+3 POLICE with Police Unit

[Nexii]

The tooltip for +3 POLICE says: 
"3, 3 units as police. Police effect doubled!!"

#ABILDESC22
{Non-Lethal Methods} allow a unit to count double when used as Police units (each unit eliminates two $LINK<drones=36> rather than one).

If you have +3 POLICE with a police unit, it pacifies three drones.  It should be four if both double it (2*2).  The rationale is the tooltip descriptions and that most other unit modifiers multiply with SE (Morale, Planet).  It seems this was coded to be +1 drone pacified for each of:
+3 or more POLICE
Police unit

[Nexii]

I tested at -POLICE rating and it seems the "+1 drone pacified" does not apply for Police units in this case.  So it should be 1 drone pacified for each of:

• +3 or more POLICE
• Police unit (if POLICE => 0)

[Guv’ner]

It's late and I'm finally on coffee so I'm woolly at this point but I do want to sort this bug out if it is there.


The alpha #SOCPOLICE tip says that “3 units as police. Police effect doubled!!”.


So presumably that means that combat units can (if you have enough units) quell three drones. And since you have the equivalent of Non-lethal methods, each unit will quell two drones so two combat units would quell three drones (they could quell four but you can only quell three under #SOCPOLICE 3). I see that the text in alpha isn't clear enough (by a long shot) but I'm too hazy to see if there is a bug. Is this the behaviour you would expect?

[Guv’ner]

Sorry that came across brusque. I'll check in the scenario editor tomorrow and report back what I found. I assumed the bonuses wouldn't stack but I suppose that is debatable.

[Nexii]

You can pacify 9 drones at +3 POLICE with 3 Police units.  But since both the SE and unit ability say "doubled Police", it's strange that both together is three drones per police unit.

[Guv’ner]

Well that is broken somewhere, I assumed it should be three drones but was obviously wrong. I’ll work out whether it’s the non-lethal or the socio settings. Shames me for playing like a hippy.

[Nexii]

Yea, I think you read the amount of units as the amount of drones.  I'm arguing that it should be twelve drones pacified with 3 police units at +3 POLICE (four per police unit).  Though we can debate if that is too powerful.  Note though that +3 POLICE isn't that easy to get for most factions early.  It means forgoing Free Market, and as most factions you need Ascetic Virtues or Thought Control in addition to Police State.

[Yitzi]

-The "doubled" is a bit of a misnomer; it really should say "+1 per unit".  As for at -POLICE, is that true at -1?  Because at -2 or lower, units with nonlethal methods do count double: Every nonlethal methods unit up to the maximum number of police units (0) suppresses two drones.

[Nexii]

+3 POLICE and Police units both function as though they are "+1 drone pacified per police unit".  I think it's a stretch to assume they worded either one wrong.  The short description for Non-lethal (i.e. Unit Workshop) explicitly says "2x Police powers".  As well the long description non-Lethal states a doubling, only their example case is implied to be for the default POLICE rating.  Similarly the SE explicitly says "police effect doubled".   Nowhere in the game do I get the impression that they intended it to be "+1 drone per police unit".

Police units work as they should at -POLICE (2 drones each).  My first post was more accurate.

[Yitzi]

+3 POLICE and Police units both function as though they are "+1 drone pacified per police unit".  I think it's a stretch to assume they worded either one wrong.

It's more of a stretch to assume they coded it wrong.  They may have been using D&D's rules for doubling (where two doublings is a tripling) here; I know they use D&D's rules for distance calculations, so there might just have been a D&D fan among the design team.

[Guv’ner]

I too think that tripling effect may be intentional but you've made me realise my understanding of the police effect in general is rubbish. Thankfully I haven't yet tried to rewrite the relevant article yet.


I've now flagged everything that references police so I can creep through it soon.

[Nexii]

Other than base facilities, I can't think of anything else that is additive this way in SMAC.  Secret Projects, SE settings and units (i.e. combat, and combat abilities) are always truely multiplicative.  For example Supercollider + Theory of Everything.  Or Super Formers with Weather Paradigm.  Morale + Planet for PSI attack.  Even non-combat abilities like Polymorphic Encryption are truely multiplicative (though PROBE is very buggy with overflows).

[Yitzi]

Other than base facilities, I can't think of anything else that is additive this way in SMAC.  Secret Projects, SE settings and units (i.e. combat, and combat abilities) are always truely multiplicative.  For example Supercollider + Theory of Everything.  Or Super Formers with Weather Paradigm.  Morale + Planet for PSI attack.  Even non-combat abilities like Polymorphic Encryption are truely multiplicative (though PROBE is very buggy with overflows).

So we already have one example...it's a bit unusual to assume that there's another, but it's easier than assuming that they messed up something that simple.