SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Thank you for feedback. It matters!

Please send me your saves.

Number of minerals per row is calculated by original code. WTP has nothing to do with this. Keep in mind that AI cheats on you in many places. Like this one, for example. On turn 2211 he has correct number of minerals per row if you are playing on highest difficulty: 7 + 1 for -1 INDUSTRY = 8. On next turn some cheating started. I cannot tell you exactly when and how they cheat but I did see a lot of related code.
It is easy to check. Just load the 2212 turn in the unmodded version and observe. You can probably run terranx.exe (not modded exe) or better yet just run clean vanilla install.

Also feel free to mention whatever good or bad things you noticed in the mod before you forget. It is also easier to discuss them one by one. People do have different taste and preferences so discussing it matters. Keep also in mind that some of the later additions are inspired by other players. So you may just experience a clash of preferences.

[Nevill]

Here are my two saves. My password is "worm". I do not know Tayta's password, he'll have to chime in if you want to play those turns yourself.

I don't know where the cheating occured, but I've never seen this kind of cheating before. And I tend to keep an eye on AI opponents and what they are building, because you have a lot of time during PBEM. I've not looked at the code though.


Right, the good and the bad. Where do I even start.

I should probably preclude everything I write below with a warning that I've been playing SMAX for a long time, and always with Multiplayer in mind. It is probable that I use and/or abuse some features of the mod in a way they weren't intended to.

The game is slow as molasses compared to vanilla. I can't decide whether it is a bad or a good thing. It's different, that much is certain. Perhaps too different from the original to comfort. Colony pods priced at 60 put a dampener on expansion, and they are easy to lose, so you need to build and support escorts overloading the already low support.

On one hand, I feel your pain about how much ICS poisons the well and skews the gameplay towards it. On another, I think it went too far in a different direction as of v66. I haven't started expansion until I reached Fusion tech, and that was because the price of CPs got lowered to 50 and the formers to 30 which I think are the sweet spot for the kind of changes you intended. You reverting the cost of CPs back to 40 seems to support the notion, although I have not played later versions of the mod.

The problem with ICS is that the game incentivises low-pop bases. A high population base has no benefits over a bunch of low-pop ones early in the game. And it can't even build Colony Pods very efficiently because the time needed to reach high pop gets higher the more pop you already have. The fastest way to pump CPs is still a 2-pop base sitting on 2 rocky mines and switching to a 3-food tile (Nutrient+forest) every other turn.

I can't say I have a solution ready for this; will have to see what you are proposing with alternate growth formulas. In absense of those, though, I think capping CPs at 50 would be a decent move.

Formers at 40 is a much more drastic change. We have less bases resulting in lousy support and meaning we have much less minerals to play with with every new former. I don't know what your design philosophy on them was supposed to be. If you wanted to reduce their number to 8-10 when before we had 50, then congratulations, you did it. I am just not sure why. It... reduces the micromanagement I guess?

Losing a former can set a faction back by ages, and it slows an already slow game to a crawl.

Also, the mine decreasing food production by 1 in a tile is one of the original's design decisions I could never understand. Farm+mine take 12 turns to terraform, and the result is still hideous. Why build a mine anywhere but on a rocky tile?

The decision to move EcoEng to a tier 6 tech and tie all of the advanced terraforming options to it means that for half the game you can't even do anything interesting with terraformers.

Reducing energy in forests... while I understand how it came to be (hybrids are really overpowered), now they are a weak choice. I played Gaia, and I produced my first forest in 2160s. I think delaying the Hybrid forests could be a better solution.

Absense of condensers means that population growth is very hard in absense of pop-booming, meaning the factions that lack it (Morgan, Hive) are gimped.

Absense of Echelon Mirrors (never thought I'd say anything good about them) and raise/lower terrain options means that energy production options are really limited. Boreholes are not available until later... and when they become available they instantly obsolete all other options. I settled a borehole cluster halfway across the map and the base at 3 pop produced 27 energy (~8 lost) with all the trade. My 7-pop HQ produced 15.

Sea bases are gimped. Well, they were gimped in original, no big surprise there, but here they are crippled extra hard. How do you produce minerals in them? Subsea Trunklines are 6 level tech, cost a ton (and you don't have minerals to build them), and mines giving -1 to food production means that you have to build an aquafarm to make them semi-viable. In essense, sea bases leech resources off land ones, because it is impossible to build anything in them. Maybe very late in the game things change due to additional +1 mineral, I don't know. For now they are just a tool to deny enemy territory and cheat your way into victory at sea with subpar units. Just build a base where you want to win your battles. Cheaper than building up the military.

Fungal production is... lacking. From the readme:

Get it to at least 1-1-0 yield relatively early in the game to allow minimal support for barren land and sea bases.
Focus on energy yield in the mid game to compliment forest instead of competing with it.
Use green/alien technologies for fungus production to streamline research priorities for green/PLANET factions.

Technology | Fungus production effect | Comment
---------- | ------------------------ | -------
Centauri Ecology | +1 nutrient |
Progenitor Psych | +1 mineral | reassigned
Field Modulation | +1 energy | reassigned
Bioadaptive Resonance | +1 energy | reassigned
Centauri Psi | +1 nutrient |
Centauri Meditation | +1 energy |
Secrets of Alpha Centauri | +1 energy |
Centauri Genetics | +1 mineral |

Well, this is false. No tech gives fungus +1 minerals, they give it +food or +energy instead.

Since I am playing Gaia I can say that a good fifth of my worked tiles are fungus since it produces 3-0-2 (at Bioadaptive Resonance ATM), and there are no better options for food available, since there are no condensers. Sea bases definitely aren't getting anything out of it.

Maniford Harmonics is going to be OP, I can tell. It's why Zakharov's cheating prompted me to post, I was so incensed.

Projects and their evaluation from a MP standpoint is another matter, for another long-winded post.

Also, a design choice I don't really get is the balancing of POLICE around -1 as a new center. With the explanation given that... Brood Pits will give you +2 later? When are those Brood Pits due? And while we are at it, shouldn't it mean that Broodpits are the ones that need fixing, not factions?

As it is, it just looks more than a bit ugly... and unnecessary, I think? Look at what it means for SE... you get +1 Police with Police state, -2 Police with Wealth, and 0 Police with them both. No other changes for other SE (up until Cybernetics/Thought Control).

Well, why not give Police State +1 POLICE, and Wealth -2 POLICE, and have essentially the same result but without every faction looking same-ish? Then you can mod Brood Pits to only give +1 POLICE and have everything work just as it does in v66?

SE changes is another big topic I want to touch on later. I think I found them very questionable. I am Gaian, and I can't think of the circumstances when I'd run Green. Maybe (maybe) with Manifold Harmonics, but I wouldn't count on it. It is a SE for lategame energy production, and your mod doesn't have nearly enough options to produce energy up until mid-game and boreholes. Kinda a weird combination, boreholes with Green economy.

What else, what else. Oh, the slowing down really got some areas harder than others. I miss Non-lethal methods, but I understand your reasoning, even though I am running Wealth and can't make use of them anyway. I think of police units in original as an alternative to facility-based drone handling, and suffice is to say, 1 unit quelling 1 drone doesn't really compare to Rec Commons + Holo Theater. The drawback of police is that it is hard to switch to another method once you are using it, and it really precludes SE switching. In your mod I hardly use police at all.

But I find myself missing some of the things I really got used to in the original. Research Hospitals were too close at Gene Splicing, which was only nominally a Tier 3 tech as it only required 2 tier-1 and 1 tier-2 as prereqs. 120 minerals was too much investment for too little gain at that point. You have reduced its cost... and then moved Gene Splicing to tier 6 tech, removing facility out of the player's grasp. As it is, I can build Genejack Factories sooner than Researh Hospitals. I pop-boomed to 7 pop before I reached there. And... one can get used to that, but then why did you reduce the cost if you consider them mid-game tech?

Cost of units would be a reason for another rant. Generally, I find war to be impossible to wage now. Oh, I can steamroll an AI just fine, it can't really do anything. But investing 100 minerals into a cruiser only to see it die against a +50% territory-enhanced bonus out of nowhere? It is more expensive than most structures.

I know the game was ridiculously skewed towards overwhelming offense, but this swings it too far in the opposite direction. I kinda want the balance to be in favor of defenders at a base, and a parity in the field if one utilizes the terrain correctly. Meaning a 3-to-2 att-over-def advantage, brought to 3-to-3 with the help of terrain and/or abilities (ECM, forests, fungus, rocky tiles), and 3-to-4/5 at bases with Perimeter Defences and sensors. As it is, war is all but impossible in the early game without crippling yourself... and midgame against a human who has even halfway decent scouts it will fail as they can resupply much faster and can catch enemy units in their territory with a flat +50% bonus. Losing a state of the art 6-armor unit to a much cheaper horde of 4-weapon ones is not very fun.

Native life. You wanted to make it more dangerous, but now that I can't hunt them down they are more annoying than anything. They still can't get past trance units, so what they do is eat an occasional former which sucks because losing formers sucks that much harder now. Native life for players... yeah, no. No one uses NL in multiplayer (with the exception of Locusts as an air unit that can capture bases with no ground support) precisely because they get countered by a trance scout and an empath rover. Dependence on Life Cycle facilities which are few and far between, not to mention expensive, makes them a really situational choice when others pump out cheap units with +2 Morale upgrades. Sure an IotD can both attack and transport troops, but attacking with 1:1 odds is a good way to lose those troops, and even if you win you are slowed down by damage, so the next cheap ship will pick you off. I've found the worms' price point to be decent at 4 mineral rows, and I gave them ECM to protect them from rover harass. I still don't use them as anything but guerilla fighters since once the enemy wises up to it artillery makes them go splat really easily. Conventional units are oftentimes better. But then military is generally more expensive in your mod.

I can't think of why I'd use anything other than locusts with the way you priced them.

There are some changes I can't do anything but laud, though. The INDUSTRY exploit has finally, FINALLY, been fixed. I don't even begrudge it that I found it out the hard way by switching to +INDUSTRY civics and failing to complete the project I wanted. Or the reactors not giving additional HP, or the combat not being centered on a per-round model that takes the attacker's advantage and whack a defender over the head with it.


Ok, to to summarize the contents of this post for ease of replying.
1) Slow game speed caused by high cost of CPs and formers. Early game was just us passing turns back and forth.
1a) Some techs come in well past the time when you could make use of them. Research Hospital is one, but advanced terraforming, Subsea Trunkline and others come to mind.
2) Not enough variance in terraforming caused by moving EcoEng to midgame. Could be spread out better among different techs.
2a) Not enough options for energy production. Boreholes still superior to everything.
2b) Minerals are hard to get in general. If you don't have a lot of rocky tiles, you are out of luck as forests are your best bet.
2c) Not enough minerals in fungus. This even contradicts the readme?
2d) Default -1 food on mines exacerbates this. Sure I can change it on my end, but I wonder about your reasons.
3) Sea bases are useless for early to mid game. No minerals, high cost of improving facilities.
4) POLICE rating centered at -1 clogging faction displays when the same effect can be achieved with different means. General uselessness of Police after moving NLM away.
5) Extreme cost of combat units coupled with massive defender's advantage make war against humans infeasible. Territory rules are exploitable, turning Colony Pods into semi-combat support units.
5a) Native life costs. I am not spending 80+ minerals on a unit to have it go splat against a scout.

Oh, would it be a good time to mention I don't undertand ability costs? At all. The readme mentions streamlining this, and I am just not seeing it.

What does it mean to have "cost 2"? In original it means to have the cost be 50% higher with ability than without it. Here, a 5-1-1*1 unit (50 minerals) with AAA costs 80 minerals, and 6-1-1*2 (50 minerals) with AAA costs 70. Same base costs, different result. I guess it's because of reactors reducing the cost after abilities come into play, but it makes it hard to predict what the cost is going to be without the workshop.

...and I don't even know what the cost factors of 16 and 32 are. I assume it's 1 mineral row and 2 mineral rows, respectively?

[Nevill]

Oh, and speaking of territories.

I think you might be interested in this pic.

Somehow Hive got an 1-tile enclave in the middle of my territory. Are you sure this is supposed to happen?

Here's the screenshot and the save. The password is the same as in the above post.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Awesome notes, Nevill.
Thank you for feedback.

Here are my two saves. My password is "worm". I do not know Tayta's password, he'll have to chime in if you want to play those turns yourself.

I've loaded your save in original game and it shows 6 minerals per row as in your second screenshot. So it is vanilla feature.

The game is slow as molasses compared to vanilla. I can't decide whether it is a bad or a good thing. It's different, that much is certain. Perhaps too different from the original to comfort. Colony pods priced at 60 put a dampener on expansion, and they are easy to lose, so you need to build and support escorts overloading the already low support.

On one hand, I feel your pain about how much ICS poisons the well and skews the gameplay towards it. On another, I think it went too far in a different direction as of v66. I haven't started expansion until I reached Fusion tech, and that was because the price of CPs got lowered to 50 and the formers to 30 which I think are the sweet spot for the kind of changes you intended. You reverting the cost of CPs back to 40 seems to support the notion, although I have not played later versions of the mod.

The problem with ICS is that the game incentivises low-pop bases. A high population base has no benefits over a bunch of low-pop ones early in the game. And it can't even build Colony Pods very efficiently because the time needed to reach high pop gets higher the more pop you already have. The fastest way to pump CPs is still a 2-pop base sitting on 2 rocky mines and switching to a 3-food tile (Nutrient+forest) every other turn.

I can't say I have a solution ready for this; will have to see what you are proposing with alternate growth formulas. In absense of those, though, I think capping CPs at 50 would be a decent move.

Yes. People keep saying it is slow(er). And I also don't know how to limit ICS abuse some other way. Maybe it is meant to be and I shouldn't be very restrictive about it. Anyway, I added some speed in latest versions by giving base square 4 nutrients and lowering CP cost to 40. Although reactors do not change module cost anymore, just weapon and armor. So they do not affect basic CP unit production.

Another thing is that only you guys, who play MP, started complaining about it recently. Number of actions per turn doesn't bother single player much.

Formers at 40 is a much more drastic change. We have less bases resulting in lousy support and meaning we have much less minerals to play with with every new former. I don't know what your design philosophy on them was supposed to be. If you wanted to reduce their number to 8-10 when before we had 50, then congratulations, you did it. I am just not sure why. It... reduces the micromanagement I guess?

Losing a former can set a faction back by ages, and it slows an already slow game to a crawl.

I guess this is a remnant of trying to equalize cost of land and sea formers before I even start changing exe. The practical reason is that abilities increase unit cost by 1/4. So fungicide tanks slapped at 20 cost former are free. Didn't know how to circumvent around it. Maybe double costs of all former related abilities? I'll try it out in my next version.

Also, the mine decreasing food production by 1 in a tile is one of the original's design decisions I could never understand. Farm+mine take 12 turns to terraform, and the result is still hideous. Why build a mine anywhere but on a rocky tile?

I don't either. Most likely because designer valued minerals a lot. You can see it in any other themes throughout the game. All mineral improvements come last and they cost more. There is also another restriction - rocky tile does not produce nutrients from farming at all! That is even harsher.

Do you want these restrictions removed?

The decision to move EcoEng to a tier 6 tech and tie all of the advanced terraforming options to it means that for half the game you can't even do anything interesting with terraformers.

Not by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%. I agree it could be moved earlier. I think I moved it there because trading places with Environmental Economics. Somehow I thought tree farm should appear before boreholes. I'm not fixated on that, though, and can revert it.

Reducing energy in forests... while I understand how it came to be (hybrids are really overpowered), now they are a weak choice. I played Gaia, and I produced my first forest in 2160s. I think delaying the Hybrid forests could be a better solution.

I've already delayed it. There were long discussion about it. Vanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself. I decided to nerf it based on many users input. Mostly to give life to other options like rocky mines. In vanilla people plant forests left and right and don't bother about rocky mines. Now they are more or less on pair, I think. However, if you believe it becomes inferior without energy - let me know. I may change this.

Absense of condensers means that population growth is very hard in absense of pop-booming, meaning the factions that lack it (Morgan, Hive) are gimped.

Absense of Echelon Mirrors (never thought I'd say anything good about them) and raise/lower terrain options means that energy production options are really limited. Boreholes are not available until later... and when they become available they instantly obsolete all other options. I settled a borehole cluster halfway across the map and the base at 3 pop produced 27 energy (~8 lost) with all the trade. My 7-pop HQ produced 15.

Not following you. Are you talking about complete absence of them in a game or delay?

Sea bases are gimped. Well, they were gimped in original, no big surprise there, but here they are crippled extra hard. How do you produce minerals in them? Subsea Trunklines are 6 level tech, cost a ton (and you don't have minerals to build them), and mines giving -1 to food production means that you have to build an aquafarm to make them semi-viable. In essense, sea bases leech resources off land ones, because it is impossible to build anything in them. Maybe very late in the game things change due to additional +1 mineral, I don't know. For now they are just a tool to deny enemy territory and cheat your way into victory at sea with subpar units. Just build a base where you want to win your battles. Cheaper than building up the military.

They are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later. Let me know if it makes a difference.

Fungal production is... lacking. From the readme:

Get it to at least 1-1-0 yield relatively early in the game to allow minimal support for barren land and sea bases.
Focus on energy yield in the mid game to compliment forest instead of competing with it.
Use green/alien technologies for fungus production to streamline research priorities for green/PLANET factions.

Technology | Fungus production effect | Comment
---------- | ------------------------ | -------
Centauri Ecology | +1 nutrient |
Progenitor Psych | +1 mineral | reassigned
Field Modulation | +1 energy | reassigned
Bioadaptive Resonance | +1 energy | reassigned
Centauri Psi | +1 nutrient |
Centauri Meditation | +1 energy |
Secrets of Alpha Centauri | +1 energy |
Centauri Genetics | +1 mineral |

Well, this is false. No tech gives fungus +1 minerals, they give it +food or +energy instead.

Since I am playing Gaia I can say that a good fifth of my worked tiles are fungus since it produces 3-0-2 (at Bioadaptive Resonance ATM), and there are no better options for food available, since there are no condensers. Sea bases definitely aren't getting anything out of it.

Remnant of changes. I'll fix the readme. I removed mineral yield from it at all to make a counterpart of forest and conventional terraforming. Otherwise, they are pretty difficult to balance. Let me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.

Maniford Harmonics is going to be OP, I can tell. It's why Zakharov's cheating prompted me to post, I was so incensed.

Yeah it will be with +3 PLANET. Try it out and let me know if this alone lets you win the game. I'll change it then.

Projects and their evaluation from a MP standpoint is another matter, for another long-winded post.

Project cost was always the topic for suggestions. I just raised them to some extent to make racing more interesting. Their relative cost is up to play testing. Feel free to suggest changes.

Also, a design choice I don't really get is the balancing of POLICE around -1 as a new center. With the explanation given that... Brood Pits will give you +2 later? When are those Brood Pits due? And while we are at it, shouldn't it mean that Broodpits are the ones that need fixing, not factions?

As it is, it just looks more than a bit ugly... and unnecessary, I think? Look at what it means for SE... you get +1 Police with Police state, -2 Police with Wealth, and 0 Police with them both. No other changes for other SE (up until Cybernetics/Thought Control).

Well, why not give Police State +1 POLICE, and Wealth -2 POLICE, and have essentially the same result but without every faction looking same-ish? Then you can mod Brood Pits to only give +1 POLICE and have everything work just as it does in v66?

You are absolutely right. Either factions get -1 POLICE or all SEs within certain row - The effect is the same. I thought it is better to give to factions to not modify default choice (none). Besides, there is already a lot of negative police modifiers in vanilla. I didn't want FM have -3 POLICE just to compensate its other bonuses.

Anyway, I can change that. And you are right that modifying faction is more complex thing for players.

SE changes is another big topic I want to touch on later. I think I found them very questionable. I am Gaian, and I can't think of the circumstances when I'd run Green. Maybe (maybe) with Manifold Harmonics, but I wouldn't count on it. It is a SE for lategame energy production, and your mod doesn't have nearly enough options to produce energy up until mid-game and boreholes. Kinda a weird combination, boreholes with Green economy.

That is another absolutely open topic. I've already changed a log of SE choices based on user input. So you may as well blame them and/or propose your changes.

But I find myself missing some of the things I really got used to in the original. Research Hospitals were too close at Gene Splicing, which was only nominally a Tier 3 tech as it only required 2 tier-1 and 1 tier-2 as prereqs. 120 minerals was too much investment for too little gain at that point. You have reduced its cost... and then moved Gene Splicing to tier 6 tech, removing facility out of the player's grasp. As it is, I can build Genejack Factories sooner than Researh Hospitals. I pop-boomed to 7 pop before I reached there. And... one can get used to that, but then why did you reduce the cost if you consider them mid-game tech?

Because even for mid game tech it is too much. eco/lab/psi facilities are about 4 times weaker in benefit than mineral ones.

Cost of units would be a reason for another rant. Generally, I find war to be impossible to wage now. Oh, I can steamroll an AI just fine, it can't really do anything. But investing 100 minerals into a cruiser only to see it die against a +50% territory-enhanced bonus out of nowhere? It is more expensive than most structures.

I know the game was ridiculously skewed towards overwhelming offense, but this swings it too far in the opposite direction. I kinda want the balance to be in favor of defenders at a base, and a parity in the field if one utilizes the terrain correctly. Meaning a 3-to-2 att-over-def advantage, brought to 3-to-3 with the help of terrain and/or abilities (ECM, forests, fungus, rocky tiles), and 3-to-4/5 at bases with Perimeter Defences and sensors. As it is, war is all but impossible in the early game without crippling yourself... and midgame against a human who has even halfway decent scouts it will fail as they can resupply much faster and can catch enemy units in their territory with a flat +50% bonus. Losing a state of the art 6-armor unit to a much cheaper horde of 4-weapon ones is not very fun.

Define fun. Not losing units?

Stronger defense is a cornerstone of this mod. And I doubt you can steamroll an equally developed AI just fine. Of course, AI has appalling war tactics but you still sacrifice units to god of randomness. That is a price for free bases.

Forget vanilla where you can take whole opponent faction with just 10 needlejets. This mod requires a fully prepared assault with artillery, defenders, mixed units, fast units, air support, probes, shore bombardment, etc. With all of this your losses will be minimal and you will be able to advance with constant reinforcement from production centers. That is tough but doable. People play tested this and found it quite reasonable balance.

Now if you are saying you cannot occupy weaker faction with all the war preparation you can possible make then we can return to this topic again.

Native life. You wanted to make it more dangerous, but now that I can't hunt them down they are more annoying than anything. They still can't get past trance units, so what they do is eat an occasional former which sucks because losing formers sucks that much harder now. Native life for players... yeah, no. No one uses NL in multiplayer (with the exception of Locusts as an air unit that can capture bases with no ground support) precisely because they get countered by a trance scout and an empath rover. Dependence on Life Cycle facilities which are few and far between, not to mention expensive, makes them a really situational choice when others pump out cheap units with +2 Morale upgrades. Sure an IotD can both attack and transport troops, but attacking with 1:1 odds is a good way to lose those troops, and even if you win you are slowed down by damage, so the next cheap ship will pick you off. I've found the worms' price point to be decent at 4 mineral rows, and I gave them ECM to protect them from rover harass. I still don't use them as anything but guerilla fighters since once the enemy wises up to it artillery makes them go splat really easily. Conventional units are oftentimes better. But then military is generally more expensive in your mod.

I can't think of why I'd use anything other than locusts with the way you priced them.

Pardon me. Are you saying native life feel less dangerous that in vanilla???

As for using them for assault I disagree they are useless. Yes, they can be countered by trance/empath ability but so is ECM against rovers. The mere fact they ignore all defensive structure makes them an excellent alternative choice against highly defended bases. Just +2 PLANET gives them +30% attack and defense! With that setup you probably lose less of them than conventional units against walled base. They have plenty of other benefits and in my play testing I used them effectively providing conditions.
As for the price, I think 4 is too low for such versatile unit. Maybe 8 is too much - I don't know. I can review it and reduce it by your recommendation.

And it doesn't really matter what is psi land attacker:defender ratio is. With long siege they will be attacking your worms as often as you them. Unless, you plan for a single turn base capture without retaliation. And that exactly what want to prevent in this mod! 😉

There are some changes I can't do anything but laud, though. The INDUSTRY exploit has finally, FINALLY, been fixed. I don't even begrudge it that I found it out the hard way by switching to +INDUSTRY civics and failing to complete the project I wanted. Or the reactors not giving additional HP, or the combat not being centered on a per-round model that takes the attacker's advantage and whack a defender over the head with it.

Glad, I did something right. 🙂
Keep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism. I welcome constructive critics when people offer a solution that is supposed to be better than existing one.

1a) Some techs come in well past the time when you could make use of them. Research Hospital is one, but advanced terraforming, Subsea Trunkline and others come to mind.
2) Not enough variance in terraforming caused by moving EcoEng to midgame. Could be spread out better among different techs.

That is adjustable. I also spread advanced terraforming across levels in latest releases. Aquifer and boreholes appear much earlier.

2a) Not enough options for energy production. Boreholes still superior to everything.
2b) Minerals are hard to get in general. If you don't have a lot of rocky tiles, you are out of luck as forests are your best bet.

If you are talking about boreholes mineral output then I reduced it for reason. Otherwise, with them minerals will be too easy to get in general as you can drill them left and right. Rocky mines at least restricted to rocky squares. So one should cherish them. I think it is fair. Land base covers 20 workable tiles. You are saying not having a single rocky tile is a common situation? I never saw that.

If you think there is still not enough minerals - let me know how can you fix it (with boreholes or otherwise) without overdoing it.

2c) Not enough minerals in fungus. This even contradicts the readme?

Fixed docs. Now you legally don't get minerals in fungus.

2d) Default -1 food on mines exacerbates this. Sure I can change it on my end, but I wonder about your reasons.

Is it changeable in txt? Never knew that. I just didn't touch this feature. Haven't you observed it in vanilla?

3) Sea bases are useless for early to mid game. No minerals, high cost of improving facilities.

Again vanilla feature. Have you played vanilla and didn't notice the same thing?
We can move trunkline a little earlier but they will still suck on minerals in early game.

4) POLICE rating centered at -1 clogging faction displays when the same effect can be achieved with different means. General uselessness of Police after moving NLM away.

Thank you for suggestion. I'm about to fix that.

5) Extreme cost of combat units coupled with massive defender's advantage make war against humans infeasible. Territory rules are exploitable, turning Colony Pods into semi-combat support units.

Are you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.
In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.

What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?

Oh, would it be a good time to mention I don't undertand ability costs? At all. The readme mentions streamlining this, and I am just not seeing it.

What does it mean to have "cost 2"? In original it means to have the cost be 50% higher with ability than without it. Here, a 5-1-1*1 unit (50 minerals) with AAA costs 80 minerals, and 6-1-1*2 (50 minerals) with AAA costs 70. Same base costs, different result. I guess it's because of reactors reducing the cost after abilities come into play, but it makes it hard to predict what the cost is going to be without the workshop.

...and I don't even know what the cost factors of 16 and 32 are. I assume it's 1 mineral row and 2 mineral rows, respectively?

It would be. I'll add this to description. I'll also add comments in alphax.txt.
Unfortunately, there were no place to store flat ability cost. So I repurposed same int value. First 4 bits are for standard proportional cost. Second 4 bits are for flat cost (number of mineral rows).

So the cost 2 is, as usual in vanilla, means +25% * 2 = +50% unit cost increase.

The cost 16 means +1 row on top of the price. And so on.

You see some differences in it due to rounding. Vanilla adds rounding at every step. That is why their formulas are incredibly complicated. I calculate everything without rounding and then round at the very end. Thus you may see slight variations in cost. I'll try it to make it so people do not complain about small discrepancies.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Oh, and speaking of territories.

I think you might be interested in this pic.

Somehow Hive got an 1-tile enclave in the middle of my territory. Are you sure this is supposed to happen?

Here's the screenshot and the save. The password is the same as in the above post.

This is how vanilla calculates it. WTP has nothing to do with it. Weird, eh? There is a lot of weirdness to discover in vanilla code. 😃

Here I reproduced it.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Nevill, here is the version for you. Not everything you dreamed for but some.

# Version 77

* Sea Formers is given by Ecology.
* Sea Formers is given by Ecology.
* Terraforming Unit cost = 2.
* Spore Launcher is enabled by Field Modulation.
* Fungicide tanks cost = flat 1 mineral row.
* Super Former cost = 2.
* Unit cost is rounded before ability cost factor is applied so same ability added to the same cost units result in same total cost.
* Needlejet chassis cost = 4.
* Gravship chassis cost = 6.
* Decifer ability cost to human readable text in Datalink.


* Unit cost is rounded before ability cost factor is applied so same ability added to the same cost units result in same total cost.
Before I rounded just final result. Now I added another rounding in between. Let me know how critical it is for you. The more roundings in between the more we fall into evil path of vanilla "whole numbers at every step".

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/hlx36z/mine_subtracts_1_nutrient_worth_fixing/

Posted this question on reddit. Feel free to express your thoughts.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Nevill,
Actually, I have already distributed advancing terraforming across different techs in my recent versions. Check em out.

Last number is (very) approximate sequence at which said tech will be discovered.

aquifer         Field Modulation      16
Technology to build roads in fungus         Field Modulation      16
Thermal Borehole         Superconductor      23
Raise/Lower Land and Sea Floor         Ecological Engineering      40
Condenser         Ecological Engineering      40
Echelon Mirror         Ecological Engineering      40

Tree farm         Environmental Economics   35

So aquifer and borehole come quite early, then tree farm, then rest of them. Is this fine with you?


Same story is with Subsea Trunkline. It is now on level 4 tech about 26% down the tech road.

Thermocline transducer         Superconductor      23
Subsea Trunkline         Fusion Power      26
Aquafarm         Nanominiaturization      55

[Nevill]

Sorry, past midnight here, so I'll be brief. Might expand on it later.
Ended up awake and answering in full. And missed the replies, it seems.

One thing I'll say in advance, is that you often compare things to vanilla. That's not what I mean when I give my feedback. Vanilla does a lot of things wrong; that's why you made the mod in the first place.

Re: mines give -1 food:

I don't either. Most likely because designer valued minerals a lot. You can see it in any other themes throughout the game. All mineral improvements come last and they cost more. There is also another restriction - rocky tile does not produce nutrients from farming at all! That is even harsher.Do you want these restrictions removed?

There is a parameter in alphax.txt that removes this feature. I was wondering if you had something in mind when you left it unchanged, because you made your own adjustments to alphax.txt.

It's the first thing I remove when given a choice because it limits terraforming options with no good reason.

I never cared about farming rocky tiles. Seemed logical enough.

Not by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%.

Not in MP where people beeline to it. One thing Thinker did that changed things significantly was introduce tech tiering. Now beelining to Tier 6 out of the box is impossible. So it is 2220s when I can finally get my hands on the tech I used to get in the 2150s in vanilla and... I think in 2170s in Thinker?

It wouldn't be so bad if I had anything to do with formers in the meantime.

Personally, I am coming around to the idea of not having a fleet of 100+ formers just to drill boreholes (yes, MP games can get stupid when it comes to seeking advantage). I think high cost formers (i.e. low number of formers) could work with reduced terraforming times and earlier access to advanced options. Not sure if this is where you want to take it, though.

Vanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself.

Yes, but only a decent output. Increase the terraforming time, and condenser+farm coupled with a rocky mine is a comparable option, giving 4-5-0 to 2-4-2 (or with modded 0-2-6 boreholes and Tree Fams, 4-3-6 vs 4-4-2). It's really only the Hybrids that make forests too much.

I've been around for most of the discussions about how OP forests are, but I think one can find a balance between advanced terraforming and forest-and-forget.

Not following you. Are you talking about complete absence of them in a game or delay?

A delay that I find a bit unreasonable.

See, one consequence of removing energy from forests and moving energy-producing terraforming far away is that it closes off certain playstyles. In my game, I found myself unable to do much with my bases that weren't on a shore or near a cliff. This is the state of my bases as of 2200:

https://i.postimg.cc/0jnKf0WZ/Gaia-1.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/vHP6xX6Z/Gaia-2.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/tCRxg8Jc/Gaia-3.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/1RrFsym6/Gaia-4.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/9MVfnqqk/Gaia-5.jpg

Note the differences between bases that have access to the shore, and the ones that don't. Also note the base in the Borehole Cluster. Really says it all about boreholes.
(Also note the sea base that has all the energy in the world... and 2 minerals to build facilities)

The only bases I managed to pop-boom are the ones on the shores (Tidal Harnesses can be put anywhere on the shelf) and the ones on the Mount Planet. The rest didn't have enough energy to invest in psych. My early research was done with Biology Labs, which were the second facility I built after Recycling Tanks. One man's trash...

Now I realize that factions that can run Free Market can probably take off with its help, but inland factions would be utterly dependent on starting conditions for energy production. Allowing more energy in forests (while increasing the terraforming time) and/or allowing earlier access to echelon mirrors, and raising terrain would expand the number of strategies available.

You have moved these around, so I suppose the point is moot until I get to test a newer build.

Re: sea bases

They are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later.

Yes, the same as in vanilla, and maybe even a bit worse, what with Aquafarms and Trunklines being made more expensive. And it caused me to never build one in vanilla because it was more cost-efficient to raise a sea floor and put a land base instead.

Subsea Trunkline isn't even that much of a good building. It means that the base would either be unable to take full use of the facility, or unable to produce energy. It's just that without it, sea bases can be written off for much of the midgame, and it would be a shame, seeing how they are made available from the start. I think it should be made much cheaper and available earlier for me to consider colonizing seas.

As of right now, sea bases make for decent outposts due to them projecting territory which the mod converts to combat advantage.

Let me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.

I think having 2-1-1 on a non-terraformed tile would be decent for early midgame (tier ~5-6 techs, so by Centauri Meditation?) when other, much better choises are available if you have former turns to spare.

But fungus is just something that is nice to have. Nothing crucial about it. It's something you mine when you have nothing better to mine.

Define fun. Not losing units?Stronger defense is a cornerstone of this mod. And I doubt you can steamroll an equally developed AI just fine. Of course, AI has appalling war tactics but you still sacrifice units to god of randomness. That is a price for free bases.

Nah. It's getting to play with a lot of them.

SMAC is a game of snowballing, and right now I have a choice of building a cruiser, or a couple of facilities, or a top-tier one that would allow me to snowball harder. And when I see the opponent building those facilities, and then sinking my top-of-the-line cruiser with trashy foils two tech levels behind, I don't bother.

The army is slow to build, and even slower to resupply.

My definition of fun is, hmm...

This is a screenshot from the MP game of Binary Down played sometime last year. The year is 2180. I play Usurpers, Auriga plays Caretakers, and there are another 4 human players in a loose alliance. I've been at war with Auriga from the first moment we met somewhen in the mid-2140s. Since then he destroyed about 60 of my units, and I 80 of his.

https://i.postimg.cc/Wz7Fpw0g/Usurper-units.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/vBfxksBP/Caretaker-units.jpg
The attrition rate averages at about 4 units per turn.

I have ~200 units under my control, 90 of them formers. 5 cruiser transports filled with twenty 6-1-1 marines. About 12 probe teams... those are the ones that survived, I think I had more.

The average naval combat looked like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/zvNH1cHq/Naval-combat.jpg
Absolute chaos and hordes of units ambushing each other from fungus, sinking incoming transports, baiting enemy forces and trying to sneak a force past the patrols. And dying by the dozens.

All made possible by cheap units that are easy to restock and throw back in the meat grinder.

I know, this seems to be a design decision. If I wanted to play Binary Down I'd play it. But building a unit for 10 turns to have it destroyed in one is different from building 10 units per turn and throwing them away to die.

I don't think I can afford building a massive army at this point in game, and we seem to be entering midgame with Tier 6 techs.

Pardon me. Are you saying native life feel less dangerous that in vanilla???

I am saying NL is absent from player-to-player combat. I don't build them, even though my -4 Morale and +1 Planet would suggest otherwise.

Right now I am getting through Centauri Psi and think not "oh sweet, I can make Sealurks now!", but "I need to push through to Centauri Meditation and grab the Xenoempathy Dome".

I am leery of suggesting what they should cost because... well, right now they are in tune with "war is super-expensive" design philosophy. I am just saying everything costs too much, and I am much better off not going to war at all.

If you are talking about boreholes mineral output then I reduced it for reason. Otherwise, with them minerals will be too easy to get in general as you can drill them left and right. Rocky mines at least restricted to rocky squares. So one should cherish them. I think it is fair. Land base covers 20 workable tiles. You are saying not having a single rocky tile is a common situation? I never saw that.If you think there is still not enough minerals - let me know how can you fix it (with boreholes or otherwise) without overdoing it.

Boreholes I actually agree with you on. I'd even probably lower their energy output, and make them a bit faster to build. 0-2-6 at 16 turns sounds reasonable... but maybe it's because that was what I set it to in my own mod.

As for minerals... with negative mine/food dependency switched off and faster condensers available 3-2-0 (rainy-rolling) tiles are a possibility. It's a lot of work, and the output isn't much, but it is something.

Assuming condenser takes 12 turns, and forests are 1-2-1 at 8 turns...
Condenser + Forest*2  =(6, 5, 2) vs (farm+mine)*2 + (farm+solar) = (6-9, 5, 1-3) with 28 vs 34 terraforming turns. Sounds reasonable?

Are you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?

Did you have this discussion before? Could you link to it?

Vanilla is far from perfect, but I don't think it was ever intended to not count reactor discounts. The costs went up until chaos units at 6-8 mineral rows, then a Fusion reactor would have the unit costs roll back to 3 mineral rows. Somewhere at the point of Shard tech the costs would go up again, and the quantum reactor would have it roll back once more, except the game was over by then and nobody got to see it.

As far as I remember vanilla, I mostly waged war with units that cost no more than 7 mineral rows.

The fuss about absolute costs is that it is far more convenient to sit back and build up, and watch your opponent in case they build a military, then build up a (smaller) defense force and build up some more. You are never in a hurry against AI, but you need to keep developing to stay ahead of competition when it comes to human rivals, and the economic/opportunity cost of war seems too much.

The point at which you can invade is a point at which you are already winning by a wide margin.

Eh, we'll see. I like some of the changes, like how you made armor cheaper so an armored unit would cost you less than 2 separate ones, or the different price rules for combat units and modules. But the pace of the game is not something I am used to.


P.S.

Keep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism.

I am not sure how to take that. Do you think I am being nonconstructive?

I mean, there isn't much else to say when I happen to dislike one of the aspects of the core idea behind the mod, except to try and explain why I think that. It doesn't even mean I dislike the entire mod.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One thing I'll say in advance, is that you often compare things to vanilla. That's not what I mean when I give my feedback. Vanilla does a lot of things wrong; that's why you made the mod in the first place.

What else to compare to? I am not making new game just enhance existing one. Too little time to do otherwise.

Re: mines give -1 food:
There is a parameter in alphax.txt that removes this feature. I was wondering if you had something in mind when you left it unchanged, because you made your own adjustments to alphax.txt.

It's the first thing I remove when given a choice because it limits terraforming options with no good reason.

No. I didn't have something in mind when I didn't change that. As I didn't have anything in mind when I didn't change a thousand other original configuration parameters. 😀

Going to disable it in next version. I agree with you on that.

Not by much comparing to vanilla. Originally EcoEng is discovered approximately at 30% of the whole tree. In my version it is 40%.

Not in MP where people beeline to it. One thing Thinker did that changed things significantly was introduce tech tiering. Now beelining to Tier 6 out of the box is impossible. So it is 2220s when I can finally get my hands on the tech I used to get in the 2150s in vanilla and... I think in 2170s in Thinker?

It wouldn't be so bad if I had anything to do with formers in the meantime.

Personally, I am coming around to the idea of not having a fleet of 100+ formers just to drill boreholes (yes, MP games can get stupid when it comes to seeking advantage). I think high cost formers (i.e. low number of formers) could work with reduced terraforming times and earlier access to advanced options. Not sure if this is where you want to take it, though.

I've heard you. Will keep this in mind. I don't believe Thinker rearranged a tree. It just set fixed cost based on level. So does WTP.

I am giving aquifer and boreholes early. Can also give condensers and mirrors but they require large concentrated work fields and one probably doesn't have too many of such even by 100th turn.

Play it if you have time and let me know if you still have nothing to do with formers.

Vanilla forest is immensely OP. Decent output, shortest terraforming time, expands by itself.

Yes, but only a decent output. Increase the terraforming time, and condenser+farm coupled with a rocky mine is a comparable option, giving 4-5-0 to 2-4-2 (or with modded 0-2-6 boreholes and Tree Fams, 4-3-6 vs 4-4-2). It's really only the Hybrids that make forests too much.

I've been around for most of the discussions about how OP forests are, but I think one can find a balance between advanced terraforming and forest-and-forget.

Restoring forest yield and moving HF later in future versions.

Re: sea bases

They are pretty much the same as in vanilla. I may just move some Subsea Trunklines tech earlier or later.

Yes, the same as in vanilla, and maybe even a bit worse, what with Aquafarms and Trunklines being made more expensive. And it caused me to never build one in vanilla because it was more cost-efficient to raise a sea floor and put a land base instead.

Subsea Trunkline isn't even that much of a good building. It means that the base would either be unable to take full use of the facility, or unable to produce energy. It's just that without it, sea bases can be written off for much of the midgame, and it would be a shame, seeing how they are made available from the start. I think it should be made much cheaper and available earlier for me to consider colonizing seas.

As of right now, sea bases make for decent outposts due to them projecting territory which the mod converts to combat advantage.

I'll see about decreasing aqua facilities cost. However, sea bases produce 3 energy per tile from game start. That is 1.5 times more than 1 mineral when building/hurrying facilities. So the trade-off for building facilities is quite good. These 3 energy will be equal to just 0.75 minerals when building units. So sea bases quite capable to build their infrastructure on hurrying alone. They are poor for unit production that's true.

Sea bases is a long going discussion as well. You can open it again if you like. I perceive them comparable to land ones. And I believe if you give them 2 minerals per tile there won't be need for land bases at all. So we should tread cautiously about giving them more minerals.

Let me know if fungus desperately needs minerals.

I think having 2-1-1 on a non-terraformed tile would be decent for early midgame (tier ~5-6 techs, so by Centauri Meditation?) when other, much better choises are available if you have former turns to spare.

But fungus is just something that is nice to have. Nothing crucial about it. It's something you mine when you have nothing better to mine.

Deal. 1 mineral but no more!

SMAC is a game of snowballing, and right now I have a choice of building a cruiser, or a couple of facilities, or a top-tier one that would allow me to snowball harder. And when I see the opponent building those facilities, and then sinking my top-of-the-line cruiser with trashy foils two tech levels behind, I don't bother.

The army is slow to build, and even slower to resupply.

I know, this seems to be a design decision. If I wanted to play Binary Down I'd play it. But building a unit for 10 turns to have it destroyed in one is different from building 10 units per turn and throwing them away to die.

I don't think I can afford building a massive army at this point in game, and we seem to be entering midgame with Tier 6 techs.

I agree with you that game is more flexible with cheaper units. You build them quickly then change production if you like. There is no line to draw there. It is up to personal preferences.

There are two arguments against very cheap units, though.

1. You may fall into another extreme - too many units to manage. Combat units mostly die on front line. However, one still need to set build orders, check bases every time they are built, deliver them to front line, and maybe board-transport-unboard them if on different continent. Dividing unit price in half doubles mouse clicks for above. And then game becomes so boring that 90% of the time you do same logistics over and over again instead of strategy and tactics. That is what some of my users say. Not me. For them unit should be reasonably prices so you can build them in 5-15 turns at any stage of the game. With many bases one will still produce few of them per turn.

2. There should be at least some minimal cost distinction between units of different strength. So the player building better units spends more time on them even nominally. I don't say this is some mandatory rule but it is a logical design in my understanding.
In vanilla all infantries X-1-1*4 with singular reactor cost 6 rows regardless of weapon value. I claim this a bad design and a lot of players agree. I've already compacted weapon cost to grow slower than vanilla. SMACX has 13 weapons. So even with step 1 cost increase you are bound to end up with 13 mineral rows for high end unit. WTP weapon cost accelerates a little so the highest weapon costs 20. Vanilla top weapon cost is 40. With highest reactor cutting cost in half you'll spend 10 mineral rows for 30-1-1 unit. It is absolutely not expensive for late game bases with 50 mineral production or more. They will build such unit in 2 turns. Of course, speed cost a little more and armor cost a little more, etc. So you will be building super puper armored units in 4-6-8 turns instead. Sounds reasonable.

I believe what you experienced with long to build units is the delayed development phenomena. Vanilla keeps all the good weapons and armors in the second half of the game. So player can evolve their empire quite significantly before units becomes expensive. I've corrected this skew in WTP. Now you get weapons/armors at the steady rate. So you may get an expensive unit but unable to produce it quickly. Build cheaper units then. There is always a choice.

Summarizing above.
Try to invent a pricing model that makes different strength unit priced more or less proportionally differently (before reactor discount) and at the same time all units are cheap. I'll be interested.

I am leery of suggesting what they should cost because... well, right now they are in tune with "war is super-expensive" design philosophy. I am just saying everything costs too much, and I am much better off not going to war at all.

That is the point. 4X games like Civ were designed to have a good mix of economy and conquest. Unfortunately, SMACX fell into conquest end of spectrum quite deeply to the level of boredom. I have restored the balance. That is all. I believe there are more of "less build, more fight" games like Starcraft out there where you can have battles of 200 units simultaneously. Civ games are tailored for few units combat. That is how they are designed. It would be a mistake to redo this.

Assuming condenser take 12 turns, and forests are 1-2-1 at 8 turns...
Condenser + Forest*2  =(6, 5, 2) vs (farm+mine)*2 + (farm+solar) = (6-9, 5, 1-3) with 28 vs 34 terraforming turns. Sounds reasonable?

I am with you on this.

Are you serious? Unit cost is so broken in vanilla I don't even want to start this discussion over again.In vanilla hovertank goes from 1-1-3 = 2 rows to 30-12-3 152 rows (not counting reactor discount). At the same time vanilla infantry goes from 1-1-1 = 1 rows to 30-1-1 = 11 rows. This is beyond the unfair.What is the problem with extreme cost for units? Does everybody gets the same price? If so, what is the fuss about absolute unit value?

Did you have this discussion before? Could you link to it?

I don't think there is a dedicated one. Probably beginning of this thread + some special thread I've created if you like to comb through them. However, these were mostly discussion about how to fix it properly rather than what exactly is broken there. The general understanding is the whole unit cost algorithm is broken beyond repair. Check out just the vanilla cost formula and try to design different units there and you see how ridiculous cost you can get both too low and too high.

Civ 1/2 had a very balanced system where cost was assigned to the whole units taking all its strengths and weaknesses into account. And it worked. SMACX trying to standardize everything prices individual components instead and then employ a huge algorithmic machinery to cope with that and to generate Civ like cost for whole unit but fails miserably. And reactors is a story in itself.

I'd suggest to not argue with my unit cost formula in general. Instead let me know if you believe some units are priced incorrectly relative to other units. Then we can fix it.

Vanilla is far from perfect, but I don't think it was ever intended to not count reactor discounts. The costs went up until chaos units at 6-8 mineral rows, then a Fusion reactor would have the unit costs roll back to 3 mineral rows. Somewhere at the point of Shard tech the costs would go up again, and the quantum reactor would have it roll back once more, except the game was over by then and nobody got to see it.

No. It wasn't. The reactors are there to cover their algorithmic incompetency. Look at their unit cost formula. It is so huge and so sloppy. One good developer could fit a better algorithm there and waste less lines of description. It is just cannot exist without reactors cutting unit cost 16 (sixteen) times and quadrupling unit power at the same time!

The fuss about absolute costs is that it is far more convenient to sit back and build up, and watch your opponent in case they build a military, then build up a (smaller) defense force and build up some more. You are never in a hurry against AI, but you need to keep developing to stay ahead of competition when it comes to human rivals, and the economic/opportunity cost of war seems too much.

I've already answered on a point of being flexible in building by shortening production time. Try to come up with better cost arrangement across all components and we'll talk again. So far I'd say this mod model is better than vanilla's but maybe not yet 100% perfect.

The point at which you can invade is a point at which you are already winning by a wide margin.

That is your vanilla snowballing conquest talking in you. Yet, you somehow prefer not to compare with vanilla. 😉

Learn new strategy, man. This is a different game. Here is one hint. Due to enhanced defense you can quite effectively defend from weaker opponent. With that in mind, you don't need to amass enough force to wipe them out completely. Just taking 1-2 bases is enough. They won't be able to retake them. They you can wait a little to accumulate new tiny invasion group and repeat. Of course, they won't like you very much but this is a viable strategy - better than wait half a game to invade.

Eh, we'll see. I like some of the changes, like how you made armor cheaper so an armored unit would cost you less than 2 separate ones, or the different price rules for combat units and modules. But the pace of the game is not something I am used to.

No. You are not. Let me reiterate this again. Vanilla holds best weapon/armor for later until you are so strong economically that building them is a piece of cake. Plus reactors, of course.

WTP gives you components at regular intervals. Quite often few first components are unused because you have nobody to fight yet. This may seem like a waste but it is not. Because sometimes, just sometimes, you actually may need this particle impactor for early conflict. And there you have it. True that you probably won't be using them all in one game because they are pouring at you like shower. But that is fine.

We can try to speed development up a little. I am working on it and you can help out too.

P.S.

Keep mentioning this in the thread periodically to outweigh too much of nonconstructive criticism.

I am not sure how to take that. Do you think I am being nonconstructive?

No. I was literal. There is a lot of nonconstructive stuff going around. You are quite constructive. I like that.

I mean, there isn't much else to say when I happen to dislike one of the aspects of the core idea behind the mod, except to try and explain why I think that. It doesn't even mean I dislike the entire mod.

Absolutely, man. You did a pretty good job already. Speak up and be heard.

[Hagen0]

My experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that. Thinking about it in a 1vs1 scenario you could probably have a very slow, very strategic war which could be interesting. In SP the inability to control my factions boundaries is frustating.

The combat is the one thing I dislike most about the mod. It seems excessively random due to having so few units with high combat volatility. I would also like to see combat unit costs reduced substantially.

Regarding energy input, I agree that boreholes have no competition. (You can do something like raise land + crawled solar collectors/echelon mirrors later but that requires The Supercollider special project to be reasonable.) Early on, if you have no river your energy input is extremely low. Reducing solar collector build cost would be an option. Perhaps reduce mine construction time also.

Vanilla Smac is not a very combat-focused game. While it is very easy to wreak havoc on factions with a moderate force it is next to impossible to conduct war in a manner that benefits you as opposed to hurting someone else (1vs1 and early rover rushes being exceptions). Moreover, a conquered base in enemy territory is a huge liabillity against enemy drones.

[Nevill]

My experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that.

Why, use the offensive outposts (TM)! Fight fire with fire; if they are skulking around at the edges of your territory, expand your territory just before you attack them. They lose their +50% buff, and you get one. Sensor arrays and their puny 25% on defence, eat your heart out!

***

SMAC has a problem in that it is almost impossible to recover from a blow dealt to one of your production bases. Something you invested in for decades can be taken away in a matter of turns, and even if you retake the base, rebuilding it requires a disproportional investment.

As such, multiplayer games for the players tend to be over once the first base falls. The players are rightfully desperate to hold on to their bases, and unless it was a surprise attack the fall of a base means that all resources have been exhausted.

There are no tales of heroic resistance in SMAC. It can be pretty frustrating to play and develop your faction for months without contact, and then lose it all in five years when the militaries clash and the victor emerges.

That is a rather disappointing ending to an otherwise tense game.

I try to keep an open mind about what the new changes mean for the game. I suppose this mod could help the faction dig their heels in, though I am not sure if it wouldn't just delay the inevitable. I suppose this could be most pronounced in games with more than 2 players where others can help the aggrieved party rebuild and retaliate.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

My experience with the combat system is the AI declaring war on me and then sitting on my periphery with artillery/armored drones such that dislodging them is cost-ineffective due to the defender having a large combat advantage. Granted I play a very passive builder style. But I still do not see what to do about that. Thinking about it in a 1vs1 scenario you could probably have a very slow, very strategic war which could be interesting. In SP the inability to control my factions boundaries is frustating.

Are you talking about vanilla experience or WTP?

The combat is the one thing I dislike most about the mod. It seems excessively random due to having so few units with high combat volatility. I would also like to see combat unit costs reduced substantially.

🙄
That same question is raised over and over again. Please watch Sid Meier's presentation on game psychology here.

This is no mean to offend you. Just saving pile of yours and mine time. Millions of players ask this same exactly question about combat randomness and volatility. Sid answered it pretty much clearly. So check if it answers your concerns first.

Regarding energy input, I agree that boreholes have no competition. (You can do something like raise land + crawled solar collectors/echelon mirrors later but that requires The Supercollider special project to be reasonable.) Early on, if you have no river your energy input is extremely low. Reducing solar collector build cost would be an option. Perhaps reduce mine construction time also.

I've reduced boreholes build time. I also enabled aquifer relatively soon. This combined should give extra energy.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

SMAC has a problem in that it is almost impossible to recover from a blow dealt to one of your production bases. Something you invested in for decades can be taken away in a matter of turns, and even if you retake the base, rebuilding it requires a disproportional investment.

As such, multiplayer games for the players tend to be over once the first base falls. The players are rightfully desperate to hold on to their bases, and unless it was a surprise attack the fall of a base means that all resources have been exhausted.

There are no tales of heroic resistance in SMAC. It can be pretty frustrating to play and develop your faction for months without contact, and then lose it all in five years when the militaries clash and the victor emerges.

That is a rather disappointing ending to an otherwise tense game.

Surprisingly, Nevill, I was expecting to hear that from a single player perspective. While from multiplier perspective you should understand and feel that a bonus for one side is a penalty for another and you can be on any. When you dislike fast war resolution do you dislike it as both victor and victim? Would you, as assailant, prefer defender to be able to "recover" from any of your attempts to destroy their economy so the war never ends?

[Hagen0]

The quote was about WTP.

You linked that video before. I do not understand what it's supposed to say. I am not talking about randomness in general. I am talking about your mod in particular. I already explained once how the combat formula you invented makes extreme combat outcomes more likely than they should be. That in itselves would still be OK if you did not have so few units.