Smac Datalinks mod - help?

[Simpson II]

I've started on a mod of the Smac 4.0 datalinks (mainly out of sheer annoyance!) to correct as many of the errors and omissions as possible, as well as to rewrite some of the more opaque bits.

Is there any interest in such a mod? And, if so, does anyone know of some things that ought to be changed? I think I know about most of this, but still any info is welcome! You never know what I might have missed.

Thanks, S2

[Vultur]

Begin to correct Factions'text errors.
For example:in MORGAN.TXT the datalink says:
"^Need HAB COMPLEX for bases to exceed size 4: {Creature comforts at a premium}"
you can correct in "^Need HAB COMPLEX for bases to exceed size 4: {Population need comforts}
Or in HIVE.TXT Yang says "my social experiments" that sounds bad. Can be corrected in "my communal utopia"
(thanks to Lal's " Social History of Planet")
There are other things that can be corrected
(why PK have population bonus? I think is better to give this bonus to Spartans... as spartan lifestyle)


---------------------------------------------
^The luck helps prepared mind.
^
^ --Blaise Pascal
^ Datalinks

[This message has been edited by Vultur (edited August 25, 2000).]

[Simpson II]

Vultur, I was thinking more of a purely factual mod. For example, explaining the combat bonuses of perim. defense, aero complex and naval yard, something the datalinks doesn't do properly. Or correcting the 'SE effects' help section for economy, so that it reflects the actual energy production under different economy modifiers.

[Helium Pond]

The Landmarks section of the Datalinks doesn't tell you what the Manifold Nexus is or does; this is something I've modified in my own datalinks, out of annoyance.

I find the way the datalinks displays the morale levels to be inconvenient. In the manual, the morale levels and the mindworm equivalents are diplayed in a list, side by side, so that it's easy to see the rankings. In the datalinks, the same information is written as a sentence, which makes it harder to use. This has always annoyed me.

The datalinks do not mention Population Booming, one of the most important parts of the game. Well, they mention it as an effect of +6 Growth, but they do not explain it.

You said you were going to work on the section on Perimeter Defenses, so you might already be aware of this, but it's always annoyed me that the Datalinks don't mention the fact that a Perimeter Defense keeps the base from losing a unit of population when the last defender is killed.

Apparently the Datalinks don't accurately tell you how the defesive bonuses of a Children's Creche work, but I'm not sure what the real info is. There was a big argument about it over in AC-General a while ago, I'm not sure how it turned out.

It annoys me that the Technology part of the Datalinks doesn't tell you exactly what the bonuses are of each technology. I don't know if you can make this kind of modification, because it looks like there's not a lot of space allowed for these descriptions, but it would be great to have the Datalinks tell you *everything* a tech gives you.

So, tehre's some ideas. Hope it helps.

[VoodooChild]

Yes I am interested in seeing your work. As I am re-learning the game many of these undocumented features I am unaware of today.

Speaking of PDs and TFs, do they provide bonuses vs PSI attacks? (From memory) The effect is adding one to a units defense, but since PSI combat not based on weapon/armor does this apply to this form of combat?

[Simpson II]

Heh, I thought this forum was dead!

Thanks HP, most of those are new ones, very useful. I don't believe it's possible to have the datalinks tell you the the bonuses of the techs, since that window is generated rather than pre-made. The others I will go about implementing.

VoodooChild,

Nope, the defensive facilities give no bonuses against Psi units. You get the +25% from the base square instead of the +100%. I hope the mod will be of use!

[mark13]

Just occured to me, it might be a good idea to include the correct hurry formula in the advanced section of the datalinks. I'm not sure as to the practicality of that (never modified the datalinks), but there is a new thread in the Strategy forum.

[Helium Pond]

I find the unit hurry cost formula unnecessarily complex. I appreciate the work that went into defining it exactly, but in the end all you need to know is that the cost per mineral remaining=cost to hurry divided by minerals remaining. Any other information you can work out with the windows calculator. For my own convenience, I've made a modification to the scripts.txt file that shows a list of the most common costs-per-mineral whenever you see the partial-hurry window. That's been very helpful to me. But no one's ever going to need to actually USE the hurry cost formula, because it merely explains a number the game gives you on its own: the cost of hurrying a unit.

[Helium Pond]

I just came across this:

Yang's faction profile doesn't mention his immunity to Efficiency penalties.

[Simpson II]

Sorry about ignoring you mark13, I still rarely check this forum. That ought to change, really.
I think I might disagree with you here, HP. The part-hurrying thing is an something that a player should work out for his or her self, it's simply a property that emerges from the unit-hurry formula.. so I may well include the formula, and let whoever hasn't heard partially hurrying work it out. Not that there is likely to be any such person, lol! So I think I will implement mark13's suggestion.
Thanks for mentioning Yang, though. It also reminds me that nothing they changed in the patches is documented! Tut, tut.
[This message has been edited by Simpson II (edited September 22, 2000).]

[Helium Pond]

You do understand that all the formula does is explain how to calculate the cost of a FULL hurry, right? In other words, the formula merely explains the mathematics behind a number that the game already gives you. In other, other words, using the formula will only give you results that are identical to numbers you already have, numbers you get without needing to do any math. What was really helpful from all the discussion over the hurry formula was the revelations that:

a) cost per mineral is simply total hurry cost divided by minerals remaining, instead of some of the more arcance theories proposed, such as there being incrementally higher costs for every ten minerals, etc.

b) when you do the math (cost per mineral * (minerals remaining - mineral production)) to determine a PARTIAL hurry, you need to round your final total UP.

Every player who gets past basic play will want to know how to do a partial hurry. To know how to do this, the above two points are all they need to know. The only reason I can think of that anyone would want to know the FULL hurry cost formula is if they want to know how much it will cost to fully hurry a unit at a base that isn't building the unit yet. Having played the game for well over a year now, I can safely say that I have NEVER needed that information.

Respectfully, therefore, I must disagree with you. The full hurry cost formula is virtually useless. It was worthwhile trying to find out, because it cleared up some other issues, but in and of itself, you can't use it for anything. The information about partial hurrys, however, is needed by almost everyone AND, far from being obvious, was widely misunderstood before MariOne did the simple legwork necessary to get to the bottom of it. This is why I disagree that it's something "players should work out for themselves": it took everyone at this forum a long time to work out, and it's unlikely that people unfamiliar with this forum will figure it out on their own. In fact, in two separate PBEM games with people who don't read these forums, I sent them the information about partial hurrys (in fact, I also sent them my modified scripts.txt file), and they both thanked me very much for the information, and said it was very useful. Neither of them said, "by the way, could you send me a formula that tells me how to calculate the cost of a FULL hurry?" It's simply not something you need.

But you must do what you feel is right, of course. You're the one making the mod.

[mark13]

Whoops - looks like I may have started something here......

HP:
The partial hurry cost is simply worked out by putting in whatever fraction of the cost remains. But the reason that I think the hurry cost should be implemented is to let players work out exactly how much cheaper the hurry cost will be in x turns time. It certainly helped me in this way, as it lets me calculate exactly when it would be most convenient to hurry, with regard to timing and cost. Rush-building can be very important in this way. As such, you don't want to be spending 300 ec rush-building a unit, when if you wait just one turn it would only cost 100.

Also, there are a lot of unnecessarily complex formulae in SMAC. If there's a hard way to do something, Firaxis will find it

SII:
It is indeed the case that nothing changed in the patch is mentioned in the datalinks, simply because I don't think an update to the Datalinks was provided. This is mainly because:

a) Firaxis couldn't be ar$ed,
b) They felt that everything could be covered in the readme file.

I understand that this is a v4 update datalinks, but I feel that it is an integral part of the game, and therefore should not be overlooked.
[This message has been edited by mark13 (edited September 24, 2000).]

[Simpson II]

Heh, I need to make myself a lot clearer in future, I think!

HP,

when I said that a player should work out how to part-hurry for themself, I simply meant that I don't want to say 'here's how to calculate an optimal hurry-cost' because that's part of game-strategy, not game-help. Certainly I don't think that people should be forced to repeat old experiments!

When I said that I would include the hurry-cost formula, I didn't just mean that I would quote the equation that Mario et al. came up with. I intend to completely document the way that the game calculates hurry-costs, using all of the information they discovered. Anyone who decides that they want to work out how to hurry something optimally will definitely find all the data needed to work out how in the Datalinks.

As a rough example of what I will do (it's correctness is unverified at the moment, I think the one for SPs may be wrong),

*********************

If M is the number of minerals required to fill the empty space in the production box before any minerals have been hurried this turn, then the hurry-cost per mineral is:

2 + M/20 ec for units
2 ec for facilites
4 ec for SPs

If the production box contains less than 10 minerals then these costs are doubled.

Once you have calculated the cost of the number of minerals you wish to purchase, round the cost up to the nearest whole number.

*********************

I don't think that this is too complicated personally, but then I have a maths degree. What do you think? I do believe it's a good idea overall to put in the full formula; look at all the trouble that people went to to find it! Clearly there are interested people, regardless of it's overall usefulness.
BTW, can you send me a copy of that script.txt? It sounds like it would save some time with the calcutator! My e-mail address is j.moughan@excite.com.


mark13,

"I understand that this is a v4 update datalinks, but I feel that it is an integral part of the game, and therefore should not be overlooked."

You mean the hurry cost? This isn't exactly a v4 update, but an update for v4. Lots of things were completely wrong from the start.
[This message has been edited by Simpson II (edited September 25, 2000).]

[Helium Pond]

S-II:

Well, that looks like a good way to do it. Nice. I'm sending the scripts.txt to you. This looks to be a very valuable mod. Are you going to adjust it for SMAX, also?

[mark13]

Yeah, this mod sounds promising, let us know when it's ready!

SII,

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but I thought this was a v4 mod, and would only include mostly v4 updates, which the hurry cost is not.

Well done so far on the mod, and keep it up!