Saving Habits

[Bkeela]

All my time playing SMAC, I have used the save option liberally. I've thought nothing of re-loading maybe up to a 100 times to find an elusively favourable outcome.

Recently though, I have attempted to play Iron Man mode. I've found it incredibly difficult.

I was just wondering what the standard is, if there is one. In all the challenges for instance, is it normal to re-load after every failed attack until success, or re-load only occasionally when something unfair happens? Or absolutely no saving allowed when playing a challenge.

Bkeela.

[Flubber]

No reloads EVER-- its the only way to play

The only time I have replayed ANY single player turns was a personal challenge I did where I lost to the AI around turn 110. I went back to year one and tried another method and won pretty handily. Otherwise i try to win despitr bad outcomes


Reloading multiple times to try to obtain an unlikely result is even worse-- Play the game "fairly " or why bother ?

[Main_Brain]

IronMan.. if your Machine is stable that is :=)

[Xian]

i reload all the time, using the autosave

[Method]

i use ironman mainly because i get +100% on my score at the end
just in case it crashes however, i still keep an autosave handy (though it seems to keep only one where previously it would make several)
/me shrugs

[CEO Aaron]

I don't use Ironman, but I also rarely restore from a save to avert unwanted outcomes. I suppose given that, I really ought to start using Ironman for the extra score, but honestly, I'm more concerned about breaking the barrier from Thinker to Transcend, than padding my score. Most games I won't play through if its apparent I'm going to win anyway, so score really isn't a factor for my typical game. I believe I've only finished the Ascent to Transcendence twice in the myriad times I've played the game.

Bkeela, if you have trouble stopping yourself from reloading when things don't go your way, I heartily recommend using Ironman to reinforce your discipline. The AI in this game is sad and pathetic enough as it is, you don't need to cripple it by making it lose every battle, or making all your pods shove out tech and units. Remember that cagey and determined play can recover from almost any reversal of fortunes, and don't worry so much about getting every single secret project for yourself, and you'll find your skill improving and your enjoyment of the game increasing at the same time.

[Asmodean]

Hmmm...I reload, but not a lot. In my current game, I have reloaded only one time. I am governor, and I simply forgot to check how the Gaians were doing on their Nano Factory. So without warning they completed the damn thing 2 turns before I would have done so. In that case, I reloaded.

I think it is ridiculous that you don't receive warnings regarding Sp's every time, when you are the governor. I mean, the info is right there for you to access (given of course that you have discovered the base in question)

Asmodean

[Static Universe]

I only reload if I've done something stupid or forget to do something I was planning to do. Since I manage every base personally, and usually sprawl, sometimes things I planned last turn for this turn sometimes slip my mind. After 10-15 minutes of handling production, this happens to me a lot.

I played ironman for a while, until one night after I stayed up til sunrise playing a game against a custom networknode.org faction which gave me a particularly good run for my money. It was on a 320x32 map, so I couldn't do anything against them until I got orbital insertion. They had the HSA, CV, DT, NAmp, and CBA and I couldn't make a dent on their continent with elite drop troops. I put drop colonies on nearby islands, rushed some bombers, and the game did the "air unit scramble crash" on my first round of attacks. It was by far the best game I had ever had against the AI too.

[MariOne]

Prepare yourself, here it comes my usual shot:

IRONMAN IS A FARCE,
IT'S THE STUPIDEST SETTING THERE IS,
IT ONLY SPEAKS BAD ABOUT THE PLAYER WHO USES IT

[ resume normal mode ]

Why Ironman is a farce:
It does NOT STOP you from reloading.

On modern systems, exiting and reloading only takes few seconds more, less than a minute for sure.
It is a VERY MILD deterrent on the one who is determined to cheat. If you want random outcomes too, all it takes is to reSAVE b4 reloading.

It allows you to "CLAIM" to play straight, but it only tells one of these two about you:
- ally you aim to is to rinse your publice image, while instead you're the most determined to cheat: if you want to reload, go for it seriously and admit it, covering it up behind an IronMan façade is hypocrite on top of that
- you'd honestly want to refrain from reloading, but you're so weak-willed that you need a deterrent or you couldn't force yourself to do it on your own, and even weak-willed to the point that the lamest weak deterrent would tho be enough, while proving nothing of your integrity...
___
Now, for some positive, no-nonsense considerations about the subject.

Flubber, of course, for serious gaming, and for serious COMPARATIVE gaming, no reloads EVER is the ONLY way to go.

But remember FUN is the ultimate reason for everyone playing.
As long as you play single player to amuse yourself, and you don't expect to claim any challenge achievement, scenario result solution or anything, *whatever floats your boat* is the way to go.
You just have to be mature enough to not fool yourself, have consicence on the conditions under which you achieve your results and which meaning they can have, and not be ashamed to publicly admit and declare it where needed/appropriate.

We don't need to scare or harass any player, just to be honest and true to each other.

___

So, in pbem, reloading other than because of crashes is an outright CHEAT, and makes you not belong to the pbem gaming community.

In challenges where your single player results get compared with others, reloading makes your results moot and null, and only tell that you are but a LOSER.

Otherwise, reloading is acceptable as long as it meets your own individual goals and expectations for your personal fun.
During the learning phase, it is not only advisable, but imho *necessary* to alternate intense reloading phases with "clean" tests of your so far achieved level. Only by testing over and over alternate options with which to approach and address the SAME situation you'll really get better and progress fast.

And even later, you won't have to prove nothing to yourself.
You probably find fun in putting your skills to test by taking on the toughest challenges. This of course makes sense only if you go the clan way, taking shortcuts wold only defeat the same purpose you'd be undertaking the endeavout for.
but then of course you'll not succeed everytime, sometimes you'll still screw up, and realise it.
You might have invested several hours to build up a game to a very challenging and satisfying point.
What you do then, you trash it all because of one onfortunate outcome, or one unadvised decision?
You're wlecome to it.
I'd' have no problem tho to adimt the loss, but nevertheless to imagin AS IF I'd started over and got AGAIN at that same point, and branch from that point for a SECOND run at a situation that I know for challenging and satisfying.
Of course would be immature to "just" boast in the end "I have beaten that challenge".
If you needed to reload 5 times to succeed, you should have the face to admit "I have gone for that challenge 5 times, and after 4 failures, at the 5th attemp I finally had learned from my former mistakes and managed to succeed".

___
I'd like to exemplificate it:
in my youth, I seriously enjoyed skiing (we're talking about ~20 yrs ago...).
I got to a pretty good level, although far from top.
Let's just say that I could take on almost any "black track" or how do you call it in english, steep and with any amount of bumps (maybe not also with green ice at the same time...), although it required to put in the best of myself, and in that strenuous effort and exhaustion lied the fun of it indeed.
But more often than not, I plainly admit that I enjoyed MORE something that only required around 70% of my capabilities, some just medium-high difficulty track where I could go down lightheartedly, with comfortable sweeping curving, always in easy control, enjoying more the nature, the landscape, the speed, the sun & breeze, without having to care to the technicalities of the run.
The same I could say for sailing.

I hope this example helps conveying my opinion about game reloading better than all the above words

[Bkeela]

Thanks for your advice guys.

My main playing pleasure in the past was more of a simulation/role playing kind of motivation. But I found it increasingly boring once I had defeated all my enemies. So to inject new fun into the game, I decided to play without re-loading.

I just found it so difficult that I wondered what the standard of the community is. It seems no re-loading is the way to go, so I'll adhere to that.

I've since started a game lowered to Talent level, and I'll slowly build up as my skills improve. I'm making fairly good progress, although I started a half hearted war against the Gaian's which failed. It's definitely an entirely new way of playing resisting the temptation to re-load.

Cheers,

Bkeela.

[Alex]

I never reloaded any of my games, even back when I was learning how to play... I play for fun, and if I make a bad decision of if something bad happens, I try to overcome this situation and do my best to improve my own skills. I cannot do it all the time, but then I learn a valuable lesson for my next game. And there's a lot of fun throughout all the process.

[Static Universe]

My philosophy on reloading is that if you want to reload, just reload. It's your game, your computer and your free time. Enjoy it as you wish. But MariOne is correct when he says that you shouldn't cheat yourself (or others) when you do this.

If you find yourself reloading every 5th turn, you may want to ask yourself what you are doing wrong, or why you are not playing it out.

Playing youself out of a hole will increase your skills faster, IMO, because you won't get the advantages of SPs you've missed out on or need to rethink your battle techniques.

You'll just fight the same battles again with larger armies, which may not always be the best tactical choice. If not getting certain SPs ruins your game, these may be the areas where your game is weakest, so not getting them forces you to think about where you need to improve.

Also, I have a problem on my system where if I save out of an Ironman game, and try to restart the program later in the same Windows session, I get a bunch of "file not found" errors from SMAX, then terranx.exe crashes. I always thought this was a feature to stop people from working around the reloading issue, even if implemented badly. Anybody else have this problem?

[Gibsie]

In my latest game I've been trying not to reload. Just lately, after very little reloading, I had a couple of units tryin to defeat the sole defender of a naval Drone base, and after reloading maybe 10 times, I won the combat and took it over.

The next turn, Drone bombers wiped out my two units and that was that.

Reloading = dumb

[Albin]

Yes, I am a reloader... If I spend my time with this excellent game I don't want play good. No, I want play beautiful. Aesthetic terraforming, balanced building, amusing roleplay and strong military actions... So, if I make stupid mistakes I can't resist to reload.

[Datajack Franit]

I stopped reloading after I became good enough at this game- the last time I remember reloading a saved game was because I stupidly pressed the obliteration key on my headquarters