Fusion Power Is NOW!

[Mart]

Well the Thinkers didn't say that in the selection dialog box, so I'm guessing there's some text that didn't get changed.

Just a note for modding knowledge, that text would be assembled from the currently used rules in alphax.txt, so if it is not having values that we would expect from alphax.txt, that we want to use, this is indication of wrong file.

[bvanevery]

Umm I switched between 2 different laptops due to running out of battery power, in MY 2371.  They both had GOTM 1804 installations on them, but slightly different toplevel directory naming conventions, due to different times I installed Yitzi on the machines.  I think you're saying that when I switched machines, the main alphax.txt got used, not the scenario alphax.txt?  Just checked my .sav and Ascent to Transcendence only costs 2000.  Oh well.  I'm not going to replay it.

If you were giving +6 research for Thinkers, but I was only getting +3, doesn't that mean I exceeded the difficulty of the scenario?  As in playing with a handicap.  If the only substantial change was a penalty against me, I think my time should stand.  But, I don't know what else you changed.

[Mart]

Umm I switched between 2 different laptops due to running out of battery power, in MY 2371.  They both had GOTM 1804 installations on them, but slightly different toplevel directory naming conventions, due to different times I installed Yitzi on the machines.  I think you're saying that when I switched machines, the main alphax.txt got used, not the scenario alphax.txt? ...

Yes, unfortunatelly, in its implementation as it is in SMACX now, it stores the full path from "C:\ ..." so the actual folder where the game is installed matters too.
That can be changed, but it is not an easy task, when players start their own scenarios.

If you were giving +6 research for Thinkers, but I was only getting +3, doesn't that mean I exceeded the difficulty of the scenario?  As in playing with a handicap.  If the only substantial change was a penalty against me, I think my time should stand.  But, I don't know what else you changed.

Other main change is, that research rate is down to 20%, this is why we have meaningful late game, it does not rush with 1-2 techs per turn.
So defaulting to standard alphax.txt you returned to 5 times faster researching. It was not handicap here.

[bvanevery]

Oh well!  And if tech is that slow, I have no idea how Kirov managed his time.  Maybe he can explain, but part of me almost doesn't want to know.  Sounds like every city sending crawlers to a research capitol, which isn't an interesting game to play.

Ok I looked at his .SAV file, and actually that wasn't it.  He has more cities and a denser array of cities than I did, separations of only about 3 squares between most cities.  This would not be any good for a terrestrial based society, but he built 21 Sky Hydroponics Labs, 5 Nessus Mining Stations, and 21 Orbital Power Transmitters.  I built 0 satellites.  I am forced to conclude that large numbers of Orbital Power Transmitters are the only way to overcome the research handicap of the scenario.

He did at least built a lot of labs.  32 Network Nodes, 11 Biology Labs, 24 Fusion Labs, 20 Research Hospitals, 16 Nanohospitals, and 19 Quantum Labs.  In contrast I built 20, 21, 17, 20, 0, and 0 of those, but played the 2nd half of the game with the wrong alphax.txt and 5x faster research.  I suppose that means "Wealth first" doesn't actually work.  Would need to get to better labs faster.

He also built a lot of thermal boreholes, I built 0.  I don't know whether they really help earlier in the game or not.  I think they don't provide that much for the Former production, terraforming, and mouseclicking effort, compared to Hybrid Forests.  I've done "maximum density borehole" worlds before and I never thought they put me on any kind of fast track to anything.  They carry ecological risks; actually so do any mineral increasing strategies for that matter.  I generally don't go buff on minerals.  Given all my Hybrid Forests, in any given game I probably use a tiny fraction of my actual possible mineral capacity.  When cities get to 20 minerals I'm like, eh, good enough.

BTW I notice it is not possible to load someone else's .SAV file with the correct alphax.txt, presumably because installation directories are different.  I'd have to replace alphax.txt at the toplevel.  I also noticed that all of my own .SAV occurred at the toplevel and I couldn't do anything about that.  The UI wouldn't seem to let me save in the folder I wanted, i.e. in the /saves folder.

[Kirov]

Oh well!  And if tech is that slow, I have no idea how Kyrub managed his time. 

Thank you, the assessment of your actual SMAC competence is now complete. Indeed you don't need to replay the scenario.

And it's Kirov.

[Kirov]

To other contestants:

Guys, I can assure you that this scenario is really really interesting, precisely because of the 1/5 tech rate. It’s going to be incrementally harder to improve your submissions as with each one, you have to cram a ridiculous volume of lab points into an ever smaller number of turns. So with the last tech at 22k, in order to go down from 100 to 99 turns you need to squeeze in ca 220 lab points more into each one of your turns (although obviously the end-game is the most important).

The bad news is, a contribution around 2400 won’t give you the first place because I intend to beat it. The 2403 is just my first casual attempt and I believe I can shave off, say, 10 turns from it (but please, try me).

The good news is, after a few initial benchmarks this scenario can become super exciting. I believe that I can provide insight, tips and motivation to bring us all the way down to 2390. This is where the real fun will start. Crossing this barrier to 2389 will take a lot of skill and joint analyses. 2385 seems ridiculous, but I still think it’s within reach. As for 2380 and below... well I know it sounds crazy, but in this decade of the 21st century, much crazier things actually happened. My  vague intuition is that somewhere in the 2370s there’s a hard ceiling for the scenario, where our situation is already optimum and nothing can be done to go down further. But I would immensely enjoy trying to find that place.

Don’t accept wrong suggestions, this scenario doesn’t require any Excel sheets or meticulous comparisons of expected energy outputs per building times (although we can still do that if you’re keen to). On the contrary, there’s so much more which we can squeeze out of these circumstances and there’s a huge number of long-term and short-term strategies which we can discuss on various levels of complexity. What’s the fastest way to the Gov’nor office and the Global Trade Pact? (I did it in 2319, but this surely can be improved). What’s the most cost-effective way of keeping the AI at bay? Are the sea bases even worth keeping? Should we upgrade all, some or none formers to Clean Reactor? Should we relocate our HQ? Should we raise the land at Safe House City, at the expense of all those tidal harnesses? Should we consider rare improvements like aquifiers or echelons? What are the best options to protect our former fleet from missiles? What should be our priorites with the Secret Projects and blind research? How can we make Mart’s modifications work to our advantage? I can write a page or two about each of these questions, and I believe that if we find proper answers, ridiculous deadlines can be met. But I won’t do it alone, as I lack the commitment to beat only my scores all the time.

You can also consider it a good preparation for Mart’s upcoming democracy game. I promise that whatever happens and whatever your level is, you will take something out of this scenario. If you’re less experienced than me, I can give you a few juicy pointers for your future SMAC performance. If you’re better than me, I promise to put on you as much pressure as possible so you’re forced to do your absolute best, kinds of like you haven’t done for a long long time. We can do an incredible time if we put our minds to it.

This is not to boast, this is not to gloat, this is just to give you a nudge towards a friendly competition – I want to announce that I’m taking this badge home. Please, stop me.

[bvanevery]

And it's Kirov.

Maybe there was a Kyrub in the archives somewhere.  Not sure where I got that.  I've corrected it in my earlier post.

As for your statement of my abilities, I think you're using sarcasm, but I'm not entirely sure.  You should consider that I thought we were playing the same scenario and we weren't, and that the rules aren't the same as a standard game anyways.  I don't invest tons of time pre-analyzing someone's mod to find the optimal way to exploit it.  I play it.  In fact that's what Mart wanted people to do, to just play and see if we notice anything different.  Well, mixed results on that, because "Wealth first" doesn't reveal a slow tech rate.  I don't even micromanage citizens ordinarily, I think it's a dull game mechanic and if it weren't for the scenario, I wouldn't have even noticed a change to +6 labs.  If you happened to decide that you could cream just about anything by building enough Orbital Power Transmitters, hey whatever dude.  I didn't play this for ego strokes, I played this because I was asked to give Mart feedback on his mod.  Which unfortunately, I only half did.  I've got my own mod I'm working on, almost 3 weeks of full time work so far, like that could have been paychecks in some other universe that isn't mine.  So pardon if I don't care as much about this as what I'm working on.

[bvanevery]

Since I have now released version 1.1 of my own mod, I decided to take another stab at this yesterday.  But the bottom line is I rage quit on turn 24.

[rant]

Mart, I don't think it's wrong that you wanted to try out these changes in principle.  But you need to disclose things like, Fusion Labs being so egregiously expensive to maintain, that labs output actually gets substantially worse if you build them at the beginning of the game.  It's not a player's job to pore over every last detail of an alphax.txt file to figure out WTH is going on.  Or go over the entirety of the Datalinks with a fine tooth comb.

I eventually resorted to using a diff tool on your alphax.txt, to see exactly what you changed.  I noticed you also did things like jack up the AAA defense, and the expense of building Interceptors.  Which was the immediate trigger for my rage quit: I had just taken a painful 5 turns to build a fusion Chaos Interceptor.  I attacked a fission AAA ship that was 50% wounded to save one of those northern sea bases that's very hard to defend, and got killed.  Enemy ship barely survives and of course she'll float into my base next turn and fully heal.  In a normal game, that ship would have been dead.  It was the last straw, against a backdrop of no progress that had been building up for awhile.

You also gave the same "egregiously expensive to maintain" treatment to Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests.  I built some extra Tree Farms at the beginning, not knowing any better, because that's a fairly logical thing to do in an ordinary game.  So that helped tank my research and economy.  What your undisclosed changes did, is pretty much waste 5 hours of my free time.  You need to respect the time of the people who playtest or engage your stuff, as this is a long game.  "Just try it, do you notice anything?" isn't enough.  YES I noticed some things, eventually, painfully.  You need to say things like, "X Y Z are now very expensive to maintain, to the point of damaging your economy irreparably if you build them too soon.  You may not want to build them for a long time."

Also making Aerospace Complexes free to maintain, is a pretty cheap shot, given what you did to fusion labs, tree farms, and hybrid forests.  So now I know the basic secret to Kirov's success: for whatever reason, he happened to make Aerospace Complexes and go the Orbital Power Transmitter route.  And I'm betting pretty early on.  You made a "golden path" one way, and an egregious "tar pit" the other way.  Mart, how about next time you just tell players about these kinds of major changes, instead of griefing them?

Oh, and this is somewhat missing the forest for the trees.  20% research rate??  Yeah, I got that disclosed after playing with the wrong alphax.txt for half a game.  Think you could let people know that up front???

As for the scenario design rather than the rules, I'm not thrilled that trying to build The Supercollider is so high pressure.  It seems likely to be essential for getting along the tech tree in any reasonable time.  Yet Morgan starts to build it immediately, and he's protected from tech theft by the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.  Nobody else has Applied Relativity initially and you can't steal it from them.  Your own research rate is too pathetic and random to come up with it yourself.  I didn't in that game I played, I got Bioadaptive Resonance despite a Discover focus.  Joy.  I already had Chaos weapons, that was completely useless to me.  Other factions do eventually research Applied Relativity, but then you've got like 2 turns before Morgan completes.  You'd need pretty much omniscience and a pile of supply crawlers that you started making from Turn 1, to pull that off.  I don't think people should have to replay a scenario repeatedly to figure out the importance and doability of stuff like this.  Especially for a game that can easily take 5+ hours, assuming one just quits and doesn't even try to finish.

[/rant]

I'm not completely sore about this, so I've started another game and am giving your scenario one more chance.  I'm not enthused though; maybe I finish the game, maybe I don't.  It would only take one more "this sucks rocks" incident for me to say, that's not what I want out of SMAC or a scenario.  In my current game I'm not going through special heroic efforts to obtain The Supercollider at all costs.  I'm making "a reasonable effort" at it, not a premeditated, omniscient, I-already-know-on-turn-17-I-need-to-do-X effort.  And I'm not going to be baited into Aerospace Complexes as the One True Way to play the game.  I value my ability to make choices as a player, which means, those large sucky fungus beds and dry patches of land are getting terraformed.

[bvanevery]

I played that game until turn 35.  I had no realistic chance to get The Supercollider, as I refused to engage in premeditative heroics from turn 0.  No specific thing caused the end of my game.  It just became 12:30 AM and for the time I'd spent during the day, it was no longer worth continuing.  I was slowly winning an air war against Deirdre, with the emphasis on slowly.  The game plays like something whose research has been cut to 20% of normal.  I've done plenty of slow research games before, both in SMAC and Freeciv.  I know how it goes, so I am not inherently interested in that.  I'm done with worrying about the scenario objectives as stated, which are essentially "finish the tech tree".  IMO at 20% research it's a painful objective, an invitation to play the game much more slowly than usual.  That translates into real hours of time spent, that I don't want to.

I'm likely to play another game where I blow off any pretense of research, since it is unprofitable, and not what Roze is designed to do as a faction anyways.  Instead I will try outright conquest.  I'm tired of being hobbled by Free Market and a concern for research that doesn't actually go anywhere.  I am wondering if the scenario design is wholly irrational, or purely game mechanical, take your descriptive pick of my terms.  That is to say, if you kill everyone else, clearly they cannot Transcend.  So I wonder how long it takes to do that.

[bvanevery]

I started again with a military focus, going Democratic Planned Knowlege, then Democratic Planned Wealth taking advantage of higher minerals for disbandment before each change.  I did build the 2 Research Hospitals in progress and later came to regret it, as eventually my research rate dropped to something like 1 in in 60 turns.  I don't even need protection from the Prometheus Virus as I have The Human Genome Project.

Further societal transitions were Fundamentalist Planned Wealth, which was costing me -30 credits/turn for awhile.  Then Fundamentalist Green Wealth, which was more stable and sustainable.  However for having jacked my probe teams to the max, it really didn't benefit me in any way.  They often died on missions, which I think is a bit stupid for having +4 Probe.  I couldn't seem to frame Deirdre for theft either.  My team would succeed, but but they'd still be allied and unruffled.  I wonder if Yitzi changed probe team behavior in some way?

I built a fair number of Penetrators.  They did some good damage initially, but then Deirdre started stacking her bases with AAA units.  The new rules seriously reward AAA against air assault, and I didn't even try to make a run at them.  Also they make planes more expensive.  I came to a point where I realized my pricey air force was actually pretty useless.  I could only use it to harass units in open terrain, as these new AAA units provide pretty much a perfect base of operations for the enemy.  Deirdre was slowly building her Conventional Missiles and those are very annoying.

There's also just overwhelming piles of fungus to remove.  I think I overproduced Fungicidal units.  I actually don't need nearly as many of those as regular Former units, since much land is already cleared and still needs to be developed.

So in MY 2314, I quit.  I'll try again with Chaos Marines.  I don't remember any new rules against those, and they work.  Perhaps with some AAA naval escorts, to really "game" these new rules.

[bvanevery]

I played another game today, that may have taken 4 hours, that also happened to end at MY 2314.  It was 3:15 PM when I quit, which may be a rough "trigger time" of the day for when I begin to feel fatigue about something.  Maybe the park bench?  Maybe just sitting one place too long, who knows.  But there's definitely a time limit on my attention span if things aren't going so well.

Fusion Chaos Marines with a Synthmetal jacket definitely work better than an air force.  AAA Silksteel Impact Cruisers are also effective at suppressing enemy air force.  Yes the Silksteel garrison units don't take much damage, but planes are fragile and take a lot of damage from artillery.  They can't so easily come out to fly around at you, when they need to heal up all the time.  Yes the AI will eventually get around to putting land artillery in position, but it takes it time, especially when it has been depleting its minerals reserves from too much support.  So tactically, it's a good force investment.  I took Mindworm Pass pretty early, then I harassed that base north of it for awhile.

Strategically, this didn't help my cause at all.  Mindworm Pass is not inherently valuable.  I kept Deirdre from bothering my northern sea bases, indeed I was able to stock them with Disciplined or higher 1-4+-1 units pulled from my vast starting horde.  But having taken Mindworm Pass, I become somewhat obligated to defend it, otherwise why did I even do it?  And now here comes the probe team, a factor in the invasion I completely forgot about.  Yes I was able to block the 1st one with a Missile Needlejet, that wasn't in danger of getting shot down because I had been suppressing Deirdre's Interceptors with my AAA Impact ship.

But this isn't some blitz.  Despite all that cash and all those garrisons at the beginning of the scenario, Roze just really isn't running a wealthy, productive nation.  Her terrain sucks, there's all this fungus everywhere, and it takes a long time to clear it.  It might be tempting to think you're gonna just storm the enemy's beaches, but my experience is it just isn't gonna happen.  Roze doesn't have any inherent production advantage.

I concluded that the better strategy is to forget about invading anyone for awhile.  Roze is really not that strong at the beginning.  She has a lot of fronts that need defending, with a lot of enemies with plenty of productivity to just bore you to death with all the stuff they can spam your way.  I think the AAA Silksteel Impact Crusier tactic is good, since it exploits what was intended to be "scenario designer's punishment" to your own advantage.  Wanna take the power of my planes away?  Ok, I'll defend with AAA, I'm wise to ya.  But the Chaos Marines, they're really only a "win" against Svensgaard's 2 isolated sea bases.

I'll probably try again, with the "Fortress Angel" idea in mind.  But I'm definitely experiencing scenario fatigue.  There's only so many times I'm probably willing to throw 4..5 hours at the same thing.  Generally I need some kind of "new conclusion" to justify doing so... and it wouldn't hurt to see something resembling progress for a change.  Playing scenarios that resemble WW I trench warfare aren't exactly my idea of a good time.  As I said, I've definitely given up on the official victory conditions.  I'm just wondering if there's any style of victory where this becomes a satisfying game.  It could be that taking over someone's mismanaged empire isn't basically a fun exercise.  This much fungus this late in the game?

Like, there are plenty of my own games, written up in AARs, where I got to a point midgame and said, "You know what?  This empire ain't that hot."  Meaning, I know it's going to be a drag to keep playing, because I haven't established enough dominance over the AI.  I suspect that may be the problem here.  The AI has been allowed to grow way too strong in many places.  Well, we'll see.  But if it takes too many hours of my real wall clock time to issue a "corrective" to the balance of power, then I'd sooner put the time into fresh games where I control how things go.

Incidentally, although an initial round of Democratic Planned Knowledge mostly worked, I did have one annoying productivity phenomenon.  The base at which I was making the Interceptors, kept getting drone riots as it grew.  So my Interceptor production kept getting delayed.  With sufficient micromanagement, I could have prevented the riots by turning people into doctors before the population booms again.  But if you're just trying to have a life and play a game, it's easy to get into "D'oh!" because there are too many other things going on to attend to.  I'm not sure Planned is all that worth it, if I'm not actually going to do any invasions at the beginning.  Might be better to just re-home those 2 Missile Needlejets to cities that can afford the unhappiness and stay with Free Market.  Although, then my AAA Silksteel Impact Cruiser suppresion plan wouldn't work.  I suppose I could delay it, until I can steal Centauri Empathy and go Green.

[Kirov]

Also making Aerospace Complexes free to maintain, is a pretty cheap shot, given what you did to fusion labs, tree farms, and hybrid forests.  So now I know the basic secret to Kirov's success: for whatever reason, he happened to make Aerospace Complexes and go the Orbital Power Transmitter route.  And I'm betting pretty early on.  You made a "golden path" one way, and an egregious "tar pit" the other way.  Mart, how about next time you just tell players about these kinds of major changes, instead of griefing them?

Stop making things up about my game, you always get it wrong. It seems you don’t really know what happens in a good gameplay. Of course I had those Tree Farms up and running very quickly, in this scenario it’s crucial to popboom early, grab that Governor office and put the Trade Pact in place ASAP. An average player could school you about that.

I value my ability to make choices as a player, which means, those large sucky fungus beds and dry patches of land are getting terraformed.

This is a preposterous statement.

A good player comes to a scenario, analyses the circumstances and then carefully selects proper strategies from his wide arsenal of tools in order to deliver a good or winning performance. And you consistently fail to do so. In fact, you do the opposite – failing to win with some basic, ‘tried & true’ strategies, and then blaming the author that it's not enough. Throwing the towel on the grounds of ‘refusing to employ a specific tactics’ is a ludicrous excuse.

For example, I like to fight in SMAC, I really do. But the winner of this scenario will have fought as little as possible, or to be more precise – will have built as few combat units as possible. A tech race forces players to reduce non-tech cost allocations to an absolute minimum. This is the nature of such a challenge, not Mart’s mischief.

I assure you, there’s nothing wrong with this scenario, however it does pose a demanding challenge for good players. This is why I told you that you don’t need to play. A good score is clearly beyond your reach and it’s you, not Mart, who is wasting your time.

As for access to information, in my first attempt I knew much less than you do now. I never play late games (MP games tend to finish at the nukes, tops), so I didn’t even notice that the tech rate is nerfed (because I had no idea what it should be at that stage). I was just doing my best to improve my lab output. It’s not Mart’s fault that you can’t come close to it.

On the face of it, it seems irrational that first you blame Mart for wasting “5 hours” of your time and then proceed to play it over and over with made-up conditions (as you are required to get the Transcendence Thought, it’s right there in the first post). But I think that you think that if you’re loud enough, we won’t notice that your challenges are a string of failures, and that you have actually yet to prove that you are NOT the worst active player alive. But we do see that and I’m afraid your constant temper tantrums about fungus being too pink will only make matters worse.

Stop blaming everyone around for your failures, nobody’s falling for that. Your gameplay has numerous, numerous shortcomings and you need to learn some new tricks and grow beyond the ‘forest & forget’ strategies. In particular, it seems you need to find out about the clean mineral limit and how to collect much more than 20mins/turn per base. You will never win against humans at such a cap.

There’s one thing I commend about you – your commitment. I used to live and breathe SMAC for many years and I love the fact that this game still maintains its alluring charm. So keep playing, but also keep growing. If you change your tune, I can help you vastly improve your performance.

[Kirov]

They often died on missions, which I think is a bit stupid for having +4 Probe.  I couldn't seem to frame Deirdre for theft either.  My team would succeed, but but they'd still be allied and unruffled.  I wonder if Yitzi changed probe team behavior in some way?

PROBE just improves the probe team's morale and doesn't directly improve their chances to succeed/survive.

As for framing, there's one very little known fact that to make a frame attempt successful, you can't be at Vendetta with the victim of your probing mission. So in this scenario, you need to grab a Pirates' base, exchange it for truce ('trade land for peace' option) and then continue to probe the Pirates while framing Deedee and Sparta. In this way, you can actually get them to fight each other and have your borders much more peaceful. I must say I was every unlucky with the framing - with Elite units it should be at 67% or something, yet I had to repeat it some 6-8 times. The good news is, additional attempts are not that difficult - Deirdre and Santiago hate you anyway no matter what, while Ulrik will always 'trade land for peace' when he loses a bases. So if you lose a frame attempt, just take his base, give it back and frame the girls again.

[bvanevery]

Stop making things up about my game, you always get it wrong.

When you don't disclose what you did, how would anyone know?  I actually wondered if you had just cheated your way through the thing somehow.

It seems you don’t really know what happens in a good gameplay.

In a scenario with arbitrary new rules that destroy economies, no I don't actually.

Of course I had those Tree Farms up and running very quickly,

Surprised you found them profitable, given their maintenance costs.

in this scenario it’s crucial to popboom early, grab that Governor office and put the Trade Pact in place ASAP.

Trade Pact??  Oh good grief.  My success or failure in the game is to be predicated on whether I thought I should do a Global Trade Pact or not?  That's a level of persnicketiness I have never gotten into in SMAC.  I figured if half are enemies and half allies, the enemies benefit just as much.  Well thanks for telling us all about the golden path you actually found.  This is reminding me of a jumping problem in a platformer game, where if you don't just jump oh-so-correct, you can't win.  Not in MY 2403 at any rate.

Maybe if you habitually go for Economic Victory, you would think of GTP.  I never do.  It has always seemed like vastly more work than straight conquest or Diplomatic Victory.

An average player could school you about that.

At the risk of getting banned again...

Suuure they could.  I'll go fetch one off of GOG right now.  Have you noticed I'm the only person other than yourself who has actually submitted a victory for this scenario?  Of course with wrong rules half the time.  I don't see any of these so-called 'average' players even making an effort.  So I think you are deluded about people's average abilities.  You have the perspective of someone who's an "indefatigable calculator" about SMAC, and you're not nice about it.  I'll take blame for having thrown down a gauntlet to anybody and everybody a few months ago, but there are clearly some areas of the game where I would never beat you.  I don't have the patience to worry that much about the stats, so if a scenario is actually all about grinding the stats to minimax them, I'll just hand you your victory crown right now.  And get back to work on gameplay that average players might actually enjoy.

I value my ability to make choices as a player, which means, those large sucky fungus beds and dry patches of land are getting terraformed.

This is a preposterous statement.

It is the perspective of a kind of player rather different from yourself.

A good score is clearly beyond your reach and it’s you, not Mart, who is wasting your time.

And this kind of thing makes me wonder why I should be singled out for 'rudeness'.  Although, it was in a different thread on a different subject.

As for access to information, in my first attempt I knew much less than you do now.

So it seems you think 'good' scenario design is to make the player learn by trial and error in multiple long games, rather than telling them up front what has changed.  As a game designer I don't believe in this at all.  I'm wondering if many real players feel similarly, given the lack of submissions.

On the face of it, it seems irrational that first you blame Mart for wasting “5 hours” of your time and then proceed to play it over and over with made-up conditions

I'm investigating whether there's anything worthwhile about the scenario at all, or whether it's tedious on all fronts.  I have an entire year's worth of AARs you can read about the concept of tedium.  I don't think you're going to understand or appreciate this because you seem to be the "challenge" archetype of player, who feels rewarded for knowing all kinds of stuff oh-so-well.  People like you will beat their heads on inscrutable Kingdom of Loathing crafting problems to get the bragging rights of having figured it out first.

and that you have actually yet to prove that you are NOT the worst active player alive.

Exaggerate much?  Manners much? 

In particular, it seems you need to find out about the clean mineral limit and how to collect much more than 20mins/turn per base.

I know what the limits are.  They're easy enough to find because you just build stuff and see if you're doing eco-damage.  Against AIs it's not particularly necessary to have more than 20 mins/city, it works fine.  There's a point at which mouseclicks are not worth it to me.  The game has far too many mouseclicks as is.

You will never win against humans at such a cap.

Of several reasons why I don't generally care about winning against humans, is that my reward would be interacting with attitudes such as your own.  You know, this is ironic, because years ago I was kicked out of a face-to-face board game group in Asheville for being too "hardcore" and giving people 'tude they didn't like.  I merely had the attitude of someone who had grown up on Diplomacy.  "I am about to win.  Why aren't you all trying your hardest to gang up on me and beat me?"  Because they're average players and don't think like that.  I think I lasted a year in that group.  You might last a few play sessions, with truly average players.

There’s one thing I commend about you – your commitment. I used to live and breathe SMAC for many years and I love the fact that this game still maintains its alluring charm. So keep playing, but also keep growing. If you change your tune, I can help you vastly improve your performance.

I am good enough at SMAC for most of the human race's practical purposes.  You have helped me to realize there are players in the 4X TBS universe with temperaments and concerns rather different from my own.  This will be useful when / if I finally write my own 4X TBS and try to build a community around it.  So yes, thanks for that kind of help you've given me... I won't be needing the other kind.

[bvanevery]

As for framing, there's one very little known fact that to make a frame attempt successful, you can't be at Vendetta with the victim of your probing mission.

Joy.

Things like this make me think that most of a game's rules should have source code available.  I read the "decompliation coordination" thread last night.  All that heroism from at least 4 people, did not result in sustainable effort over the long haul.

I wonder if the Civ IV ecology is any improvement.

If they insisted on having this rule, what they should have done is make it impossible to attempt a frame job, that cannot possibly succeed.  As well as saying, "you can't frame because you have a vendetta".  Not good game design.  Oh well, not everything in such a large game will be optimal.  Nor maintained over the product's life cycle.  Hence the need for source code to be available.