Insanely Stupid Cheat

Simpson II · August 26, 2000, 10:01

Did everyone else know about this? I haven't heard it mentioned.

Load up a game where you have infiltrated a faction. Hit 'f4' to bring up the base operations screen. Click on the icon of the faction which you have infiltrated. Click on the citizens tab. Now, left-click on the citizen graphics in the display. One by one, they will be changed to specialists! Right clicking clears specialists back to citizens.

I'm flabbergasted that the designers made that mistake. It would allow you to easily contain any AI that happens to be nearby until you feel like marching in. It's also effectively undetectable for challenges, or in MP until the other players have infiltrated that AI

.

Possibly a prohibition against it should be added to the PBEM tournament rules...

Googlie · August 26, 2000, 14:14

It was a known bug in smac v1.0 - I thought they had corrected it with a subsequent release.

Simpson II · August 26, 2000, 17:04

The bug is alive and living happily in my Smac 4.0 edition, I'm afraid. Please, don't say they got rid of it and then brought it back again...

Purple · August 27, 2000, 13:06

In an early release you were also able to change the name of another player's bases using the same technique. Don't know offhand whether you still can, but it was fun, for a while, to rename Believer bases things like Tammy Faye's Epiphany or Hogwash Chapel.

Alinestra Covelia · August 27, 2000, 17:50

You could do that in Civ2 as well. Gave me hours of fun with enemy Civs.

Just a quick question - who was Tammy Faye?

Googlie · August 28, 2000, 00:08

HHmmm

S2:

On reading the readme files that came with the smax 2.0 patch, I think I was confusing your discovery with:

"You can no longer switch the AI's governor settings from the F4 screen."

G.

[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited August 27, 2000).]

Googlie · August 28, 2000, 00:34

Hmmm again.

Been testing it on some saved games. You can do it with a pactmate as well, whether submissive or not.

And it applies to smax v2.0 as well

The AI of course reallocates its next turn, but interestingly, leaves more empaths/transcendii around than it originally had.

Wasn't able (hadn't the patience) with the saved games to see if there were any loss of minerals/nutrients/units, etc as a result during the turn interregnum, or whether the AI just reset prior to its moves.

Possibilities for tweaking the research rate of your pactmate/slave by gifting crawlers & sea crawlers then converting their pops to specialists (or not gifting, as the case may be, just changing their citizens)

Good discovery, S2 - how did you happen on it?

Googlie

[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited August 27, 2000).]

Simpson II · August 28, 2000, 15:34

Googlie,
Ah, I see. Nice to know they fixed the governors. Shame they didn't think a bit while they were doing it!
I starved Morgan Industries down from pop 7 to pop 1 like this, so it's safe to say that the AI loses nutrients

.

I found the bug just after I'd built the Empath Guild in a MP game with Paul. I was going through his bases one by one using the f4 screen, generally having a look. I happened to click on a citizen, through general tiredness (1:30 AM). A specialist appeared, and I automatically right-clicked to clear it. I was looking at the base when I realized...

I hadn't thought about gifting crawlers to keep up the AI's nutrient production. Nice one, it might win someone a fastest-transcend title, if this isn't banned from that (absolutely nothing else seems to be, other than the scenario editor!)

Gregurabi · September 4, 2000, 13:32

Tammy Faye Bakker is the (ex?)wife of notorious televangelist Jim Bakker. She's most widely known for her tendency to wear hideous amounts of make-up.

Didymus · September 5, 2000, 09:07

Tammy Faye divorced Jim Bakker when he was in prison, so yes, ex-wife.