Why do aircraft cause drones when in base?

[Earwicker]

In both Civ and SMAC, building and supporting the bomber cause the drones, not having it around in the city. That's why Shakespeare's Theater was an effective anti-unhappiness strategy in that game and the Punishment Sphere strategy works in SMAC. Home the aircraft to London (or Assassin's Redoubt) and station them anywhere you want.

[Enigma]

Blake:
Helping computer terraforming AI would be a major improvement, however the computers tactical usage of units is pretty terrible...

I mean when is the last time you saw a human player rushing with ALL infantry?

The Civ3 AI isn't great, but if you give it say 100 turns using its production bonuses to build, then it does OK simply because tactics are so much simplified in the game. SMAC was basically done to maximize strategy/tactics- IE stacked unit damage.

I have heard you make references to mods you make on the AI to make em more difficult- could you explain please? I am going back into the game single player and would like a challenging game... The stuff you explained would need to source code to be changed.

[Blake]

What I've done to improve the AI's play revolves putting the AI in situations where it's ability to hurt itself is minimised.

Terrain & Terraforming
One thing I've noticed is the AI consistentely plants forest on low altitude flat/moist, flat/arid terrain. So when making a map, putting 'beaches' of flat terrain tends to encourage forest planting. The AI does truly atrocious things to rolling/moist tiles, and rainy/flat tiles - avoid them, but tends to handle rolling/rainy high altitude tiles okay. Anyway, a map can be designed so the AI does sensible terraforming - while still looking fairly 'natural' to a human player.

Also the AI handles maps with lots of land better.

Modifying text files
You can change the factions to give them a higher 'building' priority, and a lower 'military' priority. Every faction should either/both of BUILD, EXPLORE. If not they neglect terraforming to a criminal extent. Santiago (Conquer, Discover) and Zak (Discover) are some of the worst offenders at not terraforming.
Changing priorities does not change the human players game, but if you dont mind altering the game rules you can do more to create a 'padded room' for the AI to play in, while still minimising changes to the fundamental gameplay.
Free Market: -5 police -> -3 Police. The deal is, good human players easily get around FM drones anyway, by using probes, specailist bases/PS bases, smart population managment or strategic SE changes. The AI is completely incopetent at handling drones, and inevitably will kill itself under FM once D:AP arrives. Hence, reducing pacifist drones provides a minor benefit to the human player, but a massive benefit to the AI. Also, cybernetic has to lose the police penalty, or you merely delay the AI's sucicide until they can run cybernetic...


AI Factions
There is a LOT you can do with well designed AI factions, which avoid the AI deathtraps and avoid any changes to the gameplay. If done right an AI faction provides minimal early game benefit to the AI, and continues to provide benefit later in the game...
The basic changes I make are:
Reduce agression by 1.
Modify the priorities, make sure every AI has BUILD and/or EXPLORE. If you like builder games, just give the whole lot BUILD and not CONQUER - dont worry, they will still build military units and attack.
Free Former (I've seen the AI not build a former for the first 100 turns... a free former is the obvious and most effective solution)
Free Rec Tanks (The AI's terraforming is bad at best - free rec tanks brings their bases resources up to par)
+5 or +8 Police. (The AI never has to worry about pacifist drones, +8 ensures the AI never has to worry about any drones, the AI drone control is already broken compared to humans (-3 drones per base on transcend, I think). The police bonus doesn't kick in for quite a while, but does keep the AI in good health for the mid game...)
Free Clean Reactors, SMAX only. (Removes the AI 'infinite unit production' death trap.... usually the AI's production stagments at the start of the mid game.)

There is a number of ways you can implement AI factions... in SMAX just make custom clones of the existing factions and give them the bonuses, then choose the customised ones for the AI players, and an original for the human.
In SMAC original, I believe you can use 'load faction' to do something simialler.
Otherwise just juggle the text files to get the ones you want. I name my AI factions identically to the existing ones, and have a few different sets in subfolders, like 'Original', 'Builder AI's', 'SMAC AI's', 'SMAX AI's', then I mix and match so I have an original, and the AI gets modified ones.

If you look around the creation forum, searching under 'AI factions', or something, you should be able to find some threads with AI factions made by me or Smack posted

Scenerios
There are lots of good ones around... or you can make your own. Do stuff like allying all the AI's against you - give them strategies like 'Lots of colony pods'.
Pre dot the map with forests.

Self imposed restrictions
Some of these can also be implemented by altering the text files...
Dont use crawlers. Period.
Dont pop-boom.
Be overly and stupidly generous with gifts. Particullary when it comes to dangerous military & super builder techs.

[MattyBoy]

Nice post on fixing the AI with minor programming tweaks.
What if each interested apolyton member paid $1 each to pay for 1 day of consulting time at Firaxis to edit their code and release a patch?

I agree that it is outrageous that those tweaks were not made in SMAX.