SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Nevill]

The ability to start building a facility, hurry the first 10 minerals for 20 credits, and then switch to building a unit at no penalty is definitely exploitative. You essentially gain an advantage of 20 credits on every unit built. That's significant given how much 20 credits is worth early in the game.

It is pretty minor, actually. You make it sound like it is significant and every unit nets you 20 credits, but you have to pay 20 credits to save 20 credits.

It's precisely because 20 credits is a lot in the early game you don't waste it hurrying units. I did it, what, two or three times in all of the 40 turns we played, and the most I paid was 10 credits at a time. Mostly when a base needed a police scout, or when a worm was sighted nearby.

[Tayta Malikai]

It is pretty minor, actually. You make it sound like it is significant and every unit nets you 20 credits, but you have to pay 20 credits to save 20 credits.

It's precisely because 20 credits is a lot in the early game you don't waste it hurrying units. I did it, what, two or three times in all of the 40 turns we played, and the most I paid was 10 credits at a time. Mostly when a base needed a police scout, or when a worm was sighted nearby.

I often hurry units by a single turn (to a maximum of 12 credits for 3 minerals) to get them out a turn faster, because my understanding is that tempo is important and getting stuff out ASAP is critical (what gets called "turn advantage"). If I was allowed to hurry the first 10 minerals for cheap, I'd get a lot more value for my money.

Now, granted, maybe this is inefficient of me and I should just stop hurrying units altogether, and save the money for hurrying facilities later instead. I didn't consider that before. But it is an advantage compared to what I was doing before.


EDIT: So I tried re-enabling the doubling threshold for singleplayer... but it turns out it applies to units as well, making it cost 8 energy per mineral. Yikes!

I guess I will have to change it back and just avoid abusing the exploit for now.

[lolada]

The ability to start building a facility, hurry the first 10 minerals for 20 credits, and then switch to building a unit at no penalty is definitely exploitative. You essentially gain an advantage of 20 credits on every unit built. That's significant given how much 20 credits is worth early in the game.

Jeez i rush a toooon, all the time, usually waste no credits and quick calculate exact amounts.. i look for bases that take longest so that i get the most in turn saved and what not... but rushing 20 for facility then switch to unit. That would be so annoying - but i guess it would be super useful for formers and at the start of the game. Now i need not to use this  .. i am barely avoiding using industry exploit to rush secret projects.

[Tayta Malikai]

Jeez i rush a toooon, all the time, usually waste no credits and quick calculate exact amounts.. i look for bases that take longest so that i get the most in turn saved and what not... but rushing 20 for facility then switch to unit. That would be so annoying - but i guess it would be super useful for formers and at the start of the game. Now i need not to use this  .. i am barely avoiding using industry exploit to rush secret projects.

Haha, sorry about that. xD

I thought the INDUSTRY exploit was patched in this mod, though?

[lolada]

I am pretty sure its still worth it to switch industry and rush with energy credits, switch back; not sure what Tim last changed. He fixed it partially; i think he fixed that you could actually complete the thing by switching back or forth.. or smth like that.

[Nevill]

Huh, it didn't occur to me, but now I realize it's an either/or.

Either you keep the numbar of minerals constant, no matter what the INDUSTRY setting, which causes a 20-rows mineral project to autocomplete with 160 minerals after switching to +2 INDUSTRY.

Or you shift the number of accumulated minerals with the length of the row, which makes 200 minerals shrink to 160 after a switch... or expand 160 minerals to 200 after switching back. Which opens the possibility of exploiting energy reserves.

Under the old system you can't misuse credits directly (you can do it by upgrading Crawlers, but there are no crawlers in the mod, so it's irrelevant). You could build units for cheap and disband them while on Power for an extra 2 minerals per row, I suppose. You could pay ~640 credits for WP instead of 800 (ignoring the hurrying thresholds here for ease of calculation), and switch from 0 to a +2 INDUSTRY next turn. Money for SE changes are not refunded.

Under the new system, you can do the same (Switch to a +2 INDUSTRY, pay 640 credits for 160 minerals, switch back to 0 INDUSTRY to "stretch them" into 200 minerals), refunding the money. In a way, it opens the way to a more severe exploit... but unlike the one above, which is just a part of the gameplay, this one has to be maliciously abused to make use of it.

Not sure it's a better approach, but it bothers me less.

[lolada]

I am not bothered with it.. in single-player you just cheat or not... everyone has its own set of rules. In MP well maybe you can do smth to control it there if someone is a scumbag . But I believe there's so many ways to cheat/exploit in this game that its mostly pointless to try hard to remove exploits.

[Tayta Malikai]

I think the new system makes things nebulous enough, and the gains small enough, that it's not really worth trying to exploit INDUSTRY anymore.

[Nevill]

Looking at the earlier changes...

Version 49
Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.

Can you clarify the reasoning about those? I thought SE didn't multiply yield, and that only Condensers added their +50%.

I think this worked better in vanilla when it was an undocumented feature, and all it needed was documentation. It encouraged Condenser + Farm for a 4-1-0 yield, plus Farm + Solar around the condenser to get some use out of rainy tiles, and Echelon Mirrors to enhance solars. It also made Condenser + Farm + Soil Enricher / Borehole competitive with Hybrids later in the game. I think the multiplication effect let it scale rather nicely.

[lolada]

Condensers are rightly nerfed. AI was notorious with them like 6+ 8+ food tiles everywhere. The best play was to like spam condensers two  tiles apart for food and just work boreholes. Thawk has some aars with condensers networks i think.

Food is mostly ok in this game, condensers are doing their job when they are available on time.. often its way easier to spam Tree forests. Soil enrichers are also good but come quite late. If anything AI is growing too fast early.

[Nevill]

You can't have 6+ tiles everywhere without giving farms a +2 output.
The max output a condenser can give a tile with no bonuses at the early stages of the game is 4. (3 from a rainy farm +50%). A fair amount compared to the former-turns invesred.

I think you complained about the lack of terraforming diversity in the next thread? This *is* the alternative to spamming tree forests. Well, this, and nerfing boreholes so they aren't the all-time superior terraforming choice.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I could always include some advice on which factions to exclude. The reason for having 8 factions is that a lot of them could be described as being the odd one out - Omega can't be played effectively by the AI, Meta gums up the Council mechanics, PTC doesn't really know what it's doing, and so on. So I figured the player should get the choice of what sort of game they want to play.

In this regard I'd recommend to make them actually playable by both AI and human. It does limit your imagination, of course. However, this way somebody will actually play them or play with them in a game.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am pretty sure its still worth it to switch industry and rush with energy credits, switch back; not sure what Tim last changed. He fixed it partially; i think he fixed that you could actually complete the thing by switching back or forth.. or smth like that.

WTP recalculates accumulated minerals proportional to INDUSTRY change. So the number of turns left to completion stays the same. I didn't take hurry into account. That is correct. If one wants to hurry project in one turn it is cheaper to switch to higher INDUSTRY before that.
I can go further and recalculate hurry price for INDUSTRY = 0. So the price will be dependent on basic item mineral cost and completion percentage but not on current INDUSTRY rating. That would be a very nontransparent to user, though. Currently they are paying for each mineral brick in production screen now. With this correction they will not see what they are paying for.

I would just leave these exploits there and let people use them if they up to it.

The better way for INDUSTRY and GROWTH would be not to reduce the target box but to directly multiply the contribution. Then it would affect the current turn only and won't create these tangling between consents across turns.
But this is technically impossible. The whole game is penetrated with this mechanics. 😟

Either you keep the numbar of minerals constant, no matter what the INDUSTRY setting, which causes a 20-rows mineral project to autocomplete with 160 minerals after switching to +2 INDUSTRY.

Or you shift the number of accumulated minerals with the length of the row, which makes 200 minerals shrink to 160 after a switch... or expand 160 minerals to 200 after switching back. Which opens the possibility of exploiting energy reserves.

Under the old system you can't misuse credits directly (you can do it by upgrading Crawlers, but there are no crawlers in the mod, so it's irrelevant). You could build units for cheap and disband them while on Power for an extra 2 minerals per row, I suppose. You could pay ~640 credits for WP instead of 800 (ignoring the hurrying thresholds here for ease of calculation), and switch from 0 to a +2 INDUSTRY next turn. Money for SE changes are not refunded.

Under the new system, you can do the same (Switch to a +2 INDUSTRY, pay 640 credits for 160 minerals, switch back to 0 INDUSTRY to "stretch them" into 200 minerals), refunding the money. In a way, it opens the way to a more severe exploit... but unlike the one above, which is just a part of the gameplay, this one has to be maliciously abused to make use of it.

Not sure it's a better approach, but it bothers me less.

Not entirely correct. Let's say you have 200 mineral worth project. You are contributing 10 minerals/turn and accumulated 100 minerals already. It is 10 turns left to build and 400 credits to hurry it outright.
Now if you switch to +2 INDUSTRY.

Vanilla
Box size shrinks to 160 and there is still 100 minerals accumulated. So it is 60 minerals left to accumulate = 6 turns left to build and 240 credits to hurry.

WTP
Box size shrinks to 160 and there is now 80 minerals accumulated. So it is 80 minerals left to accumulate = 8 turns left to build and 320 credits to hurry.

As you see WTP completely mitigates building exploit and halves hurrying exploits in case you buy it and switch back. So it is somewhat better than vanilla in this regards.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Looking at the earlier changes...

Version 49
Condenser does not multiply nutrient yield.
Soil Enricher does not multiply nutrient yield and instead adds 1.

Can you clarify the reasoning about those? I thought SE didn't multiply yield, and that only Condensers added their +50%.

I think this worked better in vanilla when it was an undocumented feature, and all it needed was documentation. It encouraged Condenser + Farm for a 4-1-0 yield, plus Farm + Solar around the condenser to get some use out of rainy tiles, and Echelon Mirrors to enhance solars. It also made Condenser + Farm + Soil Enricher / Borehole competitive with Hybrids later in the game. I think the multiplication effect let it scale rather nicely.

Condenser is supposed to change moisture around. Naturally their primary placement strategy was to create a network of condensers to cover tiles in most effective way with as little condensers as possible. This effect is also supposed to limit their usage as one cannot make tiles more rainy. Condenser by itself should not do anything else besides moisturizing.
Multiplying () food output is a very strange lore wise inexplicable effect. Moreover, it clashes with above placement strategy forcing players to place them on nutrient resources without regard to its moisture coverage area. I found this strategically unsound. It also allows to get more and more food from them by placing more of them even on already rainy land.

SE I was just corrected to match documentation. In vanilla it adds 50% which won't have any effect on arid+farm.

Besides, food multiplication on top of another multiplication creates too much food toward the end of the game. I believe improvements should add some flat value, not multiplying stuff. This creates too tricky mechanics and micro-strategical exploits those are not really needed.

On top of all the above this was also inspired and heavily discussed with thread participants. It is a product of multi-mind review. 🙂
Which doesn't prohibit us to reopen the discussion and revert/modify it as needed.

[Nevill]

Not entirely correct. Let's say you have 200 mineral worth project. You are contributing 10 minerals/turn and accumulated 100 minerals already. It is 10 turns left to build and 400 credits to hurry it outright.
Now if you switch to +2 INDUSTRY.
[...]
As you see WTP completely mitigates building exploit and halves hurrying exploits in case you buy it and switch back. So it is somewhat better than vanilla in this regards.

The more you build with minerals instead of credits, the less you get out of it.

Vanilla requires you to actually change SE settings and stay that way for the next turn so they could take effect. So to make full use of it you have to pay ~80 credits for the SE changes, and another 80 to change back, though often you would plan your game so that you don't have to.

Modded version allows you to outright cheat by paying with credits at a cheaper rate with no other effects on the turn. Just switch to a higher INDUSTRY setting, hurry things in one go, then switch back on the same turn as if nothing happened - the box will stay full. If you can save up 320 credits to change 3 settings at once, you can hurry things up to 40% cheaper assuming a +4 INDUSTRY rating and building them from scratch.

The halving of the hurrying exploit stems from the fact that bases that don't have accumulated minerals benefit in full, and those that have completed their production have zero use for it. But exploits can always be targeted.