What do YOU want in SMAC2

[Hobbekros]

is still miss a real planet faction, who doesnt care about the normal militairy techs and so on.

who is planet him-/herself. planet ech/planet economics/planet mind.

speaking in general, i would like more distinguished alternate factions, who can walk their own special path.

[Blake]

quote: Originally posted by Closey on 03-28-2001 10:05 AM Blake, you haven't by any chance read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy have you?

Not a chance! Erm, I mean yes Atleast twice

I want my own space elevator too. In SMAC2 everyone should be allowed to build atleast one space elevator. Space elevators rock! No-one should be deprived of having a space elevator...

With different coloured fungus - prehaps there could be a feature which allows more varied forest/fungus equivilants, concocted in biolabs by your mad scientists, prehaps the first batch doesn't grow, or you end up with some sort of weed which rapidly expands over existing forest/fungus but produces little resources.. so you burn it to increase the fertility of the soil for farms!. I mean when you start out on a planet you can't be sure what will thrive and what dies, and your scientists wouldn't always be able to engineer the best organisism for given conditions, especially when starting out.

Prehaps someone needs to write a terraforming game!

How about fungus of varied colour? I mean pink, pink, pink??? Yeeechh! What about purple, brown and orange? Those are valid colours for fungus.

Eye-candy.

[Closey]

Blake, you haven't by any chance read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy have you?

[Blake]

Cool idea, and no-one really reads the creation forum anyway

I'm not sure it would work, I havn't suceeded in placing "sea roads" in the scenerio editor, I have placed "sea magtubes" but they have no picture or benefit.

I usually make a "bridge" unit (trans-1-1, clean), but any units lose movement when moving to the base. A proper bridge would rock. Ofcourse if you really insist just raise the base out of the sea... But hopefully in SMAC 2 raising terrain is not allowed! The idea of getting huge mountains from nowhere is stupid, rather it should be possible to "level" terrain, creating more beach or shelf. And global warming should be much reduced, and have more climatic impact rather than sea level change. Condensors should be allowed, but must also be limited in the ability to create wetness.

I would really like the option to play on truly horrid planets which must be terraformed on a grand scale, prehaps planets with no oceans at all, and little capacity for plant life.

Some terraforming things I would like:

Hydro Lab, creates 3 Food on ANY land tile, immune to restrictins. Expensive. (incurs upkeep) Only way to generate decent food on arid worlds.
Hydro Dam: Generates energy. Can only be built on rivers. Quite clean.
Rivers should be more permament fixtures, without raise/lower terrain the course would reamin unchanged.
Geothermal Plant: Generates energy in certain low-lying or volcanic areas (ie drill deep into crust, pump down water, boiling water comes back up and drives turbines) Very clean.
Greenhouse Gas Generator: Factories designed to pump up the atmosphere with gas, creating global warming. Production bonus from tile too.

Council type:

Ice Meteor Impact: Collide a large icey comet into the atmosphere, introducing more water and creating denser atmosphere = warmer climate.

It'd be cool if the map could be split into regions or layered, for example have multiple large aquafors, and only one river can be drilled to each. And areas of volcanic activity, and viens of high mineral concentrations. And areas of excellent fertile soil...
Iow making it more like a real planet.

Anyway, must sleep!

[Cybergod]

Hmmm... Landbridge... Couldn't the user create his own in the existing SMAC? Just input in alpha.txt, in terraform section, that roads (or what do you wana call them) are allowed to be built at sea after discovering certain tech? Haven't tried this one, but I know that bunker, sensor and soil enricheners (renamed by someone to kelp enricheners) can work that way.

Whoops! The above should really got to Creation forums...

[Blake]

One feature I did like in CTP was undersea tunnels. This removed the PIA factor of having to transport troops by ship, especially because turns take so much longer later in the game, you don't want to have to wait a turn or two to have the transport ready.
It would be nice if bases just off the coast could be fitted with a "bridge" improvment (built as facility) which allows units to treat the seacity like a road square. This way you could plonk a city down in a channel and have units cross freely. Ofcourse the "bridge" could be sabotaged by probe teams, and also be used be enemies w/o marine detachment.

(whoa, what happened to my maths study I was doing...!)

quote: Originally posted by trevlix on 03-27-2001 10:25 AM Other than the AI, I think some new things to build would be nice. For instance, bridges and aqueducts could have helped out in alot of situations.

Wouldn't that make it look like Caesar III?

[Cybergod]

All wicked ideas guys! Keep 'em coming!

BTW why, if you post your story idea here, mcannot Firaxis use it for their own design purposes?

[trevlix]

Other than the AI, I think some new things to build would be nice. For instance, bridges and aqueducts could have helped out in alot of situations.

[knowhow2]

or how about a AI personality that only has one single goal, transcend as quickly as possible, say 76 years?

edt : or a psycho AI that would first beat you senseless and then some special constructed "bug" would force you to stay in that game not able to start a new one until the AI is done with (which could take something like 20-30 turns... )



[This message has been edited by knowhow2 (edited March 27, 2001).]

[Blake]

I would like a faction design thingy, where you can create point-based balanced factions from major and minor traits, this would be quite a lot of work, and need a LOT of balancing, and probably would need to be updated in patches as various traits are found to be overpowered for the cost - or effectivly neutralised by another trait or whatever. So it would be a lot of work but would also add alot to the replayability (atleast in my opinion). Ofcourse it would also have to include a bunch of pre-designed factions, like the SMAX ones.


Anoter idea I had is to have a certain number of factions, lets say 14. You can choose how many you want in a game. Then extra cool you have 56 (or 1000) AI leaders, and each leader plays differentely (ie builder, momentum, hybrid.. agressive, passive, co-operative, backstabber etc). Either have something like 4 leaders per faction, or even better (but harder) have 28 leaders, which can each play ANY faction, in there own "unique" playstyle. These leaders should be editable, with preferences like "lots of bases" or even "one base challenge". A leader would NOT alter the faction strengths in any way, for example having a leader with growth focus would not give a + to growth SE, only encourage construction of colony pods and so on...

So pair off the factions with the leaders, you have the same factions all the time, but lots of combinations of leaders+faction, for greater longlivity. Thus no faction would be bound to a particular AI leader (ie the Peacekeepers wouldn't always be led by back-stabber Lal, The Hive wouldn't always result in a sprawl of poorly developed cities...)

And if you want to play a relativly peacefull game to high technology assign every faction a builder leader, or for kicks design a OCC leader and play a OCC game against AI's. It would add great versitality and the diplomacy would stay fresh much longer. Leaders would have there own agenda, as well as the faction agenda. Is this Zak who wants to peacefully research his way to transcendence, or Zak's evil twin who's secret agenda is to planetbust every living thing on planet!

I think it would be really cool and build on SMAC's greatest strength - the leaders.

[Skanderbeg]

I would like to choose the number of factions to play with.
What an imagination to play on a huge map with 20 factions

If the CPU wouldn't get a meltdown....

[RobN]

The AI is the main problem. It simply does too many nonsensical things and misses opportunities like there is no tomorrow.

[SKiller9]

Just a word of warning to anyone considering posting story ideas. There is a chance that if you post an idea here, that Firaxis will be unable to use it for legal reasons.