Has anyone played with specialist output?

[EmpathCrawler]

Maybe I'm playing wrong, but I generally don't have much use for the early game specialists except Doctors of course. In the late game, I often rather have the econ from Engineers rather than the raw labs from Transcendi.


Has anybody played with the specialist outputs in their mods?

[bvanevery]

In my mod I have substantially delayed the availability of the advanced Specialists, just in case anyone's figured out some exploit with them.  Some of the changes were driven by narrative and tech tree reasons, such as shifting lots of mindworm stuff later and making that part of the Explore tree something you really specifically have to climb up to get the benefits.  I've got Empaths, Empath Guild, and Empath Song quite late.  I think my most important practical change is that you don't get Transcendii until you've completed the Threshold to Transcendence.  Those are pure benefit and have the effect of blowing the lid off of any late game or endgame challenge.

Generally speaking I think Specialists are a play mechanic that should Go Away.  It's a terrible idea when faced with so many bases to administer.  However in my mod, for the most part I try to remain sensitive to people who want to play with all the original gewgaws.  So generally I don't "hard remove" stuff from the game.  Instead I usually push things so much later in the game, that they cease to have relevance.  You will probably have won the game some other way, and you will probably forget about them over time.

[Nexii]

I nerfed them down a bit
technician - 2 econ
doctor - 2 psych
librarian - 2 labs
engineer - 3 econ
empath - 3 psych
thinker - 3 labs
transcendi - 3 to all

transcendi requires more tech, threshold of transcendence. they obsolete engineer, empath, and thinker. to me it seemed strange lorewise to have them any sooner than that. perhaps they should even require transcendent thought

specialists at 4-5 are quite powerful compared to civ2 where they top out at 3. I guess it could be said FOP is also a bit higher in SMAC, but still. transcendi being ridiculous at the end is fine by me. the civ to get threshold should have an advantage in the ascent race, it's a small boost

[Hagen0]

I don't understand your nerf to technicans or librarians at all.

[EmpathCrawler]

In my mod I have substantially delayed the availability of the advanced Specialists, just in case anyone's figured out some exploit with them.  Some of the changes were driven by narrative and tech tree reasons, such as shifting lots of mindworm stuff later and making that part of the Explore tree something you really specifically have to climb up to get the benefits.  I've got Empaths, Empath Guild, and Empath Song quite late.  I think my most important practical change is that you don't get Transcendii until you've completed the Threshold to Transcendence.  Those are pure benefit and have the effect of blowing the lid off of any late game or endgame challenge.

Generally speaking I think Specialists are a play mechanic that should Go Away.  It's a terrible idea when faced with so many bases to administer.  However in my mod, for the most part I try to remain sensitive to people who want to play with all the original gewgaws.  So generally I don't "hard remove" stuff from the game.  Instead I usually push things so much later in the game, that they cease to have relevance.  You will probably have won the game some other way, and you will probably forget about them over time.

Hmm, delaying is an interesting way to do it. Didn't think of that. It's hard to even support Librarians or Technicians when you can use them, anyway.


I still like having them around because I play on Standard maps so it's often not too arduous to micro them. I also like how they make bases a little more distinct from each other.

I nerfed them down a bit
technician - 2 econ
doctor - 2 psych
librarian - 2 labs
engineer - 3 econ
empath - 3 psych
thinker - 3 labs
transcendi - 3 to all

transcendi requires more tech, threshold of transcendence. they obsolete engineer, empath, and thinker. to me it seemed strange lorewise to have them any sooner than that. perhaps they should even require transcendent thought

specialists at 4-5 are quite powerful compared to civ2 where they top out at 3. I guess it could be said FOP is also a bit higher in SMAC, but still. transcendi being ridiculous at the end is fine by me. the civ to get threshold should have an advantage in the ascent race, it's a small boost

Echoing Hagen0, I don't get your Technician or Librarian nerf! They are already so hard to use early on.

[Nexii]

Yea it's probably an overnerf. I plan to boost them back up after I redo my tech tree and terraforming changes.

Mainly it seems that nutrients are much too easy and too early. Results in having tons of specialists even if your bases are packed close.

I do like the idea of specialists. I think the direction I'll go is keeping them specialised, that is giving only one out of economy, psych, or labs. Probably something like 3 for the baseline and 4 for the mid-level.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I understand you find vanilla specialists too useless and asking whether there is a point in using them at all? If so then mine (and probably others) understanding is that most of them are no match to working fertile land. So if one can normally work great land they usually don't convert land workers to specialists. There is probably one case when one would want to use them. First condition is the very strong demand for energy(eco/psy/lab) over minerals. Otherwise, forest output (1-2-1, 2-2-1, 3-2-2) is superior to any contemporary specialist output. Second condition is appalling efficiency (in remote bases or overall). Since specialists are not affected by inefficiency they are great source of energy derived income. Actually this second condition probably defines the first one. With appalling efficiency one _have to_ turn some specialists on to pay maintenance.
The only obviously overpowered specialist is transcend. So I nerfed it a little in WTP and also moved to the very end where it is supposed to be by lore.

Other than that they are not too interesting part of the game. Even less interesting than forest. Governor automatically turning them on when needed is completely fine with me and I don't believe there is much in micromanaging them in each and every base.

[EmpathCrawler]

I understand you find vanilla specialists too useless and asking whether there is a point in using them at all? If so then mine (and probably others) understanding is that most of them are no match to working fertile land. So if one can normally work great land they usually don't convert land workers to specialists. There is probably one case when one would want to use them. First condition is the very strong demand for energy(eco/psy/lab) over minerals. Otherwise, forest output (1-2-1, 2-2-1, 3-2-2) is superior to any contemporary specialist output. Second condition is appalling efficiency (in remote bases or overall). Since specialists are not affected by inefficiency they are great source of energy derived income. Actually this second condition probably defines the first one. With appalling efficiency one _have to_ turn some specialists on to pay maintenance.
The only obviously overpowered specialist is transcend. So I nerfed it a little in WTP and also moved to the very end where it is supposed to be by lore.

Other than that they are not too interesting part of the game. Even less interesting than forest. Governor automatically turning them on when needed is completely fine with me and I don't believe there is much in micromanaging them in each and every base.

I don't find specialists useless. In fact I use them all the time. Typically in bases that hit their pop limit. I think the early game ones are not particularly useful due to their timing and I'm not sure when Transcendi beat Engineers because with late game SE choices the latter can possibly produce more energy and labs, at least in my experience. They're the only way to "fine tune" a base so I like that they are an option. Otherwise every base would be like all the others, just slightly better or worse depending on terrain and facilities. I don't play on big maps so the micro doesn't get out of hand.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't find specialists useless. In fact I use them all the time. Typically in bases that hit their pop limit. I think the early game ones are not particularly useful due to their timing and I'm not sure when Transcendi beat Engineers because with late game SE choices the latter can possibly produce more energy and labs, at least in my experience. They're the only way to "fine tune" a base so I like that they are an option. Otherwise every base would be like all the others, just slightly better or worse depending on terrain and facilities. I don't play on big maps so the micro doesn't get out of hand.

I didn't say they are useless. I tried to clarify if you mean they are too useless.
🙂

And all of your examples are a confirmation of what I said: they are to fine tune a base and quite often used when conventional methods are not working. So they are auxiliary to main base land yield mechanics. Which makes it fine to manage them or not to manage them - it's a personal choice and not much change to faction development overall.

[bvanevery]

Conventional methods always work.  I mean, you can't lose this game on Transcend, against the stock binary, if you know what you're doing.  I benchmark my performance based on how quickly and succinctly I win, not on whether I win.  That's a given, unless I fall asleep first!  I find it interesting to occasionally discover "economic runaways" in my approaches.  And if they're too egregious, I may have to mod them out, so that they're not possible.  There's a balance to be struck between a player opportunity and an exploit.

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So they are auxiliary to main base land yield mechanics.
This reminds me of old episodes of Star Trek, where some baddies are always taking over the auxiliary control room.  WTF do they have an auxiliary control room, for baddies to take over, time and time again?  Well I think so that script writers can show 2 different things going on at once, and have a "wrestle for control of the ship", that's why.  You'd think someone back at Starfleet Engineering would have done a better job with command lockouts, lol.  To be fair, not every episode has this special "place to take things over" plot dynamic.  I think they eventually phased that sort of story out in The Next Generation, i.e. no more "Battle Bridge".  And they still had "taking control of the ship" stories.  Usually done by hackers or ghosts in the machine.

[EmpathCrawler]

I don't find specialists useless. In fact I use them all the time. Typically in bases that hit their pop limit. I think the early game ones are not particularly useful due to their timing and I'm not sure when Transcendi beat Engineers because with late game SE choices the latter can possibly produce more energy and labs, at least in my experience. They're the only way to "fine tune" a base so I like that they are an option. Otherwise every base would be like all the others, just slightly better or worse depending on terrain and facilities. I don't play on big maps so the micro doesn't get out of hand.

I didn't say they are useless. I tried to clarify if you mean they are too useless.
🙂

And all of your examples are a confirmation of what I said: they are to fine tune a base and quite often used when conventional methods are not working. So they are auxiliary to main base land yield mechanics. Which makes it fine to manage them or not to manage them - it's a personal choice and not much change to faction development overall.

Ah okay. Might play around with making them more firmly a mid-game option as my real issue is that they appear a little too early to be usable.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I feel like we are dancing around this topic stepping back and forth.
I think they are usable. The Technician is pretty good if you need to boost your economy a little in exchange for nutrients and minerals, that's it. Only very high early tiles gives you +3 economy right away. Abandoning some mediocre 2-1-1 working tile is generally seen as not fair trade to just 0-0-3 (economy) intake on average. However, it may be an option to temporarily fix awfully low cash flow. They become even better with low EFFICIENCY rating when you cannot even move allocation slider away from 50-50 split. With specialists you can easily trade 100% economy to 100% science without penalty and without corruption. Could be nice trade-off.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am actually thinking it would be nice to give +1 extra output to Technician and Librarian up to +4 economy/labs. This is still inferior to average worked tile yield but they become purely superior in energy output to almost any worked tile. Such Technician also helps solving some early cash flow problem for factions with low ECONOMY and EFFICIENCY. And Librarian may be used to really boost research temporarily.

[EmpathCrawler]

I feel like we are dancing around this topic stepping back and forth.
I think they are usable. The Technician is pretty good if you need to boost your economy a little in exchange for nutrients and minerals, that's it. Only very high early tiles gives you +3 economy right away. Abandoning some mediocre 2-1-1 working tile is generally seen as not fair trade to just 0-0-3 (economy) intake on average. However, it may be an option to temporarily fix awfully low cash flow. They become even better with low EFFICIENCY rating when you cannot even move allocation slider away from 50-50 split. With specialists you can easily trade 100% economy to 100% science without penalty and without corruption. Could be nice trade-off.

I think you put a much higher premium on nutrient and mineral production than I do. I only want my bases to have enough nutrients to remain stagnant and +2 nutrients when it's time to boom. For minerals, getting 10 minerals is typically enough aside from the bases I use to produce the military or secret projects. Early on, sure I'll probably work a 2-1-1 tile but only if my growth has outpaced my terraforming efforts. This is informed by playing under Thinker: I feel like I need to expand expand expand early on just to secure enough land, but I tend to focus on developing a core set of bases.

I am actually thinking it would be nice to give +1 extra output to Technician and Librarian up to +4 economy/labs. This is still inferior to average worked tile yield but they become purely superior in energy output to almost any worked tile. Such Technician also helps solving some early cash flow problem for factions with low ECONOMY and EFFICIENCY. And Librarian may be used to really boost research temporarily.

That's actually where I wanted to start! I haven't thought of prereqs yet, but it preserves the current progression. It also solves an annoying micro problem I've had when dealing with drones, which is "Will a Thinker stop this drone riot or do I need an Empath?"


Technician,       Technicians,         None,    Fusion,  4, 0, 0, 0000000
Doctor,           Doctors,             None,    CentMed, 0, 2, 0, 0000000
Librarian,        Librarians,          PlaNets, MindMac, 0, 0, 4, 0000000
Engineer,         Engineers,           Fusion,  Disable, 4, 0, 2, 0000000
Empath,           Empathi,             CentMed, AlphCen, 0, 3, 0, 0000000
Thinker,          Thinkers,            MindMac, AlphCen, 2, 0, 4, 0000000
Transcend,        Transcendi,          AlphCen, Disable, 0, 4, 6, 0000000



You start with Doctors because otherwise you become a planet of drones. Push the rest later. At some point, maybe when you can break the first hab limit, you get the full triad. Doctors for psych, Technicians for economy, Librarians for labs. That's typically when you can start to support specialists, anyway. This should probably be the longest period.

At a second point, the division becomes between pure psych and econ/labs. Doctors become Empaths, without the economy bonus but an extra point of psych that should pacify an additional drone with multipliers. Librarians and Technicians become Thinkers and Engineers, who are two sides of the same coin. Pick which one makes sense for your faction's needs.

At a third point, the idea of technological advancement is all about transcendence. You get the transcendi, who give psych because they're psyched to transcend and labs because they're driving forward towards that goal. No more economy bonus because they don't care for material things anymore. You also retain the vestigial Engineers.