Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2020, 06:25:51 PM
I would strongly suggest that you binary hackers make this problem go away. i.e. a Will To Power suggestion. Here's how I feel about bypassing base defenses: I don't allow Blink Displacers until the very end of my tech tree, when the game is already going to be long since 'won' by other means. Yet here we have mindworms doing it from Day 1. No wonder they're so good!
It turns out this is going to be a complete cakewalk. I'm noticing that the defender doesn't get a Perimeter Defense bonus against the mindworm. That is seriously overpowered. I'll need to have a word with the binary hackers about that. Won't help my mod, but it should be made to help somebody. I'm saving a game just in case there's any kind of forensic question about this.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 11, 2020, 10:44:38 PM
Quote from: Deidre Skye
Having now established a secure perimeter, we have made ourselves
relatively safe from enemy incursions. But against the seemingly
random attacks by Planet’s native life only our array of warning
sensors can help us, for the Mind Worms infiltrate through every crevice
and chew through anything softer than plasmasteel.
It's not overpowered. It's a cakewalk because you have +4 PLANET and you're attacking the stupid stock AI that doesn't build trance units and makes convenient magtube networks for you to follow. If Perimeter Defenses (and Tachyon Fields) worked against psi combat, bases would be uncrackable to psi units.
The point of psi combat is to be a "hole" in the combat system and be strong on the offense. Mind worms are still expensive and stacking lifecycle bonuses requires a lot of additional expense that doesn't help with a conventional military aside from one? exception.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2020, 06:42:08 AM
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If Perimeter Defenses (and Tachyon Fields) worked against psi combat, bases would be uncrackable to psi units.
You would have to use softening and attrition tactics, i.e. actually work for your meal.
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The point of psi combat is to be a "hole" in the combat system
It's a really bad idea. It renders all the other combat progressions meaningless. Make mindworms and take over, because they're a free victory.
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Mind worms are still expensive
Not compared to the weapon and armor progressions I built in my mod, to make players actually work for advantages. Mindworms have no cost progression, and work just as well regardless of defender's armor or reactor size. Isn't it obvious when I put it that way, that it's the One True Weapons Platform? How could it possibly be otherwise? Nobody else gets to ignore base defenses, ignore unit defenses, ignore unit hit points...
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and stacking lifecycle bonuses requires a lot of additional expense
In my game I've built like 3 Spore Launchers. Every single other unit, I've captured. They're so good, that they've survived all this time. I've got Mature Boils, Great Boils, and Demon Boils. Granted I'm playing a Passive Aggressive style and not a Full Conquest style. That means I'm not engaging in any attrition warfare. I kill something weak to get someone's attention. I mostly turtle and then find a point of weakness whereby I extend my reach.
Post by: Geo on September 12, 2020, 07:38:41 AM
Secondly, this begs the question if the same applies to the Psi Attack weapon.
I can't imagine a brain-on-a-projector physically worming its way through 'anything softer then plasmasteel'.
Post by: lolada on September 12, 2020, 12:16:28 PM
Worms have more issues, they are slow and can only attack once. Its often much better to have strong rover attacking and kill 2 units instead of worm being so clumsy. So they are specialized base attacker - good vs heavy armored targets and perimeter defenses. Vanilla AI does not build trance defenders, but mods do so they get countered. Another great thing about worms is that they cannot be subverted by probe teams.
One minus is they need special facilities.. which are not really great to make them strong. Its much easier to build command centers for example. So all summed up, its a unit with some great advantages and disadvantages - thats why its so fun to use them.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2020, 01:41:09 PM
Firstly, since its in the game's Canon mind worms infiltrate bases with ease, I assume it is meant to be by the designers back then.
Intended design isn't the same thing as good design for a combat system. They may have intended a narrative of horror, for indigenous life to be really threatening to early bases, and not really thought through the combat implications at all. I just spent 2.5 years modding so I hardly think they made correct decisions about all aspects of the game.
Worms have more issues, they are slow
Put 'em on a mag tube and they can attack anything on the mag tube network instantly, at any distance. Make enough Formers and you can put them wherever you want on any turn.
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Its often much better to have strong rover attacking and kill 2 units instead of worm being so clumsy.
The AI does build ECM and 3-Pulse units. The AI also bunches itself up in stacks. A mindworm attacking a rover, the rover disengages. A mindworm attacking a stack that contains a rover and any other unit, they stay "pinned" and get hit. Once you've got planes you can also fly a plane around the back of the rover to keep it from moving off.
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One minus is they need special facilities..
Only if the dozen you've captured with your PLANET rating isn't enough for your conquest purposes. Building a rail to someone else's door, then crushing everyone in the base with your mindworms, is pretty much the drill. You don't need to take more bases per turn than you've got Formers and mindworms to do it with. The stock AI isn't good enough to punish you for this base holding, and even if it was, bases are a good place to draw up a defensive line.
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which are not really great to make them strong.
They level up pretty quickly as they eat.
Post by: Geo on September 12, 2020, 03:18:40 PM
Firstly, since its in the game's Canon mind worms infiltrate bases with ease, I assume it is meant to be by the designers back then.
Yes, its clear were you stand on this, bvanevery. You don't have to repeat it a zillion times.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 12, 2020, 03:55:18 PM
No, my +4 PLANET isn't the issue. That's only a +40% offense bonus. A Sensor Array alone in my mod is a +50% defense bonus. That kind of bonus to defense hurts, enough to go to great lengths in my mod to get rid of Sensor Arrays before making assaults. A Perimeter Defense is ordinarily a +100% defense bonus, greatly exceeding my Psi offense bonus. It would not be a cakewalk, if it were actually in effect.
It's a cakewalk because you have +4 PLANET and the AI doesn't build trance defenders and the AI builds magtubes for you. I don't see any sensors, but maybe you actually had to pillage/bombard those rather than the AI not building them smartly since it doesn't. Those are all issues to the defender, cumulatively.
Quote from: bvanevery
You would have to use softening and attrition tactics, i.e. actually work for your meal.
You already do. Even in the base game it's a good idea to remove sensors before assaulting. If the base has a trance defender, you have to bombard it or use conventional weapons or lose mind worms. When mind worm assaults fail, the defenders usually have no problem mopping up the survivors (mind worms can't retreat, defenders might got morale boosts due to surviving combat).
Quote from: bvanevery
It's a really bad idea. It renders all the other combat progressions meaningless. Make mindworms and take over, because they're a free victory.
Except the morale system, which is the point of psi combat. You also admitted that you didn't actually "make" any mind worms in this game you cited. You captured them in the early game and had the foresight to train them up to high levels, which AIs don't do. Make a mind worm and you have an expensive and weak unit that you must carefully maneuver around scary threats so it can attack weaker units and train first. If it gets caught in the open, it's probably going to die.
Quote from: bvanevery
Not compared to the weapon and armor progressions I built in my mod, to make players actually work for advantages. Mindworms have no cost progression, and work just as well regardless of defender's armor or reactor size. Isn't it obvious when I put it that way, that it's the One True Weapons Platform? How could it possibly be otherwise? Nobody else gets to ignore base defenses, ignore unit defenses, ignore unit hit points...
This is all basic psi stuff that's all there in the manual. Mind worm cost is moddable so that's on you to account for them and balance accordingly if your revised conventional unit costs threw things out of wack. So is the PLANET combat bonus/penalty, for that matter.
Isles of the Deep are expensive for what they are and don't benefit from an innate psi attack bonus. It's also generally harder to capture them in the wild. Foils and Cruisers are generally more flexible. Locusts I would say are OP, but they come late enough where there's a lot of "OP" stuff flying around. Take away their hardcoded SAM or make them even more expensive than they already are. I don't play with SMAX units so I can't speak to those.
Quote from: bvanevery
In my game I've built like 3 Spore Launchers. Every single other unit, I've captured. They're so good, that they've survived all this time. I've got Mature Boils, Great Boils, and Demon Boils. Granted I'm playing a Passive Aggressive style and not a Full Conquest style. That means I'm not engaging in any attrition warfare. I kill something weak to get someone's attention. I mostly turtle and then find a point of weakness whereby I extend my reach.
That is not the AI's native life form experience. The AI doesn't understand how to deliberately hunt for mind worms and it generally clears fungus either intentionally or inadvertently with forest growth. Once AI Deirdre gets into her first war, she will lose a lot of those captured mind worms and not be able to replace them through more captures because the fungus is gone.
You should actually make a mind worm army and see what it's like before you decide the units you got for free are too expensive or powerful.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2020, 04:41:04 PM
Yes, its clear were you stand on this, bvanevery. You don't have to repeat it a zillion times.
How should I handle this comment from you? You're definitely escalating some hostility with me, saying this. I've decided, I'm going to point this out to you, and pretty much leave it at that.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2020, 05:41:56 PM
and the AI doesn't build trance defenders
The stock AI does build them in my mod. Just not enough of them, or early enough. I'm way better than the AI. I can get all kinds of techs and cream it. This is not true of everyone who's playing my mod, based on field reports I've gotten back. So I'm not quick to judge whether the AI is "building enough Trance defenders". There's no doubt that it builds far less Trance, than it builds ECM or AAA. It builds plenty of 3-Res, but that's really not enough to slow down a mindworm.
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and the AI builds magtubes for you.
No, sometimes they do and other times they don't. I build my own Formers and lay my own rails just fine, regardless of what the AI does. Long as Formers and rails are in the game, they can be used with impunity. And I'm not taking them out of the game, because the game is already tedious enough as is, pushing all the units around.
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I don't see any sensors, but maybe you actually had to pillage/bombard those rather than the AI not building them smartly since it doesn't.
You don't generally see them in my recent AAR because I've generally destroyed them before taking a screenshot. I'm sure I've detailed such procedures in other AARs, but not every AAR I do is a basic tactical tutorial. My typical method is using a probe team to escort a Scout. Scout performs the destruction, probe team does some other task.
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Except the morale system, which is the point of psi combat.
An Elite unit is Elite, a Demon Boil is
The Cyborgs have put 2 oddly Elite units next to my city, so I send an oddly Demonic mindworm to kill one of them. As usual, the odds calculator lies and it's actually a total cakewalk. The armored Speeder unit, I send an old Particle Impactor after it, because if I do well with a mindworm it's just going to disengage anyways. That will put it on a stack of units that will all get wiped out with successive splash damage. The Particle Impactor dies because it was a Fission vs. Fusion matchup, but the Speeder takes 40% wounds. The Spartans just donated some armored Particle Impactors so I use one of those next. As expected, it takes 70% wounds and disengages to a square with another unit on it. When the mindworms come, it'll die in the stack, or be awfully close to it.
Oh wow get this. I just actually looked at the details of my own screenshot. An Elite bonus is +50%. A Demon Boil bonus isn't equal to that, it's actually +75% !!! Now I'm realizing, that's the 3:2 offense ratio bonus in action. And the +40% PLANET bonus on top of that.
Having Demon Boils is not difficult. In my current AAR, I've never made a mindworm in the lab. They're all field worms, the product of popping numerous supply pods on a Huge map earlier in the game. Now you might say, I earned them with all those mouseclicks, so there's no problem. But let's not pretend that Demon Boils are rare, or hard to have.
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You captured them in the early game and had the foresight to train them up to high levels, which AIs don't do.
Getting assaulted by the AI, is not why I wrote this post. I'm talking about how easy it is for me to beat up the AI.
In my mod, the AI will build tons of mindworms in the late game. If the game goes to late game. Which sometimes it does, because of the map and my play style that game. The AI has clearly figured out that mindworms and spore launchers are a better deal than advanced weapons. It even uses them effectively for some things. Like preventing Conventional Missile hits, a Spore Launcher works amazingly well! Or if I do an orbital insertion and am lazy about reinforcement, mindworms can indeed swarm in and pick me off by sheer attrition.
To me, it's a given that the AI can't mount a competent offense, after midgame. In the early to midgame, it might get enough of a mass of stuff together to cause problems. But I'm too good a player for anything to ever be an issue once we're in midgame. This isn't true of everyone playing my mod, so I'm not quick to bias things towards what would challenge me.
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Make a mind worm and you have an expensive and weak unit that you must carefully maneuver around scary threats
Wat? I walk out into the fungus and pop pods. Mindworms pop out of those pods and I kill them with impunity. They don't even fight back! Except the spore launchers sometimes.
Or, if it's part of a military campaign, I just hit "weakest with strongest". Whether that's about psi, or ECM, or AAA, or whatever. There's nothing exceptional about mindworms in that regard. It's just combined arms combat.
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Mind worm cost is moddable so that's on you to account for them and balance accordingly if your revised conventional unit costs threw things out of wack.
It doesn't matter if mindworms cost the moon when you've got a positive PLANET rating. You can go capture more of them. I didn't pay a dime in production for my mindworms. I've trashed a supercontinent with them! Yeah, with rails too.
I will think about whether their cost should increase, but it can create a new problem. These are captureable resources. If they're too expensive, you could just cash them as "nouveau Artifacts" for Secret Projects. That's why a lot of the discovered or captured predefined units, that you can't make yourself, I have a low cost put on them.
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So is the PLANET combat bonus/penalty, for that matter.
I didn't increase it. PLANET has to be worth choosing for some reason. I don't think our discussion changes if my mindworms are at +0% offense instead of +40%. I've only noticed mindworm combat being a problem, if I've got PLANET penalties. Like, -20% for Capitalist, kinda hurts. If I've got some mindworms popping pods and I change to Capitalist, I don't get in fights with other mindworms anymore. I'm probably gonna die.
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Isles of the Deep are expensive for what they are and don't benefit from an innate psi attack bonus.
You can get gazillions of the things with even a +1 PLANET rating, I've found, combing the oceans on a Huge map. The key is to make a few foils to start with. These go pop pods. Isles come out of pods. Some of those, you capture. It snowballs a lot after that. Your Isles will be pretty weak initially, so you do have issues with fattening them up. It's not anywhere near as easy as the land popping drill. But when your PLANET rating goes up later, they become more able to kill other Isles. So then you have stronger ones.
Still, they are not invincible. I tend to suffer a lot of attrition in midgame when various factions start patrolling the oceans more aggressively.
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Locusts I would say are OP, but they come late enough where there's a lot of "OP" stuff flying around.
I also made them come even later in my mod. I'm not worried about them, as I personally will have already effectively won the game by other means. Others may feel differently, but I'll await player feedback on that.
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You should actually make a mind worm army and see what it's like before you decide the units you got for free are too expensive or powerful.
Lol, like in 2 decades of play and being one of the hardest core modders out there, I haven't done that. It's too easy! Now I finally figured out why it's too easy.
Well if I can't change the Perimeter Defense for mindworms in a *.txt only mod, I'll have to consider what else I'm willing to do.
The simplest thing to try, would be to go back to Hypnotic Trance costing 0, as in the original game. In my mod it costs 1. Back when I did that, it was a major improvement to the rationalization of unit costs. However that was a long time ago, and the fundamentals of unit costs have changed a lot since then. So far I'm still happy with ECM costing 1, probably because I made weapons have prohibitive cost and a Speeder has some more cost even on top of that. But Trance, I'll look at making it 0 again.
The hope would be that absent a cost impediment, the AI makes dual ability Trance units. That would make Neural Grafting a rather important Explore and Conquer tech though. I'd also need to make Hypnotic Trance easier to obtain. I recent releases I made it harder. But this is turning out to solve the wrong problem, as the AI does in fact need defense.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 12, 2020, 10:51:21 PM
The stock AI does build them in my mod. Just not enough of them, or early enough. I'm way better than the AI. I can get all kinds of techs and cream it. This is not true of everyone who's playing my mod, based on field reports I've gotten back. So I'm not quick to judge whether the AI is "building enough Trance defenders". There's no doubt that it builds far less Trance, than it builds ECM or AAA. It builds plenty of 3-Res, but that's really not enough to slow down a mindworm.
Hair splitting. "Not enough" might as well be none at all. Given the right conditions, the human can cream the AI with Unity Rovers and harsh words.
No, sometimes they do and other times they don't. I build my own Formers and lay my own rails just fine, regardless of what the AI does. Long as Formers and rails are in the game, they can be used with impunity. And I'm not taking them out of the game, because the game is already tedious enough as is, pushing all the units around.
Then you're going to have to live with the consequences of 1 movement point units being so powerful once magtubes are around. It's not just mind worms, and they don't even benefit as much as a rover or hovertank.
You don't generally see them in my recent AAR because I've generally destroyed them before taking a screenshot. I'm sure I've detailed such procedures in other AARs, but not every AAR I do is a basic tactical tutorial. My typical method is using a probe team to escort a Scout. Scout performs the destruction, probe team does some other task.
While I'd say that's exploiting the batty ZOC rules, nevertheless this is not something you could do with only mind worms so no they're not the "One true unit" or whatever. You're already using combined arms.
An Elite unit is Elite, a Demon Boil isEliteworse (see below). And I get to add +4 PLANET on top of it. I can cream Elite units no problem, on open ground at least. Just illustrated me doing that.
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Oh wow get this. I just actually looked at the details of my own screenshot. An Elite bonus is +50%. A Demon Boil bonus isn't equal to that, it's actually +75% !!! And the +40% PLANET bonus on top of that.
Clearly the result of attacking from a base with a Brood Pit and a Children's Creche, not equal circumstances.
Demon Boil is actually inferior to Elite because mind worms don't get an additional movement point.
Getting assaulted by the AI, is not why I wrote this post. I'm talking about how easy it is for me to beat up the AI.
In my mod, the AI will build tons of mindworms in the late game. If the game goes to late game. Which sometimes it does, because of the map and my play style that game. The AI has clearly figured out that mindworms and spore launchers are a better deal than advanced weapons. It even uses them effectively for some things. Like preventing Conventional Missile hits, a Spore Launcher works amazingly well! Or if I do an orbital insertion and am lazy about reinforcement, mindworms can indeed swarm in and pick me off by sheer attrition.
To me, it's a given that the AI can't mount a competent offense, after midgame. In the early to midgame, it might get enough of a mass of stuff together to cause problems. But I'm too good a player for anything to ever be an issue once we're in midgame. This isn't true of everyone playing my mod, so I'm not quick to bias things towards what would challenge me.
OK so how do you make mind worms both harder for the player to use but easier or the same for the AI? Perimeter Defenses aren't going to cut it.
Wat? I walk out into the fungus and pop pods. Mindworms pop out of those pods and I kill them with impunity. They don't even fight back! Except the spore launchers sometimes.
Yeah, that's my point. You can't just churn out high lifecycle mind worms without significant investment or putting them through "training".
I didn't increase it. PLANET has to be worth choosing for some reason. I don't think our discussion changes if my mindworms are at +0% offense instead of +40%. I've only noticed mindworm combat being a problem, if I've got PLANET penalties. Like, -20% for Capitalist, kinda hurts. If I've got some mindworms popping pods and I change to Capitalist, I don't get in fights with other mindworms anymore. I'm probably gonna die.
I didn't say you increased it. Yes, the penalty seems to work well in punishing players for negative PLANET.
You can get gazillions of the things with even a +1 PLANET rating, I've found, combing the oceans on a Huge map. The key is to make a few foils to start with. These go pop pods. Isles come out of pods. Some of those, you capture. It snowballs a lot after that. Your Isles will be pretty weak initially, so you do have issues with fattening them up. It's not anywhere near as easy as the land popping drill. But when your PLANET rating goes up later, they become more able to kill other Isles. So then you have stronger ones.
Still, they are not invincible. I tend to suffer a lot of attrition in midgame when various factions start patrolling the oceans more aggressively.
It can be harder because if you're running positive PLANET you will probably have captured a lot of mind worms already by the time you go to sea, so your capture chances are going to be innately lower. It depends.
Lol, like in 2 decades of play and being one of the hardest core modders out there, I haven't done that. It's too easy! Now I finally figured out why it's too easy.
You keep missing the point I'm making: Your human experience is nothing like the AI's, but all the nerf tools at your disposal are likely going to hurt them the most. Good luck squaring that.
Yeah, making Trance expensive was not the way to go. Consider predefined Trance garrison units.
Post by: bvanevery on September 13, 2020, 03:17:41 AM
It's not just mind worms, and they don't even benefit as much as a rover or hovertank.
Weapons are expensive in my mod. There is no cheap cheat to have them, like putting them on an unarmored infantry unit. They will still be expensive. Speeder and Hovertanks are an additional cost modifier on top of that, so they're not obviously a free lunch. Also, the AI does make ECM and 3-Pulse units. Although hovertanks are certainly an advantage, it is not clear to me that they're a gold standard of advantage.
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While I'd say that's exploiting the batty ZOC rules,
I own a probe team. It's my right to use it however I want, long as it's still got movement remaining. Another way to do it is to fly a plane around as an escort.
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nevertheless this is not something you could do with only mind worms so no they're not the "One true unit" or whatever. You're already using combined arms.
It's not a worthwhile argument to say that mindworms do all the fighting, but Scouts do a teeny weeny bit of Sensor Array and Former killing, accompanied by a few Probe Teams who do some stealing.
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Clearly the result of attacking from a base with a Brood Pit and a Children's Creche, not equal circumstances.
Wat? Brood Pits are extremely late in my mod, they don't even exist yet. I've said like 3 times already this is a "field mindworm", captured in the wild, leveled up by eating things to get to this stage. It's not at all hard to do. It's an Independent mindworm, no base.
A CC, are you clowning? Since when do CCs have anything to do with mindworms? You some kind of Cultist feeding the surplus children to them?
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Demon Boil is actually inferior to Elite because mind worms don't get an additional movement point.
They aren't inferior at combat.
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OK so how do you make mind worms both harder for the player to use but easier or the same for the AI?
I'm not trying to solve the problem of making the AI play better with mindworms on offense. I'm trying to solve the problem of the human player having this huge exploit with mindworms against bases.
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Yeah, that's my point. You can't just churn out high lifecycle mind worms without significant investment or putting them through "training".
But against the stock AI, mostly I don't even need to. I need lots of garrison units, to hold the ground I've taken. Mindworms attack, garrison units cover them, AI doesn't know what to do. Wet, lather, rinse, repeat.
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It can be harder because if you're running positive PLANET you will probably have captured a lot of mind worms already by the time you go to sea, so your capture chances are going to be innately lower. It depends.
I find it confusing to predict because I've had games where I just got massive, never-ending piles of Isles, and I'm pretty sure I also had plenty of land mindworms. And I don't think I had a rating as high as I've got in this AAR now as the Caretakers holding the Manifold Nexus. I typically sweep up almost all of Planet's supply pods, because I'm way better at it than the AI and it's so profitable. Then everybody "retires" when there's nothing more to take.
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Consider predefined Trance garrison units.
The problem with predefined anything units, is it often invites the AI to obsess about them. I've designed all kinds of units over the course of 2.5 years, and thrown out many of them. Either the AI wouldn't make them at all, or it would make way too many of them.
What I'll be doing for my next mod release, is making Trance available at Tier 2 instead of Tier 3. Moving it to Tier 3 was a fairly recent change and it was a wrong move. In my mod there can be huge time delays to get to Tier 3.
Actually changing the combat formulas and costs, will be some future endeavor, if at all. I'm still in shock that mindworms don't care about a Perimeter Defense. I will see what the AI does when Trance is easier to get.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 13, 2020, 04:29:54 AM
Wat? Brood Pits are extremely late in my mod, they don't even exist yet. I've said like 3 times already this is a "field mindworm", captured in the wild, leveled up by eating things to get to this stage. It's not at all hard to do. It's an Independent mindworm, no base.
A CC, are you clowning? Since when do CCs have anything to do with mindworms? You some kind of Cultist feeding the surplus children to them?
As far as I can tell, it's in a base per the screenshot. Do you have a better explanation?
Independent Demon Boil vs Elite, boil attacking from base tile, no facilities: https://i.imgur.com/t3wyoYB.png
The same, attacking from base with Children's Creche: https://i.imgur.com/GucCAl7.png
The same, attacking from base with Children's Creche and Brood Pit: https://i.imgur.com/071mVti.png
They aren't inferior at combat.
Elite conventional units get 50% and a movement point, Demon Boils only get the former and not the latter. That is mechanically inferior to me. But this is splitting hairs territory again.
I'm not trying to solve the problem of making the AI play better with mindworms on offense. I'm trying to solve the problem of the human player having this huge exploit with mindworms against bases.
Exploiting ZOC inconsistencies is fine, but using mind worms as intended is an exploit? I don't think we're going to agree on what an exploit means.
The problem with predefined anything units, is it often invites the AI to obsess about them. I've designed all kinds of units over the course of 2.5 years, and thrown out many of them. Either the AI wouldn't make them at all, or it would make way too many of them.
What I'll be doing for my next mod release, is making Trance available at Tier 2 instead of Tier 3. Moving it to Tier 3 was a fairly recent change and it was a wrong move. In my mod there can be huge time delays to get to Tier 3.
Actually changing the combat formulas and costs, will be some future endeavor, if at all. I'm still in shock that mindworms don't care about a Perimeter Defense. I will see what the AI does when Trance is easier to get.
Good luck, I hope the AI uses it more because they really should. AI factions also need a chance to build The Neural Amplifier.
Post by: bvanevery on September 13, 2020, 06:09:35 AM
As far as I can tell, it's in a base per the screenshot. Do you have a better explanation?
My mindworm did indeed attack from the base.
If base facilities give bonuses to mindworms attacking from the base, that's complete news to me. It's definitely not in the Datalinks. If a Children's Creche has any offensive capabilities at all, that's news to me. If it has anything to do with mindworms, ditto. There is also a Biology Lab in the base. That's standard issue in all my developed bases at this point in the game. If a Lifecycle bonus also awards this great offensive benefit, that's news to me.
There are no Brood Pits in this game currently, and there likely never will be. It's extremely late game tech in my mod, and I've all but won the game by the time such become available. The AI never makes it to Brood Pits, I'm too good. I don't even know if they build them if they're available. I do not give the Cult any free Brood Pits either, because they're a seriously overpowered facility. I jacked the cost of those things through the roof. I think I have them as expensive as a Quantum Converter, and those aren't cheap either.
I'm currently checking the game manual. This is all looking like totally undocumented "how it really works, or it's really bugged" stuff. I found one bit of official trivia that's not in the Datalinks. Not relevant to the current situation, but noted for future use:
"Units in a headquarters base automatically gain +1 Morale when defending."
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Exploiting ZOC inconsistencies is fine,
There is no ZOC inconsistency whatsoever in using a probe team to escort units. If I have movement, I can put a probe team there. If I didn't have any probe teams, or a Cloaked unit, or air cover, I couldn't. If there wasn't a rail available, then I'd have to expend movement points instead of riding them around for free. I can also escort units by bringing other units into squares from different directions, probably at the cost of their movement. I can build entire chains of units to "hold" squares for access. It's a good use of Scouts. I don't get how you claim there's any inconsistency at all.
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but using mind worms as intended is an exploit? I don't think we're going to agree on what an exploit means.
An exploit is anything that is seriously overpowered. So you seem to think that probe team escorts are seriously overpowered. Why? Do you want ZOC bypassing abilities to be removed from the game? And surely you've noticed that sea and air combat don't have any ZOC.
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AI factions also need a chance to build The Neural Amplifier.
In my mod it requires E8 The Will To Power. That comes at the beginning of the late game, if someone climbed all the way up the Explore part of my tree. With the AI vs. me, they're never gonna get it. I'm too good. Against someone else, one of the Explore oriented factions could get it. But it's late game.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 13, 2020, 03:10:25 PM
My mindworm did indeed attack from the base.
If base facilities give bonuses to mindworms attacking from the base, that's complete news to me. It's definitely not in the Datalinks. If a Children's Creche has any offensive capabilities at all, that's news to me. If it has anything to do with mindworms, ditto. There is also a Biology Lab in the base. That's standard issue in all my developed bases at this point in the game. If a Lifecycle bonus also awards this great offensive benefit, that's news to me.
There are no Brood Pits in this game currently, and there likely never will be. It's extremely late game tech in my mod, and I've all but won the game by the time such become available. The AI never makes it to Brood Pits, I'm too good. I don't even know if they build them if they're available. I do not give the Cult any free Brood Pits either, because they're a seriously overpowered facility. I jacked the cost of those things through the roof. I think I have them as expensive as a Quantum Converter, and those aren't cheap either.
I'm currently checking the game manual. This is all looking like totally undocumented "how it really works, or it's really bugged" stuff. I found one bit of official trivia that's not in the Datalinks. Not relevant to the current situation, but noted for future use:
"Units in a headquarters base automatically gain +1 Morale when defending."
Children's Creches provide some complicated morale bonuses that are bugged AFAIK but the +1 morale bonus for any unit when attacking from base square is working as designed. ("parents will defend their home to the death"). Even mind worm units benefit from that and additionally get another +1 morale from the Brood Pit for thematically similar reasons. I'm not sure if mind worms were intended to receive both and will probably submit a bug report post and see if Scient wants to do anything about it.
I have no idea where your mind worm's additional +1 morale came from if that base doesn't have a Brood Pit. I gave a base every facility except for a Brood Pit and Children's Creche to test for undocumented attacking-from-a-base-tile bonuses. I tried giving myself +4 PLANET. The Dream Twister's bonus gets its own line so it's not getting added to the Demon Boil morale percentage. I am also using Scient so it could be that you're encountering a stock bug that he fixed.
I didn't know that about the HQ defense bonus.
QuoteExploiting ZOC inconsistencies is fine,
There is no ZOC inconsistency whatsoever in using a probe team to escort units. If I have movement, I can put a probe team there. If I didn't have any probe teams, or a Cloaked unit, or air cover, I couldn't. If there wasn't a rail available, then I'd have to expend movement points instead of riding them around for free. I can also escort units by bringing other units into squares from different directions, probably at the cost of their movement. I can build entire chains of units to "hold" squares for access. It's a good use of Scouts. I don't get how you claim there's any inconsistency at all.Quotebut using mind worms as intended is an exploit? I don't think we're going to agree on what an exploit means.
An exploit is anything that is seriously overpowered. So you seem to think that probe team escorts are seriously overpowered. Why? Do you want ZOC bypassing abilities to be removed from the game? And surely you've noticed that sea and air combat don't have any ZOC.
Overly broad and idiosyncratic definition of "exploit". You think mind worms are too powerful in their intended state so that would be a balance issue. An exploit is the use of game rules or limitations to produce an unintended result. If you want a conventional military unit to ignore ZOC rules, the game designers clearly intended to give you that option: use a Cloaking Device. The AI certainly doesn't know how to abuse Probe ZOC like you the player does. The idea of James Bond successfully shepherding a tank division through enemy lines is laughable, but that's essentially what you're doing. You can do that, I don't care how you play your games. But it's an exploit. I'm not interested in going around and around when we can't agree on what an exploit is. There's no purpose to it.
In my mod it requires E8 The Will To Power. That comes at the beginning of the late game, if someone climbed all the way up the Explore part of my tree. With the AI vs. me, they're never gonna get it. I'm too good. Against someone else, one of the Explore oriented factions could get it. But it's late game.
Well then psi combat is always going to be OP in your hands I suppose, but that's not surprising since you're a human player.
Post by: bvanevery on September 13, 2020, 06:52:03 PM
Children's Creches provide some complicated morale bonuses that are bugged AFAIK but the +1 morale bonus for any unit when attacking from base square is working as designed. ("parents will defend their home to the death"). Even mind worm units benefit from that and additionally get another +1 morale from the Brood Pit for thematically similar reasons. I'm not sure if mind worms were intended to receive both and will probably submit a bug report post and see if Scient wants to do anything about it.
It's a bug. It's ridiculous on its face. They didn't do all this separation of MORALE facilities for conventional units, and Lifecyle facilities for indigenous life forms, just for the lolz. Nevermind obvious differences in the social engineering effects of MORALE and PLANET. Mindworms parent larvae. Yes there might be a human mindworm handler involved, but it's not a whole squad of them. You can't make a mindworm have higher Morale from a Command Center, and it's the Biology Lab that heals a mindworm in 1 turn, not a Command Center. I just read that in the .PDF of the game manual, not like I knew that off the top of my head. But it makes perfect sense and is rational. There are parallel facilities for humans and mindworms. Bioenhancement Center is what it is because it benefits both tracks instead of just one. The Children's Creche is not supposed to benefit mindworms. There is no simulation or narrative justification for this at all.
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I have no idea where your mind worm's additional +1 morale came from if that base doesn't have a Brood Pit.
The obvious suspect is the Biology Lab. And on that theory, anything with a Lifecycle bonus, such as a Centauri Preserve. Confirming this hypothesis is left as an exercise to some future person. These base bonus bugs / undocumented features deserve their own threads in the Bugs forum.
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I am also using Scient so it could be that you're encountering a stock bug that he fixed.
Possible. Will mention that when finally writing everything up.
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Overly broad and idiosyncratic definition of "exploit".
I say my definition's better than yours. The bottom line is whether something is seriously overpowered in a game, and not whether the devs put it there deliberately or accidentally.
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An exploit is the use of game rules or limitations to produce an unintended result.
I don't agree at all. For instance, combining Thermal Boreholes, Condensers, and Supply Crawlers to Get Rich Quick is very much intended in the original game, and it's still an exploit. Supply Crawler abuse is one of the biggest exploits of the stock game. Doesn't matter if you were supposed to be able to do it. They came up with an unbalanced game design that makes the pursuit of most other strategies pointless. Thinker Mod is even built around this exploit, it leverages it to the hilt! My mod attempts to blunt the exploit by making all these things more expensive to obtain, and much more research to obtain.
The Copter chassis is an exploit. It was clearly intended in the original game. The effects of being able to attack with every single move, are catastrophic. The game designers were just stupid about this. The design imperative I think they were probably following was, "Well the game's got too many low level units at a certain point. We need a handy way to clean them all out." What could possibly go wrong?
My answer to that is the Copter chassis is banned from player use. I have only 1 predefined unit, the Unity Lifter, a Copter with a Transport module. No weapon mounted. I also tried limiting Copter movement for awhile, but it was super boring, having these super slow moving units. So I got rid of the thing entirely, except for the 1 predefined special that doesn't attack.
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If you want a conventional military unit to ignore ZOC rules, the game designers clearly intended to give you that option: use a Cloaking Device.
This is not a "single unit per square" game. You can move stacks of units around. You can combine or break apart stacks at will, any time you want. You can make any combo of legal moves you want on your turn. This is like Wargaming 101 and I don't see how you figure it's otherwise. You might personally want to design something else, but the rules of the game are as they are, not what you want them to be. This game does not simulate logistical "traffic jams", where a column of units can't pass on a road because they don't have room to get by. The game muddles the tactical, operational, and strategic scales, so there is no particular simulation basis for insisting on any particular concept of ZOC, stacking limits, or movement order. It's a "free movement system" and if you don't like such systems, that's merely your problem.
You're free to design a game with a different movement system, and try to get people to adopt it, or sell your game, whatever.
When I finally write a new 4X TBS, it's not going to have the "all offense vs. all defense" combat mechanic. Offense and defense factors are going to slug at each other simultaneously. Combats aren't going to be to the death either, they're going to be resolved over a bounded period of time. Standoffs and mutual bloodlettings will be expected. There aren't going to be any Armors that just bounce the incoming Laser fire and cause planes to magically fall out of the sky. There are going to be helpless troops on the ground getting strafed and taking damage, not really able to do anything about their assailants.
The point is that's my simulation "pet peeve" about the game's combat system. I don't confuse it for being an exploit. It would be like complaining, "The Queen is too powerful in Chess! Look how much it can move around!" It's bloody Chess. Play the game or not.
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The AI certainly doesn't know how to abuse Probe ZOC like you the player does.
This is true. That's merely a problem with the AI implementation, not the rules. The AI is stupid about countlessly many things, like the pathfinding for Formers screwing up, when it doesn't screw up military unit pathfinding. Providing better AI, is a serious commercial development sustainability question.
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The idea of James Bond successfully shepherding a tank division through enemy lines is laughable,
You seem to be under the mistaken belief that an empty square is tremendously secure. If you want it to be super secure, then fill it. Same as you'd have to do for sea or air combat. If your "line" is like Swiss Cheese then yes, James Bond can most certainly lead the way and show you how to get from A to B.
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But it's an exploit.
It's a flaw in your mental model of what ZOC means, from a game design standpoint. Plenty of articles have appeared in "various places" about ZOC systems. The whole thing arises historically from wargames with limited hex resolution, trying to model the phenomenon of a military unit controlling more than "just their own hex". Well there's actually no good reason to do that anyways, they probably just wanted to save some money on cardboard counters. Probably also on art assets for a given map scale, since a physical playing board was something you had to ship to your customers. They didn't have computers to zoom the map scale up and down to whatever might be desired. If you have enough units and enough hexes, you don't need a ZOC system. Square's occupied? Guess you're not going there.
The game does feature the obvious alternative, in sea and air combat. Which proves that the designers weren't ideologically committed to some particular notion of ZOC, the way you seem to be.
Why don't you try going back to Civ II or even Civ I and see if you can't do exactly the same things with spies and ZOC? It's not like SMAC was the 1st cut at these game design mechanics. If they didn't redesign them, then they didn't think it was some big humongous problem. You do, and that's your problem. The rest of us are playing an IGOUGO game with known rules of how everything works.
Defending with an AAA Garrison isn't an exploit either, it's how the game works.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 13, 2020, 07:53:17 PM
It's a bug. It's ridiculous on its face. They didn't do all this separation of MORALE facilities for conventional units, and Lifecyle facilities for indigenous life forms, just for the lolz. Nevermind obvious differences in the social engineering effects of MORALE and PLANET. Mindworms parent larvae. Yes there might be a human mindworm handler involved, but it's not a whole squad of them. You can't make a mindworm have higher Morale from a Command Center, and it's the Biology Lab that heals a mindworm in 1 turn, not a Command Center. I just read that in the .PDF of the game manual, not like I knew that off the top of my head. But it makes perfect sense and is rational. There are parallel facilities for humans and mindworms. Bioenhancement Center is what it is because it benefits both tracks instead of just one. The Children's Creche is not supposed to benefit mindworms. There is no simulation or narrative justification for this at all.
Brood trainers have families, too, I suppose.
As for the rest of that post, I've given you my final words on the matter and already consider the discussion at an end.
Post by: bvanevery on September 13, 2020, 08:22:08 PM
IGOUGO systems allow players to bring all available force to bear on their turn. That's fundamental to the concept. Of course players can do lots of damage to each other on their turn, in all kinds of unit combining ways. If you don't like that, consider an "activation system", where the number of units you can use on your turn is limited. Or a "phased turn system", where it's not IGOUGO, and defending units attack as you try to pass them. SMAC uses a simple system, that's one of its advantages.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 08:28:29 PM
The point of psi combat is to be a "hole" in the combat system and be strong on the offense. Mind worms are still expensive and stacking lifecycle bonuses requires a lot of additional expense that doesn't help with a conventional military aside from one? exception.
I would rephrase it to be an alternative combat system to increase combat variety and survivability of different factions. Like if one faction is quite behind in weaponry but has PLANET bonus (or crank it up) they can withstand massive conventional firepower turning it to psi combat. A very nice idea of different warfare types.
That is in theory, of course. Stupid AI and smart ass humans, as always, can screw up any brilliant game designers' idea. So it may need further balancing. However, I would not discard it right away. Native life is a cornerstone of the whole story! 🙂
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 08:38:22 PM
Oh wow get this. I just actually looked at the details of my own screenshot. An Elite bonus is +50%. A Demon Boil bonus isn't equal to that, it's actually +75% !!!
That is weird. How did that happen? Did you mod anything? Can you share your save and alphax.txt?
Independent Demon Boil vs Elite, boil attacking from base tile, no facilities: https://i.imgur.com/t3wyoYB.png
The same, attacking from base with Children's Creche: https://i.imgur.com/GucCAl7.png
The same, attacking from base with Children's Creche and Brood Pit: https://i.imgur.com/071mVti.png
Thank you for these examples, man. Apparently, there is a bug in CC or BP those allow natives have more than 50% lifecycle bonus. Need investigation.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on September 14, 2020, 08:57:23 PM
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 14, 2020, 09:56:47 PM
I would rephrase it to be an alternative combat system to increase combat variety and survivability of different factions. Like if one faction is quite behind in weaponry but has PLANET bonus (or crank it up) they can withstand massive conventional firepower turning it to psi combat. A very nice idea of different warfare types.
That is in theory, of course. Stupid AI and smart ass humans, as always, can screw up any brilliant game designers' idea. So it may need further balancing. However, I would not discard it right away. Native life is a cornerstone of the whole story! 🙂
Sure, and Planet needs to be some kind of threat from the early game up until fungal pops. It's nice that Thinker knows to mix in some psi units when they have positive PLANET. I wonder if they know, or should know, to build Biology Labs and other facilities if they like PLANET?
Indeed. Both CC and BP add to morale bonus without limiting it. That's definitely a bug.
Scient said that they were aware but forgot to implement the bug fix in the patch: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21522.0