SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

I can't just give AI factions Formers, there's no way to do that.  If AI gets it, so does the human player.

I've thought about giving all factions 4 colony pods to start with.  That's a major change however, something that would require a lot of playtesting.  I'm definitely not willing to do it for my 1.31 release, as we're almost to the end of the month now and it's time to release.  I'm trying to focus my energies on my own new game development, not SMAC anymore, so I don't actually want a major change that's a gamble and would require a bunch of testing.  If a number of other people tried it and reported it was actually useful, that might persuade me to evaluate its merits, as I wouldn't be completely shooting in the dark and just wasting a lot more of my time.

Giving out sea colony pods to non-aquatic factions doesn't work.  There's no guarantee that a faction will start next to water.  For an inland faction, extra sea colony pods would just die immediately.  Any coastal faction would start with a major advantage.

I've already made Doctrine: Flexibility a C1 tech, no prereqs.  Boats are gained much faster than the stock game.  There is still a delay to gaining them however. 

I've not really thought about making predefined ship units available without any techs.  My concern if you get any kind of ship, maybe it can be turned into other kinds, but I could check on that.  There's still the question of whether having ships immediately available, does any actual good for colonizing.  Sometimes the AI does very stupid things when it's given early capabilities that it can obsess about.  For instance, I had to make Perimeter Defenses and Heavy Artillery come later, because otherwise the AI goes unproductively nuts with them.  The testing for this is much less ambitious than the 4 colony pods idea, but it would still need testing.

[vonbach]

I've already made Doctrine: Flexibility a C1 tech, no prereqs.  Boats are gained much faster than the stock game.  There is still a delay to gaining them however. 

Boats are gained early the aquatic colony pods don't come then though.

[bvanevery]

That's not true.  Gaining C1 Doctrine: Flexibility grants sea colony pods on a Foil chassis.  Just checked that with the Scenario Editor.  The blurb you see on screen doesn't say it grants them, but the unit designer figures it out and makes it available.  I suppose I should check if there's any bug when the unit designer is turned off.  That shouldn't affect what the AI does anyways though.

Aha.  Yes indeed, if you don't have the Unit Designer on, you won't see a Sea Colony Pod, even though you can design one.  That's worth providing a work around about. 

While I'm in here thinking about stuff, I'm thinking that having a Unity Foil be Slow is pretty pointless.  Gonna remove that.  Heck I'll give it a Deep Radar while I'm at it, make it more useful.

I have verified that making a Transport have no prereq, also makes it possible to design a Gun Foil and a Sea Colony Pod.  Giving it away for free would basically make Doctrine: Flexibility have no purpose.  I'd need to come up with something else to do with it.

[vonbach]

Does the AI actually design the sea colony pods though?

[bvanevery]

Well they must at some point, because there's no sea colony pod predefined unit, and we know the AI will make sea colonies.  I would expect the AI to design the unit at soon as C1 Doctrine: Flexibility is discovered.

[bvanevery]

I've decided I'm not ready to ditch C1 Doctrine: Flexibility and just give everyone basic ships.  Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it isn't, maybe it doesn't matter because the AI won't take advantage in practice.  But in any event it needs testing.  This is the end of the month and it's time for me to do another release now.  Not to quickly embark upon a change that might seem to be major and somewhat goofy.

I can contemplate the essential annulment of C1 Doctrine: Flexibility in a version 1.32, as well as giving everyone 4 colony pods to start with.  But the answer might be "these things should not be touched".  I'm also feeling pretty unmotivated to touch them, and I don't have anything else for a 1.32 release.  I may not ever make a 1.32 release.  It's contingent upon finding something that actually needs doing, and I'd like to think I just found "the few things I missed" for 1.31, which I also didn't expect to be releasing.  Releases are definitely on a "trickling wind down" now.

[vonbach]

The Ai does build ships eventually. One thing Its never learned to do is mount naval invasions.

[bvanevery]

  My game has taken so bloody long, I'm in MY 2392 and I still haven't won.  I have Black Hole Guns and Inertial Dampers and I still haven't won.  My increases in production costs are that impactful.  I'm only rushing the Singularity Inductor this turn, and I've dealt with a modest amount of flooding already. 

The good news is I think this might mean there's actually a late game and an endgame to play.  I've actually found Psi Gates useful for a change.  Part of me wonders if I've just been stupid about how to win the game though.  I'm definitely in the situation where I still don't know how to play my own mod.

Once I got the Cloning Vats, I thought I was going to rack up the votes and get a Diplomatic Victory.  But the other factions were never conquered and continue to grow.  Not enough to challenge my dominance, but enough to make it more difficult to put a 3/4 majority out of reach.  A few turns ago I decided, heck, maybe all this military garrisoning and taking over cities with Secret Projects was a complete waste of time.  So I started building Sky Hydroponics Labs to really goose my growth.

Well guess what?  The game just gave me bloody sunspots!!   
 

I'm not playing 20 more turns of this garbage to get a Diplomatic Victory.  I'm morally opposed to Transcending.  I don't have the money to Corner the Energy Market, I'd have to build a bunch of Orbital Power Transmitters first, then wait 20 turns.  And I think a Conquest victory with conventional forces would be prohibitively tedious, given the number of enemy units on the board.  So I am embarking upon a comprehensive plan to destroy the world with Singularity Planet Busters.

 

Because I'm a stick in the mud, I'm still using my 1 Skunkworks to prototype new units.  The game forgot that I knew how to make a Planet Buster, because it recycled my unit designs.  Or maybe it didn't, I was fiddling with those settings recently.  Anyways it forgot, so I have to prototype it again.  It was going to take 5 turns because it's not a high minerals city.  But it just so happens there are still a few supply pods at sea.  They were trapped in an inland sea that opened up due to flooding. Or conquest, whatever.  I sent out a 12-Res Trance Cruiser Transport and picked one up.  And thereby achieved possibly my most expensive unit completion ever.  900 minerals for that prototype, higher than many Secret Projects in the game!

Details endgame pod popping

endgame pod popping

And the 2nd pod I popped that same turn, gave me 50 energy credits.

[bvanevery]

With the completion of the Singularity Inductor, many of my Singularity Planet Busters will be completed in 2 or 3 turns.  The weakest cities will take 5 or 6 turns.  So I'd say at the most, 5 turns to Doomsday!  I anticipate that my first strike will destroy all enemy Planet Busters on Planet.  Then it's just a race between destroying everyone and the mindworms getting me.

Details preparation for doom

preparation for doom

You might wonder, where is my sense of political correctness and ethnic diversity?  Eh, sunspots.  It can really fog the brain on what you'll put up with.  Also these jerks have been declaring war on me every few turns for a very long time now.  Nobody actually likes me.  Nobody will sign a Treaty with me, even though I have the same politics as 3 out of 5 factions.  So screw 'em!  They had their chance.

[bvanevery]

Details singularity apocalypse

singularity apocalypse

Planet isn't bothering to wait for me to launch.  It already resents my increase in minerals due to the Singularity Inductor.  That thing never mitigates enough damage for all the minerals it spews out.  Reaching the Threshold of Transcendence and getting another +1 minerals in fungus squares doesn't help either.  I'm having a vague memory that something is supposed to make Planet stop hating on me though.  Like if I start the Voice of Planet?  Can't remember.  Would be cool if I could trick Planet into ignoring my apocalypse.

Of course I have not bothered to make offensive air units to take out these stacks of Locusts.  I do have plenty of defensive and redeployable Trance 12-Res units though.

[bvanevery]

Defending against the giant stacks of Locusts was trivial.  I used both Drop garrisons and Trance Formers to guard my cities.  Locusts simply bounced over and over again, inflicting minor wounds.  I didn't lose a single unit, and I could have handled several more cities of innundation that way.  The apocalypse is looking good!  Don't need to take any special measures to turn Planet off, it seems.

Details expensive armor

expensive armor

I haven't managed to prototype the Inertial Damper yet.  Belatedly I'm realizing it's as expensive as a Planet Buster.  I think that's ok, it gives people something to look forward to.  The Black Hole Gun is goofy by comparison though, only costing 60 minerals for an unarmored infantry unit.  I think I'll need to jack that cost up.  Finding stuff like that, is why I've been forcing myself to finish this tedious game.  Although, my final actions may yet prove amusing.

I'm working on the Telepathic Matrix.  I used a probe team to take over Zhakarov's last city with a Secret Project in it.  I succeeded at Total Thought Control so we're not at war.  That was expensive, like maybe 5000 credits, I forget.  That's how much I'm making per turn though, and I only built 1 Orbital Power Transmitter.  I built 54 Sky Hydroponics Labs which should be, ah, "sufficient".  Only 8 Orbital Defense Pods as they haven't seemed much needed.  The Drones built 1, that's it.  The Peacekeepers still have the Planetary Transit System, which I want to take over.  Then my collection of Secret Projects will be complete!

I "only" have 11 Singularity Planet Busters, so I'm not quite ready to launch.  I'm making some Conventional Missiles to decoy any enemy Orbital Defense Pods.  It seems to be cheaper than just slugging it out with ODPs, as the latter tend to favor defense not offense.

[Vidsek]

        Keep us updated!   I want to be able to remember exactly where I was at the End of the World 

[bvanevery]

It proves to be impossible to jack up the cost of an unarmored Singularity infantry unit with a weapon.  It's always going to cost 60, even if it's a Black Hole Gun.  I've tried some truly ridiculous numbers and they don't change anything.  I suspect there is also a point at which the numbers aren't even representable, like maybe only 8 bits or less is given to the numerical field.  So for now, I am just accepting that unarmored infantry units are the bargain basement of the game.

Since I can't make things more expensive, I decided to make things cheaper.     Well there really is a problem of infantry units with weapons + armor being way too expensive at the end of the game.  I found out in the real world of keeping Planet from turning into Waterworld, factories just aren't going to get bigger and bigger.  You'd drown first.  I've recalibrated Black Hole Guns so that a Singularity infantry unit with Inertial Damping armor costs 600, the same as 2 Planet Busters.  With a Singularity Laser it's now 500, and with a Graviton Gun it's now 450.

These costs are still high, and thereby create an interesting endgame dynamic.  It's actually economically rational to completely destroy Planet with Planet Busters rather than bother producing expensive units.  Getting pissed off at the game and saying, "I'm gonna end it all with nukes!!" might be a more common thing now.  I wonder if one even needs to wait until the Singularity era to do this.  Quantum era?  Even the Fusion era?

Conventional Missiles and Fungal Missiles become really cheap in the Quantum era, so that's another way to go.  "How to do the endgame" may be a subject explored for some time.  Maybe it will need further balancing, because I think in the past, most of us never got to any substantial endgame.  In stock SMAC, gonzo techs come too quick, so you just steamroller everyone and declare yourself the winner.

I was up late last night, and am not quite ready for the holocaust today.  I'm at MY 2396 and have 20 Singularity Planet Busters.  I have 24 more in production, almost all of which will be ready in 3 turns.  I total thought controlled the last enemy city with a Secret Project, and I'm still in a Truce with everybody.  Sunspots are still active.  Where's my sunblock??  My brain is melting.  I'm definitely feeling the Daenerys Targaryen effect of screw these people, they had their chance.  Maybe that's what will happen from now on, the game will annoy you with factories and units that are so expensive, you just want everyone to die already!  I mean hey, this game has been annoying me that way for 20 years, and so has the genre in general.  Vengeance by modding.

[bvanevery]

Details pipsqueak university

pipsqueak university

MY 2398.  Can you believe this crap??  I'm minding my own business, trying to get a boring war ready for the end of the world, and this clown deigns to bother me.  These jerks can't seem to honor their Truces for more than 5 years at a time.  I've lost track of whether it was Zhakarov who rebelled last time, but someone is always stirring the pot.  And he did what, wound a Former?  These people need to seriously die.  And I was just starting to have second thoughts about my holocaust too.

I've decided to bump up the prices of missiles again.  A progression of 400, 300, 200, and 120 for Tectonic missiles.  200, 150, 100, and 60 for the Conventional and Fungal missiles.  I'd rather those be higher with a Singularity reactor, but I can't get them to be.  Well unless I jack up the base cost of the chassis again, maybe that would work.  Or if I make predefined units for these, can I fix the cost of a missile regardless of the reactor on it?  Worth trying.  Tectonic missiles in particular are completely backwards, I'd like them to be more expensive as the reactor gets bigger.  I could settle for them all just being super expensive, like 600.  Do you want a Secret Project or do you want a land bridge?

[Vidsek]

   I haven't yet explored the power and cost of missiles in the Yitzi-AIGrowth Merge and how it changes with reactor.
I just need to use to Scenario Editor to gift all the reactors and missiles to a faction and run through all eight options available with Yitzi.  I'll get to that some night a bit of tedium seems appealing.

   Does the AI ever actually use Tectonic missiles?  Or Fungal ones for that matter.

   The Fungal warheads make some RL sense as biological warfare, but the whole concept of the Tectonic ones sticks in my craw.  If the AI doesn't use them, I'd be tempted to disable them entirely.

   At the very least, they should have an equal chance of lowering the land, or lowering one side and raising the other.
   Just as unrealistic, but more fun, would be if they caused a volcano to erupt, complete with active lava flows that damage units crossing them