SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

Details isolated biologist

isolated biologist

Going vertical with a few cities, doesn't seem to be worth anything.  It's definitely not making me a tech powerhouse, despite +1 RESEARCH and a Biology Lab and Network Node in every city.  I'm not really any better than factions that spread out horizontally.  I'm worse than the University, which spread out a fair amount + got the Monsoon Jungle.  I don't feel that bad about them being in the lead.  I just don't feel like everyone else should be at parity with me.

For a long time, I've thought that tech bonuses aren't worth that much.  It's why I upped the University to +3 RESEARCH some time ago.  I don't have anyone who's at +2.  I have certainly done well with PLANET though.  Pretty much the undisputed pod popper of the game, especially at sea.  This, however, still hasn't catapulted me greatly beyond any other faction though.

The game is a bit dull because my 1 enemy is very far away, and my nearest neighbor is an ally.  I could betray them, especially since I completed the Ascetic Virtues and could go Police State instead of Democratic.  But they're not near enough, or beneficial enough, for me to be terribly motivated to do that. 

Hm, I've got more Artifacts than I thought.  11 of them.  I could cash those for tech, but I generally prefer to rush Secret Projects with them.  I haven't had much opportunity to do that this game, meaning that I've been behind others on tech.

I just keep making Clean Speeder Formers because I have nothing better to build.  Everything is too far away to bother to invade.  Even pushing foil probe teams is too much of a chore, and I've only got a few of them out and about.

This game seems like a complete waste of time.  Going vertical in a few cities doesn't work.

[bvanevery]

I don't have anyone who's at +2 RESEARCH. 

I forgot that the Cybernetic Consciousness is my faction that has that.  Reminded by starting a game and randomly getting them.  Their bonuses were feeble enough that I made them a "collects interest on credits" faction, utilizing a play mechanic that's available in the original game, but wasn't actually provided in any of the stock faction files.  I haven't gotten especially wealthy with the Cyborgs either, as I didn't intend to make them overpowered in that regard.  But they are a hybrid research and moneygrubbing faction, with default AI research foci of Discover Build.

[Later] Well I managed to play not very well with them.  Fights against my immediate land neighbors went fine, I did those right.  Lots of Recon Rovers and some rails.  At sea though, first I pushed all these Foil Probe Teams into a large large ocean.  They were mostly summarily killed by a small number of Believer ships that are completely immune to Mind Control.

So later I thought I'd correct my mistake and push lots of Laser armed ships.  They eventually reached Peacekeeper waters very very far away from home, and very exhausting to get them there 5 moves at a time.  Lal just summarily took them over with a foil probe, even though I was Police State and had a +1 PROBE advantage for my faction, for a grand total of +2.  Yes I could have doubled my ships up to prevent this, but good grief this is so tedious.

I did not do especially well on either research or money.  Both the Peacekeepers and the Free Drones were really cleaning up this game, unmolested by me.  I quit.

I think the moral of the story is, the Cyborgs don't have much in the way of special advantages.  I guess I balanced them "correctly" that way, but it also bored me.  RESEARCH just isn't worth much of anything.  I also learned Knowledge, so even had +4 RESEARCH.  And unlike the previous game with the Gaians, I spread out just fine and had plenty of cities.

I was doing Police State Socialist Knowledge and then Police State Green Knowledge most of the time.  Maybe one has to do Democratic Capitalist Knowledge to get the +2 ECONOMY, really make money, and thereby really get research going.  I had a lot of fungus to start with and the Cult of Planet as an enemy for awhile, so at first I didn't want to do that.  Also I thought the stronger probe teams would buy me something, and in practice it never did.

As for making units, it seems like lots of Formers is the only correct thing to do.  Building mag tubes is the only way to get anywhere quickly.  Pushing ships around continents takes way way too long and is so godawful tedious.

[bvanevery]

Details pointless fijords

pointless fijords

I just did the most ridiculous and excessive amount of terraforming I've done in a long long long time.  For awhile I simply didn't have anything useful to make in my cities, and I was too far away from anyone else to make military units.  I'd already conquered the Morganites, who started on the same small island as myself.  Got them to surrender without taking a single city actually, because I outsettled them.  By the time I was ready to start taking them over, I had all these troops and they knew their situation was hopeless.

So here I am on this island, nobody else to fight.  I build causeways to my nearest neighbors, one to the east, another to the west.  Most of what you see here was open ocean.  After the causeways were completed, I just kept building stuff until a resource special would appear.

I wanted my conquered Morganites to go make use of this, but they never did.  That might be a result of their pure Build focus, which tends to strongly centralize any colonies.  Explore, by contrast, causes the AI to scatter their colonies much farther over the map.  Conquer does that to some extent as well.

I started out trying to raise mountains to see if I could get any useful farmland out of it, or ruin my neighbbors' farms.  None of that worked though.  I had already long since settled and terraformed my own land to perfection, and just didn't need farmland.  No point in making energy parks either, as Supply Crawlers take a long time to get in my mod.  I did make a bunch of Thermal Boreholes, but they were underutilized due to lack of food.  I could have built more Condensers but I didn't want to ruin my forests.

I finally stole Tree Farm tech from the Believers, and was starting to work on food, when I thought Good God I've been terraforming for way too long.  None of it was of any actual value, and it had gotten old!  So I quit the game and wrote this up.

I actually started making military units as soon as my causeways were completed.  But I had made so many Formers, that this was just the product of having them available.  Hm, what was the final count?  63 Clean Formers, 13 Clean Fungi Speeder Formers, and 7 Clean Synth Speeder Formers that I completion scummed in the early game. 

I probably should have cashed them in for Secret Projects, maybe saving my Artifacts for techs rather than using them to rush projects.  Come to think of it, those Clean Synth Speeder Formers were worth a fortune, to the point of being a serious cheat / exploit.  Whether that or armored rover colony pods, it's generally my policy to just use them instead of cashing them, because it would be such a cheat.  Completion scumming can be pretty overpowered if you micromanage your unit production.  It's pretty much how I exceed the AI in the early game.  Somehow the AI always manages to leverage its advantages though and catch up.  At least, someone catches up.  Like Miriam was just stomping everyone this game.
 
Maybe I should have made an avalanche of Recon Rovers and just beaten up some neighbors by sheer attrition.  Or X Recon Rovers and eliminated the Caretakers earlier, instead of waiting around until Needlejets became available.  I only built 1 of those anyways, since it became time to do the Tree Farms.

Probably, Thermal Boreholes and Condensers are the only correct "Weather Paradigm" strategy.  I just hate playing like I'm supposed to be the Thinker Mod AI.  I'm seriously biased towards forests.  They look so much better on Planet.

Maybe next time I won't bother with so many Clean Formers.  That way, I won't feel like I need to keep them.  I could just cash regular Formers to do SPs and get my SUPPORT back.

[bvanevery]

Details early AI threat of Economic Victory

early AI threat of Economic Victory

Morgan is threatening victory in 2178 !  And because of my good modding, having arrived at this point, he only needs 5 years to do it.  This isn't what I had in mind.  If I decide to regard this as a bug, the most expedient fix would be to require a tech later than B4 Planetary Economics to make Economic Victory possible.  Probably when I readjusted the COMMERCE progression, it's too easy to pull way ahead in the early game.  Factions have different research paths, haven't met yet, and aren't trading so many techs with each other.  I don't intend Economic Victory to be some kind of early tech victory for focusing on Build research.  One should have to build a bunch of stuff, and have a worthwhile empire.  I seriously doubt Morgan's empire is actually worth anything.

Thought I'd better have a look at the game with the Scenario editor.  Morganites have 9 cities.  They have a Treaty with the University (me) and the Pirates, and get a bit of Commerce income for that.  Other faction cities: University 9, Pirates 11, Drones 11, Cyborgs 10, Spartans 10, Cult 6.  I think the Cult got eradicated at the beginning of the game, but I'm not sure.  Could have been the previous game.  Probably by stray mindworm, although if it was a faction walk-in, they could have renamed the base.  I'm too lazy to go through all the bases to find out if any have been captured.  It's not important; what matters is nobody's ahead on city development.

B3 Superconductor, B3 Ecological Engineering, and B4 Planetary Economics each increase COMMERCE by 1.  Morgan doesn't get a COMMERCE bonus in my mod, since he already gets +1 ECONOMY.  A high ECONOMY will give bonuses to COMMERCE.  He's Democratic Capitalist Wealth, giving him +4 ECONOMY really early!  That's worth +2 COMMERCE.  So Morgan is at +5 COMMERCE, really early.

Other factions: University knows B3 Superconductor, Cyborgs know B3 Ecological Engineering, Pirates surprisingly don't know any B3 techs, Free Drones don't even know B2, and neither do Spartans or Cult.  The Cyborgs and the Pirates are Democratic Capitalist, but this only gives +1 ECONOMY, no COMMERCE bonus.  That means only 2 factions are at +1 COMMERCE and the rest are at 0.

The Economic Victory equation must give a really big advantage to Morgan.  My memory is if the COMMERCE difference is big enough, a faction only needs 1000 credits to win the game.  Which is pretty trivial for the AI factions to procure; I regularly see some factions with bank accounts in excess of 2000 credits.  Hm, Morgan now has 44 credits.  What about last year?  Yep, 1039 credits.  Morgan has paid the minimum to win.

The rest of my COMMERCE sequence: B5 Environmental Economics, B6 Industrial Automation, B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering, B9 Global Energy Theory.

Hmm, how many COMMERCE techs did the original game have?  Hm, surprisingly only 6: Industrial Economics, Industrial Automation, Environmental Economics, Planetary Economics, Industrial Nanorobotics, and Sentient Econometrics.  So we've got the same number of gradations, but mine are biased towards earlier in the game.

Economic Victory formula:

Your commerce rating is equal to the number of commerce techs you know, +1 if you're Morgan, plus whatever you get from your ECONOMY rating (+1 for +3 ECONOMY, +2 for +4 ECONOMY, and +3 for +5 ECONOMY). This value is squared, then add 1; the cost is divided by the result.

So +5 COMMERCE is a huge early game bonus compared to +1 COMMERCE, because of the square.  Like 25:1.  No wonder Morgan can buy all these little bitty bases so cheap.

Early game COMMERCE techs, would create a more stable baseline of bonus differential.  Like let's say B1 Industrial Base, B2 Industrial Economics, and B2 Ethical Calculus became COMMERCE techs.  Then the factions would have had COMMERCE as follows: Morganites +8, Cyborgs and University +4, Pirates +3, Drones Spartans and Cult +1. 8^2 / 4^2 = 4:1 bonus over the leading factions though.  Maybe it's more stable, but that doesn't sound stable enough.

Empires need time to get bigger, and bases time to get larger.  Clearly, that means moving the tech for Economic Victory later.

Let's say I keep my mod's COMMERCE sequence, and Morgan gets to the B6 techs while others are back on B4.  Further assume that Morgan doesn't learn Digital Sentience, so can't go Cybernetic, so can't do +5 ECONOMY, only +4.  Makes me wonder if Digital Sentience should be a COMMERCE tech though, especially since the Cyborgs are my "techie moneygrubber" faction.  Anyways, Morgan gets +5 COMMERCE from tech.  Democratic Capitalist Wealth and his faction bonus give +4 ECONOMY, which is worth another +2 COMMERCE.  So Morgan is at +7 COMMERCE, while most other factions are at +3 COMMERCE.  7^2 / 3^2= 49 / 9 = 5.4x bonus over other factions.

Let's say I add the B1 B2 B2 techs as COMMERCE.  That would put Morgan at +10 COMMERCE while most factions are at +6 COMMERCE.  10^2 / 6^2 = 2.77x bonus over other factions.  About half the bonus.

I dunno, maybe this COMMERCE thing is just a bad mechanic.

I'm going to try making B6 Industrial Automation the requirement for Economic Victory, and see if the Morganite AI pulls any more shenanigans.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.55 to 1.56:

ECONOMIC VICTORY

- Technology for economic victory: now B6 Industrial Automation.  When it was B4 Planetary Economics, the Morganic AI tried to corner the energy market in the early game for a mere 1000 credits.  This is because COMMERCE bonuses are squared.  Morgan was managing to reach +5 COMMERCE in the early game when other factions only had +1 COMMERCE, resulting in a 25:1 bonus.  Since empires hadn't expanded either tall or wide much yet, the cost to buy them out was trivial.  A later tech requirement, gives empires more time to expand, build up, and have competing economic value.
- Bio-Engineering, Industrial Nanorobotics, Sentient Econometrics: added "Increases commerce income" flags.  Intent is to make it cheaper to Corner The Energy Market in the mid to late game, if one is ahead on Build techs.

[bvanevery]

I went through a period of playing Galactic Civilizations III and finally got mostly sick of it.  The civilian micromanagement in that game is interminable.  SMAC seems quite a bit more playable by comparison, even if it has problems.

Today, I returned to playing SMAC in order to playtest a minor predefined units change.  Something I've thought about as far as improving the AI's effectiveness for a few months now, but got worn out bothering about it.  Started up a game today and never really tested what I intended, because, uh, the AI kicked my butt.

Details ferocity of the flanking

ferocity of the flanking

The Galactic Civilizations III AI is crassly stupid, especially at the beginning of the game.  This had gotten me in the habit over the past couple of months, of not treating it with much respect.  SMAC is not the same as that!  I built a line of cities straight towards the Cult of Planet, thinking I'd get the production drop on them and just summarily run them over.  Didn't really think very hard about the Usurpers on my flank.

Well, the most extreme city on my road, the Cult took over with a probe team.  That's because the rivers were positioned such, that I couldn't get a unit up there to intervene.  Fine, ok, that city wasn't much developed anyways.  Figured it would give me an opportunity to infiltrate them no problemo, steal a tech, and then finally liberate it.  Not a big deal.

Well, the Usurpers coming in overland with lots of Recon Rovers, was a very big deal.  I forgot how deadly that can be.  I really didn't have adequate prep for that, and I'd stuck my neck out where it would be cut off.  I don't usually get overrun, at least, not in the past when I'm used to playing the game and know what I'm doing.  Between the 2 of them, they slaughtered me.  And they'd probably keep doing it, because that's an awful lot of material coming.

So I quit.  Lesson learned.  Don't underestimate this AI.  Sometimes, my own mod beats me.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.56 to 1.57:

PREDEFINED UNITS

- Drop Plasma Garrison: removed.  The AI did not make effective use of this unit and obsessed over building it, when other more effective units were available.  Setting Plan=-1 "Auto Calculate" was a bad idea because the AI decided it was an assault unit.  Also even if it had been used as intended as a scout, its lack of Hypnotic Trance made it vulnerable to mindworm attacks in the fungus.
- Drop Rover: removed.  Setting Plan=-1 "Auto Calculate" was a bad idea because the AI decided it was an assault unit.  It built lots of them instead of the far more effective and annoying Cloaked R-Laser Speeder.  I tried setting AI Plan=3 "Reconnaissance", which did cause the Ai to build very few of them, like 2 units.  However it did not make any use of the units, it just seemed to park them inside bases and forget about them.  So, best to get rid of it entirely.

[bvanevery]

Details alien rich

alien rich

It is actually possible to win an Economic Victory after all.  Meaning, the game circumstances can arise where it's rational to do so.  I got the random draw of the Caretakers at the start, which is always expected to be easier than other factions.  My previous game was a Lal game where I grew big cities and won by Diplomatic Victory, so those kinds of play dynamics were on my mind.  It doesn't make as much sense for the Caretakers since they can't win that way, but eh, bigger is better?  I didn't pigeonhole myself into any one strategy to start with.  I just played the game, and reached a point where it seemed like Economic Victory could actually be a viable way to win with less effort.

I started in a very northwards, isolated, landlocked from the major oceans portion of the map.  I did my requisite Explore thing, as a +1 PLANET faction is going to do, and I'd probably do in any event anyways.  The Usurpers turned out to be very nearby, and so I initiated rather early war with them.  They were behind an inland sea, so it was a matter of out-colonizing them while preventing their expansion into the main continental body.  They did a poor job at Exploring, so pretty soon I felt confident that my big spread wasn't threatened.  I just waited until I got all my cities connected by mag tubes and then pretty much creamed them with Recon Rovers.  I didn't manage to exterminate them, but I did them so much damage that they never recovered as a force in the game.  Just a few sea bases scattered here and there on the map.

Lal turned out to be my other neighbor on the eastern part of the continent.  I didn't try to provoke him, I was even Democratic the whole time.  But he did something, I can't remember if it was a surprise attack or a theft.  So I walked all over him.  Mostly Recon Rovers, eventually stole Impact weapons from somebody and finished the last few cities with them.  It took me that long to get to his Secret Projects, as let's face it, Recon Rovers aren't exactly major ordinance.  There were some sunspots for awhile, and by the time they lifted, Lal only had 1 offshore city left.  Finally he surrendered as my thrall.

So I had this huge empire from landlocked early militarism on a large continent.  But meanwhile, the Data Angels had had a totally unrestricted hand on the other half of the map.  They'd built all kinds of Secret Projects while I was busy fighting.  Fortunately, I had also collected all kinds of Artifacts.  I never really stopped exploring, although I did tend to get killed venturing very far into foreign waters.  I had very few sea ports and it took a long time to build those up into productive centers, since I had started so far inland.

I went on a campaign of trying to steal the technologies that other factions had accumulated, particularly the Data Angels.  This took a long time, and the bulk of thefts were perpetrated by amphibious rover teams.  My cruiser probe teams, they were consistently killed by the Believers patrolling the oceans.  Hardly any of those made it through, and pretty much proves a real naval effort would have been necessary.  Too much unit pushing work, and I had lots of clean land formers by then.  I built rails all the way to the borders of the Data Angels empire, needing Advanced Ecological Engineering for the last few stretches.  If I'd had the Weather Paradigm way earlier in the game, I could have bridged the continents and made a mag tube conquest very easily, but that didn't happen.  And I'm too lazy to ferry lots of units around.  Although I did a tiny bit of work with Marines, mostly I just stopped fighting when I got to this natural barrier.

Would the Data Angels come to me?  They never did.  They were happy to try to subjugate the Hive, and later the Morganites and Believers.  Their Laser Needlejets would sometimes kill some of my formers, which is pretty much why I put that cheap unit into my mod, but it didn't really stop me from doing anything.  There was a time period when I AAA covered all of my construction, and later on, I just didn't bother anymore.

Once I finally stole all the techs, I cashed in the huge pile of Artifacts I'd accumulated.  I built all kinds of SPs and got just ridiculously far ahead in tech.  I could have embarked upon a conquest right then, and it would have been a cakewalk.  But it also would have been a lot of mouseclicks, I thought, so I embarked upon a path of less resistance.  When I got the Habitation Dome tech, and the Cloning Vats, I thought seriously in terms of just getting monstrously bigger.  Multiplying the advantages I'd already gained.

Details the core of the sprawl

the core of the sprawl

I never even bothered to garrison my empire with Fusion units, or anything beyond Silksteel.  Nobody was actually making a move to threaten me.  I didn't bother with advanced research facilities or factories either.  I wasn't causing any floods and I intended to keep it that way.  Made Hab Domes, made Hybrid Forests, did Aquafarms and Thermocline Transducers where appropriate.  Global Warming happened because of the Data Angels and I had to do river flood repair work a few times.

Finally I started getting more money than I could actually use up buying new facilities.  I looked at how much Economic Victory would cost, and it was only around 40k.  That surprised me compared to previous games I'd played, where it was often 200k.  I don't know exactly why.  Maybe I had just gotten that much farther ahead of everyone else's economic development, with the big Artifacts cash in.  Maybe my empire was just that grand.  Whatever.

I'd already built a decent number of Orbital Defense Pods, in case of trouble.  I started building a lot of Orbital Power Transmitters to augment my pretty profitable empire.  Then I realized I'd seriously overdone it, that I'd built more than my city sizes could profit from.  So I switched over to Sky Hydroponics Labs.  Which then again I had plenty of, and hadn't quite reached the Cornering The Energy Market threshold yet.

So I made military units, preparing for an invasion.  If there really wasn't anything else to do in the game, why stand on principle?  I didn't have anywhere near as many formers anymore, so I didn't feel like doing the usual massive mag tube invasion.  I made a lot of Shard Hovertanks.  And a lot of Conventional Missiles, and a modest number of cheap drop units, thinking perhaps I'd take over the Manifold Nexus deep in Believer territory.  Knock them out of the warmongering and so forth.

Details victory in five

victory in five

Well, none of that has happened yet.  Many missiles are now in the sky and inbound off the Data Angels and Believers coastlines.  I seriously doubt they'll shoot any down, as I've never seen the AI do that before.  Even if they do, it won't matter because I'm going to win this game in 5 years.  Them's my modding rules: it takes so long to pile up the money, I just can't see making the player wait another 20 years for the payoff.  If your enemies can't do anything about the situation in 5 years, well they all deserve to be under your economic thumb!

I'll add the screenshots in a minute here.  The Windows+G method of capturing is really good for getting the initial images, but the file sizes are too large for this site.  So I have to process them into something smaller.  I want to save my writeup meanwhile and not lose any of this work.  My saved game files actually are marked Cheater.  That's not my fault, there was an "enemy unit in the wrong city" bug earlier in the game, and I had to use the Scenario Editor to get rid of it.  That's the one bug I consistently get with the vanilla binary.  And unfortunately, Scient's patch doesn't fix that bug.  Anyways, BRB with the pics.  And then I'll do a final victory writeup in another post.

[bvanevery]

I pacified the Hive by orbital dropping into a base that the Data Angels had already emptied out.  I wrested the Manifold Nexus from the Believers.  They were more stubborn and it took multiple turns of cheap drop troops and expensive Conventional Missiles to bring them to heel.  They really only gave in when my cheap gravships got there and started wiping out empty size 1 sea bases.  My expensive tanks were rather slow to get produced.  My few remaining formers and a new spew of mindworms crossed the Data Angel's frontier long before the tanks were available.  Roze cried uncle pretty fast and offered a Truce after losing only 1 city.  That left me with a ridiculously large invasion force with nothing needed to do.

Details the occupation

the occupation

For sake of form I eradicated the last 2 Usurper enclaves, in an inland lake.  The 1st one went down with some CMs and clever Elite amphibious speeder movement.  The 2nd was just summarily overwhelmed by the gravships arriving.  An early drop gravship wiped out a sea colonist that might have delayed their death.  With this many resources, why shouldn't I be thorough? 

I clearly could have won this game eons ago if I'd just done straight conquest.  I guess winning by Economic Victory is a matter of style.  It did make sense in terms of winning by just sitting around, as opposed to Transcending or building subspace beacons.  I still don't quite have the techs for those yet.  I was doing Knowledge Cybernetic for a long time, but I never built advanced research facilities except in my capitol.  Maybe that's why I only got a tech every 3 to 4 turns.  Once I decided to go for EV I switched to Wealth, to make it a little cheaper to pay the Cornering The Market cost.  After I paid it, I went to Power, since I had the Cloning Vats and no penalty for that.

Details you only have everything to lose

you only have everything to lose

I hit End Turn expecting the factions to meekly submit to my economic rule.  After all, the amount of force I have in theater to keep everyone in line, is absolutely overwhelming.  Not to mention all the cheap cloaked hovertanks back home as a reserve, exactly in case Roze were to pull something like this.  Well, here we are.  Is she going to assault a few mindworms and then the game declares me the victor anyways?  Or should I go through the motions and actually use all those offensive tanks?  Or the incredible numbers of probe teams that have nothing to do, that could have bestowed endless plagues eons ago?  In what style does this end?

Details too little too late Roze

too little too late Roze

Nope it's over.  She killed at most 5 gravships.  I'm always irritated by surprise attacks that don't do any real damage.  You'd think the AI could weigh the odds of success better than that.

The score was 3600 or something like that.  Since my game was marked as Cheated, it wouldn't do any real score analysis, so I'm not bothering with that screenshot.  This game might have made it into my top 5 scores, but it's a long ways behind the top 2 slots.  Those are games where I either built or conquered pretty much every SP, and I don't think I dawdled either.  Lotta dawdling this game, when I think about it.  My opening was extremely efficient and that's why I got so big and swollen.  Could have just kept on rolling.  Didn't.

Well, better luck next time?  At least I now know that Economic Victory is as viable as Transcend or Progenitor Victory.  But if I had played a human faction, I would have had Diplomatic Victory with all those big cities, possibly upon building the Empath Guild.  Certainly upon building Clinical Immortality, I can't imagine anyone even coming close to me at that point.

I always say the next game is going to be the one where I really just keep the military steamroller rolling.  And then I rarely actually do it.  I just get tired of pushing the units around.  I guess I spend too much time terraforming stuff.  Every single tile.  This time I did aquifers, a lot of soil enrichers, and the stupid floods kept making me do those rivers over again.  That would have been a good reason to wipe out the Data Angels, right there.  Gotta preserve Planet!