posted 04-22-99 10:01 AM ET     

I usually play SMAC in our LAN with 4-6 players, and to keep the games reasonably short (less than 10 hours) we have developed a tactic of using very small maps. Even with 6 players we have found out that a map of 16*32 squares is enough. But with maps this small we have encountered several problems.
(Getting the maps to work in MP required hacking the alpha.txt)

First, the screen refresh fails big-time. Often you just get large black squares in the screen, and have to refresh manually. Also sometimes you see enemy units moving as the screen is refreshed only partially where they move. And if the map gets small enough,
(10*20 for example), you have to shift-right-click to move the screen at all ... annoying.

Also the planet creation would obviously need some tweaking as computer players generally start in 1*1 islands, and not on the main continents where the human players ... this naturally weakens the computer even more - even at the two most difficult levels they still offer no real challenge, in addition to acting real stupid at times ...
for example not even trying to expand from the 1*1 island ...

And even when we choose 70-90% sea, it often creates only one big island - several smaller ones being the preference ...

Also to even up the games we have added into every faction SHARETECH 4. This keeps even
the computer from performing too badly, but it would be great to be able to change it to something like "Share tech everybody else has, or everybody but two players have" as this would take into account the varying number of players ...

We also have rebalanced several of the factions to reflect the shorter games ... Hive has hurrying-costs doubled to reflect planned economics, and Deidre has got a gravship former at start to help her grow more quickly. A sea former would of course be more appropiate, but as it is put in the same pile with the other units at start, it gets destroyed before you can move it ... thus the gravship solution. And the AI is completely unable to use it to do anything useful.

I also would like to see "infiltrating datalinks" weakened in some way ... The AI is not really able to use it to it's full potential, but human players are, and it really gives far too much power. Perhaps you cold make the probe-team stay in the enemy base, and only make the infiltration last as long as the unit stays there ? The enemy could of course send his own probe-team to fight the infiltrating team, as they would be immune to normal attacks ...

Ah yes, also it would be nice to have different difficulty-levels in multiplayer for each player - this is suggested by having each player choose a difficulty level, but it would be nice if it had all the effects it has in single player ... it would make it easier to have people of different skill-levels in one game. Beginners playing with us in the global transcend-level usually don't do too well ...

Also there is this minor issue of ships at port engaging in artillery fight sometimes getting altitude bonus ... the ships usually stay at sea-level - right ? I could imagine a small penalty being used instead of an altitude bonus due to restrictions of movement in a port ... ?

Thanks for your patience.

DrDoom