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For a while, PBEMs have referenced the bug list at http://www.civgaming.net/smac/acad_buglist.shtml
It seems rather old and unorganized to me, and with the looming possibility of recreating SMAC in Civ 4, some of the bugs/exploits that are sometimes allowed and sometimes disallowed may become points of contention. Should we recreate those exploits or take the opportunity to fix them?
Here I'll roughly classify bugs, exploits, and tricks from the CGN list and others I know of by severity, and updated with current information. This list is just a draft for now, and will need updates.
Game-breaking bugs, should never be allowed:
Ability to activate the scenario editor for a PBEM (CGN 16)
Inexpensive completion of several expensive builds (like projects) at once
Multiple airdrops using the right-click menu (CGN 2)
Trading bases with the AI (as opposed to extorting or gifting) (CGN 4)
If you have another player infiltrated, you can affect his workers via the F4 screen (CGN 75).
Under some circumstances, a faction can be suddenly erased and restarted elsewhere on the map with a few units, as if it had been liberated by a probe team.
(Several more of these are known to CMNs, but knowledge is restricted to prevent abuse)
Game-damaging bugs, should rarely if ever be allowed:
Reactivation of terraformers (CGN 22)
Sometimes, the AI will take an action in place of a player on another player's turn. This can happen when using "demand withdrawal" and when bribing a faction during council elections. Sometimes, the AI will spontaneously bribe you on behalf of a human player (CGN 25, 42, 43).
Probing a human player prompts the active player, rather than the victim, for a response (CGN 26). The active player is expected to declare vendetta unless the victim has asked otherwise.
Changes in a player's industry rating take effect immediately, allowing crawlers to be cashed for higher value at no cost (CGN 38). Note that TCP/IP games handle this differently.
Units can be instantly upgraded to elite by way of the patrol command (CGN 74).
Artillery can sometimes fire upon tiles more than 2 tiles away.
If "Do or Die" is off, it is profitable to self-destruct your faction (CGN 7).
Units can be self-destructed to cause damage to all units in adjacent tiles not in bunkers or bases. The damage caused is normally floor(weapon * reactor * .5). Thus, two 10-1-12*2 needlejets can destroy a cluster of fusion units in the open, regardless of the number or strength of the units. No notification is given to affected players, and damaging or killing units does not initiate a vendetta.
Probe SE values of +4 or higher are treated as +0 for most purposes. This leaves the Data Angels' bases vulnerable after discovering PSA, and receiving free Covert Ops Centers. Players are expected to honor the Angels' actual probe rating.
Initiating a vendetta against another player has no effect on pending diplomatic deals. Specifically, if one player has accepted a treaty or pact, the other player can initiate a vendetta, then end it on the same turn by accepting the pending deal (CGN 27).
The build queue can be abused in many ways, allowing facilities to be built without prerequisites (CGN 50), sea units to be built in landlocked bases, and other Bad Things.
The AI knows where all units are on the map. Placing air units "on alert" basically hands control over to the AI, which will use them to destroy enemy units the player had no way of seeing.
Retiring a basic design (something that appears in the design workshop with * for a number) retires it for all players, disbanding their units of that type. If a faction has the FREEABIL faction ability, units stolen from them may not appear in the recipient's design workshop, so the original owner could retire the design and disband the stolen units as well.
Game-altering bugs, sometimes allowable:
"Reverse engineering" stolen (or gifted) units in the design workshop allows access to weapons, armors, chassis, reactors, and special abilities not yet discovered (CGN 18).
As a result of reverse engineering, Planetary Networks essentially grants the rover chassis (CGN 19, 57).
A unit upgraded individually consumes its entire turn. Units upgraded via the design workshop can act normally. This can allow severe sneak attacks (CGN 63).
Aerospace complexes and interceptors do not prevent drops of non-hostile units. This can allow severe sneak attacks (CGN 65).
Secret projects normally cost 4 EC/mineral to hurry. Units normally cost 1-2 EC/mineral to upgrade. By upgrading supply crawlers, secret projects can be hurried for a reduced cost (CGN 70).
Under some circumstances, a terraformer can accumulate "credit" in safety, then move to a dangerous tile and hastily complete a terraforming project, before an opposing player can respond (CGN 71).
Artillery can only be fired from a transport via the right-click menu (CGN 76).
Colony pods can be added to bases to breach habitation limits (CGN 1).
The AI can sometimes trade more ECs than it has, leaving it with a negative balance (CGN 5).
Aquifers cannot normally be drilled adjacent to rivers, but if a former has already started drilling before an adjacent river appears, it will finish normally (CGN 11).
Boreholes cannot normally be constructed adjacent to lower terrain, but if terrain changes so that a borehole would be illegal, terraformers already working on a borehole will finish normally.
When a base finishes constructing a facility/project, or finishes a unit with "Stockpile Energy" next in the queue, the base's entire mineral yield for the turn will be converted into energy, and the surplus will also be applied (up to the 10 mineral cap) to the next build (CGN 44, 45).
Normally, changing production costs half the minerals accumulated after the first 10. If the item currently being produced is a unit, and that unit's design is retired, all accumulated minerals can be reassigned at no cost. Combining this with cashing in upgraded crawlers to contribute to prototypes yields the Maniac Manoeuvre, a way to rush all production for reduced cost.
Normally, air transports cannot unload in flight. However, using the keyboard shortcut will bypass this restriction (CGN 21).
Clicking on an unexplored tile will center the view there, unless a base is on that tile. In this way, bases can be located without exploration.
Dragging a path for a unit to follow will normally name the destination with coordinates. If the destination is a base, that base will be named instead, even if it hasn't been found yet.
Attacking a unit with an air unit can cause the defending faction to automatically intercept by moving a SAM needlejet from a nearby base to the attacked tile. If the two factions have the status of truce or treaty, the attacker can then choose not to declare vendetta and attack elsewhere, having drawn out a defender.
Native life can be captured by attacking it, but if "Confirm Odds" is on, the player is given a chance to back out of the attack after seeing whether the capture was successful.
Minor bugs, usually not worth the trouble to exploit:
Tree farms and similar facilities, when built after the first *pop*, increase the faction's clean mineral limit by one each. If those facilities are scrapped, the increase remains.
Specialists other than doctors (or their replacements) cannot normally be assigned to small bases, but if a base shrinks, any specialists already assigned remain unless reassigned.
Automated formers can build improvements in fungus tiles before that ability is granted by technology.
Bugs that give the user a disadvantage:
Needlejets that are upgraded (by the design workshop) while in flight will have many fewer movement points than normal, and will usually crash.
Fungal towers sometimes appear underneath units (usually crawlers). If one is killed while a crawler is on the same tile, the crawler is also destroyed.
If an airbase, base, or carrier appears under a needlejet that has used one turn of fuel, it will not refuel properly until it has moved again or skipped its turn (CGN 29).
Sometimes, after an artillery unit performs long range bombardment, a nearby enemy artillery unit will respond and "defend" against another, separate "attack" by the original artillery unit. The attacker, having already moved, suffers a -100% penalty for being hasty.
Land transports, when aboard a sea transport, seem to think they are aboard themselves, and will not move with the sea transport. At great expense, a bridge can be built like this. Likewise, an air unit that somehow becomes a carrier will land on itself with every move, ending its turn if it is not adjacent to a non-friendly unit. I believe the German version of SMAC/X has the Locusts of Chiron unit defined as a carrier.
Choppers, gravships, missiles, and needlejets with only one turn of fuel remaining will end their turns upon moving into a friendly base, unless a hostile unit is adjacent to it.
If you scrap all facilities of a type using the handy command, all bases, even those without that facility in the first place, are flagged as having already scrapped a facility this turn.
The "repair bay" special ability does nothing (CGN 55).
Curiosities or unavoidable bugs:
The effect of the Xenoempathy Dome seems to be that the owner can treat fungus tiles as roads, even to the extent of moving from fungus to road with 1/3 move, and road to fungus with 1/3 move. However, moving from an empty tile to a road costs whatever the underlying terrain costs, but moving from an empty tile to fungus costs 1/3 move.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, unit strengths in combat do not directly imply the odds that each will win a combat round (for one point of damage). The stronger unit's strength is effectively increased by the difference in strengths. Thus, a missile infantry attacking a silksteel sentinel in the open has a 8:4 odds in favor of winning each combat round.
Labs-increasing facilities stack additively, so that a Network Node and Research Hospital together double labs production. Labs-increasing secret projects (Supercollider and Theory of Everything) stack multiplicatively, so that having both quadruples labs production, on top of facilities' effects.
Command Centers have maintenance equal to the highest reactor value discovered. Nothing else has variable maintenance.
A pactmate's needlejets can interfere with transports (CGN 24).
Wild mind worms outside bases fight at reduced strength before 2115 (CGN 28). Wild mind worms, when attacking bases, fight at reduced strength until 2150.
Naval units can attack other naval units' attack values or defense values, by using long range fire or attacking normally. This makes purely defensive ships useless unless noncombat (CGN 35).
Some doubled doublings are triplings - nonlethal methods units under conditions of +3 Police quell 3 drones each (CGN 39). A tachyon field when combined with the appropriate defensive facility (perimeter defense, naval yard, or aero complex) triples a defending unit's strength.
The Skunkworks facility has the hidden bonus of allowing production to be reassigned within the same category (unit to unit or facility to facility) without loss of minerals (CGN 53). The Spartans cannot build Skunkworks because they already receive its listed benefit.
The Bulk Matter Transmitter, instead of adding 2 minerals to each base per turn, increases minerals at each base by 50%, additive with other facilities. This can cause massive, unexpected ecodamage.
Damage from an airdrop will never destroy a unit (CGN 3).
Echelon mirrors not in anyone's territory will not affect solar panels. Presumably, echelon mirrors in one player's territory will not affect adjacent solar panels in another player's territory.
Children's creches and morale interact in such a way that sometimes lower morale is better.
A base can never suffer more bureaucracy drones than it has population.
Talent-creating effects convert superdrones to regular drones before converting drones to workers and workers to talents. Drone-reducing effects can convert superdrones directly to workers.
Prototyping a weapon, armor, or chassis will also effectively prototype all weapons, armors, or chassis of equal or lesser strength or speed (CGN 56). However, experimentation with the scenario editor shows that the game keeps track of whether each weapon, armor, or chassis has been directly prototyped.
Most SAM air units suffer a -50% penalty when attacking non-air units. Psi SAM air units suffer no penalty against non-air units. Psi SAM air units other than Locusts of Chiron, when attacking interceptors, attack with a psi value of 1, while the defending interceptor uses its weapon. Locusts of Chiron force the defending interceptor to use its psi of 1.
Two bases owned by different factions can work the same tile if the factions have not yet made contact.
Most facilities that add 50% to something, such as network nodes, round up. Mineral-increasing facilities round down.
Apparently, terraforming operations other than "raise terrain" and "lower terrain" can, in conjunction with global warming/cooling, cause immediate changes in terrain height.
Fungus in sea shelf tiles can "sink" and stop influencing production from those tiles, as a result of becoming ocean tiles. Other sea improvements do not sink.
Global warming/cooling, combined with the restriction that adjacent tiles cannot be more than one elevation category apart, and the retroactive enforcement of this rule, can silently "wash" endangered tiles of terraforming, units, and bases.
Disbanding most units in bases will add half the unit's mineral value to the current build, rounded down. Disbanding a native lifeform adds one mineral.
Native life units require no support while in fungus.
Some landmarks are destroyed by changes in elevation. These are: Monsoon Jungle, Garland Crater, Uranium Flats, Fossil Field Ridge, Manifold Nexus, Nessus Canyon, Mount Planet, Unity Wreckage, Pholus Ridge, and Geothermal Shallows.
Non-amphibious units normally cannot move between land and coastal sea bases. The presence of any transport (even a land transport) in the base bypasses this requirement. Additionally, a unit can move out of a sea base into a land tile occupied by a friendly unit without a transport, but units cannot move into coastal bases, occupied or unoccupied, without a transport or the amphibious ability.
Under some circumstances, discovering a "secrets" tech will not award the free tech until the following turn. This can happen as the result of cashing in an artifact or using another secrets tech to discover the secrets tech.
Wild spore launchers will sometimes attack each other.
Orbital defense pods do not have the listed 50% chance each to stop a Planet Buster, and seem to need to stop each PB twice.
The production of fungus tiles is not influenced by having a +2 Econ rating or by the Merchant Exchange project.
Under some conditions, the game turn will fail to advance for several turns.
When in a pact with an AI, maps are automatically exchanged with every conversation. Pacts between human players don't do this.
Tiny and small maps are hardcoded to have nutrient and mineral row widths of 8 and 9 respectively, for the default alphax.txt. Custom maps with the same sizes as tiny and small use normal row widths.
Bases have an intrinsic defense multiplier of 1.25. Defense-boosting facilities like perimeter defenses replace this with 2 (or 3 if two facilities apply), rather than simply doubling (or tripling) it.
Factions with inherent research penalties don't receive research points until year 2100 + 5*X, where X is the research penalty.
Bases founded in 2100 receive half as many free minerals as normal. This prevents them from finishing scout patrols before the player can act.
Unity foils only carry 1 unit, though nothing in the game directly indicates they should have a reduced capacity.
It seems rather old and unorganized to me, and with the looming possibility of recreating SMAC in Civ 4, some of the bugs/exploits that are sometimes allowed and sometimes disallowed may become points of contention. Should we recreate those exploits or take the opportunity to fix them?
Here I'll roughly classify bugs, exploits, and tricks from the CGN list and others I know of by severity, and updated with current information. This list is just a draft for now, and will need updates.
Game-breaking bugs, should never be allowed:
Ability to activate the scenario editor for a PBEM (CGN 16)
Inexpensive completion of several expensive builds (like projects) at once
Multiple airdrops using the right-click menu (CGN 2)
Trading bases with the AI (as opposed to extorting or gifting) (CGN 4)
If you have another player infiltrated, you can affect his workers via the F4 screen (CGN 75).
Under some circumstances, a faction can be suddenly erased and restarted elsewhere on the map with a few units, as if it had been liberated by a probe team.
(Several more of these are known to CMNs, but knowledge is restricted to prevent abuse)
Game-damaging bugs, should rarely if ever be allowed:
Reactivation of terraformers (CGN 22)
Sometimes, the AI will take an action in place of a player on another player's turn. This can happen when using "demand withdrawal" and when bribing a faction during council elections. Sometimes, the AI will spontaneously bribe you on behalf of a human player (CGN 25, 42, 43).
Probing a human player prompts the active player, rather than the victim, for a response (CGN 26). The active player is expected to declare vendetta unless the victim has asked otherwise.
Changes in a player's industry rating take effect immediately, allowing crawlers to be cashed for higher value at no cost (CGN 38). Note that TCP/IP games handle this differently.
Units can be instantly upgraded to elite by way of the patrol command (CGN 74).
Artillery can sometimes fire upon tiles more than 2 tiles away.
If "Do or Die" is off, it is profitable to self-destruct your faction (CGN 7).
Units can be self-destructed to cause damage to all units in adjacent tiles not in bunkers or bases. The damage caused is normally floor(weapon * reactor * .5). Thus, two 10-1-12*2 needlejets can destroy a cluster of fusion units in the open, regardless of the number or strength of the units. No notification is given to affected players, and damaging or killing units does not initiate a vendetta.
Probe SE values of +4 or higher are treated as +0 for most purposes. This leaves the Data Angels' bases vulnerable after discovering PSA, and receiving free Covert Ops Centers. Players are expected to honor the Angels' actual probe rating.
Initiating a vendetta against another player has no effect on pending diplomatic deals. Specifically, if one player has accepted a treaty or pact, the other player can initiate a vendetta, then end it on the same turn by accepting the pending deal (CGN 27).
The build queue can be abused in many ways, allowing facilities to be built without prerequisites (CGN 50), sea units to be built in landlocked bases, and other Bad Things.
The AI knows where all units are on the map. Placing air units "on alert" basically hands control over to the AI, which will use them to destroy enemy units the player had no way of seeing.
Retiring a basic design (something that appears in the design workshop with * for a number) retires it for all players, disbanding their units of that type. If a faction has the FREEABIL faction ability, units stolen from them may not appear in the recipient's design workshop, so the original owner could retire the design and disband the stolen units as well.
Game-altering bugs, sometimes allowable:
"Reverse engineering" stolen (or gifted) units in the design workshop allows access to weapons, armors, chassis, reactors, and special abilities not yet discovered (CGN 18).
As a result of reverse engineering, Planetary Networks essentially grants the rover chassis (CGN 19, 57).
A unit upgraded individually consumes its entire turn. Units upgraded via the design workshop can act normally. This can allow severe sneak attacks (CGN 63).
Aerospace complexes and interceptors do not prevent drops of non-hostile units. This can allow severe sneak attacks (CGN 65).
Secret projects normally cost 4 EC/mineral to hurry. Units normally cost 1-2 EC/mineral to upgrade. By upgrading supply crawlers, secret projects can be hurried for a reduced cost (CGN 70).
Under some circumstances, a terraformer can accumulate "credit" in safety, then move to a dangerous tile and hastily complete a terraforming project, before an opposing player can respond (CGN 71).
Artillery can only be fired from a transport via the right-click menu (CGN 76).
Colony pods can be added to bases to breach habitation limits (CGN 1).
The AI can sometimes trade more ECs than it has, leaving it with a negative balance (CGN 5).
Aquifers cannot normally be drilled adjacent to rivers, but if a former has already started drilling before an adjacent river appears, it will finish normally (CGN 11).
Boreholes cannot normally be constructed adjacent to lower terrain, but if terrain changes so that a borehole would be illegal, terraformers already working on a borehole will finish normally.
When a base finishes constructing a facility/project, or finishes a unit with "Stockpile Energy" next in the queue, the base's entire mineral yield for the turn will be converted into energy, and the surplus will also be applied (up to the 10 mineral cap) to the next build (CGN 44, 45).
Normally, changing production costs half the minerals accumulated after the first 10. If the item currently being produced is a unit, and that unit's design is retired, all accumulated minerals can be reassigned at no cost. Combining this with cashing in upgraded crawlers to contribute to prototypes yields the Maniac Manoeuvre, a way to rush all production for reduced cost.
Normally, air transports cannot unload in flight. However, using the keyboard shortcut will bypass this restriction (CGN 21).
Clicking on an unexplored tile will center the view there, unless a base is on that tile. In this way, bases can be located without exploration.
Dragging a path for a unit to follow will normally name the destination with coordinates. If the destination is a base, that base will be named instead, even if it hasn't been found yet.
Attacking a unit with an air unit can cause the defending faction to automatically intercept by moving a SAM needlejet from a nearby base to the attacked tile. If the two factions have the status of truce or treaty, the attacker can then choose not to declare vendetta and attack elsewhere, having drawn out a defender.
Native life can be captured by attacking it, but if "Confirm Odds" is on, the player is given a chance to back out of the attack after seeing whether the capture was successful.
Minor bugs, usually not worth the trouble to exploit:
Tree farms and similar facilities, when built after the first *pop*, increase the faction's clean mineral limit by one each. If those facilities are scrapped, the increase remains.
Specialists other than doctors (or their replacements) cannot normally be assigned to small bases, but if a base shrinks, any specialists already assigned remain unless reassigned.
Automated formers can build improvements in fungus tiles before that ability is granted by technology.
Bugs that give the user a disadvantage:
Needlejets that are upgraded (by the design workshop) while in flight will have many fewer movement points than normal, and will usually crash.
Fungal towers sometimes appear underneath units (usually crawlers). If one is killed while a crawler is on the same tile, the crawler is also destroyed.
If an airbase, base, or carrier appears under a needlejet that has used one turn of fuel, it will not refuel properly until it has moved again or skipped its turn (CGN 29).
Sometimes, after an artillery unit performs long range bombardment, a nearby enemy artillery unit will respond and "defend" against another, separate "attack" by the original artillery unit. The attacker, having already moved, suffers a -100% penalty for being hasty.
Land transports, when aboard a sea transport, seem to think they are aboard themselves, and will not move with the sea transport. At great expense, a bridge can be built like this. Likewise, an air unit that somehow becomes a carrier will land on itself with every move, ending its turn if it is not adjacent to a non-friendly unit. I believe the German version of SMAC/X has the Locusts of Chiron unit defined as a carrier.
Choppers, gravships, missiles, and needlejets with only one turn of fuel remaining will end their turns upon moving into a friendly base, unless a hostile unit is adjacent to it.
If you scrap all facilities of a type using the handy command, all bases, even those without that facility in the first place, are flagged as having already scrapped a facility this turn.
The "repair bay" special ability does nothing (CGN 55).
Curiosities or unavoidable bugs:
The effect of the Xenoempathy Dome seems to be that the owner can treat fungus tiles as roads, even to the extent of moving from fungus to road with 1/3 move, and road to fungus with 1/3 move. However, moving from an empty tile to a road costs whatever the underlying terrain costs, but moving from an empty tile to fungus costs 1/3 move.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, unit strengths in combat do not directly imply the odds that each will win a combat round (for one point of damage). The stronger unit's strength is effectively increased by the difference in strengths. Thus, a missile infantry attacking a silksteel sentinel in the open has a 8:4 odds in favor of winning each combat round.
Labs-increasing facilities stack additively, so that a Network Node and Research Hospital together double labs production. Labs-increasing secret projects (Supercollider and Theory of Everything) stack multiplicatively, so that having both quadruples labs production, on top of facilities' effects.
Command Centers have maintenance equal to the highest reactor value discovered. Nothing else has variable maintenance.
A pactmate's needlejets can interfere with transports (CGN 24).
Wild mind worms outside bases fight at reduced strength before 2115 (CGN 28). Wild mind worms, when attacking bases, fight at reduced strength until 2150.
Naval units can attack other naval units' attack values or defense values, by using long range fire or attacking normally. This makes purely defensive ships useless unless noncombat (CGN 35).
Some doubled doublings are triplings - nonlethal methods units under conditions of +3 Police quell 3 drones each (CGN 39). A tachyon field when combined with the appropriate defensive facility (perimeter defense, naval yard, or aero complex) triples a defending unit's strength.
The Skunkworks facility has the hidden bonus of allowing production to be reassigned within the same category (unit to unit or facility to facility) without loss of minerals (CGN 53). The Spartans cannot build Skunkworks because they already receive its listed benefit.
The Bulk Matter Transmitter, instead of adding 2 minerals to each base per turn, increases minerals at each base by 50%, additive with other facilities. This can cause massive, unexpected ecodamage.
Damage from an airdrop will never destroy a unit (CGN 3).
Echelon mirrors not in anyone's territory will not affect solar panels. Presumably, echelon mirrors in one player's territory will not affect adjacent solar panels in another player's territory.
Children's creches and morale interact in such a way that sometimes lower morale is better.
A base can never suffer more bureaucracy drones than it has population.
Talent-creating effects convert superdrones to regular drones before converting drones to workers and workers to talents. Drone-reducing effects can convert superdrones directly to workers.
Prototyping a weapon, armor, or chassis will also effectively prototype all weapons, armors, or chassis of equal or lesser strength or speed (CGN 56). However, experimentation with the scenario editor shows that the game keeps track of whether each weapon, armor, or chassis has been directly prototyped.
Most SAM air units suffer a -50% penalty when attacking non-air units. Psi SAM air units suffer no penalty against non-air units. Psi SAM air units other than Locusts of Chiron, when attacking interceptors, attack with a psi value of 1, while the defending interceptor uses its weapon. Locusts of Chiron force the defending interceptor to use its psi of 1.
Two bases owned by different factions can work the same tile if the factions have not yet made contact.
Most facilities that add 50% to something, such as network nodes, round up. Mineral-increasing facilities round down.
Apparently, terraforming operations other than "raise terrain" and "lower terrain" can, in conjunction with global warming/cooling, cause immediate changes in terrain height.
Fungus in sea shelf tiles can "sink" and stop influencing production from those tiles, as a result of becoming ocean tiles. Other sea improvements do not sink.
Global warming/cooling, combined with the restriction that adjacent tiles cannot be more than one elevation category apart, and the retroactive enforcement of this rule, can silently "wash" endangered tiles of terraforming, units, and bases.
Disbanding most units in bases will add half the unit's mineral value to the current build, rounded down. Disbanding a native lifeform adds one mineral.
Native life units require no support while in fungus.
Some landmarks are destroyed by changes in elevation. These are: Monsoon Jungle, Garland Crater, Uranium Flats, Fossil Field Ridge, Manifold Nexus, Nessus Canyon, Mount Planet, Unity Wreckage, Pholus Ridge, and Geothermal Shallows.
Non-amphibious units normally cannot move between land and coastal sea bases. The presence of any transport (even a land transport) in the base bypasses this requirement. Additionally, a unit can move out of a sea base into a land tile occupied by a friendly unit without a transport, but units cannot move into coastal bases, occupied or unoccupied, without a transport or the amphibious ability.
Under some circumstances, discovering a "secrets" tech will not award the free tech until the following turn. This can happen as the result of cashing in an artifact or using another secrets tech to discover the secrets tech.
Wild spore launchers will sometimes attack each other.
Orbital defense pods do not have the listed 50% chance each to stop a Planet Buster, and seem to need to stop each PB twice.
The production of fungus tiles is not influenced by having a +2 Econ rating or by the Merchant Exchange project.
Under some conditions, the game turn will fail to advance for several turns.
When in a pact with an AI, maps are automatically exchanged with every conversation. Pacts between human players don't do this.
Tiny and small maps are hardcoded to have nutrient and mineral row widths of 8 and 9 respectively, for the default alphax.txt. Custom maps with the same sizes as tiny and small use normal row widths.
Bases have an intrinsic defense multiplier of 1.25. Defense-boosting facilities like perimeter defenses replace this with 2 (or 3 if two facilities apply), rather than simply doubling (or tripling) it.
Factions with inherent research penalties don't receive research points until year 2100 + 5*X, where X is the research penalty.
Bases founded in 2100 receive half as many free minerals as normal. This prevents them from finishing scout patrols before the player can act.
Unity foils only carry 1 unit, though nothing in the game directly indicates they should have a reduced capacity.
But why not break it down?
(And coast guards?! And police copters!? I want those! 
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features:
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