Supply crawlers, need some opinions

[Nexii]

Yes it's safe to change alphax.txt, you might want to back it up though.

And yea, there is that - Demo/Planned/Creche was very easy to boom with.  I have Democracy at -5 POL, and Planned at -3 ECON.  So if you run both it's very difficult to drone control that.  The low energy means you need to allocate very high PSYCH.  Meaning that boom comes at a large energy and labs cost.  Demo+FM+GA+Creche is arguably easier.  But that comes at the cost of being able to war or fight native life at all.  I also put -1 GROWTH on Values default tier so that pretty much rules out any early to early-mid booming.  It really takes PSY facilities and PSY allocation to boom with how I mod.  You could put -1 or -2 GROWTH default on Future Society SE tier instead if you don't like the mid-game booming though.  I tried that and it wasn't too bad.

Some of the issue with the SE switching is that it's a bit fast by default (1 turn, and negligible cost for large empire).  I think more turns would be preferable to very high energy costs.  But not sure if very feasible, thats a substantive mechanic change.  There's similar exploits I mentioned with IND pumping/dropping.  You can make crawlers then convert them at low IND, for more minerals.  Then pump IND back up to get a cheaper SP.  Extreme case you can multiple the crawler minerals by 2.6x.  I think for that one crawlers would need to have a value associated with the minerals used to create them.  At least for other units the conversion rate is 50% so its not as feasible

[smith]

Popboom is overpowered early to midgame, no matter the cost. You could have 0 production and science for these 7 turns and doubling your population would be still totally worth it.

So, I'm with Yitzi, just having a very high growth would be still really good, but would require you to dedicate to growth civics for several decades to outpop competition.

Obvious solution - make growth level resulting in popboom adjustable in alphax.txt, so anyone can chose what one think it should be.

[Nexii]

If your land is fully developed, yes.  The extra pop is always a big benefit.  But as I've noted before, there's other exploits to get around booming.  You can make colony pods instead in size 2 feeder bases at 20M, which is a lot less FOP than higher natural city growth (10N*size could be 100-200N in a big base).  PTS becomes rather overpowering as an alternative to booming, as you get 3 pop per pod instead.  Perhaps if city growth didn't require such high sums of N, at higher size, non-booming would work better.  But as I see it, cities have to grow vertically somewhat faster than linear in size (as horizontal expansion is non-linear, aside from B-drones dampering things a bit).  An exponent of 0.5-0.8 onto N to grow would be better than 1.0.

The way I see it is also relative to my modded SE set.  Default Demo was just miles ahead of any other Politic choice.  With Demo at -5 POL instead, it's a big risk to boom.  The few turns of low science/energy are not the only concern but also the P-drones from Demo itself.  By the time you get a Values SE, air is prevalent...but air units cause P-drones.  So to boom you also have to give up all air power, and any aggression on a land front.  Even sea units are extremely limited with close sea borders.  It would be much more of a risk again if you were locked into an SE choice for say 4-5 turns before being able to switch again.

I wondered also about whether GA should require *all talents* in the base, rather than talents > workers.  The Demo+FM+PSY method does feel a bit easy, I will admit.

[Yitzi]

Crawlers:

Make them cost one mineral in support ( logistics in real life are costly as well ):
- It will make the early game crawler spam on forest a lot less powerfull.
- It'll still be viable to build a few to put them on forest for one mineral and move them on mines after ecological engineering, remote special resources wiil be still great.
- It will give an incentive to build roads to their destination in advance and not to send them too far away, especially in early game.
- Later the clear reactor comes, but at this point crawlers are at a competition with workers.

Perhaps I should just have a general "select modes that are support-free" option...

Make scrapping them work just like any other unit. Instead give them lets say 3 + (reactor) resource units crawl capacity when shifting resources between bases:
( They can transport up to 7 resources from remote tiles, then why only two already gathered ones between bases ?)

Actually, I was thinking of a flat amount not pinned to reactor.

- Make popboom possible at +10 growth ( planned, demo, creeche, eadaimonia, golden age ).

The problem with that is that then there are a bunch of factions (   without your proposal, ,   ,   ,   ) that can't do it at all without Cloning Vats, and late-game it really is needed.  I'd rather make it be at +9, and change Eudaimonia to +3 GROWTH.

- Clonning Vats give +2 growth, give Hive +2 growth - if early popboom is not possible, than this one more growth isn't such a huge difference, and late game popbooming wil allow this faction to live up to its name.

With the proposal I said, Hive getting +2 isn't necessary, and on the flip side +2 seems a bit weak for the Cloning Vats; I'd rather do a bit more, maybe +4.

I am convinced that with these two fixes and tech stagnation, research curve will be just fine and for sure you should try to nerf crawlers and popboom first before messing with rersearch...

Might be a good idea.

and put the CV as a late rather than midgame SP.

Interesting idea (though simply fixing copters pushes it substantially later because you're not beelining half the way there already).  At which tech do you put it?

I found that with nerfing crawlers and CMs, it was necessary to reduce early game building costs.  While the late game is definitely too fast, the early game is also definitely way too slow

Actually, when it comes to nerfing CMs, a better approach might be to just weaken ecodamage too, so that high-production factions are actually better off (especially if they're careful about ecology).

The point of the nerfs is to make mid/late game techs and other developments last longer, if you reduce costs, than you'll negate crawl nerf.

Yeah, the proposal with the penalty+reduced costs is good for weakening early-game crawlers but does not do the job for midgame.  (Though for midgame, you might want to give some thought to nerfing condenser nutrient output, as farm+condenser is an excellent space for crawling...)

How does conwoy penalty works ? I can't find description of this feature, does it simply reduce amount of crawled resources by a value ?

Exactly.  If it's at 1, and you crawl a square that produces 4 nutrients, you only get 3.

Add an option to change an amount of resources shipped by a convoy between bases and apply the same convoy penalty to it. Make crawlers scrapping like a regular unit and we are set.

Actually, I think that applying the penalty to shipped resources would be too much, as that's resources you already spent workers on acquiring.  However, some future plans (for later on) are either to have a penalty keyed to what percentage you send away and your efficiency (send away 10% and you're fine; send away all of a resource and you'd better have excellent efficiency or you'll lose most of it) and a population-based cap on how many crawlers a base can benefit from at once.  (Also a complete rework of the crawling system, though that's not for a while.)

Project crawlers scrapping for 100% resources is bad, it allows you to effectively build the project before you have the tech and then make it appear the moment you get it.

My thought exactly.

I would also make it impossible to start the same project in more than one base - it's another exploit that allows you to start to build a project before you have the tech.

A penalty for switching will reduce the problem there, and your proposal wouldn't fully fix it (as there'd still be the possibility to start something you don't really want to finish.)  And sometimes (though not often) you do want to have a spare in case one of them is captured.

Is changing alphax.txt values safe for my saves ?

Mostly.  I wouldn't change the stuff that affects atrocity effects on ecodamage if there've already been major atrocities or PBs, but other than that there shouldn't be any problems.

And yea, there is that - Demo/Planned/Creche was very easy to boom with.  I have Democracy at -5 POL, and Planned at -3 ECON.  So if you run both it's very difficult to drone control that.

Not really; as long as you stay at home to avoid problems from POL, -3 ECON isn't much worse than 0.

Some of the issue with the SE switching is that it's a bit fast by default (1 turn, and negligible cost for large empire).  I think more turns would be preferable to very high energy costs.

What would happen in between?  And it would indeed be fairly tough, though probably doable eventually.

There's similar exploits I mentioned with IND pumping/dropping.  You can make crawlers then convert them at low IND, for more minerals.  Then pump IND back up to get a cheaper SP.  Extreme case you can multiple the crawler minerals by 2.6x.  I think for that one crawlers would need to have a value associated with the minerals used to create them.

That'd also be fairly tough; it'd probably make more sense to make it so that when you change IND, any production so far is scaled accordingly (so if you change from +4 to -2, all your minerals stored are cut in half).

Obvious solution - make growth level resulting in popboom adjustable in alphax.txt, so anyone can chose what one think it should be.

It's so obvious, it's already on my list.

If your land is fully developed, yes.  The extra pop is always a big benefit.  But as I've noted before, there's other exploits to get around booming.  You can make colony pods instead in size 2 feeder bases at 20M, which is a lot less FOP than higher natural city growth (10N*size could be 100-200N in a big base).

True, though I am planning to make the population cost per pod moddable as well, and those bases won't have the infrastructure to produce much energy.

Perhaps if city growth didn't require such high sums of N, at higher size, non-booming would work better.

No; the current way actually means that a base's time to grow is pretty much independent of size.  (At low pop, the base square gives a substantial bonus, but after that, it's fairly independent, as both N required and free N gained scale with population.  Well, unless you go all forests and don't have Hybrid Forests yet...but forests might be OP anyway.)

But as I see it, cities have to grow vertically somewhat faster than linear in size (as horizontal expansion is non-linear, aside from B-drones dampering things a bit).  An exponent of 0.5-0.8 onto N to grow would be better than 1.0.

Horizontal expansion requires more territory, though...and of course EFFIC becomes a factor (both in terms of B-drones and inefficiency due to distance) after a point.

I wondered also about whether GA should require *all talents* in the base, rather than talents > workers.

Interesting idea, but that might be too hard.  It already requires zero drones, which is a fairly big deal.

[Nexii]

CV is also very, very, powerful due to removing Power and Thought Control negatives.  It can be like +11 SE in good SE categories.  I currently have it at WillPow, Dream Twister moved to SentEco (kind of less fitting).  May swap them.  As far as copters I've actually had to put them back to 8 move and +2/reactor.  With free armor unit costing, they just aren't as powerful.  They can kill one unit at most typically, then have the trouble of having to get back to a base or they die, unless they lived with over 30% HP.  The advantage they do have is being able to do a cycle in one turn rather than 2 like a needlejet.

Yea I do play with drastically lowered ecodamage with 0 CMs.  The default divisor of 300 is extremely high.  Reason is that even 1-5 net ECODMG results in fairly frequent pops.  I found around 8000-15000 was needed.  Not much ecodamage early but it does ramp up late.  Early on the -PLANET on fighting native life is a big downside just on its own.

Scaling current M for IND changes would be useful.  To clarify I assume you mean bases would always keep the same % completion.  i.e. a facility half done say 30/60 with IND+4, would go to 60/120 if switching to IND -2.  Same should probably be done for N and GROWTH SE changes, though somewhat less crucial.

I've thought about SPs and unit rushing.  As bad as crawler rushing is, pooling up energy to boost an SP is also exploitable.  I wondered if SP races would be more interesting if they instead employed the unit-type rush costs (where rushing 0%>100% is very expensive, but the cost goes down to ~4:1 or 2:1 as you get closer to 100% completion). Similarly crawler conversion rates would be low at 0% completion, but go closer to 100% as the SP nears completion.  Of course that might mean saving a lot of crawlers for the final push.  But it would still cost more.

In between SE changes you would either be stuck in the previous SE or default/frontier choice.  Civ2 had the mechanic of 4 turns for government change, but I think it was rather rudimentary (only changed gov't on leap year).  AC is definitely more complex, since theres multiple tiers.  I'd have to think more on this.  Scaling energy costs alone would probably help some but it tends to favor economic>war changes and make war>builder changes difficult.

Yea what I meant for base growth is that it's generally linear throughout the game.  Size 10>11 takes as long as size 20>21, given constant +N/sq.  In practice even without booming the 11>20 is a lot faster as most good N boosters don't come till midgame (condensor, N-sats, HF).  After 21 it drops off as there are no more workable squares.  The thing to keep in mind is that there's only 400 turns maximum in a standard game.  A few small nerfs to growth and tech here and there, and SPs also, and it doesn't take a lot more to make the game harder to complete within a normal timespan.  I think pod dumping would definitely have to be out with pop booming out is all I'm saying.  You could also crawl N into a tiny base so it essentially booms every turn.  Why make all that surplus N and go heavy +GROWTH in your big cities when you can crawl N/M into a small base?  A few feeder bases would still be worth it, is all I'm saying.  At most you would need 1 per 'real' base, and they can be scrapped once the boom is over.  Their E production wouldn't matter.

This gave another side idea for crawler capping.  What if rather than crawlers per X pop, resource crawling could be capped as a percentage of the base's *worked* resources?  Maybe around 50-100%?  I suppose another option would be something like X resources of each category per N pop (1-2X or so).

Either way I still don't feel that booming is that overpowering.  You're still pop capped until Hab complex/dome, and it's pretty much available to any faction.  The SEs that give GROWTH can/do give other positives even post-boom.  I think the main reason it seems overpowering is just because the AI doesn't make Creches or pump PSY up.  It's one of those strategic areas of the game I'd rather see stay.  Knowing when/how to boom is important.  Further I think it's one of the few ways a faction that's behind can legitimately play catchup. 

[Yitzi]

CV is also very, very, powerful due to removing Power and Thought Control negatives.  It can be like +11 SE in good SE categories.

Not so good for builder players...but yeah, it does seem to be very powerful, especially for a warmonger.

Unfortunately, putting it later doesn't really work out thematically, so perhaps it does need to be nerfed to only +2 GROWTH...

Yea I do play with drastically lowered ecodamage with 0 CMs.  The default divisor of 300 is extremely high.  Reason is that even 1-5 net ECODMG results in fairly frequent pops.  I found around 8000-15000 was needed.  Not much ecodamage early but it does ramp up late.  Early on the -PLANET on fighting native life is a big downside just on its own.

That high?  I'd think that 3000 (or even 1000 with a mineral divisor of 3) would be sufficient, resulting in ecodamage being a serious concern but not insurmountable.

Scaling current M for IND changes would be useful.  To clarify I assume you mean bases would always keep the same % completion.  i.e. a facility half done say 30/60 with IND+4, would go to 60/120 if switching to IND -2.  Same should probably be done for N and GROWTH SE changes, though somewhat less crucial.

I think I'll put it on the list, then.

I've thought about SPs and unit rushing.  As bad as crawler rushing is, pooling up energy to boost an SP is also exploitable.  I wondered if SP races would be more interesting if they instead employed the unit-type rush costs (where rushing 0%>100% is very expensive, but the cost goes down to ~4:1 or 2:1 as you get closer to 100% completion).

I think that would be too much; the current system, where it's 16:1 at very low completion, 8:1 at low completion, and 4:1 beyond that, seems it should work well.

In between SE changes you would either be stuck in the previous SE or default/frontier choice.  Civ2 had the mechanic of 4 turns for government change, but I think it was rather rudimentary (only changed gov't on leap year).  AC is definitely more complex, since theres multiple tiers.  I'd have to think more on this.  Scaling energy costs alone would probably help some but it tends to favor economic>war changes and make war>builder changes difficult.

So use default in between?  It's an idea, though unlike anarchy in Civ2 the default is really not all that bad (in fact, there are times when it's outright preferable to the others.)

The thing to keep in mind is that there's only 400 turns maximum in a standard game.

That's actually a fairly sizable amount.

A few small nerfs to growth and tech here and there, and SPs also, and it doesn't take a lot more to make the game harder to complete within a normal timespan.

Perhaps, though of course that timespan can be increased.  In any case, I think nerfs to speed at one part of the game should come with buffs to speed in other parts.

I think pod dumping would definitely have to be out with pop booming out is all I'm saying.  You could also crawl N into a tiny base so it essentially booms every turn.  Why make all that surplus N and go heavy +GROWTH in your big cities when you can crawl N/M into a small base?  A few feeder bases would still be worth it, is all I'm saying.  At most you would need 1 per 'real' base, and they can be scrapped once the boom is over.  Their E production wouldn't matter.

Point...perhaps an alternate rule where a pod costs X rows of nutrients (but if it goes below 0 costs 1 population), and if added to a base gives Y rows (and if that puts it over enough to grow, it grows immediately)?

This gave another side idea for crawler capping.  What if rather than crawlers per X pop, resource crawling could be capped as a percentage of the base's *worked* resources?  Maybe around 50-100%?  I suppose another option would be something like X resources of each category per N pop (1-2X or so).

Those are ideas, but might be difficult to justify from a "makes sense" perspective.  However, for an alternate idea (where convoys have to actually carry the resources to base), I do plan to have unloading speed be peggable to base population.  That won't be done for a while yet, though.

Either way I still don't feel that booming is that overpowering.

I don't think it's so much "overpowering" as "imbalancing", in particular in the relative importance of nutrients as compared to minerals and energy.

Further I think it's one of the few ways a faction that's behind can legitimately play catchup.

I'd actually rather see that done with diplomacy and maybe some probe actions.

[Nexii]

Yea putting CV down to +2 GROWTH also helps.  Even +2 GROWTH would be a worthwhile SP without negating negatives of Power/TC (and any SE with -GROWTH, Green by default)

3000 was quite high - only Green SE was really that viable then.  Past a certain number of pops, native life will really wreck your bases.
ECODMG = DF * Perihelion (1) * Techs * Life (2) * Difficulty (5) * Planet) / 3000
Assume 0 PLANET (3) -> DF * 30 * TECHS / 3000
DF = M -> 20M * 30 * 20 / 3000 = 4 ecodamage at 20M, 0 PLANET, 20 TECHs.  4 ecodamage is actually quite a bit in terms of pop frequency.  Actually I do wonder about ecodamage, how it's related to pop frequency.  Higher ecodamages seem to increase the frequency but I'm not so sure it's a linear relationship.
80M * 30 * 80 / 3000 = 64 ECO DMG late game (~20 with some eco facilities, 6-7 with both and green).  Ecodamage scales up quadratically as the game goes on, due to tech and m both increasing generally at a linear rate.  The div by 2-3 from facilities helps but doesn't offset it all that strongly.  Thus I found around 8-15k divisor was needed.  Of course the dmg goes up/down a lot on rare or abundant lifeforms.

Yea SPs going from 16:1 to 4:1 also works. 

Another option would be that only the negative of the SE you are switching to applies for a few turns, before you get the positives?  The defaults can also be modified to be negative but I realize most players don't play that way (I opt to)

Yea I feel 400 turns is quite a long game.  I guess if the amount of units to micro didn't get so high later on, it might be faster.  That would be an interesting poll though - how long a game typically takes people and how they feel about it.  Personally against AI, most games don't last long as it doesn't play well into the early-mid game.  MP probably lasts quite a bit longer.  I've found most self played MP went at least mid game before a faction got a large advantage.

Yea I think that fix for pods would also work.  The cost per pod would scale with GROWTH I assume?  i.e. 20N at 0 GROWTH, 10N at +5 GROWTH, etc.  The N given by dumping would be the same, and scale up/down with GROWTH changes.  Still not sure how PTS would play in, though.  Also this seems kind of similar to the delivering N with crawlers idea, so I really wonder if pod dumping even has to stay in.  It's something to think about.  A similar pod exploit to 'destroy' bases is to starve them down to 1 and make a colony pod, then just disband the pod in a friendly base.  Not sure what I think on that.

[Question]

I wouldnt say pop booming is OP but rather, growing a base without pop booming is too slow.

With default values and 0 growth, it takes 20 nutrients to grow from size 1 to 2. Thats 10 turns assuming you get lucky and have a rainy square in your landing zone. From size 6 to 7 and 0 GROWTH, it takes 64 nutrients. At 20% growth, its 57 nutrients and at 40%, 43 nutrients. I dont know how this is calculated because 80% of 64 nutrients is obviously not 57 nutrients...

That is a LOT of turns to grow a base normally if you cant pop boom.

[Nexii]

Is that on a standard map size and difficulty?  I think theres a similar modifier for IND on small maps.

[Yitzi]

3000 was quite high - only Green SE was really that viable then.  Past a certain number of pops, native life will really wreck your bases.
ECODMG = DF * Perihelion (1) * Techs * Life (2) * Difficulty (5) * Planet) / 3000
Assume 0 PLANET (3) -> DF * 30 * TECHS / 3000

Right away, if difficulty is 5 then that's supposed to make things hard; 3 is "normal".  (Yes, I do believe that beating the game on Transcend should be extremely difficult.)

DF = M -> 20M * 30 * 20 / 3000 = 4 ecodamage at 20M, 0 PLANET, 20 TECHs.  4 ecodamage is actually quite a bit in terms of pop frequency.

At normal difficulties it'd be only 2 (assuming you have -1 per base so it rounds down instead of up), which is a lot more manageable (at least if you reduce global warming rate substantially).

So part of the problem might be that you're playing on Transcend and expecting it not to be ridiculously hard.

80M * 30 * 80 / 3000 = 64 ECO DMG late game (~20 with some eco facilities, 6-7 with both and green).

Late game, I think eco facilities should be a given.

However, I favor moving the Voice of Planet up somewhat, to Secrets of Alpha Centauri (which should be around 60-70 techs); together with 3 for difficulty, ecodamage at that point would be moderately high but not insurmountable (but a strong motivation to be careful with PLANET and/or build the Voice, which doubles pop chance but causes them to no longer include worms)...which is pretty much the situation that the story (and in particular the blurb for the Voice) suggests.

And Green is probably best for the late game anyway, as EFFIC becomes more important and ECONOMY usually less so.

But yes, late-game ecodamage is meant to be a substantial obstacle; there is a progression from Planet as a background to inter-faction strife to Planet as the biggest obstacle of all to Planet as an ally (after building the Voice of Planet) and eventually the key step to humanity reaching its full potential as "children of the starts", and in a sense that progression is the story of SMAC/X.

Yea SPs going from 16:1 to 4:1 also works.

Well, they do.  At less than 10* minerals completion it's 16:1, from there until 4* rows it's 8:1, after that it's 4:1.

*number can be modded in alphax.

Another option would be that only the negative of the SE you are switching to applies for a few turns, before you get the positives?  The defaults can also be modified to be negative but I realize most players don't play that way (I opt to)

And similarly for the negative of the SE you're switching from (for a time you only get the negative)?  I think that would be the best way, perhaps even with the old negatives fading out and new positives fading in over time.  (So if it takes 4 turns and you switch from Democracy to Police State, you would immediately go from +2 GROWTH, +2 EFFIC, -2 SUPPORT to -2 EFFIC, -2 SUPPORT, then the next turn have -2 EFFIC, -1 SUPPORT, then the next turn -2 EFFIC, +1 POLICE, then -2 EFFIC, +1 POLICE, +1 SUPPORT, then -2 EFFIC, +2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT.)

Yea I feel 400 turns is quite a long game.  I guess if the amount of units to micro didn't get so high later on, it might be faster.

I think a "stack" action, where the unit copies (if possible) any action taken by a unit in the same square with the same chassis and same "plan" (offensive, defensive, former, colony pod, etc.) would be the best way to do it.

Personally against AI, most games don't last long as it doesn't play well into the early-mid game.

Well, unless you're going for a huge Alpha Centauri rating...

Yea I think that fix for pods would also work.  The cost per pod would scale with GROWTH I assume?  i.e. 20N at 0 GROWTH, 10N at +5 GROWTH, etc.

Yeah.

Still not sure how PTS would play in, though.

What I had planned would actually not affect new bases at all; the only issue, as IIRC you said, is building a base and then immediately being able to build more colony pods.

But seeing as it seems meant to achieve that effect, and make it easy to grow horizontally extremely fast, I think that's just working as intended.  If anything, the only problem is that it, like most projects, is underpriced for its benefit.

Also this seems kind of similar to the delivering N with crawlers idea, so I really wonder if pod dumping even has to stay in.

It is a similar effect, but allowing that mod probably wouldn't be much harder than removing pod dumping entirely.

It's something to think about.  A similar pod exploit to 'destroy' bases is to starve them down to 1 and make a colony pod, then just disband the pod in a friendly base.  Not sure what I think on that.

I don't see any problem with that, although I could see making it an atrocity when done to a captured base before assimilation.

I wouldnt say pop booming is OP but rather, growing a base without pop booming is too slow.

With default values and 0 growth, it takes 20 nutrients to grow from size 1 to 2. Thats 10 turns assuming you get lucky and have a rainy square in your landing zone. From size 6 to 7 and 0 GROWTH, it takes 64 nutrients. At 20% growth, its 57 nutrients and at 40%, 43 nutrients. I dont know how this is calculated because 80% of 64 nutrients is obviously not 57 nutrients...

That is a LOT of turns to grow a base normally if you cant pop boom.

Not really.  When you're at size 6 or 7, you probably have access to farms and condensers, so you can get 3 nutrients/tile.  So given that you already have pop 6, that's +8 nutrients, so 43 (though I have no idea where you're getting that number form) should take only 5-6 turns.

Of course, if you go forest all the time that's a different story, but I think we all agree forests could use a nerf anyway.

Is that on a standard map size and difficulty?  I think theres a similar modifier for IND on small maps.

That makes sense.

[Nexii]

Well, with ecodamages that high, I'd favor less significant increases in tech costs mid-late.  Later Locust swarms (10-20) can completely level a base.  And so unless later game facilities also cost a bit less to replace, heavy-M strategies just get crushed by native life.  But then again, more M means more units to fight it .  Swarms of Empath units can stave it off I feel, and maybe it's more Planetpearls that need to also be taken down a bit (this is moddable, I know).  I'll try it again anyways.  I will say I did have one exciting game once where it was a race to see if my Ascent city could survive waves of native life.

Same goes with all the reqs to buff farm/solar, at div 3000 Forest/Borehole pollute a *lot*.  I had previously tried it that low, with warming off it was too much flooding.  But yes with disabled flooding, and higher ecodamage divisor (8-15k) Green wasn't that necessary until quite late in the game.  I was trying to make Green better for early MWs, as they weren't viable at any point with default costs.  With low ecodamage div, going out of Green to boom mid-late is a *big* risk - and one that is much more significant than giving up air power temporarily.  CV circumventing that is quite overpowering.  Lore-wise it CV might fit in the mid-game but for balance reasons with booming out/harder, it needs to come late OR be toned down a lot.  Otherwise it's game for the maker.

Fading the SEs would probably be the most 'ideal' but perhaps also the most complex to implement.  I think as long as the SE page can be accurate at each turn that can work.  I assume you'd be 'locked' from further switches until completely converted to the new choice.  i.e. I'm switching from "Green" to "Free Market", I can't pick "Planned" until fully "Free Market"?  Of course, sometimes the intermediary penalties are not that significant.  I think maybe the full penalties should apply until 'converted', and only the new positives would fade in (and all old positives would go away immediately).  I think then probably energy cost could go away from SE switching to compensate.

Stacks are a good idea.  This would be good for combat and not just terraforming.  However one issue is that units with same chassis don't always have same movement (damaged, Elite).

I'd say that some SPs are undercosted for their benefit and most were about right.  EG, CBA, CV I think everyone agrees are undercosted.  A few like Bulk Matter, Telepathic Matrix, were vastly overcosted.  Fewer are undercosted if you take down facility costs & maintenance (which I agree is a positive change).  It also depends heavily on what sort of SP switching penalties you run.  A lot of the time you will lose an SP race.  Is there a way to make SPs go from 16:1 rush cost to 4:1 without impacting facilities and units?  These seem like flat variables in alphax.txt that impact everything?  I was thinking something more like unit scaling.

[Yitzi]

Well, with ecodamages that high, I'd favor less significant increases in tech costs mid-late.  Later Locust swarms (10-20) can completely level a base.

How many pops in do you get that sort of size?  It may be that the ramp-up of native attacks is just too fast.

I will say I did have one exciting game once where it was a race to see if my Ascent city could survive waves of native life.

This should not happen, as once the Voice is built I'm pretty sure native life stops spawning in response to ecodamage.

CV circumventing that is quite overpowering.  Lore-wise it CV might fit in the mid-game but for balance reasons with booming out/harder, it needs to come late OR be toned down a lot.  Otherwise it's game for the maker.

I think that makes sense.

Fading the SEs would probably be the most 'ideal' but perhaps also the most complex to implement.

Not that much more complex than a several-turn switch.

I think as long as the SE page can be accurate at each turn that can work.  I assume you'd be 'locked' from further switches until completely converted to the new choice.  i.e. I'm switching from "Green" to "Free Market", I can't pick "Planned" until fully "Free Market"?

No, I think you would be able to switch in the middle, and it'd simply mean you'd carry part of the penalty of three things.  For instance, if it's a 4 turn switch and you re-switch in the second turn, it would be something like this:

Turn 0 (the turn you switch): -3 PLANET, -5 POLICE, -2 GROWTH
Turn 1: -3 PLANET, -5 POLICE, -2 GROWTH (because nothing increases by 4 this switch, there are no benefits until turn 2)
Turn 2 before reswitching: -3 PLANET, -5 POLICE, -1 GROWTH, +1 ECONOMY
Turn 2 after reswitching: -3 PLANET, -5 POLICE, -1 GROWTH, -2 EFFIC
Turn 3: -3 PLANET, -4 POLICE, -2 EFFIC
Turn 4: -2 PLANET, -3 POLICE, +1 GROWTH, -2 EFFIC
Turn 5: -1 PLANET, -2 POLICE, +1 GROWTH, -2 EFFIC
Turn 6: +2 GROWTH, +1 INDUSTRY, -2 EFFIC

Of course, sometimes the intermediary penalties are not that significant.

Sometimes, but I think that's fairly rare.  Any particular examples in mind?

Stacks are a good idea.  This would be good for combat and not just terraforming.  However one issue is that units with same chassis don't always have same movement (damaged, Elite).

True.  Perhaps it would be better to also require the same movement available.  (Not sure if damaged units should stack only with other damaged units.)

I'd say that some SPs are undercosted for their benefit and most were about right.  EG, CBA, CV I think everyone agrees are undercosted.  A few like Bulk Matter, Telepathic Matrix, were vastly overcosted.

Bulk Matter Transmitter is actually fairly strong, at +50% to all minerals.  Well, if you can keep ecodamage under control.

Energy Grid had a lot of its strength being due to the stockpile bug, which I removed.  Modding air power and satellites also can nerf the CBA a lot, and the Telepathic Matrix can also be made stronger by nerfing free probe team boosts and adjusting drone rules to make drones into more of a challenge.

Fewer are undercosted if you take down facility costs & maintenance (which I agree is a positive change).

Actually, I favor reducing facility costs in the early game, but increasing it in the late game.

It also depends heavily on what sort of SP switching penalties you run.  A lot of the time you will lose an SP race.

True, though without easy switching or crawler adding that will become somewhat more predictable...and of course if SPs are properly balanced and expensive enough that you can't get them all, then different factions will have different priorities and will often simply try for different SPs (well, unless you get a particular SP so your rival doesn't, but then the consequences of losing the SP race are simply part of the pseudo-war going on).

Is there a way to make SPs go from 16:1 rush cost to 4:1 without impacting facilities and units?  These seem like flat variables in alphax.txt that impact everything?  I was thinking something more like unit scaling.

Well, the threshold that switches from 8:1 to 4:1 can be modded without affecting anything else, but the 16:1 to 8:1 threshold is the same as for facilities going from 4:1 to 2:1.

[Question]

Even if theres a bonus to growth on small maps though, it doesnt make sense that 20% growth is more like 10%...

[Yitzi]

Even if theres a bonus to growth on small maps though, it doesnt make sense that 20% growth is more like 10%...

If you can post screenshots of the various growth charts at various growth values, that would help figure out what's going on...

[Nexii]

Yea for SE switching I was more concerned with hovering between a choice and Frontier-types, or SEs and those with no downside (CV with Power/TC, Yang with PS/Planned).  I think as long as the positives fading in are relatively backloaded it'll be fine though.

Bulk Matter is the +2 minerals SP.  I think you're thinking of Singularity Inductor, which is a strong SP.  One thing about late-game facilities is that they have a lot less time before the game is over to pay off.  Although cities are much bigger late, facilities all only give a % modifier on the base E/M produced.  I'd have to run some numbers.  Something like ~15-20 turns to pay-off would be about right, I feel.  Most early facilities are around that range if put at 4 mineral rows cost.  Late facilities maybe around 16-24 rows tops, but moreso than pay-off I think you also have to weight them against units.  Units keep you from losing cities.  It might be more that 2:1 rushing gets rather strong, late, when considering that E doesn't cause any ecodamage, than that M costs need to stay very high.
 
I'll see about native life pops.  I wondered if perhaps the strength of pops should scale up with ecodamage #, rather than pop sequence #.  That way since ecodamage gets higher later, the pops would get bigger.  One issue is that if you've had a lot of pops, even slight ecodamage can cause huge boils.  I can't prove this but I feel that ecodamage # is not linearly related to pop chance, that it might not go up as fast.  So many bases with low ecodamage actually are a lot more dangerous than a few bigger bases with high ecodamage.

The game I'm remembering might have been more of a race to VoP to get Ascent than VoP>Ascent.  Might have been something like huge boils going around and new ones stopped coming at VoP, but I had to rush Ascent in the next 2 turns and protect the Ascent city.