02-07-2004 01:23									#1
	Why does nerve gas cause ecological damage? Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

You are damage humans nervous systems, not Planet.

To tell you the truth, I had forgotten they caused ecological damage. Well when I performed 2900 years worth of sanctions of nerve gassing, I was in for a nasty surprise. I knew there was another drawback, I just couldn't remember (yes I could check the in game help, but I get lazy). Well I was anally raped by aliens after that. What can I say. But at least I took out the hive who had attack 4 weapons and plasma steel defense, and I only had lasers . but I lost the game due to losing all my bases to aliens. (except the last which was taken by the believers who picked on my last base). but it's kind of fun losing sometimes. Well maybe not. It's something I never allow happen usually. But just for the hell of it, I continued playing.

well I was going to give you all a screenshot, but all the land comes up black in my picture viewer/program. you can only see the unit shields, and city names. oh well.

I suppose they did this for game balance. Nerve gas would be too tempting to use otherwise. As sanctions aren't that big a deal. I could deal with 2900 years of sanctions . well actually when I play peaceful factions, sanctions were the sole reason I did not use never gas.

	02-07-2004 06:18									#2
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Heh i remember doing about the same thing to beat off a ravenous Miriam, then got raped by planet.

The reason is that Planet is empathic and feels the pain of the nervegas victims, do it enough and she gets unhappy and decides to punish you. But if you repeal the UN Charter, Planet beings to understand that humans enjoy killing each other and inflicting pain, and thus decides to not punish the gasser.

	02-07-2004 06:19									#3
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yeah I tried to repeal the charter. Wasn't going to happen

	02-07-2004 06:28									#4
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You have to keep SMAC open in the background while you paste the picture in the graphics program.

	02-07-2004 13:33									#5
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Wrong thread, Skanky.
...
The way I figure it, Nervegas must be some high-grade greenhouse gas. So the sea level rises and planet gets angry about the sea level rising.

	02-07-2004 14:18									#6
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In response to

quote: well I was going to give you all a screenshot, but all the land comes up black in my picture viewer/program. you can only see the unit shields, and city names. oh well.

	02-07-2004 14:45									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Enigma_Nova Wrong thread, Skanky. ... The way I figure it, Nervegas must be some high-grade greenhouse gas. So the sea level rises and planet gets angry about the sea level rising.

Mmm no Planet can actually regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gasses and thus prevent - or cause - sea level rises. When the sea levels rise, it's planet trying to drown the humans. Kind of like an autoimmune response.
Evidence can be found in the ways ED control works. You don't reduce emissions, you pacify planetmind.

	02-07-2004 17:36									#8
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Leads me to wonder why Planet gives a crap about the humans.
Is there any rational explaination?

	02-07-2004 18:31									#9
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I don't have much experience with sea level raises and nerve gassing, so I'm wondering: how exactly does nerve gassing cause sea level raises?

Does it reduce your # of clean minerals, meaning you'll get more ecological damage and thus through the normal way get sea level raises due to too many fungal pops?

Or will you suddenly get a sea level raise even if you don't get any fungal pops at all?

Or is the sea level raise still dependent on getting a fungal pop, but is the # of fungal pops required to cause a sea level reduced to eg one?

The latter seems to correspond with an experience I had. I had been gassing the aliens for a while, and then one turn suddenly I get a sea level raise after only one fungal pop, though I hadn't suffered any other fungal pop in fifteen years or so. However I'm not sure the gassing was the cause, so I'm asking to know sure.

A last question, does gassing aliens also cause sea level raises after a while, or only gassing humans while the UN Charter is in effect?

	02-07-2004 18:43									#10
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I think each normal atrocity decreases your clean mins limit by one, increasing the likelihood of ecodamage, which causes global warming. Gassing the aliens is not an atrocity and does not cause this. Atrocities while the UN Charter is repealed also do not cause this. I don't know if sunspots would have this effect.

	02-07-2004 19:14									#11
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that's why it makes no sense. Why is it okay to gas in some circumstances and not in others. Like Planet knows the difference.

stupid planet

	02-07-2004 19:54									#12
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I'll bet planet kicked your ass a couple of times.

	02-07-2004 20:12									#13
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yes it did. That's what I was describing in my opening post. I was raped pretty bad. I was left with only one city.

	02-07-2004 20:59									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Dissident that's why it makes no sense. Why is it okay to gas in some circumstances and not in others. Like Planet knows the difference. stupid planet

Two words: game balance.

Not that you didn't really know. Just reminding you that we can make up all the silly little role-playing explainations we want, but when our explainations break down in the face of scrutiny, it is because the real answer is game balance.

Or maybe Planet hate aliens as much as humans do.

	02-07-2004 21:53									#15
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Planet can't have malicious thoughts against the CTs! They have +1 Planet!

	03-07-2004 00:44									#16
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Actually, the fact that Atrocities reduce your free mineral cap I'm fine with, it's the fact that repealing the charter makes planet not care that really stymies me. Does Planetmind get a seat on the council or something?

	03-07-2004 01:25									#17
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It doesn't make sense. If you launch like 20 Planet Busters, the sea levels rise. Right? So then why is it called a nuclear winter?

	03-07-2004 01:32									#18
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Planet Busters aren't nukes. What nuke takes out an 800 km radius, lowering it into the sea?

	03-07-2004 05:12									#19
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Planet has an autoimmune response against "The Planet Death Disease" - Planetmind isn't in full control of this response, but if Planetmind is relatively happy it wont happen. Planetmind is empathic and can feel the pain of humans, prehaps it learns about council through conversations with humans. Prehaps the colonists are just less angry when gassed when the Charter is repeal, like some of them will be thinking "Well we bought this on ourselves" and planetmind might pick that up.

Hard to say why planet doesn't care if you gas aliens, planet probably just doesn't like them. After all, from Planets perspective both the Ursupers and Caretakers have less than noble intentions. (see the humans will help Planet through the flowering, thats AtT, the Caretakers won't. The Ursupers just want to control Planet and become Gods)

	03-07-2004 06:14									#20
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But the planet also doesn't care when the Aliens gas anyone (I presume).

	03-07-2004 08:25									#21
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In all truth, it is to emphasize the consequences of nerve gas. It is not realistic that it causes eco damgage only when nerve gassing is illegal and atrocious. The Planetmind, in real life wouldn't know, or care why the nerve-gas is there or why it is being used or under what conditions it is being used. The nerve gas just simply causes eco-damage, it doesn't make the planet mad or go crazy, it justs simply harms it, like pollution and PBs, unleashing disturbed mindworms. And what I really don't get, is why pollution ATTRACTS fungus and causes fungus pops. I mean, obviously Firaxis isn't going to make eco-damage make fungus go away, but it just doesn't make sense...

	03-07-2004 08:43									#22
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Pollution doesn't attract fungus, like fungus was a plant or some other non sentient. Pollution enrages planet, who goes after the source. An equivalent would be if all the seahorses in the coral reef got together and formed a volvox-like mega sphere that went and ate ships that were dumping crud into the sea.

I dont' know why, but this thread is really cracking me up

-S

	03-07-2004 09:43									#23
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Planet is sentient and so large and complex and tied in with every living thing on it's surface that it's intentions and reasons are sometimes impossible to entirely fathom

	03-07-2004 13:27									#24
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As of right now, I'm beleiving the 'game balance' theory. :/
No way planet could have all these exceptions in its logical structure. You make it sound like an earth government.

	03-07-2004 17:08									#25
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Pfft game balance is inconsistent and often nonexisitent - rather difficult to believe in.

As for the exact ecodamage effects of nervegas, they were never quite pinned down. I can say it's nothing trivial, like every gas incident giving -1 clean minerals. I suspect how it works, is after so many gas attacks (that may be a variable amount) your faction gets a "major atrocity" worth of clean mineral reduction. It's also possible you can gas unpenalized for a while (to somewhere around 1000 turns of sanctions) then start wracking up clean mineral reductions with each attack. There is definitely some sort of random factor, or an "unknown" factor, like how a >pop< triggers the clean mineral increase ability for treefarms & friends.

	03-07-2004 17:12									#26
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If you gas 30 things you should have no clean minerals, right?
I suppose it has to become a major thing, but I don't see what separates 1 gassing from 100...

	03-07-2004 18:44									#27
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Another thing: Does gassing lower your clean minerals, and precipitate a sealevel rise during sunspots, or isn't it 'spotted' by Planetmind then? Reason for asking is that in the last ACDG the CyCon continuisly nervestapled all it's bases, extensively used Xgas Choppers and even gassed and obliterated a few bases to death during sunspot activity. But nothing happened whatsoever in the area of fungal pops and sealevel rises.

	03-07-2004 19:31									#28
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That question is best answered with
"Do you get Sanctions while Sunspots are active?"
If not, then it isn't processed in the game mechanics.

	03-07-2004 20:25									#29
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Alpha Centauri is a quirky game, and many things have effects you wouldn't expect. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if atrocities that don't cause sanctions still lower your clean minerals. Just think of the airdrop bug, or the demon boil bug, to see what I mean by "quirky".

	03-07-2004 22:51									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Blake Pfft game balance is inconsistent and often nonexisitent - rather difficult to believe in.

Let's go ask Firaxis. I think there's a good case either way. My vote is for game balance, or rather, for play balance to make penalties for choosing the 'easy road'. There is every reason to do this.

My question is, did the penalties for Nerve Gas come before the clean-mineral penalties? It seems to me that the Gas was added later, probably when someone decided that mere sanctions were not enough. It seems to tap into the ecodamage and global warming system, rather than define it.

Terraforming --> Global warming: Game philosophy rather than balance.

Heavy Minerals Production --> Fungus attacks: Game balance in nature, tacked onto the story.

Gas --> Mad Planet: Definately game balance. Tacked onto the previous two.

Here's my long argument about the above. It's really two things. First, that terraforming/mineral 'Pop!'s and ecodamage were not expected until the mid-game by the designers, and then in small amounts. Secondly, that the 'Green' strategy is much more inconsistent than the play-balancing aspects of ecodamage. These things lead me to suspect that mineral based ecodamage is really a game balancing thing in origin, to try to distract the player who is pulling ahead.

About minerals in the mid-game. It's pretty clear that none of the playtesters used a crawler-heavy strategy. Best evidence is that they are really unbalancing. Secondly, that crawlers are so easy to get to in tech. Third, that they are so cheap (free). Fourth, the AI doesn't use them very much (see below).

Imagine the playtesters.....In the mid-game, one or two players are pulling ahead, often because they were lucky with getting SP's because they had a lot of minerals. Or perhaps they just discovered mineral-duplicating facilities and have the luxury of building them. So now the game throws some distractions at the leaders. Hey, Meteor!. Hey, Planetblight!. Hey, ecodamage at your military mecca! There are many things that seem to point to 'Attack the leading faction' in Smac. Perhaps ecodamage is a small part of that, or was supposed to be.

Crawlers. Without crawlers, when is a faction likely to get a mineral pop? Often, looking at the AI, it's when they build their first mineral producing facility, or in a huge city in the jungle. Sometimes there is ecodamage in an AI city running FM and trying to go to war (painful to watch). The point is, the first 'Pop!' is in the mid-game when mineral-multiplying facilities, satellites, and base-sizes become a factor.

The AI and crawlers: I know what you're thinking: 'The AI stinks at so many things, it's no surprise they don't know how to use crawlers' Yeah, but I think the AI could do it. Just look at how their formers work. They are not that smart, but they get things done nonetheless. The AI knows how to go after special resources and landmarks. There is no reason why it couldn't build a mineral park or energy park. But it doesn't. If the game designers really knew how exploited the crawler would be, they definately would have done something about it. I think it's possible they might have tried to get the AI to use them, which would have required them to rethink ecodamage.

Ecodamage as storyline or game atmosphere/philosophy. Sure, it does add to these things, but it's wildly inconsistent. I was just writing about this in the ACDG gaian pages.
Terraforming is bad: Planet doesn't like it, leads to mad planet.
Terraforming is good: Forests, The Weather Paradigm, the XE dome allowing faster fungal removal?
Trees are good for planet: Tree Farms and Hybrids reducing damage?
Trees are bad for planet: Grow over fungus, which attacks them with pops, rather than just attacking boreholes, etc..
And on and on. It's especially noticible if you play a 'Green' faction and try to think about what they would do, in character, and how planet would react.

Enough rambling.

-Smack

Edit: Forgot to tie this back in with Nerve Gas....

quote: Originally posted by Chaos Theory Alpha Centauri is a quirky game, and many things have effects you wouldn't expect. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if atrocities that don't cause sanctions still lower your clean minerals. Just think of the airdrop bug, or the demon boil bug, to see what I mean by "quirky".

There are really two kinds of quirky in my opinion. One are those mechanical oddities, like you mention, and then there are the Storyline oddities, like 'Green' philosophy in Smac, which is terribly oversimplified and inconsistent. I think both come from the game not being as thoroughly tested as it could have been. As to ecodamage and nerve gas and 'Green', I think these things were tacked on piecemeal as the game was rebalanced: 'Hey Brian, don't you think we should punish the Nerve Gas users?' 'Yeah, make it make planet angry too...', with little overarching story consistency in mind.

Nerve Gas has little to do with planet. I'm in that camp.

-S