SMAC 2

[CEO Aaron]

Wow, that's a really cool idea, actually. I'm totally into it.

[Alinestra Covelia]

You could have another continuation whereby the Planet mind decides to try to colonize other planets and terraform them.

Actually, you could do a lot of stuff with the game. There's like five ways of completing it, and you could do a sequel where you've got five factions, each of which completed the original game in the different ways, and now trying to work through the galaxy.

One could be a Planetmind transcend, one could be a military conquistador, one could be an economic giant, and one could be a diplomatic unifier.

Of course the Progenitors are a big unanswered question. The sequel would show how they figure into things.

As for me, I'm really looking forward to the inclusion of the Evil Galactic Empire and their new Death Star superweapon.

[Sandman]

I'd like...

Good graphics. So long as it doesn't seriously impact gameplay, the more eye-candy the better. Mountains that look real, ice-caps, animated rivers and shorelines (like in Civ1), lush looking forests, attractive-looking terraforming, fungus that's not a pink smear, swirling oceans, special resources that don't look like placeholder art, the list is endless.

A flexible base radius system, whereby you have more freedom to place bases without the need for crawlers to fill the gaps, etc. For example, you could place a ring of bases around a lake without having to worry about them overcrowding, since their radii would meld into new shapes.

A new resource system. If we're being really ambitious, it could be like the one outlined in the Merchant Exchange movie, with each rare element having it's own price. More mundanely, fresh water could be a potential resource, with irrigating dry land requiring a source of water, be it a condensor, aquifer, reservoir, desalination plant (which requires energy), etc.

Certain civ throwbacks should be removed in my opinion, such the defence rating determined by armour, or the minor tribes/unity pods.

[Qualicide]

Make sea lurks easier to catch.

[Frankychan]

make planet busters larger...

[gwillybj]

Return to Earth

A Return-to-Earth mission is already part of SMAC, although you don't actually get to play it out. Instead, if another faction Transcends, you are called to a new command:

(from Interlude.txt):
#EPILOGUE2
#xs 400
^^
^^EPILOGUE
^
^^from
^
^^The Book of Planet
^
^^M.Y. $NUM2 (Seed Year 1)
^
^

#INTERLUDE18
#xs 500
#caption Epilogue
^ The cold-sleep unit finally cycles open and you stretch muscles rusty from decades of computer-managed disuse. But they are young muscles, shockingly young, and it will be a pleasure to beat them back into shape. Orbital insertion begins and you tingle with the excitement of your new mission and with the joy of having returned to human form. Yes, you left a copy of your personality among the Planetmind's giant matrix, but this copy, this human being $NAME1 now waking to lead the first Seed mission, this is the only self now immediate to you and therefore the only real you. You are flesh again, and so quite mortal, and for this too you rejoice.
^ You despaired when Planet invited $NAME5 to join its dominant self, and for a decade or more you moped about the bizarre virtual reality of the Undermind with no coherent purpose, a lost spirit unable to die. But when the Seed missions began, the Voice/Planet personality herself sought you out in the abyss and convinced you to accept command of the {Prodigal Son}.
^ "Earth$NAME3, you are unfulfilled here and I have need of you. In ages to come I shall have need of allies, sister Minds, if I am to keep the flame of conscious thought from guttering out as the universe contracts or else expands to dust. Take with you the gift of life, the seeds of all our species. Spread them to the stars, across the galaxies, creating new civilizations, new minds, and enlisting the aid of any you encounter. Go forth, Earth$NAME3. Go forth and multiply."
^ The maneuver at last complete, the safety shutters retract from the viewport and you behold a sight lost to human eyes for over $NUM3 centuries. Deep blues, swirling whites, the azure tint of a rich oxygen atmosphere. Inviting browns and greens of continents basking in the sun, a few scattered impact craters the only visible signs of a war now buried in the aeons. Third planet. Earth. Home.

I suppose a new game could be written wherein you return to that future Earth with all the knowledge gained on Chiron, intending to "reclaim" it for "enlightened" humanity, only to discover it was not depopulated.
Rather, humans are still there, however changed they may be by time and circumstance, or another species has risen to a level of cognitive intelligence at the very least on par with homo sapiens of centuries long forgotten, and you may or may not be welcomed by any or all of them.
Let your own imagination take it from there...

[The diplomat]

Re: Return to Earth

Originally posted by gwillybj
I suppose a new game could be written wherein you return to that future Earth with all the knowledge gained on Chiron, intending to "reclaim" it for "enlightened" humanity, only to discover it was not depopulated.
Rather, humans are still there, however changed they may be by time and circumstance, or another species has risen to a level of cognitive intelligence at the very least on par with homo sapiens of centuries long forgotten, and you may or may not be welcomed by any or all of them.
Let your own imagination take it from there...

A Return to Earth sequel definitely has huge potential. The only tricky part may be the tech tree. Would the Earth survivors be more or less advanced than the humans on Chiron? Would the tech tree "start from scratch" or would it continue where the SMAC tree left off?

[Alex]

Re: Re: Return to Earth

Originally posted by The diplomat

A Return to Earth sequel definitely has huge potential. The only tricky part may be the tech tree. Would the Earth survivors be more or less advanced than the humans on Chiron? Would the tech tree "start from scratch" or would it continue where the SMAC tree left off?

I would post the exact same concern. How would the developers handle the tech tree? It doesn't seem plausible that the voyagers could lose all the knowledge gathered in Chiron, forcing them to start from scratch, and a tech tree that continued from where the SMAC tree left off would be really trick... It is not that easy to project future technologies beyond the ones that SMAC already projects, and there is a risk that those techs would end up being too abstract and disconnected from the actual improvements that they would grant in the game.

[Xian]

forget a sequel, simply release the source code as id did with doom (another classic game)

[Ned]

I really like SMACx. I could live with the game as it is with a better AI and a simple correction of known bugs.

[A_Darkfire]

I really like the idea of the Return to Earth...

You could 'wipe-out' the tech tree and start from SMAC's starting point. On the return trip instead of having control landings, like (sort of) SMAC, why not escape pod (large ones mind) that leave the survivors with only minimal supplies. It would be kind of like the tech for getting back into space...it's not that we don't know how, it's just we don't have the resources.

Plot wise, it would be good if, on returning to Earth, that you find no-one left there, and running plot would be the discovery of what happened to the Human race on Earth...maybe nature finally had enough of us!

I doubt there will be a new game though, after the mess of Civ3 and MoO3...pity really. Though if they release the source code for AC...

[Static Universe]

Re: Re: Re: Return to Earth

Originally posted by Alexnm

It doesn't seem plausible that the voyagers could lose all the knowledge gathered in Chiron, forcing them to start from scratch, and a tech tree that continued from where the SMAC tree left off would be really trick...

It never seemed plausible to me that they would lose all the technology in the first place, but it really doesn't matter I suppose.

Perhaps they could reintroduce the energy vs projectile weapons/armor concept back into the game, as earth probably would have gone a different route in tech development.

[CEO Aaron]

I've always held that it wasn't so much the ability handle the theory behind new technology, but the implementation. For example, most folks on this board know that gasoline (petrol for your non-yanks) comes from light sweet crude oil, but I doubt any of us could actually _make_ it happen under laboratory conditions.

Nevertheless, the realism or lack thereof behind the game is really only incidental to me, as long as the gameplay is balanced and fun, giving folks numerous tactical and strategic options.

To that end, I think some balance changes would be nice, such as re-visiting the accessability of armor to defense technology, making submersible vessels available sooner, and mitigating the almightiness of choppers.

For more fun, I'd also consider getting away from the square grid, moving to a hex-grid, just to complicate things. I don't think that a second SMAC game would necessarily have to be a sequel, just as long is it had substantial upgrades/improvements, especially in graphics over the current version.

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron

For more fun, I'd also consider getting away from the square grid, moving to a hex-grid, just to complicate things.

An option for hex or square would be an interesting feature for a game, although I imagine it would be difficult to implement, esp. for AI path-finding.

[Cybergod]

Note to self: wow i really haven't posted here a long time...

Well, I don't really understand why everyone denounces Civ3 as a "complete" abomination. Certain aspects of it, such as the vastly improved bargaining table and cool AI should be integrated into any future Civ-like developments.

BTW, there were several threads on this TIME ago. It seems that none of the game developers will ever take hints.