Feedback thread

[TheLazyHase]

Tech stealing. I guess this is mainly still the BTS code but the requirements for stealing tech are utterly insane. Making tech stealing easier would allow us to provide more negative teching for certain social engineering choices (like Fundamentalism). Perhaps you could bridge the gap in EPs with credits?

The BtS code make tech stealing incredibly easy and cheap ; so either there is something I don't have seen in planetfall that hinder tech steal, or you are doing something wrong, like thinking you can steal technology without any investment in spying.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I'm mostly playing on Noble and the native life during the start is rabid. Now, this doesn't bother me a lot, you just need to take a little care (a bit like with FfH2, the start phase is more dangerous than vanilla Civ) - but I noticed that about every second game, one of the AI factions loses within the first 10 - 15 rounds or so, and considering that there are only six factions (apart from yours), that's rather annoying.

Perhaps the AI on Noble could need some extra free wins against natives/barbarians? Or perhaps it just needs to concentrate on early defence a little bit more.

On general gameplay: I cannot shake the feeling that the choice of civics feels a bit... limited, especially pitted against the choices of vanilla Civ4. The ecology civics are basically whole-game strategies, so that feels more like a part of your general strategy choice.

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Maniac, I noticed the Scotland Yard graphic still uses the Firaxis texture map, not the one I've done for you. It seems you forgot to extract the zipped file I send.
IIRC, this graphic was used for the Planetary Council?

 

[Maniac]

upgrading the Solar Power Transmitter Unit into Gravity Lens causes the corresponding building to vanish in the next turn (including it's energy bonus to solar collectors) and allows to build another SPT

Fixed!

Can we have more Secret Projects?

Yes, when people suggest ideas for them.

Would it also be possible to incorporate the original movies into the game? (you need some extra code for this?)

It would be possible, but it would increase the mod's download size too much IMO.

Any reason why obelisks don't provide unit upgrades like in SMAX? I assume the code is a pain to implement?

It would be easy to implement - I just don't like that feature. It leads to repetitive unit micromanagement. If there's one thing SMAC ended up giving me a disdain of in the end, it's micromanagement.

Better AI in regards to anti-native life. On Monarch I find that Miriam still loses most of her bases to Native Life.

Should happen... eventually. AI improvements are limited by the speed and frequency I play a Planetfall game myself.

Moar special locations, like the boreholes and pholus mutagen. I'd like to see the monsoon jungle back and also the broken up remains of the unity craft, especially so you can get the comms for everyone on the planet.

Except for the Unity remains (which are represented by the project-building Unity Supplies unit), those landmarks are all in. Since everyone starts close to each other anyway, there's little need for a comm-providing goodie.

The BtS code make tech stealing incredibly easy and cheap ; so either there is something I don't have seen in planetfall that hinder tech steal, or you are doing something wrong, like thinking you can steal technology without any investment in spying.

I have never managed to get an espionage strategy to work myself in BtS. Could you please explain how to make one work? Also how cheap is cheap expressed as a percentage of espionage points / tech's beaker cost?

Knowing myself how I'm supposed to use espionage will be useful when I get to adding the Data Angels.

I'm mostly playing on Noble and the native life during the start is rabid. Now, this doesn't bother me a lot, you just need to take a little care (a bit like with FfH2, the start phase is more dangerous than vanilla Civ) - but I noticed that about every second game, one of the AI factions loses within the first 10 - 15 rounds or so, and considering that there are only six factions (apart from yours), that's rather annoying.

I've given the AI on Noble an extra defensive unit and one extra free barb kill. Please tell if it helps in the next patch!

On general gameplay: I cannot shake the feeling that the choice of civics feels a bit... limited, especially pitted against the choices of vanilla Civ4. The ecology civics are basically whole-game strategies, so that feels more like a part of your general strategy choice.

I agree. Ideas to make the non-Ecology civics more interesting are welcome.

Maniac, I noticed the Scotland Yard graphic still uses the Firaxis texture map, not the one I've done for you. It seems you forgot to extract the zipped file I send.
IIRC, this graphic was used for the Planetary Council?

Woops fixed.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Base cost of stealing tech in EP is greater than the beaker cost. But they are a lot of option to get discount, including staying 5 turn, having open border, having a trade route to the city, and religious discount (both for having holy city and having a state religion that is not the same as the opponent but that had spread into the city), so in the end you can pay 30-80% of the beaker cost in EP. In BtS, EP are given by a lot of building, including courthouse and palace, meaning that with 10-20% spy slider you can usually get a lot of tech.

 

[Maniac]

30 to 80% WTH??
What ratio of espionage spending do you usually have with your target?
I assume you spend everything on one target then? What do you do when you end up at war with your espionage target? Do you avoid damaging its economy, so it can keep researching at full capacity??

 

[Pfeffersack]

The Broodpit Graphik in the datalinks looks a bit oversized - not a big thing itself, but IIRC such graphic issues can sometimes lead to crashes when the building gets built in game or at least weird graphiks on the map as well...?

 

[TheLazyHase]

30 to 80% WTH??
What ratio of espionage spending do you usually have with your target?
I assume you spend everything on one target then? What do you do when you end up at war with your espionage target? Do you avoid damaging its economy, so it can keep researching at full capacity??

Well, I go full on an opponent at a time, and if at war I switch to someone else and use the leftover for city revolting and general sabotage.

The religious part is the mort important ; I can't say if in planetfall it's that easy to get right, simply because half the time I get beaten to pulp by native planet and half the time I have some random graphic crash, maning I don't have the time to really try that out.

Don't forget : 5 turn = already 50% reduction. So, it's easy for EP cost to be less than beaker cost.

 

[GeoModder]

Don't forget : 5 turn = already 50% reduction. So, it's easy for EP cost to be less than beaker cost.

Yes, but that is counted without the hammer loss of all those spies/probe teams which fail or get discovered along the way.

 

[Panopticon]

This mod keeps getting better and better. I'm playing as Deirdre and enjoying the Hybrid path. I haven't played much as Terraformers yet, but I get the impression that they face lots of fungal attacks. How about a Citizens' Defense Force Secret Project that gives bases defenders in case of fungal bloom?

 

[Panopticon]

Here's a problem. I can't join the Planetary Council even after Morgan has built it. On the turn it was built, I was offered the pop-up window that offers immediate civic switch, but when I entered the Civics panel immediately afterwards, Member was still not a civic I could do.

 

[Maniac]

Fixed in patch c.

 

[Panopticon]

How are corporations intended to function? I have built several Temples of Planet, but it only incorporates Temple of Planet corporation in the first base to build the ToP building. I can't find a way to spread it.

 

[Panopticon]

I get a Crash To Desktop when I try to pillage a sea tile with a Bloom-promoted Isle of the Deep. I suspect it's checking whether it ought to spread Sea Fungus to the tile at the time of the crash, but I can't discern any useful information from the logs. It's a reproducible error, so it might be possible for others to get the same effect - try to pillage Morgan with one of the Isles of the Deep in Vale of Winds.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I get a Crash To Desktop when I try to pillage a sea tile with a Bloom-promoted Isle of the Deep. I suspect it's checking whether it ought to spread Sea Fungus to the tile at the time of the crash, but I can't discern any useful information from the logs. It's a reproducible error, so it might be possible for others to get the same effect - try to pillage Morgan with one of the Isles of the Deep in Vale of Winds.

Crashes for me as well. I tested also if it makes a difference if you pillage on a trench (fungus not llowed) or on coast, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

--------

The revolt odds hoover for having drones is somehow broken for the decimals (picture taken in "Große Anhäufung"):

 

[Maniac]

Thanks for the bug reports! They'll be fixed in patch d, which will break saves though. :-s

 

[Panopticon]

Just keeping up the theme of reporting oddities I see...

We've discussed an odd native life behaviour here recently: native stacks spawn just outside the border of a Terraformer, which happens to be inside the territory of a Hybrid, and the stack goes for a Hybrid city. Even though it can be a bonus to the Hybrid player if she manages to capture the worms, it still seems like odd behaviour, assuming that the point of the stack's being formed by Planet is to attack the parasitic humans. Maybe there should be an AI strategy for those native life forms specifically to head for a "bad" human base and leave the "good" humans alone. Ignore this if the theme of the Hybrid player isn't really about working with Planetmind; I don't have enough experience yet to judge.

 

[Panopticon]

OK, I'm now playing Zakharov. The military tech development is something I'm still getting used to. My question at the moment is: how should a terraformer deal with fungal blooms at sea? Is the only answer a deployment of overwhelming numbers of boats, most of which will die?

 

[Pfeffersack]

OK, I'm now playing Zakharov. The military tech development is something I'm still getting used to. My question at the moment is: how should a terraformer deal with fungal blooms at sea? Is the only answer a deployment of overwhelming numbers of boats, most of which will die?

The key is to get rid of the fungus both inside your territories and on the outside tiles adjacent to your borders, which prevents the blooms. Coastal bunkers help to protect the improvements. Sailing out with fleets is a nonetheless a must, too.

 

[darkedone02]

I finally got a hold of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and played it until I got bored and my end turns takes a minute or 2 to end.

Alpha Centauri is completely different then this mod, both my look the same, but by game play they are different. I don't know what the mod maker's are trying to do with this game, as they either trying to be something like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or do something else and make it look more interesting then the previous game.

When I play Alpha Centauri, I found something different that this game has then what this mod has:

-When I got this research on satellites, Alpha Centauri allows you to build resources satellites that increase nutrients by 1 for ever base and a Solar satellites that does the same as the one for the Nutrients but does it with energy instead, both of these satellites can continue to be built over and over. Planetfall only use the satellites as a non-movable and deadly siege weapon... which is just more useless like bunkers are in both games imo.

-Alpha Centauri allows you to automate all units, that means soldiers that you have built can fortify the city or explore and conquer foes that are near the unit or go after a city if you declared war with another faction. Helicopters and planes go from city to city attacking units nearby or go and try to attack the base and head back to the city for refuel. Formers terraform normally around cities (which is normal for Civ 4), etc etc. I like that feature that they have, but here in Civ 4, you cannot automate all units like in Alpha Centauri, only you can automate the formers. Which sucks btw... it will be nice if the mod makers make such an option for all military units and formers and colony pods to be able to fully automate and go to the right place to go to do their mission.

-Religions and Civics are different here as well... There is no autarky civic in Alpha Centauri, instead there is "Green", there is also no Constatue or whatever civic in Planetfall, as there is only democracy, Fundamentalism, and police state. There is also a future tech civics, as well but i don't know what they are yet.

in my opinion, I like Alpha Centauri better then this mod because it has more features then this mod has. If only this mod try hardly and got the same feature as that game has, then I would play this mod more then I play Alpha Centauri. As Alpha Centauri got rid of a lot of management annoyances and other annoyances of mine that I often dislike in Civ 4, and Civ 4 lags like a .