About beelining to Industrial Automation...

[gwillybj]

HongHu: I have one question. Now everybody could edit alpha.txt, so if in a case a tech you desired is not available to you, wouldn't it be easy to solve if you simply edit the txt file and change the order of the techs? That would be a cheat though. Just wondering if this means that.

Minute Mirage: I suppose so, assuming that changing the order doesn't break anything. It would indeed be a cheat, though.

The order of the techs in alpha.txt is extremely important. The "line numbers" (which begin with zero) are keyed to every other part of the game that is keyed back to a tech's "line number" - some of which is hard-coded. If the order is changed, it will break many, many things.

[Minute Mirage]

Here's the 1.03 version of the file. I included the SMAC tech tree like johndmuller recommended. You can select which version (SMAX or SMAC) you want to use by selecting the approriate worksheet. If there are any bugs or such, please let me know.

EDIT: File removed, newer version available later in the thread.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by johndmuller

I think I used the (Scenario) Menu to add the techs (there's a selection that opens the Technology sub-window); I'm not familiar off-hand with the keyboard variations or what the difference might be.

I tried some of the things you mentioned, and I still got a different set of techs for my choice than in the actual game. Like jtsisyoda said, there are a lot of possible variables that can affect the choices, and finding them can be really hard.

[jtsisyoda]

You mean my feverish tirade was not just a bunch of malarkey? You made my day.

[johndmuller]

I checked out the program against a SMAC PBEM (presumably scenario generated) for which (I thought) I had very good research-offering notes about tech offerings. As it turned out, I had been rather remiss about entering all the trades and gifts, but I did have much of the missing info in my regular notes on the game. After correcting my research-offering notes for the missing additional tech acquisitions I was able to replicate with the program all but one of the offerings I had noted and I believe that I must have incorrectly captured the offerings (as the ones I had listed were inconsistent with the mod3 principle). I did have to make some assumptions to deal with contradictory information during my reconstruction of the missing data from the other file, but I would consider this effort a validation of this spreadsheet, at least for this game (I was the Spaartans, BTW). Unfortunately, if this game is typical of my accuracy and completeness at taking notes, I will not be able to definitively verify or disprove the program without a lot more work going back into save-game files to check my notes (and I don't think I am going to do very much of that).

Speaking of the work, it seemed that I was too often having to select techs in the drop-down list (which is considerably more a PIA than clicking the 'research' button) to add techs that were 'temporarily' unavailable due to the Mod3 rule. This was because there was quite a lot of trading going on in this game and also because in practice it is quite likely that trading partners will be working on the same set of techs, more or less, and 1/3 of them might be unavailable. So, it would be nice if there were an 'easy' way to select the unavailable techs, like an 'acquire' button for them in the rightmost column. Of course, if I was saving this spreadsheet and adding the techs as a game progressed, I wouldn't really mind the extra work selecting the tech from the drop down list, but for doing a lot of entries at one setting, it would be helpful to have a single button selection process for the 'unavailable' techs.

In this game (a partnership game), the CMN had given me my partner's starting tech as well as my own - this apparently translated into a 'trade' as far as the spreadsheet was concerned - as I was required to set it up that way to get the correect offerings at the beginning.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by johndmuller

Speaking of the work, it seemed that I was too often having to select techs in the drop-down list (which is considerably more a PIA than clicking the 'research' button) to add techs that were 'temporarily' unavailable due to the Mod3 rule. This was because there was quite a lot of trading going on in this game and also because in practice it is quite likely that trading partners will be working on the same set of techs, more or less, and 1/3 of them might be unavailable. So, it would be nice if there were an 'easy' way to select the unavailable techs, like an 'acquire' button for them in the rightmost column. Of course, if I was saving this spreadsheet and adding the techs as a game progressed, I wouldn't really mind the extra work selecting the tech from the drop down list, but for doing a lot of entries at one setting, it would be helpful to have a single button selection process for the 'unavailable' techs.

One solution to that would be to set the "Initial selection"- switch to "Yes", which makes all the techs to become available. Of course, if you're constantly checking whether the choices are correct, you would have to set it to "No" to be able to do that. So I guess an "acquire" button could be added.

Originally posted by johndmuller
In this game (a partnership game), the CMN had given me my partner's starting tech as well as my own - this apparently translated into a 'trade' as far as the spreadsheet was concerned - as I was required to set it up that way to get the correect offerings at the beginning.

My understanding is that using Ctrl+F2 to give techs to a faction in the scenario editor will count as a trade. Apparently most CMNs (including you) do it this way.

[johndmuller]

The 'initial tech' setting would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had thought to use it (I guess it just enables all the possible techs without doing anything else), particularly if I wasn't interested in seeing whether or not I could research the particular techs at that particular time (like when I was entering a string of 3 or 4 trades and didn't need to check the offerings against my records from the game). On a frequent basis though, such as switching back and forth between the initial and regular settings, the yes/no dropdowns are still considerably more cumbersome to operate (at least with my mouse) than just a single button click button. The part that seems to add the most effort is having to first click on the cells to reveal the dropdown arrow, then moving to click the arrow, then back to select the option; if the drowdown arrow were always there, it might not be so bad (although selecting a tech way down the list is also time consuming).

I know this seems kind of petty and whiney, but I'm just trying to help fine-tune this potentially very useful product.

I guess I'll have to play the Blind Leaders game again to see what the techs are doing compared to the spreadsheet's program. I did notice something that struck me as strange in the BL tech offerings (but I don't want to telll you what it was since you're playing the game - you know, if you knew that everyone else got offered Industrial Auto on the first round, you might be really upset ), but I thought it was just a coincidence, perhaps having to do with the particular slots and starting techs that went with each faction (I still haven't completely let go of the possibility that different factions get different offerings sometimes, possibly related to their faction.txt file's tech preferences). As best as I recall, I didn't do any 'cute' things with the techs (except for Yang, and even with him no really radical stuff like giving him AdvSpaceflight so I could give him hundreds of missiles, and then removing it) so I wouldn't think there were any side effects from that sort of thing. Except for the University, where I had to supply the techs backwards, I just doled out the techs, with no false starts, with no mistakes that I had to undo or any other anomalies that I can remember.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by johndmuller
The 'initial tech' setting would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had thought to use it (I guess it just enables all the possible techs without doing anything else), particularly if I wasn't interested in seeing whether or not I could research the particular techs at that particular time (like when I was entering a string of 3 or 4 trades and didn't need to check the offerings against my records from the game). On a frequent basis though, such as switching back and forth between the initial and regular settings, the yes/no dropdowns are still considerably more cumbersome to operate (at least with my mouse) than just a single button click button. The part that seems to add the most effort is having to first click on the cells to reveal the dropdown arrow, then moving to click the arrow, then back to select the option; if the drowdown arrow were always there, it might not be so bad (although selecting a tech way down the list is also time consuming).

I know this seems kind of petty and whiney, but I'm just trying to help fine-tune this potentially very useful product.

I do agree that selecting a tech from the drop-down box is time-consuming. I added the "Acquire" buttons like you requested.

Originally posted by johndmuller
I guess I'll have to play the Blind Leaders game again to see what the techs are doing compared to the program.

If you want to, I can send you some of my save files where I got the unexpected choices.

Originally posted by johndmuller
if you knew that everyone else got offered Industrial Auto on the first round, you might be really upset

Hey!

EDIT: File removed, newer version available later in the thread.

[Minute Mirage]

Here's version 1.05 of the spreadsheet. There are no big changes, but I removed the "Initial selection" switch (which I think was useless) and corrected a few mistakes.

EDIT: File removed, newer version available later in the thread.

[Net Warrior]

v1.06 seems to be working very well for SMAC as far as I can tell. A nice addition to my bag of tricks. Thanks.
Net Warrior

[johndmuller]

MM,
I'm a little puzzled as to what the mod3 column is supposed to show - I would have thought that some tag for the "mod3 group" that the tech belonged to, like group 0, 1 or 2, for the actual mod3 value of the tech (it is just the sequence # of the tech mod3'd, right?, and so would stay the same), but as the numbers in that column seem to change each time a tech is added of subtracted (although the groupings stay the same), it must be something else. Perhaps if I knew the system it would make sense to me, but so far it is confusing. I am referring to your latest version a couple of posts above (1.06, that is; I don't seem to have downloaded - 1.05 if it is/was up there).

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by johndmuller
MM,
I'm a little puzzled as to what the mod3 column is supposed to show - I would have thought that some tag for the "mod3 group" that the tech belonged to, like group 0, 1 or 2, for the actual mod3 value of the tech (it is just the sequence # of the tech mod3'd, right?, and so would stay the same), but as the numbers in that column seem to change each time a tech is added of subtracted (although the groupings stay the same), it must be something else. Perhaps if I knew the system it would make sense to me, but so far it is confusing. I am referring to your latest version a couple of posts above (1.06, that is; I don't seem to have downloaded - 1.05 if it is/was up there).

The "mod 2" is the current remainder of the techs, that is, the ones that are currently not available as choices have 0 in the column. The value increases by one for every added tech (more precicely, it goes from 0 to 1, 1 to 2 and 2 to 0). This means that you can tell which techs are going not to be available next turn by checking which techs have 2 in the column (with the exception of the joker tech).

[johndmuller]

Thanks for explaining that; I suppose it would have been obvious if I didn't have a preconception as to what was going to be in there. The sequence of disappearance is indeed useful information; I'm glad I didn't suggest that improvement at the same time asking you what was going on in that column . If it isn't already in there somewhere, you might consider adding some indication of how that works as a help item in any future version you might make.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by johndmuller
If it isn't already in there somewhere, you might consider adding some indication of how that works as a help item in any future version you might make.

Yes, I guess I should do that. I can see how a simple "Mod 3" could be considered not informative enough.

[johndmuller]

I found a couple of more things that seem to be a little more significant.

I thought that saving the spreadsheet would let me return to it later so that if I save the version that had a particular PBEM's techs already in it, it would let me pick up where I left off when the next tech choice came around without having to enter in all the techs again; but there seemed to be some problems with that - perhaps there is some initialization routine or something, but it loses some stuff, for example, the ability to unload the last tech, but not just that.

Regarding undoing techs, there seemed to be several problems with that too. Particularly if it were a previously saved file, but IIRC, some of this stuff was problematic in a new file too - the various remove buttons do not always work properly, all three kinds, the "all", the "most recent" and the "specified". It seemed to be losing track of what &/or how many entries were in there. In addition, it hassled me about clearing the tech cells manually too, as they seemed to be protected or locked or something.

Just so it doesn't get lost in the negative stuff, I still think that this is a very fine and useful spredsheet .