SMACX Thinker Mod

[Buster's Uncle]

https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2681.0

This thread, then - hundreds and hundreds of names, all factions covered, and links in the OP to other like threads all over the community.  ete's sinc.in compilation is still up; I checked.  I don't think he updated the last few pages' worth from the thread, though.

[Rocky]

I just want to say thank you for all your hard work on this mod. I'm loving the recent additions. They really add much to the game experience.

Having a strong AI, being able to set a number of bases (Love the option to let the AI adjust their numbers to match the player), setting the distance between factions or bases, customizing AI behavior, having adjustable settings for the map and much more.

Two things I especially like are that I can now pick which factions can be excluded in the random setup, and that you can disable some of the native life forms on Planet. (I was never really a fan of Fungal Towers and Spore Launchers)

There's something I'm wondering about the new AI military setting. In Thinker.ini it states that 100 is the default value. If I wanted a more peaceful builder game would setting it to 50 be a good value? Does it mean the AI will field an army about half their regular size? What would happen if I set it to 25 or 0? Would the AI still build defensive units?

Thank you again for all your hard work!



 

[dino]

White and yellow outlines for headquarters and golden age are cool, even if not really that useful, but it made me think of a real QoL feature in a simillar vein.

To play efficiently and prevent all obviously predictable riots, you have to check each base every turn, there is no thinking involved, it's just annoying busy work.
So I propose, red outlines for bases that are most likely going to riot next turn if nothing is changed, or are rioting currently.

drones > talents, or drones == talents for base that is going to grow and add a drone next turn

You could also simulate default resources allocation after pop growth, to remove false positves.
But even just pointing out potential riots with simple drones == talents check for bases that are about to grow and add a drone, would be very useful.

Other less useful ideas ( but probably no less useful than the ones you already have ):
Red outline could also be used for bases with negative mineral, or nutrient output, so red would be a general "something wrong with a base" indicator.
Green outlines for bases that are about to grow a pop,
Blue outlines for bases that reached pop limit if a relevant pop limit facility is available.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

So I propose, red outlines for bases that are most likely going to riot next turn if nothing is changed, or are rioting currently.

Is this with or without governor? I would say it is useful without governor. Otherwise, it makes sense to fix the governor so it does not let that happen ever.

[dino]

I love micro, I never use governor, I don't even use queues
If such features were implemented, I see no reason for disabling them when governor is active.

As for improving Governor AI, even if you hooked regular AI code to it somehow, it would be still pointless, since on high difficulties you have to micro better than AI to win.
So governor is by definition most of the time useless for users of this mod and development effort spent on it could be allocated to something more useful.
This was also Inductio's stance on the governor last time he was asked about improving it.

[Induktio]

There's something I'm wondering about the new AI military setting. In Thinker.ini it states that 100 is the default value. If I wanted a more peaceful builder game would setting it to 50 be a good value? Does it mean the AI will field an army about half their regular size? What would happen if I set it to 25 or 0? Would the AI still build defensive units?

Interesting question and it goes back to the roots of how Thinker works. The key decision that the AI always faces is whether to build more military or infrastructure/pods/formers. I solved this early on with a non-linear randomized choice based on some threat factors. By design the frequency for military stays usually in the 30-70% range. The value from config gets plugged into this formula:

double threat = 1 - (1 / (1 + max(0.0, threat_factors * conf.conquer_priority/100.0)));

if (minerals > reserve && random(100) < (int)(100 * threat)) { build_more_combat }

There's also separate code for producing garrison units and it's always forced if the base undefended. So you can tinker with this config variable and observe the results now.

To play efficiently and prevent all obviously predictable riots, you have to check each base every turn, there is no thinking involved, it's just annoying busy work.

I agree with this 200%. That MMing is really horrible. My preferred solution would be to rewrite the governor such that it always force allocates enough doctors to prevent rioting. It's really irrelevant for the most part if the food input is restricted if it just avoids the riots. This part of the game was kind of badly designed from playability perspective. The problem is rewriting that part of governor requires a lot more code to calculate the drone effects accurately and other stuff. But it would be nice to rewrite more of that base bookkeeping code in Thinker's source.

[dino]

I like micro, I don't like meaningless busywork micro.

Decision on what method to use to deal with drones is fun, checking out each turn on each base is not.
With a red outline indicator one look at the map would tell me which bases require my attention.
Much lower hanging fruit than governor ai and usefull for people who don't use it.

Of course improving AI workers allocation in general is a worthy goal on itself.

[Induktio]

Newest develop build now has a feature where world_map_labels will highlight bases that are about to drone riot next turn. It does not consider how the drone count would be affected by population increase but I guess it's still useful.

SMAC rendering engine redraws map in a lazy way so it often results in rendering glitches where some part does not get updated. It's kinda pointless on modern CPUs to be honest. So because of that I added there more map redraw calls after some user interface actions. Also as another feature the game now preserves autosaves from all turns and the filenames contain the actual turn year.

[dino]

I understand the decision to highlight only 100% certain riots, not potential ones, to not confuse players.
Will be very useful when adjusting SE settings.

In such case however, I'd definitely like to see green outlines for bases that are about to grow a pop next turn.
Pop growth is responsible for like half predictable riots, so it'd be a great help when combined with riot highlights.

We could prevent all predictable riots with only checking on red and green highlighted bases, instead of all of them.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I noticed you took control over enemy probes and they now do not subvert units anymore.

[PvtHudson]

Probe team movement code in the last version seems to respect enemy ZoC, while probe teams should be exempted from this restriction.

[fuzion2100]

hello, i have tried a few things to get thinker to work.  i download it and put it over my game files. but i am lost at that point.  could some one give me some step bystep to get it running please?

[AcidJazz]

Hi Folks, is there any other way to download the Thinker Mod?
Unfortunately I cannot download via the link provided on GitHub (Certificate issue with ore than a browser).

EDIT : Sorted Out

[Induktio]

Project has been on a hiatus for a while, let's see...

> Probe team movement code in the last version seems to respect enemy ZoC, while probe teams should be exempted from this restriction.

Can you clarify this a little bit? Maybe some examples of movement paths that the AI doesn't take that it should use.

Also note that currently the AI doesn't use probes to mind control units, only bases. I have not yet investigated how to patch that functionality for the new AI.

> i download it and put it over my game files. but i am lost at that point.

Unzip to game folder and run terranx_mod.exe. Hmm?

[PvtHudson]

Project has been on a hiatus for a while, let's see...

> Probe team movement code in the last version seems to respect enemy ZoC, while probe teams should be exempted from this restriction.

Can you clarify this a little bit? Maybe some examples of movement paths that the AI doesn't take that it should use.

Also note that currently the AI doesn't use probes to mind control units, only bases. I have not yet investigated how to patch that functionality for the new AI.

Probably, this turned out to be false alarm. Apparently, it's just coincidence that Morgan stopped (for a long time now) to infiltrate probe teams through his northern and north-western borders once I blocked it with border guard ZoCs.
Instead another glitch has shined: can't kick out of my lands probe teams at (63,17) and (59,17) (north of Pseudocode), because game considers them "not in our territory".