Discussion Re: Disabling crawlers

[Yitzi]

Sorry.  But he should know that many people do judge people (especially in logical discussions) by their usage of spelling and punctuation, so he's likely to get a better response if he's careful about such things.

[Buster's Uncle]

I didn't speak up because I disagree; I spoke up because bringing it up so abruptly and bluntly to someone you just met is rude.  As it happens, I agree strongly, and a high level of written English skills is one of the things I like best about our community.  But I also imagine it's nothing Impaler doesn't know.  Some care more than others, and it's in the nature of social interaction that you gotta grit your teeth and pick your battles to get along.

Back in the day, I got to know Darsnan before I pointed out the your/you're and their/there/they're rules - to absolutely no avail.  He still makes me wince a little with almost every post, years later.  Some things we just have to put up with....

[Yitzi]

I didn't speak up because I disagree; I spoke up because bringing it up so abruptly and bluntly to someone you just met is rude.

Unfortunately, I have never been able to get the hang of telling someone something not-abruptly and not-bluntly, on the internet or in real life.  Do you have any suggestions for me?

[Buster's Uncle]

A good start would be something like "I don't mean to be rude, but it bothers me when".  A little diplomatic intro makes a diference...

[Yitzi]

Thanks.

[Yitzi]

I've thought about it some more, and it seems that if condensers are limited (probably via an ecodamage mod), then crawlers should be pretty balanced until either satellites come out or specialists can easily produce more than 2 non-psych energy; the effects of satellites can be mitigated by making the orbital defense pod the first satellite available (hence, satellites become difficult to keep up during wartime), and specialists producing more than 2 non-psych energy can be moved from "as soon as the base is large enough for specialists" to the late game (and both changes are probably desirable anyway because otherwise a nutrient focus strategy will be too powerful even without crawlers).

[Buster's Uncle]

Good point - satellites break the game a lot harder, being so much tougher to get at...

[Yitzi]

So I'd propose the following fix for them (strictly as part of a variant set of rules, which no doubt some people will greatly prefer and some won't):

-Orbital defense pods are available with Orbital Spaceflight.
-Sky Hydroponics labs require Self-Aware Machines.  (With satellites, nutrients become the most valuable resource, so they should be at least tied for the last to become available from satellites.)
-Nessus Mining Stations can stay where they are (Self-Aware Machines), but if hab domes are moved slightly earlier (perhaps desirable to encourage more spread-out bases), they can be moved to Super Tensile Solids to compensate.

Another question is where to move the advanced specialists; since every crawler frees up a citizen to be a specialist, they're a major portion of why crawlers are so powerful and so need to be moved to the late game.  (Except for empaths, since psych is more limited anyway, and large bases really could use the help.)  I'm thinking engineer to quantum power and thinker to Eudaimonia.

[Impaler]

I am sorry if my writing can be a bit grating, I assure you it is not from any haste or intentional sloppiness on my part, I've had profound difficulty with spelling (below bottom 10th percentile) from a very early age, I do make use of every highlight the spellchecker provides me, but some stuff slips through regardless.

As for your recommendations I like them as a means of slowing down the late game orbital explosion, though they seem to be getting a bit away from the crawler issue.  My rather crude modification was to just triple the cost of all of em so they are near Secret Project cost and to insert another tech 'Orbital Construction' to slightly delay them as well.  Your solution is more subtle and I think I will incorporate something like that into my own mod.

As for Specialists I use a 2-3-6 pattern, initial specialists all produce 2/0/0, second tier 2/0/1, Transcendi produce 2/2/2 to perfectly obsolete all the earlier ones.  This is a considerable nerf vs the original output in research and credits so mass specialists combined with mass crawled food should be less powerful.

The overall thrust of your desire to 'slow the snowball' is exactly what I've endeavored to do with my own modding, you should check it out.  So far I've just posted snippets but I'll eventually provide a zip of the whole thing.

[Yitzi]

I am sorry if my writing can be a bit grating, I assure you it is not from any haste or intentional sloppiness on my part, I've had profound difficulty with spelling (below bottom 10th percentile) from a very early age, I do make use of every highlight the spellchecker provides me, but some stuff slips through regardless.

As for your recommendations I like them as a means of slowing down the late game orbital explosion

Thanks, I'm also considering lowering the price of Defense Pods to 80, and raising Hydroponics Labs and Mining Stations to 180, in order to make it more difficult to keep satellites up in wartime.

though they seem to be getting a bit away from the crawler issue.

They are connected.  Crawlers are most effective when you're planning to focus on one resource type anyway, and satellites mean that focusing on nutrients is by far the most effective.  Make satellites less effective, and prevent widespread use of crawlers somehow, and worked forests (with hybrid forest) become much closer to competitive with crawled spaces even once specialists are producing 4 energy apiece; they're slightly inferior, but between the more difficult terraforming and the cost of crawlers, it should be ok.

My rather crude modification was to just triple the cost of all of em so they are near Secret Project cost and to insert another tech 'Orbital Construction' to slightly delay them as well.  Your solution is more subtle and I think I will incorporate something like that into my own mod.

Thanks.

As for Specialists I use a 2-3-6 pattern, initial specialists all produce 2/0/0, second tier 2/0/1, Transcendi produce 2/2/2 to perfectly obsolete all the earlier ones.  This is a considerable nerf vs the original output in research and credits so mass specialists combined with mass crawled food should be less powerful.

I sort of feel that if someone wants to go transcendi to pump their score via Transcendent Thought when they could have won anyway, they should be able to fairly well.  On the other hand, even 2/0/1 is fairly unbalancing in the earlier portions of the game, not only for crawlers but also for base size/density (more effective specialists favor more bases, since the base square doesn't need to be worked and therefore is effectively an extra specialist.)  So I'd go with initial specialists all producing 2, empaths produce 2 psych 1 economy (yes, this means that psych is effectively half the cost as labs or economy when you get it from specialists; this is a good thing because it makes larger bases more appealing and tight packing of bases less appealing), engineers produce 3 economy 1 labs and require Quantum Power, thinkers require Eudaimonia, and transcends require Threshold of Transcendence.

The overall thrust of your desire to 'slow the snowball' is exactly what I've endeavored to do with my own modding, you should check it out.  So far I've just posted snippets but I'll eventually provide a zip of the whole thing.

I might as well provide a list of my changes to slow the snowball (I have ideas for changes for a few other purposes too, some of which overlap); some of them are marked by an asterisk, meaning that they can't be done with .txt modding and require .exe modding (the .exe modding would make the change dependent on the .txt file, so that people don't have to go with the change if they don't want to.)
-Satellites changed as I've already said.
-Specialists changed as I said in this post.
-Hybrid Forests require Sentient Econometrics.  Hybrid Forest is a "tier 3" facility like the quantum lab and nanohospital, so it should have comparable tech requirements.
-In SMAX, kelp farms only grant 1 nutrient, and tidal harnesses grant only 2 energy.  Otherwise, adding an aquafarm/thermocline transducer on top of that is just too much.
-Recycling Tanks grant +1 nutrients, but not minerals or energy.  (Really, whose bright idea was it that base squares should provide 7 FOP without being worked?  That's just begging for ICS.)
-Air power (which makes snowballing worse because it's such a huge advantage if you're ahead in tech, especially if you abuse it with ZOC and protecting stacks) is nerfed in a number of ways:
  -Doctrine: Air Power now requires Advanced Military Algorithms instead of Doctrine:Flexibility (this doesn't increase its tier, but does add a few extra prerequisite techs, making it harder to beeline for it.)
  -Air Superiority only requires AMA, though of course it can't be put on an air chassis until Doctrine: Air Power.
  -AAA Tracking only requires Optical Computers, and gives a 150% bonus instead of 100%.
  -*Aircraft only have 8 movement (+2 with CBA, +2 with fuel nanocells) unless you give them Antigrav Struts (which requires an endgame tech as usual.)  This is what the rules seem to indicate should be the case anyway, so I consider it to be a bug fix and therefore if I do the mod it will probably not be dependent on .txt modification.
-*Crawled spaces produce ecological damage from improvements.  Condensers and mirrors are as damaging as boreholes, and the bonus ecodamage from all three is not affected by tree farm/hybrid forest (but is affected normally by forests.)  On top of that, the bonus damage from mirrors and condensers applies to any base with a radius or crawled space next to the mirror/condenser as well.

Oh, and I almost forgot:
-Reduce Democracy growth bonus to +1, to make it hard to pop boom.

[Impaler]

I was incorporating the satellite changes and decided to go with this sequence, Space Flight gives Pods which cost 12 (rows), Advanced Space Flight gives Power Transmitters which cost 24.  AdvSpace and NanoMininturization are the prerequisites of Orbital Construction my new tech (which itself leads to Super Tensile Solids), it gives both Nesus and Sky Hydroponics which both cost 36.  I think having minerals and nutrients higher then energy is wise because they are much more snow-ball inclined then a few raw energy.

More good stuff, I've also put Empathi 1/2/0  (Credits/Psych/Research), but nerfed the Engineer down to 2/0/1 (I also renamed them Cyborgs for flavor) and Thinker goes to 0/1/2.  The latter two then switch tech requirements of Fusion and MindMac again for flavor and consistency with the Cyborg change.

My nerf to all forest related strategies is to take forest down to 1/1/1, after that I don't need to do nearly anything to delay the Tree facilities themselves.

Recycle Tanks and high Base productivity can indeed encourage ICS, but I've significantly increased facility maintenance costs and this has the effect of making small bases unable to achieve net positive credits from anything but the earliest facilities.  Without significant yield of credits (or a negative credit yield) the ICS strategy runs into EFFIC limits of drones and wasted energy and becomes self-limiting to a degree.

I'd also made MilAlg a prerequisite for Doc:Air, I recall this has been a common modification for ages as it's so obvious that having a tier 2 tech as the prerequisite for the strongest tech in the game is absurd.

I've modified SE significantly as well but I place a -1 Growth on Survival value and the None-Future choice which prevents Pop Booming for most of the game.

[Yitzi]

I was incorporating the satellite changes and decided to go with this sequence, Space Flight gives Pods which cost 12 (rows), Advanced Space Flight gives Power Transmitters which cost 24.  AdvSpace and NanoMininturization are the prerequisites of Orbital Construction my new tech (which itself leads to Super Tensile Solids), it gives both Nesus and Sky Hydroponics which both cost 36.  I think having minerals and nutrients higher then energy is wise because they are much more snow-ball inclined then a few raw energy.

It seems to me that with early and relatively cheap pods and more expensive mineral/nutrient satellites, increasing satellite cost by that much might be unnecessary (since you'll need a large production advantage to keep your satellites up in the face of an enemy just building pods to shoot them down), but that's really more a matter of taste.  (I also tend to prefer the minimal change that will do the job, both aesthetically and to increase the number of people that will be willing to play it, and I consider 1 moderate (2:3 ratio) decrease and 2 moderate increases to be less of a change than 1 moderate increase and 2 large (1:2 ratio) increases.)

More good stuff, I've also put Empathi 1/2/0  (Credits/Psych/Research), but nerfed the Engineer down to 2/0/1 (I also renamed them Cyborgs for flavor) and Thinker goes to 0/1/2.  The latter two then switch tech requirements of Fusion and MindMac again for flavor and consistency with the Cyborg change.

That might work if you don't move hybrid forest (crawled rainy spaces still produce 1.5 more min+energy (2.5 more energy, 1 less minerals) than forests, but that may be justified by needing a lot more terraforming and the crawlers themselves.)  You do end up, though, that working a non-forest flat space is almost never worth it, and even if it's rolling you need to value minerals more than energy (more than twice as much if the square is less than 1000 ft, though mirrors do change these calculations somewhat.)

Although I feel that moving hybrid forest up makes sense anyway to match the others with similar energy-related purposes, so I need to move specialists up as well to keep forests competitive with crawled spaces.

My nerf to all forest related strategies is to take forest down to 1/1/1, after that I don't need to do nearly anything to delay the Tree facilities themselves.

Maybe it's just my previous experience with Civ, but I feel that minerals should be more of a strong point for forests; with your change, they're a weak point after hybrid forests.

Recycle Tanks and high Base productivity can indeed encourage ICS, but I've significantly increased facility maintenance costs and this has the effect of making small bases unable to achieve net positive credits from anything but the earliest facilities.

That can work too.  I'm aiming for a somewhat lighter mod, though, and cutting recycling tanks seems lighter than increasing maintenance.  It's really a matter of taste, though.

I've modified SE significantly as well but I place a -1 Growth on Survival value and the None-Future choice which prevents Pop Booming for most of the game.

I really don't like putting modifiers on the starting options, as to me those options are supposed to be "neutral", no effect.  I'd only use that if I want an across-the-board modifier (and then I'd put it on everything in the row.)

[Pickly]

Going the "any possibility I could imagine" route, I'd probably limit crawlers per city by support in some way, possibly support + industrial production

I considered a limit per city, but that'd encourage lots of small bases, which is already an ugly but effective strategy.  Limiting it in a way that depends on industrial production might work, though...I do think that INDUSTRY is a better one to use than SUPPORT, though...

How does "{base's free mineral production}/(10-INDUSTRY), rounded down" sound?  (As a bonus, this has an in-game meaning already; it's the maximum number of rows for a unit or facility in order to be able to produce it in 1 turn).  At 0 industry rating, a decent-sized city can support 2 or maybe even 3 crawlers, but widespread use will not be supportable until you get late-game mineral boosters/Nessus mining stations.  Throw in the project/prototype limits I mentioned earlier, and that should work.

That is true about the ICS, didn't think of that when writing the idea.  I like your industry suggestion, although to me support does "feel like the better option.  (Although it's not like either messes up gameplay that much.)