Planetfall

[Maniac]

Patch a for Planetfall version 3 is ready. Download link:

http://planetfall.apolyton.net/Planetfall_v3a.exe

I don't have any fluently written out changelog, but these are my own notes in case anyone can make sense of them:

Spoiler :

-city nifs
-spore launcher size
-sealurk nif
-artifact resource nif
-bCanStrike
-pedia gfx
-peacekeeper diplo ambience
-strike collateral damage
-<iAirCombatLimit>
-psi tags - hypnotic
-empath song
-rename chopper unitcombattype
-plasma shard
-logistics disciplined
-promotions SAs: Antigrav Struts, Fuel Nanocells, blink displacer
-infantry milhap
-extra foil movement
-transport upgrade for unity supplies
-Hive defense logistics
-UNITCOMBAT BUTTONS
-rename helicopter
-cruiser gfx
-civics; fundamentalism, cooperative, values?

And don't forget to thank DanQ at...

 

[Anon Zytose]

Patch a for Planetfall version 3 is ready. Download link:

http://planetfall.apolyton.net/Planetfall_v3a.exe

I don't have any fluently written out changelog, but these are my own notes in case anyone can make sense of them:

Spoiler :

-city nifs
-spore launcher size
-sealurk nif
-artifact resource nif
-bCanStrike
-pedia gfx
-peacekeeper diplo ambience
-strike collateral damage
-<iAirCombatLimit>
-psi tags - hypnotic
-empath song
-rename chopper unitcombattype
-plasma shard
-logistics disciplined
-promotions SAs: Antigrav Struts, Fuel Nanocells, blink displacer
-infantry milhap
-extra foil movement
-transport upgrade for unity supplies
-Hive defense logistics
-UNITCOMBAT BUTTONS
-rename helicopter
-cruiser gfx
-civics; fundamentalism, cooperative, values?

And don't forget to thank DanQ at...

Hooray for patch! The spore-launchers are normal-sized now. ^^ Now if only I could attack them...

By the way, thanks for the tech quote idea. :3

 

[Maniac]

Hooray for patch! The spore-launchers are normal-sized now. ^^ Now if only I could attack them...

Can you post a save of prior to an attack which causes a CtD?

 

[Zuul]

I also could not attack any native life without a crash (defence works okey).

 

[belisariu]

Incredible work, i loved SMAC and Planetfall seems very near.

If you need spanish male voices (or english speaked by a spanish) i could help with them

 

[Maniac]

I also could not attack any native life without a crash (defence works okey).

Please attach saves if possible.
Are you getting a crash every time?

 

[VinceM]

I have to say I'm really pleased to see some people trying to recreate the Alpha Centauri spirit I'm sure this has the potential to become the best mod ever made for civ4, so I'll be following this closely.

I tested it yesterday, apart from the "assert failed" messages that you can ignore, and only one CTD, the game is already almost playable in its current state. Except the numerous gameplay balance issues (that I guess you will dig later), I noticed a few things that do not work properly and that don't seem to have been stated in this thread :

- Trade routes must follow roads, that is, there are no technologies giving you the feature "allows commerce over coast/ocean". That means also that you can't import resources from another landmass, making colonization of islands for unique resources completely useless. This alone limits seriously the gameplay right now, IMHO.
- I can't get the happiness bonus you are supposed to get from factory+gold. Actually gold doesn't even appear in the resources tab of the city screen. Don't know if it's the same for silver.
- I cannot plant a forest : it seems to be instantly cleared (even giving the 20 hammer bonus) at the very moment terraformers finish the job.

But among these things maybe some are not bugs, just uncompleted features. All that being said, keep up the (very) good work

Oh and btw: could you explain how the culture system currently works ? Can't get the hang of it by myself

 

[Zuul]

Yes CTD every time!

 

[Anon Zytose]

Can you post a save of prior to an attack which causes a CtD?

I think so. Let's see if this works. ^^;

 

[r_rolo1]

Same here... Attack worm with gun... instant CTD

 

[Ellestar]

Ops. I'm playing with multiplayer settings - stack attack on, quick combat (offense/defense) on etc. so i didn't get that crash bug. And there was a small typo in a code that caused that crash Before the patch, turning on quick combat will help avoiding it.

 

[Maniac]

, I noticed a few things that do not work properly and that don't seem to have been stated in this thread :

Thanks, I'll fix these for the next patch;

Oh and btw: could you explain how the culture system currently works ? Can't get the hang of it by myself

Same as in default Civ4, except you can get extra culture for a high Planet value. Currently you already get some for free with +1 positive Planet. Will be changed so you only start getting it with +3.

Ops. I'm playing with multiplayer settings - stack attack on, quick combat (offense/defense) on etc. so i didn't get that crash bug. And there was a small typo in a code that caused that crash Before the patch, turning on quick combat will help avoiding it.

I play with Quick Combat (Offense) on, Quick Combat (Defense) and Stack Combat off. I don't get a crash with Anon Zytose's save. I did get a crash with that save I posted yesterday though, but when I end the turn today, I don't get a crash.

 

[Anon Zytose]

So I tried again with activating quick combat for attacks. And the game no longer crashes. Thanks for finding that. ^^

I also noticed that in the game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, native life units (especially mind worms) seem to beat everything. Including city garrison infantry. (Good thing I had a second unit there.) I've realized that while the enemy gains the technology for all sorts of nifty weapons, I may as well direct my technology to pretty much anything else, while building an army of mind worms.

Now one crazy thought of mine, floating in my head for a month or two, has been for mind worms to not automatically knock down enemy strengths to its level, but instead try to catch up. Suppose the native life units could be "upgraded" to higher stages in the life cycle, which would mainly increase the strength scores from 3 to, say, 5, 8, 12, 20, 32, and 48? I was thinking it would still be worthwhile for these units to have bonuses against otherwise stronger non-natives, but I don't know how hard that would be for the major programmers here to achieve without them listing every target for each unit. I then thought, what if we tried that? It wouldn't exactly be fun to read or program. I realized we might be better off if we just increased the strength scores of the native units and gave certain units with smaller strength scores (the ones with the best discipline and flamethrowers for their strength scores) bonuses against them. And yes, this is assuming my wild idea is actually implemented.

In other news, I've also noticed that forests get cleared upon planting.

One thought I've had for dealing with the micromanagement of planting and chopping forests for the production. What if an idle terraformer (or worker in normal Civ) provided a production bonus for every turn spent in a city? As in slightly more of a bonus than it would offer from planting and chopping a forest in the same amount of time? If this makes formers too powerful, we could increase the costs to build and/or maintain them.

 

[Bandobras Took]

So I tried again with activating quick combat for attacks. And the game no longer crashes. Thanks for finding that. ^^

I also noticed that in the game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, native life units (especially mind worms) seem to beat everything. Including city garrison infantry. (Good thing I had a second unit there.) I've realized that while the enemy gains the technology for all sorts of nifty weapons, I may as well direct my technology to pretty much anything else, while building an army of mind worms.

As I recall, that's how Alpha Centauri was. Special Promotions/Special Projects were lifesavers against Native Life. That was also one of the reasons I enjoyed the Gaians/Planet Cult.

 

[Anon Zytose]

As I recall, that's how Alpha Centauri was. Special Promotions/Special Projects were lifesavers against Native Life. That was also one of the reasons I enjoyed the Gaians/Planet Cult.

In my last game, I played as the Planet Cult specifically for how their superior Planet rating provided amazing native life units.

 

[Ellestar]

I also noticed that in the game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, native life units (especially mind worms) seem to beat everything. Including city garrison infantry. (Good thing I had a second unit there.) I've realized that while the enemy gains the technology for all sorts of nifty weapons, I may as well direct my technology to pretty much anything else, while building an army of mind worms.

I think they're a little too cheap in Planetfall, in SMAC Mind Worms were more expensive. Also, they're weak in defence (str 2 vs 3) and they aren't fast.

 

[Anon Zytose]

I don't think increasing the price of mind worms will be sufficient. It would mainly just mean that in the early game they'd be too expensive to be economically worthwhile in the short run. And in the late game they might still not be expensive enough for one to consider anything else.

 

[Maniac]

One thought I've had for dealing with the micromanagement of planting and chopping forests for the production. What if an idle terraformer (or worker in normal Civ) provided a production bonus for every turn spent in a city? As in slightly more of a bonus than it would offer from planting and chopping a forest in the same amount of time? If this makes formers too powerful, we could increase the costs to build and/or maintain them.

Or chopping forests could be made not such a profitable strategy. I've reduced the free minerals for a chop to 10. Chopping forests should not be profitable when you can plant forests as well. Perhaps the number should be reduced further - don't know. Problem here kinda is that the free minerals for a chop reduce in Civ4 the further from a base. And we can't have a chop yield nothing at all. Otherwise it could be a bad thing to have forests expand naturally.

I also noticed that in the game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, native life units (especially mind worms) seem to beat everything. Including city garrison infantry. (Good thing I had a second unit there.) I've realized that while the enemy gains the technology for all sorts of nifty weapons, I may as well direct my technology to pretty much anything else, while building an army of mind worms.

The rock > scissors > paper of SMAC psi combat was like this:

Rock: Expensive units with strong conventional weaponry.

Scissors: First counter was cheap 1-1-x units with empath song and/or hypnotic trance.

Second counter was artillery. Artillery used its conventional weapon strength in bombardment, while psi units were still defending with base strength 1 or 2. Don't know if this was a bug or by design. In any case, as a consequence an attack by eg chaos artillery meant instant massacre. This was one of the reasons why building native life units was a very bad idea. They became completely defenseless as the game progressed. Artillery currently doesn't work as a special counter against native life in Planetfall. Perhaps it could be introduced that more powerful artillery does indeed get better against native life, but it shouldn't be so extreme as in SMAC IMO.

Paper: Psi units. These were actually pretty much useless in SMAC. Yeah sure you can have a fun game with them against the AI, but against the AI you can win with anything. One reason is they were too easily countered by artillery as mentioned above. Another reason is that they required too advanced technology, and there were more attractive b-lines to follow. A third reason is they were too expensive: their other counter besides artillery (1-1-x trance infantry or empath rovers) was much cheaper. In SMAniaC I made worms and spore launchers cost only 20 minerals. That worked pretty well. Given that the cheapest unit in Planetfall costs 20 hammers instead of SMAC's 10 minerals, perhaps native life cost could be doubled as well compared to SMAniaC: 40 minerals? I haven't given much thought yet to unit costs - just slapped random numbers on them - so feel free to suggest concrete numbers.

Anyway, considering the AI doesn't know how to best counter psi units, I assume using them against the AI is indeed very powerful currently. However you say they also beat city garrisons. Don't cheap and conventionally weak units work against them currently?

 

[Anon Zytose]

Right now scissors is doing a poor job trying to beat paper. With psi combat in Planetfall's current stage, The only advantage conventionally weak units have over their conventionally stronger counterparts is that more of them can be built in the same amount of time. Both the weak unit and strong unit have the same potential for getting things like hypnotic trance and whatnot.

Now. Suppose we added a conventionally weak unit that's strong against native life, which itself is strong against conventionally strong units of many sorts. The native life units stay the same. They also find that they'll still defeat the best of the conventionally strong category in the game. It'd be like having ancient-era spearmen that can't upgrade to pikemen and so forth, but can still defeat cavalry and gunships as if they were chariots.

Now add a category of units that are conventionally significantly weaker than other units at the same tech level, but quite capable of beating native life and other units that cause psi combat. If the native life units remain the same in terms of combat ability, one could overpower them through the least expensive of the conventional weak category. They would have reason to upgrade, but mostly in cases where the enemy has a stack of native life and scissors units. The most effective way to beat the stack would be with better scissors. Plus maybe some heavy artillery. And at some point the competition of scissors units will get to the point where it's less expensive to send, say, three paper than one scissors. Any cost of scissors beyond that would be pointless. And thus, so would any level of rock past that point, as well. This pretty much means that unless the psi units get better and better for producing (and thus require stronger and stronger scissors to overtake) throughout the entire game, the most advanced units in the game will be worthless.

Or at least that's what it seems like for me.

Anyway, yes, native life can defeat city defense units. The odds are on the defender's side, but not by all that much. Kinda makes me wish for a return of promotions like City Garrison.

 

[Maniac]

Right now scissors is doing a poor job trying to beat paper. With psi combat in Planetfall's current stage, The only advantage conventionally weak units have over their conventionally stronger counterparts is that more of them can be built in the same amount of time. Both the weak unit and strong unit have the same potential for getting things like hypnotic trance and whatnot.

I'm not a fan of hard counters à la default Civ4 +50% or +100% where A *always* beats B always beats C always beats A... I want my Spartan high morale troops to have a good fighting chance against worms, no matter what weapon they use. Even if cheap units and expensive units are just as strong against native life, by using cheap units you'll lose less minerals if you takes losses, so you'll have won an economic victory, making them an effective counter.

Now add a category of units that are conventionally significantly weaker than other units at the same tech level, but quite capable of beating native life and other units that cause psi combat. If the native life units remain the same in terms of combat ability, one could overpower them through the least expensive of the conventional weak category. They would have reason to upgrade, but mostly in cases where the enemy has a stack of native life and scissors units. The most effective way to beat the stack would be with better scissors. Plus maybe some heavy artillery. And at some point the competition of scissors units will get to the point where it's less expensive to send, say, three paper than one scissors. Any cost of scissors beyond that would be pointless. And thus, so would any level of rock past that point, as well. This pretty much means that unless the psi units get better and better for producing (and thus require stronger and stronger scissors to overtake) throughout the entire game, the most advanced units in the game will be worthless.

I lost you. :dizzy: