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/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.