Aplha Centauri 2 Wishlist

[binTravkin]

However, how many in our community are skilled enough to work with these in order to create a fully fledged mod?

I want to repeat this question now and to larger scale
later.
And we will need testers and storywriters (Im sure there will be additions in this field too) as well, so everyone who wants will be able to contribute.

Also - seeing all the features you describe here, all the new ideas and almost unlimited freedom the released code would give to us I'd like to admit (although it's a bit against what D posted here before) that the cIV--->SMACX Mod (we really should register this TM!) will be more like SMACX 1.5, not the same old buggy terranx.exe.


And, guys, please don't talk about disabling ICSing or any other strategies.

Instead of diabling strategies which humans use against AIs, we will teach them and their counterparts to AIs.

I've always wondered how stupid the manufactured AIs are.

I've been modding AIs since AoE first came out and I bet you can't even imagine how much better it can do just by changing a few values.

This time I will get down to the code!

[binTravkin]

So for example, a 2-1-1 unit would have an attack and defense of 2...a 2-2-1 unit would have a combat percentage of 10% (10% for each armor point) and would have a power of 2.2....

Got your point, idea itself sounds good, but I doubt it will be very good in the exact way you present.
The percentage should be bigger and both values should actually give percentage, so a 2-2-1 would look like 1.2-1 (two times 10% increase).


Sorry for many posts, was looking back to pages.

[binTravkin]

Addressing Hydro (as our hydrological authority):

Some things I’d like to see:

Terraforming: More realistic terraforming – trees, farms, river, solar collectors are all fine. BUT, drilling to an aquifer to make a river makes no sense at all (this is a pet peeve – I’m a hydrogeologist, after all). Likewise, raise and lower terrain violates the conservation of matter – no small thing to consider. Where does all the extra soil/rock come from or go? And consider the scale! A sector is something like 10,000 kms square. Raising a tile 500 m over that area is a stupendous amount of material! Now, if these types of terraforming were available as uber high tech that would be OK.

Here I'd like to note one thing - please propose replacements/solutions.

I think noone wants his favourite "drill to aquifier" command just washed away (anyone has it favourite? ).

So, please, Hydro and other hydro/geo - logically educated people here - what type of operation would make a river come out of nowhere?
Probably replace it with "dig a channel"?

About raising-lowering terrain.
Yes. I agree, it's extremely stupid.
My proposal:

1.Remove "no lower ground adjacent" requirement for holes.

2.Make sea level rising be a lot slower (huh, boys, really can you get plus 1km/20yrs on earth?) and make and "Ice pool" which would mean that one point rising simply stops as there's no more ice to melt.
Some other things should occur then as massive rainfalls somewhere and massive aridness at somewhere else.

3.Remove drastic effects of quakes/volcano appearance.

4.Move raising/lowering terrain to Adv.Ecol.Eng (I guess).

Opinions.
Please detailed and in organised posts, so people can read.

Movement: More realistic representation of distances wrt unit movement, and tile utilization (already well discussed by others).

Agreed. But this will need some advanced testing and evaluation.

Support: Better representation of support (well discussed by others).

Here I must say Im very much against global support, but people get it explained correctly I could give some ideas on it as well.

I don't see a way how mistical upkeep for each base from some support mineral pool makes good sense.
It actually adds to micromanagement because you'll need to check each base for info can you afford more units.
It will also become extreme issue in situations where you lose mineral production rapidly (crawlers harassed by enemy).

Eco damage: IMPORTANT – keep the concept of ecological damage, BUT make those that violate Planet pay through the nose. Right now eco pollution makes it possible to pollute more. Surely a programmer made an equation error since, in my mind at least, any ‘white blood cell’ reaction to pollution by Planet would make Planet more sensitive, not less, to future pollution. So, pollution without mitigation will not pay.

So you suggest if a fungus kills my mine and I put my worker on other one resulting in the same pollution amount, I should get even more pops?
Seems a bit weird.
It needs some counter-measure.

Probably make fungus have -1 pollution in the same way forests do? As if fungus eats your pollution?

Other solution?

Tech rate/ability: Make technology available based on what you do, and maybe your SE or faction agenda. For instance, an industry and pollution heavy faction should have a very difficult time getting Planet friendly techs. This might be done by giving certain factions a bonus toward some types of techs (eg – Gaians to Explore, and Morgan to Build), but negatives toward others.

A bit like Galactic Civs.
Im afraid we will need to turn this down while making this first mod.
It will be pretty hard to implement such cost changes, though some little values could have an effect on it (your avg. pollution per base e.g.)
Strongly against tieing SE to it.
It could make Morgan be halfway to Secrets Of Alpha Centaury, then switch to Green, complete it in next turn and switch back then.
I think its not what we (including you) want.

Tech function: Another possibility is that a tech may simply not work at all or very well if your actions (eg – ecopollution) or faction disposition is wrong. So the Gaians might steal Morgan’s industry tech, but have a bit of a struggle getting it to work. Likewise, the Morgans might really struggle to get farms, forests, etc to work well on Planet since they just don’t get it.

This will be easy if defined right.
We can add something like fungus penalty for negative planet rating to anything we want (at more or less effort).

[binTravkin]

My last post for 4 days I guess - about that whole crawler/specialist thing.

We need some conclusion on it.

Ideas presented:

1.Technician working a crawler.
2.A city can't go 100% effective as there's always some stupid/lazy people.
3.Fiddling with production values.

Address:

1.Its not a bad thought, but has a downside - imagine you're Hive and want to max out mineral output per base till ecodamage (which is a worthy strategy) - you'll need to have too much technicians to work on crawlers and you're not gonna get em as you're popboom-retarded.
So my conclusion crawlers need crawler-based penalty.
Like paying 1 mineral support (so useless on 1 min square and not very good at 2 min squares - forests?).
Hiverians will object this for sure unless we give them cheap mines proucing 3+mins from around the time IA is there.
This solution is actually the most realistic IMO as crawlers would be no different than other units IRL - just some machines.

2.True, that's why many specialist cities lose their base energy production to inefficency.
You suggest making Specialists subject to efficency?
Then efficency needs a lot less penalty for faraway bases.

3.Disagree. Think up something else.
Crawlers already have a penalty of not being able to work all 3 resources and I think it's quite enough.
If we put them to supported units they will have their penalty they need.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by binTravkin
I think it's clear we won't get to completely rebuilt SMAC from the cIV code, either by resource reason or others.

I am coming to the unfortunate conclusion that your statement is probably correct, for better, or for worse....
One reason I was pushing for building as close an approximation of SMAC(X) as possible is that it would eliminate a lot of questions/ comments/ feedback/ arguments that are inevitably going to be involved in deciding what path to follow in regards to how a cIV---->SMACX mod would be built. As an example I have to go no further than the number of opinions you just posted above in your replies, and know that there will be a certain number of people in our community that will disagree/ have different ideas/ have arguments about your ideas, and that a certain percentage of these people will also be so disenchanted with the directions that we will need to choose that they will back out of helping in such a project.

Originally posted by binTravkin
I propose not go too far with assumptions we need to rewrite something before we haven't seen it.

I am not going to disagree with this statement, however I don't want to mislead people into thinking this will be a simple task. I do agree though that the code should be reviewed first to define what can and can't be done with the code (based upon available human resources), and that we then begin to define the cIV--->SMACX mod from there.


D

[binTravkin]

will also be so disenchanted with the directions that we will need to choose that they will back out of helping in such a project.

We shouldn't really go so far and some people should also understand that we haven't got the resources to completely rebuild SMAC from cIV code.
They should understand that most of the SMACX features in the new mod will be modifications found in cIV, so they could and in certain situations would behave differently.

On the way to making such modifications we can take in count the ideas posted above thus changing the behaviour of some features for more realistic/less exploitable/less micromanagement requiring (Im for this as Im also often strapped for time on MM) because it would be not more difficult to do it or it will be even easier comparing to implementing the actual SMAC equivalent

Also please note this thread is SMAC2 wishlist and we're not gonna make SMAC2 at first, so we can just skip some things found here (giving a reason, of course).

I am not going to disagree with this statement, however I don't want to mislead people into thinking this will be a simple task. I do agree though that the code should be reviewed first to define what can and can't be done with the code (based upon available human resources), and that we then begin to define the cIV--->SMACX mod from there.

Of course, but everyone is welcome to do his brainstorming here (giving some explanations/arguments as well) and who knows, he might see the thing implemented in

cIV--->SMACX Mod.

You wanted a way to name the new game..
Read above.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by binTravkin


Of course, but everyone is welcome to do his brainstorming here (giving some explanations/arguments as well) and who knows, he might see the thing implemented in

Good point!

Have a good holiday, bt!


D

[PJayTycy]

I state again I will buy civ4, only to help with modding it to smac2. As for my experience : I'm a student Computer Science Engineer. This year I got 1 examn called "Artificial Intelligence" (completely useless for the AI we are discussing here though). I've got a little experience with modding games not meant to be moddable.

We can discuss now all we want about how we want the workshop to be, we don't know what will come. If civ4 is truelly moddable enough, I am sure we can re-implement it completely.

And, when the game is released, we might find out some of the beta-testers have done some of this yet (I bet they have to beta-test the moddabillity too, and what else can they try to do??)

[Straybow]

Originally posted by binTravkin
My last post for 4 days I guess - about that whole crawler/specialist thing.

We need some conclusion on it.

Ideas presented:

1.Technician working a crawler.
2.A city can't go 100% effective as there's always some stupid/lazy people.
3.Fiddling with production values.

You forgot limiting the number of, or income from, crawlers contributing to the base. Production values stay the same.

[Commy]

Originally posted by Darsnan
One reason I was pushing for building as close an approximation of SMAC(X) as possible is that it would eliminate a lot of questions/ comments/ feedback/ arguments that are inevitably going to be involved in deciding what path to follow in regards to how a cIV---->SMACX mod would be built. As an example I have to go no further than the number of opinions you just posted above in your replies, and know that there will be a certain number of people in our community that will disagree/ have different ideas/ have arguments about your ideas, and that a certain percentage of these people will also be so disenchanted with the directions that we will need to choose that they will back out of helping in such a project.

While I'm no programmer, may I suggest that those who SERIOUSLY want to mod SMAC for a SMAC2 perhaps should make their own website with forums...

Ask for some ideas on Apolyton, but don't tell anyone your final decision...then, suddenly (and unexpectantly) release "SMAC 2" and just tell people that's what they get...

Hopefully this will prevent people from saying "that idea sucks" or "your mod is going to be horrible" or whatever....as quoted above, many people will have many ideas, and not announcing what you are going to do might prevent people from trying to annoy you by arguing there idea, whatever...

I know you can run a free website on www.freewebs.com and think also on geocities...freewebs I know has the ability to create forums...

But of course, it's all up to the programmers who wish to undertake such a difficult but glorious task...

[Hydro]

bT,

River – rivers are largely the product of regional rainfall and topography. Water (as all other things) is conserved, so if you make a river you are taking that water from somewhere else – and that ‘somewhere else’ may not be to your liking (“Glorious Leader! You have your river! But, the water table dropped 100 meters, the Glorious Capital wells are dry, and all nearby the farms have gone arid…”)

Ecopollution – my understanding is that each fungal ‘pop’ increases the future max minerals a city can produce w/o eco damage. So, it pays to pollute so you can increase your industrial potential. This strategy combined with eco friendly structures can massively increase your industrial potential through a game. My observation is that strong players intentionally create pollution to get as many ‘pops’ as they can before and during the building of tree farms, hybrid forests, etc. Others have parsed out the details of this oddity, but to me this seems dead wrong if xenofungus acts as white blood cells to find and eliminate invaders – as is stated in Datalinks. Why would Planet reward ‘bad’ behaviour?

Hydro

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Commy
Ask for some ideas on Apolyton, but don't tell anyone your final decision...then, suddenly (and unexpectantly) release "SMAC 2" and just tell people that's what they get...

Actually thats step 2 in my thinking: essentially step 1 is get all the hardcore SMAC'ers who have programming experience together onto one team and hack out as close an approximation to SMACX as we can get. Then step 2 is that everyone goes their own seperate ways (with each individual having the combined knowledge from our community of how to redesign the whole game!), and designing their own "ideal" version of SMAC(X)2, which they can then unleash upon the world as they so choose. Here again ideally speaking if all the really important files are encapsulated into the game file (which is passed from player to player) , then this simply amounts to downloading a file and playing the "game" as designed (or "seen") thru another's eyes!

Originally posted by Commy
Hopefully this will prevent people from saying "that idea sucks" or "your mod is going to be horrible" or whatever....

One need only revisit the early threads from Civ3 to know how that avenue fared....

Originally posted by Commy
But of course, it's all up to the programmers who wish to undertake such a difficult but glorious task...

I'm hoping to get our whole community involved, at some point or another....

D

[binTravkin]

bT,

River – rivers are largely the product of regional rainfall and topography. Water (as all other things) is conserved, so if you make a river you are taking that water from somewhere else – and that ‘somewhere else’ may not be to your liking (“Glorious Leader! You have your river! But, the water table dropped 100 meters, the Glorious Capital wells are dry, and all nearby the farms have gone arid…”)

Ecopollution – my understanding is that each fungal ‘pop’ increases the future max minerals a city can produce w/o eco damage. So, it pays to pollute so you can increase your industrial potential. This strategy combined with eco friendly structures can massively increase your industrial potential through a game. My observation is that strong players intentionally create pollution to get as many ‘pops’ as they can before and during the building of tree farms, hybrid forests, etc. Others have parsed out the details of this oddity, but to me this seems dead wrong if xenofungus acts as white blood cells to find and eliminate invaders – as is stated in Datalinks. Why would Planet reward ‘bad’ behaviour?

Hydro

Dear Hydro.

As you see in my adress above I completely understood your ideas about what's wrong in SMACX.
I understand also the idea of water level and how it interacts with waterflow and other geological concepts.

But what I asked in turn was you to understand that nothing should be just taken away on the ground that it's unrealistic.
If we took away all things that are at least a little unrealistic from SMACX, we would be taking away 50% of the game at least.

Thus, you, as a hydrologically educated person, are asked to propose a solution to this problem, a replacement or whatever what would make people not think that the terraform options are chopped down in an ugly way.
Probably you can provide ideas on even more terraform options.

Waiting for your reply,
bT

[bluetemplar]

If we took away all things that are at least a little unrealistic from SMACX, we would be taking away 50% of the game at least.

I also completely agree with that. It's not realism that makes SMACX a wonderful game, it's only a game after all.
Gameplay MUST pass before realism.

I think we should discuss more the things we want to KEEP, and what make us prefer SmacX rather than Civ3, so that some zealous firaxian programmer would not erase them thinking it would be best (with all my respect to the said programmer).

For my part I loved in SmacX:
- Unit Workshop :
Before finding smacx I've tested a lot of games in order to find one with this concept, and I'm really glad that this feature is present among also excellent others in this Game.

But it still need improvement, for instance:
*To be able to save units designs in a specific file.
*Easier navigation : I think windows explorer folder system would be excellent.
*To be able to customize units : more chassis looks for one standart type (eg "rover") as it already exists between humans and aliens ; chassis "faction tags" (as in homeworld) ; colors ; etc... with maybe the capacity to toggle to a standart view in the general view (as for "toggle flattened terrain").


- The whole interface :
A way lot better than in many games which soon became boring due to clumsy gestion system.

But it also need improvement, maybe using many windows would be a good choice. ( See also Space Empires game series)

[The_Reckoning]

Here are the few things I want to see:

Graphics:

- 3d Voxel maps with dynamic lighting. I mean, it'd look great to see a base on the dark side of the planet all lit up, with lights in the mines, and lens flares on the solar panels on the bright side.

- Visual representation of units. Because my SoD is a bit shaken when I see one man pushing a fancy laser conquer an entire colony.

- Properly animated and detailed battles, via live rendered 3d cutscenes: If it's some laser infantry defending against a tank, and the infantry are in heavy cover, I want to see troops taking cover behind the rocks, shooting at the tanks. Not predone FMV, but a live little animation in a box, with Source-level graphics.

- Animate lanscapes. I want to see spore launcers pulsating, mind worms writhing, fungus slowly growing, formers actually builing things, bases bustling, tidal generators spinning, Maglevs humming. Also, I think the props to show what tiles are being worked on are a great idea, as they add to the immersion of the landscape. So only the imrpovements which are being worked animate.

Gameplay:

- Automated units interact and coordinate attacks themselves. Like if I have a needlejet in a base 5 tiles away from an enemy base occupied by one unit, and a rover nearby, they work together to kill the unit and capture the base. Etc. with transports and lan units.

- Artillery that are actually useful, and always reduce the defense value of terrain for a turn. Think about it, would a bunker be as good defense if it had been bombarded with balls of chaos for a year?

Interface:

- A better build menu.

Here's my idea: http://img27.echo.cx/img27/7779/smacthing4sx.jpg

E: Just thought of another tick-box at the top: Show autodesigned units On/Off.

The four divisions of units are for the different kinds. So Formers+Crawlers+Pods fit in build, Scouts+Transports in explore, Militaria in Conquer and Artillery in Discover. Artillery don't fit with discover, but the Conquer would be too crowded otherwise.

Of course, the user would be able to rearrange the sections if they wish.

- A MUCH smoother way of pruning units. So a button saying "Delete Design" instead of "Retire" and "Obsolete".
Because, who brings back obsolete designs? Also, the computer would pick up on that you don't like the designs,
and say "Deleting this will cause X bases to have no orders.:
Replace these orders with [User seleceted]
Keep Design


More ideas to come