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"Units in the game are fully customizable in any of five different categories: chassis, weapon, shielding, reactor, and special abilities." Brian Reynolds from an interview by LDespot. Beyond Alpha Centauri. Link to source: http://www.beyondac.com/focus/e3/. Chassis: Determines the type of unit – land, sea, or air and the number of movement points it has. Weapon: The offensive armament, or may be replaced by a non-combat package. Shielding: The defensive capability of the unit. Reactor: Determines the hit points of the unit – more advanced reactors decrease the overall cost of the unit. Special Abilities: They add special bonuses to the unit, however, it may come at a greater cost or a penalty to some other aspect of the unit. Non-Combat Items: Terraformer equipment, supply pod, colony pod. Native Units: Units that you can breed and that use PSI combat. Tim Train of Firaxis. From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source. http://www.geocities.com
"[There are] …plenty of air units. And with the unit design system, you can find lots of cool things to do with air units. I just put my first Probe Team on a Needlejet chassis the other day, and discovered I had a range-22 Probe Team!" Tim Train, FIRAXIS "Tim Train of Firaxis. From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source. http://www.geocities.com
"Morale also plays an integral role in Alpha Centauri, much more so than in any of Meier's previous efforts. According to the designers, six levels of morale have been modeled in SMAC, and they're meant to portray the inherent value of properly training units, the units' proficiency at completing specific tasks, and their degree of responsiveness when the chips are down." Marc Dultz. Sneak Peaks: Alpha Centauri: Stranger in a Strange Land. Gamecenter Review. Link to source: http://www.gamecenter.com/Peeks/Alpha/. Also see: Ranged Attacks in Gameplay Known Special Abilities:
"You can assign units to stacks and move them as a stack, which should help the endgame management problems often seen in this genre of game." Official FAQ from Firaxis. http://www.alphacentauri.com. "We feel that the way combat is set up now does take into account the idea of stacked arms. For example, if your stack has air cover, then that air cover must first be eliminated before the ground units can be attacked. If you have artillery, then the stack has long-range fire capabilities. If that stack is attacked by artillery, your artillery will return defensive fire. Additional complexity in this area moves the focus away from the overall strategic feel of the game." From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source. http://www.geocities.com "Other empire-building games have combat systems where if one unit in a defending stack is destroyed, then the entire stack is destroyed. In SMAC, other units in the stack will take collateral damage from the attack, but won’t be destroyed." Official FAQ from Firaxis. http://www.alphacentauri.com. "Entire stack gets destroyed if one guy dies" is one of the more unpopular features about Civ-style games. The reason for this rule is so you must use terrain effectively and co-ordinate attacks, instead of just marching up to a target with a bunch of units and pounding the heck out of it on the next turn (the 'dogpile' strategy). However, the old stack rules were definitely annoying and certainly unrealistic, and so just recently we implemented the idea of 'collateral damage', which has been working really well. If your units are in a stack and the highest defender loses a combat, all other units in the stack take collateral damage, but are not actually destroyed. This discourages the 'dogpile on the square' tactic without being quite so annoying or unrealistic. I have to say that so far I really like how this works, and it will probably make it into the final product. Another note on stacks: for moving stacks, you can now assign units into a stack and move them together, which simplifies large military forces in the mid and endgame." Tim Train of Firaxis. From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source: http://www.geocities.com "Units can now be upgraded in the field! If you have built a prototype using a new weapon, you can now (at a specific energy cost) upgrade your older models. This can be done singly, or as a group when the new prototype is built." Tim Train of Firaxis. From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source: http://www.geocities.com "Materials may be moved to other bases by the creation of supply crawlers that start convoy routes to your bases. Those supply crawlers may also be used to help build prototypes and Secret Projects, and may also be used to collect resources from squares that are not close to your base." Tim Train of Firaxis. From Dante’s Inferno SMAC page. Link to source: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/8242/ac.html
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