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the current method i have for making it work is restarting the computer repeatedly until it catches 
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Oct 14, 2014 00:35
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so do folks here play SMAC/X multiplayer at all ever? i kind of want to give it a whirl at some point
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Oct 18, 2014 01:33
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We used to do play by email on here, but I don't think anyone has done one in a long time. There's a lot of house rules you need to have in place because the game is pretty buggy in multiplayer, and I think people got tired of the hassle. Also there was some drama among the more regular players, and a few people ended up quitting.
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Oct 18, 2014 02:25
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So CBE is pretty disappointing, so I rebought SMACX through gog.com. I haven't played it for 5-10 years. After 15 years, what's the best way (starting settings, or anything else) to play the game? Blind research sounds good now. Does Ironman change anything beyond you can't save without exiting? What's the most entertaining 8 factions to use with SMAX? Random world, or Large Planet map? Comstar fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 13:22
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Comstar posted:So CBE is pretty disappointing, so I rebought SMACX through gog.com. I haven't played it for 5-10 years. I wouldn't recommend Blind Research unless it's gotten way too easy for you and you need to handicap yourself. Ironman doesn't change anything, so it's not needed if you have willpower. Choose a small world if you like fighting, large if you like building. And personally I always play a random map, although sometimes this shafts you. And I agree, CBE sucks.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:47
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Comstar posted:So CBE is pretty disappointing, so I rebought SMACX through gog.com. I haven't played it for 5-10 years. This all depends on how good you are at the game, and how challenging you need it to be. Personally I really like Blind Research as a concept, and play with it most games, but you usually get screwed out of one of the really good Secret Projects (Hunter-Seeker and Cloudbase) because you can't beeline them. Personally I like random worlds, low sea levels, unity survey on, pod scattering off. But the Map of Planet is pretty good. For factions I tend to pick the ones that perform the best, usually these guys, plus whoever you are of course. If I'm playing someone in the list, I'll throw in Morgan or Santiago.
My biggest problem with SMACX is that the map generator loves to start people way too close together (I've seen 4 people start within 8 squares of another player in one game), and the AIs tend to get spawn-trapped by Spore Launchers that they don't know how to respond to early. But yeah, BE is pretty disappointing. There's no uniqueness between factions, science is the only thing that matters, trade routes are absurdly overpowered, and also hell to manage, and the victory conditions make the late game a total drag.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:57
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Map of Planet. Original factions. Never played crossfire, but I assume you'd set the game up in that for extra techs or something.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:19
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SMAX: [*]makes airpower stronger and the HSA/PROBE 3+ not hard counters to probe teams [*]adds in additional buildings that make sea terraforming yield greater resources [*]adds some cool special abilities for units [*]adds armours and weapons that make troops better at dealing with native life or rovers [*]adds some bugfixes and balance tweaks [*]changes the color of your start menu buttons because reasons  [*]has some really odd new faction ideas (still don't understand why they thought an entire faction built around the concept of computer hackers was a good idea 
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Oct 29, 2014 06:54
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So, what's the draw of playing on the Map of Planet anyway? I don't understand at all.
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Oct 29, 2014 06:56
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Tollymain posted:SMAX: Late 90s. You can see some similar influence in Sister Miriam, and of course there's Morgan's Microsoft shoutout.
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Oct 29, 2014 07:03
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Yeah but even then, it's a hobby/profession, not an ideology. Might as well have a faction of plumbers. Wait, that's Domai nvm
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Oct 29, 2014 07:07
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Eh, open-source and the Web were just getting big at the time. None of the SMAX factions get a whole lot of quotes, but you can see some of that excitement over new kinds of societies and "information wants to be free" floating around the Data Angels.
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Oct 29, 2014 07:19
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Tollymain posted:Yeah but even then, it's a hobby/profession, not an ideology. Might as well have a faction of plumbers. Wait, that's Domai nvm The hackers of the Data Angels are just as much ideologues as they are professionals and hobbyists. From GURPS Alpha Centauri: quote:Beliefs quote:Data Angel Characters
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Oct 29, 2014 07:31
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Tollymain posted:So, what's the draw of playing on the Map of Planet anyway? I don't understand at all. It's a reasonably balanced map (which is not at all guaranteed from the random map generator), that also has some cool thematic things going on. All the fungus is interconnected and it focuses in on The Ruins; Garland Crater is free of fungus (it having been blasted out), the placement of the jungle makes more sense than it normally would. Just little things.
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Oct 29, 2014 09:14
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Glidergun posted:Eh, open-source and the Web were just getting big at the time. None of the SMAX factions get a whole lot of quotes, but you can see some of that excitement over new kinds of societies and "information wants to be free" floating around the Data Angels. Data Angels are a faction that was designed for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange 10 years ahead of their time. In an alternate universe they became who they are after playing SMAX and Brian Reynolds is on homeland security watchlist.
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Oct 29, 2014 09:50
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Plus there's little name tags for geographical features, which I love.
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Oct 29, 2014 11:52
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PittTheElder posted:It's a reasonably balanced map (which is not at all guaranteed from the random map generator), that also has some cool thematic things going on. All the fungus is interconnected and it focuses in on The Ruins; Garland Crater is free of fungus (it having been blasted out), the placement of the jungle makes more sense than it normally would. Just little things. Also the map generator algorithm just plops down a few random sized squares and calls it a day.
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Oct 29, 2014 11:52
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has anybody tried modding the map generator? surely the science has improved since 1999 or whatever
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Oct 29, 2014 11:54
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Are there any quality of life or visual mods that I should pick up for this?
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Oct 29, 2014 12:28
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Tollymain posted:has anybody tried modding the map generator? surely the science has improved since 1999 or whatever I always sort of wanted an external app to generate maps. I like the idea of an option to generate completely 'dry', Mars like worlds which you can flood as the game goes on and see the continents appear.
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Oct 29, 2014 13:27
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If you're playing regular SMAC, probably the most helpful QOL patch is Kyrub's SMAC Patch. It's most notable feature is vastly improved AI, especially where terraforming is concerned. If you're playing SMAX instead, Kyrub has a patch for that too, but because the AIs in SMAX work differently from in SMAC, the patch doesn't include the boosted AI. There is also a long series of patches from a guy named Yitzi (Latest version here) which seem to be focused on tweaking very minute aspects of the game's performance and mod-ability. To be honest I don't follow Yitzi's work that closely because his overall development goals aren't as well documented.
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Oct 29, 2014 13:28
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Why did AI stuff change so much between the two anyway?
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Oct 29, 2014 13:33
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Tollymain posted:Why did AI stuff change so much between the two anyway? As far as visuals and other mods are concerned, that's even trickier because the game was written in Assembly, which is not exactly mod friendly, and most of the units are voxel based .cvr files, which people are only now just figuring out how to mod-- and only to the extent that you can change their colors. Posters over at Alpha Centauri 2 have been plugging away at the .exe of the game and have been able to add additional options to the game's modding, but like I said it's mostly been minute details. There's only really been one attempt at a 100% conversion of SMACX, and that's Kilkakon's Lost Eden, which alters practically every visual in the game and completely rewrites the story, tech tree and units that you can play as. It also re-imagines Alpha Centauri as a divine battle between Christianity and Demonism, as acted out by naked Pokemon. I'd, uh, suggest not google image searching it. Or playing it for that matter unless you have a high tolerance for weirdness.
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Oct 29, 2014 13:56
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Strange Matter posted:There's only really been one attempt at a 100% conversion of SMACX, and that's Kilkakon's Lost Eden, which alters practically every visual in the game and completely rewrites the story, tech tree and units that you can play as. It also re-imagines Alpha Centauri as a divine battle between Christianity and Demonism, as acted out by naked Pokemon. I'd, uh, suggest not google image searching it. Or playing it for that matter unless you have a high tolerance for weirdness. i huh that is pretty weird yeah
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Oct 29, 2014 14:00
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Strange Matter posted:It also re-imagines Alpha Centauri as a divine battle between Christianity and Demonism, as acted out by naked Pokemon.  That reminds me I haven't read the awful mods thread in a while
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Oct 29, 2014 16:43
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hahahaha faction leaders:  http://i.imgur.com/T9Q6GL5.png http://i.imgur.com/lpW2Q5i.png http://i.imgur.com/WQPaIxC.png
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Oct 29, 2014 16:51
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The real messed up thing is that Kilkakon put an insane amount of work changing pretty much every single thing about SMACX to create Lost Eden, but he can't get anyone to play it for obvious reasons. He has abundant talent, you just have to wish he was doing something, anything else with it.
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Oct 29, 2014 16:59
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I got this game off GoG yesterday after hearing it talked up so much in the Civ BE thread and for my first turn I tried to pan the camera and made all my units run in four separate directions. Then I spent two minutes trying to figure how to press next turn. Then I spent two minutes trying to select a unit or get any useful information about it and accidentally made them walk in four separate directions again. Then I quit because the UI was horrifying. I guess I'm ready to try again. Does the camera even pan? DO I want to play the base game first or is it okay to do alien crossfire? I didn't even know about mind worms until I found this thread.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:05
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Krinkle posted:I got this game off GoG yesterday after hearing it talked up so much in the Civ BE thread and for my first turn I tried to pan the camera and made all my units run in four separate directions. Then I spent two minutes trying to figure how to press next turn. Then I spent two minutes trying to select a unit or get any useful information about it and accidentally made them walk in four separate directions again. Then I quit because the UI was horrifying. I guess I'm ready to try again. I had a similar experience, spent about five minute trying to select my unit, uh sorry I am no help to you
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Oct 29, 2014 20:07
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Disable num-lock and use the keypad to move your units around. Left clicking should select the units unless I'm mistaken?
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Oct 29, 2014 20:14
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I have spent twenty turns driving this pod around how do I deploy it? There seems to be literally no way to build a city and start the game? Right click, activate unit here, nothing. Nothing happens. The tutorial didn't teach me what to do. There's no "found a goddamn city" button flashing or anything. I don't get it. I don't get this game. I can't really hold this against SMAC personally since it's from dinosaur times but goddamn I hate how literally no 4x game will ever think to lock down the border between two monitors to capture the mouse and now I have a lopsided map that lilts to the right and there's no way to pan to the left. And this game won't even allow me to compensate by controlling the map with arrow keys it makes my units run westward every time I try. Rome total war two from this loving year didn't have mouse capture. Nobody ever does it. e: wait this time it auto-built a city? There was no city last time. What the heck? If you start with a city why do you have a colony pod? What do I even do with this thing set it to explore? Krinkle fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 20:35
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Krinkle posted:I have spent twenty turns driving this pod around how do I deploy it? There seems to be literally no way to build a city and start the game? Right click, activate unit here, nothing. Nothing happens. The tutorial didn't teach me what to do. There's no "found a goddamn city" button flashing or anything. I don't get it. I don't get this game. The UI is pretty much a disaster when compared to modern games. It's worth fighting it for the rest of the game, however. It's been a couple of months since I played it but right clicking should give you an option to found a city...
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Oct 29, 2014 20:41
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If you right-click you'll get a bunch of options depending on what unit you have selected. It sounds like you might want to restart and do the tour thing when it prompts you, because that tells you what to do.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:42
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^ Right-click the colony pod when it's active (flashing), click "Action..." and then Construct Base. Or press B. Activate Unit Here just selects the unit as the currently active one.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:42
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when you have a unit selected, left-click and hold on the square you want it to go to until a line indicating its path shows up. colony pods turn into bases with the hotkey b. if you go to the menu and look under the action submenu i'm p sure you can also select it there. there are two different ways to start, depending on whether or not you select an optional rule before choosing your faction. one allows you to explore a little before setting up shop, the other just plops out a base where you first make planetfall. first technology you want to get is always going to be centauri ecology (it's an EXPLORE tech if you are doing blind research). build yourself at least one former per base, terraforming is extremely important and really shouldn't be locked behind a tech at all terraforming actions have their own submenu because 1999 i guess, so watch out for that
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Oct 29, 2014 20:47
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i highly recommend learning the basic action/forming hotkeys asap because gently caress digging through menus
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Oct 29, 2014 20:48
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oh um to pan the camera bring your mouse to the edge of the screen/window you want to pan towards. yeah.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:50
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Strange Matter posted:He has abundant talent, you just have to wish he was doing something, anything else with it. the mod-consumer's lament
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Oct 29, 2014 20:51
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speaking of which strange matter i really want to try out your custom factions, how balanced are they against the actual game? any recommendations for other fairly serious factions/sets that fit the tone of the base game?
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Oct 29, 2014 21:00
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HappyHelmet posted:We used to do play by email on here, but I don't think anyone has done one in a long time. There's a lot of house rules you need to have in place because the game is pretty buggy in multiplayer, and I think people got tired of the hassle. Also there was some drama among the more regular players, and a few people ended up quitting. It also takes months for a good game and it's all too easy for it to stagnate when one too many people get bored or busy. It's fun as hell once you get it going, but it's hard to maintain and by the end there just weren't enough people. It is also horribly unforgiving for people who don't know every last intricate detail which means there's an unfortunate tendency for new people who want to join getting stomped relentlessly
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Oct 29, 2014 21:16
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