How would you improve SMAC or SMACX

[Grail Quest]

Misc

(1) Option to omit resource harvesting.

In my current game, I had a base with the present maximum Mineral Production without triggering Eco-Damage. The very next turn, there's a mineral production boom (+1 per square). Suddenly, my Pop 9 base has Eco-Damage rating 25 and freakin' fungus is flowering over my forests.
I can't disable working any resource squares because my Nutrients would fall below what is necessary to support the base. I'm hoping it won't lay waste to my forest before 10 years is up.
No, I don't have crawler technology yet. It's only about 80 turns into the game, and I'm playing with Blind Research.

(2) More clearly directed research.
It seems that no matter what research focus I choose, the % research discovered always seems kind of even across all 4 categories with Blind Research. I imagine it's because of critical technologies that must be discovered before research can progress further.

[Grail Quest]

Minerals and Production

(1) Allow a "Just Enough" Hurry or JIT production Hurry, where the Energy amount buys minerals equal to (minerals required - mineral production for current turn) so that production is completed and the next item in the queue starts with 0 minerals.
This is related to point #2, which is...

(2) Allow banking more minerals than 10 without loss. If I have a city that is crunching out, say, 30 minerals per Turn, and I just want to build a weeny former that costs 16, I don't want to lose all those excess minerals!
Perhaps bank them as crawler pods without any chassis, so that they can't go anywhere, but can be slapped onto a chassis at any time.

(3) Recommend a HQ location from time to time, or on demand.

[Securion]

SMAC/X is good as it is. (except the poor AI)

But if I could put a couple of artists and designers on the game I would order them to make the game more... "dark". More like Starship Troopers vs Aliens 2 kinda atmosphere. Who came up with the brilliant idea of having pastell colors in the game anyway?
Anyone remeber that futuristic combat scene in Terminator 2? Do you remeber how cool it was? THATS how a future war will look like! Alot of rubble, ruins and robotics... And it would be nice to have in a game.

So basicly, make a new "darker" SMAC/X ith more power to the user to really design his own military forces.
Make the player LOVE hes creation/empire.

[Securion]

One more thing...
Who says that, in the future, we must go out ourself to fight wars when we have super advanced computer AI and robots?
Wouldnt it be esier to just send out military robots?

Put that in SMAC/X also... The more advanced civ, the more robotics would be available for designing military forces.

[Darsnan]

Re: Minerals and Production

Originally posted by Grail Quest
(1) Allow a "Just Enough" Hurry or JIT production Hurry, where the Energy amount buys minerals equal to (minerals required - mineral production for current turn) so that production is completed and the next item in the queue starts with 0 minerals.
(

This can be accomplished thru the "Make partial payment" option in a Cities Production Screen. When you click on a city and decide to "Hurry" that cities current production, the screen that comes up gives you the option of cancelling, making full payment, or making partial payment. In this case select the "Make Partial Payment" option. Look at the number of EC's it will take to complete the item in question. Divide it by the number of turns it will take to complete the same item (this is in the "Turns to Complete" box visible when you click on a city).
Example: you click on a city and it tells you it will take 12 turns to complete the Impact Rover currently in production. You want to rush it, so you click on the "Hurry" button to rush the cities production. It says it will take 80EC's to complete the production. Take the number 80 and divide it by 12, and it will give you the whole number of 6. Subtract the 6 from 80, and it gives you 74. Select the "Make Partial Payment" option, and enter 74 EC's into the screen. The Impact Rover will now show as being completed in one turn. FYI.

D

[Grail Quest]

Re: Re: Minerals and Production

Originally posted by Darsnan
Look at the number of EC's it will take to complete the item in question. Divide it by the number of turns it will take to complete the same item (this is in the "Turns to Complete" box visible when you click on a city).

Sorry, but not exactly.

If the city is producing +30 minerals, and you are building a unit from scratch that costs 32 minerals, it will show that production takes 2 turns.

According to your strategy (which in the early game works well enough because mineral production is low) if you spend half the credits needed (i.e., Hurry it by 1 turn so that it is complete at the end of the present turn), you will buy 16 minerals.
That means at the end of the current turn, +30 minerals will be added to the 16 you bought, for a total of 46, which is 14 more than necessary, meaning 4 lost and a carry-over of 10, which is the limit.

The correct amount to buy for Just-In-Time production was only 2 Minerals.
To figure this out, with SMACX as it is right now, I need to go to Base Status and look at production, then Zoom to Base and look at minerals production, before I calculate the minerals to buy, then go to Hurry to get the EC figure to find out how much the present EC cost per mineral is (it varies from x2 to I think as high as x8 or more).

Obviously it's not a big deal for cities with under +10 mineral production, but in the mid- to late- game, I've got cities pushing +70 mineral production.

There is a line in alphax.txt that can adjust the carry-over,but I think it adjusts the free minerals for a base, also -- can someone confirm? Or have I adjusted the wrong line?

[Kirnwaffen]

Sorry, became redundant while I was typing.

[Darsnan]

Re: Re: Re: Minerals and Production

Originally posted by Grail Quest


Sorry, but not exactly.

If the city is producing +30 minerals, and you are building a unit from scratch that costs 32 minerals, it will show that production takes 2 turns.

Sorry for the delay in responding - what with 'poly being down, then playing hide and seek with me, have'nt had a chance to respond!
Of course you are absolutely right in your response to my proposition. This is an oversite on my part, specifically because I've never had cities produce so many minerals (such as the +30 you are describing) that, when I used this technique, I experienced a mineral penalty on the carryover! Glad you pointed this out to me, in case I ever get to needing a city with mineral production of that quantity! However, I contributed this technique because, in a number of games, I came up against opponents who were paying the full cost to rush items, whereas it was much more economical to to make the partial payment and have the unit ready in one turn, thus saving the EC's to use for other purposes. FYI.

D

[Impaler[WrG]]

A 4th Social enginering Choise in each catagory. I am thinking Olagarcy for goverment, Gift Economy (think of the Mars Triligy by Kim Stanly Robinson) and Justice as the new Value. As for effects of these choices I have no idea but Justice could incresse your police rating. I can't think of any new future societys. Also in response to an ealier idea about incressing the severity of social changes I whole hartedly agree. Here is an outline for how I would change it.

First off upheval cost is not 40 EC, its your polulation multiplied by 8 or more so its going to be a BIG bill. Secondly Each change of Goverment, Economy and Values would have a differnt upheval effect. The first transition from the "simple" to some more advanced form is half price and dose not suffer the following penaltys, so make that first choice well. Reverting back to a Simple would then cause the same thing as switching to a totaly differnt system.


For goverment you losse the ability to conduct diplomacy (like a sun spot), rush or change any production in your bases and your bases experience double the abount of inefficency loss they would normaly loss.

Changing your Economic system results in -1 of every resorces harvested in all squares (like an economic colapse, cloud cover and Crop failure combined!!)

Changing your Values results in additional Drones (like Zark has 1 per 4), incresses probe vulnorability and if we are adding culture points like in Civ3 they stop acumulating, also all golden aging stops.

This state will continue for 1 turn per difficulty level and your society will experience the negative modifiers of your past and future changes but none of the positives. At any time after the start of the transition you could revert back to your original but you resieve no EC refund.

Future Sosietys would most likly be perminent, its rather unimaginable that a sosiety would go from Eudiamonaic to Police State in ANY time scale we would include in the game.