Build Queue Template Rollover and other oddities

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's a simple & powerful bug:  you know how you can save the current build queue in a base?  For those who don't know, you right-click on the build queue



and Save current list in to template.  So that gives you something like this:




So say you wrap up a game (or [Ctrl][Shift]Q)...  Without exiting SMAX, start a new game.  When you right click on the build queue in the new game and load the first slot



You get this:



-The first item in the first template from the previous game.  It's the same for all eight templates.  I arrange things so, in the new game, I have early access to, in order, an advanced former, an advanced sea former, Hab Complex, Habitation Dome, Sky Hydroponics Lab, Nessus Mining Station, Orbital Power Transmitter and a chaos radar gravship.

...

Attached is a save of a new game with the template rollover available.  I have more to tell, but for scient's convenience, I'm going to break this up into multiple posts.  Back soon.

[Buster's Uncle]

It only loads the first thing in each template, the production slot, as pictured in the last screenie above and the last in this post.

...
Anticipating the usual teasing, I should mention that my mother's side of the family loves doing puzzles and playing solitaire and games like that.  I call it "playing sorting games".  I'm no different, and that informs how I play SMAX.  I like to play it almost like Sim City - the challenge aspect for me is largely building.  If I enjoy using exploits in single player, who's hurt?
...

...So that former's not going to build in a decent interval, right?  Well, that's where the save reload cheat comes in.  You saw the pod adjacent to the base in the next-to-last screenie?  There's usually one next to your founding base.  I keep popping that sucker until I get this:



-which results in this:




I usually build a Nessus Mining Station the same way next, which reveals the whole map, then the gravship to make early contact with the other factions, so to be able to call an election first, as soon as I can win it.  (Naturally, I'm not very cooperative about selling comlinks until just before I do.)

[Buster's Uncle]

As you build new bases, it gets tougher and tougher to find a pod to instabuild a former for you (the instabuild goes to the nearest base), so for my rollover former, I choose the cheapest design that still is worth building that way:



-which is why I'm not using this:



The fission antigrav super former only costs 20 min, which, later in the game, with various bonuses accruing, gets easier and easier to build quickly.   


The game doesn't know what to call the rollover units; whether former, sea former, or gravship, it calls them "0" in the base external production display.  You can see it here:



right over the former below Fungus Fantasy.  In the minerals pod pop-up pictured in the last post, there's simply an extra space where it should have said "former".

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's the "0" gravship - same deal:




Now, there's a freaky thing that mostly doesn't, but can happen with these "0" rollover template units.  So, I'm playin' along, mindin' my own business



-when I discover Quantum Power



-and THIS happens to my former formers:



!!!  (And they have names now.)

I'm using the timewarp cheat, too (described in another thread), and had saved the end of the previous turn, and it's getting on midnight, so I went to bed.  The next day I discovered that I had to obsolete the fusion colony pods -which were the only workshop units in my build select screen (they cost exactly the same, so why not upgrade once you have fusion?)- at the end of the previous turn, and then nothing happened.



It doesn't usually spontaneously alter the "0" units on discovery of a new reactor, but sometimes, which ISTR is how I originally discovered this particular quirk.  The sea former and gravship "0" units are vunerable, too, though the formers -probably because they're in the first template slot- usually alter first.  I can usually trigger the former change on my own schedule, an exploit I'll go into next.

[scient]

Yah, memory clearing of all game structs in SMAC/X is pretty bad.  That's why you get all these loading save game exploits (or previous game).  The OP bug is fixed as part of this bug since you can't alter production slot only queue.

[Buster's Uncle]

OP bug?


So, I'm playing the timewarp cheat, and in that, all your units have already moved each quasi-turn, which is why I have so many formers.  (As soon as I pact with someone and can magtube all my units to one of their bases, I switch support there; it doesn't cost your ally or you any support that way, though if you use those formers to replace forest afterwards the 5 min bonus goes to the ally's base.)

Under those time-frozen circumstances, squeezing an extra turn out of your formers really matters. I know a way to get five moves out of the same former in a turn.  Because the basic "0" former has antigrav struts, and thus two moves, and because of the support avoidance issue, I avoid using the patrol/elite exploit before I can use it to switch support.  (Also because by that stage of the game, I mostly need to improve empty squares, something for which you must have a minimum of 1.3 moves.)

So I designed this:



(the lack of antigravstruts serves a purpose) which triggered the spontaneous "0" mutation for the formers, and, after forgetting to take a screenie for a while, got this:

.

[Buster's Uncle]

So later, I designed this:



-with antigrav struts and upgraded the lot, squeezing out an extra move for each former.  When the spontaneous upgrade had happened, I didn't use the patrol/elite exploit with units doing something that didn't require more than one move



-so I had a lot left over for those two-move tasks.  That only makes three free moves, doesn't it? Oops.

Absent use of the timewarp, this still can be used at the ends of turns to squeeze out that much more advantage over the AI.

[Buster's Uncle]

Incidentally, you may notice that some of the screenies above are a little grainy/color-speckled - it seems to be the difference between starting GIMP during the game, and the clearer ones I got when I started it before SMAX.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well Tim, this thread's a banquet of cheats...