Anyone else use Inertial Damping and Global Energy Theory?

[BFG]

I'm just wondering if I'm the only person who uses these two available-but-dummied-out technologies to pad the Tech Tree a bit.  I also add Heavy Transport to Inertial Damping to reactivate that technology.

[gwillybj]

I edited my alphax.txt because I didn't like the Progenitors - they seemed a bit comical to me. I use every line in the Technology section, including the new techs, but I have changed some of the prerequisites. All Abilities are enabled. I eliminated sea bases by changing a few lines in the Units section. I made pcx badges for the new techs. I renamed the "voices" folder "voices blurbs folder" so I don't hear any of the blurbs, and I turned off the Secret Project movies (after the first 1,000 or so times they get old). Just a bunch of little things that make the game more enjoyable for me.

[BFG]

I'd be interested to see what PCX files you came up with as I did the same (and posted them for download on this site).  Would be curious how similar they ended up.

And no sea bases?  You must never play as the Pirates . But seriously, that is interesting.  I went the other way, trying to enable additional sea terraforming options.  Too bad I have no idea how to actually make some of them appear on the map as there are no sprites for them currently.

[gwillybj]

I haven't played any of the given factions in a long time. They, too, got tiring after a couple hundred games.
Here are my four pcxs:

[Bearu]

I always disable all the additional features of SMAX except the new native life (I move the sea lurks onto the Centauri Meditation and the sporelaunchers onto Centauri Empathy) and the algorithmic enhancement to balance the strength of the Hunter Seeker Algorithm. The technologies for Global Energy Theory and Inertial Damping also fit into the tech tree for my game.

[BFG]

It's interesting how differently we each play.  I prefer to use all of SMAX's options, with these two techs, a few new terraforming options, and some units (like the Aero Colony) to help the AI out.  But I otherwise leave it vanilla and only play the original 7.


I don't suppose you have those icons in a JPG or other modern format?  (Apparently I lost my PCX viewer when I installed Windows 10.)  If you don't already have them converted, don't worry about it...no reason for you to spend the time doing that when I could just as easily.


For what it's worth, here are the icons I came up with for those two techs.  I tried to make them match what I though Firaxis might've come up with.  The color schemes are a side effect of the conversion process; they would appear correctly in-game.

[Bearu]

I downloaded the images from the website awhile ago, but I do have the actual images (credit given for the appropriate person/people).  I also remember reading about the presence of another Doctrine Technology. (Doctrine: Security???)

[BFG]

There are some interesting things buried in SMACX's asset files if you dig into them.  I don't remember if Doctrine: Security is one of them but will take a look when I get home from work.

The interesting thing about Inertial Damping and Global Energy Theory is that they already have recorded sound files, blurbs, etc...they're just missing the icons, titles, and activation in alpha(x).txt.  Also of interest is the fact they "even out" the tech tree - without them, two of the B/C/D/E branches have 21 techs, and two have 22.

Personally, I don't see much point in adding more techs besides those two, unless you extensively rework the tech tree.  The game has at least 2 more open tech slots - and possibly more if it would recognize techs 090 and above - but what's the point without in-game benefits?

[gwillybj]

The way I did it didn't need a lot of rearranging because I made sure every tech is a prerequisite for something other than just another tech. One example is The Virtual World is now at Optical Computers.