EXE patch concept: support cost scales with reactor

[MercantileInterest]

Support becomes irrelevant after the early game. Wondering how the game would work with a reactor 2 unit on support requiring two minerals per turn, a level three requiring three minerals and so on. People would probably stick with reactor 1 terraformers.

I haven't the skill to code this and Yitzi is gone but the thought intrigues me. In fact, it would work particularly well with Yitzi's idea that all formers require 1 mineral upkeep regardless of support values.

[PvtHudson]

+1. Player will have another trade-off, instead of 'the bigger reactor the better' no-brainer. More trade-offs are better, right? Probably, will require also shifting Clean ability farther in tech tree and/or upping its cost.

[bvanevery]

Support becomes irrelevant after the early game.

Not true in my mod.  Your usual "high minerals exploits" like Genejack Factories, Supply Crawlers, and Thermal Boreholes are quite a bit delayed.  Some chassis costs are seriously increased, like Needlejets, Missiles, and Gravships.  I would say SUPPORT only becomes irrelevant in early late game, when you have probably built Hybrid Forests and Genejack Factories.

Wondering how the game would work with a reactor 2 unit on support requiring two minerals per turn, a level three requiring three minerals and so on.

Badly in my mod.  I already addressed minerals production and support costs in other ways.  For one thing, SUPPORT itself is seriously on a diet.  No faction starts with a SUPPORT bonus.  Police State gives +2 SUPPORT, Fundamentalist gives +1 SUPPORT, and Power gives +1 SUPPORT.  So if you want +3 SUPPORT to get support the size of your city's population, you have to choose Police State Power.  That comes with a total of -4 EFFIC in my mod (and I call it JUSTICE instead).

Also I would point out, there's only 2 tiers worth worrying about: Fission and Fusion.  If you're still faffing around in the Quantum era, it's because you're having fun.

Also, were you planning to take Clean Reactor ability out of the game?  Or make it prohibitively expensive?

Lore-wise I don't think this "increasing SUPPORT" idea makes any sense.  A Fusion reactor should cost less support, not more.  The problem with the reactors is they make costs too cheap as things go on.  They're like piling on a bonus on top of a bonus.  I've tried to mitigate this as best I can, by targeting the Fusion era as the expected cost of production.  For instance, my Fusion Supply Crawlers cost 50 minerals, same as an Artifact.  And that's on the Infantry chassis.

I'd like to be able to change the unit cost curves of the reactors.  I wouldn't be surprised if that takes some non-trivial coding.

I haven't the skill to code this and Yitzi is gone but the thought intrigues me. In fact, it would work particularly well with Yitzi's idea that all formers require 1 mineral upkeep regardless of support values.

I am generally against hard coding into binaries, cost issues which can be addressed at the modding level.  Even if it's presumably an optional rule, it's a maintenance burden to keep such a thing working and tested.  IMO if you want units to be more expensive, you make them more expensive.  You're going to have a lot of trouble just cranking out units in version 1.32 of my mod.

[bvanevery]

+1. Player will have another trade-off, instead of 'the bigger reactor the better' no-brainer. More trade-offs are better, right? Probably, will require also shifting Clean ability farther in tech tree and/or upping its cost.

Highly refined tradeoffs are the art of modding.  I feel I have done this in my mod.  I'm not aware of anyone doing a mod of the costs of the game, or the prereqs, anywhere remotely near the scope of my mod.  If anyone does think such exists, whether in the present or past, I'd like to hear about it.  Tim Nevolin's work on combat costs was ambitious in his vision, although I don't think the final execution was quite there when last I looked at it.  Nevertheless, his work heavily influenced my own work, and I incorporated as many of his ideas as I actually think were holding up in practice.  I acknowledge him as an influence in my README.

Actually come to think of it, you're in there too, PvtHudson.  I believe for opinions on mindworms and Trance.

Anyways the problem is, I'm always looking at this game where all the costs and tradeoffs have been totally reconsidered. I know what is possible.  I'm never looking at these problems from the standpoint of tweaking the stock vanilla game, a little bit this way or a little bit that way.  I consider that a baby exercise.  Much needs to be modded, to get an acceptable player-worthy result, IMO.

Sure you could start down the road of binary patching SUPPORT.  In an open source project where all the code was laid bare, that might even be a reasonable engineering idea, as anyone could bang on it and tweak tweak tweak.  But this old decrepit binary has limitations in that regard.  Serious limitations of manpower and ongoing knowledge and support.  IMO it is better to pick cost strategies which mere mortals can modify.

Yeah so I also tore up the whole tree, and all the units, to get to that place.  It wasn't without work.  But my changes are merely in alphax.txt and I think that's the proof of the pudding.