Name the #1 thing SMAC2 should have!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

After being over on the CIVIII forums and realizing what went wrong with it, I would say SMAC2 should incorporate the following but NOT take away any of the rich features.

Ability to create integrated combat units(armies) and not via some cheesy great leader approach.

What this means is you have the abillity to create a basic infantry/armored/cav etc. unit(corps). To this unit via the workshop you can extend it's capabilities adding say 2 arty battallions, a mechanized scout platoon, an armored cav regiment, attack copter cav squad etc. etc. In doing so you have expanded the capabilities of the unit/corp division etc. Further to this you of course can upgrade each individual platoon, regiment, battalion with latest tech's armor and weapons. In taking this approach you get to incorporate the advances of things like AAA, SAM, ECM, etc. to the extent you wish to to any given corps.

I would envision the units built would then be something like regimental level units (with say 2 expansion slot capababilities)

Divisional level units (with say 4 expansion slot capabilities or two Regimental units)

and Corp level units ( with say 6-8 expansion slot capabilities or 3 regimental or 2 Divisional units)

Further for those inclined to like in MOO2 battle resolution can be handled at a tactical level or let the game resolve it at a strategic level. I would envision having some option as to the tactical layout of the corps (line formation, collumn formations, etc.) that impact the tactical initial layout and/or the strategic combat resolution.

Under no circumstance tho' do I advocate eliminating game features as was the case with CIV3.

Og

'Course this is all kinna pipe dream isn't it?

[DilithiumDad]

Certain things could be adopted from Civ3. A hybrid game would be great! The biggest thing is to fix the "mystery drone bug" in SMAX. This makes SMAX unplayable for me and I usually stick with SMAC.

Things to steal from civ3:

1. Air combat and movement model should be incorporated wholesale. Get rid of those ridiculously overpowered choppers!

2. Get rid of ZOC --has great effect on AI's ability to ambush you deep inside your territory.

3. Use improved graphics and animations a la Civ3.

4. Increase tech cost to avoid late game rush of unusable techs

[Blake]

The #1 thing that would improve SMAX for me is a revamped population, specialist & crawler model.


The most important thing is to avoid a situation where you can use a crawler with absolutely no tradeoff, other than the initial construction cost. I refer to a situation such as replacing a worker on a mine with a crawler, and then having the worker able to go somewhere else / become a specialist.

The second most important thing is to avoid arbitary rules, such as "No crawlers inside base radius". It would be okay if using crawlers in a base radius was merely unfavourable.

This would be difficult to fix, and changes to crawlers would be insufficent, population, growth and specialists would also need to be modified. Additionaly minerals, energy and nutrients would require some modification (this would be required anyway to prevent things like SE quickies to get more minerals.)

The short and incomplete version of my fix basically goes like this:
Make population growth more linear (like in Civ3) and eliminate the popboom.
Make it so crawlers have a cost, a simple upkeep isn't enough.

An idea I like is to make crawlers cost 1 pop to build. When harvesting they create a 'crawler specialist' in their home base, which eats 1 or 2 nuts and acts like a normal citizen in terms of drones and hab limits. This roving citizen is the workforce which actually processes the resources collected by the crawler.
To balance it up a bit crawlers should be able to collect more than one type of resource, up to a certain total of resources. So if your current tech allows crawlers to harvest 5 FOP, and you order it to harvest energy from a rainy+rolling+solar+2000ft, it would collect 3 energy, 1 nut and 1 min (1 nut lost).

Additionaly, when a crawler is ordered to 'hurry' a SP, a large proportion of the mineral output of the home base is diverted to the SP base, the maximum would be the same as the maximum amount harvestable (but you could choose to transfer less). This production would count towards ED at the SP base instead of the home base.
Once the SP is completed, or the crawlers orders change, the transfer of production stops. Having crawlers work like this prevents 'plonking' down SP's in one turn, while still allowing an impressive empire-wide effort, which would still have to be managed carefully (imagine the native response if you pumped a base up to 50 production in the early game for a number of turns...).

Okay, so thats a rather long #1 thing SMAC2 should have, so I'll put a slightly shorter #2.

#2. Stack orders ( movement and/or combat and/or terraforming).
This would allow you to give an order to every unit in a stack, for example 'Move North', this would cause every unit in the tile, with enough movment remaining, to move north.
Stack orders are distinct from armies, because if you created an army of 10 formers, and ordered it to plant forest, 6 of the formers time would be wasted, while using stack orders you could tell the stack of 10 to plant forest (4 used) then build road (another 3 used) and Move North (the 3 unused formers move, leaving the 7 used ones behind).

#3. And Armies, because army combat is way better than single unit combat.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Forgot probably the most important thing. A facility for bases that eliminates the nerve gas population halving effect.

Og

[Lucy In The Sky]

BRIDGES!!!!!!!!!!! Instead of raising ocean bed to reach another land mass, I wanna build bridges & secure them w/ground troops. I wanna engage opposing naval forces fr bridges I occupy w/ground forces & I wanna use my naval forces to attack opposition forces on bridges. & of course I wanna be able to build mag tubes in the sky on these bridges. Well, you get the idea. I mean, once you raise a land bridge to another land mass, among other things, naval forces are isolated.

Gotta go 3d to do something like that?