Does Scients Patch Fix Caretaker Transcendence and Data Angel Probe Bugs?

[Amunra93]

Installed the patch but was wondering if it fixed these two crucial bugs. On a side note, what method do you guys use to play this game (Tuungle, Hamachi, ETC)?

[Buster's Uncle]

I know that maybe the very first thing scient fixed almost five years ago was the Angel's probe rollover bug...

[Kirov]

Welcome onboard, Amunra! Several things here:

1) I'm not sure if I remember the caretaker transcendence bug. I read the list of bugs last week and can't recall it. What's that?

2) The DA rollover thing was fixed a long time ago, I think even back in the official 2.0 patch, along with CyCon's Nosteal.

3) The standard method of multiplayer is PBEM. IP games are rarer, but played (we actually had one two days ago). We used Hamachi, but weren't too happy about it. I'm not familiar with that other names you mentioned. Can you elaborate and/or suggest a better way to play IP?

Thanks!

[JarlWolf]

You can play IP games via Gameranger. Google gameranger, download it. Free server thing that hosts a lot of games.


Hamachi is crap, never use it, especially for a buggy game like AC.

[Petek]

I tried to find information about a "Caretaker transcendence bug." It seems that players sometimes report as a bug that the Caretakers can't transcend, not realizing that's a feature.

[JarlWolf]

 

I find that funny, given that caretakers WHOLE IDEAL is aimed at preventing the flowering of Tau Ceti/Transcendence.

[Amunra93]

I find that funny, given that caretakers WHOLE IDEAL is aimed at preventing the flowering of Tau Ceti/Transcendence.

I agree, however I recall it being bugged when I played patched SMAX years ago, you could build the project as her.

With that said, to anyone using Hamachi, I highly reccomend you try out Tunngle. It has rooms with a 255 player capacity in almost every game imaginable.

It was like night and day for me going from using Hamachi to Tunngle. Hamachi - 5 s delay to all my actions - Tuunngle - Little to no delay (depending on players ping).


Off topic , does anyone here play Civ 5?

Here's the deal for me. I feel that Alpha Centauri is the best 4x game I have played, but their are a few things which really limit its potential:

1) Community is very, very small compared to many other games

2)May not appeal to those who favor shiny graphics over gameplay (To me personally, the games visual style looks very good) The only thing I dislike is the in game videos being distorted/stretched because I play at 1920x1080.

3)Tedious amount of micromanaging

4) Finally the biggest one for me.....Playing with A.I.: AI in every game I have played is repetitive. Most A.I. is bad, and the creators give the AI's cheats to "equalize" this imbalance.
The fact is I just feel like I can't be bothered with wasting valuable limited time to play a game against computers. - It gets old, and I find it depressing.
Someone mentioned AI being immune to drones or something along those lines to me, is that true?

Does Yitzi's patch make the AI smarter in anyway?

For me the richest experience possible would be playing with 7 other people simultaneously. Given that that is highly unlikely to happen in the near future, I guess I will have to tide myself over by playing occasio

I really wish they would release a remake or sequel to the game. I could see it going one of three ways.

1) They decide to stick to the games core and simply do a graphical revamp, bug fixes, make some smarter AI in all functions of the game, new videos, revamped UI etc while sticking to core game mechanics.

2) They decide to go with the hex based system of Civ 5 instead, and opt for either a remake or a spiritual sequel based off of that. If they did this it might as well be a different game, which might not be totally bad. I for one think that tall vs wide empires should be on equal terms (in Alpha Centauri it feels like Wide Empires are much stronger, with little to no penalty)
I don't think this would be the worst thing to happen........Before brave new world I would have said a resounding yes. With that said I feel Alpha Centauri requires too tedious micromanagement for too little effort. That and I feel that the infinite city sprawl in the current game is out of control.


3) They continue to do nothing due to the fact that the IP and companies are in different hands. Probably the most likely outcome for the near future, which saddens me. The though of never being able to play a great game like this the way it was intended.


Minor Quarrels with the Game:

My last game I had over 100 Bases with no penalties whatsoever. I had a slight drone problem as the Hive. Nothing that running 20-30% psych and having the human genome project couldn't solve. That and I was rushing scouts as effective cheap police units.

By the time the game ended I had 880 planetary votes while the 4 remaining AI had a combined total of maybe 80. Now this may be because I was the governor and had built the 50%+ votes in planetary council

If I want to save my time I must turn on the governor, the only problem is the governor is braindead.
Same thing with formers; in the early game they prioritize farms and mine as well as 5000 roads despite the fact that the resource restrictions have not been put in place. I wish their was an option to automate spreading of forest, which feels so much better early game.

All this micromanagement leaves one drained.

And then on top of that, I find out today that people don't actually build secret projects.... They rush them via supply crawler upgrades

Mind = Blown.
Would me using the QUEUE system be an effective way to limit how much micromanagement I have to do when dealing with many different cities?

Another minor issue is that the AI doesn't use supply crawlers, one of the best utility units in the game IMO.

In the installation faq their was message about two common exploits:

Two possible "exploits" in particular are very easy to use and are considered as valid tactics in as many circles as they are considered heinous crimes. Namely, reverse engineering and upgrading supply crawlers for use in rush buying secret projects. You should definitely decide before the game starts or in the first turn whether these are allowed or not

How does upgrading supply crawlers increase their mineral value? Does it increase their disband value or something, since you get 100% of it?

For now I will probably playing Civ 5 BNW with all dlc because I prefer playing with real humans vs ai. (Playing with AI makes me feel lonely =/)

Civ 5 does have some huge flaws in it though. All I have seen people do is mass tons of archers and then 1-2 melee units to capture cities. Imbalanced much? People who build 50 of X kind of unit should be penalized, not rewarded.

Alpha Centauri got it right in the sense that Artillery should get mowed down when in square to square combat vs melee units.
In Civ 5 not only did a Ranged unit (Composite Bowman with a strength of 7) outdamage my warrior in melee, but he also gets to shoot me in fog of war?

Another thing I like about Alpha Centauri is units dying in a fight (sans disengaging from combat)

For the time being I will mainly be playing Civ 5 due to the huge playerbase when compared with this game, their were 36,000 people on peak steam hours today. (Most I have seen is 63,000 in one day.)

Please let me know if you guys host/plan any games, I enjoy getting crushed by better players, it gives me the foresight to improve myself.

Also for what its worth this game is just a really huge addictive timesink, I'll give it that. I need to play with real players for it to feel worth the time commitment. Maybe if I get rich I can hire 6 drones to play with me?

[JarlWolf]

I think what you need is custom factions: They bring new and interesting playstyles and opponents to the game and make it an entirely new challenge. Try some of them out, I have 5 factions out there currently made by myself, I've helped Green1 with the Exterminatus, Sigma has done a lovely job with his complete 7, highly recommend his, Dio is working on an alternative set of the originals and Kilkakon:

Kilkakon has a total conversion. While it may seem odd, and maybe not your tastes, it is a very extensively well done piece of work and worth a shot, even if just once.

Plus there is the numerous network node factions. They can all be found in the modding factions sub forum, check them out.

[ete]

Making a queue of ~10 items you want in every base and saving it (right click, save template) does help with late game micro a HUGE amount. Playing with various restrictions or boosted AI opponents makes it a bit more of a challenge, though watch out.. some of the monsters we've made may give you a tough time.

For the whole "late game is really easy" thing bear in mind that the game is designed so that a player with a significant advantage in early game gets a lot of SPs, which usually gives a very large midgame advantage, and then you hit some serious exponential growth once major restrictions are removed with later game tech/SPs (Clean reactors, hardcore multiplication due to facilities, Cloning Vats, army being high morale and fast). Basically, they want you to be able to win quickly once you've proved you're way ahead. But the same goes for if an AI gets flying ahead, and they can surprise you on occasion (though against a competent human they need massive faction bonuses to have much chance of getting to lategame with a major advantage).

Here's me losing to a faction I made with huge bonuses:
http://i.imgur.com/pqV8F9A.jpg
The AI can be a challenge if they get rolling and get a lot of the key SPs before you.

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's me losing to a faction I made with huge bonuses:

The AI can be a challenge if they get rolling and get a lot of the key SPs before you.

I did the art.

[Yitzi]

I agree, however I recall it being bugged when I played patched SMAX years ago, you could build the project as her.

This bug is not fixed by Scient's patch.  It is, however, fixed by my patch, I think it was version 2.2 or 2.3 where it was first fixed.  (As part of the same fix, the prerequisite for the Ascent now properly displays as "None", since anyone can build it once the VoP is completed; if you change the prerequisite in alphax.txt, the rules about what you need to build it will change accordingly.)

4) Finally the biggest one for me.....Playing with A.I.: AI in every game I have played is repetitive. Most A.I. is bad, and the creators give the AI's cheats to "equalize" this imbalance.
The fact is I just feel like I can't be bothered with wasting valuable limited time to play a game against computers. - It gets old, and I find it depressing.

Well, there is multiplayer if you prefer.

Someone mentioned AI being immune to drones or something along those lines to me, is that true?

No, but on higher difficulties the AI has a lot less drones than the player.

Does Yitzi's patch make the AI smarter in anyway?

Only that it incorporates Kyrub's patch, which helps the AI some.  AI is Kyrub's department, not mine.

For me the richest experience possible would be playing with 7 other people simultaneously. Given that that is highly unlikely to happen in the near future

Don't be too certain...we have a growing community, and a planned fix for my patch will make it easier to have different difficulty levels for different players (so that newbies can play against experts, using difficulty as the handicap setting), and I've given some thought to the matter of a ranking system that's designed for many-player games rather than 1v1...a 7-player game is not unfeasible.

That and I feel that the infinite city sprawl in the current game is out of control.

Earthmichael has a strong case to make that ICS is not in fact the most effective gameplay method (his argument doesn't work for a heavily momentum-oriented faction, where ICS is definitely desirable, but that's a somewhat special case).

3) They continue to do nothing due to the fact that the IP and companies are in different hands. Probably the most likely outcome for the near future, which saddens me. The though of never being able to play a great game like this the way it was intended.

Fortunately, there's no EULA to the game (if you got it long enough ago), so unofficial patches are ok.  "Be able to play a great game like this the way it was intended" is a fairly decent description of the goal of my patch...so if there's something you'd like to see, feel free to let me know; if I like it I'll put it on the short list, otherwise it'll wait until I start taking general requests and votes.

My last game I had over 100 Bases with no penalties whatsoever. I had a slight drone problem as the Hive. Nothing that running 20-30% psych and having the human genome project couldn't solve. That and I was rushing scouts as effective cheap police units.

Try playing with my patch, and set the drone formula to 10,11,14,15,26,27,30, or 31, to see a substantially bigger drone problem.  (Police is still very good against really heavy drone problems, and that's one of the Hive's strengths, and bureaucracy will never cause more drones than the size of the base, but with those drone formulas facilities will be less effective and specialists nearly useless except for the psych they provide, so that will make it harder.)

If I want to save my time I must turn on the governor, the only problem is the governor is braindead.
Same thing with formers; in the early game they prioritize farms and mine as well as 5000 roads despite the fact that the resource restrictions have not been put in place. I wish their was an option to automate spreading of forest, which feels so much better early game.

Kyrub is the go-to guy for AI.

And then on top of that, I find out today that people don't actually build secret projects.... They rush them via supply crawler upgrades

This can be made far less effective with my patch, by changing the upgrade cost formula.

Another minor issue is that the AI doesn't use supply crawlers, one of the best utility units in the game IMO.

Kyrub's patch (and thus mine) fixes this somewhat.

[Geo]

I did the art.

I remember seeing the Usurper+fungal trees baseset in the NN download.
Did you make the 'saucer towers' base art? If so, where can I find it? Can't remember seeing it in the downloads section.

[Buster's Uncle]

I modified the Exterminatus bases from a .jpg off Dreifle's site.  http://alphacentauri.us/fac-tool/faq.htm

[JarlWolf]

What exactly was modified on the Exterminatus, if I may ask? Don't mind people editing it, just curious as to what was changed.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sorry, I meant the faction ete made; there's been so much produced lately that I've lost track of which is which.