Nomination thread: New features and bugfixes for Yitzi's patch 3.6

[Yitzi]

Just so you know; 3.5 will allow custom units to be made unavailable and then have a faction bonus making them available again; do you still particularly want the AI-only ones?

Yes please. It would allow us to just dump a load of special units into alphax.txt to improve the AI without affecting human experience.

Ok, nominated.

[Buster's Uncle]

Has anything ever been done with user-definable interlude triggers?

No; however, that is so broad that it can't be done comprehensively without a parsing procedure, which is a lot of work and would probably hurt performance and isn't worth doing.  However, specific triggers (or specific types of triggers such as "on learning a tech" or "on finishing a project") would probably be doable, though it'd still be a bit tricky if it needs to avoid repeats or otherwise store information.  Did you have anything specific in mind?

I'm on the creative end of GotMs, so it's tough for me to go into specifics from a conversation that mostly took place 5.5 years ago on another site in a private folder, but one I think could be made to serve most scenario needs is an option to place a location trigger or several on the map - maybe also specific objects/units, like an alien artifact that has to be escorted back to base x.

The problem we faced when we were trying to figure out how to work story into interludes in early 2010 was that altering the text of existing interludes is easy, but figuring out how to set things up to trigger in the right order made it unworkable.  If we had more options, it should make all the difference.  "on learning a tech" or "on finishing a project" would be good, too.

(I also have a few other related things on the wish-list, like an option to have multi-page interludes -there's one or two already in the game- and ability to insert art; but mainly, more interlude trigger options.)

sisko can probably elaborate on all this...

[Yitzi]

Has anything ever been done with user-definable interlude triggers?

No; however, that is so broad that it can't be done comprehensively without a parsing procedure, which is a lot of work and would probably hurt performance and isn't worth doing.  However, specific triggers (or specific types of triggers such as "on learning a tech" or "on finishing a project") would probably be doable, though it'd still be a bit tricky if it needs to avoid repeats or otherwise store information.  Did you have anything specific in mind?

I'm on the creative end of GotMs, so it's tough for me to go into specifics from a conversation that mostly took place 5.5 years ago on another site in a private folder, but one I think could be made to serve most scenario needs is an option to place a location trigger or several on the map - maybe also specific objects/units, like an alien artifact that has to be escorted back to base x.

The problem we faced when we were trying to figure out how to work story into interludes in early 2010 was that altering the text of existing interludes is easy, but figuring out how to set things up to trigger in the right order made it unworkable.  If we had more options, it should make all the difference.  "on learning a tech" or "on finishing a project" would be good, too.

(I also have a few other related things on the wish-list, like an option to have multi-page interludes -there's one or two already in the game- and ability to insert art; but mainly, more interlude trigger options.)

sisko can probably elaborate on all this...

When there's a more specific request that you'd like to nominate, I can assign it a difficulty (location triggers shouldn't be too hard if you don't might each such location counting toward the maximum of 64 landmarks, and stuff involving units would be significantly harder but should be doable), but without a specific request it's just to broad to even know what I would be doing.

[Buster's Uncle]

Location triggers, then.

[Yitzi]

Location triggers, then.

Ok, nomination accepted.  I take it that it is ok if they count toward the landmarks limit?

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.  No problem.

[Nexii]

I nominate for features:
- A flag to give PSI defender a -/+% modifier by PLANET SE (like attacking already has)
In order to make native life more relevant/usable I've been playing with 2:1 A/D ratio on PSI.  However this makes PSI units very weak on defense, with high PLANET they should have a little more chance.  It's tricky because alien life also has to be considered...I know non-native defenders are also an option.
- Not sure if it's a bug but N from condensors are treated as bonus and thus exempt from N cap.
- More flags on tech/facilities so that FOP gains on terrain other than fungus can be added.  Might be a lot of work for what it's worth, but it has possibilities I think.

[Yitzi]

I nominate for features:
- A flag to give PSI defender a -/+% modifier by PLANET SE (like attacking already has)
In order to make native life more relevant/usable I've been playing with 2:1 A/D ratio on PSI.  However this makes PSI units very weak on defense, with high PLANET they should have a little more chance.  It's tricky because alien life also has to be considered...I know non-native defenders are also an option.
- Not sure if it's a bug but N from condensors are treated as bonus and thus exempt from N cap.
- More flags on tech/facilities so that FOP gains on terrain other than fungus can be added.  Might be a lot of work for what it's worth, but it has possibilities I think.

The second one isn't a bug, so you can only nominate two:
-The flag for Psi defense could definitely be done and wouldn't even be that difficult.
-Removing the cap exemption for nutrients would also be very easy.
-The extra flags on tech would be doable, but would require describing exactly what effect each flag should have.  Flags on facilities would require redoing facility setup to allow flags, a huge (but allowing a lot of possibilities) project.  Changing the quantity of existing bonuses, or tacking on bonuses to specific facilities, would be a lot easier.

[Nexii]

Hmm ok based on these I would actually change this a little,  Picking two items for native life since I think it's pretty core to the theme of the game.
1) PSI defense by PLANET as a combat variable
2) An option to flatten the curve of amount alien life per fungal pop somehow.  Not sure if any others are playing with zero clean minerals but what I find happens is that ecodamage is irrelevant early on, and later on its borderline unmanageable even with picking Green.  The game should be this way a bit but it's too extreme like the tech curve issues.  I guess there would be two approaches - TECH removed from ecodamage formula or fungal pop size scaling with ecodamage (and ecodamage chance as more of a constant / or a cap on pops per turn...I have to think on this a bit more)

[Yitzi]

Hmm ok based on these I would actually change this a little,  Picking two items for native life since I think it's pretty core to the theme of the game.
1) PSI defense by PLANET as a combat variable

Nominated.

2) An option to flatten the curve of amount alien life per fungal pop somehow.  Not sure if any others are playing with zero clean minerals but what I find happens is that ecodamage is irrelevant early on, and later on its borderline unmanageable even with picking Green.  The game should be this way a bit but it's too extreme like the tech curve issues.  I guess there would be two approaches - TECH removed from ecodamage formula or fungal pop size scaling with ecodamage (and ecodamage chance as more of a constant / or a cap on pops per turn...I have to think on this a bit more)

Actually, both of those are on the to-do list for 3.5 (I added them myself).  So you can nominate something else instead.

[Nexii]

Ok I'll go with something that might be relatively simple?
- a flag to modify the PLANET rating of alien life (0 by default)
This could be changed to make the alien life itself more or less deadly as a sort of difficulty slider (I think the game puts in some hidden modifiers based on turns, difficulty, vs base already that aren't shown on the combat display)
Do you consider AI not polluting a bug?

[Yitzi]

Ok I'll go with something that might be relatively simple?
- a flag to modify the PLANET rating of alien life (0 by default)
This could be changed to make the alien life itself more or less deadly as a sort of difficulty slider (I think the game puts in some hidden modifiers based on turns, difficulty, vs base already that aren't shown on the combat display)

Ok, nominated.

Do you consider AI not polluting a bug?

You have a savegame where it should pollute but doesn't?

[Nexii]

Actually I tested this, the AI just gets a large reduction to ecodamage (I got around 18% ecodamage that a human player would have on Transcend)
See attached game you can swap Firaxians from Human/AI to get different ecodamage.  With my settings it's 13/69 but it will differ with the defaults I'm sure.  Could be something like 1/5 if both of those are rounded down

But I wasn't able to make the AI trigger a fungal pop in 20 turns.  May have to test this more.  Interestingly the AI was prioritizing Green and Ecodamage facilities when I made this base and maxed out tech for them.  Had never seen that before.

[Yitzi]

Yeah, that's not a bug; the ecodamage formula says that DIFFICULTY is 3 except on the two highest difficulty levels, but in fact this is only for human players.  AI has DIFFICULTY of 2 on Thinker and 1 on Transcend.

Basically, on Thinker human players get +2/3 to ecodamage and AI gets -1/3, and on Transcend it's +2/3 and -2/3.

[Nexii]

Good to know.  I used Free Drones instead and ran the game about 50 turns.  What I saw was that fungus was popping around the AI base however never once did native life spawn - even after a dozen or more pops.  I know if a human player had that many you would be getting significant amounts of native life.

Another thing I saw was that the roaming native life seems to scale up with the highest player's TECH (not the fungal pops).  Was seeing Locusts of Chiron wandering around in YR 2102.  This might be a known fact also.

I may have also discovered a bug while playing around with this.  It seems the AI can trigger a second (or more) Global Energy Market victory before the current one has run its 20 turns.  I think this will set back the timer to 20 turns from the current turn.