nessus prime mod

[dmm1285]

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now, but to actually complete it I need to find out how many people are interested, I'm not going to make it if I'm the only one to play it, but if 10 other people are interested, it will definently get done.

I. Intro
I intened for this mod to take place between Orbital Spaceflight and Super Tensile Solids. However, instead of being on the ground, you are playing in orbit! I also intend to make it MUCH simpler game and Micromanagement wise, I shooting for 2 hours to get through a whole game

II. Proposed Changes

A. Base square
First off, I'm going to change the base sqaure production to 1/0/0 to discourage ICS. ICS makes since groundwise, humans tend to fill their enviroment, but in space with increased costs it shoudn't be practical

B. Tech Tree
Right now, I'm seeing the tech tree shrunk down to 20 or so techs with a somewhat different organization than the orgianal. (add more details later)

C. Units
Every unit in the game will now use fuel (except maybe VERY advanced ones. Between this and the increased costs of bases, I hope to see more aribases built. There will also be an empasis on crawler vechicles with lowered groth rates

D. Social Engineering
I'm going to completelty revamp the SE table. With much smaller populations (1 pop = 100 people), the need for advanced governments are diminished. Instead, I'm going to turn the top row into 4 goals: EXPLORE DISCOVER BUILD CONQUER, all available from the start of the game, I haven't decided which bonus and negative to give each yet. Also, I plan on starting all factions with say -1 growth -1 support or something like that in 2 of the frontier slots, then later up the tech tree you can swtich switch to a bonus/penalty free SE.

E. Terrafroming
I'm going to turn most of the terraform options off (boreholes in space make no sense). Now there will be three options, hydroponics labs, power transmitters, and mining stations. Between increased build time and my next change, you will be discouraged from plaing these everywhere

F. Special Resources
I want special resource squares to drive the game, whoever controls the most will have an advantage. Right now I plan on spreading 1 of each type for each faction through the (small) map, so 21 total. Should you try to grab as many as you can? Or just grab a few, get them well defended and steal a neighbor's?

G. Winning
Winning will be pretty muich the same except building the SPace Elevator will be the game winning SP.

H. Anything Else
Anything that doesn't make sense in space (WP, fungus, etc.) is getting dumped, I'm not going to try to force anything that doesn't make sense

I. Custom Factions
There will be none. In fact, I plan on sticking with the orignal 7 only. Pirates, Cyborgs, and the Cult in space sounds like a bad movie.

III. Graphics
Graphics-wise I'm set, expect this to look like a nice, proffesional mod, similar looking to galactic civilizations. The problem is cleaning up the frames of the SP movies I plan on using will take a while, and it's not worth doing if no oine is interested.

[Kirov]

Sounds interesting and I could find some time to playtest it, but if I were you I wouldn't expect as many as 10 people willing to join the project. I mean, not nowadays. It hasn't been this quiet around here for ages, and the creation section was never too popular...

[MMC]

Yeah... this time of year is not a good time for people finding free time to work on projects, at least on SMAC(X).

I could have too much fun talking about temporal mechanics after that statement.

Anyway, exams and such, I'm sure you get the idea.

As for the mod idea, I think it's a good idea, but could use a little more work on the story. Also, although all vehicles would require fuel to move, they wouldn't crash if they ran out of fuel they would keep flying until the orbit decayed, several turns later. But another factor of requiring a full turn to stop (also requiring fuel), could add a bit of uniqueness to the mod.

[dmm1285]

Originally posted by Kirov
Sounds interesting and I could find some time to playtest it, but if I were you I wouldn't expect as many as 10 people willing to join the project. I mean, not nowadays. It hasn't been this quiet around here for ages, and the creation section was never too popular...

Maybe I wasn't clear in my first post, I didn't want people to help make the mod, I was saying 10 people who would interested in playing it when it was finished

[Zeiter]

Originally posted by dmm1285
Maybe I wasn't clear in my first post, I didn't want people to help make the mod, I was saying 10 people who would interested in playing it when it was finished

Yeah, I know what you mean. I made an entire modern earth and cold war mod with a completely revised tech tree, labels, and gameplay, and I never got much feedback about it. Although I did get to embark on some wild USSR invasions of western europe, hehehe.

[Xian]

Im certainly interested

[Mart]

about base square,
you may go with;
0/0/-1 for example, to get even more penalty
energy might be other negative numbers too, but then elements of the game that change base square energy loose meaning.

[Xian]

I think a lot of peopel will be interested if you can actually pull this off

[waab]

sign me in for beta testing...

[waab]

Well I took some time to really read true your ideas and what I thought they would result in...so here

it comes things I am a little bit concerd of and things I think sounds great.

II Proposed changes

A Base square.
Sounds good that you try to stop ICS to weaken human players. The only problem I see is that it might damage AI to. The reason for this is the AI poor terra forming wish might lead to wery low income and production. A way to counter that might be to do as in SNAC were the mod guy removed the shield from the city square and changed the Rec tanks to 2:0:2. If the AI build Rec tanks and they often do it gives more energy, and bigger bases cheap.

B Tech Tree
Sounds good, I am waiting for more info.

C. Units
fuel? Like airplains or?

If my english is to much crap for the moment empasis on crawler means that crawlers will play a mayor part of this mod. If you want a good SP game (mayby this is a MP-mod, then I am sorry) you should ask yourself if it isn't better to remove the crawler.

D. Social Engineering
Sounds good

E. Terraforming
Again sounds really intresting, let see how this works.

F. Special Resources
Sounds like you are going to make a special mod map, any plans how it will look?

I. Custom Factions
Just think about to much change of the game play might weekend the factions in different ways. You might need to balance them a little bit (a low pop miriam might get huge problem with science meanwhile Morgan or Zak is going strong)

III Graphics
Sounds really nice! Go for it!!!

[Mart]

I tried base square to set to:
0/0/-1
Also gave AI (in scenario only) a new pre-defined unit:
unity supply droid, which costed 1 row and was disabled for manufacturing. It was a crawler with slow ability to distinguish it from the standard one. In testing I found AI was mostly doing good use of it. Two such units per faction at game start were aiding AI enough.

Re ICS, it is not only the "free" base square thing like other players, more knowledgble than me say. It is also about bonus from facilities, leverage from growth and production centers. There were a few good threads on that topic.

And some other thoughts on ICS. After some time, though I did not like ICS, I got more convinced it is just yet another strategy to play. In a sense, a base square is lost to some other possibilities of terraforming. There is a good player - Shawnmmcc, who plays excellent yet when asked about ICS, said he did not do it, his bases were placed on tiles most suited for them. So one can play SMAXC better when not ICS-ing. ICS is then relatively good strategy easy to learn probably compared to some other that may give even better outcomes. It is like Hive faction. Many consider it the strongest faction in play. However, it is just that one learns some decent level of play with Hive relatively easy. Ask Lazerus, who plays Hive excellent. Hive has its big disadvantages when you want to play a difficult game and very competitive. ICS kinda rescues Hive. Just my view on it.

[waab]

Intresting thing about the "special" crawlers, would be intresting to see if the AI actuly produce more crawlers if it is cheap and if the AI understand what to use the crawler for. In that case you might be able to have two different types of crawlers: AI crawler, which is cheap and ordinarie crawler. Much as the SManiAC mod with terraformers.

About ICS, I have nothing against ICS because that is more or less my playing style, but the AI is not that good in filling up the map. This was really obvios my latest game, with Hive on a standard map. I ended up on big chunk of land with Miriam and Gaia. None which really spended enough resources on more bases, which meant that when Miriam declared war against me, I was sitting on 15 bases, she was sitting on 5. So if you make it harder for the Humans to stop swarming it will help the AI.

[The_Reckoning]

I'd play it.

[Mart]

Re AI doing ICS, it does it on jungle tiles. I would like also to make a map with high density of base-good tiles for AI, so it does ICS too without jungle. An idea for a good map. might be difficult to do though.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by waab
Intresting thing about the "special" crawlers, would be intresting to see if the AI actuly produce more crawlers if it is cheap and if the AI understand what to use the crawler for. In that case you might be able to have two different types of crawlers: AI crawler, which is cheap and ordinarie crawler. Much as the SManiAC mod with terraformers.

Personally I haven't noticed an increase in crawler production by trying this.