesqueness |
I did manage to get some SPs done, despite the exorbitant cost of some of them. The Planetary Datalinks was surprisingly pricey, but I had cities stuck in a "SP climb" for a long time, continuing to produce a defunct project. Now I know how SP cash cost works, and how valuable Artifacts are for the job. I typically use them to hurry SPs along in my own mod, but in this one, it would cost you 300 cash to get the same benefit.
There doesn't seem to be any point at being good at research, as long as you've got an ally. Morgan supplied me with most of my tech, and Svensgaard some. It takes a long time just to build basic things. I was working on Tree Farms when I quit. I eschewed Genejack Factories, because I wanted growth and not unhappiness. I suppose I could have adjusted my budget to take advantage of the Virtual World network nodes that so many of my cities had. I think I was waiting for a bit more empire spread before bothering. I did not do Hab Complexes.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 03:59:21 am
Has some alteration been made that's bugged the Spartan's ability? There are a few thinker.ini variables affecting prototypes, but they don't obviously govern this.
Thank you for discovering this. It was a pretty hard coded ASM stuff prone to mistake as advertised. 😄
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-183
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 06:28:00 am
expansion_factor=25
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
bountiful isle |
I was given an island. It had some fungus on it, but was also lushly green and has Mt. Planet. Can't complain. That's 3 for 3 with the stock faction placement algorithm giving good land. This supports my theory that it evaluates the quality of the land given, and the alternate algorithm does not.
MY 2190. I am at war with the Caretakers immediately to the south of me, and allied with the Data Angels far away from me. I'm doing the usual Fundamentalist thing as it's clearly a slam dunk as long as you have an ally. It's also easy to get an ally when you're pathetic, as some faction is likely to see you as a sad sack in need of help. This is almost exploit territory, but I don't feel that bad considering how imbalanced and painful most of the SE choices are.
Due to Completions I have a functioning Skunkworks, and I completed some real armed ships. I thought I was going to cream the Caretakers, but surprisingly, they fought back with real ships. The initial clash is a bit of a stalemate, and I'm about to probe.
Most factions can't get access to Non-Lethal Methods units, but I have the Worm Police ability. It is extremely helpful, almost exploit territory. I've got a pathetic indigenous life form in most of my cities, adding to the crowd control.
The Data Angels only have 16 cities. They have 1 active Colony Pod and 1 in production. 1 active Rover Colony Pod and 1 in production. They are mostly building Trance Scouts and Recycling Tanks. They don't appear to have any land neighbors, nor are they at war with anybody. Morgan is visible in the sea to the south, and Roze sold me his comm frequency just before allying with me.
Morgan is in contact with the 3 other factions, but wants an exorbitant 125 credits for the commlinks. Later for that!
my buildership |
I've managed to get some SPs done, using up a bunch of Artifacts. I will also soon complete the Universal Translator. That's not worth spending anything on, because cashing 1 Artifact is a cheaper way to get a tech.
Next year, the Caretakers annoyingly sink my foil probe, and someone calls an election. Deirdre declares war on me. Miriam and Aki Zeta-5 give me Treaties. After some trading, I talk to Miriam again and she allies with me. She likes my godly style.
The Believers have 23 cities. 1 active Colony Pod. 2 active Rover Colony Pods, 2 in production. Their empire is mostly Scouts. They aren't at war with anybody.
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 07:05:18 am
I notice that alphax.txt has:
Code: [Select]
Trance Scout Patrol, Infantry, Gun, Scout, 2, 0, 0, Brain, -1, 00000001000000000000000000Based on my experience with the stock binary, I think it is exceedingly likely that the AI is obsessed with producing this unit. To the point of producing almost nothing else.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on November 04, 2020, 08:16:25 am
Hmm. I see a lot of controversial responses on recent AI changes. Let's review them.I would like to see my SP game progress, too. Haven't had much time to play lately... and what time I do have goes to playing my turns in MP. And next year I expect most of my non-MP time will be spent trying to mod SMAC features into Terra Invicta, when that comes out. (Making my own mods instead of complaining about other peoples', that's right!).
Thinker main goal was to improve AI and WTP continues on this path as well. I have heard a lot of complaints about some OP exploits humans can do but AI cannot. Teaching them to AI is usually the best way to resolve that problem. However, this is also the most difficult option. In absence of which, we usually resort to limiting such exploits to equalize human vs. computer capabilities. ICS was one of the most notorious one everybody tried hard to limit. Yet now when I was able to teach computer do the same, making it no more exclusive human exploit, it doesn't seem to be unconditionally liked. What is going on, guys? Were you hypocritical when you complained about it and demanded this problem to be solved for good? I have spent quite substantial amount of time and mental efforts on it. Was it for nothing?
Let me know if this is the right direction and/or something need to be done with spamming as well, regardless of AI success.
Keep in mind that neither Thinker nor WTP planned to put any limit on AI improvement posing themselves as challenging mod. So the argument that game becomes unbeatable on toughest level, while pretty valid for game attractiveness in general, is not applicable to this mod.
About AI disregarding defense while expanding without limits. That is true. Building more colonies obviously impacts combat units. This allowed me to amass an army and easily cut into neighbor territory. I plan to work on defense more. However, even in current state I can eat some number of surrounding bases and I may even match other factions in number of bases but it takes long and I had to put everything into building combat units so this seriously delays my economical development. By the time I an about to eat next faction they become very strong and easily block my advancement. Tayta reported that she can continuously beat them all conquering whole planet, though. I would love to see her SP game progress just out of curiosity.
Nevertheless, it seems that AI grow stronger comparing to previous settings, overall.
This was about where I got up to when I stopped playing. The short version is I took two bases, Edenists killed a former, and then offered me all their money in exchange for peace. I took the offer because, well, why build military when there are facilities and projects to be built? Those Tree Farms and Genejack Factories and Research Hospitals aren't going to build themselves.
(https://i.imgur.com/AK9YkPW.png)
My assessment is that I could definitely win a conquest victory like this, it would just take a long time and probably become tedious with how many sea bases the AI has. I'd probably settle for taking over their mainlands, then sitting back and building up for the diplomatic victory. This seems to be the outcome you're angling for, but do correct me if I'm wrong.
It's definitely worth repeating that the AI performs a helluva lot better now when it comes to economy and research. The AIs that were able to expand with a gazillion sea bases and enjoy mega commerce with each other are raking in the cash and tech big time. So great job on that.
It may be that the AI performs so well economically now that the player is forced to devote all their resources to keeping up, making war less feasible. That sounds like it was your experience too.
I'm not super opinionated on where the core mod ends up going, since I'd most likely just end up using a modified version for "my" solo games anyway. I do of course appreciate all the new features and configuration options you keep adding. Things like infiltration expiring make it much harder to get complacent now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 12:44:32 pm
Stronger empire means more of everything. Not only energy and research but proportionally more units too. They just seem to sacrifice some current military power for bigger future one. That may be perceived as temporary disadvantage. I am going to work on this.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 04:48:11 pm
Load the save and directly attack the tile with two enemy cruisers, 12-1-6 and 1-12-6. Use a gatling 5-1-6 cruiser for this. Instead of picking the unit with better armor and easily fending off the attack, the game will pick the unarmored one to defend, which will lose immediately.
Also. Pick a free tile in a 2-tile range of a enemy cruiser or artillery. Bombard it. See what happens on successful bombardment.
(a -100% hasty penalty, resulting in the immediate death of your ship, as it expended the moves and can't defend. It is not supposed to happen, I think. If there is supposed to be an artillery duel, then let them duel before the moves are expended)
Found some questionable stuff in code. Now trying to understand how it is supposed to work. See my reddit post.
Post by: Nevill on November 04, 2020, 05:08:02 pm
Well, would you look at the screenshot.
My 2-14-1 arty is bombarding a tile near the believer 10-14-1 arty, yet it is my OWN artillery (30-14-1) that ends up intercepting and initiating the duel.
In particularly egregious cases, the artillery may initiate a duel with ITSELF at -100 Hasty penalty, and lose.
I can offer no opinion about the authors' intention, and the wiki article may have been written to try and explain an existing fact. There are no references to duels over the tiles that contain no units, and tiles with units never get defended in that way even though there is no logical explanation for why arty units should protect empty tiles and not their allies.
...I like the idea, though. But I think the entire concept is born out of a bug.
(Then again, I consider 1-round land/sea duels a result of a bug as well. The wiki reflects what is in the code, not what should have been there.)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 05:30:10 pm
(Then again, I consider 1-round land/sea duels a result of a bug as well. The wiki reflects what is in the code, not what should have been there.)
Or it could be the opposite. At least looking at the code does not give me the clear feeling which branch is a bug.
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 05:32:22 pm
invincible probe team |
Now they've finally sent this wunderkind probe team unit. I've already bombarded it with a Fusion Laser. That didn't make any wound at all, which seems pretty lame to me. I have 8 offense, they have 6 defense, seems like I could have at least done 5% or 10% damage or something. But nope, nada, zip.
The odds on this matchup are crazy bad. We're almost equal, yet I'm given only a 15% chance of victory. Since I don't object to the Territory bonus, I say the Alien Defense bonus is too high. In my mod, I removed both the Alien Offense and Alien Defense bonuses. I didn't want grossly superior aliens like in the stock game. If you want to keep those bonuses, I'd suggest knocking them down to 15%, equivalent to a PLANET bonus. They're pretty much magic excuses and it's dumb.
What bugs me isn't that the Caretakers will liberate their bases with a probe. I'm surprised they didn't attempt that a long time ago.
What bugs me is that they never pay the real cost of captured military units when they do so. These are expensive ships with good armaments on them, and it should be expensive to take them over. Otherwise the whole game becomes about probe team exploits and that's boring. I have rage quit SMAC over the years more times because of this problem than any other. In my mod I doubled the cost of all mind control, which somewhat helps, but it's not an ideal fix. The real problem is the complete lack of accounting of units in and around the base.
I decided to retreat to Harmonic Acolyte and hope I win an artillery duel against my own unit when it is captured. Suiciding against the probe team doesn't seem likely to stop one of my bases from being captured, as even 2 movement is enough to do the job.
spared |
MY 2242. I'm surprised my Fusion Megafoil was not swept up in the probe. In the stock binary it would be toast. If WTP has improved the behavior for this, I'll take it! I think that expensive probe ship must have died too, because I don't see it at any nearby sea base.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 06:01:05 pm
Closing this question for good. I have discovered that destroying improvements (bombarding empty square) explicitly exhausts movement points. Therefore, it seems that it was not a design decision to protect empty squares with enemy artillery.
Post by: Nevill on November 04, 2020, 06:02:27 pm
Or it could be the opposite. At least looking at the code does not give me the clear feeling which branch is a bug.Can you tell us what you see? In layman's terms, so we could at least try to understand the intent.
Right now I see several inconsistencies:
- The artillery duels are initiated over empty tiles only, ones that are "protected" by another artillery. Tiles with units are not protected.
- The duels do not care for the faction of the artillery (and sometimes they don't care if there even is another unit)
- There is no actual duel. AFTER the bombardmebt succeds, the movement point is simply expended and the attacking artillery is subsequently killed as its power is reduced to 0 by the -100% Hasty penalty.
- A bombardment has to succeed for the duel to commence. If the bombardment fails, the duel is not initiated. How do you fail bombarding an empty tile - the success and failure look exactly the same?
What would be a logical example of code?
1) The attacking and defending units could duel only if each is within range of the other, i.e. no more than 2 tiles apart.
2) The duel would only commence if the attacker chooses to bombard a tile within the range of the defender (different from 1, as though the units could be within a 2-tile range of each other, the attacker can choose to fire in the other direction). The battle would play out the same as if the attacker chose to fire directly upon the defender.
3) What is in the tile should have no bearing on whether the duel commences. Neither should the success of the bombardment. If you choose to fire upon a tile within the sphere of influence of another arty, and you yourself are within range to fight, you fight.
4) If there are several artys eligible to protect a tile from bombardment, the one with the highest chances gets picked.
That would turn arty units into some kind of land-based interceptors, able to protect an area in their vicinity from enemy bombardments. Even then their usefulness would be limited, as the area would most likely be bombarded from outside their very, very limited range.
I just can't envision how this mechanic would work or what the point would be.
Edit: NVM, ninja'd.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 06:17:23 pm
The odds on this matchup are crazy bad. We're almost equal, yet I'm given only a 15% chance of victory.
You are not almost equal. They are 50+% stronger.
That is what you get with vanilla combat mechanics. A slightly stronger unit is almost a sure winner. Have you experienced any different in decades of playing??? Why suddenly start complaining about it in the mod play testing that has nothing to do with this mechanics?
Higher randomization in WTP serves the specific purpose of giving more winning chance to weaker unit.
Post by: Nevill on November 04, 2020, 06:23:37 pm
What's up with these ability costs? There's no predictable consistency between abilities that cost 16 and abilities that cost 1.It confused me at first as well. You may have figured it out on your own, but just in case - cost factors 16/32 denote the cost in additional rows, not an added percentage.
Cost x = Base cost + 25% * x
Cost 16*y = Base cost + y mineral rows
Base cost 60 would give cost 80 and 70 for cost factors 1 and 16, respectively.
It's probably done that way because it's hardcoded somewhere.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 06:41:33 pm
Can you tell us what you see? In layman's terms, so we could at least try to understand the intent.
There is a "destroy" function that, apparently, only get called when bombarding empty tile.
There are battle/fight function chain those are called for unit-to-unit combat in all other cases.
The destroy function exhausts unit movement.
After it there is a condition check on global variable that falls into normal unit-unit combat if variable is set.
Variable is NOT set when you start the program.
Variable gets set in different combat scenarios like direct attack.
It never gets cleared! Meaning it corrupts the whole program in memory. Reloading doesn't fix it!
Tiles with units are not protected.
Yep. That is a big mess that directly contradicts the description.
What would be a logical example of code?
1) The attacking and defending units could duel only if each is within range of the other, i.e. no more than 2 tiles apart.
2) The duel would only commence if the attacker chooses to bombard a tile within the range of the defender (different from 1, as though the units could be within a 2-tile range of each other, the attacker can choose to fire in the other direction). The battle would play out the same as if the attacker chose to fire directly upon the defender.
3) What is in the tile should have no bearing on whether the duel commences. Neither should the success of the bombardment. If you choose to fire upon a tile within the sphere of influence of another arty, and you yourself are within range to fight, you fight.
4) If there are several artys eligible to protect a tile from bombardment, the one with the highest chances gets picked.
Yes, I would like the same to work. However, it is sooo messy as you can see already, I don't want even study this code much less touch it. For now, I think the fix for bombarding empty tile is sufficient enough. We can forget about whole artillery interception functionality then.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 06:43:47 pm
What's up with these ability costs? There's no predictable consistency between abilities that cost 16 and abilities that cost 1.It confused me at first as well. You may have figured it out on your own, but just in case - cost factors 16/32 denote the cost in additional rows, not an added percentage.
Cost x = Base cost + 25% * x
Cost 16*y = Base cost + y mineral rows
Base cost 60 would give cost 80 and 70 for cost factors 1 and 16, respectively.
It's probably done that way because it's hardcoded somewhere.
Yes. There is only one field for ability cost and I split it bitwise on two values. This is described somewhere in readme, I believe. I also plan to display more human understandable text in designer as well.
Post by: bvanevery on November 04, 2020, 06:46:06 pm
You are not almost equal. They are 50+% stronger.
Only by lame ass bonuses they shouldn't have. My gun is the same strength as their armor. They're only 1 level of MORALE better than me. Allowing for the Territory bonus, that would only be 25% stronger. Which shouldn't be a 15% chance of winning. Alien Defense is stupid. Plus there's probably probe team MORALE exploiting going on too.
Quote
Have you experienced any different in decades of playing???
Armored probe teams are an area of exploit that I've only become aware of in the past 2 years.
While we're on that subject, why are you letting ships have ECM ? It's an exploit.
Quote
Why suddenly start complaining about it in the mod play testing that has nothing to do with this mechanics?
Because you kept the Alien Offense and Defense bonuses and they're lame.
Quote
Higher randomization in WTP serves the specific purpose of giving more winning chance to weaker unit.
Too bad it's also lame. Janks the player and makes combat a bunch of unpredictable mush. A lot of people don't want to fight a war with Play-Doh. They want to use steel. "My units can't reliably do crap" is a play mechanic in various games, like if you have untrained conscripts, or an army of zombies barely held together by guts and goo. You have to throw sheer overwhelming numbers of things at enemies to get a result. But it's not basically interesting to have to do that for all combat.
Post by: Nevill on November 04, 2020, 06:53:06 pm
Quote
While we're on that subject, why are you letting ships have ECM ? It's an exploit.In what way?
I was wondering for a while if it's possible to make ECM work for ships like it does for land units. Right now the cruisers advantage over the foils is that during a direct attack a cruiser has a chance to disengage, much like a rover against slower infantry. ECM would put an end to that.
However, what sea units would be considered "fast"? Cruisers only?
Disabling it for ships would probably be easier than inventing functionality for it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 04, 2020, 06:55:16 pm
While we're on that subject, why are you letting ships have ECM ? It's an exploit.
Don't remember touching ECM flags. It's allowed for land units only, as you can see.
Comm Jammer, 1, Physic, ECM, 000010111001, +50% vs. fast units
Post by: bvanevery on November 05, 2020, 04:21:10 am
Comm Jammer, 1, Physic, ECM, 000010111001, +50% vs. fast units
Huh. Well now I can't reproduce it. I could swear I had the option to put ECM on a ship at one point, probably a foil, earlier in one of my WTP games. Well I'll just have to watch for it in the future. I wonder if it was some kind of unit design shuffling exploit that I accidentally discovered.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 05, 2020, 05:50:41 am
Step toward returning sensor bonus into the game.
Some more thoughts about future sensor and bonuses development in general
- Sensor confers a small but universal flat and transparent bonus everywhere to all combat types: attack/defense, factions/natives, land/sea.
- Territory bonus is reduced to about sensor bonus or below so sensor contributes significant amount to territory combat as well. Optionally, it can be removed completely.
With above changes sensor bonus complements or replaces territory one. Since AI now build them again, it won't be deprived by that comparing to human. Sensors still can be destroyed but it takes time to wipe them out all, which delays direct base assault and give defender mobilization and counterattack opportunities. So attacker chooses between surprise attack against sensor protected base or improve odds by destroying them first. An acceptable trade-off. Sensors can also be placed quite dense.
Ocean gets earnable extra combat bonus on own territory. Again they can be easily destroyed before base attack by loosing element of surprise. One sensor - one turn of attacker's ship wasted.
I heavily advocate sensor bonus to be equal on attack and defense to encourage active defense and do not coerce defender into passive waiting. I feel like 25% is good enough universal bonus especially with territory bonus reduced.
I also started to believe this bonus should extend on natives as well especially with increased native life in WTP. Indeed, this makes faction internal land safer than outside wilderness. A natural distinction everyone would expect by investing into safety infrastructure. Need to remove their 100% collateral and review their odds against Trance defender in base to not overdo it. This is still debatable change but I started to like it.
Post by: bvanevery on November 05, 2020, 05:53:00 am
final condition |
MY 2270. I'm too bored to continue. What you see here is mainly the work of only 2 ships over a long period of time. There's nothing particularly wrong with my empire. I have tremendous buying power. I can drop cash to finish expensive projects like the Neural Amplifier. But this is all long distance unit pushing, and conquering cities that aren't worth anything. I don't realistically see how or why I'd finish this game. I certainly wouldn't wait around for a Transcend victory, as that would be even more boring than the waiting I've done so far, to make my bigpox empire strong. Destroy everything in a blaze of nuclear armageddon? It seems like the only way you'd actually get rid of all of these cities.
So far I'm not convinced that changing expansion_factor matters. For instance, the Morganites have 52 cities. I think they're just geographically constrained. 5 active Colony Pods, 1 in production. 4 of various types of sea colony pods, 3 in production. It's time to try something drastic, like expansion_factor=1.
I'm also going to try eliminating the Trance Scout predefined unit. The AI's use of them as a "Defensive" unit, looks awfully lot like a stock binary obsession to me.
To me the only real lesson of this game, is the Caretakers were much farther away from me operationally than I thought, and not actually a threat. Just because they're "south of me" doesn't mean they can or will bother me. I could have completely ignored them and spared myself the busywork. Which means I'm just playing the isolated island game, and wondering what to do with myself on that basis?
Post by: bvanevery on November 05, 2020, 06:29:50 am
expansion_factor=1
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
Trance Scout Patrol removed from predefined units.
tough spore launcher |
I thought indigenous life forms were supposed to be weak as crap on turn 1. I didn't think hurrying 1 square would be the death of my Scout. I'll be quitting this game. My immediate landing site is not great. No supply pods, dry and scratchy, and my starting square has fungus next to it. Time to activate the Scenario Editor and see if there was something great and compensating nearby, like the Monsoon Jungle.
underwhelming |
Nope. It's not great land. It's not awful, there are some Rainy bits. It's not a hardcore fungal maze but there are fungal obstructions. I'm on a large east-west continent that's only shared with the Peacekeepers, so this might have been an isolation game. The Caretakers are in the game though, so they could have come to claim part of this land.
I do notice there are no fungal towers immediately near me. Nor are there any near the other faction starts, with the exception of the Morganites, but they're not bottled up by them.
Out of 4 tests of the stock faction placement, this is the worst one I've seen so far. I'm taking it as a sign that I should go to bed. 1:30 AM.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on November 05, 2020, 01:09:14 pm
In Mission Year 2228, one of the AIs finally conquered something.
(https://i.imgur.com/v7VTqlA.png)
The Monoculture seems to have forgotten that it was in a war, as all it had to defend that base were half a dozen scout patrols. And it was still building economic facilities even as the Stewards were breaking down the door with 6-6-1 infantry and artillery. And it's supposed to be a warmonger faction!
Thankfully, it now has an ECM Silksteel defender in production at the HQ. Better late than never...
On a whim, I called up the Edenists and they proposed a pact with me. Even though they're a free Free Market and I'm running Green. In fact, they haven't made a peep about my running Green. I don't think this is a WtP thing, but it's interesting nonetheless. Maybe they just decided I was too strong to fight?
Regardless of their reasons, this means I now have pacts with 5 out of 6 AI factions. I think this is mostly the result of my custom factions' orthogonal SE preferences, which are generally nicer and more compatible with each other's than vanilla's.
Speaking of which, Green is a pretty cool SE once you've built up all your major bases. I'm basically stuck at 7 pop per base for the near future, but the +2 TALENT gives me drone control without having to put energy into Psych, and the +2 PLANET is a big help now that my HQ is at 44 minerals and causing fungal blooms every other turn.
(https://i.imgur.com/iLmJXjY.png)
The AI in general also seems to have experienced a sudden surge of competence in building projects, as the Edenists and Stewards both managed to grab a couple, the former spending some of their huge reserves of energy to hurry some.
(https://i.imgur.com/PeXEe5F.png)
I still got all the good ones, though.
Thanks to the zillions of energy I'm pulling in every turn, I was the first to needlejets. I remember someone (lolada?) observed that they were not as useful in WtP. We'll see about that.
I was unpleasantly surprised to see that air transports got nerfed into expensive trinkets. There goes my plan to unload a dozen shocktroops on an enemy base after I was banned from using APCs. Curses, foiled again!
(https://i.imgur.com/dWoMrVz.png)
You've seen 6 vs 1 going wrong, now get ready for... 12 vs 1.
(https://i.imgur.com/KSBwVfp.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4KUq5aO.png)
Okay yes, the odds were more like 9 vs 2 after the bonuses were factored in. And I did win the battle and go on to take the base. (Protip: Amphibious Pods not required to disembark into empty shore base!) But you have to admit, this does look a little silly.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 05, 2020, 01:33:42 pm
expansion_factor=1
This is Thinker property that gets overridden by my production code. May not have any effect in WTP now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 05, 2020, 01:37:44 pm
I was unpleasantly surprised to see that air transports got nerfed into expensive trinkets. There goes my plan to unload a dozen shocktroops on an enemy base after I was banned from using APCs. Curses, foiled again!
I didn't do anything specifically about them.
Post by: Nevill on November 05, 2020, 09:08:16 pm
Quote
I was unpleasantly surprised to see that air transports got nerfed into expensive trinkets.You might be used to playing with my transports? I increased their capacity because they are remarkedly useless in vanilla.
Speaking of transports... Alpha Centauri Bear, since you are fixing various bugs in the code, did you know the right-click context menu options do not have the same checks in place that most actions normally require? The most infamous of those was the lack of Airdrop check, allowing units to airdrop from anywhere on right-click instead of only from bases with Aerospace Complexes. This was banned in every MP game, and so was one of the first things scient fixed.
I) What he didn't touch were less known bugs:
- Normally you are only allowed to load and unload cargo from air transports in bases and airbases, as evidenced by the text message that appears when you click a unit inside an air transport. (Why, though? Choppers aren't even considered proper air units, and the eplanation for their loss of health is that they are making emergency landings). Right-clicking Action -> Unload Transport lets you bypass that.
- Normally land arty units are not allowed to fire when transported across the sea, and there is a promt to that effect if you try to press "F" while in transit. Right-clicking Action -> Long Range Fire Here lets you bypass that.
What is your opinion on these things? Since there was talk about adding an option to terrain-detonate busters (by copying code from Fungal/Tectonic missiles), I thought this falls under menu functionality.
II) Unrelated to those two things. One of the annoying aspects of SMAC is the lack of group control. There is functionality allowing you to select multiple units in a group... but you can't do anything with them except move them between bases. I was wondering if it would be possible to:
- move a selected group to where the cursor is pointing by adding a right-click menu option "Group Go To Here". It would issue a "Move To Here" order to all units in the group.
- allow group terraforming... somehow? Formers are easily the most numerous and most-often selected group. Can you imagine the tedium of selecting 100 of them and manually ordering every one? Pressing "B" 24 times to drill a borehole? Maybe there is a way to issue groups orders to former teams, aka "Group Terraform Here"? Or select a group of formers and make a terraforming order apply to them all? This might be trickier as normally a terraform command is issued at the tile where the former is standing, and a group can contain units from multiple tiles. Might require some checks or even additional grouping options like "Exclude units not in the same tile" and "Exclune non-terraformers".
III) One of the most disappointing things about AIs is how they use air units. They just move them between bases, very rarely doing anything except take potshots at an occasional former. They never use them to ruin terraforming, and are very conservative about attacking. I noticed two options on the right-click menu: placing units on Alert, and ordering Bombing Runs. Placing air units on alert makes them either wait at the base, patrol inefficiently in a very small radius, or attack occasional unit with no rhyme or reason (a copter attacked a few passing cruisers, but ignored most of anything else). A bombarding run made jets attack a base... sometimes, and copters just move close to it and crash land. And stay crash landed indefinitely... or at least for 10 turns. That's not just weird AI, that's a violation of the rules - choppers are not supposed to have enough fuel to do that. Half the time ordering a bombarding run made units just skip their turns forever.
I am certain that the functionality of these orders is fundamentally and completely broken. I suspect that AI might be issuing those orders to their units, and is strongly affected by the associated bugs.
Can you look into these and at least make a reasonable guess at what they were supposed to be doing?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 05, 2020, 10:50:36 pm
Alpha Centauri Bear
You can call me Bear for shorter typing.
, since you are fixing various bugs in the code, did you know the right-click context menu options do not have the same checks in place that most actions normally require? The most infamous of those was the lack of Airdrop check, allowing units to airdrop from anywhere on right-click instead of only from bases with Aerospace Complexes. This was banned in every MP game, and so was one of the first things scient fixed.
Yea. There is a lot of plain broken stuff there. Fixing everything is a job for Scient's OpenSmacx project. I usually hesitant about complete rewriting beyond few lines here and there for tweaking mostly.
- Normally you are only allowed to load and unload cargo from air transports in bases and airbases, as evidenced by the text message that appears when you click a unit inside an air transport. (Why, though? Choppers aren't even considered proper air units, and the eplanation for their loss of health is that they are making emergency landings). Right-clicking Action -> Unload Transport lets you bypass that.
- Normally land arty units are not allowed to fire when transported across the sea, and there is a promt to that effect if you try to press "F" while in transit. Right-clicking Action -> Long Range Fire Here lets you bypass that.
Added both to TODO list. Will look into them.
Whenever you ask for UI fixes, please also try to make up a case about how much game disrupting they are (you usually do). There are tons of them. So may only spend time on those making serious playability impact.
Big number of them can either be ignored or banned on agreement.
- move a selected group to where the cursor is pointing by adding a right-click menu option "Group Go To Here". It would issue a "Move To Here" order to all units in the group.
- allow group terraforming... somehow? Formers are easily the most numerous and most-often selected group. Can you imagine the tedium of selecting 100 of them and manually ordering every one? Pressing "B" 24 times to drill a borehole? Maybe there is a way to issue groups orders to former teams, aka "Group Terraform Here"? Or select a group of formers and make a terraforming order apply to them all? This might be trickier as normally a terraform command is issued at the tile where the former is standing, and a group can contain units from multiple tiles. Might require some checks or even additional grouping options like "Exclude units not in the same tile" and "Exclune non-terraformers".
Some minimal ugly additions probably could be added but cannot tell now - never modified UI.
For group terraforming something like extend terraforming order on all idle formers in tile.
Same request for playability impact case. Lacking these could be annoying but not to the level people would break their monitors.
III) One of the most disappointing things about AIs is how they use air units. They just move them between bases, very rarely doing anything except take potshots at an occasional former. They never use them to ruin terraforming, and are very conservative about attacking. I noticed two options on the right-click menu: placing units on Alert, and ordering Bombing Runs. Placing air units on alert makes them either wait at the base, patrol inefficiently in a very small radius, or attack occasional unit with no rhyme or reason (a copter attacked a few passing cruisers, but ignored most of anything else). A bombarding run made jets attack a base... sometimes, and copters just move close to it and crash land. And stay crash landed indefinitely... or at least for 10 turns. That's not just weird AI, that's a violation of the rules - choppers are not supposed to have enough fuel to do that. Half the time ordering a bombarding run made units just skip their turns forever.
I am certain that the functionality of these orders is fundamentally and completely broken. I suspect that AI might be issuing those orders to their units, and is strongly affected by the associated bugs.
This is certainly a call for complete override. Not sure if this features are needed to be preserved, though. I believe simpler and better approach is just to let mod code control AI units directly. Which is what Thinker does to extent. May not cover air units yet. There is a lot uncovered stuff there. A lot of work. That is why I called for AI designer but no one responded yet.
😞
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 12:35:18 am
Can you imagine the tedium of selecting 100 of them and manually ordering every one?
Not really. I used to play games with high numbers of Formers pretty routinely, and I don't remember amassing that many. A pile of Formers is used to drive a land bridge and rail to an enemy. Once you've got enough for that job, you don't need more. Otherwise I terraform every square in my empire by hand. There's only so many units I'm going to build for that, and my empire is only going to be so big, and I'm only going to march so many troops around too. There's just sort of a human attention span limit to all of this, and I don't think trying to "level up" with ever vaster numbers of units is really a goal.
1 turn might take a long time. But if a lot gets done in 1 turn, that's ok.
Quote
III) One of the most disappointing things about AIs is how they use air units.
Yeah in the stock binary they kinda suck.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 02:08:49 am
BUG: changelog for 187 says territory bonus was lowered to 25%, but combat_bonus_territory=50 in thinker.ini. Seems to be fixed in 188 though. Not sure where thinker.ini lives in the Git repository. Nor where the faction files are, for that matter.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents. I drew the Hive.
BUG: Hive's IMMUNITY to EFFIC is undocumented in the faction description. This is true of the stock game, but it is still a bug. I have used language such as "EFFIC never goes below zero" and some hand wavy explanation.
Modified the settings:
expansion_factor=1
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=25
Trance Scout Patrol removed from predefined units.
Usurper brawl |
My starting land was fairly fertile. No substantial fungus obstructions, just a few patches. Mt. Planet available. Definitely a good start, absent the Usurper encroachment. They're at war with me. Have a Treaty with the Cyborgs to the north. Gaians started out at war, but a few turns later accepted my Truce. I'm now making Rec Commons because the Hive doesn't get Police State fast enough to be of use. Am building a Skunkworks, on a base that got some Completions so is ready to grow larger.
So, faction_placement=0 is now 3 for 4, better algorithm. Note the lack of fungal towers.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 04:45:46 am
bad odds |
MY 2193. Getting rid of the Trance Scout predefined unit, I may have induced a few better units to be built. The Usurper defense is still overwhelmingly Scouts, but it does at least have 11 ECM Plasma defenders. And it has managed to build one here, at this city I've had to shell forever. I had the deployment drop on the Usurpers a long time ago, but my one Missile ship just didn't have the oomph to punch through. Even a Scout defender would do 50% damage to it, and there's no chance of it denting anything resembling a real unit.
IMO this means that defensive capabilities are dialed up too high. Bases should not have a 50% inherent bonus. That just rewards the AIs for spamming endlessly, creating strongpoints everywhere. Territory is still dialed up too high. If an AI puts down a base, then boom, 50% for base and 25% for territory = 75% bonus to defense. Way too high. That's like instant armored Scout with the free minerals when making a base. How much do you think you'd have to spend to get an equivalent in the field defensive unit? Yep, it makes the colonist the one true pillar of victory.
Gonna knock base and territory both down to 15%, each worth a PLANET bonus. In my mod and the stock game, base is 25% but there's no territory bonus. So 30% total is roughly equal.
While I'm chewing up alphax.txt, a Fanatic Attack bonus of 50% is stupid high. Back to 25% it goes. Generally speaking, 50% bonuses should not be handed out like candy. It's grossly imbalancing.
Oh, and this game pretty much proves that expansion_factor has no effect at all.
Wow, the unit readout says the Cyborgs have produced 79 Trance Formers, with 19 in production. That is clearly an obsession, and indigenous life isn't remotely threatening enough to justify that. That's another predefined unit that must be eliminated. The Gaians also caught this obsession. And the Morganites. Wow.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 06, 2020, 04:54:28 am
Wow, the unit readout says the Cyborgs have produced 79 Trance Formers, with 19 in production. That is clearly an obsession, and indigenous life isn't remotely threatening enough to justify that. That's another predefined unit that must be eliminated. The Gaians also caught this obsession. And the Morganites. Wow.
I have designed it for myself to not design over and over again every game. There is some merit to invest 50% more in production but lose them about twice as rarely. Do you think it's not the case?
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 05:13:44 am
I have designed it for myself to not design over and over again every game.
Never, ever, ever, use predefined units for player convenience. Any predefined unit you make, tells the AI that it's something valuable. Often the AI goes crazy with it. Predefined units are only for teaching the AI what it should and shouldn't make. Playtesting reveals what units the AI will and won't make, and what works in practice and what doesn't. Another major problem with predefined units, is they may be appropriate for earlier in the game and become a total liability later in the game.
Quote
There is some merit to invest 50% more in production but lose them about twice as rarely. Do you think it's not the case?
It is grossly outweighed by an obsession with a unit that is not valuable in the quantity being produced, compared to other production concerns of the empire. You're kneecapping the factions that discover the unit.
A historical example in the stock binary is the Pirates freaking out with armored Transports. I had to ditch that.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 05:33:35 am
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents. I drew the Usurpers.
inferior |
I was given a substantial fungal wall in front of me. At least I could walk through it. The Great Dunes are visible to the west, so I'm guaranteed not to have rainy land nearby. The Usurpers do have -1 PLANET and I wonder if this has anything to do with the kind of start they get. I'm counting this as 3 out of 5 starts good. It remains to be seen if this is as bad as it looks. What if the Monsoon Jungle is nearby and I have no competitors?
The Pirates are right next to me by sea. Well at least interacting with them won't be boring.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 05:43:40 am
8 balled |
This is officially a lousy start, requiring me to be aggressive. Yeah I know I'm the Usurpers, but I didn't choose that. I guess we'll see if wiping out either the Data Angels or the Pirates goes ok. I do have probe team capability already, just need to make some. Along with everything else.
MY 2137. The Data Angels' 1st conversation with me is to threaten. Of course I refuse, and they declare war. Well that certainly simplifies the dynamics. Am I stronger or not?
Meanwhile, the Pirates wanted me to go to war with the Data Angels a few turns ago. I declined, then. They're Seething at me.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 06, 2020, 05:57:15 am
Fix for break treaty - aircraft scramble. And probably for many other hidden ones since treaty break request is moved a lot earlyer.
Off by default. Didn't bother to check all corner cases. I believe it will work but who knows with SMACX.
Please enable and test and let me know if it is safe.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 06:26:09 am
excess colonists |
I don't want to deal with this anymore. The lack of space and the forced fungal maze, totally threw off my colony production. I also ended up with 1 more colonist than expected because I accidentally did a Completion when I was tired, before I had changed the production to something more useful. Although I haven't lost any Colonists yet, it's just super duper annoying and obviously not the correct use of the situation. I don't think I've had a battle this cramped on a Huge map in a long time. So, it's definitely possible to get a lousy start with the stock faction placement. No fungal towers though.
Really irritating is I couldn't get back around to Social Psych, despite my directed research. I didn't go for it earlier because it didn't seem to be needed. Now I need it badly and can't get to it. Plus probe team production for tech theft is taking a long time.
If I had continued, a combo of war and shifting my colonization to the north, might have worked fine. I thought about doing it peacefully with Transports.
1:30 AM. Going to bed.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 02:33:01 pm
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents. I drew the Data Angels. I sure seem to draw them a lot.
[Limit reached]
This is the 2nd turn in a row that the Pirates have been eradicated. How does that happen? I've never seen such a thing before.
My own land has some fungus but is lush. Looks like a decent start. I did not try to go to any heroics with avoiding fungus. I put my first 2 cities right next to fungal clumps.
MY 2106. A spore launcher just showed up to the west of my capitol. Someone is stirring the pot. I need to consider going into combat mode. Don't want a repeat of last game where my front line was a bunch of colonists.
[Limit reached]
MY 2107. OMG! 3 times in a row. What did you break? Ending this game, and no more playtesting until this showstopper is resolved. Gonna go do life productivity stuff. Yeah.
I found the autosaves available, and resaved them with dates on them. Looking at them under the Scenario Editor, it's not clear to me what's going on. I don't see any geographic anomaly. Maybe after they settle their capitol, they're being eradicated by some bug? And it repeats every turn.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 06, 2020, 05:23:29 pm
MY 2107. OMG! 3 times in a row. What did you break? Ending this game, and no more playtesting until this showstopper is resolved. Gonna go do life productivity stuff. Yeah.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-190
Thank you for saves. You stepped on exceptionally sloppy programming vanilla bug when they count only specific predesigned colonies. I don't even understand how this could be done accidentally. Seems like they decided to cut on rare edge case which you discovered.
Made me sick in the stomach.
It seems to be a regular practice everywhere in the code. I recall first unpatched releases just crashed on me all the time. I was lucky to enjoy 100 uninterrupted turns in a single game back then.
Post by: bvanevery on November 06, 2020, 11:14:34 pm
Will install 190 shortly.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 06, 2020, 11:24:11 pm
Yet they failed at this miserably too. The one notorious example is calculating distance between tiles which is used like, err, everywhere. There is no function for this it is hardcoded everywhere. And their formula to calculate coordinate difference is: dx = abs(abs(x2-x1)). At first, I checked why they need second abs thinking maybe I missed something important but no - this is just how it is done. Everywhere. I guess for extra safety. 😂😞
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 12:56:52 am
What if this was expressed for some compiler limitation, some kind of inlining trick or workaround?
Post by: scient on November 07, 2020, 01:34:24 am
My laptop is currently being repaired by Apple, so I'm on my really old MBP that I haven't used in a couple years. On hiatus from working on OpenSMACX for a week until I get it back.
Bear summoned me, so had a quick look at last few posts in thread. Definitely lots of issues with right click vs short cuts. The problem is mainly there isn't unified code for both. There are separate large Console and MapWin class functions that pick up hotkey and other for right click context menus. So if there aren't certain validation checks inside sub-functions, there is inconsistency between them. Definitely area that will need a lot of work.
As for faction elimination, yep that's really dumb code. I can understand having checks if BSC_COLONY_POD or BSC_SEA_ESCAPE_POD are non-zero for player_data.protoIDActive. This would save time versus cycling through all units. However, if both those checks fail it should have logic to look for any other units with pods before eliminating the faction. I'll integrate a fix into OpenSMACX code base. I'm pretty sure I've run into this as well where a faction is eliminated for seemingly no reason. Thanks for the heads up!
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 01:52:36 am
faction_placement=0
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents.
I drew the University. Ugh, this is likely to be a stinking pile of doo. A mere +2 RESEARCH is no kind of advantage against even the inflated performance of stock binary factions, let alone WTP. And for that I get a -2 PROBE penalty. And a kneecapping drone penalty.
[Limit reached]
My start was not that good. Fair amount of fungus, and not particularly good land. Fortunately, some pods popped some resource bonuses that made up for it. Mt. Planet was visible to the southeast, but it turns out Yang was sitting on top of it. He declared war on me.
One of the pods near my capitol burst a spore launcher and a mindworm, surrounding my Scout. The mindworm died attacking the Scout, but it got so badly wounded, that it had to retreat and heal up at the monolith. A 2nd Scout came up to attack the spore launcher, and it died. This left the spore launcher free to shell me without mercy. It trashed both the mine and the forested nutrient I had built at my capitol. That's a lot of turns of early productivity down the drain. It took a long time to get units up to deal with it, because I was in the middle of building a Command Center due to Yang's threat. He also came threatening me by sea, although he didn't actually shell. This close quarters pressure has kept me from getting much in the way of Completions, although I did slip a ship out to the south, which is popping pods.
I think I'm willing to say, that a "surround" pop this early, this close, is pretty grossly unfair. I don't think that happens in the stock binary. It's also worse in WTP, because you can't be sure of offing the offender.
So, this proves that faction_placement=0 can definitely give you a kind of bad start. No fungal towers though. That seems to be the consistently good thing. It remains to be seen whether I make progress against Yang. I do have both the Command Center and the minerals productivity. I will radiate Scouts towards him and see what trouble I can make. Of course it's Yang with Perimeter Defenses, so this might not go so well. I do have probe team capability, but they're pricey and mine are going to die after every mission.
I did manage to Complete a Laser Skimship prototype, so I can send out Recon Rovers when that's appropriate. First I'll sweep with Scouts though.
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 02:16:10 am
I'm buying techs from the Cult of Planet. That's how lame I am, and how useless my +2 RESEARCH is. Network Nodes don't do you any damn good if you can't even get your cities settled. In my mod the University has no PROBE penalty, no extra drones, only suffers half of POLICE penalties, and it's still kinda crap to play with. For a long time I even gave them free Biology Labs to go with the Network Nodes, but something shifted in the AI performance that made that unnecessary.
[Limit reached]
Yang believes in Scout spam just as much as I do. I have my mineral deposits, but he has Mt. Planet and farmland to go with it.
I Completed a Foil Probe Team and infiltrated Yang. Surprisingly, my probe didn't die, so soon I'll steal his map. It seems I just bought the techs that he'd gotten ahead with.
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 06:04:43 am
I don't think anything but an infantry chassis should be able to have ECM. Yes the original game is flawed that way.
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 06:30:11 am
This is an exhausting slog. I really hate this. It's 1:30 AM and I'd much rather have sleep. I haven't been playing continuously, I went and watched a movie and came back to this. The University is like the worst faction ever. It has no value in the game at all. I looked at my capitol's research given all the events that had happened, and it was pathetic, like 3 points. Yeah it had some minerals but so what? I have to steal techs from factions that get it way faster than me, because spamming colonies is the only thing that matters.
I think this game has cured me of any interest in faction_placement=0. It just sucks too hard if you get the wrong close quarters start. I'd rather file a TODO about wiping out fungal towers near the landing sites, because that's what the default placement algorithm seems to do.
And I'm pretty close to dumping all the factions, in favor of my own. Some of these are terrible. Just not different enough from the stock game to overcome what's seriously wrong with them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 07, 2020, 12:12:38 pm
[Limit reached]
I don't think anything but an infantry chassis should be able to have ECM. Yes the original game is flawed that way.
You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 02:43:02 pm
You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.
No I just straight up designed that unit. I was going to take a screenshot of the ability being available in the designer, but for some reason as I was fumbling around I didn't. It'll be easy to do again.
In other news, I think for now, I'll simply refrain from playing factions that I consider to be terrible. That would be the University. My jury's out on the Morganites. But consider that any faction that can learn and use Knowledge, gets a +5 RESEARCH advantage. That pretty much makes the University obsolete. Yeah so they could have another +2 on top of that, big whoop. Free network nodes aren't enough to compensate for the extra drones, which they're going to have to spend on facilities for. It's pretty much like oh yeah Network Node benefit as long as your city is small. Which doesn't mean anything because a Network Node is a multiplier.
It's reminding me of those shoe stores that say "Buy One, Get One 50% Off". Which is a roundabout and obscuring way of saying 25% off, if you buy twice as many shoes as you wanted. Big whoop.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 07, 2020, 05:26:19 pm
You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.
No I just straight up designed that unit. I was going to take a screenshot of the ability being available in the designer, but for some reason as I was fumbling around I didn't. It'll be easy to do again.
Ah. I mixed them up. It is not allowed for sea and air units. Game does not have special ability flag to distinguish by chassis type. So it is allowed for land units any chassis. I don't see inherent problem having this installed on speeder, though. It'll get extra defense against other fast units for price. Analogous and alternative to extra armor. Prevents hovertanks disengagement as well.
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2020, 07:16:51 pm
Analogous and alternative to extra armor.
Then it should probably not be so cheap. Or so effective, take your pick.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 07, 2020, 11:04:56 pm
Analogous and alternative to extra armor.
Then it should probably not be so cheap. Or so effective, take your pick.
For +25% of the cost one can get either +25-50% to regular armor (depending on whether armor is primary or secondary stat) against everybody or +50% to the defense against fast units only which is usually less than half or attackers. How is it OP???
Pricing it at 50% of the cost makes it absolutely inferior to direct armor improvement.
It is the same cost as in vanilla and I don't recall anybody ever called it a golden bullet.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on November 08, 2020, 01:28:18 am
In practice, I expect such a tactic does not dominate for the following reasons:
- In vanilla, Advanced Subatomic Theory (D3) does not lie on the most appealing tech path. There are more important techs to get, like Gene Splicing (B3). And jets are available not long after at E5, coming on the back of other useful tech paths like Gene Splicing -> Synthetic Fossil Fuels and Doctrine: Flexibility. (This might be a bit different in WtP which makes jets available later at C7.)
- Artillery still works regardless of ECM and allows you to reduce the health of the stack anyway. (To test: do artillery rovers have their damage reduced by ECM? That would probably be a bug.)
- If the stack wants to attack a fixed target, that target will probably be defended by... ECM infantry. So neither the offense nor the defense of the stack are affected, and it still cost more to build.
Post by: bvanevery on November 08, 2020, 02:32:31 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents. I drew the Peacekeepers.
[Limit reached]
This is an example of what sucks about Thinker's faction placement, like a number of previous games demonstrating the same thing. No evaluation of land quality is made really. There's no Rainy land, and there's enough fungus to seriously restrict movement and options. Hoping for something better, I tried spreading out. With the eastern Colonist I took a chance popping a pod with it. I'm not sure that's a valid move as far as mindworms counterattacking, I'm hoping they're strong enough to sustain the earliest hits. I got a Unity Rover as a result. When it subsequently popped a pod, it had to attack a mindworm and that's why it's 20% wounded.
The flat river square to the west, was not a safe haven from fungus, as there was another square immediately downriver. I tried moving that and it stirred up a mindworm, an exceedingly common occurrence on river fungus squares for some reason. Oh, and the coast didn't have anywhere fungus free to stop either. So this is how it's going, just being pushed around, and there aren't any resource specials yet to justify settlement. It's not a good start.
[Limit reached]
MY 2110. It was not possible to get Rainy land and be free of fungus. In the west, I did at least settle with only 1 patch that I need to get rid of. On the way there, only 1 square was free of fungus next to it. That's right next to where I started, in the middle, and it wasn't particularly good land.
[Limit reached]
MY 2216. Luck, changed my land composition for the better. The middle is now decent because of forest, in a way it previously was not. But now a 2 mindworm pod pop threatens to ruin it all. I'm filing an Issue on this, as it's not the 1st time I've seen such double threats early on. This is just janking the player. There's a good chance that with 2 hits, I'll die. And if a spore launcher lives through all of this, as in a previous game, it'll destroy any terrain improvement I either fleetingly gained or developed.
[Limit reached]
I did file an Issue, talking about the case of 1 mindworm surviving. Totally forgot to mention the likelihood of both mindworms surviving. If they tear up that new patch of forest I needed, then I'm quitting. And I won't be playing any more test games until that one is fixed somehow. I haven't gone over thinker.ini settings to see if there's some control over mindworm spawning whatever.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 08, 2020, 02:45:45 am
I don't think we need to work on this more. This is the luck element of the game equally favorable to all factions.
I have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.
Post by: bvanevery on November 08, 2020, 03:02:02 am
Whereas, last one is for super seasoned players who can beat game at any starting condition.
I do not agree that this is the purpose of Transcend. I don't think the purpose of Civ II was to survive on an ice floe at the North Pole either.
The purpose of Transcend is to provide a stiff but equitable challenge.
Quote
I don't think we need to work on this more.
There is a point at which I'm willing to cease testing work, or fork the code. I hope I can convince you over time, what early game play quality and balance require. I don't expect you to see this immediately, because every author thinks their work is "their baby". And also, you are distracted by many competing priorities. But if someone of my familiarity with the game and modding ability, is saying these things, you should pay them some heed. It's not like I don't have a lot of test cases of these early Thinker placement phenomena by now.
I am the kind of player who is not interested in playing the "random early janking" game. The effects of early jankings are so magnified, that there becomes little point in continuing.
Quote
This is the luck element of the game equally favorable to all factions.
This is not true because AI factions don't start out with anything remotely like equal footing on Transcend. The discrepancy magnifies problems for the human player, in ways that are not comparable for the AIs. Consider the most basic and obvious one, the colony spawn rate. A human player can never do this, it's an asymmetric "difficulty" setting.
Quote
I have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.
But you also dialed colony spawning up to Eleven. Which means more food is needed to have any hope of keeping up.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 08, 2020, 03:36:02 am
QuoteI don't think we need to work on this more.
There is a point at which I'm willing to cease testing work, or fork the code. I hope I can convince you over time, what early game play quality and balance require. I don't expect you to see this immediately, because every author thinks their work is "their baby". And also, you are distracted by many competing priorities. But if someone of my familiarity with the game and modding ability, is saying these things, you should pay them some heed. It's not like I don't have a lot of test cases of these early Thinker placement phenomena by now.
I am the kind of player who is not interested in playing the "random early janking" game. The effects of early jankings are so magnified, that there becomes little point in continuing.
I do not argue with this as I don't have strong opinion about it. I just stated that I don't see it as overwhelming problem since many people played it for decades and it is probably not the worst thing that happened to them.
I do understand that early luck fluctuations are seriously magnified. Early game natives are weakened for that specific reason. That's why I proposed to weakened them even further - either all of them of just towers. Other than that I don't see any smooth way to do it. Extra colony is too much on highest difficulty.QuoteI have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.
But you also dialed colony spawning up to Eleven. Which means more food is needed to have any hope of keeping up.
Err, man, don't mix things up. One is AI thinking ability improvement another is luck management. Each one may have own problems and solution but I don't see much sense in fixing one with another.
Post by: bvanevery on November 08, 2020, 03:53:54 am
Also, the AI factions play under no pretense of making sure their fledgling civilizations survive. They all spawn, and the human player cannot stamp out all of them as they do so. It's the fish's reproductive strategy, spawning a lot of eggs. Can't eat 'em all. Turns the whole thing into Whack-A-Mole, the penny arcade game where you've got a mallet and must hit moles as they pop up out of holes over and over again. The faction farthest across the map from the player, is guaranteed to be the most difficult to deal with, because logistically the player is least able to intervene in its spamming.
A real AI would play as though it does not wish to lose. That it is an individual empire trying to survive and thrive, not just a collective map threat and filler to harry the human player.
[Limit reached]
MY 2119. Surprisingly, the mindworms did not pillage the forest. However now I'm cut off to the west by a fungal bloom. I would like to see fungal blooms be impossible before some year, or perhaps at some radius from cities up to some year. That's a mountain of fungus now.
[Limit reached]
MY 2124. Yet another act of cutting me off. I'm done with this game, and with playtesting until something changes somewhere. The start conditions of a Thinker faction placement start are too impoverished. The fungal blooms and double mindworms envelopments are contributing too much to the problem.
I mean, really. MY 2124. Too early for this stuff.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 08, 2020, 11:18:08 pm
Bringing this discussion here for clarification.
bvanevery and others properly noted low value of RESEARCH effect. It is not that effect itself is not valuable. It quite is. The problem is that 10% research speed up doesn't give enough edge over other factions due to them stealing and exchanging techs left and right. Of course, if one wants to keep their research to themselves they should protect their bases with probes but investment is too much and diminishes the value of research advantage.
In theory RESEARCH bonus should lead to technology advantage but in practice it leaks to other factions quite intensively.
bvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed. I believe this is too coarse grained and unfair blocking factions like Believers from seeking knowledge forever.
Instead I have proposed a simple multiplier for this effect. Like 2, for start. This will turn RESEARCH bonus table into this.
-5, Labs research slowed by 100%
-4, Labs research slowed by 80%
-3, Labs research slowed by 60%
-2, Labs research slowed by 40%
-1, Labs research slowed by 20%
0, Normal research rate
1, Labs research speeded by 20%
2, Labs research speeded by 40%
3, Labs research speeded by 60%
4, Labs research speeded by 80%
5, Labs research speeded by 100%
Do you like to try it out? Any objections?
Optionally.
If this is not enough we can crank multiplier even higher to 2.5-3.0. This'll create problems with negative ratings but we can set a proportional scale where each step changes speed relatively to previous one, not initial. So with 30% per step we'll end up with this research speed (proportional to base, dropping percents)
-5, 0.3
-4, 0.4
-3, 0.5
-2, 0.6
-1, 0.8
0, 1.0
1, 1.3
2, 1.7
3, 2.2
4, 2.9
5, 3.7
Seems pretty smooth and never hits zero. +5 makes research 3.7 times faster, and -5 is same number slower.
Post by: bvanevery on November 09, 2020, 12:23:37 am
bvanevery and others properly noted low value of RESEARCH effect.
That, I did.
Quote
bvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed.
I did not. I have no idea where you came up with that idea.
Quote
Instead I have proposed a simple multiplier for this effect. Like 2, for start.
5, Labs research speeded by 100%
This does not address the severe discrepancy between the University's +2 RESEARCH and the Knowledge choice's +5 RESEARCH. The point is the University does not currently have any advantage worth mentioning. It's supposed to be the faction that does RESEARCH the best, but it is grossly inferior to any faction choosing Knowledge.
Currently, you are giving away RESEARCH very cheaply to anyone who wants it. Far better than even the University can do.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 01:06:59 am
Quotebvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed.
I did not. I have no idea where you came up with that idea.
Then I misunderstood you completely.
This does not address the severe discrepancy between the University's +2 RESEARCH and the Knowledge choice's +5 RESEARCH. The point is the University does not currently have any advantage worth mentioning. It's supposed to be the faction that does RESEARCH the best, but it is grossly inferior to any faction choosing Knowledge.
Currently, you are giving away RESEARCH very cheaply to anyone who wants it. Far better than even the University can do.
Ah. Now I understand what you are talking about. Don't really know what to do with them. Give them +5 RESEARCH as faction bonus and decrease Knowledge bonus?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 03:34:06 am
Problem statement
University gets +2 RESEARCH at start. Knowledge gives +5 RESEARCH. This is perceived as nullification of University innate bonus.
How it is done in vanilla
Factions have their personalities which includes some relatively small effects (-2 to +2 range). These effects are purposefully small so they can be overridden by SE choices. In other words, faction are not doomed and locked in their initial feature effects. That makes complete sense and is consistently applied across factions in vanilla and, I think, we should stick to it. The range of inherent effect variations should be noticeably smaller than the spectrum of all SE achievable values.
Do we really have a problem?
I don't think so. Even though faction can get much bigger bonus from SE their inherent bonuses do not go anywhere. They still work (positive or negative) and keep their value more or less throughout the game. Hive is 20% more productive than Spartans and this relation doesn't change if they both also pick Planned.
The fact that some factions have crappy inherent bonuses is a different story and subject for faction adjustment.
So to answer your initial issue: I don't think that Knowledge obsoletes University. Knowledge is not a problem here. RESEARCH may be and University may be.
Do we really need Knowledge to give that much RESEARCH?
Don't know. This is an experimental feature. Need to play out and see if it works out. I think with more benefit to each RESEARCH rating this can be safely reduced.
Post by: bvanevery on November 09, 2020, 03:53:39 am
Also in the early game, the University's +20% RESEARCH advantage clearly doesn't matter in the real world, when the human plays the University, on Transcend. The AI is somehow getting massively more advantage than that, under the hood. One might at least expect the University to gain parity with inflated AI research, but that is empirically not the case. The AI factions routinely out-research the supposedly best research faction of the game, in the early game.
Part of this is probably because Network Nodes offer very little benefit until a faction has more bases and the bases are larger. It's not an awesome ability.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 01:31:58 pm
Let's say for simplicity sake that tech cost is always proportional to labs at any stage of the game. It is roughly true since tech cost was specifically adjusted like that. Let also say both factions labs equal to current tech cost so they routinely discover one tech a turn. every five turns University also gets one extra tech due to their inherent bonus. That is a flat addition due to 20% more labs. If both factions gets +50% to labs they will both discover one more tech every two turns. That doesn't change technology race state for them. On top of that University will continue receiving another extra tech every five turns that counts to technology advantage as initially. Nothing changed in regards to advantage.
I don't see how Knowledge makes University worse. They both have their own issues probably. That I don't rule out.
Take the above as MHO and some exercise in math. It has no meaning when we are dealing with player perception of fun. 😁
What do you propose to change?
Post by: bvanevery on November 09, 2020, 02:25:03 pm
Why do yo divide RESEARCH bonuses? What does this ratio tells us?It tells us that the University's rate of research is only 13% better than most other factions choosing Knowledge. This is all the advantage the U. has. Meanwhile those other factions have advantages like higher ECONOMY, higher INDUSTRY, higher MORALE, etc. They're worth more than what the U. has got over them.
Quote
It doesn't matter whether faction discovered twice as more techs than other.
It would if they actually did that! 13% better is obviously not 100% better.
Quote
Let also say both factions labs equal to current tech cost so they routinely discover one tech a turn.
Surely an artifact of Knowledge being cranked up way too high.
Quote
What do you propose to change?
To start with, lower Knowledge. It's too high. Try +3 RESEARCH.
Knowledge then has too many penalties. Get rid of the GROWTH penalty. It doesn't make any sense anyways.
The GROWTH bonus for Power doesn't make any sense either. It's a giveaway. Get rid of it.
Then make University have +3 RESEARCH. Now there's still a reason to be the University.
+60% vs. +30% = 1.6 / 1.3 = 23% relative advantage.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 03:28:57 pm
To start with, lower Knowledge. It's too high. Try +3 RESEARCH.
Knowledge then has too many penalties. Get rid of the GROWTH penalty. It doesn't make any sense anyways.
Then make University have +3 RESEARCH. Now there's still a reason to be the University.
+60% vs. +30% = 1.6 / 1.3 = 23% relative advantage.
Let's try Knowledge change.
Agree about U. too.
The GROWTH bonus for Power doesn't make any sense either. It's a giveaway. Get rid of it.
How did you manage to slip Power into this discussion? Trickster!
It may become too not powerful without it. Especially later in the game when it is discovered when SUPPORT value diminishes. Maybe replace GROWTH with some smaller bonus? If not then maybe increase existing bonuses and/or decrease penalties at least?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 03:53:33 pm
Post by: bvanevery on November 09, 2020, 09:00:17 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 09, 2020, 09:18:55 pm
RESEARCH giving 20% per level may affect factions and SEs. However, it was not that strong effect before and this change, probably, won't affect game balance too drastically. So I didn't do any adjustments right away except returning Believers to their -2 RESEARCH. We shall try it out and see whether we need any adjustments.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-196
This is just out. You may give it a try. Should be compatible with saved game.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 12:12:43 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. I choose the University. Random opponents.
[Limit reached]
My land was lush. Surprisingly, I have not yet seen a single fungal tower. The Changelog didn't say they were removed from the game....
MY 2149. This is the year that contact with everyone else exploded. Previously I was allied with the Gaians. Under the new research regime, I maintained parity with them, but we were clearly equal partners and I didn't have any research advantage over them. Then suddenly they had more techs than I did, and had the temerity to treat me as the po boy in the last round of trading. They gifted me E2 Secrets of the Human Brain and then What A Pleasant Chatted me. I proceeded to buy commlinks until I had everyone's. 3 factions are now at war with me. Although I could call an election, I don't see much reason to bother, as my allies won't win it.
[Limit reached]
This is the empire that is known to be beating me on tech. Maybe it's a temporary blip due to trade leakage, but they certainly kept parity with me, no problem. They have 11 cities to my 6. 7 of theirs are size 1, while only 1 of mine is. 4 of my cities have completed Recycling Tanks, and 2 of theirs have. Their only scientific facility is 1 Biology Lab. In contrast I have Network Nodes everywhere and 1 Biology Lab. I have 1 Command Center I've made very little use of. It's in my capitol, which has been gifted with minerals and nutrients for colony spewing.
My cities have LABS outputs like 3, 5, and 9 in the one case. Theirs are like 1, 2, 3, and 5. It is tempting to conclude that the AI RESEARCH advantage on Transcend is cranked up pretty high somewhere under the hood. We shall see as this game progresses.
The AIs are all remarkably obsessive about not trading C2 Nonlinear Mathematics due to the Universal Translator. This is not a good Secret Project IMO. It would be nice to have because it's relatively cheap by this mod's standards, but it's not absolutely cheap. Spending the production at this early point in the game on merely getting 2 more techs, isn't a good decision. You can do far better just trading for techs or buying them outright. It's always my dead last project. The AIs have traded all sorts of techs that have better Secret Projects attached to them, so it's pretty weird that they fixate on this one. Maybe they should be stingier about other SP techs in general, but one way or another, the discrepancy in AI behavior is irrational.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 10, 2020, 01:17:20 am
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
I may asked before but why do you think they hurt AI? They make them die more than twice as less for 50% price increase which is still almost nothing if you account both cost and support.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 01:27:06 am
Quote
I may asked before but why do you think they hurt AI?
The AI obsesses and builds way too many of them, when it should be building other things of value for defending the empire. They're not a 50% price increase, they're 100% increase, 20 minerals vs. 10 for a normal Scout. They're a one trick pony, they're only useful for defending against mindworms. Against conventional weapons, they're highly vulnerable. You have not been seeing this because your defaults put base and territory defense crazy high. That's how mere Scouts are able to defend against Chaos Guns.
As I have posted before, the AI obsessing about predefined units is a common problem in the stock binary. When the AI does that, you need to remove that predefined unit. It is extremely unlikely that any AI obsession over a predefined unit, will result in good play over the course of a complete game. Even if it helps the AI in the early game, it will cripple it later on when the unit isn't relevant anymore. The AI will still keep chugging it out, and meanwhile all those units represent tons of lost empire productivity.
[Limit reached]
MY 2162. I'm being assaulted by many mindworms. Most were stirred up by others. The Isle was my doing, popping a pod when I finally got out to sea. Mir Lab in the northeast was previously hit by 2 waves of mindworms, the last one 3 at a go.
[Limit reached]
My paltry empire is in danger of economic collapse, with -9 credits/year. All I think I've done is work on the basic things necessary for an empire core. My biggest expense is Recycling Tanks. Unlike in the stock game where they're an asset, in this mod they're a trade of energy for minerals. I'm not real thrilled about this "kind of factory" costing 2 maintenance.
I sell the Command Center I Completed in my capitol for 40 credits, as I'm never able to use it in practice anyways. I've only just stopped making Colony Pods there. Finally going to put a Rec Commons on it. I'll have to Stockpile Energy as cities get done with their stuff. In other games I've probably explored more, gaining more money, so not noticing budget problems. Recycling Tanks has usually been my trigger to stop colonizing and starting going vertical. Well the University can get there fairly fast, and verticality seems like what the University should be doing. Network Nodes are not particularly beneficial when playing horizontally.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 01:45:13 am
2 minerals for 1 energy is terrible. Not a fan.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians are maintaining tech parity with mere spam. They have a breakthrough every 11 turns, and it takes me 13. They don't even bother to defend themselves. Look at the empty bases! Avoiding any mindworms like that is just cheating. My bases have held because I've defended them and lost Formers as sacrifices. I wonder if the AI knows there are no mindworms coming, like it checks and then cheats on defense.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 02:00:50 am
So I need to go vertical for my free Network Nodes to be of benefit. But if I do that, I'm heavily penalized. I think the University's DRONE penalty should be removed. I did it in my mod. The stock game acts like a free Network Node is some huge advantage, but it isn't. It's not worth the extra DRONES that you're going to have to build extra facilities for, to keep everyone happy. Even in the stock game, the Virtual World doesn't solve this problem, it only mitigates it. And the Virtual World is helluh expensive and late to obtain in this mod.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 02:31:03 am
I've had it with this game. I'm quitting. There's no value in playing vertically, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a spam bot like the AI. Maybe the stock game thought you were going to manipulate and tweak your citizens to be Librarians or something, but damned if I'll ever do that either. Citizen tweaking is the worst, a leftover from Civ II.
The mindworm spam has continued.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians don't even try. They just grow. At least they are actually building Trance Plasma Garrisons now for defense, instead of that Trance Scout nonsense.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians have got 2 Biology Labs. That's it. Ok, they did just get elected Governor. I helped them with that, as did everyone else. Guess they were sick of Lal. But they were doing about this well before they were elected Governor too.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 05:22:12 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. I choose the University. Random opponents.
[Limit reached]
I started surrounded by a bunch of fungus, between what is now University Base and Koppernigk Observatory. A mindworm immediately popped from a pod where the energy special is, blocking my way to the north. So I went south. The land otherwise turned out to be rather fertile, and I also triggered various solar collecting specials.
This time, I have played primarily to increase energy, although also spreading for awhile. I tried to set up Completions for Biology Labs rather than Recycling Tanks, on the premise that they're cheaper to maintain and more directly beneficial to the University. I did not try to complete a Command Center, waiting instead until I had some big mineral deposit cities to start making one.
I don't think there's anything better I could have done with this spread, and not be an AI imitating colony spammer. I shouldn't have to do the boring playstyle that the AI does, to make progress in the game. Current testing, I consider to be mainly about rendering a verdict as to whether the game has devolved into a One True Strategy. Where the AI has every advantage, much like how straight Thinker just made the whole thing about Boreholes and Condensers. I consider reducing the game to such a monodimensional exploit, quite boring.
I can't really tell how I'm doing compared to the other factions. I don't have any alliances. I've done a lot of trading with the Data Angels. Maybe I'm ahead of them, but I did have to buy Fusion Power from them.
I brought the Manifold Nexus just barely into my territory, quite some time ago. However it is only now, MY 2171, that I've captured a mindworm. I've had plenty of mindworm combat. The +1 PLANET did help with home territory defense. Farther afield exploring, my units do eventually get killed. They might survive an attack or they might not. I've had some Unity Rovers that got fairly buff in the field, but eventually got killed.
I made sure to explore this game, to pick up plenty of money from pods. I won't run out of money this time, and I have a pretty good idea what's settleable around me.
[Limit reached]
I have 8 Network Nodes, 4 Biology Labs, and I've developed some energy on my land. Despite all these reasonably good moves, my research is not impressive. 1 discovery every 20 years. The Gaians last game did way better than that, every 12 years, with mere spam and 2 Biology Labs. It may be that AI research and/or colony spam are so powerful that there's no point to doing any research, even as the University. Many of my previous games, I've just gone Fundamentalist and had some ally gift me techs nonstop forever. And a fair amount of time stealing stuff.
MY 2172. I just bought 2 techs from the Data Angels.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 06:11:33 am
MY 2186. 1 or 2 years ago, an election was called and we got Roze as our Governor. This year, I allied with the Pirates and got a lot of world map. I can now better see how I'm doing compared to others. My research rate has improved, 1 tech every 7 years. But...
[Limit reached]
Svensgaard is Fundamentalist and getting 1 tech every 4 years. This is absurd, why play this game? Unless "every 4 years" doesn't mean anything, if it really means "4 years until the next tech". I'm unclear on how the newfangled tech progress works. Heck I couldn't remember how the old one worked anyways. But if Svensgaard ends up treating me like the po boy, I'm quitting. I shouldn't be playing second fiddle to the Pirates, let alone a Fundamentalist faction!
[Limit reached]
The Pirates don't have any laboratory infrastructure at all. It's just ocean waves and tidal harnesses. They're making a crapload of money on a Simple economy too, 55 credits/year. I'm making 13. They're paying for one Rec Commons, that's it?? And they pay no maintenance on a Thermocline Transducer? That seems like quite a giveaway, although it doesn't look like it's helping them much yet. TTs in the midgame totally overpowered the Pirate AI in my mod, so I put them solidly into late game.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 06:18:06 am
What's with Roze going Fundamentalist? Her agenda is Democratic. This was supposedly fixed in version 181:
Quote
Configuration option to allow AI deviate from its social priority choice (social_ai_soft_priority). Turned off by default.My thinker.ini is correct:
Code: [Select]
; Manage social engineering priorities.
social_ai=1
; AI may deviate from their SE priority when beneficial
; by default soft_priority=0 - never deviate if this choice is available
social_ai_soft_priority=0No other factions show an agenda error.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 06:30:06 am
The Pirates are now showing a more reasonable 20 years for their next tech. Still seems pretty good for a Fundamentalist faction though.
MY 2194. It's almost 2 AM and I quit out of boredom. Really favoring sleep right now. I completely hate the University's DRONE penalty. I get to size 3, then I have to screw around with sending out more colonists instead of going vertical. It's supremely annoying. I don't want to play the "I get crippled on happiness" game, the University's bonuses aren't that good. Even if I'm possibly staying ahead on tech now... what good is it doing me? I still have to build stuff. I think the whole DRONE thing, like Morgan's Hab Complex at size 4 thing, is a bunch of misguided ideas that these 2 factions were "powerful" because of their bonuses. They aren't.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 10, 2020, 01:09:57 pm
What's with Roze going Fundamentalist? Her agenda is Democratic. This was supposedly fixed in version 181:
Does she has Democratic?
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 03:42:56 pm
Code: [Select]
Politics, Democratic, PROBE
Values, Power, nil
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 10, 2020, 03:59:47 pm
Yes, it's right there in Roze's screenshot I provided. AGENDA: POLITICS, DEMOCRATIC. But she went Fundamentalist. We all know from the original game that she's Democratic, a sort of Lal wannabe. Here are the relevant lines in angels.txt:Code: [Select]Politics, Democratic, PROBE
Values, Power, nil
This is her agenda all right. I am asking did she have Democratic choice available? Did she discover Ethical Calculus.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 04:13:16 pm
This is her agenda all right. I am asking did she have Democratic choice available? Did she discover Ethical Calculus.
I found the autosave. It's now attached. No she did not know Ethical Calculus. Maybe that helps you with your bug tracing. It is still a bug. Her valid political choices are Frontier and Democratic. Right now she should be Frontier.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 05:17:05 pm
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents but included the University to see how the AI would do with it. I drew the Peacekeepers.
[Limit reached]
I started with fungus touching me again, but the prevailing land was lush. A pod popped a bunch of solar arrays which removed some fungus, making a better site for my capitol.
MY 2120. I quit because of another early double mindworm pop. I'm not playing again until this kind of event is delayed until substantially later. I had two units to fight those life forms off with. My Unity Rover, which had all its moves remaining, attacked the spore launcher. It failed. My Scout, which had popped the supply pod on the river square between the 2 life forms, only had 1/3 move remaining. It attacked the weakened spore launcher and failed as well, leaving it barely alive. Now the spore launcher will destroy the Borehole Complex. This is one of the many ways in which this kind of "combo" early on is totally not cool. Finding the Boreholes is valuable, and so is putting all your effort into making your 1st mine or forest patch or whatever. I'm not putting up with the game janking me like this. It's a dealbreaker, it's gotta stop. One indigenous life form is plenty to deal with, early on.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 10, 2020, 05:21:26 pm
This is her agenda all right. I am asking did she have Democratic choice available? Did she discover Ethical Calculus.
I found the autosave. It's now attached. No she did not know Ethical Calculus. Maybe that helps you with your bug tracing. It is still a bug. Her valid political choices are Frontier and Democratic. Right now she should be Frontier.
Oh. Is this how it is in vanilla? I shall correct it then.
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2020, 05:24:54 pm
Oh. Is this how it is in vanilla? I shall correct it then.
I can see that Roze's character and story have just excited the hell out of you, all these years. Yes, this is how she is in vanilla. Rah Rah Expansion Pack. Just not up to the same level as the original 7 factions.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 20, 2020, 06:32:51 pm
Working on OpenXcom mod now. Could be not responsive here.You're working on TFTD, huh? Hats off to you.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8661.0.html
Here is another one for MM6 if anyone is interested.
https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/10/17131
Here also you'll see the thread that (somewhat) inspired me going for my own since the proposed implementation just barely scratched the subject.
https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/10/10887
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 21, 2020, 11:13:49 pm
Post by: scient on November 22, 2020, 12:22:03 am
Here is refreshed scan of installer downloaded off here:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/9d378ac1faa4402dcd1f0e2655ee6f1dc6c645b5d84a953cb9e7fa23a337deca
It looks like you can report false positives via interface:
https://community.webroot.com/got-a-question-10/how-can-i-report-a-false-positive-337336
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2020, 05:35:55 am
MY 2119. I was quite surprised to see a double mindworm event in my own mod. I thought it was some punishment that WTP had cooked up, rather than a stock game behavior. I'm still uncertain about it because I don't remember such things being common. I am playing on an Enormous map this time, whereas usually I play on Huge.
[Limit reached]
MY 2134. Earlier than I remember this sort of thing happening.
[Limit reached]
Another game. MY 2115 on a Huge map.
[Limit reached]
MY 2130. Seems my memory was highly selective.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 22, 2020, 06:22:56 am
1. When the owning faction's bases starve, population is not lost but transferred to a non-starving base.
2. The faction obliterating a base does not count as an atrocity. The population of the obliterated base is redistributed to expand the faction's other bases. Could add a check for the AI when it conquers a base. If perceived as not worth keeping, the AI will sell all base improvements and obliterate. This would add a new approach to the conquest of low value or tactically indefensible bases.
3. If one of the faction's units (or an allied unit) starts within the faction's territory, it gains an extra movement point. Possibly only for ground units. Doesn't make much sense for sea units (fuel caches?) but with the new territory rules, would certainly be helpful. Air units move far enough that it wouldn't make much difference. Alternately, could simply double the effectiveness of roads within the faction's territory, though this would give some vulnerability to invading enemies.
I like the idea of all three together.
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2020, 07:18:28 am
The game would change some if killing a colonist was an atrocity.
I don't think anything good can come of giving units extra movement points. Too easily abused.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 22, 2020, 03:58:01 pm
The doubling road movement within territory is a step on the way to magtubes more than anything else.
Infiltration expiring after a time is probably for the better but it weakens the Planetary Datalinks, already one of the weakest projects. In single player, you're more advanced than everyone else by the time you build it. In multiplayer, the other factions deliberately stop trading to keep tech from falling into your hands. Infiltration expiring only makes this weaker. Would be for the better if the Planetary Datalinks also worked for techs already held by 3+ infiltrated factions, rather than only those which are discovered later. If you're already behind, you catch. Regarding the infiltration problem, three possible solutions:
(1) At the start of each turn, the project gives a 1/10th chance of infiltrating one random faction. (The Planetary Datalinks has discovered a bug in the Spartan Datanet. We have placed an infiltrator.)
(2) If you possess the Planetary Datalinks, your infiltration does not expire.
(3) Could just set the price very low in the alphax and accept it as a trash SP that you'd really only want if you already have the Empath Guild.
By the way, does Empath Guild infiltration expire?
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2020, 05:00:31 pm
No. In this scenario, you use the PTS to forcibly relocate the population to other bases. Not starve them.
You made a new base where 3 citizens can't eat. Sounds like starvation to me.
I did not read your obliteration idea 2. as being dependent upon the PTS. I thought it was an independent comment. Making it depend on the PTS, sounds like pretty funky complicated rules. If you have the multiplayer bias, perhaps you don't care, but the AI doesn't understand such a thing right now. "If the opponent has the PTS, with its funky rules, then I...?" Or if I have the PTS, then I...?
Quote
The doubling road movement within territory is a step on the way to magtubes more than anything else.
I'm opposed to magic hand wavy capabilities for home territory. Although there might be some possibilities of legitimate modeling of real world phenomena, like the Viet Cong being supported by friendly villages, that should have some pretty specific modeling of the forces and material movements involved. A blanket "Hey the Reich always fights better, it's the Fatherland" is completely silly. Enemies in war get their asses handed to them all the time. That's pretty much what makes it war. Nobody would do war if there was some magic advantage "it's my side, I win" like it's a game of tag.
Quote
In single player, you're more advanced than everyone else by the time you build it.
Not in my mod. It's a Tier 3 Secret Project, same as many others, and costing my standard 300 minerals for an early project. WTP makes most SPs very painful to finish, and this has consequences.
Quote
By the way, does Empath Guild infiltration expire?
That would be irrational / a bug. Mods have also priced the E.G. as vastly more expensive than in the stock game. You get what you pay for.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 22, 2020, 08:59:30 pm
ACB has already tinkered with the default rules because he finds them unsatisfactory.
I don't know whether the implementation of my suggested rules would be complicated. We know the game already ranks bases, because it shows lists of best bases in the datalinks.
It's hardly a magic hand wave to suggest that the Planetary Transit System affect transit.
I'm not suggesting what the Empath Guild should do. I'm asking what it already does.
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2020, 10:24:51 pm
I don't consider the PTS as is to be a worthwhile SP either. Smallpox is anathema to me, and that's probably the only circumstance where the PTS is a benefit.
PTS lowering the cost to build roads, or rails, or making rails available earlier, might be more thematically appropriate. Thing is, rails are available plenty early in my mod anyways, so that's not a big whoop.
In stock, the Empath Guild's infiltration benefit is permanent. I would expect it to be so in WTP, but I have not verified it. If it does not, I say that's a bug.
Post by: MercantileInterest on November 23, 2020, 05:21:14 am
In the readme, you mention issues with crawlers. Other than project exploits, what do you have in mind?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 23, 2020, 02:16:50 pm
You took crawlers out of the alphax. I had mistakenly thought you left them in but done some exe wizardy so that they could only crawl and not be used for projects.
In the readme, you mention issues with crawlers. Other than project exploits, what do you have in mind?
Here.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg126485#msg126485
Check all the posts that lead to this conclusion. Keep in mind this is not my sole authoritative decision but rather weighted feedback average. Feel free to continue this discussion if you like. I'm open to move either way, as always.
Post by: bvanevery on November 23, 2020, 07:10:56 pm
It wasn't in my personal play style repertoire and not something I particularly enjoy. I've done my worlds full of densely packed boreholes. I've done my super capitols with a gazillion crawlers feeding it energy. They're abusive and not that entertaining to do over and over again. They're a form of grinding, so I don't do them. I tend to do "forest and forget" because of that key word, forget. You plant some trees at the beginning, mostly your job is soon done. Doesn't put Planet thousands of meters underwater.
So, once I understood how some players and Induktio's AI would do things, I changed my mod to thwart it. I didn't banish any of these tactics, but I substantially delayed them until the late game. If you want to win that way, you can, but there are a number of other ways to win. I deprived these tactics of their status as the One True Way to win the game. I didn't want to be forced to slavishly imitate such tactics in order to keep up.
I also doubled the amount of time it takes to build these things, to slow down the hit parade. And supply crawlers are more expensive. That doesn't affect Secret Project goosing much, as you're just working with bigger denominations of minerals. But it does penalize energy and minerals harvesting, which is very much my intent. It shouldn't be quite such a gravy train.
Supply crawlers pose a real problem for game balance. The stock game is in no way balanced with them, they are easily exploited. Any mod worth its salt IMO, needs to do something about supply crawlers. Banning them entirely, is a reasonable decision in my view, because they're that bad. I took a more nuanced approach, but it doesn't trouble me at all, to see them gone.
I might suggest reusing the art assets for something though. A binary mod, probably does make that possible somehow.
In my own mod, I banned choppers, with the exception of my 1 Unity Lifter unit. I somewhat miss having chopper artwork flailing around. However it's not worth the dire consequences to the game mechanics, of having the chopper chassis available. My mod targets the stock binary only, no binary modding, so banning was the only reasonable option. I did try choppers with few movement points, but they're so boring that I never build them. They're especially useless on Huge maps, so I just said, time to get rid of them completely.
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2020, 05:44:49 am
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the Cyborgs.
[Limit reached]
My starting location was reasonably lush, and I popped a minerals bonus immediately. That made it a no brainer as to where to put my capitol. However it was not obvious which way to go with the 2nd colonist as I had a lot of fungus around. It was clearer than shown in the screenshot. Up north, I explored the river system with my Colonist, but all I saw was dry scratchy land. I used the roads I had created with my Formers to turn to the southeast. I had a viable settlement spot, right where my Colonist currently is. But in MY 2110 I popped 2 pods and got 2 fungal blooms, cutting me off to the northwest and southeast.
It's obnoxious. If it proves to be a problem, I will file an issue about it, even if the issue is difficult to find a solution for.
[Limit reached]
I cut a hole in the fungus to rejoin my cities. So far the fungal barriers haven't proven to be a dealbreaker, but they did have the effect of delaying my 2nd settlement quite a bit. Consequently, MY 2123 is too soon to be being whacked by double mindworms of normal deadliness. I saved the game and looked at the odds calculator. It said I had a 74% chance to win, but based on previous experience with these events, I didn't believe it at all. Sure enough, I died. On a 2nd run I did kill the 1st worm, but took 90% wounds, so the 2nd worm will surely wipe me. And of course it has spawned right next to the Mine that I painstakingly built on my 1st mineral special.
I edited thinker.ini:
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
Then I did Start New Game and loaded my saved game. I don't think it picked up the new setting. I was given the same odds of success. I had a couple of times where I killed the 1st worm and only took 40% wounds, so at first I was encouraged. But then I went through a lot of summary deaths, as before. It doesn't seem to be any easier, so I will start a completely new game. I am supposing that the setting gets baked at the start of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2020, 06:59:07 am
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the Spartans.
[Limit reached]
MY 2119 and I still haven't settled my 2nd city. Could not find anywhere that wasn't touched by fungus, very poor soil, and no resource specials. I only popped the 2 Monoliths in the past 2 turns. If the north turns out to be a paradise, well the joke's on me. I only had enough units to explore what I did, and the fungal walls will force you to keep going certain directions.
When considering when to make the mindworms full force, the dynamic range of the badness of these starts needs to be considered. I'm still suffering here.
The Data Angels came through with their probe team. I sent them home. The land was even drier than it is now. They seem to have touched off a river or an earthquake somewhere.
[Limit reached]
MY 2123. Got my 1st double mindworm pop. We should be still in the half strength period. How is this going to go? My Scout is Disciplined. I saved the game so that I can run this a few times to see what happens. 1st time, survived the 1st worm just barely, 2nd worm wiped me and hardly took a scratch. I don't think that counts as "toned down" mindworms. 2nd time, 1st worm killed me. 3rd time, 1 mindworm lives with 30% wounds. 4th time, same thing. 5th time, 1 mindworm lives with 20% wounds. 6th time, both mindworms live. That's enough runs.
I conclude that double mindworms are way too strong for this to be meaningfully easier. These just don't seem to be "half strength" mindworms. I'm not convinced that the new code in version 197 does what it's supposed to. Maybe the year change is being ignored?
[Limit reached]
I decided to continue the game out of morbid curiosity for how bad this will get. For my trouble I was rewarded with a fungal bloom next to my capitol. Now the fungal maze is pretty much completely closed around me.
This is actually a good test of supposed "half strength". I have 2 Green Scouts facing a somewhat maturing fungal tower. I have been unable to Complete any Command Centers despite having popped a fair number of pods, so this is as trained as they were going to get. It's a better case than average because I'm the Spartans.
[Limit reached]
The odds are terrible. I don't even try. I don't think "half strength" is happening with fungal towers either. It's only MY 2125.
[Limit reached]
MY 2165. A big fungal maze forces one to walk a long distance in order to settle stuff. That also gives enemies a lot of chances to home in on you. I lost a Scout wounding a Spore Launcher almost to death. I had a 2nd Scout escorting my Colonist, so I thought I'd finish the almost dead thing off as I settled my city.
Then a Mindworm came up to join it. I retreated and realized I'd be walking all the way back the way I came. That's been pretty much the theme of this whole game. Mazes stretch you out, I suppose. Felt far too fatigued and bored to put up with this anymore, even if it may be a viable game in some sense. It's a tedious tooth pulling game, that's for sure. Looked at the clock and it's 3 AM, so not surprised as that's usually when I get in touch with my real feelings about how something is going. Sleep is better.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 26, 2020, 01:55:26 pm
Yep. Removed the bonus but not display. Fixed in 198.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 26, 2020, 02:42:18 pm
[Limit reached]
The odds are terrible. I don't even try. I don't think "half strength" is happening with fungal towers either. It's only MY 2125.
Just a reminder that this is a result of vanilla multi round combat computation which turns 0.875 / 1.25 = 0.7 round odds into 0.28 battle odds (22% winning chance). WTP combat loss divider parameter smoothens it out a little. For example, with its value of 2 it would turns this combat odds into 0.5 (33% winning chance). Using one or another is a matter of preference, as usual.
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2020, 07:15:19 pm
;uno
(closest holiday)
New game with version 198.
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the Caretakers.
[Limit reached]
Early spread was fairly easy because it's the Caretakers. With more starting cities, they have more Scouts to push around. Factions that start with a PLANET bonus, are also scripted to have their 1st mindworm and spore launcher captures automatically successful. 1st Isle capture is also frequently successful. It's not really a good test of early spread issues.
I popped a forest on the nutrient special next to what became Consonance. That's the city I'm using to generate Colonists. Since I had a readymade forest mineral at Star Harmony, I took the unusual step of going for the Weather Paradigm early. Since I can direct my research, I beelined for the Merchant Exchange so that I can get a cheaper project done fast. In another 21 turns I'll have it, assuming I don't amass money, which I probably will from pod pops.
I also decided to use coastal cities to make Foil Probe Teams instead of the usual stuff. Another tactic driven by directed research. I haven't found anyone else yet though.
[Limit reached]
MY 2128. The odds calculator does verify a half strength Isle now. However, I really don't believe the odds. What claims like "96% chance of success" really mean, in many psi combats I've had in many games, is that I'm going to lose. And just barely. The pattern is so common that there's just no reason for me to believe the calculator. I don't think it's selective observation. Now that I've got "pause after every battle" turned on, I may be able to provide some rigor, to this empirical belief of mine that the odds calculator is flat out wrong. If I really had a 4% chance of failure and just got unlucky this time, I should be having lots and lots of battles that I win, with only the occasional hiccup. Whereas my "muscle memory" for these psi combats is exactly the opposite. I almost always lose, and just barely.
[Limit reached]
MY 2129. This is supposedly my last turn of half strength mindworms. It's an opportunity to test the odds. However I don't really need to fight, because my mindworm can kill the "back door" and give the Rover a route of escape. Still I will save the game, and repeatedly see what can be done.
Not much need to do many runs. Even the Hardened Unity Rover alone, can defeat 3 mindworm larvae. Aside from the higher MORALE, the Caretakers also have the +25% Alien Defense and +15% PLANET bonuses working in its favor. I don't think this is a valid test. Since it's so lopsided, I'm going to start over with another faction, even though this game is going fine. It's more important to find out what most factions experience, not a PLANET friendly faction.
I will reiterate my opinion that the magic Alien Defense and Alien Offense bonuses are lame. It's not compatible with a world view of making them equivalent to 'normal' factions. I modded those bonuses out eons ago.
Post by: bvanevery on November 27, 2020, 04:50:16 am
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the University.
[Limit reached]
I started in a deep maze of fungus just north of the Garland Crater. I did get an early mineral, but no food. The Crater is currently useless because only 1 of its central squares is free of fungus. I began planting forests around my capitol immediately, and now 29 years later, the situation is starting to improve. I did eliminate a budding fungal tower northwest of my capitol, so the easy mindworms was working then.
I found I was on a sort of island, barely attached to another land mass. It took me pretty much forever / the worst case / last place I looked, to find that land attachment. The island was smaller and quite dry to start with, but an earthquake raised land to the east and improved the raininess. Monoliths came rather late as I pushed my many Scouts around. I was unable to Complete any Command Center, despite much trying. Tech progress has been very slow as I've only had 2 cities this whole time.
MY 2130. I'm only just about to establish my 3rd city next turn. Most of my Scouts have walked to the land mass to the south. Easy mindworm combat has expired this year, so I don't think I'll take out that fungal tower to the south. There might be a lot of pods to pop. I've also discovered that the Monsoon Jungle is on this land mass. Hope it's vacant. I think I got a fungal pop starting to explore it. It'll be awhile before I can get to it and it's useful.
On the positive side, mindworms have not been trashing me. I must be pretty isolated from other factions. In the stock binary, I would call this a weird start, but not necessarily a bad start. The power graph shows me as last place, but without anyone to interfere with me, I might be able to colonize all this land and do just fine. The question will be whether the WTP colonization spam closes in on me before that can happen.
[LATER] I quit at 2 AM. MY 2201. The Monsoon Jungle was too far away to be of any use. In WTP, its food value isn't that superior compared to rainy land anyways. I exceeded my EFFIC rating long before I'd even settled my island. I only managed 1 infiltration, and even the Caretakers seemed to be ahead of me. That's not a good feeling as the University. I think my hugely delayed start, isn't a fair test of them, so it's not really worth continuing the game.
I am reminded that the University suffers a drone every 4 citizens. I question whether that's fair for them in WTP, as they cannot get the Virtual World easily to compensate.
Post by: bvanevery on November 28, 2020, 05:22:16 am
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the Cyborgs.
I had a nearly fungus free start. I did not have any early mindworm hassles at all. Consequently this game hasn't been any kind of test of early game issues.
[Limit reached]
MY 2210. The Caretakers and I are in neighborly war. They stupidly send multiple unarmored infantry probe team units to their deaths. This is a bad unit design, and like the others I've listed above, should be removed from alphax.txt. Units should never be designed for the convenience of players, ever. They should only be designed for the benefit of the AI. The AI simply can't use an unarmored movement 1 probe team intelligently. It will try to use them on offense, and they will get killed. The only time they are valid on offense is when they're riding mag tube networks, and I haven't even seen WTP build a mag tube yet. Armored movement 1 probe teams can work if the armor is tough enough. Unarmored movement 2 probe teams can work in some circumstances, but the stock AI has a bad habit of sending big stacks of those to their doom. That's why I don't define unarmored probe teams at all in my mod. The player has to figure out those designs for themself.
The other predefined AI units I've removed, are because the AI makes an unhealthy obsession of them. If you tell the AI that a Trance Scout is "good for defense", it will build those almost to the exclusion of anything else. On that scale of obsession, it is a massive waste of productivity. They only hold up to mindworms, they cost 2x what a regular Scout costs, and obviously I'm going to attack with something that will plow right through them.
[Limit reached]
MY 2240. 2:30 AM. This is the point at which I quit. This war with the Caretakers has been like watching paint dry. They are not effective, but bringing up my units without mag tubes takes forever. I resisted building Genejack Factories for fear of environmental damage and unhappiness, so my unit output has been so-so. They have all these silly defense bonuses and I'm quite convinced they have to go. Earlier I was Green, but it took a sheer pile of captured mindworms to do any damage. Eventually they all died and I went Planned. That actually proved to be somewhat a mistake for my empire stability. It's just all a dead bore, and made more remarkable by the Caretakers' utter inability to take advantage of my own weaknesses. I think the AI must be horribly confused by all its city spam.
Activating the Scenario Editor, the Caretakers have 54 cities. 24 have Pressure Domes, so presumably sea bases. They have 88 Scout Patrols, which at this stage of the game seems rather obsessive and unproductive. The Scout Patrol entry hasn't been changed in alphax.txt though, so perhaps the AI just believes that a Scout is defensively a good deal. 13 ECM Silksteel Garrisons, 11 ECM Plasma Garrisons, 7 ECM Gatling Squads. It's not really defending or fighting.
The force distributions of the other factions look reasonable. No particular obsessions.
Nobody else really made it into direct conflict with me. The Believers are on the other side of the Caretakers and finally moving in force against them. I had may allies earlier in the game, some of whom fell by the wayside because I wouldn't do their wars. The Cult of Planet is offshore but hadn't gone hostile when I quit.
Post by: bvanevery on November 28, 2020, 08:40:12 am
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=10
10, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, Trance Sea Formers, and Infantry Probe Team removed from predefined units.
Caretakers: DEFENSE, 110
Usurpers: OFFENSE, 110
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the Caretakers. I expect early mindworms will be no challenge at all.
I started on an island, but an earthquake joined me to a larger island to the west. So far no neighbors.
[Limit reached]
MY 2127. Somehow I've had no mindworm interactions before now. None of them popped up on river fungus squares, and I haven't been crossing fungus much at all. Just been focused on popping pods. In WTP I'm not that excited about capturing mindworms, as somehow I don't seem to get as many, nor do they last as long. Maybe healing in field takes longer too. It just doesn't add up to the classic mindworm steamroller, whatever's going on.
I survived the 2 mindworm hits and then captured the spore launcher, per the standard scripted automatic success for a PLANET friendly faction. Meanwhile a Transport at sea has survived 2 Isle hits with only 20% damage.
MY 2186. 6:30 AM. I quit because I wasn't happy with my colonizing. Whenever I start building Rec Commons everywhere, I tend to just stop. The delays for getting anything built are rather long. I hadn't finished filling out my original territory. A 2nd earthquake attached me to the mainland. I accumulated enough Artifacts to complete the Merchant Exchange. It makes me think I could afford another early Secret Project and I'm underutilizing my capabilities.
The Gaians have 24 cities, 15 of which are sea bases. They have built 56 Scouts. This seems excessive, especially since they've only lost 7. They build 2 or even 3 Scouts per base, running out of SUPPORT. They're Democratic so -2 SUPPORT is a problem for them.
Post by: bvanevery on November 28, 2020, 08:21:58 pm
aliens_fight_half_strength_unit_turn=30
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=10
10, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25, ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, Trance Sea Formers, and Infantry Probe Team removed from predefined units.
Caretakers: DEFENSE, 110
Usurpers: OFFENSE, 110
Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings. Random opponents. I drew the University.
[Limit reached]
I quit in MY 2164. 3 PM and I'm really dragging from lack of sleep last night. I think I won't be doing any more testing for awhile.
Had a mediocre start with not really any good land where I landed. I walked east and west, founding University Base and Zvedny Gorodok. I used pod popping to do Completions, and I studiously avoided making any Rec Commons unless I'd amassed something important, like a Command Center. I had quite a bit of fungus in my way, I was on pinched land, and the Cultists exerted pressure on me from the north. Pretty much every faction I met, hated me and declared war on me.
The final straw was Planetary Archives getting trashed by wild mindworms, that surely someone else stirred up. I even had 3 ECM Scouts to fight them off, and a Sensor Array, and a Battle Ogre waiting outside the city to help with problems. Well they went through me like I'm butter anyways, and my Ogre was blindsided by an unseen pre-boil mindworm. I had to sell off a Biology Lab. I lost all the production on my nearly completed Recycling Tank, as changing it to a military unit, didn't allow it to complete before the barely alive remaining mindworm trashed my base. The only thing I can say is I held onto the base. It was otherwise a wipeout, a totally one sided engagement.
This game demonstrates that despite factions being positioned far apart, PLANET positive factions can be an enormous threat to non-PLANET factions that are restricted by fungal mazes. It was a viable game, but irritating all around. Getting trashed and not being able to do much, isn't fun.
I'm also not convinced that the University has any advantages compared to its disadvantages. Totally vulnerable to probe, and a drone every 4 citizens with no possibility of the Virtual World alleviating it, hardly seems worth it to get a modest boost in RESEARCH. The AI on Transcend seems to do quite well on its RESEARCH anyways, it's not like the University actually gains an advantage. Usually feels more like under parity.
Time to file some "definitely needs fixing" issues and beg off for awhile.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 24, 2020, 03:55:13 am
Post by: bvanevery on December 24, 2020, 05:11:53 am
Post by: MercantileInterest on December 24, 2020, 06:54:25 pm
On that note, have you fixed the probe bug? The AI always detects probe incursions. Nerve stapling is bugged too. Sometimes, you get a message saying the drones have become immune but if you mash the button a few times, you can successfully staple the drones.
Resource mechanic would be tricky. Would have to tie specific resources with specific components in the design workshop and/or with specific facilities. The resources would all/or mostly have to be actual minerals like aluminum or silicon, since this isn't light sci-fi (PSI aside).
Would very much enjoy actual mountains but that would require a graphic update, differing depending on whether the mountain range was confined to one tile or expanded over several.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 24, 2020, 08:23:51 pm
On that note, have you fixed the probe bug? The AI always detects probe incursions.
What's that?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 24, 2020, 08:28:34 pm
Post by: Tayta Malikai on January 08, 2021, 02:46:50 am
A group of us are currently playing a multiplayer PBEM game using MercantileInterest's modification of Will to Power v160. I in particular have benefited from a very curious bug. On two occasions, I have researched techs well in advance of the expected date: first in 2157, and again in 2163. Both were level 4 techs and had 10 turns to go.
I am very certain that I did not use the wrong .exe or make any changes to the game files.
We were hoping you might be able to inspect the save files for us and let us know what seems to be amiss.
Save files are attached here. The relevant mod files can be found in this thread (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17429.45).
(click to show/hide)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2021, 05:16:35 am
However, I'd like to understand what am I looking for first. What are these techs?
What do you mean by "well in advance" bug? Did it become available without necessary prerequisites? Was it researched too fast comparing to other level 4 techs?
Post by: Tayta Malikai on January 08, 2021, 05:46:53 am
The first was Static Energy Storage (D4). In 2155, I had 482/989 labs and 11 turns to go. In 2156, I had 532/989 labs and 10 turns to go. In 2157, I suddenly had the tech.
Likewise for Colonial Aviation (C4). In 2162 I had 330/989 with 10 years to go. In 2163 the tech was in my hands.
Post by: Fibonacci on January 08, 2021, 07:31:50 am
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Random_Events_(Basic) (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Random_Events_(Basic))
Post by: Tayta Malikai on January 08, 2021, 07:44:27 am
I feel like it'd be very unlikely, though technically not impossible, to get the event twice in a row under similar circumstances.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2021, 02:39:32 pm
Found it.
Somehow in your next game (2157.SAV) Thinker header was missing in save. That triggered total reinitialization of all Thinker variables including tech cost which is set to default vanilla tech cost. It was not corrected by updated tech cost computation since it happened in the middle of research and not at the research pick stage. Vanilla cost also happened to be about twice lower than Thinker. Therefore it immediately completed current research.
I am not sure if this header is supposed to stay all the time in save from the very first save or Induktio accounted for it to disappear sometimes and be recreated.
What I can do is modify initialization routine and make sure it sets properly computed value if tech is already selected.
Add to that the storing Thinker variables in save is uncharted territory and could be very fragile especially in multiplayer game where save bear a special "end of turn" meaning and could use some extra logic that is difficult to test in local development environment. Be on a lookout about potential bugs.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on January 09, 2021, 09:47:52 am
We've since uncovered that one of the players was using the default terranx.exe to play the game, which was causing bugs in his research. I'd guess that this is what caused the Thinker header to be dropped from the save. We'll keep playing and let you know if it comes up again.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 09, 2021, 06:58:57 pm
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 14, 2021, 07:54:40 pm
Been a long time since I touched Civ III but I recall a very different system of air power.
SMAC advantages:
- Air Units destroy their targets if successful. Not just an alternate form of artillery.
- Needlejets and Choppers can choose to exhaust their fuel in suicide runs.
- Recon missions work in straight lines. In civ, you only see certain areas, not everywhere you fly over.
Civ III advantages:
- Ground units can't block air units.
- Rebasing air units in new bases works better.
- Missiles aren't recon units.
- Aircraft can't be shot down halfway through a recon mission
- Air units never run out of fuel.
Miss anything?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 14, 2021, 07:58:11 pm
I'd be grateful -and this is aimed at all the other modders, too- if the mod, and future major updates, could be uploaded to our Downloads section, too. AC2 benefits from hosting content, you can crosslink with GitHub -please!- it makes the mod easier for random SMACers on the net to find, AND it's something I can promote on Facebook and at CFC and other places.
You also get an autopost in the Chiron News Network subforum when you post to Downloads, which promotes your mod on our Front Page.
Everybody wins, thank you. :)
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 02:03:51 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 02:48:46 am
Idea: Hab complexes have a secondary effect, so you don't boom and then scrap them for credits. Maybe some sort of efficiency boost or +1 unit supported in the base.
You can scrap Hab complexes and continue to grow??? Didn't know that.
Personally, I don't think the population limit lifting facilities have any sense whatsoever. Player just has to build them to grow further. There is no strategical choice in that as with other facilities which have benefits and penalties and one needs to carefully weight the conditions to decide whether to build them. They are remnants of Civ 1 aqueduct that was there for historical reasons when cities really could not grow without them. They don't have any solid game playing value.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 22, 2021, 03:32:24 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 04:34:53 am
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 22, 2021, 04:37:39 am
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 07:13:29 am
You can scrap Hab complexes and continue to grow??? Didn't know that.
You can't.
What you do is build a hab complex. Then you boom or grow to size 14. Then you disband the hab complex because it will be decades before you need habitation domes. Why pay maintenance in the meantime? Plus you get extra cash for scrapping the facility.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 02:38:05 pm
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 04:57:53 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 05:35:29 pm
On a side note. There won't be anything perfect in SMACX with its mountains of bugs and quirks. We are just looking for minimally acceptable solution.
😀
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 05:46:46 pm
Personally, I don't think the population limit lifting facilities have any sense whatsoever. Player just has to build them to grow further. There is no strategical choice in that as with other facilities which have benefits and penalties and one needs to carefully weight the conditions to decide whether to build them. They are remnants of Civ 1 aqueduct that was there for historical reasons when cities really could not grow without them. They don't have any solid game playing value.
They're not a strategic choice sure but they do make it harder for a faction to gain runaway momentum. This kind of game is vulnerable to the leading player accelerating faster than the others to easy victory. Mechanics that give other players a chance to catch up are useful.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 06:01:30 pm
They're not a strategic choice sure but they do make it harder for a faction to gain runaway momentum. This kind of game is vulnerable to the leading player accelerating faster than the others to easy victory. Mechanics that give other players a chance to catch up are useful.
And why we want to prevent bases from growing when all modders try to do the opposite to outweigh ICS strategy?
This is the obstacle for everybody. The leader player will overcome it easier than other, obviously, being leader in production. This does not let others to catch up. Quite the opposite.
The feature to facilitate the catch up should be proportionally harder for leader to achieve. There should be pretty specific and well thought logic in it.
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 06:06:00 pm
(1) Hab complex costs no upkeep (can be done in txt) and gives +1 energy in base square.
(2) Complex gives +1 (or 2) nutrients in base square because additional space opened up for hydroponics. This allows the base to feed another citizen or specialist.
(3) Stacking workers in hab complex reduces pollution. Base gains +1 clean mineral.
(4) Better housing turns one drone into a worker.
I like number (3) best. Anti-pollution is always useful.
(1) sort of makes sense, since cities generate a lot of waste heat but am not sure how feasible it is to harvest that energy. (2) is fairly situational, depending on whether the base already has enough nutrients. (4) depends on what sort of psych the base already generates. If you had a punishment sphere, could still scrap the hab complex to no loss. Dark vision of the base as a vast cyberpunk slum surrounding the immense semitranslucent sphere crackling with a low hum.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 06:39:26 pm
(1) Hab complex costs no upkeep (can be done in txt) and gives +1 energy in base square.
Make sense. Simple and always useful.
(2) Complex gives +1 (or 2) nutrients in base square because additional space opened up for hydroponics. This allows the base to feed another citizen or specialist.
I guess this is same as #1 in simplicity wise. I like this too. We may even combine them.
(3) Stacking workers in hab complex reduces pollution. Base gains +1 clean mineral.
It's a faction wide variable, unfortunately. Cannot do for a single base. We can include this facility as the one that increases clean minerals overall the faction like TF and others. Would it be too much for it?
(4) Better housing turns one drone into a worker.
This again quite difficult to implement due to unrest computation is hardcoded everywhere. I guess giving extra energy is a substitute that can contribute to luxury anyway.
Post by: MercantileInterest on January 22, 2021, 10:58:34 pm
Quote
Interesting, especially regarding having the pop check every TURN and reducing pop, I think the risk of PROBE is anyway a bit overstated. Targeted facility destruction is a harder probe action for one (untargeted sabotage is easier), the other thing is if you can get a probe team in and sabotage a facility, might as well wreck a perimeter or other defensive bonus facility and attack the base in force to raze it.
One way to make it less obnoxious would be if maybe the depopulation could remove just one pop per turn, until it gets to the limit. Plenty of time to rush it back, random facility loss (ex. from low income) wouldn't [fuddle-duddle] you over as much and you would still have a reason to keep it long term and not scrap it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2021, 11:55:53 pm
That doesn't deny the energy bonus which, I think, is nice to have too.
Post by: MercantileInterest on February 11, 2021, 07:52:13 pm
Post by: Drinniol on March 08, 2021, 09:30:32 pm
Idea: foil chassis can sail up river squares.
Something I've always wanted, possibly with some sort of terraformer thing required to widen/deepen the river first. In real life some of the greatest cities were on rivers that had access to the sea. Would really help integrate land and sea more, especially since you can drill rivers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 09, 2021, 01:54:38 am
Think about it. Drilling may change whole river grid completely. Rivers just jump from one place to another. This is minor impact when they are just roads for land troops and extra energy but sea units traveling on them may get stranded.
Besides, what do you actually want for sea units inland? What would be their role? For one they can get closer to enemy troops and territory to bombard them. This role is already taken by land artillery that is cheaper. So no practical benefits there. Other than that I don't see any meaningful use. Transporting troops? They already travel pretty fast on rivers themselves.
Post by: Drinniol on March 09, 2021, 02:36:07 am
I don't think it will work well for this game especially since player can drill for them.
Think about it. Drilling may change whole river grid completely. Rivers just jump from one place to another. This is minor impact when they are just roads for land troops and extra energy but sea units traveling on them may get stranded.
Besides, what do you actually want for sea units inland? What would be their role? For one they can get closer to enemy troops and territory to bombard them. This role is already taken by land artillery that is cheaper. So no practical benefits there. Other than that I don't see any meaningful use. Transporting troops? They already travel pretty fast on rivers themselves.
Extra production capacity from land for the ocean or vice versa, not just your coastal bases. Ability to reinforce landbases from sea routes. Imagine making a river canal across a continent to unite two seas without cutting it in half with terraformers.
I agree it wouldn't work well with the current river system, but if we ever got an open source version to mod the ability to make canal routes as something built on top of rivers would be nice.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 09, 2021, 03:36:50 pm
Usually there is no need to connect oceans because in 99% maps they are all already connected except maybe small inland lakes. I have quite rarely saw disconnected oceans in my games.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 27, 2021, 07:55:52 pm
Essentially population size facilities should affect the growth speed not the population limit. I.e. is more crowded and more difficult to grow without them over certain population level. That can be reflected in effecting either GROWTH in base or nutrient bonus/penalty (or both).
Here possible implementations.
1.
Missing habitation facility penalizes base GROWTH proportionally to base size above limit.
Optional and very interesting effect is to benefit base GROWTH proportionally to base size below limit when such facility is present. This way having it before base hits the limit would not be a waste but will contribute to population growth.
Of course, -3 GROWTH halts growth completely at base. With CC one can stretch up to 5 citizen above the limit with harsh growth penalty.
2.
Missing habitation facility penalizes base nutrient surplus proportionally to base size above limit.
Similar option for beneficial effect when base is below limit and facility is present.
I prefer solution #1 as all the mechanics is there in the game already and we need only hook habitation facilities to GROWTH.
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 27, 2021, 08:58:55 pm
Still, option #1 does interesting as it adds a new gameplay option of building the complex early to boost growth.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 28, 2021, 08:19:17 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-199
Post by: dino on March 29, 2021, 08:14:13 pm
Satellites are overpowered, better then most SPs and the bigger the faction the more it gets from them.
Instead of them giving a resource point to unlimited amount of bases, make them create a pool of resources, 10 points per satellite and then distribute them among the bases up to their satellite resource limit.
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 29, 2021, 09:16:30 pm
Admittedly, with modding, haven't built the CA in years, as it's pushed to the end of the tech tree. It's current effects are a bit hokey, since aero-complexes give a lot of bonuses.
On similar note, space elevator that didn't halve costs for Orbital Defense Pods would be an improvement. Very powerful project that allows total space dominance.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 29, 2021, 10:45:56 pm
Since you are active again, I'll try to sell you an idea ( maybe I've mentioned it already but don't remember ).
What do you mean "again"?
😂
I am checking this forum quite regularly. Nobody complained to the latest changes and and nobody posted new ideas recently except MercantileInterest's channels. So I went modding MM6 instead. You know you can always reach me in PM to wake me up if needed.
Satellites are overpowered, better then most SPs and the bigger the faction the more it gets from them.
Instead of them giving a resource point to unlimited amount of bases, make them create a pool of resources, 10 points per satellite and then distribute them among the bases up to their satellite resource limit.
Currently game just checks how many satellites to add to each base disregarding all other bases on a planet. With distribution it will be a pretty complex and painful algorithm to account to which base has already received benefit and which bases to skip when distributing, etc. A complete horror of programming and further testing. Please invent something simpler.
😢
One option I have already proposed some time ago is to reduce the effect limit to 1/2 or 1/4 of the base size which will make the effect pretty mild comparing to conventional way of acquiring resources.
Or just make their price enormous the usual way.
Another option is to make the effect proportional to existing intake. Sort of multiplying facility. For example, each satellite gives 5% of resource intake rounded down up to 50%.
Another option is to introduce a reduction coefficient proportional to number of bases. This will work similar to your initial idea only more jumpy due to the rounding functionality. Like if one has 100 bases building 10 satellites would add +1 intake to each and so on.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 29, 2021, 11:09:46 pm
Another out-there idea: Cloudbase Academy does not have current effect. Instead, gives +2 movement for air units and enemies cannot airdrop anywhere within your territory.
What's wrong with it giving AC? It is one of the many similar facility granting projects. Should be just fairly priced for better facility.
+2 movement makes sense. Similar to Maritime Control Center.
No airdrop seems to be a very strong feature attached to a single project. Should be a function of AC or Flechette defense system or Geosynchronous survey pod or similar facility.
On similar note, space elevator that didn't halve costs for Orbital Defense Pods would be an improvement. Very powerful project that allows total space dominance.
I don't think this project secures the victory. It costs 8 defense pods. If opponent start building them while you are wasting time on this project they will be ahead of you in pods until you both reach 16 of them. They may very well first strike you and win.
At this very late point in game it is pretty rare to have few equally developed factions. The leader usually wins projects or no projects.
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 29, 2021, 11:50:12 pm
The other facility secret projects give:
(1) Command Centers (+2 morale to ground units and repair injured ground units quickly)
(2) Perimeter Defenses (increase base defensive bonus from 25% to 100% against ground attacks)
(3) Network Nodes (+50% research at base, cash in an artifact)
(4) Energy Banks (+50% econ at base)
(5) hologram theater if base already has network node (+psych and less drones)
In other words, aerospace complex, as a facility, already gives more bonuses than any other facility, which is fine for one base but quite a lot for a project. You can just increase the SP's mineral cost but I like the idea of a SP that does a few new things rather than lots of things that you can get by building facilities. No airdrop in territory is a lot better than no airdrop within two tiles of bases but you'd make up for it by the project not giving all the old aerospace bonuses. Extra movement opens up new tactical options.
Just had an idea that your air units don't run out of fuel inside your territory if you have cloudbase academy but, even before thinking about it, probably way too powerful.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 30, 2021, 01:22:40 am
Aerospace complexes give +2 morale to all air units built in the base, +100% defense against air attacks, they allow for rapid repair of air units, they prevent airdrops within 2 squares of the base and they allow the base to build satellites. Not only does it do a lot, what it does is important. Hybrid forests do a lot too but they're not essential. Cloudbase Academy gives all of these bonuses to every base in your faction.
The other facility secret projects give:
(1) Command Centers (+2 morale to ground units and repair injured ground units quickly)
(2) Perimeter Defenses (increase base defensive bonus from 25% to 100% against ground attacks)
(3) Network Nodes (+50% research at base, cash in an artifact)
(4) Energy Banks (+50% econ at base)
(5) hologram theater if base already has network node (+psych and less drones)
In other words, aerospace complex, as a facility, already gives more bonuses than any other facility, which is fine for one base but quite a lot for a project. You can just increase the SP's mineral cost but I like the idea of a SP that does a few new things rather than lots of things that you can get by building facilities. No airdrop in territory is a lot better than no airdrop within two tiles of bases but you'd make up for it by the project not giving all the old aerospace bonuses. Extra movement opens up new tactical options.
Just had an idea that your air units don't run out of fuel inside your territory if you have cloudbase academy but, even before thinking about it, probably way too powerful.
You are absolutely right on AC importance. That is why CBA is so powerful. Would raising its price fix the problem? It is not that this project give unique advantage. People build ACs anyway. It just saves on facility building having pure economical value. So right price for economical benefit seems to be a proper fix. Optionally, we can increase cost of both AC and CBA to make it fair.
If you are talking CBA not giving AC at all and instead doing something else this would be interesting but too drastic change. I would like to explore less invasive options first like above.
I really don't know what so special we can give to air combat that is already quite powerful.
+2 movement is not too unique. They are already have something like 16 by the end game.
Copters not running out of fuel?
Do not penalize armor on planes so player can slap it on and make them more defended against anti-air attacks? Simulates better pilot training in academy that makes them able to maneuver better in combat and avoid missiles of sort. 😄
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 30, 2021, 01:59:28 am
My modding is evolved, rather than designed, so can't say how exactly it works, but air power does not feel too strong in either single player or multiplayer.
Quote
The Cloning Vats, 120, 0, BioEng, Disable, Population Boom At All Bases, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2,
The Space Elevator, 120, 0, Space, Disable, Energy +100%/Orbital Cost Halved,0, 1, 2, 2, 0,
The Ascent to Transcendence, 600, 0, Thresh, Disable, End of Singular Sentience Era, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2,
Here, you get space elevator with a level six tech. It costs 70 more mineral rows than in vanilla but the other players need aero complexes to prevent the elevator faction dropping out of orbit onto them. Alternately, they can build fighters as those also prevent drops. So, I thought it would be fun to have a project that envelops your whole territory with an anti-drop net, as an alternative to building complexes all over. Of course, it would also work against ordinary range 8 airdrops.
You may remember I've altered the basic growth formula. I increased the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1, so before future society or cloning vats, only way to boom is with golden ages. Hence, increased cost for the cloning vats. With the latest hab complex rules, you won't be able to boom once you exceed your limits, which is a nice touch. In fact, could even increase the necessary GROWTH by another 1, so you need hab complex to boom. Will have to tinker around. Regardless, cloning vats should cost more.
Ascent to Transcend comes a little early on my tree, so increased the cost a bit. No more single turn builds.
Don't know if I've mentioned it but abolishing planetpearls, the new tech cost mechanic and what you've done to reactors are all brilliant. Your modding has vastly improved the game.
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 30, 2021, 02:05:47 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 30, 2021, 02:10:51 am
The point of a facility SP is to get the facility to your bases cheaper than building it everywhere. Increasing the cost of Cloudbase would solve the balance issue but it goes against the point of this kind of SP. I feel that a new feature would be more interesting.
As I said, I don't mind as long as implementation is pretty easy. As for me I would repurpose all free facility projects to something more interesting. Free facility is just boring. Unfortunately, there are limits to my imagination. 😄
I still think global anti-drop net is too powerful for a single project. Same as orbital insertion but that is a blame to another project.
You may remember I've altered the basic growth formula. I increased the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1, so before future society or cloning vats, only way to boom is with golden ages. Hence, increased cost for the cloning vats. With the latest hab complex rules, you won't be able to boom once you exceed your limits, which is a nice touch. In fact, could even increase the necessary GROWTH by another 1, so you need hab complex to boom. Will have to tinker around. Regardless, cloning vats should cost more.
How did you the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1? Is there an option for that?
Ascent to Transcend comes a little early on my tree, so increased the cost a bit. No more single turn builds.
Don't know if I've mentioned it but abolishing planetpearls, the new tech cost mechanic and what you've done to reactors are all brilliant. Your modding has vastly improved the game.
Thank you. Appreciation always creates warm feelings inside me.
By the way, do I recall right that you are modding txt on top of WTP? If so, can you share your settings? I may introduce them into WTP default.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 30, 2021, 02:17:26 am
As I recall, in air-to-air combat, both sides use their weapons. Armor is ignored.
Post by: MercantileInterest on March 30, 2021, 02:26:36 am
Quote
; SE GROWTH rating cap (vanilla = 5)
; Anything above triggers population boom
; allowed values: 0-9
se_growth_rating_cap=6
Didn't you increase this all the way to 9? From your readme:
Quote
Population boom is a powerful feature leading to OP strategy: expand - pop boom - repeat. The population boom is a nice feature. However, its cost is obviously negligible comparing to benefits.
This mod changes the GROWTH upper cap and thus GROWTH rating requirements for population boom making it more difficult to achieve.
I've got citizens only eating 1 nutrient and farms producing +2 nutrients instead of vanilla +1, so, even without booming, growth is more rapid.
Thinker.ini:
Quote
; attack and defense bonus when fighting in own territory in percents
combat_bonus_territory=25
I meant that CBA would prevent enemies from dropping into your territory (the region where you get this bonus), not within the entire map. Might still be too powerful.
Lol. You're right about air combat.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 30, 2021, 04:13:20 am
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-200
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 04, 2021, 02:55:30 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 06, 2021, 05:46:26 am
Here you go. A reworked display odds dialog with much less invasive patch footprint.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 07, 2021, 07:14:07 pm
New dialog displaying both vanilla estimate and exact number reminded me about huge combat skew discussion we had long time ago. I guess it will be useful to illustrate this visually one more time.
Attached are displays for multiple cases.
Specifically three different divisor settings: 1.0 (exact vanilla mechanics), 2.0, 3.0. Bigger divisor simulates less skewed winning chances. Algorithm is courtesy of dino.
For each divisor two cases are given: strength ratio 2:1 and health ratio 2:1.
Here are some interesting observations.
First and foremost, vanilla odds cannot be used to estimate winning chances/odds because they are astronomically far from them. They still correlate to the winning odds somehow. Seasoned players can tell you the 10:5 odds are almost certain win and they can give a more or less close winning estimate based on vanilla odds.
The divisor does the trick of bringing actual winning chances to match vanilla computation. Thus making vanilla estimate more reliable to the level when it can be just used as is for casual play. Higher divisor does better job, obviously. However, I don't see much point in raising it up too much. Even 2.0 does huge improvement and anything beyond 4.0 is just a small numbers fiddling.
The advantage in strength is not equal to proportional advantage in health as vanilla deceitfully tries to persuade us. The advantage in strength seems to be better. Although opposite advantages are cancelling each other pretty close as can be seen on second picture.
Post by: Induktio on April 13, 2021, 12:43:54 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 13, 2021, 04:17:20 pm
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 05:36:39 pm
I would suggest you not call this a Credits section though. Crediting, in the game industry has a legal meaning that someone worked on the title as a joint author. Like in the film industry, Credits exist at the end of the movie for legal reasons.
I am not such a person. I have never "worked on" WTP. I've always been rather careful about this to merely provide suggestions, never actually offer code patches, etc. You're the author, not me. I've learned about joint authorship on open source projects the hard way in the past, so that's why I'm careful to acknowledge people who have helped me, but not credit them as somehow being joint authors of my own mod.
Now the other people you credit, your relation to them may be different. Your choice / call what to say people are. The legal fine points of "contributions" get murky. Probably all armchair issues anyways, given the licensing of the game. I personally adopt the formalities, "just in case", but also for sake of instructive form. New game developers come around, they need to be educated about licensing and crediting somehow.
You might be interested to know, that absent Induktio's additional direct involvement in your project, he is not a Joint Author of your work. Rather, he licensed some code to the entire world under the GPL. You made use of that code, under his license. Thus it would be legally inappropriate to Credit him, as he didn't work on your project. Unless he did / does, in which case your relationship is different and I didn't know that. Anyways, it's certainly appropriate to be very grateful that he put his GPL code out into the world, for you to pick up and use. That's the sort of thing that I Acknowledge people for.
Once upon a time, I was in the same position vis a vis The Battle For Wesnoth. It was GPL licensed code that I was making mods for.
Licenses are interesting in how they differentiate the idea of "thankfulness". You've got the MIT license which says nothing on the subject, it's flatly neutral. You've got the BSD license which explicitly denies any credit or involvement, and doesn't allow you to make any such claim. You've got zlib which demands you credit the original work and that you're the knockoff, you must annotate all your sordid changes, etc. And then you've got the more manageable CC-BY which says "you have to acknowledge that I wrote the original". I use the latter.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 14, 2021, 06:31:12 pm
:)
I have changed section name to "Special thanks and acknowledgements".
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 06:44:49 pm
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 07:51:23 pm
Just started a game on a Huge map, 30%..50% land mass, Transcend difficulty, random opponents, to see how it compares to my own mod. Drew the Peacekeepers. Have lush green land with a bunch of fungus touching, in my immediate vicinity. Got a fungal bloom east of me, but I the think the land it messed up, was already dry. Hmm, wait, I save scummed the fungal bloom out of disbelief about the Former's move. At first I thought it was a bug.
Hm, 2 moves on roads for infantry units. Doubting that will be Huge map friendly, but we'll see.
Completion scummed a Recon Rover.
MY 2115. Survived my 1st pod popped hatchling mindworm attack with 50% damage. Happened to have a 2nd Scout on scene for counterattack but didn't need it.
Same year, popped a fungal bloom with a fairly well developed fungal tower. Somewhat blocks up westward expansion, 4 squares from my capitol. Reasonable test question: when will I be able to kill it? It's too soon to be trying, but as turns ensue I'll try to give it some priority.
MY 2118. The rather precise screen says if I attack the Hatchling that has slid up next to my base, I have an 82% chance of losing. Guess I'll wait for the attack. I save the game, not knowing whether these odds are accurate in the real world. They sure look convincing. Next year I took 30% wounds defending, so ok whatever.
MY 2121. Lost 2 units in different places in the bush, getting attacked by mindworms I could have attacked first. Displayed odds of attack weren't great for me, so not sure what's best. Makes me realize that I have no odds estimating my defense next turn. Generally speaking, I think odds of defense would never be explicitly revealed to me.
MY 2122. Attacking a 50% wounded hatchling that I had the good luck of being in the right place to attack, has a 88% chance of them winning? That's kinda BS. Well, will it die if it attacks me instead? Guess I'll find out. Won't be having any SUPPORT problem at this rate. Actually getting 2 tries at this in 2 different places. Won both engagements. 1 took no wounds, 1 took 80% wounds. Ok whatever. "Choose defend".
This is seeming to imply that I cannot rid myself of a Spore Launcher, except at great cost.
MY 2126. My Green Scout with a little bit of experience and 90% health from spore launcher fire, has a 53% chance against the spore launcher. I have a Recon Rover for followup. Scout dies, inflicting 50% wounds. Rover prevails, taking only 10% wounds.
Same year, a Unity Rover gets surrounded by 2 hatchlings. Odds are against me, so I wait to be hit. Remarkably, it survives both.
I rush my 1st Colonist for 36 credits, saving me 4 turns.
MY 2133. A shore dumped hatchling attacks but does not kill one of my Formers. That's cool because it's really irritating to have half your road making capability destroyed early on. I've had no time to make others, as they're not entirely cheap. I go back to base to heal up.
Same year I pop an Isle with my cheap Gun Foil. Attacking it is 50% odds. Can I defend kill it? That's not a realistic option in the original game. If I can consistently pull that off, it would make clearing my home waters of immediate threats much easier. It would amount to a form of easy ship training. Well I live, but it makes me 90% wounded. I don't know that there's any guarantee on this.
MY 2134. I get to try the Isle thing again with my other cheap Gun Foil. It survives but with 70% wounds. So, a decent option if close to base where one can heal up. Far from base, probably better to get out of the way.
I rush my 2nd Colonist for 27 credits, saving me 5 turns. That base had 1 extra unit drawing SUPPORT.
MY 2137. My slightly wounded rover meets a Caretaker rover. They declare war on me. Next year I find they have a second rover. Next year, that rover kills me, even though I was standing on some rocks.
MY 2141. I found the Monsoon Jungle, a good distance south of me.
MY 2142. My Hardened 20% wounded rover kills a Caretaker spore launcher, that had boxed me in next to a wild hatchling. I escape the latter.
MY 2143. I get my 1st large pile of cash from popping pods, 100 credits. It's been pretty lean and I've popped a lot of pods. Some turns from now, I'll use it to complete a Command Center next to a mineral deposit. I also acquired Synthmetal Armor from a pod, so I'll make some defense against the Caretakers. I don't think their threat is anywhere nearby though. I've got a couple of Foil Probe Teams being built, because I didn't have much else to do at the time.
MY 2145. I run into the Believers. Miriam wants an alliance to make war on the Cultists, and I grant it to her. She's also at war with the Caretakers already. We trade some techs. She's doing the usual holdout on Nonlinear Mathematics, for the silly Universal Translator. Miriam is somewhat far from me to the west and has traveled by the northern ocean. I suspect the Caretakers are between us.
I've survived the initial game just fine and don't see anything particularly wrong with my expansion. According to the graph I am the worst faction in the game. I think Miriam used to be the worst but not any longer. Much of my initial scouting burst has been used up and I've popped many pods immediately around me. My efforts will now become more focused on settling bases in relative safety. This wasn't so much a choice as a forced reality due to the slowness of colonist production. It has worked ok though. I don't see any problem with this initial stage of the game.
I'll beg off the reportage now. I was mainly interested in seeing whether something in the early game would make me scream. Earlier I had some Issue Tracker items about that, but with recent releases they were closed. They may have been solved.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 14, 2021, 08:14:47 pm
Trying to reduce ground movement comparing to sea/air ones. Ground units moving at infinite speed is somewhat breaking the balance between army classes. I have tried 3x3 previously but even then hovertank moving 27 tiles a turn is pretty much amazing. Now it will move at 12 which is somewhat comparable to needlejets and cruisers.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 09:34:33 pm
Ground units moving at infinite speed is somewhat breaking the balance between army classes.
Ya think? ;lol It's the one true tactic of the game. It's also the only thing that makes unit pushing manageable. That's why I tend to retain it as my favorite, privileged tactic, rather than seeking to get rid of it. And because I'm not binary modding.
Command Centers costing an arm and a leg, that's new. 16 of 80 minerals, would still need 192 credits to complete it. Maybe the necessary completion threshold to avoid penalties has changed though. Or not, maybe it's just damn expensive. Don't feel like figuring it out right now.
The partial payment calculation is useful. Now I know what things could really cost me, if I want to hurry them.
Wow, 8 credits to mind control a Cultist Gun Foil. What a deal.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 09:56:15 pm
[Limit reached]
Oh wait, maybe I see the problem. The readout says their odds of winning are 99%. I think it should say our odds of winning are 99%. "Their" is ambiguous, it could mean the defender. I may have been reading earlier odds calculations backwards.
Yep, I won. "Attacker" would be unambiguous.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 14, 2021, 10:37:49 pm
Ground units moving at infinite speed is somewhat breaking the balance between army classes.
Ya think? ;lol It's the one true tactic of the game. It's also the only thing that makes unit pushing manageable. That's why I tend to retain it as my favorite, privileged tactic, rather than seeking to get rid of it. And because I'm not binary modding.
I do not particularly mind units moving at a speed of light per se. However, people correctly pointed out that this erases the difference between infantry-rover-hovertank so people would just switch to infantry. The lower the multiplier the more pronounced is hovertank benefit. That is why I initially reduced it to 3x3. However, this still seems to be slightly too much with rovers moving at 18 tiles a turn practically undistinguishable from hovertanks (27) in local combat. So I like to experiment with 2x2 now. That is a matter of taste, though.
As for binary modding you are free to build on top of WTP. It is pretty configurable and has options for practically everything and can be reverted to vanilla in every aspect you like.
Command Centers costing an arm and a leg, that's new. 16 of 80 minerals, would still need 192 credits to complete it. Maybe the necessary completion threshold to avoid penalties has changed though. Or not, maybe it's just damn expensive. Don't feel like figuring it out right now.
Simple economical balance. At 40 it is like a cost of 4-1-1 infantry unit. Many people noted its overly cheap so building it before building any combat unit is no brainer. Doubling the cost is not that much of a robbery. Just making player think whether they want it from the day one. And more thinking is always better. I don't like no brainers.
😀
Wow, 8 credits to mind control a Cultist Gun Foil. What a deal.
That I didn't change.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 14, 2021, 10:42:30 pm
Oh wait, maybe I see the problem. The readout says their odds of winning are 99%. I think it should say our odds of winning are 99%. "Their" is ambiguous, it could mean the defender. I may have been reading earlier odds calculations backwards.
Yep, I won. "Attacker" would be unambiguous.
"They odds are" is a vanilla thing. I believe you should memorize every vanilla dialog wording by now.
😆
I agree it could use some disambiguation. Feel free to propose better wording.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2021, 11:20:37 pm
However, people correctly pointed out that this erases the difference between infantry-rover-hovertank so people would just switch to infantry.
You have to actually build rails. They don't just build themselves. The real issue is the AI's limited ability to intervene in your building of rails. If it has an air force, it will destroy your Formers, but you could cover those with AAA units. Driving a speed-of-light rail deeply into the enemy is pretty hard for the stock AI to defend against. It just doesn't understand the tactical possibility. That's why it's so effective.
Quote
As for binary modding you are free to build on top of WTP.
Oh sure I could. :) There's just no career value in it. What I should be doing is writing my own 4X from scratch. I've held myself up with the perceived need to invent a programming language. I just hate all the other languages so much, I find I can't put the idea down. I tried to get myself to write AI prototypes in Python or Lua the other week, and I just couldn't justify it! They make me itch too badly.
I'd only do something on top of WTP if I suddenly saw some burning problem with SMAC, that I simply couldn't let go, that I could actually solve by modding WTP code. I can't think of any such burning issue at present. I don't guarantee I'll never think of such an issue. But the time is not now, and not likely to be soon. I blew 2.5 years of psychological investment on my own mod. I'm only in maintenance mode on SMAC stuff right now, and I'm going to totally prefer it that way for quite some time.
When something really bugs me, I file you an Issue Tracker item. You recently retired most of those, maybe all of them, haven't checked. Good going! I haven't fully tested whether I agree with those issues being done and over with now, but I'll get to it. It's a break from playing my own mod. I actually do play my own mod lately, for enjoyment.
Quote
Simple economical balance. At 40 it is like a cost of 4-1-1 infantry unit. Many people noted its overly cheap so building it before building any combat unit is no brainer. Doubling the cost is not that much of a robbery. Just making player think whether they want it from the day one. And more thinking is always better. I don't like no brainers.
😀
Recently I've noticed an odd behavior in my mod. The AI doesn't seem to want to build Command Centers most of the time now. I don't know why. Seemed like a long time ago, the AI would obsess about building too many of them. I don't know what is responsible for the change in behavior. Something about my tech tree being reshuffled I suppose, but damn if I know what. Doctrine: Mobility is still a Conquer 1 tech with no prereqs. Still gives the Speeder and the Command Center.
Maybe there's something about my spread of 14 unique research combos, where most of 'em don't care about Command Centers. But I don't remember any faction building CCs properly nowadays. Maybe that's been selective observation on my part. I should see if the violent, Conquest oriented factions are building them.
Anyways if your AI will actually build expensive CCs, well good. Mine won't even build the cheap ones.
Post by: dino on April 14, 2021, 11:32:06 pm
It's intentionally formal and emotionally detatched, changing Their to Our would make it more intuitive, but less formal and would suggest personal emotional investment from a security chief.
I'd leave it vanilla.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 12:26:45 am
It's intentionally formal and emotionally detatched, changing Their to Our would make it more intuitive, but less formal and would suggest personal emotional investment from a security chief.
Ah. You mean security chief reports to you and don't even associate the people rushing to attack with either himself or you? Like they are some kind of two forces battling.
😁
Well, with that and odds displayed the game is one step from proposing bets on each side.
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2021, 12:31:24 am
"Our forces are ready -> Their winnig chance is.
"Our... our" is parallel. "Our... their" is not.
"Both units have 10 max HP" destroys the possessive pronoun's antecedent. That's the specific reason it's ambiguous.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 12:43:06 am
How about I move reactor note to the end or remove entirely assuming players are aware of this?
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1. Their odds are:
10 to 1 (vanilla estimate)
20 to 1 (exact simulation)
Attacker winning chances are 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
- Reactor power is [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2021, 01:29:33 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 01:57:34 am
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2021, 03:19:13 am
Ok, I just quit my 1st game. I have to admit, the reduced road movement is seriously making me itch. It's throwing off all my muscle memory for the game. It's making me very conscious of the fact that everything's taking much longer to do, and that's a drag. I now think plain Formers are pretty useless and am only building Rover Formers. I already tended to do a lot of that in my own mod, but now I feel like I have to. Otherwise, how the hell is anything ever going to get done?
I am playing on a Huge map. I don't know whether I'll feel the same on Standard. In this game, I was relatively isolated with mild interference from the Caretakers. Actually the most immediate trigger for me quitting, was when they walked up next to one of my Formers. I knew they were in the area, and I had counter units in the area. But everyone moves so slowly, I couldn't get over to defend like usual. I also don't have any Sensor Arrays built because the Formers are all crippled.
And of course my Former decided to complete its build order and prevent me from moving it out of the way that turn, before I could click on the damn thing to cancel. I think I filed that sort of thing in the Issue Tracker once. I know I at least commented on it before. Think the initial prognosis is it may have come from the original game.
If others object to this slow road movement regime, pay heed. It may be too much to expect veteran players to swallow.
I don't see why road movement has to be crippled, just because of the infinite rail speed problem. Moving 6, 8, 10, or 12 squares on a rail as compared to hovertanks, is a tactical concern. Strategically, I gotta push units all the way across continents. That's many multiples of turns. Any finite movement regime is going to take relatively forever. Gonna be a lot more like long distance naval invasions, which kinda suck on Huge maps. Sometimes I've done 'em anyways, but never if speedy rails are a viable alternative.
It's hard for me to visualize hovertank centric combat. I just don't value it. I've done it, I've wiped out remote Alien empires with X Missile Hovertanks. Really made scorched earth with almost no rails and few roads. Can't remember why I did it that way. Maybe I got hovertanks before I got super formers, so couldn't raise land. It's not like I don't know how to use hovertanks, I just don't see the value.
Is this like a multiplayer thing? The multiplayers love hovertanks and want more hovertank centric stuff?
I mean heck I can build Airbases every 12 squares and destroy everything that way. I just don't want to. And if I couldn't do rails, why would I choose hovertanks over air assault? Hovertanks are slower, they aren't typically cheaper, and ECM is a plenty abundant defense. I've been made to feel really stupid, ho ho ho, sending my great early batch of hovertanks against even the stock AI. Yeah that went well. The only thing they've really got going for them, is logistical independence. You don't need to keep flying them back to a base. Just like ships have logistical independence for exploring distant parts of the map. You don't have to build roads and rails to support them.
Do any of you folks actually play Huge maps regularly? They're all I play.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 04:08:31 am
I have to admit, the reduced road movement is seriously making me itch. It's throwing off all my muscle memory for the game.
He he. Mine too. I always try to move unit third time and move some other unit by that instead. Maybe I should change it to 3x2. Should keep road multiplier intact and nobody got used to tube multiplier anyway.
Post by: dino on April 15, 2021, 07:22:45 am
"Our... our" is parallel. "Our... their" is not.
Our forces, it's a plural noun with a possessive pronoun.
A proper pronoun for a plural noun is 'their', while 'our' is a pronoun for 'we' and 'our' would also be in direct conflict with the last line "Shall I order them to proceed?"
Using 'our chances' when refering to 'our forces' would be a common figure of speach coveying the meaning of our forces and us being the one.
No politician in our times would dare to skip this figure of speach in a public statement, but skipping it fits the dystopian theme of people being resources, pawns in the game.
The main reason it may be confusing is because you skip reading the first sentence, go stright for the numbers and loose the context the first sentence sets.
So I propose this iteration:
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1 (vanilla estimate)
Odds are 20 to 1 (exact simulation)
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
It tells the reader who skipped reading flavour introductory line and went stright for the data lines what the numbers represent, without redundant odds and chance mentions and just looks cleaner.
I think that singular chance is more common form when refering to a percentage probability and it also stylistically separates this info from odds.
I agree that both are useful btw: odds are good at hinting how much damage winning unit may suffer, while chance provides an exact probability of surviving.
If you'd want to keep reactor line, I'd add a hint of reactor power being a configurable mod feature.
For me this line could be best skipped, but on the other hand you risk some new mod users being unaware of the feature if it's enabled by default.
I'd either go for full disclosure:
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1 (vanilla estimate).
Odds are 20 to 1 (exact simulation).
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
- Reactor power is set to be [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Or minimalistic display skipping any unnecessary mentions of modded features:
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1.
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
I'd say just go for the minimalistic one, or make it a config option with the former being a default to inform new users.
Post by: dino on April 15, 2021, 11:04:38 am
1) attacker strenght / defender strenght
2) attacker strenght * power / defender strenght * power ( power aka hit points is constant, taken from the beginning of the battle )
3) attacker strenght * power / defender strenght * power ( power aka hit points is adjusted each round )
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 02:35:59 pm
1) attacker strenght / defender strenght
This one. In WTP it is also variable based on who won previous round to make round victory stick and spread battle outcome a little bit wider.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 03:18:06 pm
I'd either go for full disclosure:Code: [Select]Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1 (vanilla estimate).
Odds are 20 to 1 (exact simulation).
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
- Reactor power is set to be [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Or minimalistic display skipping any unnecessary mentions of modded features:Code: [Select]Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1.
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
I'd say just go for the minimalistic one, or make it a config option with the former being a default to inform new users.
I don't want to remove first sentence. It is needed for those surprised by slightly differently looking dialog and reading whole thing to connect with their vanilla experience. Same story is with vanilla odds. I agree minimalistic version is less cluttered but people will be constantly asking what are these odds and why they don't match vanilla. We have our legacy.
😢
Also if we are going to split number section in two it is good to keep spacing between numbers and outer text as well. Otherwise, it seems like a ripped in half by most unwanted place.
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 10 to 1 (vanilla estimate).
Odds are 20 to 1 (exact simulation).
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
* Reactor power is set to be [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Seems a little bit spread but who cares? All information is there and after first time people will look at numbers only.
Another option is to hide vanilla odds somewhere in the parenthesis behind the exact ones to reduce clutter. This way we still have reference to vanilla but it is not upfront and is confuse with actual numbers.
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
Odds are 20 to 1 (vanilla displays 10 to 1).
Winning chance is 70 %.
Shall I order them to proceed?
* Reactor power is set to be [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Post by: dino on April 15, 2021, 04:48:39 pm
The exact odds is exactly the same info as a chance to win, just presented in a different less intuitive form, though.
Vanilla odds are: attacker strenght * HP / defender strenght * HP, which is actually a very useful inormation with a bit misleading label.
Because it's proportional to a statististically expected damages if I'm not mistaken, for example with 3 to 2 vanilla odds you are expected to win and suffer 67% damage. Am I right ?
I don't know how to calculate expected damages for our little skewing algorithm if you wanted to display it in place of vanilla odds, should be close to vanilla anyway, or you may try to solve it.
So I'd present vanilla odds as the main ones: Odds are 10 to 1 ( exact simulation is 20 to 1)
Or just drop redundant exact odds info completely.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 05:31:56 pm
Vanilla odds are: attacker strenght * HP / defender strenght * HP, which is actually a very useful inormation with a bit misleading label.
Because it's proportional to a statististically expected damages if I'm not mistaken, for example with 3 to 2 vanilla odds you are expected to win and suffer 67% damage. Am I right ?
I believe so. Never found use for that, though. Nor any other player ever thought about their meaning either besides us math geeks, of course.
😃
It would really matter in absence of healing when player would cherish every unrecoverable HP. With healing - nobody cares. Only winning odds/chance matter.
I don't know how to calculate expected damages for our little skewing algorithm if you wanted to display it in place of vanilla odds, should be close to vanilla, or you may try to solve it.
That is what simulated numbers are. I do exact simulation taking all factors into accounts including our probability modifying algorithm.
So I'd present vanilla odds as the main ones: Odds are 10 to 1 ( exact simulation is 20 to 1), or just drop redundant exact odds info completely.
Yes. The main confusion there is what are these odds are? I should just clearly state that they are winning odds. Same as probability. In this case I'll leave people to guess what vanilla odds are. They are probably odds of resulting injury as you properly guessed but I am not going to decipher it.
RE: chance vs. chances
I am not a native speaker but I speak it for quite a long time already and when I hear "chance" I understand it as an occurrence/realization/attempt of something happened. In other words, it describes an event by itself without tying it to any probability or computation or any other way of weighing one's options.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chance&oq=chance&aqs=chrome..69i57j46i20i263i275i433j35i39l2j46i67i433j69i60l3.1855j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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lucky chance = something rarely good happened
it's your only chance = it's your only option
no chance = no way it is going to happen = this is not happening
All the above examples can be used strictly with singular form.Whereas when I hear "chances" it means an estimate/guess to me. Not the event per se but it's likelihood.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chance&oq=chance&aqs=chrome..69i57j46i20i263i275i433j35i39l2j46i67i433j69i60l3.1855j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#dobs=chances
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chances are my dad with let me drive his car = I anticipate this to be a high probability
I bet my chances are high to land this job = I anticipate this to be a high probability
Let's weigh our chances in that = estimate our probability / chance of success even if we are considering a single action
Or I could just put it plainly as "winning probability is" to end this linguistic discussion.
😉
Post by: dino on April 15, 2021, 06:31:16 pm
"Chance is" is how you say it in my native tongue, my english is quiet poor actually, so I don't know why I've decided to lecture on it ;)
> It would really matter in absence of healing when player would cherish every unrecoverable HP. With healing - nobody cares. Only winning odds/chance matter.
With increased defence values in your mod, expected damage is useful for determining how many units you need to take over a base, instead of just suffering bigger losses than defender with no payof.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 15, 2021, 07:17:31 pm
With increased defence values in your mod, expected damage is useful for determining how many units you need to take over a base, instead of just suffering bigger losses than defender with no payof.
I see that you are theorizing about usefulness of this value. Sure. People would love to know that. However, this involves a lot of knowledge about a lot of units and a lot of computation on top of it. A single 1-1 combat dialog won't help you and it never helped me of any other user. It is too high math and most people just estimate it in their own way. I would say not presenting a player an exact number is a challenge they seek. They want to reconnaissance enemy base, see what units they have, how to wage attack better, etc.
With randomization anyway there is no hard number. One can loose even bringing twice more units than needed. So people just tend to triplicate the defending forces to be sure. Besides, it is hardly your last attack wave if you waging full scale war.
I think it is too far fetched topic. Current dialog already have triple information vanilla had.
Post by: bvanevery on April 15, 2021, 11:54:22 pm
Seems a little bit spread but who cares?
I'd advise against taking risks with excessive screen real estate. You don't know what devices are being displayed on. Someone may be doing screenshots for an After Action Report. Someone may have a weird reason to push the dialog out of the way to see what's going on elsewhere. When I can't do that, I typically scroll the global insert map in the lower right corner, to get something into view that I need to see. It's just generally not a good idea to block up more of the display screen when you don't actually need to. Consuming blank lines of whitespace not considered good.
There are probably ways to provide color contrast in text, if you want a different means of differentiating sentences. The faction.txt entries use various kinds of markup, maybe those work in dialogs just fine as well.
And it is probably all overthinking it, that big blank lines are needed by anyone.
Quote
The main confusion there is what are these odds are?
I think that anyone who doesn't automatically understand what "simulated" odds are, or who doesn't at least pick up on it by osmosis over time, is either too stupid to play 4X, or is very young and inexperienced. I would address neither concern. It's like worrying about whether cardboard hex wargamers know how to roll dice and stack counters. This is an odds calculator. If they don't understand the concept of odds calculation (and I hope in some cases that's merely not yet, like they're 7 years old? I memorized AD&D manuals at age 8.) then they don't have to understand anything about the damn dialog box. Heck maybe the word "simulated" is too big for them.
The right way to handle this kind of problem, "What does simulated mean here?" is to nicely explain it in a forum, where the question actually gets asked. For instance, someone the other day asked me what "unit pushing" meant and I wasn't a dick about it.
Don't dumb down the 4X.
Corner case: my aspersions on someone's ability to understand the import of the word "simulated", have assumed a native English speaker. If English isn't someone's 1st language, I don't know how obvious things are. Hopefully in many languages, plenty obvious. Especially to the extent that non-native English speakers are still geeks and have encountered "simulation" in other contexts. But I thought I'd make note that I don't have it in for non-native speakers. I just wasn't thinking of them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 12:37:24 am
Code: [Select]
Our forces are ready to begin the assault, $TITLE0 $NAME1.
^Winning odds are {$NUM0 to $NUM1} (vanilla odds are $NUM2 to $NUM3).
^Winning chances are {$NUM4} %.
^
^Shall I order them to proceed?
^
^* Reactor power is set to be [ignored] in combat. Both units have {10} max HP.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 02:52:42 am
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 03:58:19 am
It's only when other people test my mod, and then give me feedback, that I realize they're experiencing dire battles with this sort of late game stuff as a background. And I don't get enough feedback on this late game stuff, to have had any impetus towards changing things.
I do Sky Hydroponics Labs first as the 'root' orbital facility, because doing it any other way in stock, will give you a UI error where you don't get an orbital display. Then I have ODPs, NMSs, and OPTs on parallel techs from that. Works fine for my tree.
Hab Domes don't require spacefaring in my mod. I figure they're glorified "tough metals" and it shouldn't take space anything to build a big dome.
The best answer for enemy orbital facilities problems is ground intervention.
The second best answer is to sacrifice relatively cheap Conventional Missiles, so that the enemy uses up their ODPs shooting them down. This is way better than trying to attack ODPs directly with your own ODPs, because the loss ratio seems to be 3:1 in favor of the defender.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 05:14:56 am
Could the world generation or faction placement algorithm be iterating over and over again without success, until finally something succeeds?
In comparison, stock binary has very little delay from time hitting ok to the time telling me what faction I got.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 07:55:22 am
[Limit reached]
Even if you thought Aliens should be able to do this for some reason, it makes no lore sense at all for the Usurpers. This smells like a bug. Heck it doesn't even make game mechanical sense, as your version of the Usurpers has the unaltered -1 PLANET.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 08:23:16 am
The Usurpers are spammy and they keep pushing out new colonies. I've got Missile Plasma Foils heading around the continent, Recycling Tanks everywhere, a huge reserve of cash from mostly seaborne pod poppings that the other factions didn't pick up, and 4 additional landlocked Command Centers on the way, to match the 2 already active since the beginning.
Eventually this feels like it should be a complete rout, as the Usurpers started too close to me, even on a Huge map. Actually it wouldn't have been so bad for them, if they weren't such compulsive expansionist jerks. Like they insisted on breathing down my neck, with no force whatsoever to back it up. I don't think they're going to out-tech out-spam me. Probably their algorithmic behavior is going to turn out to have been, pathologically stupid.
It's been kind of a drag seeing them waste the time. I mean if I'm going to have a hapless victim in front of me, I'd rather have it be executed sooner and not make me spend so many mouseclicks for it.
I've really put very little effort into optimizing my empire, like spending the excess of credits for instance. For a long time, I wandered my probe teams around their territory at will, because we had no diplomatic relationship and I can do that. Then one day they declared war, just as I was getting ready to steal Social Psych. Well that was like 20 years of delay, getting back to where I could steal from them again. I could have bought the tech from various other factions at any time, but I was rather stubborn about getting my "free" tech from the Usurpers.
I don't know what the other factions are doing. Yang crabs at me about Svensgaard every so often. The real question is whether all this "land delay" with the Usurpers, is going to cost me any kind of growth problem with the other factions. We'll see. They've completed some SPs.
Since I have +1 POLICE I could have doubled my guard on all my cities. Didn't bother. Really don't want to garrison with untrained units. Now I finally get to start building Rec Commons.
[Limit reached]
MY 2206. Usurper tech advancement is spammy as well. Their tech leakage is absurdly complete, because they keep trying to push new bases at me, without any ability to defend them. I just walk up to them with my Plasma unit as cover, bring up a probe team, and steal whatever. This year I finally get Secrets of the Human Brain out of them, which opens up the total cakewalk gift giveaway Fundamentalist choice for me. Like why would I even want to do any RESEARCH at this point? Dumb factions are racing ahead and everything else about the choice is a slam dunk for close quarters conquest. As the Spartans I've got an abusive +4 MORALE now and these aliens are so gonna die.
There's a reason I took early MORALE bonuses out of my mod. It's the damn Spartans.
Oh, Cha Dawn declared war on me, but I have no reason to care. They're on the other side of Planet, with strip lands and other factions in the way. They haven't even taken out my Gun Foil. They were whining about the Hive.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 11:23:22 am
An initial rash of Missile ships, terrorized their sea bases, completely obliterating them. They never fought back at sea, and the whole thing was a game of whack-a-mole, eliminating Sensors and new bases as yet another sea colony pod sprouted. I'm quite surprised at the number of wounds a civilian sea colonist can commit on defense, it seems quite excessive compared to Missile ships. Also for some reason I wasn't allowed to equip them with chemical weapons, which I consider an unreasonable deficiency.
On land, it took me forever to get my cities properly garrisoned. Since the Usurpers actually had no offensive potential at all, this was a complete waste of time. What they did do, is keep rebuilding cities I'd already killed, in the same places. I felt like I had an extreme lack of productivity, far more than just my -1 INDUSTRY penalty would account for. It's like, I eventually get stuff, but the rest of the map just grows and grows and grows.
The graph said I was the 2nd crappiest empire, after the Pirates. And that the Usurpers were substantially better than me, even though they couldn't do a darned thing to me. How does someone manage to be better when all they do is lose? I stole like every tech in existence from the Hive. Didn't quite have that finished up when I quit, but I was close. The Hive never did anything to me either.
It seems like the only thing the AI has got going for it now is spam competition. This is very tedious for a human player, and I don't see that it's militarily effective. It's also a huge tech leakage giveaway.
In contrast, with the stock binary + my mod, a militant faction that gets ahold of so much as Recon Rovers, is capable of wiping you out, if you're not careful and forget to defend yourself with proper garrisons. This is even with Huge map and all the biases I've put in the tech tree towards early defense. That's not a brag; I didn't program that AI behavior. It says that the AI in Thinker or WTP, is making very serious mistakes about how to allocate effort, compared to the stock binary.
I think if I didn't bother to make the latest greatest expensive garrison units, and only made X offense, I could probably wipe out a nearby Alien faction pretty easily. Or humans if I was playing an alien. I may not need to make a navy at all. I didn't see any basic competence at sea.
Some specific AI pathologies I noticed:
* suiciding Scouts against much stronger armored units. Especially egregious when the armored defender is in a city.
* building expensive armored probe teams that are merely Disciplined, when they're facing a Fundamentalist empire with Commando or Elite probe team defenders.
On the positive side, I had no problem getting my empire established. That's 2 games now where I didn't think there was any basic fairness issue with mindworms and whatnot. And I did have quite a bit of fungus touching my cities this game. It was only later on that I cleared it with Fungicidal Formers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 03:38:03 pm
Something makes the game take a relatively long time to start up. At least 30 seconds after I set all factions to random and then hit ok. Maybe as long as 1 minute. There's just a blank screen waiting that whole time, an uncomfortable pause that makes me think something is broken. I noticed this behavior in both versions 218 and 215.
Could the world generation or faction placement algorithm be iterating over and over again without success, until finally something succeeds?
In comparison, stock binary has very little delay from time hitting ok to the time telling me what faction I got.
I noticed that too. Could be world generator or PRAX patch Thinker embedded. Not sure. Does it happens every time?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 03:40:47 pm
Why are the Usurpers able to settle bases on fungus?
[Limit reached]
Even if you thought Aliens should be able to do this for some reason, it makes no lore sense at all for the Usurpers. This smells like a bug. Heck it doesn't even make game mechanical sense, as your version of the Usurpers has the unaltered -1 PLANET.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-209
To aid AI in base placement among large fungus/rocky patches. It doesn't know how to clean spot for bases with formers. I may also automatically remove fungus/rocky from base site to not confuse people. Probably I should do it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 03:55:32 pm
If you have time to play Thinker 2.5 as well - try it out and let me know if it suffers the same problem.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 08:42:46 pm
I noticed that too. Could be world generator or PRAX patch Thinker embedded. Not sure. Does it happens every time?
Yes, every time.
My 1st try of version 220, it didn't happen. This time I only Quick Started my game, hopefully relying on previous RANDOM faction settings. I drew Cha Dawn, which does seem random compared to previous games, so I think the RANDOM settings have been retained. I guess we'll see if the problem comes back, or has been squashed by your Thinker 2.5 code merge.
To aid AI in base placement among large fungus/rocky patches. It doesn't know how to clean spot for bases with formers.
Well, that's a cheat for the AI. But at least in the stock binary, it would be a defensible one, considering how badly the AI does with colonists and fungal mazes. I'm surprised that Thinker doesn't handle things ok, considering how much more AI oomph it's got in settlement algorithms. Are you sure you really need to have the AI push out this many more colonies, on these places? Doesn't Thinker already spew enough bases as is?
It would be preferable to actually have the AI clean spots for bases, but I understand that could be a lot of work.
Quote
I may also automatically remove fungus/rocky from base site to not confuse people. Probably I should do it.
Removing the fungus and flattening the rocky terrain to rolling, would hide the cheat better. Then if discovered, at least you could justify the cheat in your notes as necessary to solve an AI performance problem. Could note it as an interim step, a kind of triage, even if you never get around to doing better. "Ideally we'd like, but...."
If you have time to play Thinker 2.5 as well - try it out and let me know if it suffers the same problem.
I don't. I was up to 6 AM playing your mod as is, and it's getting on towards 4 PM now. Fortunately, you just merged 2.5, so that's halfway to knowing how it behaves.
I'm going to start a new game with version 220 shortly. My prediction is: I'm not going to end up in a human-alien neighbor war. I may not get the U.N. Charter properly repealed (prediction, hah!) I'm going to make a token garrison force of Synth units, and I'm going to ignore the water. I'll build my Speeders and summarily overrun my nearest neighbor, because AI is completely incompetent, wasting its production on colonization instead of defense. Why am I confident in this prediction? Because I was noticing similar behavior a couple months ago when I was last testing. I don't think the "runaway train" of excessive colonization has been averted.
But we'll see. I don't know how new objections about unusable roads and auto-destructing empires are going to factor in. I suspect they mean there's no value in taking over bases. Only in obliterating them. Which may mean twiddling my thumbs until I've got Planetary Council clearance to legally do so.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 09:39:13 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 09:45:14 pm
To aid AI in base placement among large fungus/rocky patches. It doesn't know how to clean spot for bases with formers.
Well, that's a cheat for the AI. But at least in the stock binary, it would be a defensible one, considering how badly the AI does with colonists and fungal mazes. I'm surprised that Thinker doesn't handle things ok, considering how much more AI oomph it's got in settlement algorithms. Are you sure you really need to have the AI push out this many more colonies, on these places? Doesn't Thinker already spew enough bases as is?
It would be preferable to actually have the AI clean spots for bases, but I understand that could be a lot of work.
It's a huge huge work nobody wants to do. And if it is only to clean place for base then this cheat just solves it for cheap. I am not sure if this cheat should be there or we should deprive AI from such areas. I don't think it really matters much. I just introduced it to see how AI expands in general and these patches just go in the way of my observations. I can turn it off if people say it makes AI overly strong.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 10:50:37 pm
Regarding the colony clearing cheat, my working hypothesis is that the AI fights badly because it spends too much time colonizing. Thus, denying more colonization spots might be in your best interest. A halfway house would be to allow the cheat for X number of configurable turns at the beginning, then turn it off.
I'm currently on MY 2153. From what I can see of the map, here are the colonial spreads. Cha Dawn - me - 8 cities. Usurpers - at least 7 cities, some map blackout obscuring. They will soon move into the Monsoon Jungle. University - 6 cities. Gaians - 6 cities. Cyborgs - 4 cities. Peacekeepers - 6 cities. That leaves only the Pirates unaccounted for, as nobody seems to have met them. I can see Safe Haven because I found the USS Unity crash site.
Yes, I'm better at colonizing than the AI is. I know how to completion scum, and I've gotten pretty good at masking the long colony production times. I also started on pretty good land, lacking only a minerals deposit so far. And I'm the Cult, giving me lotsa money from early exploration popping pods. I'm now going through a phase of building Rec Commons and Rover Formers to follow, as my road network isn't enough for my reach.
I have prototyped Plasma armor with a completion scum. Gatling guns are coming by sheer long term brute force. Didn't pick up a completion scum on that one. I don't need those techs yet, I was just being a boy scout for any upcoming trouble. Since the Usurpers are my nearest neighbors, I wasn't wrong to do that. But so far, we have a Treaty and aren't touching each other yet. If we do touch, I predict they're dead meat.
Anyways, empiricism says 60 turns of settlement cheat is totally reasonable. Wouldn't shock me if 80 or 100 turns of cheat turns about to be reasonable as well. Whereas, when I took the screenshot of 4 bases on the front line of last game's Usurpers, all lining up in a huge mass of fungus, I thought that was pretty unreasonable and goofy looking. Hard not to notice that, and seemed pretty excessive given the sprawl of that empire elsewhere. That was in MY 2198, near the 100 turn mark.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 10:58:37 pm
Instant startup is a certainty for vanilla. Years of testing on that. Don't know about Thinker. Kinda busy conquering. You could test it yourself, wouldn't take you any more time than it takes me. It's not going to be any different on my machine with a "clean install" of Thinker. This isn't a graphics problem, the recent instant startup proves that. The problem may be gone now.
There is no point me testing it. I do not observe it.
Regarding the colony clearing cheat, my working hypothesis is that the AI fights badly because it spends too much time colonizing. Thus, denying more colonization spots might be in your best interest. A halfway house would be to allow the cheat for X number of configurable turns at the beginning, then turn it off.
Oh. It definitely does. That is why I see how to nicely deprioritize expansion in favor of protection. All AI tuning is a tedious work.
What's completion scum?
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 11:09:45 pm
Later I realized it was also useful on land in a lot of contexts. For instance, if you completion scum a Command Center, you can devastate a nearby enemy, much faster than you'd expect a CC to be built. Your long build time for CCs actually means nothing to me early game.
If you don't understand completion scumming, you might want to go up that learning curve, and decide whether you want to nerf it somehow. It's very powerful. Not quite thermal borehole, supply crawler, and condenser powerful, but it really gooses early game spread. And the AI has no idea how to do it at all.
In fact, the WTP AI doesn't even seem to know how to pop pods. I wandered all over the ocean last game, popping pods it hadn't picked up. I could swear that previous versions of Thinker I've played, cleaned out all the oceans quickly. Can't remember about WTP. But anyways, the AI is leaving a lot of early money lying on the table. Not good.
Post by: bvanevery on April 16, 2021, 11:11:13 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 16, 2021, 11:56:56 pm
I keep getting distracted from the original thing I was going to post about. As the Cult, of course I'm acquiring wild hatchling mindworms. When they survive a combat, why are they never leveling up? Is this intentional? In the stock game, winning with a hatchling guaranteed turns it into a larva.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/README.md#promotion-probability
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 12:45:51 am
MY 2198. This is typical of AI empires. I definitely think the fungus cheat should be cut off after 100 turns at the latest. This is plenty enough cities to make a core empire. It gives the unfavorable impression that the AI doesn't have to think, plan, or play by the same rules you do.
Cutting off at 80 turns may be more appropriate. I remember the Usurpers having a substantial number of fungus cities by then. 60 is probably too early.
I'm still at peace with the Usurpers so I'm just going vertical with my 8 cities. Slowly putting trained Fusion ECM Synth Garrisons in place, using only 1 Command Center that did in fact take me forever to build. All factions are pretty even on the graph.
I'm finding that WORMPOLICE is an advantage, in a game where it's hard to have Police units.
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 02:22:00 am
Exploration kept me going for awhile, but then when the pods are all dried up, there's really no reason to be out there anymore. Unlike the stock game, trying to capture more mindworms is mostly fruitless. You will get one occasionally, but it is not worth the intervening mouseclicks. Using your mindworms to fight other mindworms is pointless, you'll just get killed half the time. So I don't. I just evade and go pop another pod. When those are gone, there's nothing left to do.
Used to be I'd go execute Fungal Towers to make some money, but I don't think I get any money for that in WTP. So the usual suicide ritual of sending 3 untrained Scouts against a Fungal Tower, to reduce my SUPPORT, is pointless. Unless there's one nearby in the way of my expansion, which there wasn't.
Marr had this huge but crappy empire north of me. And if I go try to take it over, everything up there is going to auto-detonate. There's no reason to do anything up there, because there's no profit in it for me. I'd only go if he was a threat, and he isn't. Also, threats can generally be dealt with by taking 1 or 2 cities. Then factions will shut up and leave you alone for awhile.
What's the point of this game? Sit around and level up my cities forever? If that's all there is to do, well I don't think I'd pick the Cult of Planet to do it. They're not the most useless faction for building, but they're not what I'd call advantageous.
Sitting around waiting for stuff to get done building, takes a long time. That's not much of a game. I feel like I just went through 5 hours of foreplay, after which, I could not be bothered with SMAC porn anymore.
I never made a social engineering choice. They're all bad. You're better off in neutral. Until someone declares war on you, at which time Fundamentalist is the obvious slam dunk total giveaway. But that never happened, so I never made any choice. I contemplated going Green Something once my cities got up to size 7, as I wouldn't need them to grow for awhile and could delay on Hab Complexes. But even with 8 cities fully terraformed, only 1 of them made it to size 7 before I quit.
I had tons of money and nothing at all useful to do with it. Unlike my mod, I can't just drop it on Secret Projects. They're too expensive. None of the buildings are worth anything and nobody's doing anything, so, why bother?
Like why did I build Biology Labs and Network Nodes? It doesn't make any difference to research, I can just buy other people's research. Except for the tech for Recycling Tanks, because it takes forever for someone to build The Human Genome Project and they all block on trading the tech until then. It's the only tech they actually do block on. I don't know why they're so uniquely fixated on that one tech. It's really weird that they'll trade lotsa techs with SPs, but not that one.
The Cult possibly could have made use of the BLs for a mindworm assault, and I sorta had that partly in mind after getting the Genejack Factories done. But chemicals are best against aliens and BLs don't help with that. I was trying to talk myself into a hybrid assault model when just all sorts of feelings of meh washed over me. Don't care.
Human history sure would have been different, if seizing foreign lands never had any value to it.
What to do, play the "take the 1 distant city that made a SP" game? Well since rails don't work, you're sure gonna be pushing units a long time to do that. Not worth it.
Play the "early land greed" game? What if I don't like that really? What happens when I'm bored with pushing colonists around?
Pretty much I feel nihilism.
I wonder if WTP is oddly vulnerable to Single City Victory? I might test that.
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 05:50:42 am
There is no point me testing it. I do not observe it.
Quick Start once again came up instantly. This time I drew Zhakarov, so all the previously established RANDOM factions are still set properly. The original problem happened when I set all the RANDOMs by hand. Not this time, but next game, I'll try that again. If the problem doesn't recur then I suppose Thinker 2.5 fixed it somehow.
This game I'm going to try to jump nihilistically forwards with X Recon Rovers, spending the least possible on offense and doing the most damage. Of the 4 X's, I don't think eXplore lasts so long now, and eXpand and eXploit seem pointless. That leaves eXterminate. The formal question is, just how broad a circle of destruction can be imposed how cheaply?
BTW when I play, as a matter of habit, I don't change the faction default research foci. This allows me to perceive the faction more like the AI does. Like whether it gets hopelessly stuck in the tech tree somewhere. So far that has not been a problem. There has been way more tech easily available on the open market, than I think I could ever possibly need.
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 08:38:19 am
MY 2198. Sunspots descended a number of turns ago. I'm taking advantage with my first Obliteration against my former ally. I never did anything to him. He just reneged on his Treaty and then got uppity about us both removing units from each others' territories. So I sent in a bunch of unarmored units from all those Command Centers I was building and wiped out his city. Took some losses.
I've got these much finer X Synth Impact Rovers coming up next. The fusion reactor allows me to put a little bit of armor on it without any substantial additional cost, which is gonna be great for sliding up right next to a base. I only hope the sunspots hold long enough for me to take real advantage of this.
I do have the prereqs for Advanced Military Algorithms, which would allow me to propose Repeal the U.N. Charter. However I haven't learned it yet, and there's no certainty it'll pass. Lal the goody two shoes is the Governor and my ally. He often vetoes that, but sometimes he doesn't. You just never know.
I still don't know how to build the Virtual World. Because of the extra drone for every 4 citizens, I'm having to build Hologram Theaters. The University has been harmed in this regard compared to the stock game. It remains to be seen how much of a problem it is, but presently, my budget has to be 40-30-30 and I've still got troubles.
Oh, and of course I can't go Fundamentalist, so this chemical weapons extermination, is quite the preconceived agenda. To the extent that tech is rather easily obtained in WTP, this might actually be the worst case for waging a conquest.
MY 2204. Sunspots have lifted. That wasn't long enough. I got delayed by a flank of wild mindworms. To add insult to injury, he's jolly well spammed a base right were I previously obliterated it. I have to go Free Market to deal with my poverty.
MY 2205. Well I took the base, for all the fat good it's gonna do me. Can't very well obliterate it now.
MY 2211. They retook the base with a Chaos Shock Troop and some peons. Although it's good to see the AI displaying mild competence, it also reinforces what a lousy faction the University is, and what a bad strategy my imagined "X rush" is, absent a Repeal. Would have been better not to squabble about the border and just sit around until a Repeal is ready. But how long would that be? I'd have to break purity and change my research foci. Won't do that this game, would just start over.
What's up with their armored probe team killing my probe team, like it was nothing? They both have the same level of training, Disciplined. They took only 10% wounds. So then I make a conventional attack with one of my fancy X Impact Synth Rovers and of course it dies. Later for this, I'm quitting. There's something awfully capricious about probe team combat, if that was an expected result.
4:37 AM.
Miriam was at war with me, north of Domai, pretty much this whole time. She circulated in the water near me too. She never mattered. I originally thought I was going to go on a chemical extermination of her.
I really had to reel back in my war effort because of my poverty due to the extra drones penalty. It's not basically fair because it treats the University like it's minting piles of gold bars or something. Actually, the University's tech research is quite worthless. So all I get is a faction that's rather disadvantaged for keeping itself happy and above the poverty line. And I can't go militant with Fundamentalist. So what's to like? A free network node is not worth all of these penalties.
Pretty sure I've filed Issue Tracker stuff about all of this. Yep I did. It was closed. Entry for #195 says:
RESEARCH bonus percentage parameter is added in thiker.ini: se_research_bonus_percentage.
RESEARCH bonus is doubled.
Fundamentalist, Brain, ++MORALE, ++PROBE, +INDUSTRY, --RESEARCH. It loses extra RESEARCH penalty which was added previously just because RESEARCH bonus was too weak.
Well, looking at other factions, it seems I have better tech than many. On the other hand, the Cult got gigantic in 111 turns and has several techs I don't have. I presume because of their sheer size. Kinda ridiculous looking at them. Their government is Fundamentalist Green Survival. They don't have a single Biology Lab or Network Node, so how the hell are they pulling that off? Something's wrong here.
Unless the AI now knows how to pop Artifacts for tech?
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 04:41:14 pm
[Limit reached]
I had an unusual start near Mt. Planet. I had to walk 4 squares to get settled, and I got lucky with a forest pop on the way. I've completion scummed a Command Center and already have a Recon Rover prototype available, so I'm unusually well situated to rush the hell out of somebody. I don't know if I have any neighbors.
In MY 2119, I did it again! I've got 2 Command Centers. Oh, and I already know Impact weapons.
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2021, 09:48:32 pm
Ok, this is the reason I quit, and won't be playing any more for awhile. I know it is a vanilla behavior. But it is hugely exacerbated by WTP. The credit exchange rate on building Secret Projects is 6:1, which is a pretty huge "screw you". You need piles and piles of credits to afford a SP. Ridiculous, wasteful numbers of the stuff.
I had something like 1200 or 1400 credits and had been trying to build the Command Nexus for a very long time. A ridiculously long time, because it's so godawful expensive. I was within a few turns of completion, and even had an Artifact being finally dragged back home, to get this done. And then, this.
A rational person would say I don't want or need the CN, that I'd coughed out the units I needed just fine with 2 completion scummed Command Centers from the beginning of the game. But I don't know what do to with all this money I've piled up, particularly from exploration.
I was already building every low cost base facility, with all the minerals from farming and forests. Without legal chemical weapons, there's no motive to go to war with anyone, as "takeover" war doesn't gain you anything. So my cities just sit around building the next thing that might make them stronger in the future.
I've been trying to get Advanced Military Algorithms since like, forever. I even adjusted my research focus to Conquer only. Even once I can make the motion to Repeal the U.N. Charter, there's no guarantee that anyone will go along with it.
So this all becomes a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting. With all this cash that is of no use. Except to try to finish a ridiculously expensive SP, that's a total ripoff. It's like 200% MSRP "oh we're having a chip shortage, didn't you know?" pricing on PCs in real life right now.
Energy market crash has always been a s### sandwich. Now it tastes even worse than vanilla. I ain't buyin' it.
Tim, I know you've tightened the economy of lots of things to achieve various gameplay effects. But the problem is, you've made so many things so tight, it's not fun anymore. I sit around for a long time with no incentive to do much of anything. I don't think it's reasonable to make SPs godawful expensive in the 1st place, then even more godawful expensive if you dare to use cash, then allow the vanilla "screw you I'm takin' your cash, how dare you prosper" gameplay.
It's 4:30 PM and to get to MY 2208, took about 6 hours. That's a waste of my real world life at this point. With these egregious cost formulas and very long delays until anything meaningful happens in the game at all, this is not respecting my time as an adult.
I wonder how bad my own mod does on that subject. But at least I'm not setting people up for a huge janking. At least, I don't think I am. Sure hope not.
Gonna file "get rid of Energy Market Crash" in the Issue Tracker. I don't know how doable that is for you. I'm not likely to play again if I have to face that risk and deal with egregious costs at the same time.
Bear in mind that this sort of problem, is partly an indirect consequence of your new policies about invasions. That invasions basically have no profit value at all. You're kinda taking the game away. So then I look for something else to do, and then that part of the game sucks hard, so...? I end up saying I'd rather spend 6 hours of my life on something else.
Other circumstances: my nearest invasion target, the Believers, eventually became my ally. This seemed semi-rational because I would probably go Fundamentalist. Far to the northwest, the University was also allied and sitting on the Monsoon Jungle. They mostly provide free or cheap research. They were a buffer to the Hive, ever more distant. Hive got in a snit with me, probably instigated by the University. The Cult was also very far away and in a snit with me, probably the Peacekeepers' fault. They are also allied with me and also provide free or cheap tech.
So, presuming I could get chemical weapons legalized someday, I was still looking at 2 very long distance invasions. And I won't ever be able to move fast across the Huge map, until the orbital insertion era, so... how much fun is that gonna be?
Generally speaking we conquer next door neighbors because it's profitable to do so. It adds to the glory of our empire. But when you auto-destroy that, you're taking out a big part of the game. Absent that, the game reduces to "colonize forever" game, where someone else's territory is just a more tedious kind of terrain to clear out and prep. Because there's no value in what's already there, all that stuff's gonna vanish.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 17, 2021, 11:14:33 pm
Collecting opinions here.
What should be crash percentage to not be such a devastating event?
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2021, 01:16:02 am
If the % is low, like 20% or less, then the only message is "Hi, gamedev here. I'm a dick. I just took money away from you, that you can't do anything about." What were you supposed to do about it? Divert all your attention into building a big pile of Energy Banks, so that you don't lose 200 credits? Considering the cost in credits and time to build those facilities, that's economically irrational, so I don't see the point. It would seem to be nothing more than attempting to condition the player, to obsess about Energy Banks. Why do that? I can't think of any good reason to insert that worry into their head, or try to get them to do that more often. It's just a futz, some crud.
If the % is high, it's still a dick move. It deprives the player of agency. Or, to the extent you think that obsessing about Energy Banks should be something the player makes decisions about, it's not a good mechanic. There's always something the player should be doing, some need of the empire here or there. Why do this "baby birds and babysitting" sort of thing? I don't want a whiny, crybaby, falling apart empire.
It seems to me like huge economic consequences, would require a fundamentally reworked market trade system. Where the player has made decisions to invest in BS like Enron or AIG or other such society destroying ventures. But that level of economic sim, just isn't in the cards for SMAC. So my vote is, screw it.
My point of view is, some game designers are lazy. They insert RNG stuff as content filler, because they've run out of ideas. They figure they can jank the player a bit into treading water, struggling to preserve the status quo. This is a reasonably well known commercial game design idea, especially in the MMO space. Well hey geniuses, I'm already doing lots and lots of work in this game. So bugger off.
How do random bad events work in a game of Monopoly? Well, there's a certain degree of tactility for the player's agency. The player does something. They roll a pair of dice. They push a token around the board. They pick up a card from a pile. These physical acts feel like some degree of player agency. They aren't; they just feel like it. But at least the tactile illusion does hold up some, in real life.
And, the illusion is not shattered by particularly horrible penalties. You can lose $50 for a Doctor's Fee. You can Go To Jail. That's about it.
In contrast, the rewards are better than the penalties. You can get Bank Error In Your Favor Collect $200, which is unambiguously good. You can Advance To Go and get the $200 you had coming to you anyways, sooner. It might skip you past a danger. It might make you unable to land on something you wanted, so it's not a 100% boon. And it might set you up to land on the light blue properties, as a matter of probability. Sucks if someone else has put hotels on those.
SMAC did the opposite. The rewards are mostly worthless. The penalties are horrific. Cynically, one can say that the minuscule rewards, exist only to psychologically condition you to swallow the horrific penalties. Putting a little Special Sauce on the s### sandwich, as it were. Pretty lazy and evil game design.
Maybe some genius thought they were "just worldbuilding" with the Energy Market Crash. That they were primarily trying for a narrative function. Like starving colonists, there's sort of a narrative there. It's not a very good one, because I hardly feel invested in an event I can't control, and I'm not gonna just drop what I'm doing to go deal with it. The tactical question comes up from time to time on forums, and my answer is always, "Let 'em starve." No, it's not the Chairman Yang in me, that says that. It's the game designer in me. It's not an especially compelling narrative or game mechanic, so it's best ignored.
The difference with an Energy Market Crash is, you have to be silly endgame rich, to be able to ignore a jank like that! "Oh, well, what's another 5000 credits."
If events are meant for narrative worldbuilding purposes, then I would think about the effectiveness and value of various possible events. So then one doesn't have to be married to "Energy Market Crash". Perhaps one wishes to say something about "the economy".
The asteroid hit which destroys one of your bases, is another one of these dubious worldbuilding horrible penalties. I think the reason I haven't called for its removal, is it doesn't happen very often, and I haven't lost a precious base to it. Like with a pile of Secret Projects in it. I don't know if that's just my relatively good luck, or if the code filters out cities that are too good to destroy.
Let's ask plainly: what's so important about asteroid hits, for worldbuilding? Yes asteroids could be presumed to be going on in the game, since it's a space game. But I can't think of anything about the main narratives and themes of SMAC, that says we really needed to hear about asteroids destroying bases. I mean yeah someone may have wanted to illustrate how the Garland Crater happened a little better. But I think the map art was fine in the 1st place. Why bother with a late game uptick in asteroid hits?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 18, 2021, 02:49:56 am
I agree that is pretty stupid penalty and there are more like that but that sort of common practice is such sort of games. I do not propose to remove it entirely but reduce its effect to bearable one. Doesn't make it less stupid but at least doesn't disrupt a long played game completely in one shot. So could be silently ignored.
I am aiming to raise event multiplier to 3/4 from vanilla's 1/4.
The big idea of random events in this game is that more fortunate factions experience more bad effects and vice versa. Another equalizing mechanics to prolong the uneven game if such happens. Same story with this one. One can keep their reserves under 1000 to not get penalized ever.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2021, 05:32:36 am
Energy Market Crash does not take Energy Bank into account.
That really sucks. Other events like the Network Overload, Planet Blight, Prometheus virus, and demanding a Children's Creche, lead you to believe that you have to build enough of some facility to prevent a bad event.
Well at least 3/4 probably won't trigger a rage quit.
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The big idea of random events in this game is that more fortunate factions experience more bad effects and vice versa.
I don't believe in doing much rubber banding. It removes player agency.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2021, 08:57:52 pm
I briefly started up #222 again before remembering I hadn't actually installed a #225 release last night. I manually set all the factions to RANDOM. The delay before my faction came up, was only very slight, like a few tenths of seconds extra. I would say that the previous problem of relatively long delay, is gone. I bet it was a Thinker 2.4 problem and 2.5 fixed it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 18, 2021, 10:07:58 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 18, 2021, 11:29:53 pm
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 06:30:15 am
In the beginning, spore launchers were a super duper pain that kept destroying my roads from invisible locations. Killed a 1st one, didn't realize there was a 2nd one for quite awhile. Mindworms were also much more swarmy than other games. They trashed several of my Scouts, but my bases happened to be close enough together that I was able to reinforce. I prevented base loss and facilities damage.
Morgan's -1 SUPPORT felt severely restrictive. I'm not certain if it's a dealbreaker for his prosperity in WTP, but it sure makes the early game a big chore. I'm not yet convinced that he has any compensating advantage. He doesn't make that much more money with +1 ECONOMY than anyone else. There aren't any early SE choices where you pick up just a +1 additional ECONOMY, for the desired total of +2, as in my mod. In that regard in my mod, he has a lot of flexibility as to how he will make his money, and that's a real advantage.
In WTP he has to do what everyone else does: go Free Market. And the penalties on that are awful. I was surrounded by fungus, often touching my bases, and I lost defenders even with PLANET = 0. No way I was going to take a penalty, with all that mindworm activity. It turned out I was in the middle of a supercontinent. So, somehow someone else's mindworms eventually just wandered over to me, to cause me trouble.
Lal was my huge next door neighbor and the dominant power of the game, as the graphs told it. So, I'm pretty much Finlandized to go Democratic. Except, I'm already at -1 SUPPORT and really hampered by it. It took me forever to build The Living Refinery. Then I finally went Democratic, to seal my alliance with Lal for the long term. Getting to that point was a real drag.
And, oh yeah, WTP has a PLANET penalty in Democratic for some reason. Doesn't make any narrative sense, but game mechanically, there it is. So that's another reason why I didn't think I could realistically choose it, for a long time. Took me forever to learn how to make Trance Scouts, then to train enough of them to garrison all my bases.
Oh, and I had the gigantic Cult of Planet threatening me next door. They actually proved incompetent and never came my way with any troops, and I killed several of their bases with Recon Rovers. Finally Lal and I got peace out of them. Anyways it was another reason why a PLANET penalty really didn't seem viable. I had one Fungicidal Former going around trying to snip snip snip stuff to prevent a Cult mindworm invasion, that never actually came.
The Usurpers nominally threatened me from the south, but never did anything. Incompetent.
Aside from this being an unwieldy and scrunched up game, where I was just made to feel like a super runt the whole time, the "quit trigger" was finally getting a clue about how Hab Complexes work in WTP. Morgan isn't actually hard limited to base size 4. Instead, there's this GROWTH penalty mechanic. His faction description needs to change to reflect that, and I filed an Issue about it.
I think the Morganites suck, but I haven't determined whether they dealbreaker suck or not. Some other random time. It's hard to estimate when, the military action of the game was, pretty much nil. I saw Lal starting to move some Chaos troops around, but darned if I knew where he was taking them. He definitely didn't travel through me to get to the Usurpers, even though he was at war with them too.
I learned that the AI's swarming behavior is a two edged sword. If you ally with someone like Lal, he's gonna send Colonists through you. To get to any empty territory around you. Which is bad if you wanted to colonize that stuff yourself. But it could be good if you want him as a political buffer state. We didn't get far enough to see if the buffer state would hold up. He had "shelled" me from much of the Cultists and the Usurpers. The Believers should have been arriving eventually too, and his bases would have been in the way of that.
Time to start over with a real faction, if there any. Certainly Morgan isn't. 1:30 AM now.
It seems like a few Recon Rovers would be the supreme weapons of devastation, as long as I had the means to make them. Which I didn't so obviously have with Morgan. You can't rely on 1 Recon Rover to win against a Scout in a base though. Saw those 75% odds, watched my Rover die. Fortunately had a 2nd one. It would take swarms of them to do the job of wiping out the frontier spam.
The tech gets ridiculously far in advance of anything I'd ever be able to build.
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 09:10:45 am
I had a big minerals deposit and Rainy Rolling land within my first few turns. Even this huge boost really didn't make me feel awesome. There's just too much crap that's gotta get done and too many bases are unproductive. I got Trance Scouts garrisoned more quickly this time. It was just about after I got that done, that I quit.
An Elite Recon Rover can devastate Scout defenders. Less than that though, they die more often than you'd think. I never had lots of Recon Rovers because there's always something else that needs to get done. Meanwhile the AI just spams away, making me feel like a bit of a fool even trying to keep up. My ally Domai got elected Governor, not me.
I also don't trust the odds calculator when facing a Colonist. Several times I was facing 93% victory and yet my Recon Rover died like it had taken on something too strong. Really don't expect a big fight out of something I'm supposed to have decisive odds over. Makes me wonder if there's a non-combat part of the calculation that's wrong.
Feels like I should ignore tech, and that bases without minerals don't matter. I tend to make a lot of solar farmland on rolling terrain, and the bases don't seem to grow into it much.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2021, 01:05:21 pm
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 04:10:12 pm
I played a short game before finally going to bed, 1 hour long, as the University. No contact with anyone, just colonizing a new area with a few cities. Lotta Rainy land. Yet, couldn't help but feel it was all going wrong, that somehow, such land distracts more than aids.
It may be an indirect effect of colonization being so expensive. The usual drill is to spread out and grab stuff. It seems like the right thing to do, because the AI is doing it so much. Yet, it may not actually be all that productive.
I will try to figure out how to make bigger bases with piles and piles of minerals. This time around, I specifically got into trouble putting Recycling Tanks on every early city. I already knew it was probably a bad idea, but I was frustrated at the non-growth non-productivity. Maybe a minerals city producing a lot of Rover Formers, then better choices about where to settle next to get yet more minerals.
I haven't really figured out if conventional Mines are worth building in the early game. In the stock game, they're not.
It also occurs to me that tech is dirt cheap on the open market. That makes Fundamentalist slam dunk the one good tech of your early 6 choices. If you can choose it. 2 factions cannot. There's also the possibility of it precipitating a war with a neighbor that you don't want, as was the case 2 games ago. However I'm starting to think I should just take my chances, relying on the AI to not be any good at fighting for now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2021, 06:54:56 pm
We may be already slightly spoiled by that and forgot how long and dull vanilla was with its yield restrictions where there were nothing to do except colony spamming for quite a while.
I don't think colonization is that expensive. The only change comparing to vanilla is that colony cost slightly more (3 -> 4). However, the modification in growth system makes it equally impactful to build colony at any base size. So that may create an impression of other priorities competing with colonization and, therefore, presenting colonization as not only choice = not a "no brainer" anymore = perceivable more difficult to choose.
It is easy to build mineral output due to recycling tanks and other mineral multiplier moved slightly closer. Of course, base needs some basic mineral input first. Conventional mines are very lucrative in WTP when restrictions are lifted. They overrun forest on mineral output. However, forest is also give one energy which may level them a little. See attached worksheet for forest and mine per worker mineral yield.
Early tech was somewhat cheap. I increased early tech costs a little. Should be smoother development now.
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 07:34:06 pm
Maybe your mod does something similar to give player things to play with at the beginning.
Clean Reactors. When in doubt, they're always a safe investment. You can always make progress on your empire that way... until you get to the point that you have more Formers than you could ever possibly need, or more garrison units stacked up than could ever be justified by any invasion. But generally you'll get some other tech to pursue by then. So Clean Reactors is always a valid "buffer" for how to spend your mouseclicking energy.
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We may be already slightly spoiled by that and forgot how long and dull vanilla was with its yield restrictions where there were nothing to do except colony spamming for quite a while.
I played my own mod in between your 222 and 225 release. My mod's early game is way faster than yours. I think. The most obvious and uncontroversial reason, is I didn't try to make Colonists expensive.
Another reason is if you're going to go mindworm pod popping, I've got the fast vanilla behavior of mindworm offense wins. You do get to steamroll a pile of mindworms that way, instead of the "skulk and shame" mechanics of your mod. I can clear pods in your mod, I've figured out how to just stand there and let them attack. Or just avoid them, run away. I'm just never going to sweep the map with the same breakneck speed, because you don't allow mindworm capture to go habitually well for me. In vanilla and my mod, the drill is kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill capture kill kill kill kill kill.... In your mod it's like Monty Python. "Run away!"
You've also raised cost on a number of basic facilities, like a Command Center. That means you're using delay as your primary game design tool. I can completion scum some of it, but not always. When you pile up delay after delay after delay, it has an impact on the pace of the game. It remains to be seen if the available player audience accepts that as challenging, or misguided. My jury's out on that. I think there are limits on how much of the game you can "take away" from players.
Finally, my unit movements are tailored to Huge maps. My Foils move 5. My Cruisers move 8. My Needlejets move 12. Huge maps are my design center. I tell players that playing on a Standard map is a mistake. Of course, because I'm working with the limitations of the stock binary AI.
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It is easy to build mineral output due to recycling tanks and other mineral multiplier moved slightly closer.
Excessive early game Recycling Tanks on bases that don't actually yield much additional minerals for having done it, will bankrupt you.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2021, 07:45:35 pm
QuoteIt is easy to build mineral output due to recycling tanks and other mineral multiplier moved slightly closer.
Excessive early game Recycling Tanks on bases that don't actually yield much additional minerals for having done it, will bankrupt you.
Who is talking about anything excessive? You cut my second phrase off context.
😀
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 08:40:17 pm
So if you did learn Recycling Tanks - which doesn't always happen, as you could be researching differently and factions will not just trade it to you - then you think well shoot I don't have enough minerals, should I be building these??? It looks like an early game tech, since Recycling Tanks is very basic to vanilla SMAC. But it may actually be a serious liability in a lot of cases.
I'm kinda having suspicions about your base facilities, that I have about your SE table choices. Mostly useless. Best avoided. Except for the clearly obviously good choices, like Fundamentalist and a Command Center. I just haven't proven that this is the case yet.
It reminds me of my learning curve about Freeciv. For a long time, the ultimate answer to that game, was to rush everybody with the super cheap Horsemen. Their 2-1-2 unit. You shouldn't even bother with Chariots, the 3-1-2 unit.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2021, 09:20:34 pm
It's not exactly clear how bases are supposed to develop in WTP.
Please be specific. I believe it doesn't matter which mod people play the mechanics is there and they know they can build stuff and push units.
You get bombarded by lotsa techs in WTP, but many of them are useless
What's the nature of the complain? Too many techs? You want less?
Techs provide useless items? That is to vanilla designers.
like weapons and armor that are too expensive to have any battlefield relevance for a long time.
What is useless weapon??? Everybody are going with about same pace. When you get 4 weapon/armor others get the same. Why now 4-4-1 is useless?
Meanwhile it can take a surprisingly long time get something like, a Children's Creche.
I never thought this is some critical element new base cannot live without comparing say to Recreation Commons, for example.
Which does seem like it should be useful, but I don't know yet if it actually is. Now it seems you've got Hab Complexes sorta competing with CCs for the growth functionality, and I don't understand the tradeoffs between those yet.
No trade-offs no competitions. They both affect GROWTH in some way. There is a synergy between them - having both is better.
CC effect is constant.
HC negative effect is triggered by population being close to limit. So it is more restrictive around the limit.
HC positive effect is slightly higher than CC one but the facility is more costlier. You may rush it only if you have plenty of money and nothing else to do.
So if you did learn Recycling Tanks - which doesn't always happen, as you could be researching differently and factions will not just trade it to you - then you think well shoot I don't have enough minerals, should I be building these??? It looks like an early game tech, since Recycling Tanks is very basic to vanilla SMAC. But it may actually be a serious liability in a lot of cases.
Level 2 in WTP. Use normal judgement when building multiplier - there should be something to multiply. I usually go for it when I have 10 minerals in base. Could go as low as 6 if I need to increase production in this particular base.
I'm kinda having suspicions about your base facilities, that I have about your SE table choices. Mostly useless. Best avoided. Except for the clearly obviously good choices, like Fundamentalist and a Command Center. I just haven't proven that this is the case yet.
Cannot tell either way. It's your strategy.
If you are saying some choices are not viable - let me know with specific example.
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2021, 10:52:12 pm
What is useless weapon??? Everybody are going with about same pace. When you get 4 weapon/armor others get the same. Why now 4-4-1 is useless?
All of the weapons except Lasers and Synth, appear way too soon, and are way too expensive, for the minerals productivity at the point in the game in which they appear. If you chase after the "better weapons" as they appear, you will never have more than 1 or 2 units in your army. Which are gonna die, because your combat system has a fair amount of volatility.
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I usually go for it when I have 10 minerals in base.
You either have a much more effective beginning game drill for minerals than I do, or you are waiting much longer to build them than I was trying to.
[Limit reached]
It's MY 2166 and I think this is the best case of what I could have done, given the starting conditions. My initial landing site was poor land, and I popped things like commlinks to human factions, which of course are useless at the beginning for the Caretakers. I had to move a little bit to get settled. I made an arc resulting in Decision: Manifold, Great Intertwining, and Melody of Souls. The first 2 had poor land and I settled mainly because it's unwise to keep walking forever. Who knows who your continental neighbors are?
The 3rd had a Nutrient special, and I managed to Completion Scum a Command Center. I decided this would be the focus of my nascent empire's terraforming investments. I got the Nutrient built up, then the Mine on a river square, but I hadn't learned to exceed the mineral limit just yet. I brought my Ogre in to pacify and worked the river farm square. The other 2 bases languished with Biology Labs and their extra Scout wandering around.
My bush troops started to pick up and I started getting mindworms etc. Thanks to lots of Unity Rovers, which seem to do much better at psi attack for some reason than a Hatchling, I had a pretty easy time sweeping pods out of the lands to the east. I wouldn't say I got rich, but I didn't lack for money. To the west, my sweep stalled out, because I did not send as many Scouts that way initially. Ocean sweeping has been local but successful, clearing the Sargasso Sea of pods. Unlike on land, it took a long time to capture some Isles, but I've got 2 now.
I've been trying to get a 2nd minerals heavy site going, and choosing settlements accordingly, but it's just taken forever to do it. I do have everything fully garrisoned with trained Trance Scouts. The policy was basically military first, Formers second, and that latter part has just been dragging and dragging. You really do make everyone feel like po folks, Tim.
I just killed a Fungal Tower that was blocking up what could be some good mining land, south of my main minerals city. However that's still a lot of fungus and I haven't learned Fungicidal Tanks yet. I need to clear at least 1 fungal square for correct city placement. I'm scarce on Formers and it may be some time before I get to that. But at least, the prep of getting that obstruction out of the way, is done.
I've prototyped Lasers and Synth by brute force. Lasers are the minimum needed for land invasions, and a little bit of armor on ships is darned useful at sea. Good prep for Fusion Reactors at some point "soon" too.
Went Fundamentalist. Research rate is still fine compared to production requirements. Only now am I studying Recycling Tanks.
Just ran into Cha Dawn, at a fair distance to the northeast. He declared war. Looks like he put a city on the continent, and has a base in water. Not a strong presence. In principle, I can go destroy these settlements. In practice, they're rather far away and it doesn't look valuable to do. I will at least send some stuff that way to check though.
Miriam's allied and sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, across the water to the north. A Morganite city is visible near her, but she hasn't made contact yet. I'm in Truce with Zhakarov but I don't know where he is.
MY 2172. Rushed Skunkworks, rushed Recycling Tanks, resulting in Command Center base with a minerals output of 12.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2021, 11:55:32 pm
All of the weapons except Lasers and Synth, appear way too soon, and are way too expensive, for the minerals productivity at the point in the game in which they appear. If you chase after the "better weapons" as they appear, you will never have more than 1 or 2 units in your army. Which are gonna die, because your combat system has a fair amount of volatility.
It is better to divide specific problems from personal perceptions/preferences. Otherwise, it is difficult to find a real improvement worth suggestions within tons of claims.
There are 13 weapons in game. So on average one should research one each 25 turns or so depending of research paths. I can try to adjust their appearance a little but generally they are more or less on target. See diagram attached.
What's the specific problem with having 1-2 units in army? That is how early combats are in any game with evolving production potential. Why should it be any different in this one?
Does it incapacitate player brain activity having so few units?
They are not gonna die against weaker units. You need to get your fact straight first. Check winning odds I specifically displayed for that purpose. Even with volatility 4 weapon against 2 armor has 4:1 winning odds. That is one 4-unit kills four 2-units on average with that mod volatility! Of course, vanilla volatility is even lower and one stronger unit will just kill infinite number of lower ones but that is a different story. Even with this volatility you complained about twice stronger unit is twice as more economically effective in isolated combat. So it is always beneficial to build stronger units.
Post by: bvanevery on April 21, 2021, 01:24:18 am
There are 13 weapons in game. So on average one should research one each 25 turns or so depending of research paths.You might want to think about player real wall clock time rather than simulation game turn time. Early game turns do not have the same number of moves in them as later game turns. I'm seeing lots and lots of weapons whizzing by at the the beginning of the game, that I can't use. I play a game for 6 hours and my perception is, what is all this useless stuff. That I can't produce effectively, and the defenders are vastly Scouts anyways. I have yet to push past a 6 hour game, that's the max so far.
Quote
What's the specific problem with having 1-2 units in army?
That even in your 4:1 example they die 20% of the time. Which means you can easily be SOL on a long distance campaign. March march march march march march march march march, oops bad luck, die. All eggs in one basket, no fallback.
Reliability of odds, only matters if you are using large numbers of units. Which so far, I've had a great deal of trouble producing. I'm "on track" to do better this game, but this is looking like a long distance naval / marine war. My 2 coastal cities are the crappiest I've got, my strength happened to have developed inland. I don't know how fast that geographic production reality is going to turn around.
Quote
So it is always beneficial to build stronger units.
Nope. Per above, you got that flat out wrong.
Also, FYI, over and over again in gazillions of wargames, I have observed the phenomenon that controlling the battle space with the largest number of cheapest units available, generally determines the game. The question is, can you stand to push all those units?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 21, 2021, 01:45:17 am
Post by: bvanevery on April 21, 2021, 02:57:20 am
Would you prefer to play 6 hours with a single researched weapon?
Yep! That's a little exaggerated but it's not far off from my early gameplay. You will be using Impact weapons for a long time.
I'm not exactly sure why I pulled this off in my mod's tech tree, whereas yours is like a lickety split succession of weapons and armor. I built a whole bunch of prototypes at my inland Skunkworks base, only because I didn't have any new bases to settle (per my more vertical minerals expansion policy). The game's up to freakin' missiles and we're still not in any kind of real shooting war. Even with maybe 2 more 'good' minerals cities coming online, there's no way I could afford the more expensive equipment. Currently MY 2200.
Maybe it's because I use Secret Projects to block the AI from trading various techs with you. I'm generally not blocking weapons and armor techs, but I do a whole lot of blocking, which slows down tech development quite a bit. Whereas, your AIs will trade techs very cheap at the drop of a hat. Except for a few weird exceptions where they do block on certain SPs. Seems to be the cheap SPs.
Maybe your AI is making an assessment of how likely it is to finish a given SP. If it decides (rightly so, considering your expense levels) that it's hopeless, maybe it just freely trades the tech. Which is shortsighted / bad policy. Default should be to never trade any tech that has a SP that hasn't been completed.
I always wondered why at times in the stock binary, the AI 'goofed' on this point. It was especially noticeable with the Data Angels and the Cybernetic Consciousness.
Post by: bvanevery on April 21, 2021, 06:06:59 am
MY 2224. After building a SP forever in one early "good minerals" city, I finally complete the Maritime Control Center. 3 Artifacts also went into the project. A long time ago, I decided I didn't really need a navy. I needed armored transports and marines. Then I could leverage my land power. So I set this goal, and it's the only SP I've completed. I don't believe it would have been possible to get done any faster, with this empire and start.
The Gaians have subsequently filled up almost this entire strip continent I'm on. I'm on ok terms with them, and I actually want to go Green. I don't know how to do that yet, although I am researching it. I became poor and have happiness due to lack of EFFIC. Free Market is not correct for the warmongering I want to do. Planned would merely make me more miserable.
Supply pods were useful for spurring my early growth, but they've mostly dried up now. I saw that economic writing on the wall and built Energy Banks everywhere. My economy is stable but not a moneymaker. I had to go to a 30-40-30 budget this turn to deal with yet more unhappiness. I make 1 credit per turn and have 182 credits in reserve.
I can't afford the maintenance on any more facilities. I make Fungicidal Rover Formers nearly everywhere because they don't cost credits to maintain. If I make enough of these things, eventually I'll be able to make better improvements or raise land bridges to enemies. Doesn't look like I'll need to build roads to anybody like I first thought, as Deirdre will surely come to me. Meanwhile I'm working on basic homeland improvement. So far I've only managed to sustain bases of size 5.
My original Command Center base is building a Genejack Factory. I have 1 coastal base doing so as well. Hopefully this is enough to get some marines out there killing stuff. If it isn't, well frankly this will have been a whole lotta prep for no real action. So I hope we're finally about to get to the action. Otherwise I will say that the game is way too slow.
I mean, I started at 4 PM, and it's now 1 AM. I did eat dinner and watch 1 episode Stargate SG-1. Maybe I did some Reddit stuff, can't remember. This game might have 5 hours into it already.
Since I am Alien, I can use chemical weapons and obliterate bases without economic sanctions, or fear of Planet vengeance and global flooding. But can I actually eliminate the Cult before they nuke me in retaliation? It's not a good idea to commit atrocities against an enemy you can't eXterminate. On the other hand, I estimate the AI's competence at building a Planet Buster, to be pretty low. Based on all the Scouts everywhere.
What if the world floods for other reasons, like some faction going nuts with Democratic Free Market and -3 PLANET ? The world going underwater, slows down your ability to access other factions to destroy them. Then again, the time that happened to me, Planet was taking vengeance on me. This time it won't. So I might MCC my marines everywhere they need to be, just fine.
Looks like WTP has inherited Thinker's "baby nerf" settings for global flooding anyways though. 1/3 rd probability of occurring. Well unless Thinker was set even lower. Anyways I'm used to 1/1.
Post by: bvanevery on April 21, 2021, 07:23:57 am
MY 2240. It's 2:20 AM. Getting Genejack Factories ain't that great, because then you need Hologram Theaters to keep people happy. And now I need Tree Farms everywhere to make money. I've stolen everything Cha Dawn has and they're not a land adjacent enemy. I also went Green so they're not a natural enemy.
We had sunspots for awhile and I was shelling one of their cities the whole time. I'd kill a Scout or a Sea Former occasionally, but I didn't have any navy to really do any kind of job. Thus, I never inflicted an atrocity on Cha Dawn. It wasn't exactly hard to call this quits.
Now I'm only at war with the Hive. They're straight north of me, as far as one can get just going north. They're a smaller empire by WTP standards. Perhaps I can eXterminate them?
I expect my alliance with the Morganites will eventually disintegrate.
Is the world going to get better once I have Tree Farms? Will I finally have enough production to do something useful?
You know what? I'm looking at this and, it just doesn't work. I quit. The MCC was an expensive complete waste of time. It's a super duper drag to push a navy all the way across a Huge map, to chemically purge an enemy that isn't even a threat to you.
Fundamentalist doesn't work as well as I thought. I'm right about its tech penalty being meaningless, as I got crazy stupid amounts of tech. Fusion weapons, like I'm really gonna build those. Built a prototype anyways for sake of form. The problem with Fundamentalist is, you don't grow much. I don't know if Democratic Planned will fix that, or if it's actually desirable.
Might be that one has to swallow Free Market penalties. Just make war with unhappy people. -2 PLANET seemed unpalatable as the Caretakers, but I suppose my mindworms were eventually not useful. I just kept them on border duty, as they're good at preventing wild mindworms from arriving.
It's a lot easier to make and use money in my mod.
Another lesson is your 'distant' land neighbor is gonna swallow your supercontinent soon enough. I should have thought about eXterminating Deirdre. Probably easier than pushing units to Yang. Still, I wonder if there was any point. Well, at least eventually the Gaians were land adjacent. Unlike the distraction known as Cha Dawn.
Finally, my capital sucked this whole time. I wonder if that had any indirect effects.
Post by: bvanevery on April 22, 2021, 05:34:46 am
I left my research on the default Discover only focus, as the AI would experience it. I have not learned Social Psych and it is causing me problems. I don't know if the AI would suffer similarly in the absence of Social Psych, as maybe it cheats. But inability to learn it, is a problem I've definitely seen in my own mod. The answer to that is to give it a research weight of 1 in some other category, as a "breadcrumb" for factions to figure it out.
I started out landlocked. Ran into hostile Usurpers fairly early, but they haven't sent any units my way. My capitol was well supplied with minerals, so I have used it to garrison everything with ECM Scouts. At some point my exploration started setting off piles of mindworms, and they hammered my bases quite a bit. I lost a few Scouts but generally was able to hold, and didn't suffer any loss of facilities.
I was really hemmed in for expansion though. There simply wasn't any room to put a base where either the mindworms wouldn't get it, or the Usurpers wouldn't get it. This has resulted in an eastwards march to the sea. I've now got coastal bases from the excessive colonists I produce to get rid of the unhappy people.
I've hit my Bureaucracy limit and need Social Psych soon or this empire is going to become degenerate. I did try increasing my Psych budget at one point, but it failed to keep even my capitol happy at size 4, even with a Battle Ogre in it. So, I haven't really seen a reason to try again.
For awhile, I had all my "minerals inferior" bases build Rover Formers. I've got enough of those now, so I've been building Biology Labs. Hoping to bolster my free Network Nodes. I've got piles of cash, I'm not exactly sure why, since I haven't been able to explore much lately. So far I have no use for it, because what I really need are instant Rec Commons once I finally learn Social Psych. Or if I learned Police State maybe that would work. Maybe Free Market would give me enough money that I'd be able to make people happy.
But I don't have any of these yet. I haven't met anybody but the Usurpers, and now you can see the result of my attempt to infiltrate and steal from them. The plan was to go to the cleared river square. Then walk 1 square along the river through the fungus, step into the open, and with my remaining movement infiltrate the base. Easy peasy, right?
[Limit reached]
Well, I was pretty surprised to see a really big load of Usurper troops there. I ended my movement where I clearly should have been killed. Miraculously, i.e. totally buggily, they didn't attack. I think there were at least 3 troops there, 2 of them with at least strength 3 guns. No excuse not to slaughter me. Yet, they just shuffled around and left me alone. So, what is the source of the AI's extreme stupidity in this regard?
Now I will move the heck out of the way. I'll build some Impact Speeders, slaughter the opposition, and finally do my infiltration. I scouted this whole frontier a lot earlier, and didn't see any sign of Usurpers coming my way. So I figured the AI was doing its usual passive not effective at projecting force thing, and just concentrated on my own empire internals.
On the same turn as I wrote this up, I finally met Domai at sea. He wanted an alliance against the Pirates and I acquiesced, as I really needed his tech. I acquired both Free Market and Social Psych, so now I'll finally be able to get something of an empire together.
Post by: bvanevery on April 22, 2021, 08:53:12 am
The Usurpers made a nominal effort to send forces at me, which is an improvement over previous AI behavior. However, their tactics were sad. They did kill 1 relatively weak unit once. Mostly I just blocked them on Rocky terrain with strong armored units, pummeled them with a piece of Chaos artillery, and then inflicted grievous bodily harm with 2 X Missile Synth Speeders. They didn't have any answer for those, they simply got destroyed. So, it didn't really matter what forces they brought, they just died. Eventually they seemed to get a little tired of it. As did I, because if you shoot fish in a barrel with the same repetitive mouseclicks for enough hours, you start to get sleepy.
It was a stalemate because I never really felt like I had any productivity outside of my 3 "good minerals" cities. I got a couple of cheap SPs done, the Supercollider and the Universal Translator. I went Democratic Green for awhile. Later I went Police State Planned Cybernetic. I don't think that was actually helping me. I think it mostly made people more unhappy, which wasn't the goal. That's a lot of why I quit.
So that was another 5 hour game. The pace is really slow. It feels like everything is too expensive and restrictive to ever get anything done quickly.
On the positive side, the presence of Usurper armored resistance, did prevent me from Recon Rover rushing them. Or even infiltrating them, for that matter.
But... it's not clear what would break the logjam. If I have to rely on "good minerals" cities to build an army, then this is never going to work. I'm not sure if "ordinary minerals" cities are actually sustainable. In previous games, they just seemed to drive me into bankruptcy. I did a lot of defensive Energy Bank building this game, so I did have money. But, I didn't really get productivity. There's just always yet another piece of crap that's needed, and so troops don't get built.
Post by: bvanevery on April 23, 2021, 06:22:10 am
I kept settling up a coast, thinking that I was utilizing "good" land. But in hindsight, Rainy land is common in this game and not worth much of anything for early empire development. You do need a bit of it to offset your minerals deposits or mines, but a whole bunch of Rainy land isn't basically useful. It just leads to cities that can't make anything.
I managed 2 "good minerals" cities, my capitol and one other midway up the coast. I had a 3rd started at the end of my expansion, but all my Formers got trashed by mindworms. I was rebuilding that capability when I quit. Generally I have my "bad minerals" cities contribute the Rover Formers, then they go improve the "good minerals" cities. I think I did as well at this drill as could have been done. Part of the reason I kept expanding along the coast, is my Formers were well ahead of what my bases needed. Until I started working on that third "good minerals" city, as it was near a bunch of fungus.
I got the 2 cheap SPs done, the Merchant Exchange and the Universal Translator. Getting other faction's techs for free was convenient in the beginning. Easy to get started on the cheap SPs. Not sure if I was going to have such a good time with the Human Genome Project. Growth in my "good minerals" cities was requiring other things, like Hologram Theaters. I had the capability to build the very expensive Virtual World, but I doubt it can be worth it. That BTW, harms the University.
Early on, I had Domai as a nearby naval enemy. Then we had sunspots for awhile. I met various other factions without being able to talk to them. A land war with the Believers looked possible in the future. I wouldn't have had that problem if I hadn't kept going up that coast. At least, not for some time yet. When I quit, sunspots were still active.
I really didn't see my empire as having sufficient output for making war. There's always just too much damn stuff that needs to get done and not enough minerals. I don't think I did a bad job at minerals making either. I was a little recalcitrant about rushing the 3rd Recycling Tank because I wasn't sure if the mine was going to get done quickly enough. I never did complete that mine.
Post by: bvanevery on April 24, 2021, 05:54:50 am
I had a particularly poor minerals start, just 1 special. As I developed bases, I made it a point to develop 1 Mine and 1 Rainy Farm as often as I could. It was not easy to get such operations off the ground, outside of my 1 "good minerals" base. Originally I thought I was going to use that base to pump out some Formers, but lots of mindworms were headed my way. So I did the Command Center thing. I have my doubts that it's possible to get away with an untrained defense.
Later on, it seemed like I had a handful of "ok minerals" cities, but I wasn't getting much of anything done. And I was becoming poor. My ability to invade someone else was nil. I'm not convinced that building conventional Mines can make an empire put out much of anything.
I started right on top of the Manifold Nexus. Founding my capitol put it within my radius. Guess how many mindworms I captured? One, the whole game. I never learned Centauri Empathy, but in the stock game, I definitely don't have to. The capture chance may not seem that great for "awhile", I'm not exactly sure how it works. But even on +1 PLANET you can get some mindworms. This was particularly sad and undermotivating.
Democratic Planned never seemed like a good idea. Why get more population if you can't make them happy? And you need minerals to build the facilities to make them happy. Or money from popping pods, but my mindworm situation really wasn't happening. I did explore but it wasn't lucrative.
Post by: bvanevery on April 25, 2021, 04:57:15 am
Played a "minerals first" strategy, on the premise that the game is minerals poor and pretty much determined by minerals output. Only had 4 cities for a long time. I now suspect that this isn't optimal. Maybe fewer cities and not spreading out too much is the right idea for getting minerals going, but not quite that few.
Didn't learn Recycling Tanks until MY 2206 I think. Finally stole it from the Believers after they stole from me first. Had long distance mindworm skirmishes with the Believers and the University. Had sunspots for awhile, during which time I saw the Hive and the Usurpers fighting on my border. Once they lifted, the Hive declared war on me. Not much happened but their artillery bothered me, and that's pretty much when I quit. It was a viable game, but felt like a drag where I didn't have any particular advantage.
My Chaos Silksteel Cruiser ships were expensive and ineffective against the Believers. They countered with a Chaos Plasma Foil, which smoked my ship about as fast as I smoked their Scout defender. Actually they killed my almost dead ship as it was trying to retreat. Pretty good defense for a Scout. The economics of this are clearly awful and I don't see the point of waging naval war against crappy ocean bases.
On the bright side, I see the AI actually using some troops. I can't tell if anyone was a real threat or not. The Hive and the Usurpers were keeping each other busy for the moment, and the Believers were too far away to matter.
I did no SE choice for quite some time. Eventually I went Democratic Planned, as I had a lot of developed land and hadn't really grown my bases to match. Some bases were at size 7 and building Hab Complexes when I quit. I'm not used to pop boom mechanics because I severely limit them in the early game in my mod.
I managed to build the Universal Translator, the Merchant Exchange, and the Human Genome Project. That pretty much exhausted the Artifacts I picked up.
I brought a lot of independent mindworms and spore launchers back to my empire, which then were useful as worm police. Sometimes that was involuntary, as when my diplomatic relations with an ally fell through. Sorry I don't give chump change to snivelers. Especially when they're holding out on me on tech and could jolly well sell it if they want money.
Post by: bvanevery on April 26, 2021, 01:09:40 am
[Limit reached]
I thought I was going to get in a shooting war with the Caretakers pretty early on. Then we had sunspots. When they lifted, the Caretakers got bored enough with me to sign a Treaty. So, crisis was averted. Only then did I realize that the 4 Command Centers I'd painstakingly built up, did me no good at all. The Gaians in WTP have a -2 MORALE penalty. Without a Command Center, units start as Very Green. With a Command Center, units start as Very Green.
This is untenable and a dealbreaker. I'm not playing WTP with this faction until it's fixed. IMO that's totally broken because mindworms aren't any kind of wonder weapon in WTP anymore, if they ever were. They're pretty nerfed. I filed an Issue about this Gaian stuff.
I'll go do a "decent minerals output" empire with some other faction. Start conditions permitting.
Post by: bvanevery on April 26, 2021, 03:25:21 am
[Limit reached]
Morgan Industries was the square I started on and an ok place to settle, so I took it. I saw the outline of the Garland Crater so I headed my 2nd colonist for it. When I got there, I found it covered with fungus and dry as bone. I was going to abandon the area when I popped a Monolith. I figured my base square would have adequate food and the Monolith would make it enough for the early game.
The extra Garland Crater mineral did prove helpful. I succeeded at an early rash of Formers using Completion Scumming. This however, rapidly ran me out of SUPPORT. I had to reassign units and manage the timing of my Colonist completion at Morgan Industries, to avoid a disbanding. I also had to avoid picking up the Unity Chopper and the Mining Laser from the crash site, because they would have added to my SUPPORT burden.
I scouted a reasonable search area but was beholden to my Scouts still taking up SUPPORT while I was in the field. Unlike the Gaians or other +PLANET factions who get some free units for scouting, for the Morganites it's a major liability. That's a lot of early game money that they don't have as good an access to. I patted myself on the back that I managed to patrol this much around me anyways, before things went south.
The point at which mindworms just start exploding around you, killed off my Scouts. Well ok, at least I could get on with making my empire. But I hadn't learned Social Psych. I kept the game's default research settings, to see things as the AI does. I don't know if AI Morgan has the same problem, if it has a way to cheat around it, but I was certainly harmed by not being able to make any Rec Commons. My 5 bases were all I had been able to manage, given the SUPPORT poverty. Many of them had access to better resources in total, but it would take more than 2 population to do it.
The last straw was when I sent my 6th colonist to an intended nearby beneficial nutrient site, and it was summarily killed by an unseen mindworm. I didn't explode anything down there myself. It's just the stage of the early game where they start wandering around a lot.
Quit at MY 2150, 10:30 PM. This basically isn't any fun, it's a drag. I don't consider it a challenge when the odds are stacked so heavily against the Morganites, I just think it's me being jerked around. The Morganites were the most pathetic faction of the original game too, for the same reason, the SUPPORT problem. Also like the original game, they have no real advantage. +1 ECONOMY doesn't do much. If you want +2 ECONOMY, you still have to pick Free Market to get it. Wealth doesn't come until a lot later. That's a long time to be playing without any real advantage, plus the SUPPORT liability, plus the Hab liability.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 26, 2021, 04:31:54 am
Faction balance is not this mod (my) specialty. It requires a lot of thinking and a lot of testing which I don't have time for, unfortunately.
😒
Honestly, I don't think they are seriously broken now after I removed aquatic minerals. I don't see any faction that is constantly on a lead or in the tail.
Let's look at Morgan's -1 SUPPORT that you mentioned, for example. I am not defending my position here. This could be one point of view. Not necessarily mine.
This is definitely a serious penalty. I don't think it is completely fatal to them, though. Sure they can support one unit less per base but this can be played around easily. Morgan should lean toward expansion thus creating more bases and sufficient unit presence by that. Their cash flow bonuses can be used to rush colonies and increase psych at bases to negate b-drones. Their population size restriction also suggest wider spread. So all their bonuses/penalties are playing relative well together.
Besides, somebody has to have this penalty. It would be quite dull to grant only positive bonuses to everyone. If not Morgan with his wealth than who?
Above passage illustrates that it is difficult to prove that certain faction bonuses combination is an absolute evil. There could be multitude opinions and point of views. They all are subjective. It is almost impossible to mathematically relate SE effects to each other. I have tried once and did the very rough approximation at best with tons of assumptions. Only million AI-AI simulations can gather sufficient statistics.
Post by: bvanevery on April 26, 2021, 05:10:06 am
Case in point: My Morganites +1 ECONOMY is very powerful, because I don't force factions to choose Free Market to make money. In my mod, in the early to mid game, you have to choose 2 of {Democratic | Capitalist | Wealth} to get to +2 ECONOMY, to make your money. Morgan only has to choose one of those. That's a big advantage. He could go Democratic Green, he could go Theocratic Capitalist (The Almighty Dollar!!!)
;morganercise ;worship
And my Capitalist isn't some onerous pain to choose, like in your mod, or the original game. It's only -2 PLANET. Of course it's also only +1 ECONOMY. I split it up.
Besides, somebody has to have this penalty.
No they don't. For instance, I have no PROBE penalties in my SE table or my factions. I don't believe in it as a mechanic, because stock binary mind control balance is crap. So I got rid of it.
Similarly, I have no INDUSTRY bonus or penalty anywhere in my SE table. No faction has an INDUSTRY penalty. Only the Free Drones have a bonus.
Quote
It would be quite dull to grant only positive bonuses to everyone.
False. That's my mod you're talking about. You actually played it?
Only million AI-AI simulations can gather sufficient statistics.
False. I've done dozens upon dozens of AI vs. AI simulations, and that's a big part of why my factions are balanced. I can only stand to play so many games manually. When I have my suspicions, I fire up the AI vs. AI games and see who gets killed. Consistently underperforming factions get adjustments. That's why my Morganites are +1 SUPPORT, not -1. It works in my mod, my actual game balance.
My AI players don't get benefits like settling fungal patches either. Another way that you can't assume equality between mods and factions.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 09, 2021, 11:06:50 pm
Don't know what to do with old releases yet. Some people still use them. It would be unwise to just wipe them out. From the other side it would take quite long time to transition them all into released tags. Maybe create an uber zip with all zips and put it as "Old releases" release?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 13, 2021, 12:39:57 am
Based on my recent disassembling of MC cost I have decided to mod it a little. All formula components make sense except unit counting filter. It counts only units with unit plan 0 and 1. Unit plan is an obscure feature designed for AI unit control mostly and is not visible anywhere on the UI. This part of the formula could be inadequately vague to player. I think it worth streamlining it a bit.
Here is what I have in mind.
1. Count units in base square and all adjacent squares as well since they all will be subverted on successful MC.
2. Count all combat units including psi, excluding scouts.
3. Units with Polymorphic encryption count twice (or some number of times). Original formula make them exceptionally powerful doubling whole unit count not only this particular one.
Post by: bvanevery on May 13, 2021, 07:44:26 pm
You must count Scouts. Scouts are early game defense and offense, and the Data Angels do start the game with a probe team and the ability to mind control. There's no basic reason why Scouts should be precluded from use in the rest of the game. When I'm taking someone over, Scouts are typically used to destroy enemy Sensor Arrays, wreck their Formers, provide impediments to AI movement, keep routes of travel somewhat more open, and even occupy bases when my real serious unit count gets thin. They're a perfectly valid military unit. They should have takeover cost proportionate to their worth.
Did you know that if you give Scouts an AI Plan of "-1 = Auto Calculate", the AI will calculate them as Assault? And that they can actually trash your capitol with a Transport invasion, in the early game? I was impressed! It's a pity that this setting also causes unhealthy obsessions with Scouts. So while trashing capitols is cool, watching the AI run out of SUPPORT yet again is not.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 15, 2021, 07:00:25 pm
- I think I better start drafting the MC and S formulas before I start to implementing them. It may be not too simple to even design.
Exclude nerve staple effect. It is an interesting factor but it has a limit and it seems ridiculously to force player nerve staple their vulnerable bases over and over again.[/li][/list]
Base faction EC? I think it is solid factor that is pretty difficult to change very quickly. So anyone trying to prevent their bases from MC should accumulate sizable sums of credits instead of spending them on hurrying.
Double cost if factions are not in pact. That condition sounds pretty weird. It is cheaper to buy pact base? But then they most likely break the pact. Is it one time feature? Why at all buying pact base should be cheaper? Not only this condition is weird it it difficult to control for both parties at will. I think it is better drop it.
Halve cost if base is rioting. Definitely drop it. Too temporary condition easily induced by the probing faction as well!
Double cost if base is in golden age. That is not easy to decide. Player may go all the way to make their people happy to not let them run away. The condition costs something to the player and may last for long and cannot be induced by probing faction. However, probing faction can increase riot activity thus nullifying the golden age. Of course, base owner can try to prevent riot and try to keep golden age but over pleasing citizens on purpose but I see it as too micro that would more annoy people than excite.
Double cost if base faction is an atrocity victim of probe faction. That is legit. People remembering what other faction did to them and don't want to defect.
Distance to HQ. That is the most controversial of them all. It makes sense from lore point of view. I.e. government has better control over base, etc. However, as usual in vanilla, implementation bastardized it. For one, not having HQ make it better for some distant bases. For second, bases close to HQ cost just a ridiculous amount to buy and that suggest a "move HQ close to captured bases" strategy. Which is viable but leads to human abuse, since AI doesn't do that. I believe HQ should add to cost but not that drastically.
Proposed formula for MC cost
Base MC cost
Every citizen costs 100.
Evey facility costs 20.
Every SP costs 1000.
Every factor of production base income costs some small value like 4 probably. This way base with 100 minerals and 200 energy will add 1200 on top of the cost.
Multiplying factors
(1 + base faction EC / 1200)
Not counting base faction corner market cost because I cannot comprehend what this means.
(2 - min(half map X, distance to HQ) / half map X)
This way bases close to HQ cost twice as much but not 5 times. Also not having HQ does not make some bases cost more.
Double cost if there is Genejack factory
Halve cost if there is Children's creche
Halve cost if there is Punishment sphere
These conditions do not count:
nerve stapled
pact
rioting
golden age
All other multipliers from original formula.
The cost of all subverted units is added on top of that but only for actual MC cost computation. Corner market does not count subversion cost.
Proposed formula for subversion cost
I think I'll put it here for completeness sake as well.
Unit cost in mineral rows * 10 * (hurry cost) * (800 + unit faction EC) / 800 * (2 - min(half map X, distance to HQ) / half map X)
Any unit home base conditions have no effect.
All other multipliers from original formula.
Optionally PE multiplies cost by more than 2.
Post by: bvanevery on May 15, 2021, 09:45:59 pm
Base faction EC? I think it is solid factor that is pretty difficult to change very quickly. So anyone trying to prevent their bases from MC should accumulate sizable sums of credits instead of spending them on hurrying.
However, this is also grossly capitalist. Just sayin'. Gonna say it since I did put Socialist explicitly into the game, and explicitly made Domai the socialist posterboy he always was. "Money makes people happy" is capitalist as #### (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony).
I imagined Morgan's endgame as Cybernetic, and made it dystopian, ala Blade Runner.
From a simulation standpoint, it would make more sense to deal with the happiness of the citizens in the base, and not how rich the faction is. I'd go so far as to completely discard EC as a factor in the computation, replacing it with some weighted metric of citizen happiness. I would furthermore discard things like Genejack Factories as a factor, instead relying only on whatever they do to base happiness. If you've got GFs but your PSYCH budget is also 40%, who's to say that doesn't work as a resilient society?
This of course contingent upon the doability of reading the base's happiness and integrating those factors into a formula. You'd need Talents, Workers, Drones. Dunno about Specialists.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 15, 2021, 10:37:01 pm
Happiness, on the other hand, fluctuates like crazy. Base can jump in and out of riot/GA in a matter of turns. It is also directly affected by probes. Even aggregate happiness you proposed suffers from the same.
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2021, 04:47:31 am
I don't think you should have to make tons of energy credits, to keep your population from being mind controlled. It is an explicitly capitalist, right wing way to look at societal organization. It really bugs me the degree to which games embed these kinds of assumptions about economics and society.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 16, 2021, 05:13:53 am
This is not a single facility. There are others like CC, COC, etc. They affect cost same drastic way. I don't like to change it more than necessary as long as some players are aware of these facilities effect on MC. After all MC cost should not be some absolutely precisely weighted formula. It is nothing like that in the whole game. Most of the modifiers in this game are "doubled"/"halved".
I agree that CC and COC specifically are more suited by their own primary effect to affect MC cost. Whereas, GF not so much - it is just mineral multiplier among others. So may drop it from the formula. Besides, it already adds 1 drone. Once again, need to think about it.
The overall happiness is a great measure to counter MC but there are few problems with it. It is difficult to raise it on purpose in recently captured bases with all psych facilities ruined and without psych multiplying facilities either. It would take enormous psych percentage that would be an overkill. It is also difficult to compute it and it adds additional complexity for the player to eyeball how much "happiness" their bases have.
How about some simplification then? Use Psych allocation as a direct MC cost multiplier? Like every 10% Psych increase MC cost by 20% or something like that? Should be very transparent to players.
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2021, 06:00:09 am
It is difficult to raise it on purpose in recently captured bases with all psych facilities ruined
I don't see any purpose at all to the guaranteed ruining of various base facilities. For me as a single player it creates busywork. In MP everyone's experiencing the same thing, so it doesn't matter. If it were easy enough to do, I would simply eliminate this play mechanic as unnecessarily baroque, un-fun, and not contributing anything to simulation. C'mon, you're the Nazis fleeing the American advance, you're gonna make sure your card playing room is trashed before you head out the door and flee down the road? Priorities man, priorities.
Look I'm gonna flat out say it: it's stupid. Who knows what some game designer or designer wannabe was thinking when they decided upon that. Probably contemplating "destruction". Doesn't mean they had good ideas.
Quote
It is also difficult to compute it and it adds additional complexity for the player to eyeball how much "happiness" their bases have.
The point would be to eliminate other factors in the formula until it is, in fact, easier to compute. Whoever designed various formulas for SMAC, clearly didn't have in-the-head computability in mind, when they were working on it. Especially for the Bureaucracy formula, over time I learned to just stop worrying about it. That actually took me years, to stop worrying about the inverse square root for the map size and so forth.
Quote
How about some simplification then? Use Psych allocation as a direct MC cost multiplier? Like every 10% Psych increase MC cost by 20% or something like that? Should be very transparent to players.
The PSYCH budget allocation is not enough. The absolute amount of energy you're putting in, and the size of your empire, do matter.
There's nothing stopping anyone from examining a base before they try to mind control it, and assessing the happiness there. Maybe you've forgotten this in the course of implementing various anti infiltration rules?
Also BTW:
Quote
Evey facility costs 20.
That kind of simplification, sucks. You're making cities with lotsa expensive facilities in them, into a bargain basement.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 16, 2021, 06:28:15 am
I don't see any purpose at all to the guaranteed ruining of various base facilities. For me as a single player it creates busywork. In MP everyone's experiencing the same thing, so it doesn't matter. If it were easy enough to do, I would simply eliminate this play mechanic as unnecessarily baroque, un-fun, and not contributing anything to simulation. C'mon, you're the Nazis fleeing the American advance, you're gonna make sure your card playing room is trashed before you head out the door and flee down the road? Priorities man, priorities.
Look I'm gonna flat out say it: it's stupid. Who knows what some game designer or designer wannabe was thinking when they decided upon that. Probably contemplating "destruction". Doesn't mean they had good ideas.
This is one of conquest lure reduction attempts. If you would capture a completely functional base it would increase conquest lucrativity threefold. Besides it is to draw clear distinction between MC/capture and TC. How else TC will be better. I don't mind removing it by itself but don't want to trash balance with other features. Let me know if you think of something.
The point would be to eliminate other factors in the formula until it is, in fact, easier to compute. Whoever designed various formulas for SMAC, clearly didn't have in-the-head computability in mind, when they were working on it. Especially for the Bureaucracy formula, over time I learned to just stop worrying about it. That actually took me years, to stop worrying about the inverse square root for the map size and so forth.
Like content citizen = 100 and happy = twice as much? That would embed both happiness and population factors in it.
Also BTW:QuoteEvey facility costs 20.
That kind of simplification, sucks. You're making cities with lotsa expensive facilities in them, into a bargain basement.
As any other factor. Don't be so picky. They are all not exact. At least this is some approximation. Vanilla doesn't even count facilities.
Trying to factor every facility cost makes formula more complex to understand and compute in head. Isn't it what you advocated for?
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2021, 10:16:33 am
How else TC will be better.
Total Thought Control avoids all political consequences for taking over the base when it's successful. That is the entire and only reason to do it. It's as though the base or unit was never possessed by someone else and was always yours. Well, I don't recall if Captured Base still happens, but politically, nobody can even remember it wasn't yours.
Quote
Like content citizen = 100 and happy = twice as much?
5 AM so my brain isn't in gear for thinking about numbers, but conceptually, T = Talent, W = Worker, D = Drone. Weights +1, 0, -1. Average citizen happiness = (T - D) / (T + W + D). 0 would be equivalent to all Workers. More positive would be more mind control resistant. Negative would actually be a drone riot in progress.
Quote
Vanilla doesn't even count facilities.
Vanilla sucks. The point of revamping this stuff is to make it not suck.
Quote
Trying to factor every facility cost makes formula more complex to understand and compute in head.
Not really. You know at a glance that a loaded city is going to be more expensive to buy. It's not realistic to think that anyone's gonna manually add up the cost of units in their head. Rather, they get a feel for what things cost, by very obvious inputs and outputs to cost. Expensive units and expensive facilities make a base cost more.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 16, 2021, 06:27:06 pm
each surplus nutrient and mineral = 4
each economy, psych, labs = 2
each facility = 10 * cost
each project = 80 * cost
happiness coefficient
all drones = 0.5
all content = 1.0
all talents = 1.5
prorated in between
HQ distance coefficient
No HQ or farther than half X width = 1.0
Right next to HQ = 2.0
linearly prorated in between
Previous MC coefficient
Each previous MC adds 10% on top of the cost. I.e. after 10 MC the cost doubles, after 20 - triples, etc.
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2021, 04:20:31 am
You're treating happiness as a minor factor only. 0.5 to 1.5 is not a very big range of variance. Like it could be the most singin' and dancin' est place in the world and it doesn't matter much compared to ho hum. It's not exactly easy or realistic to get a base with all talents. You're doing well if you've got people in a Golden Age.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2021, 03:21:49 pm
If you have easy access to the maintenance cost of the base, that's a better approximation of facility cost.
I can use both. However, maintenance is a burden. Why higher maintenance should increase base cost? I think facility cost is good enough estimate for base value.
You're treating happiness as a minor factor only. 0.5 to 1.5 is not a very big range of variance. Like it could be the most singin' and dancin' est place in the world and it doesn't matter much compared to ho hum. It's not exactly easy or realistic to get a base with all talents. You're doing well if you've got people in a Golden Age.
Err, what can we do about it? I have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky. Base of all drones now will cost zero. We cannot go below that. How else you want to make happiness as a major factor? Make it exponential? Like all drones divides cost by 10 but all talents multiplies cost by 10?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 17, 2021, 03:30:24 pm
Also, since unit subversion cost is calculated independently from other MC factors cost, enough number of units in base will keep it from reaching too low value anyway.
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2021, 11:32:26 pm
I think facility cost is good enough estimate for base value.
I missed the part where you decided to use straight up facility cost. Earlier you were only interested in counting the number of facilities, which isn't accurate as some are much more expensive to build than others. If you have access to facility cost, then yes, that is best.
Quote
I have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky. Base of all drones now will cost zero.
Not sure what the lower bound of cost should be. But that's not as important, as making a base too expensive to take over, because people are too happy to put up with mind control. So, what is a cost threshold, that represents "really can't afford that" ? Who's doing the buying? At what point in the game?
Quote
From the other side it is easy to turn everybody to specialists in captured base to avoid having drones at all.
Is negative nutrient status / a famine, a readily accessible quantity? You could put in a penalty if people are starving, even if they haven't lost population yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2021, 01:59:23 am
QuoteI have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky. Base of all drones now will cost zero.
Not sure what the lower bound of cost should be. But that's not as important, as making a base too expensive to take over, because people are too happy to put up with mind control. So, what is a cost threshold, that represents "really can't afford that" ? Who's doing the buying? At what point in the game?
No idea. Try it and tell me. New formula is definitely very different from vanilla so no comparison here.
QuoteFrom the other side it is easy to turn everybody to specialists in captured base to avoid having drones at all.
Is negative nutrient status / a famine, a readily accessible quantity? You could put in a penalty if people are starving, even if they haven't lost population yet.
I can access any value in the game. That is not a problem.
I was questioning if this will be considered an abuse to silence drones with doctors just to keep base price high? Upon thinking I don't believe it will. The price is heavy enough.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 18, 2021, 06:05:29 pm
I am deleting release folder from repository. Releases are accessible through regular GitHub release list. Let me know if anyone is still using older version so I can stash it.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases
Post by: CaptEHCJ on June 04, 2021, 04:56:09 pm
I downloaded version - TheWillToPower-229 - as that was the newest version from the link posted on the first page of this forum a few weeks ago. Played and got very deep into a game only to reach a point where at the end of the turn, other AI players took their turns and poof, the game just crashed. No error, just game close. It initially happend right after I got a new tech (the one that allows you to build the cloudbase great building). So I tried about 3 times, always crash. I then went back 3 turns or so, and got the tech earlier. Played for the rest of that turn, but then during AI turn, crash again. Was frustrated, as it was a good and challenging game.
So, I uninstalled SMAX entirely. RE-downloaded it from GoG. Found this thread and downloaded TheWillToPower-240 hoping that the crash had been fixed. Note, you might want to change the link on page one to point to the new site. Anyway, started a whole new game, got not all that far in, and poof... crash again. I end turn and then poof, program shuts down. Nothing fancy happening that I know of...
Any way this can be fixed?
Runnnig Windows 10 Pro on an HP laptop. Glad to provide any info needed to fix it.
thanks!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 04, 2021, 05:30:40 pm
Glad you like it. Sure it is a one-man shop. So bugs appear and are squashed on a regular basis. Just send me a version and save before the crash (maybe also a turn before that if you have it) and I will try to figure it out. Sometimes you can even continue the game after bug fix - like nothing happened. 😁
On a flip side you have the power to influence the way it develops. Imagine that! Any bug reports, improvement ideas, and criticism are welcome.
For specific bugs and well articulated suggestions you can just submit an issue on GitHub attaching all the artifacts like saves here: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues. You'll get notification on the fix this way.
For generic questions and discussion - use this forum or reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/4xgaming, https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/) for faster response.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 04, 2021, 05:32:45 pm
Post by: CaptEHCJ on June 04, 2021, 09:17:06 pm
CaptEHCJ
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 05, 2021, 04:14:58 pm
If not then it could be not WTP error. Vanilla still has plenty of fatal bugs out there.
Are you launching terranx_mod.exe?
Please send me your exe and configuration files.
alphax.txt
conceptsx.txt
helpx.txt
labels.txt
Script.txt
socwin.pcx
terranx_mod.exe
thinker.dll
thinker.ini
Alpha Centauri.Ini
Even better would be to zip and send me entire AC directory. However, it could be huge. If you can send it me over google drive or some other method – that would be good.
I have also created issue on that. Can you access it? It would be nice if you can attach directory zip there.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/84
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 05, 2021, 10:55:17 pm
1:1.3 strength ratio produces 1:5 winning odds. I remember I have agreed on that before just want to hear this once more from users.
Post by: bvanevery on June 06, 2021, 02:25:51 am
Post by: CaptEHCJ on June 06, 2021, 04:39:52 am
I have loaded yours "Aki Zeta-5 of the Consciousness, 2155" save (I assume this is the one after which you experience the crash) into 240 version running on my machine. It passed without any problems and continued my turn by showing me which facilities are built in my bases. See attached. Did you get to this point?
If not then it could be not WTP error. Vanilla still has plenty of fatal bugs out there.
Are you launching terranx_mod.exe?
Please send me your exe and configuration files.
alphax.txt
conceptsx.txt
helpx.txt
labels.txt
Script.txt
socwin.pcx
terranx_mod.exe
thinker.dll
thinker.ini
Alpha Centauri.Ini
Even better would be to zip and send me entire AC directory. However, it could be huge. If you can send it me over google drive or some other method – that would be good.
I have also created issue on that. Can you access it? It would be nice if you can attach directory zip there.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/84
I have posted the files requested on the github site and a few comments there.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 02:57:01 am
[Limit reached]
Turn 15 I completion scum a biolab. The Caretakers start the game with the ability to make them, as they're given by Progenitor Psych. You sure you want to do that? Not that I object to Biolabs being given very early, I have them in D1 Biogenetics in my mod. But it takes a little time to get them, and you need to be a little Discovery focused to have the likelihood of getting them immediately. Giving factions stuff that they can immediately completion scum, is pretty darned good for completion scumming as a tactic. And as you can see, it's well within the mineral allotment of the new approach.
[Limit reached]
Oh, uh, that's not what the popup said. Was that like a 10 minerals bonus or something? I'll need to pay better attention next time to the before and after. If the bonuses are paltry, then the immediate availability of a Biolab isn't gonna matter. The dialog should be changed to reflect reality though.
I think if you make the bonus too low, then having the dialog pop up "to get the player all excited about something", is just going to come off as really annoying. I don't have a sense of what low vs. high is yet. I'll play on.
I seem to have committed myself to a marginally useful early game biolab, lol. Well who knows, maybe it'll mask my waiting for a size 2 base that can make a Colony Pod or something. We'll see.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 03:33:08 am
I've got 4 units and no SUPPORT issue? This is new. I remember that being talked about, but I was busy with my own modding at the time. Well, we'll see. I wonder how long I can crank out the units? I'm not opposed to getting a bunch of Formers in a hurry, it's pretty much standard drill with my own mod's Clean Formers at the beginning of the game.
[Limit reached]
Ok, assuming this doesn't somehow vary per city, looks like 4's the limit. I'll shift their homes and fill things up. I would have opened a little differently if I'd known I could have 4 free units.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 05:34:29 am
MY 2184. This is the extent of my settlement, at which time I made the decision to start going vertical with Rec Commons. I didn't find colonization particularly difficult, but I am used to long colony pod lead times in WTP.
I popped many pods, but I never got any more Completions than what I documented above. Only those few minerals on a Biolab at the beginning of the game. If the criteria has changed for when the event fires off, it seems to be operatively a non-event now.
I don't think anyone's capable of doing better at pod popping than me, as I did start with +1 PLANET, captured some mindworms and spore launchers readily, and carefully retained them to maximize pod bursting. Basic tactic was to use Scouts to attack indigenous life forms, not the captured mindworms. If I'd realized I could support 4 units for free, I would have made a lot more Scouts at the beginning. Even as is, I did ok with that.
I got a fair amount of money from my activities, 790 credits at present. I mostly don't know what to do with it, so I've sat on it. Occasionally I've completed a Rec Commons or a unit that was almost complete anyways. It's not clear to me what the most profitable use of money in WTP is. Trying to rush units early seems to have big penalties.
I've only got 2 Isles swimming around in the oceans. I think Zhakarov may have cleaned out all the ocean pods.
I can't tell much about the AI's colonizations, but I think I out-colonized Deirdre. I currently don't care about wiping them out, as they don't really seem to be a threat. However she's Seething, possibly from my rude willingness to poke my Scouts around her land, even though we have a Treaty. Hey, I want more pods. There may not be any, but I like having intel. I've left whenever she's thrown a snit about my presence, but if she's not going to, well I'm just gonna keep tromping around. I'm rude that way. I've got stuff to do, and she can just bugger off and do her own stuff. I really don't care. We're both Planet-friendly factions and she's often such a butt.
Zhakarov probably wants to declare war on me soon. Maybe I'll use him as long distance chemical weapons exercise, but I don't feel I'm logistically in good contact with him yet.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 06:12:01 am
MY 2199. I outmaneuvered the Gaians at a corner of their empire, and managed to pop some pods they hadn't reached. I got another Completion. It's not scumming, because I did not set up anything specially to get it.
[Limit reached]
I'll need to load up an autosave to see what the city was at before. Pretty much all my cities are building Children's Creches lately. I've also gone Green Democratic.
[Limit reached]
31 - (8 + 3) = 20 minerals bonus. Seems a bit cheap. I mean isn't that a Recon Rover, yippie?
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 06:25:24 am
MY 2202. Seething Deirdre sold me a map of the Pirates. They're a bit spammy nuts. One of the original feedback questions that led to the anti-Completion Scumming measures, was about rate and expense of colonization. Well it looks like the Pirates aren't paying much! All that free food.
The Gaians in contrast are a little more spammy than I earlier estimated, but they don't seem so bad compared to myself, at least yet. If I wanted to take 'em, I could. As is, I still don't care.
The University doesn't look at all tough on land. Almost stillborn, by this mod's standards. They have stuck their toes in the oceans a fair amount.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2021, 02:27:52 pm
The Caretakers start the game with the ability to make them, as they're given by Progenitor Psych. You sure you want to do that? Not that I object to Biolabs being given very early, I have them in D1 Biogenetics in my mod. But it takes a little time to get them, and you need to be a little Discovery focused to have the likelihood of getting them immediately. Giving factions stuff that they can immediately completion scum, is pretty darned good for completion scumming as a tactic. And as you can see, it's well within the mineral allotment of the new approach.
I don't understand. Are you playing the version where instant completion is replaced with fixed mineral bonus? If so then what is the problem in having this mineral bonus for anything? It is still the same bonus regardless of what you are building.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2021, 02:32:28 pm
Oh, uh, that's not what the popup said. Was that like a 10 minerals bonus or something? I'll need to pay better attention next time to the before and after. If the bonuses are paltry, then the immediate availability of a Biolab isn't gonna matter. The dialog should be changed to reflect reality though.
Sorry, I must have changed the script after I committed the release. Should be updated in next version. It adds flat 20 minerals.
It is in thinker.ini: instant_completion_fixed_minerals
Here. Take these and just drop in game directory. They should have fixed wording.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2021, 02:41:16 pm
I've got 4 units and no SUPPORT issue? This is new. I remember that being talked about, but I was busy with my own modding at the time. Well, we'll see. I wonder how long I can crank out the units? I'm not opposed to getting a bunch of Formers in a hurry, it's pretty much standard drill with my own mod's Clean Formers at the beginning of the game.
Ok, assuming this doesn't somehow vary per city, looks like 4's the limit. I'll shift their homes and fill things up. I would have opened a little differently if I'd known I could have 4 free units.
Support has been changed too. See here.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#alternative-support
Number of constant free units is set in thinker.ini. Initially I thought to give 2 to match vanilla closely. However, people (including your) often noticed AI exhausts itself with support pretty quickly. So I raised it to 4. We can play with it to find a good spot.
Ok, assuming this doesn't somehow vary per city, looks like 4's the limit. I'll shift their homes and fill things up. I would have opened a little differently if I'd known I could have 4 free units.
It does not. The pattern is same for all bases.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 05:39:44 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer#alternative-support
I think you've got a missing term in your equation. In both Firefox and Edge browsers it appears as:
Code: [Select]
base support = ( * (4 - SUPPORT)) / 4Sumthin's tryin' ta get multiplied.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2021, 05:45:00 pm
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 07:53:18 pm
MY 2242. This is last night's wee hours of the morning game, and I've decided I will start over. I leveled up all of my cities through Hologram Theaters. I built a few Command Centers for garrisoning, but, lacking any real desire to wipe out the Gaians, I finally just started building several Secret Projects.
I feel like I probably should have done that eons ago. The game makes me very uncomfortable that I can't do SPs when I'd like to get them done. I have to engage in very, very long term planning to have any of them, due to the crippling exchange rate of credits for SP minerals. This is particular to WTP and I'm not sure I'm exactly in favor of it. I find myself staring at my directed research choices and thinking, well I don't need that, nor that, because I can't actually build that.... Which honestly, is a bit boring. Feels like there's nothing to do but level up all my cities.
The potential parity of AI expansion, gave way in early midgame to the usual across the map spam I more typically expect from WTP. I still don't know if that's playable or not. I definitely have no desire to emulate Infinite City Sprawl myself. The AI never gets tired or bored of this, but I as a human most certainly do.
I think my empire was ok but could have been a bit bigger than my earlier reported ceasing of colonization. Not by much though. One thing I wonder about, was making a financial area in that personal ocean south of me. It was all shallows and pretty well shielded from the predations of the Pirates, who were way elsewhere on the map.
It would have been militarily rational to stomp the Gaians in their crib. I usually have trouble with that sensibility in SMAC. In recent years, I just don't wanna. It's also game mechanically rational to leave your closest enemy for last, concentrating on someone farther afield and interfering in their growth. However that's also a logistical drag, so in terms of real world player energy investment, it's a bit between a rock and a hard place. I do wonder if a different "close by" enemy would have stimulated me to get on with the stomping.
Deirdre definitely didn't bring any fight to me. Despite all that Seething, and my provocations of tromping Scouts all over her soil, given our Treaty. She did steal a tech from me. In a rare moment of largesse, I simply ignored it. I really only had a 1 city front with her, so she wasn't going to be able to do it again. In the manner of The World According To Garp, that city was pre-disastered. Lacking obvious incentive in the tech tree, I kept researching the lowest tier techs anyways. So I figured, how much could she possibly get ahead? I'm not the University, I'm not coughing out great stuff for her. I deliberately pursued this "low tech" research policy in the future, despite having built every research gizmo I could.
SE table choices as usual don't seem like a very good deal. I did eventually decide that Democratic was acceptable once I got Green. Green fits my faction's capabilities. I made pretty good use of it until the midgame. Then I got the feeling that I'd sucked up most of the pods that were available, and I was very much hitting a point of diminishing returns. I contemplated bagging my mindworms and going Free Market.
I did manage to get a lot of Artifacts home, but then I did nothing with them. They are probably best used on SPs as they don't suffer the horrible exchange rate of straight cash. But SPs are also so expensive, that they hardly seem worth having. Maybe it's better to let the AIs build them all, wasting their resources, and then engineer the long distance logistics to take them over?
And of course, I had lots of money from my early exploration, that I didn't use on much of anything. I still don't have a sense of what's actually worth paying for at the beginning. WTP seems to favor a "more horizontal" approach to empire building.
In a new game, I'll use a lot more Scouts, to take advantage of the 4 free units.
My provisional opinion is that 20 minerals is too cheap a bonus, to be wasting the player's time with a popup screen. That's arguably only worth 40 credits. A 25 or 50 credit bonus is nothing to get excited about, and straight cash is generally more useful than a small city specific minerals bonus. Completion mechanics were worth something because they were a large bonus. In the early game, it takes 75 or 100 credits for me to feel like I made some bank. It seems like the frequency of Completions has been cut down as well, not just their value, so "once in great while you get 20 minerals" seems especially cheap. It's really inappropriate in the midgame, where the typical cash pop is 150 to 200 credits. Here I am getting 40 credits worth of minerals, in some random city where it may not have even particularly availed me of something important.
Earlier I recommended 50 minerals and I will stand by that recommendation, as being worth 100 credits for facilities. You do seem to be controlling the frequency of Completions somehow, whether explicitly or implicity. They're way less frequent, so I don't see why the player has to be put on 2 kinds of hard diet.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2021, 09:48:50 pm
MY 2151. Rockin' it as bureaucratic Lal. ;danc My landing site was a bunch of dry scratch near the Great Dunes. This cost me about 5 turns of delay, but subsequently I found good land and made up for it. I took advantage of the early free units and made lotsa Scouts and Gun Foils. I popped the crap out of the pods, getting me a fair amount of money, and a bit of safety from any surprise mindworms. When I had excessive money, I used it to rush Colonists. That's actually how I went from 2 to 4 bases, as I found that pile of USS Unity money up north.
Soon I'd established my scouting perimeter. I mainly started making Formers after that. I only got 1 'Completion' when trying to set those up, which was merely a 20 minerals commitment to an ECM Recon Rover prototype. That wasn't the greatest idea in hindsight, as the prototype is expensive and would still take a lot of turns to complete. I was nominally at war with the Cyborgs at the time though, although they weren't land adjacent to me. We eventually signed a Treaty, and later even a Pact. The Aliens on the other hand are being butts. No real conflict yet, but they're doing their usual Alien ugly thing.
The seaward orientation yielded the reward of coming into contact with all of the other factions. This year in a flurry of comm sales, I became Governor. I also got maps for most stuff. For some reason I parted with D3 Intellectual Integrity to get one of the maps, I guess because I have a hard time valuing any of these early techs as important. Usually I wouldn't do that, and maybe I didn't even have to, as one of my new allies might have been able to get it for me. Oh well, whatever. Brain got a bit soft.
Having this early a window into most of the AI spread, I find interesting. It seems we're at parity in our ability to spread, more or less. That implies the really spammy stuff comes later, when I as a human am tired of colony pushing and they're not. We'll see if they have any military capacity when I decide to change gears. The Caretakers are close enough to completely obliterate, and maybe I will finally do that sort of thing sooner rather than later. The Usurpers are also just down the road from them, so it begs for chemicals.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2021, 06:18:29 am
MY 2216. I completed my 1st Secret Project, the Merchant Exchange. I'm also 2 turns away from completing the 1st SP I started, the Command Nexus. Policy has been to build Recycling Tanks in cities once they've got 6 minerals. It took a long time to get multiple such cities going, but eventually I was building many SPs in parallel.
I also built 1 such city with a Command Center, as it happened my capitol U.N. Headquarters. It singlehandedly defended the realm from all manner of mindworm spam, probably triggered by the Caretakers coming to clean up the fungal bond pods I missed. In the future I'll be more through with Scout spam at the beginning. I have found the disengagement of Scout Rovers to be effective against mindworms, getting past the usual attrition problem. Spore launchers I've never had an answer for though, and have just occasionally had to sacrifice something.
The Caretakers also interloped and exacerbated my situation with a few units. However they've had no stick-tuitiveness about it, so things got back to quiet. I'm using the remainder of my Scout Rovers to wipe out fungal towers near me. Some of my bases are at size 6 and when they go to size 7, I'll get an unhappy person, so I make a colonist.
Once the Command Nexus completes I think I'll start sending ECM Recon Rover spam at the Caretakers. Unfortunately I don't know the secret of chemical weapons yet. I've kept the default Explore Discover research foci, to see what it's like for the Peacekeeper AI to experience the game. Well, they aren't going to learn Democratic, it seems. I've never made a SE choice, and I plead poverty with my allies Aki and Zhakarov. They dole out some techs to me.
Yang, Deidre, and the Caretakers hate me. The Usurpers recently signed a Treaty with me, after a long bout of sunspots.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2021, 09:48:08 am
Why does Knowledge not have any penalties? alphax.txt says it does. PEACE.txt doesn't show any special faction ability like Impunity to this choice. I need me some EFFIC right now so I'm just gonna go on rockin' this cheat. I mean, it's MY 2222 and I've never learned Democratic. As the Peacekeepers.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2021, 10:04:38 am
MY 2254. I completed the last of the SPs I started earlier, the final one of which ended up being the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. Of course, Algorithmic Enhancement is already in play somewhere. The Planetary Datalinks was particularly expensive to pull off. I never did use any of my 5 Artifacts.
I've been devastating the Caretakers with X Missile armored speeders. It goes fine but... I really can't take the unit pushing anymore. I've got no rails, so everything has to be moved manually. I've got a road that slowly advances towards the front, but it only goes about halfway. There are so many bases to get rid of, it's pretty silly. I just can't justify the real life hours it would take to do this.
Enemy resistance so far is token. If there's a Scout or Trance Scout defending, then the city just dies. I might still take a lot of wounds though. If it's got a Plasma defender, I usually kill it but sometimes I lose a unit. If it's got Silksteel, I'll lose a unit, but I've got them seriously outproduced and I just attack again and again. Things die. Chemicals work reasonably well, even against the inflated defensive capabilities of WTP.
Thing is, if you don't have Aliens to wipe out, it could be a real pain to get chemicals legalized. I only just learned Advanced Military Algorithms.
My main goal in this playtest was to evaluate the anti-Completion Scumming stuff. I'd say in terms of the frequency of the event firing, it's working. It doesn't come up so much. When it does come up though, 20 minerals is too cheap.
I don't find the new support regime to be a big deal.
And that's that! Quitting time. 5 AM here.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2021, 04:04:36 pm
[Limit reached]
Why does Knowledge not have any penalties? alphax.txt says it does. PEACE.txt doesn't show any special faction ability like Impunity to this choice. I need me some EFFIC right now so I'm just gonna go on rockin' this cheat. I mean, it's MY 2222 and I've never learned Democratic. As the Peacekeepers.
What? Shouldn't be like that. Send me the save, please.
Never mind. Found the problem. The comma is missing in alphax.txt. Fixed in 251.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2021, 04:06:38 pm
I don't find the new support regime to be a big deal.
What do you mean?
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2021, 05:34:46 pm
I don't find the new support regime to be a big deal.
What do you mean?
Well 4 free units is a pretty cush way to start the game. I'm not complaining if everyone's on the same basic footing. I can make lotsa Scouts like I'm Miriam in the original game or something.
Later in the game, I still had my civilization fitting into the 4 free unit window mostly. As I've said about SUPPORT for a long time, it ceases to matter once you're in midgame because minerals production gets high enough. If I actually had enough units in the field to be a SUPPORT challenge, I surely wouldn't be able to stand to push them around. As is, I had waaaaay too many armored X speeders to want to bother with. I think I'd put more effort into establishing "communication by road" before bothering with such an invasion again.
Maybe I didn't even need the Command Nexus. If I worked on having a few cities that were far more massive, that could spew all the garrison troops. I don't really see a point in a medium distance invasion. It's not like the AI is bringing any kind of fight to me, and all I want to do at that distance, is completely obliterate bases.
Dropping money into Recycling Tanks when it's finally growth appropriate to have them, was clearly a successful acceleration strategy. I got more SPs than anyone else. It was irritating though to bumble away the Empath Guild. I belatedly realized that with the AI's inherent spam advantage, I would never be Governor. The spam directly hurts the Peacekeeper play style, because it's just not realistic that a human is going to keep up with the AI population growth.
Dropping money into Children's Creches might be appropriate, but I didn't actually know that tech for quite a long time. I'd already made my bigger SP producing cities by then. The basic idea is you can't spend money on SPs, it's financial suicide. But you can spend it on making cities bigger, that then sit around making a SP.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2021, 05:41:52 pm
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2021, 05:58:32 pm
The things I care about "asserting a need to change", are things that clearly bother me. Like having to kill waaaay too many bases. I will try again with a different mindset, but what I learned from last game, is there's no such thing as rushing a mid distance enemy in your mod. By the time I actually have the minerals to make an offense, the AI will have spammed the map 2/3rds full.
Post by: dino on July 01, 2021, 09:21:43 am
The AI support hurdles should be fixed on the AI production selection code, and/or by introducing AI only bonus.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2021, 11:40:32 am
MY 2266, 6 AM real world, and it's quitting time again. Can't take the ICS anymore. I had 2 "good" cities in the early game, 1 of them my capitol due to a lucky minerals pop. It took a very long time to get other cities to have much in the way of minerals. Once they got up to 6 and I built Recycling Tanks on them with all my cash, I started a huge pile of SPs.
[Limit reached]
As you can see I did pretty well at that. By rights though I felt like a lot of these slipped away from me for no good reason. Other than the AI gets like all the resources in the world and I don't. So many things conspire to make me have like a Third World budget compared to this incredible spam the AIs are putting out. I garrisoned my entire empire from one Command Center, my capitol. I would crank out some kind of armored Trance Skirmisher every turn. Well when you're going Police State and need 3 units per city that takes a long time. My 2nd good city produced the armored Speeder Formers I needed to actually develop the rest of the empire. With so much taken up with just getting the basics established, the AI is bound to start some SP somewhere and get it.
It bothers me that the AI is not even required to try. I have to spend turns waiting to make the heavily armed units, that will surely destroy the many many weak AI defenders. I get bored doing that, and the AI doesn't. This game even had relatively less unit pushing than the last one. I waited until pretty much everyone was in contact with me. Then for some reason 3 factions lost their cool and all declared war, after some sunspots.
I did learn the hard way that I can't just put my tough units on fungus and wait to blast the city. Morgan took one tiny mindworm (!) and actually killed me on the attack. Since when do Sensor Arrays give an offensive bonus? Well whatever, better luck next time. I had +0 PLANET and he had Democratic Free Market Wealth Cybernetic, so should also be +0 PLANET. He's not sitting on the Manifold Nexus far as I can tell. Yet he creams me with this little thing. Why don't my mindworms do that?
I put piles and piles of those tiny mindworms right out in the open next to Morgan's cities. Knew the AI would attack them and most likely do badly. Mostly it did indeed do badly, losing more expensive units. I made those mindworms when I had nothing else to make at one point. Just before the piles of war broke out, as it happened. There was nothing decisive about that front because I didn't have any "real" units to follow up with. And my ally Domai, fought stupidly as one usually expects from an AI. I'm like, Domai, over here, chew this stuff up? "Mummuuuuuuhh... mooo.. ron..."
I also don't like that the Governorship is now impossible for the human player to have. It doesn't matter if you're Lal or build the Empath Guild. In fact I don't think it matters if you're both. I'm not even going to comment on how ridiculous the Gaian population got this game, and I'm the one who was sitting on part of the Monsoon Jungle. Of course my ally Domai ate most of it. And of course it's not as important in WTP due to abundant food.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 01, 2021, 03:06:24 pm
It favors early ICS too much and removes tough decissions from early game.
The AI support hurdles should be fixed on the AI production selection code, and/or by introducing AI only bonus.
I think it is quite the opposite. Supporting more units allows to have bigger army instead of just stamping colonies.
Anyway, I returned it back to 2 in future version.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2021, 01:53:52 am
MY 2166. I've had about enough of this. Quitting.
I already sent a ship in that direction trying to draw the interest of any Isles. Thought I spotted something, but it didn't zoom in on my ship a number of turns back, so whatever. Settled a new base on the energy bonus northeast of Parrot Landing, immediately got killed. Save scummed it, went a different direction. So two Isles come to trash Parrot Landing.
Why do Isles go through my untrained defenders like butter? That doesn't happen with mindworms on land. Turtling up inside your base is generally the best policy. It seems to be completely different on water, and I really don't care for that. I don't think any noobs are going to care for that either, because it's bloody confusing. Like are indigenous life forms deadly on offense or not? Doesn't seem consistent.
Notice also that the Isle that attacked is not much scratched. Only 20% wounds.
The Pirates are minerals poor as dirt now. In the water, they don't have anything. Even a base settled right on top of a minerals bonus, is only worth 3 minerals. I'm not seeing how they're going to compete with the land factions, and stay in the water. And if they have to go on the land, there's not really much point to them as an Aquatic faction.
Trance units seem to be currently the only valid untrained defense for the Pirates. I was actually starting to garrison my sea bases with Trance Scouts, but they all had to come from 1 base and I've only got 1 Transport. It's not that I have a Command Center there. I surely don't have the minerals to justify any such thing, nor would I likely have had time to complete it. Nor a Naval Yard; I don't even know how to build one of those yet. The thing is, everyone's tied up just trying to get the bare essentials going, a Recreation Commons. We're that poor. All this food is worthless. And you can't really make any money on tidal harnesses, because you have to spend your first 2 squares on making minerals that you don't have.
Finally, it's not like I start the game with Trance capability. I only learned it recently, and I couldn't tell you if I figured it out or just bought it.
I don't know yet if the Pirates are hopelessly crippled for a human player, with the changes WTP makes. But their opening play style sure seems predetermined. No choice but to spam Gun Foils, far more than I did. Can't really just explore, have to more like make war upon all the Isles in the water. The Pirates are gonna get everyone's Isles, not just their own. I was trying to establish a big perimeter around my empire, but I feel like I was barely getting everything scouted and garrisoned as is. I'm not even sure if that's viable.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 02, 2021, 10:27:15 pm
; Improved tech cost mechanic to increase late game research costs (see Details.md)
; Tech costs scale relative to the level of current research item, instead of the
; old version where costs increased according to the amount of techs a faction had.
revised_tech_cost=1
Then the following error message appears: Error while patching game binary. Game will now exit.
It's a fantastic feature. Surprised it's not on by default.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 02, 2021, 10:39:59 pm
Uses slightly different formula too. You can have either one or another. However, due to few research bugs fixed in WTP related to this feature (including multiplayer) I recommend to use the latter (which is on by default). Not because it has better math but merely because I am confident it is more stable.
I will add comment to the Thinker version one about the above.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2021, 06:02:16 am
Why do my hurrying costs suddenly seem to be about doubled? I was getting away with "near completion" for much smaller numbers of credits, up until some time recently. It's now MY 2299. Two theories:
- Something's bugged.
- My cities are getting bigger, doing more work per turn, and "low turns to complete" isn't a good indicator of "few minerals to go" anymore.
[Limit reached]
Wait a minute... what's going on?? I swear this thing wanted like 300 credits a moment ago. Something's off. I'll have to really pay attention now.
My government has been Democratic Planned Power Cybernetic for a long time. I have -1 INDUSTRY.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2021, 11:19:58 am
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2021, 03:37:18 pm
I am becoming concerned that there's not enough time, before the end year of 2500, to actually do much of anything. I have deliberately avoided making Genejack Factories due to my historic fear of the entire Planet going glub glub glub underwater. But I'm so minerals poor compared to other factions' colony output, that I'm wondering how the units would ever get made to clean them up. It doesn't help that singular attacks on a base just result in another Trance Scout being immediately spammed. It's got an almost video game arcade like sensibility in that regard. It means that even a big ship with a big gun, is obstructed and delayed. I saw Lal working on a Copter chassis, but I haven't got those techs yet myself.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2021, 09:30:44 pm
Am I supposed to sit around in my own little enclave until I Transcend? That's like one of the most boring ways to play the game that I can imagine. I doubt that I'll ever achieve Economic Victory with so many cities on the map. Diplomatic Victory is impossible, you can't ever have the votes.
I wondered if I could ever get the production together to have a Singularity Planet Buster finish. That's where you save up enough of 'em for doomsday, nuke the whole rest of the world all at once, and just declare victory before Planet comes to take vengeance! It's a total cheat, but the game deserves it.
I have been playing with my usual fear of developing too many minerals and factories, because in the stock binary, that'll drown you. I don't actually know if it's a big deal in WTP. In Thinker it was totally nerfed, and that was one of my sore points with Induktio that caused us not to get along as designers. Well I could see if there's not much reason to avoid Genejack Factories after all.
At one point I was going to wipe out the Caretakers with X weapons. But the other factions kept spamming me with minor distractions. Then something would come up that would seem like it needed to be built. The end result is I never managed to get around to any kind of offensive at all. I feel like there aren't enough resources to do much of anything, given the huge standing of the AI factions on the map.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2021, 05:47:15 am
MY 2215. This faction is a complete cakewalk. It is totally unbalanced compared to the various lousy factions I've previously played with: the University, the Cyborgs, the Peacekeepers, and the Pirates. Why would anyone in their right mind pick any of those? Either deliberately or as an indirect consequence of the colony spam, none of those factions have advantages and they've all been given significant penalties. That ends up looking completely daft and pointless compared to the Free Drones. They've got the ability to absolutely stomp everyone at making Secret Projects, in a game where there's no other way than doing it one city at a time.
[Limit reached]
I did use a new tactic I'll call "anticipatory minerals". The cities I reasonably expected to grow to have 6 minerals soon enough, I build Recycling Tanks on them. Then I started SPs, way before anyone else was even thinking of it. It makes sense, as SPs have been turned into such a marathon. Well as you can see, it worked. Even with the Free Drones -2 RESEARCH penalty, which obviously doesn't mean anything in the early game. AI factions trade techs that yield SPs pretty freely, with a few stumbling block exceptions for some reason. So there are plenty of SPs to build, and I didn't even feel like my own research sucked all that hard.
I am concerned that Democratic Planned is the only correct way to play the game. Maybe Free Market has some merit, I haven't really tried that because I'm afraid of mindworms and don't like being strung up with peaceniks. But the other choices don't work. You can't possibly want to be Green as long as you've got enough happiness to keep growing. If you were in a mindworm war maybe it would help, but the AI factions don't make enough war for that to even be a concern. I don't know if using hordes of mindworms as a continental extermination force is valid, with some super high PLANET rating, but it definitely wasn't appropriate for me in my last game.
Another thing is, I'm making a lot of money at Planned as it is. Why do I need more money with Free Market? I can't meaningfully spend it on SPs, with the 6 credit conversion rate. I don't know if it can make so much more money as to yield Economic Victory, or do major buyouts of enemy bases, but I sorta have my doubts.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2021, 08:56:56 am
MY 2249. They'll be lucky to get anything.
[Limit reached]
I had Morgan's sea bases thoroughly terrorized, just running around wiping out anything size 1. That didn't get him to sign a Truce, so I started taking bigger bases. That got his attention and he signed a Treaty. Guess he doesn't like losing to a big army with no end to its growth trajectory in sight.
[Limit reached]
The belligerent evil Gaians cried uncle before I even took a base. I guess they got tired of me running around with that 1 ship in their southern ocean. And the huge land force about to spell their doom. I started walkking it towards the Caretakers, but Zhakarov just cancelled our Pact. Not sure what I'm doing now.
All of my bases are built up to Genejack Factories. Despite whopping eco-damage in some cities, there's been precious little mindworm vengeance. You're looking at the worst of it. In the stock game, global flooding would have definitely started happening by now. It might even be serious.
If I had rails, I'd build land bridges and so forth. But, I'm attached to a supercontinent anyways. So it would be more about bypassing other factions' lands, to get to a victim. Like the Caretakers. It's not fun to manually push units all the way across the map.
If I had air power, I suppose I could send out Carriers and X Needlejets to liquidate the Caretakers. It's been a long time since I did a long distance air campaign.
I tried to legalize atrocities some turns ago, but Deirdre vetoed it. Despite me having the Empath Guild, I don't have the votes to change her standing.
[Limit reached]
Like my last game, this is a supercontinental system cutting the map in half, with only 1 teeny weeny passageway connecting the halves. Last time around I started very near that passage. But I didn't settle it, so the Free Drones swept over it and bottled it up. I was landlocked for quite some time, and unable to get to my preferred victim. The Free Drones finally got uppity and then I took their cities on the passageway from them.
Hmm I wonder what it would cost to just sink everything? It's pretty darned pricey in the stock game. However if I settled a sea base first, maybe the cost would go down.
I could do a sort of cold war beating, jerking them around with probe teams, then real troops, then a Treaty, then messing with them all over again.
You know... it's 4 AM and this game is just way too silly. I'm quitting. I gotta stop picking random factions. Need to consider whether there's one that's a "fair test", because it's neither crippled nor overpowered.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2021, 04:09:39 pm
This morning I put 1.5 hours into the Cult of Planet. I actually had a fairly bad start, where I could have settled at various points, but didn't want to, for sheer lack of resource bonuses. It was all pretty dry and overgrown with fungus too. I kept walking west trying to find some good land, and I don't think I settled my capitol until turn 20. My 2nd base, not until even later, as it ran into a fungal maze and had to turn back.
Despite this, the hordes of mindworms I stirred up and captured made all my scouting rather easy. +2 PLANET must be a big threshold of difference in the mindworm power curve, where you have enough offensive oomph that you can do a quite traditional mindworm capture and steamrollering. It did start to get shakier in later turns as the mindworms got tougher, but the opening value of the mindworm spreadout was obvious and decisive.
The Cult's other huge advantage is they've got WORMPOLICE, in a game where otherwise nobody gets police units until... I don't even know when? Didn't see them in my previous test games, so no time useful, that's for sure.
The Cult is clearly one of the 'good' factions. Having established that, I'll try someone else.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2021, 03:16:50 am
The Gaians are a more balanced faction. They do have the +1 PLANET advantage, so can score some supply pods pretty quickly, but they don't come crashing out the gate at quite the same speed as the Cult. I had to wander some Scouts around to finally get some mindworms and spore launchers. Subsequently though I found the Manifold Nexus in my backyard, putting me on offensive parity with Cultlike play.
I had no time to do anything other than the Merchant Exchange, as I had land claiming pressure from both the Morganites and the Believers. Just a lot of spewing of colony pods. As of MY 2218 I still haven't learned Recycling Tanks. It's about to be stolen from Morgan though. He surprise attacked me some turns ago. I took a walk-in city and secured a Truce, giving me time to finish Biology Labs and build up a stupid large horde of Mindworms. And I don't plan to stop, until Morgan goes down. We have a Treaty and I just stole from him this turn. He declined to go war over it, and just wagged his tongue at me.
I'm Fundamentalist Green. This is pretty sycophantic, although the combo does work. I don't really need more tech, I'm happy to steal to provoke war, it offsets my MORALE deficiency, and I don't mind an INDUSTRY bonus. Haven't managed to get the Believers allied with me, but they changed from Seething to Belligerent, last we talked. They're at war with the Morganites and will start liking me again when we start fighting.
In my own mod, I usually just whap 1 base to secure peace. But in WTP, I've realized that allowing the AI factions to go back to spamming colonists uninterrupted, is a bad idea. So I made it a point this game, if the circumstances warranted it, not to plan on peace. I have eschewed the value of Green, but this is actually the circumstance where it is appropriate. We'll see what +4 PLANET can do.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2021, 06:19:38 am
+4 PLANET mindworms can do an awful lot against Free Market Morganites. They're basically invincible. Morgan has paid me very large sums of money to beg off, like 2000 credits or 1300 credits. Not sure how he got the latter back so quickly, but whatever. I used the cash to make rapid upgrades to my infrastructure, finally getting a lot of Recycling Tanks built. Then my hand slipped on the keyboard, and I accidentally contacted my ally Santiago. She wanted to precipitate war with the Morganites all over again, just after I signed a Treaty and backed off! Well I said sure... and this is such an exploit, that I've lost interest in the game. Quitting.
Mindworm stomping against a PLANET vulnerable faction is pretty much cake. I think this is partly due to the 15% increments. Also the AI has a bad habit of attacking mindworms in the field and just dying. Like it didn't think about the disadvantage it was at due to relative PLANET ratings.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2021, 10:25:51 pm
The Spartans are pretty much a cakewalk. They're overpowered. Proud as I am of this nascent empire and the beginnings of a Gaian stomp, there's no reason to continue this game.
The Spartans start the game with Speeders, no prototyping required to get started sweeping the map of supply pods. Speeders in WTP are also extremely cheap, costing only what a Scout costs in the normal game. Thus, suicide tactics into supply pods is no trouble at all. They're tough enough due to their MORALE bonus that they might live through the experience, and if they don't, who cares? It's the cheapest unit in the game. A Laser Synth armored Recon Rover still only costs 1, so very quickly, the Spartans have a minimum armor and weapon unit that can be used for anything. I started in the middle of nowhere so I didn't have any enemy to immediately trash. But if I had, and they were doing the AI's usual Trance Scout thing, they'd be toast!
Worse, the Spartans have +1 POLICE, in a game that otherwise makes it really really difficult to use police units. They can out-police the Hive and get +3 POLICE when declaring a Police State. This makes all units do 2x police work. So I don't even have to try to keep my citizens happy, it's trivial.
In my own mod, I couldn't abide the Spartans having better police than Chairman Yang. So I made +1 POLICE into Yang's primary play mechanic, getting rid of other things like the INDUSTRY bonus and the IMMUNITY to EFFIC penalties. I took the +1 POLICE away from the Spartans and I strongly recommend you do so. I feel strongly enough about the gross imbalance here, that I'm filing an Issue about it.
Similarly for the Cultists. Their WORMPOLICE make them way too powerful. If you're going to put police on a diet, stick to the plan and don't give them away.
The Ascetic Virtues is a solidly midgame SP, not easy to complete any time soon. Its +1 POLICE benefit is generally the only way that anyone can get to double police, until Thought Control becomes available. That takes awhile.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2021, 08:12:46 am
The Believers seem balanced enough. I didn't have any real difficulty with my -1 PLANET rating. I had to adopt some cautious tactics, but mindworms will ultimately hurl themselves at your cities. Usually they die that way, particularly if I've toughened up by going Fundamentalist. The INDUSTRY bonus helped me crank out a couple of SPs. The graph says I'm not doing really much better or worse than anyone else. There's nothing really wrong with this game, but it's 3 AM and I'm tired. The mission of testing the basic playability of yet another faction has been accomplished, so I'm bagging this.
The Believers are a good fit to WTP's biases. Early tech research isn't worth anything, there's no point. You can buy it easily enough, and allies will often just up and give it to you. For both the Believers and the Free Drones, you might want to consider the meaninglessness of the -2 RESEARCH penalty.
I figured out that building a Rec Commons followed by a Hologram Theater can count as "anticipatory minerals" for building early SPs, if Recycling Tanks is not learned. Just has to be somewhere that will grow enough in the meantime to get meaningful minerals. Such as combining nutrient specials with forests.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2021, 04:26:24 am
The Hive is definitely not an underpowered faction. I don't think it's overpowered, but there's more of this game to go. My start was fine. Pretty good land. More than I could reasonably settle before "other concerns" drove me to go vertical.
In MY 2216 I completed the Command Nexus. Previous to that, all of my garrison troops came from 1 Command Center. Elsewhere I built a big pile of various Formers, and then finally Synth armored Rover Probe Teams because I had nothing better to do. They're all heading for Deidre, and the Fungicidal Formers are coming after to carve a better road to the enemy. Several factions are at war with me but Deidre is the closest land adjacent neighbor. I had planned to stomp the Morganites but we went into sunspots. There's no point in stomping them until I can get a surrender out of them.
I'm starting on hordes of Missile Speeders with Plasma armor. I'm working on a Chaos prototype. I'll be surprised if Deidre has any chance at all, because infiltration doesn't show her defenses to look like much. Some armor and ECM, but a lot of Trance Scouts too. Unimpressive city size and infrastructure, not much minerals output. Her SUPPORT must be bad as I see various cities with some units costing her 2 minerals.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2021, 05:03:28 am
I played a game as the Data Angels, starting in fairly close quarters to hostile Spartans. At first I thought I was getting the better of them. But with only 1 "good minerals" Command Center city, and trying to grow the rest of my empire under all that combat stress, I really couldn't put them under. In fact they took back the city I took from them. Their artillery was surprisingly effective at keeping my wounded units weak. It really does a lot of damage to units to bust open a city, so they're all but spent afterwards.
The Data Angels' PROBE bonus is not really that useful in the early game. It's not like I had lots of money to buy Spartan units or cities with. Nor did I have the manufacturing capacity to make lots of probe teams. The main thing keeping me going was SHARETECH. But that's not as helpful as you might think, because as the game progresses, it only means you stay even with most factions. You're not actually gaining an advantage.
I don't think the Data Angels are a bad faction, but they're not as good as the better ones. It's hard to use probe teams effectively.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2021, 05:07:58 pm
I didn't think a probe team could mind control stuff that's on a Transport. It can't in the unmodded game, because there are 2 units in the square. Makes me wonder if that rule is gone in WTP. I didn't see the Recon Rover leave my Transport, and it's empty now, so I wonder if it summarily sunk?
[Limit reached]
I'm playing as the Usurpers because it's the last faction to try. I got an unusual start with 3 minerals deposits next to a manageable slice of the Monsoon Jungle. So uncharacteristically, the 1st thing I researched was Social Psych. One advantage of directed research is I will be able to get Recycling Tanks very soon, like in 5 more years.
I lost my 1st Independent Scout on the 1st turn of the game, popping all those pods with my non-combat units. But otherwise mindworms haven't been a serious problem yet. I beat some pops off with my Scouts, taking casualties, but my cities and terrain improvements weren't harmed. My exploration radius is rather limited compared to what I usually do. Hope I don't get hordes later as a result.
In MY 2212, at 1 AM, I quit. The game was viable, but I don't think my 3 city vertical opening was particularly advantageous. Despite making some early conquests of the Caretakers just to the east, I wasn't able to reinforce the conquered cities and the Caretakers merely retook them. When I quit, I think we had rough parity, which isn't an endorsement for my opening strategy. I think there's just too much work to do everywhere, and colony spamming is still obviously the optimal strategy.
I also got hammered by a lot of hordes of wandering mindworms. Although I did hold them off by sheer numbers of ECM Synth Laser Infantry put in as defenders, they did tie me up and blunt any other offensive activities I may have engaged in. This indicates to me that allowing others to pop the pods is a very bad idea. Not only won't you get the money, but you'll also get their mindworms hitting you.
Post by: bvanevery on July 18, 2021, 07:14:14 am
I made it to MY 2304 as the Peacekeepers before quitting. Things are calm now, but I previously fought overwhelming amounts of Hive Recon Speeder spam. It just went on forever and it has worn me out. Although the AI's strategy of spamming incredible numbers of cheap units may be effective in some cases, it's pretty darned dull to fight forever. Too much.
This sort of thing seems to pit extreme vertical (me) vs. extreme horizontal development (them). There just comes a point at which I'm like, why would I want to wade through any more of this?
On the positive side, I did manage to get elected Governor. It did take the Empath Guild, and all the terraforming I did for a long time instead of other things, and Democratic Planned. And probably an ally finally voting with me instead of undermining me.
Post by: bvanevery on July 20, 2021, 05:24:47 am
I made it to MY 2297 as the Cult of Planet before quitting. I actually out spammed the Hive. However this is not basically playable, pushing all these units around, 3 or 6 squares at a time. I can't imagine doing this for lots more of the map than I already did. This is what rails are for.
The Hive mostly built regular units without Trance ability, so I just steamrollered them with my +4 PLANET mindworms. The Hive eventually started building some Trance Scouts. Those would interfere with my conquest, except for the fact that they're extremely vulnerable to artillery fire. One shot with a high caliber artillery piece, and they're half dead, which means just about any mindworm will kill them. Since they're no longer viable anti-mindworm defense, the stronger armored units which typically have ECM are selected. They die, and then I might send some kind of Speeder to mop up the Trance Scouts if necessary.
You would improve the AI's resistance if you built Trance units that actually had armor. And if you didn't make Trance so expensive that the AI objects to doing so. In my own mod, I finally had to go back to Trance being a free ability on certain units, like in the original game. Otherwise mindworms were just too overpowered, the one true weapons platform. You've balanced mindworm offense and defense differently, but you've also made PLANET a +15% increment. I question the wisdom of that. Especially since it pretty much makes the Cult of Planet the supreme faction.
What I didn't do this game, compared to the previous, is waste time building terribly advanced facilities. All that does is give the Hive time to create Recon Speeder ultra spam. You don't actually get any advanced abilities worth having, for all the facilities making trouble you go through. So basically, no Fusion Labs or Research Hospitals this time. Only in my capitol, where I built the Merchant Exchange and the Supercollider.
I did pretty much all the basic facilities stuff, but then my empire was pretty much "ready to invade with mindworms". Yang finally got around to being enough of a jerk, he pretty much started the war. Granted, I went Democratic Planned for a long time. Then Democratic Green. When he declared war I went Fundamentalist and then that was that.
It's a bit insulting that the graph rated me as Feeble when I'm walking all over my nearest neighbor. What's he supposed to be? Wasn't my land area impressive enough? Weren't my troops legion?
Post by: bvanevery on July 22, 2021, 08:35:33 am
I played to MY 2253 as the Pirates before quitting. I did better than a previous attempt quite a number of games ago, but still felt pretty starved of minerals compared to a land empire. Not convinced that sea energy makes up for it. I basically chased all the minerals deposits, which spread me out quite a bit. That might not be the optimal way to do things. A more centralized empire that hugs a coast might be better.
I'm not sure if I was left alone by virtue of lucky geography, or the AI not being as good at sea expansion as one might think. This is way before the "oceans completely filled with spam" part of the game.
I played Fundamentalist most of the time. It's really not necessary to do serious research in WTP. Fundamentalist did however undermine me on EFFIC and GROWTH though, as the Pirates have EFFIC and GROWTH penalties. I benefited from the INDUSTRY bonus, but despite some threats of war and some nominal war, MORALE never mattered. I think I had 1 ship combat with the Data Angels when they declared war, just passing through my waters with a Gun Foil. That's it. Some time pretty late in things I finally learned Green from someone else, and then went Democratic. I think I was overly afraid of the -2 SUPPORT penalty, forgetting that in WTP you can still have 2 units for free.
I may try the Pirates again as I think they offer something different to think about than the land factions. I'm not sure the Pirates actually have any advantage. Any faction could just choose to go to sea, and it seems like the Pirates might have to go to land, at least along a coast, to get any real minerals. Sure you can build Subsea Trunklines eventually, but they're expensive to maintain. I definitely didn't get rich this game.
Post by: bvanevery on July 25, 2021, 08:09:12 am
Made it to MY 2308 before throwing in the towel. 3 AM. Better centralized than the last Pirate empire, pretty close to a "perfect circle" from my capitol. Spent all my time leveling up cities, just don't have any minerals. Don't see that money makes up the difference. Pirates are poor. Theoretically they have the advantage of Naval Yards and Marine Detachments. In practice, I'm too impoverished to deploy any ships. I kept a few on "capture Sea Formers" duty, whenever Yang would foolishly send some my way to make Sensor Arrays in my region. I made almost no SPs, just the Merchant Exchange and the Supercollider at the beginning of the game.
The only other advantage I can think of for the Pirates, is if you're playing random opponents, you know you won't have the Pirates bothering you. Otherwise, I think even 1 port city with a Naval Yard could accomplish the amount of force projection I managed this game. Being on the ocean really doesn't have any point. There's nothing out there.
Oh, and I never learned Advanced Ecological Engineering, so never got to take advantage of the "build on Ocean squares" ability. Not that I needed it anyways. The oceans in WTP are mostly shallow, and very few of my bases had any shortage of workable squares. And that's only because I was building Hab Domes when I quit.
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2021, 09:02:16 am
A brief game to MY 2186. Tried to make this empire "like Rome", in anticipation of free Naval Yards coming soon enough. Used my 2 initial sea bases as spawners for the land bases. Didn't see any point of spreading at sea, since there are no minerals there. Never built armored ECM defenders in my original 2 bases, so got PWNed by a trivial Caretaker ship. Lesson learned.
Thing is, a navy's only good at taking over sea bases. What's the point? Sea bases are pretty worthless. Coastal base invasion needs either Speeders or Marines. The Pirates don't have any particular advantage with land units.
Post by: bvanevery on July 30, 2021, 08:03:18 am
I might have the right idea with this, but I also am pretty burned out with any kind of playtesting, having filed plenty of Issues already. I think all I'm going to say about the Pirates for now, is my jury's out about them. "Clusters of sea minerals" definitely does boost minerals output in a few sea bases though. There aren't going to be that many clusters available though, within a radius that gives reasonable EFFIC.
Post by: MercantileInterest on July 30, 2021, 03:27:51 pm
; Faction placement can also add two nutrient bonuses for each land-based faction.
; 0 = disable for all, 1 = enable for AIs only, 2 = enable for all.
nutrient_bonus=2
No longer seems to work on premade maps like the map of planet. Still works fine on randomly generated maps. A deliberate change?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 31, 2021, 01:27:28 pm
This line in thinker.ini:
; Faction placement can also add two nutrient bonuses for each land-based faction.
; 0 = disable for all, 1 = enable for AIs only, 2 = enable for all.
nutrient_bonus=2
No longer seems to work on premade maps like the map of planet. Still works fine on randomly generated maps. A deliberate change?
This is Thinker property and, honestly, I don't even understand what is it about. I would suggest to test it in pure Thinker installation first.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 11, 2021, 10:17:31 pm
Since bvanevery started testing he found a lot of not synced entries in Data Links. Anybody is interested in co-authoring the mod and cleanup all text files? I really don't have a lot of time now due to work.
😃
Post by: bvanevery on August 12, 2021, 04:35:18 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 12, 2021, 03:50:47 pm
Post by: bvanevery on August 12, 2021, 05:54:01 pm
Well that's what Issue Trackers are for. To let things sit around a long time until someone finally wishes to deal with them. When they're not burning down the house.
Post by: bvanevery on August 12, 2021, 10:20:33 pm
[Limit reached]
It seems I've finally cracked the productivity code. One must have a city with a good supply of starting minerals, and then a Recycling Tank, and then a Genejack Factory. The trick is being able to keep people happy enough to have this, and also being able to afford the maintenance cost of this. As I had very good minerals deposits right at the beginning of the game, I built 3 GFs later on. Then I had severe maintenance cost problems for awhile, causing me to go through a phase of Stockpiling Energy. If I had only built 1 and used it as something of a supercenter, such as for building SPs, I would have probably been more efficient.
Eventually my productivity became so legion, that I sat around building Conventional Missiles, for lack of anything better to do. This tech was obtained from my ally Zhakarov. Shortly after that, he stopped giving me any techs. I still had plenty of armaments to stomp anything that could possibly get near me. And frankly, by MY 2280 things weren't still quite getting near me.
I deliberately expanded towards the coast early in the game, figuring that I would need naval bases later on, to wipe out encroaching sea bases. Clearing enemies out of the oceans has been completely trivial. They have no defense against a Fusion Laser, and even if they did, I've got 37 CMs. It's pretty silly really. I have far more productivity than I know what to do with.
I've been attacking enemies, taking 1 city, gaining a Treaty, and telling them to knock off their wars with everyone. Then I talk to Zhakarov, who always still seems to manage to be at war with someone. Then I say, "Sure I'll help you!" and I wonder why I'm bothering, because he doesn't give me anything anymore. It doesn't make any sense to try to out-compete him on tech. I've done Police State Planned forever, avoided Cybernetic because of the POLICE penalty and useless EFFIC, and even avoided Knowledge when that finally came available.
To actually win this game, the logical thing to do, would be to devour my ally Zhakarov. I just see that as incredibly inefficient, as I could have done plenty of things way earlier in the game. Might as well bag this and move on to version 255.
It is worth noting that I've suffered no significant consequences for so many big minerals cities. Planet never floods. I did get recurring popups of 8 mindworms, but with Trance garrisons and cheap Empath attackers, they are easily vanquished.
Post by: bvanevery on August 15, 2021, 07:32:57 am
I also took over the Monsoon Jungle on a different continent just to the north. The Believers were unbelievably spammy up there, and that's the main reason I quit at 2:15 AM. I built most of the SPs available, but after many hours it's just too tedious putting up with the computer's spam. I don't know where the Believers are getting all the colony pods from, to just sacrifice them like cannon fodder and keep my front line of mindworms busy. But it gets dull. Those aren't the only things they sent my way, they were making an effort to fight me, but there is so much unit pushing.
I had planes but didn't make much use of them. When you have to invest so heavily just to have a viable Command Center, it doesn't make sense to build Aerospace Complexes in those cities. I had some ACs coming online fairly soon.
Moving on to a more recent release.
Post by: bvanevery on August 17, 2021, 06:07:13 am
Version 256. I played until MY 2278, at which time I decided my stomping of Planet was a foregone conclusion. I've all but wiped out the Cyborgs, who were actually my allies until someone framed me.
I've been Fundamentalist almost the entire game. It was a good fit to the Data Angels' lack of research. And, as I've been saying in the Issue Tracker and Reddit, research is unnecessary. The only faction with a lot more tech than me was the University, and they were getting picked on by some neighbors. They were maybe 6 techs ahead and it's obviously not important. Everybody else, they might have 1 tech that I don't.
Only after recently completing the Xenoempathy Dome did I bother with Green. Also my amount of conquest was getting silly and I needed the happiness boost.
The winning strategy of the game is establishing massive early productivity. The AIs don't have anything remotely like my level of output. I just grabbed all the good minerals immediately, and used my supply pod money to put Recycling Tanks on top of all the ones that had Minerals specials. I never built a single Genejack Factory this game. For quite awhile, I was worried about being able to afford them. Then eventually it turned out I didn't need them.
The AI spams too much and doesn't focus on productivity. Getting a big early minerals lead makes it very easy to win the SP races. When I let the Command Nexus go, I was doing just fine spitting garrison units out of 1 city. When I let the Maritime Control Center go, I was all but landlocked. I didn't put a single military ship to sea the whole game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 17, 2021, 01:53:16 pm
I've been Fundamentalist almost the entire game. It was a good fit to the Data Angels' lack of research. And, as I've been saying in the Issue Tracker and Reddit, research is unnecessary.
Err, obviously, research is unnecessary. For Angels. Especially with their ability to get it without even establishing data link.
😁
Post by: bvanevery on August 17, 2021, 03:09:07 pm
I've now filed an Issue about reverting the Recycling Tank to original game behavior. It is a huge mistake to give away a cheap 50% mineral multiplier early in the game. It has risen to the level of exploit because the AI doesn't know how to use it anywhere near as well as I do. It would take a lot of AI programming to correct this... or you could just admit that in light of the needs of writing AIs, some rules changes are a bad idea and shouldn't be done.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 17, 2021, 07:59:46 pm
Research hasn't been necessary for any faction I've played. Allies will give you sufficient tech or sell it very cheap. This is all in that Issue I filed, that I think you closed without taking any action on it.
In my perception I research about 50-60% of tech, trade/buy 20% and steal 20%. I don't feel like trading and stealing can provide a sustainable flow of contemporary techs. They are good means to catch up with others as long as I already have some lump number of them researched by me already. Besides, there is nothing to trade.
Even now I don't feel AI willing to trade all the time. One need to maintain pretty good relationships to keep it flowing. Stealing is also not an infinite solution: worsening relationships, less and less chance of stealing, border bases are exhausted, deep penetration into enemy territory is almost impossible. So one will either trade with other faction when in peace or steal from it when at war but both approaches are limited.
I never tried to not research at all (not being Angels and without The Planetary Datalinks) and see how I will keep up. If this proves to be absolutely viable then sure - we can conclude this is not needed.
I've now filed an Issue about reverting the Recycling Tank to original game behavior. It is a huge mistake to give away a cheap 50% mineral multiplier early in the game. It has risen to the level of exploit because the AI doesn't know how to use it anywhere near as well as I do. It would take a lot of AI programming to correct this... or you could just admit that in light of the needs of writing AIs, some rules changes are a bad idea and shouldn't be done.
I am correcting programming to emphasize mineral multiplying facilities and testing now. Hopefully, they will do better on that. Thank you for pointing this out.
At the same time I have balanced mineral and energy multiplying facilities even further. Mineral facilities cost a little more now. That should be a solution for "cheap" part.
Keep in mind, though, that any multiplication is "cheap" in some way because they will pay for themselves in certain number of turn (more or less) and then provide free surplus.
Post by: bvanevery on August 17, 2021, 09:54:40 pm
Biogenetics is only a D2 tech, it's not hard to get at all. The only reason I wasn't getting it in many of my previous games, is I have usually tested from the AI's perspective, only sticking with their default research foci. That's not valid for testing a human's ability to exploit the game, so I'm just researching what I need. Allies as usual have given me a sufficient amount of techs, and no, this doesn't require any "maintenance" or "work" to get the gravy.
I've been pestered by some mindworms, and a little bit by the Usurpers. With the Drones' absurd +2 INDUSTRY bonus, it certainly hasn't been anything resembling a problem. My plan is to finish grabbing all of the Monsoon Jungle, then build the Recycling Tanks. I think the Usurpers will then be summarily overrun. The Hive is nearby over the water, and jerky to me. I'll post again about it when these stompings are completed.
Early linear scaling bonuses to minerals is a very bad idea. Recycling Tanks in the original game are ok because they're a constant bonus, not linear. Helps out a lot with early bases when a constant bonus is proportionately more. Doesn't matter as much as bases get bigger. Same with a Biology Lab.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 17, 2021, 10:32:07 pm
It doesn't matter how soon you get the tech as long as item cost is right. In vanilla people get Network Nodes at level 1 and what? They didn't build it until their bases grow to some pop 5 with sizeable energy input. That is absolutely correct strategical balance.
I have increased RT cost some more. I should do it initially but was tempted to give mineral boost cheaper. Now I see that was a mistake. It should cost as much as it should.
Post by: bvanevery on August 18, 2021, 05:52:32 am
Any fixed bonus is a no strategical choice as it clearly was in vanilla.
You can't always be thinking / planning about this game, in terms of some far off mid to late game "payoff". Massive gains in the early game, count for tons. This is kind of 4X 101, that better early game moves pretty much determine the rest of the game. That's pretty much a problem with the genre, the foregone conclusions.
Quote
People just build it without much thinking.
By replacing "Recycling Tanks is always an automatic minor benefit" with "Recycling Tanks has a cost, but doing it early is the key to winning the game" is not improving the situation. If something will win you the game, it's not a thought, and you pay the cost. That's what cash from supply pods is for, paying your initial costs.
I buy your godawful expensive Command Center because it is necessary. The only actual thinking is only building one of them for awhile.
Quote
You won't build them everywhere even when you got the tech, do you?
Most bases will eventually have 6 minerals, so when that happens, yes it gets built "everywhere". The only thinking is when to build it, not if.
Quote
It doesn't matter how soon you get the tech as long as item cost is right.
False, because inability to get started building something in the early game, does matter.
Quote
In vanilla people get Network Nodes at level 1 and what? They didn't build it until their bases grow to some pop 5 with sizeable energy input. That is absolutely correct strategical balance.
False. If science is at 4, Network Node is ok to build. 6 is better.
[Limit reached]
Meanwhile, here's the kind of stuff I pull with my allies all the time. I don't need research! My allies are gonna rubber band me through most of what I need, with many of the Secret Projects excepted. Not all though. Sometimes they just give up an uncompleted SP tech. Yeah sure, the Peacekeepers are "near" the Usurpers, and have even managed to send a few units to my front with them. But the AI really has no understanding of the payoff value of its largesse. I don't need more tech, I need the productivity to harness the tech I'm given.
MY 2195. Next turn I will complete the last Recycling Tank in the Monsoon Jungle. I'm working on 3 SPs. 2 of them complete in 2 turns. Only the Consciousness is even trying to do one, and they don't stand a chance of winning. I've got a Command Center city that's starting to pump out ECM Synth Laser Infantry, to deal with the huge pile of Usurper Recon Rover spam that's building up. I've got my 1 port city building a Skunkworks, and with Lal's gift, I'll put a Naval Yard on top of that.
[Limit reached]
I guess the Data Angels want the Usurpers "real dead" too. This is pretty silly. I haven't lifted a finger, not even 100 turns have gone by, and I've been given Genejack Factory capability if I want it. And I probably don't even need it, because Recycling Tanks alone are good enough!
I'm gonna laugh out loud if they finally give me Fundamentalist. I can't even remember what tech that comes with.
MY 2197. By completing the Universal Translator, I learn Fundamentalist on my own. Well it will eventually cost me Lal and Roze as allies, but frankly who cares? ...Oops, minerals weirdness with my SP after going Fundamentalist, caused me to replay the turn. This time I got Fusion Power, so no easy Fundamentalist yet. Not like I need it.
[Limit reached]
MY 2199. The Empath Guild is only like the most important SP for the Peacekeepers. Yet he traded it for Fusion Power. It's not like Fusion Power is all that important in WTP. At least Roze finally thinks I have enough tech, that she didn't just give me something. I could buy a couple of Level 2 techs from her if I had the money.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 18, 2021, 02:17:13 pm
Any fixed bonus is a no strategical choice as it clearly was in vanilla.
You can't always be thinking / planning about this game, in terms of some far off mid to late game "payoff". Massive gains in the early game, count for tons. This is kind of 4X 101, that better early game moves pretty much determine the rest of the game. That's pretty much a problem with the genre, the foregone conclusions.
You are talking about different things and avoiding the main point. Please argue with my statement and don't just add irrelevant words into discussion.
"Massive gains in the early game, count for tons" - true. I didn't say it is not.
"early game moves pretty much determine the rest of the game" - true. Who said different?
My point is: any fixed bonus does not supply strategical decision. Try argue with that if you can.
You want to add fixed bonus to new base - piece of cake. Add to base tile production in alphax.txt. What's the problem with that?
The problem with vanilla RT is that it is redundantly add resources to base tile which can be done in configuration. The fact that it requires 1-st level tech and 40 minerals changes nothing as everybody has to pay that and everybody receives same benefit. No opportunity to outthink opponents.
So I removed this quite useless feature and added some other that really boosts early game progress and also requires certain level of thinking whether you want to apply it or not and at every single base. Why are you arguing with that? Just for the sake of arguing?
If you look at overall game pace then you cannot not notice that this mod is about 4 times more dynamic than vanilla. Increased growth speed, formers at start, removed yield penalties. Vanilla until tech level 4 was just a drag with excruciatingly slow growth and really nothing to build. It really picked up only toward mid game. I have moved all these toward the beginning giving you an opportunity to beat the game by properly using these early boosts. Which you actually proved yourself in previous games. Why contradict your own experience now?
QuotePeople just build it without much thinking.
By replacing "Recycling Tanks is always an automatic minor benefit" with "Recycling Tanks has a cost, but doing it early is the key to winning the game" is not improving the situation. If something will win you the game, it's not a thought, and you pay the cost. That's what cash from supply pods is for, paying your initial costs.
If you really don't see a difference then there is no point in further discussion.
Post by: bvanevery on August 18, 2021, 03:12:45 pm
The problem with vanilla RT is that it is redundantly add resources to base tile which can be done in configuration.
Having to build stuff costs time, which is a resource in any wargame.
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added some other that really boosts early game progress
No kidding.
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and also requires certain level of thinking whether you want to apply it or not and at every single base.
The only thought is when does the base go to 6 minerals. The benefit is so powerful, that grabbing the best minerals supplies at the beginning of the game, determines the game. The "certain level of thinking" is only this.
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Just for the sake of arguing?
Do you really believe I tell you straight up what's wrong with your mod, so that I can enjoy some argument? You think that's my motive? When are you going to start playtesting your own mod, as much as I am? There may also be the problem that you've played enough in the past, that you think certain things are "good", when they are not.
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Vanilla until tech level 4 was just a drag with excruciatingly slow growth and really nothing to build.
Actually I feel similarly restricted because you've made certain things so godawful expensive, like Command Centers. I'm still waiting waiting waiting for the Command Nexus to complete. Secret Projects are the usual way of getting ahead in vanilla, and you've denied that. Couldn't avail myself of Genejack Factories because I couldn't afford the maintenance on them, until I finally got Energy Bank tech. Have to build Hologram Theaters to keep the growing cities happy. Have to build Hab Complexes to keep their growth rate from slowing down. It's not all that different as far as needing to build basically 5 facilities.
Meanwhile the AI puts out loads of low level spam. I finally got that under control, mainly with my own ECM Synth Laser spam from my 1 Command Center city. Just blocking up my border.
Started making Biology Labs in my cities that have nothing left to build anymore. They're way cheaper than Command Centers and won't be a waste once the Command Nexus is built. Now spewing Democratic mindworms. They're not reliable as far as killing stuff, but they do inflict wounds, and they make the large fungal patch between us a much more formidable barrier. Also, mindworms don't require support when sitting in fungus.
My 1 Naval Yard with piles of minerals, is completely sweeping out the Usurper ocean spam. Not even a challenge.
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If you really don't see a difference then there is no point in further discussion.
2 different kinds of easy decision.
Post by: bvanevery on August 21, 2021, 06:41:07 am
I made it to MY 2282. The redundancy of combat, and pushing units slowly to the front, has gotten the better of me. There's nothing wrong with my position, I just don't want to do it anymore. 1:30 AM tends to have that effect on me. This game has gone on a fair number of days, although I can't remember how many. Turns get longer when you're pushing so many units around. Looking at older posts, looks like this was the 5th night playing.
I had just started a 2nd front with the Hive, via a land bridge. Not a problem for my production. I've built most of the SPs, and I can cough up plenty of fighting units. But I have to move those around and fight with them, and there's... so much spam to overcome.
I wasn't able to waltz in as fast as I thought I'd be able to, due to all the spam in my way. I could have done it if I didn't build all the SPs. However, happiness and money have been constraints. SPs are helpful in overcoming those. When I quit, I'd just finally built the Virtual World. I still haven't built any Genejack Factories. Bad for happiness, money, and the planet.
My main armament at the end was the ECM Fusion Silksteel Infantry. Mostly I built a lot of those. I had a few Fusion Synth Speeders, Fusion Synth Batteries, and ECM Silksteel Skirmishers for support. Eventually stopped using Democratic mindworms when the last one from the old batch died.
Post by: bvanevery on August 23, 2021, 07:15:59 am
Version 257. Made it to MY 2255 as the Believers. 2 AM gave me the yawns. Not really into stomping the University anymore. They put up very little resistance. Although I think making armor more expensive again is a good thing, I think the U. lacked ECM units. It's as though the AI decided not to build so many of them, compared to previous test games.
I just made lots of various kinds of Speeders for the most part. The U. was of course no match for my productivity. As usual, getting the research I needed wasn't even a challenge. My view is in WTP the University has all kinds of major disadvantages for research bonuses that aren't even worth anything. Meanwhile I played much of the game at -4 RESEARCH, once I went Fundamentalist, and it didn't even matter.
This time I only built the Merchant Exchange and the Command Nexus initially. I used up a lot of Artifacts for the latter, and still had to wait awhile. Nevertheless it was worth it. Eventually I built a Genejack Factory in my capitol and ended up with the Living Refinery, giving me +4 SUPPORT. That was it for my SPs. I finally stopped building Chaos Rovers and started to build Energy Banks, intending to start on Tree Farms after that. I ended up being Fundamentalist Green with a 40-30-30 budget to keep my expanding empire happy. I wasn't making any money, although I had developed a 600+ bank account that wasn't getting depleted.
Not exactly a fan of the invincible Sensor Arrays, but they certainly didn't stop me from clobbering the U.
Oh, and for the record, they declared war on me. When they thought they had the advantage. In terms of tech armor, sure, they did. But how long was that supposed to last them? So easy to steal their stuff.
Not much point in building Silksteel defenders if you can't really crank those units out fast enough. My main defensive unit was the Trance Plasma Garrison. In other words, I was far more worried about the occasional mindworm interloper, than anything the AI players could hope to do to me. I had a few ECM Silksteel units on my front line initially, but Zhakarov's ability to hit me back in any way, collapsed pretty quickly.
Post by: bvanevery on August 25, 2021, 04:34:32 pm
I have deliberately not invaded anyone yet, because I know that unit pushing wears me out and makes me hate life. The time is almost nigh though, because I'm completing Tree Farms in many cities, with Genejack Factories following as happiness permits. I'm Democratic Planned with a 40-30-30 budget. Tech as usual has been no problem to obtain. What I used to trade for, nowadays I just steal. My plan is once I'm ready to invade, or once my cities finally start rioting again, I'll finally go Green. Then my mindworms will be pretty strong. I can also make any conventional units I want.
[Limit reached]
The Believers are supposedly the leading faction according to the power graph, with the Hive right behind them. They were gifted the Monsoon Jungle at the start of the game, yet they've built no advanced facilities at all. Not even a single Recycling Tank! They know the tech, that's not the problem. They just don't have a clue how to make a productive city. All they do is spam, and that results in a giant skeleton empire that's no threat and tedious to overrun.
[Limit reached]
Here's one of the best cities they've got, and they've got a good handful about this size. 7 minerals and still producing Colony Pods! Even though they declared war on me for ideological reasons quite some time ago. They've done nothing to me at all. Look I don't mind having the luxury to build up even more than I strictly needed to, but this is gross incompetence.
[Limit reached]
Here's what a real city looks like, when you've been playing properly the whole game. This used to be my 2nd best city but with the Tree Farm, it has pulled into 1st. My other biggest mineral city put out a lot of Fungicidal Synth Rover Formers, which have given me quite a lot of competent terrain improvement. The Believers, in contrast, have a pretty crap road network, and seem to be overemphasizing Condensers. I never build those.
[Limit reached]
The Believers aren't exceptional. The Gaians, Spartans, and Data Angels haven't built any Recycling Tanks either. I don't have infiltration to any other factions, but it won't shock me if it's the same for all of them. This is incompetence rising to the level of a bug. Gonna have to file an issue about that, and I really don't see the point of playing any more test games until it's fixed somehow. This is a showstopper.
If I continued this game, the results would be just like the previous 2 test games. Lots and lots of unit pushing across the adjacent skeleton empires, with very little resistance. In the sheer amount of time it would take me to do that, maybe the most distant empires could amass some kind of competence, who knows. But it is way too boring to find out.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 25, 2021, 05:47:07 pm
The Believers are supposedly the leading faction according to the power graph, with the Hive right behind them. They were gifted the Monsoon Jungle at the start of the game, yet they've built no advanced facilities at all. Not even a single Recycling Tank!
Need tweaks in production priority calculations. Working on it.
It actually would be useful to keep these saves and then rerun them with new version and see if AI acts better on production choices.
Post by: bvanevery on August 25, 2021, 08:54:17 pm
Of course a flaw in the plan, is if I don't build the Human Genome Project early, and no one else does, then Biogenetics may not be known by so many factions. Still, you could just assign everyone to have Biogenetics.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 25, 2021, 08:58:11 pm
I don't get how to run AI vs AI? Isn't it like 1 human and 6 AIs in game fighting all against all?
Post by: bvanevery on August 25, 2021, 10:13:41 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 26, 2021, 01:42:36 pm
I do this all the time to test AI development.
Post by: bvanevery on August 26, 2021, 05:19:14 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 27, 2021, 04:03:56 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on August 27, 2021, 04:04:44 am
I think I'm done working on this one. Too many changes. Will continue working on AI in next releases.
Post by: bvanevery on August 27, 2021, 04:29:32 am
How do I find you cookbook among thousands of pages?
There are search functions. I imagine you can narrow things down by my name. You could simply read back a few years until you see it, as there aren't that many posts in Theory of Everything in recent years. It's also possible to look at a user's profile and see all the stuff they ever posted.
You could also just hack it out with the 2 sentences I told you. Open the Scenario Editor and...
Post by: bvanevery on August 28, 2021, 10:50:44 am
MY 2184 as the Spartans. Well the AI certainly builds Recycling Tanks now. Somehow with Discover Conquer research foci, I didn't get Biogenetics and they did. This year my allies the Gaians completed the Human Genome Project. I went on a begging and trading spree with my 4 allies, which got me Biogenetics and a bunch of other things. Definitely tech leakage, although one could argue they're merely rubber banding me. I'm not awesome. My start was minerals poor and a bit restricted on land spread, due to fungus and fungal towers in the way. I have only 1 "good" city with 8 minerals, 2 with 5 minerals, and 7 other paltry cities.
I've got Rec Commons completed in most of them, but there's no way that starting a SP would have been viable. The AIs totally got the jump on me this time. I was building Foil Probe Teams to go steal from Zhakarov my one enemy, when the Gaian SP completion gave me an easier path.
I did have a good cash stockpile, so I'm rushing 2 Recycling Tanks this turn. Won't have quite enough next turn for the 3rd, but it won't take long. After that, I don't actually have any "minerals worthy" cities yet, so I'll be needing to grow. I've started Children's Creches in the various puny places, and shortly I'll go Democratic as it's non-controversial. Before that I've got an interloping spore launcher to kill though.
Post by: bvanevery on August 29, 2021, 05:10:32 am
MY 2263. This isn't any fun. I've had no productivity the whole game. I barely got my small nation garrisoned with Trance Plasma units, and finally Hologram Theaters and Genejack Factories built, which merely catches up to where AI factions have been at ages ago. They seemed to have no problem making massive amounts of money to maintain their GFs, whereas I get no money and am seriously penalized by the high maintenance. I could understand in the case of Lal because he was Governor and getting extra income, but why Deirdre should be making a lot of money, is a mystery to me.
Former allies mostly turned on me, due to me picking SE choices necessary for catching up. The Cult turning on me is particularly irritating, because I am Green. I had both the Cult and the Gaians as neighbors and as one might expect form the hard coding of the stock binary, they got into a war with each other. Nice political choice wasn't enough to prevent the Cult from threatening me as I'm so far behind. And unlike the Morganites, who really weren't in shape to send anything my way before my GFs and Tree Farms complete, the Cult has lots of powerful units ready to go.
This game felt like it was determined by 1) getting a mediocre start, with not many minerals, not much food, and not that much fungus free land, and 2) the accident of getting Biogenetics later than everyone else. It seems unreasonably difficult to research it with a Discover Conquer research focus, and seems to say that picking Discover is necessary to prevent one summarily losing the game.
I think I'll actually try the Spartans again, because it is possible that they can't produce for crap. Not just the INDUSTRY penalty but the new EFFIC penalty makes it difficult for them to afford anything. I don't think I got in a fight with any other faction the whole game. It was that painful just to garrison with basic units. I'm thinking that going Fundamentalist early and stomping someone might be the only way to play the Spartans. Well at least given a poverty start.
Post by: bvanevery on August 29, 2021, 08:57:36 am
Owing to a much better minerals, food, and roomier start, I was able to build the Merchant Exchange and the Human Genome Project. Now though I'm in a thing where all the AIs have beat every single SP I've been trying to build in my best city. As of MY 2241 this is tiresome and I'm quitting. 3:45 AM has a lot to do with it too. I had to beeline with Discover to get Recycling Tanks fairly early. Even when I only had 3 cities, the Data Angels had already built 2 Recycling Tanks. That's a bit ridiculous and feels like advantage goes to whoever gets a good start.
As the game progresses, the production of the AI factions feels pretty much impossible to compete with. In this game, the Spartans also didn't have a good option for stomping anyone "early". I also realized that Fundamentalist doesn't exactly come early anyways.
I really, really don't think a Minerals Multiplier should be so easily obtained by anyone at the beginning of the game. It makes the game much more capricious as to who got early advantages.
Similarly, allowing the AI to almost immediately get ahold of Genejack Factories just after it got Recycling Tanks, is not exactly fair to the human player. The AIs don't seem to suffer anything remotely like the maintenance and happiness penalties that I do. I think these 2 facilities alone, turn the game into "watch AIs win and you can't catch up".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 15, 2021, 05:02:35 pm
Conventional artillery bombarding mind worms initiates a conventional combat. This is an only exception from *all other* cases when psi unit is involved (direct attack, spore launcher bombardment, artillery duel with spore launcher on either side). As a consequence, conventional artillery with high enough weapon value delivers huge damage to mind worms as they got some virtual armor value = 1 assigned for such conventional combat.
I am not sure what to do with that. Any suggestions? Here is what pops up to my mind.
- Leave it as is and use as feature.
- Force it to be a psi combat thus reducing bombardment damage to some small number as if in equal weapon/armor conventional bombardment.
Post by: bvanevery on October 15, 2021, 07:29:46 pm
Mindworms are not artillery pieces. They are targets. Mindworms can't do anything to you at a distance. It would be smart to fight them at a distance.
One could reasonably question why an air attack on a ground unit wouldn't also be "fighting at a distance" though. Do mindworms suddenly become scary when you're strafing them? If you could drop bombs on them, why would they be able to do anything back? The game doesn't quite implement bombing proper. I think I've tried making a flying artillery piece, but I can't remember if it worked or was actually useful for anything.
The thing about your mod is, do you actually have any real global warming? Or real punishing behavior for transgressing with illegal chemical attacks? I've done After Action Reports of that sort of thing. No Survivors, No Secrets (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21431.0) is one in which I prevailed. Artillery is useful when facing many stacks of 32 or 64 mindworms or Isles. Need the Air Superiority version to shoot at similarly huge stacks of Locusts.
I've got the original game's death scenario, so there's no way I'd consider getting rid of this.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 15, 2021, 07:56:14 pm
As for psi/conventional attack we can talk it all over comparing to real life. Although, I am skeptical anyone encountered mind worms in real life. That is largely irrelevant as whole concept of psi combat is quite controversial. It is introduced there as some other combat mechanics alternative to spice the game and not just letting strongest weapon prevail. That is fine, but having a single and not symmetrical exception from the whole case is bad play wise. Same way you can argue that spore launcher in a duel may inflict psi damage but should receive conventional damage as it is just bombarded with mindless shells. There is no point in psi damage for ranged attack at all. Yet it is there.
I am inclined to remove this exception to make rules more straightforward and simple. Indeed, nobody ever reported that problem before. People just largely don't care.
Post by: bvanevery on October 15, 2021, 10:52:00 pm
I didn't change global warming formula.
Then you have inherited Thinker mod's nerfing of it.
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Although, I am skeptical anyone encountered mind worms in real life.
We have a secret project video and extensive verbal description of mindworm combat. What these things do, is no kind of mystery in the game's lore at all.
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having a single and not symmetrical exception from the whole case is bad play wise.
Taking issue with psi combat as a whole is one thing. Taking issue with whether conventional artillery attacks make sense against mindworms is another. I don't see what's hard to understand about the latter, lore-wise. Have you not watched secret project videos in a long time?
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Same way you can argue that spore launcher in a duel may inflict psi damage but should receive conventional damage as it is just bombarded with mindless shells.
And armor and AAA shouldn't magically work against Needlejets. But it does. At some point you have to accept the game mechanics on their own terms, unless you're prepared to implement a completely new combat system.
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Indeed, nobody ever reported that problem before. People just largely don't care.
I think you should add real global warming back into your mod first.
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2021, 12:34:20 am
A mindworm can't behave like an artillery piece on defense from an artillery attack. The idea is ridiculous. If you were shelling a base, for instance, and they had 1 mindworm as a defender amongst a dozen other conventional defenders, then suddenly you'd be in an artillery duel. Players can't have artillery defense like that. You have to either build some kind of artillery piece to fend off artillery attacks, or you have to take the damage. Anything else is just getting silly with the rules.
So, given that a mindworm must take damage from an artillery attack, the 2 issues are:
- How much damage will the mindworm take.
- What sound will play during the combat.
That's it. Well you could quibble about text descriptions and animations to go along with these 2 facts, but these are the essential facts of the problem.
In the original game, mindworms are "glass cannons". They do a lot of offensive damage and have very little defense. The bigger the caliber of artillery used against them, the more damage is done. I can't remember if a big artillery piece can actually destroy mindworms in a stack outright? There will always be 1 defender left alive but I can't remember if many of the rest can be shelled to oblivion. It can definitely destroy Isles or Locusts, presuming you made it have Air Superiority for the latter.
In your mod you'd want to do something more consistent with your concept of mindworm offense and defense. But... artillery is supposed to damage them, one way. That's not negotiable, per the rules everyone expects of the game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 16, 2021, 02:49:18 am
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2021, 10:27:50 am
I think you should be readjusting how a mindworm takes conventional damage.
Bear in mind that they already tend to have a "superweapon" problem. If you make them basically have this great armor, you could be throwing the game balance off in the name of "rules consistency".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 17, 2021, 11:32:22 am
AI is doing much better now, I didn't see unprotected bases even with (rare) supply pods enabled.
Neat.
Formers are making roads and getting more things done than earlier, but I can notice them being unable to decide what improvements to keep - mines to solars and back to mines. Miriam has a former planting fungus on a rocky mine near New Jerusalem while the square is being worked by the base.
As with any other AI in the game they don't have long term plan. Instead they just do what they think is needed right now and that may change turn over turn. Occasionally, they may find replacing improvement is better than building new one. I didn't specifically tune them not to. Algorithm may be not that deeply sophisticated. I am not building another Deep Blue here. As long as they do right things 90% of the time they are still ahead of human player with their 30% production-growth bonus.
I am playing with 1.25 mineral weight in thinker.ini to see what effects it would have.
You mean this: ai_terraforming_mineralWeight=1.50? Sure try it out different combinations. Keep in mind, though, that these weights are not same as resource values! These are just priorities. There are multiple factors at play one of which is terraforming time. Mineral improvements being longest to do make them less desirable to be built. That's why in my latest versions I set mineral weight twice bigger than nutrient to encourage formers to build more mine improvements.
Keep also in mind that AI does not think in patterns like farm-solar-road. It just build what brings more value right now. So it may be that placing farms first is more effective strategy. I don't explicitly stop them from doing anything unless they do obviously stupid things all the time. Occasional stupid things is fine.
I find it odd that AI terraforming performance took such a huge nosedive in WtP. If memory serves, it was much stronger in Thinker. Maybe making the AI use the farm+solar+road and farm+mine+road orders instead of single improvements could help while forbidding the replacement of existing improvements? Exceptions for replacing forest spreads or drilling boreholes included, of course.
I beg you pardon. How did you come to this conclusion? 😁
Induktio in Thinker directs his formers to do what he wanted them to do. For example, plant more forests as he believed forest to be quite productive and underappreciated by vanilla AI. That do make sense. However, this approach is somewhat brittle when game rules change.
WTP uses regular industry artificial intelligence approach. I.e. for each action it calculates the result, evaluate this result according to corresponding resource weights, adds all up and prioritizes action based on these results. It takes everything into account: different resource weights, current base needs, terraforming time, travel time, and many others. This approach is absolutely flexible and rule agnostic. One can change game rules as I did quite often in the past (like farm output, borehole output, terraforming times, etc.) but the algorithms continues to work without special tweaking for these specific rules. Which is a huge time saver and element of overall mod stability.
Now. I cannot say with utmost assurance whether Thinker or WTP does better in terraforming (under WTP rules!). I didn't compare them too deeply. However, this can be done easily. I can add a parameter to switch off WTP terraforming for say last three factions and see whether they win/lose/wash on regular basis. Would require some 10-20 test game. If you or anyone else is up to it - I'll introduce it.
Another thing I would love to see would be the turn resolution order change in Yitzi's patch, where bases grow before the governor adjusts PSYCH specialists for drones. Losing a production turn to base growth is incredibly frustrating and manually checking and adjusting the cities is tedious.
I know about how Yitzi disappeared and left no documentation, but hey, a man can dream ;lol
What is that? Is that AI thing or overall game mechanics applicable to all?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 17, 2021, 12:07:51 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases/tag/276
Knock yourself out and test compare them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 17, 2021, 07:06:09 pm
Post by: MercantileInterest on October 17, 2021, 07:17:20 pm
TECH, InfNet, IMPUNITY, Cybernetic, PSI, -15, TECHSHARE, 1, MINDCONTROL, 1, TECHSTEAL, 1, SOCIAL, --PROBE, UNIT, 2, UNIT, 5, SHARETECH, 1,
Society, Cybernetic, RESEARCH
Politics, Fundamentalist, nil
The goal, of course, is to give them a more distinct playstyle than vanilla, since University is already the RESEARCH faction.
In this iteration, their main strategy is to infiltrate everyone, as any discoveries by infiltrated factions automatically get copied by the Cyborgs. This is very powerful, so I've tempered it by reducing their PROBE value, which means their infiltration devices will be more rapidly discovered. They're also immune to bribery.
Along with negative PROBE, they also suffer from -15% PSI combat. With WtP's intense mindworms, this is a substantial obstacle.
With this setup, the Cyborgs benefit immensely from the Empath Guild. Without that, size of the map makes a big difference to playstyle, since you have to get your probes to rival bases.
This sort of probe heavy playstyle infringes a little on the Data Angels ;roze; so my old post on how they might work applies:
Faction Stats:
- Founding base is not HQ, may not build HQ, does not acquire HQ upon conquest
- Faction does not experience drone riots, instead drones may not work tiles
- Enemy factions may never in any way infiltrate the Data Angels, other probe operations will function as normal
- Rival bases within 4 tiles of Data Angel territory gain +1 drone
- -1 Support
Post by: bvanevery on October 18, 2021, 01:11:08 am
I've been tinkering with the Cyborgs: ;aki;
TECHSHARE, 1, ... SHARETECH, 1,
Why both?
Post by: MercantileInterest on October 18, 2021, 01:23:21 am
Post by: bvanevery on October 18, 2021, 01:45:55 am
In fairness, the wrong information is given in alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
; SHARETECH = Gain any technology known to # other players
...
; TECHSHARE = When used with SHARETECH, requires one to be spying on the other
; factions (by probe, Empath Guild, Governor, or Pact). Parameter is ignored.I'll make a correction to the wiki.
Post by: esch1lus on November 14, 2021, 02:35:10 pm
https://ibb.co/tzbnD6v
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on November 15, 2021, 02:39:03 pm
I am on reddit but don't scan it often. Where did you post it?
The picture indeed looks strange. I don't see any formers there both sea and land. Can you send me a save?
Post by: bvanevery on December 22, 2021, 03:19:50 pm
[Limit reached]
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 22, 2021, 07:02:16 pm
I didn't explicitly disable sending them or not sending them.
For your question I may say that there is a complex computation logic to understand whether unit has to be sent home after pact cancellation. It involves not only unit being in territory but also distance to pact faction bases. So sometimes it may for sure send units home when they are NOT in territory. Don't remember if opposite may happen.
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2021, 12:40:20 am
The point of course is so that you can't break your Pact and then immediately wail on your erstwhile ally, right inside their own territory.
I was eventually asked to Withdraw that unit. It got sent home. The appropriate logic is somehow not firing when the Pact is broken. Broken by Miriam BTW, not me.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 23, 2021, 01:12:38 am
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2021, 02:34:05 am
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2021, 03:30:12 am
Miriam's Fundamentalist only, so +3 PROBE.
[Limit reached]
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 23, 2021, 04:31:18 am
Chance of successful escaping RISK 1 mission is less than 100%. So probe can die escaping sure mission. Don't tell me you haven't seen your probes dying after infiltration before!
AE increases probability but not to 100%.
The only change I made is for Introduce Genetic Plaque. Vanilla: RISK 1, WTP: RISK 3.
probe_action_risk_genetic_plague=2
Elite probes with AE are extremely reusable. They complete RISK 2 mission and survive with 84% probability.
Positive PROBE increases probe morale = higher chances. Naval Yard does not affect probes. COC does.
Of all people you should know (or be able to lookup) these numbers!
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2021, 05:57:10 am
Of all people you should know (or be able to lookup) these numbers!
I hate probes almost more than any other thing in the stock game. I don't spend time memorizing tables of things that I hate.
I am surprised that survival rate for not so well trained probe teams is that bad. I won't bother to Enhance a merely Disciplined unit in the future.
This is also the 1st time I've ever paid to get Algorithmic Enhancement, in any game I remember playing. There's no need for it in the stock game. You just build the Nethack Terminus.
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2021, 06:14:13 am
Ok I'm finally just grossed out by the number of mindworms that have come at me. This is fairly different from previous WTP play that I remember. More like stock binary. Ocean levels rising all over the damn place, although not so fast that any of my stuff is underwater yet. I have had a reasonably nice road system messed up by rivers changing course though. And good God, the number of fungal pops. I've only got Genejack Factories and -1 PLANET, wth? Maybe this is actually more eco-damage than stock binary.
It would be manageable if I knew I was in for this, and had planned accordingly. As is, I sorta half-managed it. I built the number of Trance units that I thought would be reasonable for having a few pops, then things subsiding into pretty much normalcy. And I also had a fair number of cheap cannon fodder units that I was going to try to throw at one of my neighbors as a screen. But... everyone got sidetracked having to do garrison duty against the never ending fungal pops. I thought I saw 68 eco-damage in one of my cities at one point?
I thought my cities were only like 25 minerals, but the SUPPORT rules could be throwing me off. Hmm, my worst city is more on the order of 40 minerals. Just half of it is getting chewed up by SUPPORT.
Other factions are accused of doing serious eco-damage. It's not just my bad.
I've been trashing the sea bases of nearby jerk factions. They just spawn them and don't put any good defenses on them. After awhile this starts to feel like busywork. I've tried doing my usual "force a Truce" thing as long as they don't have any techs I want. If they do, then I steal, watch their outrage, and trash another fairly helpless sea base. If my ally Lal says he wants war with someone, I go trash them, then do a Truce.
This isn't getting me anywhere though. It feels completely pointless. How many cities would I have to continue to churn in this manner, to make some kind of progress? What does progress even mean?
Begging off. I've got like 2k credits I don't even know what to do with.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 25, 2021, 07:00:04 am
Does WTP get rid of sending units home when a Pact ends? Miriam just got huffy with me because I wasn't interested in war with the Hive. She cancelled our Pact, but I still have this Scout wandering right through her territory.
[Limit reached]
OMG. Damn. That was my stupid bug (copy/paste - not updated). Thank you for discovering it. Fixed!
Post by: bvanevery on December 25, 2021, 07:11:18 am
Merry Christmas!
[Limit reached]
Verified fixed. Those 2 active units just got sent home by the Usurpers breaking their Pact with me.
Post by: bvanevery on January 01, 2022, 05:03:13 am
Since when can bases be founded right next to each other?
[Limit reached]
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 01, 2022, 04:54:13 pm
Post by: bvanevery on January 01, 2022, 05:19:09 pm
[Limit reached]
[Limit reached]
Conjectures:
- Too much emphasis on colonization?
- Some part of the AI gives Trance Former a preference over just Former? But then some other part of the AI decides they're too expensive and doesn't build them.
If they were closer to me, at this point in the game I think they'd be summarily overrun.
Much as I'm doing to the Pirates now. The Pirates are producing Sea Formers and using them to some extent. But I haven't seen a single military ship, and they stock their bases with mere Scouts. Likely culprit is again, too much emphasis on colonization. They have a lot of sea bases scattered all over the place.
Post by: bvanevery on January 01, 2022, 05:37:27 pm
[Limit reached]
Post by: bvanevery on January 01, 2022, 06:14:21 pm
Meanwhile I've acquired the armor by other means, and finally probe team capability. It will take me some time to steal from them, as I do have to get past their screen of cruiser spam. But they do not seem to be very thorough about this. I actually haven't been pumping out ships to the exclusion of all else. I've been developing my infrastructure, with ship pumping resuming as I've gotten done with things.
[Limit reached]
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 01, 2022, 06:56:45 pm
Happy New Year!
Since when can bases be founded right next to each other?
[Limit reached]
I checked the code and didn't find direct indication why this happened. I can make a speculation about WTP colony code searching for suitable base location. It checks suitable spot to be not too close to existing bases (based on configuration parameter base_spacing). It happens once per turn before all units move. However, it does not check suitable spots to be not close to each other. So it may happen that two bases are sent to adjacent locations and built bases on the same turn bypassing this check.
I have added another check at the time the base is actually built to not build it next to other. Instead second colony would skip the turn and reevaluate build spot next turn this time not near just appeared base.
The change is minor and it should work. 😀
I haven't test it, though. Try it out.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-279
Post by: bvanevery on January 02, 2022, 05:35:59 am
[Limit reached]
That was in MY 2225. Finally after I end my turn in MY 2232, the Pirates get serious and retake the base.
[Limit reached]
Post by: bvanevery on January 02, 2022, 06:56:06 am
[Limit reached]
Couldn't get a screenshot of the event as it happened, it went by too fast. These are the 2 ships remaining.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 02, 2022, 10:40:20 am
I had an elite foil probe team and 2 other ships in my captured sea base. A Pirate ship attacked and somehow the foil probe team was selected as the defender. Considering that it was unarmored, that's rather strange. I have trouble believing it was the best defender available. If indeed it was the best defender, just by virtue of being elite, then something is rather weird and counterintuitive about the WTP combat system. This smells like a bug.
[Limit reached]
Couldn't get a screenshot of the event as it happened, it went by too fast. These are the 2 ships remaining.
Ugh. Another of my bug. At least I found and fixed my bug that may caused this.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-280
Forgot to use float point computation when weighing damaged unit strength getting obviously zero and ignoring them altogether. This way if you have probe stacked with damaged units probe will be erroneously selected. Fixed in 280.
Thank you for discovering this by paying attention to details!
Post by: bvanevery on January 05, 2022, 04:01:58 am
Mission Year 2278. This is the point in the game at which I finally conquered the Pirates. 1st time I recall playing WTP long enough, to completely conquer a faction. Bear in mind that I only play on Huge maps, so that I have a basis of comparison to my own modding work, which is Huge map centric. We were in sunspots for awhile, and they finally just cleared. After conquering 1 more isolated city far afield, I accepted Svensgaard's surrender for this little cluster. That's all there's left of them.
[Limit reached]
Note that this conquest was achieved by the vertical development of a small number of cities. 6 inland, 6 coastal. That's it. I think it's proof that at least on water, the AI's strategy is rather bad. I've been attacking the Pirates fairly relentlessly since early in the game. They started it, and since they were right next to me, I desired to finish it. They actually did put up some resistance for awhile, but they simply didn't have the defensive sensibility, nor the industry, to be competent. Like every other faction, they spend way too much time spamming the water with colonies and not enough time defending them.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians started at war with me as well, but they were so far away by land, that it wasn't worth fighting them. We made peace and eventually became allies. I played a Fundamentalist only empire for a long time, and was traded or given a lot of techs by them. The Free Drones already start at -2 RESEARCH and my Fundamentalist choice made it -4. It simply doesn't matter. Research doesn't have any value in WTP, because allied factions will give or sell you techs, and it's easy to steal from your enemies. I've not seen a single enemy probe team ship the whole game. I am suspicious that requiring them to have SUPPORT, means the AI won't build them anymore.
[Limit reached]
At some point I acquired Power, which was a great enabler of my conquest. With the MORALE boost it pretty much doubled the punch I could give the enemy. My ships would become Elite fairly quickly. I did manage to get the Maritime Control Center done. Later on I got Cybernetic. The EFFIC boost was really useful for the rather large empire I had acquired by then.
Only this year, I finally went Democratic, after taking Svensgaard's surrender. That's to get yet more EFFIC boost. I'm "Pirate huge" now, most of my bases very far from my capitol. As I was Fundamentalist for so long, I've been at war with both the Peacekeepers and the Hive for a long time. I tried making peace with Lal but he's not having it. We never actually strike blows because we're on opposite sides of the world. I have occasionally managed to get my probe cruisers all the way across the map to steal from him. I still haven't infiltrated him. The Hive, I just wander around taking his empty size 1 sea bases. Yang hasn't gotten tired of this yet, still won't sign a Truce.
It would be logistically rational now, to turn on the Gaians and overrun them. However there's no value in it, as they haven't made even a single Secret Project. The Usurpers, in contrast, have 4 sweet Secret Projects including the Empath Guild. I could use chemical weapons on them, and unless rules got changed in WTP, nobody would care. I did try to legalize chemical weapons when I first got Advanced Military Algorithms, but Lal vetoed it. I would need the Empath Guild and some growth in all these sea bases, to oust him from the Governorship. Wiping out the Usurpers could eventually be the basis for a Diplomatic Victory.
I've got Doctrine: Air Power now. Don't know if anyone else does. Haven't seen any planes.
[Limit reached]
I didn't bother to count that accurately before trying, but I thought, maybe with my allies I have enough to win the Governorship right now! Indeed, I came within spitting distance. Unfortunately there's no moving Yang, right now. He'll probably always Abstain, since I'm not going to go Police State. Empire's too big for that. It wouldn't take that much sea base growth for me to overcome Lal's slight advantage, even without the Empath Guild. If I got him out, then I wouldn't have to worry about his veto. Then I could get atrocities legalized! Then I wouldn't have to take any more human faction bases. I could just wipe 'em out. I could definitely see the Hive, gone.
Post by: bvanevery on January 07, 2022, 02:37:24 am
In the above, I've gone non-expansionist for the moment. Got a Treaty with the Hive, and a Truce with the Peacekeepers, after taking 2 of their sea bases close to their home territory. The Gaians have been using them for staging air raids. Lal just broke the Truce and attacked one of those bases, that may have had a Gaian plane in it at the time, but my ship got clobbered.
So now it's like, what next, maybe some orbital drop warfare? Just puzzled about this whole 0 cost Clean Reactor thing. SUPPORT rendered moot?
Ok, now I'm seeing it's about the Attack/Defense ratio, but that's still going to be a lot of garrison units that cost nothing. Might as well armor up the transports and formers too, to get the Clean Reactor for nothing.
Post by: bvanevery on January 07, 2022, 10:41:09 pm
This base keeps resetting the production to stuff I don't want, typically a low grade military unit. This is one of the 2 bases I took from Lal. Deirdre's been using it to conduct air raids. My theory is, Deirdre's sitting in my base, and Lal attacks her. My own defenders have already been wiped out. When Deirdre dies, somehow the base reacts like it's an AI controlled base, not my base. And switches production to the low grade military unit. I kept checking to see whether the Governor had accidentally got switched on, but nope.
My intention is to keep the base slooooooowly working on a Hab Complex. I've noticed the AI doesn't seem to want to actually take over empty bases. So, that's my version of putting it in "park", until I can actually bring up some AAA Cruisers to defend it. That will take awhile, as these bases are clear on the other side of the map. They might also get fried by the Locusts that Lal likes to use. But I want my free Clean Reactor.
Post by: bvanevery on January 08, 2022, 03:32:03 pm
Well, this is the farthest I've ever gotten in WTP, but I'm bagging the game. Even though it's pretty clear I can win this, it's got that SimCity feeling where everything you did wrong makes you itch, and you just want it gone.
I was deadly afraid of flooding for the longest time. I didn't build minerals anything. No Genejack Factories, no Robotic Assembly Plants, no Subsea Trunklines. I just kept reinvesting my capital into other facilities, no matter how expensive they got. Finally, in recent years, I started to relent and prepare for some kind of ultimate showdown. The fact that cranking out modern defensive ships was so sloooooooow was just getting to me. The world had already started to sink a bit due to the foibles of other factions. So I thought, if it sinks now, what's the loss? I could always make Singularity Planet Busters and just end everything. If I had the minerals to survive in the sea.
I could definitely win by Transcend victory, as the tech tree is almost over with. But, I'm morally opposed to doing so, unless I'm playing a faction where that would be in character. I see Transcend victory as tantamount to joining the Comet Hale Bopp cult. It's a really bad idea. If I had carte blanche to rewrite a lot of content for this game, and could make money doing so, I'd have the option to kill Planet. Dig the thermal boreholes and drop the Planet Busters down in, until the damn thing's dead.
The AI can't mount an offense. Those 2 very distant bases I sailed into, in Lal's home waters, he finally retook 1 of them. After ages of waiting around. I learned the hard way, there was no value sailing all the way over there to begin with. Shouldn't have bothered. It wasted some of my real world time, pushing ships that far. It would make far more sense to push ships only in an ever expanding "perfect circle" from one's empire, given the lack of AI aggression.
I went high EFFIC because of all the bases I took over. Well if I hadn't insisted on conquering a Pirate sprawl, I would never have needed all that EFFIC. And I probably would have had a better empire, built in a "perfect circle". The main question is how hard could I have pushed my minerals. I was really, really squeamish about it, because I got into a fair amount of trouble the previous game.
One of the final straws, was that Marr finally declared war on me after eons of just Seething. And then I sloooowly mobilized in his direction. Got modern defensive AAA ships into all my sea bases, "in case of his planes". Which I never saw. I lost infiltration for a long time, and it seems he mostly filled up his empire with tough defensive probe units. So the AI does make those things on land, even if it does nothing at all at sea. Then after I made my 1st nuke, Marr begged off and signed a Treaty with me. Like what's the point of me even trying to shift gears, if it's that difficult to mobilize and get things going? Why bother to make any war at all?
I never made war with Deirdre because I correctly surmised there was no value in it. She helped me eventually win the Governorship, and she had no Secret Projects to take over. Again from a "perfect circle" point of view, there's nothing to be had from her. Especially not after I took so much from the Pirates. The price I paid for Gaian pace, was I never used Free Market or Planned. Didn't want Free Market because I didn't need Planet getting mad at me. Didn't want Planned because it would harm the happiness of my huge sprawling empire. Can't do Green because I was the Free Drones. Really, bad options all around.
Marr actually had 4 Secret Projects worth taking, but they were deep in his territory. I would have had to wipe out the whole continent to get to them. I think I did finally make it to the orbital insertion era, via Graviton Theory, not the Space Elevator. That thing was taking forever and I actually begged off, in favor of the overpriced Universal Translator.
I got a lot of SPs, even with my non-factory approach to the game. Got decent minerals out put from good terraforming. Better than the AI at least, won plenty of SP foot races without really trying after awhile. Clearly could have done much more in that regard. All that time spent conquering the Pirates, could have been several more SPs.
So, wiping this one and starting over. I think this is basically close to a builder sandbox, because the AI isn't really going to do anything to you. It needs to stop colonizing and start fighting.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2022, 09:04:15 pm
A Clean Reactor costs nothing once you know the tech? I'm really surprised at that decision. I get that you don't obtain it until say the early late game, but you do still obtain it, and there's a lot of the game left to go.
That is some weird thing. I don't remember doing that. Let me check configuration.
Update
Indeed it was set to -1 (attack/defense ratio). Don't remember why. Maybe someone asked me to do that or I tested this and it slipped to production release. Anyway. Reverted it back to 32 what it was.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2022, 09:05:21 pm
This base keeps resetting the production to stuff I don't want, typically a low grade military unit.
What do you mean keeps resetting? Is it under your control? Does it overrides your build queue items?
Post by: bvanevery on January 12, 2022, 05:11:12 pm
This base keeps resetting the production to stuff I don't want, typically a low grade military unit.
What do you mean keeps resetting? Is it under your control?
Nope.
Quote
Does it overrides your build queue items?
Yep.
Post by: bvanevery on January 12, 2022, 05:12:57 pm
[Limit reached]
Post by: bvanevery on January 12, 2022, 06:20:16 pm
This is the point in the game where I finally completed the Space Elevator, only to discover that I'm not allowed drop pods yet anyways. That's a bit of a drag, considering how long it has been. I started the game in extreme landlocked isolation, and only now has anyone even begun to encroach anywhere near my home territory. I went vertical very early and completed various SPs before the AI even had a chance. This enabled me to keep people happy and keep going vertically. There really has been no happiness reason to expand.
[Limit reached]
The power graph says I suck, but I've built 12 SPs, more than any other faction. Lal, the hegemon of the game, has built 8. The Cult has built 2. This is further evidence that the AI spends way too much time colonizing. The only reason it worked out for Lal, is he started literally on the Monsoon Jungle.
[Limit reached]
I've been trying to get a probe team up to this 1 land base near me, so far without success. My initial rush of amphibious unarmored hovertanks, Lal cut to pieces with his air force. I was surprised at that display of competence. It can't happen again, given that I'm advancing with heavily armored AAA units. The sea bases I've taken, they're AAA garrisoned. Lal's defenses are pitiful, just Scouts. If it weren't for the air force, I'd own this region already. I've now got my own Shard Interceptors that are starting to go to work.
[Limit reached]
I played Fundamentalist Green earlier in the game. Once I got Cybernetic, I captured a lot of mindworms with the extra PLANET friendliness. At some point after learning Knowledge, I switched to Fundamentalist Planned Knowledge Cybernetic for a long time, trying to get a little growth and better industry. That's how I got all the SPs done. Having completed the Space Elevator, I've finally transitioned to Democratic Planned Power Cybernetic. I used to have a lot of hovertank formers, but they've gotten trashed by all the rivers shifting around from floods. The eco-damage wasn't previously my doing, it was mostly Lal's fault. Now I've got a fair amount of my own. I'm not too crazy about the game mechanics of this, but I wouldn't want the game nerfed like Thinker mod does either. If the world finally turns into a puddle, I did build the Maritime Control Center a long time ago, against that contingency.
I thought I was going to be beginning orbital insertion warfare at this point, but it's not to be yet. I don't know how long it's going to take to research or steal drop pod tech. Lack of amphibious probe teams is a real cramp in my side. Mag tubes are pretty useless for logistics in WTP. 2x movement speed amounts to only slightly better local defense, which gets trashed by global warming anyways.
Allies gave or sold me techs for a long time, once again demonstrating the pointlessness of research in WTP. Finally my changing politics ended those alliances. So even in the absence of any neighbors to steal from, you can get pretty much all the tech you want.
Post by: bvanevery on January 13, 2022, 12:08:57 am
Ok, a mere 3 years later, I'm quitting this game. The amount of eco-damage abuse I'm receiving from merely having dropped 1 PLANET rating, is totally unreasonable. I'm still at +1 PLANET, this shouldn't be happening. What is the scale pegged on now? This is crazy. Every turn, hordes show up over and over again. I am being "rewarded" for having spent a very long game building up my stuff, going vertically. Not any real population, only Recycling Tanks and Genejack Factories. Going Democratic Planned was supposed to be the time where I finally got to "fill in" my underdeveloped cities.
This isn't any fun. If I had wanted to play "everybody getting overrun and starting to sink" game, with rivers destroying everything I build every other turn, I would have done an After Action Report about it. In my own mod. I don't need to fire up WTP for this experience.
I've only started to have a real fight with Lal now, and only because he's ahead of me. I don't feel that being subjected to this much global warming, mostly his doing initially but now me too, is something to wait around and build up a game for. In the original game, you'd put up with this stuff because at least you could make a lot of money off of it. Now, all I do is get abused. There's no value in it.
If I had known the long term endgame was always going to be total, vicious global warming and mindworms everywhere, I would have started the game as an eco-damager from the get-go. It's totally pointless building up a lot of terrain improvements that are going to be trashed like this. Granted... I'm not sure of the fungal pop "calming down" formulations in WTP. In the original game, you'd just want to get the fungal pops over with, so you could reach some kind of point of stability. I hope you didn't decide to deprive the player of relief in that regard, because this isn't worth putting mouseclicks into.
This is reminding me somewhat of what it's like when Planet gets mad at you for committing atrocities. It's not quite that bad and I've written AARs about that sort of thing, even survived it. But it's very premeditated, to put up with that level of abuse.
It should me noted that destroying mag tubes in river floods, as well as mag tubes being way slower than original game mag tubes, makes it very hard to defend one's empire from all of this. Pretty soon, every city gets hit in isolation because the roads all get cut off, and units can't move fast enough. And by "empire" I mean 6 friggin' cities. The only way to deal with this, would be if I already knew I had to deal with this, and had built all kinds of anti-mindworm ordinance. And based on plenty of stock game binary experience, it would still probably be a real drag, when I'm supposed to finally be getting into a fight with Lal.
Post by: bvanevery on January 14, 2022, 06:47:39 am
Post by: bvanevery on January 14, 2022, 01:41:59 pm
This is the point at which I lost interest in this game. My position is viable, but my previous warmongering actions in the game seem completely pointless. The Believer enclaves, I took over rather a long time ago. Even making a large number of Rover Formers, and conscientiously acquiring mag tubes via directed research, I've been unable to link these captured cities with my own empire. Now the Believers have been given some planes from their ally, and decided to declare war on me again. They're killing formers that took me a long time to get going in those isolated places. Why bother? There was no strategic value in ever conquering these cities.
Although I'm a Planet-friendly power, the Cult seems to be better at it than I am, making my mindworms somewhat ineffective. They're getting bigger and bigger because I completed the Xenoempathy Dome and the Pholus mutagen. If I continued, I'd have Brood Pits soon. Meanwhile, my Chaos ECM Silksteel Dragoons are expensive to produce and don't hold up well in combat. They seem to be fairly vulnerable to artillery fire, which surprises me, given that they're armored. There has been nothing satisfying about dealing with the Cult at all. Once again, they are outside of my meaningful logistical range. I might occasionally wipe out a brand new colony they just settled, but there's just no point in stretching for territorial claims.
It seems the only correct play, on land, is to wait until one's empires are actually touching.
On water, previous games have established that the greater mobility of ships, coupled with the AI's blase about defending itself, do make it appropriate to seize sea bases. Of course, that wasn't this game.
Even directed research felt pretty pointless. I bought most of my techs from my ally Roze. I wonder if I would have done just as well going Fundamentalist.
I had intended to test the "eco-damaging lifestyle" but it was inappropriate for a Planet-friendly faction.
Post by: bvanevery on January 16, 2022, 08:02:37 am
This is the point in the game where I transitioned from a strictly Planned society, to a Democratic Green Wealth society. We had sunspots for awhile. They ended, and I did a lot of catch-up trading. This resulted in the acquisition of Wealth, which made the loss of +2 GROWTH seem more attractive. Also I was finally getting to the point where people were unnecessarily unhappy. I will soon be founding my 14th city. It's not a lot of cities, but it's more than I've done in previous games.
[Limit reached]
I built a fair number of Genejack Factories early this time, in cities that weren't going to grow too much, so that I wouldn't have to deal with additional unhappiness too soon. This has enabled me to complete a fair number of SPs compared to the competition. I used my Artifacts to almost rush the Human Genome Project. Other Artifacts as they've come in, have helped a few other SPs along, although not much. My governmental transition is also timed about at the end of exploring the map. I've popped nearly every supply pod available.
[Limit reached]
This is where my next city will go. The Spartans are allies, but that may change now that I've chosen Wealth. I don't find myself worried as the game considers them Feeble. The Peacekeepers are also allies, which could change if I get into a war with the Spartans, as I'd probably go Fundamentalist. Neither has anything of value though. Probably I would just spend time "completing the perfect circle" around my capitol, which would be pretty much at the Spartans' expense.
The Usurpers are currently allies and so far doing the best with SPs. They will not like my transition from Planned to Green. Previous games have demonstrated that absent orbital insertion, they're too far away to invade. The Cult is similarly far away from me, and immune to my mindworms and isles, same as last game. Now that I'm Green they may eventually come around to my point of view. I know that in the original game, the Gaians and the Cult are hardwired to hate each other a bit. The logic of it is somewhere deep in the binary code.
[Limit reached]
The Pirates, I imagine they'll get tired of my Wealth as well. I'm happy to take a few of their sea bases to round out the "perfect circle" around my capitol, Autumn Grove. They'll probably view them as acceptable losses and beg off.
So, the game plan is just to "make the circle", then see if I ever arrive at a position of overwhelming dominance. Or do I just end up in a kind of stalemate, all the way to the end of the tech tree? I'm doubting the Spartans will manage a good offensive, as I've not previously seen that out of the AI. There's nothing wrong with my mindworms, and they can be pretty potent if I decide to get serious and go to war. Also I have the Xenoempathy Dome.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 16, 2022, 10:26:57 pm
This base keeps resetting the production to stuff I don't want, typically a low grade military unit.
What do you mean keeps resetting? Is it under your control?
Nope.QuoteDoes it overrides your build queue items?
Yep.
I meant whether the base is yours so you can set the production yourself. If it is yours but production queue items gets overridden by something else that is definitely a serious issue. If it is not yours then why do you care what it produces?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 16, 2022, 10:31:22 pm
I think probe teams should be allowed to have amphibious pods. I'm playing a game of extreme landlocked isolation, where there are almost no land bases near my cities. But there are a few coastal cities, still far away, but reachable by hovertank.
That is weird. It is not disallowed for probe teams neither in vanilla nor in my version.
Amphibious Pods, 1, DocInit, Amphibious,000000001001, Attacks from ship
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 16, 2022, 10:34:56 pm
I notice that something called a Police Garrison is proudly displayed as a capability of The Will To Power tech, but Non-Lethal Methods is available via Intellectual Integrity much earlier.
Uh-oh. Definitely a mishap. I should correct it.
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2022, 12:42:58 am
I meant whether the base is yours so you can set the production yourself. If it is yours but production queue items gets overridden by something else that is definitely a serious issue.
Yes it is. I believe production gets reset when my ally is attacked in my base. I think the game treats it like my ally's base.
Quote
If it is not yours then why do you care what it produces?
You need to remember that I'm the best Q.A. person you're ever going to get, and would not be calling a bug to your attention, if it weren't happening. I'm not "casual" about making these reports.
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2022, 12:47:43 am
That is weird. It is not disallowed for probe teams neither in vanilla nor in my version.
Amphibious Pods, 1, DocInit, Amphibious,000000001001, Attacks from ship
Note how flags in my own mod differ.
Code: [Select]
Amphibious Pods,1,AdapDoc,Amphibious,000000111001, Attacks from shipI have the additional codes:- Allowed for Terraformer units
- Allowed for Noncombat units (non-terraformer)
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2022, 12:57:29 am
[Limit reached]
This is the point in the game where I transitioned from a strictly Planned society, to a Democratic Green Wealth society.
[Limit reached]
22 years later, this is the point at which I totally lost interest in playing. Somehow I should have kept settling my vacant gaps "judiciously", but I just didn't. I keep getting distracted by building more facilities. Nothing happened on the war front either. I took a few cities by walk-in to make various factions stop squawking at me. No real battle. So it all gets really duuuuuuuuuuull.
In a sense I play the game as though it's long division, done by hand. Another facility here or there, or another colony, is like another digit in the long division. The problem is, my decision basis for whether I should make a colony or make people happy, is off. So I end up with this empire with holes in it. Which makes me itch. And since nothing's going on, I just quit SimCity style. The empire is "not a good city".
There must be quite a lack of pressure, if I'm treating this as a sandbox builder game.
I don't really try to steal any techs. Making probe teams is expensive and I'm going to buy everything from allies soon enough anyways. If others are getting farther ahead of me in tech, they're not expressing it with any meaningful practical application. Like, they're not producing Secret Projects faster than I am, or sending military units my way that I can't handle. Mostly they just waste their time colonizing pointlessly and endlessly, giving me all the time in the world to do whatever.
I think part of my problem, is there's clearly a profit incentive to sweep the pods off the map. Once those are gone though, it's like, why bother to do anything in particular? I've merely assigned myself an aesthetic of "perfect circle" development. War is pointless. Unless you happen to be right next to someone who has produced valuable SPs. Usually, that SP producing faction is far away.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 17, 2022, 01:31:14 pm
I meant whether the base is yours so you can set the production yourself. If it is yours but production queue items gets overridden by something else that is definitely a serious issue.
Yes it is. I believe production gets reset when my ally is attacked in my base. I think the game treats it like my ally's base.
Aha. That makes sense. I need to check this code to see if this indeed may happen in vanilla of if it is something I have introduced. If you have a save right before that happened that will help but it is not mandatory. I'll probably can simulate one.
I assume it changes production to some defensive unit?
QuoteIf it is not yours then why do you care what it produces?
You need to remember that I'm the best Q.A. person you're ever going to get, and would not be calling a bug to your attention, if it weren't happening. I'm not "casual" about making these reports.
Sorry, I didn't mean to diminish your observation. I do appreciate all the things you notice.
What I meant is that AI changes their production all the time in their bases and why this particular would caught your attention? I guess we can end discussion here because this is not the option that happened.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 17, 2022, 01:34:15 pm
That is weird. It is not disallowed for probe teams neither in vanilla nor in my version.
Amphibious Pods, 1, DocInit, Amphibious,000000001001, Attacks from ship
Note how flags in my own mod differ.Code: [Select]Amphibious Pods,1,AdapDoc,Amphibious,000000111001, Attacks from shipI have the additional codes:I think a probe team is a Noncombat unit.
- Allowed for Terraformer units
- Allowed for Noncombat units (non-terraformer)
There is a special flag disallowing ability for probe teams. And, as you can see, it is not set in vanilla and WTP.
; Flags =
; 000000000001 = Allowed for Land units
; 000000000010 = Allowed for Sea units
; 000000000100 = Allowed for Air units
; 000000001000 = Allowed for Combat units
; 000000010000 = Allowed for Terraformer units
; 000000100000 = Allowed for Noncombat units (non-terraformer)
; 000001000000 = Not allowed for probe teams
; 000010000000 = Not allowed for psi units
; 000100000000 = Transport units only
; 001000000000 = Not allowed for fast-moving units
; 010000000000 = Cost increased for land units
; 100000000000 = Only allowed on probe teams
I also remember being able to build amphibious probes as well. Let me retest it when I come back from vacation.
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2022, 02:12:32 pm
If you have a save right before that happened that will help but it is not mandatory. I'll probably can simulate one.
[Limit reached]
This base keeps resetting the production to stuff I don't want, typically a low grade military unit.
If you go back to the original post via the quote link, it had a saved game attached. It may not be at a precise point of phenomenon demonstration, but the battle in the southeast corner of the map where it kept occurring, was ongoing.
Quote
I assume it changes production to some defensive unit?
Per the screenshot, it was making a Trance Scout Patrol.
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2022, 11:09:07 pm
This is my attempt at doing a better job of early "perfect circle" settlement. I was semi-thwarted in my agenda by a large fungal patch east of my capitol. I expanded in other directions according to best resource benefits at the time. I allied with the Gaians and we formed a border. They were rather nosy about intruding into "my" forests, and seemed to be determined to form a "candy coated shell" around my empire. The Cult briefly made war but we were too far away to have much happen. I started out Fundamentalist but went Democratic Green once the Gaians made Centauri Empathy available to me. It was politic for the region, didn't make me grow any less than Fundamentalist, and solved my weakness to Planet problem.
I just finally met Lal. Nobody else had previously met him, despite us all knowing his general whereabouts for quite some time. Despite my Democratic government he's cagey, so we only have a Truce. Just as well, as my entire horde of various kinds of untrained Scouts are intending to pop pods in his vicinity. If he had made war, I figured they might have done some righteous pillaging and starvation tactics.
Only fairly recently have I obtained Fungicidal Tanks. My bigger cities that have "completed stuff", are cranking out Fungicidal Rover Formers. I want all this junk out of my way, so I can perfect my circle. Maybe I'll eventually go Free Market. Fundamentalist too, that would be cute, I could make war with all my neighbors at once!
The University has been at war with me since the beginning, owing to Gaian instigation. I sailed into at least 1 sea base a long time ago, destroying it. Otherwise there's not really any interaction. The Data Angels allied with me, digging my jazzy Democratic. The Morganites haven't freaked out about my Green yet, but I don't talk to them.
I haven't really committed to a location for my capitol. New Jerusalem is slightly off-center, owing to the fungal impediment at game start. I didn't begin the Merchant Exchange anywhere. Instead I threw all my Artifacts at the Human Genome Project, which is going to complete in a few turns. It's far more valuable, and actually needed now, as my size 7 cities are starting to have drones in them.
For the "long division of colonization", I'm at the point where my HGP SP is a bit in conflict with "colonize the drones". I often run into this problem where I've made people too happy, so I start building only facilities. I'm going to try to remember not to do that this time, until I complete the perfect circle.
Post by: bvanevery on January 18, 2022, 08:42:46 am
76 years later I finally plunk down the last city of my perfect "circle". My capitol is still off-center as I never got hostile with my neighbors. Democratic Green Cybernetic seemed to work well enough so I kept going with it. I don't think I've done any eco-damage in umpteen zillion years. Only recently did I start building Robotic Assembly Plants. I totally skipped Genejack Factories. Don't need the unhappiness. I'm still on only a 50-10-40 budget.
[Limit reached]
[Limit reached]
I can build. The AI mostly can't. It really needs to quit it with the colonizing. Basically, nothing has happened. Zhakarov has never done a darned thing to me, and I keep sending a Cruiser Probe Team to steal his techs. My allies give me techs. Morgan eventually declared war on me, but who cares.
Post by: bvanevery on January 18, 2022, 09:29:09 pm
This is the point at which I began orbital insertion warfare. I think I got Applied Gravitonics a couple of turns ago, but I forgot that that's when orbital insertion becomes available. Previously I'd made 5 of the cheapest possible drop units, with the goal of getting "orbital walk-ins" once I was capable. It took 3 such drop-ins in 1 turn, to bring Morgan to heel. Then I dropped the last 2 to pop pods, capturing a mindworm in the process.
I've finished building all the facilities I consider worth building. I'm now spending surplus money on completing SPs. I am utterly dominating that. Cities that are not working on the last few SPs, I'm cranking out AAA Neutronium Garrisons to make a modern defense. Nobody's ever attacked me in any way, but I'd like to keep it that way.
I was about to steal from Zhakarov when he agreed to a Treaty as well. I got him to stop his longstanding war with Deirdre. The Cult is the only troublemaker left.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself, once the SPs get finished. Previously I was disbanding Needlejets given to me by Deirdre, as I didn't want anyone becoming unhappy. But subsequently, I completed the Ascetic Virtues so my POLICE is only -2. I've got 2 donated Copters shooting at the Cult. There's no value in overrunning them, but I might do it for sake of form.
I believe this turn, we started to get the 1st global warming. Not my fault. My eco-damage has been 0 since forever. The game mostly blamed the Data Angels. Hmm, maybe I should conquer the Free Market factions.
This is feeling a bit sandboxy. I'm not sure if anyone's in danger of finishing the tech tree. I'll finally be able to infiltrate Lal in a minute here, as I completed the Nethack Terminus and automatically get algorithmic enhancement. I only have 1 probe team, which should be fine for infiltration. Even if someone finishes the tree, I seriously doubt anyone has the capacity to finish the Voice of Planet or the Ascent to Transcendence. I pretty much own SPs. I haven't taken a peek at anyone's mineral output, but I suspect I'm the only one doing it seriously.
Post by: bvanevery on January 18, 2022, 10:41:09 pm
This keeps flashing between turns, typically 9 times in a row. I don't need that much notification.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 19, 2022, 01:01:32 am
I just enabled it for non pact factions.
Post by: bvanevery on January 19, 2022, 02:14:58 pm
I was slightly disappointed to complete the Cloning Vats and find they've been toned down, but I'm not at all surprised. The documentation of this is a mess. Please eliminate the spurious lines of text that are not pertinent to WTP.
Your entire description should now pretty much be "Gives +2 GROWTH".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 19, 2022, 04:16:43 pm
Post by: bvanevery on January 19, 2022, 08:38:01 pm
Why is a Singularity Planet Buster so darned cheap? Alternately, why are Fungal and Tectonic Missiles so darned expensive? SPBs cost about what a tough garrison unit would, so I don't even know why I'm playing the game anymore. Switching all production to SPBs. I'll wipe out everyone in 1 turn and declare victory.
Edit: in MY 2321, sunspots are upon us. Plan B is to wipe out the Peacekeepers before anyone knows what has happened!
Post by: bvanevery on January 19, 2022, 11:01:32 pm
Uuuuh the Morganites have drawn first blood in nuclear armageddon. I would not have anticipated that. I don't think this is aimed at me, because we're not at war. Probably frying the Data Angels. But man.
;roze; ;gandhi ;gandhi ;gandhi ;liftoff ;morganercise
I wonder if this is a direct consequence of SPBs being so cheap.
[Limit reached]
I've almost got beachfront property now. That was a close call. I hope the back and forth doesn't catch me in the envelope of one of the nukes. Those Singularities put out a pretty big bang. Unfortunately I still haven't discovered Orbital Defense Pod technology, although it has to be Real Soon Now, because I've brought all these Artifacts home via Drop Transports. In the interim I'm making Flechette Defense Systems, hoping it helps a little.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 19, 2022, 11:53:26 pm
[Limit reached]
Why is a Singularity Planet Buster so darned cheap? Alternately, why are Fungal and Tectonic Missiles so darned expensive? SPBs cost about what a tough garrison unit would, so I don't even know why I'm playing the game anymore. Switching all production to SPBs. I'll wipe out everyone in 1 turn and declare victory.
Could be chassis cost. What do you think it should cost? What do you think all missile units should cost? I'll adjust them.
Post by: bvanevery on January 20, 2022, 01:06:55 am
In MY 2325 the year after I posted, I got my Artifacts home and completed the tech tree. I can start making Orbital Defense Pods, but I find myself really wanting Psi Gates, since it's so hard to get around the map. I've almost finished the Space Elevator, having gone back to it in my capitol again, instead of the Network Backbone. With a completed tech tree, getting the police penalty for Cybernetic removed isn't so compelling, as far as the super expensive projects go. And meanwhile, the AI has basically no chance to build them.
One starts to wonder, with advanced weapons and armors being very expensive, why one wouldn't always build a nuke? Like if it's 8 turns for an advanced conventional weapon, even if you raise the nuke to take 8 turns, clearly you should pick nuke. An expensive conventional unit just has you waiting around forever, probably only kills 1 unit unless it's like a Chopper, and basically makes the game take a looooong time to get done. Exacerbated further by the degree to which WTP fills the map up with base spam.
Making bigger factories to crank out units faster, seems very dangerous. I've done ok this game, but only because I stayed +2 PLANET for most of the game. Previous game, the whole world was turning to crap. Not so much sinking, as rivers just changing directions and completely ruining all my hand crafted rails systems. That's part of why I quit. Well maybe that was 2 games ago, I forget.
So a major question is, just how do you expect a human player to win, other than sit around for Transcend? I could do that now. I'm not going to do it now, because generally speaking, I'm morally opposed to Transcend victory in this game. I don't want to become one with Planet. I like humanity as it is. I'd be killing Planet.
I just checked the cost of Cornering The Global Energy Market. It's in excess of 800k credits. Granted, I'm not Free Market Wealth Eudaimonic, but I can't imagine why I would be.
If I wipe out Lal without using nukes, during the sunspots, then possibly I could win by Diplomatic Victory. I might need to figure out some real growth. Despite having a lot of infrastructure, cranking my growth to +6 was surprisingly ineffective in all sorts of places. A lot of places would have 1 drone no matter how high I cranked up my PSYCH. So I'm not entirely sure if big growth, is even possible in WTP.
So I don't really know what nukes "should be" in your mod, because it's not clear how one is supposed to win anyways. I guess in a few more years I'll have more of an answer.
Like, after all this time, is it trivial or exceedingly difficult to wipe out Lal? I'd like to think that genetic plague + X String Choppers will reduce him to nothing, but who knows. I also have a lot of weak Empath units for taking out pesky mindworms, at least in isolation. I don't have any decent gun Empath units because those are more expensive to build. TBH I thought I might have to fight my ally Deirdre, after I changed from Green to Planned. Now I'm back to Fundamentalist Green Power Cybernetic, so she'll be happy if the sunspots lift.
Post by: bvanevery on January 20, 2022, 03:22:23 am
I've just been laughing at the poor silly AI, building all these rails up to the cities I'm actually gonna keep. The whole thing is sort of like this big death plan. Well surprise surprise, he got ornery enough to draw first blood! I wonder what he's got in him? Is it going to be the usual "AI hardly does anything" show? He's not gonna like my counterstroke. I haven't completely built out my X String Choppers, but many of them are already forward positioned in my lead city. So unless he nukes it...
Lal is a complete weenie. He only killed a few of my hover formers. This is gonna be rude.
[Limit reached]
This is a sample of the havoc I'm wreaking upon the Peacekeepers. I'm really surprised that air units can ride on mag tubes. It means that a rail network is a really really good air umbrella, like almost a giant carrier deck. That's pretty powerful compared to the original game. It has allowed me to bring air units from very far back in my empire, that otherwise would have stayed put on some kind of nominal garrison duty. Even though nobody's attacking me.
I haven't even started on the main Secret Project objectives yet. I took a shell of fairly large Peacekeeper sea bases that were off my coast. I figure I don't need to commit atrocities just yet. I can use the population if it's close to home. Getting farther afield though, and smaller bases, they're gonna be toast.
Glad I wrote this up. Accidentally used my nerve gas on the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm base. Choppers flying along mag tubes to the end of the line are pretty overpowered. They get like a gazillion strikes against weak enemies.
Next year, Lal had basically no answer for all the stuff I did to him. I lost 1 unit to a Conventional Missile, and 1 cheap Interceptor to some kind of expensive counterattacking Interceptor. That's it. I got away with everything.
Post by: bvanevery on January 20, 2022, 05:12:10 am
For some reason the turn counter didn't advance between turns. I'm still in MY 2327. I've seen this problem before. I don't know what causes it.
Post by: bvanevery on January 20, 2022, 06:32:51 am
Ok the AI is not really making much of an effort to fight me. I don't really see a point in continuing. Clearly I will stomp Lal. Soon enough I'll get The [sic] Clinical Immortality and probably can gain Supreme Leader eventually. I've probably been far too worried about the capabilities of the other factions, the whole game. I don't need many of these SPs that I lavishly built. Nor many of the advanced weapons. My X String Copters were not that great because even with +3 PLANET and the Dream Twister, they don't do that well against Spore Launchers. I should have not been cheap and made them Empath X String. Or had an artillery plan. I had lotsa artillery marching down the rails, just a pile of scrap, but they never got used on offense. Gravships are the one true weapon to use with rails as they can move pretty much the length of the system, and they can also take cities.
My original "perfect circle" probably didn't even need to be as big as I made it.
Somehow, I imagine doing better.
With my -1 INDUSTRY, nukes are in a cost progression: Fission 32, Fusion 26, Quantum 21, Singularity 16. In the case of nukes, it actually makes no sense that they get cheaper. At a minimum, they should all cost the same. Possibly, their cost should increase. Although another reality is, I think you're pretty much always going to know Singularity by the time you know nukes.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 20, 2022, 03:09:04 pm
In my own mod, I don't have as precise a control over costs. So I had to do things with the cost halvings of the fission fusion quantum singularity progression. Although there is some stiffness to my SP costs, it's not remotely as onerous as in your mod.
I didn't mean to do a fine tuning yet. Maybe I can just change the cost of missile and payload to adjust it. Usually it works fine.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 20, 2022, 03:11:04 pm
For some reason the turn counter didn't advance between turns. I'm still in MY 2327. I've seen this problem before. I don't know what causes it.
Does reloading the game helps? Closing and restarting program? Does it offer you to save with correct year in savegame?
Post by: bvanevery on January 20, 2022, 03:18:35 pm
Try it yourself.
Post by: bvanevery on January 21, 2022, 05:30:27 am
MY 2195 is when I acquired fungicidal tanks. I started near the Monsoon Jungle, which unfortunately got an earthquake and a lot of fungus popped all over it. I killed various fungal towers around my small empire, to make room for where I would soon put my cities. I figured that someday, I'd free up the jungle. All of my cities are going vertical except Dawn of Planet, which is still the designated colony spawner. I've moved my capitol to The Edicts, on the water in the jungle. The Spartans unfortunately finished the Merchant Exchange faster than I was expecting. I threw most of my Artifacts at the Human Genome Project, since it's more valuable. That's pretty much my standard opening lately.
This will be a smaller "circular" empire than last time. I'm not sure what questions of game efficiency I'll be answering. I'd like to invade someone if that makes sense. I don't see myself waiting around "in fear of" anyone like last game, since the AI didn't prove terribly good at fighting back. I'm also wondering whether nukes are the cheap game finish I imagine them to be.
I've not made any social engineering choices. Green would slow my population growth. Mitigating that with Democratic, would harm my PLANET rating. Hmm although I suppose I'd still be +1 PLANET ahead of where I am now. Didn't think of that for some reason. Didn't have any problem remembering that last game.
Post by: bvanevery on January 22, 2022, 01:15:19 am
MY 2236, war breaks out with the Usurpers. They were previously my allies, but they soured when I changed to Democratic Green. I've been allied with nearly everyone. 2 of them were already at war with the Usurpers and I'd been refusing to join in. Once the Usurpers finally aggressed at me, I got the Spartans to join the fray.
Their declaration of war, happened to coincide with me finishing the Xenoempathy Dome. So, I will totally fry them with mindworms. They will have good morale from Fundamentalist, but they have the -1 PLANET disadvantage. Maybe I'll go Fundamentalist myself, to get to +4 PLANET.
Since I built the Human Genome Project pretty early, I've felt at ease affording some Genejack Factories in a few places. I've got enough to crank out some Secret Projects. Other cities, I'm growing more to be economic and research centers, since I have already established an industrial base.
This will be the end of colony expansion for awhile. I've only kept 1 city, Dawn of Planet, providing colony pods most of this time. Budget wise, I'd wait until exploration gave me in excess of 400 credits, then I'd rush something. Typically a Recycling Tank if minerals in a city had reached 6, or a Hab Complex if population had reached 4. If nothing else, I'd rush a colony pod.
I never did settle any more of the Monsoon Jungle. Having Fungicide Tanks, is not the same as having made enough Formers to do the job. Eventually it will happen, but in the future, I will not look at big patches of fungus as any kind of immediate opportunity. It takes too long.
I meant to colonize the Manifold Nexus, as it was unoccupied and available with sufficient sea lift. However it was also far away. Exploring the last big continent to pop its supply pods, seemed like a higher priority. My original intent was to decide "what to do next" after finishing exploration. Meaning, after popping almost every supply pod on the map. But my neighbors the Usurpers had other ideas.
Post by: Rocky on January 22, 2022, 12:54:17 pm
"Eases population growth beyond defalut limit 14.
The limit can be modified faction settings and SP's."
I recently started playing your mod. It's very different experience from vanilla AC but I'm enjoying it. It's fun to re-learn the mechanics and technology tree.
Post by: bvanevery on January 22, 2022, 03:10:08 pm
MY 2274. I've wiped out most of the Usurper land cities, and a few sea bases. The task force on land was 1 X Chaos Speeder, 1 ECM Silksteel unit, and a lot of mindworms. Mindworms alone couldn't have done it, but the assistance of even 1 chemical weapon was absolutely brutal. Trance Scouts of course can't stand up to them.
[Limit reached]
As I neared the last remnant of Marr's empire, I got an annoying level of resistance from Chaos Artillery. It caused me to take wounds, retreat, and regroup. I can't honestly say that I'd favor armored speeders though, as they're so much more expensive. That armor also becomes worthless after you've attacked someone and taken wounds.
We were in sunspots for awhile, so I lost the habit of talking to my allies. Eventually they lifted, but I still didn't check in. I got the impression that they've gotten somewhat farther ahead on tech. However I've had no reason to care, as my existing equipment and techniques have worked just fine. I didn't even build any new units for awhile, I just kept on working on things like Tree Farms and Genejack Factories. Even Habitation Domes, for lack of anything better to do. I have 1 city with a Command Center and it would make the occasional X Chaos Speeder.
The Usurpers sent an annoying counter force towards me. I had plenty of home defense, it's not like my cities were in any way threatened. But it diverted my attention from the act of killing cities.
Then my allies started giving me planes. At first they gave them in such a way that they would immediately crash, which wasn't at all useful. Finally the Spartans put 3 of them in one of my cities. The results were devastating, as those advancing unarmored Usurper artillery pieces, can't stand up to them. Nor is a Trance Scout enough of a city garrison. If I'd had my Elite speeder in range of that city, it would be obliterated now. But the Usurpers had diverted my attention.
Backed with planes, and 2 more X Chaos Speeders, and a scouting hovertank on the way, and a Probability infantry, the 2 middle cities will soon be gone. That leaves the 3 far cities on the coast. I can't imagine them holding up. By the time those are gone, I may have the Maritime Control Center completed. Then it's a matter of wiping the Usurpers out of the ocean.
The moral of this story is Trance Scouts are not an empire. The AI needs to spend less time colonizing, more time building up a real productive capacity, and more expenditure on real garrison units. The Trance Scout spam everywhere idea only works when an enemy is very distant on the map. Or when the nearby enemy is just as incompetent, i.e. not a human player, not me.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2022, 05:32:05 pm
I made a screenshot of the Datalinks info for the Habitation Dome, but the screenshot ended up wrong. There are two errors in the first two lines. I post the description below:
"Eases population growth beyond defalut limit 14.
The limit can be modified faction settings and SP's."
Thank you for noting. I am a quick typist.
😢
Note 1.
Feel free to edit these text documents in GitHub for further changes if you are up to co-authoring but don't feel bad if you don't. I'll fix this one myself.
Note 2.
I think this needs to be reworded as the whole mechanics about it is not simple yes/no as was in vanilla. I may use yours and all other forum folks help to set it right. The first sentence does not quite catch it.
Code: [Select]
Helps base grow faster by improving living conditions.
^Eliminates population limit GROWTH penalty.
^Default limit without this facility is {7} (alterable by faction settings).
^
^Base with this facility gets GROWTH bonus below the limit.
^GROWTH bonus = min(3, limit - population)
^
^Base without this facility gets GROWTH penalty approaching the limit.
^GROWTH penalty = max(0, population - limit + 3)
I recently started playing your mod. It's very different experience from vanilla AC but I'm enjoying it. It's fun to re-learn the mechanics and technology tree.
Yeah. The mechanics change is there. As for tech tree I tried to stick to vanilla more or less in latest versions.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 22, 2022, 08:14:23 pm
I just tried downloading the original save, from the post before I reported the bug. I downloaded to a non-game directory. I started up SMAC, picked load game, picked the original save. Then chose End Turn. Got the dialogue about how I haven't moved all my units yet, said yeah sure bite me. Interim turn period begins. I just hit Proceed a bunch to get through it. At the end of it all, it's still exactly the same year.
Try it yourself.
OMFG! This is just a hilarious vanilla bug. However, I cannot say "I cannot believe it" because I can by encountering tons of such bugs before.
Here is how to reproduce it. Try it on vanilla game for example.
- Have needlejet not in base or airbase.
- Have it moves not completely spent so it is still able to move but do not press space on it so it is does not finish its move.
- Force end turn by Ctrl-Enter.
There is probably other ways to trigger it without force end turn but this one is simplest.
With these conditions program falls through and quits turn upkeep routine immediately discarding huge amount of standard per-turn actions.
Post by: bvanevery on January 23, 2022, 03:19:25 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 23, 2022, 03:52:35 am
Post by: bvanevery on January 23, 2022, 06:43:14 am
[Limit reached]
MY 2300. I finally crushed Courage: To Question. My X Chaos Speeders were unable to do it. They merely inflicted wounds, and the Usurpers kept responding with artillery fire. It took a long, long time to walk my artillery all the way over there. What finally broke their back was Conventional Missiles. I'm making those in inland cities that have finished building everything else. I'm not bothering with advanced labs. The Gaians have a ton more tech than I'll ever research, and I'll easily get it one way or another.
I've also chased them around in the ocean destroying weak bases. I've made no real concentrated effort to wipe out the Usurpers. Mostly I've built Hab Domes and Hybrid Forests, to try to grow more. It's sorta working, but it's not dramatic. I'm still only Democratic Green and haven't made any other social engineering choices. I didn't want the Cybernetic police penalty, as I'm still on campaign. Power is terribly politic given I have the Spartans and Pirates as both allies and neighbors, but I sure don't need -2 INDUSTRY to complete Hab Domes. So I've just kept going with what works.
I figure, CMs and Sealurks until the Usurpers are all gone. Then I can decide "what to do". I think my allies the Gaians and the Spartans are at war with each other now.
Post by: bvanevery on January 23, 2022, 05:40:52 pm
Note that partial payment comes pretty close to circumventing the rush penalty. If I want to ensure 0 turns to complete, I have to pay 2x as much. Allowing 1 turn to complete has very little risk in most circumstances. Something could happen that disrupts the working of the squares, like an interloping mindworm, or a flood. Other than that though, it just gets done.
Post by: bvanevery on January 24, 2022, 12:13:34 am
MY 2315. This is all that's left of the Usurpers. How is it that Spore Launchers defend themselves so well from just about everything? I've noticed even in the original game and my own mod, that they're just about the best Conventional Missile defense you could ask for. They do great against my attacking Sealurks, even though I have +3 PLANET and they have -1 PLANET. That ain't right. And they stand off my Chaos ship guns, giving better than they get. It has taken brute force and attrition to wear the things down. Finally once they crack I'm able to apply the right units to the right targets, and thereby mop up what's left of pitiful defenders. Sometimes I manage to get a chemical weapons hit against a conventional unit, but mostly bases are wiped out by obliteration.
Otherwise I'm starting to just spend money on SPs, for lack of anything better to do. My allies have been in and out of war with each other. I think we're entering a period of relative peace, and lately they've been listening to my requests to call off their wars. Deirdre is the tech leader. I haven't wanted to talk to her much lately about giving me some tech, for fear of her asking me to get into a war. But I think I don't have that problem now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 24, 2022, 05:21:57 pm
https://www.reddit.com/r/4Xgaming/comments/sbr7jh/smacx_modding_tuning_up_ai/
https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/sbr83l/smacx_modding_tuning_up_ai/
As always, I would be glad to team up with someone with enough dedication on AI tuning. I'll take care of the programming part.
Post by: Nexii on January 25, 2022, 04:15:46 pm
Of course, boosting defense means the AI is even worse at taking cities. It then has to be smarter about destroying sensors, perimeters, and using artillery. It's not an easy problem.
So unit use is one thing but I think the AI also has to be smarter about its relative power position. It's relatively indifferent to the leader (be it human or AI) and weaker factions should be much more willing to gang up by alliance. It's a very rare game when all 7 factions are relevant late... I've seen like one out of hundreds of games.
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 05:05:36 pm
I don't see that "7 factions viable in the endgame" should be a metric of anything. The whole point of the game is to beat somebody up, and there's already been an early game and midgame for that to be accomplished. I don't know of any classic "free form alliance wargames" where all 7 players would be viable in the late game either. It's usually down to 3 or 4 players at that point.
A normal sized map will "runt" 2 factions automatically. Pretty much guaranteed by the faction placement algorithm. You're really only playing a game with 5 factions in that case. This is a big part of why I only recommend Huge maps playing my mod. The AI needs room to get situated and dig in, before a smarter human player comes to trash it.
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 06:42:04 pm
MY 2319. The Usurpers are no more. I can't believe how well puny mindworms defend, for a -1 PLANET faction, against my +5 PLANET attackers. It's pretty off.
The most immediate consequence of my victory is I switch from Thought Control back to Cybernetic. Next year I'll switch from Green to Planned. I don't have to fight anyone right now, and I need to grow. It'll probably be awhile before Deirdre gets ticked off enough to come after me.
[Limit reached]
As I'm about to end my turn, I remember that I could probably get some techs out of my allies. Svensgaard only has Advanced Ecological Engineering. The Spartans have a number of things but aren't trading or selling on account of the Space Elevator. Deirdre gifted me nukes. Maybe I really will test the "destroy everything in 1 turn" way to end WTP.
I trade Roze the nukes in exchange for a lesser tech. She wanted to sell me Quantum Machinery for 375 credits. That's a joke, I'll get it some other way.
Aki Zeta5 is still sore at me for going to war with her at the beginning of the game. I'm even Cybernetic now.
My bases have been building Fusion Labs that they don't need. Bases that get done with everything, have been Stockpiling Energy. I dump that money into my Secret Projects. Not efficient but that's about all you can do in WTP. Next year I'll probably adjust my budget to make a lot more money, so that I can get the SPs done a lot faster.
[Limit reached]
I think there are only 5 supply pods left on Planet. 4 are accessible by water. 3 are in Cyborg territory. 1 is underneath a fungal tower. Might as well make a go of them! I can reach most of them with my 2 Isles and a Cruiser that's been on coastal sea base "bridge" duty.
Since I still have some flooding damage, I switch my Stockpile Energy bases to Clean Hover Formers. I send my old Formers that require support to become part of my Secret Projects.
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 07:40:48 pm
MY 2324. I complete my Quantum Planet Buster prototype and start making them in every "finished" city. I also complete the Neural Amplifier. The Longevity Vaccine will be next. I've popped 1 of the supply pods and got a new fungal tower for the trouble. I've positioned some planes for the final strike on the fungal tower sitting on the supply pod. X ships are going home and disbanding. Sealurks I'll keep in my home waters as I'm still +3 PLANET.
So, how long will it take before I think I have enough QPBs to end the game in 1 turn? And will I figure out some other way of winning before then?
Is it faster to save up QPBs or Orbital Power Transmitters, to win? If WTP hasn't changed its rules on Cornering The Energy Market, it would still take 20 years after declaring that intent. And the current price of CTEM is 750k.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 25, 2022, 09:33:43 pm
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 10:54:05 pm
[Limit reached]
MY 2329. This is it. I've got it ringed with 4 planes to take out the fungal tower, but I still lack the ground unit to pop the pod. It's slowly coming by Isle. Aki got busy with the other 2 pods on her territory as I was getting near them. The AI might be smart like that. I got the 2 pods on the island. 1 of them did yield an Artifact, making the effort somewhat worth it. I suppose at the WTP 6:1 rate of exchange, 50 worth of minerals is like getting a 300 cash bonus. Acceptable for exploration, even if it's a lot of work to bring the thing home. Of course the other option is to cash it for a tech, and save me the bother of stealing from someone.
[Limit reached]
Almost everyone is making a QPB now. Otherwise I've got the Cloudbase Academy well on the way to completion, and the Space Elevator in progress in my capitol. I realized a flaw in my plan: with -4 POLICE from Cybernetic and my faction penalty, every QPB is making my citizens upset.
[Limit reached]
However as luck would have it, this year I learned Centauri Psi! I get a free Brood Pit in every base. This puts me at -2 POLICE, where nobody gets upset about anything. I didn't have to disband all those X Chaos Cruisers after all. But, I didn't know / think of this coming. In my own mod, I got rid of the free Brood Pit ability as overpowered a long time ago. It's also rather late game and frankly in my mod, I probably would have won the game by now. Or wouldn't have seen a Brood Pit as instrumental to victory.
BUG: The faction description "Free BROOD PIT with discovery of Centauri Genetics" is wrong. It's now Centauri Psi.
Soon, I may have cheap satellite building and orbital insertion capability. I wonder if that will dissuade me from the QPB finish.
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 11:16:22 pm
Inter-turn, MY 2329 to MY 2330. I'm not sure if the AI's are paying enough attention to the realities of voting. Deirdre of course could not possibly have gotten everyone to agree to make her boss. It's actually pretty amusing to see the stock AI try to pull this. It's a narrative moment where everyone says "NO!" But it points out a reality, that the Data Angels have been Governor since almost the beginning of the game. They have long since been eclipsed by other factions, any of whom could probably take the Governorship from Roze.
Now, why haven't the Gaians or Pirates made a move on the Governorship? Perhaps they're each afraid that the vote could go the other way. And they'd each rather have weak Roze as a Governor, than the other one strengthened? Except that I think until fairly recently, they may have been allies. I haven't been paying a lot of attention to that, long as nobody is asking me to get into their wars.
Well, Deirdre, Svensgaard, and Santiago are all in Pact with me. And with nobody else. This means I could gain a Conquest victory by eliminating both the Cyborgs and the Data Angels. If the Pacts all held. Which if I used nukes, they wouldn't. So that's all just nice to note for now. Doesn't really help anything.
I still think one of the AIs should have tried to grab the Governorship by now. Probably should have done it quite a long time ago.
Post by: bvanevery on January 25, 2022, 11:28:27 pm
Roze made me an expensive offer I couldn't refuse. Singularity Planet Busters are the key to really wiping things out in 1 turn. She also sold me 2 lesser techs for not as horrible a price. This has left me without many credits. Upgrading my QPBs to SPBs may have to wait a year or two. Assuming I do it. Probably should. Sometime you want a smaller pop though, like hitting something near your own territory.
I've completed the Cloudbase Academy. I could stop working on SPBs and instead try a growth and diplomatic victory strategy. However, Sky Hydroponics Labs only become especially cheap once I finish the Space Elevator. I think? Better check that reality in WTP. Thought satellites were still half price in the last game I played. Well, the docs say so, so I'll plan on that basis.
I think I might have gotten another one of those "year didn't advance" bugs. Not sure. Supposedly this is MY 2330, but I had already saved a game. Maybe I got distracted.
Post by: bvanevery on January 26, 2022, 01:35:44 am
MY 2339. I interrupted my nukes to build Paradise Gardens, then Sky Hydroponics Labs, then Robotic Assembly Plants. I've gotten away with building the latter in almost every city, with no eco-damage anywhere. I guess my earlier SPs are blocking the eco-damage. Only my capitol lacks a Robotic Assembly Plant. Unlike other cities, I'm building the full complement of labs, due to all the city specific bonuses.
Elsewhere, the Cloning Vats will be done soon, and I'm working on the Singularity Inductor. If that gets done, and I haven't drowned everyone, it'll be pretty darned trivial to crank out SPBs. As is, I have 19 QPBs and 21 SPBs. Wow! I might have to start thinking about how many it would take to end this. Also I could upgrade the remainder of QPBs cheaply as needed, because I completed the Nano Factory.
The Pirates and the Spartans went to war recently. The Pirates tried to rope me into it. Since they're both allies, I declined. The Pirates blamed Spartacus, said I'll have to go talk to her. Which I won't, unless she bugs me too.
I could swear that someone's mod, didn't require resetting your satellite choice every time one completes. Was that Yitzi's patch? Now that I'm making lots of Sky Hydroponics Labs, this is a noticeable burden.
Post by: bvanevery on January 26, 2022, 01:57:13 am
Interim between MY 2341 and MY 2342. Hmm, how close is she really to transcending?
[Limit reached]
Well she must have changed her mind. I'm the only one building any Secret Projects. It does mean she's finished the tech tree though. I wonder what she'll do, now that she doesn't have to research anymore? Does the AI have a good plan for that?
[Limit reached]
Flooding cheated me out of finishing the Cloning Vats this year. When you only make a partial payment to barely get something done, things can happen.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 26, 2022, 03:54:50 am
Missile chassis now cost twice as infantry and same as gravship.
Conventional missile now cost about same as corresponding attack gravship. Therefore, it is less economically effective but has farther reach. I am thinking to increase its speed even more for that cost.
PB, Tectonic and Fungal missiles cost does not drop with reactor because their power already grows quadratically with reactor level. No need for price drop.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-282
Post by: bvanevery on January 26, 2022, 05:19:24 am
[Limit reached]
MY 2348. I have completed the Singularity Inductor. So far no eco-damage. I've built as many Sky Hydroponics Labs as my cities can realistically use for the time being. My biggest city is size 30, and I'm pretty sure the rule is, you can't use more SHLs or OPTs than the size of the city. I've been switching to Orbital Power Transmitter production. I've realized that more money means more to spend on Secret Projects. My next one is the Telepathic Matrix.
[Limit reached]
I also finally learned Eudaimonic. In preparation for that, I'm finally choosing Knowledge. This may eventually tick off the Spartans, but I'll probably be ready with all my SPBs by then. If I don't do any eco-damage, my rate of producing them is going to be scary!
Uuuh, because it's late and I'm tired, I got distracted and totally forgot about what I planned to do. Piece of chocolate cake got in the way. I ended up playing until MY 2351, when my game crashed for some reason. I replay the turn and go Eudaimonic. PLANET drops to +1. I don't see any eco-damage this turn; hope that's true next year.
Damn. Have to figure out the crash first.
I theorize that it might be due to Dierdre and Spartacupants attacking each other, with units inappropriately in each other's cities. If they are no longer at war, the problem may go away. I hold my nose and talk to Deirdre. I get her to stop the war, and then I buy every remaining tech from her. This leaves me with 24 credits and no reason to work on the Universal Translator anymore. Fortunately, I have plenty of other things to switch to.
Unfortunately, that didn't solve it. 2 more wars I can end though. I get the Data Angels to knock it off with both the Spartypants and the Pirates. I'm surprised that they have 1 tech I haven't acquired. They refuse to trade it initially and Roze cuts me off before I can ask again. Well I got the wars stopped. That's the most important in-game diagnostic thing, without having to crank up the Scenario Editor. To be honest, this is the 1st time I've thought to try peace as a solution.
DAMN! Game still dies. No choice but to start poking around with the Scenario Editor now.
Using the Scenario Editor, I try eliminating the Data Angels from the game. The last message I see is Deirdre learning Transcendent Thought. Then the game crashes. So it's probably her fault.
Eradicating only the Gaians, the game crashes immediately. So I guess the Data Angels are involved in the problem after all.
Eradicating only the Pirates, the game crashes immediately.
Eradicating only the Spartans, the game crashes immediately.
Eradicating only the Consciousness, the game crashes immediately.
Eradicating no one at all, the game crashes immediately.
I sanity check that the Usurpers didn't somehow come back into existence. Nope, they're out. So the Data Angels are involved in at least one game crashing problem. Could eliminating them, simply create another problem?
Eradicating both the Data Angels and the Gaians, allows the game to continue. So the problem is somehow between them. Or there are 2 problems. I've already manually checked all the Data Angel cities. I suppose I'll have to undertake the more difficult task of checking the Gaians.
I can't find any anomalies in Gaian cities either. I'm a bit alarmed to notice they have 44 SPBs. I have 27 SPBs and 19 QPBs. I thought I was badass. The Spartans have 0 SPBs active, but 30 in production (!) This bodes ill.
I'm a bit stumped. I don't have the mental energy for more diagnosis tonight.
Post by: bvanevery on January 27, 2022, 03:50:11 am
This game may be toast. I could just try nuking people now, but I don't think it would prove anything.
I think this game proved that I can use very few units to destroy an ALIEN faction. Obliterations being legal and all that. Probably for not much more effort, I could have conquered them conventionally. But to what profit?
I wonder if I'm hostile to all my near neighbors, if I can crank out the troops to liquidate them all. That sounds darned tedious though. And I'm guessing someone out of my logistical reach, will just become the new "Deirdre" of the game. Maybe not though. I guess it would be a test.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 27, 2022, 06:11:34 am
I tried poking around at the Data Angels. Didn't get anywhere. Tried deleting all their Interceptor units, hoping it was an Interceptor bug. Didn't help.
Sorry. What is this about?
Post by: bvanevery on January 27, 2022, 03:33:44 pm
I gave up trying to diagnose the bug. I am playing a new game with your latest version.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 27, 2022, 09:12:52 pm
Post by: bvanevery on January 27, 2022, 10:04:54 pm
Using the Scenario Editor, deleting both the Data Angels and the Gaians will get past the problem. I don't know anything more specific than that.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 28, 2022, 02:15:05 am
Although I noticed that AI turn takes hefty 10-20 seconds. Is it normal for huge map?
Post by: bvanevery on January 28, 2022, 03:03:32 am
One thing I have noticed, is fairly often the game takes a long time to cough up a map, when you start a new game. I assume that's what the code is whirring and spin looping about. Then finally you get your faction announcement, "Domai, you're the arch socialist who will smash everybody! Welcome to Planet!" or whatever the heck it says. It can take 20 to 30 seconds, which is pretty ridiculous for random map generation. I assume it's getting locked in some kind of bad generation state that somehow it finally breaks free of, as a failsafe somewhere.
Heck maybe it is some nasty sort bug?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 28, 2022, 03:00:46 pm
For map generation - yes. That is Thinker code that does multiple passes.
Post by: bvanevery on January 29, 2022, 05:35:07 pm
Quote
As a human player, part of my personal limit is driven by boredom! I simply don't want to keep colonizing endlessly. The AI unfortunately does not have a boredom function. Maybe one could be simulated. Like of all the various moves it spends, what % are building and moving colonists?
As you know from my abundant test game posts, I've adopted a strictly vertical approach to compete against the spammy horizontal AIs. This is about being able to dominate Secret Project races, since there's no horizontal way to do that in WTP. It's also about being able to crank out real military units. Typically I have 1 city with a Command Center and a big mineral deposit, dedicated to making all the garrison troops.
I also typically have 1 city that's on colony spewing duty. More at the beginning, of course, everybody's doing it. But at some point, I whittle down that role to 1 city. Has to do with having enough happiness facilities available to build, and enough places settled with good resources that need more population to work them. So I'm adding cities but it slows down a lot.
[Limit reached]
In my current game, here is an example of my empire going through the transition of "everyone making colony pods" to "only 1 city making colony pods". My capitol is the designated spawner, because I popped a Nutrient special before settling it, and it's landlocked. The trigger for the transition was, the Usurpers came into my awareness. I think they almost immediately declared war on me, and they're close enough to actually destroy.
You might notice that my early colonization is actually on par with the AI's capability. Granted, they might have gotten a worse start, with Courage: To Question somewhat stuck on a not so great chunk of peninsula. On the other hand, the AI gets to colonize directly on top of fungus patches and I don't.
A big difference, however, is I could almost guarantee you the AI is completely blithe about scouting out the best mineral deposits, settling them, and making an appropriate switch to vertical development, while still colonizing horizontally elsewhere. I seem to be way better at that. I've got 1 such city working on garrison troops, which lucky for me, is at the front border with the Usurper empire. I didn't plan it that way, and they haven't tried to scout me with anything, but it's gonna be handy some turns from now. I've got 1 other city working on the Human Genome Project.
I've had tons of mindworm spam to fend off, using nothing more than ECM Scouts until recently, so it's not like I've had it easy. I don't know who triggered all that spam but it sure has been annoying. I think it's more than I popped myself, although there were some 8 worm explosions.
Since I've got allies who have provided me sufficient techs, and I'm allowed to use chemical weapons on Aliens, I expect the Usurpers to be completely trashed Real Soon Now. It's mainly about getting the mindworm storms over with. Once I have a free hand, I don't see that the Usurpers are even going to have a chance. They're simply too close and I know I'm too far ahead for their pathetic Scout defenses to deal with.
[Limit reached]
It may be the Free Drones who stirred up all the mindworms. They have the Manifold Nexus, so they may have captured a few mindworms and have had them roaming around. Supply pods in the north part of their territory indicate they haven't thoroughly scouted in my direction though. Their city spread is larger than mine, surely owing to AI colonization priority, available land, and their +2 INDUSTRY bonus. It remains to be seen if they will become a problem. We only have a Truce.
Post by: bvanevery on January 29, 2022, 06:58:47 pm
Using only 1 base, I've had time to garrison everything with trained ECM Scouts, everything with Trance Scouts, complete a Skunkworks, complete a real offensive infantry piece, and drive a road straight at my enemy, completely unchallenged. Still with the occasional mindworm explosion from nearby exploration and fending those off. And even getting an Artifact home by sea, and will complete the Human Genome Project next year.
The AI is simply not paying attention to the approaching doom. It is colonizing indefensible cities in my general direction, with no roads infrastructure to support them, and no meaningful garrisons. The strategy of "scattering your seeds" only works when there is no enemy actively trying to kill you, when there's a lot of land available for you to spread the seeds around. It's why the strongest AI enemy is generally the one diagonally opposite the player on any given map, at the greatest distance from the player. That AI, always has the least amount of logistical interference from the human player. "Seed spread" is a terrible, terrible strategy when a human player is close by.
The AI should, at a minimum, be making a war decision based on the closeness of proximity of the human player. The Usurpers should have long since switched their production to a war footing, as I did. And heck, I wasn't even on a desperate war footing. I was on a "I know you're slack, so I'll complete my anti-mindworm garrisons" footing.
I think the stock binary makes that kind of proximity decision. Either that or their default production, is much more geared to war. I've had my butt handed to me, in my own mod, by early Recon Rover rushes if I'm too slack. Usually happens with Conquer oriented factions.
It is only because of the mindworm explosions that I'm not overrunning the Usurpers by now. They're really tying me up. Meanwhile, Domai finally traded some techs, signed a Treaty, and is on good terms with me. So that's not going to interfere.
I haven't even bothered to go Fundamentalist yet, or made chemical weapons yet. I figured I'd drive my road towards them as long as they'll allow me to do it. See how much damage a mere 1 unit can do. Previous experience has been, quite a lot of damage. My original goal was to link up to that Monolith in their territory, and use it as my logistical base.
I believe pretty strongly, that an AI should play as though it wants to live, to preserve itself. It should not play as a cooperative element of a large collection of AI spamming factions. It's not supposed to be "the human vs. a unified AI". It's supposed to be about 7 factions all against each other. An AI should try to behave for a defensive bad case, for real threats to existence early in the game. That could be mindworms or other AI factions or a human faction.
It shouldn't be, well 6 AI players just cast their stuff about, and a few of them do ok enough, to eventually challenge the player.
Post by: bvanevery on January 29, 2022, 11:09:15 pm
I've destroyed 2 cities already with just this 1 unit, although I did have a Trance unit previously to accompany me on my takeovers. The Usurpers had a Scout Rover nearby, but I did not take enough damage from the fighting, for them to be able to do anything about my armor. Once I take this city, I will finally commit my 1st atrocity. I don't need any Usurper citizen liabilities, and they stand in the way of me getting Diplomatic Victory later in the game.
I settled that other city myself. I've stopped spawning colonists from my capitol. I doubt I need any more colonists at all for awhile. I've completed 2 Genejack Factories, as I have plenty of happiness to handle it. They're doing eco-damage and despite completing 1 Tree Farm to mitigate it, it didn't seem to have much impact. I'm also Democratic Green so +1 PLANET. I recently captured my 1st mindworm and 1st spore launcher. I'm working on the Empath Guild, and it will only take 20 turns. I will finally start making more troops when my Command Center city completes its Tree Farm and then perhaps an Energy Bank. For now, tearing up their periphery with 1 unit works fine.
Aside from aforementioned human proximity alert, the AI could stand to have an "ouch I'm getting my butt kicked" metric. Like if you're not doing well, change strategy.
Post by: bvanevery on January 29, 2022, 11:56:09 pm
I gained the tech for Centauri Preserve and built one. Possibly in conjunction with the Tree Farm, it reduced my eco-damage from 14 to 0. That's pretty powerful. 14 is also a lot of eco-damage for +1 PLANET, I think. Well whatever. Problem solved. Now my Command Center city is free to make some troops. Marching around the 1 piece of Impact Plasma Infantry has been very successful, even without chemical weapons. So I will send out X versions of that. That will probably be the end of the Usurpers. I might be limited mainly by the speed of roads to deliver all the chemicals. I can send X Speeders once I think they're trapped with enough infantry units.
I've also got a Genejack Factory completed in a port city. It's not doing eco-damage yet, perhaps because its population is not as high, or perhaps because there have been fungal pops already. When it is built out, I'll use that to make the X ships to wipe out the sea bases.
Otherwise I don't really need more Genejack Factories. 3 seems to be enough for now. 1 for land troops, 1 for Secret Projects, 1 for a navy.
[Limit reached]
A fungal pop next to where I'm building the Empath Guild, causes me to divert production to a Fusion Empath Speeder. And to move 2 Trance units closer to the city, because for some reason, I neglected to garrison it with a Trance unit earlier. Probably because I was working on the Human Genome Project and didn't want any SUPPORT cost. I could have left it homed to some other city, but in the course of the day's interruptions, doing other things, I simply forgot. Well, I seriously doubt the 2 mindworms I see, can penetrate my defenses anyways. I'd only be in trouble if there's a whole ton of 'em I can't see. Which I doubt, because this is the 1st mindworm bearing pop I've had. City is still doing 7 eco-damage afterwards.
Post by: bvanevery on January 30, 2022, 01:44:05 am
Previously I did not bother to infiltrate their network. I figured they'd never have any tech I needed, and the pattern of Scout defense was clear enough. This is the 1st time I've seen something resembling a defense, although these units are only Green. I wonder if they'll try to shoot at me? My unit is Commando. My Impact weapon is probably not enough to ding them up, so I will back off here, and find another target. I recently researched Gatling tech so I'll probably field upgrade soon. I've got both these units armed with chemical weapons now.
MY 2222. I've completed the Empath Guild, and have the votes to win the Governorship. However we're in sunspots.
MY 2224. Sunspots end. Domai asks for Pact against Miriam and I agree. I'm elected Governor.
Post by: bvanevery on January 30, 2022, 06:09:00 am
Here we have the Usurpers finally about to die. The last few cities were quite spammy about artillery. They inflicted some wounds but didn't really do anything for actually killing my units. Units that could kill, like the occasional Missile Speeder, seemed rather poorly used. Were they really that afraid of my armor? Even when I was badly wounded after making a successful chemical attack, the AI wouldn't do the logical thing and go after the nearly dead units. Consequently, my units would generally escape. Since I have the Xenoempathy Dome, they'd hole up on some fungus to heal for awhile. An artillery piece might come and barrage one of them, but they certainly didn't have enough to barrage all of them. And so eventually, I just wore them down.
On the ocean, it's only been 2 X Missile Foils and a Gun Cruiser wiping everything out. The sea bases have been almost all poorly defended, mere Scouts. So it's just blast, take, and obliterate. Only this 2nd to last base has shown a Silksteel defender, which has caused me to take some time trying to soften it up with naval artillery first.
RESEARCH regressive Domai is actually pretty ahead on tech. He's got a lot of rather large cities. Looks like Democratic Planned Power Cybernetic has worked out pretty well for him. I didn't want Cybernetic due to my active crushing of the Usurpers. Once they're done though, I have no nearby enemies. Maybe I'll go Democratic Planned as well.
MY 2267. I wipe both the land base and that sea base. They've only got the other sea base left.
Post by: bvanevery on January 30, 2022, 06:27:40 am
Domai's Agenda is Eudaimonic, but he has gone Cybernetic. WTP is inheriting Thinker mod's disregard for faction agendas.
Pretty soon we'll be in the awkward position where I go Cybernetic, but then Domai jaws at me to go Eudaimonic, while he is Cybernetic himself!!
I have both Domai and Aki Zeta5 as allies. In a normal game, they would be ideologically incompatible with each other.
MY 2269. My buddy Domai barely beats me out of the Governorship.
Post by: bvanevery on January 30, 2022, 06:43:00 am
MY 2271. He ded.
So... how long ago was it, from "obviously" I'll just wipe him out? 2271 - 2185 = 86 years.
Post by: Rocky on January 30, 2022, 11:56:46 am
I made a screenshot of the Datalinks info for the Habitation Dome, but the screenshot ended up wrong. There are two errors in the first two lines. I post the description below:
"Eases population growth beyond defalut limit 14.
The limit can be modified faction settings and SP's."
Thank you for noting. I am a quick typist.
😢
Note 1.
Feel free to edit these text documents in GitHub for further changes if you are up to co-authoring but don't feel bad if you don't. I'll fix this one myself.
Note 2.
I think this needs to be reworded as the whole mechanics about it is not simple yes/no as was in vanilla. I may use yours and all other forum folks help to set it right. The first sentence does not quite catch it.Code: [Select]Helps base grow faster by improving living conditions.
^Eliminates population limit GROWTH penalty.
^Default limit without this facility is {7} (alterable by faction settings).
^
^Base with this facility gets GROWTH bonus below the limit.
^GROWTH bonus = min(3, limit - population)
^
^Base without this facility gets GROWTH penalty approaching the limit.
^GROWTH penalty = max(0, population - limit + 3)I recently started playing your mod. It's very different experience from vanilla AC but I'm enjoying it. It's fun to re-learn the mechanics and technology tree.
Yeah. The mechanics change is there. As for tech tree I tried to stick to vanilla more or less in latest versions.
Thank you for your reply. I'm not really sure how Github works. Do I need an account for that?
I like the idea of how Hab Complexes work. Does it mean it rewards the player for building them earlier for some extra growth? In vanilla SMAC I always found building them a bit of a burden but here you actually get an incentive for it.
The description of the Covert Ops Center doesn't state what kind of bonuses it gives. (It only describes what the building is)
EDIT: The new description for Hab Complex looks good. (Although I can't tell from which population size the bonus or penalty kick in)
Post by: bvanevery on January 30, 2022, 04:50:33 pm
I'm not really sure how Github works. Do I need an account for that?Not to download a release, inspect a repository, or clone a repository. But if you want to file an Issue in a repo's Issue Tracker, I think you need an account for that.
[Limit reached]
Before my allies give me ~20 planes, it would be nice if they actually checked whether I can support 20 planes. Disband after disband after disband. I got to keep one plane.
Next turn they threw away about 6 more.
Next turn they threw away another 10. Make it stop.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 30, 2022, 04:56:23 pm
Thank you for your reply. I'm not really sure how Github works. Do I need an account for that?
Try to get there to see if you have read access. You should.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer
Then open this.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/docs/configuration/helpx.txt
And see if you have pencil icon on top of the text. If yes - click it, edit, commit changes. Otherwise, you may need an account so I give you edit permission.
However, if you didn't deal with Git before - don't bother. It'll be some learning curve. I just meant you are free to edit it if you are up to it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 30, 2022, 05:01:40 pm
I like the idea of how Hab Complexes work. Does it mean it rewards the player for building them earlier for some extra growth? In vanilla SMAC I always found building them a bit of a burden but here you actually get an incentive for it.
Correct. If one builds it in base size 1 they get +3 GROWTH for this base right away. Nice bonus but could be costly for small bases.
The description of the Covert Ops Center doesn't state what kind of bonuses it gives. (It only describes what the building is)
I don't think I have changed anything from vanilla description. A lot of vanilla descriptions are pretty general and suck. Feel free to supply new content for it if you are up to it. It is an open project.
EDIT: The new description for Hab Complex looks good. (Although I can't tell from which population size the bonus or penalty kick in)
If you open in game help and click interchangeably between hab complex and hab complex - you'll see their description is identical except bold bright number on third line for default population limit. If it is not too noticeable we may move it to separate first line to highlight it.
Post by: bvanevery on January 31, 2022, 06:23:42 am
After destroying the Usurpers, I did Democratic Planned Wealth Cybernetic for a long time. That put me at -3 POLICE. I slithered a mindworm towards home, and got this Hive base as a walk-in. This is where my allies kept donating the planes, uselessly.
I used Brood Pits to get my cities to -1 POLICE, allowing me to move troops freely. I rapidly jacked up the base with various expenditures. Eventually, I was able to keep the donated planes. They have not, however, been enough to make headway in the region. I've destroyed a lot of minor units that were milling around and not really coming for me anyways. It's been pretty much a pointless grind.
[Limit reached]
Similarly, fighting the Pirates has been pretty pointless too. They didn't like my Wealth. I've destroyed many size 1 bases but that never gets them to sign a Truce. This is the 1st "real" base I've taken from them. It required an awful lot of sailing of ships, which is a real drag. Still don't get why spore launchers defend so well against even Empath units. Eventually I wore them out though. That worked mainly because the Pirates don't reinforce anything. Well, I suppose they did send some units to attack, and they even killed a few of mine. But I had many.
[Limit reached]
I've completed many SPs. Once I completed the Manifold Harmonics, I switched from Democratic to Fundamentalist. I wanted the INDUSTRY boost and it got me to +1 PLANET. I haven't done any more than that because I've been working on so many SPs. Domai blew me off as an ally a long time ago, but he still hasn't attacked. I've got lots of troops ready for him when/if he does, enough that I feel pretty safe working on SPs.
Now that I've got Psi Gates, we'll be entering a new kind of war. I'm not used to getting gates before orbital insertion. I've got a lot of Drop garrisons to get some fly-ins, but they weren't near anything. And I was darned if I was going to move them all over the map manually. Psi Gates will allow me to come in and slowly start jumping around. Too bad it's 1 unit at a time. I wonder if I can send a full transport through a gate? Doesn't help with landlocked cities though. WTP doesn't have Heavy Transport available, so if I made a "truck" it could only carry 1 unit anyways.
Next year, Pirates finally signed a Treaty. Maybe my Graviton ships are scary. Still says MY 2309 though. Guess I got a year bug again.
Post by: bvanevery on January 31, 2022, 02:09:26 pm
The short description for the Cloning Vats, "Population Boom At All Bases", is wrong. It should probably say "+2 GROWTH". The description can be changed in alphax.txt.
Post by: bvanevery on February 01, 2022, 04:50:41 am
I complete the Space Elevator. Half of my drop troops, I drop on the remaining supply pods of Planet. This mostly stirs up mindworms, although I make a few credits, capture a mindworm, and clone one of my troops. I'm not sure if those troops are going to survive, as they are ECM troops.
[Limit reached]
The other half of the troops, I send at Miriam. On first contact she reiterates her desire to kill me, despite me being Fundamentalist. I don't really have a coherent plan for this. I made these drop troops so long ago, in anticipation of a war with Domai. They were intended to drop into several of his undefended cities. Miriam doesn't have any undefended cities, so it's not clear what these troops are going to do. I thought perhaps I'd surround and starve some outlying cities. However once I dropped in, I quickly saw that she had her own troops milling around everywhere. It's not going to be easy to move around.
[Limit reached]
What I do next, will depend on what survives. I could start making Drop Formers, and build Airbases here and there, in order to get back into orbit. But if all these troops die, there's no point. I've got plenty for home defense against Domai, and I'm still working on some SPs. Those that aren't, are starting to make Sky Hydroponics Labs again. I've got some already but could certainly use a lot more. I'm imagining that I'll complete Clinical Immortality and then somehow get Diplomatic Victory. I wonder if I'll have to crush someone to do that?
Post by: bvanevery on February 02, 2022, 01:40:06 am
The Believers aren't really starveable without a lot more troops. I just don't have the concentration needed. Mostly nothing has happened on this front. Miriam has scratched me a bit, but typically dies. Then I back off and try to heal in the fungus. I've gradually gotten my other drop troops back into orbit and into theater, although some of them drowned when the south pole washed away.
I have some really nasty Singularity Antimatter Gravships coming, which will eventually resolve the stalemate. They are seriously overbuilt and I'm not even sure the Antimatter armor provides any benefit. I have a mild paranoia that ground troops could somehow attack them, since that's something I can do to gravships and locusts as a human player. However, I've rarely seen the stock AI do it. Usually only if some unit got in the way of a movement path, and not with direct intent.
Yang has made multiple "surprise" attacks and lost a city each time. He's behaving himself at the moment. Miriam has only lost 1 newly colonized city to me, and that didn't stop her from warring. Domai is still oddly silent. He often comes to use my Monoliths to heal and level up. I deliberately moved a mindworm away from one of my Monoliths, so that he wouldn't use it as an excuse to talk to me. If he had half a brain, the minute he opened his mouth he'd declare war. But, he is Domai.
The irony is my endgame strategy would be to go Eudaimonic and grow the heck out of my population. I have Clinical Immortality, but it's not enough to overcome the objections of all the factions. For now, I will continue with my +3 INDUSTRY bonus. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to doing anything other than building SPs. War is certainly not worth it. The exception would be if Domai declared war, as then I could increase my population easily and decrease his. Pretty much everyone else though, not worth it.
If I was not Lal, I'm not sure what I'd be doing. Conquest victory seems futile. Singularity Planet Busters aren't a bargain anymore. Although, once I've finished the Singularity Inductor and Bulk Matter Transmitter, maybe I'll think differently about them. I suspect that Sky Hydroponics Labs are cheaper for me to do though. And, completing late SPs, really isn't a different strategy from what I'm doing now.
Post by: bvanevery on February 02, 2022, 02:15:54 am
So here we have an exceedingly expensive empath singularity antimatter gravship, determined to do only so-so against a mere mindworm. Granted a demon boil, granted Miriam outranks me on PLANET. But I do have the Dream Twister and this is disappointing. I guess there's nothing for this but peon attrition. I do have less expensive empath singularity gravships being made my nearest conquered base.
[Limit reached]
This is sad! This is the cheaper version of the heavy armament, without the armor. Guess I'm going to need to make a cheaper still, "good enough" armament, if I want to accept attrition. Which I probably don't. Spore launcher, the perfect defender of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on February 02, 2022, 04:40:57 am
You know, I just hand terraformed this river system, the last time it wiped everything out. I think this flooding also took a whole bunch of my Clean Hover Formers with it. I need a more permanent solution.
[Limit reached]
I made a Singularity Tectonic Missile prototype a long time ago and never had a use for it. I fired it off. It's not enough though. I need all these river valleys gone. Guess I'll be making more of them. They also seem to ruin various terrain features when they go off. But if things are getting ruined by flooding anyways, then I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. And I know that flooding is pretty much forever! I already got Launch Solar Shade passed 4 years ago, and the Pirates have found a way to mess the world up even more since then.
Post by: bvanevery on February 02, 2022, 06:45:44 pm
MY 2333. Domai foolishly calls an election. I have finished everything in the tech tree except Transcendent Thought, which I don't think gives any new capabilities. I'm about to complete the Network Backbone, the last SP not counting the transcendence stuff. I could definitely have won by transcendence by now, as Aki traded it to me at one point. My massive productivity compared to my rivals, would have made it about 6 terms to activate the Voice, and then however long it takes to Ascend. But I hate that ending, and will never choose it unless I'm playing something like the Cult of Planet. To me it's like dying in Comet Hale-Bopp.
As you can see, I have the votes to be Supreme Leader if only Domain was in the game. But there are the other factions to deal with as well. I recently soured my alliance with Aki as I didn't feel like getting into her wars. She blamed everyone else for them, and I haven't been compelled to talk to anyone else. Domai has been weirdly silent all this time. I mean, I'll take it, but I'm pretty sure in the stock binary he would have declared war eons ago.
I haven't really noticed any major turn slowdown. That's pretty good for a 14 year old laptop. Whether the AI is smart or not is another matter, but at least it's not taking annoyingly too long.
I've been Fundamentalist Planned Wealth Cybernetic for a very long time, because it is INDUSTRY oriented. When I complete my last SP, I will transition to something more GROWTH oriented. The peaceful resolution of the game will depend on whether all my space infrastructure can be rapidly filled out by high GROWTH. If that doesn't work, well every city that doesn't need terraforming, is making Singularity Planet Busters. One way or another, this game will end in my victory.
I wonder if people will vote me Supreme Leader if I nuke the Hive and Believers, who are ideologically opposed to me, and then buy Truces with everyone else? That would take less nukes than nukeing the whole world. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't take that much to conquer them conventionally.
But... this all feels like sandboxing, and that it should have been long since over, somehow. There's just no profit angle to any of it. Conquest feels really pointless. If the goal is to have SPs, well I did most of them myself. Which takes forever, so it's a different kind of pointless. I'm not sure what the "fast" way to win WTP is. I've certainly proven there's a reliable slow way.
[Limit reached]
I've built everything, I don't need money anymore. I contemplate the wisdom of trying to buy out Domai's cities. But I bet it'll be expensive, and will probably lead to war. So just seems like it's more trouble than it's worth. Ergo, I waste all my money on excessive PSYCH. Next year the Network Backbone will be done and I'll start transitioning to GROWTH.
Post by: bvanevery on February 02, 2022, 08:39:04 pm
It's been awhile since Yang acted up. Why does he keep doing it? Ideologically compulsive I guess. Will I nuke him? Conquer him conventionally? Try to legalize atrocities one last time? Just commit the atrocities anyways? Not like sanctions mean anything to me anymore.
[Limit reached]
This is what it's been like the whole game. I'm the only one willing to speak against the insanity of the U.N.!!
;danc ;gandhi ;gandhi ;gandhi ;liftoff
[Limit reached]
You know, if for no other reason than Domai's AI being completely slack, I've already won this game any number of ways. I've been "playing it safe" far too long and think instead, I will make this interesting. Can I wipe Yang in 1 turn without any further prep? Not like I brought my nukes forwards. I just have psi gates. I wonder if a Drop Carrier is possible, and could carry a nuke? Probably not in WTP. Can't remember if I ever experimented with that in my own mod. If I did, it was a long time ago. Well it's besides the point as I don't have any made. Psi gates it is.
[Limit reached]
The blast radius of a SPB is 4. The tricky bit is destroying several of Yang's cities without hitting my own or other factions. Isn't it convenient that he's still tending to his farms and fields?
[Limit reached]
The Believers are too close to Hive cities I want gone. I may have already hit Believer troops in the blasts anyways. Despite having been Fundamentalist for a very long time, Miriam refused to communicate with me, and historically has been an enemy. I was planning to transition back to Democratic before Yang attacked, so she'll never like me, or vote for me. Get thee gone! If I reduce enough votes in the factions, I win.
[Limit reached]
I took a size 2 city from Svensgaard and he rolled over. Problem is, I seem to recall that when you have an Infamous reputation, Truces might last only 1 turn. He's allied with the Hive and actually has a ship in a city I would have liked to have nuked. The point is moot as I didn't have enough gates to do the job anyways. My nuclear inventory is surprisingly low as well, only 2 left. I guess that means I'm not even remotely close to being able to nuke the whole planet. I hope votes get me to victory faster.
Domai required that I walk into 3 of his empty cities before he signed a Truce. Aki only required 1. I was unable to settle the war between them, as I did Aki 2nd, and she said it was Domai's fault.
[Limit reached]
For all those nukes tossed, this is surprisingly the only city doing eco-damage. If I weren't in the middle of building a nuke, I could put a Centauri Preserve on it and call it a day. Technically there's nothing stopping me, except the 134 lost minerals. Which I guess is only 1 turn at this base. Ok, fine. I mean who needs mindworm hassles?
Post by: bvanevery on February 03, 2022, 08:42:40 pm
Ok... I don't feel like playing this particular game anymore. The endgame is really tedious. I was surprised that I got away with setting off a lot of nukes, without doing any eco-damage. I guess if I've managed to master eco-damage generally, with the Pholus Mutagen and whatnot, then some nukes aren't going to be that big a deal. But the problem with nukes is, you have to settle everyone down again, if you want to get Diplomatic Victory. Which prevents me from using more nukes. Which is how I could wipe out the Believers easily and non-tediously. Instead I'm preparing this big conventional push, and I feel like, I could have done that eons ago. So why play anymore?
Interceptors are surprisingly effective against the various things I built. One answer to that is ground assault. However this can be really tedious on a big map. Psi Gates don't let you put a lot of troops on target quickly. I started to make a bunch of String Empath Wave Gravships, hoping Wave would be the answer to Air Superiority, but that's the point at which I got very very bored.
The Pirates have been jerky. They can't do anything to me, but they're usually violating their Truce. I feel like the nukes only bought me a Pirate nuisance. I still don't have the votes to declare Diplomatic Victory. It would take more conventional conquest to secure it, and that's why I feel this game is pointless. Sure I could win, but I could have won better a long time ago.
I keep thinking that the "perfect circle" is the only legitimate and sustainable expansion. Either that or some theory of "take the oceans" because you'll have the most food. In a previous game, taking over the Pirates was relatively easy.
I'm imagining another game where I pursue a strategy of remote slavery. Maybe Punishment Spheres can be useful.
I never did go Democratic to get the +7 GROWTH. Warfare kept me Fundamentalist, at +5 GROWTH. Pretty good GROWTH and some places did pop boom. But I don't think I ever really implemented the "maximum growth" strategy.
Post by: bvanevery on February 04, 2022, 05:37:13 am
Here's an isolated Morganic kingdom. Played the beginning as Fundamentalist. Tech made no difference as Deirdre gave or sold me stuff, and I think I researched a sufficient amount on my own anyways. My empire has always seemed infrastructure limited rather than tech limited. I got my Habs done fairly early. When I learned both Democratic and Green I transitioned to that, accepting the hit to my SUPPORT. This has left me slightly understaffed in the Formers dept. I've done a lot of shifting my Rover Formers about, trying to get them to where they're needed.
I got a certain amount of spore launcher trashings at the beginning. The world seemed far too dangerous to go Free Market with all this fungus around. I had a certain amount of trouble even while Green. This is the point in the game where I've finally acquired Synthetic Fossil Fuels from my ally the Usurpers. Deirdre had it some time ago, but she kept getting other techs, and selling me those instead of what I wanted. That non-specificity of transaction can be really annoying, compared to other games.
Pretty soon I'll have some fungicide. I might also complete the Xenoempathy Dome. Deirdre was correctly cagey about trading it to me at first. But later, she just traded me freakin' everything. Really doesn't have any sense of restraint.
When I first met Deirdre, I think she wanted war with the Pirates, and I granted it to her. That was a long time ago, and there was never any possibility of an actual fight. We're at peace now. The Cult of Planet has been sassy nearly from the get-go. I've run around destroying a lot of empty size 1 cities, using only 1 Scout Rover. Didn't cause him to sign a Truce. We're not anywhere near each other by land though. I see they've got a goofy sea settlement getting closer to me. Guess I'll go infiltrate it.
So far this game has been a lot of waiting around for infrastructure. I'm doing Tree Farms without any Genejack Factories. I just don't know what to expect when I finally go Free Market. If it ends up being some kind of mindworm hell then I'll probably bag this game as pointless. Morgan seems pretty crippled and I'm not so far seeing why he's a "good" faction in any way.
Post by: bvanevery on February 04, 2022, 03:43:44 pm
This is the point at which I finally went to Wealth, making me Democratic Green Wealth Cybernetic. I think the interloping mindworms have been far too dangerous to consider Free Market. I just captured a spore launcher that was tearing up a nice forest patch I wanted to settle. At least now I've finally freed my cities of the clutches of fungus. There are no direct routes of attack anymore. Another factor in my recalcitrance is Deirdre has been a huge technological benefactor. I'm not sure how it would ever be more profitable, to cut off her largesse and go it alone.
Factions have been weirdly isolated this game. It's taken a long time for anyone to meet the University, and none of us have yet met the Peacekeepers. I know where they are, having found the USS Unity maps early in the game, but they're so remote that my ships haven't managed to sail up there. They might also be landlocked.
Lack of a world community, harms me because I can't get a Global Trade Pact established. I'm doubting I can win the Governorship, but the University did just trade me Sky Hydroponics Labs technology, which at least makes it theoretically possible to pursue. Still need to get Doctrine: Air Power out of him, but he cut me off.
Militarily, war with the Usurpers is logical because they're relatively close by and want me to be Planned, which I can never do. They were allies but got sick of me being Green some time ago. However my -3 POLICE and -3 MORALE don't exactly put me on a war footing. And if I do go Free Market, my mindworms won't be any use either. Still, the AI's garrisoning of the ocean will probably completely suck, so I could at least wipe all of those out.
[Limit reached]
Next year I ran into Cha Dawn, and he did know where Lal was. I wasn't able to do my usual thing of selling commlinks at great profit before getting everyone to know each other. I figured it best to call for a Global Trade Pact while there's no Governor, so that the Governor couldn't veto it. It worked!
The Pirates are starting to hate me for my Wealth. They are far away though and of no military consequence.
Just realized I'm going to be at -7 POLICE if I go Free Market. I'm still exploring.
Since I have a super efficient economy, I adjust my budget to 50-30-20. Deirdre can do the research.
[Limit reached]
Next year, this is the nonsense I have to keep dealing with. My captured spore launcher, it stirred up another spore launcher trying to go after the new one, and then died shooting at it. This is why I don't want a big negative PLANET rating. I don't think Free Market is designed to be something you can just do. It's like this shaggy dog story where there's always a reason it's a bad idea.
Post by: bvanevery on February 04, 2022, 04:33:16 pm
Ok look I'm quitting. The game's level of tech leakage is ridiculous. I haven't researched a darned thing. Zak wanted war with Deirdre, I declined. Zak then allies with me anyways. I get free tech from him.
Then I talk to Lal and he trades me a bunch of stuff, that previously he wasn't interested in trading. So now I'm just loaded. I haven't researched a darned thing, and you're obviously a complete chump to do any research in this game. It's totally out of balance and it makes a lot of the pace of the game pointless.
Why do I need to worry about Wealth and Free Market, when Eudaimonic is right around the corner? Well, maybe it isn't, but I've got a really strong feeling that my own tech choices in this game are completely meaningless. I'm going to be given everything, which makes this pretty much a baby game.
I know I've filed this in the Issue Tracker before, and it's time to ping that if it hasn't been pinged recently. This is just crazy.
I don't feel a need to playtest WTP any more. Some of the top issues need to be addressed, to be worth playing any more:
- tech pace and leakage is silly bad, especially from allies
- AI colonizes way too much without making the bases defensible
- AI doesn't have a reaction radius, when danger is approaching or it's actually being trashed by an invader
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 04, 2022, 05:17:38 pm
Post by: bvanevery on February 04, 2022, 07:32:08 pm
Since I hate probe team game mechanics, I haven't been inclined to complain about that. But it does affect whether tech leakage happens or not, so I thought I should come clean.
Post by: bvanevery on February 04, 2022, 08:09:10 pm
I noticed the function, void evaluateLandColonyDemand() in aiProduction.cpp. It looks to me like the algorithm is fundamentally opportunistic, driving colony production on the basis of available nearby empty space. This is completely, flatly, strategically wrong. If I've guessed correctly as to what this function does, without really thinking hard about it or trying to deeply analyze it, the whole AI incompetence is based on this "map slidealong".
You don't colonize stuff because you can. You colonize stuff because it's a valuable contribution to your empire. That means it's got good resources, you can turn it into a big city, you don't have enough cities yet, it's close to the core of your empire, it's defensible, and it's not in danger of being overrun by mindworms or enemy factions.
If the algorithm is just trying to "fill up available space", without regard for the quality of the space, or the necessity of filling any space at all, then it explains why the AI is a complete child.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 04, 2022, 11:07:45 pm
WTP does a very poor job with probe teams lately. Factions often don't make them at all. If they do, they'll use them as defensive garrisons only. I haven't had an AI faction try to run a probe team mission on me in eons. I suspect you have made them too expensive for the AI to consider them worth building.
Since I hate probe team game mechanics, I haven't been inclined to complain about that. But it does affect whether tech leakage happens or not, so I thought I should come clean.
Sure. I can crank their production. Keep in mind, though, that any AI tuning will change production balance. They cannot simply produce something more without producing something less.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 04, 2022, 11:17:56 pm
I'm making a cursory effort to understand WTP's source code and .ini options. I'm not willing to get "deep into the weeds" with the code. It's not my project, I'll never gain fame, glory, or money for bothering to spend a lot of effort on it. Things that take a lot of effort, need to go into my own 4X commercial game work, that could potentially get me out of living out of my car poverty someday. But, if I happen to spot something that's low hanging fruit and easy, I will at least make note of it. I'm really only interested in whether there's 1 knob, somewhere, that can majorly change the AI performance by adjusting it.
I noticed the function, void evaluateLandColonyDemand() in aiProduction.cpp. It looks to me like the algorithm is fundamentally opportunistic, driving colony production on the basis of available nearby empty space. This is completely, flatly, strategically wrong. If I've guessed correctly as to what this function does, without really thinking hard about it or trying to deeply analyze it, the whole AI incompetence is based on this "map slidealong".
You don't colonize stuff because you can. You colonize stuff because it's a valuable contribution to your empire. That means it's got good resources, you can turn it into a big city, you don't have enough cities yet, it's close to the core of your empire, it's defensible, and it's not in danger of being overrun by mindworms or enemy factions.
If the algorithm is just trying to "fill up available space", without regard for the quality of the space, or the necessity of filling any space at all, then it explains why the AI is a complete child.
You nailed it. AI is completely child. I am absolutely 100% with you on that it may be somewhat more sophisticated. However, actual programming is quite rudimentary taking this is a patch and the original code is pretty flat and stupid. I have to solve algorithmic problems every time I am trying to teach it something sane. Takes long.
So each of "it's got good resources, you can turn it into a big city, you don't have enough cities yet, it's close to the core of your empire, it's defensible, and it's not in danger of being overrun by mindworms or enemy factions" thing turns into hundreds lines of code. The worst thing is that I cannot work on just some AI feature in isolation. They need to work at least somehow consistently. So I need to create similar code for all types and all activities at the same time and this alone is a big pain. Making small steps at a time. From 1-year-old child to 2-year-old and so on. It already beats vanilla AI per Induktio testing. Maybe we can make it even better.
Post by: bvanevery on February 05, 2022, 12:01:17 am
Quote
it's got good resources, you can turn it into a big city,
These are simple tile proximity metrics. Aren't filter functions for analyzing this stuff already available somewhere? Like finding the 2 radius intersection of resource specials.
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you don't have enough cities yet,
Why isn't that 5 lines of code?
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it's close to the core of your empire,
Why isn't that 10 lines of code?
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it's defensible, and it's not in danger of being overrun by mindworms or enemy factions
To a first approximation, don't settle next to fungus if you're not a PLANET friendly faction. If you're close to a faction that could turn aggressive on you, don't settle in that direction. This isn't hundreds of lines of code. It's some proximity and distance metrics. Sure you may not have a "good" estimate of whether a faction will turn hostile, but you can know that it's near you, and presume it hostile. More refinement would be estimating the health of your relationship, like if it's an alliance of permanence or convenience, and your relative faction power. Push forward if you're strong, settle the other direction if you're weak.
Quote
The worst thing is that I cannot work on just some AI feature in isolation. They need to work at least somehow consistently. So I need to create similar code for all types and all activities at the same time and this alone is a big pain.
In the specific cases I've enumerated above, I'm not seeing the problem. That may be because I have no idea how SMAC + Thinker + WTP is actually implemented. ;lol But in a clean slate design, these would be fairly trivial, very basic rule encodings. It's the kind of basic stuff I apply as a human player over and over and over again.
Post by: Rocky on February 05, 2022, 10:46:47 pm
===
I agree with bvanevery about the expansion rate for the AI. It's a difficult issue and the Ai is undoubtedly better than stock AI but I noticed that even around the year 2300 the AI factions are often still in an expansion/terraformer phase.
They set up a large amount of near unusable seabases filled with drones, and their core bases are still popping out (sea) colony pods/(sea) formers.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 06, 2022, 03:58:03 am
From the other hand do you stop expansion as a human? How do you define this limit for yourself when it is no use to build even another single base?
Another question is what if all factions follow this limit and do not populate entire planet? Is it optimal?
Post by: bvanevery on February 06, 2022, 07:54:36 am
How do you define this limit for yourself when it is no use to build even another single base?As I said some posts ago: boredom. The factor working against boredom, is recognizing there's some "minimum necessary" clump of cities to do the job of stomping others. If I've made enough cities to do the job, then I don't need more. "Enough" in my current AAR about Thinker (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21768.0) turned out to be 15 cities. This was based on a procedure of happiness facilities, penalties due to EFFIC / Bureaucracy, and resources in the vicinity of my capitol.
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Another question is what if all factions follow this limit and do not populate entire planet? Is it optimal?
Please try to remember that you can conquer the entire Planet, if you're really so inclined. You do not have to personally spawn every city yourself. If you can get things legal, you can also raze cities to the ground, so that you don't have to deal with them. Developing the infrastructure for lots of conquered cities can get to be a real chore. The farther away they are from my core empire, the less I am inclined to do it.
Post by: Rocky on February 06, 2022, 02:14:13 pm
Good point. I'll be working on that.
From the other hand do you stop expansion as a human? How do you define this limit for yourself when it is no use to build even another single base?
Another question is what if all factions follow this limit and do not populate entire planet? Is it optimal?
The question I ask myself is when do I reach a point when expanding no longer feels necessary for securing the game, when it starts becoming a chore and/or when efficiency becomes too much of an issue. I may still expand at times depending on different factors, like for example coming across a spot with some really good mineral deposits. In that case I would settle another base and rush all cheap buildings in it to turn it into a military production center/forward base.
The Will to Power/Thinker AI is much more efficient in building up its infrastructure than the stock AI. It can get away with less bases and still be a major powerhouse.
In the Thinker AI document we have an option to tell the AI how many bases it should settle at max. Currently it's 50 but I feel that's too much. If the setting was 15-25 at max with autoscale on 1 (so the AI would still expand if the human player has more than 15-25 bases) the AI would likely turn towards infrastructure quicker. Well developed infrastructure would allow for faster military production and more options.
If I expand as a human player it kind of goes like this:
1. Expanding with first wave of colony pods. I try to create a ring around my main base.
2. More colony pods, I start to produce basic infrastructure in my Headquarters/second base.
3. If at peace I expand until I hit the efficiency limit. Core bases produce more infrastructure. If at war, core bases produce military stuff.
4. I stop expanding a few bases over the efficiency limit. At peace all bases make infrastructure/formers. At war I still have two core bases produce stuff like Tree farms/Research Hospitals (So I don't get too much behind in tech) Unless it's a war for survival.
5. When my first wave of expansion bases have the basic infrastructure in place or if I increase my efficiency rating I do a second wave of expansion, filling up spaces which have choke points, resources or act as forward bases.
Usually I end up somewhere around 15-25 bases. (My current game is an exception as I have around 40 as the Pirates─But I find that sea expansion depends on different factors than land and I expanded aggressively because I knew the Ai was doing the same)
Overall the WtP/Thinker Ai could expand in waves (based on efficiency and new drones), doing another round of expansion when the core bases have been developed. Or based on a hard cap in the Thinker.ini file.
A few things I noticed:
1. On land the AI keeps a minimum amount of distance between bases according to the Thinker.ini file. But on sea the Ai keeps much more room between its bases. Especially for the Pirates this means overextended empires which are difficult to defend. When the Ai expands on sea it should try to expand close to the core bases first and then slowly move outwards in a ring pattern. (I haven't seen the Pirates AI settle on land yet)
2. Sea formers seem to pick unusual locations to terraform. I've seen the Ai send their sea formers across the map to aid an outer sea base, while there are other (sea) bases nearby and closer to Headquarters which also need help. This causes the Ai to lose valuable terraform time.
3. There have been a few instances the Ai prioritized expanding on sea over land. There was one game the Believers had around 3-4 land bases, and ignored the rest of their landmass for settling sea bases. It doesn't happen that much but it did cripple them in that game.
Post by: bvanevery on February 06, 2022, 05:59:30 pm
When the Ai expands on sea it should try to expand close to the core bases first and then slowly move outwards in a ring pattern.
Yes and my current Thinking about Pirates AAR (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21768.0) shows exactly how to do this right. 15 bases. Basically I grabbed all the good resources that were nearby. One difference though, is Thinker gives +1 sea minerals to AQUATIC factions and WTP does not. I don't think that belies the general principle of tight concentric circles based on best resources though.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 06, 2022, 07:57:03 pm
1. On land the AI keeps a minimum amount of distance between bases according to the Thinker.ini file. But on sea the Ai keeps much more room between its bases. Especially for the Pirates this means overextended empires which are difficult to defend. When the Ai expands on sea it should try to expand close to the core bases first and then slowly move outwards in a ring pattern. (I haven't seen the Pirates AI settle on land yet)
It values every piece of land but not water as it is all equal and it is usually a lot of it. That's why it rushes for ocean resources first regardless of distance.
2. Sea formers seem to pick unusual locations to terraform. I've seen the Ai send their sea formers across the map to aid an outer sea base, while there are other (sea) bases nearby and closer to Headquarters which also need help. This causes the Ai to lose valuable terraform time.
Need algorithm tuning for yield vs distance priority. Also sometimes it takes direct distance into account when path to it could be very curved. Not that sophisticated yet. May work on it with your observations in mind.
3. There have been a few instances the Ai prioritized expanding on sea over land. There was one game the Believers had around 3-4 land bases, and ignored the rest of their landmass for settling sea bases. It doesn't happen that much but it did cripple them in that game.
Didn't work on this yet. For now they just expand in every directions land or sea alike. May add some "placement quality" factor in future.
Post by: dino on February 06, 2022, 11:47:27 pm
Send together with colony pod few formers and few crawlers to home in new base, or in case of WtP send few colony pods to start with few pops instead and rush punishment sphere, to provide huge food and mineral input from the start, send few military units to protect the base, rush essential infrastructure with money. Basically rapidly grow new bases tall with help of the whole empire, there is not enough time for them to grow organically and there is too much risk of a conflict that could sweep them away before they'd amount to anything growing organically.
If a new base is close to the other faction border, or is far enough for inefficiency to eat away close to half of energy output, specialize the base in the warmashine industry: terraform for food and minerals, rush build punishment sphere, mineral multiplier facilities, defensive and unit improving facilities and then start pumping, either military units, or supporting rapid development of another base.
If a new base could have decent energy output and is relatively far from enemies, terraform for energy and scrap punishment sphere after rushing drone control facilities, build enrgy multiplying facilities, but generally unless the faction is behind most of the competition in energy output new production bases should be prioritized in later midgame.
It should keep expanding, if it's too much for someone, he should play on a smaller map.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 07, 2022, 12:08:31 am
Send together with colony pod few formers and few crawlers to home in new base, or in case of WtP send few colony pods to start with few pops instead and rush punishment sphere, to provide huge food and mineral input from the start, send few military units to protect the base, rush essential infrastructure with money. Basically rapidly grow new bases tall with help of the whole empire, there is not enough time for them to grow organically and there is too much risk of a conflict that could sweep them away before they'd amount to anything growing organically.
I guess this is a whole idea to support new bases in mid game with whole empire power. Otherwise, they won't amount to something interesting.
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 01:44:25 am
PS makes the most sense when you capture a large, distant enemy base, that you don't really have the generic infrastructure to pacify normally. But how often does that really happen? I usually beat factions at SP happiness stuff. I usually have lots of money to rush basic happiness facilities, like Rec Commons and Hologram Theaters. I'm usually spending some part of my budget on PSYCH by the time I'm projecting force across the globe. And finally, big captured bases often have advanced facilities, like tree farms, that you're losing a lot of benefit of, if you put in a PS.
I think the PS is kind of a solution in search of a problem. I allow them very early in my mod. I never found them to actually be a useful early game strategy. Simple Rec Commons, SPs, and some Non-Lethal Methods are more effective, for the amount of growth you're probably going to have early game.
I understand the theoretical potential of "giant early manufacturing city". In practice, it's been a lot of work, and I haven't seen an obvious benefit, compared to other methods. I think it would take a detailed After Action Report with some impressive early gains, for me to be convinced otherwise. People saying "do it", by itself, isn't all that convincing. I have done it, and it didn't work so well, at least for how I understood the game and was playing.
My opinion is, generally I can beat up AIs just fine.
Post by: dino on February 07, 2022, 01:58:12 am
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 02:10:44 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 07, 2022, 03:20:07 am
One thing about PS
It has a huge benefit of police early on and even reduced support for them. So It is a great tool when you don't have sheer energy and psych multipliers. That period in game actually exists. Later on, yes, it may be a burden. But that is the idea of SE variety. Different choices shine at different time.
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 05:06:25 am
It's even more egregious in WTP where colonies are actually quite expensive. That's a lot of minerals that could be going into something other than population centralization.
Post by: dino on February 07, 2022, 08:57:48 am
It backfires a bit by making mid game colonization feel a bit unrewarding and slow.
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 01:35:01 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 07, 2022, 04:09:20 pm
You need like size 12 bases to be benefiting from PS over conventional happiness facilities.
I don't get why it is? Are you referring human play on Transcendent? If so then second citizen is already a drone that you normally quell with garrison even without PS involved. When you grow twice the base limit they are now all drones. PS allows to cheaply build 3 (three) police for the cost less than Recreation Commons and for bigger effect than it. I would say it is a huge time saving especially for extended empire of small to medium bases.
On top of this it grants more support which can be used either for these extra police units of for other units if some bases do not require that many police yet.
Maxing out early drone quelling benefits would give: 2+2+3 = 7. That accounts for base size 8 if you are below base limit and 7 if above. I would not say it is too unrealistic base size for mid game.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 07, 2022, 04:22:13 pm
I've forgot about colony pod cost in WtP, you are right there is no good tool like crawlers, to artificially speeed up pop growth in WtP, in fact it was a design goal.
It backfires a bit by making mid game colonization feel a bit unrewarding and slow.
You are right that absence of easy to trigger vanilla style pop-boom makes growth and continuous colonization not a no-brainer anymore. Yes that was a design goal. However, due to restriction lifted early, farm +2, and plenty of instruments to add to GROWTH (including easy to get Children creche, Habitation complex and Habitation dome) the growth speed is much noticeably faster than in vanilla. So steady and planned colonization is still rewarding.
As bvanavery correctly pointed out, there is no much point in colonizing just because there is an empty space. Such colonization is more of a burden than benefit. Of course, with vanilla constant pop-booming nobody thinks that through. Unlimited excess of population and cheap colony allows player to just vomit this excess population to empty space for almost no cost at all disregarding these newly created bases, not managing them because the whole empire treasury is not enough to fast develop them all instantly, and leaving them there struggling on barren lands to the end of the game.
In WTP there is still plenty of resources to continue and maintain target colonization without this excessive waves of colonists in all directions.
Oh. Bvanavery just chimed in on the same.
Simple answer for that. By midgame your colonization should be over. I've written a ton of posts on that theme. You don't need lots and lots of cities to kick the snot out of things.
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 09:56:39 pm
PS allows to cheaply build 3 (three) police for the cost less than Recreation Commons and for bigger effect than it.
In your mod? That's certainly not stock, and sounds way cheaper than even I made it. Checking your alphax.txt.
Code: [Select]
Recreation Commons, 4, 1, Psych, PlaEcon, Fewer Drones
Punishment Sphere, 10, 2, MilAlg, Disable, No Drones/-50% TechSo: no, false. And not even relevant, because you can't have a PS at the beginning of the game. Like you can in my mod. I have experimented with it. Here are my costs:Code: [Select]
Recreation Commons, 3, 1, Psych, SentEco, Fewer Drones
Punishment Sphere, 4, 1, EthCalc, Disable, No Drones/-50% TechQuote
On top of this it grants more support
No it doesn't. It supports whatever a base of that size supports.
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which can be used either for these extra police units of for other units if some bases do not require that many police yet.
You meant to compare POLICE. It does nothing for SUPPORT at all. For instance if you happened to have a PS in the ocean with no minerals at all, it wouldn't be doing very well supporting stuff.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 07, 2022, 10:27:10 pm
PS allows to cheaply build 3 (three) police for the cost less than Recreation Commons and for bigger effect than it.
In your mod? That's certainly not stock, and sounds way cheaper than even I made it. Checking your alphax.txt.Code: [Select]Recreation Commons, 4, 1, Psych, PlaEcon, Fewer DronesSo: no, false. And not even relevant, because you can't have a PS at the beginning of the game. Like you can in my mod. I have experimented with it. Here are my costs:
Punishment Sphere, 10, 2, MilAlg, Disable, No Drones/-50% TechCode: [Select]Recreation Commons, 3, 1, Psych, SentEco, Fewer Drones
Punishment Sphere, 4, 1, EthCalc, Disable, No Drones/-50% Tech
By police I meant any police like scout patrol. Not necessarily 2xPolice unit.
So 3 scouts < RC.
What punishment sphere does in this equation?
QuoteOn top of this it grants more support
No it doesn't. It supports whatever a base of that size supports.
Are you saying +2 SUPPORT does not reduce support?
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2022, 11:55:58 pm
When you talk about a military unit functioning as police to quell 1 drone, be advised, your SE choices may not even allow for that. Comparison between PS, Rec Commons, and Hologram Theater is more valid, because they are all facilities that take time to build, continue to exist in 1 place, have maintenance, and do not impact SUPPORT.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 08, 2022, 01:08:14 am
The PS does not affect SUPPORT at all. Go read the Datalinks. Nor have I ever observed it to affect SUPPORT in any game I've ever played.
Are we talking about same thing? PS = Police State? Right?
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Social_Engineering_(SMAC)
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Police State
Prerequisite: Doctrine: Loyalty
+2 Support, +2 Police, -2 Efficiency (except Yang)
Am I delusional?
Post by: bvanevery on February 08, 2022, 02:56:27 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 08, 2022, 03:26:11 am
Post by: Rocky on February 08, 2022, 12:15:22 pm
I've been trying to create some distance between myself and their empire by taking a number of sea bases but resistance has been tough. I've lost nearly a dozen Quantum/Gravitron Cruisers/Interceptors before I could make some progress and now my campaign has stalled because the Gaians have build Tachyon Fields around the bases which were under threat.
(https://i.ibb.co/M6v2q8X/Will-to-Power-2.jpg) (https://ibb.co/dgTWnbh)
The Peacekeepers focused on an almost farm-only build. Given that farms provide more nutrients in WTP it worked wonders for them due to their habitation/talent bonuses. It may have been a coincidence, but the Morganites focused heavily on Echelon Mirror farms which also suits their identity.
After the AI ended their expansion phase (50 bases in Thinker.ini) they got a power spike around 2310 and went crazy. The WTP/Thinker AI is adept at building infrastructure, increasing science and within two decades I went from Unsurpassed to Wanting and I had go all out in order to keep up. Three factions declared war on me and I lost several of my outer bases in a combined Penetrator/Cruiser/Artillery attack.
In contrast to the stock AI WTP/Thinker AI does make good use of reactors and weaponry. I can't remember the stock AI ever go past Shard units but here we're already at Singularity units.
A few things I noticed (and which very likely have already been pointed out by bvanevery)
- Missiles/Planet Busters are surprisingly cheap. In the endgame i can finish a PB within a few turns.
- The AI builds Tectonic Missiles, which is a nice surprise, but are they able to use them effectively?
- Some of the later buildings feel too expensive. There is a pretty big gap between Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests and I find myself skipping the latter most of the time. (The Ai doesn't seem to be building them either)
- Orbital improvements are pretty steeply priced as well. I used to build them to give my empire a nutrient/energy boost but due to their cost I couldn't find the right moment to use them here.
- The later Secret Projects also feel too expensive. Around the time I got projects like Space Elevator/Cyborg Factory/Universal Translator it takes a pretty long time to build them, and in my case I had already reached the endgame before I could make use of them.
-This was already pointed out by bvanevery but the Ai overall seems generous in trading techs. The AI was willing to sell or trade me the more exotic techs (like Planet Busters/Graviton Weaponry/Orbital tech) for pretty good terms. I felt a kind of reassurance from this and I decided to lower my science budget for a stronger economy.
I'm not sure if it's possible but to encourage the player to invest more in end-game research the AI should be more "stingy" or demanding when it comes to techs above (for example) level 9/10. Like: I trade you this Discover 13 tech in exchange for this Build 9 tech, Conquer 10 tech and a few thousand energy credits.
I do like the increased costs for the earlier units/buildings. The higher priced colony pods give a much needed slow down to expansion and add a lot more weight to the decision where to settle or what to build.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 08, 2022, 06:11:39 pm
If you also can mention the version it would be even better to know what exactly features are in play as I keep modifying them based on user input.
I almost completed my first game on Transcend and I had a great time. I really like how the Gaians focus on fungus terraforming later in the game. It really adds a lot of flavor. The Gaians may not have had the biggest bases (which fits their ideology) but they became the runaway tech leaders and most powerful faction (see image below), surpassing even the University.
...
The Peacekeepers focused on an almost farm-only build. Given that farms provide more nutrients in WTP it worked wonders for them due to their habitation/talent bonuses. It may have been a coincidence, but the Morganites focused heavily on Echelon Mirror farms which also suits their identity.
I didn't specifically work on the faction agendas. This could be something in the vanilla that controls it. From the other side, it could be a synergy of terraforming and faction SE (both innate and chosen). Formers weight each improvements against anticipated base benefit. It could be that Morgan running high ECONOMY result in increased value for energy as it multiplied by commerce, etc. That's why increasing energy intake computes to be more beneficial in the moment.
Same exactly for Gaians with their innate +1 nutrient from fungus and probably inclination to PLANET in general. Fungus yield just start to beat others. Thanks to careful balance of conventional and fungus farming. Fungus should be slightly inferior in general but may win with some bonus combinations like extra PLANET and especially with The Manifold Harmonics.
Overall, I am quite pleased with sensible terraforming matching to faction needs. I was hoping something like that should be happening so glad to see it in action.
I've been trying to create some distance between myself and their empire by taking a number of sea bases but resistance has been tough. I've lost nearly a dozen Quantum/Gravitron Cruisers/Interceptors before I could make some progress and now my campaign has stalled because the Gaians have build Tachyon Fields around the bases which were under threat.
I've teached AI to evaluate the threat to each base and to pump up military production and garrison. Very very rudimentary. Nothing sophisticated but they should be responding in at least the volume of defensive units at border bases.
I think it is still possible to take over their bases with carefully planned assault with lots of artillery to reduce their defense.
After the AI ended their expansion phase (50 bases in Thinker.ini) they got a power spike around 2310 and went crazy. The WTP/Thinker AI is adept at building infrastructure, increasing science and within two decades I went from Unsurpassed to Wanting and I had go all out in order to keep up. Three factions declared war on me and I lost several of my outer bases in a combined Penetrator/Cruiser/Artillery attack.
Hmm. I am not sure this expansion limit applies in WTP. Need to check. Isn't it just because they colonized whole planet?
- Missiles/Planet Busters are surprisingly cheap. In the endgame i can finish a PB within a few turns.
Yep. Some misbalance in their chassis and payload cost. Updated in latest versions. Will see how it goes.
- The AI builds Tectonic Missiles, which is a nice surprise, but are they able to use them effectively?
No slightest idea, honestly. I didn't even touch this. There are so many interesting end game features not in scope of my attention. People rarely report them as they rarely see them. Good that you noticed it.
While we are on the topic I can express my opinion that these new payload types are one of many stillborn children of SMAX. They are not doing anything new that formers cannot do already and they are not doing it somewhat significantly cheaper especially fungal missile. Overall, it is not some new concept that opens door for some new tactics/strategy or interesting turn in the game. I never used them and I never saw any other player mentioned to use them and I never saw AI ever used them to my knowledge.
- Some of the later buildings feel too expensive. There is a pretty big gap between Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests and I find myself skipping the latter most of the time. (The Ai doesn't seem to be building them either)
Hybrid Forests is twice as expensive in vanilla and I kept this proportion. I guess this is intended to not make it built automatically everywhere but only in very advanced bases or something. Let me know if you think they need to be cheaper.
That is true for all other similar multiplier buildings: minerals/economy/labs/psych.
- Orbital improvements are pretty steeply priced as well. I used to build them to give my empire a nutrient/energy boost but due to their cost I couldn't find the right moment to use them here.
Intended. Previously people complained that due to their (relatively) low cost in vanilla they just immediately build them to saturate all bases. Now there should be some trade-off between them and other facilities.
- The later Secret Projects also feel too expensive. Around the time I got projects like Space Elevator/Cyborg Factory/Universal Translator it takes a pretty long time to build them, and in my case I had already reached the endgame before I could make use of them.
I guess this is common end game problem. Any end game endeavor would seem expensive comparing to the time left to play. When there are 50 SPs in game one doesn't need to build them all to win. I can sure reduce their cost to make them more interesting to build in end game if you are up to it.
-This was already pointed out by bvanevery but the Ai overall seems generous in trading techs. The AI was willing to sell or trade me the more exotic techs (like Planet Busters/Graviton Weaponry/Orbital tech) for pretty good terms. I felt a kind of reassurance from this and I decided to lower my science budget for a stronger economy.
I'm not sure if it's possible but to encourage the player to invest more in end-game research the AI should be more "stingy" or demanding when it comes to techs above (for example) level 9/10. Like: I trade you this Discover 13 tech in exchange for this Build 9 tech, Conquer 10 tech and 4000 energy credits.
True. This is on TODO list but I still not sure what is the best way to implement it. Thoughts so far: reduce overall AI willingness to trade or restrict it to lower level tech or same level tech exchange, etc. Suggestions are welcome.
Post by: Rocky on February 10, 2022, 10:04:10 pm
The last few days have been more busy but I had a short break tonight and played a few more turns. I've been able to take the number 1 spot again after completing 3 Secret Projects (Space Elevator, Cyborg Factory and Bulk Matter Transmitter; The Gaians snatched the Universal Translator unfortunately) and taking a few sea bases from the Believers. The Gaians had forced the Believers into the war─They're Pact Sisters (I'm now up against Gaians, University, Believers and the Spartans─Luckily the latter two have been fighting each other for a long time so their attention isn't really focused on me)
The Gaians have been consistently using Veteran/Commando level air units. The air battles were intense. My interceptors were dropping like flies until I went with Fundamentalist/Power, and it's still a close call.
Then the Gaians did this. I can't remember seeing this before:
(https://i.ibb.co/ZXqfsNt/Will-to-Power-3.jpg) (https://ibb.co/H45KvX1)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 10, 2022, 10:37:53 pm
No rush in reporting. Take your time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 10, 2022, 10:48:24 pm
That is indirect answer why vanilla AI sucks miserably. People just didn't have powerful computers at the time and designers cut on everything they can.
Post by: bvanevery on February 10, 2022, 11:03:22 pm
I don't think I've ever seen any AI in any binary ever use a Tectonic Missile. Tectonic missiles are a lot less tedious that land formers for raising land in the late game. They can be used to lift sea bases out of the water. You can't air drop or orbital insert into a sea base, so suddenly turning them into land, can make them much more invadeable.
Also tectonic missiles could be of theoretical use in an apocalyptic deluge, such as when you use illegal chemical weapons and Planet punishes you for it. It's very, very hard to keep up if you just use Super Formers. I've got AARs on that subject, and it was a bear. You keep trying to make Super Formers, and things keep sinking a bit faster than you can raise them up. It's a never ending slough and not much fun to play.
The stock AI does know how to engage in extensive orbital warfare, if you let its production get that far along. I'm surprised that I haven't seen that in Thinker or WTP. It happens in my own mod if the AIs are allowed to get too far ahead. There are 2 responses to this AI orbital spamming: Conventional Missiles, because they are cheaper and the AI will waste Orbital Defense Pods trying to stop them from hitting. Or ground assault. What does not work, is trying to out-compete an entrenched, large AI at making ODPs. ODPs are defense pods, and have really bad kill ratios when they go on offense. It's like 3:1.
Post by: Rocky on February 11, 2022, 12:04:19 am
I saw Domai light up a fungal missile the other week, I think. Pretty sure that wasn't Thinker but WTP. He did not make sustained use of them though. I have no idea what he thought he was accomplishing, as he threw it at someone else. Maybe he threw the only such missile he made?
I don't think I've ever seen any AI in any binary ever use a Tectonic Missile. Tectonic missiles are a lot less tedious that land formers for raising land in the late game. They can be used to lift sea bases out of the water. You can't air drop or orbital insert into a sea base, so suddenly turning them into land, can make them much more invadeable.
I haven't seen it either. One of the Ai's is sitting on a few Tectonic Missiles, but despite being at war doesn't use them. That's a great tip by the way about raising sea bases. I have to try that out next time.
Quote
The stock AI does know how to engage in extensive orbital warfare, if you let its production get that far along. I'm surprised that I haven't seen that in Thinker or WTP. It happens in my own mod if the AIs are allowed to get too far ahead. There are 2 responses to this AI orbital spamming: Conventional Missiles, because they are cheaper and the AI will waste Orbital Defense Pods trying to stop them from hitting. Or ground assault. What does not work, is trying to out-compete an entrenched, large AI at making ODPs. ODPs are defense pods, and have really bad kill ratios when they go on offense. It's like 3:1.
I had the same experience with Thinker. I can't remember them being built. (Maybe a few) Haven't seen them yet in WTP, but maybe their cost makes them less accessible. The AI doesn't have to spam them but it does add an interesting layer to the game if you have to take them into account as a player.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 11, 2022, 03:11:32 pm
Post by: Tayta Malikai on February 12, 2022, 04:05:50 am
You might like to know that the PBEM group over at RPGCodex plays games with WtP now. Most of the actual Thinker/WtP changes are turned off, but the option for extra starting formers and colony pods is very handy, and the options to have PLANET bonus apply on defense and to nerf magtubes from their OP vanilla state are nice too.
Post by: bvanevery on February 12, 2022, 05:09:14 am
the PBEM group over at RPGCodex
What part of their site does that exist in? I tried looking through the Forums in the Strategy section, but didn't see anything. Searching for "Alpha Centauri" in the forums also gave me a File Not Found.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 12, 2022, 06:53:06 pm
😎
Also it would be nice to have a constant feedback on what works and what doesn't in MP too. So I may inquire about this there.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on February 13, 2022, 02:01:00 am
Vanilla Game 1 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-1.91970/)
Vanilla Game 2 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-2.92864/)
Vanilla Game 3 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-pbem-game-3.100614/) (starring Nevill)
Binary Dawn Game 1 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-1.123497/)
Binary Dawn Game 2 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-2.126329/)
Binary Dawn Game 3 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-3.129491/)
Binary Dawn Game 4 (http://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-4.132258/)
Binary Dawn Game 5 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-binary-dawn-game-5.134614/)
Will to Power Game 1 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri.137753/)
Will to Power Game 2 (https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/lets-multiplay-alpha-centauri-the-cognito-elite-clubs-sport-of-choice-returns.141827/) (in progress, just started)
In my opinion, the most entertaining ones are Vanilla 2 and Binary Dawn 1, but they all have their moments.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 13, 2022, 05:18:59 am
Post by: Tayta Malikai on February 13, 2022, 05:22:14 am
Since it's XenForo, it's possible you previously saw an alert from the thread, and then moused over to dismiss it without opening the thread. You don't get subsequent alerts if that happens.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 13, 2022, 05:25:37 am
Post by: Rocky on February 15, 2022, 11:41:06 am
Thank you for your detailed reply. I appreciate it. The version I used in this game was 281.
I've made a fresh install and installed 285 for the next game. I'll add the factions I didn't use in the previous game.
I'll hold off on any suggestions because the last game was played with the Pirates, and I want to have a full game with a land-based faction this time, especially to see if mineral production will be different in relation to end game buildings/projects. I'm not an experienced player and I want to be careful to suggest something that isn't well founded.
One thing I do feel more confident about is the cost of a Hybrid Forest. Which felt like it kind of broke the "flow" of building up infrastructure. If you wish, would you consider changing the cost from 36 to maybe something like 27?
One thing I also noticed (and this may be something you've already changed) is that the AI doesn't colonize islands or uninhabited (small) landmasses. I remember Thinker AI colonizing islands as the Pirates. (Or an Ai which commits to expansion on the sea) They surrounded islands with sea bases and then built bases on it and terraformed it. It created production/economic hubs which gave the AI a lot of resources.
=== ===
EDIT: I missed your comment about tech trading.
Tech trading on an equal value level sounds good. The AI being more careful with technology also sounds good.
I feel it would be best if the AI is less willing to trade when it comes to key techs. It already seems to do this for Secret Projects, but I wonder if this can also be extended to key technologies which give things like: Reactors, weaponry that is currently state-of-the-art on Planet, air power, orbital tech, missiles, economic facilities like Tree Farms, tech that unlocks resources, etc)
It doesn't have to mean the AI will never trade them, but more that the AI values them more and takes the current geopolitical situation on Planet into account. (Like "I want two D9 techs in return for this C10 tech." "Instead of 250 energy credits, I want 2500." Or "the human player is allied with my enemy, I'm not trading these techs right now.")
An idea could also be that (AI) players which are rivals (Like being in the top 3 power chart) will make the AI even more cautious to trade key technologies because it could put their own position in jeopardy.
What should be avoided IMO is for the AI to value tech humans have as less than the same tech the other AI's have. That would create a kind of unfair feeling to put the human player at a disadvantage.
However, it would be okay for the AI to overcharge certain key techs. (If few factions have them) The argument can be made that these techs offer new options that will last throughout the game. The additional price tag could be justified as an "investment" for long term benefits.
Post by: Induktio on February 15, 2022, 05:31:17 pm
One thing I also noticed (and this may be something you've already changed) is that the AI doesn't colonize islands or uninhabited (small) landmasses. I remember Thinker AI colonizing islands as the Pirates. (Or an Ai which commits to expansion on the sea) They surrounded islands with sea bases and then built bases on it and terraformed it. It created production/economic hubs which gave the AI a lot of resources.
Simple answer is that you're not playing against Thinker AI when you're playing WTP. The mod replaces nearly everything with unit movement last time I checked, so there's nothing really similar between the AI actions of these two mods.
I noticed WTP's readme makes these kind of claims "New AI terraforming algorithm replacing Thinker's. These are few notable changes among many. [...] * Works best tiles first. * Properly selects best basic improvement option between rocky mine, farm-mine, farm-collector, forest." etc.
Unless the author elaborates on the terms like what means "properly", "works best tiles first", how these two implementations compare, or what you're even comparing them against (vanilla AI?), it's hard to justify those claims.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 15, 2022, 05:33:23 pm
I'm not an experienced player and I want to be careful to suggest something that isn't well founded.
Come on! I don't think anyone even can measure this ephemeral "experience" in game playing! It sounds like "I am not very experienced in having fun".
😂
Please don't ever mention this again and never hesitate to share ideas popping up to your head. There is no harm in opinion expressed. The more the merrier. Free flow of information is the foundation of fan based projects and activities like this one.
You can always change your opinion later influenced by others. That is completely normal process. If you follow this forum from the beginning you'll see that every change was discussed by many people from multiple angles before got finalized and polished.
One thing I do feel more confident about is the cost of a Hybrid Forest. Which felt like it kind of broke the "flow" of building up infrastructure. If you wish, would you consider changing the cost from 36 to maybe something like 27?
I can reduce cost. I bumped them of the rationale that they are multi-purpose facilities: 1) reducing terraforming eco-damage, 2) improving forest yield, 3) +50% economy and psych. Each of these features are exceptionally useful and the last one even pays for facility maintenance. However, if you observe that nobody builds it even for that price than maybe it is too high.
Try this one: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases/tag/286
Another consideration is that vanilla tends to double the cost of next similar multiplying facility in line (Fusion lab -> Quantum lab, Research hospital -> Nanohospital, etc.). The rationale is that later in the game player has more production to spend so it just reflects production power inflation cost. However, double cost may be too steep price for same exactly benefits as you noticed. So maybe they need to grow like 50-75% instead?
One thing I also noticed (and this may be something you've already changed) is that the AI doesn't colonize islands or uninhabited (small) landmasses. I remember Thinker AI colonizing islands as the Pirates. (Or an Ai which commits to expansion on the sea) They surrounded islands with sea bases and then built bases on it and terraformed it. It created production/economic hubs which gave the AI a lot of resources.
That is the one thing I try to teach them. At least in some recent versions I tested they do it. Like Pirates goes to the nearest land, etc. May need fгrther verification and and tuning, as with any AI feature.
Tech trading on an equal value level sounds good. The AI being more careful with technology also sounds good.
I feel it would be best if the AI is less willing to trade when it comes to key techs. It already seems to do this for Secret Projects, but I wonder if this can also be extended to key technologies which give things like: Reactors, weaponry that is currently state-of-the-art on Planet, air power, orbital tech, missiles, economic facilities like Tree Farms, tech that unlocks resources, etc)
It doesn't have to mean the AI will never trade them, but more that the AI values them more and takes the current geopolitical situation on Planet into account. (Like "I want two D9 techs in return for this C10 tech." "Instead of 250 energy credits, I want 2500." Or "the human player is allied with my enemy, I'm not trading these techs right now.")
An idea could also be that (AI) players which are rivals (Like being in the top 3 power chart) will make the AI even more cautious to trade key technologies because it could put their own position in jeopardy.
What should be avoided IMO is for the AI to value tech humans have as less than the same tech the other AI's have. That would create a kind of unfair feeling to put the human player at a disadvantage.
However, it would be okay for the AI to overcharge certain key techs. (If few factions have them) The argument can be made that these techs offer new options that will last throughout the game. The additional price tag could be justified as an "investment" for long term benefits.
Agreed. These are all good ideas. Customizing game behavior is very tedious and error prone thing. Nobody wants more bugs in the game. The first approach would be to try simple numeric parameters and see if they are satisfactory enough. Like plainly reduce frequency of tech trading in general and see if we get the effect. Reduce the chance of stealing tech and see if we get the effect. Etc.
Problem with key tech is - how to understand they are key tech? There is no 100% agreement in the community about it. In vanilla reactor and needlers were considered OP and so their unlocking techs. In mods this may change and so will unlocking tech value. I think vanilla AI already does good dynamic evaluation on tech value counting everything it unlocks. Which is pretty nice feature. If you noticed they sometimes offer 25-50-75-100 credits for it depending on their personal need in it. These numbers may be adjusted for inflation, of course, to match current cash flow but other than that the valuation mechanics is there.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 15, 2022, 05:57:02 pm
One thing I also noticed (and this may be something you've already changed) is that the AI doesn't colonize islands or uninhabited (small) landmasses. I remember Thinker AI colonizing islands as the Pirates. (Or an Ai which commits to expansion on the sea) They surrounded islands with sea bases and then built bases on it and terraformed it. It created production/economic hubs which gave the AI a lot of resources.
Simple answer is that you're not playing against Thinker AI when you're playing WTP. The mod replaces nearly everything with unit movement last time I checked, so there's nothing really similar between the AI actions of these two mods.
I noticed WTP's readme makes these kind of claims "New AI terraforming algorithm replacing Thinker's. These are few notable changes among many. [...] * Works best tiles first. * Properly selects best basic improvement option between rocky mine, farm-mine, farm-collector, forest." etc.
Unless the author elaborates on the terms like what means "properly", "works best tiles first", how these two implementations compare, or what you're even comparing them against (vanilla AI?), it's hard to justify those claims.
Sorry, man. I didn't mean to diminish your AI work. After all you pioneered it!
😀
These claims were made at the time I was thinking I improved something comparing to current Thinker version at the time. It is my impression only. I may simply be blatantly wrong about my achievements. Besides, you keep modifying it so may get better in recent versions.
At some point you mentioned that you gave up doing anything AI related besides small fixes here and there. So I picked up and carried the torch. It seems you are back in this business. So I will glad to exchange ideas improving both mods, as always.
I won't go into deep details of my approach as it may take long. Here are paradigms I am trying to stick to.
Precompute all values once if possible and then feed ready results to vanilla hooks instead of recalculating them at every hook invocation. This is how I generate terraforming orders for formers, colonies and some combat vehicles. It is not 100% like that yet.
In same vein I am trying to avoid arbitrary hooks if I can do it directly. For example, I abandoned "suggest production" hook and instead just review all bases and set their production to what I need at the end of the faction turn. The effect is largely same but I don't depend anymore on when game decides to change production now, all bases are reviewed, and they all can benefit from global precomputed values, etc.
I am also trying to use standard AI priority approach to reduce coupling between different game aspects. During selecting base production phase each option is evaluated and gets its priority based on its usefulness, current needs, faction demands, etc. Then the highest priority item wins. A lot of these priority parameters are exported with "ai_production" prefixes for tweaking.
Code also tries to use dynamic values from the game whenever possible. For example evaluating terraforming improvement actually simulates this improvement, compute base, verifies if base actually likes it and, if yes, how much benefit base takes. This all using in-game functions for yield, etc. This way it becomes slightly more flexible against tweaking game rule yield variables and the like.
Update
The above alone does not guarantee better AI performance, of course. The devil is in details and exact parameter values.
Post by: bvanevery on February 15, 2022, 06:33:01 pm
Unless the author elaborates on the terms like what means "properly", "works best tiles first", how these two implementations compare, or what you're even comparing them against (vanilla AI?), it's hard to justify those claims.I've now got some recent experience in both mods. I don't have any opinion on this issue yet. My Thinker games have been determined by other issues so far:
- don't leave someone alone long enough that they nuke you
- don't flank before you have the strength to do so
- don't expose a close land front as an early sea empire
- early Pirates are weak compared to Thinker AI land factions
It is worth noting that these mods do not have the same basic terrain capabilities available. Boreholes in WTP are nerfed. I think condensers do not give a scaled bonus in their square, they give +1 nutrient.
In my own mod, the original game capabilities are allowed. However, they're at least twice as time consuming to build IIRC, and absent the Weather Paradigm, you won't get to build them until late game. You could do all that condenser / supplier / borehole scumming eventually if you're so inclined, but it is not going to be the one and only true obvious golden path through the game. At some point, I may try putting Thinker's code up against my rules, to see what happens. Not yet though. Still evaluating Thinker in its own terms. Well, except for I'm only playing Thinker with what might be "real" global warming damage now. And a few other tweaks to its .ini.
Post by: Induktio on February 15, 2022, 06:50:15 pm
Okay, but generally it's important not to over-engineer the solutions. I'm not making that judgment on any specific thing here, just saying some elements in WTP code already look quite complicated. Also another consideration is that WTP presents lots of very complex parameters in its config file. It's a usability concern if it's too hard understand what those options do without knowing all the implementation details.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 15, 2022, 07:52:15 pm
> I won't go into deep details of my approach as it may take long. Here are paradigms I am trying to stick to.
Okay, but generally it's important not to over-engineer the solutions. I'm not making that judgment on any specific thing here, just saying some elements in WTP code already look quite complicated. Also another consideration is that WTP presents lots of very complex parameters in its config file. It's a usability concern if it's too hard understand what those options do without knowing all the implementation details.
True about over-engineering. I try to avoid it if I can. Like replace it with simple solution if it comes to my mind. That works for patches. Does not for AI, though. The mere amount of things to account for is huge and AI code is bound to be thousands lines. Vanilla AI code is nightmare mess. I never ever even tried to understand it. You cannot escape this fate either. Thinker AI code is the biggest part of the project. And most obscure one too - I don't try to understand it in its entirety or integrate with it. Same for WTP, I guess. That is why I proposed to exchange ideas to see if we can simplify it.
As for obscure AI configuration parameters I never planned them to be dials users would turn the way they like and understand what is going on. This is for my own and dedicated testers only use. I sure can use separate file or keep them in the code but why bother? They are clearly marked as AI parameters at the end of the file. They are mostly described as well. I don't see an issue.
Post by: bvanevery on February 15, 2022, 10:36:30 pm
You cannot escape this fate either. Thinker AI code is the biggest part of the project. And most obscure one too - I don't try to understand it in its entirety or integrate with it. Same for WTP, I guess.
So far in the WTP sources I've tried to partially understand one function. The one I think is likely responsible for the "keep spreading forever" policy. Which I know is strategically wrong. And of course, being only interested in partial understanding, I haven't even remotely proposed an actual working solution for anything going on in there. Only the proposition, that effort should be focused on this one function. That it's a locus of problems and probably represents some kind of low hanging fruit.
Quote
As for obscure AI configuration parameters I never planned them to be dials users would turn the way they like and understand what is going on. This is for my own and dedicated testers only use.
Valid design goal. It makes it possible for someone as hardcore as myself, to do playtesting, consider very carefully the biggest problems, and look for a knob that might solve the problem. Maybe even feed in a value and see if it actually does something better. Without such knobs, and a list of "choke points" in the code where it would indeed be profitable to look for answers, I surely wouldn't bother. I mean, I've got a DX12 3D engine project to draw my attention. I don't need to be "deeply in the weeds" for something that will never make me a dime, especially considering my ongoing state of real world poverty.
So yeah. Knob it up for the rare experts that come along. It makes it possible for someone else to follow your work. Yitzi, in particular, never did that. Probably never conceived of a need to do that. Got busy with his own life. And hey guess what, other people trying to pore over obscure things you did in machine code, is not sustainable and not an invitation to follow on the work.
Even my work on the original game, often didn't proceed with understanding. It proceeded with empirical observation and a helluva lot of playtesting. I've "hacked" my way to many solutions in the original binary. Better map generation, would be an obvious self-contained example of that. It preceded me actually starting SMACX AI Growth mod.
Another example would be the "Deirdre wants Locusts before going Green" bug in the original binary. I hacked my whole SE table around that problem. Makes my SE table look stupid, unless someone bothers to actually read my design notes. Or I verbally explain it to someone who's been in disbelief the umpteenth time. :-) I kinda miss vonbach that way.
I hacked my way out of the stock AI being stupid about SUPPORT...
It's kinda like the game's AI is a "sort of" ersatz neural network, with weights. I have manually provided a pile of weights. Other game devs might just say pff, data driven design. As in game dev 101.
Or from the 3D graphics / asm optimization jock standpoint, you optimize a real system, for its real behavior. Theory on paper doesn't work. It may inform your heuristics as you try to optimize stuff, but real world results are king. You have some commercial benchmark, you either win it or you lose it.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 16, 2022, 02:42:43 am
Valid design goal. It makes it possible for someone as hardcore as myself, to do playtesting, consider very carefully the biggest problems, and look for a knob that might solve the problem. Maybe even feed in a value and see if it actually does something better. Without such knobs, and a list of "choke points" in the code where it would indeed be profitable to look for answers, I surely wouldn't bother.
Err... It is not a secret. You don't need to guess. Just ask me and I'll be glad to share.
😀
I would appreciate any attention to this. I just meant I didn't expect anyone would be paying attention. Therefore, they are not explicitly documented.
Post by: bvanevery on February 16, 2022, 08:07:05 am
Asking devs about stuff, is typically pretty slow. It also has political risk. You can piss off the dev. It doesn't actually take much with typical open source devs working on things. Although you and I have a track record, there's still the risk of pushing you too hard on something. You can take a lot, but in the past I've observed, even you have limits.
Thus, in the vast majority of cases, I don't ask. I find. I search. I RTFM and study the code. I also assess how much energy I'm personally willing to put into something. I'm not going to get into a big dev conversation with somebody, leading them to the expectation that I'm going to do a lot of work, until I've actually decided already that I'm going to do some work. In open source, it's better to "do your own recon", look over the horizon, and quietly disappear if it looks like it's gonna be a hellhole.
There's also just the reality of, how much do I have going on in my own life? I've given energy when I've had the free time and attention span to do so. I'm very aware of how that can evaporate. Therefore, I don't start creating expectations that I can't finish.
Example: I say I barely looked at the code for 1 function, because I don't want to give any impression at all, that I spent any more energy than that, or am committed to doing so. With a development attitude like that, there's not that much for me to be asking about! ;lol
I mean we all wish someone else would write the AI, or provide the 3D engine, or cook up the art assets, or get the legal papers drawn up. The reality is, I either find ways to get that stuff done for my own, commercially viable work... or I get to keep living out of a car, until I'm literally old and literally die.
So although day to day, part of me might want to get more engaged to certain things, the other part of me is doing "triage" of how I can afford to spend my time. Digging further through the gory details of that 1 function, ain't it right now.
What I actually ended up doing was a Thinker assessment. Plenty time consuming, but not that much cognitive load to it. I mean I need to play some kind of game anyways, and I can do AARs in my sleep.
It does make me wonder about the agenda of "more efficient" AAR production, and what the commercial import of such might be. I haven't put brain cells into it and don't have any serious answer yet.
It's up there with the "how do you run a web forum democratically" problem. Like I recently got enlightened about some of Paradox's past modder debacles. There was something called the Magna Mundi mod for Europa Universalis III. The rest of the story about that is epic. Not "Diaspora suicidal" epic, but involuntarily committed epic.
Too bad I'm not rich. As a younger man, a friend of mine and I joked we were supposed to be fops by now.
Post by: dino on February 16, 2022, 09:09:51 am
AI maybe should dedicate resources to rush infrastructure in new bases and always send a former, or two with midgame colony pods so they can get off the ground as fast as possile and go for midsize production centers instead of fully fledged bases.
But you haven't really made a good case why it's a bad policy in general. Yes the game may end before these bases will took off, but what if the game manages to last 300 turns ?
There is not a single unlimited production piece, that provides better return on investment than a new base, so you are asking for AI to stop playing competitively at some point, so it's not too annoying to finish it off.
As for annoyance aspect, it's easily solvable by not playing on huge maps and didn't Inductio already implemented an adjustable AI expansion limit because of your complaints ?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 16, 2022, 01:52:36 pm
Asking devs about stuff, is typically pretty slow. It also has political risk. You can piss off the dev. It doesn't actually take much with typical open source devs working on things. Although you and I have a track record, there's still the risk of pushing you too hard on something. You can take a lot, but in the past I've observed, even you have limits.
You are thinking about it too much. And you also somehow mistake developers with mean people. Not all of them are mean.
😉
I wouldn't worry about it. This is not any large size project and I am not under any kind of pressure. So will be glad to talk about anything - as I said and I meant it.
Not expecting any commitment from anybody either. Not even from myself.
Post by: bvanevery on February 16, 2022, 02:27:58 pm
Not expecting any commitment from anybody either. Not even from myself.Well, even that is not something you just find out from people. "So, are you committed to what you're doing?" Gets on people's nerves fast. I don't ask about that. I look at how many commits they're making to their code repository, whether they respond to questions put to them, and critically - if I do work, do they do work?
You're fine. I'm just saying, I don't ask about this sort of thing. Which leaves people's level of commitment, somewhat in the dark.
Try to understand I've lost literally man years of my life to $0 open source developer politics. I'm very gunshy about doing lots of work where I get burned again. Maybe almost to the point of PTSD. "Overthinking it" as you claim. Working on SMACX AI Growth mod all by myself, is the logical conclusion of such a history.
Post by: bvanevery on February 16, 2022, 02:48:58 pm
But you haven't really made a good case why it's a bad policy in general.
I don't need to. It's clearly broken policy in WTP right now. I've written tons of AAR-like posts on the subject. I've got issues filed in the Issue Tracker. Fix what I've QA'd. Then worry about whether it's a good/bad policy "in general".
Quote
so you are asking for AI to stop playing competitively at some point,
It's not playing competitively now. Thinker is competitive now. WTP isn't.
Quote
didn't Induktio already implemented an adjustable AI expansion limit
I haven't tried turning that knob. One reason not to do it, is Thinker seems to derive its strength overwhelmingly from condensers, supply crawlers, and thermal boreholes. One of my test games, there were like 80 crawlers in play. I thought, "If only I could find a way to kill those things?" That's area based growth, not vertical growth. I'm slightly concerned that Thinker might not actually know how to grow big cities, absent these exploits. "Concerned" meaning, my next testing procedure is throwing what I consider "real rules" on top of it. Instead of that clearly golden path exploitable original game stuff. I really don't like "the boreholes only" game. Very much offends the Deirdre tree hugger "forest and forget" in me.
WTP is similar to my modding work in that it makes "real rules" for just about everything. But most especially, about terrain.
Quote
because of your complaints ?
Hardly. Could have been someone else's identical complaints for all I know. Could have been Induktio deciding it's The Right Thing To Do [TM]. But we generally speaking, have not previously given any real feedback on each other's work. We got off on the wrong foot at the beginning, a few years ago. Fundamental disagreements about AI faction SE choices, global flooding from AI boreholes, and utilization of [power tech wealth growth] weights in alphax.txt. Those first 2 issues, well nowadays Thinker has knobs for them. I'm still checking on how those knobs work, to see if they do what I hope they do.
I don't know if the 3rd issue is even an issue anymore. If it is an issue, it'll affect how dumping my mod on top of Thinker goes. If factions research stuff pretty much like I expect, based on long experience with my own work, then there's no issue. If factions mysteriously cheat and beeline for certain techs, then there's an issue. Those weights are supposed to be a racetrack for how blind research works, for how easy or difficult anything is, depending on your choices. It's not supposed to be some advisory nice idea that you can just blow off, and instead implement your own internal directed research algorithm. You make a choice about general area you want to research in, and then you're stuck with the probabilistic consequences of your choice. That's the game. And I've spent years fine tuning that particular game. Very exact and disciplined regimen of what Explore Discover Build Conquer mean, compared to the slop of the original game. I want the AI to play the same game I'm playing, and not have some special cheat put into the binary.
Post by: dino on February 17, 2022, 11:13:47 am
Post by: bvanevery on February 17, 2022, 11:57:33 am
I agree that techs ai weights are much better handled in the alphax.txt, than in the gamecode, but making his tech weights optional is like the first thing he made due to your feedback at the very beginning.
Well if that happened, I never noticed, because I stopped following Thinker's development. I don't see anything about tech weights in Thinker 3.1's .ini. Alternate tech cost to research, yes, but not anything about [power tech wealth growth] for blind research. I suppose I could play catchup right this minute and read the entirety of Changelog.md.
Ok, just did that. I don't see anything obviously relevant. Moving along to Details.md.
Ok, read that too. I don't see anything.
I'm not planning to dig through Thinker's source code at this time. What actually matters is the test game I'm about to run, and whether blind research is "noticeably off" somehow. No point worrying about it until I actually see something. And I'm aware that even the original game binary, did dirty tricks to get the AIs to the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. There are a couple of other dissassembled goosings that some people have discovered.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 17, 2022, 12:30:55 pm
I don't really understand the point of arguments here. Taking things out of context and putting opponent claims to extreme doesn't really going to help finding common ground.
First of all, I strongly believe, everybody understand that founding new bases during war for survival is not the best option. I don't remember myself frantically expanding in such situations. Neither does AI nor most of the human players. On huge map populating the rest of it only happens after the game won militaristically. Otherwise, opponents will just take your best biggest bases while you are founding new empty ones. Anybody wants to argue with that?
Then, even in some imaginary pure economical competition, even in vanilla, founding new base brings diminishing return and becomes a liability at some point. Everybody may name different perception about when it happens. The exact number is not a key point here. The point is that even founding new base and do nothing with it leaving it rioting every turn does impact the rest of empire by increasing number of b-drones in other bases. On a standard map founding every new base beyond 24 generates 3 drones somewhere.
Vanilla allows player to expand more or less beneficial until global war breaks. That may create a perception that expanding is the best economical strategy ever trumped only by defense. WTP tilts the balance a little toward vertical growth. So the point of diminishing return appears somewhat earlier. Maybe even before the war. Thus the period of vertical growth becomes somewhat more pronounced than in vanilla. That is all.
Some people may argue that vanilla PTS makes expansion pay for itself infinitely. That is a false perception caused by massive faction power increase due to inflated population. Founding new bases with PTS let player win faster because they outnumber opponents in early-mid stage but further base founding beyond certain limit is still a liability.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 17, 2022, 12:37:08 pm
making his tech weights optional is like the first thing he made due to your feedback at the very beginning.
By "he" you mean Induktio and Thinker? I don't recall anything like that either. Besides, I don't see a point doing this programmatically as one can just simply equalize weights in txt.
Post by: bvanevery on February 17, 2022, 04:14:34 pm
PTS is the 1 SP that I never worry about the AI getting it instead of me. It's the absolute last priority, even less than the stock binary's Universal Translator. BTW only recently did I clue into WTP's retooling of that and the TOE. Good call, making those global benefits.
Post by: dino on February 17, 2022, 07:56:50 pm
It was made optional through thinker.ini setting within weeks after bvanevery first complained about it over 3 years ago:
; Prioritize former/crawler/resource cap-lifting techs when selecting what to research.
tech_balance=1
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 17, 2022, 08:25:33 pm
There was no point in making it programmatically in the first place, but Inductio had a policy at this early stage for thinker to work with vanilla alphax.txt.
It was made optional through thinker.ini setting within weeks after bvanevery first complained about it over 3 years ago:
; Prioritize former/crawler/resource cap-lifting techs when selecting what to research.
tech_balance=1
Ah. You qualified it some unusual way and confused other discussion participants.
😂
This "Prioritize former/crawler/resource cap-lifting techs" has nothing to do with tech weights. It explicitly overrides tech priority for just few of them. Tech weights are still used normal way for majority of tech. They are not optional.
Post by: Induktio on February 17, 2022, 08:37:29 pm
There was no point in making it programmatically in the first place, but Inductio had a policy at this early stage for thinker to work with vanilla alphax.txt.
It was made optional through thinker.ini setting within weeks after bvanevery first complained about it over 3 years ago:
There's some inaccuracies here unfortunately. Tech balance has always been an option, and there wasn't any later point in time where it would have been "made optional", because it was already listed as thinker.ini option. This did not change after any "complaints". I did later change the calculation multiple times but that is another matter. Anyway the intention was always that the feature would remain optional.
And this kind of feature is still very necessary for the AI if the players use some other alphax.txt mods that haven't adjusted their tech weights. For players it's not viable to expect them to edit this stuff in alphax.txt files manually in each case. In this case tech_balance feature ensures the AI uses sane research priorities in the early game. There would be an argument that the same could be done for player factions, but this is not that important since players can adjust their research priorities anyway, even while using blind research, which essentially results in directed research if you micromanage the weights enough. AIs would not have this ability. Not to mention humans can trade techs very easily. That's all I got to say about this thing once more.
Post by: bvanevery on February 17, 2022, 08:43:13 pm
It became pretty clear to me then, that we weren't going to agree on how the game should be implemented / respected / standardized. That we weren't going to have any real compatibility between our works. So I stopped caring and had no interest in it, as happens in open source. Concentrated on making my own work good, which is something I have full control over.
That was then, this is now. But oh good grief, now I see that option is still in Thinker.ini ! I missed it because it's been a long time and the exact verbiage / framing was not on my mind. Well for better or for worse, I'm currently playing with that option set, as per default. We will see if there's a noticeable empirical impact. I don't know if there's going to be yet another game after the current one, because I have no way of knowing what might derail the current game. But at least now I'm duly informed / reminded.
Even now, if we have some kind of detente, I don't see myself suddenly supporting my mod "with Thinker". I put my work under CC-BY-NC license for a reason, to let someone else be responsible for sort of thing, if they so choose. They can go grab the limelight for that and become "The Great Integrator". Taking all the bows and lumps for such an effort. I don't want responsibility for what they concoct. It would at least double my testing load, and I have already put tons of time into my own QA.
It doesn't actually profit me, as a game designer and developer, to share the stage with Induktio in any way. Whether people buy commercial titles from me in the future, depends on whether they think I am responsible for the work. If I share that with someone else, particularly someone who has done a "very heavy" project of their own, then people have no way of knowing all the work I actually did.
This is true for Tim as well, unfortunately. Not gonna suddenly combine my mod with WTP. Plus, in that case we have really different tech trees and SE tables. There's not even a clear way to combine. Influence, sure. We've had that happen anyways, without any kind of formal credit sharing. Combine, no.
The niche I've carved out, is "here's what you can do with the stock binary." You could always have done what I've done, at any point in the past 20+ years. No illegal binary modding heroics required. Just an awful lot of elbow grease, and taking the low hanging fruit. Until it hurts.
I go back and forth about the legality of binary modding. I'm happy to avoid any entanglement in that regard. As I try to get my own commercial title out there, I don't need EA gunning for me.
Post by: bvanevery on February 17, 2022, 09:16:35 pm
And this kind of feature is still is very necessary for the AI if the players use some other alphax.txt mods that haven't adjusted their tech weights.
Who would that have ever been? Wouldn't ever have been me. Wasn't Tim later. Wouldn't / shouldn't have been you. So what is the concern, some "lesser known / more random / abandoned" alphax.txt that is floating around out there somewhere, from the stone ages? I'm not familiar with more developed and ongoing work, such as Binary Dawn. I would expect an author that is still persisting in such effort, would know how [power tech wealth growth] actually work.
The main impact of bad Build decisions in the stock binary, is the Spartans wouldn't build a darned road or turn any soil, for a long time. They'd get to it eventually, but they really really did a bad job, early on.
The fix for this problem is both conceptually trivial, and trivial to implement. Formers are a technology of Conquest. When you lay down roads to your enemy, they die faster. Drilling a road straight into the enemy's heart, is standard operating procedure against "nearby" AIs that you want dead. You can also defend your own empire better with an internal road system.
So you set power=1 in Centauri Ecology, instead of the 0 it has in the vanilla alphax.txt. This means a pure Conquer faction like the Spartans will get around to making Formers.
This kind of solution is generally true of any "hangup" early tech. Such as Information Networks and Network Nodes. Stock AI can get into serious tech stagnation not ever building these, because various factions never learn Information Networks. I've often put a "bread crumb" =1 in its weights, to make sure that the stock AI doesn't get hung up forever by that.
The important implementation detail is "=0" is a hard barrier. That should be understood by the alphax.txt designer, and used judiciously. It should not be softened by a game binary. The designer should either use the barrier because they intended it, or not have it.
Yes I think people should actually learn how to use the data driven design of alphax.txt and not have the binary doing magic things behind their back. I suppose it gets into a broader philosophy of what modders "should be doing". I'm not really understanding the concept of a "casual" modder, for something as complicated as 4X TBS or an alphax.txt file. I wonder if the historical evidence in that regard, is for or against me. It's definitely for me now, in 2022, with the people we actually still have doing major work. But the last 20 years? I have no idea. I was asleep about all matters social and multiplayer, with this game.
Rather than trying to "save people from their ignorance" and implementing special things in binaries, players can be educated about what they should do with an alphax.txt, using a comment. I'm pretty sparing about those in my alphax.txt, but I do have a few. Because there are some really important and picky things I've discovered in the course of my work, like:
Code: [Select]
; Bunkers are disabled because the AI builds way too many of them,
; which simply gives a human player an easy way to invade.Code: [Select]
; A predefined unit cannot be upgraded to. That's an unfortunate limitation of the original game.
;
; We can work around this problem making our predefined units, seem different than the designs
; the player comes up with in the Workshop. The 30th and 31st ability bits are not used, so we
; can turn one of them on to make it seem like a different unit design. Unfortunately this messes
; with the display of unit abilities and their cost, but there's no other way.
;
; We do not need to create a seemingly different unit design, if one cannot ever upgrade to it.
; For instance, you can't upgrade to a mindworm. Nor to a Scout, Former, Sea Former, Probe Team,
; Foil Probe Team, or Supply Crawler, because they have no abilities and the lowest possible armor settings.Code: [Select]
; TECHSHARE = Gain any technology known to # other players that have been infiltrated
; (by probe, Empath Guild, Governor, or Pact).That seems to be it. Maybe I'm not doing the best job educating. ;lol I have not tried to advance the cause of greater [power tech wealth growth] awareness using my mod at all. Didn't think of pedagogy. Thought an alphax.txt modder should know what they're doing, by reading the thing until it hurts.
Like how are you going to mod predefined units, if you don't "get in there" and figure out it's an array that you add entries to? I've had very, very noob modders ask how you do that sort of thing. I answer nicely, but the meta answer is "you open up a .txt file and read wtf is going on". That's how you mod. If you don't get something, you scratch your head real hard until you do. Like, surely the original devs bothered for some reason?
I grew up PEEKing and POKEing memory locations on an Atari 800. I taught myself how to do that, reading a small number of books and magazines. There was no internet and nobody had a clue back then. Maybe I'm a fossil. Well, if I am a fossil, so were the original SMAC devs. Like look at the binary flag tables. Surely if you're going to mod binary flag tables, you can figure out [power tech wealth growth].
Post by: bvanevery on February 17, 2022, 10:01:28 pm
Tech weights are still used normal way for majority of tech. They are not optional.And probably, back at the beginning, I saw "not following standard way to implement / solve" as far more of a big deal, with far more invasive scope, than it may have ever been at the time, or turned out to be over the long haul. Like I see this guy changing weights that I've spent
Post by: dino on February 17, 2022, 11:34:35 pm
I couldn't imagine this discussion would be a thing if it was optional, so I've just assumed it wasn't initially.
I'm sorry that I've just contributed to digging it up, lets just burry it again please.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 21, 2022, 06:24:52 pm
Building mining platforms all around does not solve the problem. The platform produces 1 mineral for the cost of -1 nutrient and -3 energy. This is huge price that nullify all above talks about sea bases fast growth and extra cash flow. Surrounding sea bases with platforms turn them into inferior version of land bases that still eats more minerals to support more formers for building these platforms.
I am thinking to return Pressure dome bonus to aid to sea bases especially with +1 mineral aquatic bonus removed. Moreover, I think it would be more viable to give +2 minerals instead of +1/+1/+1 as in vanilla. That is not exceptionally huge bonus but it'll at least let sea bases to maintain some minimal fleet of useful units including transports those are actually very much needed for ocean based factions. I also think it should be allowed for land bases to build this as well and receive same exactly bonus: +2 minerals/turn for 80 minerals invested. It is relatively average deal and won't be an OP.
Thoughts?
Post by: bvanevery on February 21, 2022, 07:20:49 pm
Post by: EmpathCrawler on February 21, 2022, 10:10:49 pm
They do get an advantage in former turns even though their formers are more expensive. They have far fewer improvements to build, and their primary source of food will grow on its own.
A lot of the Pirate advantages aren't ones the AI can exploit very effectively, like time, flexibility, pod popping. They aren't bright enough to seek out and secure the two sea landmarks that they know
I don't play with SMAX factions so my primary experience with sea bases is what I call "sea exile". It's when you or the AI successfully eject an annoying faction from land and then have to put up with their sad, ineffectual attacks and bombardments from the sea because they hate you forever. I'd be nice if the AI knew when it got beat and cut its losses rather than becoming 10 annoying Taiwans.
Post by: bvanevery on February 22, 2022, 12:25:05 am
;banjo :hammer: ;rockon ;rockon ;rockon
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 08:55:23 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 01:27:39 pm
They still cannot support too many units but they at least spread pretty fast. That should be good compensation.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 02:28:49 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 02:47:58 pm
What's that? Can you create issue with description https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues (https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues)? I'll have a look.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 03:44:49 pm
Bug description: Every time a base completes a facility it will automatically switch to Stockpile Energy. Since the game handles energy income after production you will then get the full Stockpile Energy amount added to your energy reserves on top of the normal turn production that went into the completed facility. Essentially you get the turn production for that base twice, once in form of Energy.
If you construct a unit instead you normally won't get extra energy as the game automatically inserts another copy of the unit when the first finishes. However, you can trigger the bug manually by inserting Stockpile Energy as a build option below the unit you are producing.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 04:30:48 pm
They are applied after all positive effects. Thus effectively rendering all coping methods ineffective. Thus making it a serious issue impossible to alleviate with whatever amount of luxury spend on base.
I am thinking to modify it in two possible ways.
1.
Just swap it with Psych. However, this will turn the situation other way around. Psych now will override pacifism making it less of an issue.
2.
Yutzi did some patch for this and all other drone calculations. Unfortunately, this is not included in Thinker and I don't know how to include it not invasively. So need to reinvent it.
The idea is to compute all methods in a pure arithmetical way without any cutting off, rounding, and other [nonsense]. Then just suppress drones first and generate talents from whatever left.
3.
Nuances.
Superdrones. They complicate everything. Superdrone = 2 drones. Pacifying facilities and police quell a citizen regardless of whether it is a drone or superdrone. Whereas psych offset drones. Meaning it takes 4 psych to turn superdrone to content. Superdrones are not distinguishable from drones on base screen. That is why it is pretty difficult to understand how psych works. Or any other method for that matter.
Should facilities and police quell drone instead of a citizen? Are superdrones at all needed? What is the point in them?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 04:41:52 pm
That's such a well-known bug from the times of yore I didn't think I had to explain it and I was very surprised to encounter it in a modern mod. Since the Pbem version is heavily tampered with I'm not sure the bug is actually in WTP. (Or Thinker, how are they connected?) So I'd rather not create a ticket for it.
Bug description: Every time a base completes a facility it will automatically switch to Stockpile Energy. Since the game handles energy income after production you will then get the full Stockpile Energy amount added to your energy reserves on top of the normal turn production that went into the completed facility. Essentially you get the turn production for that base twice, once in form of Energy.
If you construct a unit instead you normally won't get extra energy as the game automatically inserts another copy of the unit when the first finishes. However, you can trigger the bug manually by inserting Stockpile Energy as a build option below the unit you are producing.
WTP includes Thinker (some version) which, in turn, includes scient patch.
I just tested it and it is in WTP and Thinker.
Scient claims to fix it.
[EXPLOIT] Fixed the energy stockpile exploit. (credit to kyrub)
Not sure what is going on as it should be in Thinker then.
I have checked scient code and I don't see where it is actually fixed. Can you tell me any version of any mod/patch where it is confirmed to be fixed?
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 05:13:20 pm
I don't remember. In SP I don't care about minor issues like that and in MP I'm not sure I played with a modded .exe. Can't say for sure. It's been too long.
Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.
The main effect of superdrones is to decrease the efficiency of Psych (from slider or specialists) as a drone control mechanism. This has the rather important consequence that you cannot GA-boom past a the first bureaucracy drone warning without the HGP and that you cannot GA-boom at all past the third bureaucracy warning.
Post by: bvanevery on February 22, 2022, 05:18:16 pm
Psych now will override pacifism making it less of an issue.That would be a case of it actually working like you'd reasonably expect it to though. A PSYCH budget isn't magic, it can take a lot of expenditure to make just 1 drone happy, if you don't have any special facilities yet. In fact it often just doesn't work... I've never worked through the "super drone" problem to figure out exactly what's up with that, but I wonder if that's part of what I've seen. Anyways, I don't think it's typical for players to break the bank on PSYCH budgets because of EFFIC penalties. So I'll typically be doing 50-0-50 budget for quite awhile, then switch to 50-10-40 in a Hologram Theater / Tree Farm era, then 40-20-40, then 40-30-30 or 30-30-40 as time passes.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 05:20:16 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 06:01:38 pm
Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.
The main effect of superdrones is to decrease the efficiency of Psych (from slider or specialists) as a drone control mechanism. This has the rather important consequence that you cannot GA-boom past a the first bureaucracy drone warning without the HGP and that you cannot GA-boom at all past the third bureaucracy warning.
Good point. Let's leave them as is. I am still thinking to swap psych with pacifism.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 06:31:37 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-287
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 07:05:21 pm
Thank you for fixing this. Switching the mod in midgame is not a good idea, though. It's nice for later games. I just wanted to make sure you are away of the bug.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 07:13:37 pm
To be clear, I don't actually like the way some factions can't pop-boom when they expand to a reasonable number of bases.
Sorry. Didn't get you. Are you still talking about stockpile exploit?
Thank you for fixing this. Switching the mod in midgame is not a good idea, though. It's nice for later games. I just wanted to make sure you are away of the bug.
My pleasure. Since it is just a code change it should work with same save.
😊
However, better be safe than sorry. MP games are very brittle.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 07:39:03 pm
To be clear, I don't actually like the way some factions can't pop-boom when they expand to a reasonable number of bases.
Sorry. Didn't get you. Are you still talking about stockpile exploit?
No, I meant the way Psych interacts with bureaucracy drones (which are just negative Psych really). Factions like Morgan or Yang can't pop-boom once they have even a single bureaucracy drone unless they have the HGP.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 07:56:03 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 08:10:22 pm
Take a size 3 base. If you are at twice the bureaucracy limit every base has exactly one b-drone which is equivalent to -2 Psych. You can at most gain 6 Psych via slider and specialists so total is +4 which gives you one talent and one worker. To reach a GA you'd need a second Talent.
Post by: bvanevery on February 22, 2022, 08:14:06 pm
Psych is exempt from slider inefficiency. You can dump 100% energy into psych with no losses.
But usually, why would you want to? Don't care about making money or doing research anymore? You have to be well in the lead to feel that way.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 22, 2022, 08:26:00 pm
Both negative and positive psych input for a base is capped by 2*(base size) . You can have more but that won't have any effect on drones.
Take a size 3 base. If you are at twice the bureaucracy limit every base has exactly one b-drone which is equivalent to -2 Psych. You can at most gain 6 Psych via slider and specialists so total is +4 which gives you one talent and one worker. To reach a GA you'd need a second Talent.
Still the math not clear to me. Please don't get any deeper I don't want to exhaust your time on that.
Is this for human on Transcendent? If so, there should be 2 drones beyond first citizen. Plus 1 b-drone it makes it three. Then +6 psych should cure them all and leave all content citizens.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 22, 2022, 08:33:37 pm
Indeed, there are 3 normal drones due to the one b-drone. Then 4 of the +6 Psych makes one drone into a talent, the rest changes another drone into a worker. If +8 were possible the second drone would also turn into a talent.
@bvanevery: Extremely high psych expenditure is used exactly for this. Achieving golden age so factions with Growth mali or inability to use Planned/Democracy can pop-boom.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on February 22, 2022, 11:30:35 pm
The problem with the Psych limit is not that this hampers drone control, but that it prevents Golden Ages in bases with an odd number of population and all of them being drones.
It's somewhat easier for Morgan than Yang, since he can run Democratic for +2 EFFIC that raises his base cap from 9 to 14 before he starts getting B-drones. You can somewhat game the system by repeatedly switching to and from SEs that give +EFFIC, as this will reshuffle B-drones in your bases. So you can Golden Age popboom in some of your bases and then try to get the rest done afterwards. It of course helps that Morgan has a lot of energy that even 20% Psych can achieve a lot - I haven't really played Yang much, so I don't know how his popboom experience goes.
And of course, if you're fast enough to snag the Human Genome Project, you don't have to worry about Psych limits at all since it adds another talent after Psych is calculated.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 23, 2022, 01:33:06 am
Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.
Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.
This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?
Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?
Post by: bvanevery on February 23, 2022, 03:42:17 am
@bvanevery: Extremely high psych expenditure is used exactly for this. Achieving golden age so factions with Growth mali or inability to use Planned/Democracy can pop-boom.
Yes of course but you have to be willing to pay for all of that. It's not clear it's a good strategy compared to other things you could be spending money on. It depends on how much of your empire is undergrown.
Post by: Tayta Malikai on February 23, 2022, 04:03:10 am
They only appear in the Psych screen IIRC. They should be noticeably super-red compared to regular drones.Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.
Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.
This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?
Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?
Post by: Hagen0 on February 23, 2022, 07:38:26 am
Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.They only appear in the Psych screen IIRC. They should be noticeably super-red compared to regular drones.
This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?
Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?
This. Tayta Malikai is quite right.
Additionally, genejack factory drones appear at the facility level of the psych screen. They aren't super drones (-2 psych) but function more akin to pacifism drones iirc. Not completely though, since they operate at the faciltiy level they are discounted from drone control facilities. If you have a recreation commons and a genejack factory you will get one drone pacified at facility level in aggregate.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 23, 2022, 02:24:02 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 23, 2022, 02:35:16 pm
I am sure this won't be a discovery for you but the way psych, facilities, police, projects work with drones is awfully non-linear. It is impossible to predict whether and how some changes affect happiness across empire on average without carefully repeating these quirky computation for each base.
Examples
On Transcendent (when human has only one content) having both 1 b-drone and 1 facility drone from Genejack Factory - cancel each other!!! Meaning player receives just one additional drone, not two.
Same story with psych and facilities. For 2 size base when all citizens are drones if psych happens to turn one citizen to content it makes Recreation Common redundant for this citizen. Moreover, For 3 size base psych 6 turns one citizen to talent and one to content which is also redundant with Recreation Common. If it would summarized purely arithmetical, Recreation Common + 6 psych would make two talents and one content triggering GA.
I understand that this all sequence of applications and redundancy is probably by design to reduce efficiency of psych, increase effect of pacifism, etc. However, this also creates some unbalances those probably may be addressed.
One of such imbalances is reduced efficiency of b-drones because they are applied first and are only effect producing super-drones. Super-drones are only matter when countered by psych. All other drone-dealing means ignore them completely. That creates strange exploitation strategy. More bases create more b-drones but only first b-drone creates a drone. Further b-drones are super-drones those do not negate effects of pacifying facilities. So spreading thin, keeping bases up to size 4, building Recreation Common and Hologram Theater in each allows absolutely droneless infinite expansion affecting only the corruption in new bases but this is minor. With police units base sizes could stay up to 5-6-7.
Summarizing above, the mechanics behind b-drones and psych strongly favors horizontal expansion and hinder vertical one very much. Whereas the sole purpose of b-drones is to counter unlimited spread! Some major mechanics flaw. I believe now that this flaw and not the colony cost is the major contribution to ICS strategy that many people tried to combat so far.
There are a lot of interesting drone ideas in Yutzi's patch.
https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/New_alphax_variables_in_Yitzi%27s_patch (item 2).
I don't like the idea of phantom talents/drones as they are not visible on the screen. However, I like the idea of facilities suppressing super-drones first making them less effective when super-drones are present. I also like the idea of many other drone types added to super-drones, not only b-drones.
In short, I like the idea of direct arithmetical addition of all talent/drone factors and then clipping them by base size. I.e. all drone factors can contribute to super-drones. All talent and anti-drone factors should suppress super-drones first. Probably with exception of police. It could be either left as is - suppressing whatever citizen in this slot regardless of whether they are drone or super-drone. Other option is to let them suppress super-drones first as any other factors but let them suppress 2 drones for regular police and 3 drones for "non-lethal"/"3 POLICE" and 4 drones for "non-lethal" + "3 POLICE". After all effects are combined they are clipped to whatever can fit to the screen for non-specialists citizens. Meaning it is possible to avoid drone riot by turning all citizen to specialists but it won't be possible to GA with more than half of specialists.
I clearly understand this will be a different game. It would need to be heavily playtested too to tune some parameters.
😄
However, would it be much Much MUCH simpler to understand drone rules and their exact effect?
I see just few implications on this field.
B-drones as well as any other drones in combination become more dangerous and more difficult to control.
Psych becomes very powerful as it is becomes pure additive and not redundant with other methods anymore.
Pacifism drones becomes much easier to quell with psych and other methods.
It becomes pretty easy to trigger GA with enough psych combined with other methods. This should not be a big deal in WTP, though, as GA just adds +2 GROWTH and does not lead to pop-boom directly.
Post by: Hagen0 on February 23, 2022, 06:06:24 pm
Summarizing above, the mechanics behind b-drones and psych strongly favors horizontal expansion and hinder vertical one very much. Whereas the sole purpose of b-drones is to counter unlimited spread! Some major mechanics flaw. I believe now that this flaw and not the colony cost is the major contribution to ICS strategy that many people tried to combat so far.
Not sure I agree. There are two ways to look at it. Pop-booming is very powerful. So the way, b-drones make pop-booing via GA hard to possible can act as a check to expansion. B-drones also very much hinder early expansion. Past the first bureaucracy limit bases will riot at size 2 and in FM already at size 1.
On a meta level, another base is always worthwhile as long as there is good land. Since in Smac all land is good and you make settle basically everywhere there is no reason to ever stop expanding, nor should there be. In the short term however, another colony pod may not be the best build on a profit vs opportunity cost basis; formers, booming infrastructure, multiplier buildings and of course military units often have a higher profit vs. opportunity cost ratio.
Post by: bvanevery on February 23, 2022, 06:28:26 pm
Baroqueness is an awful plague that should be abolished from the genre.
It's also a strong argument for having certain rules be visible in source code, or failing that, data driven configuration. So that this kind of nonsense is stopped and not just tweaked endlessly by some production programmer who thought it would be a good idea to "tune it" here and there.
The only forgivable corner case I can see, is the game was due for "gold master" release, and someone had to fix a serious problem in a hurry. But when do travesties ever get cleaned up after the fact?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 23, 2022, 06:50:58 pm
Not sure I agree. There are two ways to look at it. Pop-booming is very powerful. So the way, b-drones make pop-booing via GA hard to possible can act as a check to expansion. B-drones also very much hinder early expansion. Past the first bureaucracy limit bases will riot at size 2 and in FM already at size 1.
I think you are missing the point. I never said b-drones do not hinder expansion. They do! I am saying quite the opposite thing. Because of this non-linear addition logic b-drones hinder expansion not as much as they could be if all drones would add up together and super-drones suppressed same way as regular ones.
Let me reiterate it once more. They do check the expansion but not that strong as one would suppose to just from reading their description. There are pretty easy ways to keep bases from rioting and continue expanding unlimitedly.
On a meta level, another base is always worthwhile as long as there is good land. Since in Smac all land is good and you make settle basically everywhere there is no reason to ever stop expanding, nor should there be. In the short term however, another colony pod may not be the best build on a profit vs opportunity cost basis; formers, booming infrastructure, multiplier buildings and of course military units often have a higher profit vs. opportunity cost ratio.
You are kind of contradicting yourself or mixing terms in midway. I believe everyone on this forum understand the opportunity/cost basis. In this regard the claim for the strategy to be always worthwhile implies it beats all other strategies hands down for any possible game conditions combination. When in next sentence you started listing exception from this claim it becomes not very clear why making this claim in first place?
Besides, my post wasn't judgmental in any regards. I noticed that b-drones description and their claimed purpose is in contradiction with actual mechanics implementation and proposed possible solution for this problem.
I do not encourage this or otherwise. This is a topic for user discussion.
I do not state any opinion of whether expansion is good or bad and whether it should be supported or nerfed. This again a topic for user discussion.
Of course, this change would probably make expansion even more difficult. So if people would like to hinder expansion even more they will vote for this which may lead me to implementation. If not then not.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 23, 2022, 07:09:20 pm
I don't even have the brain cells to follow all of this.
You are not the only one.
😂
I myself don't understand this and many other mechanics in their entirety. My examples above are just some corner cases I spotted in the code but the chain of condition statements is so long I barely analyzed 10% of it.
I agree about the strange style of game algorithm design. It seems they borrowed whole number game arithmetic it from dice rolling table top games at the time of first Might and Magic and Civ1 and never stepped away from it. There are much simpler ways to solve these things computer wise.
They created an awful chimera crossing table top games with computer. Computer game is supposed to aid player by hiding and internalizing a lot of complex computation those are burden for player to do. Nobody wants to play game with calculator and compute damage on a piece of paper every time unit hits another unit. At the same time game rules should be clear and visible to user so they understand the effect. When ability description states it adds +2 to attack and player sees that in experience that is an absolutely clear and nice definition and implementation. When it says something like "PLANET reduces eco damage" players are like: err, whatever. The funny part is that by concealing part of the ruleset designers do not need to bother about this ruleset anymore! They can implement it as whatever simplest and dumbest way they can achieving their own goals disregarding players feedback. And yet, they don't. Ugh.
Post by: bvanevery on February 23, 2022, 08:33:17 pm
Traditional board games required the humans to adjudicate all the rules themselves. That somewhat steers away from grey box designs, but not entirely. It's possible to have a system of rules that's so labyrinthine in detail, that only diehards will learn and apply them. The old Squad Leader games were like that. You'd probably remember a lot of it, but it was also encyclopedic. You'd have to look up the rules section to apply it to some specific case, like how turrets are working today, in this particular game expansion pack.
Probably the original SMAC authors all grew up playing such games. So they apply the encyclopedic approach, without the constraint of actually having to look anything up themselves. ;lol
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 01, 2022, 11:55:56 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 05, 2022, 07:52:44 pm
Just discovered another shady logic in mineral and eco damage computation.
According to eco damage formula in help:
Code: [Select]
The ecological damage formula is complex:
...
^(6) Take the number of minerals produced this turn (but not from Orbit)
...
Which implies minerals from orbit are not counted toward eco damage.Now the code actually adds orbit minerals to base mineral yield. Then this yield is multiplied by facilities like Genejack Factory which produce the mineral intake. That, in turn, is distributed to support and production. I.e. orbit minerals are multiplied by facilities.
When eco damage is computed it takes mineral intake, subtract orbit minerals from it, and use the rest for computations assuming it excluded orbit minerals from eco damage by that. Well, obviously, not all of them. Imagine base receives 10 minerals from orbit and has three multiplying facilities turning them into 25. Then eco damage algorithm subtracts 10 out of total mineral intake intending nullifying orbit mineral impact while, in fact, it leaves 15 orbital minerals multiplied excess for further eco damage computations.
This strengthen my earlier impression that designers did not plan for orbital resources to be multiplied at all.
I'll try to patch it so.
Post by: bvanevery on March 05, 2022, 08:46:53 pm
...is orbital minerals eco-damage an actually important part of the game? I've never built a Nessus Mining Station, that I can recall. In the original game or anybody's mod, by the time I have that capability, I certainly don't need the extra minerals. I also never build Nanoreplicators or Quantum Watchamajiggers. I may build the Singularity Inductor, but it's a low priority project mainly to block others from building it. I tend to avoid the Bulk Matter Transmitter until dead last, because it does boost up eco-damage.
Basically, what's wrong with Forest and Forget?
The game goes on too long with too many stupid toys. All you need are some appropriate gravships to pound the crap out of everybody. AI dies, game over.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 05, 2022, 11:06:14 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on March 06, 2022, 07:12:51 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 06, 2022, 07:55:22 pm
1. Changed round attack odds from (2a - d)/d to a/d. That is a conceptual change to make combat odds proportional to strength.
2. At some point I have experimented with multiround combat trying to make it less sqewed toward stronger unit. That could be done by reducing power multiplier from 10 to 5 or something. However, I didn't want to touch it as it is too hard code everywhere. The alternative was to alter round odds each subsequent round which is mathematically equivalent to lesser number of round. Even though this seems like brilliant solution I made it optional as many people didn't like it. The switch is still there if anyone likes to try.
I'll add more links to previous discussions if I find them.
https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21371.msg122835#msg122835
https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg122935#msg122935
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 10, 2022, 06:29:11 pm
A question about amphibious.
It does seem like a quite useless ability. Not 100% useless but its application are very rare and specific. The only thing I ever used them for is attacking enemy ocean bases sitting next to my continent. Vanilla AI tend to place them adjacent to land so few of them can be conveniently captured by land units without transportation. After than they are no longer needed. Other than that? Anybody ever built, loaded, and transported amphibious unit specifically to assault ocean/coastal base?
Needless to say AI never uses them. It may build them but not use for the purpose. Which is, actually, is the primary argument for removing it. AI combat tuning is very difficult as it is already.
Anybody objects against completely eliminating this ability?
Another path would be to try enriching its meaning but I advise against it. If such meaning exists it would be proposed already. The fact that nobody bothered with it until now means the ability itself is not very interesting to players and it does not deprive any part of the game if not used. We may disable it now and keep on a back burner if somebody comes up with brilliant idea.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on March 11, 2022, 12:46:28 am
Post by: bvanevery on March 11, 2022, 06:11:17 am
Anybody ever built, loaded, and transported amphibious unit specifically to assault ocean/coastal base?
Many years ago, that used to be my standard drill for winning vanilla games quickly. My Chaos Marines = dead AI. Just run around on Cruisers wiping everybody out.
For some reason I don't tend to do that anymore. Maybe because I dislike pushing Cruisers across oceans. Maybe because I'm playing on Huge instead of Standard sized maps. Maybe because building rails is the one true strategy. Maybe because I got a lot more comfortable with chemical weapons, sunspots, and legalizing atrocities.
I do use Marines to wipe out sea bases next to a coast, typically Pirate sea bases. AI is pretty helpless against such landward attacks.
Quote
Needless to say AI never uses them.
Not true. When passing by a coastal base, I've had a Marine in the base shoot at me. This isn't a very good use compared to putting them on a ship and blasting my sea and coastal bases, but it is a use.
Post by: Neil on March 12, 2022, 09:20:16 pm
Quote
For example, both 6-1-1 and 1-6-1 infantry units now cost 6 rows of minerals. Imagine the simplicity!
A 6-1-1 because of its slow speed is liable to get intercepted and destroyed before it can attack anything important. Indeed, even a lowly scout patrol counterattacking has a good chance against it. A 1-6-1 on the other hand is probably a garrison unit and so the lack of speed isn't fatal. I would argue a 6-1-1 is much less useful than a 1-6-1 and that it would be fair for it to cost less.
Post by: bvanevery on March 13, 2022, 04:10:14 am
A 6-1-1 because of its slow speed is liable to get intercepted and destroyed before it can attack anything important.
Base defense. Rails. Make it amphibious and attack off a boat. Accompany it with an armored unit.
Post by: Neil on March 13, 2022, 04:57:50 am
A 6-1-1 because of its slow speed is liable to get intercepted and destroyed before it can attack anything important.
Base defense. Rails. Make it amphibious and attack off a boat. Accompany it with an armored unit.
Exactly. It requires more support from other units to do its job effectively, hence why it should cost less.
Post by: bvanevery on March 13, 2022, 04:35:58 pm
Exactly. It requires more support from other units to do its job effectively, hence why it should cost less.No... it's a cheap way to kill stuff, that actually works. You aren't owed a bunch of capabilities in the game "for free or cheap".
Like armored screens. It's not like you lose your armored screens, just because you're marching around with them. If you don't think armored units are worth making, that's your problem, not the game's.
Granted, SMACX AI Growth mod and WTP don't have a weapon vs. armor imbalance problem, unlike the original game.
Post by: Neil on March 13, 2022, 05:16:54 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 13, 2022, 06:44:20 pm
You are actually welcome to do the same and present your statements, assumptions and math to the public if you have something in mind. Just saying something should cost less is not a thing to discuss.
Post by: bvanevery on March 13, 2022, 07:52:16 pm
I think things should have a cost proportionate to their utility. I think that one 6-1-1 is less useful than one 1-6-1 and therefore should have a lower cost. If you disagree, that's fine.
Fine, put your mod out to lots of people and see if you get any feedback counter to your own opinion. Be advised that very few people actually give specific and actionable feedback, when you're a $0 modder for an old game, even when you're one of the 3 leading mod makers. This is a strong motivation for me to produce a commercial title. People just don't pay attention to things they don't have to pay for, for very long.
If it's your own opinion, and you have strong play style biases, what would ever disprove your confirmation bias to yourself? I mean I could regale you with tales of all the enemy units I've killed on the walls of my bases, over decades of play, with these exceptionally cheap 6-1-1 units. But why would you care?
It's not just SMAC either. "Armored unit accompanying glass cannon" is standard drill in every single Civ-style game I've played. Heck in Freeciv, City Walls were strong enough that I'd be like, "Guess I'm waiting until I've got Cannons." Musketeers ain't gonna cut it.
Post by: Neil on March 13, 2022, 08:42:20 pm
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 13, 2022, 09:46:39 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 13, 2022, 09:58:21 pm
However, when one does need to build a former and a super former option is available - which one they are going to build? Is anyone seriously trying to prove super former is NOT superior over regular one from any point of view?
Post by: Neil on March 13, 2022, 10:00:24 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 14, 2022, 12:00:26 pm
Post by: Neil on March 14, 2022, 03:24:00 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 14, 2022, 05:28:10 pm
Post by: Neil on March 14, 2022, 08:17:38 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 14, 2022, 09:32:59 pm
Induktio occasionally pulls some of WTP fixes back into Thinker codebase at his own discretion.
I agree it would save tremendous amount of time by having common codebase and I proposed the same to Induktio few times but he didn't like the idea. See if you can persuade him.
🙂
Post by: bvanevery on March 14, 2022, 09:55:12 pm
What actually works, at the scale of 2 developers with semi-independent projects, is someone pulls or pushes something they want.
Like, a Management Chart Hierarchy is not needed, and is counterproductive.
If Thinker had more major mod consumers, the situation might be different. But it doesn't.
So you have yourself, myself, Induktio, and arguably Scient, as major modding players. None of whom actually coordinate closely about anything. Some of it due to historical personality differences. Others due to rather different design and project goals. No "single project" has emerged from these 4 people's efforts.
I am a veteran of many $0 open source projects. The vast majority of which, my contributions ultimately failed. SMACX AI Growth mod is my only success story. I had a substantial contribution to a Wesnoth campaign a long time ago. But by now, there's no telling what's left of whatever I did. Got booted off that project. I had a Windows build system for someone else's Scheme programming language, working really well for about 6 months. Until the language author couldn't hide his lack of enthusiasm for the burdens Windows imposed. We had sharp words and that was that. It was a rude lesson that even if you build 100% useful infrastructure, other people aren't going to just step into the gap and keep going with it. Quality of work doesn't mean anything, if you haven't surrounded yourself with people who have a vested interest in using the work.
People will coordinate when they have a vested interest in coordinating. Do not try to recruit tepid people to a cause. In that direction, is a river of tears.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 14, 2022, 10:07:01 pm
Post by: bvanevery on March 14, 2022, 10:16:38 pm
For instance: since forever, I could have packaged up Yitzi's Patch to be more beneficial to end users. Contemplated requirements. Things like a Python installer, to assess the compatibility issues and make the appropriate changes. Contemplated mod managers. Did all the provisional homework on requirements for such things.
But how does any of that, benefit me? I just get to do work, to make other users happy, with "some configuration" they think they want and think they're interested in. For a patch that doesn't even have an active author behind it anymore. And yet, by virtue of being a binary patch, gets disproportionate attention compared to my own "plain .txt" work.
Users, for some reason, respect code hacking and things that are called patches. They tend to assume that they're automatically beneficial. They imagine all sorts of improvements, particularly to AI performance. When in fact, none may exist. And, may never have even been intended.
So, yeah. Competition. Attention. Users think it would be neat to have all this different stuff. What's the reality though? Various people off on version A, B, C, or D. Not really making a lot of time for the other versions. And so their knowledge and attention, becomes more and more limited.
It's a small version of the general game selling problem. Sure, people buy and play more than 1 game. Plenty of game companies can coexist. But, there is competition, and a "discovery problem", and losers.
The only one who wins, is the fatcat known as Steam. They win no matter how many indie devs lose. Because some indie devs win. It's a pyramid scheme, where Steam cleans up.
Post by: Neil on March 16, 2022, 06:51:58 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 16, 2022, 08:35:12 pm
😂
Well. Probably "competitive" is not the right word. I'd say not too cooperative.
Post by: bvanevery on March 16, 2022, 11:21:47 pm
But yes, there is still competition. And I still think that so far, I've done the best job with this game. As far as what the original game was, and what it should be. I've contributed substantial playtesting effort to helping WTP "catch up" and polish / iron out its rough edges. Far more than anyone who was was a strict mercenary about their work, or terribly business minded, should do. I have that open source background, and ideologically, I still believe in some of that to some extent.
But I sure as heck draw the line on making mod managers for Yitzi's Patch, which helps my work in no way at all, and would just burden me with months of additional boring development. Someone else can do that if they want it. That's another thing about open source. You want something bad? Then how about you go do it. I know that lots of people are capable of doing it, with not terribly advanced coding skills. Do they actually do it? No, they don't. So forget 'em. I'm not here to save 'em.
I mean, I made my own work the best it could be, pouring blood on the table, within the scope of a .txt only mod.
There are a few things I'd actually like, out of some kind of "minimal binary alteration" project. Fixing probe team rules, is first among them. But I'm darned if I'm going to get into the difficulties of ASM reverse engineering, and illegal binary distribution, while simultaneously trying to get a commercially viable 4X game going.
I mean, I can be writing a DirectX 12 3D engine. If only the rest of my life plate would clear up, and I actually got a new laptop in here.
My next "low hanging fruit" would be to look at where OpenSMACX is at, nowadays. But, you know. Life.
Post by: DrazharLn on March 18, 2022, 09:16:57 am
Bvanery's mod isn't part of that lineage, but they have offered lots of free playtesting to Alpha Centauri Bear.
Post by: bvanevery on March 18, 2022, 01:15:16 pm
It's worth noting that my own work is under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license. Nothing's stopping anyone from using my work, long as I'm given appropriate credit. But, with the "creative differences", it seems people want to program things and not mess with .txt files so much. Or, they figure they can mess with .txt files themselves and don't see value in utilizing my work, despite ~4 calendar years and ~15 person months put into it. Programs have a way of propagating themselves, in ways that data driven designs do not.
Some people have done enough of their own .txt modding that they genuinely don't see a need for my work. They might draw inspiration from some things I've done, similar to how I've drawn inspiration from other people's .txt mods here and there. But they don't need my work for any heavy lifting.
Whereas, people think they need AI code. Squeezing every last drop out of existing AI code, via data driven design / environment around the code... I'm not sure why that doesn't occur to more people.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 20, 2022, 12:39:30 am
Tuning tech speed to be not too fast and not too slow is an extremely tedious work. It requires a lot of relevant statistics as a basis of all computation. Otherwise, all beautiful formula will just suck.
With that in mind I ask users permission to add tech research collector code that would dump research info to the file that you later can send to me. It should probably accumulate data from multiple games to reduce number of message. I then can share these data with all developer if they are interested in it. Any objections?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 20, 2022, 01:02:41 am
- Reactor adds 10-15% combat bonus. It does not change the price.
- Regular units get small psi bonus proportional to its weapon/armor. Currently, I think something like 5%. I.e. 20 strength item also confers 100% psi bonus.
- Natives cost slightly less than in vanilla in compensation for above.
Mind Worms 4 Spore Launcher 4 Sealurk 6 Isle of the Deep 8 Locusts of Chiron 8 - Natives do not require maintenance at all and not only they are parked in fungus. Parking them in fungus is too tedious support reducing micromanagement.
- Optionally, natives require regular maintenance. Either way I want to exclude this "in fungus" logic.
Another idea that I don't insist on but that flows along psi bonus above. Empath/Trance ability gives some small flat bonus (25%) plus proportional of of weapon/armor (5%?) and cost proportionally to unit cost, correspondingly.
Post by: bvanevery on March 20, 2022, 02:48:51 pm
Any objections?
Not personally, but I think it is a misguided use of your effort. I think you should be playtesting something and making a decision. Not hoping that by collecting data and throwing it over the fence to someone else, that someone else is actually going to make a decision. Newsflash: since it's your project, they won't. Not unless they're motivated enough to fork your project and "put things right". No reason to believe that's gonna happen at this time.
Here's what I think you should playtest: my mod. AFAIAC I don't have any problem with tech pacing at all. Nobody's told me differently either, although I sure wish more people were disposed to chime in about such things. Anyways, I think I don't have a problem, and you do, because I've played both of our mods plenty. You should play mine and see if that helps you figure out what's wrong with yours. I have no doubt your tech pacing is off, as I've filed things in your Issue Tracker about it.
Post by: bvanevery on March 20, 2022, 02:57:19 pm
Natives do not require maintenance at all and not only they are parked in fungus. Parking them in fungus is too tedious support reducing micromanagement.That's a bit of a giveaway, increasing the tendency to use the mindworm as the one and only perfect combat unit. Generally you have to pay for Clean Reactors. When you capture a unit and it's Independent, that's a somewhat rare resource, so you typically don't want to just throw those things away.
Quote
Optionally, natives require regular maintenance. Either way I want to exclude this "in fungus" logic.
This is the better option if you're absolutely determined to simplify.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 20, 2022, 04:22:47 pm
Not personally, but I think it is a misguided use of your effort. I think you should be playtesting something and making a decision. Not hoping that by collecting data and throwing it over the fence to someone else, that someone else is actually going to make a decision. Newsflash: since it's your project, they won't. Not unless they're motivated enough to fork your project and "put things right". No reason to believe that's gonna happen at this time.
I don't understand your blame. I did playtest tech speed many times. That's why I picked parameters those are there now. However, I understand that my statistics is not exhaustive just because of my playstyle and sheer number of cases. I just want to expand to many people playstyles and get more data. I don't ask anybody to do any conclusions on this.
Here's what I think you should playtest: my mod. AFAIAC I don't have any problem with tech pacing at all. Nobody's told me differently either, although I sure wish more people were disposed to chime in about such things. Anyways, I think I don't have a problem, and you do, because I've played both of our mods plenty. You should play mine and see if that helps you figure out what's wrong with yours. I have no doubt your tech pacing is off, as I've filed things in your Issue Tracker about it.
I understand you mod uses vanilla tech cost formula?
Post by: bvanevery on March 20, 2022, 04:37:37 pm
I just want to expand to many people playstyles and get more data. I don't ask anybody to do any conclusions on this.If you like more data, then collect data. It is of very little use though. Is the player going to give you an opinion to go with the data? If not, then all you know is they did X. You don't know whether they considered it good, bad, or indifferent. You don't know if it was in harmony with what they thought was their playstyle, or actively working against them.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Quote
I understand you mod uses vanilla tech cost formula?
Yes. And all of my development, was empirically derived, with tons of playtesting, using this as a constant. When things took too long to get, I put them earlier. When things were too easy to get, I put them later. After 4 years it certainly gets results.
Recently I playtested plain Thinker in conjunction with my mod. Pretty quickly, I turned off the alternate tech costs, because they are not an improvement.
Post by: Hagen0 on March 20, 2022, 05:52:05 pm
As for the tech costs, early on vanilla tech costs work just fine. They are much better than the attempt to rebalance them in Thinker mod. You need certain techs to get going early on. Chiefly Centauri Ecology but also early SE choice (Planned, FM). The Thinker costs make the early game boring and tedious. You also have no shot to research military technology in time if you meet an aggressive neighbour. You just die.
The problem with vanilla tech costs is that they don't increase enough in the late game. However, this may be a lost cause to begin with. The archive of games at http://dos486.com/alpha/ has already been mentioned. In the University game thawk is making 10k research every turn. Any attempt to increase tech cost to meaningfully keep up with this is probably silly.
Post by: Neil on March 20, 2022, 07:33:36 pm
In my opinion the target should be that "on average", a player reaches the end of the tech tree around the game turn limit, or maybe a bit before. There needs to be enough time to digest and adopt the new stuff from later technologies before even newer stuff comes to replace it or the game ends.
Part of the problem seems to be that the amount of energy you can generate in the late game can vary considerably, depending on what has happened. Perhaps tech costs can also take into account the number of turns since the beginning. If the player is well ahead of the curve (from a theoretical baseline), costs go up a bit. If the player is well behind, costs go down. Obviously you don't want this to be so extreme that it enables bad players. The main objective is to even out tech progression for all factions generally, rather than a "catch up" mechanism for behind factions. I got this idea from Hearts of Iron, which attaches an "estimated" date a faction would be expected to discover a technology, and adjusts the cost based on the current date.
You're not going to please everyone. At some point you have to go with your gut and decide what you think is best.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 20, 2022, 08:50:30 pm
As for early tech cost I agree with you too. Calculations show that one tech should be discovered on average in 350 / 85 = ~4 years. 20 labs is the perfect cost for first technology assuming two bases (= 4 worked tiles) producing 1 energy each tile + 1 from HQ. That gives exactly 4 turn to discover it. Subsequently, following tech should cost somewhere 25-30-35-40-50-60-.... Of course, since Thinker and WTP set tech cost not by research sequence but by level, all first level tech should not all cost 20 as it will make further researches too quick. So the first level tech should be somewhere 35-40 on average defining affordable learning curve.
Post by: DrazharLn on March 21, 2022, 10:15:31 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 21, 2022, 03:21:46 pm
I like that native units are free when in fungus. I think it's good flavour and encourages you to do thematic things with the worms, like hiding them in the fungus or have them patrol fungus.
There are some interesting aspect playing natives: psi combat ignoring weapon/armor, moving in fungus as on roads, fungus combat bonus, full healing in fungus. These alone is very sufficient to encourage their usage and create a flavor. However, there are "encouraging" and "forcing".
Not paying maintenance only when parked in fungus and only on this turn is too micro and it actually forces player to end turn in fungus or suffer hefty penalty. One can move by road/river but should end turn in fungus. If anything it is discouraging aspect of native management. Think about it. For every native unit on a map every turn player is charged 1 mineral depending on how the hell they completed last turn for these particular unit type! Why anyone should care how do I move my units?! This is pure micro that has nothing to do with strategy at all and quite little with flavor.
Bear with me. I don't absolutely mind any fungus native bonuses. I mind how game penalizes specific parts of unit movement. For example, full healing in fungus is pretty fine feature because 1) player willingly decides to spend a turn to heal unit, 2) player willingly decides where to place unit while healing, 3) healing takes whole turn of immobility. Whereas when human moves unit from A to B they don't control it every freaking turn. They just point to destination and click. If it happens native end their turn not in fungus - player pays. To not pay they have to move these units by hands calculating every move. Ugh.
Post by: bvanevery on March 21, 2022, 06:22:41 pm
Not paying maintenance only when parked in fungus and only on this turn is too micro and it actually forces player to end turn in fungus or suffer hefty penalty.
SUPPORT penalties are only meaningful in the early game to early midgame. Once you've got various kinds of minerals multiplier factories going, SUPPORT is immaterial. If at that point you are stressing about the support cost of any unit, not just mindworms, then that's your own irrational OCD about playing perfectly. Which, admittedly, is an emotional response that many adherents to the 4X genre actually do feel acutely. 4X selects strongly for people with those tendencies, who rate their well being or irritance with how perfectly they're playing the game.
Myself, after zillions of games, I learned to finally get over various "perfection" issues. Especially EFFIC and drone issues, trying to build the "perfect" number of cities according to the map bureaucracy calculation to avoid it. It's not worth the effort. Nowadays I just keep building until the drones get really bad. Then I sorta cut off citymaking.
If we can rationally agree that SUPPORT is only meaningful in the early to midgame... (if we can't, I have no basis for discussion with anyone. In my view they're plain wrong.)
...then the question is, how are mindworms used in early to midgame? I use them to explore and pop pods. They're going to be on fungus at least 2/3rds of the time. Also, captured mindworms are usually Independent. It is known strategy to capture them at a distance from one's cities, to make sure they're Independent when captured. One way you could simplify circumstances, is to guarantee that captured mindworms are Independent. Find the spot in the code that assigns a captured unit to a nearby city and disable it.
In the original game, you could make mindworms yourself by gaining E3 Centauri Empathy. In my mod for a long time, it was E3 Centauri Genetics, to have more of a "laboratory work" flavor to it. Same position in the tech tree, a Tier 3 tech. Well, I don't allow that anymore. Mindworm manufacture doesn't come until late game. So it is simply not possible to build a lot of SUPPORT requiring mindworms in the early to midgame, that you can stress over the minerals they're consuming. Problem doesn't exist for me.
Post by: Hagen0 on March 21, 2022, 07:26:53 pm
Post by: bvanevery on March 21, 2022, 07:28:32 pm
SUPPORT is clearly irrelevant when you have a factory belching out 40 minerals/turn. Or even 20 minerals/turn.
Post by: dino on March 22, 2022, 04:49:49 pm
Post by: bvanevery on March 22, 2022, 05:24:19 pm
Post by: Neil on March 24, 2022, 04:40:18 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 24, 2022, 01:46:17 pm
Support seems more significant earlier just because of of units base has to support even in peace time: formers, police, native protection, scouts. That's why vanilla wisely gives 2 free units to account for minimal set: police + former. If you think this is not enough we can give more free units per base to balance it.
WTP solves this problem to some extent.
- Number of free units does not change with SUPPORT rating allowing bases to keep minimal number of units for peaceful development.
- Number of free units is adjustable. Currently it is 2 as in vanilla. Could be increased.
- The rest of the units support is proportional to SUPPORT rating. It's 1 at zero and changes by 1/4 at each step up and down. Even slightly negative SUPPORT now bites warmongers.
If you think this the above settings is still not enough it may be tightened to increase SUPPORT effect on military.
For example, we can increase number of free units to reduce pressure on minimal peaceful base unit set: 2 formers + 2 defenders = 4. At the same time we can set 1/2 support per rating step. So that it changes from 1/2 at best to 4 at worst. This way supporting army would seriously require positive SUPPORT.
Some people also say Clean Reactor solves support problem. Well, yes, for the cost of Clean Reactor which is not free. One probably can slap it on formers and permanent garrison units but not at all combat units as it may turn to be even worse than paying support. It takes an ability slot too. Clean Reactor does not make support go away. It offers an option to pay with mineral cost to reduce support which may help to some extent or may not. The mere talk about using Clean Reactor show how significant support is at any stage of the game! Otherwise, people would stop bothering with it beyond mid game.
Post by: Foehn on March 24, 2022, 06:20:10 pm
In most mods, by the time you have gained a Brood Pit, you don't need one. You should have won the game already.I'd argue this is also the case in vanilla, by the time you get the BP, you don't really need it. a couple of cheap garrisons with non-lethal methods will be more useful.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2022, 06:54:38 pm
Don't believe people telling support is not significant in late game.If you can't beat up the various AIs within the confines of a 20+ minerals factory, you're not any good.
In multiplayer, it may be a different story. But I don't care about that.
Quote
Otherwise, people would stop bothering with [clean reactors] beyond mid game.
People who are smart, and have gotten over their perfection compulsions, and who are only trying to beat AIs, actually do so.
The mere talk about using Clean Reactor
is because people are psychologically conditioned to regard any bell, whistle, or gewgaw that the game presents them later on, as a reward for all their hard work of empire building. They don't like having their sense of reward invalidated by having the thing become available with no tech requirements at the start of the game. It's a kind of sunk cost fallacy. I've climbed this tech tree; therefore, whatever is at the top of the climb, must be valuable.
Caveat about tech tree climbing ruses: people are capable of seeing through them, if the ability granted is almost absolutely useless. Like cloaking device, because the AIs ignore that you're invisible. Ignoring zone of control isn't that big an advantage.
Clean Reactor looks like it has value, so people insist it has value.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 24, 2022, 07:27:48 pm
Another option I didn't yet decided on is to scrutinize it stronger for large military. However, it is more voluminous change too lazy to even think about details right now.
- Free units: 6 instead of 2 as of now.
- Support increment by level: 1/2 instead of 1/4 as of now.
- Increase cost for any SUPPORT granting bonuses, projects, etc.
- Rearrange SE models to value SUPPORT more and don't give too much positive values.
Post by: Foehn on March 24, 2022, 08:03:13 pm
I am actually thinking to raise number of free units to 4 in future releases.and what about The Living Refinery, which (I think) adds SUPPORT?
Another option I didn't yet decided on is to scrutinize it stronger for large military. However, it is more voluminous change too lazy to even think about details right now.
- Free units: 6 instead of 2 as of now.
- Support increment by level: 1/2 instead of 1/4 as of now.
- Increase cost for any SUPPORT granting bonuses, projects, etc.
- Rearrange SE models to value SUPPORT more and don't give too much positive values.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 24, 2022, 08:13:49 pm
I am actually thinking to raise number of free units to 4 in future releases.and what about The Living Refinery, which (I think) adds SUPPORT?
Another option I didn't yet decided on is to scrutinize it stronger for large military. However, it is more voluminous change too lazy to even think about details right now.
- Free units: 6 instead of 2 as of now.
- Support increment by level: 1/2 instead of 1/4 as of now.
- Increase cost for any SUPPORT granting bonuses, projects, etc.
- Rearrange SE models to value SUPPORT more and don't give too much positive values.
Increase cost for any SUPPORT granting bonuses, projects, etc.
This is not an exhaustive list anyway. Just an idea that would require major rebalancing.
Post by: Nexii on March 24, 2022, 08:16:52 pm
Post by: Hagen0 on March 24, 2022, 09:08:17 pm
What support really influences past the early game in vanilla is how many stock formers a base can employ. If you get into a real war the support cost obviously also matters but fairly quickly up-to-date combat units become much more expensive per unit than 2 row formers.
Post by: Foehn on March 24, 2022, 09:26:05 pm
These number thrown around are not realistic. Noone is gonna have 20 or even 10 combat units per base. There is not enough time in the game to build them.I agree with this, even endgame at Talent level difficulty, my entire army might be 10-15 offensive units, not counting however many garrisons per base. Early game, support is very powerful as you want to crank out some formers quickly, and even mid and late it's powerful as you can pick up the more juicy secret projects.
What support really influences past the early game in vanilla is how many stock formers a base can employ. If you get into a real war the support cost obviously also matters but fairly quickly up-to-date combat units become much more expensive per unit than 2 row formers.
Post by: Nexii on March 24, 2022, 11:25:48 pm
Similarly sea units play more of a role when they don't automatically die to air
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2022, 01:12:36 am
What support really influences past the early game in vanilla is how many stock formers a base can employ.
I have stock AI making use of Clean Formers since the beginning of the game. Anecdotes from playtesters is that my AI factions terraform better than stock. Unsurprising as the whole intent was to free up the AI's SUPPORT burden. Stock AI just doesn't know what to do about SUPPORT, and would otherwise exhaust itself.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2022, 06:15:02 am
😪
It was mostly inspired by latest playtest revealing AI as not competitive. I cannot say it is there yet but the big number of modification are done. Check changelog for short list of changes.
Usual warning: major code rework. I think I squashed all the bugs but nobody knows. Don't use for multiplayer campaigns yet.
Here is the more elaborated discussion.
I was focusing more on development side: expansion, growth, production. Just because it was there already and much more easily quantifiable and measurable.
* Big improvement in base production and placement. Now every tile is evaluated. AI searches for more lucrative locations.
* Big/Huge/Enormous improvement on land unit transportation by sea. Generalized algorithms allows seamless transitions all over the globe. AI is no more technically challenged to jump onto/into another continent/ocean. All factions exploit land and ocean alike.
* Added more sophisticated algorithms to production choices. For example, TECHSHARE faction values labs facilities less and other minor staff here and there.
There is one improvement on army production and movement, though. AI evaluates base threats. That is whether base can sustain nearby enemy military attack should they move onto. Current diplomatic relations are taken into account. Current enemy represents full threat. Whereas peaceful factions just partial to be prepared for sudden attack. AI uses this information to build and distribute protectors across bases. It also tries to match them with most effective counter units. It also tries to produce best counters available. The computations are insanely heavy as they need to account for every base and every unit and also cross unit-unit effectiveness. So, at this point, it is very very crude. I have tested it for the first 100 turns so far but not beyond it. Need to verify AI is doing sane things with bombers, interceptors, natives, anti-natives, ships, etc. And especially artillery as it the most difficult part to evaluate.
At the same time it does build sensors, Perimeters in frontier bases, Command Centers, and the like. Also overall military production priority is raised very high. It should be able to consolidate and fend off aggressors if needed. But again - needs a lot of testing as combat is the most complex activity in this game and I don't even pretend to approach perfection.
In conclusion here are some power graphs attached. I started two games from the same initial placement: University (single base human observer), Pirates, Morganites, Angels, Gaians, Drones, Cyborgs. Then I enabled factions 2,3,4 to use WPT algorithms leaving factions 5,6,7 to Vanilla/Thinker (left chart). In second game I swapped them (right chart). 100 turns. That is not to compare WTP with Thinker but to establish some average level and verify whether WTP early expansion/development indeed improved in this version.
My general feeling is that WTP lead AI is not always better but it never falls too much below average. Where previous version AI could get stuck in pretty bad position, new one finds ways to escape to ocean, other continents, proper terraforming, etc.
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2022, 04:42:56 pm
Apologies if I don't actually have time to look at your work for awhile. I recently bought a brand new laptop with a RTX 3060 in it. I've made no use of that 3D graphics capability at all, so far. Verified I'm getting the expected performance with a few benchmarks, but that's it. No games. I'm only barely starting to get used to the new keyboard and touchpad gestures. Haven't compiled anything yet. Life is just chaos right now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 20, 2022, 06:30:37 pm
Apologies if I don't actually have time to look at your work for awhile. I recently bought a brand new laptop with a RTX 3060 in it. I've made no use of that 3D graphics capability at all, so far. Verified I'm getting the expected performance with a few benchmarks, but that's it. No games. I'm only barely starting to get used to the new keyboard and touchpad gestures. Haven't compiled anything yet. Life is just chaos right now.
Please don't apologize. It's not that you (or anybody else) own something. Not even me to myself.
😂
You helped a lot already. In big part this activity is due to you previous tests.
Post by: bvanevery on April 20, 2022, 07:15:19 pm
;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;worship ;liftoff ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke;
Post by: Sardaukar on May 20, 2022, 03:57:55 am
Had a new thought about this today. The road improvement represents not just pavement but logistical support for transit. Naturally, this will all shut down in the face of hostile forces moving up the highway. So there's the justification.
However, road as movement multiplier seems a sketchy game mechanic. Yes, some units are infantry but these are probably small military kill teams, not WWII divisions on the eastern front. We can reasonably imagine high tech warfare as tiny forces applying tremendous force against key points in the enemy's infrastructure. Infantry units would fight on foot but they'll travel (especially on their own roads) in vehicles like everyone else. Who in his right mind would walk across hundreds of km of unbreathable Chiron landscape from Baikonur Cosmodrome to University Base?
With that in mind, roads providing a multiplier is funky. Rovers and infantry (riding rovers that belong to basic faction infrastructure), should move at about the same speed. Instead of a multiplier, why not a standard movement bonus to roads?
For example, all ground units may move over 10 friendly road squares for free. Could be some value other than 10 but I like the thought of rapid redeployment around your territory. Plus, this would ensure that hovertanks and rovers don't move less than in vanilla. It would, of course, substantially alter the meta but that could be resolved through testing and fine tuning a number of variables.
However, it's also possible to imagine bringing up your own logistics to make use of enemy roads. Thinking of a special unit with a terraform (?) ability to convert enemy territory into your own. Logistical Ops Squad. Could use the currently ignored supply crawler weapon.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 20, 2022, 04:27:02 am
Road usage switch is probably disabled due to the fact that multiple reviewers could not find a common ground whether to accept it or not. Too many disputable points as you mentioned yourself.
It seems that it is not too much problem for attacker to contain the invasion on land anyway.
Post by: bvanevery on May 20, 2022, 08:52:47 pm
Version 292. terranx_mod.exe seems to ignore DirectDraw=0 in my Alpha Centauri.ini file. terranx.exe honors it just fine. I've got a higher resolution laptop screen to look at now, 1920x1080. Also it's Windows 11. I don't know what previous versions of the mod did. I was using a different laptop then.
I put that setting in my Alpha Centauri.ini but did not change thinker.ini. It has the following settings:
Code: [Select]
; Make SMACX run on the native desktop resolution by disabling DirectDraw.
; Recommended value is 0. This overrides any value in Alpha Centauri.ini.
DirectDraw=0
; Enable windowed mode in custom resolution while DirectDraw=0 is set.
; If windowed mode is disabled, native desktop resolution is used instead (default).
; This mode can also be enabled from the command line with parameter "-windowed".
windowed=0
window_width=1024
window_height=768
I don't think it's using native desktop resolution.
Changing window_width=1920 and window_height=1080 doesn't do anything. If I also change windowed=1, I get this totally weirdo blown up window where I can only see 1/4 of the menu screen. Can't access the menu buttons so I just hit ESC to quit.
Choosing windowed=1 and the defaults of window_width=1024 and window_height=768, results in a borderless window stuck in the upper left corner of my desktop that cannot be moved. Running off the border of the window to the left or top will scroll the window, but going to the right or bottom will access the desktop and pass out of the game. This feels quite broken.
One might think windowed=1 and window_width=1080 and window_height=1080 would do something logical, like make a square on the left side of the screen. However the Windows 11 taskbar overrides the bottom of the window, and the menu background art is also stretched. I can't access the menu buttons, so this pretty much doesn't work.
windowed=1 and window_width=1024 and window_height=1024 is about the same. Basically windowed doesn't accomplish anything.
Ok, the problem has something to do with Windows 11 scaling behavior. I found a solution. Right click Will To Power's shortcut on the desktop (that's how I installed it for myself) and click Properties. Select Compatibility. Select "Change high DPI settings". A section at the bottom is titled "High DPI scaling override". It has a checkbox, "Override high DPI scaling behavior". Check it, and in the drop down menu, select "Scaling performed by:" Application. Now you will get SMAC in teeny weeny 1920x1080 glory.
Post by: Sardaukar on May 20, 2022, 10:21:22 pm
Thank you for feedback!
Road usage switch is probably disabled due to the fact that multiple reviewers could not find a common ground whether to accept it or not. Too many disputable points as you mentioned yourself.
It seems that it is not too much problem for attacker to contain the invasion on land anyway.
Yeah, the counterarguments are strong. But what about this?
With that in mind, roads providing a multiplier is funky. Rovers and infantry (riding rovers that belong to basic faction infrastructure), should move at about the same speed. Instead of a multiplier, why not a standard movement bonus to roads?
For example, all ground units may move over 10 friendly road squares for free. Could be some value other than 10 but I like the thought of rapid redeployment around your territory. Plus, this would ensure that hovertanks and rovers don't move less than in vanilla. It would, of course, substantially alter the meta but that could be resolved through testing and fine tuning a number of variables.
Would be more realistic, make for faster gameplay and alleviate that 4x weirdness where wars take way more years than they should. To match the increased road speed, would also want to increase movement for ships and possibly air units but that's easy to do with the txt. Increased movement would make offense far stronger but the territorial defense bonus you added could cancel that out. Either that or make the base/perimeter defense stronger.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 20, 2022, 10:21:55 pm
I ended up uninstalling Galactic Civilizations III after about 80 hours of play, because I saw no evidence of the AI being able to fight in the early to early midgame. Higher levels of difficulty would only add cheating movement and money buffs to the AIs.
Sadly, this can be said about ANY game pre 2000. They didn't do good AI then.
Thank you for resolving this issue with resolution on Windows 11. I don't have it yet but it's good to have it solved already!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 20, 2022, 10:25:48 pm
Yeah, the counterarguments are strong. But what about this?With that in mind, roads providing a multiplier is funky. Rovers and infantry (riding rovers that belong to basic faction infrastructure), should move at about the same speed. Instead of a multiplier, why not a standard movement bonus to roads?
For example, all ground units may move over 10 friendly road squares for free. Could be some value other than 10 but I like the thought of rapid redeployment around your territory. Plus, this would ensure that hovertanks and rovers don't move less than in vanilla. It would, of course, substantially alter the meta but that could be resolved through testing and fine tuning a number of variables.
Would be more realistic, make for faster gameplay and alleviate that 4x weirdness where wars take way more years than they should. To match the increased road speed, would also want to increase movement for ships and possibly air units but that's easy to do with the txt. Increased movement would make offense far stronger but the territorial defense bonus you added could cancel that out. Either that or make the base/perimeter defense stronger.
I agree that would be more realistic to imagine that foot soldiers are actually transferred by some land transport. This would require complete game rewrite, though. Currently units have only their speed and road multiplier (which is common parameter). To implement your proposal we would need to keep "speed without road" and "speed on road" parameters and there is no space for them both, unfortunately. It is too much game mechanics change proposal. Would you be willing to invent something of the same sort but within the current game mechanics scope? Probably by changing some parameters only?
Besides, what would be the difference between land classes chassis then if infantry start moving that fast?
Post by: Sardaukar on May 20, 2022, 10:45:18 pm
But I think that's what your describing as not possible/inordinately difficult.
Rovers would still be slightly faster on roads (10+2 rather than 10+1) but mostly they'd be advantageous for off-road operations. Suppose it might be appropriate to increase their speed as well.
If it could be made to work, would eliminate 2/3 and 1/3 strength penalties.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 02:58:45 am
You know the code and I don't but I imagined something along the lines of a unit having 10 "ticks" for free movement between two road tiles. When all ticks were exhausted, it would have to use ordinary movement. The game already has "ticks" or whatever they're called to keep track of how much movement a unit has already used in the turn. Magtubes factor into this somewhere, as they simply don't deplete "ticks."
But I think that's what your describing as not possible/inordinately difficult.
One doesn't need to know the code to see values/parameters in the game. Like infantry chassis can move 1 open terrain tile while rover can move 2. These values can easily be changed even in alphax.txt. I meant these kind of changes. Something that can be done through text modding mostly.
The thing is that each unit has a single variable that counts its movement allowance. So introducing another movement pattern would require second counter and some interchanging between two. And there is no place in vehicle structure to fit second one into.
Here is some info for you to play around.
There is a chassis speed which you can see in alphax.txt. This is how fast they move on open ground without road. Value can be simply edited in file.
There is a "road/tube multiplier". It is 6 in current WTP version but can be modified in alphax.txt and thinker.ini.
Chassis speed times tube multiplier = total number of "movement points" which unit can spend. The value should be whole.
The cost of movement to next hex is defined by the terrain (open, rough, fungus, road, tube). This cost should be also whole!!!
Normally moving to open terrain without road/tube/river costs exactly the multiplier so number of hexes unit can move in open properly divides down to chassis speed.
Last step can be done even if there are insufficient movement cost.
Example.
Rover. Chassis speed = 2. WTP road/tube multiplier = 6. Total movement points = 2 * 6 = 12.
Cost to move to open terrain (no road/tube/river) = 6. Therefore rover can make 12 / 6 = 2 steps in open.
Cost to move on road = 2. So it can move 12 / 2 = 6 hexes along the road.
Cost to move on tube = 1. Same: 12 / 1 = 12 hexes along the tube.
Would it be close to your idea if we just increase movement allowance to all land units by fixed value? Currently they have 1-2-3 (infantry, rover, tank). What if we set them to: 2-3-4 or 3-4-5, for example? That will proportionally increase their road speed, of course.
Another easy option I see is to change movement cost along the road based on chassis type and make infantry to move on roads as if they are tubes. Or we can do other way around: make rover moving x1.5 or x2.0 times slower on roads implying that they are already mobile units and use their own motor power moving on roads. Whereas infantry is using transportation that increase their road speed tremendously. Hovertank would benefit road the least as it already don't have impassable terrain so the road doesn't add much to it.
Something like that?
| chassis | chassis speed | movement points | field cost -> distance | road cost -> distance | tube cost -> distance |
| infantry | 1 | 6 | 6 -> 1 | 2 -> 3 | 1 -> 6 |
| speeder | 2 | 12 | 6 -> 2 | 3 -> 4 | 2 -> 6 |
| hovertank | 3 | 18 | 6 -> 3 | 4 -> 5 | 3 -> 6 |
Although, many people would be quite disappointed by road movement speed reduction for fast units.
If it could be made to work, would eliminate 2/3 and 1/3 strength penalties.
That's doable. However, it gives enormous advantage to infantry. They are now as good as speeder attacking from afar.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 04:19:43 am
Sadly, this can be said about ANY game pre 2000. They didn't do good AI then.
GalCiv3 actually came out in 2015. The last expansion, Retribution, was in 2019. That's what I just played. Now they just shipped GC4. I don't rule out the possibility of trying 4, but with the unimpressive AI performance of 3, it's not going to be 1st in line.
GOG has got Old World now, with a 10% sale on it. I might do it. But... today I thought, let's do WTP first. And I'm somewhat interested in the AI of Remnants of the Precursors, the one Xilmi made.
Quote
Thank you for resolving this issue with resolution on Windows 11. I don't have it yet but it's good to have it solved already!
Definitely some wisdom to spread around. Might need an entry in the game's installation notes, if it proves to be a problem for more people.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 05:14:28 am
Units that started out independent, are being assigned to cities and costing me SUPPORT. Has happened with 2 Unity Rovers as well. I restarted a game because I thought in some sleep deprived haze, I'd accidentally homed my Formers to my bases. Not so.
30 turns ago, my Formers were independent. By 20 turns ago, they were costing SUPPORT.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 06:24:05 am
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-292
Support is a complex and controversial thing by itself. Trying to tune it while human player exploits cloning hordes of free scouts away from bases and when computer players exchange their former support between each other makes it double so. I decided to establish the simplest baseline possible removing all random or quirky features those can be used as exploit and/or skew support configuring. At first I tried to assign all free or wrongly assigned units at once but it created sudden support surge especially at the beginning of the game. So I smoothened it out by doing that in the least invasive fashion not exhausting bases support all at once. Free units get assigned to bases to not reduce mineral surplus below 2 (or whatever is configured).
I agree this is not pretty straightforward to predict when free unit becomes assigned. I am open for other suggestions.
Also I may make it more wordy in changelog if it is unclear.
Now, on the top of this base state we can adjust support parameters: a) number of free units and b) how fast it grows per rating. Currently it is 2 free per base, others are consuming 1 mineral by default changing by 1/4 per SUPPORT rating.
I observed AI and it seems that 2 free units is slightly too tight for them especially when probes also require support. Maybe raise it to 3-4? This would also solve the problem assigning all initial units to first base (1 colony + 2 formers + scout). Also I can modify the logic to not assign free colony. This would apply to initial colonies only.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 07:16:09 am
I guess that initial Independent Scout is being sneakily assigned as well, and I just didn't notice. I think that would tick off a player a lot, when they notice. Carefully managing SUPPORT is pretty important in the early game.
I'm not inclined to say that gaining Independent units from popping supply pods is a problem. The AI is doing a pretty good job cleaning out all the supply pods, last I checked? Unless I'm confusing straight Thinker for what happens in WTP. You're only going to get Independent units in proportion to how many pods you pop, and past the early game, it's not like an Independent Unity Rover is some awesome advantage. The Independent Unity Transports are not that useful in WTP because you've kept them Slow like the original game. In my mod they're full speed and also have Deep Radar on them, so getting a fleet of those is definitely useful early on.
Getting Independent mindworms could be considered a problem. But, you could also ask whether this is an advantage a PLANET friendly faction should legitimately have, for having made the choice. And if it's somehow overpowered, is Independence what makes it overpowered, or just being able to have too many mindworms? I think it's the latter, at least in the stock binary.
Getting Independent ships because Marine Detachments boarded them, could be considered a problem. But again, is it a legit advantage for having spent production on the Marine Detachment ability? Is it something the Pirates should have as their most basic faction advantage?
I think bribing units is often helluh expensive and often doesn't work at all. So if that's a source of Independent units, I don't think it's a problem. Usually you can't buy cheap enemy units forever, because of that funny escalating cost formula, and because factions react by choosing ++PROBE stuff.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 07:22:58 am
😀
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 07:34:22 am
I would suggest considering which grants of Independent units are overpowered, if ever. I really think mindworms and pirate ships are the only way you can farm them. Wandering around in fungus trying to pop pods, when you can pretty easily be killed wandering around, is not exactly a farming strategy.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 02:30:25 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 04:28:31 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 05:52:08 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2022, 06:34:16 pm
Mindworms, the number of them you can capture should be downgraded.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 08:50:17 pm
😆
move -> production cycle
Vanilla checks/changes production in bases in pretty erratic way. It may check some bases multiple times a turn and don't even check some others. I am making it more straightforward with "move -> production" cycle.
First units are moved. Each unit may get some task to do in form of: go there and do this. Then as engine processes all unit tasks it also make note of some task demands or requests. For example if a lot of land units needs to be transported across the ocean but there is not many transports in this ocean, the number of transport requests goes up and so is the transport building priority in bases connected to this ocean. Or if there are many aliens around to kill but not enough scouts to do so - scout production priority goes up. Or if bases are under siege but there is not enough protectors to counter the threat, military units production priority goes up. And so on.
base threat evaluation
For each base algorithm scans all combat units on a map trying to make crude intelligent determination whether these units can advance toward player base. For example, pure protective units stationed at other bases do not present a threat or air units unable to reach the base from nearest airport do not present a threat either, etc.
Then each unit is weighed by its distance to the base and by current diplomatic relations. Units of enemy nation present full threat, pact units are no threat and peaceful ones are somewhere in the middle. That is to account for potential threat and prepare for future treaty break.
Then each our unit type is compared to each not our unit type to see how effective it is against them. I.e. how many of our units are needed to stop the invasion. Some of our units are more effective some are less.
Then all combat factors are taken into account: defensive structures, sensors, PLANET rating, unit morale, etc.
This all above summarized to some number representing total threat to the base as well as each of our unit contribution to alleviate it.
On top of that I also assume that enemy units will have hard time advancing through our territory due to ZOC and need to fight their way through. Therefore, land bases deep in land territory will receive much lower threat rating.
base protection
Algorithm sorts units by their combat effectiveness and sends most effective units to the closes base where it is needed the most. Then next unit and next unit until all base protection demands are satisfied. If there are still under protected bases the demand for military unit production raises.
enemy assault
This is not implemented yet.
If all base protections are satisfied and there are units left, these units can be sent toward some enemy base to capture it.
instant kill
Every time military unit moves it reviews enemy units around reachable within a single turn. If it can kill it with 1.5 odds it attacks.
waiting for backup
If unit is tasked to attack an enemy unit it evaluates own chances to win in a single battle. If it cannot, it stays within 3 tiles from the target and wait for reinforcement (more friendly units targeting the same enemy). Then when they are all in same range of the target, they move ahead as an army. I tested this and it does work but not perfect. Either way it is much better to attack fungal tower by multiple scouts within pretty tight turn range rather than not even tryin to synchronize them.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 21, 2022, 08:51:30 pm
Mindworms, the number of them you can capture should be downgraded.
What do you mean? Reduce capture chance?
Is it you own idea or is it in response to our conversation?
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2022, 01:41:02 am
I've noticed that in WTP, +2 PLANET seems to be the threshold for going on a "mindworm scouting rampage" where the force can keep building on itself. +1 doesn't do it. With mindworms having less offensive power in WTP, +1 PLANET tends to be a stalemate where you may capture a mindworm, but if you attack another mindworm with it, it'll probably die. So you can't snowball and the whole thing fizzles. I believe you have +15% steps between your PLANET ratings, so it's something about the difference between a +15% and +30% bonus, that is a tipping point. Maybe also coupled with the defense modifiers also being worked in there, unlike stock.
If you're worried about Independent units, then this is one of the big sources of Independent units. Food for your thought.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 22, 2022, 02:03:29 am
The PLANET attack/defense bonus is indeed +15%.
You are right that with 1:1 land attack mind worm army does not snowball that pronouncedly anymore. Yet, one does not need to attack to capture. If you are farming with mind worm and encountered alien mind worm, try to attack. It is either capture it right away or shows odds dialog meaning capture failed. Cancel attack and just follow this alien unit and try on next turn. Stupid, I know but this how it is sequenced in vanilla.
I am thinking to make each captured life form cost support. This way one still can gather large native army but this will draw their production. That would force player either start using them or stop accumulating them. Good check in my opinion.
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2022, 02:20:42 am
Cancel attack and just follow this alien unit and try on next turn.Hm, despite having odds calculator on permanently exactly so I can abuse capture, I never thought of trying to capture over and over again. I think it's because I'm also interested in leveling up my own mindworms. Killing a pile of them is just fine. Plus in stock, you get money.
Quote
I am thinking to make each captured life form cost support. This way one still can gather large native army but this will draw their production. That would force player either start using them or stop accumulating them. Good check in my opinion.
Earlier in the game, it might force a decision. Later in the game, production minerals are abundant from multipliers and SUPPORT doesn't matter much anymore.
Another factor is when you let the player start making their own mindworms in factories. There's no advantage to capturing a bunch of mindworms if they cost SUPPORT anyways and you can just make them. Not unless you could reliably produce twice as many units by beating the bush with Scouts, and I don't think mindworm capture is that reliable.
I don't allow mindworms in the lab until late game now. Since they are the best weapon of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2022, 12:51:48 am
Similarly, since you charge SUPPORT for probe teams, the Data Angels are going to be hosed by their extra unit and put at a disadvantage. The Cultists will be paying SUPPORT on their mindworm, unless you keep mindworms independent for some reason.
The worst one of all is, someone who gets a free ship because they've been given a lousy start, is going to get a lousy start paying extra SUPPORT for it.
The idea of paying SUPPORT on units you start the game with, is really bad.
Battle Ogre for Alien factions.
Also if you get any free units really early on, they're basically not bonuses anymore. They're penalties, in that they'll cripple your early colony production. Yes you could disband them. That's infinitely sick and irritating for players to have to do. "I giveth, and I taketh away."
The only way I can see salvaging some remnant of your idea, short of reversion, is putting a turn limit or later game condition on when these independent units are no longer independent. Now of course if your whole point was to constrain the early game, well, it's a bad idea. Should just give out units you consider problematic, less frequently.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2022, 01:25:39 am
On the similar note, let me know if you prefer default free unit allowance (2) to be increased.
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2022, 01:58:49 am
[Limit reached]
At turn 60 I quit the game. I've barely had time to get my own empire started, only just having learned Rec Commons. This is the 2nd probe team the University sent at me. The 1st one was 1st contact, declared war and stole from me. How does the U. manage to cough up the probe teams so quickly? More importantly, why is it so trivial for them to take over my bases, which are very close to my capitol? This is really out of balance, and hearkens to the worst offense of the stock binary. Before I started modding, I'd say 50% of my rage quits and deletes were due to overpowered probe teams.
In my mod, mind control costs 2x for most factions. This seems to prevent the stock AI from being able to take over bases near your capitol. There's at least a minimum radius of safety, I'm not sure how far it goes. But by feel, all of these bases would be 100% safe in my mod. You can't really make a sea empire in any tighter a cluster than I just made.
I don't know if you or Thinker have changed the probe team cost formulas.
This concludes testing for now. Griefed by probe teams is not something I do.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2022, 02:59:46 am
Not stopping you from playing completely just worrying about your burning out on hitting same problems over and over again.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 23, 2022, 03:00:27 am
Post by: Sardaukar on May 24, 2022, 06:39:57 pm
Another easy option I see is to change movement cost along the road based on chassis type and make infantry to move on roads as if they are tubes. Or we can do other way around: make rover moving x1.5 or x2.0 times slower on roads implying that they are already mobile units and use their own motor power moving on roads. Whereas infantry is using transportation that increase their road speed tremendously. Hovertank would benefit road the least as it already don't have impassable terrain so the road doesn't add much to it.
Chassis Speeds:
- Infantry - 4, road multiplier - 3
- Rover - 6, road multiplier - 2
- Hovertank - 8, road multiplier - 2
This value from the txt might need tinkering:
25, ; Combat % -> Mobile unit in open ground
Are rovers and hovertanks "mobile" or is that any unit over 1 movement? When thinking about multipliers, also have to keep elites in mind. An elite infantry unit would move 15 on a road, surpassing a rover! But not a big deal.
Post by: Sardaukar on May 24, 2022, 07:14:13 pm
12, ; Population limit w/o hab complex
24, ; Population limit w/o hab dome
Do your changes to hab complexes allow for this value being different?
Quote
Helps base grow faster by improving living conditions.
^Eliminates population limit GROWTH penalty.
^Default limit without this facility is {7} (alterable by faction settings).
^
^Base with this facility gets GROWTH bonus below the limit.
^GROWTH bonus = min(3, limit - population)
^
^Base without this facility gets GROWTH penalty approaching the limit.
^GROWTH penalty = max(0, population - limit + 3)
Post by: Sardaukar on May 24, 2022, 07:23:34 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2022, 07:27:03 pm
Been thinking about roads.
Chassis Speeds:
- Infantry - 4, road multiplier - 3
- Rover - 6, road multiplier - 2
- Hovertank - 8, road multiplier - 2
Remember there are also tubes. Supposing they are 2-3 times faster then road then hovertank with 8 movement would cover 8*2*2-3 = 32-48 tiles in one move. It is like crossing the whole map in 1-2 turns. Isn't it too much?
This value from the txt might need tinkering:
25, ; Combat % -> Mobile unit in open ground
Are rovers and hovertanks "mobile" or is that any unit over 1 movement? When thinking about multipliers, also have to keep elites in mind. An elite infantry unit would move 15 on a road, surpassing a rover! But not a big deal.
Rover and hovertank are mobile AFAIR. Elite extra movement does not make infantry mobile.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2022, 07:30:00 pm
I modded the values for base growth limits:
12, ; Population limit w/o hab complex
24, ; Population limit w/o hab dome
Do your changes to hab complexes allow for this value being different?QuoteHelps base grow faster by improving living conditions.
^Eliminates population limit GROWTH penalty.
^Default limit without this facility is {7} (alterable by faction settings).
^
^Base with this facility gets GROWTH bonus below the limit.
^GROWTH bonus = min(3, limit - population)
^
^Base without this facility gets GROWTH penalty approaching the limit.
^GROWTH penalty = max(0, population - limit + 3)
Yep. They are based on whatever current limit is. That applies to Morganites, for example, if you test them.
The text in help reflects the current configuration state. So if you change alphax.txt the help need to be changed too. Unless you don't distribute it, of course.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2022, 07:34:05 pm
In regards to the SUPPORT question, worth thinking about Civ iii, which switched SUPPORT from minerals to energy and ran it across the entire empire, rather than per base. I don't know whether energy or minerals are a better value for support but spreading the pain makes more sense. Could be tricky if you're paying the absolute minimum on a partial cost to rush a construction and your base suddenly has to support a new unit.
I absolutely welcome this approach! Actually it was also implemented in Master of Magic long long time ago.
Un-very-fortunately I don't see how we can change it in SMACX. It is all extremely hardcoded in all the places.
What I did about this is distributing unit support from heavy burdened bases to less burdened. This is for AI only, though. As players may want to micromanage it and free up some project building bases off support.
Post by: Sardaukar on May 24, 2022, 09:34:48 pm
Remember there are also tubes. Supposing they are 2-3 times faster then road then hovertank with 8 movement would cover 8*2*2-3 = 32-48 tiles in one move. It is like crossing the whole map in 1-2 turns. Isn't it too much?
I've only ever used magtubes with unlimited speed. :-[ Didn't seem too fast. Suspect there's a whole game design theory behind this choice that I've overlooked.
Also could set up hovertanks with 8/10/12 movement but not to move faster on roads.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 24, 2022, 10:25:07 pm
Also could set up hovertanks with 8/10/12 movement but not to move faster on roads.
You mean 8 - field, 10 - road, 12 - tube?
Post by: Sardaukar on May 25, 2022, 01:09:15 am
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2022, 02:06:08 am
And AI is not cheating on a major stuff like production or something. If they built it then they could.
It is their priorities compared to myself and other factions, that I question. It is one thing to build out your own empire as though you intend to survive. It is another thing to build with the tacit understanding that your goal is to harass the human player, in concert with all the other AIs. Or that you can take it for granted that all the other AIs have the same strategy that you do, so you can count on them leaving you alone. I just have to wonder if the University was putting its production strength into foil probe teams, if that was leaving it weaker somewhere else, and whether that's a sane choice. The stock AI is absolutely obsessed with taking over sea bases.
I have played again, vowing not to play the Pirates due to the likely foil probe team obsession problem. If I encounter the same kind of shenanigans with land probe teams, I'll just quit. But I'll wait until that actually happens.
As the Spartans, I suddenly had all the extra scouting SUPPORT "come due" when I made my 1st colonist. I had to disband the scout in my base to keep from losing something to lack of SUPPORT.
The game crashed on me, early on. Very sudden, complete wipeout to desktop. I don't have experience playing the stock binary on this new Windows 11 gaming laptop, so I don't know if it has to do with Will To Power or not.
EDIT: Played my mod with the stock binary for several hours. No problems, so this probably isn't graphical or OS related.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2022, 06:02:09 am
Sorry. That was unclear. Meant 8 or maybe 10 or maybe even 12 with no road bonus at all.
Yep. That was my idea as well. Infantry gets 3x bonus from road, speeder 2x, hovertank 1x (no improvement). We just need to select good numbers for their speed. Hovertank moving 8 turns in field is kinda unconventional. Although, I like the idea, other users may frown upon it. Do you mind put your whole idea in the table with all three chassis and how far they go in the field, road, and tube.
Also should we count river same as road in this regards? I would say so but other people will start arguing that all land units are traveling by rivers in boats, bla-bla. Winners...
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 25, 2022, 06:05:26 am
It is their priorities compared to myself and other factions, that I question. It is one thing to build out your own empire as though you intend to survive. It is another thing to build with the tacit understanding that your goal is to harass the human player, in concert with all the other AIs.
I am positively sure that the AI part of computer player is designed in a way to maximize own survival. They don't sacrifice themselves just to bring human down.
That would be unethical.
😂
Seriously. they don't.
Another thing is that their survival algorithm can be not perfect and they can do all kind of weird things those you may perceive as targeted human player annoyance. That's your point of view.
Post by: Sardaukar on May 25, 2022, 10:34:17 pm
- Chassis Speed: 4
- Road Multiplier: 3
- Chassis Speed: 6
- Road Multiplier: 2
- Chassis Speed: 10
- Road Multiplier: 1
Magtubes same as in vanilla.
Tables are a pain with this software. Will try.
| chassis | chassis speed | movement points | field cost -> distance | road cost -> distance | tube cost -> distance |
| infantry | 4 | 12 | 3 -> 1 | 1 -> 1 | free |
| speeder | 6 | 12 | 2 -> 1 | 1 -> 1 | free |
| hovertank | 10 | 10 | 1 -> 1 | 1 -> 1 | free |
Of course, this is all theory and would require in-game experimentation. Am having radical ideas about jiggering with the txt values. For example, rovers could have the same chassis costs as infantry. Infantry might have a better bonus against bases. The penalty for drop troops attacking on the same turn as they drop could be reduced from 50% to 10%. Modifications to base defensive bonus, infantry against base, mobile-in-open, etc.
Overall, am envisioning a radically more open and mobile style of warfare with bases becoming lynchpins in the defense networks. Tough nuts to crack.
In regards to movement, this proposed system would benefit greatly from slowing the movement rate in rocky and fungus squares.
Movement Costs:
Open tile: 1
Rolling tile: 2
Rocky tile: 4
Fungus tile: 6
Can't find values for this in the txt. Not sure whether is worth distinguishing between open and rolling. Might just confuse the AI. But definitely, slower rocky and fungus would create interesting strategic barriers.
As for rivers, I like the idea of them working as in vanilla. Slower than roads. Same with native life moving through fungus. But haven't thought it through yet.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2022, 05:22:50 am
Infantry:Rovers:
- Chassis Speed: 4
- Road Multiplier: 3
Hovertanks:
- Chassis Speed: 6
- Road Multiplier: 2
- Chassis Speed: 10
- Road Multiplier: 1
Magtubes same as in vanilla.
Tables are a pain with this software. Will try.
chassis chassis speed movement points field cost -> distance road cost -> distance tube cost -> distance infantry 4 12 3 -> 1 1 -> 1 free speeder 6 12 2 -> 1 1 -> 1 free hovertank 10 10 1 -> 1 1 -> 1 free
Didn't understand how chassis speed and movement points are tied to each other? What is chassis speed? How many open tiles unit can go without road?
Free tube movement is something we tried to get rid of in this mod. At least this is common understanding that tube movement could be fast but still should be limited.
In regards to movement, this proposed system would benefit greatly from slowing the movement rate in rocky and fungus squares.
Movement Costs:
Open tile: 1
Rolling tile: 2
Rocky tile: 4
Fungus tile: 6
Can't find values for this in the txt. Not sure whether is worth distinguishing between open and rolling. Might just confuse the AI. But definitely, slower rocky and fungus would create interesting strategic barriers.
Not in txt. One can plant fungus for such barrier for sure.
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2022, 07:49:27 am
[Limit reached]
Maybe my eh performance wasn't entirely my fault, as the SUPPORT reshufflings are rather disruptive. It's pretty anti-exploration. You pretty much just get in trouble all the time and find yourself sending units back to rehome them. I noticed the AI wasn't exactly aggressive about popping pods either. Especially when you only have a few bases, it becomes this major major task instead of an early game land grab.
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2022, 05:00:58 pm
Replayed from Autosave 1. This time it didn't crash. The main difference in movements, aside from incidental ordering, was the supply pod that the Transport popped. Instead of sprouting an Isle, this time it gave me 75 credits. If the bug is a memory leak though, then it may not have anything specifically to do with actions I take on a turn. It may be that restarting the game, gives more memory before a problem manifests again. I do note that these crashes are coming at a roughly similar time of playing the game, a sort of early game thing.
SOB it crashed again, just another turn after I overcame it. Played from "replay no crash" and then it crashed. Now restarting and loaded "before 2nd crash" game. It would have to be an awfully quick memory leak, so that's probably not it. Continuing, the game crashes.
Started the game again. Loaded "before 2nd crash" and hit Turn Complete. It didn't crash. So, it's indeterminate.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2022, 05:13:26 pm
Oops, sorry. Didn't pay attention to attachment. You are all good. I'll study them.
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2022, 05:19:38 pm
Post by: Sardaukar on May 26, 2022, 06:09:19 pm
Didn't understand how chassis speed and movement points are tied to each other? What is chassis speed? How many open tiles unit can go without road?
Free tube movement is something we tried to get rid of in this mod. At least this is common understanding that tube movement could be fast but still should be limited.
Pretty sure I get it. Is just laid out in a format that seems really unintuitive to me. But it works.
If movement/roads are substantially faster, as laid out in the table, there may be less reason for tubes to have limited movement.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 26, 2022, 11:33:37 pm
Post by: bvanevery on May 27, 2022, 02:52:29 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 27, 2022, 03:39:56 am
You need hovertank chassis to build the tubes in the 1st place. Although Xenoempathy Dome can almost do as well. Which is part of why it comes rather late in my mod.
I meant for combat units moving across the network, not formers.
Post by: Sardaukar on June 11, 2022, 05:01:37 am
So you have a military unit in base and press B (iirc).
--->
Warning Box: "Are you sure you wish to eliminate base? This is a major atrocity."
--->
1) Yes
2) No, I want to relocate the populace (X credits based on pop size.)
3) No, wrong button. Sorry.
Something like that. Whether the new people would be spread out across your faction or sent to a specific base, am not sure.
Post by: shayfiles on June 30, 2022, 09:52:05 pm
Still thinking about alternate road speeds but had an unrelated thought. How about an alternative to raze base which still demolishes the base but sends the populace to your other cities?
So you have a military unit in base and press B (iirc).
--->
Warning Box: "Are you sure you wish to eliminate base? This is a major atrocity."
--->
1) Yes
2) No, I want to relocate the populace (X credits based on pop size.)
3) No, wrong button. Sorry.
Something like that. Whether the new people would be spread out across your faction or sent to a specific base, am not sure.
I think an option such as "Abandon base as refugees" would be pretty cool. For instance, a size 7 base could produce seven colony pods that need to be re-homed at another base or HQ to be activated. This could end the massive base sprawl a conqueror ends up acquiring.
Post by: Sardaukar on September 09, 2022, 12:40:56 am
With that in mind, roads providing a multiplier is funky. Rovers and infantry (riding rovers that belong to basic faction infrastructure), should move at about the same speed. Instead of a multiplier, why not a standard movement bonus to roads?
For example, all ground units may move over 10 friendly road squares for free. Could be some value other than 10 but I like the thought of rapid redeployment around your territory. Plus, this would ensure that hovertanks and rovers don't move less than in vanilla. It would, of course, substantially alter the meta but that could be resolved through testing and fine tuning a number of variables.
I agree that would be more realistic to imagine that foot soldiers are actually transferred by some land transport. This would require complete game rewrite, though. Currently units have only their speed and road multiplier (which is common parameter). To implement your proposal we would need to keep "speed without road" and "speed on road" parameters and there is no space for them both, unfortunately. It is too much game mechanics change proposal. Would you be willing to invent something of the same sort but within the current game mechanics scope? Probably by changing some parameters only?
Besides, what would be the difference between land classes chassis then if infantry start moving that fast?
Been thinking of this again. Would it really require a "speed on road" parameter for each individual unit? If we say ground units have their chassis speed but each can make 10 total moves on roads per turn that's a universal value. Can this information be stored somewhere else? Each individual unit only needs to keep track of how many of these 10 "road moves" have been expended.
I imagine there's no space for that but have to ask.
Some combat rebalancing:
50, ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
100, ; Combat % -> Infantry vs. Base
50, ; Combat % -> Territorial Defense (This is a Will to Power feature. Not found in vanilla.)
50, ; Combat % -> Mobile unit in open ground
25, ; Combat % -> Defend vs. mobile in rough
25, ; Combat % -> Comm Jammer unit defending vs. mobile unit
Speed:
Infantry: 1
Speeder: 4
Hovertank: 4
Would require some testing. Probably alter some costs. Speeders the same as infantry. Speeders would be used for controlling open fields and dominating areas with roads. Would need infantry for assaulting bases.
As I write this post, it occurs to me that I can pretty much achieve the desired feature with txt editing. Setting magtubes to a basic or tier 1 tech would do it. Give it a construction cost of 1. Since I'm mostly concerned with multilplayer, not a big deal that AI can't handle tubes.
Post by: Sardaukar on September 09, 2022, 12:48:45 am
Still thinking about alternate road speeds but had an unrelated thought. How about an alternative to raze base which still demolishes the base but sends the populace to your other cities?
So you have a military unit in base and press B (iirc).
--->
Warning Box: "Are you sure you wish to eliminate base? This is a major atrocity."
--->
1) Yes
2) No, I want to relocate the populace (X credits based on pop size.)
3) No, wrong button. Sorry.
Something like that. Whether the new people would be spread out across your faction or sent to a specific base, am not sure.
I think an option such as "Abandon base as refugees" would be pretty cool. For instance, a size 7 base could produce seven colony pods that need to be re-homed at another base or HQ to be activated. This could end the massive base sprawl a conqueror ends up acquiring.
In reference to "my mod," :-[ colony pod construction very much more expensive than in vanilla (but pop growth is faster). This proposed feature would work much better for me if it didn't produce new pods but bolstered the pop of existing bases. There's a logic to it too inasmuch as you're just throwing a new shanty town in Morgan Hydroelectric, instead founding a new base with its own grid, life support and transit.
Post by: dino on December 11, 2022, 11:20:44 am
This way all units would have the same speed on magtubes, to simulate being transported by trains without introducing new parameter.
At 3x speed, it'd be equal to hovertank on roads 9 tiles/turn for example.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 19, 2022, 05:05:18 am
I may forget initial point but what was the problem with rovers moving twice as fast on any terrain including roads and tubes?
Post by: dino on December 19, 2022, 09:09:58 pm
This way all units would traverse the same distance on magtube per turn, like they would be transported by train instead of using their own drives
Just a little simulationist thing for versimilitude and wouldn't require an additional unit stat to govern unit speed on magtube, like someone proposed on the previous page.
For game balance tubes having double speed of roads works decently for me, so it's just a low priority idea to consider.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on December 21, 2022, 02:09:41 am
Post by: Neil on January 08, 2023, 12:03:19 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2023, 06:33:37 pm
People liked it 50/50. So I didn't implement it.
Post by: dino on January 09, 2023, 10:55:03 am
I was under impression most people were against disabling roads, I'm sure many would like disabling magtube on enemy territory but still counting it as a road.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 09, 2023, 06:12:43 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 26, 2023, 08:23:11 am
Hive started on small *incredibly crappy* island. You can see their starting location. Almost completely arid, U.N.S Unity Wreckage. First 20 turns it developed soooo slow barely producing colonies to fill up starting island. However, it sent few Gun Foils for sea pod popping. And by luck and craft captured all other faction ocean bases they just built. Imagine that: just a crappy fleet of basic sea units captured all other factions' ocean bases. All of them. All ocean bases you see in the southern hemisphere belonged to others. Besides, they also captured couple of University's bases on their native island to the East. I could not believe it but now they are ranked #1 overrunning PK who landed on jungles! Funny.
8)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 29, 2023, 08:31:25 pm
First screenshot is AI playing Hive. But we are here for Believers vs. PKs. Lal landed on jungle and was first in development for long time (until AI Hive didn't overtake him). Believers, though were progressing exceptionally badly being squeezed by fat PKs and waging constant war with them (unsuccessfully).
Therefore, I decided to see what AI can pull out as Believers. Second screenshot.
I was quite pleased with Believers now swarming the map with Scout Patrols (thanks to their extra support) and just taking empty PK bases - eliminating them for good and taking this jucy jungle spot! No even after 20 turns passed so I can check dominance chart.
:o
Post by: DrazharLn on March 29, 2023, 09:26:55 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on March 29, 2023, 10:23:46 pm
Besides economy I also try to teach them to fight better. Now they can evaluate the amount of forces to gather and to coordinate the attack (to some extent).
Post by: DrazharLn on March 30, 2023, 09:15:18 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2023, 05:57:01 pm
I also do a standard reverse test replaying the least developed faction after first test only to see how it becomes the superpower even from the worst starting conditions.
Example below. Hive (WTP AI) was placed on the peninsula blocked by Believers and deprived the juicy jungle placements. Yet it was able to expand and take their territory by force skyrocketing the development close to turn 50.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 11, 2023, 05:58:29 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 23, 2023, 12:32:48 am
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases/tag/296
The major achievement is that WTP AI constantly beats vanilla even from most inconvenient starting locations. I didn't plan to make it play like a gross master. Just to be challenging enough for human.
A word of advise. HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL VERSION.
Due to deeply sophisticated algorithms it may fail. I tested it and squashed all bugs I could find but some could still lurk around. Please report.
Another thing is that I increased number of path finding overall. That may result in slower strategy computation phase. Sometimes I observed up to 10-15 seconds. Could increase with map size or number of bases/units. Let me know if you experience serious delay. That should be no too bad anyway as whole mid game turn may take 1-2 minutes just for pieces pushing time.
Post by: bvanevery on April 29, 2023, 07:23:01 pm
Quote
* Disabled tech stealing from faction with vendetta.Does that mean if someone declares war on me, suddenly they are invulnerable to me stealing techs from them? Awfully handy and convenient for them. Would be a seriously bad design decision IMO.
Or does "tech steal" mean something else, like getting a free tech when you conquer a base?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 30, 2023, 01:59:59 pm
Yes. They are invulnerable from you stealing tech from them during vendetta. That is the idea.
Post by: bvanevery on April 30, 2023, 02:54:14 pm
How many games have I played where I waited until I was in a war with someone, before I started stealing from them? Stealing while at peace risks war. Unless there's no diplomatic relationship at all, which is unusual in practice. Not unheard of though. Happens with Alien factions fairly regularly, even after they're speaking to you.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 30, 2023, 03:42:05 pm
Post by: bvanevery on April 30, 2023, 04:38:14 pm
Are you trying to balance things for multiplayer? If you are focusing WTP on multiplayer concerns, that's a whole lot of specialized design that I don't have that much input on. I don't have any experience in multiplayer really, having played a game against an actual human opponent maybe only 2 times in my life, on a LAN in my apartment back in the stone ages. Even then it was only 1 vs. 1, so not very "multi".
If you are worried about AIs spreading techs too fast by stealing them from each other, do you have evidence that this is the actual major vector of how they acquire techs? I have my doubts, particularly because in stock, probe teams tend to cross terrain very badly and get themselves killed. I do have armored probe teams in my mod, so they perform a little better, but that's primarily about threatening the human player and endangering bases to mind control.
If you're worried about a human player stealing from AIs in a single player game, you just shouldn't. It's not a problem. Frankly it's standard drill to steal from AIs that are doing better than you are. Especially on larger maps, it's not that easy to steal stuff, because it takes a long time to push those probe teams safely across the map.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on April 30, 2023, 07:17:30 pm
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/92
If you think this is not part of the problem, I can revert it. No biggie.
Post by: bvanevery on April 30, 2023, 08:01:10 pm
Quote
Tech is ridiculously cheap. There is no reason to do any research at all, as you will simply buy all your tech for next to nothing, from factions that freely sell it. Or even give it away to allies. RESEARCH penalties that some factions carry, like the Believers and the Free Drones, don't mean a darned thing. To the extent they are meant to offset and "pay for" their faction bonuses, it's a complete deal / slam dunk. A disadvantage that means absolutely nothing to them.
Please revert the probe team no tech stealing stuff. It's actually work to steal techs. I played a 1+ month game of my own mod recently before getting tired of it. The Spartans had me totally bottled up by land, and the Caretakers had me totally bottled up by sea, as far as me being able to steal tech. Couldn't do it, for like forever. Couldn't put armored troops out there to protect probe teams to get them to targets, because Spartan land onslaught was that fierce. I eventually gave up the game because I got to a point where I thought I was making progress, only to have it continue as the WW I style infinite unit pushing bog down again. I can't say that my mod beat me, but at least in that long game, it drove me to something pretty close to a stalemate. With my patience at least.
Air cover might have snuck some probe teams around over land, if I had made more planes. But, in my mod I do have cheap Laser Interceptors being made by the AI. They do shoot down my planes. Might have worked some but not great.
And I don't even have any of your fancy AI stuff from either your efforts or Thinker. Just leveraging what the stock binary can do, by providing the right predefined units.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 01, 2023, 01:01:40 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on May 30, 2023, 10:50:36 pm
I am thinking on reverting my farm production back to vanilla's +1 (from +2 now). That will significantly reduce expansion to moist areas only until TF/HF and condensers appearance. Not on sea, though.
Other option would be to increase colony cost to 8 (from current 6).
Other thoughts?
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2023, 03:57:53 pm
Need to slow down things a little.
:)
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2023, 04:05:32 pm
Or did you do an automated AI vs. AI test? If so, that result doesn't prove anything. Your game needs to be tested with human resistance. For instance, a human might be better at grabbing all the Secret Projects, giving the AIs less advantages to win the game with. The political calculus of the game might be a valid problem a human player can intervene in.
By way of comparison, AI for SMACX AI Growth mod is capable of winning by transcendence in 400 turns in automated tests. Doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough that it can be expected.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 01, 2023, 08:29:45 pm
If have tested 1 WTP computer player against 6 "vanilla" computer players so far.
I agree that it does not show that AI is good enough against human. The question of this post is not the quality of AI in general. It is that AI becomes economically more savvy to the extent it finishes the game too quickly by itself. I don't remember vanilla even was able to do it in time. So I am thinking on generic game slowdown. Irrespective to AI vs. human competition.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2023, 08:36:16 pm
I mean I don't just sit around letting AIs get ahead forever. I react. Sure I've seen AIs transcend in AI only games. They haven't transcended in my games, against me.
Post by: valox on September 10, 2023, 07:34:36 am
These are the consequences I'd expect.
1) serves as a negative feedback loop that encourages varied play styles
2) maintains player agency by not telling them what they can or cannot do
3) increases the perceived 'meaningfulness' of how one acquires technology. Namely, developing your own tech is now much more exciting since it is now perceived as being more 'sustainable' and stealing/borrowing is more thoughtful, because players need to self-regulate.
Post by: DrazharLn on September 11, 2023, 04:35:36 pm
I think the real problem has to be established to try to solve problems like this. What about a short game is bad for the experience of human players and why? Once that has been established then there may be many different approaches worth trying for solving the problem and these don't necessarily need to change player-visible mechanics.
E.g. these are different problems with potentially distinct solutions:
- human players get conquered out of nowhere by AIs that are more advanced than they expected
- human players lose to AI builder or diplomatic victories before they've got into the game
- tech progression feels too fast or easy and that undermines feeling of achievement or time passing, or makes it unsatisfying to play some factions
- players want more time to play with stuff before new things are introduced
- players find conquering the world too quick or easy
- etc
The first two can be fixed solely by changing AI behaviour; the last two may be better fixed by changes to combat, etc.
A kinda relevant story: the Old World designers don't think it's fun if the AI wins a builder-type victory in a 4X game because it's hard for players to see it coming and usually feels unsatisfying. So, in their game the AI cannot win via the main "ambition" system that players are intended to win by. AI can only win by "victory points". AI victory points act as a kind of visible, variable clock on the length of the game. The feature is really easy for players to read and avoids underwhelming conclusions where an AI wins a victory condition you didn't understand or couldn't really influence. Instead, the AI can still win, but it's clear to the player when that might happen and it is easy to understand how to delay an AI victory (because the players also score victory points).
This solution was easier for them to develop and meant they could focus on building a rich "ambition" victory system for players without worrying about how the AI would use it or how that could be visible to the player.
Rambling a bit more, some games go beyond this kind of asymmetry to choose or influence what the NPCs and environment will do based on a director system that tries to model a human game facilitator. The director makes predictions about how the players are feeling about the game and makes changes to the environment, AI behaviour, number and location of AI, equipment, etc. to try and induce emotional changes to match desirable patteens (e.g. tension builds to a climax, then there's a relaxation before the next thing; or, the surprise and elation of succeeding when you thought you would fail, or finding something you need or that would be really fun just as you need it). This is a big shift from the more obvious simulation approach where the environment mostly follows physical rules and the NPCs are modelled as individual agents that try to achieve their own simple objectives.
Obviously game designers try to build systems and agents that focus on player experience with either system, but a director approach is systematic rather than ad-hoc about modeling the player's experience and changing the game to try and induce specific emotions and behaviours from players.
I think it would be cool to know more about how different strategy game designers have experimented with more director-type systems.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2023, 05:39:19 pm
If the game was lying to me about my agency within it, just rubberbanding me if I did well or poorly, I'd be quite annoyed with the game. It's my prerogative to stomp a game. I can't stomp something if there's no valid resistance.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2023, 05:54:18 pm
to slow the game down, we could encumber players that buy and steal tech.
I have already scrutinized AI willingness to trade techs. As for stealing, I think it is already kind of not easy. One need to have a war with other faction (or risk a war by stealing from friend). That makes probes vulnerable. Stealing second time from the same base is more difficult, etc. If needed, I may make it even more difficult.
Some people say lowering probability does not matter as player just build more probes to steal it. Sounds pretty strange to me for the game where economy is everything. There is a significant difference between building 10 probes or 100 probes. One can build more combat units instead. Everything has its price and trade-off. Again, I am ready to discuss means to reduce it. Share ideas.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2023, 06:06:32 pm
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2023, 06:27:00 pm
Is tech trading or stealing even a significant factor in making the game shorter? I also don't see how it makes the game more fun. Stealing techs is fun and creative and trading techs makes the AI feel more real because they proactively contact you and they have well-written dialogue. I don't want to be discouraged to do that by a penalty I'll be paying forever. A new nation-wide maintenance cost would also be difficult to make readable and understandable to the player.
I think the real problem has to be established to try to solve problems like this. What about a short game is bad for the experience of human players and why? Once that has been established then there may be many different approaches worth trying for solving the problem and these don't necessarily need to change player-visible mechanics.
E.g. these are different problems with potentially distinct solutions:
- human players get conquered out of nowhere by AIs that are more advanced than they expected
- human players lose to AI builder or diplomatic victories before they've got into the game
- tech progression feels too fast or easy and that undermines feeling of achievement or time passing, or makes it unsatisfying to play some factions
- players want more time to play with stuff before new things are introduced
- players find conquering the world too quick or easy
Good analysis. I also don't think preventing/slowing technology exchange affects the game duration much. In my personal strong option it is the nature of 4X game accelerated growth. Since it is highly accelerated the smallest speed up or slow down at the beginning have a tremendous effect on future progress and, therefore, on the game duration. Original game designers did a lot of adjustments to keep accelerated growth at bay. Like early yield restrictions, etc. That was an exact reason why early game felt soooo slow. Well, it is either that or super fast growth later. Removing these restrictions + adding formers at start *alone* may account for fast game progress. I tried to tune up tech progression but this is indeed secondary. Faster expansion and economy growth is still there.
Keep also in mind that all AI improvement mods are built with advanced players in mind seeking challenge. With that in mind most of the "AI beats the player" problems you described above are the matter of difficulty level adjustment. When you play chess program you probably not playing the highest difficulty to get beaten all the time. Same here.
- tech progression feels too fast or easy and that undermines feeling of achievement or time passing, or makes it unsatisfying to play some factions
That is not the problem of this mod but the overall number of technologies in game. 85 tech in ~350 turns = one tech per 4 turns. That's the average you should see. Taking that most techs give you some small bonuses this seems to be normal way accumulating small benefits over time. The fact that in vanilla it took 20 turns to discover a tech early game and then 2-3 tech per turn late game is just a skew. I am not even sure if this was on purpose or just lousy balance.
- players want more time to play with stuff before new things are introduced
I agree with that. And that is quite difficult to achieve. Sure things can be more evenly distributed across time. Like 12 different weapons can each occupy about 350/12 = 30 turns, which seems to be adequate enough, providing not all of them even can be used. Plus 20-50 turns after discovering last tech to play with latest inventions.
I would probably accept slightly shorter game of 250-300 turns but anything shorter than 200 creates the sense of not controlling the progress. Things just happen.
- players find conquering the world too quick or easy
Hmm. That should not be a problem anymore in this mod. Or I need to continue working on AI improvement.
😉
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2023, 06:29:11 pm
The main actual cost to me as a player in the real world, when stealing techs, is how long it takes me to push a probe team across a map. I play on Huge maps and there's definitely a lot of times in a game, where it's less effort to build my own research infrastructure than to push the probe teams to other empires. I often wait until other empires make themselves closer to my own, before bothering to raid them.
Yep. There are many elements to stealing. All things combined I don't feel it is super easy and game breaking exploit.
Post by: valox on September 11, 2023, 10:25:28 pm
If the game was lying to me about my agency within it, just rubberbanding me if I did well or poorly, I'd be quite annoyed with the game.
this is a great point. Negative and Positive feedback loops can be very destructive when they
1) reduce player agency
2) create game-play experiences that contradict the game narrative. (Like when racing games slow you down when you are in first place, but speed you up when in last place)
In my personal strong option it is the nature of 4X game accelerated growth. Since it is highly accelerated the smallest speed up or slow down at the beginning have a tremendous effect on future progress and, therefore, on the game duration. Original game designers did a lot of adjustments to keep accelerated growth at bay.
A while back, I found myself puzzled by a game design choice: the inclusion of a feature called HabComplex. Initially, it felt like an unnecessary obstacle, but upon reflection, it serves as an excellent negative feedback loop. For players with strong starts, HabComplex requirements act as bottlenecks, dampening the effects of an early lead. On the flip side, those lagging behind typically have the required tech in place, thus avoiding population caps. This feature enhances the player's sense of agency, offering an obstacle that can be overcome in various ways.
However, there's room to refine the player experience, particularly in regard to the aligning the game's typical economic curve and the games tech cost curve. As AlphaCentauriBear pointed out, the game's duration is highly dependent on the pacing of the early game. Tech advancement can snowball from mid-to-late game, which we seem to agree is not ideal. We seem to agree that the early game should be a little more spicy, but we don't want shorter games over all.
We could get the best of both worlds! You know, add additional terraformer at the start or something. Make the game spicy like that--BUT then re-calibrate the cost of tech advancements. Run 10 or 100 test games and create a table of economic curve. Also, table the cost curve of the tech. Then we write a function that uniformly adjusts the tech costs to align with the typical economic curves we have harvested. I hope I'm making my point clear, which is that we can use two or more techniques to get the experience we seem to be aiming for.
Post by: valox on September 11, 2023, 10:47:51 pm
By framing it in this way, I think I can carve out the issue that i see (and this may be relatively minor in comparison to other opportunities being discussed). Its possible for the human players to think quite a bit more abstractly than an AI. As such, it is possible to pretty much ignore tech on purpose, and focus more heavily on economic and military goals, and use the "come-back" mechanism of the probes and trading to gain an advantage. And there you have it, the core problem that I'm trying to point out with trading/stealing. It would be fun to find an elegant way to maintain player agency, but not give players a way to leverage those options WHILE in 1st place.
My original suggestion about implementing a penalty for stealing and trading tech too many times... falls short of this goal. Ironically, the logic above demonstrates that such a change would actually hurt losing players ability to make a "strong comeback" and wouldn't really stop a "winning" player from the gimmick i described. But, maybe i'll think of something truly elegant in the future. Or, maybe i need to demonstrate the issue more clearly if other's don't know what i'm talking about.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2023, 11:03:51 pm
We could get the best of both worlds! You know, add additional terraformer at the start or something. Make the game spicy like that--BUT then re-calibrate the cost of tech advancements. Run 10 or 100 test games and create a table of economic curve. Also, table the cost curve of the tech. Then we write a function that uniformly adjusts the tech costs to align with the typical economic curves we have harvested. I hope I'm making my point clear, which is that we can use two or more techniques to get the experience we seem to be aiming for.
Yep. That is exactly what I did. I ran many test games and calibrated tech cost so that the tech pace is roughly uniform across the game. Keep in mind that this calibration is specific for the mod and even version of the mod as changes from vanilla economics curve could be quite significant.
Average pace, obviously, does not guarantee same experience between games and poor/great experience, random factors, etc. 50% variation from average is a norm.
This being said, let me reiterate my point. Tech pace definitely needs to be tied to economy pace. Otherwise, one would just either discover everything too early or too late comparing to logical game evolution which creates kind of unpleasant effect. It is economy pace we need to take care of. After that readjusting tech pace is a piece of cake.
So far many modders/users agreed that vanilla early game is excruciatingly slow. Whereas late game is a complete opposite with all the satellite resources and other multipliers. This does not only refer tech pace but the whole development in general. As such, a lot of effort was spent on smoothing it up. Giving players some actions early but tone it down later on. I saw it in many other mods and tried to follow same principle in this one too.
Un-very-fortunately, changing game mechanics is a very dangerous adventure. There is a risk breaking it down beyond repair. All low hanged fruit were picked up already. Like removing yield restrictions and giving formers at the beginning or cutting down satellite resource yield at the end, etc. Some super powerful projects and strategies were nerfed, etc.
I would say at the moment it does look much-much smoother than vanilla. The current discussion is just about possible options to make it even more smoother. However, even if we don't solve it, and game ends in 250 turns, this still would be interesting enough playable experience.
Then, keep in mind, that this is only for highest difficulty. On lower difficulties AI has less economical bonuses and develop slower, so overall game progress is also (could be) slower. Need to check.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 11, 2023, 11:24:55 pm
Oh, and concerning probes, they are 100% the best example of a positive-feedback loop. Categorically, they allow losing players a come-back mechanism. They also increase player agency, because the stealer has to make a plan and implement it. The system also maintains the victim's agency, because they can either do due diligence to protect themselves or not.
By framing it in this way, I think I can carve out the issue that i see (and this may be relatively minor in comparison to other opportunities being discussed). Its possible for the human players to think quite a bit more abstractly than an AI. As such, it is possible to pretty much ignore tech on purpose, and focus more heavily on economic and military goals, and use the "come-back" mechanism of the probes and trading to gain an advantage. And there you have it, the core problem that I'm trying to point out with trading/stealing. It would be fun to find an elegant way to maintain player agency, but not give players a way to leverage those options WHILE in 1st place.
My original suggestion about implementing a penalty for stealing and trading tech too many times... falls short of this goal. Ironically, the logic above demonstrates that such a change would actually hurt losing players ability to make a "strong comeback" and wouldn't really stop a "winning" player from the gimmick i described. But, maybe i'll think of something truly elegant in the future. Or, maybe i need to demonstrate the issue more clearly if other's don't know what i'm talking about.
I think you are placing carriage in front of the horse even though you described the situation quite well.
You are right that obtaining tech by other means than research diminishes research value. It is quite possible that reducing research allocation in favor of economy + tech stealing/trading may be more effective. Well, go ahead and try it! 😊 Maybe you discover some new super strategy nobody thought of.
As a rule of thumb, any not dumb game rules make player/AI to search for optimal strategy. The one more knowledgeable of the game rules and more capable of deeper choices analysis wins. Changing game rules to tilt balance between different strategies is kind of neutral proposition. It does not make it better or worse (for most) - just different.
Imagine you play chess and dislike playing knights (for some reason). Then you propose reducing knight value since other players use them too effective against you. Thus you invent another game but not many people will be too excited, I guess.
The goal of this mod and similar mods (I am not talking about total conversions) was to keep game as close to original playing expectations as possible. I.e. reduce grinding, any micromanagement that does not actually support player agency in the game, restore to expected balance of different features: economy, research, conquest, exploration, infrastructure, expansion, improvement, diplomacy, intrigues, etc. - making sure none of them shadows others.
Post by: valox on September 11, 2023, 11:44:27 pm
I think you are placing carriage in front of the horse even though you described the situation quite well.hehe, i'll own that for sure. I'm probably a hammer looking for a nail here.
The goal of this mod and similar mods (I am not talking about total conversions) was to keep game as close to original playing expectations as possible. I.e. reduce grinding, any micromanagement that does not actually support player agency in the game, restore to expected balance of different features: economy, research, conquest, exploration, infrastructure, expansion, improvement, diplomacy, intrigues, etc. - making sure none of them shadows others.
And this is the honey pot that compelled me to join the community. When i heard about this mod, I quickly saw the value of this mods' goals. Very excited to play it this weekend or something for the first time.
As a rule of thumb, any not dumb game rules make player/AI to search for optimal strategy.yeah, that's one of my favorite topics. Elegant game design is about increasing the number of meaningful & enjoyable ways to solve a problem with the minimal amount of complexity required to do so. So a 'dumb rule' is one that leads to "automatic" decisions for decent or expert level players.
also, as long as the 'stakes' are clear for a given game piece, a multiplayer (err multi-player/ai) environment create balance organically through player on player action. And that is EXACTLY why late game isn't very enjoyable in the vanilla version. Its hard to clearly predict the balance of powers or do anything fast enough to re balance the game through agency.. turns into a death march to victory or death.
Anywho, i'm rambling. I love this stuff.
Post by: valox on September 12, 2023, 12:03:15 am
This being said, let me reiterate my point.i'm tracking with you much better now. I see that it is the bending of the avg economic curve that's a challenge, not the tech cost curve; and that solutions need to be as non-invasive as possible.
One idea, is to not be so totally universal in how you bend the tech cost curve. For instance, maybe you scale the economic-tech costs up differently? Perhaps, you provide a transformer at the beginning, but explicitly increase the cost of the first few economy techs?
In StarCraft2, eventually the did the same thing. Early game was too boring for expert players and for audiences, so they gave you like 3x the number of workers at the beginning of the game, but made your resource supply less durable.... leading players to lots of fun action at the start, without causing the game to end any faster and without skipping the early game entirely.
So, in terms of this mod, something spiritually similar could be implemented. Heck, it could even be a matter of giving people a terraformer, but then increase the cost of building terraformer, by 15%, decreasing the efficiency of terraforming by 15%.... leading to a more interesting early game, without shortening the game?
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2023, 01:19:06 am
In other words, "should there be 1 more terraformer at the beginning?" is barking up the wrong tree, IMO.
I do think that going back to WtP, after playing vanilla or my mod or even just Thinker, always requires a big mental adjustment on the part of the player. A key thing is how to make use of Recycling Tanks early on. They aren't just a little bonus, they're a really important early factory. Pretty much your entire early game strategy should revolve around how / where to build those.
A related adjustment for me personally, is that my usual "forest and forget" strategy is not correct for WtP. You need to build Mines, early, not late. The Recycling Tanks need to be fed minerals, and the global warming / mindworm overrun consequences aren't remotely as bad as in the vanilla game, or my mod. It's inheriting Thinker's lenity / nerfing in that dept., I'm guessing. So mines early instead of mines way late, like in the era of Hybrid Forests, is way different gameplay.
A noob who doesn't know the intricacies of WtP's different resource progressions, is going to do poorly compared to someone like myself who (belatedly) knows what he's doing. After several plays, my early game wasn't the problem.
I think I quit mid to late game because there was no point to having a war for some reason. This happened every game. Was it the sheer pile of cities on the map? I played a Huge map, so that I can accurately compare the differences with my own mod, which is designed for Huge maps. I know WtP wasn't designed to be especially so. But for me personally, it's the best yardstick for comparing apples to apples.
It wasn't because militarily I was losing. Generally speaking, I seemed to be winning. But by midgame, bored out of my mind.
Oh, and I do remember one total non-feature compared to my mod. You got rid of instant movement mag tubes. Yeah, it's more realistic. It's also so incredibly dull, trying to move units on a Huge map when you can't get them anywhere fast. Push, push, push, push, push.
I'm remembering another thing that really irked me. Secret Projects are godawful prohibitively expensive. Yet, the AIs manage to build just about all of 'em. At least on a Huge map, things are so spread out and it's so hard to move units to interfere with anybody, that AIs can just allocate a few cities to build SPs for quite a long time. Because they're so spammy with cities, in a way that I'll never be as a human player. And they've got the Transcend minerals bonus, so it's not quite as painful for them to build long term stuff as it is for me. So they end up with 90% of the SPs, split between all of them more or less equally, it seemed. I could get 2 at the beginning if I really tried hard, but otherwise, forget it. Tech acceleration guaranteed they'd start earlier than me and finish before I even got a chance to try.
Post by: DrazharLn on September 12, 2023, 02:55:18 am
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 01:52:11 pm
I just played a ton of WtP and I don't remember the early game being the problem. I remember quitting in mid to late game, because I couldn't stand to do something anymore. I'm not clear on what, because I lost discipline for writing things down / providing feedback. I'll be honest: I eventually went back to playing my own mod.
No foul in that, man. I appreciate all you play testing and the feedback. It brought an enormous amount of improvements to this mod!
Feel free to enjoy yourself for a while.
😉
Even with all the negative points you are highlighting below, I dare to say it stepped pretty far from vanilla misbalance. We are just more or less polishing it now to turn into pearl that we dream of. And we sure can continue doing that as long as anybody cares. Thanks again.
In other words, "should there be 1 more terraformer at the beginning?" is barking up the wrong tree, IMO.
Absolutely agree. This is not something changing the generic game feeling.
I do think that going back to WtP, after playing vanilla or my mod or even just Thinker, always requires a big mental adjustment on the part of the player. A key thing is how to make use of Recycling Tanks early on. They aren't just a little bonus, they're a really important early factory. Pretty much your entire early game strategy should revolve around how / where to build those.
You are right. That is the serious change from vanilla. I thought about it long and hard with help of the community and found this to be most logical conversion.
Even though, I don't thing reverting it back to vanilla functionality changes much for this mod. I will just redistribute appearance of other factories and that'll be it. Maybe they will start appearing slightly later resembling vanilla progression more. Which may be more suitable. Let's share ideas.
What to do with RT?
- Revert to vanilla function. Factories will start appearing slightly later in the game. Resulting in total mineral output progression reduction.
- Reduce multiplication coefficient to +25% instead of +50%. Similar reduction can be applied to other factories. Also will result in total mineral output progression reduction.
- Move later in tech tree.
- Make more expensive making it less desirable to build in all bases, only in really high producing ones already.
- Anything else.
A related adjustment for me personally, is that my usual "forest and forget" strategy is not correct for WtP. You need to build Mines, early, not late. The Recycling Tanks need to be fed minerals, and the global warming / mindworm overrun consequences aren't remotely as bad as in the vanilla game, or my mod. It's inheriting Thinker's lenity / nerfing in that dept., I'm guessing. So mines early instead of mines way late, like in the era of Hybrid Forests, is way different gameplay.
Right. Wet and rocky landscape benefits from farms + mines more. Forest is not the ultimate solution anymore. However, it is still useful in dry and flat lands. I still use it occasionally and AI does too. Should we somehow improve it to be able to compete with mines? Not sure. With forest facilities it becomes powerful enough to be used on regular basis. Probably that should be its place. After all it reduces eco-damage so maybe mid game is its rightful place.
I think I quit mid to late game because there was no point to having a war for some reason. This happened every game. Was it the sheer pile of cities on the map? I played a Huge map, so that I can accurately compare the differences with my own mod, which is designed for Huge maps. I know WtP wasn't designed to be especially so. But for me personally, it's the best yardstick for comparing apples to apples.
It wasn't because militarily I was losing. Generally speaking, I seemed to be winning. But by midgame, bored out of my mind.
You are absolutely on the point here. I was trying to steer from vanilla total war and indestructible army in mid-late game. I.e. partially shifted from weapon prevalence to war of economies. I admit it may result in too much slow down and grinding for human player. Pretty difficult to find a sweet spot. Some people like to finish it quick, some like more positional game. Please share your suggestions.
Oh, and I do remember one total non-feature compared to my mod. You got rid of instant movement mag tubes. Yeah, it's more realistic. It's also so incredibly dull, trying to move units on a Huge map when you can't get them anywhere fast. Push, push, push, push, push.
Not sure about push-push thing. Can you send your units to destination or set up automatic relocation? This way you click just one (or none at all) to deliver them to the front line. True, it will take some turn for them to auto move but that does not require any more button pushing.
This is not conceptual change. I can revert it to infinite movement or increase multiplier or even make it proportional to the map size: say 6-9-12-15-18, which will be quite close to instant movement.
I'm remembering another thing that really irked me. Secret Projects are godawful prohibitively expensive. Yet, the AIs manage to build just about all of 'em. At least on a Huge map, things are so spread out and it's so hard to move units to interfere with anybody, that AIs can just allocate a few cities to build SPs for quite a long time. Because they're so spammy with cities, in a way that I'll never be as a human player. And they've got the Transcend minerals bonus, so it's not quite as painful for them to build long term stuff as it is for me. So they end up with 90% of the SPs, split between all of them more or less equally, it seemed. I could get 2 at the beginning if I really tried hard, but otherwise, forget it. Tech acceleration guaranteed they'd start earlier than me and finish before I even got a chance to try.
The only reasoning for that is increasing their build time to something more than 20 turns to let technologically slower factions to be able to catch up and compete. From the other side, building them fast gives benefit to research and research factions. Either way is fine. We can proportionally reduce their cost, no biggie.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 01:56:14 pm
And look at us know. Talking about global game pace and feeling. This is some next-next level. Thank you everybody for contribution!
😀
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 02:04:50 pm
@Bear, to be clear, my list of problems was hypothetical.
Figured. Not that I tried to solve each one of them. Just elaborated.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 02:33:40 pm
i'm tracking with you much better now. I see that it is the bending of the avg economic curve that's a challenge, not the tech cost curve; and that solutions need to be as non-invasive as possible.
One idea, is to not be so totally universal in how you bend the tech cost curve. For instance, maybe you scale the economic-tech costs up differently? Perhaps, you provide a transformer at the beginning, but explicitly increase the cost of the first few economy techs?
In StarCraft2, eventually the did the same thing. Early game was too boring for expert players and for audiences, so they gave you like 3x the number of workers at the beginning of the game, but made your resource supply less durable.... leading players to lots of fun action at the start, without causing the game to end any faster and without skipping the early game entirely.
So, in terms of this mod, something spiritually similar could be implemented. Heck, it could even be a matter of giving people a terraformer, but then increase the cost of building terraformer, by 15%, decreasing the efficiency of terraforming by 15%.... leading to a more interesting early game, without shortening the game?
Thank you for good conversation. I like to exchange opinion and ideas to enrich each other. Very good analysis.
On your point. This is exactly what I was trying to do. Many other discussions here are about the same thing. Making game more interesting at the beginning and end alike. Obviously, this is pretty hard thing to do for game with accelerated economy growth. Feel free to share ideas.
Terraforming is a "saturable" thing. Meaning eventually one has enough formers to keep up with worked tiles. Doubling it further does not boost economy. In this regard, increasing former cost or terraforming time does not do much because player just increase the fleet of formers to satisfy needs. Can spend some resources on slightly increased formers fleet but nothing else.
One possible way to reduce growth speed is to actually cut down all the bonuses, multipliers, etc. Like cut all mineral multiplier facility bonuses in half, maybe do the same with economy/psych/labs, reduce project bonuses, and so on. Like I cut the satellite intake in half and similar things.
Another avenue is to exponentially increase spending and cost of more advanced units, facilities, etc. However, this is more difficult to balance as unit/facility cost is tied to their benefit so we may fail to achieve nice progression.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2023, 03:57:51 pm
Absolutely do please increase the rail movement modifier substantially. I play Huge maps. Going only 2x faster is not enough. Queuing unit push orders for yet another later turn is not enough. The whole game becomes a bog where you can't get anything done. Can't knock off this city, can't knock off that city, have to wait around forever for anything to happen. BORING!
While you're at it, I think increasing Foil speed to 5, and Cruiser speed to 8, is substantially more civilized on a Huge map. I've been doing that in my mod since forever. Don't think I made planes any faster.
Think I did make Gravships faster, maybe put them to speed 18? Or is it 24? Or maybe that's what they end up with reactor multipliers. Gravships are a good benchmark for how fast things should arrive in a region, on a Huge map. There's a delay in deploying them, and you have to think strategically about moving them if you're not doing orbital insertions. But they will get to where you want, and you won't be waiting forever for it. Mag tubes should be working at a similar speed. I should be able to cross an 18..24 square region in 1 turn, no problem. For an infantry unit that's a 8x speed multiplier.
And if you're able to get really simulation fancy about it, faster vehicles shouldn't move any faster on a mag tube. They're gonna be mounted up on a rail bed and then offloaded. Don't know if that's major change to code though. Or screws up AI's ability to calculate distances and paths.
BTW one of my least favorite vanilla bugs in the whole universe is Formers chickening out at borders and derailing themselves. Did Scient's patch or your mod fix that by any chance? It's only the non-combat units that do it. They're chicken about "interference".
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 07:23:25 pm
Absolutely do please increase the rail movement modifier substantially. I play Huge maps. Going only 2x faster is not enough. Queuing unit push orders for yet another later turn is not enough. The whole game becomes a bog where you can't get anything done. Can't knock off this city, can't knock off that city, have to wait around forever for anything to happen. BORING!
While you're at it, I think increasing Foil speed to 5, and Cruiser speed to 8, is substantially more civilized on a Huge map. I've been doing that in my mod since forever. Don't think I made planes any faster.
Think I did make Gravships faster, maybe put them to speed 18? Or is it 24? Or maybe that's what they end up with reactor multipliers. Gravships are a good benchmark for how fast things should arrive in a region, on a Huge map. There's a delay in deploying them, and you have to think strategically about moving them if you're not doing orbital insertions. But they will get to where you want, and you won't be waiting forever for it. Mag tubes should be working at a similar speed. I should be able to cross an 18..24 square region in 1 turn, no problem. For an infantry unit that's a 8x speed multiplier.
No problems with me. Just need to compose a comprehensive and thoughtful list of speeds and multipliers. Feel free to start on it if anxious or I'll do it at some point.
And if you're able to get really simulation fancy about it, faster vehicles shouldn't move any faster on a mag tube. They're gonna be mounted up on a rail bed and then offloaded. Don't know if that's major change to code though. Or screws up AI's ability to calculate distances and paths.
That was discussed many times here and still no good solution. You see, game allocates some number of "movement points" to the vehicle which is multiplication of one turn road-moves and chassis speed. For example, in vanilla, infantry has 3 movement points and speeder has 6. They spend them based on terrain. Flat terrain takes 3 (one whole move), road takes 1, tube takes 0. In WTP it is 6-2-1, correspondingly. As you can see, the "speed" of crossing terrain is same for all. It is total movement points that differ. It is difficult to devise an algorithm that somehow make their road/tube traveling distance equal for different chassis. If you can come up with something, I'd be glad to implement.
From the other side, even if not realistic, equalizing travel distance for different chassis makes them less distinct and faster chassis loose their bonus of faster deployment to front lines. They still have their bonus of attack from farther distance, all right. Something to think about.
Again, I can revert it all to instant movement to avoid solving all these problems.
BTW one of my least favorite vanilla bugs in the whole universe is Formers chickening out at borders and derailing themselves. Did Scient's patch or your mod fix that by any chance? It's only the non-combat units that do it. They're chicken about "interference".
Not sure what you mean. Any save example?
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2023, 07:38:28 pm
And I still think Foils should be 5 and Cruisers should be 8, on all maps.
Oh well on the different chassis mag tube speed idea. Too complicated to bother with.
I will pay attention at some future time, whether non-combat units derail themselves in the presence of enemy borders.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 12, 2023, 08:30:56 pm
For now, I'm going with 8x as the recommended mag tube multiplier for all maps. That makes a Giant map actually giant in some way, rather than mag tubes being scaled up depending on map size. I don't really believe in that.
8x faster than on flat terrain or on road? In either case it should be road speed multiplier (3x?).
I will pay attention at some future time, whether non-combat units derail themselves in the presence of enemy borders.
The only thing I think of is a flawed vanilla algorithm. It is not perfect and it does account for territory owner. So it may try avoid stepping on it.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2023, 10:12:31 pm
Empires start to experience serious EFFIC penalties farther than 16 squares from the capitol. So a "proper" fledgling empire might only be 32 squares across. Mag tube is still not enough to move infantry from one side of such an empire to the other. But it is enough to move a reserve of infantry from a more central location. I think this is an adequately well thought out compromise on long distance empire logistics. If your empire is bigger than a perfect little radial empire, then you just have to deal with your sprawl. It'll still be work to get troops to some far flung conquered territory. Might still be better to gas everyone instead of having to build up distant conquered cities.