SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

Played the Cult until MY 2238, knocking off at 11:38 PM.  Relatively early for me, but I'm fatigued, possibly from playing yesterday.

Played a "minerals first" strategy, on the premise that the game is minerals poor and pretty much determined by minerals output.  Only had 4 cities for a long time.  I now suspect that this isn't optimal.  Maybe fewer cities and not spreading out too much is the right idea for getting minerals going, but not quite that few.

Didn't learn Recycling Tanks until MY 2206 I think.  Finally stole it from the Believers after they stole from me first.  Had long distance mindworm skirmishes with the Believers and the University.  Had sunspots for awhile, during which time I saw the Hive and the Usurpers fighting on my border.  Once they lifted, the Hive declared war on me.  Not much happened but their artillery bothered me, and that's pretty much when I quit.  It was a viable game, but felt like a drag where I didn't have any particular advantage.

My Chaos Silksteel Cruiser ships were expensive and ineffective against the Believers.  They countered with a Chaos Plasma Foil, which smoked my ship about as fast as I smoked their Scout defender.  Actually they killed my almost dead ship as it was trying to retreat.  Pretty good defense for a Scout.  The economics of this are clearly awful and I don't see the point of waging naval war against crappy ocean bases.

On the bright side, I see the AI actually using some troops.  I can't tell if anyone was a real threat or not.  The Hive and the Usurpers were keeping each other busy for the moment, and the Believers were too far away to matter.

I did no SE choice for quite some time.  Eventually I went Democratic Planned, as I had a lot of developed land and hadn't really grown my bases to match.  Some bases were at size 7 and building Hab Complexes when I quit.  I'm not used to pop boom mechanics because I severely limit them in the early game in my mod.

I managed to build the Universal Translator, the Merchant Exchange, and the Human Genome Project.  That pretty much exhausted the Artifacts I picked up.

I brought a lot of independent mindworms and spore launchers back to my empire, which then were useful as worm police.  Sometimes that was involuntary, as when my diplomatic relations with an ally fell through.  Sorry I don't give chump change to snivelers.  Especially when they're holding out on me on tech and could jolly well sell it if they want money.

[bvanevery]

I played to 2173 as the Gaians.  This pretty much proves that my previous "4 cities, build minerals" idea was suboptimal.  I may have had better starting conditions this time, but I also did much better spread.  Basically I "followed the minerals", including getting pushy with the Caretakers on their frontier about some minerals they popped.  Just rushed east and grabbed 'em for myself.  After the initial burst this was driven by the output of just 1 high food, low minerals city.  I'd add yet another city every so often to round things out.

Details 4 useless Command Centers

4 useless Command Centers

I thought I was going to get in a shooting war with the Caretakers pretty early on.  Then we had sunspots.  When they lifted, the Caretakers got bored enough with me to sign a Treaty.  So, crisis was averted.  Only then did I realize that the 4 Command Centers I'd painstakingly built up, did me no good at all.  The Gaians in WTP have a -2 MORALE penalty.  Without a Command Center, units start as Very Green.  With a Command Center, units start as Very Green.

This is untenable and a dealbreaker.  I'm not playing WTP with this faction until it's fixed.  IMO that's totally broken because mindworms aren't any kind of wonder weapon in WTP anymore, if they ever were.  They're pretty nerfed.  I filed an Issue about this Gaian stuff.

I'll go do a "decent minerals output" empire with some other faction.  Start conditions permitting.

[bvanevery]

Here by contrast is how it goes when you don't get nearly as good land to start on, and you're crippled by -1 SUPPORT.  I'm done with the Morganites in WTP until that's changed.  Filing an Issue about it.  This isn't the 1st time I've played them, not by a longshot.  It's gotten real old.

Details death of a Morganite colonist

death of a Morganite colonist

Morgan Industries was the square I started on and an ok place to settle, so I took it.  I saw the outline of the Garland Crater so I headed my 2nd colonist for it.  When I got there, I found it covered with fungus and dry as bone.  I was going to abandon the area when I popped a Monolith.  I figured my base square would have adequate food and the Monolith would make it enough for the early game.

The extra Garland Crater mineral did prove helpful.  I succeeded at an early rash of Formers using Completion Scumming.  This however, rapidly ran me out of SUPPORT.  I had to reassign units and manage the timing of my Colonist completion at Morgan Industries, to avoid a disbanding. I also had to avoid picking up the Unity Chopper and the Mining Laser from the crash site, because they would have added to my SUPPORT burden.

I scouted a reasonable search area but was beholden to my Scouts still taking up SUPPORT while I was in the field.  Unlike the Gaians or other +PLANET factions who get some free units for scouting, for the Morganites it's a major liability.  That's a lot of early game money that they don't have as good an access to.  I patted myself on the back that I managed to patrol this much around me anyways, before things went south.

The point at which mindworms just start exploding around you, killed off my Scouts.  Well ok, at least I could get on with making my empire.  But I hadn't learned Social Psych.  I kept the game's default research settings, to see things as the AI does.  I don't know if AI Morgan has the same problem, if it has a way to cheat around it, but I was certainly harmed by not being able to make any Rec Commons.  My 5 bases were all I had been able to manage, given the SUPPORT poverty.  Many of them had access to better resources in total, but it would take more than 2 population to do it.

The last straw was when I sent my 6th colonist to an intended nearby beneficial nutrient site, and it was summarily killed by an unseen mindworm.  I didn't explode anything down there myself.  It's just the stage of the early game where they start wandering around a lot.

Quit at MY 2150, 10:30 PM.  This basically isn't any fun, it's a drag.  I don't consider it a challenge when the odds are stacked so heavily against the Morganites, I just think it's me being jerked around.  The Morganites were the most pathetic faction of the original game too, for the same reason, the SUPPORT problem.  Also like the original game, they have no real advantage.  +1 ECONOMY doesn't do much.  If you want +2 ECONOMY, you still have to pick Free Market to get it.  Wealth doesn't come until a lot later.  That's a long time to be playing without any real advantage, plus the SUPPORT liability, plus the Hab liability.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Responding to your factions proposal in general.
Faction balance is not this mod (my) specialty. It requires a lot of thinking and a lot of testing which I don't have time for, unfortunately.
😒

Honestly, I don't think they are seriously broken now after I removed aquatic minerals. I don't see any faction that is constantly on a lead or in the tail.

Let's look at Morgan's -1 SUPPORT that you mentioned, for example. I am not defending my position here. This could be one point of view. Not necessarily mine.
This is definitely a serious penalty. I don't think it is completely fatal to them, though. Sure they can support one unit less per base but this can be played around easily. Morgan should lean toward expansion thus creating more bases and sufficient unit presence by that. Their cash flow bonuses can be used to rush colonies and increase psych at bases to negate b-drones. Their population size restriction also suggest wider spread. So all their bonuses/penalties are playing relative well together.
Besides, somebody has to have this penalty. It would be quite dull to grant only positive bonuses to everyone. If not Morgan with his wealth than who?

Above passage illustrates that it is difficult to prove that certain faction bonuses combination is an absolute evil. There could be multitude opinions and point of views. They all are subjective. It is almost impossible to mathematically relate SE effects to each other. I have tried once and did the very rough approximation at best with tons of assumptions. Only million AI-AI simulations can gather sufficient statistics.

[bvanevery]

Factions cannot be balanced in a vacuum.  The vanilla game is not the same as Thinker, which is not the same as WTP, which is not the same as SMACX AI Growth mod.  Factions can only be balanced in the face of a consistent set of systems.  And, we're all different.

Case in point: My Morganites +1 ECONOMY is very powerful, because I don't force factions to choose Free Market to make money.  In my mod, in the early to mid game, you have to choose 2 of {Democratic | Capitalist | Wealth} to get to +2 ECONOMY, to make your money.  Morgan only has to choose one of those.  That's a big advantage.  He could go Democratic Green, he could go Theocratic Capitalist (The Almighty Dollar!!!)
 

And my Capitalist isn't some onerous pain to choose, like in your mod, or the original game.  It's only -2 PLANET.  Of course it's also only +1 ECONOMY.  I split it up.

Besides, somebody has to have this penalty.

No they don't.  For instance, I have no PROBE penalties in my SE table or my factions.  I don't believe in it as a mechanic, because stock binary mind control balance is crap.  So I got rid of it.

Similarly, I have no INDUSTRY bonus or penalty anywhere in my SE table.  No faction has an INDUSTRY penalty.  Only the Free Drones have a bonus.

It would be quite dull to grant only positive bonuses to everyone.

False.  That's my mod you're talking about.  You actually played it?

Only million AI-AI simulations can gather sufficient statistics.

False.  I've done dozens upon dozens of AI vs. AI simulations, and that's a big part of why my factions are balanced.  I can only stand to play so many games manually.  When I have my suspicions, I fire up the AI vs. AI games and see who gets killed.  Consistently underperforming factions get adjustments.  That's why my Morganites are +1 SUPPORT, not -1.  It works in my mod, my actual game balance.

My AI players don't get benefits like settling fungal patches either.  Another way that you can't assume equality between mods and factions.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Changed release model in GitHub. Now using inbuilt Release mechanism instead of adding zips to the code. This should reduce the volume of clone.
Don't know what to do with old releases yet. Some people still use them. It would be unwise to just wipe them out. From the other side it would take quite long time to transition them all into released tags. Maybe create an uber zip with all zips and put it as "Old releases" release?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Mind_Control_Cost

Based on my recent disassembling of MC cost I have decided to mod it a little. All formula components make sense except unit counting filter. It counts only units with unit plan 0 and 1. Unit plan is an obscure feature designed for AI unit control mostly and is not visible anywhere on the UI. This part of the formula could be inadequately vague to player. I think it worth streamlining it a bit.

Here is what I have in mind.
1. Count units in base square and all adjacent squares as well since they all will be subverted on successful MC.
2. Count all combat units including psi, excluding scouts.
3. Units with Polymorphic encryption count twice (or some number of times). Original formula make them exceptionally powerful doubling whole unit count not only this particular one.

[bvanevery]

0 or 1, that's a huge hole!  Doesn't count ships, doesn't count air units, doesn't count a Planet Buster... that's completely ridiculous, to the point of being a bug.

You must count Scouts.  Scouts are early game defense and offense, and the Data Angels do start the game with a probe team and the ability to mind control.  There's no basic reason why Scouts should be precluded from use in the rest of the game.  When I'm taking someone over, Scouts are typically used to destroy enemy Sensor Arrays, wreck their Formers, provide impediments to AI movement, keep routes of travel somewhat more open, and even occupy bases when my real serious unit count gets thin.  They're a perfectly valid military unit.  They should have takeover cost proportionate to their worth.

Did you know that if you give Scouts an AI Plan of "-1 = Auto Calculate", the AI will calculate them as Assault?  And that they can actually trash your capitol with a Transport invasion, in the early game?  I was impressed!  It's a pity that this setting also causes unhealthy obsessions with Scouts.  So while trashing capitols is cool, watching the AI run out of SUPPORT yet again is not.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think I better start drafting the MC and S formulas before I start to implementing them. It may be not too simple to even design.

General ideas

Exclude nerve staple effect. It is an interesting factor but it has a limit and it seems ridiculously to force player nerve staple their vulnerable bases over and over again.[/li][/list]

Base faction EC? I think it is solid factor that is pretty difficult to change very quickly. So anyone trying to prevent their bases from MC should accumulate sizable sums of credits instead of spending them on hurrying.

Double cost if factions are not in pact. That condition sounds pretty weird. It is cheaper to buy pact base? But then they most likely break the pact. Is it one time feature? Why at all buying pact base should be cheaper? Not only this condition is weird it it difficult to control for both parties at will. I think it is better drop it.

Halve cost if base is rioting. Definitely drop it. Too temporary condition easily induced by the probing faction as well!

Double cost if base is in golden age. That is not easy to decide. Player may go all the way to make their people happy to not let them run away. The condition costs something to the player and may last for long and cannot be induced by probing faction. However, probing faction can increase riot activity thus nullifying the golden age. Of course, base owner can try to prevent riot and try to keep golden age but over pleasing citizens on purpose but I see it as too micro that would more annoy people than excite.

Double cost if base faction is an atrocity victim of probe faction. That is legit. People remembering what other faction did to them and don't want to defect.

Distance to HQ. That is the most controversial of them all. It makes sense from lore point of view. I.e. government has better control over base, etc. However, as usual in vanilla, implementation bastardized it. For one, not having HQ make it better for some distant bases. For second, bases close to HQ cost just a ridiculous amount to buy and that suggest a "move HQ close to captured bases" strategy. Which is viable but leads to human abuse, since AI doesn't do that. I believe HQ should add to cost but not that drastically.

Proposed formula for MC cost

Base MC cost

Every citizen costs 100.
Evey facility costs 20.
Every SP costs 1000.
Every factor of production base income costs some small value like 4 probably. This way base with 100 minerals and 200 energy will add 1200 on top of the cost.

Multiplying factors

(1 + base faction EC / 1200)
Not counting base faction corner market cost because I cannot comprehend what this means.

(2 - min(half map X, distance to HQ) / half map X)
This way bases close to HQ cost twice as much but not 5 times. Also not having HQ does not make some bases cost more.

Double cost if there is Genejack factory
Halve cost if there is Children's creche
Halve cost if there is Punishment sphere

These conditions do not count:
nerve stapled
pact
rioting
golden age

All other multipliers from original formula.

The cost of all subverted units is added on top of that but only for actual MC cost computation. Corner market does not count subversion cost.

Proposed formula for subversion cost

I think I'll put it here for completeness sake as well.

Unit cost in mineral rows * 10 * (hurry cost) * (800 + unit faction EC)  / 800 * (2 - min(half map X, distance to HQ) / half map X)

Any unit home base conditions have no effect.

All other multipliers from original formula.

Optionally PE multiplies cost by more than 2.

[bvanevery]

Base faction EC? I think it is solid factor that is pretty difficult to change very quickly. So anyone trying to prevent their bases from MC should accumulate sizable sums of credits instead of spending them on hurrying.

However, this is also grossly capitalist.  Just sayin'.  Gonna say it since I did put Socialist explicitly into the game, and explicitly made Domai the socialist posterboy he always was.  "Money makes people happy" is capitalist as ####.

I imagined Morgan's endgame as Cybernetic, and made it dystopian, ala Blade Runner.

From a simulation standpoint, it would make more sense to deal with the happiness of the citizens in the base, and not how rich the faction is.  I'd go so far as to completely discard EC as a factor in the computation, replacing it with some weighted metric of citizen happiness.  I would furthermore discard things like Genejack Factories as a factor, instead relying only on whatever they do to base happiness.  If you've got GFs but your PSYCH budget is also 40%, who's to say that doesn't work as a resilient society?

This of course contingent upon the doability of reading the base's happiness and integrating those factors into a formula.  You'd need Talents, Workers, Drones.  Dunno about Specialists.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't understand what you have against GF? Its description explicitly mentions increased MC vulnerability. It is a solid player decision - whether to go for minerals or base resiliency.

Happiness, on the other hand, fluctuates like crazy. Base can jump in and out of riot/GA in a matter of turns. It is also directly affected by probes. Even aggregate happiness you proposed suffers from the same.

[bvanevery]

If you wanted people to be ridiculously happy, you could put 60% of your budget into PSYCH.  I'm hardly loyal to the lore of the original game regarding 1 base facility.  You can just change the description of the lore and that's over with.  How much do you think any SMAC player has ever obsessed about a GF effect on probe teams?  In single player, I'd say close to zero.  It could be some kind of tweaky competitive multiplayer concern, but I really don't care about that.  I think "your happiness matters" is the cleanest, easiest to understand system.

I don't think you should have to make tons of energy credits, to keep your population from being mind controlled.  It is an explicitly capitalist, right wing way to look at societal organization.  It really bugs me the degree to which games embed these kinds of assumptions about economics and society.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I didn't want to change the description of GF because I am lazy and don't want to do any extra things if possible. However, I agree, the GF is not a big deal in this regard.

This is not a single facility. There are others like CC, COC, etc. They affect cost same drastic way. I don't like to change it more than necessary as long as some players are aware of these facilities effect on MC. After all MC cost should not be some absolutely precisely weighted formula. It is nothing like that in the whole game. Most of the modifiers in this game are "doubled"/"halved".

I agree that CC and COC specifically are more suited by their own primary effect to affect MC cost. Whereas, GF not so much - it is just mineral multiplier among others. So may drop it from the formula. Besides, it already adds 1 drone. Once again, need to think about it.

The overall happiness is a great measure to counter MC but there are few problems with it. It is difficult to raise it on purpose in recently captured bases with all psych facilities ruined and without psych multiplying facilities either. It would take enormous psych percentage that would be an overkill. It is also difficult to compute it and it adds additional complexity for the player to eyeball how much "happiness" their bases have.

How about some simplification then? Use Psych allocation as a direct MC cost multiplier? Like every 10% Psych increase MC cost by 20% or something like that? Should be very transparent to players.

[bvanevery]

It is difficult to raise it on purpose in recently captured bases with all psych facilities ruined

I don't see any purpose at all to the guaranteed ruining of various base facilities.  For me as a single player it creates busywork.  In MP everyone's experiencing the same thing, so it doesn't matter.  If it were easy enough to do, I would simply eliminate this play mechanic as unnecessarily baroque, un-fun, and not contributing anything to simulation.  C'mon, you're the Nazis fleeing the American advance, you're gonna make sure your card playing room is trashed before you head out the door and flee down the road?  Priorities man, priorities.

Look I'm gonna flat out say it: it's stupid.  Who knows what some game designer or designer wannabe was thinking when they decided upon that.  Probably contemplating "destruction".   Doesn't mean they had good ideas.

It is also difficult to compute it and it adds additional complexity for the player to eyeball how much "happiness" their bases have.

The point would be to eliminate other factors in the formula until it is, in fact, easier to compute.  Whoever designed various formulas for SMAC, clearly didn't have in-the-head computability in mind, when they were working on it.  Especially for the Bureaucracy formula, over time I learned to just stop worrying about it.  That actually took me years, to stop worrying about the inverse square root for the map size and so forth.

How about some simplification then? Use Psych allocation as a direct MC cost multiplier? Like every 10% Psych increase MC cost by 20% or something like that? Should be very transparent to players.

The PSYCH budget allocation is not enough.  The absolute amount of energy you're putting in, and the size of your empire, do matter.

There's nothing stopping anyone from examining a base before they try to mind control it, and assessing the happiness there.  Maybe you've forgotten this in the course of implementing various anti infiltration rules?

Also BTW:

Evey facility costs 20.

That kind of simplification, sucks.  You're making cities with lotsa expensive facilities in them, into a bargain basement.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't see any purpose at all to the guaranteed ruining of various base facilities.  For me as a single player it creates busywork.  In MP everyone's experiencing the same thing, so it doesn't matter.  If it were easy enough to do, I would simply eliminate this play mechanic as unnecessarily baroque, un-fun, and not contributing anything to simulation.  C'mon, you're the Nazis fleeing the American advance, you're gonna make sure your card playing room is trashed before you head out the door and flee down the road?  Priorities man, priorities.

Look I'm gonna flat out say it: it's stupid.  Who knows what some game designer or designer wannabe was thinking when they decided upon that.  Probably contemplating "destruction".   Doesn't mean they had good ideas.

This is one of conquest lure reduction attempts. If you would capture a completely functional base it would increase conquest lucrativity threefold. Besides it is to draw clear distinction between MC/capture and TC. How else TC will be better. I don't mind removing it by itself but don't want to trash balance with other features. Let me know if you think of something.

The point would be to eliminate other factors in the formula until it is, in fact, easier to compute.  Whoever designed various formulas for SMAC, clearly didn't have in-the-head computability in mind, when they were working on it.  Especially for the Bureaucracy formula, over time I learned to just stop worrying about it.  That actually took me years, to stop worrying about the inverse square root for the map size and so forth.

Like content citizen = 100 and happy = twice as much? That would embed both happiness and population factors in it.

Also BTW:

Evey facility costs 20.

That kind of simplification, sucks.  You're making cities with lotsa expensive facilities in them, into a bargain basement.

As any other factor. Don't be so picky. They are all not exact. At least this is some approximation. Vanilla doesn't even count facilities.
Trying to factor every facility cost makes formula more complex to understand and compute in head. Isn't it what you advocated for?