Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Dio on April 20, 2014, 09:57:33 PM

Title: Potential changes to the DRONE and TALENT faction rules.
Post by: Dio on April 20, 2014, 09:57:33 PM

Do you think the TALENT faction rule should round down like the DRONE faction rule?

Title: Re: Potential changes to the DRONE and TALENT faction rules.
Post by: Nexii on April 20, 2014, 10:26:10 PM

The TALENT faction doesn't get +1 talent, it just rounds up.  That is PKs get a talent at size 1, 5, 9, etc...  University gets drones currently at size 4, 8, 12, etc...

The problem with rounding up is then University becomes really bad on Transcend.  If the very first worker is a drone, it would be really hard to do much.   You can police the first worker, but this stops you from pod popping right away.  Similarly once a base finally becomes size 2, it will riot without a Doctor - using a Doctor makes it slow to create a Colony Pod.  Now with my modded SE set (Autocratic giving +1 POL by default) you could manage a bit better but paying 1 mineral for 2 PSY early, plus 10 minerals for a sentry, isn't great either.  It's like being -2 SUPPORT.  If I've found anything it's that early-game SEs & pod/terrain luck have more impact than late-game scaling SEs (like Univ's +2 RESEARCH).  I don't think University would ever be able to catch up, is what I'm getting at.

Ideally I think we would be able to just set the pop# at which the first drone (or talent) appears from the rule.  But that would be more work (and possibly not possible since everything else just has 1 parameter).  Another option would be to add a new DRONE rounding up rule as a new parameter.  Call it DRONEUP or something.  Not sure if there's room for that in the code.  There's probably more useful things that could be added (if I got on my creative cap).  Just because you would have to counter DRONEUP with something else like NODRONE (kind of nonsensical), or a free facility like Rec Commons.

Title: Re: Potential changes to the DRONE and TALENT faction rules.
Post by: Dio on April 20, 2014, 10:31:25 PM

Okay. I should also consider figuring out how to fix the display bug with SOCIAL, TALENT.

Title: Re: Potential changes to the DRONE and TALENT faction rules.
Post by: Nexii on April 20, 2014, 10:54:41 PM

Yea that would be nice.  I suspect some of it is because there is no graphic & category for TALENT.  I noted that if I give PKs -TALENT, it shows -EFFIC, then -SUPPORT offset to the right in the screen (which is my 2nd penalty for Barter Economy).  It would seem that it tries to draw -TALENT, then afterwards takes the first sorted penalty on the list to start the game and uses that or something.  Really strange.