been thinking lately

[yavoon]

I wna accelerate the game. get past the kinda useless "buildup" phase faster. it seems like smac just has too few relatively unimportant moves. while I realize everything can be optimized, its just not my idea of fun to sit around playing sim city builder w/ no tension wutsoever. I want more tension on my moves. so I been thinking how to do it.

first thing that came to mind is give everyone a jackassload of pods to start w/, so I decided 12. well unfortunately you can't go that high. not only that, but it seemed that some factions that had 12 programmed in got 6, others got 5, and some still yet got 4. and on top of that, the computer kinda sucks assnuts at using the pods all that quickly, they tend to wonder them around.

some other ideas i thot of, give everyone basic starting techs. while trying to avoid techs that are specifically given to factions. so I decided if everyone got applied physics/doc flex/plan networks that'd accelerate us along a lil, and this seems like a decent idea.

obvious one, play small map. while I usually play standard, I read some thread here how certain se choices are messed up on small maps. if thats true, I just don't wna touch em, cuz thats gay.

I could try give other units besides pods. formers, or scout patrols. I'm not sure tho, neither seems all that great of an idea at the moment.

another thot that crossed my mind is to give everyone real bank to start the game. AND give everyone interest 10. at first I thot just bank, then I realied everyone would just rushbuild wutever they could as fast as they could. so then I began to think about interest. interest seems like a cool idea neway, and it'd give u cashflow early.

so I was just wondering if neone has ne ideas on this. another thot that crossed my mind is to give everyone industrial auto, then i realized the computer can't use crawlers, then I also realized that I usually don't let myself use crawlers. so it seemed weird, but its still an idea.

[Cybergod]

1. You can only put up to nine parameters in the faction attributes line (things like "TECH, Algor" or "FANATIC, 0" or "PSI, 25" being ONE - ie. "STATEMENT, PARAMETER"), so giving each faction over 9 attributes will make the computer read only the first 9

2. This should go in the Creation forum!!!

3. You could speed up the reasearch or make everyone grow faster by tweaking with the alpha.txt - it's worth experimenting

[yavoon]

smac forums move slow enuff as is. u split off forums because having one huge one would spin pages off too quickly. I think smac is past the point it needs 5 different types of forums.

[Googlie]

Try Shining's modified game (it's SMAC only) - makes for a much more competitive AI.

You can get it from:

http://smac.ask-klan.net.pl/eng/index.html

G.

[yavoon]

wuts in it? and I've found a pretty competitive ai by usin g+6 support and interest 10 on the ai. lotsa other more subtle things to help the ai,, but those are the ai's two big bonuses.

oh and btw, cuz of that 9 modifier limit on the faction.txt's I won't be giving neone lotsa starting techs netime soon. I can't play small map cuz of how it messes w/ the se choices.

I dont know, I'm stuck for now on good ideas.

[Tau Ceti]

Although small and tiny maps change the mineral and food multipliers, thus reducing the effect of +10% growth or industry to nothing, custom maps of the same size get the usual settings. You could try that.