4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[laclongquan]

What's the rationale for Needlejets/Choppers creating pacifism drones regardless of position, anyway?

The rationale is that, other than SAM units which demonstrably an defense force, attack choppers and jets are tool of aggression so must create drone.
The game rationale is that the huge range of air units allow them to strike in one day and return to territory, making pacifism too weak and FM entities too powerful. Jets are prolly okay since they cant return after strike, but choppers can attack, then return to safe base.

All it accomplish is to make player create more SAM choppers to compensate for the minus factor (groundstrike) if he want to play legit.
A gamey one will create a barrack (punishment dome) town to re-home all military unit there~

 

[Absinthe]

Thing is, I don't really think ICS is that OP, just the specialists are. Normal ICS with almost pure mineral-heavy starts really isn't that great unless you plan to impact rover rush with all those excess minerals. Ultimately crawlers are the only thing that dissuade ICSing. A 2 forest/1 borehole base doesn't need no crawlers, crawlers are what a 1 base covering 20 squares needs to keep up with the 5 ICS bases covering 20 squares. Given that for much of the game bases are sitting around 6-9 size, crawlers are the ONLY reason to leave more than 6-9 spaces for each base (and I would consider 6-9 spots per base still ICSing).

If you don't get crawlers though, then your ICS bases need to cover their own food and that means you need workers and that means you have to deal with psych issues. That, in turn, makes superdrones a much bigger problem and pop booms a bit harder to use (since you first need surplus food to reach that base size 5). Now it's no longer as simple as tooling a 100% specialist base out of it anymore. You have to invest in the food and the drones. You also have to deal more with inefficiency since crawlers tended to sidestep that. I guess among other things we'd be seeing a lot more nerve stapling and punishment spheres.

Also, I like MilesBeyond of making a cIV-style expansion where bases are NOT self-sustaining at first. Hive is the closest thing to this early on because you don't get the base energy square. Can squares 'give' negative resources?

Pretty sure they can. You'd just go into alpha.txt and do this:

Replace:
Base Square,      2, 1, 1, 0,

Into:
Base Square,      1, 1, -1, 0

Now you should have -1 income for each new base and the base only gives 1 nutrient instead of 2. That could put some ugly pressure against ICSing. I don't have SMAC installed atm though so I can't test myself if negative square values work, but from what I've seen so far I expect they use signed integers for everything so it should.

 

[Nevill]

Continuing the 'balancing' theme.

SMAC uses a fucked up weapon/armor progression where weapons dominate over armor of the same tier with a ratio of at least 2:1, and the research tree makes it worse since weapons lie on a path that already offers a lot of benefits (Synthetic Fossil Fuels (has missile launchers with att6) lead to Air Power, Organic Superlubricant (att10) leads to Advanced Spaceflight which itself has a 13att weapon (you hardly will have time for Fusion Lasers.

The solution is not only to restructure the research tree, but also raise the armor values. I found it working best where the same-tier weapon to armor ratio is 3:2 - still weaker in the open field, but equal in a forest/fungus/rocky square and superior behind a base with a special facility.

That solves quite a few problems - for example, it doesn't make the infantry redundant. In vanilla, it only makes sense to build rovers if you plan to attack - they will still overcome the defenders with overwhelming odds, be it in the open or in a protected territory. Now, when the result of attacking a unit in a base is less than certain, that +25% bonus really gets to shine.

Which also leads to the use of land transports - something that I think no one ever uses because they can only move 1 unit at a time.

If you add to this a penalty for rovers to attack units in rough terrain, you get a distinct role for them - they will crush the enemy in the open, but can't touch units in the forests or fungus while the infantry is equally viable everywhere.

It also makes abilities like AAA and ECM more powerful. Now it isn't as simple as spamming air units to bomb the enemy into the ground. An AAA fission unit in the rocky terrain, a bunker or a base with a sensor could hold its own against a fusion unit, which is a huge problem in vanilla, especially considering how a new reactor reduces the costs on top of doubling the unit's power.

It makes the morale play a much larger role, since a) Elite gives infantry another move which now - with increased infantry efficiency - makes it a viable war tool, and b) it becomes a deciding factor when battling in well-defended squares.

As for the stack mechanics that gets some flac in a sister thread - the solution is simple. One can use bunkers to protect their mega-stacks, and it becomes a viable mean of both defense and offense... well, not against AI who is still dumb, but at least they see more use among the human players.

Defensive play needs to be encouraged.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Yeah, I approve this changes.

 

[mastroego]

Ok, when will we have a Kyrub-ed, Yitzi-ed, Fully Rebalanced, Integrated, Codex-Approved, Prestigious Smac/Smax patch?

You can't titillate and then go hiding.
Now you've got to deliver!

 

[Johannes]

What are the SMAC -> SMAX changes actually? I don't remember so clearly. I just remember not liking a lot of it. When playing with original factions, of course. I do remember them adding a stupid strong project in the Cloud Academy or w/e, but not much mre than that.

 

[Irenaeus II]

SMAX is useless. Never mention it again

 

[mastroego]

What are the SMAC -> SMAX changes actually? I don't remember so clearly. I just remember not liking a lot of it. When playing with original factions, of course. I do remember them adding a stupid strong project in the Cloud Academy or w/e, but not much mre than that.

Well

• The new factions, some of which I actually like
• Sealurks, Fungal Towers, Artillery Spores
• New Techs and Facilities (a few specific for water-based bases)
• Yes, the overpowered Cloudbase Academy, but also a nerf of the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm which was too powerful
• Bugfixes, stuff

 

[Average Manatee]

Defensive play needs to be encouraged.

Ehh, don't go too far.

The thing is if you can ever get more than 50:50 odds, the optimal strategy becomes turtling in your base behind stacks of units (who cost no maintenance because lol, clean). You might say that the attacker could just pillage your land, but then if they stick around you can attack them and since offense will clearly still be advantaged in the open, the intruder is dead. And lets not forget how easy it is to just spam-upgrade 30 crawlers to armored crawlers, which will bog any attacker down if they get bonuses for camping forests.

Doesn't SMAX use a difference base maintenance formula or something? I know for sure that base maintenance is more expensive there. Or was it a bug?

Bug in SMAC, difficulty was applied as a bonus rather than a penalty.

On Thinker difficulty, base facility maintenance costs are reduced by 1/3. On Transcend difficulty, base facility maintenance costs are reduced by 2/3. (This is fixed for SMACX with the patch.)

 

[Nevill]

Your rover nerf/infantry buff is good. You can always increase the infantry bonus vs base in alpha(x).txt. Might want to increase Rover bonus in the open to compensate for the weakness.

Nah. Their mobility is already a big bonus, no need to buff them further.

Your modification would make armor into 1-2-3-5-7-10-13-15? Or 1-2-3-6-9-12-15-18? My math sucks.

Let me whip out my alphax.txt...

Spoiler

No Armor, Scout, 1, 0, 1, None,
Synthmetal Armor, Synthmetal, 2, 0, 2, Indust,
Plasma Steel Armor, Plasma, 3, 2, 3, Chemist,
Silksteel Armor, Silksteel, 4, 1, 4, Alloys,
Photon Wall, Photon, 5, 1, 5, DocSec,
Probability Sheath, Probability, 7, 2, 7, ProbMec,
Neutronium Armor, Neutronium, 10, 1,12, Solids,
Antimatter Plate, Antimatter, 12, 2,14, NanEdit,
Stasis Generator, Stasis, 14, 2,16, TempMec,
Psi Defense, Psi, -1, 2, 6, Eudaim,
Pulse 3 Armor, 3-Pulse, 3, 1, 3, Subat,
Resonance 6 Armor, 6-Res, 6, 1, 6, FldMod,
Pulse 8 Armor, 8-Pulse, 8, 1,10, MatComp,
Resonance 10 Armor, 10-Res, 10, 1,14, Matter,

Huh. I thought I made it higher. So it really is 1-2-3-3p-4-5-6-7-8-10-10r-12-14. I just made it more accessible and made their techs lead to something useful, so I see a lot more of 6-4-1 and 8-5-1 units. I guess I really tried not to change the feel of the game.

Edit: oh, I remembered. I put the Tachion Field lower, so I had to slow down the late-game armor escalation.

*lol does anybody ever uses Tachyon Bolts? Forever Alone lol.

I do. The Project they sit on is useful, so sometimes you make it there before Plasma Shards. It's rare, though.

What about Base Facilities? Gotta account for Perimeter Defense/Tachyon Field/Aerospace Complex bonuses.

Too costly and prone to sabotage. Perimeters really need to be made cheaper. But overall, I think it is good. Defended bases should really be tougher to break, and you should account for missiles that deal an obscene amount of damage.

Haven't tested yet, but it should hurt Free Marketeers and make Green and +PLANET a lot more important. Maybe even make a native strategy viable post-fusion.

Why do you think native does not work post-fusion?

The odds screen lies, reactor does not affect Psi Combat at all. Locusts are still one of the more scary units.

Also, my SE settings:

Spoiler

Police State, DocLoy, ++SUPPORT, ++POLICE, --TALENT
Democratic, EthCalc, ++EFFIC, ++GROWTH, --SUPPORT
Fundamentalist, Brain, ++PROBE, + MORALE, +INDUSTRY, --RESEARCH
Simple, None,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ----POLICE, --PLANET, -INDUSTRY
Planned, PlaNets, ++GROWTH, +INDUSTRY, --ECONOMY
Green, CentEmp, ++EFFIC, ++PLANET, --GROWTH, +TALENT
Survival, None,
Power, MilAlg, ++SUPPORT, ++ MORALE, --INDUSTRY, ++TALENT
Knowledge, Cyber, +EFFIC, ++RESEARCH, --PROBE, -POLICE
Wealth, AdapEco, +ECONOMY, +INDUSTRY, --MORALE, -PLANET
None, None,
Cybernetic, DigSent, ++EFFIC, ++RESEARCH, +PLANET, ---POLICE, --TALENT
Eudaimonic, Eudaim, ++ECONOMY, ++GROWTH, +SUPPORT, ---MORALE
Thought Control, WillPow, ++POLICE, ++ MORALE, +INDUSTRY, ---SUPPORT, ++TALENT

I've made small changes to the factions to make them work best with the new values. Like, added HURRY, 75 to Santiago (she can now run PS + FM and benefit from police, the theme for her is to hurry stuff with money to compensate for her broken Industry), or added ROBUST, SUPPORT to Lal so that he could run Democracy right away. Small-time stuff, but it helps differentiate instead of everyone running Demo + Market + Wealth if they are able.

One thing I was thinking is that we could have two rebalanced versions: A Codexian multiplayer SMAX

Good luck convincing anyone that your changes are for the better. You restrict something broken and people say that you are against fun.

Doesn't SMAX use a difference base maintenance formula or something? I know for sure that base maintenance is more expensive there. Or was it a bug?

A bug in SMAC made your maintenance the same as AI's, meaning it was only two thirds of what it is supposed to be on Thinker and a third on Transcend.

 

[Nevill]

The thing is if you can ever get more than 50:50 odds, the optimal strategy becomes turtling in your base behind 30 units (who cost no maintenance because lol, clean).

If you build 30 units, you've wasted at least 30 turns.

Turtling up becomes a fitting name, because your opponent who only built 2 is way ahead of you.

It is balanced towards multiplayer where you can't really sit on you butt and be passive.

You might say that the attacker could just pillage your land, but then if they stick around you can attack them and since offense will clearly still be advantaged in the open, the intruder is dead.

Yes, and so are your boreholes. This is the most dickish form of pillaging mid-game. It really hurts. Condensers are the second most dickish, I guess.

Have fun using 24 former-turns to rebuild each one. Oh, and your formers will be in the open.

No one does that in competitive games.

And lets not forget how easy it is to just spam-upgrade 30 crawlers to armored crawlers, which will bog any attacker down if they get bonuses on forests.

Forests do not provide bonus against air, and my mod does not have crawlers because REASONS anyway.

Also, no one upgrades crawlers that are not cached in on the same turn. If you lose an upgraded one, you lose a lot of money for no reason.

 

[Absinthe]

You might want to make this change:
20, ; Combat % -> Psi attack bonus/penalty per +PLANET

Haven't tested yet, but it should hurt Free Marketeers and make Green and +PLANET a lot more important. Maybe even make a native strategy viable post-fusion.

No, that would make Deirdre's mind worm rushes even more retarded. Mind worms are already ridiculous for their ability to give no fucks about what they're attacking, and now Deirdre gets +60% combat strength mind worms, which would make her more dangerous than Miriam. As Deirdre, you would basically drive anyone you fight into adopting Green just to not get obliterated on the spot and even then you still have a strong edge.

 

[Average Manatee]

Due to the way the unit costs work, making crawlers for defense tends to be better.

Upgrading 1/1/1 infantry -> 1/3/1 infantry costs 50 credits, upgrading 1/1/1 supply crawler to 1/3/1 costs 60 credits. Later on crawlers actually become cheaper once you get to fusion reactors and higher armors due to the fact that they come naturally clean (which also means you can double up on special abilities). And there's no lost production from spamming out crawlers ahead of time, they are naturally paying themselves off.

Also no one puts boreholes on the outskirts of their empire. To get to them you have to wade through at least a half dozen supply crawlers with their ZoCs stuffing up movement.

 

[kyrub]

(Hey, an Alpha Centauri thread!)

Ok, when will we have a Kyrub-ed, Yitzi-ed, Fully Rebalanced, Integrated, Codex-Approved, Prestigious Smac/Smax patch?

I wonder that myself. I have offered all my knowledge (full IDA database) to the SMAX exe-modders about a year ago, in exchange of a promise they would attempt to create a common work, Smac-Smax thing with better AI. It never happened. Yitzi is all talk when it comes to AI, but he somehow puts not enough effort in it. The Dio guy is trying.


Honestly, this thread on Codex is bigger reaction to the AI work than anything I ever got on specialised Alpha Centauri forums. I've got very little feedback and it never pushed me to expand the AI work or to make the effort and to port the AI work to SMAX. I don't pretend the patch is perfect, it was unfinished and there seems to be a number of small malfunctions... Pity.

 

[Absinthe]

That's 'cause Alien Crossfire is an inferior game.

As for ICS, I don't think it should be eradicated. I just think that ICS should no longer be the ideal solution at all times, so putting the brakes on it should be good. If we remove supply crawlers that should also eradicate 100% specialist bases and force ICS to deal with drones for workers along with preventing other crawler stupidities. We could also set the Base Square to a 1, 0, 0 and (1 nutrient, no mineral, no energy, feel the pain) and slow down ICS that way.

I also think the real solution we need on the Green front is to make ecodamage a bigger problem. Probably we should make forests neutral for ecodamage and remove Tree Farm's ecodamage effects. And we should put a slightly bigger effect on Planet rating for eco damage thresholds. I reckon these changes will require binary editing though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Spore launchers are fucking amazing. Deidre capturing one of them early is the ultimate form of hell.

Cloudbase is OP, but its nice in a kind of "I know I'll win if I can build this and hold on to it, and so does everyone else, so I'll need to defend myself against everyone else at once when I build it, and if I can do that then I deserve to win" device. 4x MP games tend to lose steam when you get to the position where one or two players are clearly dominant, yet they can't really win easily. Civ4, for example, most games are won by the medieval age yet it usually takes 2 more ages at least to actually "win" the game, with the alternate option being all of the lagging players coming to a group consensus to forfeit, which is pretty unfulfilling for everyone involved. Dominions probably does it the best with a huge list of "I'll win if I build this and don't die for 20 turns" devices, which become interesting when two players do different ones at the same time and then have an ultimate showdown.

 

[Average Manatee]

Which is why it serves the purpose of an OP prize to be fought for well.

Especially if you play MP with a no-crawlers-into-SPs rule, which means your opponents have a decent number of turns as a heads up before you even finish it.

 

[laclongquan]

Boreholes best built on your HQ's square, and probabbly the most efficient bases. While you can build it in far off bases, the loss in effiency will eat the energy portion alive. Plus, your formers have other uses, like drill to aquifer, raise terrain, etc...

So yeah, to destroy my valuable infra like a borehole, they generally have to drill through at least one layer of my protection, which is the border towns.

On another note, I try some attrition/dispersal tactic: Sam Chopper. I send them to the border base with the biggest number of aircraft and die trying to kill them all. It generally work profitably if they dont have more than 1 armoured defender. More importantly, it scare their aircrafts away from the border, meaning they wont easily airstrike my territory. IT also work 1st time. 2nd time they have more defenders.

 

[mastroego]

(Hey, an Alpha Centauri thread!)

I wonder that myself. I have offered all my knowledge (full IDA database) to the SMAX exe-modders about a year ago, in exchange of a promise they would attempt to create a common work, Smac-Smax thing with better AI. It never happened. Yitzi is all talk when it comes to AI, but he somehow puts not enough effort in it. The Dio guy is trying.


Honestly, this thread on Codex is bigger reaction to the AI work than anything I ever got on specialised Alpha Centauri forums. I've got very little feedback and it never pushed me to expand the AI work or to make the effort and to port the AI work to SMAX. I don't pretend the patch is perfect, it was unfinished and there seems to be a number of small malfunctions... Pity.

Well this all sucks, especially for us SMACX single players.
Thanks for the work though, and I still hope someday the stars will align...

 

[Irenaeus II]

*Althrough Christian States of America is a funny anachronism. I think that if SMAC was made today, it would have been replaced with Trump States of America

#MakeAmericaGreatAgain

 

[Nevill]

Try saying that SMAC = Civilization II IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE, and people will laugh at you.

Which is funny, considering that that's exactly what it is.

I am having a very similar experience to the one I had in Civ II. Sure, there are new mechanics in place, and a few experimental concepts, but the gameplay stays largely the same.

What I didn't like about Civ III is that most of these new mechanics didn't find their way into the game. It was supposed to be an improvement over Civ II formula, but it didn't improve in the direction I hoped it would, making SMAC a superior experience and a sort-of dead end.

What makes SMAC special for me is the less strict technology paths, the stat/civic system, the espionage system (though far from perfect), the whole 'alien Planet' thing they have going with native life and a terraforming aspect, and of course, the overall atmosphere.

 

[laclongquan]

About crawler limit. Cant you limit it by population? It is essentially a faraway satelite worker unit for a town. So it makes no sense that a small town can support too many crawlers. 2 pop per crawler? This would put higher value on resource tile too, and make crawling a borehole an acceptable deal.

 

[Nevill]

Police State: Interesting idea (-2 talents??), but what about lessening the EFFIC penalty (-1 instead of -2)? Then again you may be aiming to have it hurt Hive as well. How about -1 EFFIC and -1 talents?
Demo is the same.

Well, I guess I need to clarify the goal I pursued here. I wanted to make different combinations of civics viable. As of now, there is Demo+FM+Wealth, Demo+FM+Knowledge, Demo+Planned+Wealth (for booming), and Demo+Green for lategame. That's it. That's all you are going to see for 90% of the game unless you are playing Hive.

There are 2 reasons for that - the -2 INDUSTRY penalty for Power is crippling, Fundy is completely useless, and --EFFIC effects are so disastrous that the civics that give them can only be played with ++EFFIC ones.

I have abolished -EFFIC altogether. I do not think this part of the game was well thought-out. -1 EFFIC Lal has is already harsh. -2 EFFIC is 'your research is dead' harsh. -4 is 'Pure LOL, here are your gun and the bullet'.

Negative EFFIC was designed to be used with crawlers and specialists, and even then there are more effective alternatives available. And since there are no crawlers in my mod, well...

So, Police state. The idea is to provide an early boost and give factions something to do except ICSing by providing additional support. The ones who go POLICE aren't crippled with poor research, and in fact there are few downsides in adopting it right away. However, you will need additional units to keep your populace happy as your every citizen will be a drone. The lack of Talents symbolizes crude methods that are used to ensure orders.

I dunno about that Fundy industry bonus, but it is potentially interesting. Might make a good pick for Hive now, although there's some cool potential from going Fundi/Planned/Wealth (+3 Industry! Mind the Effic and Research penalties)

Fundy needed a buff, and INDUSTRY is one of the strongest ones. It can contend with Police State and its +2 SUPPORT, and it's not half bad for a builder. Also, yes, there is a potential combination with Wealth for increasing INDUSTRY further and lowering the MORALE penalty to the one where your units aren't crippled (-2 MORALE halves modifiers from Command Centers and the like - so you get worse units, but -1 does not), and there is a potential combination with POWER for +3 MORALE (good if you have a monolith and want Elite units) while lessening the INDUSTRY penalty. Fundy + Knowledge is still retarded, though.

Police State is still preferable for Hive, but Fundy is now an option, too.

Free Market... I don't see the point of the industry penalty. I think Free Market was really good as it was (except for Hive, which could't properly use it and general momentum players), its just that Planned was mostly for early game, pop-booming or war, and Green was mostly a worm-hugger/Gaian thing, unless you had LOTS of bases. I think Planned and Green need boosts. The talent bonus for Green is interesting tho.

FM is overpowered, there is no way around it. The game centers around economics. If you gain 2 to 3 more times energy than a faction without FM, you research twice as fast and gain more money. The measures needed to control the population are rather trivial.

-INDUSTRY is one of the harshest penalties. How often do you run Power, and how often do you run Wealth? Honestly, I wanted to apply -2 INDUSTRY. You want more energy? Fine, but you will now be forced to spend it by hurrying stuff since you have more minerals to cover. It is still a very, very powerful civic. Bringing FM down a peg is a boost to Planned and Green in itself - now you would at least have a choice rather than a no-brainer.

Also, it can now be run together with Police State, which was self-defeating before (you still got Pacifist Drones, and you lost all the extra energy due to inefficiency). Santiago can run this combination to allow police under FM, and Morgan runs it to compensate for his SUPPORT problem. How often did you see this combination in vanilla game?

Planned with --2 ECON? Bear in mind -2 ECON penalty is not as meaningful as -2 EFFIC later on. Negative ECON just weakens the base square, negative effic hurts a lot more.

Planned with -2 EFFIC is a death sentence unless you are a) Hive b) Gaian c) running Democracy to Popboom and then quickly getting off to some other economy.

Is the goal of -EFFIC to make less energy? Then -2 ECON accomplishes the same thing. In the beginning half if not more of your income comes from bases, and Planned now halves that. You want to ICS because of +GROWTH and +INDUSTRY bonuses? You won't get as much free energy.

It has a synergy with Wealth by allowing your bases to collect energy normally, and it is good by itself if you collect your energy from other sourses. It is a viable mid-game choice until the endgame where Green rules supreme because of sheer brokenness of the EFFIC.

Power gives talents? I don't get it. How about 1 Police bonus instead? Synergizes nicely with Santiago, and Free Marketeers can use it along with Police State (and Ascetic Virtues) to fight.

+1 POLICE with +2 SUPPORT would simply turn Power into another Police State, only worse. The goal was to avoid duplicates. Who would run PS+Power if they were the same?

The goal of +POLICE is to quell riots. Isn't that what Talents do? Except, you know, without beating the protesters over the heads - this concerns the values the society holds, and therefore is subtler. The goal is the same as yours - to make population control easier - but it is achieved via different means, and that makes the civic unique.

Leaders seeking Power build strong, well-paid military forces to enforce their will. But Economic and industrial infrastructure may suffer from bloated “defense” budgets."

If you want a justification, imagine that those that in other societies become losers, dissenters and generally bad influence are 'offered opportunities' in the military, leaving the overall ideological climate much healthier. You can never have enough mindworm fodder.

One does usually run Power with Fundy for MORALE, or with Democracy + Planned for population booms through Golden Ages. But yes, I am not very happy with it. Maybe it should be made ++ MORALE +SUPPORT -INUSTRY something.

Er, why Thought Control gives extra talents? I don't get it.

If you can control the thoughts of your population, why would they ever riot? People are happy because they thinks they are happy, live in the best possible place, and work the best suited jobs.

Perhaps we have different understanding of Talents? To me they are just 'content, happy' citizens they were in Civ games, as opposed to the quelled drones that POLICE creates.

At this point I was thinking about synergies more than dwelling on what a particular bonus means.

I dunno, some stuff is pretty much broken by consensus

There is no consensus on what to do with it, however.

Everyone agrees that ICS is bad, but not everyone agrees about the reasons and to what extent. We've had a rather hot discussion about it in this very thread, and it was between those who exploited the mechanics to death. Get the ones who are playing on Talent difficulty here (and I do not mean it in a derisive way), and you will hear something completely different.

Things that are geared towards tournaments and fair play are not always fun to everyone, and people tend not to understand why certain things are broken and others are just powerful.

Case in point: this thread.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/homm-2-vs-homm-3.94823/page-2#post-3550388
People who never went to a tournament in their whole life discuss the tournament rules and laugh at people who are 'too OCD to enjoy the damn game', even though there is a good reason for why each and every of those rules is enforced.

 

[laclongquan]

A thing of note: Currently in my Morgan Transcend, I still havent run Free Market yet. And the issue is Police.

I need my 2 polices to give -4 drones. Without it, i might have to change a few into specialist, which is an issue for base13 (base11 +2 bonus from SP)

I havent changed the balance 50/0/50 yet. Can the extra incomefrom Free market enough to run up talent to compensate for two drone from the loss of 1 police (equal to 2 talent) and whatever come from Pacifism.

The problem is that more than half my bases dont have that much energy to create talent~ The big bases might be okay, but land base and small base might be screwed~

So to spare myself the headache I just run Dem+Green+POwer for war time, and rely on Wealth for peace time.

 

[Nevill]

Can the extra incomefrom Free market enough to run up talent to compensate for two drone from the loss of 1 police (equal to 2 talent)

Yes, easily, especially at size 13. You have to build a few facilities to get the Pop that high (Holo Theaters and Tree farms), and those amplify the psych output significantly.

Although for Morgan who can run Wealth to get +2 ECON, Free Market is not really a priority.

and whatever come from Pacifism.

No. But the method to be rid of Pacifist Drones is to home them to an all-specialist base, or a base with a Punishment Sphere.

So to spare myself the headache I just run Dem+Green+POwer for war time, and rely on Wealth for peace time.

I think Wealth should be an all-time favorite for Morgan. The morale bonuses are easy to ignote with an overwhelming advantage of weapons over armor.