SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Aerospace complexes give +2 morale to all air units built in the base, +100% defense against air attacks, they allow for rapid repair of air units, they prevent airdrops within 2 squares of the base and they allow the base to build satellites. Not only does it do a lot, what it does is important. Hybrid forests do a lot too but they're not essential. Cloudbase Academy gives all of these bonuses to every base in your faction.

The other facility secret projects give:

(1) Command Centers (+2 morale to ground units and repair injured ground units quickly)

(2) Perimeter Defenses (increase base defensive bonus from 25% to 100% against ground attacks)

(3) Network Nodes (+50% research at base, cash in an artifact)

(4) Energy Banks (+50% econ at base)

(5) hologram theater if base already has network node (+psych and less drones)

In other words, aerospace complex, as a facility, already gives more bonuses than any other facility, which is fine for one base but quite a lot for a project. You can just increase the SP's mineral cost but I like the idea of a SP that does a few new things rather than lots of things that you can get by building facilities. No airdrop in territory is a lot better than no airdrop within two tiles of bases but you'd make up for it by the project not giving all the old aerospace bonuses. Extra movement opens up new tactical options.

Just had an idea that your air units don't run out of fuel inside your territory if you have cloudbase academy but, even before thinking about it, probably way too powerful.

You are absolutely right on AC importance. That is why CBA is so powerful. Would raising its price fix the problem? It is not that this project give unique advantage. People build ACs anyway. It just saves on facility building having pure economical value. So right price for economical benefit seems to be a proper fix. Optionally, we can increase cost of both AC and CBA to make it fair.

If you are talking CBA not giving AC at all and instead doing something else this would be interesting but too drastic change. I would like to explore less invasive options first like above.

I really don't know what so special we can give to air combat that is already quite powerful.
+2 movement is not too unique. They are already have something like 16 by the end game.
Copters not running out of fuel?
Do not penalize armor on planes so player can slap it on and make them more defended against anti-air attacks? Simulates better pilot training in academy that makes them able to maneuver better in combat and avoid missiles of sort. 😄

[MercantileInterest]

The point of a facility SP is to get the facility to your bases cheaper than building it everywhere. Increasing the cost of Cloudbase would solve the balance issue but it goes against the point of this kind of SP. I feel that a new feature would be more interesting.

My modding is evolved, rather than designed, so can't say how exactly it works, but air power does not feel too strong in either single player or multiplayer.

The Cloning Vats,            120, 0, BioEng,  Disable,  Population Boom At All Bases,    0, 0, 0, 1, 2,

The Space Elevator,          120, 0, Space,   Disable,  Energy +100%/Orbital Cost Halved,0, 1, 2, 2, 0,

The Ascent to Transcendence, 600, 0, Thresh,  Disable,  End of Singular Sentience Era,   0, 0, 2, 2, 2,

Here, you get space elevator with a level six tech. It costs 70 more mineral rows than in vanilla but the other players need aero complexes to prevent the elevator faction dropping out of orbit onto them. Alternately, they can build fighters as those also prevent drops. So, I thought it would be fun to have a project that envelops your whole territory with an anti-drop net, as an alternative to building complexes all over. Of course, it would also work against ordinary range 8 airdrops.

You may remember I've altered the basic growth formula. I increased the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1, so before future society or cloning vats, only way to boom is with golden ages. Hence, increased cost for the cloning vats. With the latest hab complex rules, you won't be able to boom once you exceed your limits, which is a nice touch. In fact, could even increase the necessary GROWTH by another 1, so you need hab complex to boom. Will have to tinker around. Regardless, cloning vats should cost more.

Ascent to Transcend comes a little early on my tree, so increased the cost a bit. No more single turn builds.

Don't know if I've mentioned it but abolishing planetpearls, the new tech cost mechanic and what you've done to reactors are all brilliant. Your modding has vastly improved the game.

[MercantileInterest]

As I recall, in air-to-air combat, both sides use their weapons. Armor is ignored.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The point of a facility SP is to get the facility to your bases cheaper than building it everywhere. Increasing the cost of Cloudbase would solve the balance issue but it goes against the point of this kind of SP. I feel that a new feature would be more interesting.

As I said, I don't mind as long as implementation is pretty easy. As for me I would repurpose all free facility projects to something more interesting. Free facility is just boring. Unfortunately, there are limits to my imagination. 😄

I still think global anti-drop net is too powerful for a single project. Same as orbital insertion but that is a blame to another project.

You may remember I've altered the basic growth formula. I increased the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1, so before future society or cloning vats, only way to boom is with golden ages. Hence, increased cost for the cloning vats. With the latest hab complex rules, you won't be able to boom once you exceed your limits, which is a nice touch. In fact, could even increase the necessary GROWTH by another 1, so you need hab complex to boom. Will have to tinker around. Regardless, cloning vats should cost more.

How did you the GROWTH needed to pop boom by 1? Is there an option for that?

Ascent to Transcend comes a little early on my tree, so increased the cost a bit. No more single turn builds.

Don't know if I've mentioned it but abolishing planetpearls, the new tech cost mechanic and what you've done to reactors are all brilliant. Your modding has vastly improved the game.

Thank you. Appreciation always creates warm feelings inside me.

By the way, do I recall right that you are modding txt on top of WTP? If so, can you share your settings? I may introduce them into WTP default.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

As I recall, in air-to-air combat, both sides use their weapons. Armor is ignored.

[MercantileInterest]

From thinker.ini

; SE GROWTH rating cap (vanilla = 5)
; Anything above triggers population boom
; allowed values: 0-9
se_growth_rating_cap=6

Didn't you increase this all the way to 9? From your readme:

Population boom is a powerful feature leading to OP strategy: expand - pop boom - repeat. The population boom is a nice feature. However, its cost is obviously negligible comparing to benefits.

This mod changes the GROWTH upper cap and thus GROWTH rating requirements for population boom making it more difficult to achieve.

I've got citizens only eating 1 nutrient and farms producing +2 nutrients instead of vanilla +1, so, even without booming, growth is more rapid.

Thinker.ini:

; attack and defense bonus when fighting in own territory in percents
combat_bonus_territory=25

I meant that CBA would prevent enemies from dropping into your territory (the region where you get this bonus), not within the entire map. Might still be too powerful.

Lol. You're right about air combat.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Tribute to Tayta Malikai.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-200

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Merged with Thinker 2.4.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/ml3r1t/smax_the_will_to_power_mod_v210/

Here you go. A reworked display odds dialog with much less invasive patch footprint.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Fixed odds display in some cases.

New dialog displaying both vanilla estimate and exact number reminded me about huge combat skew discussion we had long time ago. I guess it will be useful to illustrate this visually one more time.

Attached are displays for multiple cases.
Specifically three different divisor settings: 1.0 (exact vanilla mechanics), 2.0, 3.0. Bigger divisor simulates less skewed winning chances. Algorithm is courtesy of dino.
For each divisor two cases are given: strength ratio 2:1 and health ratio 2:1.

Here are some interesting observations.

First and foremost, vanilla odds cannot be used to estimate winning chances/odds because they are astronomically far from them. They still correlate to the winning odds somehow. Seasoned players can tell you the 10:5 odds are almost certain win and they can give a more or less close winning estimate based on vanilla odds.

The divisor does the trick of bringing actual winning chances to match vanilla computation. Thus making vanilla estimate more reliable to the level when it can be just used as is for casual play. Higher divisor does better job, obviously. However, I don't see much point in raising it up too much. Even 2.0 does huge improvement and anything beyond 4.0 is just a small numbers fiddling.

The advantage in strength is not equal to proportional advantage in health as vanilla deceitfully tries to persuade us. The advantage in strength seems to be better. Although opposite advantages are cancelling each other pretty close as can be seen on second picture.

[Induktio]

It appears there's Thinker Mod's banner on alphax.txt but basically all of the changes are from WTP. You don't need to keep that banner on alphax.txt if you did all the changes yourself. Just saying it confuses people about which mod it belongs to.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Sorry. I didn't even notice it. Will remove in next version.

[bvanevery]

I was checking out README.md to remind myself of what was needed to install factions. I noticed you have a Credits section.  Thanks for acknowledging a small contribution I have made to your effort!

I would suggest you not call this a Credits section though.  Crediting, in the game industry has a legal meaning that someone worked on the title as a joint author.  Like in the film industry, Credits exist at the end of the movie for legal reasons.

I am not such a person.  I have never "worked on" WTP.  I've always been rather careful about this to merely provide suggestions, never actually offer code patches, etc.  You're the author, not me.  I've learned about joint authorship on open source projects the hard way in the past, so that's why I'm careful to acknowledge people who have helped me, but not credit them as somehow being joint authors of my own mod.

Now the other people you credit, your relation to them may be different.  Your choice / call what to say people are.  The legal fine points of "contributions" get murky.  Probably all armchair issues anyways, given the licensing of the game.  I personally adopt the formalities, "just in case", but also for sake of instructive form.  New game developers come around, they need to be educated about licensing and crediting somehow.

You might be interested to know, that absent Induktio's additional direct involvement in your project, he is not a Joint Author of your work.  Rather, he licensed some code to the entire world under the GPL.  You made use of that code, under his license.  Thus it would be legally inappropriate to Credit him, as he didn't work on your project.  Unless he did / does, in which case your relationship is different and I didn't know that.  Anyways, it's certainly appropriate to be very grateful that he put his GPL code out into the world, for you to pick up and use.  That's the sort of thing that I Acknowledge people for.

Once upon a time, I was in the same position vis a vis The Battle For Wesnoth.  It was GPL licensed code that I was making mods for.

Licenses are interesting in how they differentiate the idea of "thankfulness".  You've got the MIT license which says nothing on the subject, it's flatly neutral.  You've got the BSD license which explicitly denies any credit or involvement, and doesn't allow you to make any such claim.  You've got zlib which demands you credit the original work and that you're the knockoff, you must annotate all your sordid changes, etc.  And then you've got the more manageable CC-BY which says "you have to acknowledge that I wrote the original".  I use the latter.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You are so particular.
 

I have changed section name to "Special thanks and acknowledgements".

[bvanevery]

Excellent phraseology.  I approve.