Turning SMAX back into strategy game

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

DISTRIBUTING MILITARY TECHNOLOGY ACROSS TECHNOLOGY TREE

I've created simple program that reads technology tree and calculates statistical average for each technology discovery sequence. That is if some technology has average sequence 4 then it is most often be discovered fourth. Of course, the deviations are huge but knowing the average is good anyway. See attached "ac.xlsx" spreadsheet, "SMAX weapon armor" worksheet. Item lists on the left for vanilla. Item lists on the right - my modifications. Top chart shows vanilla weapon/armor progression. Bottom chart - my modifications. Charts do not include special items with inbuilt abilities but tables are.
As you can see, vanilla progression is pretty not well distributed. Sometimes you have nothing for long time, sometimes they start coming in quick succession. My version is a little bit smoother. It should not be exactly like that. Anyone can tweak it a little bit to their liking by selecting different item triggering technologies. This exercise can be repeated for any modified tech tree as well.
An alternative approach taken in AI Growth mode is to hard chain military technologies to ensure strict item progression. Theoretically speaking, this is an ideal approach. However, I personally don't think it is an imperative to force the progression as long as it is so on average.

You can see my modifications for weapon/armor strength on the same worksheet lower chart. I kept weapon strength within the original range to keep their assigned pictures. I raised armor strength to keep up with corresponding contemporary weapon. This again is not mandatory and one could strengthen armor even more. However, I didn't want to do it to make sure attackers have a decent chance to take out unprotected defenders outside of bases.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

UNIT PRICING

Have a look at my attached "unitcostcalculator.ods" worksheet where I tried different cost models. You can play with it too if you like.

Let me non-constructively whine here a little about unit cost formula.
It is simple impossible and soooooo broken. Every other rule that follows and tries to fix it breaks it even more. Few examples, just for fun. Pure speeder attacker costs 3 (three!) times more that same strength infantry. I understand speeder has its benefits but not at this price. Changing pure attacker armor from 1 to 2 suddenly makes it about 50-100% more costly. Pure defenders cost progression is quadratic with armor cost!!! This nonsense comes from special rule about minimal weapon. One would guess it was invented to force player to factor half decent attack into a pure defender for the same price. Pitiful attempt that failed. Now another rule nullifies this as even though this extra weapon is factored in the price already changing pure defender attack from 1 to 2 immediately bumps a price about 20% more! Enough of this.

In short, advice for novice players: don't build land mixed units (attack + defense) and don't build air armored units (obviously) - they are ridiculously expensive. I do not even bother to balance them in my adjustment. So only unit class I consider are: infantry defender, infantry attacker, speeder attacker, hovertank attacker, full packed sea units, air attackers.

Here are my attempts in balancing this class costs.
Attacker cost goes linear with weapon cost so the weapon cost should be proportional to strength. Defender cost goes quadratic with armor cost so the armor cost should slow down with armor rating.
Speeder should cost more than infantry but not by that much. To align them the only choice I had is to add 1 to chassis price of land units making them 2-3-4 for infantry-speeder-hovertank, respectively. That changed the cost of some non combat units too but it is easy to fix since most not combat units have their price slot in alphax.txt. Overall I made speeder price equal its weapon strength, infantry is 25% less and hovertank is 25% more than that. Seems good.
I've bumped needleject/copter chassis cost to 20 and gravship to 30. This makes fully armored ships cost about same as corresponding speeder-hovertank and needleject/copter now cost about the same too.

Overall with 1:1 weapon/armor ratio and with other defensive bonuses attacker would incur roughly 2-3 times more casualties. Which matches the goal of this changes.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

OTHER MINOR CHANGE

Other changes not explicitly related to the main goal but in line of combat balancing work.

I removed bunkers altogether, thanks to bvanevery (Brandon Van Every) advice and his observation that AI doesn't use them at all.

To compensate for that and to aid AI I increased sensor bonus to 50%. Automated formers eagerly build them and they have benefit of covering large area so AI shouldn't place their unit at specific location to get the bonus. Another plus is that sensor benefits only friendly units. Aha! Invader cannot abuse them. Together with this improved sensor I've achieved desired odds between  attacker and defender with same rating of weapon and armor so their unmodified odds are 1:1.
infantry in open = 1.0
mobile in open = 1.2 (due to +25% mobile in open bonus)
in rough = 0.7 (terrain bonus)
in open with sensor = 0.7 (sensor bonus)
in rough with sensor = 0.4
infantry vs base = 1.0 (+25% each side)
infantry vs base with sensor = 0.7
infantry vs base with sensor and perimeter = 0.4
Looks like they align pretty well with initial goals.

I removed penalty for ship caught in port. I don't really understand this. Sea battles are insanely skewed toward attacker even more than land ones. The only active defense you can build in sea bases is air or sea units. And now this sea unit in base that suppose to be active defender is penalized??? P-lease.
Instead I reverted this penalty into +100% bonus for ship in port. Investing into active floating defender and keeping it in port should worth something. Now attacker needs to bring twice more units to knock this defender out.

I removed penalty for non combat units. Do not really understand why it was there. To make sure they die 100% at any encounter? Where is variety in that? Giving them some survival chance make every battle more interesting.

Bumped prototype cost to +100%. Vanilla number is a minor thing when you plan to build like 10 of a kind. Even my number is not that scary. I was thinking to raise it to +200% instead. This would slow down fast military technology adoption giving you a choice whether you want to prototype something new or keep up with old stuff. Also at this prototype cost rate skunkwork becomes a very important addition.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

alphax.txt
Modified file is attached.

List of changes

Prototype cost increased.
100,     ; Extra percentage cost of prototype LAND unit
100,     ; Extra percentage cost of prototype SEA unit
100,     ; Extra percentage cost of prototype AIR unit

Psi combat equalized.
1,1,     ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)

This one just taken from some other mod. Don't remember which.
50,      ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus

Removed penalty for non combat units.
0,       ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit

Sensor improved.
50,      ; Combat % -> Defend in range of friendly Sensor

Taken from some other mod. Feels like it makes sense.
15,      ; Combat % -> Psi attack bonus/penalty per +PLANET

Chassis cost changed for infantry, speeder, hovertank, and air units except missile
#CHASSIS
Infantry,M1,  Squad,M1,      Sentinels,M2,   Garrison,M1,  1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, None,     Shock Troops,M2,   Elite Guard,M1,
Speeder,M1,   Rover,M1,      Defensive,M1,   Skirmisher,M1,2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 3, Mobile,   Dragon,M1,         Enforcer,M1,
Hovertank,M1, Tank,M1,       Skimmer,M1,     Evasive,M1,   3, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, NanoMin,  Behemoth,M1,       Guardian,M1,
Foil,M1,      Skimship,M1,   Hoverboat,M1,   Coastal,M1,   4, 1, 0, 0, 2, 4, DocFlex,  Megafoil,M1,       Superfoil,M1,
Cruiser,M1,   Destroyer,M1,  Cutter,M1,      Gunboat,M1,   6, 1, 0, 0, 4, 6, DocInit,  Battleship,M1,     Monitor,M1,
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1,  8, 2, 2, 0, 1,20, DocAir,   Thunderbolt,M1,    Sovereign,M1,
Copter,M1,    Chopper,M1,    Rotor,M1,       Lifter,M1,    8, 2, 1, 0, 1,20, MindMac,  Gunship,M1,        Warbird,M1,
Gravship,M1,  Skybase,M1,    Antigrav,M1,    Skyfort,M1,   8, 2, 0, 0, 1,30, Gravity,  Deathsphere,M1,    Doomwall,M1,
Missile,M1,   Missile,M1,    Missile,M1,     Missile,M1,  12, 2, 1, 1, 0,12, Orbital,  Missile,M1,        Missile,M1,

Disabled rest of reactors.
#REACTORS
Fission Plant,        Fission,     1, None,
Fusion Reactor,       Fusion,      2, Disable, ;Fusion,
Quantum Chamber,      Quantum,     3, Disable, ;Quantum,
Singularity Engine,   Singularity, 4, Disable, ;SingMec,

Weapons changed drastically. Completely changed rating and cost. Triggering technologies also changed somewhere but I tried to reuse those existing as much as possible.
#WEAPONS
Hand Weapons,         Gun,            1, 0, 1, -1, None,
Laser,                Laser,          2, 0, 2, -1, Physic,
Particle Impactor,    Impact,         4, 0, 4, -1, IndEcon,
Gatling Laser,        Gatling,        5, 1, 5, -1, Chaos,
Missile Launcher,     Missile,        6, 2, 6, -1, OptComp,
Chaos Gun,            Chaos,          8, 0, 8, -1, Fossil,
Fusion Laser,         Fusion,        10, 1,10, -1, String,
Tachyon Bolt,         Tachyon,       12, 1,12, -1, Fusion,
Plasma Shard,         Shard,         14, 2,14, -1, Unified,
Quantum Laser,        Quantum,       16, 1,16, -1, Space,
Graviton Gun,         Graviton,      20, 0,20, -1, Surface,
Singularity Laser,    Singularity,   24, 1,24, -1, QuanMac,
Resonance Laser,      R-Laser,        9, 1,11, -1, Bioadap,
Resonance Bolt,       R-Bolt,        18, 1,22, -1, SentRes,
String Disruptor,     String,        30, 1,30, -1, BFG9000,
Psi Attack,           Psi,           -1, 2,10, -1, CentPsi,
Planet Buster,        Planet Buster, 99, 0,32, -1, Orbital,
Colony Module,        Colony Pod,     0, 8,10, -1, None,     ; Noncombat packages
Terraforming Unit,    Formers,        0, 9, 6, -1, Ecology,
Troop Transport,      Transport,      0, 7, 4, -1, DocFlex,
Supply Transport,     Supply,         0,10,10, -1, IndAuto,
Probe Team,           Probe Team,     0,11, 3, -1, PlaNets,
Alien Artifact,       Artifact,       0,12,36, -1, Disable,
Conventional Payload, Conventional,  12, 0,12, -1, Orbital,
Tectonic Payload,     Tectonic,       0,13,24, -1, NewMiss
Fungal Payload,       Fungal,         0,14,24, -1, NewMiss

Armors changed drastically. Completely changed rating and cost. Triggering technologies also changed somewhere but I tried to reuse those existing as much as possible.
#DEFENSES
No Armor,            Scout,       1, 0, 1, None,
Synthmetal Armor,    Synthmetal,  2, 0, 2, Indust,
Plasma Steel Armor,  Plasma,      5, 2, 5, Chemist,
Silksteel Armor,     Silksteel,   7, 1, 6, Subat,
Photon Wall,         Photon,     10, 1, 7, E=MC2,
Probability Sheath,  Probability,14, 2, 8, SupLube,
Neutronium Armor,    Neutronium, 18, 1, 9, IndRob,
Antimatter Plate,    Antimatter, 22, 2,10, Quantum,
Stasis Generator,    Stasis,     30, 2,12, TempMec,
Psi Defense,         Psi,        -1, 2, 6, Eudaim,
Pulse 3 Armor,       3-Pulse,     6, 1, 6, AdapDoc,
Resonance 3 Armor,   3-Res,       4, 1, 5, FldMod,
Pulse 8 Armor,       8-Pulse,    24, 1,11, Solids,
Resonance 8 Armor,   8-Res,      20, 1,10, SentRes,

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

REACTORS

Forgot to mention this aspect. Although it was actively discussed many times here and many people agree that they break the game. Thank you for all discussion contributors.
It is also unclear how it can be fixed and whether different reactor types need to be used in game at all. I don't have even slightest opinion on a matter. Therefore, I just disabled them until someone come up with bright idea.

Here is the short summary of reactor problems.
First, discovering new reactor make a huge impact to your army effectiveness. Much bigger than discovering new weapon/armor. For example, Fusion reactor get discovered around the time you have chaos gun strength 8. Next available weapon strength is 10 which gives you 2/8 = 25% weapon rating increase and the same on combat effectiveness. Whereas supplying your chaos gun units with Fusion reactor makes them twice as strong and twice as cheap. That translates to instantly quadrupling your combat effectiveness. No other technology has an effect that is even close to this.
Second, stupid unit cost formula cuts cost in half for each next reactor. That drops them 16 times for Singularity reactor. At the same time each new reactor raises minimal unit cost. So very soon the down slope of dropping unit cost meets upraising minimal cost. That makes all units cost the same sooner or later regardless of their strength and composition.

[bvanevery]

I am with you on that, man. Didn't understand the context, though. I am not working with SE in this topic.

Thought you were?  This:

Psi combat
Psi combat should have equal base odds regardless of realm. This way secondary factors like Morale, Planet, attack and defense bonuses play tremendous role and force player to chose SE models wiser. Free Market's -3 Planet now is really bad penalty. In other words, you still can tune you faction for psi combat but you have to make specific SE choices and pay the price.

[bvanevery]

I've created simple program that reads technology tree and calculates statistical average for each technology discovery sequence.

I think it is not generally possible to give 1 statistical output for this.  Whether any given tech is discovered with blind research, depends on the player's Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer settings.  Taking 1, 2, or 3 foci at a time, and assuming no one in the real world chooses all 4, we get 4 + 6 + 4 = 14 different sets of weights applied to the values in the tree, to create likelyhood of what will be learned next.  I'm not sure how the competing possibilities amongst "next available" techs are determined, as I have not studied the game's code.  But I'm expecting a summation of probabilities of next available techs, a RNG from 0.0 to 1.0, then a looking up of the tech that fits the range.

Computing Directed Research is probably more straightforward.  But it's only applicable to the Aliens.  I don't know if faction personality affects research choice here.  One could reasonably expect an Aggressive faction to choose a Conquer technology over a Build technology, other factors being equal, but I don't know if it's implemented that way.

If I have failed to understand your methodology, I apologize.  I assume you are using an analytic, closed form solution to the problem.  The alternative is a lot of empirical measurement of AI vs. AI test games.  Which is still going to depend on the factions chosen, due to these same underlying differences of input.

Other skewing factors, worth mentioning, are the number of techs obtained by trade.  Or theft.  Or conquest of losers.  Or conquest of a base, in the case of the Cybernetic Consciousness.  Or bullying and threatening other factions.  Or popping supply pods to obtain Tier 1 techs.  Or a real human player cashing in Artifacts to get a free tech; the AI doesn't seem to be bright enough to do this.

An alternative approach taken in AI Growth mode is to hard chain military technologies to ensure strict item progression.

The drawback is it sacrifices the lore of the game.  For instance, there's nothing rational about a Superconductor giving rise to a Missile Launcher.  But I learned fairly early in my mod development, that lore was the least important consideration and had to be jettisoned when expedient.  Gameplay is king.  I've done the best I can to put the lore back into place when I could.  But I make no bones about the fact that lore had to take a back seat, to do what needed to be done.  I would never design a "from scratch" game around a tree or Directed Acyclic Graph of tech dependencies.  It's a very fragile structure to weave lore around, easy to have everything get uprooted when something needs to be changed.

The advantage is I can strictly control the progressions in the face of the overwhelming variability of the game.  I know that missile launchers are coming after gatling guns.  And this is worth knowing, because the art assets for weapons cannot be readily changed, and already have meaning to experienced players.  They know that a gatling gun is a "5", just as they know red colored armor is a "3". 

[bvanevery]

In short, advice for novice players: don't build land mixed units (attack + defense)

It can make sense if you're trying to crack an enemy city that is heavily defended with artillery, and you don't want to bring in your own artillery.  If you bring a mixed force of pure offensive infantry and pure defensive infantry, the pure offensive infantry are going to take enormous amounts of artillery splash damage and be rendered useless.  Whereas, if you approach only with armored infantry, they will not.  Not unless the artillery is way more powerful than the armor you're using.

Why wouldn't you bring your own artillery?  Well, maybe the game is wonky this way, but artillery duels are deadly and cause huge splash damage to the loser.  It might be safer to advance with no artillery at all.

These wonky mechanics and unit costs could be cleaned up in a new game.  Don't know about with .exe patching of SMAC.  I find myself more interested in figuring out how to get my existing mod in front of a lot more people, than in trying to perfect the .exe.

and don't build air armored units (obviously) - they are ridiculously expensive.

In this game, air armor also isn't a factor in air combat. Although by rights it should be.  The AC-10 "Warthog" is a well known American armored plane for use against ground targets.  The Soviets used armored helicopters in Afghanistan.

To align them the only choice I had is to add 1 to chassis price of land units making them 2-3-4 for infantry-speeder-hovertank, respectively.

Well you can choose even higher integers, of course.  They need merely be monotonically ascending.  It's just a question of how nuts you're going to drive yourself, changing the costs of everything.  I drove myself pretty nuts merely tweaking the values for the missile chassis.  It was pure trial and error until the numbers came out right.

That changed the cost of some non combat units too but it is easy to fix since most not combat units have their price slot in alphax.txt.

Not true.  Predefined units don't exist for things like Fungicidal Formers, Super Formers, Super Fungicidal Formers, Foil vs. Cruiser variants, and different reactors put on them.  All of these are dynamically designed by the game, or by you the human player.  There is no method in the standard game to specify a reactor size for a predefined unit, a real problem I've run into recently.  I just happened to read that Scient's patch version 2.0 has that feature.  However, I'm not currently prepared to require Scient's patch or any other patches.  Especially, the more and more I get out on YouTube looking for ways to push my work, the more I'm realizing there are people who have never played SMAC before.  Asking them to try my mod is already a lot to ask.  Really need slicker installers and packagers and downloaders to handle this sort of problem... but first has to come something even more basic, getting more people playing the friggin' game.

Overall I made speeder price equal its weapon strength, infantry is 25% less and hovertank is 25% more than that.

Huge issue is when you get hovertanks.  They come absurdly late game in the original game, so who really cares what they're priced at then.  In my mod, I put them on Tier 4.  These things are gonna get used.  They move 50% faster than a Speeder, so they should cost 50% more.  Unless it's going to be the "once you get it, you win" technology.

[bvanevery]

To compensate for that and to aid AI I increased sensor bonus to 50%.

Interesting to see how that turns out.  I've often stressed about whether I should knock out Sensor Arrays before beginning an assault.  Usually I default to not doing so, because that's going to be my base in a minute.  But if I really feel I've brought a marginal force in, I take out the Sensors.

I removed penalty for ship caught in port. I don't really understand this. Sea battles are insanely skewed toward attacker even more than land ones.

I guess I should watch some sea battles to verify how this works.  Also I wonder if ranged ship battles, with ship artillery, are different from direct attack ship battles.

The only active defense you can build in sea bases is air or sea units.

You can build or place infantry there.  The Command Nexus is actually very useful to a maritime power, because you don't feel obligated to transport better garrison units in from anywhere.  The other reason you typically want land units, is they're the only ones that can have Police power.  Although I think in SMAC not SMACX, Needlejets may have also counted?  I haven't checked on this lately.  I don't build many air units lately, I tend to overrun with Formers and mag tube lines.

And now this sea unit in base that suppose to be active defender is penalized??? P-lease.

Are you sure that a sea base counts as a port?  A port might be a land base.  I'm not sure the distinction is entirely rational... I mean, a base in Louisiana could be a "port" city.  But if there's a distinction, then fighting from sea bases wouldn't actually be a problem.

Instead I reverted this penalty into +100% bonus for ship in port.

Um, now the winning exploit is to put bases on coastal land and stock them with ships.  No logic in that at all.

I removed penalty for non combat units. Do not really understand why it was there.

Because if I'm armed with lasers and bombs and you are not, you should probably die pretty quickly.  Of course, recently we've had the big discussion about the definition of "Noncombat" being kind of borked.  If you put armor on a Probe Team, Former, or Supply Crawler, it becomes a Combat unit.  The Noncombat penalty does not apply.

To make sure they die 100% at any encounter?

With unarmored probe teams, I think that was exactly the idea.  They probably had a collision of game mechanics, and chose this as a way out of too much complication.  They wanted to equate discovery with death.  For probe teams, that's entirely reasonable.

Where is variety in that? Giving them some survival chance make every battle more interesting.

I've heard many historical complaints that "walls of armored Formers or Supply Crawlers" is not interesting, it's an abuse / exploit.  Careful what you wish for, when you say you want things "interesting".  But the point is moot, because armored Formers and Supply Crawlers become combat units anyways.

Bumped prototype cost to +100%.

Reasonable.  I didn't change that, but I did make a Skunkworks substantially more expensive to build and maintain.  It's equivalent to a Research Hospital in cost now.  My idea is you will build one of these things.  Maybe 2 if you're feeling really spendy.  The typical problem is your Skunkworks base gets busy building something, like your 1st nuke, and then something else comes along that you wanted to build in a Skunkworks.

I was thinking to raise it to +200% instead. This would slow down fast military technology adoption giving you a choice whether you want to prototype something new or keep up with old stuff.

But if that's a false choice, meaning that it's inevitable you must have the better performing technology to survive, then you've only created tedium for the player.  Or taken productivity away from the AI, as it will make this choice.

Also at this prototype cost rate skunkwork becomes a very important addition.

It's not at the easiest place in my tech tree.  If I had prototype costs that egregious, it would have to come earlier.  I currently have it at Tier 4, in Industrial Automation, along with Supply Crawlers.  Tier 4 seems to be late midgame in my mod nowadays.  That's because I've pushed so many of the "interesting" techs to earlier in the game, like Marines and Cloaking Devices.  Less straightforward weapon and armor buffs, more tactical alternatives.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am with you on that, man. Didn't understand the context, though. I am not working with SE in this topic.

Thought you were?  This:

Psi combat
Psi combat should have equal base odds regardless of realm. This way secondary factors like Morale, Planet, attack and defense bonuses play tremendous role and force player to chose SE models wiser. Free Market's -3 Planet now is really bad penalty. In other words, you still can tune you faction for psi combat but you have to make specific SE choices and pay the price.

I'm not discussing a modification to SE here. Can use SE effect as an examples. That's it.

[bvanevery]

Psi combat equalized.
1,1,     ; Psi combat offense-to-defense ratio (LAND unit defending)

This is a dramatic change.  It means that piles of mindworms heading for your bases, aren't going to bother you much.  A mindworm apocalypse just became a lot more survivable.  It also means, you will have trouble fishing in the fungus for planet pearls.  I wonder if it's going to penalize +PLANET factions when they try to capture wild mindworms?  Usually you just catch or kill the next one with your own healed up mindworm.  If you actually have to worry about losing your mindworm in the exchange, that's a problem.

Your change is also lore destroying.   

This one just taken from some other mod. Don't remember which.
50,      ; Combat % -> Fanatic attack bonus

I need to research how this compared to MORALE boosts.  You might have just made the Believers tougher than the Spartans when they are on offense.  I would consider that a fail.

Taken from some other mod. Feels like it makes sense.
15,      ; Combat % -> Psi attack bonus/penalty per +PLANET

[/quote]

Well I guess you'll see if this makes mindworms a doomsday weapon or not.

I gave Deirdre a unique PSI, 20 combat advantage, so that she would not be strictly inferior to the Cult of Planet.  I also took the Cult's free brood pits away.  I cheapened the cost of all mindworms, I believe that was PvtHudson's idea.  However, I also made Trance a non-free ability.

Disabled rest of reactors.

Your unit designs are going to get stuffed to the brim, but otherwise it's a perfectly reasonable way to design.  I just couldn't give up the reactors because I'm trying to please fans of the original game.  Planet Busters need their different tips on them!  I'd like to be able to separate missile tips from unit durability.

Missile Launcher,     Missile,        6, 2, 6, -1, OptComp,

You get a lore destroying prize for this one.   

Chaos Gun,            Chaos,          8, 0, 8, -1, Fossil,

and this.  Morgan prattling on about fossil fuels is a complete fail lore wise.     More seriously, there's a reason I totally reclassified all these techs into more pure Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer categories.  Lore wasn't a primary reason, but it's a contributing one.

Resonance Laser,      R-Laser,        9, 1,11, -1, Bioadap,

Bioadaptive Resonance is a relatively early tech.  Guess I'll have to see what else you did, as to whether a powerful gun like that is properly placed.  Hope you remembered to change the Battle Ogre MK1 that has this gun by default.  Handing Aliens a strength 9 weapon at the start of the game seems like a fail.  I went the other way, nerfed it to strength 2, but I also took away Alien starting armor.  Still enough to take out the Scouts everybody has, and it's got its armor.  Mindworms kill these things easily though, even with all the buffs I gave the MK1.

Plasma Steel Armor,  Plasma,      5, 2, 5, Chemist,

Pulse 3 Armor,       3-Pulse,     6, 1, 6, AdapDoc,
Resonance 3 Armor,   3-Res,       4, 1, 5, FldMod,[/quote]

I thought about spreading out the strengths of the "red" armors, but I thought it might mess too much with people's sense of armor value.  Could be a lotta "doh!" from players, asking them to check on attacker's numerical/letter ratings to determine whether to attack or not.  User unfriendly, I figured.  Not sure if all these armors use the same art asset or different assets.  There is a texture modding tool for the 3D file format.  I've never used it, but theoretically it could be used to recolor armor.  Violet and orange armor might be appropriate proximate colors.  Especially with Synthemetal as a sequence base: blue, red-violet, red, red-orange.

Pulse 8 Armor,       8-Pulse,    24, 1,11, Solids,
Resonance 8 Armor,   8-Res,      20, 1,10, SentRes,

You should rename these if they're not actually strength 3, strength 8 anymore.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I've created simple program that reads technology tree and calculates statistical average for each technology discovery sequence.

I think it is not generally possible to give 1 statistical output for this.
If I have failed to understand your methodology, I apologize.

Yep. There are multitude ways to distribute military items in given technology tree. No need to apologize. Some are better.
1. You essentially can just stick them into tree without thinking. That's bad.
2. You can eyeball it. A little better.
3. You can assign each technology a level and then eyeball it. A little better.
4. You can run blind research simulation and get a better understanding of technology level. That what I did.
5. Finally, you can gather real statistics from thousands of games to get more precise version of #4. Nobody is going to do it anyway.

I guess you meant to amend my method #4 by introducing some preference variables. That may work and make it a little better. However, I wouldn't bother with it as neither of these methods is precise anyway. I did mine just because it was easy to do (a matter of minutes) and it gave me feeling of slight improvement over #3. That's it.

I actually think your approach better if strict succession is imperative. I just don't know if said strict succession is crucial for playability. I would guess not.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

In short, advice for novice players: don't build land mixed units (attack + defense)

It can make sense if you're trying to crack an enemy city that is heavily defended with artillery, and you don't want to bring in your own artillery.  If you bring a mixed force of pure offensive infantry and pure defensive infantry, the pure offensive infantry are going to take enormous amounts of artillery splash damage and be rendered useless.  Whereas, if you approach only with armored infantry, they will not.  Not unless the artillery is way more powerful than the armor you're using.

Hm. Interesting scenario. I didn't think about it. You mean attackers will be significantly weakened just one turn they are approaching the base? Well, then you need to modify the tactics or strategy or build mixed units. They'll cost the hell more than just sum of pure attacker and pure defender.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

That changed the cost of some non combat units too but it is easy to fix since most not combat units have their price slot in alphax.txt.

Not true.  Predefined units don't exist for things like Fungicidal Formers, Super Formers, Super Fungicidal Formers, Foil vs. Cruiser variants, and different reactors put on them.  All of these are dynamically designed by the game, or by you the human player.  There is no method in the standard game to specify a reactor size for a predefined unit, a real problem I've run into recently.  I just happened to read that Scient's patch version 2.0 has that feature.  However, I'm not currently prepared to require Scient's patch or any other patches.  Especially, the more and more I get out on YouTube looking for ways to push my work, the more I'm realizing there are people who have never played SMAC before.  Asking them to try my mod is already a lot to ask.  Really need slicker installers and packagers and downloaders to handle this sort of problem... but first has to come something even more basic, getting more people playing the friggin' game.

Good point. I didn't think about that. Let me review how badly my changes is going to affect them.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Overall I made speeder price equal its weapon strength, infantry is 25% less and hovertank is 25% more than that.

Huge issue is when you get hovertanks.  They come absurdly late game in the original game, so who really cares what they're priced at then.  In my mod, I put them on Tier 4.  These things are gonna get used.  They move 50% faster than a Speeder, so they should cost 50% more.  Unless it's going to be the "once you get it, you win" technology.

Good point too. I probably should make them a little bit more expensive like +50%.