The Will to Power is a playing experience enhancement mod for Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire.
It is built on top of Thinker mod. (Thinker mod info: Thinker_Readme.md, Thinker_Details.md, Thinker_Changelog.md).
- Induktio: Created Thinker mod which greatly improves AI intelligence and makes game much more challenging.
- bvanevery: Play testing and help in design. Especially nice ideas and analysis in area of reactors and combat.
- dino: Play testing and alternative combat round resolution mechanics idea.
- Nevill and Tayta Malikai: Multiplyer play testing and multiplier text configuration.
- Tayta Malikai: text designer, crash reports, debugging, and test cases investigations!
- Mercantile Interest: Alternative nutrient model idea.
- EmpathCrawler: Play testing. Discovered Brood Pit morale bug.
I put this at the very top to avoid first impression frustration for those used to easily win every vanilla game on highest difficulty level.
This mod is much-Much-MUCH more difficult than vanilla in many ways. I strongly suggest to try it out first on three(!) difficulty levels below your usual vanilla comfortable level. I also recommend lowering activity of native life from medium to lowest at first. It also plays a little differently. Your proven strategies and exploits most likely won't work and you'll need to find new ones. Yet it is still playable in same intuitive way with great visual aid to help you make decisions at every step. Later on when you accommodate to play style and AI strength feel free to crank up the difficulty for bigger challenge! :)
- AI is shockingly smart, thanks to Induktio's work. Last game I was about to heal my damaged mindworm at a monolith so that I can later attack a nearby enemy base. AI sent a unity copter 6 tiles away just to take my damaged mindworm out before it reached the monolith!
- Major revamping of unit/cost/combat system. Primary purpose is to significantly improve defense effectiveness. Attacker investments are much larger than defender ones. Building a prepared defense and deflecting enemy attacks on a frontline with minimal losses is a completely viable and economically profitable strategy.
- Major revamping in combat probability also results in more battle outcome randomness than in vanilla. It is still not that random as in Civ 1 but somewhere in between. That makes native life a real threat. Beware! There is no point in hunting natives for planetpearls anymore. Player should minimize native life spawning and seriously prepare to deflect worm attacks or suffer consequences. Native life acts like an opponent as it should.
- Many formulas and rules are simplified to achieve better clarity. Things are more intuitive and understandable now.
- A lot of micro exploits are eliminated. Game is more streamlined toward general competition without logically irrelevant grinding.
There are tons of interesting features in the game. Many of them are revolutionary for 4X games world. I don't think there is another so feature reach game. I DO want to try them all!
With great power comes great responsibility, though. The more features you have the more difficult to make them work together. A slightest change in parameters or implementation may renders any of them completely broken, unusable, strategically unviable, or shadowed by other features. It is time consuming art and craft of game testing and perfecting. There is no doubt SMACX is the greatest games of all time. It is also clear it was hastily pushed to the market to earn quick money in its unfinished form. It definitely contains quite playable core - thanks to previous Civ 1/2 play testing. However, most of new features do not compose an integral game experience. Instead they look like unframed gems scattered here and there. Their description sounds exciting but current implementation renders them unusable which is to a great sadness to all true strategical game lovers.
I have started this mod initially to myself to give such underused features and strategies a chance to shine and to increase overall game challenge and replayability. In such option reach games like SMAX variations are endless. Due to such variations some strategical choice may sometimes shine depending on current conditions. Changing strategy in response to changing game situation is the nature of the play and that's why we have many to chose from. However, there should not be options those are never (or quite rarely) viable. Such unused option would just clutter game interface and player memory. Well thought game should not have any unusable elements. In this mod I try to make all options/features/strategies viable in one way or another.
Any option/feature/strategy should be undoubtfully advantegeous in some play style of game situation. Proportion of games where it provides such advantage should be noticeable too.
Whenever I see some feature worth improving/highlighting these are guidelines I use to decide whether I should touch it at all and, if yes, to which extent. By default I try to not fix what is not obviously broken.
- Feature should do what it claims to. If it is impossible to make it work, such feature should be excluded. Example: Deep pressure hull.
- Feature should not outright contradict or break game concepts. Example of game concept: build-your-own-unit design workshop. Example of the feature directly contradicting this concept: hybrid components (resonance armor and such).
- Game flow and features generally should be understandable to people and have clear visual effect on the game and player choices. This doesn't mean they should resemble real life. They should be only what is expected of them by average game player. There should be no hidden elements or algorithms those are difficult to grasp and apply. Example: unit cost formula. In vanilla infantry attacker 10-1-1 unit costs 5. With that in mind average player with previous Civ1/2 experience naturally would expect same strength infantry defender 1-10-1 to cost the same. They would be shocked to discover that it is 20 in SMACX actually. This doesn't match player expectations.
- Game should not create an extremely overpowered or underpowered strategy. Each strategy should be viable at least at some circumstances according to this mod principles. This mod does not intent to "balance" anything but only to adjust some obvious favorite or underdog strategies. Overpowered strategy example: indestructible army.
- Being usable also means to come at the right time in research tree. Coming too early clutters game interface and takes space from other more needed features. Coming too late causes unnecessary slowdown and frustration. This mod adjusts item appearence times to match faction development level.
- Some items naturally come in sequence when each follower effectively obsoletes its predecessor. Good example is weapons and armors. This mod tries to spread them evenly on a research scale so player can enjoy each for about same time. It also tries to link their corresponding technologies to assure they appear in right order.
- Mutually exclusive items/features are adjusted in price and effect so that they can compete with each other and none is completely inferior. Good example is social models.
A lot of above changes require moving items and features up and down technology tree. Apparently, rearranging technology tree is inevitable. This may seem like a big change for users. Therefore I dedicate a whole section to explain my reasons.
Rearranging technology tree is not something unheard of. A lot of mods do it and produce quite playable experience. The trick is in accuracy and placement since handling a dependency tree is nontrivial work.
SMACX futuristicly named technologies have no roots in real scientific history except maybe Fusion Power :). This is done, obviously, on purpose to highlight a sci-fi atmosphere. Same story is with other in game concepts, items, and features. Nobody can rationally explain why technology has such prerequisites or why it allows certain game features. I agree that some technology-feature relations make sense but most do not. In this regard I believe fiddling with technology tree is an acceptable modding approach. One could memorize some game concepts after thousands of games, of course but I doubt this is the way to go. Most of the time I find myself browsing help to understand which technology uncover which feature. That is completely fine and that is what help is for.
I tried to minimize technology tree changes to satisfy my modding needs only and to not get highwire about it. I selected one primary feature for each technology among those it uncovers. Such primary feature is the most memorized and most important technology association. In other words, player usually researches certain technology for its primary feature. Example: Doctrine: Air Power for needlejet chassis. I firmly kept such assosiations. Everything else might change. However, I also tried to keep modified tree as close as possible to vanilla one. Technologies may float but they do not go far from where they were originally. Like Biogenetics is still early game technology while Advanced Spaceflight is still late game one. I also tried to preserve secondary assosiations whenever possible to not mix things up too much.
I think I did good job on linking technologies. Vanilla technology level quite inaccurately predict technology appearance time. My tree is built with exactly 7 technologies per level. Each technology prerequisites are exactly from two below levels. This puts a pretty good timeline and value on a technology which is a great help for technology exchange. You know right away that any level 4 technology is clearly farther up the tree than any level 3 one - no need to look them up in datalink. Now it is easy to predict relative technology appearance time by its level.
I have selected primary features based on my own understanding of their importance. If someone believes there should be a different primary association - let me know. I'll gladly substitute. After all, the technology is just a placeholder for features and can be replaced or even renamed as needed.
Keep in mind that technology prerequisites are generally arbitrary and serve as interlevel relations only. Preserving some beelines is an option but not a primary concern. I welcome any suggestions about rearranging and relinking technology tree to match game lore.
Modding Social Engineering is the project in itself. There is no right and wrong answer on that. However, I expressed my view in the article here that also contains references to contemporary updates with explanations. http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Social_Engineering_Mod
Overpowered strategy: Indestructible army.
Cost/benefit imbalance: Conquering whole planet for near zero cost investment in army reinforcement.
Consequences: Conquering the whole world can be easily done in the mid game with minimal investments. The conquest victory become the easiest and earliest achievable. Other victory conditions almost never apply especially the ascent to transcedence. One needs to delay the victory on purpose just to enjoy other victory types.
Fix: adjust weapon and armor progression, attack/defense ratio, combat unit costs, military facility costs so that equally developed invader lose more units conquering enemy bases than defender and would require constant resupply to keep further advancement. In economical terms capturing a base should cost 2-3 times more in unit mineral cost to assailant than to victim. That is, of course, holds true only for attacking prepared defense of same technologically developed opponent. More advanced weaponry decreases player relative losses, obviously. Hefty price on conquering enemy bases makes non-stop conquering strategy not always a best choice. War related economical stagnation could be a too severe consequence for expansion.
To support the point above weapon and armor rating in this mod go 1:1 until about end of the game. The top weapon is about 20% stronger than top armor. Not that this difference is important at the end game where winner is essentially determined already. This is the point of this mod: let factions effectivelly defend themselves throughout the game and do not crack under slightest pressure in the middle ages. It doesn't stop anyone for crushing their enemies with enough dedication and skills. However, as it was already pointed earlier, such crushing comes with the price and peaceful development is a completely viable alternative to war.
Large number of conventional weapon items (12) in the game presents two potential improvement areas. One should experience war conflict in each of 12 first technology levels to enjoy each and every weapon/armor item. This is practically impossible and, therefore, big part of weapon/armor items is inevitable unused. It does not contradict my principle as each one can still be used over the course of multiple games. Yet, if anyone believes there are too many of them, I can reduce number of weapons to 8 or something.
Weapon and armor strength progression was redone to resemble Civ 1/2 slow slow proportional growth. Indeed, I cannot imagine why developers would left such weird weapon strength progression as 2-4-5 (?) or 12-13-16 (?) 😕. Whereas it is completely easy to correct it to normal growing progression by just changing text configuration. I've adjusted other weapon strenghts too to smoothen overall strength progression. Each next level item is about 25% stronger starting from value 4 onward.
Vanilla game has very weird code that selects regular conventional weapon icon based on its offensive value. There is nothing like that for any other item types (non regular-conventional weapons, armor, chassis, ability). Very precise, specific, and meaningless piece of programmatic machinery. This is fixed now. Modders are free to set any offensive values to regular conventional weapons without breaking their respective icons! Woo-hoo, thanks to me.
With this in mind I was able to correct weapon strenght progression to smooth it while keeping proper icons for each weapon.
Vanilla random roll method resulted in incorrect combat round odds. This is fixed now. Round odds are now proportional to unit corresponding strengths as it should be. 😉
Vanilla multiround combat model generates extremely narrow skew for combat outcome. Strength ratio of 2:1 (twice stronger attacker) produces 14:1 battle winning odds which is almost guaranteed kill. Since there are plenty of 50% and 100% bonuses in the game it quite common to observe significant strenght ratio variations. Together with inequality in weaponry research and other game variations strenght ratio may easily fluctuate between 1:4 and 4:1. Yet, as we just saw any investment into strength improvement beyond 2:1 is a complete waste.
This mod introduces alternative combat mechanics that smoothens that skew by reintroducing some randomness into combat outcomes. Now strenghtening units by all means keeps paying off up to 4:1-5:1 ratios. Anything beyond it is still an almost guaranteed kill as it should be.
Odds confirmation dialog now displays correct winning probability percentage. Vanilla odds numbers look cool but are highly unusable without calculator not even mentioning they are incorrect to begin with.
Native warfare seems to be everybody's weapon in vanilla. It doesn't seem fair to PLANET oriented factions. In base game PLANET rating is very weak comparing to say INDUSTRY/RESEARCH. It should be at least comparable to justify Cult of Planet's -1 INDUSTRY penalty. In my mind even ±1 PLANET rating should be very noticeable. Therefore, this mod increases its combat bonus to 15%. It also applies it on both attack and defense so PLANET haters suffer significant penalty. Now running Free Market really forces player to build up anti native base defense - mere avoiding combat is not a good strategy anymore.
On top of that this mod sets land psi combat base odds to 1:1. This way PLANET rating controls advantage/disadvantage in psi combat, correspondingly. It also brings psi attack odds against Transe unit in base (1:2.25) in range with conventional attack odds against base with PD/TF (1:2 - 1:3). This last change, though, could be undesired for many players as I found out already. Luckily, it is configured in alphax.txt. So anyone can roll it back or set to any other preferred value.
Base intrinsic defence raised to 50%. This is configurable in alphax.txt. Unit in base protected weaker than on rough terrain does not make sense as it forces defender to step outside of the base to get better defense.
Base defensive structures (Perimeter Defense, Naval Yard, Aerospace Complex, and Tachyon Field) defense bonuses are exposed in thinker.ini. First level structures defense bonus is left 100% as in vanilla. That effectivelly adds 50% on top of intrinsic defense. Second level structure (Tachyon Field) defense bonus is +50% to match first level bonus increase and to avoid late game overdefence that is many modders major concern.
| Defense structures | Cumulative bonus | Cumulative multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| No structures | +50% | 1.5 |
| Level 1 | +100% | 2.0 |
| Level 2 | +100% | 2.0 |
| Level 1 and Level 2 | +150% | 2.5 |
Believers are quite narrow focused faction. Their SUPPORT and Fanatic attack bonus makes them powerful large army warfare machine. This is what they should be doing to succeed as they suck at everything else with their RESEARCH and PLANET penalties. Surprisingly, their attack bonus is not that remarkable. Even Usurpers are better with their +25% attack bonus as they apply it to all type of combat including psi. Since believers are pathetic in psi combat their conventional attack bonus should be at least greater than Usurpers'. Assuming that even in the best circumstances they are not going to be in permanent war state raising their attack bonus to 50% is not at all overpowered. This is a compensation for their poor economical development.
Vanilla artillery damage is proportional to weapon/armor ratio rounded down. That means artillery cannot even harm too tough opponent above certain threshold. For example 2 strength artillery cannot possibly harm 3 armor strength unit anywhere in vanilla! That is completely ridiculous as the primary artillery purpose is to soften tough opponents before hand-to-hand combat.
This mod introduces a small correction to the game formula when the above ratio is below 1. Instead of doing zero damage artillery have a chance to do 1 damage proportional to attacking artillery strenght. It is a logical fractional continuation of original whole number formula.
Additionally artillery damage is multiplied by attacker firepower to ignore defender reactor power as it is done for hand-to-hand combat as well.
Repair rates are lowered to eliminate fast and instant healing. Parameters are configurable.
| Location/Facility/SP | Repair rate, per turn | Maximal repair level |
|---|---|---|
| Field | 10% | 80% |
| Base/bunker/aribase | 10% | 100% |
| Conventional unit in base with corresponding land/sea/air repair facility | +10% | 100% |
| Native unit in base when faction owns SP for fast native repair | +10% | 100% |
| Anywhere when faction owns Nano Factory | +10% | 100% |
The article above is a good example of what we are dealing with here. An excellent scholary research explaining miriads of small SMACX morale releated features and their interdependencies. A lot of enthusiasts worked a lot of man-months to disassemble, reverse engineer, and deliver this sacral knowledge to us in more or less orderly fashion. Even after all these efforts mere reading this article and trying to comprehend all intricacies of game engine is a work in itself. I personally sometimes have to read passages few times to catch the idea and details.
Undoubtfully, such complicated rules should not even exist in a game in a first place for players' sake. And if they do they should be clearly explained with every detail at least in advanced help. Apparently designers realized that such help would take like 20 pages of in game text. That could scare beginners! Better to replace it with one-two vague sentences or not mention it at all. Clarity achieved = profit! In literal meaning. 😄
Now players need to disassemble game to understand why their units have unexpected morale. Ugh. 😒
Removed all Children Creche and Brood Pit related morale bonuses. That includes home base bonuses as well as stationed base bonuses.
Reason: undocumented, awfully bugged, exceptionally convoluted, apallingly obscure to user formulas.
Children Creche and Brood Pit are quite strong facilities by their primary purpose already. They don't need to invade specialized morale facilities domain.
Some may refer to this passage from Datalinks: "All negative MORALE effects are cancelled for units in base square; instead such units receive a +1 MORALE modifier." It is hardly a documetation for such complex mechanics. See [Treatise on Morale] at the top of Morale section. Psi units also receive similar bonus from Brood Pit on top of Children Creche's one but this is not documented at all.
Designers added tons of little trinkets for player so they don't feel sorry for themselves and don't stop playing game in first few turns. As important as it is for absolute newcomer this is a pure annoyance to a seasoned player who doesn't quit just because they don't see a measly bonuses everywhere they look.
One of such nonsense bonuses is a Very Green defense bonus effectively turning it into Green on defense. I absolutely welcome any number of independent means to raise/lower morale in addition to base unit morale levels. However, assigning a special bonus to the very basic morale level that effectivelly disables its intended effect (even if on defense only) is beyond my comprehention.
Surprisingly, the vanilla formula is very sensible. Essentially, promotion odds are proportional to opponent to victor strength ratio as well as to how badly both you and opponent got damaged in battle. The only problem with it is that Very Green and Green units skip this calculation and are always promoted. That opens a pandorra exploit box as player can wind down their MORALE rating to lower their units morale and then quickly acquire 1-2 promotion levels.
I decided to even out promotion probabilities across all levels to decouple from MORALE rating jumping up and down. Now all probabilities are same as for Commando->Elite promotion. For example, when two equal units fight they both have 50% chance to win and then victor has 25% chance to be promoted.
Besides, why promotion should be easier for lower morale levels? That benefits weak morale factions. It should not. They have low morale for a reason. It most likely a flip side of having some other good benefit either innate or SM induced. The combination of bonuses and penalties is already carefully thought of by faction/SM designers. Why game thinks it knows better and aid to these poor "weaklings" as it percieves them?
I was struggling to make defense economically more effective than assault. Ideally defending should be two to three times cheaper than assaulting. Equalizing contemporary weapon and armor strength was a step in that direction. It was not enough. Attacker still can bring fight odds at 1:1 with greater numbers and artillery superiority against base garrisons behind PD. I do not count sensors as they are easily destroyable and not of great help. Outside of bases aggressor has full control of the land: penetrates deeply beyond frontline, kills formers, destroys enhancements, destroys sensors, cuts reinforcement communications. I was thinking about giving defender a direct bonus: pertained to defending of own territory explicitly, permanent, indistructible, undeniable.
Then it struck me. The explicit territory combat bonus is the perfect solution for that! 🌟 It is inherent so everybody always has it and it cannot be cancelled. It kicks in only on own territory combat. Due to its inherent nature it helps defender even in case of poorly prepared defence. It effectivelly replaces Chidren Creche and Sensor Array bonuses. Unlike them, though, it applies on whole territory not only in bases which is much better representation of defensive war. Why on earth the rest of the territory should be any less protected?
Children Creche and Sensor Array lose their combat related bonuses. I think it is to the best. Children Creche affecting morale was pretty strange idea in first place: too powerful for cheap facility, too cumbersome to understand the logic (only negative MORALE SE), too limited (bases only), buggy implemented, difficult to read/understand in unit screen. It should concentrate on its primary purpose: growth and efficiency. They are already quite powerful capabilities.
Building sensors to extend protection bonus is nice idea but they are easy to destroy with single artillery shot or with Needlejet raid or with probe accompanied by combat unit. They are so easy target that it is considered stupid to storm base without destroying them fist. This effectively nullifies their defense bonus value. We can set their bonus to 100% and it is still equals to zero when they are gone. Therefore, I've decided to remove their defense bonus altogether and keep them as observation stations which is still quite useful tool for human player.
Summarizing the above, territory combat bonus (both attack and defense) is a nice replacement for Children Creche and Sensor Array combat bonuses but more logical, simpler, more understandable, move visual. It is also displays properly in combat calculation screen with own explicit name and bonus value (Territory +50%) which is much better than the train of yet to be deciphered pluses. It works equally on land and sea. Finally, the undervalues sea battles are taken care of. From game lore side one can visualize this as troops fighting 50% stronger on mother land/sea. Neat! How simple and logical is that?
Unit cost formula is reworked and is greatly simplified to resemble Civ 1/2 model. Now it is MUCH easier to understand this. For example, both 6-1-1 and 1-6-1 infantry units now cost 6 rows of minerals. Imagine the simplicity! New formula completely removes a quadratic armor cost growth problem. High end mixed inrantry units now cost comparable to speeder and fully armored foil units are comparable to hovertank.
Reactor power does not multiply unit max hit points anymore. All units (conventional and native) have 10 max hit points regardless of reactor.
Instead each subsequent reactor decreases weapon/armor cost by approximately 20%. Modules are not discounted. Player gets refund when upgrading unit to cheaper one with more powerful reactor.
- Primary item (most expensive module/weapon/armor item) defines base cost.
- Secondary item (least expensive module/weapon/armor item) increases cost just by 50% of its value to encourage mixed units usage.
- Faster chassis make unit proportionally more expensive. Speeder/Cruiser are 1.5 times and Hovertank is 2 times more expensive than Infantry.
- Stronger reactors decrease weapon/armor cost by 20% comparing to previous generation.
- Abilities have now proportional and flat cost components those can be set independently for each ability. Proportional one works as in vanilla and increases cost by 25% for each unit value. Flat cost adds given number of minerals rows to the cost.
Ability proportional and flat costs are packed into a singe value for ability cost in alphax.txt. First 4 bits are used for proportional cost and second 4 bits are for flat cost. Ability may have both proportional and flat non zero costs.
unit cost = round(round([primary item cost + secondary item shifted cost / 2] * chassis cost / 2) * abilities cost factor + abilities flat cost) (rounded normally) item reactor modified cost = item cost * (reactor value / 100) module uses Fission reactor value for their reactor value primary item = the one with higher reactor modified cost secondary item = the one with lower reactor modified cost primary item cost = item cost * (reactor value / 100) secondary item shifted cost = (item cost - 1) * (reactor value / 100) abilities cost factor = (1 + 0.25 * (ability1 proportional cost + ability2 proportional cost)) abilities flat cost = ability1 flat cost + ability2 flat cost
Weapon and armor cost grows slightly slower than their value. That makes stronger weapon/armor more cost effective against stronger opponent. However, it is still cheaper to build weaker units when top item is overkill.
Native warfare should be slightly worse to conventional as they have other benefits. They ignore base defensive structures. They are naturally both full scale attacker and defender. Their price is fixed and is much lower comparing to fully equipped top level attacker-defender units. They do not require prototyping. IoD can transport. Sealurk can attack shore units. LoC does not need refueling and can capture bases. They all can repair up to 100% in fungus squares. They do not require maintenance while in fungus square. All together they are no-brainer units and as such should be a little less effective to not become a superior choice. I've increased most native unit cost except spore launcher to encourage its use for bombardment.
Flat extra prototype cost formula is introduced.
extra prototype UNIT cost = sum of non yet prototyped extra prototype COMPONENT costs extra prototype COMPONENT cost = component costs * Extra percentage cost for LAND unit
This formula changes the actual unit cost. The literal text in base screen item description (like "prototype: +50%") stays the same and displays the percentage value from alphax.txt. This may be confusing. I may change it in future releases.
Vanilla uses Extra percentage cost of prototype LAND unit percentage for designing brand new unit in design workshop regardless of selected chassis. Therefore extra percentage costs for all triads should be kept equal. For the same reason alternative formula above uses LAND percentage only.
Unit hurry cost formula always puzzled me. Why make cost grow quadratically to become exorbitant for higher end units? The upgrade cost is, on the contrary, quite low allowing "Building SP with upgraded crawler" exploit. I decided to simplify and flatten both of them for simplicity and to prevent abovementioned exploit.
In this mod unit hurry cost is four times its mineral cost. The base upgrade cost now is an exact difference of new and old units hurry cost! Could anyone imagine game design could be that simple and transparent? 🤣
Since higher reactors now do nothing but decrease unit cost player also gets REFUND when upgrading to cheaper version of unit with higher reactor. How more fairer could it get? 😄
This mod removes all hurry cost penalty thresholds. I never could grasp their strategical meaning since they do not affect course of the game but only add annoyance and require use of calculator. Let me know if anyone thinks they need to be kept.
Now all hurry costs are flat x2 for facilities and x4 for units and projects.
INDUSTRY rating is supposed to modify base production speed. Instead it modifies production item mineral cost, due to strange design approach. This allows few exploits as well as tangling between INDUSTRY rating and hurry cost. Following changes were introduced to avoid all these problems.
- All direct mineral contributions are scaled to basic mineral cost multiplier in alphax.ini. That effectivelly ignores INDUSTRY rating impact on such contributions.
- Alien Artifact is cached at base contributing to project or prototype production.
- Unit is disbanded at base contributing to current production. This is actually already scaled in vanilla so no changes were needed.
- Hurrying production. Hurrying cost is not dependent on INDUSTRY rating anymore.
Increasing cost of SP to make AI build it longer so that other AI and human can compete longer for them and less research advanced factions can still get some of them.
I also clearly understand that exact SP cost is not that relevant. It easily can be moved 50% up or down and nothing changes much in the game. My main concern was their way to low cost in vanilla. I feel like they should be about 2-5 times more expensive based on benefits. Other than that I welcome your suggestions.
10 * + 100 *
Same as above but reduced by some arbitrary usability factor.
100 * 200 *
arbitrary
Cost in mineral rows.
| secret project | cost | explanation |
|---|---|---|
| The Merchant Exchange | 20 | Local improvement - no change. |
| The Human Genome | 40 | 2 minerals worth quelled drone x 200 |
| The Command Nexus | 60 | 80 cost x 10 + 2 maintenance x 100. Reduced as it is not needed in every base. |
| The Universal Translator | 20 | Pretty limited usage of two technologies advancement. There are no unlimited artifacts in a game. Reduced in cost as it is now quite early project. It is definitely not better than The Human Genome, for example. |
| The Weather Paradigm | 40 | Tough to evaluate. Great boost to the faction via advanced terraforming but advantage doesn't last whole game. |
| The Empath Guild | 60 | Way to Governorship and energy income multiplier. Should be quite expensive. |
| The Living Refinery | 40 | About 2 minerals per base per turn x 200. |
| The Virtual World | 60 | 60 cost x 10 + 2 maintenance x 100. Reduced slightly since it benefits base only when network node is built. |
| The Planetary Transit System | 40 | Drone quellying + immediate growth boost. Proportional to empire size but limited to small bases only. Slight increase. |
| The Maritime Control Center | 60 | 80 cost x 10 + 2 maintenance x 100. Reduced as it is not needed in every base. |
| The Planetary Datalinks | 80 | Again pretty vague but should be quite high priced since technology advantage is everything in this game. |
| The Manifold Harmonics | 60 | Powerful fungus production. However, advantageous for high PLANET rating only and fully develop only in later game. |
| The Planetary Energy Grid | 60 | 60 cost x 10 + 1 maintenance x 100. |
| The Citizens' Defense Force | 60 | 50 cost x 10. It worth more than the cost of the facility as it gets built immediatelly in conquered base. |
| The Xenoempathy Dome | 40 | Tactical advantage, aid to fungus terraforming, +1 lifecycle = slight increase. |
| The Supercollider | 30 | Local effect = no change. |
| The Ascetic Virtues | 60 | +POLICE + growth = slight increase. |
| The Theory of Everything | 40 | Local effect = no change. |
| The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm | 60 | No clue how to deal with this. People tend to value it quite high. Doubled the price. |
| The Nano Factory | 40 | Slight tactical and unit upgrade advantage. Nothing seriosly game changing. No change. |
| The Longevity Vaccine | 60 | Drone quellying. Slightly higher valued than The Human Genome due to more advanced era. |
| The Nethack Terminus | 60 | Some help to probe teams. Other than that nothing much. |
| The Neural Amplifier | 80 | Tough to evaluate but I tend to price combat effectiveness boosting projects quite high. |
| The Pholus Mutagen | 60 | Allows higher production without ecology impact. Should be slightly more expensive. |
| The Dream Twister | 80 | Same as The Neural Amplifier. |
| The Cloudbase Academy | 150 | 120 cost x 10 + 3 maintenance x 100. Not reduced at all as AC is needed in every base for satellites later on. |
| The Cyborg Factory | 160 | 200 cost x 10 + 5 maintenance x 100. Reduced by 1/3 as it is not needed in every base. |
| The Clinical Immortality | 200 | Drones and diplomatic victory. Should be quite high. |
| The Singularity Inductor | 200 | 200 cost x 10. |
| The Bulk Matter Transmitter | 200 | 10 minerals x 200. |
| The Network Backbone | 160 | Large source of labs multiplied by the number of all world bases. Very high. |
| The Self-Aware Colony | 200 | Roughly 20 maintenance x 100. |
| The Space Elevator | 160 | Economy boost in base, satellites production boost, planetary orbital insertion. Few good things but not game breaking ones. Should be averagely priced for its era. |
| The Cloning Vats | 120 | Adds GROWTH rating. Good for growth but not game breaking. |
| The Telepathic Matrix | 200 | Total drone solution. About 5 times The Human Genome cost. |
| The Voice of Planet | 120 | |
| The Ascent to Transcendence | 500 | Should take some time but not to extreme with all empire bases contribuing to it. |
Multiplying facilities are incentive for base growth vs ICS. Multiplying facilities, especially mineral ones, should start earlier and distributed more evenly across the tree.
Recycling Tanks now is a 50% mineral multplying facilities amongh others of same type. Other multiplying facilities are distributed more smoothly across the tree.
Energy multiplying facilities are generally at good places already. I've reduced cost of some early coming ones to make their benefit appear earlier.
Doctrine: Flexibility is available to be researched at start. Other modders said much about that already.
Moved to level 3.
These facilities are not effective at the beginning. Even with 20 raw energy yield they contribute 5 labs/energy - 1 maintenance = 2 worth of minerals and break even in 30 turns. First base doesn't reach this raw energy intake until turn 50 something.
Hab Complex: moved to 20% in research tree (was 30%).
Habitaion Dome: moved to 50% in research tree (was 75%).
I don't want AI like Morgan or Pirates to struggle and let their base not grow for an extended period of time. Game is too short already.
Moved to 75% in research tree (was 50%).
Doubling police power should not come too early.
Bioenhancement Center: moved to 75% in research tree (was 50%).
Generic facility should come after all specific ones.
Tree Farm: moved to 30% in research tree (was 50%).
Hybrid Forest: moved to 60% in research tree (was 50%).
These facilities should be moved apart a little. In vanilla they appear immediatelly one after another. Tree Farm should appear a little bit earlier to support barren lands with forests.
Satellites appearance order is changed to: Orbital power transmitter, Nessus mining station, Sky hydroponics lab.
Sky hydroponics lab is moved to the last as most base affecting. Other two are comparable in effect to corresponding multiplier facilities.
This project effect diminishes with time as SUPPORT effect becomes less importanw when bases produce more minerals.
It is not too strong project and it is not too beneficial eaarly in a game when base fungus production is yet too low. There is not harm to place it early for owner to benefit its advantage for longer period of time.
They appear approximately at 25%, 50%, 75% of the tech tree, correspondingly, to be used about same amount of time each.
Aqua facilities appearance order is changed to: Thermocline transducer, Subsea Trunkline, Aquafarm.
Aquafarm comes last as most effective facility of them all.
This is another feature I cannot understand. What good does restricting yield do? Why I cannot farm a rainy tile to boost my base growth a little? Why I cannot mine a rocky tile to get myself some minerals? In vanilla game these restriction are lifted when you discover advanced terraforming. At this time I don't need a rocky mine anymore since borehole is better. As the result I never build mines to work on - only to harvest by crawler. I don't know how to disable them completely so I moved them all onto level 1 technologies.
I guess this was a blind copy of Civ 1 Despotism restrictions. Despotism reduces any factor of production by 1 where you have 3+ of such production. However, this was compensated by unit production and settler food supports. Meaning you harvest less but you spend less on support too. SMACX lost this second part separating support into its own effect. Thus leaving this nicely thought and designed element half cut and stupid looking. 😠
Many people before me mentioned overpowed forest. Indeed, it is capable of turning dry and barren 0-0-0 terrain into 1-2-1 adding 4 resourses in 4 turns with combined yield comparable to rocky mine. It is just insane terraforming effectiveness. As if this is not enough it spreads by itself = zero further investments. It is pretty nice option for poor bases but it should cost more than mine to be not the-only-viable-option. Currently I set its terraforming time to 8 and reduced yield to 1-2-0 to make it just enough helpful option for barren land bases but not too much to beat rocky mine.
Fungus production is not some crucial part of the game. However, it is still some alternative yield source that is mostly overlooked due to very slow development comparing to conventional terraforming. I'd like to add few touches on it.
| technology | level | effect | cumulative yield | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centauri Ecology | 1 | +1 nutrient | 1-0-0 | |
| Progenitor Psych | 1 | +1 energy | 1-0-1 | reassigned |
| Field Modulation | 2 | +1 energy | 1-0-2 | reassigned |
| Bioadaptive Resonance | 4 | +1 nutrient | 2-0-2 | reassigned |
| Centauri Meditation | 5 | +1 energy | 2-0-3 | |
| Centauri Genetics | 8 | +1 mineral | 2-1-3 | |
| Centauri Psi | 11 | +1 nutrient | 3-1-3 | |
| Secrets of Alpha Centauri | 13 | +1 energy | 3-1-4 |
Introduced Sensor Buoy on sea similar to Sensor Array on land. Copied from SMAniaC mod. They do not confer defense bonus but they increase visibility which is very important to track fast moving ships in your territory and around.
Crawlers are disabled. That solves tons of problems they generate.
Faction can fully or partially hurry project with credits at its discretion.
The main problem of this project reported by many players is that it breaks the game paired with ICS strategy. Essentially, it creates two extra citizens out of thin air in new base. Therefore it just triples the benefit of founding new base and the total faction population growth rate.
This mod limits the size of new base to this value:
new base size = average faction base size - 2
This is to prevent excessive total population growth at very early stages. It also sets limit to less than average to make sure the benefit automatically wears off when a lot of new bases created. Since the limit is less than average it guarantees creation of a new base brings the average size down. So player needs to develop the rest of their bases to keep claiming max benefit.
Permanent population boom in all bases is one of the most game breaking effects in entire SMACX. Modders struggle to mitigate and balance it. This mod moderates this project effect to the level comparable to other project effects.
The Cloning Vats do not trigger population boom. Instead they convert part of mineral surplus into additional nutrients on top of regular nutrient surplus. Thus fulfilling this project very idea of using production power to speed up population growth. The effect is very beneficial but on that OP anymore. Furthermore, it diminishes for greater base sizes due to increased growth requirements. Therfore, it can safely be unlocked in the mid game.
The Cloning Vats also does not grant impunities anymore.
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm prevents regular probe action but does not destroy it. This is to aid AI who is stupidly keep sending probes against HSA owner. This is also to reduce human player frustration when they need to remember which enemy faction has HSA to not kill own probes for nothing.
Inefficiency formula reworked. It uses "efficiency" as a complenetary measure for inefficiency.
seEfficiencyRate = (4 + EFFICIENCY) / 8 ;limited to [0; 1] interval hqEfficiencyRate = 1 - distance to HQ / (1.5 \* map width / 4) ;limited to [0; 1] interval efficiencyRate = seEfficiencyRate + hqEfficiencyRate ;limited to [0; 1] interval efficiency = efficiencyRate \* energy intake ;rounded up inefficiency = energy intake - efficiency
Disabled all hybrid and psi items.
I really cannot grasp this concept. Why having half strength ability while you can attach fully powered one for the same price? Besides, mere melting ability to the item breaks the unique SMACX unit workshop build-it-yourself paradigm! Why to introduce constructor tool and then provide pieces those cannot be disassembled to elementary properties. I almost never use them for their added ability. Merely like another regular piece of equipment. And now in my mod they don't exist anymore and nobody cries.
Same story with psi weapon and armor. By the time you get them you have full spectrum of natives who are much cheaper than psi attack + psi defense unit. I personally never used them. Anybody does? Let me know if you think they are valuable assets.
Cloaking device and Deep pressure hull abilities are broken by game shared map implementation. Other people said enough about it. Disabled them.
Repair Bay ability is useless in my mind as well. I cannot even imagine where would you massively transport wounded units.
Soporific Gas Pods. People reported AI doesn't use them due to the bug. I think it would be fair not to give them to humans too until this is fixed.
I was able to remove AQUATIC +1 sea mineral advantage. Now they are back to normal and expected growth. They will be slow on start but they have 50-100 years of undisturbed development. Once their old bases are developped enough to stamp sea pods they explosivly expand but then other factions start barraging waters and set their sea colonies. Seems to be a good balance. However, aquatic factions still develop quite differently. That requires a lot of play testing.
Some vanilla technologies boost probe team morale for free. That makes all new probe teams elite toward the end of the game. Err, what's the point in that if everybody gets it and this renders Covert Ops and PROBE ratings useless for probe team morale? I removed all such flags. Technologies do not improve probe team morale any more.
Planetpearl is a pretty weird bonus that player gets when killing land only natives (not sea, not air). This bonus goes from 10 to 70 based on killed unit lifecycle. Attacking unit with 3:2 strenght advantage has pretty good winning chances. That least to harvesting Planetpearl exploit when player induces natives appearance by trying to enter fungus tile on purpose. Gameplay wise I percieve it as gold coins falling off defeated monsters in Mario. Purely arcade element quite strategically disconnected from the rest of the game and very distracting. Native lifeforms should be percieved as a threat not as a treasure.
SMACX introduces a brilliant concept of a territory. Now no one can stick their own bases in between other faction bases. This prevents a constant micromanagement of shooing friendly and especially ally colonies from your territory. It also lets player more high level control of keeping other faction units far enough from your bases. It is a definite playability improvement.
Interestingly that when SMAXC treats land and sea bases equally (which is an epic feature by itself) the sea territory borders do not extend from sea bases as much as on land. Essentially they fail to secure territory even in between already placed sea bases which is a primary purpose of the territory. It also doesn't serve secondary purpose of the territory to keep other faction sea units at bay. Sea units move fast and 3 square extended borders is just a one turn cross distance. The situation with coastal bases is even worse. They extend their sea border 1 square away. It is just ridiculous. It doesn't prevent other players to place sea colony just 2 tiles away denying ALL water resources to coastal base. It is a major complaint of may players.
This mod equalizes border extension distances between land, sea, and coastal bases. Even though I believe this is a must have feature the configuration parameter is still in thinker.ini in case anyone wants to switch it off.
These abilities do not improve unit properties directly. Instead they essentially create completely distinct unit type with its own ins and outs. These unit type strengths are controlled by its own settings in alphax.txt. Damage Numerator & Denominator for Heavy Artillery and Combat bonus/penalty for Air Superiority. Their non-zero cost is confusing as if these abilities worth something by themselves. I think it is much clearer to keep them zero and allow player to convert unit type without additional penalty.
Population boom is a powerful feature leading to OP strategy: expand - pop boom - repeat. The population boom is a nice feature. However, its cost is obviously negligible comparing to benefits.
This mod changes the GROWTH upper cap and thus GROWTH rating requirements for population boom making it more difficult to achieve.
Human probes cannot sabotage defensive facilities either by targetting them or by random sabotage.
Disciplined enhanced probe has 50% chance to sabotage targetted PD or TF. Disciplined regular probe has also 100% chance to sabotage random facility which may be a defencive one. Sabotaging PD reduces base defence by 30%. This is too much of a reduction for the cost of a few probe teams especially against AI who doesn't protect their bases with counter probes well.
Overall, many players percieve this as an exploit similar to destroying sensor before waging full scale base assault.
Adjusted summary strength and power lines to the bottom in battle computation display. This way it is easier to read and compare them between attacker and defender.
Shortened some labels in F4 screen to fit longer base names and avoid line wrapping.
Added
suffix to bases in need of population growth limit facility.
New AI terraforming algorithm replacing Thinker's. These are few notable changes among many.
- Works best tiles first.
- Properly selects best basic improvement option between rocky mine, farm-mine, farm-collector, forest.
- Quickly connects new bases to road network.
- Tries to prevent population loss by emphasizing nutrient development around poorly fed bases.
- Tends not to build forest/kelp and not to remove fungus next to existing forest/kelp due to its potential spreading.
- Properly places aquifer 2 squares from existing rivers to maximize river coverage.
- Properly places condenser to match existing rainfall pattern to maximize rainfall coverage.
- Properly evaluates additional benefit of condenser/mirror to be used by nearby bases.
- Prefers better improvement with equal completion time (construction + travel).
- Prefers quicker improvement with equal benefit (shorter construction time + less travel).
- Redistributes former orders to minimize construction + travel time. Takes former abilities (fungicide, super) and speed into account.
- Checks existing improvements and don't build more of them if equal of better one is still unused around base.
- Raises land to improve collector energy output.