What features/exploits do we allow?

Maniac · August 8, 2002, 15:53

As there did seem to be some discussion in the original thread, ( http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=58198 ) I think it would be appropriate to post a poll on whether to allow the following cheats/bugs/features/exploits: the Stockpile Energy Bug, retro-engineering, crawler upgrading and workshop upgrading.

More elaborately explained:

Quote:

Any SMAC owner knows that minerals not needed for the production of the current unit/facility/SP are transferred to the next project, with an upper limit of ten mins. The Stockpile Energy Bug means that, besides being kept for the next production, those excess minerals are also transferred to energy credits IF Stockpile Energy has been put in the build queue. For example, if a base produces 10 minerals per turn and is two minerals away from completing an impact rover, 8 minerals will be transferred to the next project, which is Stockpile Energy in the build queue. Stockpiling energy transfers these 8 minerals into 4 energy. When one changes production to a tree farm on the same turn the impact rover is complete, the 8 minerals are kept, but you have gained four free credits out of nowhere. This is an obvious bug and normal procedure would be to not exploit it.
However the problem is that, unless you put something in the build queue other than StEn, the production automatically switches to Stockpile Energy Bug after you have completed a facility or SP. IIRC this is not true for units, where the production of a second unit of the same type is started and thus no free credits are gained. This gives an unfair benefit for builders over warmongers, and therefore using the Stockpile Energy bug is allowed in any PBEM game I’ve played.

A second issue is retro-engineering. When a unit is probed, it appears in the Unit Workshop. This allows the unit components to be modified and used in other unit designs. No problem with that of course, unless the unit probed has an ability, armour, weapon etcetera you haven’t researched yourself. Discussion among players is whether it is allowed to use that unresearched component when designing and building other units.

Crawler upgrades. The designers of the game intended to prevent rushbuys of Secret Projects. This is obvious by the fact it takes four energy to get one mineral when rushing an SP, where it is 2 energy for a min when rushing a facility. Therefore it can be considered an exploit to use crawler upgrades. For example one can upgrade a simple 0-1-2*2 supply crawler to a version with high armour and special abilities, worth about 500 minerals, for just a few hundred credits. That way one can complete a SP in one turn. Normally rushbuying would take 2000 credits and SPs would take turns to complete and actually be a huge project.

Workshop upgrades. Upgrading a unit manually on the field costs its entire turn. However, one can avoid that by upgrading all units of that type in the workshop. That way they still keep all their movement points. This is a clear exploit, as it was obviously not intended by the game creators.

There are still many other obvious exploits, for example the demon boil bug, which aren’t allowed in PBEM and I suppose will neither be allowed here. About the above four however people may have a different opinion. We’ll see.

Nubclear · August 8, 2002, 16:36

Quote:

Originally posted by M@ni@c
As there did seem to be some discussion in the original thread, ( http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=58198 ) I think it would be appropriate to post a poll on whether to allow the following cheats/bugs/features/exploits: the Stockpile Energy Bug, retro-engineering, crawler upgrading and workshop upgrading.

More elaborately explained:

A resounding NO to all of them! Exploits are just....no.

So, I voted no to all of them.

Juliennew · August 8, 2002, 16:45

Definitely NO! to any bugs or cheat.

Method · August 8, 2002, 17:04

reverse engineering isn't a cheat.

themagicbanana · August 8, 2002, 18:52

Quote:

Originally posted by TKG
reverse engineering isn't a cheat.

isn't it an exploit or something?When i play multiplayer, they say i cant do it....

Method · August 8, 2002, 18:55

its more of a feature. i think there's nothing wrong with it and IMO they put it in the game for a reason.

themagicbanana · August 8, 2002, 19:36

Quote:

Originally posted by TKG
its more of a feature. i think there's nothing wrong with it and IMO they put it in the game for a reason.

oh well that makes sense. no to everything except retro!i dont care about retro!

Andemagne · August 8, 2002, 21:45

yes to all.

DeathByTheSword · August 9, 2002, 09:25

the question is does the AI use any? the ones the AI uses we use and the rest we leave alone...but this is very hard to check isnt it?!

Maniac · August 9, 2002, 09:41

The AI doesn't use build queues, thus neither the stockpile energy bug. They don't upgrade AFAIK, thus certainly don't use crawler upgrades or workshop upgrades. They do use retro-engineering in a limited way. If they probe a unit of yours, they can build an exact replica of that. (I've seen the AI use my own 6-3-2*2 rovers and 8-1-12*2 against me

)However they don't create other unit types with that unresearched module.

DeathByTheSword · August 9, 2002, 09:51

so retro is ok but the rest are bugs!

Maniac · August 9, 2002, 09:56

Crawler and Workshop upgrades are not real bugs but exploits. The StEn bug is obviously a bug, but not using it gives the builder an unfair advantage. I do hope voters read my first post before voting... I was really hoping the Stockpile Energy Bug would be allowed. Ah, such is democracy!

Method · August 9, 2002, 10:52

the AI does use reverse engineering. roze probed my 8-1-2 in SP once, and started building them. fortunately, i erradicate her before any of the new units could be built.

Main_Brain · August 9, 2002, 17:39

an 8-1-12*2 ? How could that happen did AI buy a Base?

Maniac · August 9, 2002, 17:55

You guessed it! I got careless in a MP game. As a result all human players were terrorized by a Caretaker air fleet of 35 needlejets.

Zakharov VII · August 12, 2002, 21:22

This is a fairly old (as the Demo game goes

) thread, but there were a few things that I'm not sure if they are exploits or not...

First...building sensors where bases will go. I'm not entirely sure, but this seems like an unintended "feature" rather than strategy, at least to me (it does make for some interesting strategical decisions, I'll admit). Pretty much all terraforming stays beneath the base, but pretty much everything else only affects resources, which is independent of terrain (except rivers). And you can't build sensors on a base, only the base on the sensor.

Second (and a rather unused "feature")...what I think someone called the "crawler crawl." It "exploits" (at least to me) that you can tell a crawler to gather resources even when its turn is over. So, if you have a line of crawlers from right next to you base to five squares down and a new crawler at your base, you can crawl the original five spaces and a sixth at the end by moving #5 to spot 6, gathering, moving #4 to spot 5, gathering, etc, until you move the new one to the first spot and have it gather.

Z

MrWhereItsAt · August 13, 2002, 04:56

I have never heard of any exploits before, and that makes these doubly interesting. It is clear to me that all of these are rather dramatic exploits, and should be banned, except for a few.

The Crawler upgrade one mentioned in the top post is one that I don't consider an exploit, just from my own thoughts for a minute. The "Crawler Crawl" I don't properly understand the benefit of, so could someone please let me know what it does?

The sensors on the base site - does this just give a 25% Defense bonus? If this is all, then I don't see why we shouldn't allow this - it is nothing that the game doesn't let us do anyway.