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Pile Of Garbage posted:i got a battle report saying i'd lost a battle but for the life of me could not work out where! meanwhile i've got my drone riots sorted for the time being thanks to rec commons and hologram theatres. happened again on MY 2212 but this time i worked it out: god drat Spartans sniped my Transport Foil which had two units on board!  looks like the Spartans are going for naval superiority. this could be you smoka in a few more turns: 
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Mar 13, 2020 12:35
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i got a couple turns behind on updates, so this is basically 2208 though 2212. first, i have something embarrassing to admit. you will recall back in 2207:Glorgnole posted:finally responding to the spartan laser foil that's been bombarding Bohemian Grove for like the past 5 turns turns out, it was a ruse and i have been shamefully duped.  there was a second spartan foil on the eastern side of my continent, which took advantage of A World Called Gor having absolutely poo poo defenses.  the worst part is that 5 minutes after committing my moves for that turn i realized a way i could have at least delayed the capture of the base. lesson being that since there's no real time pressure here i really need to make sure i think things over before moving units around. the turn after that i finished the Citizen's Defense Force secret project, so now all my bases have perimeter defenses and a +100% defensive bonus. unfortunately all the versions of the video uploaded to youtube are offensively bad quality. here's a still-bad-but-somehow-comparatively-better-quality screencap from the original .wve video that comes with the game:  for some of the art in SMAC, such as the faction leader portraits, they made actual real-world-media paintings and then scanned them in. i think the Citizen's Defense Force is the only secret project where the video was made by ken-burnsing a scanned painting. i've always been curious about what happened to all that art -- i bet it got divvied up among the devs when the game wrapped. brian reynolds posts in Games, maybe he knows for sure. elsewhere there's been a bit more base expansion. the spartans are expanding to the southwest of their home continent.  meanwhile, the pirates have a new sea base.  i founded a second base in the monsoon jungle, which i don't think i've posted about yet.  here's the graph. the hive is certainly benefiting from planetary governorship, and they're now ranked second overall! 
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Mar 14, 2020 20:29
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lol at this lady extremely cj attitude, chucking a CRT at the psychic alien brainworms
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Mar 14, 2020 20:33
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Who discovered Secrets of the Human Brain first? I normally use the free tech from that to get Empath Guild. found an answer for this: it was the university!  e: i think the way we have the research settings configured you don't get to pick which tech is discovered when you research any Secrets Glorgnole fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 14, 2020 |
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Mar 14, 2020 20:34
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Pile Of Garbage posted:happened again on MY 2212 but this time i worked it out: god drat Spartans sniped my Transport Foil which had two units on board! imprisoned war criminal anthonypants appeared on the catjail balcony and had this to say anthonypants, via email posted:sounds like someone's gonna complete a secret project next year
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Mar 14, 2020 20:37
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i have very high hopes for the progress of The Turn these coming weeks
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Mar 20, 2020 06:15
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Glorgnole posted:this'll probably take a very long time, possibly many months! yikes! just be forewarned. lomarf
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Mar 21, 2020 17:11
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months was a massive underestimation. we've been playing for >2 years hell yeah
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Mar 22, 2020 07:54
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Glorgnole posted:i have very high hopes for the progress of The Turn these coming weeks retrospective lols once again Pile Of Garbage posted:months was a massive underestimation. we've been playing for >2 years hell yeah it's nuts, so much has changed in the world since we began we're at 2215 now. one thing that happened a couple turns ago that i didn't pay enough attention to is that the Spartans finished a secret project, The Planetary Transit System. this has a couple interesting effects: - all your bases start with 3 pops (vs 1 as usual) - all your existing bases with 1 or 2 pops immediately grow to 3 - bases with 3 pops have 1 fewer drone (which i think is designed to offset the "bureaucracy" penalty that gives you additional drones as you expand past a certain point) naturally there are a couple ways to exploit this to get lots and lots of bases pretty quickly here's the global state of projects. couple factions working on The Command Nexus (some harder than others)  i'm building lots and lots of mines in the rocky southern region of my continent, which has disturbed the indigenous lifeforms  generally it's been a quiet past couple turns 
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Apr 8, 2020 03:30
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Glorgnole posted:indigenous lifeforms
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Apr 8, 2020 13:57
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Glorgnole posted:we're at 2215 now. one thing that happened a couple turns ago that i didn't pay enough attention to is that the Spartans finished a secret project, The Planetary Transit System. this has a couple interesting effects: downside: getting PTS reduces the window you've got on new bases before you need to get Hab Complex. even on a base with a +5 nutrient square starting at 1 pop you can fit Rec Commons then Children's edit: sometimes worth swapping Children's Creche for Recycling Tanks as needed. edit2: actually you can fit a Former after Rec Commons easily and if it's the first base in the region it's highly recommended (unless you already sent idle Formers with your Colony Pod like a boss). Glorgnole posted:here's the global state of projects. couple factions working on The Command Nexus (some harder than others) Chairman Yang of the Wu-Tang Hive regrets their lack of secret project development! However our superior base facilities and increased PSYCH levels allowing Librarians at 2 bases more than make up for it! edit: also very much respecting the posture of my island neighbours, the Free Drones, who are building up some very tanky bases! Pile Of Garbage fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Apr 9, 2020 |
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Apr 9, 2020 13:23
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actually my posting about PTS will probably be proven moot as Spartans have a huge continent which they can readily expand into and just boom ahead of upkeep. oh dear oh my!
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Apr 9, 2020 13:37
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got some new stats for MY 2215:   dominance ranking:
Spartans have seized the #2 spot from Hive (Me), can only assume that they are booming bases across the continent they're on (edit: thanks to having PTS as glorgnole posted upthread). meanwhile Pirates are leading in wealth, here's hoping they've secured their energy banks against infiltrators!
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Apr 14, 2020 17:44
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i have the turn but limited internet right now, gonna try and send it on today or tomorrow
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Apr 18, 2020 17:26
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https://twitter.com/jimprov/status/1255555294136074240
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Apr 29, 2020 19:10
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[scribbling on jack kirby earth a.d. map] "interdimensional portal to yospos twitter canoe"
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Apr 29, 2020 20:46
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Glorgnole posted:[scribbling on jack kirby earth a.d. map] "interdimensional portal to yospos twitter canoe" Zlmao
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Apr 29, 2020 23:38
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anyone seen dat save?
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May 9, 2020 09:20
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Pile Of Garbage posted:anyone seen dat save? I had it yesterday, it's making the rounds
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May 9, 2020 15:32
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this upcoming turn is election year for planetary governor! i think that the eligible candidates are still the Gaians and the Hive, unless the Spartans have had some sort of population boom within the past 20 turns.
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May 24, 2020 18:22
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looks like the election wasn't actually triggered yet. i didn't kick it off this turn, though someone else can start it if they want. i've decided that i'm not going to vote for myself unless my only opponent is the Spartans. the year is now 2218. there's been a small backlog of turns, though only a few interesting things have happened in that time (as far as i know, since i can't see the whole map). the real-world pandemic and quarantine has done a number on peoples' schedules, so we've gone much slower this month than usual. i thought it would be interesting to point out that the Hive has essentially matched my level of research output, partly by carefully deploying Librarians in their large bases, and also through the commerce boost provided by being Planetary Governor. i'd actually totally neglected non-Doctor specialists, so i was also able to tweak my citizens' job assignments to get some extra energy and research. here's the Hive (forums poster Pile of Garbage):  (get a load of those commerce bonuses! yowza!)  and here's the Gaians (me):  the early-game specialists (Technician, Librarian, Doctor) provide flat +2 bonuses to economy, labs, or psych. the ones you get later (Engineer, Thinker, Empath, Transcendi) give much better bonuses (which actually compound, iirc). i'm continuing my policy of building lots and lots of bases. the bases in the jungle grow really quickly due to the crazy nutrient bonus, even without the pop boom mechanic i've been using through growth-friendly social engineering policies and building Childrens' Creches. there's also a Spartan impact foil shelling my formers, and i haven't decided what to do about that yet.  minor crisis: the condensor unit west of Orb Aunt Vinyard had a forest expand onto its tile, which absolutely crippled its nutrient output (causing a shortage at Beats by Deirdre) even though the condensor is supposed to also count as a farm. i was able to retask some supply crawlers to extract nutrients instead of minerals, which prevents the population from starving next turn. i don't think forests are supposed to be able to expand into condensors, but it provides an interesting mental image as i send a former over there to hack through the undergrowth.  also wanted to point out that the Spartans are at war with nearly everybody. 
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May 25, 2020 21:12
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Condensers do not count as farms, but they do provide +1 nutrients to the square they are in, on top of the rainfall changes. Farms, and later soil enrichers can also be built on the square, for a total of +3 nutrients. Building a farm under a condenser will stop the forest from growing under it. e: Another fun terraforming tip: constructing a base on top of a sensor array leaves the sensor array in place. This array cannot be destroyed without destroying the base, leaving a permanent +25% defense bonus in the area. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 21:42 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 21:31
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Condensers do not count as farms, but they do provide +1 nutrients to the square they are in, on top of the rainfall changes. Farms, and later soil enrichers can also be built on the square, for a total of +3 nutrients. whoops, guess i have some additional construction to do, i don't think i've been building farms under any of my condensors. when you build a condensor on a forest i think the forest gets cleared and harvested, so it's still a little weird that the game considers condensors compatible tiles for forest expansion. the documentation for this game is all over the place. sometimes i end up digging through posts on that SMAC modding forum where folks have decompiled the game executable to figure out the behavior of more obtuse mechanics like eco-damage, sea level changes, and probe team actions.
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May 25, 2020 21:40
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Yeah, eco-damage in particular is the frustrating one; it's a major game mechanic, but the datalinks entry only describes about half the mechanic, and the rest of it is described nowhere. Vel's SMAX Guide is really one hell of an accomplishment.
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May 25, 2020 23:19
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, eco-damage in particular is the frustrating one; it's a major game mechanic, but the datalinks entry only describes about half the mechanic, and the rest of it is described nowhere. That’s nothing, go try to look up how self-destructing units by overloading their reactor works.
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May 25, 2020 23:22
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, eco-damage in particular is the frustrating one; it's a major game mechanic, but the datalinks entry only describes about half the mechanic, and the rest of it is described nowhere. i hadn't seen that particular guide before, thank you for sharing! lots of weird stuff i didn't know about on my initial glance through, like how causing fungal blooms through excess mineral production actually increases the limit of "clean" minerals you can produce, meaning that it's actually good to cause a few blooms intentionally. evilweasel posted:That’s nothing, go try to look up how self-destructing units by overloading their reactor works. i forgot that this was a thing because i don't field-disband units and it's not documented anywhere. it's funny that you can do that, in a similar way that it's funny that there's a button specifically to release your mind worms back into the wild (which is only explicitly pointed out in a release notes forums post from like 1999).
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May 26, 2020 00:28
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Glorgnole posted:i forgot that this was a thing because i don't field-disband units and it's not documented anywhere. it's funny that you can do that, in a similar way that it's funny that there's a button specifically to release your mind worms back into the wild (which is only explicitly pointed out in a release notes forums post from like 1999). it's actually so overpowered in certain cases that people will house-rule it as not allowed
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May 26, 2020 01:02
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Is self-destructing units actually powerful somehow? I knew the option was there but it never seemed useful. Though I guess it would stand to reason that choppering in a fusion reactor and letting it cook off might do some damage. Let me guess, the damage applies to all adjacent units?  Glorgnole posted:i hadn't seen that particular guide before, thank you for sharing! lots of weird stuff i didn't know about on my initial glance through, like how causing fungal blooms through excess mineral production actually increases the limit of "clean" minerals you can produce, meaning that it's actually good to cause a few blooms intentionally. Otherwise you wind up in the late game with quantum converters or whatever they're called, which the datalinks say do not cause eco-damage, but it sure as hell counts against your clean mineral limit!
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May 26, 2020 02:03
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It’s been a while but I believe exploding fusion missiles or jets do over 50% damage to everything next to them, including stuff that they’d never be able to scratch the paint on. So two of them and boom you’ve erased stacks of units with no possible defense.
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May 26, 2020 02:12
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i feel like i could be doing a bit more to min-max my terraforming instead of just "set former to autoimprove base"
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May 26, 2020 08:11
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Pile Of Garbage posted:i feel like i could be doing a bit more to min-max my terraforming instead of just "set former to autoimprove base" yeah same except I'm in the ocean and it's like I'm playing on an inverted map beside everyone else https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Px1rfFz42I my ships are fuckin everywhere, and I'm wondering if any other player gets startled seeing one of them lmao SmokaDustbowl fucked around with this message at 08:25 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 08:15
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SmokaDustbowl posted:yeah same except I'm in the ocean and it's like I'm playing on an inverted map beside everyone else since spartans have been blowing up my vessels on-sight yeah i have a minor panic attack when i see any vessel  also that song rules
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May 26, 2020 09:08
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SmokaDustbowl posted:yeah same except I'm in the ocean and it's like I'm playing on an inverted map beside everyone else i haven't seen any of your ships in forever, which is p surprising because you do have a very large number of ships
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May 26, 2020 17:57
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Pile Of Garbage posted:i feel like i could be doing a bit more to min-max my terraforming instead of just "set former to autoimprove base" yeah the autoimprove behavior is quite bad and it ends up putting farms and solar panels in bad places in general i build lots of forests early on and rely on nutrient bonus tiles to feed my bases for a while. high levels of production are gated behind the ecological engineering techs, so farms and high-altitude solar panels won't be doing very much for you during the first ~100 turns. forests expand on their own and can clear fungus tiles, so on average they're an efficient use of former actions. clearing forests by replacing them with other enhancements gives minerals to (i think) the base that owns the former. by the time you have the tech to get full use out of farms, solar panels, and mines, you'll have forests to harvest all over the place (we're just getting to this point in our game). in the early-mid-game forests get production bonuses when you build tree farms and hybrid tree farms in them, which makes them about as good as advanced terraforming enhancements built in average-quality tiles, so it's a good idea to keep them around for a while. despite building mines+roads all over the place i do not yet have the technology to collect 4 minerals from each of them but i figure that it's better to be prepared somewhat in advance.
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May 26, 2020 18:14
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i like to put forests literally everywhere and build treefarms/hybrids to take advantage, because it looks nice
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May 26, 2020 18:19
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terraform base automation tbh has served me well dropping forests where realistic and laying off for bases adjacent to water where i can easilt plant kelp off the coast. being hive helps in that i can get Police State and get bonus support. i usually go 2-2-1-1-1 formers per base, subbing sea formers where it feels appropriate. on the subject of terraforming, IMO it's very important to have loose formers around your territory that you can re-task to build strategic assets.
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May 26, 2020 18:24
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there's also a weird moment right at the end of the game where fungus becomes just as good as forests (if you're using eco-friendly policies), but by the time you've gotten there a) you've replaced all your fungus with boreholes and condensors,and b) the game has already been over for 50 turns so what's the point
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May 26, 2020 18:24
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terraforming is probably my favorite part of this game and i would play a game that's exclusively about exploring and settling a weird hostile alien planet and contemplating fines
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May 26, 2020 18:27
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Pile Of Garbage posted:i feel like i could be doing a bit more to min-max my terraforming instead of just "set former to autoimprove base" as a general rule, the ai does not know how to play any aspect of the game whatsoever
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May 26, 2020 18:28
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Pile Of Garbage posted:i feel like i could be doing a bit more to min-max my terraforming instead of just "set former to autoimprove base" Yea the default terraforming AI is not great, it's one of the reasons the AI can't really compete in the late game. There's a couple different way to optimize it (Vel's guide goes over it, with separate sections for the early and middle game), but the short answer is ensure you have enough nutrients for growth, plant forests early and often, and lean into the bonus resources you find. Nutrients are key for obvious reasons, while forests do a reasonable job of producing minerals and energy, particularly before the 2/tile resource caps come off in the mid-game. Tile bonuses are particularly important because they bypass that limit; you can get 7 minerals from a rocky tile with a mine and a road, and 7 (or 8?) nutrients from a rainy tile with a nutrient bonus, farm and condenser (the condenser will make it rainy most times). And because those tiles produce a lot of one resource and few of anything else, they are excellent candidates for collection with Supply Crawlers. Once you get to Tree Farms, every forest square will produce 2 nutrients as a base (3 with Hybrid Forest), which makes forests self sustaining. The AI doesn't know this, and particularly ignores forests. Forests also spread themselves which is a nice bonus.
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May 26, 2020 18:28
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