Does there exist a diagram or spreadsheet to illustrate tile output?

[jez9999]

I'm revisiting SMAC after a few years (I've played it a bunch before) and I'm remembering how complex the tile output and terraforming formula is, compared to Civ at least. Does anyone know whether some diagram or maybe even an interactive spreadsheet exists that tells you what a tile output will be (and on top of that, what the *exploitable yield* of the tile will be) given its dampness, rockiness, elevation, forest, farm, mine, solar, tile bonus resource, other terraforming things like thermal borehole, and what technologies/base improvements you have (tree farm etc.)? Basically I'm thinking of creating a spreadsheet where you have a bunch of checkboxes giving this info and it'll display the tile, along with potential nutrient/mineral/energy output, and exploitable nutrient/mineral/energy output (given your discovered techs and base improvements). However I'd rather not reinvent this wheel if someone's already done it...

 

[MrBungler]

ChatGPT crunched this out quick and dirty - looks reasonable at a glance, though may have errors (I'm too lazy to check) and isn't comprehensive (doesn't handle base improvements, eschelon mirrors, special resources, tech enhancements, etc)

But may be a good place to start. If you improve it, please share!

 

[Induktio]

Have not seen any chart for all of the terraforming yields and it would be somewhat tricky to cover all of the cases. There might not be much need for it when playing since most often you only have to choose from a couple of different options when terraforming for maximum yields. The tile output calculations have been entirely reversed in Thinker Mod codebase however, look for crop_yield, mine_yield and energy_yield functions. Probably the only way to to get any accurate output from chatgpt regarding terrain yields is to tell it to analyze these specific functions using the urls or copy paste the code for reason mode. There are very minor differences compared to the original game, the mod fixes a couple of inconsistencies mostly with energy yields.

 

[jez9999]

Well I've tried to come up with a calculator that works, at least for things you're likely to encounter in the early-to-mid game. Please feel free to try it out and tell me if you notice any errors. It's at: https://game-point.net/misc/appspub/SMACTerrainYieldCalculator/SMACTerrainYieldCalculator.html

 

[Induktio]

The calculator is missing many factors though. If it needs to be complete, there's no way around listing all of the factors that are also in the mod code. Mine output on some tiles looks weird. There are some variations with the patches, for example Scient's patch changed borehole+nutrient bonus values compared to the original game.

Also to be specific the game engine does not have any hardcoded checks if the faction is "Gaians" or if they have "Gene Splicing" or similar. All of the modifiers are checked based on particular attributes granted by Planet or Economy social engineering values, tech-based fungus bonuses or yield uncaps, FUNGNUTRIENT/FUNGMINERALS/FUNGENERGY faction abilities and so on.

 

[jez9999]

Yeah, I meant it as something to help with the early to mid game in terms of prioritizing what terraforming to do. Obviously it can't cover all mods, just the vanilla game.

 

[MrBungler]

For vanilla I think it's pretty cool! Thanks for sharing For myself, I keep thinking about a table, even an incomplete one - I love having all the data side-by-side for comparison. Of course, the problem with all these approaches as Induktio points out (and he would know!) is the sheer complexity due to the number of factors (even in vanilla) makes it hard to represent.

No harm in trying though We'll probably learn more about the game in any case

 

[jez9999]

I've updated my terrain yield calculator to be closer to the Thinker mod code, and to display potential output of terrain given several different terraforming operations:

SMAC terrain yield calculator