What do YOU want in SMAC2

[Fugi the Great]

After reading the previous posts, it sounds very much like all that is needed is a patch or a mod to make most people happy, and most what you are asking for will probably be in Civ3, which after reading an article about it sounds very much like a SMAC clone with a few tweaks here and there to fool us into thinking its a whole new game.

I on the otherhand want a whole bunch more for SMAC2. They started with 3D units, so now give us the ability to design our own units in 3D, there are lots of talented artists out there, give us the template. Also some way to make movement of units faster, even on an P3 800 those units are slow, especially the alien units. Maybe convert them to 2D at the touch of the spacebar and move them as in CIV2?. Make a true 3D planet, that is spherical, with polar icecaps that can melt and also refreeze - there should be no reason they can't do this. Different levels in altitude for different units to be in, so that now a plane can fly over an enemy unit without having to attack it, with satellites above those and other space units in near Planet orbit only, and submarines that can travel under enemy ships without attacking. You no longer can just park a bomber in the middle of road to halt enemy movement, or put an army of sea terraformers out in the way to block submarine movement. Public works AND terraformers, so I don't have to build a huge army of terraformers, and make the terraformers so that I can put them in Automatic and tell them "plant forest only" - something very much missing in SMAC or SMACX, if players don't like PW then they can set it to "0", if they don't like terraformers, they don't have to build any, both could/should be used because both have their good/bad points. Expandable city influences as in CTP2 to combat ICS, but with the border movements of SMAC, but this should be OPTIONAL, for those who don't like it. Better diplomacy to "haggle" over the fineprint of a treaty. An AI that doesn't pick a fight just because I'm ten times bigger than they are, and also knows when to quit after it gets its butt kicked. And more upbeat music, that music/noise (whatever you call it) got very annoying after awhile. Also it needs to be more open for mod designers, with a way to easily design your own mods and scenarios. Please add the ability to research multiple techs as in MOO1, and even there not really too directed since most discoveries are by accident, but somewhat directed if we know that someone else has already got that technology. And please, fix ALL of the bugs not just most of them.

To sum this up, try something different. People complain about how terrible CTP and CTP2 are, but the programmers at least tried something new, maybe it was too much too fast, but those two games are the two I keep going back to again and again. Those games are very modifiable, maybe not easily, but a lot better than SMAC. SMAC can be boring and depressing. I do not want another ICS terraforming game, I already have enough of those.
[This message has been edited by Fugi the Great (edited April 21, 2001).]

[DilithiumDad]

The military model you are speaking of has been executed in Deadlock (1996)and Deadlock II (1998). The original Deadlock had a more playable demo, which you can download from this link:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters...197068,00.html

Do yourselves a favor. Download the free demo and play the game. Now tell me if you think SMAC would be imporved if they grafted on the military model and resource management from this game series.

There are 7 species which correspond with eerie similarity to the original 7 SMAC factions. Here is a key for the SMAC player:

Green faction = Gaians = Uva Mosk
Insectoid faction = Hive = Ch'Chit
Research faction = University = Maug
Money and commerce faction = Morgan = Humans
Military faction = Spartans = Tarth
Mind control faction = Believers = Relu
High morale (easy drone control) faction easy for beginners = PK's = Cyth

There is an 8th faction (The Skirineen) that runs the Black Market, but you can't play as them.

[Blake]

I agree the combat system really does need to be revamped, while the civ system was fine for civ it really needs to be dropped for SMAC2.

Unit workshop is cool, instead of chassis, weapon, armour, special, special I think the options should be
Weapon: weapon strength compared in battle
Chassis: multipliers for combat strength according to terrain, ie rovers mobile in open bonus
Shield aka forcefield: This increases the hitpoints of a unit, the effect is much greater in bases because the unit can tap the base energy grid, thus defenders get a bonus
Special Abilities: Have a whole host of these, and not restricted to 2, but some could be mutually exclusive. Examples:
Anti-missile counter measures: Combat bonus vs units with missile based weapons.
Empathic: Improved police, still quell one drone even under negative police coditions. More difficult to bribe.

Units should be generally more expensive than facilities, an attacker should require a reasonably extensive combined arms attack to conquer a city, and a city should be more of an asset than in SMAC.

Also, facilties which act as immobile units. For example SAM battery instead of increasing the combat bonus vs aircraft actually defends against aircraft, so even if the base has no units an attacking fighter still engages in combat with the SAM battery (or has a chance to get shot down). These facilities are destroyed in battles, and automatically repair by about 25% every turn, or can be rush-repaired. Other inbase defenses could be coastal battery, laser battery. Also these defenses should auto-upgrade with tech, further reducing MM, and a newly built base should have "miltia" which can defend against a less-than-serious attack (for example a scout rover stumbling across an undfended base should not be allowed to just walk in).

The actual combat should be played out in CTP2/MOO2/HOMM style, as units would be grouped into armies. It would be really nice if you actually saw rovers flanking infantry and infantry digging in, but I would be happy with a simplified combat, and the option should be available.

Speaking of options, there should be options to allow low-spec users to play the game, or high-spec users to be able to play with hundreds of armies and bases on huge worlds without slowdown. By this I mean have options for simplified units & terrain, so instead of showing up as a nicely rendered animation a missile rover is just a square with a R6 (chassis, weapon). So for small worlds you can enjoy the eye candy, while vets who know every unit inside out have options to increase framerate at expense of understandability. With SMAC you could zoom out 4 times, and the units became coloured squares. Would have been great if they had a 'F' for former, and different coloured borders for different states. But No, instead every unit was an indentical square, and bases were a slightly larger square. Stupid.

I should be studying, too

[Analyst]

Three more ideas (there goes my studying).

When upgrading a unit, improving the chassis should also be an option. I should be able to upgrade a silksteel shard infantry unit into a silksteel shard rover or chopper with energy credits. If special abilities don't convert, they should just disappear, maybe even saving money. Now, this is only an infrequent option while a unit is in production and you design a new one in which the only difference is the chassis. The chassis change could be expensive, but I shouldn't have to disband the unit in a base and lose so much production value relative to the gun and armor costs.

Any unit with more than one movement point should be able to attack up to their number of movement points, not just choppers. This goes for elite infantry, rovers, and especially gravships. I'd like them thought of as action points. Gravships hover like choppers and the infantry and rovers are on the ground anyway. Also, there's no reason why a bomber or interceptor can't make another pass, if it has fuel. All units with enough action points should be able to stick and move, not just move and stick. Maybe part of the answer is giving units a fixed amount of ammo that must be "recharged" as part of an improved military logistics system, or requiring an attack to use multiple action points.

Also, speaking of movement, one of the most annoying things is to have a gravship with lots of movement left end it's turn because you accidentally moved it the wrong way and it entered a friendly base. Only air units seem to fall victim to that, and no unit should. Airplanes don't automatically land on every runway they fly over.

[Analyst]

Ok here I go again.

I don't think secret projects should be restricted to the first faction that builds them. It makes no sense that only one faction per planet can construct cloning vats, a cyborg factory, empath guild or a Xenoempathy dome. In fact, it makes more sense to have the building cost reduced for each successive faction that builds it, since the technology is more common. Perhaps the ability to build a project for the second time would depend on a successful probe team action against the base containing the project (to steal the plans).

It also seems absurd to assume a project can't be rebuilt once destroyed. Oops - our cloning vats broke, and now no one remembers how to build another one? Come on.

Another way to handle projects is to perhaps treat them as high-powered, expensive base facilities. A weather paradigm helps formers from that base, etc. Some would have to be redesigned, but most would still make sense to build.

I'd also like to see the ability to switch a unit's home base with a right click and something like the Go-to-base menu, without having to drive the unit into the base in question. This would save a lot of time, especially when reassigning crawler production.

[Analyst]

I have about $.06 more. (Preface: I realize these next ideas are probably beyond the ability of current computer systems to handle - too hardware intensive. They would make for a great game, however.)

No more mandatory retirements. Players should be able to continue for an infinite number of game turns. If the computer's hardware gets overtaxed, the game could give a warning every few turns and the player could decide to quit or go on.

The city views shouldn't be single screens; they should be views of cities. A different toolbar should pop up with the new map after you click a city's icon on the main planet map. That way, you open a Sim City-ish view (like the game by Maxis) and plop down an improvement based on available resources or give an order to a factory to construct it. The first method would make production more like Sim City, the second more like Masters of Orion 2. This goes along with the production radius of a base being inviolate (and base production zones should be a full square, not the cross-shape they are now). You could see farms, boreholes and other enhancements only when you clicked the city icon. Within the city map, perhaps, maybe the production radius could be handled with zones, like they are in Sim City. You could zone for a farm, mine, or what have you in the city map, then set citizens to work within your city. They would prepare the terrain, build the improvement, then work it. Perhaps terraformers, as they are now, could work only outside of cities on projects like roads between cities, sensor arrays, bunkers, airfields, military refueling and repair stops, automated defenses, offensive minefields and so on. A separate zone would be available for placing factories and research centers. Maybe a space limit could be an incentive to force the construction of more sophisticated facilities - research hospital vs. network node, for example.

My final $.02 is to have the war on Chiron, with the discovery of space travel technology, extend to colonization and conflicts on other moons and planets in the galaxy or even other galaxies. You could have a universe map where the factions move to planets all over the Milky Way in the quest for resources and dominance. This would make the game much more open-ended (and a little more like the concept behind MOO2). Of course, the computer would have to handle the individual city maps, universe maps, a whole set of starship units, planet maps and combat maps (if all these ideas were implemented). It's probably too much for current computers. Therefore, players should have the option to restrict the game to one planet to save on hardware demands if they want. However, imagine intercepting a hovertank assault with star-destroyer type orbital bombardments. How cool would that be?

[Analyst]

I would like to see much more comprehensive customization of combat units - what's with this two abilities thing? We should be able to add as many abilities as we think is financially reasonable, especially since only one item can be produced at one time. Also, unit icons should better represent their abilities.

On that note, the ability to add "production lines" to cities is something to explore. Maybe for each "factory" you build, you can produce one thing. Then, perhaps facilities like the genejack could be specific to each "factory," so they had variability in high-end output, low-end output, pollution output, and worker unrest.

This would have to go along with a modification to the mineral-to-ecodamage system or relationship, with perhaps pollution-mitigating enhancements also specific to production lines. X minerals in a base = X pollution = X chance of negative consequence is overly simple coding.

I'd also like combat to play out in a separate, turn-based, animated action format, perhaps like Heroes of Might and Magic 3. That way, how you guided troops on the battlefield and used their abilities could affect how successful you are in war.

I would like to see terrain improvements proceed by upgrades - no building a forest only to replace it with a borehole later, even if you do get some minerals for chopping it down. For example, I'd like to see primitive farms go first, then get successively upgraded by say, crop rotation, fertilizer, greenhouses, etc., so the food count goes up. I'd also like to lay that farm anywhere, say, on rocky terrain, even if it won't effectively produce food at that time. I could then use a terraformer to level the terrain (pull out rocks), later. This would mean people could lay out their basic improvements in the proper patchwork within the base's production radius with more attention to how it needs to look by the late game (boreholes can't go next to each other, two condensers next to each other can be redundant, etc.) It would help save time. You could plan for the desired number of citizens and lay down the appropriate farms more easily. The same goes for industrial/energy output planning.

I would love the AI to stop building bases with production zones that overlap yours. Those bases aren't even worth conquering and holding if too many squares overlap.

On that note, it would also be nice if there was an alternative to the current way of destroying a base - say forcing the population to migrate into your cities. That way, you aren't always staring down the barrel of an atrocity just for not wanting to holding an underdeveloped enemy base. They could show up as unhappy drones in that city (or those cities) until they assimilate, and the conqueror would need enough food to support them. That way, you could demolish the base itself without committing genocide.

The AI seems to be able to declare vendetta from a truce state without losing reputation. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it would be nice to not have to choose a truce in negotiations. When asked to sign a treaty, the player should be able to say no without committing to an armistice.

Also, the AI can threaten you specifically when you try to build a base in their territory. Players should be able to do that too, not just when the AI sends any unit into a player's territorial boundary.

Military units should be supported by a combination of resources (food, minerals and energy for eating, repairs and fuel). Support costs should increase with distance and be mitigated by transports. Maybe a military supply crawler unit could be devised. Maybe morale should also be affected by deep penetrations into enemy territory. Essentially, a logistics train should be more realistic and integral to a military campaign.

Redundant facilities should be allowed and be arithmatically effective. Three network nodes or energy banks in one base should increase research or the economy by triple the appropriate factor. Maintenance costs should increase to reflect that and be the major incentive to build more sophisticated facilities. Perhaps each "level one" facility could have a "level 2" upgrade.

That's my $.02 + $.02 + $.02 ....

[RGE]

One thing I would like to see in regards to combat is a different take on weapon and armor. If the weapon has lower power than armor, the attacker shouldn't be able to hurt the defender. If the weapon is as high, or higher than armor, the battle should be resolved by comparing weapon vs weapon.

Because this seems to be the way everything is heading in modern warfare. Armor is good for protecting against shrapnel and small arms, but it's not used for actual defense when attacked by similar machines as the one you're using. Although, maybe accuracy and speed is more important once it's been established that you can't afford to let your armor take the hit, just as long as your own weapon is able to penetrate your opponent's armor.

The way I see it, the weapon and armor values are leftovers from Civ, where it was indeed true that some ancient units were better at defense, while others excelled in offense. But in SMAC, everyone is shooting stuff at each other, and to me it makes more sense to defend a base by taking cover and aim your big Chaosgun at the invaders rather than standing there claiming that your personal bodyarmor will be so effective that the enemies will exhaust their energy supplies trying to get through it. "And then I'll just walk right up to them and shoot them with this handgun." Really? Come on...

Just look at the Riflemen and Alpine Troops from Civ. They have close to the best defense out there, and it doesn't come from bullet-proof vests. Sure, Mech. Inf have even better defense, but that's basically riflemen in armoured cars. They get their good defense from being able to get quickly and safely to the right position for shooting at their enemies. The best defense is a good offense, and that applies on the tactical level as well as on the strategic level.

But maybe SMAC's ancient view on this issue is an attempt to create that special sci-fi feeling, like the WW2 style dogfights and battlestations in Star Wars? Still, even in Star Wars a good offense was a better defense than personal body armor. Ask any stormtrooper!

RGE

[SPasmofiT]

The toop movement, the blinking units, the unnatural movement of the map, no units animations... all this stufff gives me VERTIGO!

Try to polish that stuff a little...
Ah... and maybe less mind worms!

/me is a newbie, anyway ;-)

[DilithiumDad]

Another nice feature: you can transfer resources to any other human or AI faction for an agreed upon price.

[DilithiumDad]

I agree that improving AI is #1 concern and improving AI terraforming is tops within that #1. Also improving the AI's use of air and drop units.

I like Cybergod's suggestions for new techs and groupings of factions (human, robot, mutant).

But here's a practical suggestion for Fireaxis: Buy the Deadlock II engine from Accolade. I'll bet you could get it cheap. The perfect game would be a melding of Deadlock II with SMAC. Deadlock II has:
1. The 7 factions are separate species. They are animated head shots rather than static portraits.
2. Diplomacy can be non-aggression, share intelligence, share tech advances, or victory pact
3. You can present the order of your tech advances from screen that lays out the whole tech tree.
4. Resources are not per base but can be shared between bases. Moving food or metals between bases costs you money (which is not the same as energy). Transportation costs can be lowered by researching hoverway technology and later transporter technology.
5. You get two views: empire view and colony view. You select location for each base facility on the local map. These include 4 different defensive facilities.
6. Morale runs from 0 to 100 and drone riots are only one of the consequences of low morale.
7. There are more resources: iron can be refined into steel in factories (which can't be making weapons in that case), endurium to triderium, wood is needed for buildings, farms can make food or wood in any mix you choose. As technology advances, you need fewer workers to make resources and the buildings take less space. But it takes labor to do upgrades.
8. Best of all, combat model is far more complex. Accuracy counts as well as weapon and armor. Speed is also important, and is the major advantage of air power. Really cool is the fact that you get to see battles in real time, although the set up for the battles is trun based. In other words, you send you air and land movements to an opponents base, hit end turn, and then see a re-enactment of the battle at the beginning of your turn. How many times in PBEWM games have you wished you could see what was happening to your precious units?
9. Online multiplayer that really works.

By rebuilding SMAC on the Deadlock II engine, all of this could be ours! Cheap!!


------------------
Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet, available at The Chironian Guild:
http://guild.ask-klan.net.pl/eng/index.html

[Cybergod]

Idea :

"Hormone Bomb"
built like a Planet-buster. An atrocity but not a major one. Destroys non-shielded ground units in its range (which is affected by the bombs reactor). Unshielded air units get -50% damage because they are in-the-air .

How do you like my development of your ideas? Your additions/changes?

[Cybergod]

quote: Originally posted by Iskandar Reza on 04-13-2001 03:59 AM or a seabase if it's over the ocean.. rright?

Nope, tryed that already .

[Iskandar Reza]

or a seabase if it's over the ocean.. rright?

[Cybergod]

quote: Originally posted by Paul Vella on 04-11-2001 08:42 PM Here's a question, in my workshop I put a colony pod on a aircraft. What will happen? Will I be able to make an airbase?

No you can just make another land base with it...