How to calculate the cost of city mind control?

[Senethro]

Quick question: how much does it cost to mind control a city or enemy unit? I know some factors that affect it are enemy probe rating, drone riots, presence of childrens creche, use of nerve stapling, number of talents, no. of military units in the base. I think that enemy unit morale and probe team morale might also play a part.

[Flubber]

Re: How to calculate the cost of city mind control?

Originally posted by Senethro
Quick question: how much does it cost to mind control a city or enemy unit? I know some factors that affect it are enemy probe rating, drone riots, presence of childrens creche, use of nerve stapling, number of talents, no. of military units in the base. I think that enemy unit morale and probe team morale might also play a part.

I don't think that anyone has come up with a definitive answer on this. I do think that distance from the enemy's capitol is a factor. I recall someone saying (but never tested) that its actually the square the probe stands on that matters such that mind-control costs would vary if tried from different tiles

[johndmuller]

If you mind control more than 1 base in a turn, the second costs substantially more than it would have if it were the 1st or only. I tested it once in an old game and the same thing happened regardless of which base you did first (although I think it was some sort of factor, so IIRC, it was better to do the more expensive one first). I don't know if the effect is cumulative over the game or whether it is just on a per-turn basis.

I believe other factors might include the population of the target base and/or amount of infrastructure, and distance the target base is from its own HQ (although that might just correlate with some of the size/prosperity stuff).

[Kirov]

Compare the cost in Civ, although I believe nobody cross-checked it (I've been planning to do it for a year).

[Commy]

I have attempted to undertake this, and this is what I have found...

Distance is the largest factor in determining cost...distance is determined by the number of squares between the bases plus the base square...so if there is one blank square between the HQ and the base, the distance is two...

Diagonals, I believe, have a distance equal to 2 units instead of one...

Map size does not have any affect, either does difficulty level...

Some figures...

If distance is 2, base cost is 201
Distance 3, 172
4,151
5,134

and so on...I have a list all the way to 35, then have 40, 50, and distance of 100, which by the way has a base cost of only 14...

If there is no HQ, the default distance is 12, a cost of 75...

If there is more than one population unit, then it is "base" times the number of population...so a base that is 12 away from the HQ and has pop 3 costs 225, not 75...

Children creches half the distance used in the equation, so I assume genejack factories double it...

Hopefully I'll have more on this later...

[Senethro]

Wow, good work. I thought good ol' gene jack merely added one more drone?

Theory: drones half the cost for that citizen, talents double it.

What is the effect of nerve stapling?

Reading a Civ2 guide it suggested that the distance actually is from HQ to the Probe team's square. I'm wondering if AC is teh same because of the same game engine. Since playing Civ2 for the first time this week, I've noticed a lot of similarities...

[Zoetrope]

I regard AC as Brian Reynold's effort at Civ 2.9 (in disguise) pending Firaxis's winning the rights to Civ 3. A pity he wasn't involved when that happened.

[Commy]

I actually tried that, probing from different squares to see if different numbers appeared, but it was always the same...

Unfortunately, this is a difficult task...

First off, apparently just adding things in with the scenario editor doesn't work unless its with population...I added 2 secret projects and 5 units in a base with a few facilities, all with the editor...but the cost never changed...I did however start a game and then wait until the first secret project was built by the AI, and then activated the scenario editor...the cost was 696...it was a free drone base with the human genome, three 1-2-1 units, and I think a rec commons and a recycling tanks...I tried to see what affect taking away the units had...unfortunately, the price only changes after the turn is over, so if a base costs 1200 ECs to subert it and its supported units, if all the supported units are destroyed, the price still remains for that turn...

[livid imp]

Commy, did you let the game start a new turn before you probed the city? If that doesn't work,try saving and restarting the game.

Make a series of different cities with different attributes (i.e. build 8 cities surrounding the capitol at the same distance, but different pop levels or facilities, etc.) Edit in some basic entry level probes, and see how much is for sale.

[Kirov]

I'm pretty sure that both SPs and units do not change the cost.

OTOH, there are more facs than just CC and GF that affect the cost - e.g. Nanohospitals, IIRC. But the are only several of them. Punishment Spheres are also worth checking, as well as research hospitals.

On yet another hand, I _seem_ to recall a situation where an empty base (i.e. w/o units) cost much less that the same one with units... I'm not sure 'bout that.

BTW, the manual mentions that the cost is affected also by victim's PSYCH rating (I think I checked that some time ago, and it appeared to be false) and something along the line of "special actions" going in the base. I've no idea what they meant by that, but it was certainly NOT SPs. Have someone stumbled across it?

[Senethro]

Special actions: Drone riots, starvation, nerve stapling, captured base, punished base, golden age base, base with drone riots/activity incited.

Any more possibilities?

Are research hospitals really likely to increase mind control defense? They might do so indirectly by quelling one drone.

[Commy]

special actions I think refers to drone riots, golden ages, and nerve stapling...when I have time this weekend, I plan to solve everything...

The only thing that is bothering me is the equation for distance...I have set up the distance and the base cost on a graph...it looks like the equation might be quadratic, or it could just be part of an oval, I'm not sure and really am not too great at graphing...

[bluetemplar]

Hello everybody!

It's some months now that I have found that SMACX is the best game ever created and in search for a good forum about this game stumbled across Apolyton.

For now I contented myself reading topics and accumulating all this amazing knowledge one can find here.
But soon I found that even after 4 years, there are still things to discover.

Today I have run some tests concerning this topic:

Commy : Diagonals, I believe, have a distance equal to 2 units instead of one...

I think that it's rather x1.5


The cost/distance from 2 to 20:
201 for 2 and so on
172
151
134
121
110
100
93
86
80
75
71
67
63
60
57
55
52
50


My complete test excel file joined.


I think that we've found the most complicated formulae in SMACX!
Unfortunately even with this data I can't find what the formula is... and the closest (order 6) doesn't work with Excel (it might be a rounding error problem)
I hadn't tested an oval though...

P.S.: Excuse me for my poor english.

P.P.S.: Another close formula (with rounding):
267.7179937-41.37712929*x+3.919025847*x^2-0.2244749676*x^3+0.00787612925*x^4
-0.0001696430532*x^5+(2.181511736E-6)*x^6+(-1.533964146E-8)*x^7+(4.531822328E-11)*x^8

[Commy]

If it helps any, the cost for distance 1 is 242...I did this by playing SMAX on a 16x16 map, where the aliens crash land at the same time, in squares right next to eachother...I changed the owners in the editor and found the cost that way...

I have done some 5 minute research on graphing, and I have come up with two ideas...

A) There are things called parent and child parabolas...for those that know about parabolas and quadratic equation, the y-axis must always be the line of symetry for a parabola...however, by using parabola A as a parent, and graphing parabola B based on the parent, you can shift a parabola off the y-axis, possibly creating something that we have here...unfortunately, I didn't take time to see how parent parabolas work...

B) We e-mail the numbers to some engineers at a University or College...some famed institute, such as MIT, probably has many ways to contact professors...let's hope they don't think of us as annoying...

[PJayTycy]

what's the cost for distance 0 (ie: mind control the headquarters itself) ?