SMACX Thinker Mod

[EmpathCrawler]

Ingenious cool stuff! Although I agree that it may be difficult to port between computers and even people as everyone may have their own automation preferences.

Thanks! It is possible to compile into a self-contained exe, I just haven't done that. It can do everything I want so I haven't worked on it for a while, but I thought it'd be nice to expand into adding shortcuts to the entire base screen. I like to check the Psych readout when planning pop booms and such. Maybe I'll revisit the code and see if others are interested in using it.

[dino]

> If you want to add penalty for human attack/defense why not just add flat bonus everywhere? Not specifically for base attack only.

I want a balance where attacker have an advantage on flat and 1:1 on rough terrain outside of a base and disadvantage on a base assault.

The question I'm uncertain about is how much base assault disadvantage is desireable and how much of it the current AI can handle well, maybe none of it is an issue and 3:2 ratio alone would work just fine.
I would consider possibility of an AI cheat helping with assaulting bases a temporary solution until ( if ever ) a proper base assault algorithm capable of handling a very unfavorable odds like player does is developped.

> Cost is an absolute integral point of balance. Yet, you omit its valuation when you try to balance weapon with armor. Not only you but other people too. Somehow they see attack and defense values but not the cost behind units.

I've realised it too, this is why I hope inductio will be kind enough to give us unit cost formula in the thinker source code to experiment with it too.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

> If you want to add penalty for human attack/defense why not just add flat bonus everywhere? Not specifically for base attack only.

I want a balance where attacker have an advantage on flat and 1:1 on rough terrain outside of a base and disadvantage on a base assault.

These are two independent configurations: balance attack/defense on different terrains and human vs. AI. I would urgently suggest not to mix them. Human bonus pertain to human per se. Not to get intermingled with any other conditions. This way you have it as an independent switch if you want to make human life harder in general.

[dino]

Unlike economy cheats AI playing combat by different rules would be too much in your face and annoying and it should be avoided in principle.

The idea was that battle odds while defending in the base would still be obviously in favour of defending player unit only slightly less, so it wouldn't be noticeable and wouldn't affect decision making, while this is an area of the biggest difference in performance between ai and player. Odds differences for territorial combat on the other hand would be small enough that the same cheat would change expectations about which unit will prevail and player tactcs as a result, so universal combat cheat receives a big no from me.

Anyway I suspect it's not necessary, I just thought it'd be an easy to add and cool option to have for an extra challenge.
I'd definitely want to playtest different base assault odds modifiers with and without AI cheat, I don't like that it'd a bit convoluted workaround for the lack of base assault plan algorithm.
At the same time it really shouldn't be noticeable and would improve AI conquest performance, before magtubes and airforce.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I would also refrain from introducing any new mechanics. There is plenty (actually even more than even needed) already in place. There is tons of other dials to turn to tilt a balance.

[dino]

It'd be best to make perimeter and tachyon modifiers to adjustable with a float number, not only a choice between 50% and 100%.
No new modifier would be introduced, while eventual AI cheat is not something player in this particullar situation should be noticing, or have to consider for decision making.

[Induktio]

> It'd be best to make perimeter and tachyon modifiers to adjustable with a float number, not only a choice between 50% and 100%.

Probably the only way to make that work is to spend a huge amount of time rewriting all of the combat calculations to use floating point, and I'm not sure if anyone is willing to do that. But taking those base defense bonus parameters from WTP is really simple, and I'm going to include them in the next release in a slightly modified form though.

> For now I'd ask you implement in thinker vanilla function for unit cost that I could then modify and playtest on my own and maybe some optional base defense bonuses.

If you want to see how the prototype cost calculation works, you can look at OpenSMACX's reversed proto_cost function in veh.cpp and then decide what to do with it. WTP apparently has already patched some modified version in the game, so that should show how to implement it in the mod.

> If you'd be open to some rules changes I should have some free time to play SMAC 2-3 weeks from now and I'd be interested in playtesting some ideas I have.

It would be best to publish these changes in a new alphax.txt file and then gather feedback. I'd recommend using github for that. You can actually just create a new gist for it since it's supposedly only one file that's required, and gists also have integrated version history there.

> It's soooo nice in the early game to, say, build a base, hit C, change the first build order to a Former, hit Enter, hit my Queue shortcut, arrow over to a garrison unit, hit my Insert shortcut, arrow to a Colony Pod, hit my Insert shortcut, and hit Enter.

Did you know that the mod copies items from Template 1 to all new bases? It's mentioned in Details.md. Might be helpful here.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

It'd be best to make perimeter and tachyon modifiers to adjustable with a float number, not only a choice between 50% and 100%.
No new modifier would be introduced, while eventual AI cheat is not something player in this particullar situation should be noticing, or have to consider for decision making.

Unfortunately it is how it is coded in original. Changing it would be an insane amount of jumping through hoops and also error prone.

What bigger granularity you need? The artillery can reduce units health by two in base and to nothing in the field. The mere fact who has artillery superiority is much more important than ±25% PD bonus. I always analyze base assault balance in assumption assailant has artillery superiority and already reduced base defenders health in half. If you omit this part then bringing enough artillery on conquest will make it a cakewalk the one you try to avoid.

[EmpathCrawler]

Did you know that the mod copies items from Template 1 to all new bases? It's mentioned in Details.md. Might be helpful here.

I did not! I've never used those templates, huh.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Did you know that the mod copies items from Template 1 to all new bases? It's mentioned in Details.md. Might be helpful here.

Great feature. Does it save/copy the item at queue[0] too or only the rest of the queue so player need to choose first item themselves?

Would it be possible to extend it to distinct between land bases (template 1), coastal bases (template 2), ocean bases (template 3)? This would fulfill my needs completely as I use these three templates, correspondingly. Obviously, some items needed in land bases but not in ocean ones and vice versa.

[Induktio]

Alright, version 3.1 is now available from the project website. This release is a kind of "many smaller tweaks" instead of huge overhauls on any specific mechanics and it's good to get rid some of those bugs. To post feedback it's also possible to use discussions page for the project.

> Would it be possible to extend it to distinct between land bases (template 1), coastal bases (template 2), ocean bases (template 3)?

I'm not sure there's a sufficiently clear use case for this and it might make the interface more confusing. Template names would almost have to be changed or people would forget which one did what.

[Tayta Malikai]

Just wanted to pop in and say that it's really cool these mods are still being actively worked on, amazing stuff with all sorts of small but essential improvements to the game!

Maybe one day I'll actually try playing against the AI again :V

[EmpathCrawler]

I've been having fun today with your tech tree visualizer. Every once in a while I try to write a general alphax or faction parser in Python for fun and Python practice but I end up slamming my head into the keyboard. I like your method of figuring out where sections are.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Where is it? Is it in Thinker package?

[EmpathCrawler]

https://github.com/induktio/thinker/blob/master/tools/techvisual.py

You'll need to install networkx and matplotlib from pip.