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

[Nevill]

Either way, having exact values for each PROBE setting might be a bit much; better to just set the "X points, and each turn subtracts Y points minus Z per point of PROBE" approach.

Sure, that should do it.

The amount of the effect could be altered; however, that is not the major limiting factor.

If I understood the thread correctly, increasing the "turns until assimilation" value one gets from inciting Drone Riots and playing with drone control code of 16+ should do it. In that case we just need an option to set the value manually.

However, I wondered if this couldn't have been made more useful with vanilla rules by moving the effect from Base Drones to Pacifist Drones/Police, making it harder to block.

[Yitzi]

Either way, having exact values for each PROBE setting might be a bit much; better to just set the "X points, and each turn subtracts Y points minus Z per point of PROBE" approach.

Sure, that should do it.

The amount of the effect could be altered; however, that is not the major limiting factor.

If I understood the thread correctly, increasing the "turns until assimilation" value one gets from inciting Drone Riots and playing with drone control code of 16+ should do it.

Only up to a point, since "drones from conquered base" is capped at (BaseSize + Difficulty - 2) ÷ 4.

In that case we just need an option to set the value manually.

If that's what you want to nominate, sure.

However, I wondered if this couldn't have been made more useful with vanilla rules by moving the effect from Base Drones to Pacifist Drones/Police, making it harder to block.

The problem is that pacifist drones are normally calculated on a turn-by-turn basis, so unless you want it to be non-persistent (apply only on the turn of the probe team action), that would be somewhat tricky to implement.  (You can still nominate it if you'd like, though.)

[Vidsek]

  Some questions for Yitsi so I can make a better decision on what to nominate: how easy/doable are these (and for the rest of you, would you like them too, or not care?)

1) Unity pods: currently the scenario editor allows some choices on what does or does not pop out of them.  I would like total control of their contents: items, events, and the chance of each.
If this was only in the scenario editor, I'd be happy enough.
If it could be done for auto-generated games as well, even better.  (Tho that would, I guess, mean even more lines and choices in alphax...not sure it that would be a good thing...).

2) A redo of the Unit Design window to eliminate all the scrolling back and forth.
3)Stop the AI from auto-designing units when you get a better reactor.  Or have a toggle to disable that annoyance.

4) Territorial boundries in water areas: A) From LAND bases: need to go further - in RL on earth ALL countries are
  allowed control of their near-coastal waters (the 12 Mile Limit, etc.)  So: any water tiles w/n the (8 tile or whatever)
  area from a land base should be checked for inclusion in it's territory.  Limits: Distance from the shoreline (this
  could be one, or my preference, up to two tiles. This would also give ownership of small lakes inside the boundary.
  B) OCEAN bases: Same as current but one or two tiles farther radius from the base.  Land w/n a waterbase's territorial
  area: The base should have a chance to own small islands and some shoreline.  Perhaps make it's claim secondary to
  any land base, and in any case not extending past the immediate shoreline tiles (one, or at most, two tiles inland).

5) Ability to adjust the frequency and duration of communication interruptions (solar flares).

6) Ability to restrict where sea bases can be placed: ie.: any water; not over trenches; only over shelf.
    Being able to restrict them by water depth (eg. only over shelf of x meters depth or less) would be even more
    interesting, but is probably over-kill.....

7) When you turn over a base to an ally, military units auto-move to the nearest base of their faction...what happens to
 formers and other NON-military owned by the base given away?  Do they go to the ally or just poof?  I can't seem to
 find them anywhere...  If they disappear, that's a bug.

Enough for now     Most of the suggestions/nominations from other folks seem excellent to me.  The more basic design aspects of the game (UI and such) tend to get my own attention more often.  Especially the annoying or tedious ones and ones that limit the game's possibilities and replay value.

[Yitzi]

  Some questions for Yitsi so I can make a better decision on what to nominate: how easy/doable are these (and for the rest of you, would you like them too, or not care?)

1) Unity pods: currently the scenario editor allows some choices on what does or does not pop out of them.  I would like total control of their contents: items, events, and the chance of each.
If this was only in the scenario editor, I'd be happy enough.

If by "total control" you mean "anything you can think of can be added without more .exe modding", that is as close to impossible as it's likely to get.

But if you just want to be able to add specific types of events and units, that would likely be doable (with some limited control up to the modder), depending on what you want to add.

Even so, doing it through the scenario editor would be fairly difficult, but through a text file would be doable.

If it could be done for auto-generated games as well, even better.  (Tho that would, I guess, mean even more lines and choices in alphax...not sure it that would be a good thing...).

There's a reason that I do things that way; it's a lot easier than adding it to a scenario.

Though something this big would probably be better done by its own goody.txt.

2) A redo of the Unit Design window to eliminate all the scrolling back and forth.

A complete redesign would be fairly tricky, but to simply stay where you were when deleting a unit would probably be quite feasible.

3)Stop the AI from auto-designing units when you get a better reactor.  Or have a toggle to disable that annoyance.

Probably not that difficult, but as an automatic stop is not going to happen (since some people might want it), and it's not likely to get that much support in any case, since someone who dislikes reactor-based auto-designs will probably usually dislike all auto-designs and therefore just use the existing option to turn off auto-designs.

4) Territorial boundries in water areas: A) From LAND bases: need to go further - in RL on earth ALL countries are
  allowed control of their near-coastal waters (the 12 Mile Limit, etc.)  So: any water tiles w/n the (8 tile or whatever)
  area from a land base should be checked for inclusion in it's territory.  Limits: Distance from the shoreline (this
  could be one, or my preference, up to two tiles. This would also give ownership of small lakes inside the boundary.
  B) OCEAN bases: Same as current but one or two tiles farther radius from the base.  Land w/n a waterbase's territorial
  area: The base should have a chance to own small islands and some shoreline.  Perhaps make it's claim secondary to
  any land base, and in any case not extending past the immediate shoreline tiles (one, or at most, two tiles inland).

Changing the rules of territory would definitely be doable.

5) Ability to adjust the frequency and duration of communication interruptions (solar flares).

Fairly easy.

6) Ability to restrict where sea bases can be placed: ie.: any water; not over trenches; only over shelf.
    Being able to restrict them by water depth (eg. only over shelf of x meters depth or less) would be even more
    interesting, but is probably over-kill.....

Definitely could be done (the latter would only be a bit harder than the former), though you'd have to decide if the Pirates would be immune after learning Advanced Ecological Engineering.

7) When you turn over a base to an ally, military units auto-move to the nearest base of their faction...what happens to
 formers and other NON-military owned by the base given away?  Do they go to the ally or just poof?  I can't seem to
 find them anywhere...  If they disappear, that's a bug.

You can certainly nominate it for investigation and fixing if necessary.

[Buster's Uncle]

There's a post on CFC wishing there was a way to turn off auto-upgrades when new reactor tech is discovered.

I wouldn't mind never having to delete -a bunch of new default units from the select screen each time- ever again...

[Yitzi]

There's a post on CFC wishing there was a way to turn off auto-upgrades when new reactor tech is discovered.

But he wants auto-designed units otherwise?

Or do reactor auto-upgrades happen even without when auto-design is off?  Because if so, that makes the request a lot more significant, and I could certainly do it.

I wouldn't mind never having to delete -a bunch of new default units from the select screen each time- ever again...

Can't that be accomplished just by turning off autodesign?

[Buster's Uncle]

Nope.  I totally turned autodesign off 18 years ago - which is why I mind the reactor default upgrades cluttering my unit build select screen.  I'll take care of the upgrades myself, thanks, AC.

There's a related exploit, BTW, where I can get a chassis upgrade on one class of unit, if I'm clever, and which shouldn't be possible at all.  I'm sure I've written it up before in this folder w/ screenies - a bunch of tractor-chassis formers turn hovertank and get a free extra move(s) that turn.

Is it possible to get the game to NOT create new designs whenever a new reactor becomes available? For one thing in simple basic designs the higher reactor raises the cost, and second I'm a little bit anal about my designs. It's a pain to go in and obsolete all the new designs I don't want and then retire them to clear the slots. Thanks for any help, and it's hard to believe I ever stopped playing this game!!!

I don't know of any way to stop this. Just before researching a new reactor, I try to upgrade outdated units and obsolete designs that aren't being used. Doing so reduces the number of predesigned new units.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=551692

[Yitzi]

Ok, so then that can definitely be nominated, as it should be quite possible.  If you start a poll on the matter, we can even see whether people consider it a bug that it happens even with autodesign disabled, and if so it would be able to be done as a bugfix instead.

[Buster's Uncle]

Be my guest; I don't start polls and I don't understand your nomination process.

[Eadee]

@ Vidsek
I like your points 4) and 5) . I think you should nominate them.

[Nevill]

Yitzi, did you take a look at the artillery bombardment code? There is a whole assortment of bugs involving it:

- Artillery units can not use their 'Empath Song' special ability, even for artillery duels with Spore Launchers. In fact, they can't use most of their abilities, such as Dissociative Wave and Soporific Gas Pods. Nerve Gas Pods work fine for arty duels, though not for bombardment. May be connected to:
- Spore launchers don't benefit from factional combat bonuses (both offensive and defensive) and Gaian psi bonuses when engaged in an artillery duel, at least with other spore launchers.
- Units get defense bonuses against artillery in open ground (flat/rolling tiles), rocky tiles, and fungus tiles. Pretty much the only tiles that do not get the bonus are forests and bases. Not sure if intended. Previously discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7420
- Land-based artillery gets +50% defensive bonus against naval units which is not documented anywhere.
- The ship in shallow water gets an altitude bonus against a ship in a trench. scient wanted to fix it, but apparently didn't?
- Land/sea artillery duels last only one round. Discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7448
- "If you bombard a square when an enemy's artillery unit is nearby, you are counter-attacked, and, having spent 100% of your turn, are effectively dead due to -100% hasty penalty. Wasn't the duel supposed to happen before you bombard a square and spend your turn? Second, sometimes this happens even with friendlies! You can almost certainly reproduce it with two ships near each other bombarding some tile not far away. More often than not it will result in one of the ships being sunk. Third, sometimes you don't even need another ship as even one of them can initiate a duel with itself trying to bombard a tile! I still haven't figured the exact conditions, though." Discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7421 Example can be found here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7528
- Wild spore launchers often attack each other. May be due to the above bug with friendlies dueling friendlies.
- Artillery may fire from a sea transport via right-click abuse. Briefly discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7486
-  Normally, if your artillery unit does not have Air Superiority ability, it can't damage Needlejets. If, however, there happens to be an arty unit in the stack under a Needlejet unit, and it loses a duel to yours, all the units in the stack, *including* the Needlejets, will be injured from collateral damage. This happens regardless of whether your arty has Air Superiority or not.
- Sometimes when you engage units in an artillery duel, your units next to the attacking one may lose a turn. Found by accident in this thread, complete with a save file: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7197

I nominate this as a Total Rewrite of Artillery Duel logic.

IMO, we need to establish:
- Whether arty units can have special abilities like Nerve Gas pods & Soporific pods. If yes, how they should be working. My opinion is that they should apply in all combat encounters.
- Which bonuses and penalties should apply. My opinion is that the bonuses from Rocky terrain and Fungus should be the only ones affecting the outcome. The ones in open ground and shallow water (clearly a bug), or against 'naval guns' need not apply, but that is quite subjective. The best way would be to let the players set values for different conditions themselves, if possible.
- Whether or not one-round combat between land and sea arty is a bug. (My opinion is - yes)
- Whether or not using artillery from a transport is a bug (this one needs fixing either way, depending on the decision - there are contradictions in game logic. My opinion is that it should be allowed and that the restriction should be lifted).
- Whether or not using artillery should have a 'hasty bonus' and how it should apply. (My opinion is - yes, as long as the one below gets sorted out)
- Whether or not using artillery should be able to protect nearby tiles from bombardment. (My opinion is - yes, but it should lead to the duel before the bombardment of the tile commences, rather than after)
- Fix the bug with arty attacking friendlies or themselves.
- Fix the bug with being able to damage Needlejets via collateral damage.

[Yitzi]

Yitzi, did you take a look at the artillery bombardment code?

No, though some of these are in the "bonuses" code, which I did look at.  Often the real issue, though, is determining what's a bug and what's a feature.  (Where it is clearly a bug, feel free to nominate up to two for the vote on what to fix.)

- Artillery units can not use their 'Empath Song' special ability, even for artillery duels with Spore Launchers.

I don't know if this is a bug, or a feature like the non-application to artillery of many other bonuses.

In fact, they can't use most of their abilities, such as Dissociative Wave and Soporific Gas Pods.

Actually, those both do seem to work; I tried Dissociative Wave against ECM and it worked fine, and Soporific Gas Pods worked fine as well.

Nerve Gas Pods work fine for arty duels, though not for bombardment.

But it does ask about it...feel free to nominate it for a fix.

- Spore launchers don't benefit from factional combat bonuses (both offensive and defensive) and Gaian psi bonuses when engaged in an artillery duel, at least with other spore launchers.

This does not seem to be the case.

- Units get defense bonuses against artillery in open ground (flat/rolling tiles), rocky tiles, and fungus tiles. Pretty much the only tiles that do not get the bonus are forests and bases. Not sure if intended.

Me either.  Get a consensus, and I can implement whatever is decided.

- Land-based artillery gets +50% defensive bonus against naval units which is not documented anywhere.

True.

- The ship in shallow water gets an altitude bonus against a ship in a trench. scient wanted to fix it, but apparently didn't?

I also wanted to fix it, and did.

- Land/sea artillery duels last only one round. Discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7448

More than one round, but not until one is dead.  I'm not so sure that's a bug, so I'm not fixing it (except as a moddable feature) without a consensus.

- "If you bombard a square when an enemy's artillery unit is nearby, you are counter-attacked, and, having spent 100% of your turn, are effectively dead due to -100% hasty penalty. Wasn't the duel supposed to happen before you bombard a square and spend your turn? Second, sometimes this happens even with friendlies! You can almost certainly reproduce it with two ships near each other bombarding some tile not far away. More often than not it will result in one of the ships being sunk. Third, sometimes you don't even need another ship as even one of them can initiate a duel with itself trying to bombard a tile! I still haven't figured the exact conditions, though." Discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7421 Example can be found here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7528

I'm not sure either, but if you can provide a savegame to reproduce the 100% penalty, that would be good.

- Wild spore launchers often attack each other. May be due to the above bug with friendlies dueling friendlies.

Likely, but I think I fixed it; let me know if it shows up in patch version 3.4 or later.

- Artillery may fire from a sea transport via right-click abuse. Briefly discussed here: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7486

Sounds like a bug; feel free to nominate it.

-  Normally, if your artillery unit does not have Air Superiority ability, it can't damage Needlejets. If, however, there happens to be an arty unit in the stack under a Needlejet unit, and it loses a duel to yours, all the units in the stack, *including* the Needlejets, will be injured from collateral damage. This happens regardless of whether your arty has Air Superiority or not.

A bit strange, but needlejet-containing stacks are weird anyway, as is collateral damage.  Proposed rule changes can be nominated as moddable features, or you can try to get a consensus that it's a bug and should be fixed.

I nominate this as a Total Rewrite of Artillery Duel logic.

Total rewrites can't be done without first examining the relevant code and providing it before deciding what to rewrite.  Even that wouldn't affect what bonuses and penalties apply (except for maybe nerve gas, since that's not in the normal bonuses/penalties code).

Total rewrites are also a big deal if they're not bugfixes, as the original needs to be present as well so that modders can decide which they want.

IMO, we need to establish:
- Whether arty units can have special abilities like Nerve Gas pods & Soporific pods. If yes, how they should be working. My opinion is that they should apply in all combat encounters.
- Which bonuses and penalties should apply. My opinion is that the bonuses from Rocky terrain and Fungus should be the only ones affecting the outcome. The ones in open ground and shallow water (clearly a bug), or against 'naval guns' need not apply, but that is quite subjective. The best way would be to let the players set values for different conditions themselves, if possible.
- Whether or not one-round combat between land and sea arty is a bug. (My opinion is - yes)
- Whether or not using artillery from a transport is a bug (this one needs fixing either way, depending on the decision - there are contradictions in game logic. My opinion is that it should be allowed and that the restriction should be lifted).
- Whether or not using artillery should have a 'hasty bonus' and how it should apply. (My opinion is - yes, as long as the one below gets sorted out)
- Whether or not using artillery should be able to protect nearby tiles from bombardment. (My opinion is - yes, but it should lead to the duel before the bombardment of the tile commences, rather than after)
- Fix the bug with arty attacking friendlies or themselves.
- Fix the bug with being able to damage Needlejets via collateral damage.

Get a consensus regarding anything you want fixed as a bugfix, and decide what you want changeable independently of what for anything else.

[Vidsek]

Still not a nomination post, but close.

 @Yitzi: I overstated what I wanted with the Unity Pods.  Nothing new, just control over what already exists.

Unity Pods have an existing list of what can happen when you open one.  Some, but not all, of these can be disabled in the Scenario Editor (no vehicles, no Monoliths, etc.).  Many cannot be disabled, and the chance of each cannot be modified.

I would like us to be able to choose from that list and for each item/event set the chance of it occuring (including no chance at all).
The point would be to make it possible to fit the pods into the gameplay in ways other than just wild cards (and restrict some of the illogical or just plain annoying events).

I do not have any idea of how the game AI sets the chances, it doesn't seem completely random in my tests.  Besides there being a different set of choices for sea tiles vs. land ones, there seem to be some other rules involved which I haven't been able to puzzle out.
Finding where all this is located in the code, how it works, and figuring the best way to change it may well become too much time spent when there is so much else to do.

I'll save it for another update.

[Vidsek]

My nominations:

1) Territorial Boundary adjustments.  (mostly larger sea, and more overlap at shorelines)

2) Solar Flare/communication disruption - control of how often and how long.

Bugfixes:

1) Stop AI auto-design of new units with each new reactor DESPITE auto-design being turned off.

2) Non-combat units going AWOL when a base is turned over to another faction.

[Yitzi]

Still not a nomination post, but close.

 @Yitzi: I overstated what I wanted with the Unity Pods.  Nothing new, just control over what already exists.

Unity Pods have an existing list of what can happen when you open one.  Some, but not all, of these can be disabled in the Scenario Editor (no vehicles, no Monoliths, etc.).  Many cannot be disabled, and the chance of each cannot be modified.

I would like us to be able to choose from that list and for each item/event set the chance of it occuring (including no chance at all).

That would definitely be doable.

I do not have any idea of how the game AI sets the chances, it doesn't seem completely random in my tests.  Besides there being a different set of choices for sea tiles vs. land ones, there seem to be some other rules involved which I haven't been able to puzzle out.

If I do end up working on that, the first step will be to read all those rules.

Finding where all this is located in the code, how it works, and figuring the best way to change it may well become too much time spent when there is so much else to do.

That's what the voting is for.

I'll save it for another update.

Ok.

My nominations:

1) Territorial Boundary adjustments.  (mostly larger sea, and more overlap at shorelines)

2) Solar Flare/communication disruption - control of how often and how long.

Bugfixes:

1) Stop AI auto-design of new units with each new reactor DESPITE auto-design being turned off.

2) Non-combat units going AWOL when a base is turned over to another faction.

Ok, all nominated.