SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[MercantileInterest]

You mentioned Civ III features earlier. Just thought of this post:

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?

[Buster's Uncle]

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.

[MercantileInterest]

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.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

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.

[Buster's Uncle]

Y'know, you CAN grow your pop up to 127 -there's a game-breaking bug at 128- -now I have to go post for scient-  w/o hab complexes and domes, w/ colony pods.  Sucks when various random events trigger, though, mostly a plague and no resource hospital...

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Well. Maybe it worth fixing this bug?

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrug] scient's coming around some these days, so I expect some sort of answer to my post within a week...

[MercantileInterest]

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.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Ah you mean game checks these facilities only when base is about to grow in size? Makes sense. That can be fixed too. I can check it every turn, for example. Then reduce base size to whatever adequate size facilities present. This way player would need to keep and maintain them.

[MercantileInterest]

Don't know that's the best fix. It would mean probe teams could blow up a hab complex and kill half the base's population.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Are they allowed to blow such structures? Never saw this before. What would be the best fix then?

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.
😀

[MercantileInterest]

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.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

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.

[MercantileInterest]

Some ideas:


(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.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

(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.