Nomination thread: New features/bugfixes for Yitzi's patch

[Buster's Uncle]

I discovered it using the "G" to find bases - when you've filled up the map and the basenames are similar, it can be a pain.

[PvtHudson]

Better late, than never. I'll submit my 2 wishes, sorry if they were already discussed and rejected.
1. Non-lethal air attacks on land units, except probe teams. Attack by air unit cannot reduce land unit health below 10% outdoor, 50% in base or bunker. Ideally, collateral damage to population from Nerve Gas Pods should still apply. Probe teams can be obliterated, inglourious basterds they are! And probably SAM units must fight to the death.
2. Techsteal is only possible from the base with Network Node. If you don't want to be proberaped, sell NN in vulnerable base. Poor old Zak can't do this, which makes perfect sense! Setting should have different values for probe teams and TECHSTEAL faction ability.
Both features are controlled by alphax.txt.

[Yitzi]

Better late, than never.

It's too late to nominate for 3.5, but eventually I plan to do nominations for 3.6 and you can submit them then.

I'll submit my 2 wishes, sorry if they were already discussed and rejected.
1. Non-lethal air attacks on land units, except probe teams. Attack by air unit cannot reduce land unit health below 10% outdoor, 50% in base or bunker. Ideally, collateral damage to population from Nerve Gas Pods should still apply. Probe teams can be obliterated, inglourious basterds they are! And probably SAM units must fight to the death.

You mean a "max damage from air attacks" like what happens for artillery?  That could be done...

2. Techsteal is only possible from the base with Network Node. If you don't want to be proberaped, sell NN in vulnerable base. Poor old Zak can't do this, which makes perfect sense! Setting should have different values for probe teams and TECHSTEAL faction ability.

That's an interesting idea, and should be doable...

Both features are controlled by alphax.txt.

That's a given.

[PvtHudson]

You mean a "max damage from air attacks" like what happens for artillery?

Yes, quite similar to artillery. The idea is to force players use ground troops, cutting chop&drop.

[Geo]

Yitzi, the .exe you released last November (3.5), is that the last version without community requests in it?
And have you an idea of how much work you have to do before your first version with community requests in it is released?

[Yitzi]

Yitzi, the .exe you released last November (3.5), is that the last version without community requests in it?

I don't think I released any since 3.3; 3.4 is almost ready, and will be the last version without community requests in it.  (Things have been a lot busier than I expected over the last few months, hence why it's gone slower than in the past.)

And have you an idea of how much work you have to do before your first version with community requests in it is released?

Usually, each version is about the same amount of work on the patch give or take; it's work on other things that's been holding the last one up.

[Geo]

My mistake. Must have interpreted the "b" as a "5" in your latest release.

Does each new version require a clean install? I'm asking because when I switch an old with a new terranx.exe version, I got alphax.txt error popups in a modded version of your work.

[Yitzi]

My mistake. Must have interpreted the "b" as a "5" in your latest release.

Does each new version require a clean install? I'm asking because when I switch an old with a new terranx.exe version, I got alphax.txt error popups in a modded version of your work.

No clean installs should be required; however, the main version (i.e. the numbers, not the letter) of the alphax file and the terranx file must match.  (If you mod, it must have the same lines in the same order as the alphax file associated with that version.)

[Geo]

Ah, that must be the cause. Thanks for clarifying.

[Vishniac]

Not sure of the right place to post this. Move it if necessary!

I'm playing a SP game with Yitzi 3_4
The drone apparition logic doesn't fit.
Ex: base pop 2 + 1 scout for police + Human Genome Project = 1 talent +1 drone and drone riots !?!
Also sometimes drone riots erupt without change in population, social engineering or number of bases.

Is there anything I should read (like a patch log)? For we use 3_4 in our MP game and I wouldn't like any bad surprises.

[Yitzi]

Not sure of the right place to post this. Move it if necessary!

I'm playing a SP game with Yitzi 3_4
The drone apparition logic doesn't fit.
Ex: base pop 2 + 1 scout for police + Human Genome Project = 1 talent +1 drone and drone riots !?!
Also sometimes drone riots erupt without change in population, social engineering or number of bases.

Is there anything I should read (like a patch log)? For we use 3_4 in our MP game and I wouldn't like any bad surprises.

If you provide a savegame, I can probably figure out what's going on.  What drone control codes are you using?

[Vishniac]

Drone control codes? 

[Mart]

2 things/ideas, small and possibly very large:

Something, that just I thought of, that possibly could be made with not much effort:
- When in base screen, each building item has its minerals displayed as blue boxes. What could be useful, is to quickly view what row length is at a given moment.
It may be obvious for some, or even easy to count, but when the row is like 8,9 minerals or more, it is difficult.
Why is it important?
When rushing, there is a penalty (double cost!) when having less than 10 minerals collected. So when mineral row is 8, I know, that I need to have 2 filled blue boxes in the second row. (8+2), for 9 (9+1) and so on.
Would it be possible to make in easy way something similar like for SUPPORT (...) and PSYCH (...) info added on the buttons there?
Under the mineral rows, there is a label:
TURNS: ...
Would it be possible to add row length info:
... TURNS: ...
[8] TURNS: 3

The second idea, probably for PRACX:
- Widescreen are very common now, but our lower panel is still 1024 pixels wide. Widening it would make it possible to display more info, or in more readable way.
For example, when having large base population, it is so difficult to view all the specialists. Especially, when one wants to finely adjust their specialization.

[Yitzi]

Drone control codes? 

In alphax.txt, the number for the fourth line where it says "Drone rules code".

2 things/ideas, small and possibly very large:

Something, that just I thought of, that possibly could be made with not much effort:
- When in base screen, each building item has its minerals displayed as blue boxes. What could be useful, is to quickly view what row length is at a given moment.
It may be obvious for some, or even easy to count, but when the row is like 8,9 minerals or more, it is difficult.
Why is it important?
When rushing, there is a penalty (double cost!) when having less than 10 minerals collected. So when mineral row is 8, I know, that I need to have 2 filled blue boxes in the second row. (8+2), for 9 (9+1) and so on.
Would it be possible to make in easy way something similar like for SUPPORT (...) and PSYCH (...) info added on the buttons there?
Under the mineral rows, there is a label:
TURNS: ...
Would it be possible to add row length info:
... TURNS: ...
[8] TURNS: 3

It would be doable, but not quite as little effort as you seem to think.  If you nominate it, it'll probably get its votes doubled, but it's not getting in automatically.

[Yitzi]

Ok, Vishniac, there are three things going on with that base:

1. You forgot to account for bureaucracy drones.  You're running Planned, so even as the Gaians you have 0 EFFIC; together with playing on Transcend, that means you get bureaucracy drones after 6 bases on a normal-sized map.  Since you are in fact playing on a small map, it is decreased to 4 bases.  You have far more than 4 bases, and as a result that base ends up with 2 bureaucracy drones.  Add those 2 to the 1 you had normally, and you get 1 normal drone and 1 superdrone.

2. What should happen next is that your police would then remove the normal drone, and the HGP would give you a talent.  There's a bug, removed by my patch, where the superdrone will cancel a talent even though there's enough non-specialist citizens to have them both.  (I know it's a bug because it only happens when there are more superdrones than normal citizens; essentially, it counts superdrones twice when seeing if there are enough citizens.)  With the bug, you'd therefore have one drone and that's it.  Without it, you should have one superdrone and one talent, which should mean no drone riots...

3. However, I must have, at some point, set the drone rules code to 8, which has a number of effects.  One of those effects is that superdrones count double when determining whether drone riots happen, since each superdrone is effectively 2 drones' worth of psych penalties.  Thus, you get drone riots with 1 superdrone and 1 talent.

To disable this, you can open up alphax.txt and change the drone rules code to 0 to play like the original game (but without the bug), or you can leave it at 8 for an experience that many people on this site consider to be a substantial improvement.  (Note, though, that a large part of the improvement comes from a substantial difficulty increase at higher levels, so don't be ashamed to switch to Thinker.)