Posted March 29, 2019
I've released version 1.29 of my SMACX AI Growth mod. 6 PERSON MONTHS of full time development, spread over a year. This is not amateur hour, this is professional grade game design. Try it! If you tried out 1.28, here are the highlights:
- Intrinsic base defense is set back to what it was in the original game. I overdid the defensive stuff. Now it's not as painful to crack a base, although Sensor Arrays still provide better defense than the original game.
- Perimeter Defense comes at tech Tier 3 instead of Tier 1. If you start a game next to an AI faction, now you can rush them and destroy them, instead of getting stuck fighting a fruitless war that wastes all your resources.
- Skunkworks is available at tech Tier 3. It is still expensive.
- Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, and Supply Crawlers are moved much later in the tech tree, to late midgame. Someone wrote an unofficial binary patch that abuses these things to the hilt, and I had to react. The delay allows a human player to use other strategies, such as military intervention, on a Huge map before the AI becomes a pointlessly unstoppable juggernaut. Some human players use this as the One True Strategy as well. My changes put a stop to it being the One true strategy. Now you have options.
- Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, and Raise / Lower terrain take twice as long to complete.
- The Weather Paradigm is made 1.33X more expensive. When used by an abusive player or AI, it's the most valuable early Secret Project bar none. This gives a human player more of a time window to discover and build it. Rather than just watch helplessly as the AI builds it, gains early Condensers and Boreholes, and just stomp stomp stomps everything in sight.
- Supply Crawlers in the Fusion Power era now cost as much as an Artifact, 50 minerals. This does not change the rushing of Secret Projects at all, it's just a bigger denomination. It does penalize the "convoy minerals, nutrients, and energy to your bases" play style, by making it substantially more expensive per supply crawler to get those resources.
- Soil Enrichers only take 6 turns to complete now. I hated waiting 8 turns for those, it's so boring.
- Air bases only take 6 turns to complete. 10 turns was boring and doesn't basically make any sense.
- Leveling terrain only takes 4 turns, not 8. Old way was boring and doesn't make sense.
- Peacekeepers lose their +2 GROWTH bonus. It allowed really early pop booming and was overpowered.
- Hive gets +1 GROWTH bonus like in the original game.
- Believers lose their MORALE bonus, but get their FANATIC attack bonus back, like in the original game. Personality is changed from Aggressive to Erratic because they're not that good at military stuff.
- Cult of Planet becomes Aggressive and seeks to increase its PLANET rating, because +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous in combat.
- Spartans change their research foci to Explore and Conquer instead of just Conquer. This should make them more dangerous. In the original game, setting an AI faction to Explore is a strong stimulus to grow a bigger empire sooner. Almost all factions in the game use this AI stimulus to boost their performance. The Usurpers are now the only exception, as for some reason they don't need it.
Now that's a bit of a list of changes. It's only a tiny fraction of all the things I've modded over the past year. Totally revamped and rebalanced tech tree. Totally new, rebalanced social engineering choices, that nevertheless preserve the feel of the original game. Totally rebalanced factions, there are no weak ones or overpowered ones like the original game. Better world generator. Planet Busters that can hit anywhere on Planet. Tons of playtesting to ensure that everything I say to you about this is actually true. I don't just throw my work over the fence and hope it plays ok. If you want all the gory details, and how to play the darned thing, go to the home page of SMACX AI Growth mod.
- Intrinsic base defense is set back to what it was in the original game. I overdid the defensive stuff. Now it's not as painful to crack a base, although Sensor Arrays still provide better defense than the original game.
- Perimeter Defense comes at tech Tier 3 instead of Tier 1. If you start a game next to an AI faction, now you can rush them and destroy them, instead of getting stuck fighting a fruitless war that wastes all your resources.
- Skunkworks is available at tech Tier 3. It is still expensive.
- Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, and Supply Crawlers are moved much later in the tech tree, to late midgame. Someone wrote an unofficial binary patch that abuses these things to the hilt, and I had to react. The delay allows a human player to use other strategies, such as military intervention, on a Huge map before the AI becomes a pointlessly unstoppable juggernaut. Some human players use this as the One True Strategy as well. My changes put a stop to it being the One true strategy. Now you have options.
- Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, and Raise / Lower terrain take twice as long to complete.
- The Weather Paradigm is made 1.33X more expensive. When used by an abusive player or AI, it's the most valuable early Secret Project bar none. This gives a human player more of a time window to discover and build it. Rather than just watch helplessly as the AI builds it, gains early Condensers and Boreholes, and just stomp stomp stomps everything in sight.
- Supply Crawlers in the Fusion Power era now cost as much as an Artifact, 50 minerals. This does not change the rushing of Secret Projects at all, it's just a bigger denomination. It does penalize the "convoy minerals, nutrients, and energy to your bases" play style, by making it substantially more expensive per supply crawler to get those resources.
- Soil Enrichers only take 6 turns to complete now. I hated waiting 8 turns for those, it's so boring.
- Air bases only take 6 turns to complete. 10 turns was boring and doesn't basically make any sense.
- Leveling terrain only takes 4 turns, not 8. Old way was boring and doesn't make sense.
- Peacekeepers lose their +2 GROWTH bonus. It allowed really early pop booming and was overpowered.
- Hive gets +1 GROWTH bonus like in the original game.
- Believers lose their MORALE bonus, but get their FANATIC attack bonus back, like in the original game. Personality is changed from Aggressive to Erratic because they're not that good at military stuff.
- Cult of Planet becomes Aggressive and seeks to increase its PLANET rating, because +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous in combat.
- Spartans change their research foci to Explore and Conquer instead of just Conquer. This should make them more dangerous. In the original game, setting an AI faction to Explore is a strong stimulus to grow a bigger empire sooner. Almost all factions in the game use this AI stimulus to boost their performance. The Usurpers are now the only exception, as for some reason they don't need it.
Now that's a bit of a list of changes. It's only a tiny fraction of all the things I've modded over the past year. Totally revamped and rebalanced tech tree. Totally new, rebalanced social engineering choices, that nevertheless preserve the feel of the original game. Totally rebalanced factions, there are no weak ones or overpowered ones like the original game. Better world generator. Planet Busters that can hit anywhere on Planet. Tons of playtesting to ensure that everything I say to you about this is actually true. I don't just throw my work over the fence and hope it plays ok. If you want all the gory details, and how to play the darned thing, go to the home page of SMACX AI Growth mod.
Post edited March 29, 2019 by bvanevery