SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

Details tired of it

tired of it

This is an exhausting slog.  I really hate this.  It's 1:30 AM and I'd much rather have sleep.  I haven't been playing continuously, I went and watched a movie and came back to this.  The University is like the worst faction ever.  It has no value in the game at all.  I looked at my capitol's research given all the events that had happened, and it was pathetic, like 3 points.  Yeah it had some minerals but so what?  I have to steal techs from factions that get it way faster than me, because spamming colonies is the only thing that matters.

I think this game has cured me of any interest in faction_placement=0.  It just sucks too hard if you get the wrong close quarters start.  I'd rather file a TODO about wiping out fungal towers near the landing sites, because that's what the default placement algorithm seems to do.

And I'm pretty close to dumping all the factions, in favor of my own.  Some of these are terrible.  Just not different enough from the stock game to overcome what's seriously wrong with them.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Details fast exploit

fast exploit

I don't think anything but an infantry chassis should be able to have ECM.  Yes the original game is flawed that way.

You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.

[bvanevery]

You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.

No I just straight up designed that unit.  I was going to take a screenshot of the ability being available in the designer, but for some reason as I was fumbling around I didn't.  It'll be easy to do again.

In other news, I think for now, I'll simply refrain from playing factions that I consider to be terrible.  That would be the University.  My jury's out on the Morganites.  But consider that any faction that can learn and use Knowledge, gets a +5 RESEARCH advantage.  That pretty much makes the University obsolete.  Yeah so they could have another +2 on top of that, big whoop.  Free network nodes aren't enough to compensate for the extra drones, which they're going to have to spend on facilities for.  It's pretty much like oh yeah Network Node benefit as long as your city is small.  Which doesn't mean anything because a Network Node is a multiplier.

It's reminding me of those shoe stores that say "Buy One, Get One 50% Off".  Which is a roundabout and obscuring way of saying 25% off, if you buy twice as many shoes as you wanted.  Big whoop.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You mean you are able to carry it over to other chassis? Yes. Reverse engineering exploit.

No I just straight up designed that unit.  I was going to take a screenshot of the ability being available in the designer, but for some reason as I was fumbling around I didn't.  It'll be easy to do again.

Ah. I mixed them up. It is not allowed for sea and air units. Game does not have special ability flag to distinguish by chassis type. So it is allowed for land units any chassis. I don't see inherent problem having this installed on speeder, though. It'll get extra defense against other fast units for price. Analogous and alternative to extra armor. Prevents hovertanks disengagement as well.

[bvanevery]

Analogous and alternative to extra armor.

Then it should probably not be so cheap.  Or so effective, take your pick.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Analogous and alternative to extra armor.

Then it should probably not be so cheap.  Or so effective, take your pick.

For +25% of the cost one can get either +25-50% to regular armor (depending on whether armor is primary or secondary stat) against everybody or +50% to the defense against fast units only which is usually less than half or attackers. How is it OP???
Pricing it at 50% of the cost makes it absolutely inferior to direct armor improvement.

It is the same cost as in vanilla and I don't recall anybody ever called it a golden bullet.

[Tayta Malikai]

I can sort of see the logic. The idea would be that you augment a stack of offensive rovers by building a 1-best-2 ECM mobile defender and having it travel with them. This would, in theory, allow your rovers to make attacks with relative impunity whilst keeping the stack safe from counterattacks by enemy rovers.

In practice, I expect such a tactic does not dominate for the following reasons:

• In vanilla, Advanced Subatomic Theory (D3) does not lie on the most appealing tech path. There are more important techs to get, like Gene Splicing (B3). And jets are available not long after at E5, coming on the back of other useful tech paths like Gene Splicing -> Synthetic Fossil Fuels and Doctrine: Flexibility. (This might be a bit different in WtP which makes jets available later at C7.)
• Artillery still works regardless of ECM and allows you to reduce the health of the stack anyway. (To test: do artillery rovers have their damage reduced by ECM? That would probably be a bug.)
• If the stack wants to attack a fixed target, that target will probably be defended by... ECM infantry. So neither the offense nor the defense of the stack are affected, and it still cost more to build.

[bvanevery]

New game with version 190.
alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=1.0
combat_bonus_territory=15
15,      ; Combat % -> intrinsic base defense
25,      ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus
Trance Scout Patrol, Trance Formers, and Trance Sea Formers removed from predefined units.

Huge map, 30%..50% land, average settings, random opponents.  I drew the Peacekeepers.

Details fungal maze start

fungal maze start

This is an example of what sucks about Thinker's faction placement, like a number of previous games demonstrating the same thing.  No evaluation of land quality is made really.  There's no Rainy land, and there's enough fungus to seriously restrict movement and options.  Hoping for something better, I tried spreading out.  With the eastern Colonist I took a chance popping a pod with it.  I'm not sure that's a valid move as far as mindworms counterattacking, I'm hoping they're strong enough to sustain the earliest hits.  I got a Unity Rover as a result.  When it subsequently popped a pod, it had to attack a mindworm and that's why it's 20% wounded.

The flat river square to the west, was not a safe haven from fungus, as there was another square immediately downriver.  I tried moving that and it stirred up a mindworm, an exceedingly common occurrence on river fungus squares for some reason.  Oh, and the coast didn't have anywhere fungus free to stop either.  So this is how it's going, just being pushed around, and there aren't any resource specials yet to justify settlement.  It's not a good start.

Details the stretch

the stretch

MY 2110.  It was not possible to get Rainy land and be free of fungus.  In the west, I did at least settle with only 1 patch that I need to get rid of.  On the way there, only 1 square was free of fungus next to it.  That's right next to where I started, in the middle, and it wasn't particularly good land.

Details envelopment

envelopment

MY 2216.  Luck, changed my land composition for the better.  The middle is now decent because of forest, in a way it previously was not.  But now a 2 mindworm pod pop threatens to ruin it all.  I'm filing an Issue on this, as it's not the 1st time I've seen such double threats early on.  This is just janking the player.  There's a good chance that with 2 hits, I'll die.  And if a spore launcher lives through all of this, as in a previous game, it'll destroy any terrain improvement I either fleetingly gained or developed.

Details joke is on me

joke is on me

I did file an Issue, talking about the case of 1 mindworm surviving.  Totally forgot to mention the likelihood of both mindworms surviving.  If they tear up that new patch of forest I needed, then I'm quitting.  And I won't be playing any more test games until that one is fixed somehow.  I haven't gone over thinker.ini settings to see if there's some control over mindworm spawning whatever.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Vanilla does evaluate starting conditions and grants extra colony to deprived factions on all difficulty levels except first and last. I guess, the reason behind this is that the first one is considered a training when player doesn't plan for victory at all. Whereas, last one is for super seasoned players who can beat game at any starting condition.

I don't think we need to work on this more. This is the luck element of the game equally favorable to all factions.

I have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.

[bvanevery]

Whereas, last one is for super seasoned players who can beat game at any starting condition.

I do not agree that this is the purpose of Transcend.  I don't think the purpose of Civ II was to survive on an ice floe at the North Pole either.

The purpose of Transcend is to provide a stiff but equitable challenge.

I don't think we need to work on this more.

There is a point at which I'm willing to cease testing work, or fork the code.  I hope I can convince you over time, what early game play quality and balance require.  I don't expect you to see this immediately, because every author thinks their work is "their baby".  And also, you are distracted by many competing priorities.  But if someone of my familiarity with the game and modding ability, is saying these things, you should pay them some heed.  It's not like I don't have a lot of test cases of these early Thinker placement phenomena by now.

I am the kind of player who is not interested in playing the "random early janking" game.  The effects of early jankings are so magnified, that there becomes little point in continuing.

This is the luck element of the game equally favorable to all factions.

This is not true because AI factions don't start out with anything remotely like equal footing on Transcend.  The discrepancy magnifies problems for the human player, in ways that are not comparable for the AIs.  Consider the most basic and obvious one, the colony spawn rate.  A human player can never do this, it's an asymmetric "difficulty" setting.

I have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.

But you also dialed colony spawning up to Eleven.  Which means more food is needed to have any hope of keeping up.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't think we need to work on this more.

There is a point at which I'm willing to cease testing work, or fork the code.  I hope I can convince you over time, what early game play quality and balance require.  I don't expect you to see this immediately, because every author thinks their work is "their baby".  And also, you are distracted by many competing priorities.  But if someone of my familiarity with the game and modding ability, is saying these things, you should pay them some heed.  It's not like I don't have a lot of test cases of these early Thinker placement phenomena by now.

I am the kind of player who is not interested in playing the "random early janking" game.  The effects of early jankings are so magnified, that there becomes little point in continuing.

I do not argue with this as I don't have strong opinion about it. I just stated that I don't see it as overwhelming problem since many people played it for decades and it is probably not the worst thing that happened to them.

I do understand that early luck fluctuations are seriously magnified. Early game natives are weakened for that specific reason. That's why I proposed to weakened them even further - either all of them of just towers. Other than that I don't see any smooth way to do it. Extra colony is too much on highest difficulty.

I have already addressed this in WtP by increasing farm output and giving formers at start. With that moist bases do not suck completely comparing to rainy ones as in vanilla.

But you also dialed colony spawning up to Eleven.  Which means more food is needed to have any hope of keeping up.

Err, man, don't mix things up. One is AI thinking ability improvement another is luck management. Each one may have own problems and solution but I don't see much sense in fixing one with another.

[bvanevery]

When you allow more food to everyone, that actually benefits the AIs more than the human player.  Because the AI already gets a big INDUSTRY bonus on Transcend, making it much easier to spawn out the expensive Colonists.  And now they're not food limited to do it either.

Also, the AI factions play under no pretense of making sure their fledgling civilizations survive.  They all spawn, and the human player cannot stamp out all of them as they do so.  It's the fish's reproductive strategy, spawning a lot of eggs.  Can't eat 'em all.  Turns the whole thing into Whack-A-Mole, the penny arcade game where you've got a mallet and must hit moles as they pop up out of holes over and over again.  The faction farthest across the map from the player, is guaranteed to be the most difficult to deal with, because logistically the player is least able to intervene in its spamming.

A real AI would play as though it does not wish to lose.  That it is an individual empire trying to survive and thrive, not just a collective map threat and filler to harry the human player.

Details bloomin' blooms

bloomin' blooms

MY 2119.  Surprisingly, the mindworms did not pillage the forest.  However now I'm cut off to the west by a fungal bloom.  I would like to see fungal blooms be impossible before some year, or perhaps at some radius from cities up to some year.  That's a mountain of fungus now.

Details there it is again

there it is again

MY 2124.  Yet another act of cutting me off.  I'm done with this game, and with playtesting until something changes somewhere.  The start conditions of a Thinker faction placement start are too impoverished.  The fungal blooms and double mindworms envelopments are contributing too much to the problem.

I mean, really.  MY 2124.  Too early for this stuff.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/48

Bringing this discussion here for clarification.

bvanevery and others properly noted low value of RESEARCH effect. It is not that effect itself is not valuable. It quite is. The problem is that 10% research speed up doesn't give enough edge over other factions due to them stealing and exchanging techs left and right. Of course, if one wants to keep their research to themselves they should protect their bases with probes but investment is too much and diminishes the value of research advantage.
In theory RESEARCH bonus should lead to technology advantage but in practice it leaks to other factions quite intensively.

bvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed. I believe this is too coarse grained and unfair blocking factions like Believers from seeking knowledge forever.

Instead I have proposed a simple multiplier for this effect. Like 2, for start. This will turn RESEARCH bonus table into this.

-5, Labs research slowed by 100%
-4, Labs research slowed by   80%
-3, Labs research slowed by   60%
-2, Labs research slowed by   40%
-1, Labs research slowed by   20%
 0, Normal research rate
 1, Labs research speeded by   20%
 2, Labs research speeded by   40%
 3, Labs research speeded by   60%
 4, Labs research speeded by   80%
 5, Labs research speeded by 100%


Do you like to try it out? Any objections?


Optionally.
If this is not enough we can crank multiplier even higher to 2.5-3.0. This'll create problems with negative ratings but we can set a proportional scale where each step changes speed relatively to previous one, not initial. So with 30% per step we'll end up with this research speed (proportional to base, dropping percents)

-5, 0.3
-4, 0.4
-3, 0.5
-2, 0.6
-1, 0.8
 0, 1.0
 1, 1.3
 2, 1.7
 3, 2.2
 4, 2.9
 5, 3.7

Seems pretty smooth and never hits zero. +5 makes research 3.7 times faster, and -5 is same number slower.

[bvanevery]

bvanevery and others properly noted low value of RESEARCH effect.

That, I did.

bvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed.

I did not.  I have no idea where you came up with that idea.

Instead I have proposed a simple multiplier for this effect. Like 2, for start.

 5, Labs research speeded by 100%

This does not address the severe discrepancy between the University's +2 RESEARCH and the Knowledge choice's +5 RESEARCH.  The point is the University does not currently have any advantage worth mentioning.  It's supposed to be the faction that does RESEARCH the best, but it is grossly inferior to any faction choosing Knowledge.

Currently, you are giving away RESEARCH very cheaply to anyone who wants it.  Far better than even the University can do.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

bvanevery proposed to increase RESEARCH bonus by giving all faction with positive inherent RESEARCH a flat +50% to research speed.

I did not.  I have no idea where you came up with that idea.

Then I misunderstood you completely.

This does not address the severe discrepancy between the University's +2 RESEARCH and the Knowledge choice's +5 RESEARCH.  The point is the University does not currently have any advantage worth mentioning.  It's supposed to be the faction that does RESEARCH the best, but it is grossly inferior to any faction choosing Knowledge.

Currently, you are giving away RESEARCH very cheaply to anyone who wants it.  Far better than even the University can do.

Ah. Now I understand what you are talking about. Don't really know what to do with them. Give them +5 RESEARCH as faction bonus and decrease Knowledge bonus?