24-06-2004 07:00									#1
	SMAX Bugfix Increase the size of your Attachments

Ages ago, some guy called Switek did all these bugfixes for Total Annihilation, which fixed all these little stupid things.

I'm wondering if something similar would be possible for SMA(C/X)?

Suggestions:
Add predesigned rover formers to help the AI

Change the default probe team (the one prototyped with plan. nets) to infantry chassis, and predesign a rover probe team that requires plan. nets and doctrine: mob.

Probe rollover bug fix: Set the angels to +1 SEProbe instead of +2? What about fundy?

Progenitors: Need : Balancing? Alien Faction : Flag : Much depends on it. Battle Ogre : Directed Research : Survey : Energy Grid.

Beef Cha Dawn?

Move this to the AC-Creation forum?

Ideas people?

I envisage an Apolyton Standard Bugfix Pack.

	24-06-2004 07:17									#2
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I have no idea how to do it, but I support these bugs being fixed. Obviously.

	24-06-2004 07:24									#3
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I think some of it is in the files like angels.txt and some would be alpha/alphax.exe

	24-06-2004 07:26									#4
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quote: Add predesigned rover formers to help the AI Change the default probe team (the one prototyped with plan. nets) to infantry chassis, and predesign a rover probe team that requires plan. nets and doctrine: mob.

Requiring PN and Mobility isn't possible. However, the other two ideas are possible to implement.

Note that rover formers probably wouldn't help the AI that much. They wouldn't know how to use it properly, and the increased cost would slow the AI down more I think.

quote: Probe rollover bug fix: Set the angels to +1 SEProbe instead of +2? What about fundy?

Some players think it's a significant disadavantage to get their probe reduced by 1. Instead this bug needs to be fixed in the source code.

quote: Progenitors: Need : Balancing? Alien Faction : Flag : Much depends on it. Battle Ogre : Directed Research : Survey : Energy Grid.

No clue what you're talking about. Sentences would help.

quote: Beef Cha Dawn?

It'll take a long time to arguing on how Cha Dawn could be or shouldn't be fixed.


The bugs that really need to be fixed are in the source code, if source code for SMAX was available. Then someone could actually write a real patch for the game. Alpha centauri has a really long buglist.

	24-06-2004 07:44									#5
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Still, we should do what we can.
What I'm saying is that the Progenitors have a flag "Alien Faction"that does the following:
- Starts their game with a Battle Ogre Mk1 and extra colony Pod
- Gives them Progenitor Psych and Field Modulation
- Changes their graphics
- Disables Commerce & enables City Energy Grid
- Sets conquered bases to size 1 and spawns C-Pods for the defeated faction (The reverse is also true).
- Gives them unity survey, even if it's disabled
- Gives them directed research, even if it's disabled

But some progenitor things that could be changed:
The free rec.tanks at each base O.O
The Combat bonuses (Example: Usurpers get 3 levels of morale bonus at the moment: +1 from their natural SE bonus and +2 from their "Resonance sensitivity")
Caretakers on top of what they can currently do, can also capture mindworms.

	24-06-2004 08:29									#6
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I hate to double post, but here goes:

I meant alpha(x).txt not .exe since we don't have the source.

For speeder probe teams, you could auto-design them at cyberethics since the requires D:mob and Plan Nets (Unless you trade for Cyberethics). Maybe it's just better to leave it at autodesigning an infantry team at Plan Nets and assume that anyone who uses the pack will understand how the unit workshop works.

If the above idea were to be used, also add foil probe teams on autodesign. Apparently it helps the AI (thanks to Straybrow), but make the requisite tech Doctrine: Initiative, since that requires IA (plan nets) and D: Flex. As for speeder formers, I can't find a reasonable early game tech that depends on both (tech charts scramble my brain). Rover formers wouldn't be that useful anyway, I suppose.

Another thing that the Alien Faction flag does is block communication until the Aliens get social psych or the humans get progenitor psych.

	24-06-2004 08:42									#7
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Actually, the AI does use rover formers, but only in certain conditions. I just made a post about this somewhere else. Basically, Domai had two rover formers make a road to my small empire to hurry war parties against his enemies, which apparently I was being a buffer zone. So, I accepted a pact and gave hime "right of passage" so that he would go on to kill Aki-Zeta...

As for infantry probe teams, I honestly don't like the idea. The nice thing about rover probes is that they can have a one square gap between them and their target, so that an infantry garrison can't get them...

	24-06-2004 09:02									#8
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Yeah, I read that thread, and it also mentioned the probefoils.
The purpose of infantry probes is to prevent them being revese engineered, but you can still make them with D: Mobility.

Poking around alphax.txt, it seems that the settings for binary armours are still in the game (i.e. the projectile/energy/missile settings vary for weapons and the armour types vary). Has this been disabled by hardcoding? I can't find combat % for different armour types in alphax.txt, but I think it changes the game too much anyway

Also, it appears that there were once techs to disable mainenance costs for facilities (e.g. Network nodes were planned to be free after self aware machines), but that feature got canned too.

	24-06-2004 09:15									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Kody No clue what you're talking about. Sentences would help.

The progenitors need balancing.
The FLAGS in alpha.txt are important.
What about the Battle ogre, energy grid, directed research and unity survey?

Seriously, you can't speak Progenitor?
Speech: Progenitor: To remember: Easy.
Therefore
Kody: N00B
Enigma: to PWND1: Kody

	24-06-2004 09:26									#10
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At least someone understood what I said. But you did have the advantage of my later posts. Another Progenitor trait that I forgot to mention is:

- Cannot pact with humans
- Cannot treaty with other aliens
- Caretakers cannot transcend.

I'm wondering if something like CSPL for CivII: ToT is possible, to get around the source code thing.

	24-06-2004 10:22									#11
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quote: Still, we should do what we can. What I'm saying is that the Progenitors have a flag "Alien Faction"that does the following: - Starts their game with a Battle Ogre Mk1 and extra colony Pod - Gives them Progenitor Psych and Field Modulation - Changes their graphics - Disables Commerce & enables City Energy Grid - Sets conquered bases to size 1 and spawns C-Pods for the defeated faction (The reverse is also true). - Gives them unity survey, even if it's disabled - Gives them directed research, even if it's disabled

Some of these just modify the rules, if you play as aliens everyone can direct research, if not aliens can't direct research either, the same may be true of unity survey

quote: At least someone understood what I said. But you did have the advantage of my later posts. Another Progenitor trait that I forgot to mention is: - Cannot pact with humans

I've had pacts of servitude as aliens from all humans and as humans from both aliens

quote: - Caretakers cannot transcend.

through a bug caretakers can transend as dicussed in my thread 'Impossible Victory Achived'.

	24-06-2004 16:45									#12
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Qwerty88, the transcending caretakers was what I meant as per your thread.

I meant pacts of brotherhood, not servitude.

How does the alien faction stuff work in multiplayer, I wonder?

... Tests ...

It seems that the surver and blind research are handled as per the game settings. Phew. Imagine the overpoweredness of directed research when everyone else was researching blind!

Since the effects of facilities is not in any text files, I expect it would be in terranx.exe? My thought is to change the covert ops centre to +1 PROBE so then only a Fundy Miriam would probe rollover by building them. Of course, a Fundy Roze will probe rollover anyway, with this fix or not.

	24-06-2004 17:06									#13
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Double post again... Sorry

Another thing would be to fix errors in the datalinks, most notably the eco damage. I sent an email to the guy who made the CSPL, but I haven't heard back yet.

	24-06-2004 18:23									#14
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quote: Originally posted by #endgame Poking around alphax.txt, it seems that the settings for binary armours are still in the game (i.e. the projectile/energy/missile settings vary for weapons and the armour types vary). Has this been disabled by hardcoding? I can't find combat % for different armour types in alphax.txt, but I think it changes the game too much anyway

If you want to learn how to edit and fix some of the bugs in the alpha(x).txt file look here . FYI.


D

	24-06-2004 18:46									#15
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Darsnan, that's really nifty!

Say, what do people think about the following bugfixes: From the alphax thing Darsnan posted:

Bug-fix: The Antigrav Struts ability is not applicable to air units by default, even though both the manual and help texts say so. Looking at the flags of this ability it becomes clear that the Antigrav Struts ability is disabled for air units. To enable the ability for air units the tenth binary flag has to be set to 1:
Antigrav Struts, 1, Gravity, Grav, 000000111101, +1 movement rate (or +Reactor*2 for Air)



Bug-fix: The Amphibious Pods ability is not applicable to Probe Teams, although the game sometimes suggests that you apply this ability to your Probe Teams. To fix this change the seventh binary flag in Amphibious Pods special ability to 1, which allows the ability to be applied to non-combat units. This possibly affects other units as well, but I see no problems with that, since this actually makes sense (amphibious ground transports etc.):
Amphibious Pods, 1, DocInit, Amphibious,000000101001, Attacks from ship

Also, any datalinks errors found, please send to:

SpamWeldingMaskMan AT hotmail DOT comSpam

Any links for the research and ecodamage formulae would be handy too.

	24-06-2004 19:39									#16
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I wouldn't call some of your suggestions like beefing up AIs "bugfix".

	24-06-2004 20:09									#17
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quote: Originally posted by #endgame Darsnan, that's really nifty!

Rubin did most of the work. All I did was supply the wordage.
And just remember that the only part of the alpha(x).txt file that gets imprinted onto a game is the #UNITS Section. This was my major mistake when I first started experimenting with the alpha(x).txt file, as I thought the whole thing was imprinted onto a game file at the start (which it is not) and carried forward from there, and so I am posting here to save you from committing the same error.

quote: Also, any datalinks errors found, please send to: SpamWeldingMaskMan AT hotmail DOT comSpam

I think Rubin did some work in this area, as well. You might want to PM him about this. FYI.

D

	24-06-2004 20:09									#18
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Perhaps other factions, such as the Cyborgs, need to be more balanced as well. Perhaps they should get -2 growth instead of just -1. As for the aliens, take off the free recycling tanks and energy grid crap, and give the Usurpers -2 planet and Caretakers -1 growth or something...

	25-06-2004 09:32									#19
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The energy grid cannot be removed, as it is part of the 'alien faction' flag. I'd like to see the progenitors playable in MP without running away with the game, and I think the free Rectanks are way too powerful.

Darsnan, can you elaborate on what you mean by 'not carried forward'?

HongHu, you speak truth there, but the benefit of autodesigned foil probes is still a good idea, methinks.

Probe rollover occurs under the following conditions:
- Fundy anyone builds covert ops centre (except zak)
- though control anyone builds covert ops centre (except zak)
- fundy thought control zak builds covert ops centre
- anyone but zak runs fundy and thought control

This means that there is no way to properly fix the bug under all circumstances (except change fundy and thought control to +1 probe, and then roze could still pull it off, but that's a bit drastic). I think that the best thing to do would be try to make covert ops centre +1 PROBE.

	25-06-2004 10:18									#20
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quote: Originally posted by #endgame Darsnan, can you elaborate on what you mean by 'not carried forward'?

If you start, and save a game, or if you create a scenario and then save it, and send either to a second player, only the #UNITS portion of your alphax.txt gets embedded in the save file.

(ie, changes to factions in your faction files, or changes in your alphax.txt to technologies, facilities, etc don't "carry forward" to the next players set-up)

If you want your edited alphax.txt to apply to the other player(s) then you need to save the game you've created as a scenario in a separate scenario file, and copy your alphax.txt there. Then when the next player opens the scenario, the game first looks for the alphax.txt file in the scenario folder before defaulting to your alphax.txt file in the general directory

G.

	25-06-2004 10:20									#21
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Ah, thanks G.

	25-06-2004 12:31									#22
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#endgame: You may want to have a look at this thread: http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3474

It lists some changes, corrections and additions to a customized in-game help file. Of course, comments are welcome.

	26-06-2004 07:35									#23
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Rubin, that's great stuff. Mind if I use it?

Also, regarding the probe rollover bug:
Only the Angels will rollover involuntarily (sp?) so I think it's best to document it and fix the Angels in some way. What about giving them +0 PROBE and free Covert ops Centre in each base at start of game? Then they will have +2 PROBE (but only in cities - does subverting units use the faction's SE PROBE rating, or the home bases PROBE rating? I don't know.) The Angels will get their +2 PROBE and their boosted probe teams, but not rollover.

	26-06-2004 18:27									#24
	Remove this text

The problem with that is that the Angels are supposed to have bases immune to subversion come PSA.

	27-06-2004 09:28									#25
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Any other suggestions then?

There's the +1 PROBE at start, free Covert ops centres with PSA or free Covert ops at start.

There isn't any way to get +1 probe with PSA, I think.

	27-06-2004 17:55									#26
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You can also throw in ROBUST, PROBE to partially offset lowering their probe rating from +2 to +1. That way, if they run Knowledge, their probe rating will be 0, just like it should be (+2 in bases after PSA, of course).

	27-06-2004 20:21									#27
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Bugfixes. Endgame, a bug is something that should work as stated but instead breaks a bunch of other things. Some of what you are talking about are bugs, while some are improvements. Some of the bug-fixes discussed don't actually solve the problem, but change game mechanics to avoid the problem, such as probe ability roll-over.

In my opinion it's important to distinguish between these categories of improvement and release fixes/improvements according to these boundaries. Granted, the first category is really small:

1. Fixed Bugs
   
2. Bug Workarounds
   
3. Unanimous game improvements
   
4. Reccomended Improvements
   
5. Radical Improvements
   

	27-06-2004 20:58									#28
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quote: Originally posted by #endgame - fundy thought control zak builds covert ops centre

Zak's SE aversion is what?
* Enigma_Nova slaps #endgame

	27-06-2004 21:14									#29
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Zak can't do fundy, and he certainly isn't going to do though control...

	28-06-2004 15:49									#30
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#endgame : Pwnd

Fine, so it's impossible for Zak to probe rollover.

I received replies from the writer of CSPL, and I think I could give a memory trainer a go for the Angels (+2 Probe, +1 if PSA researched). Does anyone know where I can find descriptions of the save file format?