WEIRD AI unit design...

[Ned]

Smack, I'm sorry, but that is one of the funniest things I have ever read here. I too fell off my chair laughing! Dee mass producing Needlejet transports!

So, it works! Bravo!

Ned

[Avenoct]

I'm glad to see you went ahead and used the unit gifting idea. It really is amusing to give supply needlejets....hehe....but like SMAC fanatic said, some units ( ie. the supply foil) can and are used quite effectively. My next project is to figure a way to give each faction a supply crawler in the faction text. I wish a supply foil would be possible but it's not a basic unit...maybe there's a way....mutter mutter....happy crawlering,
-Smack

[Ken Hinds]

I doubt that the AI can be improved to the point where it can outsmart a person.

NS

Gee, Thanks. I regularly get beat by the AI in both CIV II and in SMAC.

Ken

[Ned]

And it took me a very long time to beat the AI in Civ I on the highest level. Ned

[NorthSwordsman]

Post deleted- it was a dumb comment. Sorry.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Smack
My next project is to figure a way to give each faction a supply crawler in the faction text. I wish a supply foil would be possible but it's not a basic unit...maybe there's a way....mutter mutter....happy crawlering,
-Smack

You can add a supply foil to the alpha.txt and alphax.txt. The AI doesn't build them very often, but I have played a game where the PKs built a slew.

eg, for alphax.txt, under #UNITS

add a 24th category (and remember to change the number from 23 to 24):

Foil Supply, Foil, Supply, Scout, 10, 0, 0, IndAuto,DocFlex, - 1, 00000000000000000000000000

It'd be the same for smac's alpha.txt. Add the line to the end, and remember to increase the # from 14 to 15

The graphics look funny, but if you add armor or trance they become normal again (course the AI doesn't add armor or trance)

G.

[Avenoct]

Thanks Googlie, I think I'll try that. The game where I gave all factions a former..yadda yadda..just came to a close. I think that giving AI factions extra starting units is a great way to change up the game. Convincing them to use the former and build more, well....adding 'build' to their strategy seems to work better than not. I've yet to see an AI energy park though. And what's with the lousy terraforming strategy? Miriam built two or three condensers, all on rocky squares, and one right next to the mouth of mount planet! She at least got her cities wet with extra rainfall...and she did a sight better than Lal who raised land on the wrong side of his island, connecting him to the fungal polar area rather than to an adjoining island. Silly AI.

-Smack

[Method]

Originally posted by Ned
And it took me a very long time to beat the AI in Civ I on the highest level. Ned

and i never went past chieftain in civ I or prince in CivII (but i was like 10 years old at the time) and i'm in the middle of my second librarian game now. (the first one i think i diplomatic-ed and my current one i have 2 pacts 2 pets 1 killed and 1 vendetta.) i know this isn't the thread for this but should i win diplomatic now or wait a very long time for transcenence?

[Ken Hinds]

And zigging back towards the thread topic a bit. I want to thank all the unit idea contributors for providing me with encouragement to attempt using the workshop features for myself.

I get tired of watching my formers and Colony pods get blasted by anything and everything. In my last game I got plasma steel early and decided to add some armor to the formers. It didn't help enough against mindworms, but came close. I also dicovered that if you upgrade the weapons when the chance comes you can build some of the advanced units long before the Production Chief would normally offer them. Ex: Needle jets with Plasma Steel armor became Needle Penetrators.

Thanks again,

Ken

[Ned]

Ken, I have never put armor on a plane. What is it, again, that happens when you get a new weapon?

TKG, Even though I think I can play SMACx well at the highest level, I really fear trying CIV I again. That game was a real nightmare.

Ned

[NorthSwordsman]

Here are some interesting posts on the effectiveness of armor on planes.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7727

And for Naval vessel armor:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7728

I bumped both threads up to the top for reference.

[Ken Hinds]

Originally posted by Ned
Ken, I have never put armor on a plane. What is it, again, that happens when you get a new weapon?

Ned

Ned,

What I've found, but others may already know, is that if after the Production Chief finishes the new weapons design offerings you go into the work shop and add that new weapon/armor to items that he chose not to upgrade then you can sometimes get items that you would not be offered for several more advances or even total new designs that don't fall in the normal paths.

I haven't played enough of SMAC (V1.0) yet to know what the normal paths should be so maybe this is old to some of you. And I'm not talking about the "mk(?)" designation. For example I just took an infantry Scout patrol and added Sythmetal armor to it and got a 1-2-2 sythmetal scirmisher(sp) with the option to obsolete the sythmetal sentinals. This was without mobility yet. I've never had this item come up in a "regular" build path even though I've played at least a couple dozen games. Now I had found a unity rover in a pod so that may have made some difference even though I couldn't build scout rovers.

Ken

[Basil]

Just so that you are all aware:

In SMAC version 1 it was reasonably cheap to put armour on planes. They "fixed" that in later patches, so in SMAC v4 or SMAC-X it is very expensive to put armour on planes.

Of course, the game still uses the plane's armour rating to defend in certain situations - against ground units with SAM, but also when a fighter scrambles to defend a unit against bomber attack, I'm pretty sure the scrambling fighter defends with its armour. (This would be a bug.)

[Kirnwaffen]

I thought that armor on planes was only used to defend against attack when they were left in the open and attacked on an opponents turn. IIRC, if an interceptor scrambles, it becomes a weapon to weapon dogfight.

Edit: sorry, missed the bug part.

K

[Basil]

Yes. I'm just going by my experience that the scrambling jet almost always loses the fight, even if it has better weapon, unless it has better morale and better reactor, which is consistent with the fight being resolved as weapon-vs-scrambler's armour. It certainly should be weapon-vs-weapon .