SMACX AI Growth mod

[vonbach]

"Justice" reminds me entirely too much of "social justice" one of those nice little orwellian terms that in practice means the exact opposite of what it means in real life. "Social welfare" in reality just means oppressing people with opposing views. Or bleeding people dry to pay for government programs. It's just a term I personally dislike. "Corruption" might be a better choice but efficiency works. We can agree to disagree i suppose.

The Problem with yang is I don't know any other way to make him work. Other than the idea of giving him immunity to both police state and planned and be done with it. Then give him something like +growth or something.
Choppers are what AAA is for. Another thing you might try is making a Surface to Air Missile.

[bvanevery]

"Justice" reminds me entirely too much of "social justice" one of those nice little orwellian terms that in practice means the exact opposite of what it means in real life.

Politics are a matter of perspective, and since I'm the modder, you get mine.     I'm not going to apologize for using Socialist or Social Justice as positive words.  I'm quite aware of the contemporary alt-right pejorative "Social Justice Warrior", and I'm doing my part to act against their twisting of language.  In real life I just went to court, I had a public defender, and a jury trial.  I'm not going to get into the details of what it was about, but I'm very clear on what's at stake for poor people in the USA, and the world generally.  Need me some JUSTICE!

"Social welfare" in reality just means oppressing people with opposing views.

I can find you instances of verbal oppression in any news media political outlet.  I don't care if you're Right, Left, or even Center.  I have a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology, which gives me a pretty good lens with which to analyze social control.  People attempt to control you with language because they want the world to be their way.  Whether that's fair nor not, depends entirely on what you personally believe in.  Why you believe it, depends on many historical accidents of your environment and how you make your own personal decisions.  Talk to me sometime in real life about how to get your opinion across to a jury, to get them to understand your point of view.  Over a beer would be preferable; I'm generally in either Asheville or Winston-Salem, NC.

Or bleeding people dry to pay for government programs. It's just a term I personally dislike.

Most wealthy people have very little concept of the infrastructural advantages they enjoy on the backs of others.  The basic problem of Socialist revolutions isn't the Capitalist injustice they fought against.  Their basic problem is they were revolutions, with violence, merely empowering a new goon squad that changes the terms around as to how people are going to be exploited.

"Corruption" might be a better choice but efficiency works. We can agree to disagree i suppose.

The problem is the factor in the game is stated in the positive, not the negative.  If you got more bad stuff the higher the factor got, then indeed I could have followed the Civ II precedent and called it CORRUPTION.  But that's not how it is.  You build a Courthouse to end corruption.  What does a Courthouse give you?  JUSTICE.  Who do you go in front of, in a courthouse?  A Justice.

Another thing you might try is making a Surface to Air Missile.

I haven't forgotten the concept, nor of making chemical SCUD missiles.  But there's enough on the plate for 1.29, with all the terraforming changes, that I'm very much willing to leave missiles to some imagined 1.30.  Would hate to run out of things to do and actually be done with the mod.   

It speaks to a general development imperative of trickling out content.  There's the reality that it takes time to actually make stuff.  Especially to test it, to make sure it doesn't suck. That's something I've done a lot for this mod, I daresay as opposed to other mods.  No mod has put the level of testing effort into it that I have, unless we're talking about mods that have been around for a very long time.  Binary Dawn is the only one whose name I've heard enough times, that could possibly rise to that level today, and I haven't played it.

If I trickle out the content, in chunks that say, "There's enough here that it's worth you downloading again," then I can command top post attention on Reddit and so forth.  I've settled on 1 month intervals for dribbling out the content.  This current instance actually arose naturally.  I got bored, then I finally tried out Thinker mod to deal with the boredom.  I saw problems, blind spots in my own play style compared to what other powergamers do.  So I've gone on a crusade against the Borehole.

[vonbach]

"Social Justice" just means oppressing people with views you don't like. Its not a twisting of words either.
"Social justice warriors" like to dox people ruining their lives or simply beating them over the head then
getting away with it. Its a term out of Orwells 1984.

Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money. Wealthy people create jobs. You can't make people rich by taking other peoples money.

I just mod it back to Effic honestly.

I've made the SAM missiles before. That would be a good defense against choppers.

[bvanevery]

"Social Justice" just means oppressing people with views you don't like. Its not a twisting of words either.
"Social justice warriors" like to dox people ruining their lives or simply beating them over the head then
getting away with it. Its a term out of Orwells 1984.

"SJWs" is a pejorative term to make sweeping generalizations about people who tend to fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum.  There's no substance to claims that "SJWs are doxers".  Doesn't matter if you got doxed by a SJW once.  I've been doxed by someone who was probably just a cyberbully and didn't have any particular political agenda.  He just didn't agree with me about game design stuff in a Usenet newsgroup.  Doxing is something that people do to each other on the internet because they want power over someone else.  There is no political creed that limits the behavior.

Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money.

Money is a social construct.  There are all kinds of ways to abuse this construct, particularly if you are the one holding the bulk of the capital.  I firmly believe that all the evils and wars in human history, arose during the Neolithic due to trade surplus.  For instance if you've got all the food and other people around you don't have it, you can enrich an elite to conquer other people and take all their land.  You can enslave them, put them in the fields, and make them produce more food for you.  This isn't ancient history either, serfdom was still going on in 19th century Russia.  It has occurred with Jim Crow in the USA, and we still see versions of this in the prison industrial complex.  Money and labor are intimately related.  If you have wealth, historically you can force other people to labor for you, and much of the time there wasn't anything even remotely fair about it.

Wealthy people create jobs.

Wealthy people usually have it due to privileges gained by birth, not their actions.  It is very difficult to bear all the costs of material productivity oneself.  Wealthy people often take for granted the embodied material costs of objects that enrich them, such as machinery, technology, public roads and infrastructure....

You can't make people rich by taking other peoples money.

So you're a Morganite.  There are other philosophical voices in the game:

##Adaptive Economics
#TECH81
Humans : correct in making the leap from wealth as currency to wealth as
energy. But logic failure : wealth ultimately is extension of desire, fluctuating
with emotions and state of mind. Desires : when all are supported in purely adaptable
system, true wealth is achieved.
^
^        -- Usurper Judaa Marr
^           "Human : Nature"

In my mod it gives Socialist.  That's not an accident.

Bugs me that the quote is attributed to Conqueror Marr though.  There's nothing Socialist or adaptively economical about him at all.  He wants godhood.  He will kill anything that gets in the way of that.  That's why in my mod he does not want Socialist or Planned, he wants Power.

I just mod it back to Effic honestly.

Doesn't trouble me.  Most people won't, and my message will get through to the vast majority of people who try my mod.

I've made the SAM missiles before. That would be a good defense against choppers.

This mod doesn't need a defense against Choppers, it doesn't have any Choppers.     What I need is a Chopper that can only shoot once or twice, not every single time it can move.

[vonbach]

"SJWs" is a pejorative term to make sweeping generalizations about people who tend to fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum.

 
Its also an accurate one.

Wealthy people usually have it due to privileges gained by birth, not their actions.  It is very difficult to bear all the costs of material productivity oneself.  Wealthy people often take for granted the embodied material costs of objects that enrich them, such as machinery, technology, public roads and infrastructure....

Most rich people get rich through hard work and effort.

So you're a Morganite.

No what I am is not a communist. The best way to make people more prosperous is to let them help themselves.
Also given the behavior of communist regimes  that quote being from Judaa Maar is apt.

  What I need is a Chopper that can only shoot once or twice, not every single time it can move.

lower the movement on it. Or make a SAM unit to defend against it.

[bvanevery]

lower the movement on it.

Been there done that.  Many earlier versions of my mod had that kind of Chopper in it.  It was boring.  I never made the things.

Or make a SAM unit to defend against it.

The stock AI never does this.  Also you don't need Air Superiority to attack an enemy Chopper on your turn.  If it's out in the open, it's sitting on the ground and vulnerable to ground attack.

If you meant "make AAA units" to defend against it, well frankly I get bored having to make a special defense unit everywhere for all the different unit types.  The real problem is an air unit that can attack 8 times in a row.

Needlejets are still in the game, you can make AAA units all you like to defend against those.  But my mod's current regime, is a Needlejet chassis is expensive.  I may have overdone it, but I wanted it to feel like you're paying a military defense contract for a freakin' Bomber, not some cheap Speeder jalopy of the skies.  The stock AI would make mountains of the damn things and fly them all over the place to almost no purpose, save for destroying your Formers.  Now the game is pretty light on bothering with planes, or at least it has been.

I probably need some "Air Corps nut" to test my mod, because I'm certainly not one.  Can't be bothered.  I'm all about the rails.

[vonbach]

Honestly I just want the copter in the game so I can play with it.  I usually don't get a chance to build them.

[bvanevery]

In previous versions of my mod, what kept you from building Copters?  They were given with Doctrine: Air Power, I didn't believe in making them come later than a Needlejet.  This is space, not WW II followed by Korea and the Vietnam War.

In the stock game, one tended to put a Chaos gun on the end of the Copter and systematically murder all the peons on the map, such as the Believers had spewed out.  Are you familiar with this play mechanic?

[vonbach]

Usually my games are over by then. They also have short range and aren't especially useful on offense. Thats by far the easiest way to deal with factions like Miram's Believers. Just attack her. The AI also has the bad habit of keeping old units about just cluttering things up sometimes.

In the stock game, one tended to put a Chaos gun on the end of the Copter and systematically murder all the peons on the map, such as the Believers had spewed out.  Are you familiar with this play mechanic?

Yes, that's why giving the AI a AAA spec to use might be nice. Or an unlimited range SAM.

[bvanevery]

I never thought the stock AI had any problem making AAA or ECM units.  The trick is to attack wherever one or the other is missing.  Dissociative Wave comes so late that everything is resolved by then anyways.

[bvanevery]

Giving the Believers +1 SUPPORT didn't improve the AI performance in Thinker mod.  I found that odd, but there it is.  I'm inclined to not give this buff, as it'll just make it easier for the human player, and I don't think that was a problem before.

The Hive did ok with +1 GROWTH, but it wasn't a leading faction.  I think the change is minor and therefore ok.

-1 INDUSTRY -1 SUPPORT seems to restrain the Pirates, but I don't know if both are necessary.  I feel obliged to test it more.  Maybe run some AI games to see what happens.  I could make them all Pirate games!

I've decided to change the Cult of Planet's personality to Aggressive and to have them seek to increase their PLANET rating.  +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous.

[Vidsek]

I've decided to change the Cult of Planet's personality to Aggressive and to have them seek to increase their PLANET rating.  +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous.

    The Cult has consistently underperformed in my tests.  Making them Aggressive should step them up to the plate, and feels right for their lore.  Also agree that high PLANET rating is powerful, if used well.
   (Between the stock alphax and Yitzi's additions, I have several ways to adjust the quantity and types of affects PLANET has.  For testing, of course, I stay at or close to the stock defaults.  Later on I can play with changes to the parameters)

Giving the Believers +1 SUPPORT didn't improve the AI performance in Thinker mod.  I found that odd, but there it is.  I'm inclined to not give this buff, as it'll just make it easier for the human player, and I don't think that was a problem before.

The Hive did ok with +1 GROWTH, but it wasn't a leading faction.  I think the change is minor and therefore ok.

-1 INDUSTRY -1 SUPPORT seems to restrain the Pirates, but I don't know if both are necessary.  I feel obliged to test it more.  Maybe run some AI games to see what happens.  I could make them all Pirate games!

  I read this as: don't SUPPORT the Believers anymore, let the Hive procreate, and watch the ARRRR!!!! series on the bvanevery channel for the latest on Pirate misbehaviour.

[vonbach]

Heres a question. You were thinking about replacing fundamentalism with another government. If so what one?
I thought about replacing fundamentalism with a "middle tier" on the oppression scale. Something like autocratic
or "corporate."

The believers were never that strong of a faction to begin with. The +support is nice but it would depend on what else they have.
They should be a +growth faction. Be fruitful and multiply and dangerous if left alone.

The reason the pirates were aggressive was a balancing factor in itself. The Pirates AI would spam military units until it
ran out of minerals. I thought making them passive would break them. Making them passive basically turned them into
sea morganites.

[bvanevery]

Heres a question. You were thinking about replacing fundamentalism with another government. If so what one?

I never really came up with a clear idea on that.  Game mechanics aren't the only consideration, one should also consider the original lore of the game.  Changing Free Market to Capitalist, and Planned to Socialist, is mostly a change of name and not so much of substance.  I think the idea of a Theocracy is worth having in the game, whatever it is called.  It's just difficult to see why a theocracy is any different from a police state.  A debate to be had with the Iranians, the Taliban, and ISIS I suppose.

I thought about replacing fundamentalism with a "middle tier" on the oppression scale. Something like autocratic
or "corporate."

It's not a bad idea in principle, but my Democratic is already corporate.  It makes money.  I think that's an accurate reflection of what industrial democracies do, as compared to alternatives.  I also have Socialist government, which loses money.  Again, accurate.  Capitalist is already corporate, you don't get any JUSTICE.  So I'm not seeing where a "make mo money" political choice would fit in, as I think I've already got it covered.

One basic game mechanical difference between choosing Police State or Fundamentalist in my mod, is one screws your money, the other screws your research.  Which do you prefer?  You may prefer either at different times of the game.  I have several Undemocratic factions: the Hive, the Usurpers, and the Cult of Planet.

If I were being honest, I would call them "Police State" and "Different Kind of Police State", but that's not catchy. 

The believers... should be a +growth faction. Be fruitful and multiply and dangerous if left alone.

I believe I tried that at one point to some degree, although it was only +1 GROWTH, not +2.  The pop booming play mechanic is already owned and dominated by the Peacekeepers.  I don't think it's a good idea to just duplicate play styles.

I arrived at a hybrid for the Believers: they are Christians who could go Democratic and sit around making money, with their new +1 ECONOMY.  They're stronger than the Morganites of the original game, although of course the Morganites were completely pathetic, so that's not saying much.  The Data Angels also got +1 ECONOMY, so the Believers are not the only faction that has gone "Morganite lite".  In the case of the Believers, I like to think of them as possibly televangelists who are worshipping the Almighty Dollar.  I don't put that into their lore though, I leave it up to the player to imagine.  I do say, "Tithings keep the Church solvent."

The reason the pirates were aggressive was a balancing factor in itself. The Pirates AI would spam military units until it
ran out of minerals.

And it got so old.  Ship after ship after blessed ship, bothering me on my coasts!  And the AI never gets tired of this drivel, it just keeps sending the ships.  Screw that, I'm not going to be pestered into submission.

I thought making them passive would break them. Making them passive basically turned them into
sea morganites.

They are quite a bit worse than sea Morganites.  They are the economic superpower of the game.  That's saying a lot as the Morganites get +2 ECONOMY in my mod.  Ocean "land" is that good!

[vonbach]

It's not a bad idea in principle, but my Democratic is already corporate.  It makes money. 

Thats not quite what i had in mind for a corporate. I don't mean a government designed to make money.
I mean a government that doesn't so much rule the state as manage it like a corporation. Something like Singapore.
Or maybe Technocracy might be a good term. A middle ground between oppressive police states and Democracy.



As far as fundamentalist government goes it depends on what your idea of a fundamentalist government is.
The USA for most of its history was essentially a protestant fundamentalist state. Perhaps instead of Fundamentalist
you could call it a traditionalist system.

They are quite a bit worse than sea Morganites.  They are the economic superpower of the game.  That's saying a lot as the Morganites get +2 ECONOMY in my mod.  Ocean "land" is that good!

I was afraid of exactly that when you made them passive wealth seekers.