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A feature that I think would be useful would be a generic mod folder parameter. You already have the basic functionality in the SMAC-only option. This would just be a parameter such as 'mod_folder="my mod". This would be useful to players in general, and in particular you could put the sorts of game balance changes discussed in this thread into a mod folder and players could easily choose to use the mod. A supplementary feature could include the ability to set the mod's title in a file in the mod folder, and have that mod title show up as part of the report when the player presses Alt-T. Now I have experimented with rebalancing secret projects, with combinations of increasing costs and moving the projects to later techs. What I concluded, after a few games, was that, at least for single player games, increasing the costs of secret projects just slowed the pace of the game down, in a bad way, and that the SP's are generally in appropriate places in the tech tree. There were obviously exceptions to this, so for example I moved the Universal Translator down to a tier 3 tech and I think that assigning it to a tier 1 or 2 tech could easily be justified, and I moved the Cloudbase Academy to a tier 13 tech because I think it removes from the strategy of the game. (Aerospace complexes are one of the best base facilities, but they are expensive, so deciding where to build them first is an interesting strategic decision, and just having them everywhere for free makes that trivial, besides being OP.) And the Planetary Transit System should be moved to a different tech (not necessarily a higher tier) than the one that's a prerequisite for crawlers. Now if you are designing a mod specifically for very experienced players using directed research, then large scale changes to SP tech requirements and costs could certainly be justified, but I don't think that would be a good change for a mod aimed at a general audience. In the rules that I use for my own games I have settled on giving supply modules a cost (in alphax terms) of 20, which means that unarmoured fission crawlers cost 60 and unarmoured fusion crawlers cost 30. This works well for me because it makes crawlers available but rare between the discovery of industrial automation and the discovery of fusion power, and after fusion power. I still build crawlers, but I'm certainly not using them just to crawl forests for 2 minerals/turn, which is definitely viable when crawlers cost 30. (This doesn't work so well for AI's using Thinker mod, because they still spend as many or more resources building 60-mineral crawlers as they would building 30-mineral crawlers, and then when they get Fusion Power they armor their crawlers because that's good design in the vanilla game, but things like this are why we give the AI cheats.) However, my first choice for nerfing crawlers would be to make them cost maintenance like most other units. Ah, needlejets and copters. I think the biggest problem with needlejet balance is that the SAM ability has the same prereq tech as the needlejet chassis. SAM rovers trade extremely well against fission impact penetrators. For that matter, fission impact penetrators don't do well at all against defensive infantry with equivalent tech, and they cost as much maintenance and upset the drones as much as better aircraft do, so I consider them to be a niche unit. It's just that if you're leading in tech, and you've just researched needlejets, then no one else can attack them. I guess you could justify a small increase in needlejet chassis costs, but I don't see it as a major issue. Maybe make the prerequisite for SAM Synthetic Fossil Fuels, or even Doctrine: Flexibility [edit] or Applied Physics or Nonlinear Mathematics, because those techs are prerequisites for new weapons so it could thematically make sense for some of those new weapons to be useable as AA weapons[/edit]. Copters are a necessary game mechanic to counter the tactic of using numerous cheap units to exploit the fact that most unit types can only attack one target per turn, no matter how much a top-of-the-line unit overpowers one of the numerous cheap units. Copters are a bit overpowered, but they have a hard counter in the form of defensive infantry (which is one of the reasons I nag you so much when defensive infantry leave their bases!), and if a copter's going to use its ability to retreat after combat then it can't attack far from its home base. When I was experimenting with rebalancing copters, I reduced their base speed to 6 compared to needlejets' 8 (so fusion copters had 8 compared to fusion needlejets' 10, etc.), and give the copter chassis the same cost as a needlejet chassis, although of course making them a bit more expensive than needlejets works too. The inconsistency issue with needlejet combat mechanics sounds like a bug, and could go in the "original game engine bugs" thread. The addition to Thinker's map generator sounds like a nice idea for people playing multi-player. |
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Yeah, so the above list references issues that might be in theory be implemented in the future, but it's by no means guaranteed. In some form or another, the mod will probably always have the default tech tree available as an option. Also most people maybe play with the default tech tree for nostalgia reasons, so I'm not sure how many players even prefer those kind of changes. So far the mod has done only minor edits to alphax.txt variables. About the "generic mod folder parameter", I'm not sure if there's a sufficiently clear use case to warrant implementing that. It might just make the usability even more confusing if additional game config files are added. There's also another idea to nerf the copters, instead of reducing the movement points, we could rewrite the rules such that Copters expend double movement points when they attack something. That would somewhat nerf the attack capability and not require reducing the range excessively compared to needlejets. |
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Out of your list, I'd love to see fractional movement point mag tubes. I still keep them disabled because they just make it too easy to blitz an AI once I can get on their network, but I miss the convenience of slightly faster transportation. By the sound of it, diplomacy changes sound complicated but what I would like to see is the AI not offer to trade a tech for your maps. It's just a free tech for the player while the AI gets nothing of actual value to itself. I'm pretty sure I've also been offered this trade by a pact mate, too, which is doubly useless for the poor AI. |
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Looks like in the next build we'll have the option to reactivate units that were skipped on the same turn. In order to avoid issues, it should be only possible reactivate units that did not move at all when they were skipped. Otherwise it would require using an extra struct field to save the fractional movement units which is not a very good use for the space. Overall this feature can be done but it requires a minor change in the savegame format. |
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There are a couple of features that could use more research. Normally Thinker's AI checks for unit visibility flag maintained by the game engine whenever it chooses attack targets. This flag should be the same that determines if the unit on a tile is visible to another faction if the fog of war is on. If the unit is inside a base, it is treated as always visible, but otherwise visibility rules should apply. Particularly for air units, this affects whether the AI will beeline to attack other units that are more far away. There have been some reports that Deep Pressure Hull and Cloaking Device don't affect AI vision at all. It would be useful to know if anyone has tested these abilities with Thinker AI in more detail. Are there any specific situations when these abilities don't seem to have effect on the AI or is it always the same? |
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Thank you for your excellent mod!
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I absolutely love this mod.. there is one feature that I have always wanted especially have civ4 came out to disable "TECH TRADING" at first I thought maybe just add a sunspots permanently but then that would not allow even talking to anyone.. so if you could just add an option in thinker.ini to disable just tech trading that would to me make this a perfect mod.. and thanks for your work! |
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Looks like there's already an option "No technology trading" in Scenario Rules (Shift+F11). This should probably do what you described, but it seems it requires starting a new scenario that has this setting enabled. There's no option to enable it for random map starts. |
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This list contains various ideas that attempt to address imbalances in the game mechanics or add new features to the game. Simple bugs that contradict the original game documentation or clearly skip the intended game mechanics belong to the other thread "original game engine bugs".
Changes only in alphax.txt:
Miscellaneous bugs:
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