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Yang feels to me like the guy who best understands the transcendence victory because that's basically how he's already modeled his society. Look at his more philosophical quotes and how he envisions society:quote:Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outwards, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment. quote:I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength. quote:What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output. Yang seems to be less about the brutal dictatorship he runs on the surface and much more about Eastern-style enlightenment and transcendence through embrace of the collective and denial of the self, mixing Confucianism and Buddhism among other ideas.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:12
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Cythereal posted:IIRC this is canonically what happened to Miriam in the books: defeated and marginalized while humanity continued to spiral out of control, she and her handful of remaining followers went into a Psi Gate with no set destination. drat. Man I know nothing about SMAC books, would you please tell me about some titles and/or read orders?
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Aug 15, 2014 19:16
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Rexides posted:Why would anyone listen to these people? Why would you care about historical accuracy in a game that lets you play as paleolithic Abraham Lincoln? Realism is well and good ... if it doesn't get trumped by game balance or that ineffable quality known as "fun". And that's a much bigger problem here than it is in other media, except it doesn't stop people from complaining. I'm not sure I want to begin on the number of historical misconceptions people have because of the Civilization games. There are all kinds of oddities in the tech trees (why would you invent an alphabet if you don't know how to write yet? ... fixed in Civ 4), although there are a whole bunch of common-sense violations too. You can tech to and build Ironclads in both Civ 1 and Civ 2 without Iron Working, that's one I discovered recently  Realism doesn't work well in Alpha Centauri either. There used to be a (stickied!) thread in Debate and Discussions about the alleged applicability of the Alpha Centauri games. Alpha Centauri puts a lot more thought into its science than most other games, but it still isn't as good as a well-thought-out book. My thinking about this is that if Alpha Centauri rules applied to real life, the United States should just straight-up conquer the world, probably with 6-strength copters. (This isn't rare in fiction; if you apply fictional rules to real life, I often end up thinking "you know, world conquest would actually be a good idea here!") Also keep in mind that the Alpha Centauri tech tree explicitly is arranged around humans adapting to not having a large population and industrial base to draw upon. People also often don't even know what's realistic to begin with. Chivalry, for instance, isn't on the Civ 4 tech tree even though it's in Civ 1, 2, and 3, which resulted in a number of complaints. It really wasn't that important a development historically, being more of a thing for romantics to write poetry about; it'd never make a 250-technology tech tree in my book. Never mind that full plate armor (for your knights in shining armor) developed predominantly as a result of firearms, and continued to be useful until rifles started showing up. I'd better stop before I go on for paragraphs quote:Seriously though I started playing SMAC with blind research on and I loved it. Later on I switched it to off because I hate it when I can't get important technologies that I like, but i still miss the "Wow, look at this new thing!" factor of blind research. The one thing that's really annoying about blind research is that sometimes you can't get your hands on Centauri Ecology for a long while, which drastically affects the early game, and doing well in the early-game exponential growth curve defines the rest of your game. This could be fixed by switching to a Civ 4-like model, where you can build formers from the start, but actually doing anything more than building simple roads requires technology; your early-game growth wouldn't be so dependent upon a single specific technology. Radio Talmudist posted:Just wanted to join the chorus of nearly-unanimous praise for this game. It's amazing. I not only play this game, I still regularly play all of Civ 1, 2, 3, and 4, which is how I remember so much about these games; I haven't stopped playing them. Civ 5 is only out because my computer can't quite handle it. Civ 1 is admittedly there only because of nostalgia, but 2, 3, and 4 are all still very much worth playing even today if you ask me. Also, in Morgan chat, no one has mentioned my favorite quote of his: Morgan in the Longevity Vaccine secret project video posted:Get off my land you peacekeeping son of a --
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Aug 15, 2014 19:31
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turboraton posted:drat. Man I know nothing about SMAC books, would you please tell me about some titles and/or read orders? It was just a single trilogy, written by Michael Ely, and a comic book. The books were 'Centauri Dawn', 'Dragon Sun', and 'Twilight of the Mind', the comic was 'Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms' by Rafael Kayanan. There was also the background story that came with the manual.
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Aug 15, 2014 19:58
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ducttape posted:It was just a single trilogy, written by Michael Ely, and a comic book. The books were 'Centauri Dawn', 'Dragon Sun', and 'Twilight of the Mind', the comic was 'Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms' by Rafael Kayanan. More interestingly, read the books that inspired SMAC. Specifically the Red Mars/Blue Mars/Green Mars trilogy and the Jesus Incident (what a strange book that is, even by Frank Herbert standards).
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Aug 15, 2014 20:24
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I loved that the comic showed the Morganite war room, and their map was a SMAC screenshot.
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Aug 15, 2014 20:33
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Boldor posted:The one thing that's really annoying about blind research is that sometimes you can't get your hands on Centauri Ecology for a long while, which drastically affects the early game, and doing well in the early-game exponential growth curve defines the rest of your game. If you set your research focus solely to Explore on turn 0, it will give you Centauri Ecology like every time. The only other explore tech is Doctrine: Mobility, which doesn't seem to be as high on the priority list. Once you have ecology, set your focuses back to whatever. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 20:43
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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bondetamp posted:I loved that the comic showed the Morganite war room, and their map was a SMAC screenshot. "Get offa my land, you peacekeeping sonova--!"
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Aug 15, 2014 20:48
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Mzbundifund posted:"Best" in that they are the first to realize it. Horrifying once you recall what they did with their knowledge. Wait, have I forgotten something? As far as I remember the Gaians are pretty zealous about their ecology, but are also pretty committed to creating a sustainable and harmonious society rooted in green culture. Diedre always seemed to care about human rights more than any other leader except Lal. Or did you mean taming mindworms for military use?
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Aug 15, 2014 20:57
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Mister Adequate posted:Wait, have I forgotten something? As far as I remember the Gaians are pretty zealous about their ecology, but are also pretty committed to creating a sustainable and harmonious society rooted in green culture. Diedre always seemed to care about human rights more than any other leader except Lal. Or did you mean taming mindworms for military use? It's heavily implied in her quotes (and the book as well apparently, but I never read it). That the Gaians were waging a secret war with the Spartans (who were apparently unaware the Gaians were behind it), and basically wiped them out using mind worms. Which is about as inhumane a way to die as possible. Note the bolded part of this quote about a mind worm attack on Sparta: quote:The klaxon began to wail, but we felt the reassuring tingle of the Tachyon Field crackling to life around us, encasing the entire base in its impenetrable glow. Tachyon Fields do nothing against Psy attacks
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Aug 15, 2014 21:05
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Mister Adequate posted:Wait, have I forgotten something? As far as I remember the Gaians are pretty zealous about their ecology, but are also pretty committed to creating a sustainable and harmonious society rooted in green culture. Diedre always seemed to care about human rights more than any other leader except Lal. Or did you mean taming mindworms for military use? It's the mindworm thing, yeah. You get a few hints in the quotes about the Gaians raiding the poo poo out of the Spartans with deniable mindworm troops. A few of the Gaian quotes come from a text called "Our Secret War," one of which is about an approach to the ruins of Sparta Command. Sparta has the quote on the boost-defense-against-psi Project, and the final transmission from Assassin's Redoubt (a Spartan base) is "Mary Had A Little Lamb" which, given that it comes from the boost-psi-attack project, is probably supposed to imply the fuckedness of their mental state post- or mid-mindworming. Glidergun fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 21:09
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HappyHelmet posted:It's heavily implied in her quotes (and the book as well apparently, but I never read it). That the Gaians were waging a secret war with the Spartans (who were apparently unaware the Gaians were behind it), and basically wiped them out using mind worms. Which is about as inhumane a way to die as possible. Note the bolded part of this quote about a mind worm attack on Sparta: Yep, according to the books the Spartans just thought they had massive mind worm problems. The Gaians only showed up in force during the assault on Sparta Command after the mind worms had crippled the city's defenses.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:10
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HappyHelmet posted:It's heavily implied in her quotes (and the book as well apparently, but I never read it). That the Gaians were waging a secret war with the Spartans (who were apparently unaware the Gaians were behind it), and basically wiped them out using mind worms. Which is about as inhumane a way to die as possible. Note the bolded part of this quote about a mind worm attack on Sparta: Although I don't think that war was one sided either; I distinctly remember Spartan troops blasting their way into a Gaian base in one of the 'expanded universe' stories or another.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:08
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Oh yeah, I forgot all about the Sparta business (because I don't care about the Spartans and they're never relevant).
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Aug 15, 2014 22:28
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ducttape posted:It was just a single trilogy, written by Michael Ely, and a comic book. The books were 'Centauri Dawn', 'Dragon Sun', and 'Twilight of the Mind', the comic was 'Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms' by Rafael Kayanan. How good are these novels? On a scale from Baldur's Gate to... uh poo poo, have there ever been any good video game novelizations?
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Aug 15, 2014 22:28
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Mister Adequate posted:Oh yeah, I forgot all about the Sparta business (because I don't care about the Spartans and they're never relevant). I swear, every game I play I see them get spawn trapped by a Spore Launcher or something. Which is a shame, I kinda like 'crazy survivalists' as a faction.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:34
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I have two technical questions about running SMAC on a modern computer. That's with Alien Crossfire from the original CDs, with the standard v2.0 patch, the XP patch, and the unofficial bug-fixing patch, but not the AI patch that some hardcore players use; and on Windows 7 on a laptop. I don't have Windows 7 Professional, so I can't use Microsoft's own XP emulator.
I'm also going to assume people won't mind if I do a short Let's Play right in this thread, since it isn't actually high-traffic. (The plan: one base only with the Peacekeepers on Transcend, average settings for everything except no blind research. Also practice for a longer LP. It won't be that long, either to play or to post, and I'll explain all the wacky micromanagement exploits that get (ab)used. Piece of cake compared to a Wizardry 6 speed run. ) I don't think there's actually a rule against this; let me know if there are any objections. It's too short to get its own thread in the LP subforum, really.inthesto posted:How good are these novels? On a scale from Baldur's Gate to... uh poo poo, have there ever been any good video game novelizations? If you reach way back into the Dark Ages, there were some kids' versions of Zork presented as choose-your-own-adventure books. Those weren't half bad, for kiddie CYOA. Some strategy guides are written as semi-novelizations, which makes them entertaining to read. The clue books to Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 come to mind.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:41
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What on earth is causing this?
), but the inability to take notes in a text editor and manage screenshots easily is painful because I have to quit to desktop frequently. Is there a way around this? No, using Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the Task Manager doesn't work; the taskbar and the Task Manager do show up fine, I just can't actually do anything with them.
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I'm pretty sure the fact that they're more nationally focused rather then ideologicaly, and that they're supposed to be more positive and aspirational, means that no one will be having conversations like this about the Beyond Earth leaders in a decade. SMAC was really unique. 
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Aug 15, 2014 22:47
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Boldor posted:SMAC won't let me switch tasks in the middle of a game. I'm considering a Let's Play of this and Civ 1/2/3/4 (yeah, that's on the pile along with the Wizardry 6 and Might and Magic 3 speed runs You might try reading this here. There's a recommendation about how to run it in windowed mode, and it seems to be applicable to both original CD and GOG versions of the game. Boldor posted:I'm also going to assume people won't mind if I do a short Let's Play right in this thread, since it isn't actually high-traffic. (The plan: one base only with the Peacekeepers on Transcend, average settings for everything except no blind research. Also practice for a longer LP. It won't be that long, either to play or to post, and I'll explain all the wacky micromanagement exploits that get (ab)used. Piece of cake compared to a Wizardry 6 speed run. I don't personally mind if you do it here but there's no rule in the LP subforum about how detailed or effort-heavy your LP has to be. If you posted it there it's almost certain that more people would see / enjoy it. Link to it here though!
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Aug 15, 2014 22:56
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If you're worried an LP being "too small" to merit its own thread, you can always make it a "let's all play" thread where readers can contribute whatever the hell they want. I know I'd be down for doing a couple of doofy gimmicks for it.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:58
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Okay, fair enough. I've already played a few test games; I haven't tried this style in ages, so I had to work out the details of playing with only one base again. It's a rather different playstyle I might end up switching to University, though; the Peacekeeper bonuses help much less with a single base than a handful of bases. You're not going to be elected planetary governor, for one thing. This is one of those rare cases where you don't actually want to research Centauri Ecology first. You need to roll a few resource bonuses or monoliths in your one base to be competitive in one-base Transcend, and those work well enough until your delayed formers come out. If you do research Centauri Ecology first that locks you out of Social Psych for the second tech; normally even on Transcend I don't research that for a while, since in the early expansion phase bases don't need to exceed size 2. These techs should be researched the other way around. (If you're played any of the earlier Civ games: in Civ 1 you research The Wheel first 95% of the time, in Civ 2 you tech straight to Monarchy about 95% of the time, in Civ 3 you research Pottery first 95% of the time. Centauri Ecology would be the first technology 100% of the time in SMAC if it weren't for stunt games like this.) Mzbundifund posted:You might try reading this here. There's a recommendation about how to run it in windowed mode, and it seems to be applicable to both original CD and GOG versions of the game. Thanks, I don't know why I didn't see this in a Google search. This still causes problems when a Secret Project video plays, by the way, but that isn't too big a deal, I can just switch between the modes if I want my video award
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Aug 16, 2014 23:00
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(sorry for the self-followup, but this is already on like page 6) Further testing shows that even a single base at Transcend will maul the AI on a standard-size map later in the game; the trick is to not get killed earlier on. Even with temporary social policy swapping, the AIs in this game are far more hostile than in any Civilization game except for multiplayer versions of Civ 2, which even in single-player mode has a much more hostile AI than the original single-player only version. I don't think it's a coincidence those came out pretty close to each other. Later in the game you can hit one technology per turn even under all these restrictions, which tells you something about how poor game balance is later in the game. I'm going to add a couple of additional handicaps to keep this interesting. It does take some luck and skill not to get blown away earlier in the game, so they can't make the earlier game all that much harder. That means I'll probably play on a larger map, which escalates technology costs but keeps AIs farther away.
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Aug 18, 2014 19:12
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It's mainly an issue of the AI just not being very good at the end game in general. Typically around the time fusion power becomes available in the middle part of the game the AI starts to lose it's ability to keep up with the players tech for "reasons." And once the player has a tech advantage over the AI it's basically game over at that point.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:12
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HappyHelmet posted:It's mainly an issue of the AI just not being very good at the end game in general. Typically around the time fusion power becomes available in the middle part of the game the AI starts to lose it's ability to keep up with the players tech for "reasons." And once the player has a tech advantage over the AI it's basically game over at that point. The late game would not work well even if the AI were improved, for two reasons. First of all, the tech tree narrows significantly as you approach the top of the tree, which forces you onto a narrower path. Second of all, the ability to gain technologies, even with just one base, far outstrips the escalation in tech costs. There are a lot of toys higher in the tech tree that just aren't all that useful if Transcendence is on the table, because the game will end before you ever get to use them. The Habitation Dome is pretty much the last thing on the tech tree that is useful in a one-base game; if you play with many bases even those come too late to make any real difference. That late in the game it isn't hard to amass the cash needed to straight-up cash rush the Ascent to Transcendence. That's even with the 2x penalty for a Secret Project, with the 2x penalty for rushing once it is available, with no supply crawlers cashed in, with just one base, and with the low mineral production of a one-base faction (you will never be able to spam Tree Farms and Centauri Preserves to incrementally reduce ecological damage; unlike some speed runs, this game doesn't go so fast that you can win before global warming sets in). That's 8 energy per mineral after the first 10 minerals; under Planned/Wealth/Eudaimonia the Ascent costs 1200 minerals, which means you can straight-up cash rush the Ascent for less than 10,000 energy. Late in the game that's not that much even with only one base. (Any extra labs generated by your one base is wasted, so it does no good to increase labs above one tech per turn. You'll also have bunches of Engineers or Transcendi spewing energy.) If you upgrade supply crawlers, that price drops dramatically; I'll limit or outright ban cashing in pod-supplied or upgraded supply crawlers because they break the game so much, though I think it'd still be useful to show how broken they are, and they don't get hilariously badly broken until later in the game. I don't think I've seen that extra 2x penalty for cash rushing when the Ascent is available described in many places; it's pretty obviously an ad hoc rule to ameliorate the late game rushing by, but it's not nearly enough. I'll probably play on a huge map, as the Peacekeepers, and stack the available AIs (both alien factions, University, Consciousness, Hive, Believers), and without pods everywhere (otherwise I can explore everywhere and cash in bunches of artifacts at the Universal Translator). This will both probably be enough to significantly delay the ability to get one tech per turn, or even every two turns, and it'll also greatly reduce the chance of an early-game asskicking. I might also actually be able to elect myself planetary governor with this setup late in the game
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Aug 18, 2014 21:41
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Boldor posted:Okay, fair enough. I've already played a few test games; I haven't tried this style in ages, so I had to work out the details of playing with only one base again. You know... it might be interesting to see a paralleled LP with multiple human players. Just a thought.
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Aug 18, 2014 21:58
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Canuck-Errant posted:You know... it might be interesting to see a paralleled LP with multiple human players. Just a thought. I think it would be interesting, but if you have human players playing the same game or from the same start, it'd be like trying to herd cats. You'd need to set up a bunch of rules so the game stays reasonably balanced, too. Also, I had forgotten about this, but turning on No Unity Scattering not only cuts down on the number of pods, but it seeds the map with extra resource bonuses, and in the Civ 1/2 pattern so you can figure out exactly where they are once you know the location of a few. You need to turn this option on for balanced play on anything larger than a standard map, because so much of the game becomes chasing down pods. On giant maps there can be literally thousands of pods, which means scads of alien artifacts; you just need to produce more scouts to replace the ones who die to popped alien lifeforms. (You get less of the thrill of exploration, on the other hand, but you don't really want to scout beyond about air unit range in a one-base game anyway.) All those pods means that speed transcendence actually might work well on a gargantuan map. It seemed to be possible when I tried this in a test game; normal speed transcendence is done on an itty bitty map. If you roll very lucky it actually might be possible to beat itty bitty map speed, even with the vastly increased technology costs. In this case you don't try to tech normally except very early on; instead you play University for the free Network Nodes and eventually rely on cashing in alien artifacts for tech.
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Aug 18, 2014 23:14
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Boldor posted:All those pods means that speed transcendence actually might work well on a gargantuan map. It seemed to be possible when I tried this in a test game; normal speed transcendence is done on an itty bitty map. If you roll very lucky it actually might be possible to beat itty bitty map speed, even with the vastly increased technology costs. In this case you don't try to tech normally except very early on; instead you play University for the free Network Nodes and eventually rely on cashing in alien artifacts for tech.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:10
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Now this I would love to watch. Not that one base on Transcend wouldn't be cool too, but that's even cooler to me. Well, the fastest speed run on Transcend was completed in 2176. Yes, that's just 76 turns; the equivalent in Civ 1 is 2500 BC! I was kind of assuming people were familiar with this run, but that's probably not actually true. Read the report here if you haven't, it's well done. You should roll a custom map size larger than huge; regular huge is 64 by 128 and probably doesn't quite have enough Unity pods to pull this off. (I am assuming no save/reload abuse.) I would roll a map of about size 80x160 (because of the isometric map mapping scheme used, this is actually 80 by 80), or perhaps a bit larger; and turn off Blind Research. To ease expansion: set ocean coverage to low (even at this setting you tend to get lots of islands rather than any significant land masses; sea colony pods take too long to build in a speed game), alien life to low, cloud cover to high, and erosive forces to strong. You need an awesome start position; this kind of speed requires a jungle start, as you otherwise spend too many early-game turns just waiting for cities to hit size 2 so you can squeeze out a colony pod. Even after that you need a lot of luck, though at least you really need it only in the early expansion phase. Gargantuan maps tech slowly enough at the start that you probably need to the roll the dice on cashing in your first alien artifacts, rather than apply them to early Secret Projects. (On itty bitty maps you can get one tech per turn from turn 1, which is not happening here.) On a standard or smaller map you can steal yourself some free bases with just your starting units and free pod-popped units, but that's extremely unlikely on a giant map because the map generator almost always makes a point placing you and the other factions far apart. You need to expand to lot of tiny bases as fast as possible to have plenty of Network Nodes available to cash alien artifacts at, and to support and build more formers, more colony pods, and all the 1-1-2 rovers and transport foils you can. Expansion is so crucial that once you have a minimum technology set, it is probably a good idea to run Police State/Planned for some time even though that crashes your economy into the floor. This is a reasonable idea in general on large maps, actually; build your headquarters base tall, and keep your other bases tiny and constantly pumping out more formers, scouts, and colony pods while you are in this phase. The idea is to exponentially expand to the point where you retrieve so many alien artifacts you can make up for the earlier slow tech rate. You only need enough bases to get enough technologies to reach and build the Universal Translator; if you can build that quickly enough you should have it made. You also need the Weather Paradigm as always; and to maximize exploration speed, you want both the Xenoempathy Dome and the Maritime Control Center. It'd probably take over a thousand map rerolls and a few dozen serious tries to be able to pull this off, bare minimum. You would also have to micromanage to the hilt and exploit every trick in the book in order to achieve that kind of speed, so it would be slow going.
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Aug 19, 2014 03:23
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That's a pretty pro click right there. I learned more about game mechanics reading that than basically anywhere else I could think of. Not that stuff like "one city can only produce one tech worth of research per turn" would ever come up otherwise!
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Aug 19, 2014 03:38
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inthesto posted:How good are these novels? On a scale from Baldur's Gate to... uh poo poo, have there ever been any good video game novelizations? The Crysis novelization by Peter Watts?
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Aug 19, 2014 03:48
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That's a pretty pro click right there. I learned more about game mechanics reading that than basically anywhere else I could think of. Not that stuff like "one city can only produce one tech worth of research per turn" would ever come up otherwise! As you've read the report, you can see the minimum size map causes huge problems that don't exist on larger map sizes, even though it also makes research hilariously cheap and allows you to easily rush other factions' starting bases. Normally if you are pushing expansion as fast as possible, the first thing you produce in bases after the initial 1-2 isn't a garrison or scout. You should produce a former first (cash rushing recycling tanks may be worthwhile if you have the energy and the technology), then go back and build a 10-mineral garrison. This doesn't work if you have to produce a police unit just to prevent your single citizen from rioting. On a giant map at Transcend, you can expand to something like 12 bases before you have to worry about that. (It's 6 bases on a standard map, 9 on huge; in Civ 2 the threshold at the highest level is 4 cities in Despotism, 6 cities in Monarchy regardless of map size.) Don't save early energy; if you have at least 10 minerals in a base and can cash rush a former, recycling tanks, or colony pod in one turn, you should do so. You also don't need to spend the full amount; the cash rush fills the entire production box, but you can proportionately spend less so that natural production exactly fills the box. The exception is that you might need to save up energy to switch social engineering policies. That report skips recycling tanks, but that's only advisable if you're going for extreme speed. (In many cases, though, you don't have the tech for recycling tanks! Even if you don't want to abuse supply crawlers, you really want Centauri Ecology for formers and Planetary Networks for Planned as soon as you can manage it.) It's kind of like skipping factories in Civ 1, which is something else only done if you're going for bleeding-edge speed.
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Aug 19, 2014 04:14
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Boldor posted:Well, the fastest speed run on Transcend was completed in 2176. Yes, that's just 76 turns; the equivalent in Civ 1 is 2500 BC! That's nothing. I've beaten the entire game on Double-Ultra-Transcend on turn 2101. All you have to do is make the map 1x1 and then there's no room for the opponents to land and you immediately win.
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Aug 19, 2014 04:16
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Okay, after playing some more I'm now convinced the AI in Alpha Centauri does actually get quite a few of the Civ 1/2 cheats. It definitely does get the instant defender cheat from Civ 1/2, and it definitely gets to carry over all leftover minerals. There are bunches I know it doesn't get; the AI doesn't get free terraforming, for instance. Also, if you want more bug fixes, you should install Yitzi's unofficial patch. This supersedes Scient's unofficial patch; Scient has mumbled a few things about making a new release but it hasn't happened in four years. You can download it here (Windows SMAX only; you must install the official patches first): http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;cat=2 Download the base v2.5 patch first before overwriting it with the v2.5j executable. This patch doesn't enlarge arrays, so you still can't have more than 7 factions, 512 bases, or 2048 units in a game at a time. (These limits can't really be changed without access to the source code.) That's got to be one of the most frequently requested features.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:19
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SMAC is an amazing game. Versatile unit design is the best feature.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:31
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ducttape posted:It was just a single trilogy, written by Michael Ely, and a comic book. The books were 'Centauri Dawn', 'Dragon Sun', and 'Twilight of the Mind', the comic was 'Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms' by Rafael Kayanan. There's also the GURPS Alpha Centauri book, which has a bunch of cool poo poo regarding the world of SMAC. Each of the faction leaders has their own GURPS character specced out.
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Sep 1, 2014 20:38
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Kaal posted:That's nothing. I've beaten the entire game on Double-Ultra-Transcend on turn 2101. All you have to do is make the map 1x1 and then there's no room for the opponents to land and you immediately win. Asteroid Centauri.
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Sep 1, 2014 22:17
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Fintilgin posted:Asteroid Centauri. Planet as a zygote.
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Sep 2, 2014 17:52
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Fintilgin posted:Asteroid Centauri. Sorry to ruin the terrible joke, but the minimum size planet is 16x16, which is a fraction of the size of a Tiny planet. You can enter in lower numbers but it'll be rounded upwards.
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Sep 2, 2014 18:12
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So I picked this game up again, and it worked initially, but now it won't open. Is this common? I'm on a macbook.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:57
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 23:00 |
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Tollymain posted:So I picked this game up again, and it worked initially, but now it won't open. Is this common? I'm on a macbook. Did you get the GOG version? If so, that sounds a lot like a problem I had. Try clearing out your /tmp directory.
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Oct 10, 2014 06:03
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