Killing Sea & Air - file help needed

[moomin]

Hi, you guys.

I'm considering getting back into SMAX again, and I want to fix my alphax.txt so that sea colony pods and all air units are diabled... but I quite forgot how to do it. Could any kind soul give me a pointer?

[Googlie]

You can disable the chassis while still allowing D:AP and MMI (which are prereqs for later techs) by setting the chassis for both to Transcendent Thought (or some other end game tech such as Voice or Transcendence itself.)

So look for #CHASSIS, and change the 2 lines:

Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 2, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1,
Copter,M1, Chopper,M1, Rotor,M1, Lifter,M1, 8, 2, 1, 0, 1, 8, MindMac, Gunship,M1,

to:

Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 2, 2, 0, 1, 8, TranT, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1,
Copter,M1, Chopper,M1, Rotor,M1, Lifter,M1, 8, 2, 1, 0, 1, 8, TranT, Gunship,M1,

To disable the sea colony pod (so that the AI doesn't build it) just delete the line from the #UNITS list, (reducing the actual #UNITS count by 1 as well)

Or leave the actual #UNITS count intact and change the disable in the tech prereq again to TranT, thus:

Sea Escape Pod, Foil, Colony Pod, Scout, 8, 0, 0, Disable, -1, 00000000000000000000000000

becomes

Sea Escape Pod, Foil, Colony Pod, Scout, 8, 0, 0, TranT, -1, 00000000000000000000000000

G.

[moomin]

Thank you, Googlie! That was what I was looking for all right.

[Panzer]

I was wondering: Why do you want to disable seapods and airunits?

[Maniac]

Probably because he considers sea bases unrealistic, and because air units (especially the gamekiller chop & drop tactic) ruin the game.

[moomin]

I enjoy the game much more without Sea Pods and air power.

1) The AI squanders its resources building a zillion pop-2 sea colonies that won't ever do it anything good.

2) THe AI doesn't have first clue about using air power, so it shouldn't build it. It can sometimes pull off decent combined-arms ground campaigns.

All in all, I've had enjoyable games on pre-made maps where AIs start in favourable positions with these settings... on Trans, the AI can sometiomes stay competitive right up to the Space Elevator!

[Panzer]

Oh, ok . I can see your points, especially about sea bases. The AI builds dozens of them and they are basically useless.

[Kataphraktoi]

last game i played,the hive had 20-25 sea bases at size 7 each with kelp\harnesses...useless for minerals,but harvesting lots of energy for me(and them awile) when i liberated them

[Maniac]

Yeah, but the AI has the tendency to NOT build them in ocean shelves.

[Kataphraktoi]

isnt ocean shelves the only place you can put them?

[Method]

yeah AI sea bases are really annoying. not productive at all, and when you finally capture them you can't do anything with them. the only thing they are good for is probing tech from

Edit: no its not. you can build them anywhere IIRC

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Cataphract887
isnt ocean shelves the only place you can put them?

You can plant a seabase anywhere, but you can only build mineral platforms/tidal harnesses/kelp farms on shelf squares

And whereas a human player would look for that prime square with 4 specials in the radius, I agree that the dumb AI just plonks them anywhere

G.

[johndmuller]

Originally posted by Cataphract887
isnt ocean shelves the only place you can put them?

Originally posted by Googlie
You can plant a seabase anywhere, but . . . G.

Is this really true, or are there some other stipulations, . . . like needing a certain tech, . . . or only in SMAX, or with a certain patch level, . . . or if you've modified your Alpha(x).txt file, etc ????? I'll have to try it out, but I'd still like to know before I get around to testing it if someone's got the story.

If it is unreservedly completely true and always has been, I wonder why I thought it wasn't - I was pretty sure I've tried it and gotten rejected. I've sure as H spent lots of time and credits raising tiles first if I really wanted a particular spot and other times put them in places that were sub-par because the good locations were too deep.

I've been envying the AI all this time for nothing ?

I thought that maybe only the AI and maybe the pirates and/or some advanced terraforming tech-prerequisite.

If this is true, then even if it is in the middle of the ocean, you could still raise land next to your new deep sea base a lot cheaper than it would cost before a base was there if you had to in order to get some of the terraforming legal.

[Googlie]

I can confirm that with SMAC v 4.0 and SMAX v 2.0 you can build sea colonies on ocean trench squares (maximum depth I was able to get in a scenario setting was 2990 meters - that's a totally black sea square.

the cost to raise an adjacent tile was 100 credits, 200 it 2 tiles away, 300 if 3 away, etc (Ocean depth tiles) or 64, 128 and 192 if regular depth tiles ( ie 800 to 2000 meters) Shallower than that is shelf, which needs adjacent land formers to raise to land.

I don't know about earlier versions of the game as I only have the current ones loaded

G.