Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: BFG on January 25, 2013, 06:22:43 pm

Title: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: BFG on January 25, 2013, 06:22:43 pm

I've been reviewing alphax.txt extensively during my efforts to rebalance/improve the vanilla game, and I had a question regarding the social engineering values.
All of the social enginnering values are on a scale - for example, Economics is (if I remember correctly) on a -3 to +5 scale.

I had two questions:
(1) Has anyone calculated the minimum and maximum possible values for each Social Engineering category, using all 15 stock factions?
(2) What happens if the values defined in alphax.txt are exceeded?  IE what happens if you get +7 on Economics when only up to +5 is defined?

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: ete on January 25, 2013, 07:09:59 pm

All the scales (Econ works for arbitrarily low values, according to some old apolyton post): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhADYlhLMFj-dFhtcmkwSm50OHY2eDBoUnVTUy1scFE#gid=1

1. Not afaik, but I'll probably do it along with the faction ranking formula. Some SPs and facilities are effectively boosts to SE values too.
2. There are some rollover bugs, which may or may not have all been fixed. alphax.txt does not set or affect anything ingame, it just describes the effects. All the effects of values are hardcoded.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: BFG on January 25, 2013, 07:25:01 pm

Quote from: ete on January 25, 2013, 07:09:59 pm

2. There are some rollover bugs, which may or may not have all been fixed. alphax.txt does not set or affect anything ingame, it just describes the effects. All the effects of values are hardcoded.

I wondered about that; I didn't see anything in alphax.txt that actually controlled the bonuses.
A related question, then, would be: does vanilla alphax.txt adequately describe all of the bonuses/penalties?  That is, when alphax.txt has no description for any value above 5, does that match the hardcoded behavior of providing no additional bonuses above 5?

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: ete on January 25, 2013, 09:48:32 pm

Vanilla alphax may well have several issues, and even the updated datalinks does not describe some details fully (like worm capture formula). I *think* that the updated datalinks should cover all or almost all of the bonuses available (possible exception: Economy below -3).

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: Green1 on January 26, 2013, 12:09:41 am

I guess they assume that if you are at the point of fiddling with alphax.txt, you know what the formulas and effects are because it is listed on the social engineering screen as you fiddle with settings.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: gwillybj on January 26, 2013, 07:32:15 pm

Quote from: BFG on January 25, 2013, 06:22:43 pm

I had two questions:
(1) Has anyone calculated the minimum and maximum possible values for each Social Engineering category, using all 15 stock factions?
(2) What happens if the values defined in alphax.txt are exceeded?  IE what happens if you get +7 on Economics when only up to +5 is defined?

Here are a post and reply from another forum. I hope it is useful.

Quote

Quote

Min/Max Social Bonus

Sabular — September 9th, 2005 11:57:01 am
What is the minimum/maximum bonus you can have in the social categories that is still useful? For example: is +6 economy at all better than +5 economy, etc. All the stats have listed ranges, for some I assume effect past that range (Efficiency is used in some formula so any value would help at least a little, I guess).

Chaos Theory — September 9th, 2005 01:35:00 pm
Limits that I know of:

ECONOMY has no further effect above 5, but seems to work fine for arbitrarily low values. The effect of X Econ, where X <= -2, is that each base loses (-1-X) energy from its base tile, *after* accounting for Rec Tanks, but not to go below zero.
EFFICIENCY has no further effect below -4.
SUPPORT has no further effect outside [-4, 3].
MORALE has no further effect above 4. I think it's bounded below at -4, but it might interact interestingly with a Children's Creche.
POLICE has no further effect outside [-5, 3].
GROWTH has no further effect outside [-3, 6].
PLANET seems to be fully effective at any value.
PROBE above 3 rolls over and is apparently treated as 0. Probe below -2 has no further effect.
INDUSTRY is normally bounded to [-3, 5] but a value of -7 or less rolls over to 5.
RESEARCH has no further effect outside [-5, 5].

I did a spreadsheet of the maximum possible values, but not the minimums, and not including the factions' inherent values. Ignoring rollover problems, the results:
ECONOMY = 5 with Frontier/Free Market/Wealth/Eudaimonic (-4Morale, -5Police, +2Growth, -3Planet, +3Industry)
EFFICIENCY = 7 with Democratic/Green/Knowledge/Cybernetic (-2Support, -3Police, +4Planet, -2Probe, +4Research)
SUPPORT = 4 with Police State/Simple/Power/None (-2Efficiency, +2Morale, +2Police, -2Industry)
MORALE = 5 with Fundamentalist/Simple/Power/Thought Control (-1Support, +2Police, +4Probe, -2Industry, -2Research)
POLICE = 4 with Police State/Simple/Survival/Thought Control (-2Efficiency, -1Support, +2Morale, +2Probe)
GROWTH = 6 with Democratic/Planned/Survival/Eudaimonic (+2Economy, -2Support, -2Morale, +3Industry)
PLANET = 4 with Frontier/Green/Survival/Cybernetic (+4Efficiency, -3Police, -2Growth, +2Research)
PROBE = 4 with Fundamentalist/Simple/Survival/Thought Control (-3Support, +3Morale, +2Police, -2Research)
INDUSTRY = 4 with Frontier/Planned/Wealth/Eudaimonic (+3Economy, -2Efficiency, -4Morale, +4Growth, +4Industry)
RESEARCH = 4 with Frontier/Simple/Knowledge/Cybernetic (+3Efficiency, -3Police, +2Planet, -2Probe)

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: Green1 on January 26, 2013, 07:34:38 pm

Probe, unless Scient or Kyrub had fixed it has a carry over bug from what I read on some forums when used with Roze.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: ete on January 26, 2013, 07:44:33 pm

Nice list. Combining that with max faction values, you get:

ECONOMY = 6 Morgan with Free Market/Wealth/Eudaimonic
EFFICIENCY = 9 Gaians/CyCon with Democratic/Green/Knowledge/Cybernetic
SUPPORT = 6 Believers with Police State/Power
MORALE = 7 Spartans with Fundamentalist/Power/Thought Control
POLICE = Spartans 5 with Police State/Thought Control
GROWTH = 7 Usurpers/Hive with Democratic/Planned/Eudaimonic
PLANET = 6 Cult with Green/Cybernetic
PROBE = 6 Angels with Fundamentalist/Thought Control
INDUSTRY = 6 Drones with Planned/Wealth/Eudaimonic
RESEARCH = 6 University/CyCons with Knowledge/Cybernetic

I wonder if the Industry rollover still exists. Scient fixed the Probe one though.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: BFG on January 27, 2013, 12:32:23 am

Thanks for doing the number crunching, guys.  I mainly asked this question to see if the descriptors in alphax.txt fully spanned the possible (and effective) values for stock factions, or if we needed to add more for completion's sake.

Three questions:
(1) Is anyone interested in calculating the minimum possible values?
(2) Ete, did your faction calculations include the Sid/Firaxis faction?
(3) According to alphax, +3 PLANET gives "Maximum chance of native lifeform capture".  This analysis seems to indicate +4 to +6 would increase the chances still further, however.  Is that correct?

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: gwillybj on January 27, 2013, 01:55:55 am

Quote from: BFG on January 27, 2013, 12:32:23 am

... questions:
(1) Is anyone interested in calculating the minimum possible values?

I'll do it tomorrow if nobody does it before me :)

Quote

(3) According to alphax, +3 PLANET gives "Maximum chance of native lifeform capture".  This analysis seems to indicate +4 to +6 would increase the chances still further, however.  Is that correct?

iirc, alphax is correct: above +3 PLANET does nothing as far as capture goes, but all possible values (high and low) do factor into the ecodamage equation (and likely something else I can't recall) :dunno:

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: Yitzi on January 27, 2013, 05:39:26 am

Quote from: ete on January 25, 2013, 07:09:59 pm

All the scales (Econ works for arbitrarily low values, according to some old apolyton post): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhADYlhLMFj-dFhtcmkwSm50OHY2eDBoUnVTUy1scFE#gid=1

That says I need access.

Quote from: ete on January 26, 2013, 07:44:33 pm

Nice list. Combining that with max faction values, you get:

ECONOMY = 6 Morgan with Free Market/Wealth/Eudaimonic
EFFICIENCY = 9 Gaians/CyCon with Democratic/Green/Knowledge/Cybernetic
SUPPORT = 6 Believers with Police State/Power
MORALE = 7 Spartans with Fundamentalist/Power/Thought Control
POLICE = Spartans 5 with Police State/Thought Control
GROWTH = 7 Usurpers/Hive with Democratic/Planned/Eudaimonic
PLANET = 6 Cult with Green/Cybernetic
PROBE = 6 Angels with Fundamentalist/Thought Control
INDUSTRY = 6 Drones with Planned/Wealth/Eudaimonic
RESEARCH = 6 University/CyCons with Knowledge/Cybernetic

I wonder if the Industry rollover still exists. Scient fixed the Probe one though.

You made a few mistakes:
-SUPPORT is actually a maximum of 8, due to the Living Refinery.
-POLICE is a maximum of 6 (before Brood Pit) with Ascetic Virtues.
-GROWTH is only a maximum of 6 (before creche and golden age), as the Hive and Usurpers cannot in fact run Democratic.
-PLANET is actually +7, due to the Manifold Nexus.

Also, note that you can also get a further +4 GROWTH, +2 EFFIC, +1 ECONOMY, +2 POLICE, and +2 PROBE from base-specific stuff (facilities and golden ages).

The minimum values are:

ECONOMY = -2 for the Hive (there are no negative ECONOMY modifiers from social engineering.)
EFFICIENCY = -5 for Pirates running Police State/Planned
SUPPORT = -6 for Morgan running Democratic/Thought Control
MORALE = -5 for Gaians running Wealth/Eudaimonic
POLICE = -9 for Angels running Free Market/Cybernetic
GROWTH = -3 for CyCon/Pirates running Green
PLANET = -4 for Believers/Usurpers running Free Market
PROBE = -4 for University running Knowledge
INDUSTRY = -3 for Spartans/Cult running Power
RESEARCH = -4 for Believers/Drones running Fundamentalist.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: ete on January 27, 2013, 12:48:11 pm

ops, made document public. And I was not including facilities/SPs, but thank you for adding them and other things, and catching the Democracy mistake.

"(2) Ete, did your faction calculations include the Sid/Firaxis faction?"
They have no SE modifiers iirc, so should not affect anything.

Title: Re: What are the min/max possible Social Engineering values using stock factions?
Post by: gwillybj on January 27, 2013, 09:20:56 pm

I also purposely left out variances due to Facilities, Projects, and Golden Ages.
I got the same list of results as Yitzi.

Note (1) The Progenitors claim none of the minimums. The same with the Peacekeepers, Spartans, and Cyborgs.
I gave the -3 GROWTH to the Pirates because their overall +/- is lower than the Cyborgs. I gave the -4 PLANET to the Believers (vs Usurpers) for the same reason. The same for giving Fungboy (vs Spartans) the -3 Industry, and the Drones (vs Believers) the -4 Research.

Note (2) The Pirates have a choice of two minimums: Efficiency or Growth, but they can't have both.

Note (3a) None of these combinations violate the faction's aversions, (3b) although they sometimes stray from their preferences.