SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Hagen0]

Both negative and positive psych input for a base is capped by 2*(base size) . You can have more but that won't have any effect on drones.

Take a size 3 base. If you are at twice the bureaucracy limit every base has exactly one b-drone which is equivalent to -2 Psych. You can at most gain 6 Psych via slider and specialists so total is +4 which gives you one talent and one worker. To reach a GA you'd need a second Talent.

[bvanevery]

Psych is exempt from slider inefficiency. You can dump 100% energy into psych with no losses.

But usually, why would you want to?  Don't care about making money or doing research anymore?  You have to be well in the lead to feel that way.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Both negative and positive psych input for a base is capped by 2*(base size) . You can have more but that won't have any effect on drones.

Take a size 3 base. If you are at twice the bureaucracy limit every base has exactly one b-drone which is equivalent to -2 Psych. You can at most gain 6 Psych via slider and specialists so total is +4 which gives you one talent and one worker. To reach a GA you'd need a second Talent.

Still the math not clear to me. Please don't get any deeper I don't want to exhaust your time on that.
Is this for human on Transcendent? If so, there should be 2 drones beyond first citizen. Plus 1 b-drone it makes it three. Then +6 psych should cure them all and leave all content citizens.

[Hagen0]

Nah, I like talking about this stuff. Yes, human on Transcend. On lower difficulty settings you have more leeway.

Indeed, there are 3 normal drones due to the one b-drone. Then 4 of the +6 Psych makes one drone into a talent, the rest changes another drone into a worker. If +8 were possible the second drone would also turn into a talent.

@bvanevery: Extremely high psych expenditure is used exactly for this. Achieving golden age so factions with Growth mali or inability to use Planned/Democracy can pop-boom.

[Tayta Malikai]

Yes, as Hagen0 says, Psych is applied depth-first rather than breadth-first. Rather than 8 Psych being distributed equally across 4 drones to turn them into workers with 2 Psych each, 4 Psych is used to turn the first drone into a talent, and then 4 Psych turns the second drone into a talent, and so on.

The problem with the Psych limit is not that this hampers drone control, but that it prevents Golden Ages in bases with an odd number of population and all of them being drones.

It's somewhat easier for Morgan than Yang, since he can run Democratic for +2 EFFIC that raises his base cap from 9 to 14 before he starts getting B-drones. You can somewhat game the system by repeatedly switching to and from SEs that give +EFFIC, as this will reshuffle B-drones in your bases. So you can Golden Age popboom in some of your bases and then try to get the rest done afterwards. It of course helps that Morgan has a lot of energy that even 20% Psych can achieve a lot - I haven't really played Yang much, so I don't know how his popboom experience goes.

And of course, if you're fast enough to snag the Human Genome Project, you don't have to worry about Psych limits at all since it adds another talent after Psych is calculated.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.

Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.

This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?

Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?

[bvanevery]

@bvanevery: Extremely high psych expenditure is used exactly for this. Achieving golden age so factions with Growth mali or inability to use Planned/Democracy can pop-boom.

Yes of course but you have to be willing to pay for all of that.  It's not clear it's a good strategy compared to other things you could be spending money on.  It depends on how much of your empire is undergrown.

[Tayta Malikai]

Superdrones are visible in base screen. They have a lighter red than normal drones.

Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.

This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?

Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?

They only appear in the Psych screen IIRC. They should be noticeably super-red compared to regular drones.

[Hagen0]

Are you sure? I never were able to distinguish them.

This is base with GeneJack factory which is supposed to turn single content citizen into drone. There are total 6 * 3 Morganites bases. It is 3 times the limit. I also noted limit warnings to be sure. That means 2 b-drones per base. Those are supposed to appear as super-drones. Can you see them in the picture?

Didn't you mix it up with Civ 1/2 where super-drones were of completely different color?

They only appear in the Psych screen IIRC. They should be noticeably super-red compared to regular drones.

This. Tayta Malikai is quite right.

Additionally, genejack factory drones appear at the facility level of the psych screen. They aren't super drones (-2 psych) but function more akin to pacifism drones iirc. Not completely though, since they operate at the faciltiy level they are discounted from drone control facilities. If you have a recreation commons and a genejack factory you will get one drone pacified at facility level in aggregate.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You both right. I just checked the code and Genejack drones are "facility drones". Recreation common generates -2 facility drones.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The population limitation of how much psych can be used to pacify drones is a strange thing, though. With all drones and super-drones it can cure super-drones only leaving all drones intact. Without super-drones it can create only half of talents or less than half in odd population bases. Is this intended design to not abuse psych for GA?


I am sure this won't be a discovery for you but the way psych, facilities, police, projects work with drones is awfully non-linear. It is impossible to predict whether and how some changes affect happiness across empire on average without carefully repeating these quirky computation for each base.

Examples
On Transcendent (when human has only one content) having both 1 b-drone and 1 facility drone from Genejack Factory - cancel each other!!! Meaning player receives just one additional drone, not two.
Same story with psych and facilities. For 2 size base when all citizens are drones if psych happens to turn one citizen to content it makes Recreation Common redundant for this citizen. Moreover, For 3 size base psych 6 turns one citizen to talent and one to content which is also redundant with Recreation Common. If it would summarized purely arithmetical, Recreation Common + 6 psych would make two talents and one content triggering GA.

I understand that this all sequence of applications and redundancy is probably by design to reduce efficiency of psych, increase effect of pacifism, etc. However, this also creates some unbalances those probably may be addressed.

One of such imbalances is reduced efficiency of b-drones because they are applied first and are only effect producing super-drones. Super-drones are only matter when countered by psych. All other drone-dealing means ignore them completely. That creates strange exploitation strategy. More bases create more b-drones but only first b-drone creates a drone. Further b-drones are super-drones those do not negate effects of pacifying facilities. So spreading thin, keeping bases up to size 4, building Recreation Common and Hologram Theater in each allows absolutely droneless infinite expansion affecting only the corruption in new bases but this is minor. With police units base sizes could stay up to 5-6-7.

Summarizing above, the mechanics behind b-drones and psych strongly favors horizontal expansion and hinder vertical one very much. Whereas the sole purpose of b-drones is to counter unlimited spread! Some major mechanics flaw. I believe now that this flaw and not the colony cost is the major contribution to ICS strategy that many people tried to combat so far.


There are a lot of interesting drone ideas in Yutzi's patch.
https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/New_alphax_variables_in_Yitzi%27s_patch (item 2).

I don't like the idea of phantom talents/drones as they are not visible on the screen. However, I like the idea of facilities suppressing super-drones first making them less effective when super-drones are present. I also like the idea of many other drone types added to super-drones, not only b-drones.

In short, I like the idea of direct arithmetical addition of all talent/drone factors and then clipping them by base size. I.e. all drone factors can contribute to super-drones. All talent and anti-drone factors should suppress super-drones first. Probably with exception of police. It could be either left as is - suppressing whatever citizen in this slot regardless of whether they are drone or super-drone. Other option is to let them suppress super-drones first as any other factors but let them suppress 2 drones for regular police and 3 drones for "non-lethal"/"3 POLICE" and 4 drones for "non-lethal" + "3 POLICE". After all effects are combined they are clipped to whatever can fit to the screen for non-specialists citizens. Meaning it is possible to avoid drone riot by turning all citizen to specialists but it won't be possible to GA with more than half of specialists.

I clearly understand this will be a different game. It would need to be heavily playtested too to tune some parameters.
😄

However, would it be much Much MUCH simpler to understand drone rules and their exact effect?

I see just few implications on this field.
B-drones as well as any other drones in combination become more dangerous and more difficult to control.
Psych becomes very powerful as it is becomes pure additive and not redundant with other methods anymore.
Pacifism drones becomes much easier to quell with psych and other methods.
It becomes pretty easy to trigger GA with enough psych combined with other methods. This should not be a big deal in WTP, though, as GA just adds +2 GROWTH and does not lead to pop-boom directly.

[Hagen0]

Summarizing above, the mechanics behind b-drones and psych strongly favors horizontal expansion and hinder vertical one very much. Whereas the sole purpose of b-drones is to counter unlimited spread! Some major mechanics flaw. I believe now that this flaw and not the colony cost is the major contribution to ICS strategy that many people tried to combat so far.

Not sure I agree. There are two ways to look at it. Pop-booming is very powerful. So the way, b-drones make pop-booing via GA hard to possible can act as a check to expansion. B-drones also very much hinder early expansion. Past the first bureaucracy limit bases will riot at size 2 and in FM already at size 1.

On a meta level, another base is always worthwhile as long as there is good land. Since in Smac all land is good and you make settle basically everywhere there is no reason to ever stop expanding, nor should there be. In the short term however, another colony pod may not be the best build on a profit vs opportunity cost basis; formers, booming infrastructure, multiplier buildings and of course military units often have a higher profit vs. opportunity cost ratio.

[bvanevery]

I don't even have the brain cells to follow all of this.  Strategically, all I get is "stuff's broken".  Pop booming is broken.  Golden Age is broken.  GROWTH is broken.  Lots and lots of broken stuff.  An AI would never be able to accurately or efficiently compute any of this.  I would never, ever put all this nonsense in a clean slate 4X TBS design.  I can only boggle at the original production processes that led to this thoroughly baroque system of rules.

Baroqueness is an awful plague that should be abolished from the genre.

It's also a strong argument for having certain rules be visible in source code, or failing that, data driven configuration.  So that this kind of nonsense is stopped and not just tweaked endlessly by some production programmer who thought it would be a good idea to "tune it" here and there.

The only forgivable corner case I can see, is the game was due for "gold master" release, and someone had to fix a serious problem in a hurry.  But when do travesties ever get cleaned up after the fact?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Not sure I agree. There are two ways to look at it. Pop-booming is very powerful. So the way, b-drones make pop-booing via GA hard to possible can act as a check to expansion. B-drones also very much hinder early expansion. Past the first bureaucracy limit bases will riot at size 2 and in FM already at size 1.

I think you are missing the point. I never said b-drones do not hinder expansion. They do! I am saying quite the opposite thing. Because of this non-linear addition logic b-drones hinder expansion not as much as they could be if all drones would add up together and super-drones suppressed same way as regular ones.

Let me reiterate it once more. They do check the expansion but not that strong as one would suppose to just from reading their description. There are pretty easy ways to keep bases from rioting and continue expanding unlimitedly.

On a meta level, another base is always worthwhile as long as there is good land. Since in Smac all land is good and you make settle basically everywhere there is no reason to ever stop expanding, nor should there be. In the short term however, another colony pod may not be the best build on a profit vs opportunity cost basis; formers, booming infrastructure, multiplier buildings and of course military units often have a higher profit vs. opportunity cost ratio.

You are kind of contradicting yourself or mixing terms in midway. I believe everyone on this forum understand the opportunity/cost basis. In this regard the claim for the strategy to be always worthwhile implies it beats all other strategies hands down for any possible game conditions combination. When in next sentence you started listing exception from this claim it becomes not very clear why making this claim in first place?

Besides, my post wasn't judgmental in any regards. I noticed that b-drones description and their claimed purpose is in contradiction with actual mechanics implementation and proposed possible solution for this problem.

I do not encourage this or otherwise. This is a topic for user discussion.
I do not state any opinion of whether expansion is good or bad and whether it should be supported or nerfed. This again a topic for user discussion.
Of course, this change would probably make expansion even more difficult. So if people would like to hinder expansion even more they will vote for this which may lead me to implementation. If not then not.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't even have the brain cells to follow all of this.

You are not the only one.
😂

I myself don't understand this and many other mechanics in their entirety. My examples above are just some corner cases I spotted in the code but the chain of condition statements is so long I barely analyzed 10% of it.

I agree about the strange style of game algorithm design. It seems they borrowed whole number game arithmetic it from dice rolling table top games at the time of first Might and Magic and Civ1 and never stepped away from it. There are much simpler ways to solve these things computer wise.

They created an awful chimera crossing table top games with computer. Computer game is supposed to aid player by hiding and internalizing a lot of complex computation those are burden for player to do. Nobody wants to play game with calculator and compute damage on a piece of paper every time unit hits another unit. At the same time game rules should be clear and visible to user so they understand the effect. When ability description states it adds +2 to attack and player sees that in experience that is an absolutely clear and nice definition and implementation. When it says something like "PLANET reduces eco damage" players are like: err, whatever. The funny part is that by concealing part of the ruleset designers do not need to bother about this ruleset anymore! They can implement it as whatever simplest and dumbest way they can achieving their own goals disregarding players feedback. And yet, they don't. Ugh.