Given that creativity is part of a random number algorithm, it's most likely a division error.

I'm not sure if negative abilities are supported correctly. In DA at least, they weren't, but since the Arceans in TA get a -1 to speed there has to be some support.

The question is, if abilities that grant a simple bonus (speed, economy, production, range etc.) are treated differently than those that actually make something happen on their own (creativity).

Try modding negative values into these other areas and see if there are strange behaviours as well - my guess would be no (only creativity is an active ability, others are passive).

It's not a 'bug' per se, as much as being counter to the intention of the ability. For example, if I ask you to rate a movie on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being 'worse than gigli' and 10 being "ZOMG, it's the best movie I ever saw" why would you say -1?

It's the same type of thing. The scale is from 0 to (say it was byte) 255. 0 is as bad as it gets.

Yes, the coding could be changed to accept negative numbers, but that would involve declaring the variable as a different type of variable, and could affect the results of an ungodly number of subroutines.

Harking back to my D&D days, and what happens when an ability score in D&D gets to 0, (Dex of 0, you don't even have the coordination to kneel, you just lay there) I'd say that a creativity of -1 would mean your people are SO uncreative that they cannot conceive of the hows and whys of research. NORESEARCHFORJU!

I have some basis for that thought. I work in an R&D lab, and most projects are pretty stymied without some out of the box thinking by someone in the lab, except for the projects that detail the properties of our product line.

All of the abilities are stored in an array of signed long integers in all versions of GalCiv, but we generally call a function GetAbility() and store the value of the ability in a local variable when using it in calculations.  In DL and DA, we specifically had code to prevent negative ability values.  For Twilight, I had to go through and change a lot of code to support negative ability values.  However, I'm still used to ability values being non-negative, so in my UseCreativeAbility function I stored the creative ability value in an unsigned long integer out of habit.  It wouldn't have been a problem in metaverse games because you would have had to take a cheater flag to get the negative creative ability, but we try to be mod friendly for non metaverse games, so I changed the local variable to a signed long integer. This will be in the next update.

I also changed it so that you don't get all the tech points for the total cost of the tech with creativity anymore, you only get what is left, so you won't get more than one free tech with creativity per turn, and I also made it so that you have to have research production to use the creative ability.

I doubt that we would implement penalties for negative creativity; its only function would be to drag down creativity ability granted by techs, the same way that you can't have a negative Approval from negative Morale ability.  It's still an obstacle, but it's not any worse than having 0 ability.

 

Oh, and I forgot, I made it so that you can't get any of the tech victory techs with Creativity.  You still have to research those.

 

So that if other races are at war, you get a hit to your economy? Not as currently implemented. We don't have any other categories of income that could potentially actually be an expense and if we had a negative income value on the economy screen that could be confusing.  Plus, how would you have a negative War Profiteering ability? It seems like it would be something that you're either good at or you're not.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

You have killed my Thalan Tech Victory idea.

If it's already been changed (being changed?) so that you actually have to have research production for it to proc, then why take the tech victory techs off of the table?

That still means that with 1% research you can 'proc' the creative ability.

This seems like a good time to submit the following thought to you two:

- Base creativity off of how much you're investing into research. Perhaps 100% research will be 100% of your x% creativity, whereas 50% research will only use half your race's creativity. This would eliminate just using 1%, 2%, or other ridiculously low near-zero cost measures while still getting the benefit. This could reflect the fact that with 100% funding you have loads of scientists, so obviously the odds of getting a creative tech is higher. Sounds fair to me, at least. Remember, creativity is immensely powerful, at least in my eyes. It's extremely cheap and gives you the possibility of major gains.

However, not really anyone runs at 100% funding and 100% research for very long, so perhaps the point at which you will get 100% benefit of creativity could be lowered to 66% investment of your income to research? I don't know. Just some sort of tie between the two sounds necessary to me.

- The other factor should be how much time a tech requires. This might sound dumb at first, but it's actually rather necessary. On Very Slow tech games (assuming tech speed gets adjusted to be less broken and hyperspeed), it's a major balance factor on how fast you get techs. When it takes dozens of weeks to get basic weapon techs, getting creativity (as it'll take you more weeks to research, therefore there's more a chance of finishing any given tech early) will give you a SIGNIFICANT advantage.

On the other hand, very fast tech speed with 10 MILLION research labs, creativity isn't really worth anything at all.

*sigh*

I agree...

I just wanted the TA Thalans to be good at -something-.

And it really would have been humorous to have, say, a tenth turn tech victory...though, I can see why not having it is a good thing.

-

The only problem with your second idea is your first idea, Uranium. Less research funding equals more time to complete a tech. One way around that might be to use the base cost of the tech instead of the actual time, but then again, I'm not really for creativity making BHEs more easy to achieve than, say, warp drive.

One other thing while we're on the subject of creativity-the description (I'm a sucker for flavor text...) says "gives a chance of making groundbreaking discoveries traditionally unavailable." Is there any way to code it (based around the current system, anyway) so creativity has a (low, low) chance of giving you...a random tech? Seems like a tech you're not currently researching fits the category of "traditionally unavailable" pretty well. Alternatively, creativity could, well, CREATE (i.e. generate) new techs, which had minimal positive side effects and only lasted for that game, but...I'll just keep dreaming about that, I guess.

Just a thought or two I had...

-

10 million labs? At a max of 99 per planet, with class 100 planets (yeah right), that gives...101,000 planets, give or take. Even if every single tile is a Precursor Library, and you're only counting "virtual" labs, that's still ~12,600 planets.

I wasn't aware we had galaxies QUITE that large yet.

There hasn't even been a balance patch since they were implemented. This isn't the release candidate. I mean, jeez, problems with what is the first release of a product in a beta?

I was trying to sarcastically jump on the "Thalan nerf" bandwagon.

I guess it didn't work.

Not that I don't believe they're not balanced as is, I'm just waiting to see what happens.

Still, +50 creativity would be scary to watch.

Even with so much wrong with the Thalans, I've found them interesting enough to play them through several games. So perversely, they will probably seem far too powerful if/when their shortcomings are addressed.

As a cutscene, it should play the scene from Family Guy where the Irish scientist invents whiskey.

Cool sound like a good change. So I was partly right as to what the issue was.