Why do aircraft cause drones when in base?

[King Stone]

I am playing as the Morganites with Democratic - Free Market and I recently noticed that Air units cause drones, even when they are in base. Is this bug fixed by a patch? I am running v4.0 from the SMAC EA classics edition. Is there somewhere I can change this is the text files, as it is totally wrong and very annoying as I haven't hit my hab complexes yet and two planes in base render it useless. Thanks!

[Avenoct]

This isn't a bug, rather, attack planes are always considered out of your territory. Defensive planes (air-air, not armored per se) are an exception. Think of the atmosphere as a map overlaid the ground-sea map and it makes some sense. Your territory doesn't include the atmosphere.

Under Free Market, with the -5 Police Rating, any military unit out of your territory causes two pacifist drones at home. Thus, with 2 planes you are getting 4 drones.

There are many strategies to deal with this, and Apolyton searches you might do would include the following words: Specialist, Punishment Sphere, Free Market, Pacifist Drones, War under Market, War Morgan.

As to editing this out in the textfiles, there are at least two ways to go, but first consider that many Smac'ers enjoy the difficulty of making war with airplanes precisely because they are so hard to use. Due to there being excellent ways to deal with this in-game, you might want to try out some strategies before hacking this out of the game.

Method 1: Change Free Market so that it doesn't have an effect on police rating at all, or minimize that effect. In alphatext you might change:

#SOCIO
[blah blah...]
Fundamentalist, Brain, +MORALE, ++PROBE, --RESEARCH
Simple, None,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET, -----POLICE

to this:

#SOCIO
[blah blah...]
Fundamentalist, Brain, +MORALE, ++PROBE, --RESEARCH
Simple, None,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET

, nixing the POLICE effect of Free Market. Quite unbalancing.

Method 2: Change Airplanes. The only available measure would be to make them ground units. From:

CHASSIS# [blah....]
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 2, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1,

to:

CHASSIS# [blah....]
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 0, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1,

Neither of these hacks are going to be satisfactory as they change the game dynamic quite a bit, but there they are if you really want to hack them.

An attempt at an all-specialist base with your planes homed there is definately worth a shot before you go making the game unbalanced. Also, keep in mind that Morgan can easily get the critical +2 economy from Wealth alone.

-Smack

[Deimos]

Ground attack aircraft and choppers cause those drones to appear wether they are in your territory or not.

On the other hand, interceptor aircraft and choppers (those with the air-to-air ability) do not have this problem.

Even though this doesn't appear to be "correct", that's just the way it is. No patch to change this exists, nor is this alterable in the text file.


Edit: Whoops! Cross-post.

[Scipio Centaurus]

Sounds like you built penetrators (bombers)! Naughty, naughty! What's a freemarketeer doing, trying to maintain a permanent offensive strike airforce?

For air defense you can design and build tactical needlejets with air superiority capability. They have shorter range and don't do as well against ground targets, but they won't cause drones - as long as you keep them in a defensive posture (i.e. on hold or on alert at a base).

If you must make air war against your trading partners, try 'hiring' mercenary penetrators as follows;

Build strike aircraft, preferably after you have installed air complexes in some larger bases. For lower population bases (say size 5 or smaller), you may want to change the resulting drones into psych specialists until the strike unit has carried out its mission. You will need to ensure that you have sufficient minerals coming into the base via some other means than workers (i.e. crawlers) to keep the base's mineral production from going negative while the strike air unit exists. Negative mutrient production in a base is often OK for a couple of turns. Check the growth display in the upper left of the base screen. You'll see when the base is about to lose a pop point. Once the strike aircraft has carried out its mission disband it (SHIFT+D) immediately if it wasn't destroyed - effectively repatriating the mercenary air combat units. In either case the drones at the deceased aircraft's home base will go away instantly.

The above strategy works well with FM/Wealth bacause the massive accumulation of energy credits coming in each turn allows you to rebuild combat units quickly for short periods of time.

Each of your combat units (ground/sea/air) will cause 2 drones at its home base, if it strays outside your territorial boundaries while running FM. As you have seen the long range offensive air units cause these 2 drones the moment they are built.

Once an interior base reaches size 6 or better, it should be able to handle drone activity from a single errant combat unit without requiring special attention. As a rule of thumb, the number of 'war drones' at a base should always be less than half the total population of a base to avoid any possibility of drone revolts.

- Scipio Centaurus (Drone War Veteran)

[King Stone]

Thanks for the input guys. I still consider it a bug, even more so now that I find it only applies to non - SAM aircraft. I had already adjusted by use of a punishment shere but I find that to be an unsatisfactory solution. I may try the hack but it seems it will prevent drones form appearing when you make attack runs, which is not what I would like either. I'll have to test it and find out.

[RedFred]

My take on this is that it is not a bug. You get benefits by running FM in the way of extra energy. So you have to expect costs as well. The costs usually include a diplomatic hit as well as making it more awkward to build lots of needlejets.

Besides you can get the extra one energy per tile with Morgan by just running wealth. The extra energy you get from also running FM (+2 energy/base & +2 commerce) may not be as important as more flexibility on the attack. Have you considered running Green? Even though Morgan has an aversion to any other faction using it, he has no problem using Green himself.

[Scipio Centaurus]

Couple of points. A freemarketeer adopting a Green social platform? Sacrilege! Don't let the soothing words of the tree huggers sway you from the one true path...

Besides, you'll never corner the global energy market unless you run FM/Wealth. Come to think of it, you may not be able to do it even then. Has anybody ever actually cornered the global energy market in SMAC?

The idea behind FM is to make it difficult for free traders to maintain permanent *attack* forces - in line with anarcho-capitalist lassiez-faire dogma. Home guard units are no problem at all.

Back to the game's free market paradigm. With a little luck, by the time I get 200+ years in with Morgan, I am running Dem/FM/Weath with a nice carpet of crawlers that allows me to convert almost any of my bases to an all specialist base at any time. I can build clean shard strike copters in 2 or 3 turns w/o even rushing production. Once a base population reaches double digits, I don't even bother to convert the pacifist drones to specialists anymore. With FM/Wealth, it's so easy to rapidly build an ad hoc aerial strike force that I just don't bother to keep a standing offensive airforce. It's a waste of resources and it would force me to pay attention to the drones. I do try to keep tactical choppers on alert at all of my bases though.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Scipio Centaurus

Besides, you'll never corner the global energy market unless you run FM/Wealth. Come to think of it, you may not be able to do it even then. Has anybody ever actually cornered the global energy market in SMAC?

Oh yes, several times. And in fact I have seen the AI do it several times - one of my SP scenarios, Democracy in Peril saw Yang, of all people, do just that.

And as to the "bug" assertion, Civers will remember the same effect when you started producing bombers - unhappy citizens in your city.

I usually deal with it by building a Punishment Sphere in one base and homing all offensive noodles there - at least until I have several bases with a majority of specialists that offset the drones.

Googlie

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Googlie
Oh yes, several times. And in fact I have seen the AI do it [corner the global energy market] several times - one of my SP scenarios, Democracy in Peril saw Yang, of all people, do just that.

Excellent! I was beginning to fear that was an unattainable victory condition. Closest I've come is about 70% of the necessary energy. I'm usually short by an order of magnitude. Transcendance seems easier to me. I must be missing a few 'energy accumulation' tricks in my playbook.

The AI has never beaten me by cornering the energy market, but I invariably play Morgan, so it's not too surprising...

Yang didn't have any particular 'advantages' in that Democracy in Peril scenario, did he?

I usually deal with it by building a Punishment Sphere in one base and homing all offensive noodles there - at least until I have several bases with a majority of specialists that offset the drones.

I will have to look into the PuniSphere technique for dealing with pacifist drones. I've never built one of those...

I've become fairly comfortable with my own ad hoc 'mercenary' aerial strike force technique. Maybe because I developed it without reference to outside sources. Those are the most powerful lessons...

- Scipio

[Lefty Scaevola]

I just love your handle, Scipio.

[Scipio Centaurus]

Thanks. A tribute to Scipio Africanus, of course.

[Avenoct]

I've become fairly comfortable with my own ad hoc 'mercenary' aerial strike force technique. Maybe because I developed it without reference to outside sources. Those are the most powerful lessons... - Scipio

...and a canoe is pretty damn amazing....till you dock next to a frigate.
All in good humor, especially because I tend to do the same thing..find a strategy that works and then never challenge it. One reason our Succession and MP games are so valuable. Ideally I'd never have read Vel's guide or asked so many silly newbie questions about strategy here because there is something so great about playing an MP game and realizing that your opponent is kicking your butt for a reason! and then, after the shock, realizing that your 'perfect strategy' might have to take some adjustments.

I can't figure out why King Stone still thinks the pacifist drones from noodles is a bug. As Ethemind would probably say, "Free Market economies don't well tolerate military actions against their customers," but really, as you think about it, its only smallscale consumerism that suffers from warfare, not the economy in general. I think Sid and company got it wrong when they attached Aversion to mass military to Democracy in Civ, and to Free Market in SMAC. At best, it's an over simplification. I think what they were trying to represent is an Aversion to Military atrocities in an enlightened (liberal) culture. If you think about the worlds first Republics and Democracies, they were also some of the most militaristic governments in history. Hmm..

-Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Smack
...and a canoe is pretty damn amazing....till you dock next to a frigate.
All in good humor, especially because I tend to do the same thing..find a strategy that works and then never challenge it. One reason our Succession and MP games are so valuable.

The lead message in this thread lead me to believe that the gentleman was making inquiry in reference to an SP game. I have couched my responses in that light. It is important to remember that SMAC SP and SMAC MP are two completely different animals. Strategies that are viable in one may be useless in the other. In no way does this imply that one technique is superior to another. It would be like comparing apples and oranges.

As an example, I have never seen the AI use nerve gas against me. But in human vs human MP games I have heard (no I haven't seen it yet - but I don't doubt its veracity) that many human players will automatically build nerve gas capability into all combat units - simply because the combat bonus likely outweighs any possibility of a coordinated response by the other human players. Every person must judge for themselves which is the 'superior' tactic. Also the AI badly mismanages crawlers vis-a-vis humans. But don't expect the same bungling from a human opponent. Or could it just be, that humans abuse crawlers under any circumstances...

Ideally I'd never have read Vel's guide or asked so many silly newbie questions about strategy here because there is something so great about playing an MP game and realizing that your opponent is kicking your butt for a reason! and then, after the shock, realizing that your 'perfect strategy' might have to take some adjustments.

You mean like the MP game where I wasted many years coyly researching a long 'dead' SP (i.e. somebody else had already built it, but I kept my base working on it) at a base so that no one could figure out what SP I really intended to go after? And then the turn after I finally switched my base over to production of the 'real' SP, another player started up the SP (from scratch) and cashed in 3 souped up crawlers and enough ECs to bring the project to within 1 year of completion while I still had several years to go? Did I get 'schooled' on the difference between MP and SP there? You bet! Did I think the human's technique was 'superior' to the AI's technique. Obviously! In fact I now do the same thing in all of my games (incl SP). Did I think that human's technique was an accurate simulation of any kind of sensible reality? Who cares!

I can't figure out why King Stone still thinks the pacifist drones from noodles is a bug. As Ethemind would probably say, "Free Market economies don't well tolerate military actions against their customers," but really, as you think about it, its only smallscale consumerism that suffers from warfare, not the economy in general.

There are precious few examples of true national free market economies in the history the World (Iceland during their middle ages supposedly comes close), so it's difficult to draw any firm conclusions. One must always try to separate the rhetoric from the reality. Just because the US says it is a free market economy, that does not make it a free market economy.

I think Sid and company got it wrong when they attached Aversion to mass military to Democracy in Civ, and to Free Market in SMAC. At best, it's an over simplification. I think what they were trying to represent is an Aversion to Military atrocities in an enlightened (liberal) culture. If you think about the worlds first Republics and Democracies, they were also some of the most militaristic governments in history. Hmm..

I think FM is an attempt to model the rhetoric (not necessarily the reality) of supposed free marketeers down through the years. Think US Presidents Reagan and the Strategic Defense Initiative; GW Bush and his Missile Defense Shield. Also check out recent candidates for US President for the Libertarian Party www.lp.org (i.e. Harry Browne) - a very fiscally conservative bunch who, for instance, want to eliminate the US Income Tax ( ) and pull all US combat troops back from the 140+ countries around the world that they currently occupy ( ). Harry Browne also ran on a Missile Defense platform in 2000. Also check out www.cato.org a public policy institute (think tank) devoted to libertarian (primarily free market) ideas.

Anyway, that's why I think penetrators cause drones.

[Avenoct]

Oh.

I follow you, especially regarding the Libertarian movement in the U.S.. I just gave a small paper two weeks ago outlining why the current U.S. policies toward isolationism are dangereous. Arafat's visit to Asia and Bin Laden figured highly in that, as did the missile-defense systems violation of the international ABM treaty, and our refusal to sign on to the Kyoto protocol. The long and the short is that isolationism isn't very compatible with maintaining imperialism. I'm a pro-state kind of person, so I tend to associate this with Libertarianism. BTW, nice site that Cato.org, and a relevant page concerning abolishing income tax is at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-272.html

Anyways, I'm wondering if you think the population's aversion to extra-territorial military in free market is really supposed to represent the 'free-for-all' foreign and domestic policy of Libertarianism, or is it supposed to represent the people's aversion to Wars of Aggression, as I seem to think it is? I don't know, perhaps it's both, now that I review this. I think I need to brush up on my knowledge of free-marketeering in relation to foreign policy.

-Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Smack
...I just gave a small paper two weeks ago outlining why the current U.S. policies toward isolationism are dangereous...

C'mon! Quit kiddin' around. You're frightening me!

The long and the short is that isolationism isn't very compatible with maintaining imperialism.

Obviously.

Anyways, I'm wondering if you think the population's aversion to extra-territorial military in free market is really supposed to represent the 'free-for-all' foreign and domestic policy of Libertarianism, or is it supposed to represent the people's aversion to Wars of Aggression, as I seem to think it is?

What's a war of aggression? Capture of territory from another soverign gov? If so, the US hasn't actually done much of that since the revolution. Occupation? That's a different story.

For SMAC, take this test; If you prefer that your faction's borders be composed of smaller submitted factions - acting as a buffer zone of client states, you may be an imperialist, and hence not tempermentally suited to running FM. If, on the other hand, you are comfortable with a border consisting of a series of well fortified bases of your own factionality, you may be an isolationist by temperment. This is confiermed if you are a military counterpuncher (you don't start wars) and are satisfied with calling off miltary action the moment you have driven invading forces out of your own territory.

- Scipio