 |
|
King Stone
|
|
NY,NY
Sep 2001
time: 01:15
|
|
I am playing as the Morganites with Democratic - Free Market and I recently noticed that Air units cause drones, even when they are in base. Is this bug fixed by a patch? I am running v4.0 from the SMAC EA classics edition. Is there somewhere I can change this is the text files, as it is totally wrong and very annoying as I haven't hit my hab complexes yet and two planes in base render it useless. Thanks!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Avenoct
|
 |
NC, USA
Apr 2001
time: 00:15
|
|
This isn't a bug, rather, attack planes are always considered out of your territory. Defensive planes (air-air, not armored per se) are an exception. Think of the atmosphere as a map overlaid the ground-sea map and it makes some sense. Your territory doesn't include the atmosphere.
Under Free Market, with the -5 Police Rating, any military unit out of your territory causes two pacifist drones at home. Thus, with 2 planes you are getting 4 drones.
There are many strategies to deal with this, and Apolyton searches you might do would include the following words: Specialist, Punishment Sphere, Free Market, Pacifist Drones, War under Market, War Morgan.
As to editing this out in the textfiles, there are at least two ways to go, but first consider that many Smac'ers enjoy the difficulty of making war with airplanes precisely because they are so hard to use. Due to there being excellent ways to deal with this in-game, you might want to try out some strategies before hacking this out of the game.
Method 1: Change Free Market so that it doesn't have an effect on police rating at all, or minimize that effect. In alphatext you might change:
quote:
#SOCIO
[blah blah...]
Fundamentalist, Brain, +MORALE, ++PROBE, --RESEARCH
Simple, None,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET, -----POLICE |
to this: quote:
#SOCIO
[blah blah...]
Fundamentalist, Brain, +MORALE, ++PROBE, --RESEARCH
Simple, None,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET |
, nixing the POLICE effect of Free Market. Quite unbalancing.
Method 2: Change Airplanes. The only available measure would be to make them ground units. From:
quote:
CHASSIS# [blah....]
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 2, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1, |
to: quote:
CHASSIS# [blah....]
Needlejet,M1, Penetrator,M1, Interceptor,M1, Tactical,M1, 8, 0, 2, 0, 1, 8, DocAir, Thunderbolt,M1, Sovereign,M1, |
Neither of these hacks are going to be satisfactory as they change the game dynamic quite a bit, but there they are if you really want to hack them.
An attempt at an all-specialist base with your planes homed there is definately worth a shot before you go making the game unbalanced. Also, keep in mind that Morgan can easily get the critical +2 economy from Wealth alone.
-Smack
|
|
| |
|
|
|
King Stone
|
|
NY,NY
Sep 2001
time: 01:15
|
|
Thanks for the input guys. I still consider it a bug, even more so now that I find it only applies to non - SAM aircraft. I had already adjusted by use of a punishment shere but I find that to be an unsatisfactory solution. I may try the hack but it seems it will prevent drones form appearing when you make attack runs, which is not what I would like either. I'll have to test it and find out.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Scipio Centaurus
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Googlie
Oh yes, several times. And in fact I have seen the AI do it [corner the global energy market] several times - one of my SP scenarios, Democracy in Peril saw Yang, of all people, do just that. |
Excellent! I was beginning to fear that was an unattainable victory condition. Closest I've come is about 70% of the necessary energy. I'm usually short by an order of magnitude. Transcendance seems easier to me. I must be missing a few 'energy accumulation' tricks in my playbook. 
The AI has never beaten me by cornering the energy market, but I invariably play Morgan, so it's not too surprising...
Yang didn't have any particular 'advantages' in that Democracy in Peril scenario, did he?
quote:
I usually deal with it by building a Punishment Sphere in one base and homing all offensive noodles there - at least until I have several bases with a majority of specialists that offset the drones. |
I will have to look into the PuniSphere technique for dealing with pacifist drones. I've never built one of those...
I've become fairly comfortable with my own ad hoc 'mercenary' aerial strike force technique. Maybe because I developed it without reference to outside sources. Those are the most powerful lessons...
- Scipio
Last edited by Scipio Centaurus on 17-09-2001 at 00:01
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Scipio Centaurus
|
|
Thanks. A tribute to Scipio Africanus, of course.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Avenoct
|
|
NC, USA
Apr 2001
time: 00:15
|
|
 quote:
I've become fairly comfortable with my own ad hoc 'mercenary' aerial strike force technique. Maybe because I developed it without reference to outside sources. Those are the most powerful lessons... - Scipio
|
 ...and a canoe is pretty damn amazing....till you dock next to a frigate.
All in good humor, especially because I tend to do the same thing..find a strategy that works and then never challenge it. One reason our Succession and MP games are so valuable. Ideally I'd never have read Vel's guide or asked so many silly newbie questions about strategy here because there is something so great about playing an MP game and realizing that your opponent is kicking your butt for a reason! and then, after the shock, realizing that your 'perfect strategy' might have to take some adjustments.
I can't figure out why King Stone still thinks the pacifist drones from noodles is a bug. As Ethemind would probably say, "Free Market economies don't well tolerate military actions against their customers," but really, as you think about it, its only smallscale consumerism that suffers from warfare, not the economy in general. I think Sid and company got it wrong when they attached Aversion to mass military to Democracy in Civ, and to Free Market in SMAC. At best, it's an over simplification. I think what they were trying to represent is an Aversion to Military atrocities in an enlightened (liberal) culture. If you think about the worlds first Republics and Democracies, they were also some of the most militaristic governments in history. Hmm..
-Smack
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Scipio Centaurus
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Smack
...and a canoe is pretty damn amazing....till you dock next to a frigate.
All in good humor, especially because I tend to do the same thing..find a strategy that works and then never challenge it. One reason our Succession and MP games are so valuable. |
The lead message in this thread lead me to believe that the gentleman was making inquiry in reference to an SP game. I have couched my responses in that light. It is important to remember that SMAC SP and SMAC MP are two completely different animals. Strategies that are viable in one may be useless in the other. In no way does this imply that one technique is superior to another. It would be like comparing apples and oranges.
As an example, I have never seen the AI use nerve gas against me. But in human vs human MP games I have heard (no I haven't seen it yet - but I don't doubt its veracity) that many human players will automatically build nerve gas capability into all combat units - simply because the combat bonus likely outweighs any possibility of a coordinated response by the other human players. Every person must judge for themselves which is the 'superior' tactic. Also the AI badly mismanages crawlers vis-a-vis humans. But don't expect the same bungling from a human opponent. Or could it just be, that humans abuse crawlers under any circumstances...
quote:
Ideally I'd never have read Vel's guide or asked so many silly newbie questions about strategy here because there is something so great about playing an MP game and realizing that your opponent is kicking your butt for a reason! and then, after the shock, realizing that your 'perfect strategy' might have to take some adjustments. |
You mean like the MP game where I wasted many years coyly researching a long 'dead' SP (i.e. somebody else had already built it, but I kept my base working on it) at a base so that no one could figure out what SP I really intended to go after? And then the turn after I finally switched my base over to production of the 'real' SP, another player started up the SP (from scratch) and cashed in 3 souped up crawlers and enough ECs to bring the project to within 1 year of completion while I still had several years to go? Did I get 'schooled' on the difference between MP and SP there? You bet! Did I think the human's technique was 'superior' to the AI's technique. Obviously! In fact I now do the same thing in all of my games (incl SP). Did I think that human's technique was an accurate simulation of any kind of sensible reality? Who cares!
quote:
I can't figure out why King Stone still thinks the pacifist drones from noodles is a bug. As Ethemind would probably say, "Free Market economies don't well tolerate military actions against their customers," but really, as you think about it, its only smallscale consumerism that suffers from warfare, not the economy in general. |
There are precious few examples of true national free market economies in the history the World (Iceland during their middle ages supposedly comes close), so it's difficult to draw any firm conclusions. One must always try to separate the rhetoric from the reality. Just because the US says it is a free market economy, that does not make it a free market economy.
quote:
I think Sid and company got it wrong when they attached Aversion to mass military to Democracy in Civ, and to Free Market in SMAC. At best, it's an over simplification. I think what they were trying to represent is an Aversion to Military atrocities in an enlightened (liberal) culture. If you think about the worlds first Republics and Democracies, they were also some of the most militaristic governments in history. Hmm.. |
I think FM is an attempt to model the rhetoric (not necessarily the reality) of supposed free marketeers down through the years. Think US Presidents Reagan and the Strategic Defense Initiative; GW Bush and his Missile Defense Shield. Also check out recent candidates for US President for the Libertarian Party www.lp.org (i.e. Harry Browne) - a very fiscally conservative bunch who, for instance, want to eliminate the US Income Tax ( ) and pull all US combat troops back from the 140+ countries around the world that they currently occupy ( ). Harry Browne also ran on a Missile Defense platform in 2000. Also check out www.cato.org a public policy institute (think tank) devoted to libertarian (primarily free market) ideas.
Anyway, that's why I think penetrators cause drones.
Last edited by Scipio Centaurus on 17-09-2001 at 02:51
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Avenoct
|
|
NC, USA
Apr 2001
time: 00:15
|
|
Oh.
I follow you, especially regarding the Libertarian movement in the U.S.. I just gave a small paper two weeks ago outlining why the current U.S. policies toward isolationism are dangereous. Arafat's visit to Asia and Bin Laden figured highly in that, as did the missile-defense systems violation of the international ABM treaty, and our refusal to sign on to the Kyoto protocol. The long and the short is that isolationism isn't very compatible with maintaining imperialism. I'm a pro-state kind of person, so I tend to associate this with Libertarianism. BTW, nice site that Cato.org, and a relevant page concerning abolishing income tax is at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-272.html
Anyways, I'm wondering if you think the population's aversion to extra-territorial military in free market is really supposed to represent the 'free-for-all' foreign and domestic policy of Libertarianism, or is it supposed to represent the people's aversion to Wars of Aggression, as I seem to think it is? I don't know, perhaps it's both, now that I review this. I think I need to brush up on my knowledge of free-marketeering in relation to foreign policy.
-Smack
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Scipio Centaurus
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Smack
...I just gave a small paper two weeks ago outlining why the current U.S. policies toward isolationism are dangereous... |
C'mon! Quit kiddin' around. You're frightening me!
quote:
The long and the short is that isolationism isn't very compatible with maintaining imperialism. |
Obviously.
quote:
Anyways, I'm wondering if you think the population's aversion to extra-territorial military in free market is really supposed to represent the 'free-for-all' foreign and domestic policy of Libertarianism, or is it supposed to represent the people's aversion to Wars of Aggression, as I seem to think it is? |
What's a war of aggression? Capture of territory from another soverign gov? If so, the US hasn't actually done much of that since the revolution. Occupation? That's a different story.
For SMAC, take this test; If you prefer that your faction's borders be composed of smaller submitted factions - acting as a buffer zone of client states, you may be an imperialist, and hence not tempermentally suited to running FM. If, on the other hand, you are comfortable with a border consisting of a series of well fortified bases of your own factionality, you may be an isolationist by temperment. This is confiermed if you are a military counterpuncher (you don't start wars) and are satisfied with calling off miltary action the moment you have driven invading forces out of your own territory.
- Scipio
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Avenoct
|
|
NC, USA
Apr 2001
time: 00:15
|
|
I'm probably a benchmark for the imperialist strategy, at least facing the AI. The most unpalatable thing I can imagine is merely repulsing an enemy..probably time and again.
But I find it pretty easy to run FM as far as the SMAC dynamic goes. There are just too many ways around the pacifist drone. Often the only time I start a turn with my units out of my territory is when a Vassal state gifts me their units on the way to battle.
I like the litmus test for imperialism/isolationism..perhaps we could think of a few more. From the data you could make a sort of SMAC personality test and match up players to their best possible strategies and factions. For instance "Which do you find yourself doing more often: Making lots of military units in advance to be prepared, rush-building units only in an emergancy, or keeping a few garrisons on hand but not extras?" Such a test could point to whether a player leans toward a Yang/Police type empire versus a Morgan/FM type empire.
I think the main thing I can't grasp r/e isolationism is how it relates to a global free market. I see imperialist states and their modern PC substitutes: the global corporation, the World Bank, and the enforcement of Human Rights by occupation, etc....as almost the highest form of Free Market. SMAC seems to add weight to this idea because Economy is so intimately linked to commerce. I just can't see that policies of isolationism strengthen a market tied intimately to global trade. Far superior (to an economy, not morally) would be highly controlled and stable imperialist ventures around the globe combined with WTO type free trade agreements. What am I missing?
If I'm not missing anything, Free Market should flourish especially when a player has troops in their submissive Vassal states, offering 'protection'.
-Smack
|
|
| |
|
|
|
King Stone
|
|
NY,NY
Sep 2001
time: 01:15
|
|
I consider it a bug for a few reasons:
1) Its not documented and contradicts documented behavior. The units are in base inside territory, so they shouldn't cause drones.
2) Nearly identical units (with SAM ability) exhibit the documented behavior.
3) Bad decisions are still bugs. They may have know about it in testing but left it in.
Its a classic case of trying to force the player into behavior patterns. Weapons are neither offensive of defensive, they are potential. How you use them is what matters. It is a bug that you cannot have non-SAM planes ready to fly defensive sorties against worms and such and run patrol patterns around your coasts without having drones. Military in your territory should not cause resentment. The fact that the problem is easy to bypass is not a mitigating factor. From a game balance perspective it actually makes it worse that it is so easy to overcome, you may as well have not done it at all.
BTW, to was SP, it would be pretty tough to get people to accept a change to the planes in MP!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Basil
|
 |
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Apr 2000
time: 21:15
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by King Stone
The fact that the problem is easy to bypass is not a mitigating factor. From a game balance perspective it actually makes it worse that it is so easy to overcome, you may as well have not done it at all.
|
There's one thing that makes it even worse than King Stone says. It may be easy for *human players* to overcome, but the AI doesn't know how to deal with it. I've seen AI's totally stalled for game-decades as they suffer huge drone revolts from the needlejets they've built, then start dismantling them for lack of resources, then decide to switch to Planned, then after a few turns in Planned decide no, they really want to do FM... 
Agreed that since Civ II worked the same way (if I recall correctly), it was probably an intended feature and not a bug. I think it's good that negative police gives problems even in peacetime, but it would probably have been better to do that by giving penalties for having too many troops, rather than penalizing bombers/missiles and only bombers/missiles.
Last edited by Basil on 18-09-2001 at 10:14
|
|
| |
|
|
|
King Stone
|
|
NY,NY
Sep 2001
time: 01:15
|
|
As I said, bad decisions are bugs. If it is a holdover form Civ2, that is even worse. Stifling innovation for the sake of continuity is a very bad tradeoff. I don't really worry about the AI, in general computer players are uniformly pathetic in all games and will remain so until AI programmers get enough proccessor cycles and memory resources to do a good job, and the buying public starts to demand a better competition. Don't hold your breath.
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
King Stone
|
|
NY,NY
Sep 2001
time: 01:15
|
|
Take it from me, I work in the industry. Resources are the primary bottleneck in good AI programming. Most of your free memory is taken up by the art, music, sound effects and I/O of the game (from what Windows leaves you). AI is lucky to get 5% of the processor cycles on most games. Some of the more modern games (Deus Ex, Black and White, etc) have bumped that up to 10% or so, but they are still sadly lacking in the memory needed to implement a really decent AI. Check out gamasutra.com and do a search for AI, they have a few good state of the industry articles which come out every few months. Most of the fantastic advances you hear about are restricted to very high end (task specific) hardware and limited problem spaces. Chess is the classic example, a reasonably simple task with a manageable problem space, but even the best AIs have trouble beating talented players, especially if you remove their opening library, which is simply positional play distilled from a century of human masters.
Black and White has integrated some of the learning aspects of AI, that is the basis for the game, but it takes an indecently long time, and the frustration factor is very high. It will be a long time before AI is good enough to challenge hard core players, if ever. The advent of Multiplayer gaming has taken alot of the pressure off, the AI has to be just good enough for practice, the real challenge is in playing other people.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Blake
|
 |
Brainfallocatione
Oct 2000
time: 17:15
|
|
The SMAC AI is fairly solid, but just needs to be tweaked. Unfortunately these tweaks have never been done, making what should be a good AI mediocre. Some of the tweaks include:
Researching Cent.Eco very high priority
Building formers high priority in the early game
Terraforming changed so that anything worse than rolling/moist is forested.
Once Env.Eco arrives boreholes and condensors are given a small priority to be built. If possible code changed so up to 3 formers will build a borehole/condensor.
{Just those changes would give the AI a solid underlying terraforming, with probably twice the resource output of it's current "terraforming"}
Higher priority for building Rec Tanks, tree farms etc... those facilities which human players tend to build ASAP.
Wartime priorities changed so AI doesn't devote all it's resources to building military units.
{Those couple of tweaks would help the AI to keep up with the human, especially the latter}
Crawler code fixed so AI crawlers extract minerals from rocky tiles with mines. (The AI currently tries to extract minerals from any rocky tile.... which doesn't work terribly well on rocky/fungus, the crawler code is SO close to working)
Building crawlers higher priority.
{The AI already *almost* understands crawlers, a little more work and it would be able to atleast crawl minerals, making use of all those rocky tiles which it neglects to work}
FreeMarket set to be not used when at vendetta.
Aircraft never built under Free Market
Green given a higher priority (and planned lower) as empire gets larger (this threshold determined in a simialler way to buro drones). This change would also help to prevent the AI killing it's economy with inefficency.
Note that I arent talking about improving any "understanding" or "awareness" the AI has, just given it SENSIBLE priorities for building stuff. The AI can handle military fairly well, but lacks the "builder" side of things. Sadly this lacking is almost entirely due to bad priorities, they came so close to making the AI good, then gave up. (prehaps the AI programmer died, hahah)
None of the tweaks I suggested require additional processor time or resources, they are mostly changing a few constants and adding a little bit of "special case" code for dealing with well defined and understood situations. Indeed I would be willing to bet that given half-decently commented source code and a week I could tweak the AI to play a 'decent' builder game.
Apparentely this programmer-week was not a luxury Firaxis could afford. I guess I can accept that.
But the fact that the AI wasn't tweaked in SMAX (over SMAC) shows just how little priority AI gets - SMAX was little more than new graphics and voiceovers, barely no improved functionality at all.
Note that I am in no way saying I could program a better AI than firaxis, I'm just saying the one which shipped with the game could be improved dramatically. These improvments are based on a good understanding of the gameplay and strategy, not being an expert AI programmer. (This is why it doesn't bother me the SMAC AI was bad, at the time of release they didn't have a good understanding of the gameplay and viable strategies, the same is NOT true for SMAX).
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Yxklyx
|
|
Going back to the original question. Wouldn't a good "workaround" be to keep your bombers stationed at an air base instead of in a city?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Yxklyx
|
|
I thought the bombers had to actually be in the city for the drones to appear. Didn't Civ II work like that?
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:15.
Apolyton Time is 00:15. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
15-09-2001 16:17
|