SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

Details how you be the ball

how you be the ball

C2 Neural Grafting increases COMMERCE income.  I think that's probably a relic from another time.  That buff should be moved somewhere else.  And, Economic Victory is probably broken.  The whole COMMERCE regime could stand reevaluation.  It used to be overpoweringly good, and now it may be nerfed too hard.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Economic Victory is probably broken.

Yeah. It was broken from the beginning. Nobody could make sense of this ending conditions. Therefore, nobody can agree on what they should be.

Conquest makes sense as a competition: who destroys whom first starting from more or less equals conditions.
Accent to transcendence makes sense either as a speed competition combining all economy and war and research and management skills. Again starting from more or less equal conditions.
Diplomatic is achieving voting dominance probably with the help of allies. Also competitive as others will try to do the same and deny you this.

Economic is an outlier in that it based solely on the size of player cash stash. This is pretty difficult to balance as it is pretty impossible to say how much cash is equal to total conquest? Besides, accumulating cash is completely counterproductive to the rest of the game. One has to willingly abandon production hurrying to just accumulate it for no other purposes but claim the win. This is not competitive in the way that nobody seriously compete in the same money saving rush and nobody can directly stop anybody else from accumulating credits and there is no common resouce to fight for either (like common votes, or territory, etc.)

[bvanevery]

Hrm, yeah.  I knew this, but I haven't thought/said it out loud in awhile.  I did shorten the time lapse of Economic Victory from 20 turns to 5.  If you have to jump through the absurd number of hoops to get enough credits to win the game, then you shouldn't have to wait another 20 years on top of all the waiting you've already done.

Seems like only overwhelming numbers of Orbital Power Transmitters would win the game this way.  Which begs the question, why do that as opposed to finishing some other way?

[bvanevery]

Adding to the list of minor problems with version 1.52, my early Discover prereqs may be broken.  In a game where I combined my mod with Thinker, I observed the University learning early techs that were not terribly Discover oriented.  But maybe they simply can't be learned in any straightforward way:

There is possibly a non-Thinker explanation for the spread though:

Details University doesn't learn D2 Information Networks

University doesn't learn D2 Information Networks

D1 Biogenetics is trivial for the University to obtain and expected.  However, E1 Social Psych has no Discover component:

Code: [Select]

Social Psych,               Psych,   0, 0, 2, 4, None, None, 000000000So the University could be learning completely random techs, until E1 Social Psych is finally obtained.  Perhaps I should "bread crumb" Social Psych as a partial Discover tech, so that the University is not unreasonably delayed.

[bvanevery]

Yeah. It was broken from the beginning. Nobody could make sense of this ending conditions. Therefore, nobody can agree on what they should be.

The techs that have the "increases commerce income" flag set on them, define a sort of footrace, for differentiating your faction as being more economically badass.  The problem is... someone steals your tech, suddenly they're as badass as you are.  You don't really do anything.  Rather than create an economic infrastructure, you just steal the idea of having an economic infrastructure.

I'm going to try to rework the "increases commerce income" flags.  But given that they just mean "you learned something", I'm not expecting much.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.52 to 1.53:

FACTIONS

- Pirates: fixed documentation mistake about TECH.  They don't start with any.
- Social Psych: set tech=2.  Previously, D1 Biogenetics was the only Tier 1 tech with a Discover weight.  This caused the University to research random techs for a long time, until E1 Social Psych was finally obtained.

ABILITIES

- Hypnotic Trance: changed Desc to +100%.  Forgot to change it when I increased the psi defense bonus.
- Air Superiority: now costs 0.  Costs 1 for a land unit.  For planes, this is a simple weapon selection about whether it's going to be good at attacking things in the air, or on the ground.  Much like Heavy Artillery is a simple weapon selection.  For land units, there is no penalty to ground combat, so the ability is purely beneficial rather than a tradeoff.
- Non-Lethal Methods: removed "Cost increased for land units" flag.  I accidentally released version 1.52 with it.

COMMERCE

- Industrial Base, Centauri Ecology: removed "increases commerce income" flags.  Economic Victory cannot possibly be achieved so early in the game.  It is pointless to differentiate factions with a tech that almost everyone is going to immediately have.
- Ethical Calculus, Industrial Economics: removed "increases commerce income" flags.  Democratic and Free Market offer ECONOMY bonuses, and so increasing commerce income would be thematically sensible.  However, these techs are very easily obtained in the early game.  They do not sufficiently differentiate factions as pursuing Build techs.  The 1st tech that definitely requires a Build focus to obtain, is B3 Superconductor.
- Neural Grafting: removed "increases commerce income" flag.  It isn't thematically a good choice, as this tech is about producing units for less cost, rather than creating energy or enhancing trade.  It's also now a Tier 2 tech, a bit too early to differentiate a Build focus.  Finally, it's first and foremost a Conquer tech.
- Optical Computers: removed "increases commerce income" flag.  It doesn't create energy or enhance trade.  Its cross-listing with Build is about producing units with the Skunkworks.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: set "increases commerce income" flag.  Hybrid Forest creates energy and economy.
- Industrial Automation: set "increases commerce income" flag.  Thermal boreholes and Thermocline Transducer create energy.
- Global Energy Theory: set "increases commerce income" flag.  Orbital Power Transmitters create energy.

PREDEFINED UNITS

- Fake Transport: new predefined unit.  Occupies the slot that Transport did in the original game.  Has the 31st fake ability bit set to distinguish it from designs that the game comes up with, and is Disabled.  This fake unit is for compatibility with the limitations of Thinker mod version 3.1.  It assumes a plain Transport Foil is available in this slot and will just use whatever is there as such.  The stock binary does not actually need a Transport Foil predefined unit.  AI factions will eventually figure out how to make Transport Foils on their own.  When and why they will do it is unclear, but it has to do with either land colonization or land assault.  The AI might be denied some early game choices in the absence of a predefined unit.  However, if any kind of predefined Transport Foil is available, the Pirate AI will obsess about building it in large quantities.  This ruins the Pirates' empire development.  They are far better off simply never using any such unit, and waiting until Cruisers become available.  Even the Pirates will eventually figure out how to make a Transport on their own, although it takes a long time.
- Clean Sea Formers: now occupies the slot that "*Sea Formers" did in the original game.  This is in case some kind of Sea Formers unit really is needed in this slot for some obscure buggy reason, despite the original having been marked as Disabled.
- Clean Plasma Transport, Clean 3-Res Transport: removed.  In a test game, when Clean Plasma Transport became available to the Pirate AI, it built 190 of them!  And it would have kept doing so.
- Clean Sea Colony Pod: now occupies the slot that Sea Escape Pod did in the original game.  Sea Escape Pod is actually what AQUATIC factions start the game with.  Since I make foils and clean reactors available at the beginning of the game, and I make the predefined Clean colonists the same cost as regular colonists, these 2 units are now completely redundant.  I don't need the slight narrative value of calling it an "escape pod", so might as well save a unit design slot.
- Sea Escape Pod: removed.  It's redundant.
- Plasma Police: removed.  Trance Plasma Police costs the same.
- Trance Plasma Police: new predefined unit available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.  It happens to have the prereqs necessary to make the unit.  Possibly I was working on that for 1.52 and then made the mistake with the "Cost increased for land units" flag, so didn't see the costs I was expecting.

[bvanevery]

I found a bug in 1.53.  Inexplicably, AAA Tracking ability now costs 1 extra for a land unit.  Somehow the flag got set for that.  I must have made a copy paste error when working on the Air Superiority ability, as the flag isn't set in version 1.52.

Another issue: Air Superiority is now free for air units, and costs 1 extra for land units.  However, I didn't think about naval units.  It's free for them as well, and the only downside is using up an ability slot.  Not sure I'm ok with that.

So, this means there will be a corrective version 1.54.  I don't have anything else presently, although I wonder if I can teach the AI to use chemical weapons and commit minor atrocities?  Like include a X Recon Rover unit and see if it'll fight with it.  It's particularly relevant to Alien-Human warfare.  I'm currently playing a game as the Believers and I've almost finished genocide of the Caretakers.

[bvanevery]

I tried including a whole slew of predefined X units.  The AI factions made tons of X Laser Speeders, and fought plenty of wars with them.  However, I never saw a single atrocity.  No cities reduced, no reports of sanctions.  I even included the Caretakers and Usurpers, and the latter ended up fighting the Spartans.  No atrocities even though there aren't any Planetary Council consequences.  I don't think the AI knows what to do with these units.

I didn't try legalizing atrocities.  I don't think there's a point, as most of the time, atrocities will be illegal.  That means X is just an extra cost to the AI's units, if it's not going to utilize the capability.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.53 to 1.54:

AIR COMBAT

- AAA Tracking: cleared the flag for "Cost increased for land units".  It was inadvertently set in version 1.53.
- Air Superiority: now costs 1.  Cleared the flag for "Cost increased for land units".  In version 1.53 I made it a free ability, thinking it would simply be a weapon selection for planes.  However I neglected that this made it free for ships.

RESONANCE

- Resonance Laser: now has strength 2 and cost 2.  When the R-Laser had strength 3 and cost 4, it simply wasn't useful for much of anything and the AI would never build it.  Now it is reconceptualized as an improved recon laser that also destroys mindworms.
- Cloaking Field: now available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.  It fits the lore of this tech, and it allows the AI to make earlier threatening use of it.
- Cloaked R-Laser Speeder: now available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.  Set AI plan to -1 "Autocalculate".  With the unit being cheaper and available earlier, the AI will build it and do damage.
- R-Laser Needlejet, R-Laser Tactical: new predefined units available with C7 Organic Superlubricant.  These are the best cheap planes.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

- I tried making X Impact Speeder, Artillery, Marines, and Foil.  Also X Gatling Needlejet.  The AI built them, but did not use them to commit atrocities.  In my test game, I never tried to legalize atrocities, and neither did the AI.  Even if the AI started using them when atrocities are legal, most of the time, they would be illegal.  Thus, it's a waste of production.  So, no predefined X units.

[bvanevery]

The Pirates have stalled me out the last few games I've played against them.  Although all the games were viable, it was frustrating being slightly behind them all the time.  They're so spammy now, that they put a lot of additional strategic pressure on the map.  They have a way of shifting alliances around.  Like first everyone is fighting them, and then suddenly everyone's on their side and fighting me!  You also can't rely on oceanic travel, like if you want to send foil probe teams at stuff.  Anywhere near Pirate waters, you're gonna get sunk.  Last game, I was completely unable to penetrate the Pirate defenses to even infiltrate them.  Even with full on piles of cheap ships as escorts.  We'd get in big cheap ship naval wars, but I wouldn't be able to get a foil probe team through.

Since version 1.53, the Pirates don't learn how to make a Transport until later in the game.  This seems to help their gameplay quite a bit!

[bvanevery]

Details all u rest of factons r weenies

all u rest of factons r weenies

Finished my latest test game with the Cult of Planet.  Explore only research focus, per default.  Never even made a Gatling Laser.  Never learned how to make Needlejets, nor did anyone else.  Slimmed down the Explore tech tree to make it shorter and more direct, put the Xenoempathy Dome earlier.  Won the game by Diplomatic Victory before I finished the Dome.  I mean heck once you get Eudaimonia you can go Theocratic and pop boom your heart out, so why fight anymore?  I'd already taken over tons of cities to grow.  The Believers were the only very distant second for competition, and that worked out well with the Theocratic.

Adjusted the research weights on Fusion Power, because it's been the requirement for Diplomatic Victory for a long time.  Never actually built any fusion reactor unit, just needed to get my Diplomatic Victory.  Thought about what other tech I might attach Diplomatic Victory to, but the only other logical ones are Planet Busters, or doing the same thing as Economic Victory.  I think "midgame" is a good requirement for a Diplomatic Victory, as it's instant, and subject to Lal's 2X bonus.  Wouldn't want him declaring DV very early just because he beelined to B4 Planetary Economics, or stole it.  "Midgame" lets everyone on Planet grow enough of a population that you actually have to do something for a DV, instead of it being a fluke.  Build Tier 4 ala the Planetary Energy Grid is a bit too early, and Conquer Tier 7 ala Probability Mechanics and Planet Busters is a bit too late.  I don't think non-Conquer factions want to be bothered with all of that.

Anyways this game proves that you don't need to manufacture your own mindworms, to totally stomp everyone.  Captures are quite enough.  +5 PLANET is deadly.  I had the whole ocean too, due to Maritime Control Center.  I got sick of pushing ships around, they had nothing to do, so I just parked them.  Then eventually I needed to make the Network Backbone, so I sent them all to my capitol and disbanded them.

I've gotten some feedback from a playtester that the AI doesn't do well with the Cult.  I don't know if my tech tree shortenings are going to help that.  The Cult sure is deadly in the hands of a human player though!  Can't really see giving them any more advantages.

Details f33l ma pwr

f33l ma pwr

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.54 to 1.55:

EXPLORE TECH TREE

- Centauri Preserve: moved to E5 Centauri Psi.  Since making mindworms isn't available until later in the game, this facility is only useful for reducing eco-damage.  Centauri Psi was lacking any facility to give away, and E6 Eudaimonia was unnecessarily overloaded with stuff.
- Hab Complex: moved to B3 Ecological Engineering.  Awhile ago I put it in E2 Adaptive Economics because it seemed to be overwhelmingly difficult to obtain.  However having it available so early is not much of a development challenge, and also feels thematically incorrect.  I shall try making removing population limits as a kind of Build tech, more like the original game.
- Super Tensile Solids: set wealth=4 and growth=3, making it a B7 tech.  Now has B6 Fusion Power as a prereq, instead of E6 Eudiamonia.  Having it as an Explore tech feels thematically and play mechanically wrong.  I've played several games as the Cult of Planet where their natural progression was to hunker down and make their bases grow like crazy, instead of overrunning Planet.  I want Explore progressions after E6 Eudaimonia to be about mindworm power, not base building.
- Xenoempathy Dome: moved to E6 Eudaimonia.  The feeling of "overrunning Planet with mindworms" just hasn't been in the game since I moved the stuff so late, and this will help with that.  Also Eudaimonic is powerful and this will block the AIs from trading it away for awhile.
- Pholus Mutagen: moved to E8 The Will To Power.  It's more thematically appropriate and it makes the tech basically a game ender, the last thing any Explore faction needs to overrun Planet with mindworms.  It will also keep the AI from trading mindworm manufacturing ability for awhile.
- The Will To Power: set wealth=3.  The Pholus Mutagen limits eco-damage.
- Thought Control: moved to C6 Retroviral Engineering.  This is to create more of an Explore prereq for E7 Homo Superior.  I hope it doesn't become too attractive for the AI factions, which why I previously moved it to Tier 7.
- Retroviral Engineering: set wealth=1 and growth=3 as it gives Thought Control.
- Doctrine: Air Power: set growth=0, making it a pure Conquer tech.  I've never played a game where the Needlejet chassis had any impact on exploration at all.  They just don't have the range to scour Planet.  Unlike the Cruiser chassis, which can persist in field indefinitely, and bring back Artifacts from far away.  Having this as partially an Explore tech was diverting the attenion of the Cult of Planet towards making planes.  That's wrong for Explore specialization as a strategy.  I'll leave this one firmly in the hands of Conquer factions, which is how planes always get used in the real world.
- Mind/Machine Interface: set wealth=0 and growth=0.  It no longer gives Thought Control and is now a pure Conquer tech.  Now has D6 Digital Sentience as a prereq instead of Organic Superlubricant.  I want Organic Superlubricant in a different part of the tech tree.  The ideal faction to figure out MMI would now be a Discover Conquer faction, such as the Hive.
- Organic Superlubricant: set wealth=3 and growth=1.   Now a C7 tech with C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels and B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering as prereqs.  I don't want this tech as a distraction in the Explore tech tree.  Although a hovertank is useful for exploration, it's not nearly as useful as a captured mindworm.  Nor is it needed for combat when you have captured mindworms as your basic combat tactic.  It comes too late in the game to be all that useful for exploration.  Meanwhile, it's tremendously useful for building mag tubes on top of fungus, or for clearning fungus.  The ideal faction to learn the tech would now be a Build Conquer faction, such as the Believers.
- R-Laser Needlejet, R-Laser Tactical: removed.  The Explore part of the tech tree is now more separate from Conquer.  E4 Bioadaptive Resonance and C5 Doctrine: Air Power don't have any common descendent in the tech tree, until quite late in the game.  By then we'd be using R-Bolts and possibly quantum reactors, which can't be specified in a stock alphax.txt.
- N-Space Compression: now has C7 Organic Superlubricant as a prereq, instead of C7 Probability Mechanics.  Needed Organic Superlubricant to be a prereq for something.  It turns out that N-Space Compression was made into a B8 tech in version 1.43.  A partial build tech a better prereq than a pure Conquer tech.
- Tank Probe: now given by B8 N-Space Compression.
- Biomachinery: now has B8 N-Space Compression as a prereq, instead of E8 Orbital Construction.  Orbital Construction was a prereq for too many techs.
- Enhanced Tank Probe: now given by E9 Biomachinery.  Biomachinery has C8 Self-Aware Machines as a prereq.  It is the 1st tech where both hovertanks and Algorithmic Enhancement are assured.
- Enhanced Rover Probe: new predefined unit given by C8 Self-Aware Machines.  Need to give an Algorithmically Enhanced land unit earlier since hovertanks aren't assuredly available yet.

DIPLOMATIC VICTORY

- Fusion Power: set power=4, tech=1, wealth=3, and growth=3, making it a C6 tech.  Although it doesn't give any direct research benefits, it's an important bottleneck in the Discover tech tree.  It should not be an unresearchable barrier for Discover factions.  It makes Diplomatic Victory possible, which is dependent on votes, which is dependent on population.  I played a test game as the Cult of Planet where nobody got to Fusion Power before I stomped them.  The technologically regressive Believers were the only distantly competitive faction.  I was building Tree Farms and likely to win by Diplomatic Victory, if only I knew the tech.
- Industrial Lab: moved to D7 Unified Field Theory.  I think having it in D5 Applied Relativity was giving it away too soon and creating too much of a Morganite flavor in the Discover tech tree.  I did not want to move it to C6 Fusion Power as that would be giving away way too much stuff at once.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=3.  It gives Industrial Lab.
- Applied Relativity: set wealth=0.  It no longer gives Industrial Lab.

[bvanevery]

Details did I remember to put a probe team in there?

did I remember to put a probe team in there?

Even after all these years of modding, I'm still back to the single Number One thing I hate the most about the original game.  The overpowered probe teams taking over cities.  I even doubled the cost of probe team actions and still this happens.  This has been a long and fairly uneventful game, to the point of starting to bore me, as what can anyone do to me?  But that doesn't mean I want to be cheesed.  I can't even remember if I defended this city with a probe team.  I know I did all the others, that I've done this tedious drill of slowly forwarding my probe teams to the front line, every time I take a city.  It was 10:30 PM when this happened and I'm tired.  I hate, really hate the game of oops gee one little oversight.  High maintenance babysitting game.

Oh, and this had to be the turn I didn't actually save the game before hitting End Turn.  Of all the self-defensive bug prevention I've been doing, since there was a slew of "enemy factions in cities" bugs for awhile.  Somehow I managed to get past all of them without having to invoke the Scenario Editor, by slightly changing the order of my moves.  One time I disbanded a sea former to keep it from being hit by a conventional missile, and that seemed to get me past a problem.  Whatever.

Details he was a rich, rich socialist

he was a rich, rich socialist

Ok in MY 2333 I did have 1 probe team in there.  Pretty minimal defense, and hadn't seen any probe team actions by anyone previously.  Domai had a lot of money and just plain spent it to get at my base.  Hmm, how much for all that?

Details not that much

not that much

Doesn't look like he spent any great wealth to take me over.  Better check whether he's got more income than I'd expect.

Details a low budget operation

a low budget operation

Nope.  He's as po as someone getting trounced should be.  He bought me for something like 2194 - 1712 = 500 credits, assuming he didn't have any other expenditures.  He had Thought Control, which surprised me as I haven't been paying attention.  That would put him at +3 PROBE to my +1 PROBE faction ability.

The action was taken really near to his home base and fairly far away from mine.  I had just raised my JUSTICE to +3 but my empire is vast.  I thought I'd forego the slight income advantage of Capitalist, as I was getting enough Bureaucracy penalty that an additional +1 JUSTICE for Green, was making me almost as much money.

So it was a legit move.  I just think this whole game mechanic sucks.  It's always been boring as hell having to worry about this.  And after a long game, late at night, I'm bored.  Not gonna even bother continuing this game.  It's classic "4X takes too long when you won many hours ago".

If I were doing more of a "go your own way" mod, maybe I'd just get rid of mind control entirely.  But I'm not.  I've only outright killed game features if they're over the top egregiously bad.  That has been: Copters, Bunkers, probe team base MORALE increasing with tech level, and High Morale.  The last one wasn't so much about egregiousness, as it's just yet another buff that throws off the combat balance.  Other buffs I put way late in the tech tree, to render them unimportant in practice, but available as toys if you want them.  "High Morale" is too low tech to do that with though, so I removed it.

Well, this whole thing still bugs me.  But this late in my modding development, I don't know that I'll do anything about it.  I already doubled mind control cost for most factions.  I don't think tripling it, would stop this from happening, because it would still be way way cheap.  I need a hack that seriously increases the cost of mind control in cities.  That works with the stock binary and doesn't break something else.  There might not be any such thing.

I could have gotten the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm when it was available; I just chose other Secret Projects.  I could have done Thought Control, which gives +3 PROBE and thus immunity to mind control.  However it also penalizes RESEARCH and I'm playing a research faction.

Worth noting that in this game, I'm the victim of my own "relaxed conquest" play style.  I deliberately didn't make very many military units, because it's boring pushing around too many of them.  But if I had piles and piles of units, Domai might have been crushed in a few turns.  Instead of me gradually taking 1 city, gradually doing the terraforming without building any new units, because again more unit pushing would be boring.  I was starting to push out a navy because the Caretakers have to die for me to declare Diplomatic Victory.  I even got chemical weapons legalized at the beginning of the game, and never used the capability.

[bvanevery]

Details no chance

no chance

This time I'm terminating with extreme prejudice.  Chemical weapons with the Usurpers actually makes that rather easy.  Maybe too easy.  But I just can't in good conscience, deny a spacefaring race, a WW I era technology.  I forgot that there's no consequence for using them, especially not on the Caretakers, in early naval battles.  At least my early laser ships were cheaper.  The only reason not to use them on the Caretakers, is to take over cities with their full population.  My own cities are fine and better centralized.

The Caretakers wiped out the Spartans, who simply got a bad start.  They actually gave the Cult of Planet a walk-in of Sparta Command, or something like that.  Anyways it was conquered when I first saw it.  The Consciousness was my next-door neighbor and I was fine with that, until they took over one of my ships!  That's grounds for obliteration.  Pirates did similar to me later.  What's with these humans thinking they can just take what isn't theirs?

I was gifted the Manifold Nexus at the very beginning of the game.  I used my first 3 colonists to surround it, preventing anyone from laying any claim to it.  Getting to play like a Caretaker who also gets +1 MORALE, is pretty advantageous!  I think the technical term for this particular game is a cakewalk.  Sure there have been some probe teams, and I even allowed them to take some of my X Recon Rovers.  It didn't matter because I had the Consciousness on the ropes.

Details the causeway

the causeway

eXterminating humans is just my day job.  I'm about to bring it to my enemy proper, courtesy of the Weather Paradigm.  Prototyped the X Impact weapons just in time for the onslaught, without benefit of a Skunkworks.

Could have stolen that tech from Lal if we hadn't made peace.  He declared war on me because he's a sanctimonious pusillanimous wimp.  I was about to start committing atrocities against his sea bases, when the Pirates pulled their shenanigans.  So I did an about face and started wiping out the more powerful and closer enemy.

[bvanevery]

That last game, I was close to a Conquest victory.  Nothing but scraps of the Cult and 2 Pirate cities left.  But, it was just so tedious to push units around to finish off those last bits, I begged off and started a new game!

Details easy killing

easy killing

Roze is actually my ally.  She was too expensive to bribe, but my rival Svensgaard was not!  So we created a veto-proof majority.  I should have made the proposal before she had a chance to call the election, but sunspots had just ended and I wasn't thinking clearly about it.  If I had done that, likely I would not have had to pay anyone a darned thing.

I'm still contemplating that chemical weapons are overpowered.  I could make them more expensive, 100% extra cost instead of 50%, but I don't think that would change what they can do.  The AI just doesn't know how to use them as effectively as a human player.

One possibility would be to keep them illegal forever.  Then at least they'd have serious consequences for human vs. human conflict.  That, unfortunately, would also get rid of the fun voting mechanic.  It also wouldn't do anything about human vs. alien or alien vs. alien conflict.

Hmm, what if I made them increase with the cost of the weapon?  It would have to result in X Impact weapons being horrifically expensive though, because I've won my last few games almost entirely with Impact.  Bet it isn't enough to work.