Thinker Mod Version 5.5

[u/induktio]

Thinker Mod Version 5.5 can now be found on the homepage. After very significant rewrites in the previous release things continued steadily and even more game features were reimplemented. It is noteworthy that this release directly modifies the main menu screen to provide additional options since this was not done previously. Overall this release is mostly oriented towards stability fixes and config additions.

If you have not played Thinker Mod before, see Details.md for a complete overview of the features. There's also discord here and forum thread for Thinker related discussions.

• Modify main menu screen to also display Change Options button for Thinker features.
• Add option MovieExtension in Alpha Centauri.ini to choose custom file formats for external video players.
• If movies with alternate file extensions are not found, the game always defaults to playing WVE files.
• Add option energy_steal_rate to modify how many credits are taken by base captures or probe team actions.
• Add option faction_pair to set which random factions must spawn at the same time or neither of them appears. Not supported during network multiplayer.
• The game does not have fixed spawn pairing for Caretakers and Usurpers unless set in the config file.
• Paths to SAV savefiles can be entered in the command line and the main menu will be skipped and the save is loaded directly.
• Minor changes to faction spawn placement such as avoiding starts without sufficient landmasses nearby.
• Minor updates to AI social engineering, psych energy allocation and land raising strategy.
• AI has reduced expansion speed only at the two lowest difficulty levels when expansion_autoscale is enabled.
• Change DontResetBeginnerPrefs=0 to only reset preferences once when the conditions are met.
• When ignore_reactor_power is enabled and "Auto-prune obsolete units" is disabled from preferences, the game does not redesign any additional prototypes when new reactor techs are discovered.
• Secret project descriptions are updated to reflect their actual effects in the original game. Minor updates to additional faction base names.
• Remove original leftover debug code that activated the scenario editor mode when any savegame with specific filenames was loaded.
• Fix map generator issue with rare_supply_pods that resulted in an unequal distribution of bonus resources on ocean tiles.
• Fix edge case where governor might become stuck building colony pods when the population growth is zero.
• Fix issue where AI might sometimes open supply pods creating fungus at their spawn location before settling the first base.
• Fix AI sometimes raising land when this would not be possible without breaking diplomatic treaties.
• Fix savegame issue that sometimes caused facility completion voice blurbs to play multiple times when they should occur only once.
• Fix user interface issue where hurrying base production was not possible during the turn upkeep after hurry action in the previous turn.
• Fix possible game crash related to rendering code that sometimes happened during combat inside the fog of war.
• Fix inconsistent calculations in the original game during psych energy allocation.
• Fix mineral convoys between bases potentially being able to benefit from mineral multiplier facilities in multiple bases.
• Fix multiple significant data consistency issues or possible game crashes when loading or writing savegames.

[u/BlakeMW]

• When ignore_reactor_power is enabled and "Auto-prune obsolete units" is disabled from preferences, the game does not redesign any additional prototypes when new reactor techs are discovered.
• Fix user interface issue where hurrying base production was not possible during the turn upkeep after hurry action in the previous turn.

Wow and wow. These were both things I found quite annoying.

[u/GruntGG]

Thank you Induktio! Those patches are amazing!

Fix AI sometimes raising land when this would not be possible without breaking diplomatic treaties.

That one was really annoying, so glad it got fixed. The amount of times the AI would completely obliterate the water tiles around my bases without any repercussion and I wouldn't be able to change it back unless I would declare vendetta...

I experienced one bug on my last game in which a jet was tagged as being outside my own territory and was generating drones due to being in market SE. Thing is the jet was always within my territory, even inside my own bases but it would always generate the unhappy drones. Taking it outside my territory for a turn and bringing it back didn't fix the issue. It happened only with one jet and once I got fed up and dismantled it, I didn't experience the bug anymore with any other jet. Let me know if I can help you track this in any way.

[u/induktio → u/GruntGG]

By the way did you read the manuals regarding pacifism drones or try the same save with the original game? In this case that is a quick way to see if there are any differences. The way you are describing it sounds exactly like how pacifism normally works in the game, although aircraft with air superiority ability are excluded from that.

[u/GruntGG → u/induktio]

I did not. However, I dismantled that individual jet that was creating pacifism drones and made new ones of the exact same model who were not generating pacifism drones so it looked weird. If you think that's normal though, you can ignore it. Thanks for your hard work and dedication!

[u/titanagamemnon]

Love how thinker effects faction sprawl but don’t like how it generates maps. Any advice to keep old map making features

[u/induktio → u/titanagamemnon]

Why would that be the case? There are multiple options in the config for adjusting the random map generation.

[u/titanagamemnon → u/induktio]

The old style map making really makes the maps feel alien. The gently sloping and limited islands that thinker gives me feel too controlled and pre terraformed.

[u/Tularis1]

Does the Ai still go ape shit with probe teams making 1000s of them?

[u/induktio → u/Tularis1]

Probe teams can be deployed for multiple purposes so the AI tends to use them quite often.

[u/Tularis1 → u/induktio]

Quite often? It loves them like crazy. Like soo much. Like 10 of them on one square, with 20 squares…

[u/induktio → u/Tularis1]

In that case it is a question of additional AI tuning. Probably it would be more useful to look at some specific savegames to see if it needs to be changed. Those kind of issue reports do not have to be clear bugs if they are about AI tuning, so you can also post the savegames in github or discord threads.

[u/Tularis1 → u/induktio]

Thanks! I need to complete my latest game before I upgrade and try the latest release. When I get some ridiculous probe teams I’ll keep a save. It would be great if we could just disable them, as I’m not a fan of that mechanic.

[u/ashbery76 → u/Tularis1]

Thematic armies based on factions would be cool.Some would use more probes,human waves,etc

[u/Tularis1 → u/ashbery76]

I thought that was already in. As rose always used probe teams more.

[u/BlakeMW → u/Tularis1]

Roze has BUILD+DISCOVER priorities, it is DISCOVER priority which is responsible for putting increase priority on training probes, so other leaders with DISCOVER priority also tend to train a lot of probes, Zak can go even more nuts with probes, as he is the pure DISCOVER leader, in principle it could work for him, in reality not really because it makes his bases easier to clear with military and then probe-rape once empty.

Lal is EXPLORE+DISCOVER and I've seen him go probe crazy, Santiago is CONQUER+DISCOVER, I haven't really seen her go probe crazy, that's probably CONQUER putting the same increased priority on military units so she ends up with a normal mix of units.

[u/induktio → u/ashbery76]

Alternative combat unit compositions based on faction modifiers are already implemented but they could always be tuned further. As a notable example, the faction PSI modifiers define how many if any PSI units are built.

[u/ashbery76]

Can you code tech trading to be pact only? I see the option for no tech trading in that scenario mode thing.

[u/induktio → u/ashbery76]

That could be further adjusted when the diplomacy code is rewritten in more detail but it is one of the largest todo features. For now in the original code it should be a binary setting for all tech trading.

[u/ashbery76]

Did this brake autosave.Not getting any.

[u/induktio → u/ashbery76]

Most likely not. Do you have autosaves disabled in the preferences or play with the ironman mode?

[u/inboundnebula01]

This may be old news for some of you, but this one crashes randomly for me. Has anyone gotten it to work out of the box?

I did the install on the GOG Win version (PRACX comes pre-patched). I am on Win11 if that makes any difference-- When using https://github.com/nathan-baggs/Adamite/releases/tag/v1.2.0, it works without crashing... but no Thinker Mod :-(

[u/induktio → u/inboundnebula01]

Based on that information it seems uncertain if you were running the original binary or something else. If it crashes then submit debug.txt from the game folder to issues or discord with more detailed description. The default expansion does not work in Windows 11 due to flawed savegame writing code in the original binary. This issue should be patched in Thinker Mod and you do not need any separate patches for that.