Aplha Centauri 2 Wishlist

[Tommar]

Removal of repetitive tasks, such as being able to specify a default building queue to be used by ALL cities (with over-rides or enables), instead of having to specify the same queue, over and over again, for each city. Alternatively, be able to micromanage your Governors' activities, by specifying precisely what they should build, in what order, and what they should not build under any circumstances.

Similarly, more automation choices for formers (like plant forests! . Better yet, be able to tell it what to build for different terrain types (if rainy and rolling, build farm and mine; if arid, plant forest, etc.

Must keep: SE and Workshops, although improvements would be nice.

[Tommar]

Be able to refuse communications from other factions, just like they can refuse player communications.

Be able to break treaties/pacts without loss of reputation if the faction leader refuses communications (like when they stray into your territory and you can't tell them to leave because they refuse communications, but you lose reputation if you break the pact.)

Stop the AI from trying to use extortion tactics ("if you give me half your money, I'll call off this war!" when you have 20 Deathspheres parked outside one of their cities.

[Commy]

IIRC, in the comlink window, you can right-click on a faction and tell them to get out of your territory, whether or not they want to talk to you...a player can't ignore these messages, including the AI, but unfortunately it will most likely result in war, unless, of course, you like war, then this could be good...

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Commy
IIRC, in the comlink window, you can right-click on a faction and tell them to get out of your territory, whether or not they want to talk to you...a player can't ignore these messages, including the AI, but unfortunately it will most likely result in war, unless, of course, you like war, then this could be good...

Cool, thanks, I didn't know about the right click option.

It's ok if it results in war. When they start ignoring your messages, war is often inevitable. And I never make a demand that I can't enforce.

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Hercules
I would like to see tunnelling (my apologies to those who have mentioned this in a wish list before) an option at some stage, maybe at Ecol Enginnering. Effectively the same as roads but also like submarine but below ground. This could be accomplished in a number of ways:

A former acquires tunnelling ability. A former builds the tunnel rather like building roads and magtubes. Non naval Units would travel along these in the same way as on the land surface. All tunnels would all be at the same subterranean level.
capabilities.

I like this idea. Even in SMAX, seabases are weaker than land because of transportation issues. I use brute force to overcome this - build land bridges. It seems like a civiliization that has the resources to build land bridges could also build a tunnel.

[Straybow]

Just allow magtubes to be built on continental shelf tiles.

Of course, you have to allow sea units to traverse without interference, prevent land units from attacking anything while in the tube, etc.

[binTravkin]

prevent land units from attacking anything while in the tube

I think this makes no sense at all.

If I knew a ship is passing a tunnel right down below me, I'd put a charge into a shaft and blow it - done thing.

ZOCs, shouldn't work, yes, but not such rules.

[Commy]

Tunnel cave-ins as part of the random events?

[Tommar]

If tunnels are more onerous than land bridges, than there is no point.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Commy
IIRC, in the comlink window, you can right-click on a faction and tell them to get out of your territory, whether or not they want to talk to you...a player can't ignore these messages, including the AI, but unfortunately it will most likely result in war, unless, of course, you like war, then this could be good...

IIRC, you can also right click and declare a vendetta, though the option doesn't show up all the time

[Straybow]

Originally posted by binTravkin

prevent land units from attacking anything while in the tube

I think this makes no sense at all.

If I knew a ship is passing a tunnel right down below me, I'd put a charge into a shaft and blow it - done thing.

ZOCs, shouldn't work, yes, but not such rules.

Huh? I think you got that backwards. Something could attack the tunnel, yes. That's pillaging. But if a unit were in the Magtube underwater, how could it attack a ship?

[GeoModder]

Stop the maglev train, deboard, find the inevitable escape hatch, take the rescue sub there, surface, attack the ship.

[yogho]

Since the whole idea of SMAC is that people are trying to live on a hostile planet, and it's one of the biggest differences to Civs, I think that aspect should be expanded.

One way of doing it could be putting some kind of support cost to bases. Currently a base in a crap location is still better than no base at all, and this results in bases covering almost every bit of land, which doesn't feel like colonising a hostile place. So, if there were support costs, a base in poor location wouldn't be self-sufficient, and would consume more resources than it produces, and would require help from other bases. Then it'd only make sense to build bases to good spots, first of all making exploration more important.

The bases would potentially be far away from each other, with nothing but dangerous wasteland between them. This would create new challences conserning transportation and infrastructure, etc. It would create a feeling that the bases are colonies that are pretty much on their own, and life in them is dangerous.
Of course the maps would have to be bigger, so there would be a lot of land.

It would make wars different, since it would be more difficult to get an invading army to enemy's bases, but it would be equally difficult for the defender to reinforce his bases. there would be less actual fighting, but more challence for both, and the fights would be more important. That also goes well with the setting, since there are a lot fewer people on the planet than there are on Earth, so there would also be fewer soldiers, and leaders wouldn't waste their lives as lightly as they would o Earth. And so the there would be a lot considerations for launching any meaningful invasion.

Another good thing would be to have terrain improvments have support costs, so you couldn't just build every place full of stuff, instead you'd have to seriously think what to build and where. Also, this combined with longer distances between bases and the importance of roadnetwork would create important intersections, that would be strategic points to defend and attack during a war.

It of course would require AI that could play well with these rules, but a signicantly better AI goes to any reasonable wishlist without saying anyway.

[GeoModder]

Such a system would work best in a sort of territorial-based map instead of a tile-based map. Every territorium (locations, divided by geographic features like mountain ranges, rivers, or simply an outright change of the vegetation) supports one base, which can be expanded upon with newer 'sister'-settlements elsewhere on the territorium when it gets more and more terraformed in time.

Such a system could be expanded upon as well for the other planets and moons of Alpha Centauri.

[Straybow]

Yes, I would like to see more of the struggling to survive a hostile environment atmosphere. It should be more difficult to build new bases.