New alphax variables in Yitzi's patch
From Alpha Centauri Wiki
One of the primary features added in Yitzi's patch is a collection of new features that can be modified through the alphax.txt file. The new options are as follows:
- Beginning in patch 2.0, many existing variables have a greatly increased range of acceptable values.
- Beginning in patch 1.1, the ecodamage formula is substantially more customizable. In particular, the following modding options exist as of version 2.0:
- The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set (as a multiple of the damage caused by a normal unworked terraforming improvement.)
- The borehole count per base can be set to be squared when calculating ecological damage; this allows heavy borehole use to be heavily penalized (at least until the availability of hybrid forests) without making lesser amounts of boreholes too problematic.
- The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set to not be affected by PLANET rating; this can be useful if ecological damage is to be a major balancing factor for these types of terraforming without giving "green" factions an overly high ability to use them.
- The number of "clean minerals" at the beginning of the game, as well as those gained per fungal pop and per facility, can be modified. Note that as of patch version 2.0, the facility-based ones are dependent on facilities owned, not facilities built.
- The number of "virtual minerals" caused per major atrocity or tectonic missile can be modified; in addition, the game can be set to count Planet Buster use instead of major atrocities (so the umpteenth use of nerve gas will not cause extra ecological damage, but using Planet Busters with the U.N. charter repealed will.) Note that if this is set to 0, atrocities and missiles will affect neither ecological damage nor native life aggressiveness.
- Alternatively, fungal pops can be set to reduce the extra ecological damage caused by major atrocities (or Planet Busters with the appropriate mod) and Tectonic Missiles, but not create extra "clean minerals" of their own. Note that if this reduces the ecological damage down to 0, that faction will have a "clean slate" as far as Planet is concerned, and past atrocities/missiles will not increase native life aggressiveness.
- The total minerals produced can be set to be divided by a fixed amount (rounded down) before being added to terraforming-based ecological damage; this allows the relative significance of minerals and terraforming to be tweaked.
- Normally, ecological damage is proportional to (3-PLANET), with a maximum of 6 and minimum of 1. All three of these numbers can be changed.
- Normally, the last step in calculating ecological damage is dividing by 300; this divisor can be changed.
- An extra amount of ecological damage per base can be added (or subtracted) after all other calculations are complete.
- The cost of upgrading a unit can be modified. Not only can the cost per point of difference between the costs of the old and new weapon and armor values now be modified (and they need not be the same), and likewise for the upgrade cost per row of minerals cost by the new unit, but there can also be a portion of the upgrade cost proportional to the square of the cost of the new unit, and there can likewise be a discount for the cost of the old unit (either proportional to the row cost or proportional to its square, or some combination of the two.)
- The energy credits gained as Planetpearls can be increased or decreased from its current value of 10 per lifecycle.
- Consensers can be set to give a fixed amount of nutrients (or none at all) rather than the current +50%.
- The extra speed gained by air units for each level of reactor can be modified, and can be different for needlejets (anything that has more than one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), copters (anything that has exactly one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking, and therefore can attack more than once per turn), gravships (anything that requires no fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), and missiles (anything that is destroyed when attacking).
- A penalty can be added to all resources brought in by crawlers.
The following options are slated for future patches:
- There will be a "Drone rules flags" setting (placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but without doing anything yet), allowing the rules controlling drones and talents to be tweaked:
- A value of 16 will mean that the University's bonus drones and conquest-based drones can create "superdrones", making the University significantly harder to play on higher difficulty levels (or when using a substantial number of specialists) and increasing the value of Police State when warmongering in such cases.
- A value of 8 will mean that if drones are turned into specialists with no talents in the base, other drones will be turned into "superdrones" to compensate; furthermore, if all non-specialists are "superdrones", it will still be possible to have extra "phantom drones" that will offset new talents (and possibly contribute to rioting); this will make all factions harder on higher difficulty levels (though the Peacekeepers less than most). In addition, it will be possible to have "phantom talents", allowing golden ages even in bases where specialists outnumber non-specialists. Lastly, "superdrones" will count double when determining whether a base will riot.
- A value of 4 will mean that the non-lethal methods special ability and punishment spheres will not work at -1 or lower POLICE rating.
- A value of 2 will mean that drone-suppressing facilities and police are less effective at suppressing "superdrones" than regular drones, and will suppress "phantom drones" first.
- A value of 1 will mean that drone-suppressing facilities and police can suppress pacifism drones.
- To use more than one rule, the values for the desired rules can be added to get the desired value for the setting.
- There will be the option to have a chosen technology allow crawlers to crawl all 3 resources inside the base radius, and another allow multiresource crawling even outside the base radius. (This has already been placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but does nothing yet).
- There will be the option to have a technology double the effectiveness of the ECM and AAA defensive abilities.
- There will be the option (placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but without doing anything yet) to choose one of a number of rules for calculating unit cost.
