17-05-2004 21:23									#1
	Modifications to the next ACDG game Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

We have decided through a poll that the next ACDG game is not going to be modified greatly. Now we are having several separate polls to decide each individual modifications and the initial responses seem to indicate quite some modifications to the original game.

I would appreciate if people could list all the suggested modifications in this thread as a summary for the common guys who has not been frequently playing with modifications of game mechanisms. I would especially appreciate an explanation about what each modification means regarding what everybody needs to do. For example, my understanding is that some modifications will be included in the scenario file that the CMN created and do not require any changes from the players. Others may require an change on the alpha.txt for anybody who wants to play which may be conflict with the person's other pbems.

While I applause the enthusiasms and initiatives of our players to make the next game fairer and more interesting, I would like to make sure that the proposed modifications are practical so we don't end up with very few people can actually play the game.

	17-05-2004 22:42									#2
	Increase Your PM Length

The propositions I've seen so far are reducing chopper movements, Cloudbase Academy changes from tech and remove/replace the Empath Guild.

For the chopper movement reduce and the Cloudbase Academy tech position change a new alphax.txt is necessary.

For disabling the Empath Guild, that can be done in the scenario editor, thus no alphax.txt change necessary. However, replacing the Secret Project or changing it's production cost needs and adapted Alphax.txt.

How I work to avoid conflict in alphax.txt files is that I made a separate folder for every ACDG/PBEM I participate in if changes are made in the Alphax.txt file. When playing one of those, I simply paste the alphax.txt file in the root folder of SMAC(X).

	17-05-2004 23:27									#3
	Full PM-box? Change here!

So that is one thing that you need to do for each and every turn for every game you play?

	17-05-2004 23:30									#4
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

No you do it once not every time you play.

You create a duplicate SMACX directory, give it a differnt name such as "ACDG" and make a duplicate Exe shortcut. Then you just put saves in the apropriate directory and play them like normal. Its no more work then a normal PBEM and would not need to be done each time you play.

Realy HongHu this is a very obvious solution have you never tried anything like this before when you made your own Alpha changes?

Last edited by Impaler[WrG] on 17-05-2004 at 23:37

	17-05-2004 23:32									#5
	Full PM-box? Change here!

We won't modify SMACX greatly.
Let's just change chopper movement points.
And the cloudbase prereq.
And the Empath Guild prereq.
And the number of rows for empath guild.
And....

	17-05-2004 23:45									#6
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Impaler[WrG] No you do it once not every time you play. You create a duplicate SMACX directory, give it a differnt name such as "ACDG" and make a duplicate Exe shortcut. Then you just put saves in the apropriate directory and play them like normal. Its no more work then a normal PBEM and would not need to be done each time you play. Realy HongHu this is a very obvious solution have you never tried anything like this before when you made your own Alpha changes?

Well I haven't really had much time to play with my own Alpha changes so I didn't really have a need for doing that. But I am not against learning if it does not mean tearing my pcs apart.

However, I'm thinking for the regular people here, not the few advanced ones. I think the majority people here have not done anything similar to what you guys are proposing. If we want to do that, we need to give a fairly detailed instruction. Also I think another poll is needed to approve such modifications if we want to invalidate the first poll that approves no big modifications.

	17-05-2004 23:46									#7
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by HongHu So that is one thing that you need to do for each and every turn for every game you play?

I didn't installed a double copy of SMAC in my computer, so yes, I need to paste the correct alphax.txt file for every ACDG/PBEM I participate in which has changes in the file.

Haven't tried out Impaler's system though.

As I understand it, Rubin is using the same system as I mentioned.

	17-05-2004 23:52									#8
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Boy you guys are doing it the Hard way, trust me this is much easier, only downside is it uses up about 300 MB of Hard Drive space which is nothing realy. Ofocorse if you were partispating in say 10 different PBEM games with differnt Alpha's then it would start to eat up a lot of room and Geo's way would save that space.

Also keep in mind its realy only the turn player who needs to worry about this stuff, other people shouldn't even be moving the Choppers at all. And it will be common knowlage that the Secret Projects were moved.

	17-05-2004 23:54									#9
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Well for this current game the Hive has had to change turn players quite frequently. So it still can be a problem if we do not do it right.

	18-05-2004 00:29									#10
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* Jamski supports HongHu's position *

If I have to arse around with my SMAC install, I won't bother to play this ACDG.

Or I'll play it with the old alpha.txt out of sheer bloodymindedness and see what happens.

We agreed - changes in the scenario editor were ok, alpha.txt changes were not ok.

-Jam

	18-05-2004 01:19									#11
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

* Comrade Tassadar supports Jamskis position

	18-05-2004 02:23									#12
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I also agree with Jamski. The problem seems to be with the voiceless majority, who seem to want to change the alpha.txt yet take no part in discusions and the ilk (Hence the current massive sway towards change, yet probably 50:50 discussion). I refer the Morganites to my recent thread on polling in our private forum...

	18-05-2004 02:42									#13
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

As far as I know, if the game is started as a scenario then a separate folder in folder scenarios in root directory should be ok - inside it the modifiy alphax.txt would be used each time when game save is loaded. Without swapping files around. I play one such game in SMAC, there is heavily modified alphax.txt. Game save should have path to the scenario folder in it - that's why it works. Am I missing some bugs here which make it impossible in SMAX?

	18-05-2004 03:05									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Let me voice that "voiceless majority" then. It is clear that Projects like the CBA and the Empath Guild are powerful enough to affect the game to the point where everyone who hasn't got them is struggling to keep up and is essentially doomed. Would you rather this happen earlier, or later with the few requirements changes being decided upon now? Given more time, more factions will have more of a chance to be able to survive not getting the Empath Guild and the CBA.

Now if people are really serious about playing a Team game, why would you want to purposefully shorten it? The CBA and EG come so early that none of the later tech tree stuff is relevant - we may as well just decide to play until we get to N-space Compression, and as soon as we reach there stop to judge scores.

My point is that if we want a game that will last a while for most factions, and will hopefully not end in a bit of a clusterf***, we should change what is overpowering in the game. What's all this whining about having to change text files? Does that take up too much time?

I guess it comes down to whether you want to redress the balance of Choppers and these 2 SPs, or whether you believe that they're not significantly better than doing without them. I am, to most intents and purposes, a SMAC newbie and I am clear on the power of these advances. Am I being misled into believing they are that good, or are others blinding themselves into thinking that is not the case?

	18-05-2004 04:06									#15
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You're being misled. They're good, but not game breaking. And to get these super SPs, you have to put in the hard work for 60-70 turns first. That's the hard bit.

-Jam

	18-05-2004 04:56									#16
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I think disabling the Empath Guild And the CBA would be sufficient, not setting them further back.

	18-05-2004 06:38									#17
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Jamski - I couldn't disagree more.

having CMN'd around 100 games I can state with confidence that the Empath Guild is vastly overpowering, so much so that by agreement with the PBEM players in about half the games I have set up it's disabled from the beginning.

It's not so much that the CBA is a major gamebreaker, rendering the owner immune to Chop & Drop, (which tactics end roughly half of all PBEMs by 2250 or earlier) - it's more because of when it's available. It's MMI that is so overpowering, giving the first faction to get there:

Choppers;
Drop capability
The ability in 1 turn to build the Cloudbase Academy
The ability in 1 turn to build the Cyborg Factory
specialists become Thinkers

Taken together, if a militaristic faction gets there first, the turn after is just a production run of choppers and droppers (cf the Drones/Hive in the current game) - game over, essentially

Those PBEMs that go on to a transcendence win see the winner, usually a builder, being the player who got the CBA and thus immunity from drop units

This has given rise to a slew of PBEM specific tactics - such as:

> The game never reaches super tensile solids, so don't bother spacing bases anything more than 3 tiles apart

> navies really are useless (except probe foils and cruisers) 'coz they deflect precious minerals from building Aerospace Centers and producing AAA defenders and interceptors to deal with choppers and droppers

> it's a conquer 6 tech (out of 15 levels (if you count the Voice and Ascent as being on a different level), so much of the later game just gets ignored

> And the poor sods who lost out have to backtrack their research to Polysoft, Opticals and Adaptive Doctrine just to get AAA tracking capability

And a final thought - smac doesn't have it, so how revolutionary is it to remove it from smax?

G.

	18-05-2004 16:18									#18
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

True. Almost all my PBEMs are with SMAC, so the CBA issue never crops up.

The Empath Guild isn't so overpowered though. Its quite a deviation techwise if you want to get it first - and if it is so powerful it may even offer an alternative to the normal dull IA beeline.

CBA is pants though, one of the reasons I prefer SMAC.

-Jam

	18-05-2004 17:44									#19
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I support only modification of this two elements, no further modifying of game.

	18-05-2004 18:40									#20
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Put it in, I say.

At CentEmp, you need 5 techs to get there - same as IA.
While you're building the EG, you can tech to Eco Eng, -or- to Res6 lasers.

Once you get the EG, trade your tech in for IA.
The factions that have Eco Eng -and- IA get a decisive boost towards victory, while everyone else is still struggling to tech up to Eco Eng.

An alternative tactic to try:
If you know someone's getting the EG,
you can try something absurd like a tech dash to Cyberethics.
Get CentEco, Doc:Flex and Int:Int.
Before the EG goes up, trade for PlaNets.
Trade Cyberethics for a 'tech to fusion' treaty.

The EG guy gets PolySoft, you get AP.
Trade them.
The EG guy gets Optical comps, you get Adaptive Doctrine.
Get gifted Optical Comps.
The EG guy gets Superconductors,
you get AMA and Presentient Algorithms.
The EG guy researches Fusion, sends it to you.

It's a thought.

	23-05-2004 10:11									#21
	Suffering from ads?

I’d rather not make the ACDG more complicated than necessary. Personally, I agree that choppers and a few select SPs are unbalancing. I recommend simply stating that for this PBEM ACDG that they don’t exist and can’t be built. Consider this the ‘honor’ system, since it only requires the good will a minimal understanding of the people in the game. As long as the rules are clearly stated before the ACDG is begun then no one on the team now or in the future has cause for concern (or to whine and complain). Note that the ‘honor’ system does not require the alpha.txt to be modified, so separate installs of SMAC/X will not be necessary.

Projects: If the EG, CBA, or other SP are overpowered. I also don’t like cloning vats, but it falls rather late in the game and is not likely to be a problem

Units: Again, if choppers are a problem then here are two options that don’t require alpha.txt changes.
1) Say that for this PBEM they don’t exist and cannot be built. Period.
2) Assign them to some other tech further down the tech tree, so that even if you have MMI you can’t build choppers until (say) Biomachinery (or some other tech of choice)
3) There isn’t much you can do via this ‘honor’ method for restricting movement, although you could try to impose movement limitations.

Hydro

	23-05-2004 11:13									#22
	Support Apolyton

For choppers it will be too much if it is not allowed in the entire game. We will certainly lose a very interesting aspect. Assigning them to other tech without changing the alpha.txt file would mean lots of monitoring, which may not be a good idea either.

	25-05-2004 14:25									#23
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I have also seen representations to this effect elsewhere:

quote: Originally posted by mart7x5 As far as I know, if the game is started as a scenario then a separate folder in folder scenarios in root directory should be ok - inside it the modifiy alphax.txt would be used each time when game save is loaded. Without swapping files around. I play one such game in SMAC, there is heavily modified alphax.txt. Game save should have path to the scenario folder in it - that's why it works. Am I missing some bugs here which make it impossible in SMAX?

Then there is this:

quote: The second paragraph of text in Alphax.txt ; If you are building a scenario and need custom rules, copy this ; file into a subdirectory with your scenario file before editing. ; Files in the same subdirectory as a scenario file automatically ; take precedence over files in the main game directory. ;

Personally, I havn't been able to duplicate the desired effect: that stuff in the creator's version of Alphax.txt is somehow immortalized - as opposed to what seems to happen when I've tried it : that the version in the Sid M's AC directory of the player seems to override.

I am with Jam and the other luddites who think it ill advised to set up the game so that a special version of Alphax.txt is required to be active for each turn. While I may or may not agree in principle with any or all of the changes that have been discussed, I definitely disagree with anything that requiires a special Alphax.txt be used by all the turn players.

Now given that the scenario-folder claim is made right in the game, and from time to time reiterated by otherwise respectable players, it would seem that there could very well be some truth to it; perhaps there is a way to make it work. I'm wondering if there is some extra fine print that has not been spelled out yet - like perhaps the game file remembers the Complete Path to the creator's Scenario folder and one must duplicate that location in one's environment in order for the Alphax.txt file from the scenario to rule, or whatever.

It is easy enough to test this out to see whether or not the stuff you are interested in has been picked up in the game despite the standard being in your main AC directory (and I have -unsuccessfully- done so on several occasions when trying to get it to enshrine some non-standard stuff in scenarios I've made).

So far, I have only been able to get it to incorporate certain aspects of Alphax.txt (like the #Units list) so that users don't need to do anything special when they play it and the determining factor there seems to be that selected parts of the creator's Alphax.txt file when the game is created in the Scenario Editor seem to be bound into the game. Making a new subdirectory in the Scenario folder with the desired stuff in it has never been the determining factor in my tests. In other words, if I had a "Clown" unit defined in my Alphax.txt file when making the scenario, that Clown would be in the game, no matter what the Alphax.txt file currently in the AC directory said.

Another factor seems to be that not everything from the .txt files sems eligible to be bound into the game, for example I haven't been able to enable those offshore sensors (bouys or lighthouses or whatever you want to call them) in a way that would override an Alphax.txt that didn't otherwise have it enabled.

I would really like to know exactly what one needs to do to get this scenario folder thing to work as advertised - I'd also be quite happy even to see an authoritative list of what can and cannot be bound into the game file independent of the users environment.

	25-05-2004 14:36									#24
	Increase Your PM Length

In essence we are already using a modified version of the alphax.txt. Googlie's Probe Cruiser, Submersible and XX missiles are included, and won't apply if the turnplayer doesn't paste it in the root folder. Don't tell me that every newbie hitting the DG automaticly takes these extra units for granted without question.

So, when the turnplayer already has to use a modified file, what's wrong with doing some agreed upon extra's?

quote: Originally posted by johndmuller I would really like to know exactly what one needs to do to get this scenario folder thing to work as advertised - I'd also be quite happy even to see an authoritative list of what can and cannot be bound into the game file independent of the users environment.

Johnmuller, have you tried putting all your scenario .txt and .pcx files in the root folder before you started to assemble your scenario in the editor? AFAIK that should do the trick. I know it's quite some extra work (copying all base unmodified files in a separate folder first, and repasting every time you play a common game).

	25-05-2004 16:37									#25
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: In essence we are already using a modified version of the alphax.txt. Googlie's Probe Cruiser, Submersible and XX missiles are included, and won't apply if the turnplayer doesn't paste it in the root folder.

Whoops I never did that.

-Jam

	25-05-2004 17:48									#26
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Some people really cannot follow anything

	25-05-2004 18:31									#27
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I think we should use a modified Alphax that all turn players will need to use. Their are going to be only a hand full of turn players in the whole game and I trust that all of them are going to be competent and capable of using these modified Alphax's

The changes to SP can be done by the honor system as secret projects are Ironicaly the least secret thing in the game.

Chopper movment needs to be in the Alphax though as its going to be very hard to remember that every single time a chopper needs moving. Better to put it in the alpha I think.

	25-05-2004 18:59									#28
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

During the course of the Hive game there was.

Rokossovky
Voltaire
Mead
Dacole
Kody
HongHu
Rubin
Jamski
Enigma

These are people that actually played the turns, not just opened it up to look. That's hardly a handful.

Edit:
Idea, if people agree to the alphax.txt changing why not provide a .bat script that copies the nessacary file, runs the game, and replaces the old file afterwards.

Last edited by Kody on 25-05-2004 at 19:35

	25-05-2004 20:16									#29
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quote: Originally posted by johndmuller I'm wondering if there is some extra fine print that has not been spelled out yet - like perhaps the game file remembers the Complete Path to the creator's Scenario folder and one must duplicate that location in one's environment in order for the Alphax.txt file from the scenario to rule, or whatever.

That could indeed have something to do with it. When opening the MarsSurvivors.SC file in Wordpad a while back, I noticed the complete directory to which the scenario was saved initially could be seen uncoded. IIRC similar with save files of that scenario.

quote: Originally posted by GeoModder In essence we are already using a modified version of the alphax.txt. Googlie's Probe Cruiser, Submersible and XX missiles are included, and won't apply if the turnplayer doesn't paste it in the root folder.

AFAIK #UNITS is in fact the only part of alphax.txt stored in the save file, so those extra units should appear, with or without the modified alphax.txt in the basic SMAC folder.

quote: Johnmuller, have you tried putting all your scenario .txt and .pcx files in the root folder before you started to assemble your scenario in the editor? AFAIK that should do the trick. I know it's quite some extra work (copying all base unmodified files in a separate folder first, and repasting every time you play a common game).

IIRC that's not necessary. To incorporate alphax.txt changes into the scenario, at the time of the scenario saving, the edited alphax.txt needs to be in the same folder as the one you will save the scenario file into. So you can't just make and save a scenario in some folder and afterwards put an edited alphax.txt into that folder.
IIRC I at least noticed this when testing out how to reduce chopper movement points in a scenario a week back or so. But in the meanwhile I could already have confused or forgotten things so to be sure, better also check it out for yourself.

quote: Originally posted by Kody During the course of the Hive game there was.

That's only because the Hive is pure chaos. j/k
Anyway, IIRC in the Consciousness Drogue, me, GeoModder, obstructor and also Corellion for one year have played turns.

quote: Idea, if people agree to the alphax.txt changing why not provide a .bat script that copies the nessacary file, runs the game, and replaces the old file afterwards.

Because I don't know how to do that. Are you volunteering though?

	25-05-2004 20:37									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Looks like I will not be playing the turns for any part of the next coming game. It may actually finally cure my addiction. Which is good.