So what are we planning to do about cottages in Planetfall?

Maniac tongue in cheekly mentioned something about self replicating nano stuff, but the tiles have to be worked in order to "grow".

Do we have some sort of sci-fi improvement that when worked will become more efficient and generate more output?

Do you have to increase commerce or can food or production be increased as well or instead?

Do we even want to worry about this yet or ever?

Cottages is a feature I have mixed experiences with.

If the feature (in whatever form) makes sense, can be balanced, and adds to the fun let's keep the feature.

If not, I won't mind omitting cottages.

I prefer having technological advances improving yields from tiles more than using cottages personally. That or civic or SE choices increasing yields.

Eek. I had something to post in this thread and I forgot about it.

I just wanted to say that one thing I liked about cottages is that it sort of forced you to defend you land. Sometimes it's easy to just have an enemy walk in and just retreat to your city. If they take down some improvements, big deal, at least you're not dead.

With cottages being such long-term investments, if they knock down the level, you're looking at a long time wasted.

If they could be tied to something someone put in the culture thread...something about becons to expand territory. You'd defend them!

Or if they were somehow capacitors that derived energy directly from Planet? You would certainly not mwant to see them either razed or "syphoned" off which could be what the enemy does when they are pillaged? Thoughts?

Another take on the "investment" feature is growing forests. Tile output and benefits (could be linked to infrastructure investment) from forests increase as forests mature.

There isn't really any "investment protection" in this idea, but it could maybe lead to more options in infrastructure (including terraforming) planning.

I think "cottage spamming" in Civ4 is a very unfortunate consequence of the "cottage" feature.

One thing that comes to mind here is the heavily reliance upon automation that colonists do upon arrival on a virgin planet: they don't have the manpower to build stuff so would need a sort of self-replicating/automated mechanisms to increase yields over time.
For instance, an automated robot that starts churning out solar panels on a plot, and every number of turns it has produced enough new panels as to increase the energy income of this plot. Same for mines, this robot churns out harvesting drones that increase the yield of the mine over time (when worked at least, which represents a specialist in the base in his cosy control room keeping an eye on things).

I'm not sure cottages as such appeals to me, personally. Especially on a new planet with hostile native life, you're simply not going to see "suburbs". The concept doesn't fit with the SMAC paradigm.

The game mechanic, however, could still work. Rubin mentioned growing forests. One of the big features of Planetfall should be the two different main strategies of the colonists: terraforming vs adapting. For terraforming you research techs that make your territory more like Earth... your plants grow faster, have a higher survival rate, etc. For adapting, you research techs that enable you to better understand, life with, and make food out of the native plants and wildlife.

Anyway, back to Rubin's thought about growing forests. Trees and wood would be a valuable commodity. People would probably value wooden furniture greatly... a stack of lumber would be worth a lot of money. So, what better to do in an enemy's territory if he decides to simply retreat into his habitats? Chop down those forests he has spent years and years growing. Cart the wood back home. This would either take a former or a crawler (I like the latter idea).

The automated solar panel extruder idea has some merit too. Especially if it costs you money to generate them. Say, 5 energy to make another panel. Each turn, each panel generates 1 energy. So, on turn 5 you have spent 25 energy and have 5 panels generating 5 energy / turn, and have a ROI of 10 energy so far. (There should be some upper limit on # of panels per tile.) Pretty soon you'll break even, and start to show a profit. The more turns they run, the more you make. Until that enemy comes along and rips up all those panels....

Wodan

Can you have 2 cottage mechanisms running at once?

I really like the solar panels, but the forests could be cool as well. Almost like planting a resource that can be removed.

I wouldn't see why not. It's a similar (game)mechanism, only the output (energy or hammers) is different.

I like the idea of making all improvements 'grow' with time to represent automated construction, but I think the time for something to grow should be reduced significantly for everything but forests; forests should take a long time to grow, but once they reach maturity they become unpillagable features instead of improvements. Of course, fungus could still overtake them once they're mature.
Regular improvements, if they use the cottage mechanic, should have only one or two iterations, I think, possibly with the lowest iteration granting no bonuses at all. But, instead of taking 40+ turns to grow the final stage, they would take 5-10 turns per stage, making pillaging a setback for most improvements, but not a game-ruiner.

Actually, while for a forest it could take longer and longer per stage of yield increase, we could do the opposite for solar panels and mines: Say 15 turns for the first increase, 10 for the second and a mere 5 for the final increase. This simulates that there's more and more surplus robot "creators" to construct new robots.

The first pillage on panels or mines should be eliminating those pesky robots then. :) I doubt they'd go without a turn long fight!

Good idea. :D

And then after the enemy is gone you need to resupply the bots to repair the improvement if it was pillages at all. (Terraformer visit, that's all)

But that sounds like micro-management. [/gerikes] ;)

Actually, it does sound like micro to me (unless I've missed sarcasm somewhere along the way). I wouldn't want to have to send formers back out to a pillaged tile unless the improvement was completely annihilated...who programmed those bots to all fight to the death anyway? They aren't military grade, you know. Well, maybe for the Spartans...

Alright, the bots get sent back automatically as you work the tile. :p

Actually, that's what I thought you meant, woodelf. ;)

Uh, that's what I meant. :p

Whatever makes the Mod look the best is what I meant. :splat:

I think forests should grow whether they are worked or not.

However, there is one particular gameplay strength in the "cottage" effect where you have to work tiles. You cannot mass prepare tiles for future expansion--not without an economic loss. This means that the choices you make for terraforming are mostly going to make sense immediately.

The "opposite" approach, presented by GeoModder, of having the improvements "grow" faster and faster sounds like something that could reduce "cottage spamming".

I think forests should grow whether they are worked or not.

Now you mentioned it, this only makes sense.

The "opposite" approach, presented by GeoModder, of having the improvements "grow" faster and faster sounds like something that could reduce "cottage spamming".
Real quick... how would you define cottage spamming and why do you think it is bad?

Wodan

I think forests should grow whether they are worked or not.


I could see it working either way; in SMAC, forests spread quickly and overtook fungus, but it doesn't have to work that way for Planetfall. Perhaps it takes active efforts by colonists to "uproot" and push back native flora to give the forest room to mature.

Real quick... how would you define cottage spamming and why do you think it is bad?

Wodan

"Cottage Spamming" is where you have no other option but to fill almost all of your worked tiles with cottages in order to compete. I've seen the AI do this too.

The problem is that you really do not have other options for tile improvements; commerce becomes so important that you can leave production to a very few selected cities and the rest becomes "cottage farms"--as long as you have enough food output.

When I have no real alternative approach during the game, I think its bad.

Gotcha.

There are two questions here. One, is the basic game mechanism not a good idea. Two, (assuming we get past One), is the specific mechanic balanced (that is, is it simply a question of tweaking the numbers)?

Thinking out loud about One... The basic concept is that "more is better". I don't think we can get away from that. It's inherent in the game concept... you build your city and terrain infrastructure throughout the game, and as a result you have more benefits.

We could encourage players to build a little of all terrain improvements by giving each mechanism a penalty. Like how boreholes had a huge benefit, but also a penalty. So, maybe, if you cover your land with energy collectors, you get more and more negatives to your Planet value, or it has a bigger and bigger "drying" effect on the surrounding terrain (turning it arid), or something. Same thing with Forests, maybe it also has a negative on your Planet value.

Another way to proceed is to look at the alternatives. The problem (as I see it) with CIV is that cottage spamming is obviously good, but the alternatives don't really compare. In other words, if you got invaded and Towns pillaged down, are you likely to say screw it, farm over the land, and run specialists? Not unless it's the very end of the game... Almost certainly you're going to re-cottage. The reason for this is the civ-wide Civics. You're running Emancipation and Univ Suffrage. Specialists only really compete when you're running Representation etc.

But, SMAC doesn't really have this. The "Civics" don't really impact your energy income (etc). So, there's no civ-wide incentive to go "whole hog" in a specific strategy.

I think I'm concluding here that it's not the nature of the cottage mechanism that encourages spamming. It's the nature of Civics that encourages spamming. And, I think we'll probably already avoid that (because SMAC didn't have it). So, all we have to do is to "balance the numbers".

However, now that I've said all this, what SMAC does have is tech-based encouragements. For example, if you go the Morgan route, you get bonuses to energy. So you're encouraged to spam energy collectors. If you go the Deirdre route, you get bonuses to Forests (and Hybrid). So, you're encouraged to spam forests.

I think I'll stop here and see what everyone else thinks.

Wodan

Gotcha.

There are two questions here. One, is the basic game mechanism not a good idea. Two, (assuming we get past One), is the specific mechanic balanced (that is, is it simply a question of tweaking the numbers)?

Thinking out loud about One... The basic concept is that "more is better". I don't think we can get away from that. It's inherent in the game concept... you build your city and terrain infrastructure throughout the game, and as a result you have more benefits.

We could encourage players to build a little of all terrain improvements by giving each mechanism a penalty. Like how boreholes had a huge benefit, but also a penalty. So, maybe, if you cover your land with energy collectors, you get more and more negatives to your Planet value, or it has a bigger and bigger "drying" effect on the surrounding terrain (turning it arid), or something. Same thing with Forests, maybe it also has a negative on your Planet value.

Another way to proceed is to look at the alternatives. The problem (as I see it) with CIV is that cottage spamming is obviously good, but the alternatives don't really compare. In other words, if you got invaded and Towns pillaged down, are you likely to say screw it, farm over the land, and run specialists? Not unless it's the very end of the game... Almost certainly you're going to re-cottage. The reason for this is the civ-wide Civics. You're running Emancipation and Univ Suffrage. Specialists only really compete when you're running Representation etc.

But, SMAC doesn't really have this. The "Civics" don't really impact your energy income (etc). So, there's no civ-wide incentive to go "whole hog" in a specific strategy.

I think I'm concluding here that it's not the nature of the cottage mechanism that encourages spamming. It's the nature of Civics that encourages spamming. And, I think we'll probably already avoid that (because SMAC didn't have it). So, all we have to do is to "balance the numbers".

However, now that I've said all this, what SMAC does have is tech-based encouragements. For example, if you go the Morgan route, you get bonuses to energy. So you're encouraged to spam energy collectors. If you go the Deirdre route, you get bonuses to Forests (and Hybrid). So, you're encouraged to spam forests.

I think I'll stop here and see what everyone else thinks.

Wodan

That's an interesting theory on it.

The problem is I don't see where that balance can come from. Because of the fact that cottages are dynamic in their cost while others are static, you can't really balance them out. Sure, at one point in time, you can easily say "this one gives +3 here, but -1 there, and the other one gives +4 here but -2 there", and if that works, great.

If a cottage gets better over time, then you can't easily balance it's entire evolution with others improvements, but only one part of it. If that one part is near the bottom (IOW, the "cottage" is relatively equal to other improvements balance-wise), then the later evolutions of the cottage will be overpowering. If it's near the end (IOW, the "town" is relatively equal to other improvements balance-wise), then the first X turns just to get there put you at a distinct disadvantage early in the game, which will have a domino effect and might make even the entire improvement worthless late in the game.

I think, if we looked at the mechanism, perhaps the best is that a "cottage"-style improvements starts out small and relatively weak, and quickly rises to a parity with other improvements, but the journey to going past this to a very overpowering improvement is very long and with large steps.

Another idea is that a cottage-style growth depends on a factor other than turns, such in order to make them reach their full potential, you have to do a lot more. I know this sounds like micromanagement, but if we tied it to something that people already do (such as increasing the population of their city) it shouldn't be. For example, say that the growth of a cottage-style improvement is directly linked to the population of your city and the amount of cottages within the borders of that city. If you place five cottages around your lvl-12 city, they would each grow at a fifth of the speed as if you were to place one next to that city, and grow at a quarter of that speed if it were a lvl 6 city.

I don't think any one improvement should really be overpowering at any one time; that's the question of balancing it. I think it can be balanced out, really, if we stick to only 3 stages per improvement. Resource-based food (and even flood plains food) is abundant in Civ; it will be a completely different situation for SMAC, since almost all food will be coming from improvements rather than resources. What that means is that all bases will need a certain number of food-based improvements just to be competitive.

Cottage spamming works mostly because it is so easy to find a nice city spot where you can easily build up the population to work all those cottage tiles, or at least a mostly-grassland city spot where the cottage tiles are self-sustaining. I think the key lies in making sure that *nothing* is self-sustaining, and I think we already have that with the food restrictions. By limiting food exclusively to farm and 'greenhouse' improvements, whatever those end up being called, it limits usable space and usable population. Further, if we are to employ cottage-style mechanics for all improvements (barring food improvements, which should only rely on sparse techs for yield boosts), it makes other improvements besides the basic "commerce-providing" improvement more interesting and likely to be built. It may also help to move yield-boosting techs for other improvements closer to the start of the tech tree, compared to civ, such that a player teching up to a goal may be able to produce better yields than a player who relied on other types of improvements to grow while pursuing other techs.

Edit: also important for energy specifically is providing alternate sources of commerce besides improvements; specifically, hammer-based sources. Make the construction of in-base reactors a viable, but production-intensive way of producing commerce, for instance; or provide several high-cost trade-boosting buildings. Furthermore, it would be interesting if we could make certain buildings (such as the above-mentioned) require production as maintenance, to keep people from mining up, building as many buildings as they can, and then solar-panelling-over...once those buildings are there, they use up some of your production to pump out all that juicy energy.

Well, in civ4 with the discovery of certain technologies, and certainly with the use of certain civics, other improvements then cottages (I especially think of watermills, windmills and workshops) keep on par with full-grown cottages.
The only breaker here I could find is this civic that allows cottages +1 :hammers:.

Another idea is that a cottage-style growth depends on a factor other than turns, such in order to make them reach their full potential, you have to do a lot more. I know this sounds like micromanagement, but if we tied it to something that people already do (such as increasing the population of their city) it shouldn't be. For example, say that the growth of a cottage-style improvement is directly linked to the population of your city and the amount of cottages within the borders of that city. If you place five cottages around your lvl-12 city, they would each grow at a fifth of the speed as if you were to place one next to that city, and grow at a quarter of that speed if it were a lvl 6 city.

Wow, took me a second read to translate this to "solar panels", "mines" and "forests" for the mod, but the idea has its merits.
But since essentially (if the proposal to let the afore mentioned improvements grow over time goes through ;) ) you should come up with quite a dedicated formula. I know that Warlords keeps track of decimals in the calculation of gold, beaker, and culture increase in civ4, but I don't know if the vanilla version from which this mod starts keeps track of that. Wouldn't it be a hinderance if it didn't and just rounded up or down the distribution of "cottage" growth distribution?

Edit: also important for energy specifically is providing alternate sources of commerce besides improvements; specifically, hammer-based sources. Make the construction of in-base reactors a viable, but production-intensive way of producing commerce, for instance; or provide several high-cost trade-boosting buildings. Furthermore, it would be interesting if we could make certain buildings (such as the above-mentioned) require production as maintenance, to keep people from mining up, building as many buildings as they can, and then solar-panelling-over...once those buildings are there, they use up some of your production to pump out all that juicy energy.

In civ, power plants (reactors in this mod) give a surplus percentage on hammer output of the city. Do you propose to change this to a surplus percentage on commerce? This doesn't follow IMO. What's your logic behind this?

As on the second part of this paragraph: if solar panel plots have a requirement to have a growing output over time, wouldn't that negate the effort of solar-panelling-over over leaving your production tiles and having to wait for 20-30 turns before full energy output of the solar panels is reached?

In civ, power plants (reactors in this mod) give a surplus percentage on hammer output of the city. Do you propose to change this to a surplus percentage on commerce? This doesn't follow IMO. What's your logic behind this?


In civ, power plants provide 'power' to cities, increasing the bonus that factories provide; however, in planetfall, all bases must have 'power' by nature, since commerce is translated directly into energy for planetfall. The mechanic for power from civ should either be excised or significantly rethought; there are a lot of paths for that but I think it should go in a different thread. In planetfall, what I am saying is that base reactors should not 'power' industry, instead they should represent energy companies boosting local commerce. In the culture thread, one notion was that reactors at bases powered an energy grid, but what I am saying here is that they could function much as the palace does in vanilla civ, providing raw commerce rather than a percentage modifier. Save that for energy banks and similar "economic" institutions.
Example: A city produces 5 minerals and 5 energy, with its currently worked tiles. A Fission Reactor costs 150 minerals to build and produces 5 energy when it is completed, with a 1 mineral maintenance cost. So, a 30 turn investment of minerals will create a building which permanently "converts" 1 mineral into 5 energy. If that base had filled its surroundings with more solar panels, it would not have been able to build the energy-producing reactor as quickly, but would have gotten more energy in the meantime. If that city had built more mines in the surroundings, it would have built the reactor more quickly, but wouldn't have been pumping out as much energy in the meantime. Thus, for a solar-panelled city, it would make more sense to spend that time working towards economic and trade buildings instead of direct energy supplying buildings.



As on the second part of this paragraph: if solar panel plots have a requirement to have a growing output over time, wouldn't that negate the effort of solar-panelling-over over leaving your production tiles and having to wait for 20-30 turns before full energy output of the solar panels is reached?

20-30 turns isn't that much, and while the panels are building up they're still providing energy. Its a suitable tactic in civ to mine/watermill/workshop extensively to build up markets and libraries (at least when chopping and whipping aren't options) and then cottage-spam over the whole area. I suppose you're losing more time if those other improvements take time to build up, though, so that's one of the reasons I like making most improvements use the cottage mechanic.

Idea for cottages that ties in with elevation level and a Flowering Counter: A cottage terrain improvement (renamed of course) becomes available somewhere on the Terraforming tech tree branch (which currently is Ultraponics->Soil Terraformation->Atmospheric Terraformation->Ecological Engineering). I guess it would simply produce (lots of) food. Normally it can only be built on Highlands (reason: there the atmospheric pressure is closest to Earth... or something). However if the Flowering Counter can be kept under a certain level, they could also be buildable on Midlands. On an even lower Flowering level, also buildable on Lowlands. Also the speed by which cottages upgrade to the next improvement in line would also be inverse-linearly be affected by the height of the Flowering Counter. Could create some interesting Terra-versus-Planetmind battles as the game progresses if a faction chose to specialize in terraforming.

Outpost->?->Settlement->...

Outpost >> Colony >> District >> Prefecture

Base still used instead of cities.

?????

Outpost >> Colony >> District >> Prefecture

Base still used instead of cities.

?????

This is not France, snipper (prefecture??? :shake: )

My takes goes as following: field lab -> outpost -> settlement -> base?

(to let things go completely crazy, how about making the end of the cottage-line a proper base/city with a pop of one?)

Gotta agree re District and Prefecture. :mischief:
As for Field Lab and Base: possible problems: Field Lab is what I've currently named the improvement that enables the monolith resource. Base duplicates the SMAC name for a city of course. And having a base is not always better than not having a base, so having bases popping up everywhere after some time would probably be very annoying. Of course all my nay-saying hasn't resulted in a good alternative name. :( ;) Perhaps a name involving something like "fertile" "terra", "paradise" or something? Though that kind of naming might perhaps fit better for the Gaians.

Btw, perhaps Outposts could grow out of Farms. Though then there should be some code that prevents them from growing before a certain tech is researched.

My idea was about ROMAN prefecture and I went for ideas demonstrating the growth of civil service on the plots. It's OK if someone find something better but I can't see it in the two above posts.

Farm->Outpost->Settlement->?->Eden (a concept name more in the sphere of the Conclave/Believers - unlike the Gaians they wouldn't hesitate to kill Planet and replace it by a terran ecology)

I personally don't see too much of a problem with the idea of cottages--in order to maintain your lands, it is necessary to have transit stations for the people that work in the city to maintain those lands, and having people permanently manning small bases outside the city isn't a ludicrous idea. Certainly I don't see them expanding to quite the size they did in Civ IV, but small cottages spread about here and there could still find some use. I would probably make them harder to maintain than in Civ IV, just due to the nature that they would probably not be self-sufficient and would depend greatly upon their main city.

I do like the idea of every terrain improvement gaining in efficiency over time. Perhaps the presence of cottages could expedite the process.

However, as for the robots idea, I think something which might be easier (from the gameplay standpoint) would be, if anything, to just delay the next increase in productivity by 5 turns or something, rather than forcing you to have your formers rebuild robots, or pass over the improvement or whatnot. Of course, you can still say that there are robots, but this saves you the bother of actually having to code them in, and find a tech for them.

Ps, there are waaayy too many techs already in this mod, so in the future, there should be more trimming down rather than "fleshing out."

Along with using the cottage mechanic, what about having upgrades via formers?

Late-game techs give formers that ability to build a 3rd level thing [=town], but it takes 20 turns?

This would mean the penalties of not working the tiles and having them razed would be lower.

Can working a tile produce health/culture/espionage?

Ps, there are waaayy too many techs already in this mod, so in the future, there should be more trimming down rather than "fleshing out."

This.

This.

This what?

This what?

It means I agree.

Ah, well, that's good then, because so do I, haha.

Along with using the cottage mechanic, what about having upgrades via formers?

Late-game techs give formers that ability to build a 3rd level thing [=town], but it takes 20 turns?

Condensers already kinda do this. That is, a later-game improvement which gives more food than a simple farm, but takes more turns to build.


I'm bit surprised to hear you guys saying there are too many techs btw. A comparison: SMAC and Civ4 have around 85 to 90 techs. Planetfall currently has 73.

I don't think there were any true third level terraform improvements in SMAC/X. Condensers did increase nutrients and did take longer to build than farms, but they didn't require farms. You could even build them on rocky tiles. ...although it still wouldn't provide any nutrients to the tile itself until the rockiness was reduced. Then there's the soil enrichers that did require farms, but not condensers.

I'm personally of the opinion that there aren't enough tech advances in the game. I think we could go for at least 90, which is certainly higher (if by one) than the number of tech advances one could ever get into modding SMAC/X. Of course, the next time I propose a tech tree, I'm making sure there's enough stuff to go with each advance.

Edit: For reference. SMAC has 77. SMAX has 86. Civ4 vanilla and Warlords have the same 86. BTS has 92. And the tech tree I proposed last July had 94.

The problem then isn't so much the number of techs available, but the fact that more than dozens of them are available at all times without much of a prerequisite structure. SMAC and SMACX were careful to put things into a structure of Build 1, Conquer 2, etc., where Planetfall's system feels a bit willy-nilly. And more of the initial tile improvements need to be available grouped together. I think I got to around 2191 without being able to build mines, and only recently discovered the farm. SMAC and CIV both have paths that seem intuitive and connected, so you have an idea as to what you are doing, and that there is a natural progression to research. So rather than reducing the number of Techs, we just need to consolidate unnecessary ones and re-organize a bit, so that the player isn't at a loss as to what is important in the early game. I suppose some writing in the descriptions of the techs would be useful--I could do some of the writing materials for you guys if you want. I was almost a Creative Writing major, but I switched to just mathematics. So I can at least flesh out some of the stuff we currently have to be beyond just the Dan Quayle quote that is on everything now.

Also, it would be could if we could get the interludes back into the game. Both some "classic" interludes and newly created ones for new events and whatnot.

Also, (again, not related really) we should shorten the length of the audio clips for religions--I like Deidre's voice, but I don't need to hear it say the same paragraph every time a religion spreads.

I think it seems to feel like there are too many techs because in Civ4, they're clearly spilt up into eras, and it doesn't feel overwhelming, and in SMAC, you never saw the full tree like that in the game, and had only a few options to choose from.

I don't mind having this many techs, so long as each one is worth its price and actually does something.

The problem then isn't so much the number of techs available, but the fact that more than dozens of them are available at all times without much of a prerequisite structure. SMAC and SMACX were careful to put things into a structure of Build 1, Conquer 2, etc., where Planetfall's system feels a bit willy-nilly. And more of the initial tile improvements need to be available grouped together. I think I got to around 2191 without being able to build mines, and only recently discovered the farm. SMAC and CIV both have paths that seem intuitive and connected, so you have an idea as to what you are doing, and that there is a natural progression to research. So rather than reducing the number of Techs, we just need to consolidate unnecessary ones and re-organize a bit, so that the player isn't at a loss as to what is important in the early game. I suppose some writing in the descriptions of the techs would be useful--I could do some of the writing materials for you guys if you want. I was almost a Creative Writing major, but I switched to just mathematics. So I can at least flesh out some of the stuff we currently have to be beyond just the Dan Quayle quote that is on everything now.

Also, it would be could if we could get the interludes back into the game. Both some "classic" interludes and newly created ones for new events and whatnot.

Also, (again, not related really) we should shorten the length of the audio clips for religions--I like Deidre's voice, but I don't need to hear it say the same paragraph every time a religion spreads.True. The number of techs available at any one time IS too high. In fact, if randomly going through the Planetfall tech tree, it will on average get this high:http://alumni.imsa.edu/~rider/images/planetfall1choices.pngThat's what you get for having nine or ten techs per level and nearly all of them each have two or-prerequisites. I personally liked it when the average number of techs available stayed below ten. Of course, I'm also someone who dislikes dead-end techs, and was glad to see them absent in Vanilla SMAC (unless you count Transcendent Thought).

Yeah, under 10 is probably a good number--and they need that descriptive enough names and descriptions so that the player can immediately see their use. Right now it is just abstract icons with vague names.

I remember that I tried to research something which appeared to give me the ability to train mindworms, but it said nothing of the biology lab and whatnot that are also needed, so it is a bit misleading there (I think it was the 2nd tech I researched). However, Civilization IV does that too, so that is probably less the fault of Planetfall's Tech Tree.

I suppose some writing in the descriptions of the techs would be useful--I could do some of the writing materials for you guys if you want. I was almost a Creative Writing major, but I switched to just mathematics. So I can at least flesh out some of the stuff we currently have to be beyond just the Dan Quayle quote that is on everything now.

That's something which anyone with lots of patience and resistance against boredom :mischief: could do if they wanted to: convert the SMAC blurbsx.txt into a Civ4 compatible XML file.

Also, (again, not related really) we should shorten the length of the audio clips for religions--I like Deidre's voice, but I don't need to hear it say the same paragraph every time a religion spreads.

Um yeah, I only want that quote to play once upon the religion being founded or the shrine being built. Unfortunately I don't see a way to do that. :( Eg the construction sound for the shrine seems to be ignored.

I'm not sure, but I think in SMAC you could get this many tech options at once, but it never seemed that way because the game would only show you a set number, if you were playing without blind research [which I always played with].

I'm not sure, but I think in SMAC you could get this many tech options at once, but it never seemed that way because the game would only show you a set number, if you were playing without blind research [which I always played with].I've checked years ago (Alpha Centauri made me obsessed with tech trees since I first saw the poster): unless stealing or trading techs out of order, the absolute maximum number of techs available in SMAC at any one time (assuming a third of them aren't spending their turn being hidden) is 11. Those 11 are Silksteel Alloys, (Nonlinear Mathematics or Superstring Theory), Applied Relativity, Organic Superlubricant, Advanced Ecological Engineering, Planetary Economics, (Centauri Empathy or Centauri Meditation), Orbital Spaceflight, (Bio-Engineering or Retroviral Engineering), Doctrine: Initiative, and Mind/Machine Interface.

With SMAX, that number rises to 12, with the 12th option being (Field Modulation or Bioadaptive Resonance). Of course Bioadaptive Resonance and Centauri Empathy won't be available at the same time there... A handful of options each also have the opportunity of being replaced by a prerequisite.

This is of course much higher than the average number of techs available at any part of the game, even the very beginning where (if you have no technology) that average is 7 or 8. By the time this opportunity happens, the average number of techs available has dropped to 5.