SMACX Thinker Mod

[Nexii]

Yea that was just hypothetical lol. I prefer boreholes in the game right now I have them at 0/0/8. It was more a ponderance whether it might do farm/enricher/solar/echelon on high altitudes

[Induktio]

Hmm, at this point it appears there's already enough stuff for a new release so I won't be adding much new features to it anymore. HQ relocate feature will get a small fix so that it covers all cases where the previous HQ might be lost.

Existing features in this changeset are still subject to being adjusted based on feedback. Tech progression should be somewhat slower in the middlegame compared to v1.0 but I hope it doesn't stagnate research too much. The main purpose there is to significantly increase late game tech costs compared to earlier tiers anyway.

[Nexii]

Cubic seems ok, I was playing around with exponential functions. But I think those might make the tech too easy in the first half and a bit too steep in the second half.

for ax^3+bx, I'd say to increase a and decrease b. Early game tech costs are too high.

Edit: Also I'd probably do away with the 'first 10 techs are cheaper' thing. IMO it's kind of a relic of the old costing formula where it was too steep for the first 10 so they worked around it with a second formula.

[Tayta Malikai]

I actually do take advantage of the "first 10 techs are cheaper" thing, by intentionally researching as many level 2 techs as possible while the discount still applies. Then I can go back to researching level 1 techs and/or just trade them from the AIs. This is probably not the intended use of the mechanic.

[Induktio]

> I actually do take advantage of the "first 10 techs are cheaper" thing, by intentionally researching as many level 2 techs as possible while the discount still applies.

Yeah it's possible to min-max it that way but the gains remain kinda limited. It was mostly there as a way for every faction to get the basic techs a little bit easier. But let's suppose we'll do away with that mechanic. Without discounts, tier 1 techs cost 120 labs in the current version. It would have to be lowered significantly from that because higher costs delay the acquisition of former technology, for example. We can add a constant factor to the formula to adjust it better for the first tiers.

Let's say we use 5*Level^3 + 95*Level - 40. In that case the costs for tiers 1-15 look like this:

Code: [Select]

60
190
380
660
1060
1610
2340
3280
4460
5910
7660
9740
12180
15010
18260

Current difficulty scaling would add 20% for human factions on Transcend level while AI factions gain a 30% discount (cost_factor=7). Any thoughts on this?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

There is no need to give AI research discount. They exchange technologies. So any discount for everyone will just speed up overall research rate. The game essentially becomes shorter. I don't think this is an intention.

Any faster AI discovery rate doesn't affect player much as human trade and steal techs as well.

[Nexii]

Yea the 10 techs thing was moreso abusable for going after early T3/4 techs (IndAuto is a big one). T2 was a bit less concerning.

Which bonuses the AI should and shouldn't get is another thing. I favor % boosts like the ones to growth, industry, and possibly research over arbitrary mechanical ones like a lower difficulty level (b-drones, growth drones, ecodamage).

30% boost in three areas is quite a lot. Compared to Deity (Civ2) which was 40% but only to industry. 30% in three areas is much more, since each is multiplicative with the others.

Adding 20% more to human lab cost is kind of the same as just giving the AI even more labs discount? To me that's a bit odd since human never had to pay 20% nutrients more or minerals more.

I'd have to recheck, I didn't think there was quite that much difference between human and AI lab costs in the stock formula..

[Induktio]

Actually I was already considering nerfing that AI discount because proportionally it is a little too much. In the stock game AI gained quite a huge research discount if I remember right, but it didn't "feel" large because AI was always incompetent in managing the economic aspects.

Here it would be possible to drop either the human or AI modifer to simplify the formula. I would estimate a maximum 30% difference between human/AI on Transcend would be enough, maybe even less. Maybe just keep the player cost level the same and apply cost_factor on AI research costs.

[Nexii]

Somehow it feels less cheaty if the AI gets larger boosts in fewer areas.

I might be missing a few that others can point out, but the list of AI boosts is quite big:
- industry boost
- growth boost
- research boost
- drones by pop mitigation (by difficulty mod)
- ecodamage mitigation (by difficulty mod)
- b-drones mitigation (by difficulty mod)
- no production switching penalties
- no SE switching costs

Seeing the thinker AI in action did make me think how powerful ICS really is. Some of this tech increase need is due to the power of this style of play. Which everyone seems to complain about due to the micromanagement involved, but there's never a solution.

I considered that perhaps EFFIC should be reworked. B-drones were a novel idea but not really enough to stop ICS. Because really it's just +1 drone a base no matter how many bases you make. And that downside can mostly be mitigated with powerful police units.

The idea was that instead of pure distance from the capital inefficiency would be based on your # of cities. It would work something like where your closest base from the HQ suffers a small amount of inefficiency. Your 12th base from the HQ might suffer moderate inefficiency. Your 50th base might produce very little energy at all. EFFIC and mapsize would of course weigh in.

It's also worth noting that they dropped waste/inefficiency on minerals/shields going from Civ2. But this might be fine, as overall energy has many advantages over minerals in SMAC/X.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Adding 20% more to human lab cost is kind of the same as just giving the AI even more labs discount? To me that's a bit odd since human never had to pay 20% nutrients more or minerals more.

It's not the same in big picture. Giving anybody research bonus makes overall research pace faster and game shorter, since everybody exchange techs.

[Induktio]

Uh, hmm. That list is not entirely accurate. I'd say only the first 3 production bonuses are meaningful, the other bonuses here and there are only coincidental. At least Thinker works with the same rules than the player with eco damage and SE switching costs. There's no production switching penalty that I remember, but then again, Thinker changes production only very rarely. That would be different with the stock game.

Also I don't remember what kind of bonuses the AI gets with B-drones, if there's even any, but this statement doesn't seem correct. "Because really it's just +1 drone a base no matter how many bases you make." If you have multiple bases over the B-drone limit then you should eventually receive multiple B-drones in the same base, it's just they are semi-randomly distributed.

[lolada]

One suggestion: Is it possible to improve AI specialist usage? Activating them instead of using quite useless tiles. For example AI tend to work useless 1-0-0, 0-1-0 tiles or similar when it could use quite good specialists. Its notable on ocean bases - ocean producing only 1 food  - there's no even point growing.. base is gonna starve. Also notable in heavy fungus maps.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One suggestion: Is it possible to improve AI specialist usage? Activating them instead of using quite useless tiles. For example AI tend to work useless 1-0-0, 0-1-0 tiles or similar when it could use quite good specialists. Its notable on ocean bases - ocean producing only 1 food  - there's no even point growing.. base is gonna starve. Also notable in heavy fungus maps.

Vanilla does use specialists. It depends on their effect. Early specialists are not that valuable. For example doctor is good for quelling drones. There is not use for them when there are none. Technician and librarians are just 3 eco/lab only. This is not always better than 1 nut/min. Energy is kind of secondary thing. Whereas nut/min are essential for base growth. So even if 3 eco is better than 1 min the distinction is pretty slim. AI may not be that fine tuned to understand it.

Although, I agree that some extra tuning may render it slightly smarter.

[Nexii]

Yea the other benefits aren't quite as strong as the production ones. I'd say the librarian level of drones on transcend is quite powerful though. -2 DRONES a base, effectively. I think a lot of the reason they put that in is because the stock AI doesn't really know 'when' to build Rec Commons and Holo Theatre.

I never looked into how b-drones get distributed. What I meant was the AI gets fewer due to librarian difficulty modifier. Multiple b-drones in one base might be possible. But even if they do all they do is make superdrones, which get controlled by police the same as normal drones. They are more of a penalty for -POLICE settings.

Governor has to take a lot into account also. The value of 1N changes a lot depending on how much surplus N is being made. In general I felt like it always undervalued energy, that is 1M > any amount of energy in a tile. It probably is one area where a human plays better than the AI heuristic.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

What is going on? I am playing WtP that uses Thinker AI for crawler placement. Look at the picture. Two crawlers convoying same 3 nutrient resources from the same square to different bases. How it this possible?