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

[DrazharLn]

Fixing the faction graphics bug would be really nice. I'll support it in the voting. It affected the Games of the Month as well, back when we* were still making those. I think fixing it would encourage more people to play PBEM/MP games and also the making of new scenarios.

* (mostly the rest of the team, I think I only ever contributed some research, discussion and some tiny fiction fragment)

[Buster's Uncle]

*It's never too late, you know - I never quit; I just ran out of scenario-creator guys.

[Yitzi]

a pet peeve of mine:

if I have set a unit to 'fully automate', and it is withdrawn from enemy territory, it stops being fully automated. 
I'd love to see some persistence in automation.

Nomination accepted, although since you might often want automation to stop due to big changes like that, it'd have to be done as an option, and I doubt it'll get many votes.

The MP faction graphics bug needs fixing -not least so sisko's sig will stop shouting.

Nomination accepted.

[Vidsek]

  How long will nominations be open?    It might take me a few days (couple weeks?) to sort through my ideas and discard the stupid ones.....

[Yitzi]

  How long will nominations be open?    It might take me a few days (couple weeks?) to sort through my ideas and discard the stupid ones.....

Until I get about halfway to being ready to release patch 3.5; I'm not sure yet how long that'll be.  If you want, you can ask for a particular amount of time warning.

[vonbach]

Is there a way to add a PSI defense only?

[PvtHudson]

I can only repeat myself from 3.5's nomination thread:
1. Non-finishing air attacks on land units, except probe teams. Attack by air unit cannot reduce land unit's 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 land units must fight to the death.
2. Techsteal and Kill Prominent Researcher is only possible against 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.

[gwillybj]

Is there a way to add a PSI defense only?

Yes: Research Eudaimonia and you will have access to Psi Defense.

[DrazharLn]

Yitzi, have you incorporated scient's v2 patch into your work? Do you have any plans to?

Feature nomination: Toggle spawning of fungal towers

This was the main block (as far I remember) for the SMAC within SMAX project. It was suggested to set the chassis for the tower to needlejet or missile as a workaround, but I seem to remember testing that and finding it didn't work.

There might have been a problem with other native life too, but I can't remember and can't test for a little while (away from windows machine).

Second feature nomination: Toggle spawning of any native life unit.

[Yitzi]

I can only repeat myself from 3.5's nomination thread:
1. Non-finishing air attacks on land units, except probe teams. Attack by air unit cannot reduce land unit's 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 land units must fight to the death.

So similar rules as artillery?  Nominated.

2. Techsteal and Kill Prominent Researcher is only possible against 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.

Nomination accepted.

Yitzi, have you incorporated scient's v2 patch into your work? Do you have any plans to?

I'm planning to add most of it piece by piece over several patch versions.

Feature nomination: Toggle spawning of fungal towers

Already completed as of 3.4.  Subtract 32 from the expansion features code (so 223 if you want to be SMAX-like in every other way, 222 if you want the SMAC intro video as well, and 0 if you want to be SMAC-like in every way except the tech tree and additional factions*), and fungal towers should no longer spawn.

*Which can then be disabled elsewhere.

There might have been a problem with other native life too, but I can't remember and can't test for a little while (away from windows machine).

There probably were; spore launchers are hardcoded to be artillery IIRC.  Subtracting 16 from the expansion features code will prevent them (and sealurks) from being spawned as native-owned, while setting the prerequisite to Disable will prevent them from being built by factions.

Second feature nomination: Toggle spawning of any native life unit.

Do you still want to nominate that given that the SMAX-only ones can be disabled (though sealurks and spores cannot be disabled individually)?  If so, should they be replaced by non-disabled ones (where relevant, e.g. spores replace worms and vice versa) or not at all?

[DrazharLn]

I retract both of my nominations. Thank you very much for your work! I've been away a lot and missed these (somehwhat) recent developments.

[DrazharLn]

Nominate feature: Set some alphax custom units to be available only to AI players.

[Buster's Uncle]

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

[Yitzi]

Nominate feature: Set some alphax custom units to be available only to AI players.

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?

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?

[DrazharLn]

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.