Pop boom bug?

[Spacecow]

I thought I saw a reference to a pop boom bug in a thread, but I'm not sure. I tried searching the forums for "pop boom" but pop is only 3 letters, and it wouldn't let me use that as a search term... And the FAQ didn't have anything... so I hate to bother everyone, but...

Is there a pop boom bug?

I was playing as Yang (+10% growth off the bat), ran a planned economy (+20% growth), and had children's creches in many bases (+20%, I believe). I doped up my psych to get Golden Ages (another +20%, supposedly). And nothing happened. Well, except the bases grew twice as quickly (+50% Growth). I checked, and some bases that had both GA's and children's creches had more than two nutrients extra, but no pop boom. For experience's sake, I scrapped the creches, and they were still at 50% (because of the GA, I assume). So my best conclusion is that there's a pop boom bug.

Not that it really matters, since growing 2x as fast as the Hive is almost as good as an all-out pop boom.

[Archaic]

If you're running plain ol' SMAC, then yes, there's a bug with GA's not giving the proper growth bonus, preventing a pop-boom from being executed with the Hive and Morganites.

[Spacecow]

Yep, I've got plain old SMAC. Thanks!

[Method]

did a search for GAs, and this is all i found. oh well.

i know that the growth bouns doesn't work in vanilla SMAC, but how about the economy bonus? this recently came up in the ACDG, and though archaic says the economy bonus is broken as well, i'd like a second opinion

[Sarxis]

Then what's the point of GAs in SMAC?

-edit-

K, hold on a second. What EXACTLY is broken about GAs in SMAC? I went into my current game with version 4 SMAC playing as Lal, and the economy and growth bonuses are fine for him. Pop boom, I'm not sure about. But you say that it is just broken for Morgan and Yang?

[MariOne]

No, the SMAC GA-bug applies to any faction.
GAs DO locally grant the +2Growth and the +1Economy.

The bug is that this +2Growth is counted for nutrient tanks (provided that a [ human ] nutrient row can't be shorter than 5), but NOT for a pop boom.

Morgan & Hive just suffer more because of the bug, as in SMAC they have no booming alternative, until the CV or Eudaimonia.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I may be completely off the mark but I seem to recall that although the GA works properly i.e. +2 growth , +1 econ sans pop boom as MariO indictes. The manual is incorrect wrt econ.

That being everyone knows +2 econis +1 energy per square. But again IIRC +4 econ delivers what is advertised as +5 econ in the manual/datalinks.

Also +3 econ delivers what is advertised as +4 econ. Is this correct?

Can anyone refresh my memory?

[T-hawk]

One further note - the pop-boom bug does not exist in the MACINTOSH version of SMAC.

(If you have a Mac player multiplaying against a PC player, the Mac player can pop-boom with Creche/GoldenAge/Democracy while the PC player can't.)

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yeah, I think my exhousemate HMB once mentioned something about this to me. The original SMAC bug means that Yang cannot popboom through Golden Ages (unless he has Eudamonia).

Later versions of SMAC allow you to pop boom as The Hive, but it's hardly worth the bother. You'd have to jack up your Psyche ratings and I reckon th 50% growth is already enough of an advantage.

[Sarxis]

Later versions of SMAC? you mean this bug only exists in 1.0?

[Mongoose]

The bug remains in all PC versions of Alpha Centauri...through 4.0. Fixed in the MAC version. I think it was fixed in the Linux version. Fixed in the PC version of Alien Crossfire.

[Sarxis]

K, thanx all for the info.

I never pop-boom anyhow :P

[Archaic]

Originally posted by TKG
i know that the growth bouns doesn't work in vanilla SMAC, but how about the economy bonus? this recently came up in the ACDG, and though archaic says the economy bonus is broken as well, i'd like a second opinion

Just to clarify, that's not what I said. I said that the economy bonus from the GA would be worthless given that we'd be spending more to get it then we'd bring in.

[Mongoose]

That depends on base size and EFFICIENCY, Archaic. If running Wealth, for instance, the +1 ECONOMY boost from GA puts you at the +2 ECONOMY threshold. Given a decent sized base with good infrastructure, a 30% PSYCH allocation can be easily paid for with the +1 energy/square (Net of inefficiency and multiplied by base facilities) leaving the increased energy to labs as a pure gain.

If running Green+Wealth, a GA offsets the GROWTH penalty from the Green social choice.

[Archaic]

Well, that's the kicker, isn't it? We're PKs. -1 Efficiency base. And our infrastructure is hardly built up (No economy facilities whatsoever, many bases even lacking Rec. Commons and other basic Psych facilities). At this point in the game, it wouldn't help a jot.