SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Nevill]

Don't be blase about game defaults.

iOS vs Android, which is better and why? I don't play the game on default settings. I read the readme for the descriptions of game features I would or wouldn't like, and then enable and disable them as I see fit.

I don't have much of an opinion on whether it should be on in SP games. I'll be leaving it on in my games, but that's because probing AI is never a big deal for me.

The feature is a modification of vanilla mechanic, and as such is a controversial change. I can see the argument for why one could want it off by default. I am of the opinion that if the mod went to the trouble of changing some aspect of the game, it may as well show off its goods.

[bvanevery]

I read the readme for the descriptions of game features I would or wouldn't like, and then enable and disable them as I see fit.

Which makes you a "tweaker".  This is not everyone's orientation towards playing a game.  Many players expect "batteries included".  They're not going to go in and figure out a bunch of default settings and fix them.  Many people think that's the game designer's job, and they move on if the job isn't being done.

I am of the opinion that if the mod went to the trouble of changing some aspect of the game, it may as well show off its goods.

Quality Assurance establishes whether one is showing off goods or shooting oneself in the foot.  It's in the realm of opinion, but I wouldn't have done 48 releases if all my iterations were flawless gifts.  Many of those releases were on a monthly cycle, not multi-daily like Tim's currently working.

Details piles o fungus

piles o fungus

Before I started this game, I thought I would try to put out Formers to deal with all the fungus.  The reason I hate the current Democratic is because it's basically unsafe.  So, at what point does my empire become safe?  When fungus is cleared away and nearby fungal towers are dead.

Well this game, there's so much fungus I'm just living inside this big maze.  My first 2 bases, Alpha Prime and Chi Plains, I had to fiddle to get them settled without fungus next to them.  And after that, it couldn't be done.  For the amount of fungus, I didn't suffer too many attacks, but I'm pretty paralyzed compared to the usual AI spam everywhere else.  I manged to get a Command Center with a Completion, but pumping out trained Scouts, really doesn't make that much headway against mindworms.

Quit at 6:45 AM.  I don't know how long I was playing.  I find these big fungal starts irritating.  This isn't a 'normal' amount of fungus.  2 games ago I had the same problem with the Usurpers.  TBH it limited my expansion with the Morganites too.  My verdict is, there's too much fungus for the Average setting.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

However the 2nd Scout received no damage at all.  I couldn't find a setting for that at first, but once I searched for the word "collateral" I found collateral_damage_value=0.  Is that a Thinker inheritance or a WTP choice?  I'm not in favor.

Yes, that's the one. The message is still there because this value could be anything above zero too.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think I infiltrated less than 10 turns ago.  I don't know exactly how much.  I'm wondering if I have any chance to put a new device in, or do I just have to wait until all are discovered?

Depending on which version you are playing. The average time for device was 5 turns for everybody then I changed it for infiltrating computer to 15. See what "infiltration" options you have in Thinker.ini.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Of course, being afraid to attack for 10-20 turns is a risk in itself... but that's all part of the fun.

Why would one be afraid to attack because of this? Infiltration doesn't give away map and troops outside of bases.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I really hate Democratic giving a PLANET penalty.  It makes no sense, and it just gets in the way of pretty much everything I want to do.

What would be your suggestion then?

[Nevill]

Why would one be afraid to attack because of this? Infiltration doesn't give away map and troops outside of bases.

It gives away the composition of troops, their movement direction, and a lot of other data that help the infiltrating faction determine their relative positions and organize a response. Usually that stops most attackers dead in their tracks unless they have an overwhelming advantage.

Of course, back in the day we managed to have meaningful parties in Hotseat mode with players having a direct visual of what the other is doing, so it's not insurmountable, but it's a big deterrent. Especially if one of the factions doesn't have infiltration and can't guess what counter the other is preparing to their attack.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Re: randomness. Actually, I've long wanted to ask this. What does it mean that WtP "increases randomization"?

Oh, my friend. You are about to tap into very heart of this mod. 😉

Here. Have a look.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg122935#msg122935
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21371.msg122824

Sadly, nobody rereading these threads anymore. They had interesting development at times.

In short, the WTP randomness is somewhere between Civ2/SMACX one where a 30% advantage always wins and Civ1 one single round combat win-or-lose where Phalanx can beat Tank occasionally. Both of the above are disliked by users. Therefore, this change. You'll see miracle wins but not that often as in Civ1. If you remember playing Civ1 - nobody called them "miracle" ones at the time. This is also configurable as any other feature.

Are the displayed battle odds still accurate?

Displayed battle odds are absolutely mathematically accurate and this is another WTP gift to users. They were NOT accurate in vanilla and no other mod bothered to change that.
Moreover, they are also expressed as simple percentage rather than ratio of two (random?) numbers.

I am seeing quite a bit of miracle wins, though I would hesitate to say if they occur more often than their odds would indicate.
I'll have to build a map for mass combat testing, put like a hundred units that have 80-20 odds, and compare the theory with the actual results.

I would discourage you from that. They were already tested multiple times by independent researchers. I have also debugged whole combat routine, of course. So it seems to be working right.

What you are facing here is not a statistical incorrectness but human perception and subconscious human desire to win all the time. This is another game aspect discussed many time. In short, the more randomness player see = the more they see things they don't like = miracle losses! They don't care about miracle wins - they don't leave much impression. However, unforeseen bad things accumulate and compound player frustration. So we are mostly managing and dancing around player expectations rather than correct mathematical models.

The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time.  It shouldn't.  Ever.  Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground.  Big organic puddle.
Lots of games over the years have done dumb things with randomness, and large portions of the player communities have absolutely hated the devs doing that stuff.  Really high dynamic range of randomness is not appreciated by all kinds of people.

Here is the perfect example of such frustration.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time.  It shouldn't.  Ever.  Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground.  Big organic puddle.

This is WTP on current settings (2.0). Where do you see 25% losing chance for chaos gun against scout?

I understand you may not like this feature or this configuration or this mod or the combination of all the element compounding your frustration or anything else maybe not related to anything resulting in your bad mood. What is the need for exaggeration and such pronounced hatred like this abomination should be abolished from the face of the Earth? I would understand the constructive criticism when you don't like some feature/setting and ask it to be changed or removed or replaced with something else. However, it is difficult for me to stay calm and detached trying to extract those from all the blaming.  It's not easy. I have feelings too.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

And bvanevery brings up a good point. I think we also need the option to "refill" the infiltration timer back to full by performing Infiltrate Datalinks again.

Good point indeed. However, vanilla didn't have a notion of partial infiltration. So the option is gone after being used. I'll look into it.

[bvanevery]

The odds are dumb if they're saying a Chaos Gun should die against a Scout 25% of the time.  It shouldn't.  Ever.  Chaos Gun = pretty big threshold of you die, you melt into the ground.  Big organic puddle.
Lots of games over the years have done dumb things with randomness, and large portions of the player communities have absolutely hated the devs doing that stuff.  Really high dynamic range of randomness is not appreciated by all kinds of people.

Here is the perfect example of such frustration.

No, it's just stupid and there are plenty of analogs from military history to demonstrate why it's stupid.  Like in WW II, Germans and Soviets had big guns on their tanks, which could actually knock each other's tanks out.  Western Allies didn't, they had pea shooters by comparison.  Very hard time penetrating the armor of the "real" tanks.  Allies would have to put 10 Shermans on 1 Panther to get a kill, and they'd still lose 3 tanks.

Chaos Gun vs. Scout hand weapons and no armor, is a fundamental mismatch where the Scouts cannot win.  Not unless you've got 3D urban fighting ala Chechnya where individual soldiers can get into super close combat with the enemy.  Tactical board games like Squad Leader back in the day actually modeled these ranges of combat, with "close combat" being a very distinct thing, and awfully hard to get done with all this ranged machine gun fire sweeping the landscape.

The mismatch here is a game designer who thinks that 6 vs. 1 means "there's always a chance to win, and it's 1/7th of the time", and a player who thinks "It's a massive ass weapon that destroys everything in front of it, and the enemy has nothing comparable to fight back with".  How do you think an Apache helicopter works in Iraq?  It stays at standoff range and fires Hellfire missiles at the target, totally obliterating it.  Your strength 5 weapon is a Missile Launcher, what do you think all those Scouts do, just duck?  You'd need some damn good armor to survive all that!  And a Chaos Gun is worse, it's getting towards quasi-Star Trek levels of energy output.

The "victory / defeat is always possible" interpretation of odds, is wrong design.  It doesn't model anything in the real world, it's a pure game mechanical contrivance.  There is a point at which the weapons mismatch is so great that you simply cannot win.  And allowing 30% wounds against the victor, in a 5-6-1 vs. 1-1-1 matchup, is quite generous, for the magic talisman of merely standing on Rocky ground.

What is the need for exaggeration and such pronounced hatred like this abomination should be abolished from the face of the Earth?

Because over and over again, I've had to go "15 rounds" with designers who don't get it.  Numerous people tell them why their randomness sucks rocks.  Yet they double down and invent excuses why it's plausible or intentional or desirable.  I've had this fight in the Battle for Wesnoth community, with the designer of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, probably others, and now you.

There's no simulation justification for "always can win, always can lose, it's just rolling dice and odds".  Players have reasonable expectations about the possible and impossible, based on the weapons described and the numbers of opponents in combat.  What the always win / lose stuff does, is gaslight those expectations.  I've done enough tactical wargaming to know that this is not how things work.  Odds systems are a gloss and slop over real combat, where you move every soldier and calculate the trajectory of every bullet fired.  When the mismatch is big enough, you get crushed.  A combat system should model that.

Instead of whatever "asymptotic system of victory comparison" you have in your mind, consider the attacker and defender as sliding windows of opportunity.  There's a point at which those windows are gone, they're closed.  This is the simple model of offset constants, where certain victory and defeat are defined.

Another way of saying it, is the dynamic range of combat results cannot be arbitrarily high.  That's not war, that's a fantasy.

This is WTP on current settings (2.0). Where do you see 25% losing chance for chaos gun against scout?

Oh, I don't know, in the ocean, with about 3 bazillion sea bases defended by merely a Scout, getting a magic home territory bonus.  Nazi land is blessed by the Volk and all that.  Or the Boxer Rebellion people who thought their chi made them immune to bullets.  I have no doubt that the home territory bonus is way too high.  But it's a separate issue from the fundamental "always can win / lose" combat randomness.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Here.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-176

Hope this'll close the renewal problem.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

RE: combat odds.
I can certainly turn it back to vanilla setting. I don't think this is a big deal now with slower healing and more steady weapon/armor progression. And also with equalized psi land odds. Should be fine.
Let me know if anyone is against it and likes to keep higher randomness?

[bvanevery]

I really hate Democratic giving a PLANET penalty.  It makes no sense, and it just gets in the way of pretty much everything I want to do.

What would be your suggestion then?

The path of least resistance is to simply get rid of it.  However before doing that, one should consider what's at stake.

In the original game, the max PLANET penalty you could get was -3, and that was all from Free Market.  In your mod, the max you can get is -4.  Are you intellectually committed to that for some reason?  Do you think that's a good or important thing to have?  I have no experience here because my mod has been either at a max of -2 or -3.  I eventually decided on -3, with my Free Market giving -2 and Cybernetic my new evil anti-Planet idea at -1.  Eudaimonic is my pro-Planet choice, so they contrast.  -2 is definitely easier but still can get you in trouble with global flooding.  -3 per the original game is acceptable, has not made the game any more awful than it ever was. 

I also only give out PLANET bonuses +1 at a time.  It's on a strict diet.  I don't need massive PLANET penalties to compensate for big PLANET bonuses.

If you insist on -4 PLANET, then if the penalty is removed from Democratic, it would have to go somewhere else.

You have 2 realistic ways to grow in your early to mid game.  Either Democratic or Planned.  Judging by how I've seen the AI factions perform, it seems important to get +2 GROWTH at some point to keep up with them.  I've had quite runty bases compared to them, due to all the various ways I have to exert myself to make any headway.  So the main thing at stake is GROWTH.

For some reason you've decided that Democratic gets PLANET penalized for daring to grow.  Planned doesn't get the same treatment, I don't know why.  It's not GROWTH hurts PLANET, as one does it and the other doesn't.  It's not a lore fit: Planet doesn't like people holding elections?  I would have thought INDUSTRY hurts PLANET, ala Planned, would be more obvious for the lore.  But of course Planned harms EFFIC and that's the original game's lore, so you've got penalties piling up.  I didn't particularly care for that lore and got rid of it.  I went to Socialist and changed EFFIC to JUSTICE.  So some of this hinges on what you think Planned means, as a matter of lore.

Neither my Democratic or Socialist gives GROWTH at all.  I didn't want pop booming to be easy in the early to mid game.  I'm going to take it as a given that you're intellectually committed to keeping GROWTH in both Democratic and Planned.  If that is not the case, then we have a different discussion.

I think that's enough preamble.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think that's enough preamble.

Did you come up with the suggestion?