SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I continue the game with version 154.  Some surprises: Fungicidal Tanks cost 0, Gun Foils count as police units.

Gun Foils is a combat unit, isn't it? Why shouldn't it count as a police? It is original vanilla thing I didn't change anything there.

Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enough by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.

I've got Fusion reactors, but I recreated the Fission Scout unit, because Fusion reactors are just double the cost and no benefit vs. a mindworm.

Higher reactors reduce weapon/armor cost. Obviously, they are not useful for non combat not armored units. They also increase minimal cost of the unit to reactor level. This is vanilla feature that I didn't touch. So not beneficial for extremely cheap units like Scout Patrol as well.

The basic problem is that probe team mind control costs are totally broken in the stock binary.  They're way overpowered, and have been the subject of probably 50% of my rage quits in the past, before I started modding.  Single biggest flaw in the game, most in need of fixing.  I mean, look at the screenshot, my capitol is 7 squares away.  WTF.

Usually people call feature broken if human can use/exploit it by AI cannot. So this one is clearly not as AI uses it quite effectively.

There is no need to raise base subversion cost as it grows anyway with the number of subverted bases to the level where faction cannot subvert any more. So it is a pretty limited used feature. Besides, there are very good defenses against it. First, protective infantry/foil probe. It costs 4 and 2.25 times more stronger against attacking probe (+50% territory, +50% base). Second, you can subvert base back. Recently subverted bases are quite cheap to the original owner.

I don't have any intellectual commitment to the settings of 154, so I will install 155 now.  However I would worry that restoration of the 3:2 mindworms might make them back into the One True Weapons Platform again.  I will suspend judgment on that for now, but it's a problem I've noticed in my own mod.  Did all this nice conventional weapons, armor, and chassis rebalancing work, only to have it ruined by this gaping hole in the combat system.

Exactly! That is why I got rid of it in first place long time ago. But, apparently, people feel strongly nostalgic about it. So I'll keep vanilla settings in alphax.txt and anyone  can change it to 1:1 or whatever else value they desire.

Now that my game is over, I turn to the problem of why the Hive doesn't research Police State.  Well, I think the answer is clear enough in alphax.txt.  It seems that Tim is using a regime where a "really important" tech in some category, has weight 6.  So there are various Conquer techs, that I think I learned, with this weight.  The problem is that Doctrine: Loyalty is not regarded as very important as a Conquer tech.  It is:

Doctrine: Loyalty,             DocLoy,   3, 2, 2, 2, Mobile,  Psych,   000000000

It's basically not going to get researched.  It's not regarded as being worth all that much.  Now the first problem is, it's rather important to the Hive.  So if it's not regarded as particularly Conquery, it nevertheless needs to find a way to be more important the Hive, or just be easier to get period.

The 2nd thing is, it gives the Command Nexus, so the Conquer rating is simply straight up wrong.  Having a free Command Center in every base is a pretty good capability.  Now one might argue that great increases in Secret Project costs, make some of these SPs not as valuable.  But it still has value for conquest, so I just can't see a proper universe where the weight is that low.

Don't blame me. One cannot possible to beeline research path for all possible priorities combinations. Sooner or later faction exhausts available focused technologies and need to research something else to advance. That is normal. Conquer oriented factions got their Applied Physics and Nonlinear Mathematics in quick succession already. No need to give them anything beyond that right away.

I think you misjudge Doctrine: Loyalty offensive value. It gives Perimeter Defense to everybody. So it is a powerful defensive tech in first place. Only one faction will build The Command Nexus out of it. Moreover, Command Center helps both defense and offense. So all in all this tech is about 90% defensive and 10% offensive. It is pretty correct to not let conquer focused factions to research it very early. Otherwise, it'll steal their good research spot without much need.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Small request, I'd like removing 50% combat penalty for non combatant units to be optional, I find formers doubling as perfectly functional defenders boring and abstract.

It makes it too easy to defend bases in early game, while saving resources on defender units. Defending formers from threats, or hunting enemy ones is also fun in itself.

Are you talking about this setting in alphax.txt?
0,       ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit

Sure. I can revert it to original value. No biggie. However, these are considerations I cancelled it in first place.

It would make sense and would change game strategy, as you mentioned above, toward protecting non-combat units IF the non-combat term would be sanely defined in a game. Vanilla treats all non-weapon and 1-armor units as non combat. Meaning that slapping 2-armor on a colony/former/transport suddenly turns it into combat unit (?) and increases its defense 4 times (?). Given that 2-armor is not that expensive one may convert their non-combat units to combat pretty cheaply increasing their defensiveness 4 times! Cost in parenthesis.
former 0-1-1 (2) => armored former 0-2-1 (3)
colony 0-1-1 (4) => armored colony 0-2-1 (5)
transport 0-1-4 (4) => armored transport 0-2-4 (5)

The problem is that not that it is not doable. It is. The problem is that AI doesn't do it on purpose. So it'll stay as human player toy/exploit only.

Besides, I don't think formers are match against some minimally advanced conventional weapon even without this extra penalty. Even 2 strength weapon at level 1 tech gives attacker 85% winning chance and 3 strength weapon at level 2 gives 90% winning chance and it gets better with stronger weapon. I never experienced a slightest problem hunting enemy formers even in relatively early game. So they still need protection either by other units or by armoring them. But again: AI does not protect them either way. They die without a fight in vanilla and WTP equally.

I also don't get why you would defend bases with formers instead of scouts. 😲
Formers are more expensive and way more valuable working in a field. Of course, if you always can detect enemy approaching and pull it into base for defense that works but you wont. This is too risky. Sometimes they can catch you by surprise. I prefer to keep at least one scout at base and let formers do their job. It's more effective this way.

The worse problem is anti-native defense. Think about it. Player does not run economical competition against natives. They just pop up at a regular intervals. This vanilla combat penalty makes formers and colonies extremely vulnerable to worms attacks. Now if you slap 2-armor on them they psi defense magically doubles even though armor is suppose to be ignored in psi combat. Apparently, with this setting it is not! That is not right.

Let me reiterate this. I absolutely welcome the idea for combat units to perform poorly in combat. Many other games have this concept. But the sloppy SMACX implementation creates more problems and exploits than it solves. So, I think, it is much cleaner without it. Not that it changes anything significant in a game anyway except the fun knocking formers with Scout Patrols. Which you won't experience quite often anyway unless you declare war at first encounter which you probably don't want to do.

Let me know what you think.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

RE: not liking scout huddle meta:
That's not what I mean. I usually have police units there to keep order at the beginning of the game in any case.

I just find it dissatisfying that if a worm appears next to a base, it's actually worse to try and proactively get rid of the problem, because you won't benefit from either base defense bonus or sensor defense bonus. Of course, one could argue that taking steps like boosting morale, building Trance units, and building sensors is proactively dealing with the problem. Let's just call it a playstyle difference.

In that light, I'd say the best and least obtrusive change to this is restoring the 3:2 psi attack ratio. Not only does it encourage striking first, it also means sitting back and doing nothing comes with a risk.

If you count vanilla values: base defense (+50%), sensor (+25%), Hypnotic Trance (+50%) = 2.8 - it is still better than attacking 3:2 = 1.5. So even in vanilla it pays to wait for worm attack when it right next to the base. In both vanilla and WTP it may be useful to kill it in outskirts to prevent improvement destruction. You just have significantly large chance of dying in WTP doing that which I find this a fair price for deliberate proactive actions. Use Empath units for that. They are quite good and get promoted with experience.

So yes. In WTP it is somewhat more difficult to deal with worms. One have to invest at least something in the war against nature. This is more of because increased combat randomness than anything else. No matter the odds there is still a chance to die. So I am pretty fine to revert them to 3:2. It reduces native protection investments but not to zero.

This is done in latest version.

I don't know what the rationale was behind having units start at Very Green, but I assume it was to curb the appearance of instant Elites that becomes commonplace in mid-game. In vanilla this required Command Centre + Bioenhancement Centre + [monolith, High Morale ability, or +MORALE effects]. WtP requires you to arrange more of these to achieve the same effect, and Bioenhancement Centres come much later. It's a laudable approach to the issue.

However, this also leads to -MORALE effects becoming much less impactful, because it's not as if you can go any lower, right? One might as well just stay in Wealth and Eudaimonic all the time and use the productivity to build bigger and better weapons. Though I'll admit that I don't know if this is as effective now that armours got megabuffed. We'll see.

You are right on both accounts. Second one is case based, though. One indeed doesn't suffer from -MORALE effects IF they also do not use any other morale upgrade means: facilities, monolith, High Morale, and most importantly - promotions. Otherwise, negative MORALE will diminish such means. So whatever you said is true if one stays in negative MORALE for the duration of the game and never fight! Which is quite not possible especially for AI.

Think about it. MORALE is the only mean to reduce morale. Everything else increases it. Promotions increase it unlimitedly. There is no way but up. I cannot really imagine a game when faction units never ever get any morale upgrade.

Think about it from opposite side too. Yes, lowest morale ignores negative MORALE effects. However, from another side, highest morale ignores positive MORALE effects. The period of the game where faction may be not affected by negative MORALE is quite short, the number of units is small and the conflicts are rare. On the opposite side, the period of the game where faction may be not affected by positive MORALE is the rest of the game past BC, the number of units is big, and conflicts are permanent. So the latter problem is much more compounded.

Finally, since it is just one morale level, I am not particularly attached to it. So can be either way by players' preference.

I also heavily disagree with reverting forest times. Forests at 1-2-1 with 4 turns to complete are OP. At 8 turns they are quite well balanced with mines: forests provide a little food and energy on top of the minerals to help support workers, and spread themselves, but mines can be combo'd with farms and can produce more minerals.

I am too but gave up under pressure of unhappy customers. I can now reset it to 8 now when one happy evens out unhappy one. 😛

Discussions of eco-damage don't really concern me, as I've never found the consequences to be extraordinarily threatening. Yeah you lose a couple of tiles here and there, so what, most of my bases are inland and I can just raise the land again. Lots of worms spawning? That can be painful, but by that time you can easily turn your mineral output to churning out the needed Trance and Empath units to fend them off. And then the clean minerals limit is raised and they stop spawning so much.

I agree. There are plenty of means to counter global warming. Including raising land and solar shading. That works for me all the time. Of course, counsel could decide to sink whole planet. Deal with it. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. That is a game. It is not that you doomed from the beginning. There is always a chance.

Moreover, this is not even about WTP vs. vanilla. It is ever existed thing nobody plans to change.

the MP community I follow

Would you care introducing me there? I may not be MP player myself but I like this game and like to follow discussions.

I'm not really sure what the problem with condensers is. If you build it on a regular tile with a farm you get 4 nutrients, which is nice, but hardly breaks the game.

There were problem with them multiplying nutrients by 50% in their tile. Without this ability they are limited by max moisture and not imbalanced at all.

RE: Police State:
-EFFIC effects are a lot milder than they were in vanilla, so even -4 EFFIC from running Police State+Planned is not so bad at the beginning at the game. I agree having the -INDUSTRY from PS cancel out the +INDUSTRY from Planned feels pretty bad though. Likewise for -SUPPORT from Planned offsetting ++SUPPORT from Police State. Yes, it's a potent early game combo, but one generally migrates to other options once energy provides more bang for your buck.

I am not angry just quite puzzled.

I really don't get what is everybody's problem about round numbers? How does it matter if certain combos reduce certain effect to zero and not say to +1 or -1 or to whatever other number?! Why it is so frustrating see some options have opposite effects? It is not enough effects to make it never happen. Sometimes some effects will be moving in opposite directions. Of course, if someone is dedicated to maximize certain effect than they would look for certain options to avoid negative contributions but other than that it is pretty much irrelevant.

It's true that Police State and Planned have opposite SUPPORT and INDUSTRY effects. Do you want this to change specifically for that not to happen? Then other combination will clash. I am all for fiddling with SE but there are much stronger considerations than above.

[dino]

Are you talking about this setting in alphax.txt?
0,       ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit

Yes this, but please don't revert anything.

I've just forgot it's from alphax.txt, couldn't find it in thinker.ini and thought you hardcoded it.
If I can edit it for myself, I'm fine, it was a mistake on my part, sorry for bother and thanks for a pointer.

[bvanevery]

Gun Foils is a combat unit, isn't it? Why shouldn't it count as a police?

In SMACX I believe only land units count as police.  I don't think they believe you can do law enforcement from the sea or air.

It is original vanilla thing I didn't change anything there.

I think that's true in SMAC.  Original game with 7 factions only.  And I thought it was that air units counted as police, but not ships.  I haven't played original SMAC since forever, so I'd have to crank something up to verify.

Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.

It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time.  It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.

They also increase minimal cost of the unit to reactor level. This is vanilla feature that I didn't touch. So not beneficial for extremely cheap units like Scout Patrol as well.

The problem is that the automated unit designer now nukes the Fission Scout unit, which is half the cost of the Fusion Scout Rover unit, at the beginning of the game when we're mainly fighting mindworms.  This is a mistake.  The stock binary does not do this.  My guess is you've inherited this misfeature from Thinker's upgraded unit designer.  Which definitely, as a piece of code, has advantages over the stock designer, but here we see there's a misfeature.  An automated designer should not just make units more expensive.

Usually people call feature broken if human can use/exploit it by AI cannot. So this one is clearly not as AI uses it quite effectively.

Really?  You're in favor of AI players buying bases off of you for nothing?

Besides, there are very good defenses against it. First, protective infantry/foil probe.

You're not listening.  It's too early in the game to have made any kind of defense.  You've created this pressure where the AI factions are spamming colonies nonstop.  I can't do that and defend bases from easy AI probe team attacks.

Second, you can subvert base back.

Destroying my facilities, units, and growth in the process and denying me the use of resources I put out.

Exactly! That is why I got rid of it in first place long time ago. But, apparently, people feel strongly nostalgic about it. So I'll keep vanilla settings in alphax.txt and anyone  can change it to 1:1 or whatever else value they desire.

If you don't take a stand about it, nobody will ever use your variation.  Anyone could have already set their alphax.txt to 1:1 over the years, they never did.  You are seemingly way too quick to back off of your ideas as a designer.  Don't you worry that you'll somehow make your mod not terribly distinguished from base Thinker?  I would.

The right thing to do would be to adjust your approach until it actually works.  You haven't tried toning down mindworm frequency and seeing if that alone is enough.  When players complain, you have to try to intuit the ultimate source of their complaint, and do something about that.  Never just cave into player demands.  Players are like children.  The goal isn't to do what the child says, the goal is to make them happy.  Now around here, admittedly, we have quite a bit more sophistication than the average player feedback on the internet.  That doesn't mean you should cave into something quickly.

I'm also really surprised that you backpedaled on forests, just after I gave you an endorsement on your approach.  Who exactly are you afraid of?

You also have received other suggestions for mindworm problems:

• try rename the native life form difficulty levels appropriately, to how you're actually using them
• solve the Former "nailed my foot to the floor" problem somehow in the code, so that I don't have to save scum it

Don't blame me.

Of course I blame you for tech research weights.  Didn't you write them?  If you inherited them from Thinker, well then I will blame you for keeping them, now that I've pointed out the problem that it causes in this 1 case.

One cannot possible to beeline research path for all possible priorities combinations.

The paths of a Build Conquer faction at the beginning of the game are much more predictable than "all cases". 

Sooner or later faction exhausts available focused technologies and need to research something else to advance.

That's a nice theory.  It doesn't work in the real world.  The time bound on reaching that point is way too long.  And it also doesn't have to happen, because of trades.

Conquer oriented factions got their Applied Physics and Nonlinear Mathematics in quick succession already. No need to give them anything beyond that right away.

I actually think your speedy weapons priority is very much a mistake, because I as a human player, certainly don't have the productivity to actually manufacture those weapons.  And the point isn't what all Conquer factions need, the point is what the Hive needs.

I think you misjudge Doctrine: Loyalty offensive value. It gives Perimeter Defense to everybody. So it is a powerful defensive tech in first place.

You don't have to bundle all these benefits into 1 tech.  I certainly don't.

Moreover, Command Center helps both defense and offense. So all in all this tech is about 90% defensive and 10% offensive.

Are you really stating that Conquer, in your mod, is for offensive weapons and abilities only?  If so, that's very different than how I categorize Conquer.  In my mod, Conquer is for all the conventional stuff you use to kill opponents.  Weapons, armor, and military abilities.  You want any of those, you study Conquer.  What are you putting defensive capabilities into, if not Conquer?  It has to be part of some other category.  And if so, your weights on Doctrine: Loyalty are still wrong.  You have made Explore, Discover, and Build have even less weight than Conquer, 2 vs. 3.

I suggest you put Police State somewhere where the Hive is actually going to find it, at the beginning of the game.

If you need "narrative lore" suggestions, I use Planetary Networks.  To me, Police State is a continuous surveillance state.  You use a network of spies all over the planet for that.

I also used Biogenetics for a time, because it's Chairman Yang voicing the lines.  I did not give away other stuff in that tech, I gave Police State.

Of course you can also keep it in Doctrine: Loyalty, but put the Command Nexus and/or the Perimeter Defense somewhere else.  I use Polymorphic Software for Polymorphic Encryption (a lame ability) and the Command Nexus (not so lame).  The idea being that the commands are being issued over some kind of futuristic encrypted internet.  I put Perimeter Defense the same place I put Plasma Armor and the Citizens' Defense Force.

It still needs to be reweighted, regardless.  It's not currently findable.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think I will rollback 155 release completely. Too hasty slapped. It contains only configuration changes those are easy altered if needed. I'll probably keep them as they were in 154 even though they are not too game play affecting.
Sorry for musical chair.

[bvanevery]

I think I will rollback 155 release completely. Too hasty slapped.

I agree.  I really don't know what you were thinking.  I also wondered why you wanted to put some things in Thinker.ini, that were normally put in alphax.txt.  I theorized about whether you had special AI code changes or something to handle the new realities.

In my next test of 154, I guarantee you I will not make any early sea bases.  Unless I get the Pirates, lol.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I also wondered why you wanted to put some things in Thinker.ini, that were normally put in alphax.txt.

Eh? Which one?

[bvanevery]

These:

  * 3,2,     ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
  * Forest terraforming rate = 4

You said you were putting switches in Thinker.ini, whether you actually meant that or not.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

These:

  * 3,2,     ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)
  * Forest terraforming rate = 4

You said you were putting switches in Thinker.ini, whether you actually meant that or not.

Ah. Misspoke probably.

[bvanevery]

MY 2150.  My expansion as the Believers has been pretty tame, with very few land based mindworms encountered.  I may have gotten a pretty good chunk of land devoid of other factional presence, as I've only encountered the Morganites to the east.  I've built a fair number of Recreation Commons using supply pod completions.  The +1 SUPPORT made it pretty easy to get out the Scouts.

Details kind of obnoxious

kind of obnoxious

However the rose parade ends in my southernmost, most frontier facing city.  I survived the first Sealurk hit just fine.  I'm not exactly pleased with a second Sealurk immediately attacking me as well.  Makes me think that the ocean spawn rates are still kinda dumb.  "Coastal scouring" is not a good play mechanic.  If I wanted to sign up for that, that's one thing, but I didn't.  I picked the "Average" number of native life forms, as I always do in all the other games.  I can't think of any game where I've had to deal with 2 Sealurk hits in a row, but of course, I usually play Huge maps so my observations are selective.  I've had 2 Isles full of mindworms land on me plenty of times, but there's usually a delay where you can see that happening and do something about it.  "Coastal scouring" is another one of those "Tomato Surprise" play mechanics.

I don't know if Isles and Sealurks are independently controllable as to their frequency, but there should be more Isles than Sealurks.  In previous games I've done a postmortem on, I've seen the overall distribution of them as being 50/50.  I do not yet know if this map has a particular way of focusing indigenous sea traffic to this location.  But in general, these Standard maps do focus the sea traffic somewhere.  That's pretty annoying because there's nothing you can do about it, and no way to see that it's gonna happen, when you first settle an area.  Other than oh, I'm on the coast, so slam me.

MY 2152.  Surprisingly though, the Sealurk did not attack my empty city.  After suffering a 1 turn delay due to the rioting, on the 2nd turn I was able to complete my Former.  I've heard that Formers end up counting as super defense units in this mod, so I'll leave it in city while I wait for another Scout to get built.

Details wtf Medusa

wtf Medusa

MY 2153.  So much for the "super defender" theory.  My Former survived the first Sealurk hit.  Then I got a second hit?  So there have been 3 Sealurks to take me on, in this little tiny area, over the span of 4 turns?  That's not cool, at all.  I've never seen such a thing happen in any game I've played.  Granted, I never play with Abundant life forms.  I found out in my modding a long time ago, that it would cripple the AI factions' expansion irrevocably.  Thinker / WTP probably doesn't have that limitation.  Anyways I do not want to play an Abundant Sealurks game.  This is not a feature.

At least this nonsense hasn't happened to me on land, for whatever reason.  I have my doubts that even a single Isle has landed on my shores.

MY 2156.  After bringing in a Green Scout from another city, finally the damn thing attacks and dies.

[bvanevery]

Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.

It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time.  It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.

I am now realizing that once you learn Fungicidal Tanks, you can upgrade the Former design to Fungicidal Formers, and all extant Formers will become Fungicidal Formers.  That makes Fungicidal ability, awfully cheap.  There's not a lot of delay from the start of the game, until you can do this.  60 years maybe.  I don't know how I feel about that.  It falls under the heading of "fungus danger issues".

Makes me wonder if I could have always done the same thing with Deep Radar ship designs in the stock binary, and never thought of it before.

I also notice that after these design upgrades, the old designs are not obsoleted.  In this case that's not a feature, as it creates clutter in the unit designs.  Free Fungicidal Tanks is strictly better in all circumstances.

[bvanevery]

Details supply pod puts Transport in enemy city

supply pod puts Transport in enemy city

I got a cool bug.  I popped a supply pod on shore, and it put a Unity Transport inside of a Morganite city.  I only have a Treaty with them.  It is tempting to leave it there!  But for all I know it could eventually wreak havoc with the game, and I might also be able to fish some supply pods out of the sea with it.  I've attached a saved game.

[bvanevery]

With that strange seemingly 3 Sealurks in a row incident earlier, I have been sending out Gun Foils to clear away pods, and also run into interlopers sooner rather than later.  I've been trying to clear the Sargasso Sea and have lost some ships in the process, or gotten them wounded and have had to retreat to heal up.

Details Planet is cheating

Planet is cheating

Ok, this is highly annoying.  The Isle landing was expected.  It's a leftover from trying to pop pods in the Sargasso.  But this turn, that larva to the north of Time of Salvation suddenly appeared as well.  I saw it spawn in the 2 square fungal patch just to the north, and then move onto the forest.  This is all conveniently timed with me having a 60% wounded Gun Foil in there.  The Scout that was also in there, got wiped out by a Sealurk 2 turns ago.  1 turn ago it attacked again and that's why my Gun Foil is down to 60%.  Planet is hammering this city.  And, I say it's cheating.  It is deliberately spawning a reinforcement, when there's no particular reason for that to be happening, other than to make my life difficult.

I don't have mindworm larvae appearing anywhere else in my empire.  I've got all kinds of Fungicidal Formers removing fungus from around my cities too, to make them safer.  Most were already pretty safe due to the forests I planted earlier, which have been spreading at fungal expense.  I have only 2 Fungal Towers in my territory, and they're nowhere near where this larva appeared.

Finally, if you're wondering if the Isle itself carried that worm and somehow dropped it up north, it didn't.  It came from the south by southwest, the Sargasso.  I know exactly where it started and watched it move.  It did not land up north and then move 2 squares south.

Cheater!

It's not going to surprise me if the original binary code has dirty tricks like this buried in it.

Details can do nothing

can do nothing

I saved my game in anticipation of save scumming.  But witnessing the wipeout, and the loss of my base's population, there's no way I'm going to be able to do anything about it.  Here's a demonstration of why.  Note that in addition to all the usual disadvantages, this Miriam has the game's default of -1 PLANET.  I got rid of that in my modding, because I think it's a stupid throwaway jab at Christians.  Nowhere else in any of the quotes or videos, does Miriam intone that she's against Planet.  That's someone else's story, mainly Morgan's.

I am quitting this game.  I find this "shores are super dangerous" play style highly annoying, and it seems to be getting worse in recent years, not better.  I want to know what geography has shielded me from problems or not, and how well I have grown compared to the AI factions.  The Scenario Editor can tell me these things now.  Finally, I am more interested in testing other factions at the beginning of this mod, as I believe they are all under-tested.  Another game might show whether I got lucky on land with the mindworms.

Details the odds calculator lies

the odds calculator lies

Well I'll be... what's BUncle's word, dipped?  I wasn't going to bother with the combat, it said I was going to die.  I just wanted to know how wounded the larva would get in the process.  Well it seems that WTP's renovation of the odds calculator isn't quite working.  I seriously doubt I got super-lucky here.  I have had my suspicions for quite awhile now, that something is off about what the odds calculator has been telling me.

I'm still quitting.  I still don't like "coastal scorching game".  I still want to know if oceanic and faction placement geometry has made my life easier or harder.  And whether my spread, which "felt fine" to me, is actually competitive.  The power graph doesn't seem to think so.

Details relative growth

relative growth

I have 10 cities.  Several factions have on the order of 17 cities.  The Cyborgs did worse than me with only 9 cities.  They got "8-balled" behind the Caretakers and Usurpers.  Fungal barriers seem to have interfered with the other factions doing that to me.  Geographically I was relatively isolated.  I am polar, which could explain sea safety on my west coast most of the time, until it wasn't.  Godwinson's Hope, the one that got hammered by 3 Sealurks, is not quite equatorial but is more mid-map.  Perhaps Sealurks funnel into narrowing east-west bays.

I would point out, that to have 17 cities, I'd have to be getting in the face of the Morganites or Usurpers on land.  Or else expanding by sea, which is unacceptably vulnerable to summary takeover by probe teams.  You're basically giving sea bases away when you make them early.  Can't abide that.

With enough Fungicidal Formers, and some trained units to eliminate Fungal Towers, I could probably put 10 more "bigpox" cities within my land.  That's assuming the Morganites and Usurpers didn't have time to press my borders.  However, I do see a Morganite colonist moving in on one of my spots.  The AI is incredibly spammy and pushy about land borders, it's really irritating.  The game doesn't have a "firm" border idea the way Civ III does.  Can you imagine if Mexico decided it just wants a little bit of Texas, now?

[Tayta Malikai]

Fungicidal Tanks in vanilla cost +25%, which is =0 for 2 row former unit cost. I don't think it is even worth 25% increase in cost for armored former. The fact that it occupies the ability slot is costly enouI thigh by itself because it denies some other useful former abilities like Hypnotic Trance, Super Former, Clean Reactor, etc.

It is not a big deal to me and I don't really have an opinion on it at this time.  It did cause me to redesign some units, because ordinarily, the unit designer / upgrader dialog boxes would be asking me if I wanted all my designs to become more expensive to produce.

I am now realizing that once you learn Fungicidal Tanks, you can upgrade the Former design to Fungicidal Formers, and all extant Formers will become Fungicidal Formers.  That makes Fungicidal ability, awfully cheap.  There's not a lot of delay from the start of the game, until you can do this.  60 years maybe.  I don't know how I feel about that.  It falls under the heading of "fungus danger issues".

Makes me wonder if I could have always done the same thing with Deep Radar ship designs in the stock binary, and never thought of it before.

I also notice that after these design upgrades, the old designs are not obsoleted.  In this case that's not a feature, as it creates clutter in the unit designs.  Free Fungicidal Tanks is strictly better in all circumstances.

Whether the game suggests new units upon researching tech, or obsoletes old units, is configurable in-game under Menu -> Game -> Preferences.

I personally disable both functionalities because the game is dumb and I'm smart it's easier and neater to just manually manage all your units.

The old unit upgrade formula is based on (difference in weapon strength + difference in armour strength + mineral row cost to build the new unit).
The new unit upgrade formula is simply the difference in mineral rows between the old unit and new unit.

Initially I praised this for being more intuitive, but further playtesting has found some issues with it. For instance, the idea of being able to get mass refunds from upgrading to cheaper models has always felt a little weird to me. It was much worse when you could upgrade your entire terraforming fleet to fusion and quantum reactors for the refund, which thankfully got patched by making reactors not discount equipment costs.

However, Nevill found that in some cases you could intentionally build more expensive models of units, and then upgrade them to cheaper models, effectively allowing you to convert minerals to energy at a rate of 2 credits per mineral. Compare this to 1 credit per 2 minerals for using the Stockpile Energy order.

This also leads to the case that bvanevery found, where units that cost exactly the same (i.e. those with abilities that cost the same) can be freely converted from one to the other at zero cost, requiring only a single turn to do so (and not even that, if you use the unit designer to do so). I am not sure if this is desirable or not. Perhaps some fixed cost could be added to upgrade costs? Even a 10 credit minimum would discourage free conversions unless it was truly necessary.

As it is, I would say to keep the new formula on for SP but disable it for MP.


Speaking of which, since you asked, the community whose games I follow is RPGCodex. Probably one of the only groups of active players still around. They can be a rather... colourful bunch though.

Links to the SMAC discussion thread, and to various MP games which were documented and recounted by means of lavishly-made propaganda, which inspired my own attempt at such:
Vanilla Game 1
Vanilla Game 2
Vanilla Game 3
Binary Dawn Game 1
Binary Dawn Game 2
Binary Dawn Game 3
Binary Dawn Game 4

Sadly the current game in progress is inaccessible due to internal forum drama.