Yitzi's unofficial SMAX patch 3.1e

[Yitzi]

Yitzi's unofficial SMAX patch 3.1e

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=272

Fixed another bug with one of the modding options, thanks to TarMinyatur for finding it.

[Question]

Does this patch include kyrub's AI fixes? I noticed in one game where i was fighting drones and i was allied with consciousness/morgan, they did not do anything except spam probe teams (that were unescorted and killed before they could do anything) and any combat units they built just turtled inside their bases. The main problem was that once in a war, it seems that AIs build NOTHING but combat units/probe teams....200 turns into the game, both consciousness/morgan had size 4 HQs without even a children's creche (although i had given them highly advanced research techs ages ago).

Potential bugs :

-Datalinks mod claims that nanoreplicator/singulatory inducer reduces eco damage, yet i tested it ingame and noticed no ecodamage difference between using either one of those and a genejack factory...(same mineral production)

-Sometimes you get multiple "urgent message from a faction leader" popups but when you click "ok", the popup just dissapears and you get another one. This happens a few times in a row until the faction leader stops trying to speak to you. You never actually enter conversation mode.

-When offering to trade tech for tech, if the AI suggests another deal (like selling his tech for your energy), you cannot offer to trade again under the same turns. It seems you only get the option to trade under the same terms if the AI agrees to trade tech for tech, but not if he suggests another type of deal.

-After installing the patch, i noticed that the AI will NEVER surrender, even if you do not commit atrocities and are a human faction fighting another human faction. This is even if you reduce them to a single base and have a massive army surrounding it. Also even if they are on feeble might and you have unsurpassed might, they will repeatedly threaten to destroy you unless you give them techs/energy. This behaviour was not present pre-patch.

-Rescued faction leaders do nearly nothing even if you give them all your tech and tons of energy. The most ive seen them do is expand a bit but they do not appear to do anything except sit there, nor do they attempt to support your vendettas.

-Air units can only damage one ground unit at a time, whereas ground units cause collateral damage and will also kill all mindworms in the same tile if they manage to kill one.

-Not sure if this is a bug, but the planet rating appears to not affect eco-damage eve though it is listed as doing so?

-Bulk matter transitor is incorrectly listed as giving every base +2 minerals in the build facilities screen

-Governor set to auto manage specialists and nothing else will refuse to use any doctors, etc at max pop (e.g. 14 with a hab complex) even if doing so will cause the base to go into golden age with the +1 economy bonus.

-The base screen does not show bonus energy rates if you have +1 economy from SE and am in a golden age (so you get +1 energy per square). The tiles still only show the standard energy rates.

-There is no indication of whether a base is currently in golden age in the base screen and if the bae is in pop boom (demo, planned, children's creche for +6 growth) the growth screen will not show the 1 turn to pop growth, it will still show incorrect numbers like 3 turns to grow, etc.

-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).

-Probe teams seem very buggy. Incite drone riots seem to do nothing (i had the empath guild, but their drones never increased despite spamming the incite drone riote mission at the base for 5 turns). Mind control costs can be absolutely insane (no polymorphic encryption, a resonance 6 rover seems to take 300+ energy to subvert). Sometimes an AI will have techs that i can steal but my probe teams will just download their world map instead (i can see they have techs i can steal from infiltrators). There is no "your success rate is blah blah blah" for genetic atrocities, it just seems to auto-succeed if they have no probe teams defending (but all other probe team missions can fail even with no defending probe teams). Command center + bio enhancement center is enough to give you elite probe teams with no probe team modifiers in SE (or any secret projects that affect probe team morale), which is odd, shouldnt it be commando level at best?

-Formers set to auto improve will not take into account forest bonuses from tree farms/hybrid forests so they will just spam farms instead of the much higher yield forests. Also one of the more common reasons for the AI not being able to grow their bases.

-You cannot build any terrain imrpovements on the fossil ridge, which makes the +1 mineral bonus useless as you get a base with ocean tiles that have inferior output to one with improvements.

-Damaged airplanes in a airbase do not appear to repair any damage at all unless you have the nano factory, even if they are not being damaged and ar eholding their position.

-There does not appear to be any way to get to the faction datalinks screen (the one you get when you infiltrate another faction, and which shows their SE choices, etc) except through the commlink (which doesnt work if they refuse to talk to you) or unless you infiltrate them again.

Suggestions (if possible)

-Add in a option for formers to auto-plant ONLY forests.

-Balance out farms, etc to make them useful in end game, especially condensers/echelon mirrors that are inferior to forest spamming after you get tree farms/hybrid forests. Maybe give them tech bonuses so that they scale and are a viable alternative to forest spamming?

-Allow formers to increase rockiness, as right now leveling a tile is irreversible

-Prevent landmarks from losing their tile bonuses when elevation changes, and highlight the exact tiles with the bonus as it is hard to see which one has the landmark bonus exactly for stuff like pholus ridge.

-Add in modding options to allow sea units to capture coastal bases.

-Allow gravships with air superiority to intercept just like needle jets (they have infinite fuel, shouldnt they be better at this?) and allow intercepts to happen as long as the intercepting target is within fuel range. Having formers get destroyed 3 tiles away from a base while your interceptors just sit there is really frustrating.

-Add in a modding option to prevent bases from being built if it will reduce the number of workable tiles in another base (unless you are at war, etc). Really annoying when submissive factions do this to you.

-Make the AI stop using non-algorithm probe teams if the target has the hunter seeker algorithm.

Also not sure if im reading the correct wiki, but it shows no changelogs for 3.1?

[sisko]

-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).

If this is on thinker or transcend diffiuculty levels, than this is patch related. It was one of the ways the designers intended to make the game harder.


and.. welcome to the AC2 forum, Question!

[Question]

Thanks, that was on librarian difficulty though, and it was also the AI starting next to each other and getting wiped out pretty quickly by the warmongers.

Some other issues i noticed :

-Planet busters (maybe missles as well) cannot be loaded on carriers, and since you cant build airbases in the water, you cant hit far away sea targets with missles due to limited range...

-Using planet busters did not get me kicked out of the planetary council and did not generate massive eco-damage. In alphax.txt, all i did was turn off base obliterating = simple atrocity, but didnt touch planet busters.

-Even if obliterating bases doesnt count as an atrocity, you still get the popup.

-The AI can see my deep pressure hull subs without any units near them (they had deep radar as well and would have seen enemy units). I was getting bombarded by a land based artillery unit and i was not within two tiles of a sensor array or base, yet he could somehow see and hit my subs.

-Any unit with psi armor cannot make artillery attacks even if they have a normal weapon equipped and can make normal attacks.

-Gravship formers count as land units and cannot lower terrain to sea level. Since they are air units they should be able to do it.

-Air units like gravships and locusts of chiron can capture bases, but not obliterate them for some reason.

-When defending against psi attacks, the game will prioritize air units as defenders, even if you have garrisons with resonance armor and a higher psi combat strength modifier.

-Not really a bug, but when attacking without preparation, the popup defaults to "attack anyway", the default option should not be to attack at a lower strength.

-When looking at the unit list in a tile (hotkey "a"), it does not show which units have already moved.

-If you activate a bunch of ground units on a loaded transport and then move one off the transport, the other ground units have switched back to sleep mode and you have to activate them AGAIN to unload them.

Suggestion :

-Add in a option so that secret projects which have been destroyed can be built again by all factions, very annoying when the AI builds something like the market exchange in a bad position and you cant do anything about it without using the scenario editor.

Not sure if bug, but i seem to recall that the data angels used to start with a free commlink frequency? Its not mentioned in their faction profile now, but i remember a faction used to have that and no faction profile seems to mention it.

[Yitzi]

Does this patch include kyrub's AI fixes?

It includes the SMAX ones; it does not include his more comprehensive SMAC ones.

The main problem was that once in a war, it seems that AIs build NOTHING but combat units/probe teams....200 turns into the game, both consciousness/morgan had size 4 HQs without even a children's creche (although i had given them highly advanced research techs ages ago).

Yes, the AI could use an overhaul.  My main concern is MP, so AI is waiting some, but once I finish my current list "allow SMAC to be played with SMAX, so that Kyrub is incentivized to work on it" and "work on AI myself, with information from Kyrub" are both possible things I might work on by request.

-Datalinks mod claims that nanoreplicator/singulatory inducer reduces eco damage, yet i tested it ingame and noticed no ecodamage difference between using either one of those and a genejack factory...(same mineral production)

Strange, as I did.

Are you sure you didn't test by using the scenario editor without going back into the base screen afterward?  Facility changes in the scenario editor are not reflected in the ecodamage display until the next time you visit the base.

-Sometimes you get multiple "urgent message from a faction leader" popups but when you click "ok", the popup just dissapears and you get another one. This happens a few times in a row until the faction leader stops trying to speak to you. You never actually enter conversation mode.

Sounds like a bug; if you can provide a savegame in which it happens, I can probably fix it.

-When offering to trade tech for tech, if the AI suggests another deal (like selling his tech for your energy), you cannot offer to trade again under the same turns. It seems you only get the option to trade under the same terms if the AI agrees to trade tech for tech, but not if he suggests another type of deal.

Not sure if that's a bug, but it could be changed eventually.

-After installing the patch, i noticed that the AI will NEVER surrender, even if you do not commit atrocities and are a human faction fighting another human faction. This is even if you reduce them to a single base and have a massive army surrounding it. Also even if they are on feeble might and you have unsurpassed might, they will repeatedly threaten to destroy you unless you give them techs/energy. This behaviour was not present pre-patch.

All intentional changes to the AI in my patch are from Kyrub; if this doesn't happen in Kyrub's version, then let me know and I should be able to fix it.  (If it does, then that was his decision; reverting it is a possibility for later, but not that soon.)

-Rescued faction leaders do nearly nothing even if you give them all your tech and tons of energy. The most ive seen them do is expand a bit but they do not appear to do anything except sit there, nor do they attempt to support your vendettas.

Does this happen in Kyrub's patch?  In Scient's or unpatched?

-Air units can only damage one ground unit at a time, whereas ground units cause collateral damage and will also kill all mindworms in the same tile if they manage to kill one.

This is an intentional part of the game, and is probably a good thing.  Allowing air collateral damage is a possibility for future patches, but not soon.

-Not sure if this is a bug, but the planet rating appears to not affect eco-damage eve though it is listed as doing so?

It most certainly does affect it; how did you test that it seemed not to?

-Bulk matter transitor is incorrectly listed as giving every base +2 minerals in the build facilities screen

Yes, this is a mistake; it will be fixed in patch 3.2.  Meanwhile, you can fix it yourself, as all the build facilities descriptions are found in alphax.txt.

-Governor set to auto manage specialists and nothing else will refuse to use any doctors, etc at max pop (e.g. 14 with a hab complex) even if doing so will cause the base to go into golden age with the +1 economy bonus.

Again, I'm not dealing with AI yet.

-The base screen does not show bonus energy rates if you have +1 economy from SE and am in a golden age (so you get +1 energy per square). The tiles still only show the standard energy rates.

I'm pretty sure it does; are you sure it's not just that you're expecting +1 energy per square at +1 ECONOMY when that requires +2 (+1 only gives +1 energy in the base square)?

-There is no indication of whether a base is currently in golden age in the base screen and if the bae is in pop boom (demo, planned, children's creche for +6 growth) the growth screen will not show the 1 turn to pop growth, it will still show incorrect numbers like 3 turns to grow, etc.

Neither of these seem that major, but eventually I might add golden age/riot indicators in the base screen and/or show the existence of pop booms.

-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).

I'm not sure exactly how the landing site generator works, but it does have a random element that results in factions sometimes starting closer to each other than a perfectly even distribution; on a small map, that can be quite close indeed.  Small maps generally are meant when you want a high-conflict world anyway.

-Probe teams seem very buggy. Incite drone riots seem to do nothing (i had the empath guild, but their drones never increased despite spamming the incite drone riote mission at the base for 5 turns).

It does something; details can be found here.

Mind control costs can be absolutely insane (no polymorphic encryption, a resonance 6 rover seems to take 300+ energy to subvert).

It depends a lot on the distance to the target's HQ and on the unit's cost, and to some extent on the target's energy reserves; a resonance 6 rover (assuming you're playing without mods) costs 6 rows of minerals (60 minerals at 0 INDUSTRY), so for it to be that expensive to subvert would require either that it's reasonably close to the HQ or the owner has a lot of cash (in particular, to cost over 300 energy would require being within 6 squares of the HQ plus 1 for every 100 energy the owner has.)

Sometimes an AI will have techs that i can steal but my probe teams will just download their world map instead (i can see they have techs i can steal from infiltrators).

Not sure what's up with that; do you have a savegame?

There is no "your success rate is blah blah blah" for genetic atrocities, it just seems to auto-succeed if they have no probe teams defending (but all other probe team missions can fail even with no defending probe teams).

This does appear to be true; do you think it's a bug?

Command center + bio enhancement center is enough to give you elite probe teams with no probe team modifiers in SE (or any secret projects that affect probe team morale), which is odd, shouldnt it be commando level at best?

I think probe teams start with 3 morale and get boosts for that; I'm planning to give more options regarding this soon.  (There are also certain techs that boost probe team morale.)

-Formers set to auto improve will not take into account forest bonuses from tree farms/hybrid forests so they will just spam farms instead of the much higher yield forests. Also one of the more common reasons for the AI not being able to grow their bases.

Also AI, meaning I'm not working on it yet.

-You cannot build any terrain imrpovements on the fossil ridge, which makes the +1 mineral bonus useless as you get a base with ocean tiles that have inferior output to one with improvements.

If you're not playing as  , you wouldn't be able to build improvements there anyway without raising it; it becomes inferior to ocean shelf (if you've got the formers), but superior to normal ocean squares.

If you are playing as  , then it's probably not worth it.

-Damaged airplanes in a airbase do not appear to repair any damage at all unless you have the nano factory, even if they are not being damaged and ar eholding their position.

Interesting; apparently air units repair only in an actual base.  Which is not exactly ridiculous; an airbase would have a refueling station but not enough for real repairs.

-There does not appear to be any way to get to the faction datalinks screen (the one you get when you infiltrate another faction, and which shows their SE choices, etc) except through the commlink (which doesnt work if they refuse to talk to you) or unless you infiltrate them again.

I believe right-clicking on their name in the comlink menu does it.

-Add in a option for formers to auto-plant ONLY forests.

Not a high priority, especially once I add the "auto-help other formers" option, but I might do it eventually on request.

-Balance out farms, etc to make them useful in end game, especially condensers/echelon mirrors that are inferior to forest spamming after you get tree farms/hybrid forests. Maybe give them tech bonuses so that they scale and are a viable alternative to forest spamming?

Actually, I ran the numbers and while condensers+raise land+enrichers+echelon mirrors are expensive in terms of former time and cost some energy, they do produce a lot of resources.  (You do need to raise land to make it effective, though.)

-Allow formers to increase rockiness, as right now leveling a tile is irreversible

Probably a good idea if I can make it work.

-Prevent landmarks from losing their tile bonuses when elevation changes, and highlight the exact tiles with the bonus as it is hard to see which one has the landmark bonus exactly for stuff like pholus ridge.

You can see the landmark noted in the tile information.  As for losing the bonuses when elevation changes, I think that's part of the game, but giving the option to change it is a possible future project on request.

-Add in modding options to allow sea units to capture coastal bases.

I think making that be the "amphibious" ability for sea units is probably the best way; it's not a high priority, but is a future possibility on request.

-Allow gravships with air superiority to intercept just like needle jets (they have infinite fuel, shouldnt they be better at this?) and allow intercepts to happen as long as the intercepting target is within fuel range. Having formers get destroyed 3 tiles away from a base while your interceptors just sit there is really frustrating.

I think the idea behind it being fuel range is that they need to be close enough for the interceptor to scramble and get there in time before the battle is over.  Making the amount moddable is a possible future project, though.  Gravships with air superiority serving as interceptors is an idea, but not a high priority.

-Add in a modding option to prevent bases from being built if it will reduce the number of workable tiles in another base (unless you are at war, etc). Really annoying when submissive factions do this to you.

This is essentially an AI issue, and as such will have to wait.  But making it an option to make it a vendetta-creating action (with all that implies) is a possible future project.

-Make the AI stop using non-algorithm probe teams if the target has the hunter seeker algorithm.

But it's so fun when they go poof!  (But yes, this is a possible future AI improvement.)

Also not sure if im reading the correct wiki, but it shows no changelogs for 3.1?

The changelogs simply state what's been changed between Kyrub's and the current version; sometimes I note where it was first introduced but sometimes I don't.  Changelogs for a given patch can be found in the readme that comes with that patch.

-Attempts to make random custom maps (using the customize map setting) on small planets show that many factions will start within 10 tiles of each other, while leaving huge areas of landmasses with no starting player. Huge problem as you cannot use small maps without starting location problems (peaceful factions tend to get killed off very early without being able to do anything).

If this is on thinker or transcend diffiuculty levels, than this is patch related. It was one of the ways the designers intended to make the game harder.

Which patch?  I know I didn't do anything related to it.

Some other issues i noticed :

-Planet busters (maybe missles as well) cannot be loaded on carriers, and since you cant build airbases in the water, you cant hit far away sea targets with missles due to limited range...

Actually, they can.  It's just that they don't automatically end their turn on a carrier like they do on a base, so you have to press spacebar to end their turn on the carrier in order to load them.

-Using planet busters did not get me kicked out of the planetary council and did not generate massive eco-damage. In alphax.txt, all i did was turn off base obliterating = simple atrocity, but didnt touch planet busters.

Strange, it works for me.  Are you sure you hadn't repealed the U.N. charter?

-Even if obliterating bases doesnt count as an atrocity, you still get the popup.

True.  Of course, a warning before destroying your own base is still a pretty good idea, so the problem is just the language...which a modder can change themselves via script.txt.

-The AI can see my deep pressure hull subs without any units near them (they had deep radar as well and would have seen enemy units). I was getting bombarded by a land based artillery unit and i was not within two tiles of a sensor array or base, yet he could somehow see and hit my subs.

Yes, AI omniscience is an old problem, a known one, and a possible target for fixing (though figuring out how much the AI should know is still quite a task).

-Any unit with psi armor cannot make artillery attacks even if they have a normal weapon equipped and can make normal attacks.

Yes, the lack of support for modding to enable psi artillery is a known issue, and on the list to be fixed.

-Gravship formers count as land units and cannot lower terrain to sea level. Since they are air units they should be able to do it.

I'll put it on the list to be fixed.

-Air units like gravships and locusts of chiron can capture bases, but not obliterate them for some reason.

I think this is intended, though I don't know why.

-When defending against psi attacks, the game will prioritize air units as defenders, even if you have garrisons with resonance armor and a higher psi combat strength modifier.

That is because psi attackers get a base 3:2 ratio when attacking land units, but 1:1 when attacking air, so even with resonance the air unit has a higher chance of winning.

-Not really a bug, but when attacking without preparation, the popup defaults to "attack anyway", the default option should not be to attack at a lower strength.

On the other hand, if you already tried to attack, then maybe you want to do it anyway just to do damage; I don't think it needs fixing.

-When looking at the unit list in a tile (hotkey "a"), it does not show which units have already moved.

It does for me; all of your units that have already spent all their moves are greyed out.

-If you activate a bunch of ground units on a loaded transport and then move one off the transport, the other ground units have switched back to sleep mode and you have to activate them AGAIN to unload them.

I think that's because it automatically switches to the transport.  However, if it's a sea transport and you're not unloading into a base, you can move the transport to a land square to select which unit to unload.

-Add in a option so that secret projects which have been destroyed can be built again by all factions, very annoying when the AI builds something like the market exchange in a bad position and you cant do anything about it without using the scenario editor.

It's a possibility for the future...

Not sure if bug, but i seem to recall that the data angels used to start with a free commlink frequency? Its not mentioned in their faction profile now, but i remember a faction used to have that and no faction profile seems to mention it.

I do seem to remember something of that sort, but as you say it's not there now.

[Question]

Whats the deal with kyrub's AI fixes? I had a look at his downloads on this site, but its in the form of a .exe file so it looks like it would conflict with your modded .exe? I didnt install his stuff seperately because i thought it would conflict with yours. I think i did install scient's stuff before i did yours, but i cant remember as it was ages ago.

I think people would love more automation even in MP games though, if you could just set a fleet of formers to auto-plant forests instead of microing dozens of them, that would speed up games a LOT.

Tested nanoreplicator again, it did reduce eco-damage. I think what happened is that at a certain point, you hit a cap for clean minerals so anything after that has no effect. I think its after 200 minerals though.

I will save the savegame the next time i see the constant popups.

I just had a game where Lal did surrender to me, but he still threatened to obliterate me even though he was stuck with a size 1 base and i had tachyon marines knocking on his door. How do i get in touch with Kyrub and ask him about it? AIs usually wont surrender though, not sure if Kyrub did anything in that regard. Also its really annoying how they threaten you even though they are on feeble might and you are on unsurpassed.

Planet rating seems to be fine now that i tested it again, do you have any specific numbers on how it affects clean mineral production?

+1 per square does work in base window, my bad.

Tested the map generator on standard map several times. Yea the landing site thing is broken. I started 6 tiles away from Morgan and Morgan was less than 10 tiles away from Miriam...fun. Meanwhile there was this HUGE, 50+ tile expanse to the north and east of Miriam that had no factions. And usurper was in a corner of the continent with nobody near him for at least 20 tiles. Would not have been difficult to guess how the game was going to go...

From what i can tell, incite drones only creates one drone at best? That seems pretty useless.

I didnt realise stuff like distance to HQ affected probe team costs, thats not mentioned in the datalinks update...what else affects it? I tried to mind control a size 1 base with no facilities and just two cheap units guarding it (a 2-1-2 rover and a 1-2-1 garrison) and the game wanted to charge me 500+ credits. Probe teams (and data angels) dont seem very useful now. Not only do you have to have a decent military to guard the probe teams, the best they can do is genetic warfare atrocity which you cant use most of the time without pissing everyone off. Also at least two of the techs give +1 to probe team base morale, not to mention all the secret projects that boost probe team morale. Since probe teams get +4 from bio enhancement centers + command centers/etc, its quite easy to get elite probe teams....maybe make it so bio centers/command centers dont affect probe team morale?

Genetic warfare atrocities not having a fail rate seems to be a bug, but i dont know if thats intentional and i dont think anyone can tell unless they ask the original devs. But it does seem too powerful for it to auto-succeed. Halves base pop and drops all garrisons down to red hp.

I think allowing improvements to be built on fossil ridge would at least make it a decent choice for pirates. Right now its totally pointless.

I used the scenario editor to test echelon mirrors. Assuming elevation of 3000+ meters, each echelon mirror can produce a max of 5 energy. Meanwhile a basic tidal harness produces 4...given that tidal harnesses are so easy to spam, this is a pretty big problem. Also nutrients cease to be relevant once you get hybrid forests and hydrophonic labs, or the cloning vats. I do have to admit that i am surprised that even with Growth +5, it takes quite a while to grow to pop 16 with +20 nutrients.

The problem with natural landmarks losing their bonus on elevation change is that it is too easy to render something permanent ineffective. Even global warming will screw it up and a single tectonic missle can render your landmark ineffective. It just doesnt make sense for it to lose effectiveness just because the elevation changed to a different 1000m band.

Sea units not being able to capture coastal bases is a huge flaw and makes coastal attacks really tedious IMHO. Right now you only need a few AAA cruisers to defend a transport, the main annoyance is getting the transport loaded with marines. Theres no real reason to make a large navy given that they are useless as port garrisons (in port penalty) and are inferior to land based artillery.

Not sure what you mean about fuel range, but im having trouble providing effective interceptor screen for my bases. Its annoying formers three turns away can get nuked by a cheap and suicidal needlejet while my base full of interceptors sit there. I mean sure, next turn i can manually send a interceptor to kill the enemy jet while its still there, but its just really tedious. Civ 5 style intercepts would be much better (you just set planes to intercept and they intercept as long as something within their range gets bombed).

For base building, i meant an option like "May not build base if within X tiles of a base that you do not own".

Not sure what you meant about the changelog, but according to http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Yitzi%27s_patch the latest version is 2.5 but you have 3.1e uploaded...

Tested missle loading on carriers again and they work now, not sure why they didnt before...

Will test planet busters again.

Is it possible to allow gravships/locusts to obliterate bases? Mostly a convenience thing.

As for the popup to attack at low readiness....its annoying because most of the time, you will get the popup by accident (moving elite units and they run into an enemy when most of their moves are gone). Its much rarer for the other situation (you have a huge combat strength difference and want to attack anyway).

Never noticed the color thing in the unit list...might have to go check it again.

With sea transport its mostly annoying when you are trying to unload a whole bunch of units into an enemy base. The game wont allow you to move the transport into the enemy base to unload them (unlike a land tile). Alternatively, maybe you could mod the game so that you do get the "disembark" popup when trying to move a transport into an enemy base? That would make things so much easier.

Another bug : If an enemy has air units mixed with land units in a tile, you are not allowed to attack the land units with your air units (unless they have air superiority). You just get a message that you need air superiority to attack.

Also the tidal harness bonus building (+1 energy from harnesses) does not work for supply crawlers. I assume aquafarms and subsea trunklines behave similarly.

[Buster's Uncle]

kyrub's a member here - try a PM, or post in his thread at the bottom of the page in Bug/Patch forum.

[Yitzi]

Whats the deal with kyrub's AI fixes? I had a look at his downloads on this site, but its in the form of a .exe file so it looks like it would conflict with your modded .exe?

It would, except that I used his stuff as a basis for mine.  All the stuff from his SMAX patch (except for one bug that he introduced in the process of fixing the stockpile bug, and I fixed) is included in mine, and any AI behavior you find in mine that's not in scient's is almost certainly from his.  (You can test it by simply storing it in a different location.)

I think people would love more automation even in MP games though, if you could just set a fleet of formers to auto-plant forests instead of microing dozens of them, that would speed up games a LOT.

Agreed; one of my plans is to have a "help other" action so that you only have to instruct each forest to be planted once.

Allowing you to disable automated formers building farms and solar is a possibility for the future, though not that soon.

I will save the savegame the next time i see the constant popups.

Ok, thanks; what I need is a game from before the popups, i.e. I can load it and get the popups (plus I'll need instructions about how to get the popups).

Planet rating seems to be fine now that i tested it again, do you have any specific numbers on how it affects clean mineral production?

PLANET rating does not affect clean minerals at all, but the ecodamage from anything past clean minerals is directly proportional to 3-PLANET, to a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 6.  (That 3, 1, and 6 can be changed in alphax.txt if you want.)

Tested the map generator on standard map several times. Yea the landing site thing is broken. I started 6 tiles away from Morgan and Morgan was less than 10 tiles away from Miriam...fun. Meanwhile there was this HUGE, 50+ tile expanse to the north and east of Miriam that had no factions. And usurper was in a corner of the continent with nobody near him for at least 20 tiles. Would not have been difficult to guess how the game was going to go...

If it was an MP game, it's not easy to guess at all;  ,  , and whatever you were playing as might have realized what would happen if they fought, and formed a truce (each expanding away from the others) until  (a threat even without ideal starting conditions) was defeated.

From what i can tell, incite drones only creates one drone at best? That seems pretty useless.

Well, if the opponent is a human player on transcend and you're not playing with the drone rules that allow non-pacifism superdrones, it is fairly weak.

I didnt realise stuff like distance to HQ affected probe team costs, thats not mentioned in the datalinks update...what else affects it?

The base formula for a unit is (target faction's EC+800)X(cost of the target unit in rows)/(4+2Xdistance to target HQ), and for a base is (target faction's EC+1200)X(population+military units in the base, discounting defensive units)/(4+distance to HQ).  A children's creche, punishment sphere, or nerve stapling in a base halve the effective distance (if there's two, the distance is divided by 4, and if all three then by , and a genejack factory triples it.  Drone riots halve the cost to mind control a base, and a golden age doubles it.  Encryption makes a unit cost twice as much to subvert when not in a base, and count as two units in a base.  Finally, there's the effects of PROBE and  's special ability, but you know about that.

I tried to mind control a size 1 base with no facilities and just two cheap units guarding it (a 2-1-2 rover and a 1-2-1 garrison) and the game wanted to charge me 500+ credits.

The rover increases the effective size to 2, so by our formula that means that either it was extremely close to the HQ or the owner was quite rich or it had a golden age.

Probe teams (and data angels) dont seem very useful now. Not only do you have to have a decent military to guard the probe teams, the best they can do is genetic warfare atrocity which you cant use most of the time without pissing everyone off.

You can also steal tech...

Also at least two of the techs give +1 to probe team base morale, not to mention all the secret projects that boost probe team morale. Since probe teams get +4 from bio enhancement centers + command centers/etc, its quite easy to get elite probe teams....maybe make it so bio centers/command centers dont affect probe team morale?

I would rather get rid of the command centers, cut the bioenhancement centers to 1, and remove the boosts from most of the techs (there's only two projects that boost probe team morale, and both are fairly late game), so that it's not so easy to get elite unless you're  .

Genetic warfare atrocities not having a fail rate seems to be a bug, but i dont know if thats intentional and i dont think anyone can tell unless they ask the original devs. But it does seem too powerful for it to auto-succeed. Halves base pop and drops all garrisons down to red hp.

Yeah, I think it's too powerful for auto-success to not be a bug.  Still, I'll take a poll, to determine not only if it should have a failure rate, but what that failure rate should be.

I think allowing improvements to be built on fossil ridge would at least make it a decent choice for pirates. Right now its totally pointless.

It's a possible future project.

I used the scenario editor to test echelon mirrors. Assuming elevation of 3000+ meters, each echelon mirror can produce a max of 5 energy.

Actually 4 without +2 ECONOMY.  But you mix in solars with the mirrors, and the mirrors increase the energy from the solars.  Exact patterns depend, but alternating rows of solars and mirrors gives an average of 7 per square (4 on the mirrors, but 10 on the solars.)

Also nutrients cease to be relevant once you get hybrid forests and hydrophonic labs, or the cloning vats.

I favor fixing that by moving hydroponic labs to the late game (up there with hab complexes, which make nutrients very relevant again).  Cloning vats are situational, and there's nothing wrong with forests being situationally superior.

The problem with natural landmarks losing their bonus on elevation change is that it is too easy to render something permanent ineffective. Even global warming will screw it up and a single tectonic missle can render your landmark ineffective. It just doesnt make sense for it to lose effectiveness just because the elevation changed to a different 1000m band.

Actually, it makes a fair amount of sense that elevation change could mess up a jungle or crater; the question is if it's good for gameplay.  And I think that it's not such a big deal, since landmarks themselves are not that important to the game.

Sea units not being able to capture coastal bases is a huge flaw and makes coastal attacks really tedious IMHO.

I think it makes for a stronger game, by forcing land units as well as sea.  However, it shouldn't be too hard to enable amphibious ships being able to capture coastal bases, so I'm putting it fairly high on the list.

Theres no real reason to make a large navy given that they are useless as port garrisons (in port penalty) and are inferior to land based artillery.

Unless you have sea bases (no in-port penalty there), or want to take out the enemy's transports because he has only a few ships to protect them (or to protect your own from the enemy's large navy.)

Not sure what you mean about fuel range, but im having trouble providing effective interceptor screen for my bases. Its annoying formers three turns away can get nuked by a cheap and suicidal needlejet while my base full of interceptors sit there. I mean sure, next turn i can manually send a interceptor to kill the enemy jet while its still there, but its just really tedious. Civ 5 style intercepts would be much better (you just set planes to intercept and they intercept as long as something within their range gets bombed).

It can be annoying; there is sense behind it, but as I said making the distance of the interceptor screen moddable is a possible future project.  (And your interceptor can be just as cheap as the needlejet and cheaper than the formers, so the ability to counterattack would be enough to encourage a human player not to do it.)

For base building, i meant an option like "May not build base if within X tiles of a base that you do not own".

What if you want to declare war?

Not sure what you meant about the changelog, but according to http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Yitzi%27s_patch the latest version is 2.5 but you have 3.1e uploaded...

Fixed.

Is it possible to allow gravships/locusts to obliterate bases? Mostly a convenience thing.

It could be added as an option at some point, but won't be a high priority because it would change the game so much, and I think not for the better.

As for the popup to attack at low readiness....its annoying because most of the time, you will get the popup by accident (moving elite units and they run into an enemy when most of their moves are gone). Its much rarer for the other situation (you have a huge combat strength difference and want to attack anyway).

Well, unless you have "confirm odds before attacking" on.  It could be made moddable, but unless other people want it too it won't be a high priority.

With sea transport its mostly annoying when you are trying to unload a whole bunch of units into an enemy base. The game wont allow you to move the transport into the enemy base to unload them (unlike a land tile). Alternatively, maybe you could mod the game so that you do get the "disembark" popup when trying to move a transport into an enemy base? That would make things so much easier.

I'll put it on my list.

Another bug : If an enemy has air units mixed with land units in a tile, you are not allowed to attack the land units with your air units (unless they have air superiority). You just get a message that you need air superiority to attack.

That gets tricky, though; if he wanted, he could designate the air unit as defender, but you can't attack the air unit, so effectively the air unit is the best unit to defend (since it prevents attack entirely) and so does, so you can't attack.

Also the tidal harness bonus building (+1 energy from harnesses) does not work for supply crawlers. I assume aquafarms and subsea trunklines behave similarly.

Test again.

[Question]

Thanks, that makes things a lot clearer. Still impossible to get enough clean minerals limit with all the mineral boositng facilities though, but by then the game is already over so i guess its not a big deal.

Tried playing Cha Dawn and i was surprised by how little eco damage i was getting. I had to try multiple boreholes to get my first fungal pop, but im dissapointed that theres no difference between 2 and 3 planet rating (and you cant seem to capture anything late game). Speaking of which, Cha Dawn gets no interludes for some reason?

Can the game handle decimals in alphax.txt? E.g. 0.5 for the planet ratings?

While playing cha dawn i noticed a couple of things. I hadnt really used native units before as psi combat seems really random (the combat strengths are relatively similar unless you can stack a lot of modifiers). The mindworms were really powerful early game, but had the downside of eating up tons of minerals in garrisons since you cant give them clean reactors. They also dont seem to scale very well later in the game. Isles are too expensive/slow and sealurks come too late into the game to do much (you get locusts earlier for some reason).

Map generator : Is there any way to make the starting locations further away, like a minumum of tiles? How would you even mod something like that anyway? I dont see any values in alphax that control it (and im not even sure how to mod anything other than the stuff in alphax.txt)

Still not sure how incite drones work. You said it increases the counter by 10, up to 2.5 the base pop. So for example a pop 4 base would get +10 to the counter and 1 more drone?

Stealing tech doesnt do much against the AI after the early game though, not sure if it's kyrub's AI changes, but the AI just goes braindead and gets stuck in permanent combat unit mode once the first wars start. 200 turns into the game, no children's creche, just building infinite units and turtling. Stuff like conventional missles with 40+ turns to go. The AI wont even rebuild destroyed HQs. Against humans its more useful exept for the weird "new security interlock" thing on bases after the first tech stolen. Also whats the difference between normal mind control and total thoguht control?

Echelon mirrors : I thought echelons count as solar collectors too? If not, maybe they should....actually how do you even edit the improvement stats? I can find the part where condensers give +50% nutrients but not the one for echelons...

Forests being overpowered just takes variety away IMHO. It would be like if hovertanks were available shortly after rovers. Hydrophonic labs arent really an issue...i think its just the structure of the nutrient system in general. Each citizen needs at least two nutrients, but pre-tree farm, most tiles are only going to give you 1 food. That leaves you with very small bases. In my experience it seems the easiest way to grow bases is to put a condenser on a bonus nutrient square ASAP. Farms on rainy tiles sadly do not do much even with condensers. But this also means that you are looking at a pop 3 or 4 base at best if you settle somewhere with no nutrient bonuses or monoliths in the early game. The next best option is to try and rush gene splicing + foils and get kelp farms going.

I typically only build a handful of hydrophonic sats by the time i get them because my bases are mostly max pop anyway, and the ones that arent have more than enough nutrients from forests. The sats are mainly for new bases i make that dont have tree farms yet. On a related note, are nessus mining stations subject to the clean minerals limit? How do you even see your CM limit anyway (would be great if you could see it).

Naval units in sea bases have no in port penalty? I thought they did when attacked by aircraft, but i might be remembering wrongly.

What if you want to declare war?

Whats the problem with declaring war? Just go ahead and do it, not being able to build a base within 3 tiles of an enemy base isnt going to affect your ability to declare war. Declare war, destroy the base, then build your base wherever you want.

Well, unless you have "confirm odds before attacking" on.  It could be made moddable, but unless other people want it too it won't be a high priority.

Yea i tried turning that option on, but it got really annoying because i would get the popup even if the odds were wildly in my favor, like 100 to 1, or even if i was attacking probe teams that couldnt defend themselves. Is it possible to mod the game so that when you mouse over an enemy unit with one of your units selected, it will display the odds in a popup window? Kind of like what civ 5 does. Its especially annoying for psi combat since the combat strengths are so close and theres no other way to tell what the odds are other than the annoying popup spam.

That gets tricky, though; if he wanted, he could designate the air unit as defender, but you can't attack the air unit, so effectively the air unit is the best unit to defend (since it prevents attack entirely) and so does, so you can't attack.

Yea, this was with the AI though and i dont think the AI uses designated defenders. I had destroyed a base with nerve gas and the left over units in the tile couldnt be attacked as the air units were blocking my needle jets...dont think thats intended.

Also tidal harnesses are fine, i was testing with a old save which apparently had +2 economy so that messed my values up.

I tested planet busters again. I nuked Gaians, and everyone declared war on me as usual. But i still managed to call the council and win via supreme leader vote and all the other factions except gaians agreed to serve me. Not sure if intended...

Some other possible issues :

If you have the planetary transist system and make a new base somewhere with insufficient food, the base will drop to 2 or 1 pop. But it wont grow back to 3 pop after you get enough food for the base (the grow check only happens when you build the secret project for existing bases apparently). You have to grow the base manually.

If you have a base within 3 tiles of a water tile, you can work that tile but cant build stuff like aquafarms.

Discovering the manifold nexus as progenitors will trigger the interlude which shows your faction in control of it, even if you are not actually in control of the nexus. I think it should only trigger once you have it within faction borders?

Caretakers were eradicated, but once i started to build the ascent to trascendence, i got a message saying that they were going to kill me because transcendence is forbidden. Usurpers was eradicated too but did not come back from the dead to call me. Not sure if the use of the scenario editor to eliminate them had anything to do with it.

Specialists do not count as talents for the purpose of golden ages, even if you have high enough psych to turn them into talents. This only becomes an issue once you get habitation domes and you have cities large enough to work all tiles, at which point they are forcibly converted into specialists. At about 30 pop it becomes impossible to get enough talents to have a golden age. Not really an issue as the game is basically over by this point.

Resource bonuses do not grant improved tile yields in fungus even after you research centauri psi or build the manifold harmonics. Not sure if intended. If you have a high enough planet rating you can get fungus that are better than any other tile in the game, but any bonus resources just do not affect it. You can build improvements in fungus after you get centuari psi, but you cant work them till you clear the fungus away (except for boreholes). Is there any point in building, say, a mine under fungus when you cant work it anyway?

If a friendly unit is in the same tile as an enemy unit, you cant attack the enemy unit in that tile (e.g. friendly air unit flying over, friendly unit stationed in enemy base, etc). Also if you have a truce and the AI decides to park their units in your territory to block you, they can choose not to take your call so you cant demand they remove their units from your territory. IIRC you do not get the option to refuse their call if you do the same to them. The problem is that you cant remove their units by any means except to declare war, but that means breaking the truce and your integrity will drop.

A rover can infinitely use a monolith to repair itself until the monolith dissapears. This is a rare scenario but a slow ground unit can keep attacking a rover, the rover disengages, and on his turn, repairs himself to full again, repeating an infinite cycle until the RNG makes the monolith dissapear. To prevent this from happening, i would suggest putting a limit on monoliths so they can only repair the same unit once in X turns.

-Disbanding a supply crawler in a base with shift+d only nets you half the minerals to a secret project, but you get the full amount of minerals if you move the crawler out of the base then back inside to get the popup asking if you want to assign the crawler to the secret project.

Suggetions (not sure whether these can be done) :

-Let players see what the morale of a unit will be before you build it (after all modifiers)

-Allow players to disable pods generating native life forms (the scenario editor only allows you to disable ALL life forms, but not pods generating them). Same goes for fungal blooms.

-Auto plant fungus option (low priority, mainly for late game players with manifold harmonics)

-Allow "duels to the death" for artillery, it should not take several turns to kill a single artillery unit....

[Buster's Uncle]

I believe the Cult gets no interludes because Cha already had some sort of connection to Planet when he was found in the fungus, so the narrative doesn't work for him...

[Yitzi]

Thanks, that makes things a lot clearer. Still impossible to get enough clean minerals limit with all the mineral boositng facilities though, but by then the game is already over so i guess its not a big deal.

Well, you could always try changing the settings so that even with going over the clean minerals amount the worm problems aren't too bad unless you go way over while running Free Market.

but im dissapointed that theres no difference between 2 and 3 planet rating

Changeable in alphax.txt.  Find the line where it says "Minimum PLANET multiplier", change it from 1 to 0, and at 3 PLANET there will be no ecodamage.

(and you cant seem to capture anything late game).

Your ability to capture depends on how many of that unit you already have, so that may be the reason.  Though  is more about building native life than capturing it;  is the one who really benefits most from captures, as it allows her to neglect military without much risk.

Speaking of which, Cha Dawn gets no interludes for some reason?

BUncle's explanation is the right one, I think.

Can the game handle decimals in alphax.txt? E.g. 0.5 for the planet ratings?

No.

While playing cha dawn i noticed a couple of things. I hadnt really used native units before as psi combat seems really random (the combat strengths are relatively similar unless you can stack a lot of modifiers). The mindworms were really powerful early game, but had the downside of eating up tons of minerals in garrisons since you cant give them clean reactors.

Yeah, I'd keep a few in garrisons and most on the offensive (or, for a defensive stance, in fungus where they're support-free until they're needed.)

They also dont seem to scale very well later in the game. Isles are too expensive/slow and sealurks come too late into the game to do much (you get locusts earlier for some reason).

Sealurks are good only where subs are good, i.e. not against the AI.  Isles are somewhat slow, but are fairly solid transports.

Map generator : Is there any way to make the starting locations further away, like a minumum of tiles? How would you even mod something like that anyway?

I'd have to find the algorithm for finding start locations and add a restriction of distance from other factions.  It would be a significant task.

and im not even sure how to mod anything other than the stuff in alphax.txt

Well, there are a few other moddable text files, but if you mean stuff like my mod, you'd have to learn assembly language.  It's a fun language if you're inclined to hardcore programming (and all your i/o work is via pre-existing functions), but if you're not good at math-type stuff it may not be for you.

Still not sure how incite drones work. You said it increases the counter by 10, up to 2.5 the base pop. So for example a pop 4 base would get +10 to the counter and 1 more drone?

Exactly, unless the counter were already more than 0, in which case it would increase to 10.  And a pop 8 base would get +10 to the counter and 1 more drone unless the counter were at least 11, in which case it would increase to 20.

Stealing tech doesnt do much against the AI after the early game though, not sure if it's kyrub's AI changes, but the AI just goes braindead and gets stuck in permanent combat unit mode once the first wars start. 200 turns into the game, no children's creche, just building infinite units and turtling. Stuff like conventional missles with 40+ turns to go. The AI wont even rebuild destroyed HQs.

To test if it's Kyrub's changes, you can see if the same happens with Scient's patch.

Against humans its more useful exept for the weird "new security interlock" thing on bases after the first tech stolen.

Even so, I think that only lasts one turn.

Also whats the difference between normal mind control and total thoguht control?

I think total thought control does not announce who did it (and while that's fairly obvious, does not provoke vendetta.)

Echelon mirrors : I thought echelons count as solar collectors too? If not, maybe they should....actually how do you even edit the improvement stats? I can find the part where condensers give +50% nutrients but not the one for echelons...

Echelon mirrors count as solar collectors except that they are not improved by other echelon mirrors.  And while I am planning to, in the future, enable a constant energy boost to mirrors and solars (in addition to the altitude-based one), there isn't any way to edit them via text files at the moment.

Forests being overpowered just takes variety away IMHO.

Agreed; the question is if they are overpowered, and if so how to fix it.

Each citizen needs at least two nutrients, but pre-tree farm, most tiles are only going to give you 1 food.

Not true; farm+moist will give two, never mind rainy.

In my experience it seems the easiest way to grow bases is to put a condenser on a bonus nutrient square ASAP.

Though modding condensers from +50% to +1 or +0 does reduce that substantially.

Farms on rainy tiles sadly do not do much even with condensers.

They do with Gene Splicing.  Before that, farms on moist, or rainy as-is, is still good for 2 nutrients.

And Gene Splicing comes before tree farms, so there's never a point (until Hybrid Forests, and even then only if you get them before enrichers) where forests produce as much nutrients as farming.

I typically only build a handful of hydrophonic sats by the time i get them because my bases are mostly max pop anyway, and the ones that arent have more than enough nutrients from forests.

If pop boom is made much harder (another goal I have), you can always use more nutrients, for faster growth (until lategame, where there's no max population and more nutrients=more specialists).

On a related note, are nessus mining stations subject to the clean minerals limit?

Nessus mining stations do not contribute to ecodamage, but the multiplier from facilities as applied to their production does.  (So if you have 2 mining stations and a genejack factory, that's +3 minerals, but only the 1 from the factory counts for ecodamage.)

How do you even see your CM limit anyway (would be great if you could see it).

No way except to experiment, or calculate it.  I'm not a fan of having a clean mineral limit anyway, so making it visible is not going to be a high priority.

Naval units in sea bases have no in port penalty? I thought they did when attacked by aircraft, but i might be remembering wrongly.

You are correct.  Which is sort of silly; I've put up a poll to determine whether it's a bug.

Whats the problem with declaring war? Just go ahead and do it, not being able to build a base within 3 tiles of an enemy base isnt going to affect your ability to declare war. Declare war, destroy the base, then build your base wherever you want.

Or build the base without destroying the base (as you said, the limit wouldn't apply when there's war)...

Still, that suggests the best approach would be to make it so that the AI automatically declares war before building the base (and if they wouldn't declare war, they won't build the base.)

Yea i tried turning that option on, but it got really annoying because i would get the popup even if the odds were wildly in my favor, like 100 to 1, or even if i was attacking probe teams that couldnt defend themselves. Is it possible to mod the game so that when you mouse over an enemy unit with one of your units selected, it will display the odds in a popup window? Kind of like what civ 5 does.

It would be doable, I think, but isn't such a high priority, as I feel those popups aren't really that bad.  (Of course, if other people also find them really annoying, then that'll change things.)

Yea, this was with the AI though and i dont think the AI uses designated defenders.

But it does use the best defenders, and an unattackable unit is the best defender there is.

I tested planet busters again. I nuked Gaians, and everyone declared war on me as usual. But i still managed to call the council and win via supreme leader vote and all the other factions except gaians agreed to serve me. Not sure if intended...

Yeah, it takes a lot for other factions to contest a diplomatic victory.

If you have the planetary transist system and make a new base somewhere with insufficient food, the base will drop to 2 or 1 pop. But it wont grow back to 3 pop after you get enough food for the base (the grow check only happens when you build the secret project for existing bases apparently). You have to grow the base manually.

That doesn't seem such an issue to me; while having the planetary transit system give automatic pop boom to bases of size 1 or 2 is a possibility, it's not such high priority.

If you have a base within 3 tiles of a water tile, you can work that tile but cant build stuff like aquafarms.

Also, an interesting mod but not such an important one.

Discovering the manifold nexus as progenitors will trigger the interlude which shows your faction in control of it, even if you are not actually in control of the nexus. I think it should only trigger once you have it within faction borders?

Or change the text of the interlude...

Caretakers were eradicated, but once i started to build the ascent to trascendence, i got a message saying that they were going to kill me because transcendence is forbidden. Usurpers was eradicated too but did not come back from the dead to call me. Not sure if the use of the scenario editor to eliminate them had anything to do with it.

It probably did.

Specialists do not count as talents for the purpose of golden ages, even if you have high enough psych to turn them into talents. This only becomes an issue once you get habitation domes and you have cities large enough to work all tiles, at which point they are forcibly converted into specialists. At about 30 pop it becomes impossible to get enough talents to have a golden age. Not really an issue as the game is basically over by this point.

It was enough of an issue that I made a modding option to deal with it; drone rule number 8 fixes this as well as a number of related issues.

Resource bonuses do not grant improved tile yields in fungus even after you research centauri psi or build the manifold harmonics. Not sure if intended.

Intended or not, this is on my list to fix (as an option), though I'm pinning it to producing at least one of that resource rather than Centauri Psi.

You can build improvements in fungus after you get centuari psi, but you cant work them till you clear the fungus away (except for boreholes). Is there any point in building, say, a mine under fungus when you cant work it anyway?

Hmm...should the improvement replace the fungus, or apply after it?  The latter would be extremely powerful.

If a friendly unit is in the same tile as an enemy unit, you cant attack the enemy unit in that tile (e.g. friendly air unit flying over, friendly unit stationed in enemy base, etc).

Barring scenario editor stuff or some really wonky cases involving pacts and units in neutral territory, this shouldn't happen.

Also if you have a truce and the AI decides to park their units in your territory to block you, they can choose not to take your call so you cant demand they remove their units from your territory. IIRC you do not get the option to refuse their call if you do the same to them. The problem is that you cant remove their units by any means except to declare war, but that means breaking the truce and your integrity will drop.

Demand Withdrawal is available via right-click on the comm menu.

A rover can infinitely use a monolith to repair itself until the monolith dissapears. This is a rare scenario but a slow ground unit can keep attacking a rover, the rover disengages, and on his turn, repairs himself to full again, repeating an infinite cycle until the RNG makes the monolith dissapear. To prevent this from happening, i would suggest putting a limit on monoliths so they can only repair the same unit once in X turns.

Actually, it won't happen infinitely, as once there's a second slow ground unit to help, it can move in to occupy the monolith after the rover disengages.  Your proposal would be fairly difficult if it applies across all monoliths, and far worse if each monolith has its own counter.

-Disbanding a supply crawler in a base with shift+d only nets you half the minerals to a secret project, but you get the full amount of minerals if you move the crawler out of the base then back inside to get the popup asking if you want to assign the crawler to the secret project.

Does spacebar also raise that menu?  Because that would solve the problem easily.

-Let players see what the morale of a unit will be before you build it (after all modifiers)

Definitely doable; how would you suggest it be shown?

-Allow players to disable pods generating native life forms (the scenario editor only allows you to disable ALL life forms, but not pods generating them). Same goes for fungal blooms.

Fungal blooms from ecodamage can be disabled by changing the ecodamage settings to negate all ecodamage (easiest way is to set maximum and minimum PLANET multiplier to 0); disabling pods producing native life forms would be doable (with alphax to control it) but not that easy and not high priority.

-Auto plant fungus option (low priority, mainly for late game players with manifold harmonics)

Automation is essentially AI, which will wait...but if I do AI work, it'll almost certainly be on the list.

-Allow "duels to the death" for artillery, it should not take several turns to kill a single artillery unit....

I thought that when one artillery unit attacks another, it is a duel to the death.  If not...I'm planning a major combat-modding set of options at some point, and something like what you describe will almost certainly be in there.

[Question]

Hmm i just noticed a huge bug. For some reason i cannot take probe actions against enemy units. When i try to move a probe team into the enemy tile, nothing happens and i get no error message. That might explain why the AI never tries to use probe teams on my units, its because they cant either...see save game. I even tried giving myself 999 energy to see if it was a energy reserves issue, but that didnt help.

Also another bug with probe teams is that when you try to move a land probe team into a sea base adjacent to land, you get a message saying that they need amphibious pods to attack the base, but you cant give probe teams amphibious pods....i was stuck on a continent with no coastal bases, surrounded by pirate coastal bases, so i couldnt build any naval probe teams nor could i give my land probe teams amphibious pods to do anything, so i had to start over.

Also probe teams can take clean reactors even though they dont cost any minerals to support, that should probably be removed to avoid confusing newbies. The security interlock thing lasts forever by the way, not just one turn. If you steal tech from one base, you will always get a higher failure rate from that base for the rest of the game.

Native units : I think the biggest problem with these is that while they are decent in the early game, they simply dont scale unlike normal units. You get up to 40 hp with singularity reactors while native units remain the same forever so theres no reason to use them once you get fusion reactors. The entire stack of mindworms will also die if one unit dies, and it is VERY easy to kill a single mind worm...just use a resonance rover/hovertank with empath song.

Echelon mirrors : I think it might be better to make them a uber solar collector instead, like what condensors/boreholes do. You put a condensor down on a nutrient bonus square, voila, 1 tile providing 7 food with a farm. You get 8 minerals from a borehole. But you put a echelon mirror down on a energy tile and its no better than a solar collector, and spamming multiple echelon mirrors is really impractical, unlike building just one condensor/borehole.

Hmm...should the improvement replace the fungus, or apply after it?  The latter would be extremely powerful.

Probably replace, forests do that currently but the other improvements dont for some reason.

Barring scenario editor stuff or some really wonky cases involving pacts and units in neutral territory, this shouldn't happen.

The AI doesnt do it often but i think in MP you could do something like this :

A is pact with B. You are at war with B but not A. A has his units stack with B's units. You cant attack B's units/bases while his units are free to attack yours.

Does spacebar also raise that menu?  Because that would solve the problem easily.

Nope, space bar just skips the crawler's turn. Its also interesting that if you have crawlers on hold in a base that start a secret project, they will wake up and ask you for orders but not give you the popup menu to ask if you want to assign them to the secret project. With artifacts, they will wake up and when you set them to hold again, you get the popup menu asking if you want to link it to the network node/assign to the secret project. This doesnt happen with crawlers for some reason.

Definitely doable; how would you suggest it be shown?

Not sure what can be done UI wise...is there any space to put the text in the unit boxes, in the build screen?

Fungal blooms from ecodamage can be disabled by changing the ecodamage settings to negate all ecodamage (easiest way is to set maximum and minimum PLANET multiplier to 0); disabling pods producing native life forms would be doable (with alphax to control it) but not that easy and not high priority.

I meant the unity pods, its really annoying when most of the pods are just native lifeforms that kill the unit that opened the pod, and the scenario editor doesnt have any settings to prevent pods from spawning lifeforms or fungal blooms.

I thought that when one artillery unit attacks another, it is a duel to the death.  If not...I'm planning a major combat-modding set of options at some point, and something like what you describe will almost certainly be in there.

Nope, artillery does minor damage to each other then they stop shooting. It generally takes 3+ turns to kill an artillery unit 1v1 unless there is a huge tech gap.

[Yitzi]

Hmm i just noticed a huge bug. For some reason i cannot take probe actions against enemy units. When i try to move a probe team into the enemy tile, nothing happens and i get no error message. That might explain why the AI never tries to use probe teams on my units, its because they cant either...see save game. I even tried giving myself 999 energy to see if it was a energy reserves issue, but that didnt help.

That would be because there are two units in that square; a probe team cannot subvert two units at a time, unless they are in a base.  (This is another thing I plan to make mod-changeable.)

Also another bug with probe teams is that when you try to move a land probe team into a sea base adjacent to land, you get a message saying that they need amphibious pods to attack the base, but you cant give probe teams amphibious pods....i was stuck on a continent with no coastal bases, surrounded by pirate coastal bases, so i couldnt build any naval probe teams nor could i give my land probe teams amphibious pods to do anything, so i had to start over.

You could always take out the units with air and then use amphibious military units to capture the base...

Also, if you want to allow probe teams with amphibious pods, you can allow amphibious pods for noncombat units in alphax.txt (of course, that means you can make colony pods or crawlers with amphibious pods, which won't do much good, so there's not much point in making them.)

Also probe teams can take clean reactors even though they dont cost any minerals to support, that should probably be removed to avoid confusing newbies.

Can be done in alphax.txt.

The security interlock thing lasts forever by the way, not just one turn. If you steal tech from one base, you will always get a higher failure rate from that base for the rest of the game.

You appear to be correct.  My mistake.  Ok, so I'll put on my list to give an option to control how long it lasts.  (This will require a substantial amount of work, but the hard part doubles as allowing you to increase the base cap, so it will be a good project for 4.1.  I'll probably increase the unit cap too at that point.)

Native units : I think the biggest problem with these is that while they are decent in the early game, they simply dont scale unlike normal units. You get up to 40 hp with singularity reactors while native units remain the same forever so theres no reason to use them once you get fusion reactors.

I believe that psi combat ignores reactors.

The entire stack of mindworms will also die if one unit dies, and it is VERY easy to kill a single mind worm...just use a resonance rover/hovertank with empath song.

This is only true of native-owned units; faction-owned worms follow the same rules for collateral damage as any other unit.

Echelon mirrors : I think it might be better to make them a uber solar collector instead, like what condensors/boreholes do. You put a condensor down on a nutrient bonus square, voila, 1 tile providing 7 food with a farm. You get 8 minerals from a borehole. But you put a echelon mirror down on a energy tile and its no better than a solar collector, and spamming multiple echelon mirrors is really impractical, unlike building just one condensor/borehole.

It sort of is, except that instead of giving energy itself it gives energy to nearby solar panels.  If you have a bunch of solar panels, changing one of them to a mirror is worth +8 energy.  Of course, if you get more of them, they're weaker, but a mirror at max elevation surrounded by solar is essentially worth 12 energy.

Probably replace, forests do that currently but the other improvements dont for some reason.

That could probably be fixed, and seeing as the current system seems to be a bug, probably should be.  I'll put it on the list.

A is pact with B. You are at war with B but not A. A has his units stack with B's units. You cant attack B's units/bases while his units are free to attack yours.

Yes, if it's not yours that's different.  However, in such a case you could simply tell A to get out of there or you'll declare war and attack anyway.

Does spacebar also raise that menu?  Because that would solve the problem easily.

Nope, space bar just skips the crawler's turn. Its also interesting that if you have crawlers on hold in a base that start a secret project, they will wake up and ask you for orders but not give you the popup menu to ask if you want to assign them to the secret project. With artifacts, they will wake up and when you set them to hold again, you get the popup menu asking if you want to link it to the network node/assign to the secret project. This doesnt happen with crawlers for some reason.

Hmm...Probably would be good to change that.

Definitely doable; how would you suggest it be shown?

Not sure what can be done UI wise...is there any space to put the text in the unit boxes, in the build screen?

You mean, instead of showing "Scout Patrol" it would show "Green Scout Patrol"?  I'm pretty sure that could be done fairly easily.  In terms of options to show it, I think maybe I'll just add it under the existing "enhanced information" feature.

I meant the unity pods, its really annoying when most of the pods are just native lifeforms that kill the unit that opened the pod, and the scenario editor doesnt have any settings to prevent pods from spawning lifeforms or fungal blooms.

Yeah, that wouldn't be so easy and isn't a very high priority, but is a possible future project on request.

Nope, artillery does minor damage to each other then they stop shooting. It generally takes 3+ turns to kill an artillery unit 1v1 unless there is a huge tech gap.

Ok, then it'll be part of the combat rework.

[Lord Avalon]

Also, if you want to allow probe teams with amphibious pods, you can allow amphibious pods for noncombat units in alphax.txt (of course, that means you can make colony pods or crawlers with amphibious pods, which won't do much good, so there's not much point in making them.)

As I play SP mostly on huge maps, I find amphibious colony pods and crawlers can be useful, if you settle a sea base next to a continent, which you find is uninhabited. Of course if you have enough (clean) transports, you could just have one hold in the base, or if you can afford it, rush build one.

[Yitzi]

Also, if you want to allow probe teams with amphibious pods, you can allow amphibious pods for noncombat units in alphax.txt (of course, that means you can make colony pods or crawlers with amphibious pods, which won't do much good, so there's not much point in making them.)

As I play SP mostly on huge maps, I find amphibious colony pods and crawlers can be useful, if you settle a sea base next to a continent, which you find is uninhabited. Of course if you have enough (clean) transports, you could just have one hold in the base, or if you can afford it, rush build one.

True; I forgot that amphibious units can use from a sea base to land without a transport.

Okay, then it definitely makes sense to open up the amphibious ability to all land units, whether combat, noncombat, or terraformer.