Incite Drone Riots (probe team action): What exactly it does.

[Yitzi]

Ok, this is something that nobody really knew what was going on, so I looked at the code and think I have the full information:
What Incite Drone Riots does is increase the "turns until assimilation" counter (normally used for a captured base) by 10, up to a maximum of 2.5 times the base's population.  (Note that the counter goes down by 2 each turn, rather than just 1, if it is not an actual captured base).  This has a few implications:
1. Because the "turns until assimilation" increases drones by 1/10 its value, rounded up, Incite Drone Riots can never make more than 1/4 the base's population in drones (rounded up), no matter how often you use it.  Against a human-played target playing on citizen, it is actually a limit of (population-1)/4, as that is the maximum drones due to captured bases against such a target.
2. Because it uses the captured bases entry, if you use it on an actual captured base, the drones due to being a captured base count toward the limit.  However, it will delay the time until the base assimilates (by up to 10 turns), which could be useful in certain situations...
3. Like any drones due to a captured base, it will never result in more drones (before facilities, psych, police, etc, counting the normal drones but not bureaucracy drones.) than the base's population, unless playing with my patch version 2.1 or later with a drone control code of 16 or higher.  In particular, this means that against a human player who's playing on Transcend, it can never be worth more than one drone except with said patch/setting.
4. Like any drones due to a captured base, it will never result in more drones (before facilities, psych, police, etc., but after cancelling out Lal's talents) than the number of nonspecialists in the base,  unless playing with my patch version 2.1 or later with a drone control code of 8-15 or 24-31.


After setting the "turns until assimilation" counter, it recalculates drones and talents, and immediately produces drone riots if there are more drones than talents. 
There is a minor bug in my patch version 2.1 in that a drone control code of 8-15 or 24-31 is supposed to make superdrones count double and "phantom drones" count once for drone riots, but does not have that effect for this special drone-riots check.  This bug will be fixed in version 2.2.

[Kirov]

Thanks for the good work. I'm still mulling it over, but for now let us make it simple - so basically, on Transcend the TUA counter simply adds one drone for 50 turns (I think) and Incite Drone Riots does the same for 10 turns? And this common wisdom of "only one drone added" is not that far from the truth, effectively speaking?

I've just checked an old save of mine (Lal) and noticed that in some captured bases the Lal's talents are cancelled and in some others - not so. Is it a normal effect of bureaucracy or is there something else at play?

Also, what is this 'drone control code' or can you point me to the thread it is discussed in?

[Yitzi]

Thanks for the good work. I'm still mulling it over, but for now let us make it simple - so basically, on Transcend the TUA counter simply adds one drone for 50 turns (I think) and Incite Drone Riots does the same for 10 turns? And this common wisdom of "only one drone added" is not that far from the truth, effectively speaking?

Assuming it's not Lal and there are no specialists in the base, yes; however, Incite Drone Riots cannot raise it to more than 1.25 times the base's population, or twice that for a captured base.

I've just checked an old save of mine (Lal) and noticed that in some captured bases the Lal's talents are cancelled and in some others - not so. Is it a normal effect of bureaucracy or is there something else at play?

My guess is that it's because those extra drones do exist; they simply disappear because you can't have more than "everyone's a drone" except from bureaucracy, but as Lal they'll cancel out Lal's talents before disappearing.  (This makes Lal actually weaker than you'd expect on higher difficulties, especially since drones removed by turning them into specialists do the same thing.)

Also, what is this 'drone control code' or can you point me to the thread it is discussed in?

It's actually labeled "drone rules flags", and one is the new lines added to alphax.txt in my patch.  Details of what it does can be found here.