Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 23, 2020, 08:49:42 PM

Title: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 23, 2020, 08:49:42 PM

I just recently discovers that Hab Complex and Habitation Dome require substantial maintenance. That is pretty restrictive especially at Hab Complex stage when faction may not swim in money yet. Should these facilities require maintenance at all? They are forced on bases to grow beyond certain limit. There is no way around it and everybody pays. If anything, it discourages vertical growth which is quite oppressed in SMACX already.

I see maintenance as choice cost. Like if one wants to use Command Center benefits to have better soldiers they pay for it in maintenance for as long as they use the benefit. Even drone facilities are choice - you can either build them or use allocate more psych. Population limit facilities are not. Building them already is a burden. Should we zero their maintenance?

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 24, 2020, 12:11:01 AM

Well if you're not rich by the time of Hab Domes, you're lame.  No sympathy for that one.

How as a matter of play style, are you managing to be so poor, even in the Hab Complex era?  I've never noticed it as a cost difficulty.  I tend to either go Green and sweep the whole world of supply pods, or go Capitalist and just rake in the dough.  Either way is a lot of money.  Did you mod the supply pods so that they don't give any money or something?

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 24, 2020, 02:39:11 AM

Human can mange. I am more concern about AI who often suffer from all kind of stupid things including not being rich at any point in time.

You are missing a point. I am not talking about these facilities being affordable. In this regard one can talk about combined maintenance for all of them, not these specific ones.
I am talking about whether these specific ones need to be maintained at all since every base should have it. It is absolutely forced on everybody unlike other facilities. Even recycling tanks and recreations common are not forced like that.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 24, 2020, 05:19:29 AM

I don't understand why your AIs are not rich.  Mine are.  Maybe you've got a Thinker Mod code problem with all the cash getting blown?

I don't agree that Rec Commons isn't forced in the real world.  People have to be kept happy somehow.  I don't think the AI is bright enough to do it with just police units, or I wouldn't have had to conjure up predefined units to specially get it to happen.

A small difference in my mod is Hologram Theaters only cost 2 to maintain.  It seems I never changed maintenance for Hab Complexes or Hab Domes.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: lolada on June 24, 2020, 12:03:26 PM

Its certainly help for AI, especially for Morgan. I guess its ok to remove it to help bad AIs manage a bit more. Some AIs are doing great, but bad ones really struggle.

Not sure whats with AI coding, but AI production/terraforming in thinker can go terribly bad. Some AIs skip basic facilities or they get destroyed and terraforming was sometimes terrible - especially that fungus galore from eco-dmg. And then when AI go nuts with wars, as they always do, they spam so many units negelcting facilities.
Somewhere in there could be huge improvements for AI.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 24, 2020, 01:41:47 PM

Helping AI was my point. Having good strategy is a difficult thing by itself with such versatile game even for human. Of course AI sucks one way or another. Thinker tries to correct it with changes here and there. I see it improves combat behavior. However, there is still room to make it even better. I'll remove maintenance for these facilities in my next release. Will see how it works out.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: dino on June 24, 2020, 02:29:21 PM

AI on transcend pays only 1/3 of maintance cost.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 24, 2020, 03:07:23 PM

Really?! Never knew that. Any reference on this information?

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Nexii on June 26, 2020, 12:59:24 AM

I would say that overall, building costs and building maintenance are a bit high in the base game. Whereas creating new bases was much too cheap. Most powerful strategies did use booming but only to fuel ICS. This has the strange effect of obtaining facility techs long before they're very useful

It's a problem I saw too, and weakening forests to 0 E only makes it worse. I had the same thing going on when I reduced tidals. Tidal+kelp is very good relatively when condensor+borehole are nerfed

At +2 ECON maintenance shouldn't be a big deal though. I can see it being more of one if you aren't

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 26, 2020, 03:54:01 AM

I agree that in vanilla ICS is very cheap. However, I don't think vertical or horizontal growth is a choice. You have both at the same time and expand in both directions. It is very nice design when one fuels another. How else players would populate whole planet?

Moreover, in vanilla they somewhat disconnected due to low colony mineral cost but not nutrient one. Therefore, a simple population growth can fuel the expansion. WTP doubles the colony mineral cost making vertical growth a prerequisite for expansion. Now one needs both growth and developed industry for that. Which means facilities, formers, terraforming, etc.

I wouldn't say building a base is cheap. Jut mere formal founding a base costs about 30-50 nutrients and 60 minerals plus travel time = about 100 resources. One could build a genejack factory instead for that. This new base is not a good member of the society yet. It needs defense, basic infrastructure, formers, terraforming, etc. It take a lot of time/money/minerals investment to make it actually contribute to your wealth and power.
Then you can lose colony in travel. Then you can lose base to worms. Even if you didn't lose it you can lose population. Then you can run out of good places. Finding a good spot for new base becomes more and more difficult. Then you lose efficiency to corruption and drones. These b-drones appear even in well established bases so expansion affects whole empire. It takes more and more to continue expansion with diminishing return. The ICS is not infinite. Even with cheap vanilla colony it wasn't. When it gets to conflict the proportionally built horizontal-vertical empire with cut through thin layer overextended one like a knife through butter.

The problem of ICS in vanilla was not in its indefiniteness, of course. But in ability to spread very quickly at the very beginning of the game before major conflicts start. Thus claiming big portion of territory with tiny bases and THEN start to grow them vertically. That was a winning strategy because smaller bases grow fast and with cheap colony this is only thing that fuels expansion. No need to even care if you colonies die en route. The production rate is just enormous.

Two things put a check on it in WTP. Higher mineral cost makes it twice as slow. Higher randomization gives wild life more chance to destroy colonies and weak bases. These make ICS strategy nonviable anymore. One simply won't be able to clamin enough territory to secure the victory.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 26, 2020, 03:58:13 AM

I tend to write long posts. Do I?

In short. I disagree building costs are too high. Faction spends about 1/3-1/4 or production power on facilities. The rest is units. So facility costs are not that impacting.
I agree that maintenance could be too constricting. More precisely, the maintenance and EFFICIENCY+ECONOMY are not well balanced between each other. On a negative side of the spectrum faction go into negative balance while in positive they swim in money. Although, this is what costs/benefits of each SE model are for. They should balance each other.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 02:25:18 PM

The issue with growing tall in Smac is drone control. It is not so easy to pacify drones in a cost-effective manner.

Why do you say that ICS runs out of land? Large bases need more tiles per base unless tbf if you use specialists for drone control you can get away with less.

Morgan with the PTS can in fact ICS forever. It's a good way to play him.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 27, 2020, 03:35:07 PM

Quote from: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 02:25:18 PM

The issue with growing tall in Smac is drone control. It is not so easy to pacify drones in a cost-effective manner.

I think it is quite opposite. More bases -> additional drones in all bases. The total drone control expenses are bigger for larger empire.

Quote from: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 02:25:18 PM

Why do you say that ICS runs out of land? Large bases need more tiles per base unless tbf if you use specialists for drone control you can get away with less.

Morgan with the PTS can in fact ICS forever. It's a good way to play him.

I didn't say you cannot. Please understand the idea and don't tear my words out of context.
I said the benefits of ICS diminishes with more bases you have. It gets more and more expensive and less beneficial. It loses its value beyond some point. Although one can still spam them forever. Nothing physically prohibits it.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 04:00:03 PM

I simply assume all bases are all drones. To stay below the b-drone threshold you need to stop expanding at 6-10 bases which is very low even if you pop-boom early.

I was precisely contesting the point that ICS gets less viable. If you have the PTS you can profitably ICS with Morgan until you win the game. A small base needs one police unit or a Recreation Commons to quell drones. Large bases require crawler/specialists, Psych expenditure or horribly inefficient buildings like Hologram Theaters.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 27, 2020, 05:16:10 PM

I agree PTS adds great value to ICS. However, this is a special case as only one faction can have it. It cannot be considered a regular strategy everyone can use. PTS essentially triples colony value. This is this particular project issue. Not the expansion strategy issue.

Also b-drones do increase number of drones beyond base size by making super drones. It takes more to quell them comparing to simple drones. Expanding keeps impacting even after turning all population into drones.

I agree that keep expanding and keep base sizes under 4 is a viable strategy. I just don't believe it's a winning one in this mod. Let me know if you manage to consistently win this way.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 05:41:32 PM

I'd only consider it with Morgan I think.

You are correct about the super drones. However, those only really matter if you use psych as drone control.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 27, 2020, 07:09:40 PM

Quote from: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 04:00:03 PM

If you have the PTS you can profitably ICS with Morgan until you win the game.

Winning the game within the standard 500 turn limit is not hard.  "You can win" is not an interesting statement to make about different strategies.  "You can win in 100 years," that would be interesting.  And I think impossible.

Leaving aside artificial scenarios like Tiny maps.  Winning on either a Standard or Huge map.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 27, 2020, 07:37:52 PM

I tend to think about this kind of thing in the context of MP so playing against other human factions. My point was that for Morgan just founding an obnoxious amount of small bases is a good strategy.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 27, 2020, 09:10:51 PM

Have you tried it once?

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire. So no matter how many base you make with ICS at worst it is -2 PSYCH per base. Which really isn't so bad.

ICS benefits in many other ways. Faster pop growth, smaller bases are easier to police with units (cheaper than facilities), more support, more clean minerals.

If you look at most speed runs it's ICS with PTS, rushing to Cloning Vats and satellites with very few facilities built.

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency. Colony pod price increases help a bit too, at least till you get Fusion reactors.

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS. Perhaps EFFIC applying to minerals, like waste in Civ2. Cheaper facilities helps too but I'd say probably not cheaper maintenance as much... smaller bases make less energy. So low cost, high maintenance on facilities might be something to try too.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 30, 2020, 12:16:12 AM

No, you are wrong. As tnevolin already stated the negative Psych from bureaucracy drones increases indefinitely. If, for example, you have 18 bases on a standard size map with 0 Efficiency you have -4 Psych in each base. That matters if you use Psych for drone control (including the HGP).

I also agree with tnevolin that infinite ICS is only viable with the PTS which is an issue with the secret project chiefly. I also would only strongly consider infinite ICS with the PTS with Morgan (and maaayyybe Zak).

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2020, 12:39:07 AM

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire.

Hmm. Where did you get that information from? Extra base can add from 0 to infinity b-drones at any of your existing bases. Another thing is that this infinity is probably capped by base size times 2 (all super drones). However, it means that all your big bases may be quite badly affected by that and the effect accelerates with number of bases.

However, all these cappings diminish the impact somehow.

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

If you look at most speed runs it's ICS with PTS, rushing to Cloning Vats and satellites with very few facilities built.

Do you mean vanilla? If so then I don't even question this is the best strategy possible.

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency. Colony pod price increases help a bit too, at least till you get Fusion reactors.

Yes. These are all components to solution. I also think to let reactor increase armor instead of lowering price. That would keep colony pod same price for whole game.

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS. Perhaps EFFIC applying to minerals, like waste in Civ2. Cheaper facilities helps too but I'd say probably not cheaper maintenance as much... smaller bases make less energy. So low cost, high maintenance on facilities might be something to try too.

I don't think we need to penalize empire size. Otherwise, faction will just cease expanding at some point. We need to make vertical growth comparably beneficial to expanding.

Size 3 base works 3 tiles. Building a colony and founding new base makes if 4 with doubled total growth rate. Meaning each one can build another colony - quadruple growth rate, and so on. No any early base improvement changes total output at this rate. Not even any late one.

The problem is that vertical growth is hardly limited in so many ways making development impractical. Like slowed down growth rate, population limits, exhausting of good workable spots, drones, just pretty much physical limit of 20 workable tiles, and on and on. Whereas expansion is just penalized by corruption and extra drones. Which, as you correctly pointed out, do not put a hard stop on ICS.

I believe this is impossible to correct. You cannot go beyond 20 workable tiles per base. Nutrient/mineral/economy/labs/psych increase is just so much per base. Take the ecodamage, for instance. This is clear limit that tells you - don't grow this base but better split it in many smaller ones.

I don't think we need to somehow prevent expansion. This is a cornerstone of 4X game after all. We just need to make the expansion speed dependent on total empire production. So the one with better infrastructure and production output in already existing bases would expand proportionally faster. Thus expansion is prerequisite for winning but vertical development is prerequisite for expansion. Currently, it is not, as you illustrated by ISC with PTS example.

Possible fixes for that

Increase in colony mineral cost. Just doubling it in WPT already quite noticeable tilts the expansion speed in favor of those prepared (terraforming + bigger bases). I.e. faction invested in formers and bigger bases is behind the pure colony spamming initially but then overtakes it in expansion speed. It's not 100% rule but happens from time to time.

Reworking the growth rate per population size. Currently base size 3 grows twice as slow comparing to base size 1 and base size 5 is three time slower. No wonder smaller bases succeed. This needs to be changed somehow to equalize growth rates. Then problem will disappear by itself. It won't be beneficial to split bases hoping for faster population return.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Hagen0 on June 30, 2020, 12:51:30 AM

For the record, I don't think just founding endless new bases is a good strategy even in vanilla (again Morgan, PTS are special cases). Vertical growth is extremely efficient due to pop-booming with the limiting factor being drone control and terraformer capacity.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 03:07:47 AM

Quote from: tnevolin on June 30, 2020, 12:39:07 AM

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire.

Hmm. Where did you get that information from?

It's in the Datalinks.  Advanced Concepts.. Bureaucracy.  The claim is very clear.  Where are you getting the idea that the Datalinks are wrong?

Quote

Extra base can add from 0 to infinity b-drones at any of your existing bases.

That is true for any one base in your empire.  But the phenomenon is better explained by the Datalinks:

Quote

For each base a faction builds in excess of [the Bureaucracy limit according to the formula given], one additional drone will appear at some base somewhere in the colony.

This is very easily seen in practice.  If you're running a "tight" empire spending only the bare minimum on happiness, founding 1 new base usually results in 1 base immediately getting a drone riot.  You can see that immediately by hitting F4 after colonizing.  You'll likely have a city marked in red, because it's now rioting.  You can possibly do something about it now, before being told about it next turn when you'll have to suffer the consequences.  Sometimes I do stuff immediately when I know I will have problems.  Like, turn a Worker into a Doctor.  Most of the time I do nothing and get the Drone Riot the next year, because I'm not paying that good attention.  Then I rush a Recreation Commons that I was already working on, because I know this is going to happen.

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency.

I've substantially delayed most specialists in my mod.  So, glad to hear that I did something to thwart ICS.  I'm all for that.  Transcedii, you're not even allowed to have until you're on the Threshold of Transcendence.  I figure the game's over then, so now you can have your "toys".

Quote from: Nexii on June 29, 2020, 10:58:48 PM

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS.

Delays delays delays.  It's what you do to anything in the game that's overpowered.

Quote from: Hagen0 on June 30, 2020, 12:51:30 AM

Vertical growth is extremely efficient due to pop-booming with the limiting factor being drone control and terraformer capacity.

Which is why I don't allow it even through much of the midgame at all.  In my SE table, you can now get +1 GROWTH from Theocratic (my Fundamentalist).  That's it.  You need at least +2 GROWTH to pop boom, assuming you have a Children's Creche and a Golden Age.  You're simply not gonna get it.  Only exception is the Hive, which has a +1 GROWTH bonus in my mod, for reasons that seemed like a good idea at the time.  I might take it away in a future release, because my +1 GROWTH used to come from Socialist (my Planned), not Theocratic.  Nowadays it's not natural for the Hive to go Theocratic.  A human player could do it, but they'd be giving up their Police State to do so.  Not inconceivable if they have Thought Control, but it's kinda lame to have a GROWTH bonus for a faction that won't make much use of it in practice.

In my mod, you need Eudaimonia to get your +2 GROWTH.  Then you'll still need to come up with your own Golden Age.  That won't be easy because my Eudaimonia doesn't give you money.  It has become my Planet-friendly option.  You're not likely to get this anyways until late midgame.  Pop booming as a game mechanic, I seriously put on a diet.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2020, 03:16:48 AM

Quote from: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 03:07:47 AM

Quote from: tnevolin on June 30, 2020, 12:39:07 AM

Hmm. Where did you get that information from?

It's in the Datalinks.  Advanced Concepts.. Bureaucracy.  The claim is very clear.  Where are you getting the idea that the Datalinks are wrong?

Out of all the players I would expect you to question game help. It is quite often wrong as in this case too.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3506.0

At least it sounds a little misleading. Each new base generates more than 1 drone total. It cannot add more than 1 in existing base but it does add them in multiple existing bases at once plus it can add unlimited number of drones in itself.

For simplicity let's say limit is 10 bases.
Then each base over 10 adds 2 drones total. Not exceeding 1 b-drone per base.
Each base over 20 adds 4 drones total. Not exceeding 2 b-drones per base. So in this case it may add 2 drones to itself.
Each base over 30 adds 6 drones total. Not exceeding 3 b-drones per base.
And so on ad infinum.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 03:42:10 AM

I flat out don't believe Yitzi's claim in that post at all.  I've never seen a base suddenly jump by 2 or 3 drones.  They go one at a time.

When have you ever observed 2 or 3 drones "just added" in a real game?

The only "common ground" I can systemically think of, is if my Huge map and Vertical play tendencies, have kept my number of bases in practice, below some threshold at which the 2 or 3 drone phenomenon does occur.  I will certainly swear that in the real world of how I play, I've never seen this.

Sometimes I've conquered a lot of bases on the map, instead of obliterating them.  I wasn't watching for this pheomenon but I don't recall seeing any such thing then either.  Nowadays it is typical for me to build Punishment Spheres if I leave distant captured bases alive.  That wasn't always so, but I've been doing the PS drill for at least a year now.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Nexii on June 30, 2020, 04:43:11 AM

Yes, with some testing it seems the datalink description is misleading. Bureaucracy causes more than 1 drone per base eventually. You'll reach a point where all bases go drone-superdrone-...

There is also another bug (or feature) which I think Yitzi also later described, where the first drone in a base can't be a superdrone from B-drone effects. So this masks some of the B-drone creation

There's also this visual drone bug... as an aside.. the base actually doesn't riot.

An open question is whether facilities should quell superdrones as though they were drones. Seems to be the opposite of Civ2 where PSYCH treated superdrones better than facilities. Which is probably why the superdrones are never much of a real problem on huge map games. Between police and facilities both quelling superdrones as though they are drones, bureaucracy has little effect until bases are very large (larger than flat drone reduction facilities, plus all police freebies)

No pop booming would seem to make vertical growth even worse to me. Maybe with more flat nutrient costs it can work. I do agree a full pop per turn is a bit much...but as it is vertical has little going for it

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 05:27:27 AM

To me the biggest reason to go vertical is just so you don't have as many damn bases to administrate.  And until someone demonstrates some kind of speed run in my mod where they achieve much earlier victory than I would believe possible, I really don't care about ICS at all.  I think it sucks, having to deal with that much stuff.  It's not aesthetically pleasing, and I've put so many delays on so many things that I seriously doubt there can be a performance advantage.

AFAIK the multiplayer crowd hasn't been beating down my door to play my mod.  So if ICS is some kind of multiplayer "bees kees" I really don't care.  I don't even know how to set up an internet game.  Neither does anyone else, judging by the posts in r/alphacentauri.  PBEM, sure, but live internet?  Seems like it's always "Uuuuuuh..."  And if it weren't for COVID-19, I wouldn't even bring it up, because under ordinary circumstances who has time to play SMACX live?

I think my personal concept of sprawl, and it's certainly not infinite, is conquering enough bases to win Diplomatic Victory.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: Nexii on June 30, 2020, 05:48:24 PM

Yea that is my issue with ICS. Not so much that there's a dominant strategy but that the game doesn't provide a good UI for mass managing so many cities.

Title: Re: Population growth facilities maintenance
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 06:58:49 PM

I'm forced to conclude, over a few decades, that mass management of anything simply isn't a good game.  Not cities, not units.  I regularly lose brain cells trying to solve this fundamental theoretical problem, and after all this time I still basically don't have an answer.  What tends to happen is I just shift into other aspects of game development for a while, because I get so sick of trying to beat my head against it.