Maps

[Apocalypse]

Quote number two is after the release of the game. It is from mid February.

[MariOne]

I believe you, but that proves nothing.
As Googlie said, BR was very likely reporting things he experienced while developing the game, without knowing how his game actually evovled after release. I wouldn't be surprised.

You're talking us anyway of things 3 years old, or 3 yrs + 2 months, or 3 yrs + 4 months.
And 5 patches old.
Or 4 patches old.
Doesn't make all that difference, don't you think?

Thanks for the bits of history.
For those intersted to play the game NOW, be aware that entering Planetsize figure bigger than 256x256 is MOOT.

[Googlie]

Well, whaddayaknow, you can.

I went to alphax.txt and changed the size of HUGE from its 64:128 default to 512:1024

Then I started a scenario and selected huge map - selected 50% water, and after about 3 minutes it loaded.

I put a PK sea colony pod at the 1023:1023 co-ordinate and saved and zipped it.

It's 800 kb, too big to apend here, but if you'd like to see it, e-mail me at linfrew@aol.com and I'll send it to you (of course it's easy enough for you to just change the Huge default size in alpha.txt or alphax.txt yourself)

[Apocalypse]

I knew I was right.

I'm a regular Keeper of Wisdom.

[The Mad Monk]

So...this means that by changing the defined size of one of the "named" sizes, you can overide whatever limit was placed on "custom"?

[Apocalypse]

Yes.

[MariOne]

Googlie, you'd remember that I was the one finding out the liitation, but then you could verify it yourself when I pointed it out to you.
So it's not just one of my dreams, the maximum *actual* map size WAS indeed 256x256, from the very early days for a long time on.
This issue resurfaced 3 or 4 times over the years, and it was not just me or you, several other players verified after us that you could not override those limits.

Of coure, we DID attempt alternate methods, so we did already try to alter the default sizes entries in alpha.txt, or the stored custom ones (in alphacentauri.ini IIRC), and none worked.

If those workarounds work now, could it be a SMAX fix?
Or did you try with SMAC too?
I note you refer to alphax.txt, while I worked with SMAC only (alpha.txt) and I admit I didn't check it with SMAX too.

[Adalbertus]

I used to play on a huge map. But after a few games with the 2-in-diagonal base placement I decided to go for a somewhat smaller map.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
I used to play on a huge map. But after a few games with the 2-in-diagonal base placement I decided to go for a somewhat smaller map.

Adalbertus,

How much of the huge map were you able to cover playing 2 x 2? I know the problem, I have so many bases, and only a small portion of the map is used.

I've found that Yang and Morgan do quite well with this spacing, perhaps better than anyone else. Zach likes it also, as it helps him avoid his extra drone problems. I haven't tried it with anyone else yet.

[Apocalypse]

Morgans are better with wide spacing. If you spend most of you time in the beginning just expanding, you'll have many large cities in the latter half of the game. With a booming economy, the game after that point is easy.

[Adalbertus]

Sikander, this depends on the game (of course) but i'm usually approaching 80 bases or so: All original names, all xxx Sector, and normally 10 or 20 bases more. In the middle to late game I spend most of the time in deciding what to rush buy.

Maybe those strategies with a big empty space inside your empire for lots of crawlers makes it more manageable. I'll have to try that. On the other hand, effects like lots of cities -> lots of free minerals or lots of bases -> more population growth, lots of bases -> more production (you can't produce more than one item per base per turn, no matter how many minerals you crawl) are the late game strength of dense spacing.

And that's why I think even Morgan is better off with dense spacing. Before hab complexes, Morgan even doesn't feel the limitations of dense spacing (as this leaves workable tiles per base), and he gets a lot of bases in place much faster.

[Apocalypse]

I don't start off dense spacing and I never feel the hab complex limitations. I just keep pumping out colonies.

[Sixchan]

Hmm...

How big can I run it, I do so wonder.

All those bases, and all those drones to nerve-staple...

[Kataphraktoi]

dont they stop being affected after 5-10 times of stapling?

[Sixchan]

Meh. With all those people, I won't run out of people to staple