Looking for PBEM players for custom SMAC mod

[fluxionman]

Well, I'm sorry if there have been problems with the files.

I'm not sure what I've done to merit the somewhat insulting/condescending attitudes, but I'll do what I can to fix things. These modifications are a work in progress.

I use the Macintosh version of SMAC, which does not include the faction editor. I've done my editing by hand, with a text editor.

The .pcx files have been used before by a Windows user, so I'm not certain what the issue with them might be.

I'm looking into these problems.

[fluxionman]

Originally posted by Hardcore SMAX
The n00b hat is a (seemingly inside) joke.
At my LANs, the dude at the ass end of the killcount has to wear a traffic cone with 'n00b' written on it.

Idk how you'd redesign the factions,
but you seem to have given them loads of extras.

SE settings: 3 mods are all you need to define a faction.
Here's your settings:
Industry: Pumps facilities
Econ: Pumps cash
Support: Pumps units
Research: Pumps tech
Planet: Pumps worms
Police: Pumps drone control
Growth: Pumps growth
Probe: Pumps security
Efficiency: Pumps expansion
Morale: Pumps morale

Say you want some player types:
1. Secret Weapons (Conquer / Discover)
2. The War machine (Conquer / Build)
3. Expansionists (Conquer / Explore)
4. Tech powerhouse (Build / Discover)
5. Pop powerhouse (Build / Explore)
6. Planet hunters (Discover / Explore)
7. MEGA KICK ASS AI (E/B/D/C)

You can take it from there.

Glad I don't attend your LAN parties.

And thanks for explaining how the game works. I wasn't sure. Just slow, I guess.

[Chaos Theory]

A faction with -X Research cannot accumulate research for the first 5X years. The Drones in SMAX suffer from this, as well as any custom factions with negative research. Furthermore, tech costs for such factions are increased by approximately the following formula:

To research tech number i
pay (i)/(i-1) times normal, or twice as much if i = 1.

[Mart]

edited for limit atributes, see the list

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
A faction with -X Research cannot accumulate research for the first 5X years.

This is something I was not aware of. I thought it was declared somewhere else. Everything is clear now.

I have checked the limitation of faction abilities. It appears that the limit pertains to the following things:

- techs
- social settings
- free facilities
- free units
- fungus bonus
- governor votes modifier

others sem to be loaded ok. So far... E.g. this works:

tech: Mobility
tech: Faith
- Economy
++growth
++industry
-planet
++morale
facility: perimeter defence

(8 above)

fanatic - 25% bonus -works still as 9th faction bonus


I was working on covenant faction and it would need to drop only one thing to fit within the limitations. I propose the free unit in this regard. I will see other factions.

One remark about road bonus. It appears the game takes it no matter if the fight is on road or not. I would remove this feature from alpha.txt There is no point in this case to keep it there. Unless I am missing smth here, but I simulated a fight in open field - no road there and I got a bonus. This feature is probably not working ok.

[fluxionman]

I was led to believe that the limit imposed on the faction modifiers applied not to number of bonuses/penalties/techs/free facilities, but simply to the length of the line in which the text that defines the modifiers appears. Apparently, SMAC cannot parse lines longer than 128 characters.

I will pull these files and have them tested in Windows before re-posting them.

Again, sorry to have wasted your time.

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by mart7x5
One remark about road bonus. It appears the game takes it no matter if the fight is on road or not. I would remove this feature from alpha.txt There is no point in this case to keep it there. Unless I am missing smth here, but I simulated a fight in open field - no road there and I got a bonus. This feature is probably not working ok.

I have heard this from many sources, to confirm your observations.

[Mart]

I have some additional observations. These factions will need testing still. Covenant works ok, but some other factions are having strange results when I modified them. I'll post later what tests showed.
Thank you Chaos Theory. I also remember something in SMAC Academy was mentioned about it too. but I do not remember details.

-------------
Fungnutrient looks like is working for disciples
fungmineral and fungenergy I cannot get to work. Are they turned off somehow?
Population limits seem not to work either. Totality should have +3 limit but cannot grow above 7

[Preview]

The behavior your seeing is odd since I am using a set of the modded files to a play a game with Fluxion. I know he tweaked some things from the version I currently have, but I wouldn't have expected these kinds of issues. I thought we had worked through them. No worries, though. We'll get to the bottom of it as soon as we can.

[Mart]

I got population limits though they should be with minus, the same as in Peacekeepers file:
POPULATION, -3, not Population, 3, this last case does not work

still I am not sure about those mineral and energy in fungus, why they do not work
----------
I use Planetpack version on WinXP. maybe this is the reason

[fluxionman]

I have what I think are the necessary modifications for the faction.txt files figured out.

I will re-post those files later today and see if I can determine why my .pcx files are incompatible. If anyone has had similar issues with custom image files, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences.

[Hardcore SMAX]

Kindly ignore earlier remarks about alpha.txt being unreadable.
I opened it in IE and the newlines were there.
CTRL-C, CTRL-V, Notepad.
We are ready to edit.

[Mart]

In my case notepad could not open the files correctly. Wordpad did.
It is all about 'end of line' ascii characters in txt files. for some reason they were different. there are some differences in standards as we can see. problems between macintosh and windows happen.
just a note

I am very interested in the solutions to the problem. also i could save pcx files in readable for windows format. I recall, one of the apps I have was able to change them, so the game worked ok. All I need is those files in another format, which my windows apps can load.

[fluxionman]

The files have been re-posted in the same location. Preview and I working together appear to have found the problem with the .pcx files. For whatever reason, the zip utility I was using corrupted the files. I had him zip the files in Windows and they appear to work fine. The text files have been updated to reflect the limitations of SMAC's parser and other suggestions, and apparently work (according to Preview), but still show some strange characters in place of apostrophes and the like. I will open these files tomorrow at work in Wordpad and see if those corrupted characters need to be changed by hand.

You are welcome to download the files from the same location, if you wish, and see if they work. Testing on at least one Windows machine indicates that they do.

[fluxionman]

Thanks again to anyone still follwing this thread for your patience and input.

A few material changes have been made to the custom factions in order to make them comply with SMAC's text parsing requirements. The text files have been cleared of strange characters in Windows and will be updated later today.

Here are the new faction modifiers (a few changes but mostly trimming):

• Covenant: Doc:Mobility, Doc:Faith, +25% Fanatic bonus, -1 Economy, +2 Growth, +2 Industry, -1 Planet, +1 Morale, free Perimeter Defense at every base
• Disciples: Centauri Ecology, Doc:Loyalty, +1 Morale, -2 Industry, -1 Research, +1 Planet, +1 Support, +25% Psi combat bonus, free Tree Farm at every base
• Institute: Information Networks, Industrial Base, free prototypes, -2 Support, +1 Efficiency, +2 Research, +1 Industry, -2 Probe, free Network Node at every base
• Paradigm: Social Psych, Information Networks, +1 Economy, -2 Morale, +1 Probe, -1 Police, extra Talent per 4 population, free Hologram Theater at every base, enhanced Commerce, 1% Interest earned on energy reserves
• Proteans: Doc:Flex, Biogenetics, +2 Growth, -2 Morale, -1 Planet, +1 Probe, +1 Research, Population limits +2, free Biology Lab at every base
• Syndicate: Doc:Intelligence, Social Psych, +1 Economy, -2 Efficiency, +2 Probe, -2 Police, +1 Growth, -2 Research, gain any Tech known to 3 other Factions
• Totality: Applied Physics, Industrial Base, -2 Growth, +2 Industry, -3 Planet, +2 Support, Population limits +3, immune to Mind Control, extra Drone per 4 Population

[Hercules]

An interesting and informative thread to read. Thanks all.