31-05-2005 14:05									#61
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: I'm not so sure increasing/decreasing a base population with a few hundred max. with every single unit built/disbanded is much of an improvement.

Yeah:
1.It would add much micromanagement.
2.In fact it would be even more unrealistic than the current representation, because you'll need less food to feed base. Take it as it is in RL - all the military people have some city where their official adress is (at least in Latvia). They can be very far from it, but still in some way tied to it.

	31-05-2005 14:24									#62
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pretty much the same in the U.S. Though the monetary support doesn't come from the individual city, but from national goverment.

This is why I would prefer they go to a civ3 system of national taxes funding the military as a whole. Instead of individual cities supporting the armies like in civ2. It's one downfall of smac if you ask me, and one of the few things civ3 does right.

	31-05-2005 15:26									#63
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(I've already said that, global support with mineral costs first appearing at the city with most minerals and moving downwards. P-drones appear like B-drones)

	31-05-2005 15:39									#64
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quote: global support with mineral costs first appearing at the city with most minerals and moving downwards.

And I object that.

Unless you come up with a brilliant idea how it should look like.

Say I have one 20 mineral city and 3 cities of each 4, 3, and 2 minerals.

What happens when I build units number:
a)1
b)4
c)5
d)8
e)9
f)12
g)20
h)21

?

I'd like to hear your opinion how each case would look like in the game. Just name which of my 4 cities (A = 20min, B = 4min, C = 3min, D = 2min) will support each of the units given in cases above.

	31-05-2005 16:27									#65
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If mineral accumulations were floating-point values, each unit needing support could be distributed across all cities, proportional to each city's mineral production. Thus, for each mineral's worth of unit supported and with 29 total minerals, each city would lose 1/29 of its mineral production.

	31-05-2005 16:45									#66
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So, imagine a situation you build something and rush it so that only X minerals remain (where X = current mineral production at the base).

At the end of turn your PACTmate AI turns his unit over to you.

Are you happy?
And imagine it was an SP which you just had researched and rushed to make before the others (and you already know that a player after you in turn order will attempt to build it the same turn as well).

And that is only one example.

	31-05-2005 16:59									#67
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What if an AI attacks your crawlers what if what if

What if we allow some bases to be flagged as "Doesn't pay global upkeep"?

	31-05-2005 17:28									#68
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quote: what if what if

You see Senethro, developers of both SMACX and Civ4 have gone through hundreds of those "ifs".

You now are trying to skip all the thinking and just take a quick idea into existance.

My point is:
1.It is unclear how it should work, and you yourself can't even think up how.
2.If id was clear it would be very hard to implement and is a possible subject of exploits and bugs/holes.

	31-05-2005 17:28									#69
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Receiving gifts of units and suffering to support them is already a problem which needs to be fixed, but not in an exploitable way.

	31-05-2005 17:39									#70
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Okay, I see I fail to explain my point.

Also I don't see anyone telling me how exactly this global support thing should work.

Maybe invent global mineral pool as well then?

To make global support work with nonglobal resource pool is pretty hard and illogical.

	31-05-2005 17:51									#71
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Is it really worth getting into specifics? Its just a random idea because some of us like Civ3s global support.

Civ3 does pay its support costs from a global resource: money. Unless SMAC were to change support to energy then there would have to be some very complicated micromanagement rules for determining who pays for unit support. e.g. Bases can be flagged to never pay, bases below a player determined mineral production are passed over until no other possibility exists.

It would get complicated and I don't have an answer for you.

	31-05-2005 17:54									#72
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Here is exactly how global support could work:
Sum up how many minerals need to be spent to support units (dependent on unit count, city count, SE settings, and perhaps population).
Sum up how many minerals are being produced at all cities.
Divide the first sum by the second. Call this the support ratio.
At each city, multiply its mineral output by the support ratio, and subtract that many minerals as its contribution to supporting units.

Maybe minerals should be pooled to some extent, at least under some governments. In SMAC, there are already two ways to partially effect this: hurrying and crawlers. A less micro-managed way of doing this is worth examining.

	31-05-2005 19:05									#73
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quote: A less micro-managed way of doing this is worth examining.

Exactly.

	31-05-2005 20:01									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger This is an old idea, but a good idea nevertheless. Completely overhaul the population model. Right now a surplus of nutrients is a sufficient condition, which is the old, old Civ model. This needs to be changed. Population growth should also be a function of quality of life, which translates roughly to base facilies such as Children's Creche, Rec Commons, etc.

It already does. If your SE Growth is high your food box is smaller and you grow faster (including BOOM). SE Growth is negative your food box is huge and you grow slower.

The beauty of the system is the simplicity. Food is constant, growth is not.

quote: Another thing is to make the increments smaller. It doesn't make sense that suddenly 10,000 persons materialise into the base out of thin air. Ideally the increases should be gradual and continual. This have nice effects such as making units are going to reduce the number of persons in the base, while disbanding units inside the base increases the population number.

The population is just a guide. What changed incrementally is resource gathering and allocation. This can happen in real life. A city grows and the infrastructure becomes strained. Then the city widens a major thoroughfare, extends water and sewer mains out into a new area of development, etc.

Everything is strained until the expansion is finished, then suddenly the pressure is relieved and the city reaps the benefit of the new infrastructure.

That's how I think about the discrete growth model.

	31-05-2005 20:22									#75
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Perhaps all costs and production are multiplied by ten...

Instead of costing 40 minerals, a rec tanks costs 400...on the other hand, a borehole that produces 6 minerals now produces 60...

This would help unit support costs...instead of all units costing one mineral (or 10, in this case), particularly large units (and ones that cost a lot) could cost more support...

Cruisers would cost more than foils, and hovertanks would cost more than speeders...so a cruiser might cost 20 minerals (= to 2 minerals), a hovertank 15 (= to 1.5 minerals), and a speeder and foil would still cost the original 10...

The same principal could be done to nutrients...instead of having 3 citizens, you would have 3000 citizens, gaining one for each nutrient box filled...each citizen, say, added 1/100 of a mineral and 1/100 of an energy to production, so only groups of 100s, or tenths of the citizens we have now, actually were productive...this would show growth and production more accurately...also, in order to work a square, 1000 citizens would be needed, so in affect, one 1 citizen or one pop similiar to what exists now would still work one square...

	31-05-2005 21:37									#76
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Why bother multiplying everything by a factor when fractions are available?

	31-05-2005 21:45									#77
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quote: Why bother multiplying everything by a factor when fractions are available?

For the coder it's basically the same.

	31-05-2005 21:56									#78
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I am a coder. Why bother with multiplying everything by an arbitrary constant factor that might later become an irritation when you can just use floats and doubles? Space and computational power aren't an issue, and round-off error is simple to cope with.

	31-05-2005 23:18									#79
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Integers and small fractions (1/2, 1/3, etc.) are more intuitive for the players to figure out and optimize than arbitrary precision floating point numbers. I would much rather have everything rounded up or down to the nearest (reasonably small) integer than trying to wrap my brain around producing something like 0.87899340762 minerals per turn in a city with 23445433245 people in the year 2307.422134. It's supposed to be a game not a weather simulation.

	31-05-2005 23:42									#80
	Inflate your Upload Space

I'd much rather have .1283257 bureaucracy drones in a city than have a 1/8 chance of getting one when I plant my next base, or need to determine its position in the global base list.

When a number is the result of division, such as for global support, the floating point number can be used internally, and the fraction (3/29 or whatever) can be shown to the player, potentially with the decimal expansion as well, for comparison to other fractions.

Breakpoints caused by discretization cause a lot of micromanagement headaches, such as checking bases to see in what year they'll grow and need more drone control, or squeezing out that last point of labs by getting as many bases as possible to produce an odd number of energy units.

	31-05-2005 23:49									#81
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

emigration.

That's what I just thought of, and should be in a game. I was thinking about this when we were discussing population growth above and strained resources. My city (las vegas) doesn't grow from people making babies. But from people moving here from other areas.

I think cities with little infrastructure and unhappiness problems should move to cities with better infrastructure and more happiness improvements. Also it would be nice if the job market was represented in some way signifying unemployment rates. This may be making the game too complicated, it's just a thought.

and perhaps if the infrastructure and unemployment of all your cities is bad, you lose population to a neighbor or a farther away faction with better lifestyle.

	01-06-2005 00:04									#82
	Increase the size of your Attachments

So then, rather than simple riots or loss of the whole city to a random faction, unhappy cities would tend to lose population (thus becoming somewhat less unhappy), potentially to nearby factions, depending on diplomacy, government, and the condition of nearby friendly bases. Instead either being just fine or rioting, bases would suffer progressively more from being increasingly unhappy, vaguely like ecodamage and pops.

	01-06-2005 00:13									#83
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Keep in mind that its some years before Planet has a global economy going. Although the Secret Project movies and quotes suggest the factions are much more integrated than we play them its still going to take roads and communications before anyones migrating.
How many years before citizens have personal transport on a planet with no cheap energy source?

	01-06-2005 00:20									#84
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Good point, and I'd say either the PTS or discovery of synthetic fossil fuels (or maybe a few other similar techs) would cause the transition from isolated bases to a connected faction.

	01-06-2005 00:31									#85
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yeah I never liked losing entire cities to an opposing faction. It doesn't seem right.

	01-06-2005 00:57									#86
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I would say having a city defect should still be possible, but only under unusual circumstances, such as Lal breaking a long-term pact with Morgan while still running Free Market, while Morgan is still running Demo. That should cause widespread unrest, and border cities might just defect. Having an unhappy Drone city riot and defect to the Hive (barring very unusual diplomacy) just doesn't seem right, though.

	01-06-2005 01:14									#87
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So.......

Isn't what we're talking about really just a system of Civ3 style culture by the back door?

(I made a possible adapted SMAC model of that somewhere but noone was interested)

	01-06-2005 01:46									#88
	Inflate your Upload Space

In Civ 3, what I experienced of it, you could go to war with a faction, seize some of their cities, and have them and your military units rapidly defect to your opponent. You didn't need to have developed any relations prior to war. This is significantly different from having your citizens flee your unhappy bases or defect if given freedoms and reason. Under a Police State, a well-garrisoned base should never defect on its own (probe teams are another matter), even if it may trickle out citizens.

	01-06-2005 03:42									#89
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I am surprised that nobody has mentioned this, but I think that one of the things SMAC sorely needs is a more realistic model of combat. In particular, how come putting on plasma steel jackets makes people carrying normal guns able to defeat people with missile launchers? Clearly in reality armor alone does not make one a better defender. Furthermore I think the idea of a 1-12 unit, or a 24-1 unit, is absurd. How could it possibly make that much difference whether the unit is attacking or defending? Aside from that, how come when there is all this awesome futuristic technology around still nobody has figured out a way to make infantry obsolete? I think that weapons should have inherent attack and defense values, and armor should determine how fast units take damage in combat, almost like reactors currently do. I also think there needs to be more chassis options and more emphasis on long range combat, beyond the artillery option.

	01-06-2005 03:49									#90
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Realism sucks.

Game mechanics rule.