What do YOU want in SMAC2

[gwillybj]

I would like to propose a minor adjustment in the unit graphics (references are to SMAC v4.0):

For unarmored infantry units, keep the current graphic of the person holding the weapon.

For armored infantry units, use a modification of the graphic used for the Former -- with its tracks and hull, but replace the terraforming tools with the weapon graphics, and the hull properly colored according to the armor type.

One way to do this would be so only certain types of armor use the "AFV/APC" graphic:
Synthmetal (blue)
Plasma Steel (red)
Silksteel (green)
Neutronium (brown)
Antimatter (dark grey)
(5 types).

The rest remain the "soldier" graphic:
No Armor (just the weapon with its usual graphic)
Photon Wall (yellow "wings" on the backpack)
Probability Sheath (gotta love that semi-transparent light grey raincoat )
Stasis Generator (red "wings" on the backpack)
Psi Defense (purple "wings" with brown antennae on the backpack)
(also 5 types).
Edit: darn formatting again .
[This message has been edited by gwillybj (edited April 26, 2001).]

[Blake]

SP's are just a hangover from Civ2 I feel, and are not really nessecary for SMAC2, instead there should be special facilities, which act simialler but more than one can be built under certain circumstances. These should have some possible negative effects, and also be allowed to be shut down. Some SP's do make sense, a second Merchant Exchange or Empath Guild would seem redundant, but if the first was destroyed.... For other SP's like the WP and space elevator every faction should be allowed one, the longlivity vaccine is borderline - surely the first faction could create a monopoly, but another faction may like to create it's own version to serve only it's own people and deprive the first LV of business...

One thing I would love to see in SMAC2 (and Civ3!!) is immigration between bases, so people move from overpopulated cities into frontier cities. If a large base feels threatened by it's proxmitity to an enemy border droves of people could start leaving it and moving to "safer" cities.

Immigration could even go between your faction and other factions, if your population is unhappy it moves! Ofcourse then that unhappy population could make the other faction unhappy and poorer too.

You should be able to control this with city orders, like to allow no immigrants from faction X, or order citywide evacuations. Ofcourse the result would depend on the population, it would be easier to order an evacuation if nearby cities are not overcrowded. Also a high probe rating and plentiful garrisons would help to prevent immigration.

The PTS SP should increase and regulate immigration, so you can quickly shuttle population around.

The growth model should have overcrowding, so unless your faction SE enforces birth control population can grow without limit, outstriping food and housing and resulting in a large, unhappy, unproductive population. On the other hand growth could be slowed by birth control, you have less population to throw around, but smaller family sizes and other factors would result in a richer, better educated population, from which you would get more technological advances and income (but less UN votes).

Earthly human factions would tend to have large, relativly unproductive populations which grow (and starve) quickly, while centurai human factions would have smaller populations, where people have a much higher standard of living and are more productive.

[Vultur]

quote: Originally posted by Blake on 04-27-2001 12:40 AM One thing I would love to see in SMAC2 (and Civ3!!) is immigration between bases, so people move from overpopulated cities into frontier cities. If a large base feels threatened by it's proxmitity to an enemy border droves of people could start leaving it and moving to "safer" cities. Immigration could even go between your faction and other factions, if your population is unhappy it moves! Ofcourse then that unhappy population could make the other faction unhappy and poorer too. You should be able to control this with city orders, like to allow no immigrants from faction X, or order citywide evacuations. Ofcourse the result would depend on the population, it would be easier to order an evacuation if nearby cities are not overcrowded. Also a high probe rating and plentiful garrisons would help to prevent immigration.

I've had a similar idea: when you lose population for hunger the game swow a window saying:"hungry workers leave the factories"
my idea is to materialize a CP in an adiacent square. The CP will be "colorless" and will move to an other faction's territory. The "reciving" faction can receive,reject,capture (use them as slaves?) or ...exterminate (truly two bad things...) the CP.An other good idea is the "City evacuation" but how to evacuate a city of more 2 citizen in few turn?(CP take time to be built...)
Maybe it will be enjoiable put an option that force your citizen to "escape" from a city. (like burned-earth strategy, you leave nothing to conquer to your enemy). Maybe the CP "created" with this methods should be different, for example with you can't use them to build new bases (they are escaped...) but you can only add to existing bases (creating refugees problemes). Maybe if you force a population to evacuate some of them will escape from your hands. (the percentage of lost CP could be based on ex-base's people happiness, so if is a conquered city very few of them will join to you)

[johndmuller]

quote: Originally posted by Blake on 04-27-2001 12:40 AM One thing I would love to see in SMAC2 (and Civ3!!) is immigration between bases, so people move from overpopulated cities into frontier cities. If a large base feels threatened by it's proxmitity to an enemy border droves of people could start leaving it and moving to "safer" cities. Immigration could even go between your faction and other factions, if your population is unhappy it moves! Of course then that unhappy population could make the other faction unhappy and poorer too.

I like the idea of Immigration too.

CIV & SMAC model conquest and colonization, but don't do real well in more subtle concepts like assimilation and cultural imperialism, not to mention the effects of religion, either spiritual or economic. Civ3 is supposed to have some elements of culture, as in conquered cities taking a while before they are really your citizens or some such, but I don't think they address as much as we could imagine.

The idea of cities or individual pop units leaving and/or joining factions sounds great; there could be some quantifiable effects from a propaganda war. Perhaps the Psych/Happiness levels could be juiced up to provide a value for comparison between nearby cities where "nearby" could be a function of the available Communications techs, whatever they were.

Probe/Diplomat units could be allowed to attempt to recruit a pop unit to switch factions where the strength of the unit and the relative Psyche/Happiness indicies were compared for resolution (maybe credits involved as well).

Emigrants could be the result of bad conditions at home either economic or military (if city conquered by another faction), and or immigration could be fostered by good conditions at the receiving faction, probe actions or just chance, maybe even ficticious good conditions via propaganda.

A "Wonder" - the Statue of Liberty could provide a bias towards acquiring and keeping pop units w/r other factions.

I think that "Guest Workers" are a viable possibility also. A guest worker would be a pop unit "loaned" between cities of different factions they would produce more and/or cost less to support than local workers, but they would have a negative effect on the Psych/Happiness of the host faction (cheap foreign labor taking our jobs). They would provide credits to the faction of origin (sending money home) as well as having a beneficial effect on the home country's Psych/Happiness (relieving social pressure). Presumably (but maybe not necessarily) this would be between a rich/advanced faction and a poor/low-tech faction. If desired, they could be represented by new icon(s) in the Drone/Worker/Specialist vein.

They could be created by negotiation between factions, by covert activity (probe/diplomat "recruiters") or automatically, by the game, between two bases whose relative technology/ecomomics/happiness-psych/whatever were conducive according to some algorithm.

Perhaps the guest workers would become citizens in a certain period of time and fully join the new faction and leave the original one.

I think that these would be really cool and add a convincing level of realism.

Something similar to guest workers could possibly be done with military units (mercenaries/soldiers of fortune), but they would have to be handled differently as the issues of support and benefit are handled differently. I think that there is some discussion of this in a Civ3 suggestions thread somewhere.

[Cybergod]

OffTpic for a second now, when am I supposed to be upgraded from a Chieftain to something lese? How many posts?

[Solver]

Cybergod,
You'll get a Warlord title when you have 100 posts.
And, the email address Aalogin@aol.com will not work, as we have the aol.com domain in our ban list. It's possible to get a free email address at aol.com, and we try to get people to use addresses provided by ISP, so that it's easier for us to hunt down those double logins.

------------------
Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Cybergod]

I've just received an email from someone who calls himself (I persume it's a he) Aardom 723 Anyway, kinda off-topic to what you guys are posting but he asked me to post his letter here since he can't for some reason create an Apolyton account (administrators, why won't Aalogin@aol.com work ?). Here itis, exactly as I received it:

Part: 1

Greetings. My name is Aalogn, but I prefer to call myself Aardom 723. I've
been working on some very intertesting suggestions for Apolyton's What do you
want in SMAC2 forum, but because of my isolated e-mail address, I cannot
recieve a password from the administraotors to join the forum. Therefore, if
you don't mind, may I send my suggestions to you to post on the messageboard?
I think they are quite interesting and quite possibly good. If you accept my
proposition, please include my name as the original writter, if you don't
mind. Thank you.


Part: 2

How about this: Instead of the traditional landmaks, I have a better Idea.
What if, even after the nuclear holocaust, a few of the largest cities managed
to survive...or at least partially survive. Any base that is built on the
city square gets a super bonus as well as any base within 7 squares. (Note:
if the base's rating is zero for the particular bonus to start with, the
base receives +1)

Los Angles: In the early 21st century, this Californian metropolis became
it's capital. It was a bustling commercial center and a major entertainment
hub.
Unfortunately, a series of horrendous earthquakes and riots brought this
city to it's knees. Many of it's building were sheilded from radiation,
though, and survived most of the fallout. Any base on this square gets it's
Efficiancy doubled, but because of severe lack of mining stations, it's
Support rating is halved.

New York: A narrow vote just missed making this the capital of the U.S.
Following that, crime in the area began to rise untill in the year 2041,
when it's security systems where jacked up. Seriously. Any base on this
square has it's Probe rating doubled, but since there are very few military
instalations in the area,
Morale is halved.

Tokyo: This Japanese city was one of the first to suffer from global floodings.
In a matter of years, most of the city was underwater. The workers managed
to persevre, but by year 2055, Tokyo was submerged. An unkown benefit of
this is that most of the city was protected from the fallout by the water,
and a series of seismic unheavals brought Tokyo from it's watery grave.
Any seabase on this square has it's Research doubled, due to the tremendous
amounts of preserved computer data, but since many communications were cut
off, Efficiency is halved.

Moscow: In year 2038, Moscow was nearly destroyed by a barage of nuclear
weapons that set off the first waves of fallout. It was repaired for the
most part, but lacked several police centers. Crime sky-rocketed, but was
silenced by a rise of military bases. Despite it's continual decay from
profuse fallout, many of these bases survived. A base here gets double Support,
but halved Police.

Bejing: As the Earths population continued to rise, great pressure was put
on this Chinese capital. It swelled from an overflowing population, and
food supplies were scarce. However, with the rise of hybrid plants, it became
apparent that China was ideal for the growing of the engineered plants.
As the hungary were fed, the food problem was stabalized. But in 2041, the
Japanese bombed it to smithereens. Many of the underground food stores survived,
giving doubled Growth, but because of the decimated factories, Industry
is slashed.

Berlin: One of the major industrial centers of the 21st century, Berlin
survived wave after wave of nuclear assult. But global warming ended up
catching up to it,
and the temperatures in Germany soared to a sweltering 120 degrees average.
As if that wasn't enough, their continual polution lead to an infestation
of a polution sensitive weed that ended the industrial giant. A base here
gets double Industry, but halved Planet.

Rome: During Earth's final years, many people turned to religion for aid.
The tiny country of the Vatican located deep within Rome was a welcome sanctaury.
The Vatican became a heavily populated metropolis, nearly absorbing Rome.
But located so close to the shore, it succumed to global floods and was
absorbed by the sea. Many of the religious buildings werre preserved underwater,
and any seabase on this square gets double Morale, due to the evangelizing
tasks that can be preformed there can have a similar effect to Miriam's
brain washing, but the complete lack of technology there drops Research.

Bagdad: As you know, Iraq was one of the largest oil producers in the 20th
century. Unfortunately, Iraq eventually drained it's petroluem fields in
around 2009
sending the country into poverty. They lost much of their military potential
and mostly fell out of world events for about 15 years. But in 2030, a large
geological fault formed right under their noses. By tapping into that thermal
energy, they once again became rich. But the geothermal proved to much for
them, and the whole country went up in a ball of flame. Parts of Bagdad
still exist, as do the geothermal mining spires. Any base here will get
doubled Economy, but because of the tremendously unfavorable ecosystem,
Growth suffers.

Rio Di Janero: Global warming hit this city hard in 2045. By that time,
most of Brazil's forests had been either destroyed by an unfavorable enviorment
or by greedy moguls. When Rio once again became capital, the industrial
upsurge proved too much for the coastal city and ended up pushing it over
the edge. Litterally. It partially sank but was resurfaced in 2054. When
it was again active, crime had exploded, causing Rio to take drastic measures.
The once great leizure
city became a vurtual fortress from crime. Any base
here gets doubled Police, but lack of exports kills Economy.

Alexandria: Originally sunk mostly into the sea sometime in the 1 century
B.C., a special excavation team, sponsored by Prohkor Zakharov himself,
dragged the city from the bottom of the Egyptian sea in 2006. Restoration
work began immediately and in 2015, most of the city was restored, including
the lighthouse of Pharos. An enourmous university, also sposored in part
by Zakharov, was then built. Unfortunately, faced with the coming nuclear
holocaust, there was little chance of it surviving. In 2061, it was once
again sunk off the Egyptian coast. It is specualated, though, that the grand
University survived. Any seabase on this square gets doubled Talent rating,
but because of the archaic condition of it's buildings, and construction
there costs twice as much.

And a special city for any alien faction (Progenitor, Zo'or, the like):

N4: Located deep in the Nevada desert, this observation site was once known
as
Area 51. Details about it are sketchy, but what is known is that a strange
and very alien technology shielded it from most of the nuclear onslaught.
In around 2070, the inhabitants of the base mysteriously vanished. Any alien
base on this site gets
a plus 1 Research on the social engineering table,
+1 Morale, due to the abundance of military technology, but these benifits
are moot until you discover
the Secrets of Final Days technology(D10),
or if you build the Universal Translator project. This site also grants
a offensive and defensive bonus to any units built there.


You can contact at Aalogin@aol.com

[Cybergod]

THIS is my 101st post now and if I don't get upgraded I'm gona kill someone !

[Solver]

Not just me. I'll kill you then, instead. But you should now get Warlord, I don't see it?

------------------
Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[vogon_jeltz]

A few more things

I like all of the ideas put forth (except for the SP negative effects; while funny, they've gotta be annoying as hell when they hit you), but there are a few that haven't been mentioned (or if so, not enough):

1) Air Bases

Air colony pods in SMAC look cool, and scare the living daylights out of your human opponents if they've never seen them before, but they plant the same old land / sea bases. Air bases would be a great addition.

2) Spacecraft Victory:

I liked the spaceship victory in Civ2 (especially the ridiculously fast "space darts" you could build), but I'd like to see it reincarnated in SMAC2 with a twist. You'd have to build 6 or 7 spacecraft loaded with your citizens, materials (and most importantly, big guns), send them all out, and at a certain time (maybe after planetfall in other star systems), lock them all on Chiron, and wipe the entire planet from existence -- conquest with a vengeance; give the other human players left on Chiron the ominous warning, "It seems to be getting quite a bit warmer," for a couple of years beforehand. Call it the "stellar converter" in homage to MOOII (which I still play). Great FMV sequence, no?

3) Multiple equipment:

Why did the designers of SMAC limit each unit to having one piece of equipment or weapon? I think that there should be a way to place two equipment modules on a unit (at some ridiculous price hike), as long as they're not both weapons. I need to have my formers/colony pods/probes have some sort of defense beyond armor -- also, imagine the sort of damage you could inflict with a Probability String Probe Deathsphere (30-8-8*inf Air Probe, if I remember correctly; ouch) or the kind of building power you could get from a Super Fungicidal Singularity Sea Former Colony Pod.

4) 3D model maker:

We (and by "we", I mean the mod-making community) need a 3D modeler built into SMAC2 to build new chassis, weapons, reactors, etc. *cough* And it needs to be out for Linux, too. *end cough*

5) Drop-in code:

It's impossible to add SPs and facilities, not to mention terraforms, to the current version of the game. It'd be nice for Firaxis to provide some way to code in the changes, perhaps in either C or some proprietary pseudocode format.

6) Better MP:

A metaserver (server with a list of all open games, akin to Q3A) capability would be much appreciated; it's hell setting up an MP game over Usenet, bulletin boards, or ICQ.

7) Sane timeframes:

Sometimes things are crunched at the end of a Transcend game; in addition, supercolliders don't take 50 years to build, and neither do nuclear weapons; just ask the U.S. gov't. I hate the Civ-style 1 year per turn timescale; I much prefer MOOII's .1 year per turn.

Just my $.14...

[Daniel Senz]

map improvements!

i hate running for years to surround the poles. the world is a cylinder...? no, it should be a shpere. turnable, rotatable and with the correct distances.

maybe further addons of north/south sphere or/and seasons, very more detailed ground (i.e. 9 times the size; terraforming for 9-square-sectors except roads) for detailes tactical improvements - therefore each trun split in 2-4 seasons

[C17GMaster]

What the...?

Okay, my opinions on these ideas:


"We should have colony pods on the moon so that when we die, we can come back." Then, they proceeded to list all the stuff they wanted to take with them to the moon.

My response: You're dead, laddie! Get over it and restart. Why prolong your suffering? We're playing on Chiron, a.k.a. Planet. Don't get into stuff like Nessus, a.k.a. Moon. "Conversations with Moon, Lady Deidre Skye." Ugh!


"Why can only one faction build each secret project? That doesn't make sense."

My response: This was put in so you have to compete for the secret projects. What's the point of a secret project if everybody has one? You're thinking of what the rest of us call "base facilities."


"The armor system is completely messed up. Armor isn't what keeps troops alive; it's their weapons. The battle should be a weapon-weapon combat."

My response: The idea here is to promote combined arms. Don't think of it as "armor" if you don't want to. Think of it as "ability to dig a foxhole really quickly and jump into it before the battle begins." This is just a tactical element of the game. (Some units are optimized as garrisons; others are designed for front-line combat.) Do you really want Alpha Centauri to be a realistic game? Okay, if you don't get the 'clinical immortality' secret project before eighty game turns have passed, you die and the AI takes over your empire. Realistically, the "commander-in-chief" is too busy to coordinate every attack (except for Pres. Johnson, I believe), so the computer should co-ordinate your battles after you pick a target nation.


"The game allows too much micromanagement. I want pure strategy. Don't let people assign individual workers to individual squares."

My response: I have a size 1 city within range of a nutrient bonus with a farm and soil enricher, and a mineral bonus in a rocky, mined square. A mindworm sits two squares away, and I can't afford a rush-build. If the production is set to minerals, I can get a garrison in time. The computer will probably choose 'nutrient,' because growth is always important early in the game. I'm going to lose my city because of that? I believe that the ability to micromanage is crucial, though I would much prefer that we get an advanced AI that can micromange competently. (As it stands right now, I don't automate formers. With a new, customizable AI, this could change.) Now, if you want a 'pure strategy' game, bring out the chessboard. This is Alpha Centauri.


"We need a new robot faction."

My reponse: Ugh! I always thought that the "Alien Crossfire" thing was just asking for trouble, and it seems that I was right... We have plenty of factions. I actually prefer the seven human factions and the Planet units (red/barbarian). No "fungal tower" mess. No bizarre native races to compete with. Just pull out good ol' SMAC... I like SMAC' story line well enough. Your "Robot faction" can be created through customization of an existing faction. Pick someone that could rival you (probably Miriam, your expansionistic foe) and hack "Believer.txt" to make a robot faction. Ta da!


"I want a spherical planet. The cylinder is unrealistic."

My response: Yes, it is unrealistic. It also works. How, pray tell, should we go about making a spherical grid? It might become a little easier if we change the squares to hexes (which could be interesting), but the tesselation still wouldn't be perfect. If you want a spherical planet to work with, wait about thirty years. By then, we'll have some thoroughly bizarre setup that meets your needs.


"I want geothermal pipes that go down to the core, release lots of energy, and kill off the life nearby."

My response: They're called "boreholes." They give you 6 minerals and 6 energy, not to mention making the adjacent squares arid.


"I want the AI to improve. Not only do the enemy factions know how to fight, but my governors are idiots, creating mind worms when I set them to 'build."

My response: Now we're talking. The rules are fine for now; I can even tolerate a square grid. That doesn't mean that the automation can't be improved. I want an efficient, micromanaged empire, and I agree that the AI could use quite a bit of work. I do like the "Evolution" suggestion, and suggest that it be expanded to adapt to whomever is playing the game. When push comes to shove, are you rover-crazy? If so, the AI could put the Comm Jammer on its defensive units the next time it plays you. This is no worse than what happens when you play the same opponent in multiplayer games for long enough... This is also a trade-off, considering that for the next twenty years, the AI will not be as intuitive as a human when it comes to dealing with the hundreds of subtle variables in each game. I am, as always, in favor of improvements on automation, and support a large "control panel" on the headquarters menu that allows you to manipulate currently-existing functions en masse and with greater precision. "Upgrade as many synthmetal chaos squads to plasma shard squads as I can afford, and upgrade units near Chairman Yang's empire before upgrading the units inland. The algorithm shouldn't be too hard: Locate all the synthmetal chaos squads. Calculate their distance from the nearest city/unit owned by Yang. Arrange them in order from nearest to most distant, and then upgrade them, starting at the top, and working down the list. Ta da! No more "You can't afford it because you have one too many infantry" or having to go through and individually upgrade each individual infantry on the front (except, of course, for the one you can't afford). My twenty synthmetal chaos squads take time to upgrade individually on my 133 MHz machine...


I'm not a complete grouch, I just don't like some of the weird stuff I've seen. Some ideas sound good, like sonar buoys that act as sensor arrays in the ocean. The seas can be extremely difficult to keep track of, considering that there is very little out there, and I would appreciate an early warning system. It doesn't defy the "nature" of Alpha Centauri, either.

-C17GMaster out-

[The Mad Monk]

I would like to see a multi-map capability, as in ToT--the ordinary 'surface' map, an underground map (allowing true subterranean cities and maglev tunnels), an undrsea map (want to raise the seafloor? You gotta build a submersible former, first), and an 'orbital' map, with true space-based colonies (that would need food connections from ground colonies to have any chance at all).

[Cybergod]

Re: What the...?

Originally posted by C17GMaster

"We need a new robot faction."

My reponse: Ugh! I always thought that the "Alien Crossfire" thing was just asking for trouble, and it seems that I was right... We have plenty of factions. I actually prefer the seven human factions and the Planet units (red/barbarian). No "fungal tower" mess. No bizarre native races to compete with. Just pull out good ol' SMAC... I like SMAC' story line well enough. Your "Robot faction" can be created through customization of an existing faction. Pick someone that could rival you (probably Miriam, your expansionistic foe) and hack "Believer.txt" to make a robot faction. Ta da!

C17 if you don't want fungal towers and any other additional interesting challenges SMAX gives then go on just play SMAC, no one is forcing your to play the expansion. I actually find it interesting and enjoyable to "compete with" Planet and her little demons .

And no, you're missing the whole point I was making about the robot faction . It adds more depth to the story line, more challenges and a different style of play. No you CANNOT hack believe.txt or any other file to make the alterations and new stuff we've been talking about on this thread.

I do agree with you that a spherical map IS a bit too much. It would make it realistic but also much more complicated and frustrating.

Vogon_jeltz, I like your idea of drop-in codes. Maybe have SPs waiting at the Firaxis or SMAC2 website waiting to ba downloaded? (What about the SP movies, that would take a while to download though ). I'd really like to see the model-naker , maybe included on the SMAC2 disc. Also I do not think that Planet busters should take ages to build ( ) and also, how come the Planet Buster cannot engage in Psi combat? This was so frustrating when I tried doing "it" ( ) on the Gaians and attacked their mindworm and off the nuke went to Psi combat and won, and nothing happened , it wanished like a missile.

It's nice to see an old thread dug up from it's grave .

PS. I just had to try out all the NEW smileys!

[Sikander]

The spherical map should not be too much a problem. Keep in mind that the game is really a series of points, arbitrarily set as a grid even though the distance in game terms between two squares diagonally is the same as it is vertically or horizontally.