A few miscellenous questions

[Mansooj]

Hi,

A few things that I've noticed and wondered about while playing my first few games of SMAC (4.0 patched).

o) What's the deal with worms on adjacent squares to one killed by one of my units getting an instant morale/lifecycle boost?

o) Why is it that when I set an air-to-air tactical/interceptor plane on alert while sitting in a base, that it goes flitting around the area rather than doing as the manual states and holding in position and coming out when an enemy enters the area? I *think* the AI's planes when on alert actually work this way, but none of mine do.

o) In playing my first game as the Gaians I strove for a +6 planet rating so I could get a 75% capture rate. Unfortunately, when I got that +6, I ended up almost never capturing any worms. I kept a tally when I got suspicious and out of 26 attempts, I only captured 4. Prior to getting the +6, my success rate seemed to meet the 25% chance I had at that time. Note that this was before I patched to 4.0. Haven't checked since then.

o) I have a base on the 'corner' of a peninsula with a small two square island across a strait, but still within the city's radius. I transported a former to one of the squares that has a mineral bonus on it, and mined it. Ordinarily, I would get 5 minerals on this type of terrain, but for some reason I am only getting 4, with the black border around the mineral icon. Another deposit within my radius is getting the 5 I expect. Is there some subtraction if working terrain on land not contiguous with that of the base? Never noticed it elsewhere. Note that I have all the techs necessary to lift the mineral caps.

That's it for now. TIA for your comments.

-Mansooj

[Patashu]

Originally posted by Mansooj
Hi,
o) In playing my first game as the Gaians I strove for a +6 planet rating so I could get a 75% capture rate. Unfortunately, when I got that +6, I ended up almost never capturing any worms. I kept a tally when I got suspicious and out of 26 attempts, I only captured 4. Prior to getting the +6, my success rate seemed to meet the 25% chance I had at that time. Note that this was before I patched to 4.0. Haven't checked since then.

Hmm...sounds like the probe bug in SMAX(maybe do-able in SMAC with custom factions). In SMAX, if you play as the Data Angels, and get the tech that for you gives you a Probe Ops center in every base, you have a probe rating of 4+, which, instead of making you immune to probes, allows them to walk right in. The only way around it is to go Knowledge for the rest of the game.

[Adalbertus]

Hi too,

o) What's the deal with worms on adjacent squares to one killed by one of my units getting an instant morale/lifecycle boost?

I noticed this strange behaviour too, but don't know why. Bug? Anyway, it gives you more energy if you have the chance to attack it.

o) Why is it that when I set an air-to-air tactical/interceptor plane on alert while sitting in a base, that it goes flitting around the area rather than doing as the manual states and holding in position and coming out when an enemy enters the area? I *think* the AI's planes when on alert actually work this way, but none of mine do.

I never used this function but you probably will get what you want when you simply put the interceptors on hold ("H"). They will come out if something in the base radius is attacked by enemy planes. Rather annoying when your plane should heal ...

o) In playing my first game as the Gaians I strove for a +6 planet rating so I could get a 75% capture rate. Unfortunately, when I got that +6, I ended up almost never capturing any worms. I kept a tally when I got suspicious and out of 26 attempts, I only captured 4. Prior to getting the +6, my success rate seemed to meet the 25% chance I had at that time. Note that this was before I patched to 4.0. Haven't checked since then.

Apparently the number of worms you already have plays heavily into the equation whether you actually get a worm. I forgot to check it but often you get a message "mindworm capture attempt failed". Maybe the 75% is the chance of an attempt and the chance to get one is lower. It's a feature, not a bug

o) I have a base on the 'corner' of a peninsula with a small two square island
...
contiguous with that of the base? Never noticed it elsewhere. Note that I have all the techs necessary to lift the mineral caps.

[Mansooj]

Adalbertus:

I noticed this strange behaviour too, but don't know why. Bug? Anyway, it gives you more energy if you have the chance to attack it.

Yeah, at least that's nice. In actuality, because of that I *do* like it, but I wondered about it. I just assume the worms get mad and get meaner. Works for me.

I never used this function but you probably will get what you want when you simply put the interceptors on hold ("H"). They will come out if something in the base radius is attacked by enemy planes. Rather annoying when your plane should heal ...

Ahh, okay, I'll try holding them in base first. Also the part about the plane reacting to enemies entering only the base radius answers another question I probably would have had since the manual says units on alert will react to enemies that come within their movement range (for planes, this is clearly not the case, then). >30 pages about double stars and gas giants could have been better used to actually explain all these 'unimportant' details.

Apparently the number of worms you already have plays heavily into the equation whether you actually get a worm. I forgot to check it but often you get a message "mindworm capture attempt failed". Maybe the 75% is the chance of an attempt and the chance to get one is lower. It's a feature, not a bug

Ahh, that could be it, then. I had quite a respectable wiggly army to my credit before I got the 6 planet rating. And yes, with regard to the messages, I think you're correct. It may very well be that the actual attempts were so few that I may have actually gotten those 4 worms in my tally out of 5 or 6 actual capture attempts, all the rest not even being attempts.

More 'unimportant' details left out of the manual.

Thanks for your input. Very helpful.

-Mansooj

[Mansooj]

Patashu:

Hmm...sounds like the probe bug in SMAX(maybe do-able in SMAC with custom factions). In SMAX, if you play as the Data Angels, and get the tech that for you gives you a Probe Ops center in every base, you have a probe rating of 4+, which, instead of making you immune to probes, allows them to walk right in. The only way around it is to go Knowledge for the rest of the game.

I haven't yet gotten the expansion, so I'm not aware of this, but it seems like it is similar. Most likely some range overflow/wrapping kinda thing. Seems pretty common in a lot of games for some odd reason. Also seems like stuff that could have and should have been caught and corrected in even minimal playtesting.

-Mansooj

[Yxklyx]

Isn't a probe rating greater than 2 just supposed to make you immune to mind control, not probes against Procure Research for example.

[Mongoose]

o) I have a base on the 'corner' of a peninsula with a small two square island across a strait, but still within the city's radius. I transported a former to one of the squares that has a mineral bonus on it, and mined it. Ordinarily, I would get 5 minerals on this type of terrain, but for some reason I am only getting 4, with the black border around the mineral icon. Another deposit within my radius is getting the 5 I expect. Is there some subtraction if working terrain on land not contiguous with that of the base? Never noticed it elsewhere. Note that I have all the techs necessary to lift the mineral caps.

Tile needs a road, I think.

[Mansooj]

Tile needs a road, I think.

Does that make any difference on non-rocky squares? I forgot to mention the underlying terrain. It is rolling/rainy.

That aside, I'm getting the ghosted mineral icon which implies I have enough terraforming to get more, but something somewhere is preventing it from actually yielding that amount.

-Mansooj

[Mongoose]

Does that make any difference on non-rocky squares? I forgot to mention the underlying terrain. It is rolling/rainy.

I surely think so. Give it a try?

[Yxklyx]

No, the only number that you should ever see surrounded by the black outline is a 2. If you're seeing some other number then you've encountered a very strange glitch that you will probably never see again - unless there's something else I don't know about here.

And yes, I've not been able to capture a single mindworm (other than the very first one) with a planet rating of 6.

[Mongoose]

No, the only number that you should ever see surrounded by the black outline is a 2. If you're seeing some other number then you've encountered a very strange glitch that you will probably never see again - unless there's something else I don't know about here.

This is incorrect. The black circle will be present, sometimes not as noticibly as others, whenever the resource yield is less than the maximum allowed by the basic terraforming done in the square. By basic, I mean farm, mine, solar, borehole.

As a test, take any generic rocky tile on which you have a mine/road. (within a base's radius) Note the mineral yield is 4. Pillage the road. You will see a 3 with a faint black circle.

Still waiting on Mansooj to report on whether the originally discussed tile has a road.

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by Mongoose


I surely think so. Give it a try?

Whoops! My mistake, it's on a flat/rainy square.

-Mansooj

[knowhow2]

Originally posted by Mansooj
Hi,

A few things that I've noticed and wondered about while playing my first few games of SMAC (4.0 patched).

o) What's the deal with worms on adjacent squares to one killed by one of my units getting an instant morale/lifecycle boost?

Th AI-worms don't get moral boost from winning battles. The get it from either the way you mentioned or by Hercules moving closer triggering active native life.

[QUOTE]o) Why is it that when I set an air-to-air tactical/interceptor plane on alert while sitting in a base, that it goes flitting around the area rather than doing as the manual states and holding in position and coming out when an enemy enters the area? I *think* the AI's planes when on alert actually work this way, but none of mine do.[QUOTE]

Welknown bug. Get the patches!

o) In playing my first game as the Gaians I strove for a +6 planet rating so I could get a 75% capture rate. Unfortunately, when I got that +6, I ended up almost never capturing any worms. I kept a tally when I got suspicious and out of 26 attempts, I only captured 4. Prior to getting the +6, my success rate seemed to meet the 25% chance I had at that time. Note that this was before I patched to 4.0. Haven't checked since then.

The chance for capturing worms decrease compare to the numbers of worms you already have and the lifecycle the Mindworm have. Fungus-pop-worms are also harder to catch.

o) I have a base on the 'corner' of a peninsula with a small two square island across a strait, but still within the city's radius. I transported a former to one of the squares that has a mineral bonus on it, and mined it. Ordinarily, I would get 5 minerals on this type of terrain, but for some reason I am only getting 4, with the black border around the mineral icon. Another deposit within my radius is getting the 5 I expect. Is there some subtraction if working terrain on land not contiguous with that of the base? Never noticed it elsewhere. Note that I have all the techs necessary to lift the mineral caps.

flat+mineral bonus+mine = 4
rocky+mineral bonus+mine+road=7

[Yxklyx]

Mansooj: How did you get your Planet rating up to 6 without the expansion?! You should get 1 for the Gaians, 2 for Green, and 2 for Cybernetic. Where did you pick up the other 1 Planet from?

[Verrucosus]

The Manifold Nexus Landmark is included in the last SMAC patch. If the Gaians get it, they can get up to Planet +6 in the late game.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Mansooj

o) What's the deal with worms on adjacent squares to one killed by one of my units getting an instant morale/lifecycle boost?

-Mansooj

Presumably planets worms when attacked are not entirely destroyed but a portion is scattered and portion is destroyed (yielding planet pearls). Firaxis when developing the game decided to include this effect as a feature thus allowing the remnants of worms scattered to add a life cycle bonus to adjacent worms. Think of it as stragglers that join up with the other worm groups (since planet worms are portrayed as a collection of mind worms acting jointly in a swarm sometimes controlled by collective intelligence of planet, sometimes by a human/alien handler).

Note this has huge benefits if you set up a worm trap (polluter base) pick off a lone worm and give a life cycle increase to a stack of worms in another square and then attack the main square for big EC's in the form of pearls.

Og

[MariOne]

Originally posted by knowhow2
flat+mineral bonus+mine = 4
rocky+mineral bonus+mine+road=7

'gzactly, and I'd add to match your observation:
rocky+mineral bonus+mine=5 WITHOUT the road.
The road is indeed *necessary* to trigger both the rocky bonus and the MinSpecial bonus for a mine.

[Adalbertus]

Where we are talking about worms and controlled by the intelligence of Planet:
Has anyone a clue what means the message (roughly) "These specific Mindworms seem to be controlled by a higher instance"?
Usually I tend to find quite a lot more of mindworms than usually.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
Where we are talking about worms and controlled by the intelligence of Planet:
Has anyone a clue what means the message (roughly) "These specific Mindworms seem to be controlled by a higher instance"?
Usually I tend to find quite a lot more of mindworms than usually.

IIRC this usually refers to worms spawned via ecodamage and at certain points in the game where dialogues are on screen. Perhelionof Hercules??

But I may be mistaken.

Og

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by Mongoose

Still waiting on Mansooj to report on whether the originally discussed tile has a road.

I replied a few posts up, but also replied to another poster that I made a mistake and the square is flat/rainy. It doesn't have a road yet, but I'll put one there and see if anything changes.

Err...I also neglected to mention that I am using a slightly modified alpha.txt where bonus squares yield +3 rather than +2 (for a game with a friend, but I forgot to reset the vanilla values).

Now, let's see what happens when that road is tossed down....

Well, lo and behold I am now getting 5 minerals (no black shadow) off this square. I didn't know a road on such a square would yield anything extra since the manual says very specifically that "roads do not provide a bonus to mines in flat or rolling terrain" (page 55, footnote 9). Can't really get much more clear than that, eh? I also read through all the patch notes and nothing was mentioned about a change related to this.

-Mansooj

[Mansooj]

Th AI-worms don't get moral boost from winning battles. The get it from either the way you mentioned or by Hercules moving closer triggering active native life.

Admittedly, I didn't actually keep track of where Hercules was at the time, but IIRC I notice this EVERY time I kill a worm with another worm in an adjacent square. I don't, however, recall for certain if this happens when worms of different vectors are involved, but I think so. In any event, as was noted elsewhere, the extra loot from this process is fair compensation (usually).

flat+mineral bonus+mine = 4

As I noted a bit late, I am currently using an alpha.txt that sets all bonus resources at +3, rather than +2. Therefore, the max would be 5, rather than 4. Either way, though, it was shadowing the "4" for some reason until I dropped the road on the square. This wasn't necessary to get the max 5 from other flat/rainy squares with mineral bonuses (in the same game).

-Mansooj

[Mansooj]

Mansooj: How did you get your Planet rating up to 6 without the expansion?! You should get 1 for the Gaians, 2 for Green, and 2 for Cybernetic. Where did you pick up the other 1 Planet from?

While Verrucosus is correct, it's not applicable to my case since my claimed "+6" planet rating was under v1.0i. This was a mistake on my part. What I meant to say was that I was striving to get the maximum planet rating to get the 75% maximum capture rate.

Pardon my sloppiness -- the original observation was written down during playing my very first game and I was a bit confused on the various scales for SE settings.

-Mansooj

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

Note this has huge benefits if you set up a worm trap (polluter base) pick off a lone worm and give a life cycle increase to a stack of worms in another square and then attack the main square for big EC's in the form of pearls.

Heh, I picked up on worm farming in my first game playing the Gaians. I generally got rid of fungus because I wasn't yet aware how nice it gets in late game, but I did set aside a worm refuge where I sent a handful of properly geared units to run around in circles with one space between each unit. The obvious goal was to scare up worms to abuse for EC's, and the odd chance to build up my own worm troops.

It really helps to make worms that pop up when you DON'T want them to a lot more tolerable when you consider how generous they're being with their pearls in other cases.

-Mansooj

[Adalbertus]

Originally posted by Yxklyx:
Mansooj: How did you get your Planet rating up to 6 without the expansion?! You should get 1 for the Gaians, 2 for Green, and 2 for Cybernetic. Where did you pick up the other 1 Planet from?

Mansooj mentioned to play with SMAC 4.0, which newly indroduced the Manifold Nexus. This could give the additional +1 Planet, netting you +6.

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Mansooj

Err...I also neglected to mention that I am using a slightly modified alpha.txt ...

you .... neglected????

EEEK!! ROLLEYES!!!!!

To all: see what I mean when I say I'm in general against mods?
have fun with them, but frankly I fail to see the interest in delving into detailed figure discussion when those figures are totally influenced by the personal way you personally tinkered with your personal alpha.txt...

Could be a nice issue for a discussion about the flexibility and versatility of the customisations tools and options the game offers to us, like when in another forum (on on both?) someone altered the artillery parameters to reflect the manual-stated behavior, and put up a pbem to test it soundly....

but goddammit, it should be the first thing you type when you open a thread about it, and you... "negelcted" it!!!!!
Talk about wasting someone else's time...

[Mongoose]

Easy there, MariOne. It didn't totally devalue the discussion...just modified it slightly.

[Mansooj]

Originally posted by MariOne

you .... neglected????

EEEK!! ROLLEYES!!!!!

[...]

but goddammit, it should be the first thing you type when you open a thread about it, and you... "negelcted" it!!!!!
Talk about wasting someone else's time...

With all due respect, MariOne, while I *should* have mentioned this initially, *I* wasn't aware of it either because I *forgot* the alpha.txt had been changed until *after* (I caught a sale on asterisks) I had posed the questions.

Only one of my questions involved the sole alpha.txt change of +2->+3 in bonus tile effect, and when reverting to a vanilla alpha.txt, the question remains valid since the only effect of switching back to the original alpha.txt was a shadowed "3" mineral and an unshadowed "4" after laying down the road on the flat/rainy/mineral bonus tile, instead of a shadowed "4" mineral and an unshadowed "5" when laying down the road.

Nobody's time was wasted. Except perhaps a bit from your taking time to rant, and my taking time to reply.

-Mansooj