SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[EmpathCrawler]

The whole game has a left wing bias.  Free Market and Planned is a good example.

It does? As a Communist, I don't exactly find the extreme stereotypes of Yang and the Hive to be a particularly flattering or fair portrayal of my own ideology. Brian Reynolds needs to try a lot harder to cater to me.


Free Market means every tile you work gives +1 energy, a great boon. To work a tile, you need population. To keep the population happy, you need police (tiny mineral investment and maybe support) or psych facilities (larger mineral investment plus maintenance fees) or specialists (so you give up a tile) or some combination. If you're raking in the energy and it's easy to keep your population pacified with a less severe Police rating, what's the downside?

[vonbach]

It does? As a Communist, I don't exactly find the extreme stereotypes of Yang and the Hive to be a particularly flattering or fair portrayal of my own ideology. Brian Reynolds needs to try a lot harder to cater to me.

Communism produces corpses and oppression. It's worth noting that any society that ever existed under Communism hates it like poison.
Planned is pretty much the best choice in the game. Growth and Industry for and Efficiency that Democracy cancels out.

Free Market means every tile you work gives +1 energy, a great boon. To work a tile, you need population. To keep the population happy, you need police (tiny mineral investment and maybe support) or psych facilities (larger mineral investment plus maintenance fees) or specialists (so you give up a tile) or some combination. If you're raking in the energy and it's easy to keep your population pacified with a less severe Police rating, what's the downside?

Free Market also has ridiculous penalties attached to it. Sure you get more money but with  the police penalties you'll be spending most of it just keeping the population from rioting. If anything Free Market should get the Growth and Industry bonuses representing the people actually having opportunities.

[EmpathCrawler]

Communism produces corpses and oppression. It's worth noting that any society that ever existed under Communism hates it like poison.
Planned is pretty much the best choice in the game. Growth and Industry for and Efficiency that Democracy cancels out.

Guess I'm under my corpse quota! Since you brought up something factually incorrect, I'll point out that polled Russians generally are positive towards the USSR and even somebody as bad as Stalin has had better approval ratings than the current and previous US presidents. Not sure where your info comes from, nor really interested in further off topic debate other than to say Reynolds certainly hasn't been at any of the leftist meetings I go to and if he did I think us SMAC fans would have some critiques rather than thanking him for a free PR blitz. The game is not biased towards me, a believer.

The reason stock Planned is overpowered is because positive Industry is itself extremely powerful and it makes it a little too easy to line up +6 Growth. Democratic Free Market is great if you're at peace and are at your pop ceiling. Don't need growth until Hab facilities, don't need industry when you can rush build.

Free Market also has ridiculous penalties attached to it. Sure you get more money but with  the police penalties you'll be spending most of it just keeping the population from rioting. If anything Free Market should get the Growth and Industry bonuses representing the people actually having opportunities.

Right, that's why I said the penalty is there for exactly that reason. It annoys me that Police is so crucial how happiness is modeled, though. In the stock game it's not too effective to run an aggressive Free Market Police State. Eisenhower called it the military industrial complex. On Earth that combination makes a lot of money, produces a lot of industrial equipment, and keeps a lot of people down. On Planet, you'd still have pacifist drones I think in stock. Crazy!

[Hagen0]

@vonbach: The police penalty for Free Market doesn't make that much sense but Free Market needs harsh penalties because it's positive effect, +2 Economy, is extremely powerful. I use Free Market in Smac most of the time. Planned is good too but imo Free Market is the strongest economy social choice in a vacuum.

You can fight wars in Free Market if you reassign your units to an all specialist base (or a base with a Punishment Sphere but that is less elegant) that pays support via crawled minerals.

[EmpathCrawler]

You can fight wars in Free Market if you reassign your units to a all specialist base (or a base with a Punishment Sphere but that is less elegant) that pays support via crawled minerals.

True, but using specialist bases for that is too gamey for my tastes IMO. If you're going to do it, I think you should either force yourself to Punishment Sphere up or deal with the issues it causes. That's just my personal play style, though. I've never actually built a Punishment Sphere in 20 years of intermittent play!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Though sometimes I just remove all the penalties from all the choices.

Well that is much more unorthodox than anything else. How would you make SE ratings go to negative at all?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

NO TOLERANCE TO FLAME

I had to remind everybody that this is a game and mod discussion thread. Please refrain from touching any sensitive topics unrelated to the game itself. Stay away from it by a large margin. If in doubt whether your post is going to hurt ones feelings - DON'T. Also do not respond to any such post. Just ignore it.

You can always open a new topic or PM if you feel an urge to express something like that.

[vonbach]

Though sometimes I just remove all the penalties from all the choices.

Well that is much more unorthodox than anything else. How would you make SE ratings go to negative at all?

Its an old idea that I saw used to help the AI. I like to use it sometimes. Basically you don't make SE ratings go negative because there are no penalties. Just different bonuses.  Usually I just limit the penalties.

Recently what I've done for my economic is give all of the economic choices at least one point of economic rating.
So it looks something like this.
Police State,    Chaos,  ++POLICE, +SUPPORT, -EFFIC
Democratic,      InfNet,  ++EFFIC, +PROBE, --POLICE
Fundamentalist,  Psych,   ++GROWTH, +EFFIC, +MORALE, -RESEARCH
Simple,          None,    None
Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, +EFFIC, --PLANET, --POLICE
Planned,         PlaNets, +ECONOMY, +INDUSTRY, +POLICE, -GROWTH
Green,           DocFlex, +ECONOMY, ++PLANET, ++EFFIC, -SUPPORT

[Buster's Uncle]

NO TOLERANCE TO FLAME

I had to remind everybody that this is a game and mod discussion thread. Please refrain from touching any sensitive topics unrelated to the game itself. Stay away from it by a large margin. If in doubt whether your post is going to hurt ones feelings - DON'T. Also do not respond to any such post. Just ignore it.

The management would like to officially endorse this post...

[Trenacker]

I am trying to draw sharp distinctions between generic economy classifications for my game, and it points to some basic problems.

First, we are all used to talking about economic theory as economic practice. The capitalism of the macroeconomics textbook is not the capitalism of the real world. The communism of the ideologue is not the communism of the real world. They are attenuated. In fact, capitalism in practice is often so attenuated that it is functionally indistinguishable from the “Planned” economy option. Even the United States, which is so often presented as the exemplar of Free Market capitalism, has parastatals (e.g., AMTRAK). This means that the “Simple” economy type, about which we receive no information, may best approximate the condition of absent regulation.

Second, in modern political vernacular, certain segments of the American population wholly misunderstand capitalism, which makes it hard to define for purposes of games sold to that same market. In fact, we are often comfortable with the monopolistic and oligarchical systems familiar to us, and have worked them into our popular understanding of capitalism so that their rough edges have become blunted and indistinguishable. This is why so many Americans persist in believing that our medical system does not already exhibit the same anti-competitive tendencies they hope to avoid by rejecting the “socialism” of a single-payer model.

Here are the economic options I came up with to solve this issue:

• Simple – An economy based on barter, without the benefit of systematic intervention of any kind.
• Unrestricted – A market without controls on market behavior other than contract enforcement.
• Command – A market governed by a central planning authority. Individual initiative is discouraged.
• Free Market – A market that leaves most decisions to consumers but does act to preserve fair competition and some socially undesirable outcomes.
• Planned – A market that protects defined interests but otherwise permits individual initiative and choice.
• Green – A market organized within the narrow limits of what is environmentally sustainable.

I used this web article, written by Prateek Agarwal, as the basis for my classifications and descriptions.

[vonbach]

I've never liked the super specialized economic systems with only one good for money and so on.
All of them should be good at making at least some money.  Thats why I give all of them at least one point
of economic rating.
Wealth should be where the real penalties lie.

[Tayta Malikai]

I've never liked the super specialized economic systems with only one good for money and so on.
All of them should be good at making at least some money.  Thats why I give all of them at least one point
of economic rating.
Wealth should be where the real penalties lie.

All of them help you to make money, though. Planned lets you invest for the future by building infrastructure and expanding your tax base; Free Market lets you reap the rewards of that investment by effectively giving you money based on your population (since 1 worker = +1 energy from the tile they work); Green starts to shine once you've built a sprawling empire and make most of your money from facilities and trade (and in this mod, can even be more profitable than FM, thanks to fungal yields). They're tools to manage your faction, not an entire idealized system in themselves.

Also, from an aesthetic perspective, I find having multiple SE choices use the same modifiers to be somewhat ugly.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

@Nevill and all.
Does this seems clear enough? Additional info at the mineral surplus row and in production completion turns.

Keep in mind that project contribution does not modify mineral surplus. It redistributes accumulated minerals up to max contribution calculated for given base surplus as long as there are accumulated minerals to distribute. Meaning if next turn an item will be built exactly without carry out minerals and new item starts with completely clean production box (no accumulated minerals yet) - there won't be anything to distribute.

This redistribution happens **after** production phase. For project base it works same way as adding crawler to project. Meaning even if you managed to complete project with crawlers or contribution it will be built on **next** turn.

Even though it doesn't change the surplus it does change how soon item will be built. Therefore, I recalculate correct number of turns in production box with account to contribution (negative or positive).

[Tayta Malikai]

That certainly does make the information more easily accessible at a glance. Nice work!

However, I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation on how the mechanics work. Does this mean that building a project will cause production to slow down at other bases?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

However, I'm not sure I fully understand your explanation on how the mechanics work. Does this mean that building a project will cause production to slow down at other bases?

Definitely! Other bases direct part of their production power toward the project. That is why I call it SPC: Secret Project Contribution. The amount that is subtracted from other bases accumulated minerals is summed up and added to project base accumulated minerals.

I understand it is hard to grasp initially because UNfortunately, there is no exactly same mechanics in vanilla. I had to invent it in parts. Here. Let me reiterate it again.

Every turn bases do their production phase as normal. I.e. surplus is added to accumulated and, if item is completed, next item is placed into production and excess of minerals carried over, etc. All the standard stuff.

After all bases resolved their normal production, program checks if faction builds a project in any of the bases. If more than one faction bases build project - the one with minimal id is picked (usually oldest). This is called project base. Other bases are called contributing bases.

Program calculates the amount of contribution for all contributing bases. The formula is: (surplus - threshold) * proportion (rounded down). Both threshold and proportion are configurable so this feature can be turned off if desired.

The contribution is subtracted from accumulated minerals pool but not more than total accumulated minerals there are, of course. For example, if production just completed without carryover minerals there won't be anything to contribute.

Contribution from all contributed bases is summarized and added to project base accumulated minerals. This effects same way as adding so much mineral worth crawler to the project. Meaning even if it completes the production the project will be erected on next production phase (next turn).

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In the base view the information about SPC is estimated for next turn in assumption nothing changes in bases output. Same way as vanilla estimates production turns for completion.