True Greens

[Jeem]

Is it possible to follow a 'true' planet path in SMAC? What I'd really like to do is plant fungus everywhere instead of forests and the like, but there is just no point to it. Even late on in the game when you get loads of bonus resources in fungus, the eco damage is appalling - even with a +7 Planet rating and all the ecology bonuses going. I would have though mineral output in fungus wouldn't be counted towards eco damage.

I once tried to create a true green faction with ACEdit but it was too hard to play without letting them plant fungus from the start. What I'm saying is, I wanna be a real hardcore planet nut but the game won't allow it! My idea of this would be a faction that used fungus as a resource and also a weapon if played right. Obviously, growth would need to take a hammering in keeping with the theme. Another idea would be to have mind worms count 1/2 for support purposes so hordes could be built even at a democracy.

Any ideas? Also, if somebody can post a link to some custom factions then I'd be grateful. Cheers.


Jim 'not content with the Gaians or Cult'

[Misotu]

Yes, I do hear what you're saying and what you're saying is true, up to a point. But I consider myself to be a hardcore planet nut, in a way, and I find the game perfectly satisfactory although you might not like my reasons

Thing is, a real planet-nut walks lightly. This means that minerals of any kind are DIRT. Now the Nessus mins do not pollute at all (which is weird, because they really must be causing pollution somewhere, right?), so when you get to that stage you can engage in a little correction. But I have to say that I have always regarded minerals in SMAC as dirty items. I play an energy game - mins are an undesirable but necessary factor. A bit like sewage

Try playing Dee as an energy faction. With her efficiency, she is practically designed that way anyhow. Which might suggest that energy, and not mins, is the way to play planet?

However, if you don't like this idea, and you simply want to play the fungus, then you must control min damage. Which means that you have to go for a very early fungal pop from eco-damage.

If you have one base that can generate very serious mins from an early point (mines on min specials etc) go for max ecodamage and get a fungal pop as early as you can. After that first pop, any facility reducing ecodamage increases the number of non-polluting mins per base by one. So, for example, after your first ecodamage-related fungal pop, every tree farm you build anywhere in your empire increases clean mins/base by one. Very significant ... and there is a very good thread here explaining this in more detail.

That's about it really. All I can say is that you either do this ... or you focus on energy and ignore the mins. I would say that the latter, ecologically, is the more enlightened strategy because mins are clearly dirty items however you look at it. There are other threads here detailing an energy strategy. But the former may be more of a winner

[big_canuk]

You could do it, but you would have to reduce your ecodamage as usual, by first allowing a pop, and then by building tree farms, hybrid forests, and centari preserves. Each one built adds one to the allowable "clean mineral threshold". Do a search on ecodamage, and look for Ned's thread.

edit: cross-posted with Mis. (Mis: looks like you finished your games too! ) (She's a energy freak, I'm a mins freak)

Here's the ecodamage thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7907

[Blake]

A few thoughts:

Mindworms dont require support if in fungus.

In order to reduce Ecodamage force a "pop" then build heaps of cent preserves, each built allows one more "clean" mineral per base.


You could design a faction with the following specs:
Start with tech for plant fungus (Cent Empathy?)
+1 Nut, +1 Min, +2 Energy in fungus tiles or
+1 Nut, +2 Min, +1 Energy in fungus tiles

If this is a role-playing faction, then you'll only be working fungus, so 2-2-1 or 2-1-2 wouldn't be unbalanced, considering you wont be working any special resources.


Industry can go either way, for example:
-1 Industry: Expensive to be green
+1 Industry: Efficent use of available minerals.
Which to choose really depends on how high fungus mineral output is set to.

Economy should take a hit.

Morale could take a hefty hit to encouarage use of natives, and improve defense in bases with a ChildrenCreche.

Could start with a free green facility, such as broodpit or biolab (not cent. preserve, or temple of planet), with or without pre-req (to taste).

Prehaps -2 growth, but impunity to negative effects of green?

edit: more cross posting than you can shake a fish at.
That ED thread is more the history of "the unlocking of the mysterious of ecodamage", it is very very long and has quite a lot of maths, a lot of the early hypothesis turn out wrong, and you'll only thoroughly confuse yourself by reading it (altough if you want to see the brilliant minds of Apolyton at work, feel free to read it)
The Ecodamage column is much more usfull, unfortunately it seems to have been un-topped. Try this link:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21690&highlight=Ecodamage+Column

[Jeem]

OK cheers for that. I used the eco pop 'bug' from ages ago but had forgotten all about it. Just recently got back into SMAC after a long lay off.

What Misoto says is quite right obviously - the mineral route should be avoided at all costs, what with us walking with planet and all that. Thing is, I tend to use Energy as a means to rush-buying improvements anyway...

I'll definitely be using the eco pop again (damn me), but I suppose I'm really looking for a faction that is quite fundamental in it's approach to fungus. Imagine the annoyance value of a faction that actually planted fungus as a social agenda! How cool would that be? I'm attempting domination in my latest MP game of SMACX using fungal payloads/XenoEmpath Dome and was wondering if that is feasible? Should be a laugh regardless.

Cheers for the replies. If anyone has a custom built green faction that is playable and fairly balanced then I'd like to know about it.

Jim

[Avenoct]

A nice can of worms this is (har har )..

Really though, this seems a philosophical question on top of a practical one.

Is it possible to follow a 'true' planet path in SMAC? What I'd really like to do is plant fungus everywhere instead of forests and the like, but there is just no point to it.

That's a practical question. Here's the answer, taking into account

(With the) bonus resources in fungus, the eco damage is appalling (for the custom faction. ((and)...They are) too hard to play without letting them plant fungus from the start

In the short-term, it's easy enough to add 'FUNGNUTRIENT, 1', or 'FUNGMINERAL, 1' to the text for your Green custom faction. I take it that one problem is that you can't plant the fungus you need, which can be taken care of in the alpha.txt in the line

Fungus, None, Sea Fungus, None, 6, Remove $STR0, F, F
Fungus, EcoEng, Sea Fungus, EcoEng, 6, Plant $STR0, F, Ctrl+F

of the "Terrain#" section. Change the Preq to "None" from "EcoEng" and "EcoEng" in each case. You can also change how long it takes to plant the fungus (the "6" above).

In the long term though, you're ecodamaging too much for what should be a 'Green' faction. The only way around this is to play a scenario. When creating the scenario play a few turns as your faction, making sure to ecodamage and cause pops, build tree-farms, etc... and then erase everything. Start your faction all over again, with whatever starting conditions you want. They will, in effect, have a high eco-damage threshold....as high as you take it in the creation step. Because this means you must play a scenario, it's really impractical, but there you go, it's possible.

Now, to the interesting part, the philosophy of 'Green'. You really have to step back to the premise of 'wilderness'. This concept only occurs when you encounter duality between 'civilized' areas and 'uncivilized' or wild areas. This is of course a consequence of civilization, which places certain geographical areas under various levels of control, initially, agricultural control. Green means simply the deemphasis of the difference between civilized and wild areas combined with the deemphasis of the impact of one side against the other. Thus, a Green farm blends as harmoniously as possible with a wild farm, or plants doing what they do naturally.

But consider that our notion of the duality of wild/civilized is an abstraction. There is no such actuality. One way to see this is to examine the word 'Weed'. The definition of a weed is any plant that occurs where it shouldn't, and shouldn't in terms of civilization. So, a tomato plant in a cornfield is a weed, as is wild garlic (Aliaria sp. ) wherever you find it, because it's an invasive, an alien species (in North America). So, consider, is the Green philosophy one of dampaning the duality, or a philosophy truly apart from the duality?

This is a question rarely addressed by so called 'Environmentalists', and all the many other terms for those people who recognize the inherant stress of maintaining an abstraction such as 'civilization' in duality with the abstraction 'wilderness'.

But back to the game... are minerals 'dirty' as Misotu suggests? I would propose that for a truly Green faction they are not. Consider too that a Green faction is most likely to seek Transcendence, which, iconically represents the fracturing of the above duality. (Needless to say, its a return to harmony, not the first visit upon it.) Imagine, you are a people that not only believes, but acually thrives on working with the environment around you. If that's true, anything you do is going to be 'Green' because you represent the Will of Wilderness itself, a wilderness bound and spoken through its many incarnations. If your faction needs to build something, Planet provides, because Planet agrees. If there is even the possibility that you could do something against Planet, you are no longer Green, but a pretender.

But suppose you can act either with Planet or against it. Why consider that minerals are against it? This presupposes that building hurts Planet, which may or may not be true. On Sol, we've learned that our methods of construction are generally hard on local environments, but what if Sol was threatened from outside? Wouldn't the Planet, if conscious, desire that we construct the things that would protect it? And on the other side of the coin, if we are one with Planet, wouldn't our construction be just another expression of Planet's will?

On Alpha Centauri we are faced with these questions for the first time, in a way. I hope that we look deeper than our own politics and toward the possible.

As a final note, you might find that Psi-units have an organic and Planet characteristic, but that their abilities are somewhat limited. I've included here a couple critters from Aldebaran that can be easily added to Smac. Just go down to the section on #UNITS in the alpha.txt, add 2 to the number on the next line, and paste these in:

Great Worm, Hovertank, Psi, Psi, 1,15, 1, Yourtech, 4, 000000010100001100111010
Great Locust, 'Copter, Psi, Psi, 4,15, 1, Yourtech, 3, 000000010100000100100010

[EDIT: Thought I'd better clarify...if you paste these in, either do it at the end of the units list, or replace existing units (and hence, keep the total-units number the same). If you paste units into the beginning of the list you'll bump everything down a position so the game will make a call on the wrong unit...would hate to see Probe teams pop up in the Xenofungus from ecodamage!]

Replace the parts 'Yourtech' with whatever tech you think they should be available for Chironians. You can of course put 'None', or customize a tech that only your faction possesses and add it to the alpha.txt.

Good luck, and let us know if you find a truly 'Green' solution,

Smack

[Jeem]

Heh. That's pretty good Smack. In particular I follow the 'why should green mins be bad' idea, but I didn't want to go into that after only two posts. The suggestion of 'green' being able to mix wild with man-made is the way I usually play the game also.

Like I said, I'm a bit out of practice, but I've got right back into it again recently. I'll have a look at your suggestions and have a go at a new faction. I'd think there's a few players here who are more capable of it than I am though. Thanks again.

[johndmuller]

Where do you put Hybrid Forests in your pantheon of good and evil?

The announcement that greets the first HF is somewhat vague as to whether the HF's are indeed crossbreeds of Earth & Chiron life as the name suggests. Even regular Forests seem to have been deemed "good" in terms of ecodamage and Tree Farms even better.

Strangely, a fungus tile is basically neutral and later in the game with the appropriate tech, it could be a negative w/r ecodamage (if you have added roads/tubes and whatever else you can get in fungus), encouraging one to build the TF/HF combo even if one didn't have any forests, just to neutralize the terraforming part of the ecodamage.

Thus it seems that the concept of "Green" is a bit confusesd as the natural Planet state is not as "Green" as it would be if it were completely forested. It may be relevant that we call it "Green" and not "Red" as the quite comparable philosophy in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is called. Actually, compared to the "Reds", Dee engages in excessive terraforming.

[Jeem]

My personal view on what is good for Planet is what was there before the humans arrived, ie xenofungus. The designers obviously felt the need to incorporate forests into the game as a quick source of minerals, and also as a means to destroy xenofungus quickly. It seems a bit strange that something that wipes out the natural flora could be seen as a good thing.

One idea I had was that forests and fungus would be perfect partners in a 'green' faction. This would mean high levels of nutrients (1 per planet rating sounds good) and energy (1 for every 2 Planet) in fungus quares. The problem here is forests would wipe out the fungus. Bummer.

If this could be sorted, it would be possible to create a faction with fungus planting as it's main agenda. That to me would be 'True' green. One cool spin-off from this is enemy factions might find themselves forced into green economics also. Something for SMAC2 perhaps?

[Fitz]

Don't suppose anyone has ever figured out the way that fungus and forest are controlled in the txt file. Basically, I'm asking if there is a place where you could make a switch and all fungus, retaining it's fungus properties for combat, native life etc, could be associated with the forest algorith for growth and eco-damage, and forest the fungus algorithm, while retaining their inherant properties for resources/combat.

The only downside I can see is forest explosions instead of fungal explosions in response to eco-damage.

I only ask because you (SMAC & others) obviously have had no problems doing things with units, such as creating new native lifeforms. If there is some way to change some flags and switch the two, it might make for a very interesting mod.

[Avenoct]

Fitz,
Great idea, but, unfortunately, not possible. If things like that were accessible one could make some truly amazing scenarios. Surely, in the source-code it is just a matter of flagging the Xenofungus to the grow and ecodamage algorithms. Unfortunately it does not make a call to a rules-file (.txt) about this.

However, just to point out the possible, even though it's largely impractical, one can make a scenario, fill it with high-tech factions. Planet-bust the **** out of everything, then re-set the factions to appear to be landing for the first time. As you can imagine, it becomes a four-way battle between forest, xenofungus, rising oceans, and new volcano's....from the very first turn. Another large problem with this technique is that each pop will be accompanied by worms, so you'd probably wan't to reduce them in strength (possible). Yeah, it's a pretty terrible idea and definately not a solution, but there you have it, the only way to 'grow' xenofungus...stubborn stuff.

-Smack

[Blake]

If it's a scenerio you want there is a much much easier way.

Design the map so that there is heaps of rocky+fungus tiles, and heaps of small lakes filled completely with fungus. Forest never expands over rocky tiles - if you think you've seen this it is because you raised terrain and rocky tiles appeared under the forest.
And obviously forest cant expand over sea fungus.

I believe you can even prevent kelp expanding over fungus, by placing sea fungus, then placing kelp on it. You get both in the tile, but it still considered fungus, and presumably kelp cant expand where kelp already grows. But that isn't nessecary as long as you dont build duckpond sea formers to trash the fungus.

Then the only way fungus gets removed is by actively using "remove fungus".

[Jeem]

Hmm. There's definitely some good ideas here for scenerios (I'd never have thought about rocky/fungus btw Blake.)

It's pretty apparent that fungus=bad overall though. This makes me think that the +1 nut for Gaians must be the most useless ability going. Even if fungus was just mediocre at game start it would make a huge difference - the problem is even as Gaians you exterminate it ASAP because fungus is worse than flat/moist (you can at least terraform that!). Not exactly walking with planet eh Dee?

The only route to fungal harmony is through the Manifold Thingy in SMACX, but that is so late in the game as to be worthless. This can be changed though...

[Fitz]

Originally posted by Blake
Forest never expands over rocky tiles - if you think you've seen this it is because you raised terrain and rocky tiles appeared under the forest.

I'll challenge this statement.

I have played many many many games without raising a single square. And I have also played many many games where I can't be bothered to do anything with the rocky squares until way later in the game. I seem to recall spending a lot of time getting 'info on this square' to find those rockies underneath the forest to mine 'em.

I won't say that isn't due to sea level rising though. Especially since pretty much all of those manys were from when I first started playing SMAC.

Time for a test. Unless you've already done one.

[Blake]

Yes, I have done such a test. Five minutes ago. I also tested a few other things regarding forest growth, which I've been meaning to test for a long long time.

(the test was done on a completey flat, completely arid map, the only rocky tiles were used as barriers, no rolling, no moist tiles)

Here are my findings:
Forest never grows over rocky tiles (atleast never over arid rocky tiles).
Forest still grows if a road or sensor is built on the forest. (I had suspected that forest growth was impeded by roads, but it seems not)
Forest grows into tiles with a road (in fact grows into almost any terraforming which isn't mutually exclusive, like farms)

Something I hadn't expected:
Forest seems to prefer growing downwind, with approximately twice the growth rate downwind than upwind.
For anyone which doesn't know, the wind on chiron blows from west to east, so forest grows faster to the right than to the left.
(but I only tested that twice, so it *could* have been random chance, but that's unlikely, it could also be a function of how forest growth is calculated)

If anyone is really bored they could test the effects of:
Slope, Rainfall, rivers (I suspect no effect, in all three mentioned cases)