A wishlist

[truepurple]

Some ideas,
to decrease population production speed. We could increase the nutrient multiplier, maybe to 20 instead of 10, which would halve growth rate right?

We could make recycling tanks give 2 mineral 1 energy instead of 1 of each.

Is it possible to make recycling center give more back for disbanded units?

[Chaos Theory]

All of that can be done but the last. In general, numbers can be changed, but new effects cannot be added.

[truepurple]

I knew the first two could be done, thats why they weren't questions. Would the first idea effectively halve growth rate and help nicely balance a 1 pop nut setting from what you can tell?

What do you think of my recycling center idea?

[Chaos Theory]

Doubling the nutrients required per row would very nearly halve non-boom growth rates. Pop booms, on the other hand, become even more appealing, especially with the vast surplus of nutrients.

It's hard to tell how lowering nutrient usage and tweaking the rec tanks might affect the game, but 2 minerals and 1 energy for 4 rows looks very appealing.

[truepurple]

4 rows? Reading the SMAniaC thread, you can disable pop booms? Would that be a good idea for this to disable pop booms? (I'm aware certain wonders would need to be changed) Might a higher nut muliplier and disabled pop boom make the growth social factor more worthless or balance out against the 1 nut a pop factor?

Do you guys think these ideas are good enough to be included in future mods? I suppose we could just test it out and see how it works out.

[Chaos Theory]

If nutrient rows are 20 wide by default, +1 growth will make them 18 wide, so the effects of growth scale with nutrient width.

4 rows is the cost of a recycling tank.

You can inhibit pop booms by forcing negative growth mods on factions, either by editing the faction files or by appending -1 growth to each SE choice on some row. Even so, GA booms are still possible for most factions.

[truepurple]

What if they are 15 or some other odd number? What would the effect of growth be?

I suppose we could give all factions minus growth, with factions who specialize in growth, less minus.

GA?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Maniac:
Having each citizen consume one less nutrient has exactly the same effect as having each citizen produce one more nutrient (via satellite).

Yep, some further thinking led me to the same conclusion.

[Chaos Theory]

I did some extensive research on the effects of altering nutrient and mineral row width in alphax.txt. The gist of it is that your actual row width equals ceil(base * (1-.1*(growth or industry)). For row widths of 15, +1 growth yields 14-wide rows, and +2 growth yields 12-wide rows, etc.

[truepurple]

equals ceil(base * (1-.1*(growth or industry)

No comprehende compadro, Please explain.

[Chaos Theory]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115504

[truepurple]

So what do you guys think of these ideas and the possibility of including them in future mods?

What do you guys think would be the best settings for creating the best effect?

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by truepurple
So what do you guys think of these ideas and the possibility of including them in future mods?

I agree (and I think a lot of the community does as well) that something should be done about chopper movement. As far as your other initial comment about city growth, why see my reply below.

Originally posted by truepurple
What do you guys think would be the best settings for creating the best effect?

I am hoping that cIV, what with its promised mod'ing capabilities, will give us the opportunity to build many different worlds on which to play SMAC(X). If it is as modable as promised, then it should be easy enough to incorporate the changes that any player wants (including your wishes).


D

[Chaos Theory]

I've been coming up with a lot of neat things that could possibly be implemented in Civ 4:

Specialists can be drones and talents, just like workers.
Cassus belli - your population becomes unruly if you fight ideological allies or ally with ideological foes. You can suffer riots for forgiving or committing atrocities. Having a bad reputation causes drones. A high police rating would suppress this. Contrarily, attacking an ideologically opposed faction or befriending an ideologically allied faction could generate extra talents.
Pacifism doesn't generate many drones as a result of units outside borders, but generates drones in response to casualties outside borders. Wars without cassus belli and atrocities cause extreme drone problems.
Riots aren't a binary proposition. The more drones, the higher the chance of problems. Talents offset this to some extent, or perhaps completely.
Industry for building units (maybe just military units) is distinct from industry for building facilities/secret projects. The -2 Industry of Power would be much less punishing if it didn't impair military production, and the +1 Industry of Wealth wouldn't offset its morale penalty by directly allowing larger armies.
SE ratings don't hit bounds, or if they do, the lower bound yields intolerable problems and the upper bound offers all that could be expected in that category. Growth would be an example of bounds implemented properly, even though pop booming is too good for how easy it is to reach.
Missiles shouldn't be able to land!
Fewer integers, more decimals!

[truepurple]

On the more immediate arena rather then getting into the details of civ4 (which I'm told [by fellow posters] is too advanced in development to take more then minor suggestions)

What do you guys think of the SMAC settings suggested here? About the precise growth multiples one should use to get the desired effect, about setting all factions growth settings back so much growth. About setting nutritional requirements to 1. About the basic (what I see as no brainers) of no production from city square and no food from recycling. About using these ideas in current and future mods of smac?