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

[Vishniac]

Thanks!

I don't want to tinker with alpha.txt, especially when I'm playing MP at the same time.
I'll take that is the 'new normal' drone situation and, moreover, I'll remember that small planet = more drones.

[Mart]

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.

Actually, this is part of the lower panel, and also some additional info, that is moderately important (making some info more visible).

Maybe at some point a larger work on the lower panel would take place, and then it would be addressed.

Drone riots...
I like the drone riots from civ4 so much more. They just make less micromanaging when playing.
If there was some way to mod it into SMACX,  it would be quite interesting new gameplay.
Now when you pay enough attention, you can avoid like all of drone riots, but it is so micromanaging.

[Mart]

I also just noticed, alphax.txt has drone rule -> 8.
from description:

Code: [Select]

8:  If a base is all drones, and some are turned into specialists, an equal number will be turned into
    superdrones.  If a base is all superdrones and it is supposed to have even more drones than that, "phantom
    drones" will be created.  Superdrones and phantom drones do increase the number of talents needed to prevent
    drone riots.  (Thus, there is no way to stop drone riots other than psych, drone control facilities, and
    police.)  If a base is all talents and is supposed to have more talents, it will create "phantom talents",
    allowing a specialist base to still have golden ages.
So as I understand this rule, it has both benefiting of a player action (more golden ages with some conditions)
and making things more difficult (drone riots in bases with specialists).

It gives incentive for assigning psych and building some facilities like holo-theatre, which is often omitted by players.
Yet it makes certain strategy no longer valid - for free market you could station your military in all-specialists bases. Now they will drone-riot. Am I right?

[Yitzi]

Thanks!

I don't want to tinker with alpha.txt, especially when I'm playing MP at the same time.
I'll take that is the 'new normal' drone situation and, moreover, I'll remember that small planet = more drones.

More precisely, more bases=more drones, where it's scaled to map size.  (If you play on a small map but only have 80% as many bases as you'd have on a normal-sized map, then it'll be the same number of drones.)

Actually, this is part of the lower panel, and also some additional info, that is moderately important (making some info more visible).

And how important it is would be determined by a vote, if it's nominated when nominations open again.

Drone riots...
I like the drone riots from civ4 so much more. They just make less micromanaging when playing.
If there was some way to mod it into SMACX,  it would be quite interesting new gameplay.
Now when you pay enough attention, you can avoid like all of drone riots, but it is so micromanaging.

That could also definitely be done, though nominations for the next patch are not yet open.

[Vishniac]

Something that seems strange. Could be improved.

I <ESC> a MP game before entering my password to look at something else on the web and when I resumed to actually play the turn I got the warning about tampering, even though I didn't open the turn previously.
And the next player got the warning about me playing the turn twice.

[Yitzi]

Something that seems strange. Could be improved.

I <ESC> a MP game before entering my password to look at something else on the web and when I resumed to actually play the turn I got the warning about tampering, even though I didn't open the turn previously.
And the next player got the warning about me playing the turn twice.

Hmm...sounds like the "tampering" market is changed even before you enter your password...that sounds like it can be changed (though perhaps at a slight vote penalty), and would count as a bugfix.  Keep it in mind for once I open nominations for 3.6.  (Currently I'm working on a number of improvements to faction bonus parsing; I recently wrote the code to have it give an error message when an invalid bonus key* is given, so that accidentally writing "IMUNITY" will tell you something's wrong instead of ignoring it.)

*Except for a number, since I'm also making it so that things like FREEPROTO will work even without "0" after it, but then I don't want "FREEPROTO, 0" to give an error message...

[Vishniac]

Something that always bothered me and could be improved.
When you have infiltrated factions and you get messages on screen telling "The Morganites and The Hive have signed a Treaty" or "X and Y have agreed to combine their forces against Z", you can't read them because, at the same time, base screens open to talk about things produced, drone riots and so on... and after the message has disappeared.
Why not have it written in "M" like "Forest expands near..." and such, so you can access it later?

[Yitzi]

Something that always bothered me and could be improved.
When you have infiltrated factions and you get messages on screen telling "The Morganites and The Hive have signed a Treaty" or "X and Y have agreed to combine their forces against Z", you can't read them because, at the same time, base screens open to talk about things produced, drone riots and so on... and after the message has disappeared.
Why not have it written in "M" like "Forest expands near..." and such, so you can access it later?

I'd have to figure out the relevant procedures...but it seems it could be done.

[vonbach]

Is there a way to put an "automatic forests" in the game?

[Yitzi]

Is there a way to put an "automatic forests" in the game?

You mean, have formers on automate make forests?  Seems it should be doable...though that's AI, which is one of the areas where I'd have to do substantially more work to learn what's going on.

[PvtHudson]

Something that always bothered me and could be improved.
When you have infiltrated factions and you get messages on screen telling "The Morganites and The Hive have signed a Treaty" or "X and Y have agreed to combine their forces against Z", you can't read them because, at the same time, base screens open to talk about things produced, drone riots and so on... and after the message has disappeared.
Why not have it written in "M" like "Forest expands near..." and such, so you can access it later?

+1.
Something not so easy: borderpushes always infuriate me to no end. It would be great to have the option to claim land around newly established base forever. May be not that long distance as it is now in the absence of neighbors, just say base radius+1. But the claimed land (and sea) will change hands only together with the base. By the way, why sea borders are closer than land ones? The option to control that will be welcomed too. Can make AI sea bases spam less annoying.

[Yitzi]

Thanks!

I don't want to tinker with alpha.txt, especially when I'm playing MP at the same time.
I'll take that is the 'new normal' drone situation and, moreover, I'll remember that small planet = more drones.

Actually, some MP games play with that rule, some play without it; you could just ask them.  Since it does affect gameplay, it's important that everybody be on the same page.

Something not so easy: borderpushes always infuriate me to no end. It would be great to have the option to claim land around newly established base forever. May be not that long distance as it is now in the absence of neighbors, just say base radius+1. But the claimed land (and sea) will change hands only together with the base.

So that there's an "inertial" radius, such that anything in that radius of one of your bases can't be transferred even if someone else has a closer base?

That should be doable.  However, barring moderately large changes, it would not be claimed by a single base, but rather by the faction...so if you then built another base within that distance of the square, you'd keep it even if the first base was conquered.

By the way, why sea borders are closer than land ones? The option to control that will be welcomed too. Can make AI sea bases spam less annoying.

That could definitely be done.

[PvtHudson]

Am I the only one dissatisfied with the players placement on the map? How many times did you end on a medium-sized island together with Yang and Marr? I have a feeling the game uses close placement of AI players as a measure to increase difficulty, at least on Transcend. Some control over that would be wonderful.

[Yitzi]

Am I the only one dissatisfied with the players placement on the map? How many times did you end on a medium-sized island together with Yang and Marr? I have a feeling the game uses close placement of AI players as a measure to increase difficulty, at least on Transcend. Some control over that would be wonderful.

Nomination is closed at the moment, but when it opens, "figuring out the faction placement algorithm" is definitely a possibility.

[mnk]

I'd like to ask what would you think about (and how hard would it be to implement) save grouping ?

I'm not really a gamer. If I play, I rely heavily on saving often.
Yet I'm not good with coming up with names, so tend to go with game proposed name whenever I can.

In AC, this is a problem, as with the default name containing only leader's name and year, it gets quite tedious if I want to roll back a few (dozen) turns, as it's hard to tell then if the save came from new strand or the old one.

So, how hard would it be to and something like "Create a new directory" button to the save dialog and making the game remember the last directory it saved to ?

PS: also, how many of the fixes described in that scient dump posted a bit over 6 months ago (here) are yet to be implemented in your patch ? That is, is there anything in that dump, that's not fixed by your patch (with either similar or different approach) ?
I've looked briefly on those files, but most I could figure out (as asm hacks are beyond me and I don't know enough about smax internals to tell much about alpha.txt (and similar) changes), that in the music files some of the metadata was (IMHO needlessly) dropped and the program used added its own markings. As such, I've just reconverted those files to keep the old data.