31-07-2001 11:56									#1
	Ideas for a Military Mod Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Being somewhat desatified the linearity of military strategy in SMAC (rover rush or chop and drop) I decided to make a few adjustments to alphax.txt . More specifically my goals were to balance the different unit types, provide for more varied strategies, and improve the realism of combat. Some ideas have been gleaned from various posts on the message boards. Id like some input and feedback in order to make a pretty general military mod that can be incorporated into other mods, or can stand alone.

1) Confine helicopters to battlefield assualt (i.e. no or limited base attack and air superiority capability).

This one has been pretty much been beaten to death. Thanks to everyone on the the original topic. Reduce movement to 4. Simple yet elegant.

2) More interesting sea combat.

Velociryx brought this up in his torture mod and like his solution: bring carrier deck and deep sea hull to doctrine initiative.

My only misgiving is that Doctrine: Initiative becomes too much of a "killer tech" with these additions. Perhaps i could move some of them to a nearby tech.

While i was at it i allowed carrier decks for land and air units (hover tank missle launchers and gravship sky fortresses )

3) Fast units for fighting in the open and Infantry for base assualt

Give bases 50% intrinsic bonus. Compensate with 50% bonus to infantry for base attack. Also Rovers get 50% in flat and rolling and infantry get 25% in rough (representing armor's dominance in open spaces and vulnerbility in rough terrain).

4) Make artillery good for something

Aritllery has to be at least a rover to keep up with an army and still fire. Unfortunately this makes it too expensive. On top of this they dont do enough damage and cant weaken a base enough.
So i made it so that the cost of the Heavy Battery ability only increases with armor (instead of with armor and speed). Increade the Numerator/Denomenator for Artillery damage to 4,2 (from 3,2). Finally made it so that they can damage units in a base by 70%. Is this too much? Either way ill finally have a reason to use them.

5) Hovertanks come too late

Like in SNAC, move them up to monopole magnets. Makes sense in terms of game play and logically (same time as mag tubs, a similar improvement of transportation)

6) Orbital insertion makes everything else obsolete

Disable allowing orbital insertion with tech. Allow everyone to build the space elevator (make it a base facility?) but at a much higher cost (2x? 3x?) Perhaps move the tech for space elevator back as well?

7) Missles!?!?!

What to do with these things? The AI seems to use them in droves and they can be fun, but as is they are either useless (choppers can do the same thing but better) or overpowered (all you ever need to build are missles and drop troops). I personally would like to see them as more of a _tactical_ weapon rather than as a base assault or main attack weapon i.e. against a retreating rover or an annoying artillery unit behind enemy lines or a chopper that ran out of gas just out of range. To this end i dropped theyre weapon strength from 12 to 8 (enough to kill a unit with 1 armor without any problem) and reduce the price from
12 to 6. This is gonna require some extra play testing and any feed back regarding this would be extra usefull. I am also considering some changes to how the other missles work and possibly putting a support cost on ODPs and increasing the cost of building flechette defense.

7a) Reducing the cost of fungal missles.

Makes eco warfare useful and entertaining. Morgan causing too much pollution and causing global warming? Releasing demon boil sealurks right next to his base and dropping fungus on his boreholes can now be a viable planet-friendly alternative to just x-choppering him silly. Im mostly included this for the hilarious hijinks that are bound to ensue and because of the fact that fungal missles are a great idea but too expensive for practical use.

7b) Doubling the range of PBs. possibly Tectonics and Fungals

Orbital spaceflight but no ICBMs? That really doesnt make any sense. The computer has infinite range missles and that doesnt seem to break gameplay. Not increasing (possibly decreasing) the range of conventional missles so they remain a tactical weapon. We launched patriot missles at iraq in the gulf war from ships station in the persian gulf, not from bases in germany or ohio. The same idea should hold in smax.

8) Making repair bays usefull

These would be best strapped to hovertanks so they can double as ground transport. Im looking for moving them to an earlier tech, but im not sure which one. The general idea is to have a unit that can act as support/supply vehicle for a large army on the move.

9) Sealurks get cruiser chassis

Someone else suggested it. I thought it was a good idea. 6 range instead of 4 is a big plus.

10) Heavy transport

what does this do? if i activate it where should it go in the tech tree?

11) Go to sleep

Any comments/criticisms/ideas are more than welcome. If i nabbed your idea and forget to mention you, just tell me and i'll properly credit you. Thanks in advance

-Nadexander

Last edited by Nadexander on 31-07-2001 at 23:42

	01-08-2001 09:04									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Some great ideas, and I've had a similar idea for a warfare scenario where techs either don't happen at all, or come pretty slowly. Maybe I'll look at your ideas one at a time here:

1. Helicopters: Talked about a lot, saw change in SNAC, but I don't think it's a dead horse. An idea I had looking at this was to make a custom unit helicopter available at some tech, but never make the chassis available at all. I've heard (though never tried) that one can 'retro-engineer' a new chassis by using a design workshop cheat, but that would just have to be banned. This way, you could give people choppers, but they would be very specific kinds: eg: an air-defense chopper, an assault chopper, a heavy transport chopper. Limit it to those three and put them on different techs...keep the reduced movement..maybe to 4-6 or so. For the air-air, that's obvious: air superiority, making it just about useless for ground attacks. For the assault chopper : weakish weapon say 4-1-4 chopper. Quite useful, but not overpowering. The heavy transport chopper: when heavy transport comes out (and yes, it works if you enable it) give the ability to build this unit. Also, change the chassis-chopper transport number to 2 or so so that a heavy transport chopper can airlift 3 units.

2. Bring all the naval powers up, and if you feel the need, make extra techs for them if they seem too powerful to be tacked onto existing techs

3. I made base defense 40 % for Aldebaran and infantry attack bonus 30%. This has the effect of making it pretty tough for an AI base to get wiped by worms in the early game, but it does nicely delineate the infantry vs. fast attack vs. base.

4. I ended up with 4/2 arty for Aldebaran as well. 5/2 was just too powerful. Turn on the altitude effects too! It's amazing...surround a valley city with arty and well, you'll have to see for yourself. 4/2 may still be weak, but it's significantly better than 3/2. Your idea for changing the cost of fast-arty is great! Hadn't thought of that.

5. Hovertanks. Yep

6. Orbital. Aye.

7. We'll have to see on the missiles. It sounds good. BTW you can adjust the AI use of them with the scenario editor...it's set randomly at the beginning of a game...turn them all 'on' or off to test it out.

8. The rest: You're going to enjoy it! Play with the transport variable for different chassis, but be sure to give a custom unit so the AI actually uses them as well. Otherwise they never think of that.

9. Finish it! Let's play!

-Smack

	01-08-2001 23:16									#3
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Smack so that a heavy transport chopper can airlift 3 units.

Great Idea! I never thought of that.

quote: 2. Bring all the naval powers up, and if you feel the need, make extra techs for them if they seem too powerful to be tacked onto existing techs

I think ill add a new tech "Doctrine: Naval Power" with pre-reqs Doctrine: Initiative and Advanced Military Algorithms. I'll move carrier deck, deep-sea hull, and Heavy transport, and maybe repair bay here.

quote: 8. The rest: You're going to enjoy it! Play with the transport variable for different chassis, but be sure to give a custom unit so the AI actually uses them as well. Otherwise they never think of that.

I plan to add several units that the AI never really uses but really should. Here is a partial list. Feel free to suggest your own.

Cruiser/Foil probe teams
Infantry probe teams
Foil crawlers
Clean (super) formers
Gravship formers
Chopper Transports
1-1-1, Clean Police
1-1-1, Clean Trance
1-1-2, Clean Empath Rovers
1-1 Empath Choppers/Lifters
Chopper Transport
Skybase (gravship Carrier, repair bay)
Launch Sub (deep seahull, carrier bay)
APC (hovertank, heavy transport, repair bay)
Mobile missle launcher (hovertank, carrier bay)

Am i correct in thinking that if a carrier is carrying an interceptor and a penetrator attacks it, the interceptor will defend? If not maybe i need to reduce the price of armor on a cruiser chassis, so that aegis ships (4-best cruiser, AAA) will be viable for defending fleets against air power. Also sub defence will be an issue. It seems like this mod might actually work out like i wanted it too, with no one strategy as dominant and successful armies requiring many different kinds of units.

Is there a way to make it so that a unit can carry missiles, but not other air units?

On a side note i think im going to increase the cost of clean reactors to 4 (rather than 2) which will make clean units cost double what a non-clean unit costs. I think this will be a sufficient compensation for the great power that clean units provide and will make them less of a game breaker.

-Nadexander

	02-08-2001 02:50									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Dangit! I can't get the compiler to deal with these units!

Chopper Lift 'Copter, Transport, Scout, 7, 8, 3, Command, -1, 000010000000000000000010
Air Defense Chopper 'Copter, Impact, Scout, 4, 8, 0, Airpast, -1, 000000000000000000100010
Assault Chopper 'Copter, Impact, Scout, 1, 10, 0, Struck, -1, 000000000000000000000011
Carrier Cruiser, Gun, Silksteel, -1, 15, 7, Projec, -1, 011011010001100110000011

I get BADCHASS Key reports...argh! I decided to try the chopper thing last night, but to no avail. I'm going to see if I can figure the problem. I suspect the computer doesn't like 'Transport' on ''Copter'. Grrrrrr.

[EDIT: WHOOPS! Think I figured it out. forgot the commas after the names...why do I always do that? Seems I made an old mistake...bumping up a thread again from when folks first figured out (in public at least) they could change units around...Should read:

Chopper Lift , 'Copter, Transport, Scout, 7, 8, 3, Command, -1, 000010000000000000000010
Air Defense Chopper, 'Copter, Impact, Scout, 4, 8, 0, Airpast, -1, 000000000000000000100010
Assault Chopper, 'Copter, Impact, Scout, 1, 10, 0, Struck, -1, 000000000000000000000011
Carrier, Cruiser, Gun, Silksteel, -1, 15, 7, Projec, -1, 011011010001100110000011

sorry bout that! By the way, the tech-preqs are different as this is from Aldebaran..just use whatever original techs seem appropriate-Smack]
So, you've been warned...if you figure this out, let me know.

I like your unit ideas...the mobile missle launcher has some aesthetic appeal I can't place...it's just so different than the original smac units.

Another note....in SMAX I think you're limited to 2? user-techs beyond the original? not sure...thought I'd mention it. Smac has room for 6-12, depending on how you juggle things.

-Smack

Last edited by Avenoct on 02-08-2001 at 03:45

	02-08-2001 11:14									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Hey, lots of nice ideas here . Some comments:

(1) Choppers. I personally like the solution of reducing their movement. But if you want to have standardized choppers that can't be retro-engineered, I think you can do it by assigning the standardized chopper a cost. I haven't tested this, but I notice that all the standard units with a fixed cost don't show up in your unit workshop and so can't be retro-engineered, while the ones with variable costs do.

Note that this would mean that you couldn't redesign the choppers with better reactors than fission.

(2) The new tech for Carrier Deck and Deep Sea Hull solves the problem (of too many abilities coming with one tech) nicely. I don't think it's a major problem, since the AI (and also automated player-controlled naval units) can see ships with Deep Sea Hulls, and the Carrier Deck is a very specialized use. But moving these abilities forwards with or without a new tech is a nice change.

(3) Better defence for infantry in bases. Here is a problem that ties infantry, artillery, and naval warfare together. An infantry unit defending in good terrain gets lots of defensive bonuses, so Firaxis made the attack much stronger than the typical defences at the same tech level: eg missiles (6) vs. plasma (3). But as a result of this sea battles are automatic kills. Solution: increase the defensive value (but not the cost) of armour. Since you've improved artillery, artillery can now be used to soften up infantry in defensive positions, so the fact that the better armour makes frontal attacks on undamaged infantry in good defensive positions suicidal just adds to the need for combined infantry-artillery tactics. And naval battles become more interesting: a typical ship might have both attack and defense of 6, making the victor the ship with the better morale, rather than the attacker (as at present).

(4) I like the changes to artillery's effect. But I don't like making rover artillery cheap: I think there should be a purpose to infantry artillery. Keeping infantry artillery cheaper than rover artillery gives the defender an advantage, which is good IMO, and it gives the attacker a decision to make (expensive artillery which can keep up with a blitzkrieg, or cheap artillery if you don't expect the invasion to move forward quickly), which makes the game more interesting.

(7) Missiles. Consider that a fusion missile has an attack of 24. This is easily enough to kill ANY defender at that tech level (unless the defender is in an improved position). Which means that ships costing more than fusion missiles do are pointless .

My idea for fixing this is: reduce the cost of the missile chassis from 12 to 6 (after all, it should be less expensive than a chassis which has to return ). Then reduce the attack value of the warhead to 2 (remember that this is the attack value of a fission missile; a fusion missile will attack with a strength of 4), and reduce the cost of the warhead to 2. This should lead to cheap missiles against which defence is useful. Caveat: I've never tested how this might work in practice.

(7b) Your proposals for different ranges for PBs and conventional missiles make logical sense but I don't know of any way to implement them .

(9) making sealurks faster makes sense: gives them a role, instead of just being IOD's that can't carry units.

(11) SAM: One of the "problems" with MP SMAC is that in order to fight air units you need to get air power itself. The SAM ability pretty much has to go with D:AP, otherwise you would have air units but not be able to attack aircraft, but there's no reason one can't make standardized units with SAM available at other places on the tech tree: say SAM missile rovers with Synthetic Fossil Fuels, or SAM artillery with Advanced Military Algorithms. This would reduce the importance of D:AP.

	02-08-2001 13:46									#6
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by Basil Hey, lots of nice ideas here . Some comments: (3) Better defence for infantry in bases. Here is a problem that ties infantry, artillery, and naval warfare together. An infantry unit defending in good terrain gets lots of defensive bonuses, so Firaxis made the attack much stronger than the typical defences at the same tech level: eg missiles (6) vs. plasma (3). But as a result of this sea battles are automatic kills. Solution: increase the defensive value (but not the cost) of armour.

Interesting idea but i think this goes beyond my intended scope of this mod and would require a complete rebalanceing of many aspects of the game, rather than mere tweaking

quote: (4) I like the changes to artillery's effect. But I don't like making rover artillery cheap: I think there should be a purpose to infantry artillery. Keeping infantry artillery cheaper than rover artillery gives the defender an advantage, which is good IMO, and it gives the attacker a decision to make (expensive artillery which can keep up with a blitzkrieg, or cheap artillery if you don't expect the invasion to move forward quickly), which makes the game more interesting.

Duely noted, and after some thought i have come to agree

quote: (7) Missiles. Consider that a fusion missile has an attack of 24. This is easily enough to kill ANY defender at that tech level (unless the defender is in an improved position). Which means that ships costing more than fusion missiles do are pointless .

I actually find that missles arent as overpoweringas you would think because they dont fight the same way you expect a needlejet to fight. I actually see that a comperable tech defender with AAA and Aerospace complex or tachyon can hold off at least 3 missles before dying

quote: (7b) Your proposals for different ranges for PBs and conventional missiles make logical sense but I don't know of any way to implement them .

unfortunately neither can i

quote: (11) SAM: One of the "problems" with MP SMAC is that in order to fight air units you need to get air power itself. The SAM ability pretty much has to go with D:AP, otherwise you would have air units but not be able to attack aircraft, but there's no reason one can't make standardized units with SAM available at other places on the tech tree: say SAM missile rovers with Synthetic Fossil Fuels, or SAM artillery with Advanced Military Algorithms. This would reduce the importance of D:AP.

I like the idea of SAM artillery and rovers and i would like to include them but putting them at synthetic fossil fuels (which makes the most logical sense) is kind of pointless since D:AP is typically the very next tech. Perhaps it would go better on a tech more parralell on the tree, so that if one passes up D:AP then one can still have a defense against it. Maybe the tech that gives AAA? Maybe some un-related discovery tech?

-Nadexander

	03-08-2001 02:29									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

A little Update.

1) I added a "Doctrine: Information" and moved the smax probe stuff (algorithmic enhancement, covert ops, and nethack terminus) there. Pre-reqs are cyberethics and adaptive doctrine (idea was to be a somewhat parrallel tech to presentient algorithms so a player can race for one or the other but not easily both)

2) decided on a 75% percent inherent base defense

3) 10% +/- for attack down/up hill (some sense of altitude in tactics)

4) 50% per altitude difference for artillery (its almost never more than 1 diference in altitude between adjacent squares and shelling from a hilltop has historically been very powerful)

5) artillery ability returned to original cost

6) adding sensor bouys and naval bases (sea bunkers) to address issue of the weakness of defense at sea allows for more detailed naval strategy

7) moved maritime control center to Doctrine: Naval Power

8) Added Heavy Transport to Doctrine: Initiative

9) Increased carrying capacity of hovertank from 1 to 2

10) removed cloudbase acadamy and cloning vats;
switched planet and and industry bonus between cybernetic and eudaimonia (two personal pet peeves)

Well this is still very much a work in progress. All your comments have been very helpful, and i welcome any and all suggestions/comments/criticisms.

-Nadexander

	03-08-2001 04:43									#8
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

A little more news:

quantum reactors moved up to frictionless surfaces so there is some kind of equal gap from fusion<->quantum<->singularity.

I will be hopefully making some last minute correcitons, doing some do-or-die testing (does it crash the game?) and then posting... drum roll, please .....
....... Nadexander's Military Mod Version 0.1 !!!!!..........

**chirping crickets**

......

well, expect SOMETHING up here by the end of the day, er the end of my day any ways (i.e. 2 am pacific standard time. gotta get up for work in the morning and all...)

in the mean time im attaching my notes for the game changes so far...

Attachment: notes.txt
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