Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Bug/Patch Discussion => Topic started by: Drinniol on March 13, 2021, 10:57:17 PM

Title: No retool penalty after upgrading bug/exploit
Post by: Drinniol on March 13, 2021, 10:57:17 PM

Hi,

Has anyone else noticed that if you upgrade a unit in the workshop, all currently building units of that type change to the new unit with no retool penalty?  But, even more than that, you can then freely switch production to ANYTHING that turn at a base that was producing the now upgraded unit and incur no retool penalty. 

This effectively lets you always retool from any unit to anything without any retool penalty, simply by upgrading that unit.  Of course, if you actually have other active units of that type, you will have to upgrade them as well, so it's not strictly speaking completely free.

Is this a known bug?  Is it in the base game?  I'm currently noticing this bug in SMACX with Thinker mod. 

Title: Re: No retool penalty after upgrading bug/exploit
Post by: Drinniol on March 13, 2021, 11:32:00 PM

Incidentally, upgrading a unit type from the workshop also doesn't take up nor require all of a unit's turns.  Not sure if this is intended or just an engine limitation (since by upgrading a unit type from the workshop you are removing that unit from your unit slots, if upgrading a unit in the workshop followed ordinary upgrade unit then you couldn't free the unit slot in the workshop if any unit of the type did not have full moves). 

Fairly broken to be able to upgrade units without using up their move!

Title: Re: No retool penalty after upgrading bug/exploit
Post by: bvanevery on March 14, 2021, 01:49:47 AM

Quote from: Drinniol on March 13, 2021, 10:57:17 PM

Has anyone else noticed that if you upgrade a unit in the workshop, all currently building units of that type change to the new unit with no retool penalty?

I don't think that's a problem.    After all, I've typically just paid a bunch of money to get all those upgrades made.  I don't think I should be ripped off with some retool penalty.  You could debate upgrade costs, but I don't think having to juggle upgrade costs and retool penalties, is a player friendly User Interface or User eXperience.  I think we want better UX, not worse.

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But, even more than that, you can then freely switch production to ANYTHING that turn at a base that was producing the now upgraded unit and incur no retool penalty. 

Hm, that could be a problem, but hasn't been for me, because I'm only playing single player.  And again, I just paid a bunch of money.  I've found the ability to tweak the change after the fact, a good safeguard against the game handing me an inferior unit design, when I could have mounted a strength 2 Laser on a unit for no additional cost.  Or some other such trivial difference, that nevertheless gives me a slight advantage.

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This effectively lets you always retool from any unit to anything without any retool penalty, simply by upgrading that unit.

Upgrading is a constraint though.  You sure you mean changing to any unit?  Because I have to upgrade artillery to artillery, probe to probe, chassis to chassis, min weapon to min weapon, min armor to min armor, etc.

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Is it in the base game?

Well, what I've described is.

To me the real upgrade exploit, is when you upgrade a design with units already built, and then all those units can still move.  That's killer!  It's how I deal with mindworm hordes if I've committed too many chemical atrocities and all of Planet is trying to utterly slay me.  If you were to upgrade those units individually, they'd have to not move and once you did the upgrade, their move would be over.  Do 'em all at once, and it's a free ride.

Title: Re: No retool penalty after upgrading bug/exploit
Post by: Drinniol on March 14, 2021, 11:56:05 PM

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This effectively lets you always retool from any unit to anything without any retool penalty, simply by upgrading that unit.

Upgrading is a constraint though.  You sure you mean changing to any unit?  Because I have to upgrade artillery to artillery, probe to probe, chassis to chassis, min weapon to min weapon, min armor to min armor, etc.

What I mean is suppose I am building some sort of military unit, any military unit.  I jump into workshop and upgrade that unit by slapping, say, a better armor on it.  Having done so, I can now swap my production at any base that was building that unit to ANYTHING with no retool penalty that turn.  The only constraint is that if the unit being built has a large amount of already active instances, I would have to pay to upgrade them at the same time.  If, however, the unit being built has no active instances, then retooling using this trick is completely free, as the upgrade costs nothing.

If one had the skunkworks facility, you could even just swap to a dummy unit within category with no active instances solely to upgrade it (with no retool cost) in order to swap between categories with no upgrade cost. 

In terms of how effective this type of exploit is... well, there are a lot more overpowered things you can do without even using bugs.  The fact that upgrading crawlers provides a more efficient conversion of energy to minerals than actually hurrying things is already well known and a lot more powerful and generally useful, if you allow yourself to abuse it fully. 

Title: Re: No retool penalty after upgrading bug/exploit
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 03:19:40 AM

Guess I'll have to try the retooling abuse then, to see what can be gained.

I've never done crawler upgrade abuse.  I've heard about it, but never had much reason to bother.  In my mod, I made crawlers much more expensive, to curb the well known "crawlers everywhere" abuse.  It's not going to be practical to spew crawlers until late game in my mod, and by then you could have won by some other means.

I call this strategy of making things more expensive and taking longer until you can have them, "soft retirement".  It's still in the game, but it's gonna come late enough that you shouldn't care by then.  If you're a rational minimaxing player trying to win in the shortest time possible.  On the other hand, if you're just sandboxing with your fun toys, it's still available.