Self-Aware Colony bug? (SMAC 4.0)

[Mansooj]

Hi,

Okay, I'm in a long-running game on a huge map and have just built the Self-Aware Colony. Having drone problems for so long I thought the extra police effect would be a real bonus along with the savings in EC's for facil upkeep.

So I watch the little video and go about my business for a turn, then as the next turn dawns I unexpectedly get a number of drone riots.

I look at the psych charts for the affected bases and see that my police effect is now less than or equal to what it was before (depending on how many units, non-lethal or otherwise, I have in each base).

At this stage of the game all of my bases have at least one non-lethal police unit, but my psych row for police now only shows one drone->worker conversion, not two, and certainly not at least the three I expected in many cases.

I tested by moving all of my units out of a particular base and re-checking the psych police row, and sure enough, I see that I still have the same single drone->worker shift. This means that the addition of the Self-Aware Colony has indeed given me the one bonus police unit effect I expected, but it has completely voided all actual unit policing effects, including the non-lethal 2-drone->worker effects.

So, anyone know what's up with this? Is this a known bug or am I just lucky?

My current SE and +/- standings are as follows:

Democratic/Planned/Knowledge/Cybernetic

+3 effic / +4 growth / +2 planet / -4 probe / +1 industry / +6 research

All others are at zero including Police, which at 0 allows for one police unit. (I have Network Backbone to cancel the -3 police from Cybernetic.)

I'm going to mess around with various SE settings regarding police effects to see if anything changes, but would still like everyone's input, because I'll probably get nowhere.

-Mansooj

[Mansooj]

Welp, because I want to get on with my long-running game I did as I said, and here follows my journey:


I did some SE fiddling and have determined from what I have observed that what is actually happening is that the Self-Aware Colony's "extra police unit" effect is quite misleading (much like the Human Genome Project's semi-bogus "extra talent per base" claim, which I may bring up in another thread.)

My tests:

Starting off with a 0 police rating which allows for a single unit to act as police, I worked with a size 14 base and put all the specialists back in the field to create 8 drones after facilities were considered (no psych points were in effect now). I then removed all units from the base.

At this stage, the psych display for this base shows that police are canceling one drone, obviously due to the Self-Aware Colony (SAC).

Working from the premise that the SAC actually does what it says and ADDS the equivalent of an extra plain unit to act as police where possible....

I then moved one standard ground combat unit without non-lethal methods into the base. The police line remained the same. This is wrong. It should be two drones canceled (one plain unit acting as police as per the 0 police rating and one from the so-called 'extra' police unit from the SAC).

I then removed the unit from the base, and moved in a single police unit with non-lethal methods (hereafter referred to as an NLP unit). The police line remained the same. This is wrong. It should be three drones canceled (one NLP unit canceling two, and the SAC canceling one).

I then changed SE settings to get a +2 police rating which allows three units to act as police.

I rechecked the police row in the base again and saw that now three drones are being cancelled. This is correct: Two from the NLP unit, one from the SAC.

I then added another NLP unit (now a total of two). The police line now shows five drones cancelled. This is correct: Four from the pair of NLP units, one from the SAC.

I then added another NLP unit (now a total of three). The police line remained the same at five drones cancelled. This is incorrect. It should be seven drones canceled, six from the NLP units and one from the SAC.

I did a few more checks which further confirmed my conclusion:

In a nutshell the SAC effect is considered before actual military units by occupying the first allowable 'police' unit slot. This means that if you are allowed two units to act as police, the phantom SAC unit is counted first (cancelling one drone), and your actual unit is counted next, and so forth if you are allowed three units.

Nowhere is an "extra" police unit actually added. What's meant by "extra" is simply that IF you have an allowance for more units to act as police than you actually have in a base, you will get the bonus of one canceled drone.

This is clearly a liability if you NEED maximum NLP effects because one potential NLP unit is being ignored. What happens at police rating 3 where all units have double effect, I don't know, as I can't get that rating with my current game. But, if NLP effects are doubled (meaning four drones could be canceled with one unit), then the SAC can become an even bigger liability.

I welcome your comments. As noted elsewhere, I am rather new to SMAC so I may be missing something fundamental that explains all this.

-Mansooj

[note: edited my conclusion to be much more concise.]

[GeneralTacticus]

Presumably if you have +3 POLICE then the SAC will cancel two drones not one, but then your NLP will cancel 3 not two. Still inefficient, but ordinarily I wouldn't keep more than two defense/police untis in each base anyway.

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus

Presumably if you have +3 POLICE then the SAC will cancel two drones not one, but then your NLP will cancel 3 not two. Still inefficient, but ordinarily I wouldn't keep more than two defense/police untis in each base anyway.

Hi Chieftain,

So you're saying that with a +3 police rating an NLP unit will function as 1.5 NLP units, not 2 NLP units? Just trying to figure out what to expect when that happens in one of my future games.

-Mansooj

[Mongoose]

I spent some time looking at the SAC issue a couple of years ago. (July '99, actually)

In the case I was investigating, a player playing the Gaians (-1 POLICE inherent, was experiening similar problems with the SAC)

From a letter I wrote at the time to the player in question:

In Gaian Skunkworks, for example: Pop = 16 I took all the Specialists off and put them to work, one on a forest square, the rest at sea.--> 7 talents, 4 content 5 drones. The police effect as shown on the psych display in the base screen showed two drones being made content due to police. OK, as should be. Total energy (gross) was 54, total psych was 25. Then, I opened the SE and built the SAC there. Ended the turn. Next turn, the pop is still 16, gross energy is still 54, psych is still 25 yet the citizenry changed from 7/4/5 to 7/3/6. The police effect went from 2 to 1!! At worst, it should have stayed even.

(too long, continued in next post)

[Mongoose]

Letter continued:
Question, is it your understanding that SAC grants another police
but only if there is 'room' to have another, or (my interpretaion) acts as a police, even if the # units doing police is already at max? If the former, then the police effect should have stayed at two. If the latter, it should have risen to three. Under no logical application of all these factors should it have decreased to one. Yet, this is exactly what it did. I think what happens is that SAC reads your 'original' POLICE rating. That is, before the effect of AV. That would have been -1, allowing no police. SAC effect says add a phantom police unit. NLM cannot be applied to this 'phantom' police unit, so the police effect is 1 drone. AV effect on POLICE is bypassed.
---end---

I was wrong, I guess. I just did a test using the PK in the Editor. With the SAC, and a Brood Pit (POLICE value is 0 before Pit) a NLM unit and a non-NLM unit have a Police effect of 4 drones. As they should, 1 for SAC, 2 for NLM unit, 1 for the non-NLM unit. Curiously, if I remove the Brood Pit, the Police effect falls to ONE DRONE.... the SAC effect, I presume. If I then add the AV, the Police effect goes up to 3, not 4, as I would expect. Some combination of low POLICE values or secret project effects is being compromised by the SAC. Needs more testing. Hmmm, perhaps with the Spartans, and their inherent +1 POLICE.

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by Mongoose
Question, is it your understanding that SAC grants another police
but only if there is 'room' to have another, or (my interpretaion) acts as a police, even if the # units doing police is already at max?

Your reference tests are apparently to SMAC-X which I don't have, but all my checks showed that the SAC 1-drone-police effect is taking up the first available police-unit slot regardless of your actual in-base police force.

There may indeed be some other process occuring that makes it seem that way, but for all practical purposes (and in my test game, that applied consistently over 90+ bases), this is what happens. Perhaps further testing with other settings and such may reveal something deeper.

-Mansooj