Aplha Centauri 2 Wishlist

[binTravkin]

I'm not so sure increasing/decreasing a base population with a few hundred max. with every single unit built/disbanded is much of an improvement.

Yeah:
1.It would add much micromanagement.
2.In fact it would be even more unrealistic than the current representation, because you'll need less food to feed base. Take it as it is in RL - all the military people have some city where their official adress is (at least in Latvia). They can be very far from it, but still in some way tied to it.

[Dis]

pretty much the same in the U.S. Though the monetary support doesn't come from the individual city, but from national goverment.

This is why I would prefer they go to a civ3 system of national taxes funding the military as a whole. Instead of individual cities supporting the armies like in civ2. It's one downfall of smac if you ask me, and one of the few things civ3 does right.

[Senethro]

(I've already said that, global support with mineral costs first appearing at the city with most minerals and moving downwards. P-drones appear like B-drones)

[binTravkin]

global support with mineral costs first appearing at the city with most minerals and moving downwards.

And I object that.

Unless you come up with a brilliant idea how it should look like.

Say I have one 20 mineral city and 3 cities of each 4, 3, and 2 minerals.

What happens when I build units number:
a)1
b)4
c)5
d)8
e)9
f)12
g)20
h)21

?

I'd like to hear your opinion how each case would look like in the game. Just name which of my 4 cities (A = 20min, B = 4min, C = 3min, D = 2min) will support each of the units given in cases above.

[Chaos Theory]

If mineral accumulations were floating-point values, each unit needing support could be distributed across all cities, proportional to each city's mineral production. Thus, for each mineral's worth of unit supported and with 29 total minerals, each city would lose 1/29 of its mineral production.

[binTravkin]

So, imagine a situation you build something and rush it so that only X minerals remain (where X = current mineral production at the base).

At the end of turn your PACTmate AI turns his unit over to you.

Are you happy?
And imagine it was an SP which you just had researched and rushed to make before the others (and you already know that a player after you in turn order will attempt to build it the same turn as well).

And that is only one example.

[Senethro]

What if an AI attacks your crawlers what if what if

What if we allow some bases to be flagged as "Doesn't pay global upkeep"?

[binTravkin]

what if what if

You see Senethro, developers of both SMACX and Civ4 have gone through hundreds of those "ifs".

You now are trying to skip all the thinking and just take a quick idea into existance.

My point is:
1.It is unclear how it should work, and you yourself can't even think up how.
2.If id was clear it would be very hard to implement and is a possible subject of exploits and bugs/holes.

[Chaos Theory]

Receiving gifts of units and suffering to support them is already a problem which needs to be fixed, but not in an exploitable way.

[binTravkin]

Okay, I see I fail to explain my point.

Also I don't see anyone telling me how exactly this global support thing should work.

Maybe invent global mineral pool as well then?

To make global support work with nonglobal resource pool is pretty hard and illogical.

[Senethro]

Is it really worth getting into specifics? Its just a random idea because some of us like Civ3s global support.

Civ3 does pay its support costs from a global resource: money. Unless SMAC were to change support to energy then there would have to be some very complicated micromanagement rules for determining who pays for unit support. e.g. Bases can be flagged to never pay, bases below a player determined mineral production are passed over until no other possibility exists.

It would get complicated and I don't have an answer for you.

[Chaos Theory]

Here is exactly how global support could work:
Sum up how many minerals need to be spent to support units (dependent on unit count, city count, SE settings, and perhaps population).
Sum up how many minerals are being produced at all cities.
Divide the first sum by the second. Call this the support ratio.
At each city, multiply its mineral output by the support ratio, and subtract that many minerals as its contribution to supporting units.

Maybe minerals should be pooled to some extent, at least under some governments. In SMAC, there are already two ways to partially effect this: hurrying and crawlers. A less micro-managed way of doing this is worth examining.

[binTravkin]

A less micro-managed way of doing this is worth examining.

Exactly.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
This is an old idea, but a good idea nevertheless.

Completely overhaul the population model. Right now a surplus of nutrients is a sufficient condition, which is the old, old Civ model. This needs to be changed.

Population growth should also be a function of quality of life, which translates roughly to base facilies such as Children's Creche, Rec Commons, etc.

It already does. If your SE Growth is high your food box is smaller and you grow faster (including BOOM). SE Growth is negative your food box is huge and you grow slower.

The beauty of the system is the simplicity. Food is constant, growth is not.

Another thing is to make the increments smaller. It doesn't make sense that suddenly 10,000 persons materialise into the base out of thin air. Ideally the increases should be gradual and continual. This have nice effects such as making units are going to reduce the number of persons in the base, while disbanding units inside the base increases the population number.

The population is just a guide. What changed incrementally is resource gathering and allocation. This can happen in real life. A city grows and the infrastructure becomes strained. Then the city widens a major thoroughfare, extends water and sewer mains out into a new area of development, etc.

Everything is strained until the expansion is finished, then suddenly the pressure is relieved and the city reaps the benefit of the new infrastructure.

That's how I think about the discrete growth model.

[Commy]

Perhaps all costs and production are multiplied by ten...

Instead of costing 40 minerals, a rec tanks costs 400...on the other hand, a borehole that produces 6 minerals now produces 60...

This would help unit support costs...instead of all units costing one mineral (or 10, in this case), particularly large units (and ones that cost a lot) could cost more support...

Cruisers would cost more than foils, and hovertanks would cost more than speeders...so a cruiser might cost 20 minerals (= to 2 minerals), a hovertank 15 (= to 1.5 minerals), and a speeder and foil would still cost the original 10...

The same principal could be done to nutrients...instead of having 3 citizens, you would have 3000 citizens, gaining one for each nutrient box filled...each citizen, say, added 1/100 of a mineral and 1/100 of an energy to production, so only groups of 100s, or tenths of the citizens we have now, actually were productive...this would show growth and production more accurately...also, in order to work a square, 1000 citizens would be needed, so in affect, one 1 citizen or one pop similiar to what exists now would still work one square...