SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am mostly mad that I can't have my ballistic nuclear submarines.

Sorry, missed this point. I am with you. It still will be only for multiplier? Is missile cloaked by itself?

[Nevill]

Yes, it is for multiplayer only.

Missiles can't have abilities. I mean, they can, if you assign those to a base unit in alphax.txt, but otherwise they can only have different reactors.

So no, they aren't cloaked.

A lot of interactions in this game haven't been thought through. For example, if you destroy an inbound air transport, its cargo will just drop to the ground unharmed. I can also think of several interactions with air superiority and artillery that don't make sense, or air superiority and psi-armor needlejets...

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Continued to play testing new nutrient model. The playability seems pretty good. Almost all bases are growing at steady rate. Some faster, of course, but there are almost no stagnated bases or bases without ability to work some minerals from at least forests. To further confirm my feelings I have analyzed the growth on diagram. See below. This is in assumption moist base has only moist tiles around, rainy base has only rainy tiles, etc. Also no special aid like CC, GROWTH change, was accounted for. First level approximation.

Solid lines are vanilla model: citizen nutrient intake = 2, farm nutrient bonus = 1, kelp farm nutrient bonus = 2, nutrient cost multiplier = 10, base tile nutrient bonus = 2
Dashed lines are new nutrient model version: citizen nutrient intake = 2, farm nutrient bonus = 2, kelp farm nutrient bonus = 3, nutrient cost multiplier = 15, base tile nutrient bonus = 2
Corrected. It was base tile nutrient bonus = 1 before.

Few things to notice.

1. Moist bases were falling into stagnation in vanilla. The bigger their size the slower they grow. In new model they exhibit steady growth, which was the intent of this modification. Nice!
I cut my chart at about 140 turn. The moist base stagnation is visible already but it is becomes just awfully slow by turn 200 and beyond.

2. Rainy bases growth rate stays steady and doesn't change much from vanilla. Which is also good - no major game breaking besides fixing stagnated bases as intended.

3. Super fertile bases (jungles or ocean with aquafarm) were growing about twice as fast comparing even to rare fertile ones. They are slightly slower in new model.

4. Due to all bases more or less steady growth rate that is not dependent on base size there is no more ICS problem. Colonies can be produced by a base at any size and this will equally impact base growth. No more need to spam them from smallest undeveloped bases. Moreover, it is now better to spam them from bases with CC. Meaning if base has enough nutrient surplus and can work some mineral tiles for decent mineral output it makes sense to build CC first then spam colonies at about 20% higher rate in general! 😊

5. The #1 + #3 also tune down the Jungle OP problem. Apparently faction landed on Jungle develop about twice faster than any other. It was perceived as very unfair random luck advantage. In new model the difference between different fertility lands is less pronounced. Rainy bases grow about 50% faster comparing to moist one and jungle bases are about another 50% faster on top of that. So it is still absolutely fair difference but not as enormous as in vanilla.

Overall, I claim this an astounding success. 🎉
Kudo to MercantileInterest for original idea. 👏

[dino]

Excellent idea to improve land farms to reduce moist terrain relative disadvantage, but I strongly disagree with other changes in #RESOURCEINFO section:

1) 1 nutrient on a base tile, with a 2 nutrients intake is a horrible idea:

A base on arid terrain will starve, which thinker ai does often. A base on a moist terrain won't accumulate a single nutrient untill it builds a farm, at witch point the difference will be the same as vanilla.
Only after growing a pop and starting to work a second farm the disadvantage becomes smaller than in vanilla. So, effectively you've made moist worse then vanilla in the most critical period of the early game landgrab.

Base Square,      2, 1, 1, 0,

2) Seanutrients

Without popboom and with nerfed boreholes and condensers, you've made seabases OP, with very fast growth in comparison to land.
I've always considered nerfing seanutrients, but it'd be too harsh, but leaving them as they are and bumping land farms is exactly right imo.
Land gameplay is more interesting, don't force me into the sea early, by making it better than land in early game.

Improved Sea,     2, 1, 3, 0,

3) ICS

Without popboom and without crawlers, ICS is the only viable strategy, just look at your graph.
Spamming bases to each work only 7 tiles, will give you 100 turns of advantage on putting all tiles to work, so growing tall is absolutely not an option now.

Solutions:

Bring crawlers back, but nerf them: no SP rush, one resource penalty.
Useless long term, can't spam them too much early and then get all minerals back when no longer needed by rushing SP.
But are a great help in the early game, for a faction that got low on nutrients area at the start of the game and can't grow population fast.

Constant growth rows: I'd suggest 5 rows x 10 nutrients.
And make AI to not start building colony pods until the base grow to 2 ( eventually untill expected time to growing a pop is smaller, than to build a pod, but with AI bonuses it's not necessary ).

Growing tall would net you the same exponential growth as ICS and open investment opportunity into resource multiplying facilities. It'd be still slower than vanilla popbooming.
While investment into colony pod, would give a return in a free support, base tile yield and opportunity to grab land before competition.

Requiring constant 50 nutrients to build a colony pod, would result in a slower early game landgrab, compared to 30 nutrients currently in the mod.
But there would be still  enough to do, while you are waiting for a base to grow to 2, build a former, military units, etc.
While total time required to put all tiles to work, whether by ICS, or growing tall, would not be faster than with ICS of size 7 bases currently.

Seriously, I like the idea of getting rid of popboom, but without constant nutrient rows, early popbooming with GROWTH 6 is a must, to not be forced into ICS as the only viable strategy.
I'd call constant rows with tall bases a "soft" popboom and you still have to grow them tall first anyway for the effect to kick in.
While after you run out of workable tiles the effect would start to diminish with each pop growth and there is no point at which it is faster than ICS, or vanilla popboom.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

1) 1 nutrient on a base tile, with a 2 nutrients intake is a horrible idea:

I meant to change it back. This is a remnant from my previous experiments. Corrected in my post. Good catch.

Without popboom and with nerfed boreholes and condensers, you've made seabases OP, with very fast growth in comparison to land.

This nutrient balance modifies both land and sea farms uniformly not changing the land/sea bases balance. So, I guess, you refer to the mod in whole?

There is no pop-boom and boreholes for some time in game. Vanilla and WTP are similar in this regards. So you are saying vanilla/WTP sea bases are OP at the beginning? Hard to agree, honestly. Let me know in how many of your previous games you started building sea colonies as soon as you got Flexibility and never build a single land one since? If the answer is zero, then you are like 99% of other players who prefer to populate land first. They would be quite surprised to find out how OP sea bases are and that they are missing an incredibly OP strategy to colonize ocean first. When this trend changes I agree to seriously discuss this topic.

Out of three features you mentioned only condensers are directly related to land/sea growth difference. This doesn't apply until you get them and even after that one loses only 1 nutrient (2 if on nutrient resource) per condenser. Not that big of a deal. I can make them generate extra nutrient in its tile if you think it is restores the balance.

3) ICS

Without popboom and without crawlers, ICS is the only viable strategy, just look at your graph.
Spamming bases to each work only 7 tiles, will give you 100 turns of advantage on putting all tiles to work, so growing tall is absolutely not an option now.

You lost me. I didn't get your math. Nobody was trying to disable ICS or growing tall strategies. They are still there. How one can expand without building colonies? Why growing tall is not an option now? Is this modification prevent them from growing? It seems to be quite the opposite. Growing tall wasn't an option in vanilla for not so fertile bases. This model allows them to grow faster. Thus securing better/quicker pay-off from growing.

How crawlers are related to grow-expand choice when they are not using base population in any way?!

I agree that easy achievable pop-boom demands fast expansion to cash max benefit but wasn't this the OP strategy that we tried to fix for long and somehow fixed already even before this nutrient model?

Bring crawlers back, but nerf them: no SP rush, one resource penalty.
Useless long term, can't spam them too much early and then get all minerals back when no longer needed by rushing SP.
But are a great help in the early game, for a faction that got low on nutrients area at the start of the game and can't grow population fast.

Crawler is just extra resource with no involvement to population whatsoever and with no penalties except initial cost. If you want to limit one of them per base then just beef up base tile yield - a free crawler for everyone to jump start the base growth. Give it like 10-10-10 yield and share your play testing experience. Maybe it will be indeed the mother lode nobody just thought about before.

Constant growth rows: I'd suggest 5 rows x 10 nutrients.
And make AI to not start building colony pods until the base grow to 2 ( eventually untill expected time to growing a pop is smaller, than to build a pod, but with AI bonuses it's not necessary ).

Growing tall would net you the same exponential growth as ICS and open investment opportunity into resource multiplying facilities. It'd be still slower than vanilla popbooming.
While investment into colony pod, would give a return in a free support, base tile yield and opportunity to grab land before competition.

Requiring constant 50 nutrients to build a colony pod, would result in a slower early game landgrab, compared to 30 nutrients currently in the mod.
But there would be still  enough to do, while you are waiting for a base to grow to 2, build a former, military units, etc.
While total time required to put all tiles to work, whether by ICS, or growing tall, would not be faster than with ICS of size 7 bases currently.

Seriously, I like the idea of getting rid of popboom, but without constant nutrient rows, early popbooming with GROWTH 6 is a must, to not be forced into ICS as the only viable strategy.
I'd call constant rows with tall bases a "soft" popboom and you still have to grow them tall first anyway for the effect to kick in.
While after you run out of workable tiles the effect would start to diminish with each pop growth and there is no point at which it is faster than ICS, or vanilla popboom.

I found these other suggestions not directly related to the quoted post. Would you mind to split them in smaller chunks and discuss them separately?

[dino]

Changes to farms and disabling popboom are separate topics, so talking about them in a single post could have been confusing.
What I was saying is that improving farms helps with both making moist better and growing pop in general, but it's still not enough to make tall bases a viable growth strategy in the absence of popboom.

Even with vanilla popboom, it is not that clear whether growing tall bases makes sense, without popboom there is no contest, your graph is a clear illustration.
Trying to build sparse bases to work ~14 tiles per base is a loosing startegy by a huge margin, because growing two bases to 7 is 100 turns faster than growing one to 14.

Constant rows would make ICSing slower, while growing large bases faster, but still slower than vanilla popbooming.
So both strategies would be equal in terms of growth speed, with advantages in different areas.
Tall makes multiplying facilities more profitable, while investing in colony pods allows to get the best tiles worked faster and support more units.

I've just repeated the same arguments, with hopefully clearer wording, so I'll end it here and won't bring this topic in the future.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

That is fine. You can bring these topics all the way you want in the future. I was just confused how some of them are related to the proposed nutrient model, as you correctly noticed.

Expanding vs. building is a big topic. We can continue on this path. However, I don't think everybody are on the same page with this. There is no a single understanding among people whether anything is broken here and if yes, what exactly, and how this should be changed to make game better, etc. We all can still continue expressing our thoughts on it.

My humble opinion is that over expanding is not a problem. This is absolutely natural thing to do and AI should do the same and then the smartest one wins.

[Nevill]

WtP bug: a number of attack modifiers do not display in battle odds as of v122.

How to reproduce: create a land unit with Nerve Gas pods, let it run along a road to have less than a single move point left, attack a scout. Neither the Hasty penalty nor the Nerve Gas bonus will be featured on the display, although they will be a part of the formula.

Attached is a picture of a 2x-1-2 rover with Nerve Gas Pods (+50%) and Very Green morale (-25%) attempting a hasty (-33%) attack on a enemy base. (and yes, I am sure it has a hasty penalty and the gas is used - it started in Library of Planet this turn)


Edit: also, I know this is not WtP... but can something be done about the bug where capturing a base from a faction with FREEFAC creates that facility in a different base? The turn before the one on the screen capturing the Revelation Base from the University not only didn't give me a Network Node or a Perimeter Defence on the base, but erected a Perimeter Defence in Library of Planet next door, belonging to the enemy faction. And I can't even tear it down with a probe anymore!

[Nevill]

Separate post:
; Set the amount of collateral damage other units in a defending tile will receive when losing.
; Example: 3 = normal damage (vanilla behaviour), 0 = disables collateral damage entirely.
; Only non-negative values are allowed.
collateral_damage_value=3

Does nothing. I can't enable collateral damage back. Am I doing something wrong?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

WtP bug: a number of attack modifiers do not display in battle odds as of v122.

How to reproduce: create a land unit with Nerve Gas pods, let it run along a road to have less than a single move point left, attack a scout. Neither the Hasty penalty nor the Nerve Gas bonus will be featured on the display, although they will be a part of the formula.

Indeed. A great discovery. It turns out that these two modifiers have their own processing code outside of battle computation! A very hard-coded game. 😢
So my nice battle status alignment pushes these two out of visible scope. How sad. I'll remove this alignment feature since it is just cosmetic and fixing this would require some code duplication. Let me know if you feel this feature is so nice that it is worth extra work keeping it.

# Version 130

* AI base production and unit movement adjustment.
  * Base tries to build native protection if insufficient.
  * Unit in the base tries to hold to maintain native protection.
  * Base tries to build colonies if there is room for colonization.
* [bug] Battle status summary alignment messes up with Hasty and Gas modifiers. Feature removed.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Edit: also, I know this is not WtP... but can something be done about the bug where capturing a base from a faction with FREEFAC creates that facility in a different base? The turn before the one on the screen capturing the Revelation Base from the University not only didn't give me a Network Node or a Perimeter Defence on the base, but erected a Perimeter Defence in Library of Planet next door, belonging to the enemy faction. And I can't even tear it down with a probe anymore!

You are kidding? This indeed is one nasty bug. Can you send me a save? Without save it would be very difficult to track this as this doesn't manifest itself all the time.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Separate post:
; Set the amount of collateral damage other units in a defending tile will receive when losing.
; Example: 3 = normal damage (vanilla behaviour), 0 = disables collateral damage entirely.
; Only non-negative values are allowed.
collateral_damage_value=3

Does nothing. I can't enable collateral damage back. Am I doing something wrong?

Hmm. Works as advertised for me. Would you mind sending me your save where you are testing this and thinker.ini? You can use PM if easier.

[Nevill]

It is a very well-known bug. Basically, when you capture a base with FREEFAC, the free facility appears on a random base. It is hard to reproduce, because it doesn't occur every time. I can send you the saves before and after.

Here's the save, my password is "buzz".

Note that upon capture Revelation Base should have a Perimeter Defence (because I play Hive) and a Network Node (because Tayta plays Uni), even though it didn't have them before. Half the time it will function as intended, but sometimes the game will assign those facilities to random bases. This time, it sent the Network Node to one of my bases on the mainland, Proletarian Knot. It certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the turn, you can check the save.

However, so far I only encountered the game sending facilities to your own bases. I've never seen it build facilities for the faction you captured the base from.

[Nevill]

Hmm. Works as advertised for me. Would you mind sending me your save where you are testing this and thinker.ini? You can use PM if easier.

Sorry, this one is a false alarm. For some reason collateral damage is disabled for tiles that contain Colony Pods. Vanilla behavior. Live and learn.

Since we touched on the subject of collateral... can you clarify when non-combat units such as formers or probes are damaged or destroyed once combat units in the tile are killed off? Sometimes formers receive damage, and sometimes they are completely annihilated. Sometimes you can defend a base with a dozen formers, and sometimes the defenders are wiped out on a third attack by a copter. What gives?

An unarmored probe is always destroyed if the base tile has no combat units left. What about an armored one?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

It is a very well-known bug. Basically, when you capture a base with FREEFAC, the free facility appears on a random base. It is hard to reproduce, because it doesn't occur every time. I can send you the saves before and after.

Not very well-known by me. Indeed we keep discovering things after 20 years of playing.

Note that upon capture Revelation Base should have a Perimeter Defence (because I play Hive) and a Network Node (because Tayta plays Uni), even though it didn't have them before. Half the time it will function as intended, but sometimes the game will assign those facilities to random bases. This time, it sent the Network Node to one of my bases on the mainland, Proletarian Knot. It certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the turn, you can check the save.

I didn't get it. Why captured base should get a Perimeter Defence and a Network Node??? Are you describing two different cases depending on who captured it?

However, so far I only encountered the game sending facilities to your own bases. I've never seen it build facilities for the faction you captured the base from.

So you are saying it is a first time it sent it to enemy base? I'll have a look.


Found it. Also found few other things for captured base along the way.

HQ is always destroyed
Pressure Dome is never destroyed

Other facilities can be destroyed in some case (except Total Thought Control?).  If so then:
FAC_RECREATION_COMMONS is destroyed
FAC_RECYCLING_TANKS is destroyed
Other facilities has 1/3 chance to be destroyed

I confirm that after above destroying code creates free facilities for both capturing and captured base factions. Weird design. Why would conqueror get a free facility from captured base faction?
The problem is that it put them in some base which is not set properly in the code. Therefore, the behavior is nondeterministic. Most often this is the last (most recent) base of capturing faction since this faction just finished their production cycle. However, it could be anything.


Voila.

# Version 131

* \[fix\] Captured base now properly receives free facilities from both capturing and captured factions. Didn't work in vanilla.