-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).If this is on thinker or transcend diffiuculty levels, than this is patch related. It was one of the ways the designers intended to make the game harder.
Does this patch include kyrub's AI fixes?
The main problem was that once in a war, it seems that AIs build NOTHING but combat units/probe teams....200 turns into the game, both consciousness/morgan had size 4 HQs without even a children's creche (although i had given them highly advanced research techs ages ago).
-Datalinks mod claims that nanoreplicator/singulatory inducer reduces eco damage, yet i tested it ingame and noticed no ecodamage difference between using either one of those and a genejack factory...(same mineral production)
-Sometimes you get multiple "urgent message from a faction leader" popups but when you click "ok", the popup just dissapears and you get another one. This happens a few times in a row until the faction leader stops trying to speak to you. You never actually enter conversation mode.
-When offering to trade tech for tech, if the AI suggests another deal (like selling his tech for your energy), you cannot offer to trade again under the same turns. It seems you only get the option to trade under the same terms if the AI agrees to trade tech for tech, but not if he suggests another type of deal.
-After installing the patch, i noticed that the AI will NEVER surrender, even if you do not commit atrocities and are a human faction fighting another human faction. This is even if you reduce them to a single base and have a massive army surrounding it. Also even if they are on feeble might and you have unsurpassed might, they will repeatedly threaten to destroy you unless you give them techs/energy. This behaviour was not present pre-patch.
-Rescued faction leaders do nearly nothing even if you give them all your tech and tons of energy. The most ive seen them do is expand a bit but they do not appear to do anything except sit there, nor do they attempt to support your vendettas.
-Air units can only damage one ground unit at a time, whereas ground units cause collateral damage and will also kill all mindworms in the same tile if they manage to kill one.
-Not sure if this is a bug, but the planet rating appears to not affect eco-damage eve though it is listed as doing so?
-Bulk matter transitor is incorrectly listed as giving every base +2 minerals in the build facilities screen
-Governor set to auto manage specialists and nothing else will refuse to use any doctors, etc at max pop (e.g. 14 with a hab complex) even if doing so will cause the base to go into golden age with the +1 economy bonus.
-The base screen does not show bonus energy rates if you have +1 economy from SE and am in a golden age (so you get +1 energy per square). The tiles still only show the standard energy rates.
-There is no indication of whether a base is currently in golden age in the base screen and if the bae is in pop boom (demo, planned, children's creche for +6 growth) the growth screen will not show the 1 turn to pop growth, it will still show incorrect numbers like 3 turns to grow, etc.
-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).
-Probe teams seem very buggy. Incite drone riots seem to do nothing (i had the empath guild, but their drones never increased despite spamming the incite drone riote mission at the base for 5 turns).
Mind control costs can be absolutely insane (no polymorphic encryption, a resonance 6 rover seems to take 300+ energy to subvert).
Sometimes an AI will have techs that i can steal but my probe teams will just download their world map instead (i can see they have techs i can steal from infiltrators).
There is no "your success rate is blah blah blah" for genetic atrocities, it just seems to auto-succeed if they have no probe teams defending (but all other probe team missions can fail even with no defending probe teams).
Command center + bio enhancement center is enough to give you elite probe teams with no probe team modifiers in SE (or any secret projects that affect probe team morale), which is odd, shouldnt it be commando level at best?
-Formers set to auto improve will not take into account forest bonuses from tree farms/hybrid forests so they will just spam farms instead of the much higher yield forests. Also one of the more common reasons for the AI not being able to grow their bases.
-You cannot build any terrain imrpovements on the fossil ridge, which makes the +1 mineral bonus useless as you get a base with ocean tiles that have inferior output to one with improvements.
-Damaged airplanes in a airbase do not appear to repair any damage at all unless you have the nano factory, even if they are not being damaged and ar eholding their position.
-There does not appear to be any way to get to the faction datalinks screen (the one you get when you infiltrate another faction, and which shows their SE choices, etc) except through the commlink (which doesnt work if they refuse to talk to you) or unless you infiltrate them again.
-Add in a option for formers to auto-plant ONLY forests.
-Balance out farms, etc to make them useful in end game, especially condensers/echelon mirrors that are inferior to forest spamming after you get tree farms/hybrid forests. Maybe give them tech bonuses so that they scale and are a viable alternative to forest spamming?
-Allow formers to increase rockiness, as right now leveling a tile is irreversible
-Prevent landmarks from losing their tile bonuses when elevation changes, and highlight the exact tiles with the bonus as it is hard to see which one has the landmark bonus exactly for stuff like pholus ridge.
-Add in modding options to allow sea units to capture coastal bases.
-Allow gravships with air superiority to intercept just like needle jets (they have infinite fuel, shouldnt they be better at this?) and allow intercepts to happen as long as the intercepting target is within fuel range. Having formers get destroyed 3 tiles away from a base while your interceptors just sit there is really frustrating.
-Add in a modding option to prevent bases from being built if it will reduce the number of workable tiles in another base (unless you are at war, etc). Really annoying when submissive factions do this to you.
-Make the AI stop using non-algorithm probe teams if the target has the hunter seeker algorithm.
Also not sure if im reading the correct wiki, but it shows no changelogs for 3.1?
-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).
If this is on thinker or transcend diffiuculty levels, than this is patch related. It was one of the ways the designers intended to make the game harder.
Some other issues i noticed :
-Planet busters (maybe missles as well) cannot be loaded on carriers, and since you cant build airbases in the water, you cant hit far away sea targets with missles due to limited range...
-Using planet busters did not get me kicked out of the planetary council and did not generate massive eco-damage. In alphax.txt, all i did was turn off base obliterating = simple atrocity, but didnt touch planet busters.
-Even if obliterating bases doesnt count as an atrocity, you still get the popup.
-The AI can see my deep pressure hull subs without any units near them (they had deep radar as well and would have seen enemy units). I was getting bombarded by a land based artillery unit and i was not within two tiles of a sensor array or base, yet he could somehow see and hit my subs.
-Any unit with psi armor cannot make artillery attacks even if they have a normal weapon equipped and can make normal attacks.
-Gravship formers count as land units and cannot lower terrain to sea level. Since they are air units they should be able to do it.
-Air units like gravships and locusts of chiron can capture bases, but not obliterate them for some reason.
-When defending against psi attacks, the game will prioritize air units as defenders, even if you have garrisons with resonance armor and a higher psi combat strength modifier.
-Not really a bug, but when attacking without preparation, the popup defaults to "attack anyway", the default option should not be to attack at a lower strength.
-When looking at the unit list in a tile (hotkey "a"), it does not show which units have already moved.
-If you activate a bunch of ground units on a loaded transport and then move one off the transport, the other ground units have switched back to sleep mode and you have to activate them AGAIN to unload them.
-Add in a option so that secret projects which have been destroyed can be built again by all factions, very annoying when the AI builds something like the market exchange in a bad position and you cant do anything about it without using the scenario editor.
Not sure if bug, but i seem to recall that the data angels used to start with a free commlink frequency? Its not mentioned in their faction profile now, but i remember a faction used to have that and no faction profile seems to mention it.
Whats the deal with kyrub's AI fixes? I had a look at his downloads on this site, but its in the form of a .exe file so it looks like it would conflict with your modded .exe?
I think people would love more automation even in MP games though, if you could just set a fleet of formers to auto-plant forests instead of microing dozens of them, that would speed up games a LOT.
I will save the savegame the next time i see the constant popups.
Planet rating seems to be fine now that i tested it again, do you have any specific numbers on how it affects clean mineral production?
Tested the map generator on standard map several times. Yea the landing site thing is broken. I started 6 tiles away from Morgan and Morgan was less than 10 tiles away from Miriam...fun. Meanwhile there was this HUGE, 50+ tile expanse to the north and east of Miriam that had no factions. And usurper was in a corner of the continent with nobody near him for at least 20 tiles. Would not have been difficult to guess how the game was going to go...
From what i can tell, incite drones only creates one drone at best? That seems pretty useless.
I didnt realise stuff like distance to HQ affected probe team costs, thats not mentioned in the datalinks update...what else affects it?
I tried to mind control a size 1 base with no facilities and just two cheap units guarding it (a 2-1-2 rover and a 1-2-1 garrison) and the game wanted to charge me 500+ credits.
Probe teams (and data angels) dont seem very useful now. Not only do you have to have a decent military to guard the probe teams, the best they can do is genetic warfare atrocity which you cant use most of the time without pissing everyone off.
Also at least two of the techs give +1 to probe team base morale, not to mention all the secret projects that boost probe team morale. Since probe teams get +4 from bio enhancement centers + command centers/etc, its quite easy to get elite probe teams....maybe make it so bio centers/command centers dont affect probe team morale?
Genetic warfare atrocities not having a fail rate seems to be a bug, but i dont know if thats intentional and i dont think anyone can tell unless they ask the original devs. But it does seem too powerful for it to auto-succeed. Halves base pop and drops all garrisons down to red hp.
I think allowing improvements to be built on fossil ridge would at least make it a decent choice for pirates. Right now its totally pointless.
I used the scenario editor to test echelon mirrors. Assuming elevation of 3000+ meters, each echelon mirror can produce a max of 5 energy.
Also nutrients cease to be relevant once you get hybrid forests and hydrophonic labs, or the cloning vats.
The problem with natural landmarks losing their bonus on elevation change is that it is too easy to render something permanent ineffective. Even global warming will screw it up and a single tectonic missle can render your landmark ineffective. It just doesnt make sense for it to lose effectiveness just because the elevation changed to a different 1000m band.
Sea units not being able to capture coastal bases is a huge flaw and makes coastal attacks really tedious IMHO.
Theres no real reason to make a large navy given that they are useless as port garrisons (in port penalty) and are inferior to land based artillery.
Not sure what you mean about fuel range, but im having trouble providing effective interceptor screen for my bases. Its annoying formers three turns away can get nuked by a cheap and suicidal needlejet while my base full of interceptors sit there. I mean sure, next turn i can manually send a interceptor to kill the enemy jet while its still there, but its just really tedious. Civ 5 style intercepts would be much better (you just set planes to intercept and they intercept as long as something within their range gets bombed).
For base building, i meant an option like "May not build base if within X tiles of a base that you do not own".
Not sure what you meant about the changelog, but according to http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Yitzi%27s_patch (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Yitzi%27s_patch) the latest version is 2.5 but you have 3.1e uploaded...
Is it possible to allow gravships/locusts to obliterate bases? Mostly a convenience thing.
As for the popup to attack at low readiness....its annoying because most of the time, you will get the popup by accident (moving elite units and they run into an enemy when most of their moves are gone). Its much rarer for the other situation (you have a huge combat strength difference and want to attack anyway).
With sea transport its mostly annoying when you are trying to unload a whole bunch of units into an enemy base. The game wont allow you to move the transport into the enemy base to unload them (unlike a land tile). Alternatively, maybe you could mod the game so that you do get the "disembark" popup when trying to move a transport into an enemy base? That would make things so much easier.
Another bug : If an enemy has air units mixed with land units in a tile, you are not allowed to attack the land units with your air units (unless they have air superiority). You just get a message that you need air superiority to attack.
Also the tidal harness bonus building (+1 energy from harnesses) does not work for supply crawlers. I assume aquafarms and subsea trunklines behave similarly.
What if you want to declare war?
Well, unless you have "confirm odds before attacking" on. It could be made moddable, but unless other people want it too it won't be a high priority.
That gets tricky, though; if he wanted, he could designate the air unit as defender, but you can't attack the air unit, so effectively the air unit is the best unit to defend (since it prevents attack entirely) and so does, so you can't attack.
Thanks, that makes things a lot clearer. Still impossible to get enough clean minerals limit with all the mineral boositng facilities though, but by then the game is already over so i guess its not a big deal.
but im dissapointed that theres no difference between 2 and 3 planet rating
(and you cant seem to capture anything late game).
Speaking of which, Cha Dawn gets no interludes for some reason?
Can the game handle decimals in alphax.txt? E.g. 0.5 for the planet ratings?
While playing cha dawn i noticed a couple of things. I hadnt really used native units before as psi combat seems really random (the combat strengths are relatively similar unless you can stack a lot of modifiers). The mindworms were really powerful early game, but had the downside of eating up tons of minerals in garrisons since you cant give them clean reactors.
They also dont seem to scale very well later in the game. Isles are too expensive/slow and sealurks come too late into the game to do much (you get locusts earlier for some reason).
Map generator : Is there any way to make the starting locations further away, like a minumum of tiles? How would you even mod something like that anyway?
and im not even sure how to mod anything other than the stuff in alphax.txt
Still not sure how incite drones work. You said it increases the counter by 10, up to 2.5 the base pop. So for example a pop 4 base would get +10 to the counter and 1 more drone?
Stealing tech doesnt do much against the AI after the early game though, not sure if it's kyrub's AI changes, but the AI just goes braindead and gets stuck in permanent combat unit mode once the first wars start. 200 turns into the game, no children's creche, just building infinite units and turtling. Stuff like conventional missles with 40+ turns to go. The AI wont even rebuild destroyed HQs.
Against humans its more useful exept for the weird "new security interlock" thing on bases after the first tech stolen.
Also whats the difference between normal mind control and total thoguht control?
Echelon mirrors : I thought echelons count as solar collectors too? If not, maybe they should....actually how do you even edit the improvement stats? I can find the part where condensers give +50% nutrients but not the one for echelons...
Forests being overpowered just takes variety away IMHO.
Each citizen needs at least two nutrients, but pre-tree farm, most tiles are only going to give you 1 food.
In my experience it seems the easiest way to grow bases is to put a condenser on a bonus nutrient square ASAP.
Farms on rainy tiles sadly do not do much even with condensers.
I typically only build a handful of hydrophonic sats by the time i get them because my bases are mostly max pop anyway, and the ones that arent have more than enough nutrients from forests.
On a related note, are nessus mining stations subject to the clean minerals limit?
How do you even see your CM limit anyway (would be great if you could see it).
Naval units in sea bases have no in port penalty? I thought they did when attacked by aircraft, but i might be remembering wrongly.
Whats the problem with declaring war? Just go ahead and do it, not being able to build a base within 3 tiles of an enemy base isnt going to affect your ability to declare war. Declare war, destroy the base, then build your base wherever you want.
Yea i tried turning that option on, but it got really annoying because i would get the popup even if the odds were wildly in my favor, like 100 to 1, or even if i was attacking probe teams that couldnt defend themselves. Is it possible to mod the game so that when you mouse over an enemy unit with one of your units selected, it will display the odds in a popup window? Kind of like what civ 5 does.
Yea, this was with the AI though and i dont think the AI uses designated defenders.
I tested planet busters again. I nuked Gaians, and everyone declared war on me as usual. But i still managed to call the council and win via supreme leader vote and all the other factions except gaians agreed to serve me. Not sure if intended...
If you have the planetary transist system and make a new base somewhere with insufficient food, the base will drop to 2 or 1 pop. But it wont grow back to 3 pop after you get enough food for the base (the grow check only happens when you build the secret project for existing bases apparently). You have to grow the base manually.
If you have a base within 3 tiles of a water tile, you can work that tile but cant build stuff like aquafarms.
Discovering the manifold nexus as progenitors will trigger the interlude which shows your faction in control of it, even if you are not actually in control of the nexus. I think it should only trigger once you have it within faction borders?
Caretakers were eradicated, but once i started to build the ascent to trascendence, i got a message saying that they were going to kill me because transcendence is forbidden. Usurpers was eradicated too but did not come back from the dead to call me. Not sure if the use of the scenario editor to eliminate them had anything to do with it.
Specialists do not count as talents for the purpose of golden ages, even if you have high enough psych to turn them into talents. This only becomes an issue once you get habitation domes and you have cities large enough to work all tiles, at which point they are forcibly converted into specialists. At about 30 pop it becomes impossible to get enough talents to have a golden age. Not really an issue as the game is basically over by this point.
Resource bonuses do not grant improved tile yields in fungus even after you research centauri psi or build the manifold harmonics. Not sure if intended.
You can build improvements in fungus after you get centuari psi, but you cant work them till you clear the fungus away (except for boreholes). Is there any point in building, say, a mine under fungus when you cant work it anyway?
If a friendly unit is in the same tile as an enemy unit, you cant attack the enemy unit in that tile (e.g. friendly air unit flying over, friendly unit stationed in enemy base, etc).
Also if you have a truce and the AI decides to park their units in your territory to block you, they can choose not to take your call so you cant demand they remove their units from your territory. IIRC you do not get the option to refuse their call if you do the same to them. The problem is that you cant remove their units by any means except to declare war, but that means breaking the truce and your integrity will drop.
A rover can infinitely use a monolith to repair itself until the monolith dissapears. This is a rare scenario but a slow ground unit can keep attacking a rover, the rover disengages, and on his turn, repairs himself to full again, repeating an infinite cycle until the RNG makes the monolith dissapear. To prevent this from happening, i would suggest putting a limit on monoliths so they can only repair the same unit once in X turns.
-Disbanding a supply crawler in a base with shift+d only nets you half the minerals to a secret project, but you get the full amount of minerals if you move the crawler out of the base then back inside to get the popup asking if you want to assign the crawler to the secret project.
-Let players see what the morale of a unit will be before you build it (after all modifiers)
-Allow players to disable pods generating native life forms (the scenario editor only allows you to disable ALL life forms, but not pods generating them). Same goes for fungal blooms.
-Auto plant fungus option (low priority, mainly for late game players with manifold harmonics)
-Allow "duels to the death" for artillery, it should not take several turns to kill a single artillery unit....
Hmm...should the improvement replace the fungus, or apply after it? The latter would be extremely powerful.
Barring scenario editor stuff or some really wonky cases involving pacts and units in neutral territory, this shouldn't happen.
Does spacebar also raise that menu? Because that would solve the problem easily.
Definitely doable; how would you suggest it be shown?
Fungal blooms from ecodamage can be disabled by changing the ecodamage settings to negate all ecodamage (easiest way is to set maximum and minimum PLANET multiplier to 0); disabling pods producing native life forms would be doable (with alphax to control it) but not that easy and not high priority.
I thought that when one artillery unit attacks another, it is a duel to the death. If not...I'm planning a major combat-modding set of options at some point, and something like what you describe will almost certainly be in there.
Hmm i just noticed a huge bug. For some reason i cannot take probe actions against enemy units. When i try to move a probe team into the enemy tile, nothing happens and i get no error message. That might explain why the AI never tries to use probe teams on my units, its because they cant either...see save game. I even tried giving myself 999 energy to see if it was a energy reserves issue, but that didnt help.
Also another bug with probe teams is that when you try to move a land probe team into a sea base adjacent to land, you get a message saying that they need amphibious pods to attack the base, but you cant give probe teams amphibious pods....i was stuck on a continent with no coastal bases, surrounded by pirate coastal bases, so i couldnt build any naval probe teams nor could i give my land probe teams amphibious pods to do anything, so i had to start over.
Also probe teams can take clean reactors even though they dont cost any minerals to support, that should probably be removed to avoid confusing newbies.
The security interlock thing lasts forever by the way, not just one turn. If you steal tech from one base, you will always get a higher failure rate from that base for the rest of the game.
Native units : I think the biggest problem with these is that while they are decent in the early game, they simply dont scale unlike normal units. You get up to 40 hp with singularity reactors while native units remain the same forever so theres no reason to use them once you get fusion reactors.
The entire stack of mindworms will also die if one unit dies, and it is VERY easy to kill a single mind worm...just use a resonance rover/hovertank with empath song.
Echelon mirrors : I think it might be better to make them a uber solar collector instead, like what condensors/boreholes do. You put a condensor down on a nutrient bonus square, voila, 1 tile providing 7 food with a farm. You get 8 minerals from a borehole. But you put a echelon mirror down on a energy tile and its no better than a solar collector, and spamming multiple echelon mirrors is really impractical, unlike building just one condensor/borehole.
Probably replace, forests do that currently but the other improvements dont for some reason.
A is pact with B. You are at war with B but not A. A has his units stack with B's units. You cant attack B's units/bases while his units are free to attack yours.
QuoteDoes spacebar also raise that menu? Because that would solve the problem easily.
Nope, space bar just skips the crawler's turn. Its also interesting that if you have crawlers on hold in a base that start a secret project, they will wake up and ask you for orders but not give you the popup menu to ask if you want to assign them to the secret project. With artifacts, they will wake up and when you set them to hold again, you get the popup menu asking if you want to link it to the network node/assign to the secret project. This doesnt happen with crawlers for some reason.
QuoteDefinitely doable; how would you suggest it be shown?
Not sure what can be done UI wise...is there any space to put the text in the unit boxes, in the build screen?
I meant the unity pods, its really annoying when most of the pods are just native lifeforms that kill the unit that opened the pod, and the scenario editor doesnt have any settings to prevent pods from spawning lifeforms or fungal blooms.
Nope, artillery does minor damage to each other then they stop shooting. It generally takes 3+ turns to kill an artillery unit 1v1 unless there is a huge tech gap.
Also, if you want to allow probe teams with amphibious pods, you can allow amphibious pods for noncombat units in alphax.txt (of course, that means you can make colony pods or crawlers with amphibious pods, which won't do much good, so there's not much point in making them.)
Also, if you want to allow probe teams with amphibious pods, you can allow amphibious pods for noncombat units in alphax.txt (of course, that means you can make colony pods or crawlers with amphibious pods, which won't do much good, so there's not much point in making them.)
As I play SP mostly on huge maps, I find amphibious colony pods and crawlers can be useful, if you settle a sea base next to a continent, which you find is uninhabited. Of course if you have enough (clean) transports, you could just have one hold in the base, or if you can afford it, rush build one.
Similarly I think sea borders of land bases should extend out as much as land borders (~8 tiles by default). It's a bit silly to get P-drones for sea units that are still in the base radius.
That would be because there are two units in that square; a probe team cannot subvert two units at a time, unless they are in a base. (This is another thing I plan to make mod-changeable.)
You could always take out the units with air and then use amphibious military units to capture the base...
It sort of is, except that instead of giving energy itself it gives energy to nearby solar panels. If you have a bunch of solar panels, changing one of them to a mirror is worth +8 energy. Of course, if you get more of them, they're weaker, but a mirror at max elevation surrounded by solar is essentially worth 12 energy.
You mean, instead of showing "Scout Patrol" it would show "Green Scout Patrol"? I'm pretty sure that could be done fairly easily. In terms of options to show it, I think maybe I'll just add it under the existing "enhanced information" feature.
QuoteYou could always take out the units with air and then use amphibious military units to capture the base...
I was playing miriam so i couldnt catch up in tech and my only hope was to steal techs with probes, which they couldnt do as the bases were all coastal.
Why not make ehcelon mirrors give a +3 bonus to the energy output of a square though? A condensor + farm gives +3 nutrients to a square with a nutrient bonus and also increases adjacent rainfall by one step. Its not common to have high elevations that make building solar panels worthwhile. Making it function more like a condensor would make it much more useful in normal play where you have time/resource constraints.
I think forests are okay at this point, its just that farms/solar collectors/mines need to scale more with tech. Making them give more nutrients/energy/minerals when you get higher level techs would be a good step (like what happens with mining platforms).
Also making mines not reduce nutrients in the square will also make farm + mines much more attractive. A rolling + moist tile would give you 2 nutrients and 2 minerals, which is better than a unimproved forest.
I also find it weird that drill to aquifer doesnt allow you to direct where the river goes. Even ancient civilizations on earth knew how to dig canals for waterflow, but its 2100+ and you can launch satellites but not dig canals to make additional river tiles? Drill to aquifier isnt very useful when it takes so many turns to do and you have no idea where the resulting river is going to go to.
Yea something like that, or somewhere else within the box, not sure what would look best at this point though.
In test.sav, you can see that i have two gatling infantries that i subverted from Lal. However the name is slightly different from the one in the workshop which is Gatling Squad. Also when i go to upgrade them via the workshop, one of them cant be upgraded. Apparently thats because one of them is an obsolete model and obsolete models that are subverted dont appear in your workshop. Whats also annoying is that when you upgrade units on the board, they dont get the benefits of the high morale ability but they do if you upgrade them through the workshop.
Another annoying thing is how you cant retire basic designs like the basic former so it keeps taking up space in your workshop. This wouldnt be so bad if the workshop didnt reset the selected unit to the latest one everytime you upgraded a unit (so if you upgrade an obsolete unit and you have 24 unit designs in total, it resets to #24 and if you want to upgrade any more obsolete deisgns, you have to scroll all the way back again). I tried disabling the basic unit designs, but that just made the game give prototype costs to stuff like formers...
-In test2.sav, it costs 1192 credits to mind control Hallowed Ground, a size 8 base with only a single transport foil and 2 buildings. This seems way too high considering that you may as well just conquer the building manually and save 1k+ credits...its not lcose to the believers HQ either, nor is it in golden age.
I also noticed that incite drones does not correctly show the newly created drones in the base screen, even if it causes a drone riot, you will still see no drones or no extra drones in the base screen. They dont appear to show up when looking at the base's psych screen either.
-Air units blocking tiles is a huge problem and really exploitable in MP. All you need is one air unit like a needle jet and it completely blocks the tile, no movement, bombardment or attacking possible except for SAM units. Any units in that tile can attack out of it with impunity. You can even do this with gravship and they never run out of fuel so you can block that tile forever for all non-SAM units. Im surprised, isnt this used in MP often?
-Clicking "Help" when selecting a native life form in the build screen will send you to the workshop which is useless, since native units dont appear there. It should send you to the datalinks section for that native lifeform.
-In the datalinks, when viewing a tech that grants a new society model (e.g. police state), there is no hyperlink to the police state entry (this applies for all society models, which are all missing hyperlinks for some reason).
-Roads only improve mine outputs if the square is rocky, if the square is flat or rolling, roads do nothing to the mines in the square (at least when combined with a farm). Not sure if bug?
-There seems to be some kind of limit to how many talents/drones you can affect with psych. Even if you have the psych slider at 100% and have 200+ total psych at a base, you will still have left over drones (not pacificsm ones) and not all workers can be turned into talents. Not sure if bug, but datalinks make no mention of a limit...
Suggestion :
-Make +PROBE modifiers in SE affect probe team combat just like how planet affects native life form combat, and also have it reduce your own probe team costs.
Let's put it this way: How many former-turns per extra resource do you think are needed to make the terraforming types balanced?
I think there is probably some rule; maybe each square goes to the lowest-elevation square next to it?
If you can figure out what would work best, I can probably do it.
When I loaded the game, it was the same name, and could be upgraded...
As for types of upgrading, there are a few differences between upgrading "on the board" as opposed to through the workshop.
The basic designs (created in alphax.txt) like the basic former do not take up slots in your workshop, and are always at the beginning.
Firstly, note that they have a native +1 PROBE, which adds 50% to the cost, so it's really like 795.
Secondly, remember that the cost to mind control depends a lot on the population of the base; you're only paying a bit under 100 per point of population before the PROBE increase.
However, I did find something not in the formula I'd found on the internet: The effective population is also increased by 1 for each past mind control and 1 for each past 4 subversions (I'm adding that to the other post), so there's actually 10 effective population, so 79.5 cost per effective population.
Finally, there is some other base property (I'm not sure what) that can increase the cost by 50% or 100%; in this case it's 50%, so it's only 53 cost per effective population.
Can I have a savegame that shows this? I have an idea of what might be going on, but it seems a bit unlikely so I'd rather check the savegame.
Fairly often, but you can also "block" a tile with defensive units and then you need strong attackers to catch it. The only real problem (although I favor being able to hit gravships without SAM anyway) is that SAM is available too late in comparison to air power (they're together) so the owner might not have the tech. If SAM is moved to synthetic fossil fuels, and air power requires advanced military algorithms, that should fix the problem.
It is not a bug; a mine is worth only 1 in flat or rolling, and the first does not need a road. (The mine is worth 2 in rocky, plus allowing the rocky itself to produce 2 instead of 1, so that's an increase of 2 that does not need a road and a third that does.)
Savegame, please?
They already give a morale boost; with the probe-team-improving techs and various facilities weakened substantially, that morale boost will be quite significant for combat and success chance. Affecting your own probe team costs is an interesting idea, but not, I think, a high priority.
QuoteLet's put it this way: How many former-turns per extra resource do you think are needed to make the terraforming types balanced?
I dont think its former turns, but making farms, etc scale with techs like forests do.
I just find it weird that you cant just make a river flow to every square when you can launch satellites...canals are not exactly high leel tech. I think the drill to aquifer option is really underulitized the way its setup.
With some unit names it might become too long if its something like Green Tachyon AAA destroyer. How about including it next to the numbers? The ones that are like 1-1-1-1? Something like 1-1-1-1-Green?
Strange, when i try to upgrade them from the workshop, i was told that there was only one unit that could be upgraded.
Whats the point of making two different types of upgrading anyway? Its really annoying not having high morale upgrades take effect unless you upgrade through the workshop.
Yea but they also cant be retired for some reason?
Ive never mind controlled the base or subverted it before though?
Also i still dont see why anyone would want to pay that much to mindcontrol a base when they can easily take it with military force for free...
Okay use the cruiser probe team to incite drone riots at The Lord's Gift. However you can see no additional drone appears in the base screen either this turn or the next, nor in the pysch screen.
I think the main problem is that it doesnt make any sense for air units to be blocking that tile in the first place. They are flying above, they cant block movement, artillery bombardment or anything. And if you try and attack with your own interceptors, the game will use ground units to defend so that your interceptors get a -50% penalty.
I don't quite understand...which part requires the road? The rocky bonus?
Savegame, please?
Hmm okay i was just thinking that right now a +2 probe faction fighting a -2 probe faction has the same probe team odds (maxing out at 3 .0 combat strength for elite probes) which doesnt really make sense.
Its also a bit unfair that probe only decreases enemy costs and not your costs.
-The sound volume at the main menu is not controlled by the game's volume settings for some reason, for example if you decrease the sound volume ingame the main menu's volume isn't affected at all. Its a bit annoying because on my computer, the main menu is really loud and i decreased the volume ingame to compensate, and the only alternative seems to be to change my computer's main volume settings everytime i launch the game...
-If you look at the save game, the needlejet put on hold in Nettap complex isnt regenerating fuel for some reason...but it will if you manually use space bar to skip it's turn instead of setting it to hold. I also noticed this tends to happen everytime you set needlejets to hold in a base.
-About the unit list not showing units whom have moved...i found the problem. Only the colored icons next to the unit image gets grayed out, and its quite hard to see at a quick glance which is grayed out. I would post a screenshot but print screen just generates a messed up image (how do you take screenshots ingame?).
Is it possible to make the name of the unit gray instead, as that would make it easier to see which unit has already moved?
And also including the number of move points left would be really helpful.
-Do you think its possible to remove Kyrub's AI changes from the next patch, as its currently not supported by him or anyone else at the moment and there seems to be some major AI breaking bugs in there...
-Can you include a list of all changes you did to the base game (other than allowing modable options) so that someone can update the datalinks? For example, clean mineral limits increased by tree farms, etc will be removed if the building is destroyed? Thats a pretty big change that doesnt appear to be documented anywhere.
-Possible issue with the way probe teams are returned to the nearest base. I used a probe team on Alpha Prime, and the probe team returned to Gaia's landing (see b.sav). The problem is that in order to get back to alpha prime, i have to sail all the way around the continent, making it much further than returning it to one of my bases at the southern point of the continent. I think probe teams should take into account direct access rather than just flat distance.
Slight correction on artillery duels, they are to the death except when its ground vs naval for some reason, at which point both units will shoot twice then disengage.
Also i can confirm that reactor sizes are NOT disregarded when engaging in psi combat with native lifeforms. It probably should.
-Gravship formers cannot use the "construct road/tube to" commands, you just get a message saying that "land units cannot perform this in sea squares and vice-versa for sea units". But manually building them with the "r" hotkey works.
-Apparently if you attack a air superiority needlejet in a base square with non-SAM air unit, the needlejet will defend with its armor value and not its weapon. The needlejet wont get the 100% SAM bonus vs air units either.
-Infiltrating datalinks is apparently a 100% success chance just like genetic atrocities, at the very least you do not get a warning popup showing you success rates.
-Not sure if intended : Believers +25% attack bonus doesnt apply against native lifeforms.
-Human factions no longer get interludes for discovering the borehole cluster/manifold nexus. They used to in the original game, but not in alien crossfire.
-Is there a way to view a combat log for all combat that has occured in a particular turn? Conventional missles display the combat window for only a split second so you cant figure out what unit it hit.
-Does the free police unit from self aware colony have non-lethal methods, or does it override an existing military unit with non-lethal methods?
-Is there a way to lift yield restrictions at the start of the game, without any techs required? I Know you can change the techs required in alphax.txt, but what about no techs at all?
-What does enhanced information in alphax.txt do?
-What are the requirements to spot a sub/cloaked unit?
-When raising/lowering land, can it show the elevation after the change in the popup that tells you how much it will cost? And possibly give a warning if it changes elevation band for a landmark square (so you can tell if it will remove the landmark bonus). Landmark bonuses are pretty important, especially in the early game, +1 minerals or nutrients in every square at the start can easily make a base a powerhouse.
-Economy seems pretty underpowered unless you can get it to the point where you get 1 energy per square. Maybe make economy 1 give +2 energy per base? +1 energy per base basically does nothing, and theres no reason to aim for a golden age unless you need extra growth to pop boom (playing cybernethics/pirates for example) or you already have +1 economy from elsewhere. -1 energy at the HQ base is also pretty irrelevant.
Support is also pretty underpowered once you get clean reactors.
Even 4 free units per base is not very impressive given the sheer hassle involved in spreading out support (having to move the units manually to each base to change their home base)
-You cant plant forests at a monolith manually, but it can spread there. Since hybrid forests are better than monoliths, maybe allow planting forests at a monolith and have the forest take priority over a monolith if it's yield is higher? Another option would be to give a boost to monoliths when you research centauri psi, since manifold harmonics is a secret project and monoliths are only good tile yields in the early game.
-When you take over a base with a headquarters, you will get the option of freeing captured faction leaders. Another issue is that if the enemy doesnt rebuild the HQ (like with buggy AI) you will never get a chance to rescue captured faction leaders again, which is rather odd.
-Make SE choices scale more? For example right now police past +3 does nothing, but efficiency will keep scaling past +5 (as far as i can tell, it does with a children's creche at least).
When you consider enrichers, specialists (empowered by nutrients, of which farm+condenser+enricher has more than forests), and raising land/condensers/mirrors, I think they do scale.
An early-game (post-gene splicing, pre-tree farms) farm/solar is worth 2/1/1 give or take (might be 3 food, might be 2 energy, but also might be 1 food or 0 minerals). A later-game (post-enrichers) farm/solar/enricher with condensers, mirrors, and land raising is worth more like 4/1/7 (depending slightly on situation). That's definitely scaling a lot.
If you describe how you'd like it to work, I could probably put it on the list at some point.
Ah; I didn't try upgrading from the workshop.
And that's not because of being obsolete, it's because one of them was not the unit in the workshop. Each faction gets its own list of 64 non-pre-designed units, and that other one must have been Morgan's gatling infantry, not your own.
The reason is that retiring a design is deleting it, and since all factions use the same predesigned units, retiring it for one faction would retire it for all factions.
That base, they wouldn't in your situation. But a more well-defended base, or if they're really rich but have a weak military, might be a different story, especially if it doesn't have +50% from PROBE and +50% from I-don't-know-what.
The second point of mine bonus. The rocky bonus requires a mine, but doesn't count as a mine bonus so it isn't blocked by not having a road.
This is because the total talents, after applying psych but before cancelling the resulting talents with drones, is capped at the base population. This limitation is also removed by mode 8 of the drone rules, and indeed setting 100% psych with mode 8 active will give you all talents.
Not without hugely delaying the patch. However, have you tested to see that those bugs are in Kyrub's alone (probably are, but not certain) and are not in Scient's?
That makes more sense. The exception is probably so that artillery isn't overpowered against naval units.
You sure? I seem to remember that higher reactor doesn't help in psi combat. If you want, you can try running some psi combats with different reactors and letting us know your results in terms of win/loss.
I'm putting it with the other gravship former bug.
Genetic atrocities are not 100% success rates; I think it only shows success rate if there is some extra factor (such as the option to frame another faction) that makes the success rate dependent on your next decision.
Just change the tech required to None, and that should work.
I'm not so sure; if you're going constant warfare, +50% to cost is a fairly big deal.
I am planning an option to have monoliths give, of each resource, either 2 or what fungus would give, whichever is better. So you actually would get a boost in the late game, although only the Gaians would get it as early as Centauri Psi.
Odd, but I'm not sure where it should be done if not the HQ.
-No air units can mount anti-grav struts despite what the description says (that it gives reactor*2 moves to air units)This is a simple alphax.txt change. Go to Antigrav Struts under Special Unit Abilities and change the third zero from the right to a 1.
-Include a setting to make all non-combat units (terraformers, transports, etc) use up no support just like crawlers/probe teams. I suspect this will make support much more useful when you dont need to worry about an army of terraformers taking up minerals.Maybe you should prioritize clean reactors. I build dozens of clean formers.
I meant that they dont scale automatically. You dont need to go out of your way to get the +1 mining plateform bonus or tree farms/hybrid forests, as you need those techs/facilities anyway.
An early game rolling/rainy square typically gives 3/2/0, assuming you disable mines lowering nutrients and most squares are below 1000 meters. Thats of course much better than a early game forest, but hybrids give the same nutrients as a rainy + farm, the same minerals as a rolling + mine and the same energy as a 1000 meter square with solar collector....except that you only need to build a forest and not worry about building anything else.
For most of the game you wont have enough formers due to support limits
so you have to be efficient with terraforming. Even a farm + soil enricher + mine is going to net you 4/2/0 at best, which is much worse than a hybrid forest.
Theres also the problem that a tidal harness + facility nets you 4 energy per square if im not wrong, with minimal investment. To equal that you need to spend how many turns raising land and building a complex network of echelon mirrors and solar collectors? Turns that could have been spent on more tidal harnesses and foil supplies.
I find that raising land is problematic for two reasons : it costs credits and it can screw up things like river placement, coastal tiles and landmark squares. If my HQ is in the garland crater, i am not going to raise land and lose the precious +1 mineral bonus per square.
Also the problem with condensors and echelon mirrors is that you cant freely stack them. For example i could have a farm with a condensor, but i cant put a solar collector in the same square. That also limits the amount of echelon mirrors i can have affect one square. Meanwhile i can have two forests each producing 3/2/2.
Using supply crawlers only makes sense when you only want one resource from that tile or when the tile is outside the base radius. For example it makes no sense to put a crawler on a 3/2/2 forest. Even if you have enough nutrients to support a base pop of mostly specialists, you wont have enough energy/minerals because you arent working enough forests/boreholes. With a size 14 bae and forest spamming, i can easily generate enough nutrients from hybrid forests alone to have rocky mines/coastal tiles worked by crawlers, which gives me a nice balance of minerals and everything else. Theres no reason for me to switch the forests over to condensors and farms since that would mean losing a ton of minerals/energy. Look at my bases in a.sav, i have no shortage of nutrients and im not even working most of my kelp farms at my HQ.
Part of the imbalance is that mines always give at least +1 minerals, which is worth 2 energy (and isnt lost to inefficiency).
but a hybrid forest gives the equivalent of 4 energy (2 minerals/2 energy). Thats as much energy as a 3k+ meter square with a solar collector except the odds of you having a base with 3k+ meters squares is really low. Also a coastal tile gives you access to tidal harnesses that give 4 energy with the facility bonus, except that you dont need to use 3k+ meter elevation squares or echelon mirrors. I could try playing with the map editor to see which is better, forest spamming or using advanced terraforming, but the ease of forest spamming is a definate advantage.
Probably should move the discussion of forests, etc to another forum...
Without knowing how the current river system works its hard to say....from what i can tell it seems to flow downhill but how the game determines the exact tiles created with a river seems pretty random, especially as it changes with interaction with other rivers. I think for a start decreasing the number of turns to drill to aquifer and removing the inability to drill in adjacent river squares would be a good start.
Actually both of those were subverted units. When you subvert a unit, it gets added to your workshop, but the reason why only one did was because one of them was obsolete. I think thats also why one of them says its receiving support from a base but the other has no base listed as support.
Thats strange, doesnt the AI use the same pre-designed units as well? So for example if you subvert a unit and then retire the design, shouldnt it in theory retire all remaining units of that design in all factions?
Then maybe the formulae should make it more expensive based on how hard the base is to take via conventional means instead, making it really cheap to take a lightly defended base.
Also while i was testing out a different installation with just the official patch + your patch, i noticed mind control costs were dirt cheap...i could corner the energy market with only 2k+ credits and there were dozens of enemy bases on the map, total enemy pop was 200+. Im not sure if scient's patch touched probe team costs though, but mind control costs in your patch are much higher.
Hmm...when do mines give +2 minerals instead of just one? Is it on rolling/rocky?
Ah i see, but from what i could tell, specialists still take up potential talent slots?
Yea i did a fresh install of AX and just installed the official patch + your patch. From what i could tell, the AI seems to behave the same as in my installation with scient's patch + your patch. Its hard to test as the game keeps crashing without scient's patch and theres a weird bug where the mouse cursor suddenly stops working ingame and i have to use the keyboard shortcuts to exit the game.
Well if you remove the land based bonus that land artillery gets, then it gets more even.
I forgot to mention : They do have access to the automatic roads/tubes command but clicking it does nothing nor is there any error message.
I think it should show the success rate at least, just so that players will know whether to risk it or not.
True, but without clean reactor spamming, your bases run out of minerals very quickly.
Can you also make it give the forest yield (3/2/2) if it would be better than the monolith yield? I cant recall if the game lets you plant forests at a monolith manually which might be another issue...
Hmm well i think ideally the captured faction leaders would get transferred over to you if you take over a base with a HQ and you get to decide what to do with them from then on. But for that to work properly i think the game would also need to let you have the option of freeing captured faction leaders any time you wanted, which might be difficult to get working...
-Check out b.sav, after i hit end turn, i get a urgent message from yang, but clicking ok doesnt give me any conversation window.
-Check out a.sav and look at home:hearth that is building the longevity vaccine. I have almost 100 extra minerals, but not all of that is getting carried over to the next building, the biology lab. I set the game to carry over unlimited minerals, but only 42 minerals are getting carried over, out of nearly 100 extra minerals.
-Bonus resources are invisible in sea squares of ocean depth or deeper. This is an issue because you cant see the bonus resources when settling bases which is important for positioning, especially at the start of the game. Very annoying to find out that you settle your base 1 tile out of range of a bonus resource square.
-Immunity/Robust : Growth does nothing for SE. Immunity : efficiency for yang obviously works, but when i tried to make a custom faction with immunity/robust : growth, it did nothing whatsoever when i chose the Green SE model.
-In the "about" menu ingame, it says your patch version is still 2.5.
-Units disbanded via the retire option in the workshop do not appear to give their bases any additional minerals from disbanding.
-Auto recycle buildings before they are replaced by the free buildings granted by secret projects? I mean, you could do it manually before you finish building the secret project, but its a hassle to keep track of.
-If you get a hurry penalty from not having enough minerals, have the game warn you in the hurry screen that there is a penalty.
-For progenitor prototypes, can there be some kind of indicator that it is a prototype with the 2 square sight radius?
-What is the terraforming penalty for farms, etc pre-tree farm? Does each farm, etc add 1 virtual mineral or something?
-Does the AI receive any boosts?
Noticed a huge bug with how intercepting needlejets do air combat.
I had SAM needlejets in a base and noticed they were getting destroyed by non-SAM usurper needlejets.
Looking at the combat results, it seems that when the usurper needlejets move close enough to trigger intercepting defenders, the game will move the interceptors next to the enemy needlejet. The enemy needlejet will then attack the intercepting needlejet, even if the enemy needlejet does NOT have SAM. Because of this, the usurper needlejet was getting its 25% attack bonus (and presumably believers would as well). The intercepting needlejet does NOT get the caretakers 25% defence bonus (even though it is being attacked) and will also NOT get its +100% SAM bonus vs non-SAM air units. The combat is also calculated as weapon vs weapon instead of weapon vs armor (As is normal for SAM needlejet vs non-SAM needlejet). This basically means you dont need to worry about using SAM jets to clear away enemy interceptors.
So a SAM needlejet intercepting enemy needlejets can easily get destroyed beacuse it doesnt get its 100% SAM bonus that it should be getting. However if you attack enemy needlejets manually (on your turn, before they fly back to base) the attack will be resolved against their armor values and you will receive the 100% SAM bonus as per normal.
A simplefix would probably be to make the interceptors attack the hostile air units first, so that would give them the SAM bonus vs armor. Making the caretaker defence bonus work would probably be harder though...
Issues :
-Caretaker artillery do not get the 25% defence bonus when attacked
-Planet modifiers for psi combat do not apply to the defender
-Progenitor energy grid doesnt count free buildings from secret projects like the command nexus
-You can build a hologram theater before you build the virtual world, and if you do, the hologram thearters will remain in the base and still cost energy to maintain, even though it does nothing at this point.
-Air units exert a ZOC on ground units, even though different domains shouldnt (naval doesnt exert a ZOC on ground units for example)
-If playing as caretakers and a surrendered human faction starts building the ascent to transcendence, you will automatically go straight back to vendetta. They probably shouldnt be able to do that.
-Even with "carry over unlimited minerals" and "build more than one item at a time" turned on, you cannot build more than one satellite at a time unless you manually queue them, but you can build multiples of anyhting else (e.g. units) without queing them manually.
-Include a setting to make all non-combat units (terraformers, transports, etc) use up no support just like crawlers/probe teams. I suspect this will make support much more useful when you dont need to worry about an army of terraformers taking up minerals.
Yea but that stuff should eventually get fixed in the next patch instead of asking everyone to fix it themselves.
- Half morale modifiers from -2 morale do not appear to work (you still get full morale modifiers).
Excess nutrients from farm/solar become more important if you increase pop limits to 10/20 from 7/14. Also I mod SE settings so that the easy boom from Demo+Planned is more difficult to maintain. Demo+FM with GA is another option, but I also took out early booming with that. Main issue remains that Hybrid Forest just comes a bit too early for tech.
You have no shortage of nutrients, but are you able to support a large number of engineers and thinkers?
The first can be done with alphax.txt; the second wouldn't help much, I think, as I think it would automatically just lead into the existing river.
What were your social engineering settings and tech? A strong commerce rating in comparison to your opponents makes cornering a lot cheaper.[/qu
Ah i see, i was playing as morgan and had +4 economy, so that might have been why...it wasnt mentioned in the datalinks that the economy SE lowered the cost to corner the global energy market.QuoteJust rocky.
It seems that you still need a road if you put a mine in a mineral bonus tile though?QuoteI'm not sure what you mean.
I mean that any specialists still wont count as talents for the purpose of golden ages even with drones rule 8.QuoteThat's strange; scient's patch followed by mine should be the same as just mine.
But what about scient's patch without mine?
And what about scient's and Kyrub's but without mine?
I meant that without scient's patch and only your patch + the official patch, i was getitng lots of game breaking glitches like mouse cursor suddenly not responding, etc. I didnt try kyrub's patch because it was mared for AC and not AX. He doesnt want to send you any files by the way (see the reply he posted in his thread).QuoteTrue, but that's not default and it's not fair to balance only with such a mod.
Okay but what is the point of having a land based gun bonus vs naval? Land based guns cost a lot less less than naval ones and can be hidden in any bases (including sea ones, where they still count as land based guns for some reason). It makes it pointless to use naval artillery since, IIRC, one land based gun can take on 3 naval guns of the same strength with ease, not to mention dragging the artillery duel out for several turns. It doesnt even make sense realism wise because naval ships can easily mount higher calibre guns.
By default its super easy to make a base immune to sea invasions. Just stick a few cheap infantry artillery units in there to prevent naval bombardment plus AAA to take care of air units. The enemy wont have any way to soften up defenses before attacking head on into naval yard + tachyon fields.QuoteThat sort of depends on how many minerals you're producing in the first place, doesn't it? Plus, of course, on how fast your units die.
Not sure how it goes for everyone else, but my bases typically have one garrison + one former in the early game. If theres a war i try to have a rover as a quick response unit, plus a artillery unit to defend against bombards and when the enemy gets air power, at least two interceptors per front line base. Thats a lot of minerals for the bare essential defence force. Considering how slow infantry formers are, im often tempted to get a lot more to speed things up even with weather paradigm. Then factor in sea formers and a few naval units for coastal defence and you can have a base with 6+ minerals gone to support which is pretty significant.
I think it would help a lot if formers at least didnt have support requirements, just like probe teams. Imagine if you had to pay support for probe teams too...also the CM limit is calculated before subtracting minerals from support, so thats another incentive to be as mineral efficient as possible.
Another annoying thing about support is that you usaully have a base good for producing units but want it supported by another base, and there doesnt seem to be any way to do that other than produce the unit and painstakingly move it to another base, change the home base, then move it back to the frontline. Its much easier to not worry about that with clean reactors (or maxing out on SE support).QuoteForest instead of monolith doesn't really make in-game sense, though, the way that fungus instead of monolith does.
Well they are just two different types of plant life in the same tile surrounding a monolith. Its just annoying that you can end up with hybrid forests that are better than monoliths but still get the lower monolith yield.QuoteDidn't get any message myself.
Strange, i loaded the save several times and kept getting it...QuoteNo matter how many minerals you're able to carry over, you can never carry over minerals that were not produced this turn (in this case, 42.) This rule was probably made in order to prevent abuse involving different rush costs.
That doesnt make sense because in the first turn, i had 42 minerals go towards the secret project. In the next, i assigned a expensive supply needlejet to the secret project. So what the game should have done is assign 42 minerals from the first turn towards the secret project, fill up the remainder from the supply needlejet, then carry over whatever is left from the needlejet to the biology lab (and those minerals were produced this turn).QuoteI think this is because they are inactive in such squares. Fungus works the same way.
Is there a way to make it permanently active then? Also i noticed that if you raise a sea tile with a bonus resource to land level, the bonus resource will vanish.QuoteCan you provide the faction file?
Im pretty sure it affects all factions, try changing yang's immunity from EFFIC to GROWTH, i did that and i was still getting negative growth modifiers from going GREEN.QuoteYou can recycle them after the project too if you want. Something that comes from both project and actual presence will IIRC have a star next to it, and can be recycled (removing the star).
Auto recycling would be a bad idea; if you conquer or build the Command Nexus but aren't sure you'll be able to keep it, you might not want to recycle all your existing command centers and then not have them if you lose the Command Nexus.
Oh good point, i didnt think of that.QuoteDepends on difficulty level.
Any idea if theres a list of modifiers that the AI get posted somewhere?QuoteThe reason this happens is because interception takes the form of moving to the attacked unit's square and being attacked instead, meaning that both units use their attack values and it counts as a dogfight.
Yea the problem is that theres no reason to use interceptors when they cant get their SAM bonus when intercepting. At the very least they should get the SAM bonus, that way you would need to use your own interceptors to clear enemy interceptors. Right now its easier to just build normal needlejets and zerg the enemy airbase instead.QuoteIs this true even when attacked by non-artillery units?
They probably do, but not if attacked by an artillery unit. For that matter, higher altitude artillery doesnt get the altitude bonus when attacked by lower atltitude artillery either.QuoteThat's because they're not really there.
But they do cost energy to maintain so they are there...QuoteI thought I fixed this. Savegame please? (Although note that to build 2 satellites you'd need a huge amount of production to finish one and then build the entirety of the second.)
Load one of the previous saves i posted and try using the scenario editor to boost mineral production at one of the bases or give the base tons of left over minerals. Build one satellite and leave nothing else in the game. Only one satellite will get built, but if you queue multiple satellites, you can build multiples of them in a single turn.QuoteNo, it'll make it less useful because you don't need it as often.
Its less useful already because instead of actually going for higher levels of support, its much easier to just spam mostly clean reactor units. You dont have to worry about moving units from one side of the map to the other to change their home bases either. At support 0 you can only have a garrison and former before you start taking mineral penalties and going police state is only useful in the early game or unless you can hit support 3 where you can get up 16 units free per base (with hab complex + ascetics). Even 4 free units per base is pretty much nothing considering how many formers you need at that stage plus air and naval units. Sure, clean reactor units are expensive, but so is having 1/4th of your base minerals taken up by support.QuoteNo, as the default is that air units can't get it, so that's the "fixed" version and anything else is a mod.
Uh isnt the default clearly bugged? I mean the game clearly says that air units should be able to get it, yet they cant.
Not sure why i would want that. Every worker gives me 2 minerals/2 energy from a hybrid forest before bonuses. By the time i get access to advanced specialists, the game is pretty much over and its way too late to start a lengthy terraforming process.
So lets say you have a energy bank, tree farm and hybrid forest at this stage giving a total of 150% to econ and a network node and research hospital giving 100% to labs. That engineer is giving you a total of 7.5 econ and 4 labs. A worker on a hybrid forest would give you 3 nutrients, 2 minerals, 3.5 energy and 3 labs.
In terms of rush buying stuff, both are equal (the equivalent of 7.5 energy)
but the engineer has 1 more lab. This assumes no energy lost to inefficiency.
Also switching from the auto-selected empaths to engineers constantly is annoying.
I did luck out in my current game and managed to find a base spot which was pretty high, so i tried solar collectors. The problems with it were that it took more than twice as long to terraform and was much more micro intensive and since i was getitng low food from arid tiles (and had no space for condensors), i had to rely on pop booming to grow the base. Also for it to be optimal i would need to leave a one tile layer of echelon mirrors beyond the base radius, which is not always possile due to map placement of resources, etc.
Relying on a rush buying strategy instead of minerals also created a micromanagement nightmare since you have to rush buy everything instead of queing a bunch of facilities and letting the base build them.
Yea i think it would help if the base turns were lowered, but allowing people to drill to aquifer adjacent to rivers allows you to essentially "fix" rivers that decide to flow somewhere totally unexpected or for some reason, makes a land drier, as well as auto placed rivers with bad flows. It also lets you fix rivers that have gone haywire after terrain elevation changes.
Ah i see, i was playing as morgan and had +4 economy, so that might have been why...it wasnt mentioned in the datalinks that the economy SE lowered the cost to corner the global energy market.
It seems that you still need a road if you put a mine in a mineral bonus tile though?
I mean that any specialists still wont count as talents for the purpose of golden ages even with drones rule 8.
I meant that without scient's patch and only your patch + the official patch, i was getitng lots of game breaking glitches like mouse cursor suddenly not responding, etc.
I didnt try kyrub's patch because it was mared for AC and not AX.
Okay but what is the point of having a land based gun bonus vs naval?
It makes it pointless to use naval artillery since, IIRC, one land based gun can take on 3 naval guns of the same strength with ease
It doesnt even make sense realism wise because naval ships can easily mount higher calibre guns.
By default its super easy to make a base immune to sea invasions. Just stick a few cheap infantry artillery units in there to prevent naval bombardment plus AAA to take care of air units. The enemy wont have any way to soften up defenses before attacking head on into naval yard + tachyon fields.
Not sure how it goes for everyone else, but my bases typically have one garrison + one former in the early game. If theres a war i try to have a rover as a quick response unit, plus a artillery unit to defend against bombards and when the enemy gets air power, at least two interceptors per front line base. Thats a lot of minerals for the bare essential defence force.
Considering how slow infantry formers are, im often tempted to get a lot more to speed things up even with weather paradigm. Then factor in sea formers and a few naval units for coastal defence and you can have a base with 6+ minerals gone to support which is pretty significant.
Another annoying thing about support is that you usaully have a base good for producing units but want it supported by another base, and there doesnt seem to be any way to do that other than produce the unit and painstakingly move it to another base, change the home base, then move it back to the frontline. Its much easier to not worry about that with clean reactors (or maxing out on SE support).
Well they are just two different types of plant life in the same tile surrounding a monolith.
Its just annoying that you can end up with hybrid forests that are better than monoliths but still get the lower monolith yield.
That doesnt make sense because in the first turn, i had 42 minerals go towards the secret project. In the next, i assigned a expensive supply needlejet to the secret project. So what the game should have done is assign 42 minerals from the first turn towards the secret project, fill up the remainder from the supply needlejet, then carry over whatever is left from the needlejet to the biology lab (and those minerals were produced this turn).
Is there a way to make it permanently active then?
Also i noticed that if you raise a sea tile with a bonus resource to land level, the bonus resource will vanish.
Im pretty sure it affects all factions, try changing yang's immunity from EFFIC to GROWTH, i did that and i was still getting negative growth modifiers from going GREEN.
Any idea if theres a list of modifiers that the AI get posted somewhere?
Yea the problem is that theres no reason to use interceptors when they cant get their SAM bonus when intercepting.
At the very least they should get the SAM bonus, that way you would need to use your own interceptors to clear enemy interceptors. Right now its easier to just build normal needlejets and zerg the enemy airbase instead.
They probably do, but not if attacked by an artillery unit.
For that matter, higher altitude artillery doesnt get the altitude bonus when attacked by lower atltitude artillery either.
But they do cost energy to maintain so they are there...
Load one of the previous saves i posted and try using the scenario editor to boost mineral production at one of the bases or give the base tons of left over minerals. Build one satellite and leave nothing else in the game. Only one satellite will get built, but if you queue multiple satellites, you can build multiples of them in a single turn.
Its less useful already because instead of actually going for higher levels of support, its much easier to just spam mostly clean reactor units.
and going police state is only useful in the early game or unless you can hit support 3 where you can get up 16 units free per base (with hab complex + ascetics).
Even 4 free units per base is pretty much nothing considering how many formers you need at that stage plus air and naval units.
Sure, clean reactor units are expensive, but so is having 1/4th of your base minerals taken up by support.
Uh isnt the default clearly bugged? I mean the game clearly says that air units should be able to get it, yet they cant.
Minor inconsistency with the display of Prototype Cost:
When designing units in the Workshop, all chassis types will show a +50% prototype cost, even if you set Land cost to 100%, Sea to 25%, and Air to 10%, for example in alphax.txt's rules.
However, when selecting units for the build queue, the correct prototype adjustment to minerals is displayed.
So if you want to make farm/solar more powerful in comparison to forests, maybe you should mod so that hybrid forest isn't available until later (on par with advanced specialists) and the game lasts longer.
Energy has other uses too, such as probe team actions, and of course it can be used to rush buy at a base other than where it was produced.
It is a harder method.
You could always get some of each...
But it is in the wiki that commerce affects it.
Technically true, but with rule 8 you can get "virtual talents" which have the same effect.
Technically true, but with rule 8 you can get "virtual talents" which have the same effect.
Elevation and stability give an advantage in artillery, and from a gameplay perspective because it's more specialized.
That sort of thing is how invading a prepared base is supposed to be. Hard-to-take bases makes for a longer and more interesting game.
Not if the rover, artillery, and interceptors are only for front line bases and there aren't that many of them.
Significant but not crippling unless there's effectively a real "limit" of clean minerals (as opposed to going 20 minerals over clean minerals and still being able to handle it).
Why wouldn't your high-mineral bases be the best for producing units?
No, it most certainly should not have done that, as applying supply units to facilities that way is extremely exploitative.
When I said "this turn", I meant from the base's own production.
I think that's because bonus resources are calculated differently for land and sea squares; there are probably times when raising a tile to land will create a bonus resource.
Works for me; you get 0 GROWTH instead of the expected -1.
(Immunity doesn't prevent negative modifiers to cancel out positive modifiers, it just means the total can't be below 0.)
That's because it's considered a duel, where both use offense.
It most certainly does (assuming there's a full category of altitude difference).
No, I mean the one from the project isn't really there.
You appear to be correct (except for the tons of leftover minerals, which never counts toward the next item, which is how it should be.) I'm putting it on my list to fix this.
Not necessarily; remember, if all you build is units, having to build all clean units is as bad as -5 INDUSTRY (or maybe -3 or -4 if you've got another expensive ability too). In such a situation (which is extreme, but probably not that far from the truth in the sort of situations where you'd get Police State or Power), +SUPPORT could be quite useful.
Or if you're conquering a lot of bases and need the police units to keep them stable (which is also the case where transferring to new bases is easiest, as they're there anyway.)
How many formers per base do you need? What are you building, and how fast do your bases grow?
I think the game lasts long enough as it is, the early game takes wayyyy too long IMHO, with serious shortages of everything.
I would say the problem is more that the other terraforming options are underpowered, not that hybrid forests are overpowered. Hybrid forests do have a huge cost to build too (although thats usually a one time cost).
True, though typically this is only useful when you have most facilities built in a base and dont need to build any units at all (which is pretty rare unless you are playing drones, who can build stuff fast enough for that).
Its not just harder, its impractical. Even against the AI, spamming solar collectors/echelon mirrors will leave you behind compared to you if you did mostly forests + boreholes.
I cant imagine people in MP giving you the time you need to do all the mass raising and terraforming either.
But the way the game works, if you are going to go energy focused, its best to go all the way due to % boosts and because having some minerals isnt going to do much, unless you hit the CM cap.
Oh, thanks. How does one edit the ingame datalinks anyway? I thought it would be in helpx.txt, but i cant find certain portions like "Ecology (Revised)".
The virtual talents do not appear to work though, i have it set to rule 8 but with very large (30+) bases where more than half of the pop are forced to be specialists, i do not get a golden age. See test.sav, more than enough psych for infinite talents, but couldnt go into golden age because of too many specialists.
Oh, you mean the nov 2012 one in the downloads section? Since its so outdated im not sure if testing it would make a difference...
Hmm you are right in that naval units dont have to use a ability slot to bombard. Im not sure if they should in that case, my main issue is that a 50% bonus for land vs naval is huge...given that land artillery is many times cheaper than naval units anyway.
The game is specifically designed to favor attacking vs defending though.
But even in SP, if the AI puts land based artillery near a coastal base, this basically grinds warfare to a halt till you get carrier decks, which are pretty late game.
Theres also a faction balance issue here because if you are someone like miriam and need to get across the water to get at, say, university, you are going to get stuck. Any faction without a research penalty will easily out-tech you and they dont need to spend much on military because of how easy it is for land artillery to take out naval ones.
The fact that land vs naval (and vice-versa) artillery duels only last two rounds also makes it very easy for someone to stall a invasion forever. Lets say it takes 3 rounds of combat to kill a artillery unit this way, thats more than enough time to feed in reinforcing artillery faster than you can kill.
Somewhat true, depending on battle lines. I find that at bare minimum, against the AI, you need at least two interceptors for a front line base, although ive had to use up to 4 sometimes to cover for the refueling interceptors.
But it is crippling in the early game when the problem is getting enough minerals in the first place.
If you dont have any rainy tiles, which are pretty rare even if you have the map generator se tto 100 million miles/dense cloud, hitting cap 7 without kelp farms is going to be nearly impossible.
They are, but if you are sending them to other bases to change their home base, it can easily add 4+ turns before they can get to the front lines.
This wouldnt be a problem if you could set the home base without needing to be physically in the base, which makes sense since you only need to call up the base and tell them to send supplies to the unit. The unit doesnt need to go in person. But i dont know if its possible to mod that...
Im confused, i thought using supply crawlers to speed up secret projects is one of the key uses of the unit (which is why it gets the special popup screen)? How would it be exploitative?
I thought the game set the bonus resources when the map is first generated, not when the elevation is changed from land to sea or vice-versa?
That does make offense modifiers overpowered though, i believe the intent was to make caretakers a defence oriented version of usurpers, and its a balance issue if their 25% defence bonus doesnt work for stuff like defending against enemy artillery.
Well maybe they should count for the progenitor energy grid bonus? If they cost energy to maintain, they should provide a grid bonus, especially since its weird that building them without the secret projects will contribute to the grid bonus, but not if they are obtained from a secret project.
Strange, i can get a base to build more than one satellite a turn assuming they are queued. Did you try turning on the "carry over unlimited minerals" option?
True, but clean reactors pay for itself quite quickly in many cases. Mainly for units that you will keep around for a lot time (like garrisons and formers, or if you are on a continent by yourself and teching with no real opposition).
Well with pop booming or cloning vats, they usually grow fast enough that the only real limiter is how many minerals/energy i can pump into facilities like tree farm/hab complex and how fast i can drop terrain improvements.
Ive been leaning more towards rover formers lately, even though they are much more expensive to build, they are more future proof and being able to move then terraform the same turn really saves a LOT of time. But once i get pop booms going or am playing Lal, i typically need at least 2 formers per incomplete base at bare minimum. This excludes the formers you need for drill to aquifer, raising land, creating bore holes for crawlers, creating new roads/tubes, etc. At bare minimum i would use 2 formers tag teaming for stuff like boreholes as it takes too long otherwise. Coastal bases also have one sea former each at bare minimum until they fill up their coastal slots, but i usually have one sea former making additional tidal harnesses if i have a coastal HQ (for energy crawling).
-Do you have any idea why a river flowing through a tile can make that tile arid? Seems like a bug, isnt it supposed to increase the rainfall level in any tiles the river flows through?
-Very green units only receive a 12% penalty when defending, whereas they receive a 25% penalty when attacking.
-Several bugs with the scenario editor.
-You do not get a "the odds are heavily against us" warning even if the odds are more than 4-1 against you (in this case, 4.5 vs 18 did not trigger the warning). The warning does trigger if the odds are even worse though, but im not sure at what level.
-Air units will always defend against enemy air units, even if a better defender is available (e.g. Elite AAA plasma garrison and a very green 1-1 interceptor is attacked by a missle needlejet, the game will have the interceptor defend instead of the AAA garrison (this assumes the interceptor does not scramble)
-Locusts can be attacked without SAM, and they will always defend against enemy air units even if a better defender is available. E.G. If a locust attacks a square with a very green needlejet and a elite AAA 8r garrison, the game will still pit the locust vs needlejet.
-Psi units always count as on "open ground" when bombarded by naval units at sea.
-Naval transports bombarded at sea will get the open ground defence bonus, including all loaded troops.
For some reason, sometimes a transport may not get the open grounds defence bonus at sea...i cant figure out why.
-If a ground unit below 1000m elevation on land bombards a loaded sea transport, it will get a 25% altitude bonus vs loaded ground units, but not the sea transport itself (they also will not get any altitude bonuses vs non-combat sea units, even if bombarding from 1000+ meters land).
Spore launchers will not get the altitude bonus vs either loaded ground units or non-combat sea units. Ground artillery will get the altitude bonus even if they are bombarding from a sea transport (but not spore launchers). Neither spore launchers or ground artillery may get altitude bonuses vs armored sea transports (and presumably formers).
-Naval bombardment vs enemy naval combat units is weapon vs weapon, except the defenders armor strength is shown. E.G. 6-3 foil attacked by naval bombardment will show Plasma steel armor, but actual combat strength will be 6 + modifiers.
-Air units with resonance weapons and empath song get no bonus when attacking locusts, but ground and naval units get the bonuses when attacking locusts.
-Locusts may be attacked by non-SAM units.
-Empath song and resonance weapons give no bonuses when bombarding psi units. They also give no bonus when engaging spore launchers in an artillery duel.
-You can equip artillery units with nerve gas pods and you get a popup asking if you want to use them when bombarding a non-native unit. If you use them, you get sanctions as per normal but you do not get the 50% nerve gas bonus. You will get the 50% attack bonus if you are attacking in an artillery duel though.
-When bombarding psi units at sea (including loaded psi units) the game will show the attacker's weapon as "Psi:1" but the actual combat strength used will be the weapon's strength (e.g. 6 for a missle launcher). However psi units at sea will defend with the psi value of 1 and probably get one shotted by anything above particle impactors (huge problem, means that demon boil sealurks and isles can be easily one shotted by low morale naval ships). Exception : When bombarding spore launchers on a transport, the attacker will use the psi value of 3 vs 2 instead.
-Artillery units on a sea transport can make artillery attacks, but not engage in artillery duels with other loaded artillery units.
-All units (including air units) stationed at an airbase get the 50% open grounds bonus when bombarded by artillery.
-SAM units do not get the 100% air to air bonus when attacked by non-SAM air units. E.G. SAM chopper is at a base and gets attacked by a non-SAM air unit, it will not get the air to air bonus.
-Tachyon fields confer a 100% defence bonus instead of 75% as stated in the datalinks.
-Base defences (tachyon fields, perimeter defences, etc) do not function in artillery duels.
-Soporofic gas pods do nothing in artillery duels. They also do nothing when a SAM air unit with soporofic gas pods attacks another SAM air unit (but they work if attacking a non-SAM air unit).
-AAA units get the tracking bonus vs attacking locusts, but SAM air units do not get it when attacking locusts.
-Believers 25% attack bonus does not apply to the following :
Any form of psi combat, including your own mindworms vs enemy scout patrols
Artillery duels (including both ground and naval)
Artillery bombardment
SAM air units attacking another SAM air unit (not via scrambling to intercept)
For comparison the usurper attack bonus applies to most of these scenarios.
-Huge bug : Land based gun bonus applies even if for naval units bombarding enemy naval units, see screenshot. The bonus also doesnt apply when a land based artillery starts an artillery duel with a sea unit, only when a sea unit attacks a sea unit or land based artillery unit.
-Conventional missles have a flat 18 attack strength for some reason? See screenshot.
Yitzi, how stable is it to change the screen resolution to something like 1024 x 720 in your mode. (Yes, still plugging away at getting OBS to work).
I believe that it may have something to do with having OBS installed. In that I can't Alt-Tab out of even unmodded AC. Will investigate.Yitzi, how stable is it to change the screen resolution to something like 1024 x 720 in your mode. (Yes, still plugging away at getting OBS to work).
I can think of no possible reason that it would be any less stable than under Kyrub's patch, which is probably the same stability as the original.
Of course, I can also think of no reason that alt-tab should fail to work with my patch...
-Obtaining units with unresearched tech through gifting or subversion seems pretty buggy. The design is added to your worksho so you can make units with armor/weapons/etc that you dont have access to normally, but you still need to make a prototype. Even if you have access to the tech, you still need to prototype it even though you already have at least one unit with the new weapon/armor/etc around.
E.G. You have missle launchers but not yet prototyped. Someone gifts you a unit with missle launchers, but it doesnt count as prototyping it so you still need to prototype it. Thats weird.
Just a quick update regarding some more bugs i noticed, will respond in more detail when i have time.
-Obtaining units with unresearched tech through gifting or subversion seems pretty buggy. The design is added to your worksho so you can make units with armor/weapons/etc that you dont have access to normally, but you still need to make a prototype. Even if you have access to the tech, you still need to prototype it even though you already have at least one unit with the new weapon/armor/etc around.
Also i cant seem to do reverse engineering anymore, isnt it just disbanding the unit in a base?
-Im having some weird bugs with drones in my latest game, not sure if its drones rule 8 related or not. I have +1 talent from the human genome project but my HQ is still rioting every turn even though drones and talents are both equal. See test.sav.
Also the number of drones in my other bases is unequal for some reason. If you compare the hive and the great collective, you can see the hive starts off with more drones for some reason but the great collective is turning workers into talents via psych (which resulted in more drones) but the hive isnt bothering to do that. If every 2 psych = 1 less drone, then i should be getting -3 drones at both bases but that doesnt appear to be true...see b.sav and screenshot. They both have the same number of drone reducing facilities.
-Mouse cursor near a volcano mouth appears to be very buggy. The game constantly thinks you are clicking on the volcano mouth when in reality you are clicking the tiles around the mouth. This often results in failed artillery bombardments that hit the volcano mouth when you are trying to hit something near it instead. See screenshot, im trying to bombard the morgan base next to the mouth but it keeps hitting the volcano mouth instead. Even if you do right click - long range fire the game will force you to bombard the volcano mouth randomly.
Also noticed that the growth bonus doesnt appear to be calculated normally.
From size 6 to 7 and 0 GROWTH, it takes 64 nutrients. At 20% growth, its 57 nutrients and at 40%, 43 nutrients. I dont know how this is calculated because 80% of 64 nutrients is obviously not 57 nutrients...
Long-term, I'm not so sure about that. Nutrients become quite powerful in the late game (earlier with mods), and farm+enricher+condenser is unquestionably the best for nutrients. (Even with condensers nerfed somewhat, it's still enough to give a large advantage over forests+boreholes if not for requiring higher former time.)
No, it's specifically designed to favor attacking in the field, but defending in bases. The viable-in-most-cases options to take one filled to the brim with units are, while not quite bugs, unintended flaws in the game.
Not to a halt; you can always attack formers/crawlers, go after less-well-defended bases, or simply be a more military-focused faction (from faction ID or social engineering.) It does limit warfare, which is a good thing (since SMAX loses a lot of its depth if it becomes just a war game).
Can't you just use transports, with warships to escort them?
No, it's quite easy if you don't go mostly forests.
Why are you sending them to other bases, if they're already homed to the bases that can afford to support them?
Because you're trying to use it to speed up a biology lab, which is not a secret project.
True, but artillery isn't meant to be such a huge part of the game that it becomes a major issue.
You misunderstand: The one from the project is not really there and does not cost energy to maintain or provide a grid bonus, whereas one that is built (even if it is later gotten from a project as well) costs energy to maintain but does provide a grid bonus.
Ah; I think the solution there is to weaken pop booming so they don't grow quite as fast (especially if you're going forest rather than farm/enricher).
This is because sea tiles have a rockiness level like land tiles (though it isn't shown and doesn't have many consequences), and if it's not rocky it's considered open ground; the only reason it's psi and unarmed units only is that non-psi units with attack can shoot back and so it's a duel rather than bombardment.
It depends on the rockiness of the square (which also affects the time taken to build tidal harnesses.)That is very strange, shouldnt all sea tiles have the same rockiness level at least?
This is because an air unit attacking another air unit with SAM (except maybe in a base, I'm not sure) is considered a dogfight, which has different rules.
As far as I can tell, they can't make artillery attacks.
That would be because they're not in flight and therefore get the open ground bonus...
This is because it's defending on the ground, not in the air.
Reverse engineering refers to the exploit where you take that unit with missile launchers and change the chassis, armor, reactor, and/or abilities to get new units despite not having the tech for missile launchers.
It is indeed drones-rules-8 related; you have 1 superdrone (bright red drone), which counts as 2 drones under rule 8, and only 1 talent, which is why it riots.
Can I have a screenshot of the amounts required?
Im not sure about that, considering that its important to get fungal pops at least until it causes global warming (which can be stalled with solar shades, although its funny how alien factions cant do that). Minerals are worth a lot more than energy because there are huge penalties for rush buying units and secret projects. Then again its possible this is different in MP.
I'm not sure about that. If an attacker brings more artillery or altitude favors him, the base is screwed even if theres a huge defending stack, and there are a lot more bonuses for attacking than defending. With naval bases, stacking ground based artillery + AAA garrisons is enough to render it untakable compared to a land base.
True, but against the AI its more of a matter of getting that last annoying base out of the way which you cant do because of how long naval vs ground artillery duels take.
Yes but the warships will be outshot by land based artillery. And once you land troops your success is dependant on whether you can bring more land based artillery on transports than the enemy, and since you are spending resources on transports and warships, that heavily favors him.
If you dont have rainy tiles and dont have condensors yet to make tiles rainy, it will be very difficult to hit pop size 7. Moist + farm is going to be nutrients at best.
OK lets say you have 6 bases right? And one or two are your main production bases.
But im not, i used it to speed up a secret project via the popup window.
The issue is the game isnt carrying over resources correctly.
E.G. Lets say a base is producing 50 minerals a turn and its also working on a 200 mineral secret project. I use a 200 mineral supply crawler to speed up the project, this is perfectly fine and intended. But the game decides to use 50 minerals from the base + 150 from the crawler then junk most of the remaining 50 minerals, instead of using 200 from the crawler than carrying over the 50 from the base. That doesnt really make sense...
Artillery isnt a major part of the game? But it pretty much decides warfare till air power at least. If you dont have artillery, the enemy artillery can simply bombard your units at their leisure, dropping them to either 1% on land or 50% in a base.
Uh if the ones from the secret project dont cost energy to maintain, then why does the economy screen show that they do cost energy to maintain?
Im not sure if thats a good idea, i dont think people want to wait 10+ turns hitting end turn just so that their bases can grow to use the newly terraformed tiles.
My main concern is that psi units at sea become trivial since a single warship can one shot demon boil isles/sea lurks with ease.
That is very strange, shouldnt all sea tiles have the same rockiness level at least?
Is there any reason why resonance weapons shouldnt work vs locusts in that scenario then, when used by air units? Same for artillery.
Strange, if i select a artillery unit loaded on a transport, i can right click -> long range fire with no problems.
I was wondering more along the lines of, why does an airbase count as open ground, but its not a big deal.
If they are defending on the ground, shouldnt they be defending with the armor value instead? A plane on a ground cant shoot back.
Oh so you cant actually reverse engineer units with tech you dont have to get an advantage? Thats a dissapointment, i thought that was a feature.
Why does The Hive have a super drone though? Also after taking into account police/psych/etc, the superdrone is turned into a normal worker (no drones visible at the end), so why is the hive still rioting at that point? I also dont get how the great collective has the same facilities and the same amount of psych, but is ending up with 2 drones and The Hive ends up with 0 drones.
Can I have a screenshot of the amounts required?
Theres also a bug with the way unit promotions work. Sometimes units get stuck and never promote at all despite winning countless battles. In this save, the trained missle infantry will not promote to veteran even after defeating 10 scout patrols which i spawned using the scenario editor...if i spawn a new unit though, that one upgrades to veteran just fine.
Not sure if bug : It still costs energy to upgrade to a new unit with lower or same mineral cost.
Yea, I had the idea of support being more automated. It's one of those tedious areas of the game that doesn't really add much strategic value. The idea was that your support cap would instead be faction-wide, but still depend on base count.
Example - 6 bases @ 0 SUP - 6*2 = 12 units supported.
3 size-4, and 3 size-7 bases @ 3 SUP - 3*4+3*7 = 33 units supported.
It is a gameplay change though, as then low-M bases can continue to make troops when under siege. It would also have to be determined how SUP cost would be distributed. I assume on a % of total mineral production basis, with highest mineral base being chosen in the case of a tie.
I think that +GROWTH/IND thing also affects AI on higher difficulties, and when you set N/row to values other than 10. The game will round to the nearest # of rows.
But yea, the whole talk about booming being overpowered, I personally don't buy it - at least with default terraforming values. I put condensors earlier (Gene) and still don't see how it's that useful. You foremost need the drone control and enough E production for it to be worth it. By the time you get all that a base will have naturally grown to a decent size. I considered modding such that Condensor is available from the start - but keeping the 2N/sq cap until Gene. This way dry terrain could at least get to 2N in the early game. I think there's still a bug where condensor squares ignore the N cap. Afaik only bonus resource tiles should exceed the cap, even then that could be debated.