SE choices for AI - suggestions

[Yitzi]

As I understand it, superdrones are only harder to suppress via psych, facilities turn them into citizens as easily as normal drones.

Even so, when everybody's a drone a large base will depend heavily on psych, so it still definitely matters.  If you have drones and superdrones, psych will turn superdrones into drones before turning drones into workers and then talents, so unless you can deal with your drone problems using only facilities and projects (no psych support at all), you're going to have to fully suppress your superdrones.

[Yitzi]

Interesting note I just found: Pacifism drones are capped at 5 drones per base.

[ete]

Earthmichel: Yes, limiting aircraft is one of the biggest disadvantages of FM. However: Do you find FM to be underpowered? Do you find it to be the SE setting you spend much of the game in? If your answers were no and yes respectively, then why would you want to remove its biggest penalty?

Players have found tricks to bypass the penalty, and if the game was to be changed (which is probably a bad idea for this mod even if kryub was not focusing on AI, because forking an already small playerbase..), I'd argue in favor of either limiting or removing those tricks rather than just removing the penalty.

Yitzi: It may force you to up your psych in some situations if done that way. Still a vastly smaller penalty than the current and entirely justifiable system. But again: Why would we want to alter the game to buff arguably the best Economic setting, and one of the best SE settings overall?

[kyrub]

I agree with ete, it's fair that PDs are so hard to control, because FMs is too good.

Although I would love it if there was a special way to go round it. Something like a secret forces rule:
"A cloaked unit is not counted as "a unit outside of territory" and it does not create pacifism drones".
Or " [... same as above ...] unless it attacks".

That would be splendid, thematically.

[Yitzi]

Yitzi: It may force you to up your psych in some situations if done that way. Still a vastly smaller penalty than the current and entirely justifiable system. But again: Why would we want to alter the game to buff arguably the best Economic setting, and one of the best SE settings overall?

More than just some situations; the net result would be that any base that can control its drones without using psych (in the midgame, this is (leaving out University and bureaucracy) up to size 5 plus the minimum of either {number of specialists} or {difficulty level from the bottom}.)  So unless you're using a lot of specialists to cut down on drones or dealing with small bases, superdrones are effectively twice the significance of the regular sort.

That said, you are right about not needing to buff FM; if anything, it needs a nerf (probably of the ecological variety).

[Earthmichael]

I think that people are grossly underestimating the difficulty in playing FM.  The penalties are very difficult to manage, especially at the early stages and when at war.

Just the fact that Police cannot be used at all for drone control hurts the early game, and the fact that the penalty is so severe that even using Police State to offset accomplishes very little.  Exploration is much more difficult, due to pacificsm penalties.

The highly negative Planet rating means that after the initial "half-strength" period, mindworms are a major threat!  While a non-FM faction can literally farm mind worms, given the 1.5x attacker rating, a FM faction has less than a 50% chance of success, especially if Wealth is also used.  So a FM faction has to research Empath capability pretty early to have a chance to fend off mindworms.

Furthermore, the negative Planet rating means that any overproduction of minerals at a base does FAR MORE ECODAMAGE, and thus the chance of mind worm pops are far more likely.  (Coupled with the fact that mindworms are far harder to deal with.)

Think about it:  such highly negative penalities on Police and Planet, just to gain a +2 bonus!  At first glance, one would wonder why anyone would possibly make such a tradeoff.  Furthermore, if you take FM, you have to give up Planned, which is the most amazing government for the early game.

Anyone who thinks FM is easy, just play a few games yourself on Transcendent on the normal map of Planet, and see how you deal with it.

One Dilbert comics strip showed the pointy-haired boss thinking that anything he does not understand must be easy, so he assign tasks ard priorities accordingly, giving Dilbert one week to upgrade the entire corporate PC base to a new OS.  It makes me wonder if the people who think FM penalties are easy to deal with have ever played a transcendant game with FM themselves?

[ete]

I think that people are grossly underestimating the difficulty in playing FM.  The penalties are very difficult to manage, especially at the early stages and when at war.

Just the fact that Police cannot be used at all for drone control hurts the early game, and the fact that the penalty is so severe that even using Police State to offset accomplishes very little.  Exploration is much more difficult, due to pacificsm penalties.

Yes, FM makes it extremely hard to go to war, which is pretty much the only reason you're ever going to leave FM. And very early before your facilities are up too, though that's fairly short and Planned's Growth/Industry bonuses are very appealing then.

The highly negative Planet rating means that after the initial "half-strength" period, mindworms are a major threat!  While a non-FM faction can literally farm mind worms, given the 1.5x attacker rating, a FM faction has less than a 50% chance of success, especially if Wealth is also used.  So a FM faction has to research Empath capability pretty early to have a chance to fend off mindworms.

Furthermore, the negative Planet rating means that any overproduction of minerals at a base does FAR MORE ECODAMAGE, and thus the chance of mind worm pops are far more likely.  (Coupled with the fact that mindworms are far harder to deal with.)

Yes, if badly managed or fighting a native faction, FM can give problems. However, with care and adequate management, worms are entirely dealable with, you've just got to remain vigilant and accept that exploring fungus is going to be very difficult.

Think about it:  such highly negative penalities on Police and Planet, just to gain a +2 bonus!  At first glance, one would wonder why anyone would possibly make such a tradeoff.  Furthermore, if you take FM, you have to give up Planned, which is the most amazing government for the early game.

Anyone who thinks FM is easy, just play a few games yourself on Transcendent on the normal map of Planet, and see how you deal with it.

One Dilbert comics strip showed the pointy-haired boss thinking that anything he does not understand must be easy, so he assign tasks ard priorities accordingly, giving Dilbert one week to upgrade the entire corporate PC base to a new OS.  It makes me wonder if the people who think FM penalties are easy to deal with have ever played a transcendant game with FM themselves?

I'm not talking from theory. I may not MP, but all my games have been Transcend for many years, and recently the AIs have mostly been given extremely overpowered factions just to try and make them feel like some kind of threat for part of the game. Once I discovered the power of FM (it was admittedly some time before I gave it a good try because at a glance it looks really bad), I've used FM almost exclusively in my games (with exceptions: very early, when I'm fighting a war without using rehoming tricks which seem cheap vs AI, when popbooming, when I'm fighting a heavy native faction like the bards, and very late game when I feel like reducing micromanagement of anti drone stuff). You know full well that FM is extremely worthwhile in its current form, and that its penalties, while severe, are more than counteracted by the massive boost in energy and research. Not easy to use by any means, but very far from needing a buff.

Edit: To clarify. My original statement:

If they were applied before facilities, pacifism drones would be almost no penalty

I should have said that this was only compared to the current system, but I did not say FM as a whole would have almost no penalty. -3 Planet is significant, though no where near as significant as the magic +1 energy per square.

My view distilled: Switching the order drones are applied in would dramatically reduce the costs associated with FM, and the costs are already not enough to outweigh the benefits for large stages of most games, so attempting to reduce those costs seems strange.

[Yitzi]

I think that people are grossly underestimating the difficulty in playing FM.  The penalties are very difficult to manage, especially at the early stages and when at war.

I see how the drone-related FM penalties are very difficult to manage until you're ready (and able) to just keep to your territory and tech, but how is the PLANET penalty that big a problem?

The highly negative Planet rating means that after the initial "half-strength" period, mindworms are a major threat!

Not if you use empath units.

While a non-FM faction can literally farm mind worms, given the 1.5x attacker rating, a FM faction has less than a 50% chance of success, especially if Wealth is also used.

Unless you're using command centers, the downside of Wealth is completely negated by having a creche in the unit's home base.  (This is probably a bug).  With equal morale on both sides and no other modifiers, anyone except the Believers actually has a slight advantage when attacking mind worms under FM; 3X.7 is still more than 2.

So a FM faction has to research Empath capability pretty early to have a chance to fend off mindworms.

True.  However, it's not such a big extra step; if you're getting Secrets of the Human Brain anyway it's only 1 extra tech, otherwise it's 2.

Furthermore, the negative Planet rating means that any overproduction of minerals at a base does FAR MORE ECODAMAGE

Sort of.  Let's take a "typical" early midgame faction, say 20 techs without a centauri preserve or 40 techs with one.  For simplicity, we'll say that his terraforming is not relevant here; say he has mostly forests so they cancel out his other stuff.  Also assume you're on Transcend, with normal native life and not at perihilion.  Let's also assume he's already had 2 pops and built 10 relevant facilities after the first pop.  Now let's look at some possibilities:
-One guy is producing 28 or fewer minerals.  No ecodamage under any economic choice.
-One guy is producing 30 minerals.  He produces 2X20X5X2/300=1.33 rounded to 2 eco-damage under Green, 4 eco-damage under Simple or Planned, and 8 eco-damage under Free Market.
-Another guy is producing 35 minerals.  He produces 5 eco-damage under Green, 14 eco-damage under Simple or Planned, and 28 eco-damage under Free Market.
In other words, the difference between 30 and 35 minerals at that point is more than the difference between Free Market and Planned; the difference in minerals between "Green has no more than 5% ecodamage chance per base" and "Free Market has no more than 5% ecodamage chance per base" is around 6.  Not such a huge difference.  Between Free Market and Planned is even less.

So yes, Free Market forces you to keep your minerals down to avoid worm rape.  But not running Free Market isn't much better.  Changing that is really the only nerf that Free Market needs.

Think about it:  such highly negative penalities on Police and Planet, just to gain a +2 bonus!  At first glance, one would wonder why anyone would possibly make such a tradeoff.

Because +1 energy per square is a huge boost, and if you run wealth as well you get a big boost to commerce.

Furthermore, if you take FM, you have to give up Planned, which is the most amazing government for the early game.

For the early game, that does make sense (though if you're going full-on energy focus, FM with occasional use of Planned to pop-boom is actually better), but what about after that?

Anyone who thinks FM is easy, just play a few games yourself on Transcendent on the normal map of Planet, and see how you deal with it.

Oh, it's not easy, no question.  But the ecodamage effect, which is supposed to be one of its downsides, really isn't because everybody has to carefully watch their minerals as compared to the cap.  That's the only change that it needs.

In games when you're at peace (which will mainly be many-player multiplayer games or lower-difficulty vs. AI; HtH and Transcend are not peace-conducive) and have collected all the pods you're interested in, it seems to me that FM is clearly the way to go; the extra energy will boost your tech more than enough to justify having to grab a couple of Centauri techs, and rushing-and-selling Centauri preserves will cancel out the ecodamage chance penalty fairly quickly.

[quoteIt makes me wonder if the people who think FM penalties are easy to deal with have ever played a transcendant game with FM themselves?[/quote]

Transcend is unusual due to the whole homicidal-AI thing; a game more conducive to peace (say at Talent but with souped-up AI factions for the difficulty boost) would be a better comparison.  It'd still be difficult to do early, but would become substantially easier later on once you can use a punishment sphere base and rush-and-sell centauri preserves to cut ecodamage.

So no, I don't think Free Market is easy (I have tried it myself, and it's hard to do early), but it still needs a nerf in terms of making the alternatives not almost as bad as it is in terms of having to limit minerals to control ecodamage.

I'm not talking from theory. I may not MP, but all my games have been Transcend for many years, and recently the AIs have mostly been given extremely overpowered factions just to try and make them feel like some kind of threat for part of the game. Once I discovered the power of FM (it was admittedly some time before I gave it a good try because at a glance it looks really bad), I've used FM almost exclusively in my games (with exceptions: very early, when I'm fighting a war without using rehoming tricks which seem cheap vs AI, when popbooming, when I'm fighting a heavy native faction like the bards, and very late game when I feel like reducing micromanagement of anti drone stuff). You know full well that FM is extremely worthwhile in its current form, and that its penalties, while severe, are more than counteracted by the massive boost in energy and research. Not easy to use by any means, but very far from needing a buff.

Indeed; I'd say it needs no buffs and needs no nerfs except in the difference between controlling ecodamage under FM and controlling ecodamage under other economies.  I think the best approach is to make it easy to control ecodamage under Green, moderately difficult under Planned or Simple, and under Free Market, not exactly hard, more like requiring abandoning any hope of high-production bases.  (As opposed to now, where it's moderately difficult under Green, a tiny bit harder under Planned or Simple, and a tiny bit harder under Free Market, unless you build-and-sell Centauri Preserves in which case it's easiest under Free Market once you hit the midgame because you can rush buy easily.)

[Earthmichael]

Actually, the thing I would like to change is that Centauri Preserves, Tree Farms, etc. keep their industry immunity after they have been built and sold.  If you sell it, the bonus should go away.  This would perhaps be the penalty you are looking for with Free Market, if you could not build and sell Centauri Preserves to build mineral immunity.

I wonder if it is possible to mod that, so that if you sell the building, the mineral immunity bonus goes away?

[Yitzi]

Actually, the thing I would like to change is that Centauri Preserves, Tree Farms, etc. keep their industry immunity after they have been built and sold.  If you sell it, the bonus should go away.  This would perhaps be the penalty you are looking for with Free Market, if you could not build and sell Centauri Preserves to build mineral immunity.

I wonder if it is possible to mod that, so that if you sell the building, the mineral immunity bonus goes away?

It would be possible, but tricky.  Furthermore, even if selling it makes it go away, it's sort of absurd that those facilities, if built in a single base, increase the mineral cap for the entire faction.  So maybe it'd be better just to remove that increase, and provide an across-the-board decrease to ecodamage to compensate.
Even so, however, ICS remains a very good way to avoid the cap, since the free 16 minerals still per-base (and a mineral-focused base doesn't need all the multiplier facilities, since most of them are energy-centered).  So I figure that it would also be advisable to remove all the "clean minerals" (but let pops reduce the effect of Planet Busters and tectonic missiles*), and reduce ecodamage a lot (something like a 10X decrease) to compensate.  Maybe also cut the global warming rate some.

*While we're at it, we might as well get rid of the stupid rule where using nerve gas increases ecodamage after the whatever-number time.

[Earthmichael]

I don't think it is at all silly for these enhancements to raise the clean mineral limit.  They each reduce pollution and industrial impact overall.  And they each have a maintence cost that has to be paid for the privilige (as long as you are not allowed to sell them and keep the benefit.

Actually, it makes less sense to me that a fungal pop would increase the clean mineral limit, but that is the way the game is designed.

[Yitzi]

I don't think it is at all silly for these enhancements to raise the clean mineral limit.  They each reduce pollution and industrial impact overall.  And they each have a maintence cost that has to be paid for the privilige (as long as you are not allowed to sell them and keep the benefit.

That maintenance cost is well paid for by the Economy boost of tree farms and hybrid forests, and even for Centauri Preserves is fairly justified by the ability to effectively halve ecodamage in the base where they're built.  But to have a facility you can build in every base which gives faction-wide bonuses for each one built...that's just ridiculous.

Actually, it makes less sense to me that a fungal pop would increase the clean mineral limit

I think that's meant to make it so that going over by a bit won't lead to a lot of pops; even so, I feel there are better ways to do that.

[ete]

Actually, the thing I would like to change is that Centauri Preserves, Tree Farms, etc. keep their industry immunity after they have been built and sold.  If you sell it, the bonus should go away.  This would perhaps be the penalty you are looking for with Free Market, if you could not build and sell Centauri Preserves to build mineral immunity.

I wonder if it is possible to mod that, so that if you sell the building, the mineral immunity bonus goes away?

Agreed. This would be my no. 1 change to eco damage, and a bugfix. Making the eco damage formula count the number of current eco facilities rather than the number you've build would make much more sense and close a major unintended loophole.

A major redesign of eco damage as yitzi suggests would be interesting, but should be separate from main SMAX imo, and ideally be a separate patch (i.e. yitzi's bugfixes integrated with kryub's AI for the unofficial standard patch, yitzi's redesign of eco damage and various other things in a separate package) for compatibility reasons unless the all old maps/saves/scenarios need hex editing to work issue can be overcome. With the facility sell/rebuild issue solved.. the current eco setup would be okay, though it does take too little account of Planet.

[Yitzi]

I didn't think of the idea of having it just be based on facilities currently present but still giving 1 per facility (mainly because it still seems flawed to me); keep it in mind for when I start asking for ideas for more things to mod, which will be right after I remove the "needs hex editing to use old maps" issue (I checked it out, and it can be done, though it'll take quite a bit of work; I figure that will be what defines patch version 2.0.)

[Earthmichael]

That was what I was proposing  (although ete said it more clearly).

To me, being able to build and destroy Centauri Preserves (and similiar facilities) to gain an extra clean mineral each time is clearly a bug, and a bug fix needs to be done.

Yitzi, I think you will find that if the player can't just create and destroy Centauri Preserves (the cheapest facility of this kind) over and over to increase the mineral limit, THEN the Planet penalty and ecodamage becomes much more significant. 

That is they way I play anyway; I never create and destroy these facilities, because I consider it exploiting a bug, even though most game rules allow it.  So perhaps I feel the pain more than most, because I guess most people have no qualms about exploiting this.

The player will be limited by the number of bases and the number of kinds of facilities that he can currently build at his tech level.  Being able to build a Temple of Planet becomes useful, instead of a big yawn to those who know they can achieve the same result much more cheaply by creating and destroying a few more Centauri Preserves.

If you don't think this is enough, then you can always do whatever you want with respect to modding to change this.  But I think the key distinction is the bug fix (so that players can no longer exploit destroyed facilities still having their effect) verses an actual change to the game.