Aplha Centauri 2 Wishlist

[Chaos Theory]

Why bother multiplying everything by a factor when fractions are available?

[binTravkin]

Why bother multiplying everything by a factor when fractions are available?

For the coder it's basically the same.

[Chaos Theory]

I am a coder. Why bother with multiplying everything by an arbitrary constant factor that might later become an irritation when you can just use floats and doubles? Space and computational power aren't an issue, and round-off error is simple to cope with.

[Leland]

Integers and small fractions (1/2, 1/3, etc.) are more intuitive for the players to figure out and optimize than arbitrary precision floating point numbers. I would much rather have everything rounded up or down to the nearest (reasonably small) integer than trying to wrap my brain around producing something like 0.87899340762 minerals per turn in a city with 23445433245 people in the year 2307.422134. It's supposed to be a game not a weather simulation.

[Chaos Theory]

I'd much rather have .1283257 bureaucracy drones in a city than have a 1/8 chance of getting one when I plant my next base, or need to determine its position in the global base list.

When a number is the result of division, such as for global support, the floating point number can be used internally, and the fraction (3/29 or whatever) can be shown to the player, potentially with the decimal expansion as well, for comparison to other fractions.

Breakpoints caused by discretization cause a lot of micromanagement headaches, such as checking bases to see in what year they'll grow and need more drone control, or squeezing out that last point of labs by getting as many bases as possible to produce an odd number of energy units.

[Dis]

emigration.

That's what I just thought of, and should be in a game. I was thinking about this when we were discussing population growth above and strained resources. My city (las vegas) doesn't grow from people making babies. But from people moving here from other areas.

I think cities with little infrastructure and unhappiness problems should move to cities with better infrastructure and more happiness improvements. Also it would be nice if the job market was represented in some way signifying unemployment rates. This may be making the game too complicated, it's just a thought.

and perhaps if the infrastructure and unemployment of all your cities is bad, you lose population to a neighbor or a farther away faction with better lifestyle.

[Chaos Theory]

So then, rather than simple riots or loss of the whole city to a random faction, unhappy cities would tend to lose population (thus becoming somewhat less unhappy), potentially to nearby factions, depending on diplomacy, government, and the condition of nearby friendly bases. Instead either being just fine or rioting, bases would suffer progressively more from being increasingly unhappy, vaguely like ecodamage and pops.

[Senethro]

Keep in mind that its some years before Planet has a global economy going. Although the Secret Project movies and quotes suggest the factions are much more integrated than we play them its still going to take roads and communications before anyones migrating.
How many years before citizens have personal transport on a planet with no cheap energy source?

[Chaos Theory]

Good point, and I'd say either the PTS or discovery of synthetic fossil fuels (or maybe a few other similar techs) would cause the transition from isolated bases to a connected faction.

[Dis]

yeah I never liked losing entire cities to an opposing faction. It doesn't seem right.

[Chaos Theory]

I would say having a city defect should still be possible, but only under unusual circumstances, such as Lal breaking a long-term pact with Morgan while still running Free Market, while Morgan is still running Demo. That should cause widespread unrest, and border cities might just defect. Having an unhappy Drone city riot and defect to the Hive (barring very unusual diplomacy) just doesn't seem right, though.

[Senethro]

So.......

Isn't what we're talking about really just a system of Civ3 style culture by the back door?

(I made a possible adapted SMAC model of that somewhere but noone was interested)

[Chaos Theory]

In Civ 3, what I experienced of it, you could go to war with a faction, seize some of their cities, and have them and your military units rapidly defect to your opponent. You didn't need to have developed any relations prior to war. This is significantly different from having your citizens flee your unhappy bases or defect if given freedoms and reason. Under a Police State, a well-garrisoned base should never defect on its own (probe teams are another matter), even if it may trickle out citizens.

[sammy1339]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned this, but I think that one of the things SMAC sorely needs is a more realistic model of combat. In particular, how come putting on plasma steel jackets makes people carrying normal guns able to defeat people with missile launchers? Clearly in reality armor alone does not make one a better defender. Furthermore I think the idea of a 1-12 unit, or a 24-1 unit, is absurd. How could it possibly make that much difference whether the unit is attacking or defending? Aside from that, how come when there is all this awesome futuristic technology around still nobody has figured out a way to make infantry obsolete? I think that weapons should have inherent attack and defense values, and armor should determine how fast units take damage in combat, almost like reactors currently do. I also think there needs to be more chassis options and more emphasis on long range combat, beyond the artillery option.

[Senethro]

Realism sucks.

Game mechanics rule.