Future Technology - New Additions to the Tech Tree?

[Trenacker]

Conceptually, what new additions can be added to the Technology Tree? I'm neither a scientist nor a futurist, so I'd appreciate fresh perspectives.

SMAC/X supplied the following "baseline" technologies, also known as Level 1 technologies:

• Applied Physics (Conquer), which grants access to laser units
• Industrial Base (Build), which provides access to both the synthetic armor upgrade and The Merchant Exchange Special Project
• Biogenetics (Discover), which provides access to Recycling Tanks and the Human Genome Project Special Project
• Information Networks (Discover), which yields Network Nodes facility
• Social Psych (Build), which leads to the Recreation Commons facility
• Doctrine: Mobility (Explore), which unlocks the Speeder chasis and Command Center facility
• Centauri Ecology (Explore), which lets you build Formers
• Progenitor Psych (Explore), which unlocks communication with Progenitor factions and opens up the aquafarm facility

Borrowing some formatting from Nethog's old SMAX Tech Tree, I offer the following Level 0 technologies:

• Doctrine: Offense (Conquer), for factions planning military aggression. Units may ignore Zones-of-Control. Mutually exclusive with Doctrine: Defense. Flavor quote is from Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I, 1.34, regarding the danger of concessions to adversaries, spoken by the male narrator.

• Doctrine: Defense (Conquer), for factions seeking bonuses on defense. Grants the ability to fortify units not in a base. Mutually exclusive with Doctrine: Offense. Flavor quote is the motto of the British Special Air Service, "Who dares--wins," spoken by the male narrator.

• Doctrine: Rule (Command), for factions focusing on the perfection of a police state. Unlocks the Overseer citizen type, which can be selected after base POP reaches 4. Each Overseer prevents 2 other POPS from becoming riotous. Flavor quote is a new one from Morgan: "Leadership is a service, yes, but therefore also a commodity. And if there is a market for leadership, then why not be the one to supply it? - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Ethics of Post-Modern Capitalism"

• Unity Workshops, the first tech designed to boost faction economy. Bases can repair damaged mechanical units. Unlocks ability to clear forests and rocky terrain. Unlocks Mobile Workshop upgrade, allowing mechanical units to repair other mechanical units. Flavor quote is from a hypothetical colonist: "Factions that seized large quantities of heavy construction equipment before escaping the UNITY enjoyed a compounding advantage. The pulsing heart of every early colony was the machine shop, where scrap could be transformed into shelter and complex devices returned to service. No settlement was complete without a defensive rampart. Irrigation ditches, pipelines, and foundations needed to be sunk in the ground and large tracts of xenofungus cleared to admit agriculture. All these things were also possible by hand, of course, but it was a question of weeks versus months of effort for often-sick and -starving colonists." - Librarian Setwe Abanake, Lectures on Planetfall

• 3D Printing (Build) is the first tech that provides a boost to Commerce by allowing creation of a base facility that boosts Commerce. No flavor quote. The idea here is that 3D printing is a major technological driver of the first manufacturing efforts on Planet.

• Neuropsych (Discover) seems like a logical precursor to Social Psych. Either this unlocks the Recreation Commons or else is a precursor to Neural Resocialization, a concept borrowed from StarCraft. One idea was that it could be tied to a new facility, Pharmacological Dispensary, which offers productivity or morale bonuses in return for creating one Drone. The flavor quote is a new take on an old Yang musing: "If the intensity, and perhaps even the genesis, of human thought is at least partially a question of chemical reactions occuring in the brain, then it follows that we can observe and describe the specific elements and compounds released in association with individual moments of genius--and, by aggregating data from a broad sample of observations, unravel the parameters common to all such moments so that they may be then reproduced in the laboratory." - Director Tamineh Pahlavi, I Made Him from Clay

• Informatics (Discover) is required to be able to read recovered Unity datacores/tapes. I think it is a precursor to Network Nodes. No flavor quote right now.

• Doctrine: Mobility (Expand) unlocks the Rover chassis and gives Formers the ability to clear tracks, a type of primitive road, through flat and rolling terrain types. The flavor quote is from J.T. Marsh: "Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he perforce gains a new frame of reference. Try as he might, he cannot return to the ignorance he left. Motion changes perspective. This, and not conscious thought, is the first basis for action." - Warden J.T. Marsh, Preface, The Lost World

• Doctrine: Initiative (Expand) gives a 25% chance for a first strike during combat. The flavor quote comes from former Unity XO, Francisco d'Alvarez: "Foucalt's most essential posutlate was that power can be measured in the ability to constrain the possibilities of another. If you merely react, then you are ceeding power to your adversary, making him stronger, for he has already limited your horizons. But bring the war to him, and you have tipped the scales in your own favor from the first moment. Which, do you think, is the most advantageous?" - Captain-General Francisco d'Alvarez, Words in Council

• C4I (Conquer) allows the construction of the Command Center base facility and Sensor Array improvement. The quote comes from a Spartan whose name is a nod to a character from a recent American naval warfare series by James L. Haley. "Every battle plan has two components: the knowing and the doing. First, where is my enemy, and what is their strength? Where aren't they, and what do they lack? Second, can I alert my forces of these these things as they are discovered, and, more importantly, as they change, so that force can be applied at the right point? Without that second part, I may as well know nothing at all." - Lieutenant-Commandant Blevin Putnam, Address to Cadets, Spartan Command

• Centauri Biology (Explore) is a precursor for hybrid and Centauri agriculture and allows the seeding of native forests as windbrakes and potential future sources of biological products. The flavor quote comes from a random colonist. "Of the many natural wonders discovered on Planet, often the most striking to early colonists was the Purelake, actually an inland sea of mild salinity with a surface area of three million square kilometers and prevailing depth less than one meter. Charged by geothermal vents, the Purelake's temperature hovered at or near 70° Fahrenheit. The high stability of temperature, purity, and salinity was ideal for complex organisms, and the Purelake exhibited uniquely high levels of biodiversity for Chiron, including more than 1,700 species of fish and 19,300 species of plant. Strong prevailing winds along the Purelake's southern shores promoted extensive upwelling, making for rich fishing. From the perspective of desperate settlers, the Purelake provided the answer to every problem: food, sanitation, transportation, and power generation. Predictably, just thirty years after Planetfall, the Purelake had suffered ecological holocaust: its surface area alone reduced by nearly one-third." - Nagao Masaru, Chiron: An Inventory

• Centauri Geology (Explore) is the requirement to build Formers. No flavor quote yet.

• Centauri Hydrology (Explore) is the requirement to build Moisture Condensers. No flavor quote yet.

• Austere Medicine (Expand) unlocks the Mobile Surgery facility, which allows a base to heal damaged infantry, as well as the Mobile Surgery unit upgrade, which allows a chassis type to heal stacked firendly infantry. Flavor quote comes from a Hunter of Chiron: "During those first, harrowing years after Planetfall, complex medicine was virtually unheard of. Infection was rampant in such a humid environment and analgesic was like gold. There were two, maybe three mobile surgeries operating within our territory. A run of people died from toothaches in the Paddock. Efficacy of intervention was very low, and our standard of care became brutal as a result: we cauterized wounds to conserve sutures and regularly administered overdoses of morphine to anyone we judged might need intensive care in recuperation." - L. Cambrysis, Emergency Medical Technician, Main Force Patrol

• Unity Armory (Conquer) unlocks "impact" weaponry, replacing the less-lethal weapons issued to United Nations Security with modern (or at least contemporary) military-grade small arms. No flavor quote.

• Self-Healing Fabrics (Build) unlocks the ability to build Terran nutrient farms, which are represented as greenhouse domes. No flavor quote.

[bvanevery]

I see that nobody else has taken a crack at this yet.  I will try, for some of it, if not all.  I've posted a lot today and feel that much of what I've said in another thread, is worth someone's time to digest, before moving on to yet more here.

I don't know if we can actually discuss game design, Trenacker.  If we can't, I'm going to be using the Report button quickly, and that's going to be the end of it for me.  I'm not interested in hearing why my point of view stems from something other than my intellectual commitment to the materials of this game.  I've been at these various categorizations for 2+ years and know more about categorizing them into an actual working playable game than anyone does.  Short of the original makers of the game, and even then, I wonder if I've now put more time into some things than they did.

So I hope with this preamble, we can avoid further incivility and actually do the intellectual work.  Writing is hard work and I thoroughly believe in "killing your darlings".  I don't apologize for that, as not all ideas have equal merit.  Killing things off is where quality actually comes from.  If you think I'm harsh as to how I rate things, you should see r/4Xgaming.  I always approach things according to commercial viability in front of a critical audience.  I can't assume they'll "see it my way".  Winning them over, "securing audience buy-in", is pretty much The Job.

"Doctrine: Whatever".  There is a risk in overloading this, in becoming repetitive and boring.  The original game has 5.  Is it now to be 8 ?  Or will the unnamed ones be dropped?

"Offense vs. Defense" may not be interesting distinctions from a screenplay "crafting of dialogue / lines / hooks" point of view.  Are they interesting words ?  Personally I say no, they are not.  And as such, they do not reflect the writing sensibility of the original game, which was paying attention to the nuances of writerliness for at least 4 of them.  I don't think "Doctrine: Air Power" is anything special, it's perfunctory, but the other 4 show that they put some thought into why they chose those words.

Are Offense and Defense interesting concepts?  I say they are not, as military operations generally do have both offense and defense.  Exceptions might be, massed tank formations ala Patton and Rommel in WW II, which was an interesting evolution compared to the tank-and-infantry formations of previous wars.  And the building of the Maginot Line which 1) didn't work, or 2) did exactly what it was supposed to do, at the cost of the Germans simply going around it.

"Doctrine: Rule" is more interesting to contemplate, although I do wonder if it's straying too far from military doctrine.  Meanwhile, we already have "Doctrine: Loyalty".  Why rewrite, as opposed to repurpose?  The voice acting is a quote from Machiaveli, it's straight up about how you rule.  I had it giving Fundamentalist / Extremist for awhile.  Now I've got it as the thing that gives you a Command Center.  The hand wave is that loyalty is how you make your command structure and build elan in the corps.  I don't think I'm wrong in that, but I do know that I'm repurposing materials and not composing from scratch.  So the tailoring can be a little off.

This is almost enough for now, to see if we can manage to discuss.  Since the above is all under the bailiwick of "military concepts", I will take on "C4I".  All I can say to that is, wat ?  A Three Letter Acronym (technically alphanumeric) doesn't start out meaning anything to anybody.  It's a bad choice.  For guidance on this point, consider "the warrior's bland acronym, MMI" in the game's lore.  Lal teaches us that it means something.  We wouldn't know it without his teaching, and we wouldn't care about it absent his voice acting.  And don't assume a game can carry more than a very few specially designated acronyms.  Done once, it makes an authorial point.  Done several times, it becomes a lot of "...wat?"

And it would certainly help your description to say what "C4I" stands for.  I have no idea.  I'm guessing it's a base designation on a hill somewhere, a command post.  Because I'm a good guesser, like maybe I saw it on a map of Dien Bien Phu or something once.

BTW on the further subject of acronyms, a lot of people on r/4Xgaming don't know what SMAC or SMACX stand for.  Even though I've been announcing my mod every month for a long time, and I'm hardly the only SMAC adherent in evidence in casual conversation.  Someone called this problem to my attention, and got me to spell out the entire "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with Alien Crossfire expansion pack" at the top of my mod release announcements.  Knowing this, if I were to do things from scratch, I would not call my mod "SMACX AI Growth mod".  I didn't know any better.  Now, having established this brand identity over a long period of time, I'm not going to change it.  It's worth more as a web search term now.  Per the discussion, my user tag on r/4Xgaming got changed from "modder" to "SMAC modder" to "Alpha Centauri modder", by the mods.

In other words, TLA consider Bad.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm considering looking to see if I can remove the report button - it's for staff who don't bother to read everything.

Waste my time using it for something petty at your own peril.

[bvanevery]

Not going to be "petty", but given history, not going to sign up for slide-along scenarios resulting in "it's my fault" either.  Happy to know that a report button actually does nothing.  I've never previously used it on this forum ever, so I wouldn't have known.

[Trenacker]

Writing is hard work and I thoroughly believe in "killing your darlings".  I don't apologize for that, as not all ideas have equal merit.  Killing things off is where quality actually comes from.  If you think I'm harsh as to how I rate things, you should see r/4Xgaming.  I always approach things according to commercial viability in front of a critical audience.  I can't assume they'll "see it my way".  Winning them over, "securing audience buy-in", is pretty much The Job.

I agree, to a point. Seeking new input does not always mean agreeing with it.

"Doctrine: Whatever".  There is a risk in overloading this, in becoming repetitive and boring.  The original game has 5.  Is it now to be 8 ?  Or will the unnamed ones be dropped?

Absolutely, there’s a chance for overloading the player.

"Offense vs. Defense" may not be interesting distinctions from a screenplay "crafting of dialogue / lines / hooks" point of view.  Are they interesting words ?  Personally I say no, they are not.  And as such, they do not reflect the writing sensibility of the original game, which was paying attention to the nuances of writerliness for at least 4 of them.  I don't think "Doctrine: Air Power" is anything special, it's perfunctory, but the other 4 show that they put some thought into why they chose those words.

Are Offense and Defense interesting concepts?  I say they are not, as military operations generally do have both offense and defense.  Exceptions might be, massed tank formations ala Patton and Rommel in WW II, which was an interesting evolution compared to the tank-and-infantry formations of previous wars.  And the building of the Maginot Line which 1) didn't work, or 2) did exactly what it was supposed to do, at the cost of the Germans simply going around it.

I think this is sound advice. I do like the simplicity of the two ideas, even while I agree strongly with your observation that offense and defense are not generally undertaken apart from each other. Possibly a better approach would be: “Doctrine: Aggression” and “Doctrine: Attrition.”

That said, I almost think it is more interesting to go with words that a general rather than words that are more precise because I feel that there is kind of a transparent and narratively troubling “techno-vibe” that happens when one veers toward “Doctrine: Bleed” or “Doctrine: Fortify.” It feels like I’m trying too hard to be cool. Whereas Doctrine: Offense and Doctrine: Defense are both immediately intuitive. Players can ask themselves, “How do I usually approach combat?” Is this clear?

"Doctrine: Rule" is more interesting to contemplate, although I do wonder if it's straying too far from military doctrine.  Meanwhile, we already have "Doctrine: Loyalty".  Why rewrite, as opposed to repurpose?  The voice acting is a quote from Machiaveli, it's straight up about how you rule.  I had it giving Fundamentalist / Extremist for awhile.  Now I've got it as the thing that gives you a Command Center.  The hand wave is that loyalty is how you make your command structure and build elan in the corps.  I don't think I'm wrong in that, but I do know that I'm repurposing materials and not composing from scratch.  So the tailoring can be a little off.

I never understood Doctrine: Loyalty. Some of the Datalinks entries that accompanies the Techs were disappointing to me, and this was one of them. If I remember correctly, the entry for this tech in particular left me feeling like I’d read words with no meaning. But to me, loyalty evokes a sense of espirit de corps—attracting people to follow you. Doctrine: Rule seems more iron-fisted. Is it absolutely possible to see loyalty in a more sinister light? Yes. I just didn’t go there myself.

This is almost enough for now, to see if we can manage to discuss.  Since the above is all under the bailiwick of "military concepts", I will take on "C4I".  All I can say to that is, wat ?  A Three Letter Acronym (technically alphanumeric) doesn't start out meaning anything to anybody.  It's a bad choice.  For guidance on this point, consider "the warrior's bland acronym, MMI" in the game's lore.  Lal teaches us that it means something.  We wouldn't know it without his teaching, and we wouldn't care about it absent his voice acting.  And don't assume a game can carry more than a very few specially designated acronyms.  Done once, it makes an authorial point.  Done several times, it becomes a lot of "...wat?"

Yes. C4I is jargon meaning command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I). Point well taken.

[Nexii]

I think the game has enough techs, but some of the less sensical ones could be chopped or reimagined. The last third of the tree is the most incoherent for me. I suppose they were going for an exotic future feel but in a lot of spaces I felt like the lore didn't do much to fill in the gaps. Most of the ones Tim identified I'd agree with.

I suppose one direction could be to chop some of the late and add early. I kind of prefer the direction they attempted of not having to discover the basics so much. I suppose for gameplay reasons a lot of SEs had to be rediscovered, though it seemed a bit strange that the new colonists would have to research to set up a democratic, theocratic, or authoritarian government. Economics and values, maybe those would take some time to develop. Chiron has different resources from Earth and finding a new value system seems to make sense, that is why Earth failed in the story.

[bvanevery]

Possibly a better approach would be: “Doctrine: Aggression” and “Doctrine: Attrition.”

It's a verbal improvement.  I don't know if these have categorical game mechanical relevance though.  It may just be trying to cut up the pie too many ways.

That said, I almost think it is more interesting to go with words that a general rather than words that are more precise because I feel that there is kind of a transparent and narratively troubling “techno-vibe” that happens when one veers toward “Doctrine: Bleed” or “Doctrine: Fortify.” It feels like I’m trying too hard to be cool. Whereas Doctrine: Offense and Doctrine: Defense are both immediately intuitive. Players can ask themselves, “How do I usually approach combat?” Is this clear?

I think a logical conclusion to be had, is probably that "Less Is More" and that the number of top level categories for player cognition shouldn't sprawl.  You can try too hard by having too many Doctrine names, or by having too "rad" names.

Why is Mobility not offense?  Particularly wrt the game's actual combat mechanics.

I don't know that defense, i.e. armor in the game's actual combat mechanical terms, is worth calling out with its own category.  I put armor and weapons in Conquer and call it done.  But if one convinces oneself to specially call out armor, it may be wise to do so without seeking dichotomy with anything else.  For instance, "Doctrine: Stability".  That's how Montgomery fought in WW II, pretty much the opposite strategy from Patton.  He intended to never give Rommel the chance to do anything tricky.  I'm not recommending D:S, but it does reflect the manner of thought of the original game categories.

I never understood Doctrine: Loyalty. Some of the Datalinks entries that accompanies the Techs were disappointing to me, and this was one of them. If I remember correctly, the entry for this tech in particular left me feeling like I’d read words with no meaning. But to me, loyalty evokes a sense of espirit de corps—attracting people to follow you.

Chairman Yang starts with it, so it's part of his narrative.  It gives Police State.  He can also build the Command Nexus immediately.  He also gets a Perimeter Defense that he doesn't need.  I didn't find these things a great fit to task either.  Yang doesn't instill loyalty, he instills obedience and fear.  He's Stalinist, totalitarian.

I moved Police State to Planetary Networks.  I eventually also made this the way you get Probe Teams.  My idea is that a police state is a total surveillance state.  Big Brother is watching you.

I moved Fundamentalist to Doctrine: Loyalty.  Religious worshippers and cultists are loyal to a fault!  The Machiavelli quote is a bit off, as it implies a deep cynicism about how religions and cults get their job done.  But I'm not afraid at poking questions about religious behavior.  Evangelical megachurch leaders getting caught with literally their pants down, is pretty much the thing to do here in the lil' ole South!  That's not fair to Miriam's characterization but eh, whatever.  I'm not going to remove a kewl Machiavelli quote from the game, and Doctrine: Loyalty is too good a mantra to rename it.

Machiavelli just really didn't describe religious belief and obedience, nor Stalinist obedience.  Nor is it democratic.  It doesn't fit an actual governance model in this game.  It's still cool to hear some Machiavelli though.  I heard it and thought, hey, I remember that guy who was my enemy back in high school, read "The Prince" as his choice for AP English class.  Then did his little report.  Me?  I did Crome Yellow, which had similarities to Brave New World.  I still haven't managed to read The Prince, although I did get to the point of a digital download one time.  I've made it farther through Mein Kampf, but the anti-semitism gets old.

I took the Command Nexus out of Yang's narrative entirely.  Sure I get that the authors wanted to talk about Yang "commanding" stuff, but the actual Secret Project is about military command.  That's Santiago's area.  Yes maybe Yang can or should be viewed as a military heavy in the original game, but Santiago is the better military heavy and the one you'd actually expect to work out a better command structure.  What does Yang's style of command really do?  Demoralize troops, not make them have better elan.  Yang is all quantity and slave driving, not quality of fighting spirit.  Santiago's area.

And I can hardly feel bad about such a decision, when the SP video for Command Nexus has Santiago voicing it.  They put this thing in the wrong place.  They probably didn't want to make it too easy for her to kick ass at the beginning of the game.

No do I, so like all other SPs, it's not available until Tier 3.  The specific tech has bopped around a lot, but eventually it has landed on Polymorphic Software.  I've been doing "probe team oriented" stuff with that, i.e. it gives Polymorphic Encryption.  In other words, a military command nexus is a bit cyber.  It's not my greatest repurposing but it's ok.  Gotta do something with the iron butterfly sometime.

Also forgot, nowadays I don't even have Fundamentalist or Extremist anymore.  I have Theocratic, and it just comes from Social Psych.  Very basic.  Doctrine: Loyalty gives the Command Center.  So I'm hand-waving about command, like the original game did.  It's not a perfect fit.  Machiavelli wasn't talking about military command or loyalty.  But whaddya gonna do?  It turns out he's kinda off-topic.  Whatever!

I could go back to giving Command Center with Doctrine: Mobility.  If I thought Doctrine: Loyalty was better suited to some other task.  I can't think of one right now.

Doctrine: Rule seems more iron-fisted.

Sure, but it's just not a military doctrine.  Doesn't fit, overloads the Doctrine category.  Verbally it's not different from Doctrine: Bleed.

[bvanevery]

I suppose one direction could be to chop some of the late and add early.

Late game weapons, armors, facilities, and abilities all still have to go somewhere though.  Unless one intends to drop them entirely as not interesting.  I've been pretty reticent about "hard" removing content from the game.  Instead I've generally "soft" removed by pushing a gewgaw so late, that it isn't relevant to victory by the time you get it.

My one exception has been the Copter chassis, which has been hard removed.  Overwhelming numbers of modders over the years have agreed with this idea.  The funny thing is, with my mega-expensive weapons nowadays, I wonder if I could reintroduce it, just at an unusably expensive price point?

Anyways I've "leaned" my tree plenty of times, and repurposed some techs where I could.  But you get to a point where the weapons + armors form a "trunk" through the tree.  Eventually you don't have much to cut out and repurpose, absent getting rid of gewgaws entirely.

Also the fixed narratives don't always fit earlier parts of the game.

[Trenacker]

Why is Mobility not offense?  Particularly wrt the game's actual combat mechanics.

That’s a good point. It could easily be repurposed. Perhaps Flexibility grants chassis types, while Mobility does something else entirely…

I don't know that defense, i.e. armor in the game's actual combat mechanical terms, is worth calling out with its own category.  I put armor and weapons in Conquer and call it done.  But if one convinces oneself to specially call out armor, it may be wise to do so without seeking dichotomy with anything else.  For instance, "Doctrine: Stability".  That's how Montgomery fought in WW II, pretty much the opposite strategy from Patton.  He intended to never give Rommel the chance to do anything tricky.  I'm not recommending D:S, but it does reflect the manner of thought of the original game categories.

Yes, Doctrine: Stability is quite interesting! Better than: “Doctrine: Defense.”

As I said, my worry is that doctrines with unsimplistic names become almost impervious to first-glance understanding, which is an admirable goal.

Chairman Yang starts with it, so it's part of his narrative.  It gives Police State.  He can also build the Command Nexus immediately.  He also gets a Perimeter Defense that he doesn't need.  I didn't find these things a great fit to task either.  Yang doesn't instill loyalty, he instills obedience and fear.  He's Stalinist, totalitarian.

I think Yang can be played as a very, very problematic paternalistic figure, in the darkest sense of the term. I envisioned disciples of Yang’s that were somewhat higher in the faction hierarchy who would try to convince themselves that he was really quite wise. I have to assume that Doctrine: Loyalty tied into the concept of a personality cult.

I remember that the same teacher that required our reading Machiavelli pointed out to us that he begins the book by cautioning every Prince that he will need two things: these principles, and a good deal of luck (timing). Nobody ever remembers that second part; they prefer to take the book as a kind of blueprint for (supposedly) principle-based action that, by itself, can result in excellent rule.

My one exception has been the Copter chassis, which has been hard removed.  Overwhelming numbers of modders over the years have agreed with this idea.  The funny thing is, with my mega-expensive weapons nowadays, I wonder if I could reintroduce it, just at an unusably expensive price point?

Is it just that you think that in-game ‘copters were functionally useless?

[bvanevery]

No, 'copters are clearly overpowered.  They get as many shots as they have moves.  Put a big gun on them relative to enemy defense, and you've pretty much ended the game.  Chaos Copter is a game ender.

Even Elite hovertanks, I have some qualms about.  4 attacks is an awful lot.

[Nexii]

Even if copters just chop one unit they are tactically superior to needlejets. Being able to return to base same turn doubles their effectiveness

Copters can be balanced. Mostly it's that their movement speed was made unrealistically good. A helicopter is not the same speed as an aircraft, not even close. ~4 base move speed is probably about where they should be. It's kind of strange they gave them the same move when in Civ2 there was a huge difference

Chopping multiple units with choppers or tanks, well, that's another problem where armor is too low relative to weapons. You see it a lot in the base tech tree because you tend to get Chaos, Fusion, Shard all before Silksteel due to their proximity to Fusion Reactor.

[bvanevery]

When I tried slower choppers, it didn't work.  Their extremely limited range made it so I wouldn't build them.  So eventually I got rid of them entirely.

[EmpathCrawler]

I like that Morgan quote about leadership. You got his voice.


Your Purelake doesn't make much sense. A hot lake the size of Australia that's 1 meter deep? I think it would all rapidly evaporate into a salt flat, like the Aral Sea. Plus you have the canon Freshwater Sea to play around with. I know if I land near that I try to exploit it ASAP.


How about "Frontier Medicine"?

[bvanevery]

Sure you got the right thread?  I don't remember any of this.  Although there's a Freshwater Sea in the game, I think it's just a place and doesn't give any bonuses.  The Geothermal Shallows do give bonus energy.

[EmpathCrawler]

I'm replying to the OP.


The Freshwater Sea gives +1 nutrients. It often spawns broken by the world builder, though.