Mode 1 looks good and likely would be a huge improvement over Mode 0. Would this be including your proposed tech tree and weapon/armor cost changes, or is that something for a later patch?
I think there were some discussions about making ECM and AAA to -1 (cheap on defense units).
Also, could you perhaps do ~4 examples of costs with Mode 1 to demonstrate? Maybe an air unit, a sea unit, a non-combat unit, and an infantry unit.
I think the only variant I'd perhaps like to see is one that encourages maxing weapons and armor on all units. I know it's not in the spirit of the game to have ultimate units.
Also, it would be great if cost of Clean reactor did not go up with reactor size.
Can one mod so that zero cost option are truly zero in any unit.
For example, if my armor is great than weapon, Trance should always cost 0, regardless of any other options picked. It does not do this now.
Also, it would be great if cost of Clean reactor did not go up with reactor size.
To clarify myself/EM:
I think that meant that Clean went up in absolute cost as the game went on, whereas mineral cost is always fixed (1 mineral per unit). Therefore the value of Clean gets diminished on more expensive units. An early game unit costing 20 goes to 30, for a 10 turn break-even on investment. A unit that costs 60 (later game/reactor), goes to 90 cost with Clean, for a 30 turn break-even.
So Clean could have a fixed cost (probably difficult to code in. Or it could just be accepted that it's better on cheaper units.
An alternative way to somewhat balance out later reactors with Clean would be to make Fusion units cost 2 minerals per turn, Quantum 3 minerals per turn, and Singularity 4 minerals per turn. This way the break-even time stays more constant. As well then Support SE and/or a mix of Clean is more relevant in the mid and late game. Not sure how hard that would be to put in either. It's sort of doing the same thing as reducing the construction cost, but rather nerfing down Reactors by means of maintenance costs.
Also as an aside great work on the cost formulas. I've been playing around with variants #2/#4 lately. Obviously they take re-scaling of the base weapon/armor costs but it looks good. Is it possible to make chassis cost the multiplier rather than a fixed 2x(land/sea) and 3x(air)?
I agree - having Clean be the only modifier with an absolute cost is clunky and might introduce more bugs with dual-ability units. What if support cost was based on the total unit cost as an end-around? i.e. support per turn = ceiling[unit cost/40] or something of the like?
It might get complex to code though, as the game would have to prioritize the highest support cost units first to be free.
Ideally I suppose the game would exempt the top X costing units, then sum the cost of the rest, and divide by 40 (or some factor in alphax.txt) for the total maintenance per turn on the base.
This is sort of another aside - the limitation of 1 unit a turn per base. How easy/hard is this to change?
Which maybe isn't a bad limitation, but later game units are often made in a single turn due to reactor cost reduction effects, and the later mineral facilities. As far as military units go, higher armor/weapon costs&values are one way to go, but then that shifts things deeply to PSI units in the later game (as they have fixed cost).
The bigger impact to 1 unit per base/turn is that in the early-mid and on, a base always can make a crawler or former, and they're incredibly powerful throughout the entire game. On the whole I think formers and crawlers are overpowered on their cost and tough to balance. Early game that first former seems fine in cost, but churning out lots is really simple later on. If they had some sort of satellite-like limitation based on city size I think that would go a long way to balance. One idea might be to make them cost more minerals based on how many total formers/crawlers you already have. At least with how the game is now, the loss of formers/crawlers in a war tends to even outweigh the military losses - since you're pretty much restricted to a unit per base/turn. It can take a long time to get them all back even if your mineral production is really good.
Isn't infantry basically straight costed in #2/#4? The cost is multiplied by 2 then divided by 2 bringing you back to 1.
I think this model is only worth it as a replacement to #2/#4 if non-whole numbers can be put in for chassis multipliers.
Good points. Maintenance on a per-unit basis is probably best.
Keep the #2/#4 modes as-is then. I can balance things around ECM/AAA cost and power from there.
And yea, I think that's my only real remaining gripe is the former/crawler cost. They're fine to start but should increase the more of them you have.
I still like the idea of clean reactor costing a constant 1 extra row, regardless of reactor. As you get later in the game, where the higher reactors show up, you have less time to get your payback.
And I like eliminating the need for micromanaging what city is supporting what unit, to get things balanced, so I prefer to make most everything clean.
I don't think increasing the cost of clean by reactor size makes sense. In fact, weapons and defense costs go down with higher reactors! So I think a constant 1 row for clean is a good idea.
Yes, that's the issue with reactors and non-combat units. There's little benefit to non-combats otherwise and that's why in the unmodded game, they made reactors also reduce unit costs. The problem with that was that reactors became much too crucial for military units. For example Fusion reactor is like going from 5 attack to 10 against someone without it, *and* 3 to 6 defense. There's no sense going down those sides of the tree early.
I still say formers need a maintenance structure all to their own, and they're most of the reason for the super-fast mid into late game.
And I like eliminating the need for micromanaging what city is supporting what unit, to get things balanced, so I prefer to make most everything clean.
Keep in mind, though, what else is at the same level as fusion: Copters, satellites, maglevs, genejack factory...there's a lot of strong stuff at that stage. Of course, with the new modding options, you can weaken the overpowered stuff as needed.
I have to agree that this whole mechanic really is tedious and very pro-ICS.
Ideally I think the game would consider support based on total citizens (or even just bases like it does now), and then allocate out support costs automatically across your cities. Kind of like how waste is auto-calculated for energy based on EFFIC SE.
Yea I compensated the reactor power vs weapon/armor a bit more by increasing the weapon/armor scaling rate. And that might be true...I'll have to try a few games going down the 'defensive' tree over the 'satellite' tree.
I think reducing satellites and CBA would help a bit here too.
The ideal fix would to tie non-combat unit effectiveness (esp formers'crawlers) more closely to their actual unit costs. a 20 mineral reactor former should terraform a lot slower than one that has 60 minerals invested. Right now there's only one real upgrade and that's Super Formers. The ideal way of them doing this would have been to put in a few terraforming 'weapon' types up the Centauri tech chain.
Alternatively non-combats could just scale with their reactor since the HP doesn't help them otherwise.
A lot of things in the game can be evaluated in terms of mineral payback period (at least in the early game). Clean at 10 cost is a *really* good payback (10 turns, and 5 at low SUPPORT SE).
Crawlers can be even better (30/6=5 turns if you crawl a borehole).
Or even in the early-mid, a 4N crawler feeds four forest tiles for 8M/4E, for an even faster payback (granted there are maintenance costs to drones).
Formers have the best payback of anything in the game, hands down. They improve terrain, generating more and more resources for bases on an initial low investment of 20 minerals. This is ok to some extent...without Formers the growth rate of the game would be too slow. Also being on bad terrain would be even more punishing than it is without fixed improvements like Forest, Borehole. There is a *lot* to consider when approaching Former unit costs. Efficient terraforming is a skillful and still debatable part of the game that I don't think should go away.
Another idea I was toying with was formers and/or crawlers that expire after X turns (if this is even possible).
There are enough other anti-ICS features (energy-boosting buildings), though, that I think it will only end up making ICS a good idea for a heavily aggressive (and thus high on supportable units) strategy, which probably should be ICS-supporting.
Proportionally to production, I assume? That'd be a huge hassle to code, though, as it means calculating something (total support cost) on a faction-wide level rather than base-wide, which nothing else is.
Adding new "weapon" types, except as replacements for old ones, is not feasible.
I think formers also tend to be in that area.
It does help if they do get attacked...and then what about if you make armored formers?
That's true. Instead of looking at this issue of assigning units to bases, from the top-down, how about bottom-up? Would there be any way of auto-assigning a unit to another base with excess support capacity when it's built, if the current base is at its support limit?
I figured not. In fact when I increase weapon values the game seems to use the wrong icons. I'm thinking weapons were hard coded in differently from armor for some reason (perhaps tied to military/non-military unit code).
For their first payback perhaps.
But no, formers are much much stronger than crawlers or anything else *in the long run*.
and I'd have to really sit down and try to analyse optimal early to mid game terraforming mathematically. Has anyone done this to date?
Anyways, the reason is formers continually improve terrain, not just once. Think of it like a base improvement that builds base improvements.
So I pay 20 minerals for a former. The first forest I make might be +2 minerals on bad terrain.
The limiting resources are workable squares and former time, which make this a bit complex to work out.
I think the optimal setup might actually be all boreholes and crawling all nutrients on condensors once they're available.
But to get back on topic about unit costs. It's quite apparent that formers (and to a lesser extent crawlers) are what drive the non-linear growth rate in the game.
Is there any way to make it so later game formers and crawlers are significantly better for their unit cost? (i.e. improvements with reactor upgrades) Perhaps making formers terraform faster - I imagine any sort of more exotic new terraforming abilities are not possible.
With crawlers perhaps a capping system that eventually allows uncapped crawling of multiple resources (or a bonus to energy/mineral crawling).
My thought was that losing all your early game formers/crawlers shouldn't necessarily be game over.
And you can only replace those at the rate of 1 per turn, no matter how big your cities are.
Yea this is true. And if you go with a costing model that makes reactors only give HP (no cost reduction), it's probably 'good enough' of a benefit.
But it also requires a unit cost model that allows for free armor on non-combats.
Else you're paying way too much in unit costs. And that's a bit of a balancing act - formers should have some defense against obsolete designs but not be a replacement for military sentinels.
I figured not. In fact when I increase weapon values the game seems to use the wrong icons. I'm thinking weapons were hard coded in differently from armor for some reason (perhaps tied to military/non-military unit code).
Since I think formers and crawlers are the most interesting aspect of SMAC, I would take care before I made any serious modifications (like having high reactors result in faster terraforming). I would not go that route. The only change that made sense to me is allow formers to use higher reactors with no great cost than fission reactor for the same capabilities. This gives basic formers a nominal bit of extra defense from the reactor.
This illustrates what I see for weapons better...their graphic depends on the power and not their name/tech in alphax.txt
#WEAPONS
Hand Weapons, Gun, 1, 0, 1, -1, None,
Laser, Laser, 2, 0, 2, -1, Physic,
Particle Impactor, Impact, 4, 0, 3, -1, Chaos,
Gatling Laser, Gatling, 6, 1, 4, -1, Super,
Missile Launcher, Missile, 8, 2, 5, -1, Fossil,
Chaos Gun, Chaos, 12, 0, 6, -1, String,
Fusion Laser, Fusion, 16, 1, 7, -1, SupLube,
Tachyon Bolt, Tachyon, 20, 1, 8, -1, Unified,
Plasma Shard, Shard, 24, 2, 9, -1, Space,
Quantum Laser, Quantum, 30, 1,10, -1, QuanMac,
Graviton Gun, Graviton, 40, 0,11, -1, AGrav,
Singularity Laser, Singularity, 50, 1,12, -1, ConSing,
Resonance Laser, R-Laser, 8, 1, 7, -1, Bioadap,
Resonance Bolt, R-Bolt, 20, 1,11, -1, SentRes,
String Disruptor, String, 60, 1,13, -1, BFG9000,
Psi Attack, Psi, -1, 2,10, -1, CentPsi,
Planet Buster, Planet Buster, 99, 0,30, -1, Orbital,
Colony Module, Colony Pod, 0, 8, 3, -1, None, ; Noncombat packages
Terraforming Unit, Formers, 0, 9, 2, -1, Ecology,
Troop Transport, Transport, 0, 7, 2, -1, DocFlex,
Supply Transport, Supply, 0,10, 3, -1, IndAuto,
Probe Team, Probe Team, 0,11, 3, -1, PlaNets,
Alien Artifact, Artifact, 0,12,36, -1, Disable,
Conventional Payload, Conventional, 12, 0, 8, -1, Orbital,
Tectonic Payload, Tectonic, 0,13,12, -1, NewMiss
Fungal Payload, Fungal, 0,14,12, -1, NewMiss
This illustrates what I see for weapons better...their graphic depends on the power and not their name/tech in alphax.txt
My issue about micromanagement verses clean is that if I support 2 free units per city, I don't want the micromanagement of trying to figure out which cities have some unit support left. I would just rather make everything clean.
I still have no seen a good argument why clean should be different costs on different units. I still like the idea of 1 row, period. This way it is a fairly no-brainer choice for most units whether to build clean or not, or to worry about city resource micromanagement.
I also don't like the idea of reactors increasing the costs of non-combat units like formers.
Formers and crawlers are powerful, and are the key to logistics side of SMAC, and in my opinion, what makes SMAC better than any Civ game before or afterwards (which did not include crawlers, and where formers where much more limited in abilities). Otherwise, it is just military verses military. Part of your military goal now must be to protect your logistics side, crawlers and formers. I think this makes the strategy much more interesting if it were only military verses military.
I do not like the idea of improving crawlers to crawl more than one resource; I the crawlers are powerful enough as it is.
Since I think formers and crawlers are the most interesting aspect of SMAC, I would take care before I made any serious modifications (like having high reactors result in faster terraforming). I would not go that route.
The only change that made sense to me is allow formers to use higher reactors with no great cost than fission reactor for the same capabilities. This gives basic formers a nominal bit of extra defense from the reactor.
You could also simply swap the caviar file names in the game folder. In this case, VW03.cvr becomes VW04.cvr and VW04.cvr becomes VW03.cvr. I had that same issue and found an acceptable workaround so long as you do not exceed the pre-determined range of weapon values for each weapon slot.
On the topic of unit maintenance, I wonder if it is code-wise possible to let a popped independent crawler be re-homed to the closest base of the faction popping it.
On the topic of unit maintenance, I wonder if it is code-wise possible to let a popped independent crawler be re-homed to the closest base of the faction popping it.
Popped? You mean like from a cloning pod? I don't really like the idea of automatic re-homing without having to go to that base, and as for AI independent crawlers, that's more a question of the AI needing to be taught to rehome unowned crawlers (and AI is Kyrub's specialty.)
On the topic of unit maintenance, I wonder if it is code-wise possible to let a popped independent crawler be re-homed to the closest base of the faction popping it.
Popped? You mean like from a cloning pod? I don't really like the idea of automatic re-homing without having to go to that base, and as for AI independent crawlers, that's more a question of the AI needing to be taught to rehome unowned crawlers (and AI is Kyrub's specialty.)
I meant from a general Unity pod, which cloning is one of the benefits. Basically, in my mod a Unity pod can give a supply crawler directly to the faction that opened (popped) it.
Would it be difficult to make a flag so that Clean does not work at Negative Support rating (like NLM for Police)?
Similarly, a flag that makes all non-Military units not require Support (i.e. Colony Pods, Formers. Scout units should require support). This may be opinion but I feel the Support SE should tie to military units only.
Also I noted in mode #2 (and I assume mode #4) there was a cost bumpup at Fusion but not at Quantum/Sing. Was this intended? I can give examples if you need them
I played a game using unit cost code #4, in which infantry units cost 1x the higher of weapon or armor, mobile units cost 2x, and air units cost 3x. I like how it tends to reward the construction of, say, a single 6-4-1 shock troop, instead of building a 6-1-1 thug and its defensive complement, a 1-4-1, at a low cost.
I would, however, like to try an option in which infantry costs 1x, mobile costs 1.5x and air costs 3x. This would make speeders more economical than they are using option #4. I don't think a speeder should cost the same as two similarly armed infantry, and thus I rarely built them. A speeder's useful ability to disengage may be worth a 50% increase in cost...but not 100%, in my opinion.
Air at 3x was also a bit steep. Perhaps less so for Copters if unmodified, but it's steep for Needlejets. Depends a bit whether AAA is set to -1. A side issue I have with Needlejets is the "stalling" technique due to their zone of control. If you rush air you can make a scout needlejet and infantry can't advance past or even around it. Would it be possible to add a flag to rid their zone of control? Or allow attacking infantry to be on the same square as an enemy Needlejet (if without SAM?)
I think with Copters, the move:4 fix is a good one
I'm thinking 2x infantry cost for air would be a bit too cheap. But 3x is too steep - a 2.5x cost mode on air might be better. Thoughts anyone?
Yitzi is it possible to add variables for the defensive power of Perimeter Defense and Aerospace Complex? I think they're reasonably balanced as they are, but I was curious on this. Mostly Perimeter Defense could use a bit of a boost. I do think the paradigm of 2:1 (attack:defense) is good. Defenders should only be able to hole up in cities.
Since this is probably going to be something that people want to be able to tweak, I think the best way is just to change the formula to (Weapon+Armor)XChassis/4 for mode 2, and max(weapon,armor)Xchassis/4 for mode 4, and then you can set the chassis cost to whatever you want. So for 2.5X you'd use 10, for 3X you'd use 12, and so on.
Quote
Since this is probably going to be something that people want to be able to tweak, I think the best way is just to change the formula to (Weapon+Armor)XChassis/4 for mode 2, and max(weapon,armor)Xchassis/4 for mode 4, and then you can set the chassis cost to whatever you want. So for 2.5X you'd use 10, for 3X you'd use 12, and so on.
Yea this would work well. I've noted some oddness with Missile cost with these alternate cost formulas. I think, they might be on another chassis cost formula something like air or sea but I'd have to test to check.