How do facilities get their color?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I couldn't find anything on the topic. There is no corresponding setting in alphax.txt too. Anyone knows the answer?

Why Recreation commons is yellow?
Why Aquafarm is yellow?
Why Subsea trunkline is blue?
Why Biology lab is green?
Why Flechette defense system is green?

[bvanevery]

I assume the facility icon artwork just has hardwired colors.

Techs change color according to the {power, tech, wealth, growth} settings.  Whatever the highest number is, that's what color the tech gets, and that's the primary research category it's in.  Category will change to {Conquer, Discover, Build, Explore} respectively, with corresponding single letter abbreviations.  I'm not sure how ties are resolved.  I don't have any ties in my mod, and I'm not sure the original game had any either.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I know about techs. Their priority can be changed in the file. Same thing with secret projects. Only facilities escaped me.

Well, if we cannot change their color, maybe we can know what it means? Like what property of the facility contributes to the color? Some are easy to guess like all military ones. Others are not. I am trying to understand the system here to be able to mark my technologies appropriately.

Yellow
Headquarters. It's main function is to reduce inefficiency. So energy = yellow?
All energy multiplying and energy increasing facilities. Looks like energy = yellow after all.
Recycling tanks. That is a complete mystery since it produces all type of resources.
All drone quelling facilities. Again a mystery since quelling drones increases all resources proportionally.
Tree farm and Hybrid forest. They reduce ecological damage, increase energy and psych, increase forest output. What of this is color relevant? Energy/psych multiplier?
All mineral multiplying and mineral increasing facilities. So minerals = yellow too?
Brood pit. Drone quelling and native lifecycles. Which one contributes to the color?
Aquafarm. That one is purely nutrients. So nutrients are yellow too?

Red
All morale/defense and unit enhancement facilities, obviously.
Subspace generator. Why it is red?

Blue
All labs multiplying facilities, obviously.
Fusion lab, Quantum lab. They are both labs and energy multipliers. So in this case labs outweighs economy?
Research hospital, Nanohospital. They are labs and psych multipliers as well as a little bit drone quelling. Again labs prevails?
Orbital power transmitter. Why is that one blue now? I thought we concluded raw energy is yellow. Confusing.
Subsea trunkline. Same question about this one. It is a pure mineral increase.

Green
Children's creche. Population growth = green? It also helps with inefficiency a little but, I guess, population growth effect is stronger.
Biology lab. No clue. Labs + lifecycles = ?
Hab complex, Habitation dome. Well, looks like population growth related = green after all.
Pressure dome. Ability to survive in water. Expansion related?
Centauri preserve, Temple of Planet. Ecology, lifecycles. Maybe because of ecology?
Sky hydroponics lab. Nutrients/population growth. That's clear.
Geosynchronous survey pod. No clue. Maybe it's green because of base survey radius?
Flechette defense system. No clue. Purely defensive building.

[bvanevery]

Holy crap.  I was getting frustrated responding to all your "nonsensical" color claims.  Then I cranked up original stock SMACX, and found that facility colors in the Datalinks do not match facility colors in the base's build screen!  That is, the grid of stuff you can build, selected by hitting Change in the lower left corner of the base screen.  A Hab Complex is always yellow in the build screen, regardless of how it appears in the Datalinks.  Ditto a Children's Creche and Biology Lab.

This seems to be true of my modded SMACX as well.  Colors in the Datalinks, simply don't match colors in the base's build screen.  None of it seems to vary dynamically according to tech category, they all look like static color decisions.

It would seem that colors are statically assigned somewhere, and that there are 2 different sets of static assignments.  As for why anything has one color instead of another, there are general tendencies but not any coherent system.  We are probably witnessing accidents of various stages of SMAC's development.  I think they probably got it "mostly right" in the base's build screen, but didn't correct the Datalinks.

I've now looked at the .pcx art assets in the /facs folder.  The facility icons have particular static colors, and these are what the Datalinks are displaying.  The base build screen, however, is changing these colors.  There must be a table of color reassignments somewhere, perhaps hardwired into the binary.  They aren't being reassigned dynamically according to some criterion like what tech they appear in, because then I would see color differences in my mod.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yep. I was suspecting the same. Well, I guess we can forget about facility colors and concentrate on technology priorities coding.

Instead of following vague priorities description, I propose to bundle player goals into categories. This way player goal would match category exactly. Meaning you don't need to check specific upcoming technologies when you need something. Just selecting corresponding research priorities should give you what you need.

Here are groups I am thinking of right now. See if you like them too.

Capture enemy bases: big to Conquer.
weapons, morale facilities, attack odds improving modifiers, probes, artillery, additional means to attack bases, amphibious, new chassis, natives

Defend against aggression: medium to Conquer and small to Research/Build/Explore to help non-Conquer focused factions getting defensive bonuses.
armor, morale facilities, defense facilities, defense odds improving modifiers, probes, artillery

I guess conquer oriented player should get defensive features as well since they are also needed in assault sometimes. However, weapon is more important for conquer than armor. Otherwise, there won't be a conquest.

More nutrients: green.
Population growth: green.

Terraforming: not sure. In original game it is green. However, it benefits everything. The matter of agreement.

More minerals: yellow. I guess minerals are so important they deserve their own pretty narrow category. Anything that adds to minerals should be marked yellow. Like recycling tanks, for example.

Less drones: again not sure. In original game it is yellow but it affects everything. The matter of agreement. Could be left yellow.

More raw energy, economy, psych, labs: blue. They are all interconnected and could be converted to each other via allocation sliders. There are also a lot of facilities providing two of each multipliers, etc. So it would be misleading for player to scatter them across multiple categories.

eco-damage: not sure again. The matter of agreement.

[bvanevery]

Before getting deep into the weeds here on details, I will comment on the general tendencies I've seen as to what the tech tree really is.  And what the game mechanical issues generally are.

Conquer techs - the vast majority of techs in the tree are actually military in nature, regardless of where Firaxis assigned them.  Firaxis followed a policy of doling out various weapons and armors, so that factions following an Explore (Gaians), Discover (University), or Build (Morganites) path would actually get some weapons and/or armors.  I don't agree with this policy.  If you want military stuff, research Conquer!  That's where all this stuff should be.  The irony is in my upcoming version 1.26 of my mod, everyone's down to fighting with Scouts for the early game.     I might have taken the principle too far.

Armor is not simply a defensive tech.  Walking right up to a base that can't penetrate your infantry's armor, then blasting it to smithereens, is standard operating procedure.  Ditto advancing with a picket of ECM armored units, to prevent the enemy from being able to attack you with Rovers as you approach.  Ditto AAA against air power.

Native units - should they be lumped as a Conquer tech, or treated as their own thing?  In my mod I have vacillated back and forth on that.  For a long time, I regarded them as Conquer techs, because that's what you actually do with native units.  Eventually however, I realized these particular units are innately tied to raising your PLANET rating.  They work really well when you've got +3 PLANET, and really poorly when you've got -2 PLANET from Free Market Wealth (in my mod).  They just don't operate on the same axis as conventional military units, and the PLANET friendly factions need these units to be competitive.

Consequently, in 1.26 I'm changing them back to Explore techs, as they are in the stock game.  AKA "Deidre's techs".  However they are cross-listed, so a tech like (my version of) Centauri Genetics will have growth=4 making it an Explore tech, but power=3 making it also strongly a Conquer tech.  (Explore, Conquer) cross-listings are actually pretty common in my tree, with one being slightly more dominant than the other.  Making native life into Explore dominant techs is important for PLANET factions though.  There's an overwhelming sea of Conquer techs to get through, and an Explore faction simply won't find what's needed, unless the bread crumbs point straight at the native life techs proper.

Building roads is a method of conquest.  Consequently, my Centauri Ecology has some Conquer weight to it.

Building mag tubes is a super duper method of conquest, frankly the best method in the entire game.  You can't argue with instantly putting unarmored infantry right next to a base in 1 turn, and attacking with the 25% infantry vs. base advantage.  Nor with being able to instantly move units across Huge, Enormous, Giant, or even larger maps.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree with what you said. It is pretty vague in many senses. However, we need to group them somehow to make blind research sensible.

[bvanevery]

Well I did it.  Explore = colonization, growth, nutrients, making people happy, and native life.  Discover = research bonuses.  Build = energy or minerals bonuses.  Conquer = the military stuff.  Mainly I purified the military category, and moved "no drone" infrastructure from Build to Explore.

Discover is the narrowest tech category, because there are actually very few research bonuses compared to other things in the tech tree.  Build is a slim category also, but not as slim as Discover.  Explore has a fair amount of stuff in it, because of my recent change of heart regarding indigenous life.  Conquer is the overwhelming bulk of techs.

Explore really means eXpand.  Well, in this game it includes eXpand.  Build means eXploit.  Conquer means eXterminate.  Discover doesn't have any inherent 4X meaning.  It means "go up the tech tree faster".

[Geo]

I always thought of Discover fitting the eXplore nomer.

[bvanevery]

You're not eXploring the tech tree when all the tech dependencies are known in advance, and you can read the benefits of any given tech before researching it.  Blind Research does make it a little more haphazard, but you still decide things like whether the next set of weapons, armors, or facilities are more or less valuable to you, and change your blind research settings accordingly.

eXploring is pushing back the black of the map, on a randomly generated map.  If tech trees were randomly generated and you didn't know what was coming, maybe you'd be eXploring them.  But if you don't know what's coming at all, you're not really exploring, you're just receiving random inputs.  With terrain, you follow rivers, coastlines, and the edges of fungal barriers.