Some Ideas to Reduce the Effectiveness of ICS

[Selador]

Some good thoughts here guys! Keep 'em coming!

Quadhelix: some interesting ideas there. I'm intrigued about the possibility of making Hab Complexes required for size 1 bases. This way, you can impose a fixed cost per base that both ICS'ers and non-ICS'ers alike will have to pay, but of course non-ICS'ers are paying less per citizen. It might be tough for a size 1 base to build a hab complex though (even if the cost is lowered) since there's no more free mineral in the base tile. I'm a little worried about slowing the game down here. Possibly if it was made cheap enough to build immediately with the free minerals given by +Support ratings, or maybe we could just make it 0 cost (not sure if this is possible)?

Another potential problem is with the AI; will it be smart enough to build a Hab Complex before a CP? I have a feeling it will just sit there trying build a CP when the base can't grow... I guess playtesting is the only way to find out. I suppose we could always add free hab complexes to the AI faction files.

Regarding specialists, I think increasing their output is the wrong approach. As Mart pointed out, this encourages dense base spacing since you don't have to worry about finding good tiles for your workers - just make them a specialist. ICS makes good use of this fact. If anything, reducing the effectiveness of specialists would be the way to go. Another issue is that the AI is too dumb to use specialists, so making changes that promote their use will only put the AI at a greater disadvantage.

Finally, regarding Rec Tanks, I don't want to increase their output for the same reason I don't want to increase the output of the base tile itself: more bases = more base tiles = more free resources.

Mart: do you have a link to that ICS analysis? I'd be interested to see it.

I agree with your thoughts regarding specialists and base spacing. I like this:

is it better to have 1 base covering 20 tiles than 5 bases doing the same?

This is at the heart of the matter, IMO. Basically, we want to change things so that, in terms of turn advantage and resource output, fewer bases for a given area > more bases in a given area.

[Selador]

In addition to the ones in the OP, here are some additional changes to alpha.txt I'm looking at implementing to smooth things out a bit:

• Recycling Tanks now provide +2/0/0 and have 2 upkeep, no prerequisite (kickstarts base growth, but gets expensive fast!)
• Biology Lab moved to Biogenetics, cost lowered to 4 rows (replaces Rec Tanks, help for early research needed due to lack of base tile energy)
• Crawlers cost 100, crawler package moved from Industrial Automation to Industrial Nanorobotics (no reverse engineering please )
• Formers have no prerequisite, now cost 30; farms require centauri ecology, mines require Industrial Base, solar collectors require Applied Physics (allows early road networks and forest seeding)
• Forests yield 1/1/1, provide 10 mins when harvested (forests were already too good, but especially need to be toned down a bit with only 1 nut/citizen)
• Robotic Assembly Plant moved from Industrial Nanorobotics to Industrial Automation, cost lowered to 100 (compensation for lack of base tile mineral, rewards big bases)
• Cloning Vats disabled (no pop booming!!)
• Ascetic Virtues moved to Social Psych, costs 100 (effectively only provides a police bonus now)
• Starting energy reserves 100 instead of 10 (allows early deficits from facility upkeeps and helps compensate for lack of base tile energy)
• Chasis speeds increased: infantry move 2, speeders move 4, hovertanks move 5 and have 3 cargo (facilitates sparser base placement)

[Selador]

Here's are my proposed revisions to the SE Table. The goal was to eliminate pop booming w/o a golden age, while maintaining balance among the possible options. I also tried to keep the overall "flavour" of the original as much as possible.



POLITICS. I wanted to move the growth bonus to Fundy because (a) Fundy was always a little underpowered, especially during peacetime, and (b) I think it makes more sense thematically. Fundy's probe bonus was swapped with the support bonus from Police State, for similar reasons. PS had it's efficiency penalty lowered to make it a more viable peacetime choice and because it's weaker now without the extra support. Demo gets a research bonus to replace growth, and it has a police penalty instead of support (a better fit IMO), making it a more viable early game choice.

ECONOMICS. FM is basically the same as before, except the drones aren't as annoying unless you're also running Demo. -3 Police and -5 police aren't that much different to a human player (easily dealt with through creative use of Punishment Spheres), but it makes a big difference to the AI. At best it is slightly more powerful, which is fine, because you'll notice the other 2 choices are slightly better also. Planned has +2 Industry and +1 Growth, instead of the other way around, while Green trades it's -2 Growth for -1 Industry.

VALUES. Power loses the crippling -2 Industry, getting a much more manageable -2 Economy instead. Knowledge is slightly weaker, losing its +1 Efficiency and trading an essentially harmless -1 Probe for an almost harmless -1 Morale. Wealth gets the -2 Support from the old Demo instead of -2 Morale, making it a bit tougher to run early on.

FUTURE SOCIETY. Probably doesn't matter too much considering how late these choices come, but I removed the +2 Growth from Eudaimonia and swapped some of the bonus around. Also, cybernetic gets the -2 Growth from the old Green instead of a police negative (Demo and FM already give -5 police). I figured slower population growth is justifiable for a machine-based society. Thought Control is beefed up slightly with -2 Support instead of -3.

Thoughts?

[Mart]

I will try to find the link, it was in one of the threads this year. Probably here on Apoly, not WPC.

With hab complexes and domes, there is an issue, that in official exe you can avoid the limit by adding colony pod to base. Scient is working on a patch, but it's not really released yet. Anyway, with expensive cp, a player would probably not grow a base like this.

another thing is, that with high upkeep of both facilities, one could temporarily sell them for number of turns when not growing and rebuild when growing. So the building cost would have to be large enough to make that strategy not worth the effort. It's bad that with limits at 1 or 2 your base has little minerals, large cost in mineral rows would make base grow slowly. With large size of base, such selling and rebuilding would be easier to do.

AI would rather not do this kind of things. But idea is interesting. So far I settled for making these two buildings power plants, so you want to keep them. And we want to promot vertical growth rather than spread many small bases. But if large upkeep cost of a base can be achieved by forcing a player to keep such habitation facilities, that would be good.

Yet another thought - Planetary transit system, it gives base start with 3 population. Would skip habitation limits and be very pro-ICS

[Mart]

...
Finally, regarding Rec Tanks, I don't want to increase their output for the same reason I don't want to increase the output of the base tile itself: more bases = more base tiles = more free resources.

...

Ok, but if Recycling costs a lot, then you would rather have 1 base and 4 workers more in such base than 5 bases to "work" these tiles paying for 4 additional recycling tanks. You might think about what rec. tanks give you that the upkeep is paying for this.

In umod it costs 10 EC/turn. Paying 10 instead of 50 is some difference.

[Selador]

Yeah, good points about the hab complex idea, Mart. I didn't consider the fact that players will just sell it off and rebuild to avoid the upkeep if it's too cheap. And of course, if it's too expensive a size one base won't be able to build it in a reasonable amount of time. So I guess that idea is nuked.

Also, I think I'll move the PTS to Planetary Economics to push it up towards mid-game. AV is no longer there, and Industrial Automation certainly doesn't need a tech attached to it since it now allows Robotic Assembly Plants.

[dgh64]

I like the idea of making colony pods more expensive. I mean, think of what a colony is: housing for hundreds of thousands of people (each unit of population = 100,000 people, right?) along with the associated food and water distribution, sanitation, power grid, etc. It also includes a manufacturing center, along with some basic resource processing facilities. Then you're packaging it all up and putting it on a vehicle that moves across the land (or water) to a new destination and builds itself -- that should be pretty expensive to build, and take a lot of energy to maintain.

Here are the changes I'd make:

• Colony pods cost somewhere around 100
• Make pods require Doctrine: Mobility and put them on a rover chassis. That way combat will still be the same with infantry only moving 1 space.
• The above idea will probably give an unfair advantage to Sparta, so change her free tech to Applied Physics
• Someone mentioned making colonies use energy per turn... is this done by changing the resource from the base square to a negative number? I'd put it somewhere around -10 or -15
• Have recycling tanks and other resource-related facilities expensive to build, so it's better to have just 1 base.

Changing the social engineering table is another good idea, but it's too complicated for me to make suggestions on, so I'll leave that to you smarter people.

[Mart]

...[*]Someone mentioned making colonies use energy per turn... is this done by changing the resource from the base square to a negative number? I'd put it somewhere around -10 or -15
...

I tried something like this. The feature I like is the way civ4 approaches it - subsequent colonies cost more and more in upkeep, so you have to watch number of cities that it does not exceed what your economy may haul.
In smacx there is no such mechanism, applying high maintenance can only simulate it, but with quite good result, if one watches also how AI deals with high base cost.

I tried put high upkeep on recycling tanks, but then you have to do it for pressure dome. And inability of AI to use these 2 facilities properly pretty much kills the idea. Human player can sell rec tanks immediatly after getting pressure dome. AI keeps both even when they cost like 10 EC/turn each, paying twice what human would.

Base tile energy has a problem, that negative values are cut to 0, so the cost cannot be applied this way. So far, facility maintenance is the way to go. Maybe there are other good ways.

[dgh64]

Facilities that you automatically get don't require maintenance, right? Like Zakharov's free net nodes? I was thinking you could pick a facility like the hab complex and just give it to all bases by default, and then give it a high maintenance, but if they're free then it won't work.

[dgh64]

Something I just thought of... early in the game, having a lot of small bases is encouraged by 2 factors, namely, drones and resource production, because you don't have access to the advanced terraforming options so you need all your people gathering resources, and that tends to cause drone riots. If you convert workers to specialists, then they have trouble feeding themselves unless you happened to land in the Monsoon Jungle or Freshwater Sea.

So, if you want to encourage a few large bases instead of a lot of small ones, some things you could do are make the rec commons cheaper (and maybe even available without prerequisite) and have the condenser and/or soil enricher come earlier in the tech tree.

[Mart]

Yes, free facilities have no maintenance, so this cannot serve as a mean to give bases maintenance.

With ICS things are not that intuitive. Recreation commons would have to be actually expensive to maintain, cause they are main drone queller in small bases. Otherwise a player would build many small bases (size 2 ) and solve all problems of drones with just this one facility. What promotes large bases, I think, is benefit of facilities giving percentage bonus. For now I experiment with low maintenance and moderate build cost for such, in case of psych and minerals. Economy are expensive for another reason.

Very much anti-ICS is decreasing benefits of a base tile, that is a "free worker." Making it "wasted" by existence of a base promotes large bases, since you would prefer a worker on a tile than a base.

Regarding condensers that would speed up growth, I think the same. Faster growth of a base makes it less necessary to build more of them to have faster faction growth.

Many things in smac work in combination. In practice, many things need testing how they work together.

[Selador]

I've been testing some of these changes and so far things are going well. I'll probably upload a modified alpha.txt sometime soon.

I think you guys are right that colony pods should be even more expensive than 50, I'm finding that it's still a bit too easy to build them at that price. I gonna try upping the cost 80 or even 100 I think. However, I don't think it's a good idea to give them a prerequisite.

Also, I'm looking at moving soil enrichers to Gene Splicing (and moving research hospital to Bio-Engineering to compensate). Any thoughts on this?

[dgh64]

OK I know this thread is a little old, but I just had an idea. Why not reduce the movement along roads from 3 to only 2. With 3 moves along a road, players can build a pod, move 2 spaces, and build a base all in the same turn. But if the speed along a road is reduced, colonies will have to take an extra turn -- they can't move only 1 space and build, because they'd be right next to the base they just left, and once they move 2 spaces their turn is over. The next turn, they can build where they are (2 spaces away from home) but they can also move another space before building -- leaving less overlap for later harvesting. So, you get the same effect as allowing units to move 4 or more spaces along a road, but you have to take an extra turn for each base you build. During that extra turn, 1 unit of population is tied up in a colony pod, not generating income, and is at risk of being attacked by worms or enemy troops. Without changing the cost of anything or boosting the chassis speed, building a new base is now more difficult and time consuming.