SMACX Thinker Mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Nice work, Induktio. Let me try it.

Are you still up to some non AI enhancement directly related changes?
One thing I noticed about psi combat in Yutzi's patch. He made it affect both attack and defense. Which makes sense to me. With vanilla settings goring deeper and deeper on negative PLANET ratings doesn't change things. Player just stop building natives and attack them. The defense strength still the same. That is why FM PLANET penalty is almost not noticeable.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Was just played your new version and observed strange thing. I never made a treaty with Gaian's and started a war against them. Then at some point it turned out we are in truce. Don't remember how it happened but OK. Then at some point they start attacking my units without game telling me that they are doing sneak attack. I've checked the comm screen and it says we are in truce. Yet both of us can attack each other without any problems.

[Induktio]

> Then at some point they start attacking my units without game telling me that they are doing sneak attack.

Looks like I can't replicate this bug at all. Did this happen even on the same turn? There's a Gaian laser squad a couple of tiles away, and I did notice one thing. If you station one impact infantry both next to the Cyborg base and the laser squad, it may seem the squad is attacking, even though it is the recon rover *inside* the base that actually counter attacked there. Visually on the map it might look really similar, but the laser squad should not attack in this case.

Are you using the default WorldBuilder btw? It looks like there's quite a lot of small islands. I didn't mention it in the thread yet, but the modded WorldBuilder can be seen in Details.md. Not that it affects this issue though.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

> Then at some point they start attacking my units without game telling me that they are doing sneak attack.

Looks like I can't replicate this bug at all. Did this happen even on the same turn? There's a Gaian laser squad a couple of tiles away, and I did notice one thing. If you station one impact infantry both next to the Cyborg base and the laser squad, it may seem the squad is attacking, even though it is the recon rover *inside* the base that actually counter attacked there. Visually on the map it might look really similar, but the laser squad should not attack in this case.

Are you using the default WorldBuilder btw? It looks like there's quite a lot of small islands. I didn't mention it in the thread yet, but the modded WorldBuilder can be seen in Details.md. Not that it affects this issue though.

I didn't change worldbuilder.
They didn't just attack me once. We are at war. I attack their units they attack mine. Yet game says we are in truce and we can communicate and trade technologies, etc. I'll see if it happens again.

[LastConformist]

Dumb question maybe... I found this mod when a renewed interest in SMACX was sparked recently. But I can't figure out how to install it properly. I downloaded the files from Github and thereafter am completely stumped. I do have the GOG version of the game. Ine instructions on Github don't seem to make sense to me. I don't see a terranx_mod.exe. Can anyone help?

[dino]

It's a bit dumb question indeed. You've probably downloaded source code from github.

Go to github page linked in the opening post, scroll down a bit to the Download section of the description.
Go Release versions -> Thinker_v0.8.zip -> click download on the top right corner.

[Induktio]

Yeah indeed. 

Re: bug reports. Make sure the issues are repeatable given some save file. If the issue cannot be repeated even after multiple save game reloads (in the case it's non-deterministic), then basically nothing can be done about it.

Anyway, currently I'm not planning to mod the combat mechanics in any way. Probably in the future releases I will attempt to streamline or extend the current AI behaviour. There might still be an issue with the foil probe team prototypes not being created properly for the AIs, have to investigate that later.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Speaking about bugs there is a minor one. Saving and loading production queue. Annoys me a little by adding more mouse-clicks but harmless overall.

In original game it saves the current production as well. That is if I save the queue with Scout Patrol currently produced. Then when I load it in new base the currently produced item is changed to Scout Patrol. This is not reflected in UI immediately but if you close the base screen and open it again you'll see it.
In your mod the currently produced item is not changing for sure.
This is repeatable I won't attach a save.

[Induktio]

Speaking about bugs there is a minor one. Saving and loading production queue. Annoys me a little by adding more mouse-clicks but harmless overall.

I think I see the difference you're talking about here. In the base game it saves/reloads the currently produced item along with the queue, but looks like this behaviour was changed in Scient patch v2.0. It's mentioned in Details.md:

50. [EXPLOIT] Using the right click "Save current list to template" and "Load template into list" features of base queue can be used to bypass retooling completely. Fixed so these queue template features only save and load the actual queue and not affect the item currently in production.

Thinker by itself should never modify production items in player bases, so this is entirely a feature caused by the Scient patch. Whether this change should be reverted or patched differently is another question then. Arguably it's slightly annoying if the current production item is not changed along with the queue.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Well then. If it is an exploit, I'll live with it.

[Induktio]

I added the smac-in-smax mod link on the readme page while expanding the details documentation. It has now its own repository in github so it doesn't get lost in this thread.

About that patch #50 I'm not yet sure if we should keep it that way or change it to something else. I think the old behaviour with the build queue would be better if the retool exploit could just be patched in a different way. There's also many other modding options that could still be added, that's for sure. I have not entirely abandoned the idea of modding satellites, probably there just isn't any simple of way of doing it, not to mention even deciding *how* they should be modded.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Induktio,
We were discussing the way of balancing psi attack and defense in general. It turned out that AI does not attack well with native nor it defends well against them by mean of building cheap units with trance/song.
Did you pay attention to it in your mod? This alone would give AI great advantage if it can assess current situation and shift toward building normal or native attackers/defenders. I.e. when enemy sends waves of worms - build more cheap trance/song units, otherwise not. When assaulting neighbor see if they have strong psi defense. If not - build worms, otherwise not.

Would creating predefined units with these abilities help AI?

[PvtHudson]

Speaking of worm wars, I didn't see any AI in the latest version switching from FM to Green, even on the brink of collapse under worm waves.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Speaking of worm wars, I didn't see any AI in the latest version switching from FM to Green, even on the brink of collapse under worm waves.

Yep. That's too. AI has a lot of things it can do better. We just touching some most visible flaws.

[bvanevery]

When assaulting neighbor see if they have strong psi defense. If not - build worms, otherwise not.

Not correct.  Successful use of mindworms on offense is usually a combined arms operation, not a monolithic attack.  There's a stage during city siege at which you throw mindworms, because now you're fighting units that aren't strong enough to stand up to them.  If something has Psi defenses, you just have to weaken those units first in some other way.  This is no different from ECM defenses, or AAA defenses.  Combined arms is the way you take all these buffs down.

You might not want to build mindworms for offensive assault, if you yourself have pathetically weak mindworms.  Like your PLANET rating is negative and you don't have Biology Labs etc. to level up what you produce.

Even still, weak mindworms are a good bush scouting and defense option.  The stock AI likes to sneak across big fields of fungus, and this is complete disaster for them if you bring a couple mindworms to intervene.  Having the mindworms be terribly strong is not all that important here, because likely to survive and level up, just getting fed all these human sacrifices.  A better AI would both plan to utilize these death traps as home defense, and also would be wiser about blundering into them.

I'm sure people could write better AI all day if they had a clear foundation to work from.  My point is that these AI problems are difficult, not simply reduced to cranking this setting up or down as a pass filter.  I'm sure Induktio knows that already and is allocating his efforts accordingly.

Defensive units, is more about cranking a pass filter up or down, as you suggest.  There's not as much tactics to defense, as you're just trying to withstand a siege that might be a complete ambush, no preparation on your part.  "Stack with cheap Trance units" is a good countermeasure to a mindworm spawning faction, or a mindworm apocalypse.