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Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
The bugs and flaws in SMAC become all that more noticable because the game is endlessly replayable.
I too, was hard on Firaxis in the past over SMAC, partly because they have no clue about PR. Leaving aside an inflammatory interview or two, their attitude towards patches has incurred the wrath of many a gamer. More progressive companies actively work with the gaming community to resolve problems.
Well if you think about it many of the secret projects are not "big buildings" like in all previous Civ games. Logicaly an invading army can capture the pyrimids if they take over the city its in. But how to you steal the Citizens Defence Force? or the Longevity Vacine? or the Empath Guild (all the empaths could evacuate the city). Some Projects (particulary the one that effect all your citys) just don't sound to me like they are "in" one location. Thouse projects would be unstealable and would be destroyed only when the whole faction dies.
Others most definatly are in a single location like the Merchant Exchange or the Space elivator, or the Super Colidor. They either effect only 1 city or they are a real physical "building". Ofcorse that might not be good for game play and it would be real anoying to remember witch projects were in a single city and witch were universal and etherial.
But thats not actualy what I ment, I was refering to how you can build crawlers in 1 city and imediatly send the crawlers to a second city that is building a project and continual cash the crawlers in. The net effect is that that particular city is sending all its minerals towards the construction of a project in another city. So lets just have an option that apears in the production list of all your citys after 1 city has started building the project. The option would be listed as "Contribute too such and such SP in City X" and all the minerals are sent their without all the hassle of making crawlers and cashing them everyturn. Before you have Industrial Automation their would be 50% waste involved in the transfer, after IA the waste disapears. So this new option dosen't actually change much of anything it would just stream line the process of SP building.
On a side note I would greatly incresse the mineral cost of most mid and late game SP, the early ones are good cause they take a good long time to make, but in the mid and especialy late game SP are gobbled up in a few turns.
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. - Thus spoke Zarathustra, Fredrick Nietzsche
I don't like it. The current system permits an opponent/enemy some opportunity of interdiction or disruption of the convoy. What you suggest would be unassailable. As a general rule, I think it is a BAD THING when a game provides resources to a player that are out of reach of other players and subsequently not liable to attack.
Similarly, some system of interdicting enemy commerce should be put in place. Not sure how to do that, myself.
You could always destroy the terrain improvments such as mines and BoreHoles or sabotage Mineral bosting facilites with Probe teams. Also late in the game you usaly have Mag tubes connecting your large citys so the Cawler moves instantly from your city ware it was made to the destination city so the supply Crawler never even EXISTS durring the enemy turn.
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. - Thus spoke Zarathustra, Fredrick Nietzsche
How about every military unit except probe teams you have next to an enemy city reduces its comerce income by 1/3?
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. - Thus spoke Zarathustra, Fredrick Nietzsche
How about every military unit except probe teams you have next to an enemy city reduces its comerce income by 1/3?
i sure dont see how that would make the game more fun...
if you want to stop terrorism; stop participating in it
''Oh,Commissar,if we could put the potatoes in one pile,they would reach the foot of God''.But,replied the commissar,''This is the Soviet Union.There is no God''.''Thats all right'' said the worker,''There are no potatoes''
A better looking map. smax is a great game, kind of ugly to look at though sometimes.
Leave resources (oil, rubber etc.) for future civ games, leave smac out of it. Stick with the simple concept of energy, food and minerals. One less thing I got to worry about when I'm woopin on somebody (or when somebody is woopin on me).
I love to see the concept where roads enhance the terrain in some way.
One thing that bugs me about smax is I can't just contact a faction and say "Yo, Morgan .. I'm declaring war on you because you are a money hungry freak that's going to declare war on me eventually anyway". Be nice to just declare war.
Wouldn't mind seeing more types of alien life forms.
I wish for an ai that's not extremely retarded. I just love it when I see "The Hive" put 30 airplanes in this ONE base with ONE defender. 3 helicopters later, so much for his airforce.
I wish for a bug free game (ya right, that will happen).
I hope they don't change around the game to much, I do dig playing smax.
Yes more alien life forms definitely, as well as more natural features across the whole biological spectrum. Natural terraforming options besides just fungus. I loved the idea of Planet as a living, breathing, ecosystem.; now take it further.
Dave
"Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us." --MLK Jr.
SMAC "perfect?" You gotta be kidding: an energy economy? Look, they've got portable reactors that soldiers can carry in battle. A technology capable of that can basically make as much energy as they want, wherever needed.
C'mon, "Energy Bank?" I believe that's what we call a battery. You can get a free one every month from Radio Shack. I suppose a more sophisticated system of "banking" energy would also use capacitors. Ooo, another high tech item.
What exactly are these little balls of energy, floating, yet immovable, scattered about the terrain? "I hope that thing is 110V-60 cycle, otherwise I can't plug my cellphone recharger into it."
Assuming that a complete rewrite of the economy and terrain resource system wouldn't be in the works leaves plenty of tidying up for the sequel. SMAC has an (inter)face only it's mother could love.
Various menus are clumsy at best. For the base build menu just give us text lists in columns that don't need to scroll if you're at a descent screen res (ie, 1024x768). Have the picture pop up according to whatever is highlighted or hovered over, or a tiny symbol as in Civ.
Same for Unit Workshop: text lists in columns, with some organizational sense to them.
Clutter-free display. The reveal-terrain-below-units-and-improvements function needs to be expanded into hotkey view options. I want to be able to make all those friggin' formers and supply crawlers disappear or become "ghosted" without changing anything else.
Originally posted by Straybow
C'mon, "Energy Bank?" I believe that's what we call a battery. You can get a free one every month from Radio Shack. I suppose a more sophisticated system of "banking" energy would also use capacitors. Ooo, another high tech item.
What exactly are these little balls of energy, floating, yet immovable, scattered about the terrain? "I hope that thing is 110V-60 cycle, otherwise I can't plug my cellphone recharger into it."
Various menus are clumsy at best. For the base build menu just give us text lists in columns that don't need to scroll if you're at a descent screen res (ie, 1024x768). Have the picture pop up according to whatever is highlighted or hovered over, or a tiny symbol as in Civ.
Same for Unit Workshop: text lists in columns, with some organizational sense to them.
Clutter-free display. The reveal-terrain-below-units-and-improvements function needs to be expanded into hotkey view options. I want to be able to make all those friggin' formers and supply crawlers disappear or become "ghosted" without changing anything else.
what's the matter with an energy bank? who cares? it's just fiction.
and i don't think anyone wants SMAC 2 to be like civ3 at all. i think that the "clumsy" menus are perfectly fine how they are, so you don't have to read, you can just tell what each project is by the picture. the unit workshop is probably the best feature of the game and is easiest to understand how it is.
the only thing i miss from civ3 is being able to right click on a stack of units (usually enemies) and see what's in it. in SMAC i have to press 'v' move the cursor onto the units and then see what's there.
TKG, it is the interface I'm talking about, not the way you design the units or build them. Take a look at what I mean. What is good about the workshop is the unit image and data on the left that shows mouse rollover. What is bad is that you can only scroll one unit at a time instead of paging through it, and the complete lack of organization. There is no relationship between when I designed these units and where they appear in the list. The names are truncated to the point of being useless.
If the Workshop list were in one or more columns then a more complete name could be shown beside the image, plus whatever data can fit in the column width, as in the Build window from Civ2. See how much more data can be shown? Isn't that what an interface is for, to show you what you want to know? It would then be easier to compare designs, for example, because you wouldn't have to keep highlighting them alternately. Separate columns for active designs, extant legacy designs, and entirely obsolete designs would be nice.
At least the base build menu already is a two dimensional presentation. The large blocks make easy targets but also make for much scrolling. I like using a keyboard. My shoulder sometimes gets sore from being in the same position using the mouse for long periods (like playing a TBS game). I can use a keyboard all day with no problem, and tabbing between fields or actions is often faster than trying to point to a narrow scroll bar. The SMAC menus don't work well with keyboard input, unless you first point to one item with the mouse.
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