SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

How else TC will be better.

Total Thought Control avoids all political consequences for taking over the base when it's successful.  That is the entire and only reason to do it.  It's as though the base or unit was never possessed by someone else and was always yours.  Well, I don't recall if Captured Base still happens, but politically, nobody can even remember it wasn't yours.

Like content citizen = 100 and happy = twice as much?

5 AM so my brain isn't in gear for thinking about numbers, but conceptually, T = Talent, W = Worker, D = Drone.  Weights +1, 0, -1.  Average citizen happiness = (T - D) / (T + W + D).  0 would be equivalent to all Workers.  More positive would be more mind control resistant.  Negative would actually be a drone riot in progress.

Vanilla doesn't even count facilities.

Vanilla sucks.  The point of revamping this stuff is to make it not suck.

Trying to factor every facility cost makes formula more complex to understand and compute in head.

Not really.  You know at a glance that a loaded city is going to be more expensive to buy.  It's not realistic to think that anyone's gonna manually add up the cost of units in their head.  Rather, they get a feel for what things cost, by very obvious inputs and outputs to cost.  Expensive units and expensive facilities make a base cost more.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

base cost

each surplus nutrient and mineral = 4
each economy, psych, labs = 2
each facility = 10 * cost
each project = 80 * cost

happiness coefficient

all drones = 0.5
all content = 1.0
all talents = 1.5
prorated in between

HQ distance coefficient

No HQ or farther than half X width = 1.0
Right next to HQ = 2.0
linearly prorated in between

Previous MC coefficient

Each previous MC adds 10% on top of the cost. I.e. after 10 MC the cost doubles, after 20 - triples, etc.

[bvanevery]

If you have easy access to the maintenance cost of the base, that's a better approximation of facility cost.

You're treating happiness as a minor factor only.  0.5 to 1.5 is not a very big range of variance.  Like it could be the most singin' and dancin' est place in the world and it doesn't matter much compared to ho hum.  It's not exactly easy or realistic to get a base with all talents.  You're doing well if you've got people in a Golden Age.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

If you have easy access to the maintenance cost of the base, that's a better approximation of facility cost.

I can use both. However, maintenance is a burden. Why higher maintenance should increase base cost? I think facility cost is good enough estimate for base value.

You're treating happiness as a minor factor only.  0.5 to 1.5 is not a very big range of variance.  Like it could be the most singin' and dancin' est place in the world and it doesn't matter much compared to ho hum.  It's not exactly easy or realistic to get a base with all talents.  You're doing well if you've got people in a Golden Age.

Err, what can we do about it? I have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky. Base of all drones now will cost zero. We cannot go below that. How else you want to make happiness as a major factor? Make it exponential? Like all drones divides cost by 10 but all talents multiplies cost by 10?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Also how to count specialists in happiness computations? From one side they are content citizens. From the other side it is easy to turn everybody to specialists in captured base to avoid having drones at all.

Also, since unit subversion cost is calculated independently from other MC factors cost, enough number of units in base will keep it from reaching too low value anyway.

[bvanevery]

I think facility cost is good enough estimate for base value.

I missed the part where you decided to use straight up facility cost.  Earlier you were only interested in counting the number of facilities, which isn't accurate as some are much more expensive to build than others.  If you have access to facility cost, then yes, that is best.

I have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky.  Base of all drones now will cost zero.

Not sure what the lower bound of cost should be.  But that's not as important, as making a base too expensive to take over, because people are too happy to put up with mind control.  So, what is a cost threshold, that represents "really can't afford that" ?  Who's doing the buying?  At what point in the game?

From the other side it is easy to turn everybody to specialists in captured base to avoid having drones at all.

Is negative nutrient status / a famine, a readily accessible quantity?  You could put in a penalty if people are starving, even if they haven't lost population yet.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have already changed the range to 0-1-2 in my release but this is risky.  Base of all drones now will cost zero.

Not sure what the lower bound of cost should be.  But that's not as important, as making a base too expensive to take over, because people are too happy to put up with mind control.  So, what is a cost threshold, that represents "really can't afford that" ?  Who's doing the buying?  At what point in the game?

No idea. Try it and tell me. New formula is definitely very different from vanilla so no comparison here.

From the other side it is easy to turn everybody to specialists in captured base to avoid having drones at all.

Is negative nutrient status / a famine, a readily accessible quantity?  You could put in a penalty if people are starving, even if they haven't lost population yet.

I can access any value in the game. That is not a problem.

I was questioning if this will be considered an abuse to silence drones with doctors just to keep base price high? Upon thinking I don't believe it will. The price is heavy enough.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Everybody,
I am deleting release folder from repository. Releases are accessible through regular GitHub release list. Let me know if anyone is still using older version so I can stash it.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/releases

[CaptEHCJ]

Greetings.  first time poster here.  I found this mod, and absolutely love it... the rebalancing, fixing armor vs weapons, making AI way smarter, etc.  Just love it.  BUT... (there's always one of those...)

I downloaded version - TheWillToPower-229 - as that was the newest version from the link posted on the first page of this forum a few weeks ago.  Played and got very deep into a game only to reach a point where at the end of the turn, other AI players took their turns and poof, the game just crashed.  No error, just game close.  It initially happend right after I got a new tech (the one that allows you to build the cloudbase great building).  So I tried about 3 times, always crash.  I then went back 3 turns or so, and got the tech earlier.  Played for the rest of that turn, but then during AI turn, crash again.  Was frustrated, as it was a good and challenging game. 

So, I uninstalled SMAX entirely.  RE-downloaded it from GoG.  Found this thread and downloaded TheWillToPower-240 hoping that the crash had been fixed.  Note, you might want to change the link on page one to point to the new site.  Anyway, started a whole new game, got not all that far in, and poof... crash again. I end turn and then poof, program shuts down.  Nothing fancy happening that I know of...

Any way this can be fixed? 

Runnnig Windows 10 Pro on an HP laptop.  Glad to provide any info needed to fix it. 

thanks!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hi there and welcome!

Glad you like it. Sure it is a one-man shop. So bugs appear and are squashed on a regular basis. Just send me a version and save before the crash (maybe also a turn before that if you have it) and I will try to figure it out. Sometimes you can even continue the game after bug fix - like nothing happened. 😁

On a flip side you have the power to influence the way it develops. Imagine that! Any bug reports, improvement ideas, and criticism are welcome.
For specific bugs and well articulated suggestions you can just submit an issue on GitHub attaching all the artifacts like saves here: https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues. You'll get notification on the fix this way.

For generic questions and discussion - use this forum or reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/4xgaming, https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/) for faster response.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Updated releases link on first page. Thank you for noticing that.

[CaptEHCJ]

Here is a zip of the last 3 turns.  Let me know if there is anything else I can do to assist in resolving this.  Thanks again so much for your assistance!

CaptEHCJ

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have loaded yours "Aki Zeta-5 of the Consciousness, 2155" save (I assume this is the one after which you experience the crash) into 240 version running on my machine. It passed without any problems and continued my turn by showing me which facilities are built in my bases. See attached. Did you get to this point?

If not then it could be not WTP error. Vanilla still has plenty of fatal bugs out there.

Are you launching terranx_mod.exe?

Please send me your exe and configuration files.
alphax.txt
conceptsx.txt
helpx.txt
labels.txt
Script.txt
socwin.pcx
terranx_mod.exe
thinker.dll
thinker.ini
Alpha Centauri.Ini

Even better would be to zip and send me entire AC directory. However, it could be huge. If you can send it me over google drive or some other method – that would be good.

I have also created issue on that. Can you access it? It would be nice if you can attach directory zip there.
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/issues/84

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am sorry to return to the odds topic once more. Those in favor of vanilla computations please tell me that this is acceptable odds.

1:1.3 strength ratio produces 1:5 winning odds. I remember I have agreed on that before just want to hear this once more from users.

[bvanevery]

To me the more relevant problem for this particular battle, is a Sea Former shouldn't be that difficult for an Isle to kill.  In my mod, I don't allow Hypnotic Trance on non-military units.