What do YOU want in SMAC2

[Closey]

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

[It'sLikeThat]

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.

[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!

[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.

[Closey]

Yeah, a good terraforming game.. I wouldn't mind buying that at all. Guess that's another reason why I enjoy playing SMAC/X. Sometimes I just wish that the other factions would leave me alone so I could tend to my bases without having to care for troups and such. Well, most of the time actually. Me, a builder? Noo..

Looking forward to seeing what Maxis/EA manage to do with Sim Mars. (Have to admit that I've read those books my KSR too.. ) Would be cool if they manage to make a good game out of it.

[Closey]

quote: Not a chance! Erm, I mean yes Atleast twice

Ah.. heh.. how about the option of building small windmills that create a little heat then? Scattering them all over your territory?

Edt: spelling
[This message has been edited by Closey (edited March 28, 2001).]

[Fantasmo]

I think it would be cool to be on the Progenitor "homeworld" and Planet before the so-called "Tau-Ceti flowering".
This would allow you to do ALOT more terraforming. Why you ask? You would be laying down monoliths , creating the fungus (in labs maybe?) and breeding life forms to populate Planet. But you cannot discount warfare and diplomacy, can you? You may build Battle Ogres, fight against whatever caused the "Tau-Ceti flowering" maybe go through the earlystages of the Progenitor civil war, meet other spacefaring races (???) and of course lots of space-travel .
Otherwise (if they don't do a prequel) your ideas are really good and I would have never have thought of some of them .

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If practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect why practice?

[It'sLikeThat]

Cybergod,

What are your ideas?

[Archangel MasterBob]

Multiplayer, Brighter colors, and better AI.

[Blake]

Sorry, more terraforming

Space Mirrors! Build big mirrors in orbit and reflect light onto the planet, increasing temperature and light levels, and increasing daylight hours near the poles. And ( ) have a big solar lense, in a low orbit, which focuses light on a small patch of ground, burning a massive trench in the ground as it passes over. Kinda like an orbital deathray.

Windmills would be an interesting prospect for energy generation. The current terraforming want (wish) list!

Food:
Farm
Hydroponics Lab (Good food output, clean, incurs energy cost for upkeep)
Sea farm


Energy:
Solar
Geothermal
Hyrdo
Windmill
Tidal harnass

Production:
Mine (clean)
Strip Mine (destructive version, eliminates food production in tile)
Gas Factory (Average mineral boost, high global warming rating)

Misc:
Thermal Borehole (Energy / Mineral / Global Warming, river flowing in makes steam = rain, kills most nearby life)
Thermocline Borehole (Sea version, creates lots of steam = rain, kills most life in nearby tiles)
Condensor: Encourages rainfall in the area, causes areas downwind to dry out, overuse may deplete atmosphere of water vapour = bad.

Biological/Nanotechnological:
Whatever is cooked up in the labs, can dynamically evolve in enviroment, may produce dramatically different resources in different areas. Species may die out as the planet is terraformed.

Grand Scale Terraforming:
Icey Comet: Increase global atmosphere density, water content
Astroid: Slam into planet to increase atmosphere density, very deadly to life.
Solar Shade: Cools planet
Solar Mirror: Heats planet, increases light = promotes plant growth.
Orbital Power Generator: Produces energy, split between bases with Microwave receivers. Can also be used as a death ray.
Orbital Manafacturing Plant: Boosts production

An idea for a play arena is a gas giant with many moons, moon hopping would be quite easy, allowing one moon to invade another. With large moons terraforming options would be just as varied as for planets.

[Closey]

quote: Sorry, more terraforming

Here's some more ideas for that list..

Blackening the poles so they'll heat faster, and thus melt faster.

And different kinds of tented/domed villages/cities. Maybe using different parts of the landscape as better sites for domes/tents. Like craters and valleys.

And if all this took place on the moons of a gas giant, why not some cloud scoops retrieving He3 and such.

And if not moons, how about habitats as in Arthur C Clarke's Rama books and Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn books? Sure, not as much terraforming, but it could still make an interesting game.

Maybe this wouldn't be SMAC anymore, but it should be able to become a very good game tho.

[It'sLikeThat]

Just to nitpick, it's "participate" in Terran Council.

Not bad, Cybergod. Very creative. Just make sure the aliens aren't as overpowered as they are in smax.

--------------------------

Money is the key to end all your woes
Your ups and your downs, your highs and your lows
Won't you tell me last time that love bought you clothes?
It's like that, and that's the way it is

[Cybergod]

"Whoops! How could I not say 'participate'?!"

By the way, PLEASE IGNORE THE "See the ___ section" PARTS OF THE THING

The terraform suggestions of someone above (sorry pal, forgot the name ) are very good and could be added to this. The "clean" terraforms, such as wind-power, could be available after discoveing another terraform-related tech, since, in modern-day experience, we see that alternative energy tends to be more expencive (in this case needed higher tech).

Of course, if the user wanted to, in scen editor or even maybe in a game option, he could make the planed be NOT Earth.

[Cybergod]

Double post...
[This message has been edited by Cybergod (edited March 30, 2001).]

[Cybergod]

Damnit! Another double post! Why is this happening?!

Sorry for forgeting yor name Blake .

I was thinking also about a newfeature in the game: Space Exploration/Combat. This would probably include building spaceships and space colonies on other planets, maybe also asteroid mining stations. There should be a special tech for special weapons/shields/models of chassises/spec reactors for the space ships, with its own design screen (so that the user can design it). What about a stealth ability on a space ship? Nah, getting too Star Trekkie (stopped watching that LONG time ago for some odd reason, now glued to here or MTV). The space colonies wouldn't be able to grow on their own but you will need to build them directly from Earth. The problem of drone riots in space is settled by simply NOT letting the drones actually travel there, only Workers and Talents (the ones born there will be reassigned on Earth). Of course, a space based spy (probe team) could still bribe the colony to go under enemy rule. You will need a higher tech to build these (Adv Space FLight?) than satellites. They take longer to build that them but cannot be destroyed by Orb Def Pods and satellites are eaier to destroy with space ships than these lot. Plus the further away the colony, the longer the ship needs to reach it. You may choose to dock a space ship in them but not repair them unless it's a Ship Repair Station. Different types of colonies:

* Recreation Colony - doesn't do anything, but takes away 1 citizen from a base that builds it and sends it to the planet/moon. A bit like a Colony Pod. If your/enemy faction gets eliminated, if you have these, you/them will still live and you/enemy will have to Colony Combat, see below. Fortunately/Unfortunately, these settlements don't grow.

* Mining Colony - provides you with some extra minerals get destroyed with your/other-about-to-be-eliminated faction.

* Plantation Colony - nutrient bonus, same as above

* Energy Colony - guess what? An energy bonus + same as above

* Gas Depletion Colony (only on gas giants) - gives you a bigger energy bonus that above but much the same

* Ship Repair Station - not really a Colony but repairs damaged ships docked here.

* Enterprise Colony - offers a Holywood style experiences to other people in other factions, generates you a +1 energy from commerce, which increase/decreases with economically related techs.

* War Colony - gives your other colonies on the same planet a defence/offence bonus against enemy colonies and their attacks on the same planet.

Colony Combat would consist with two enemy faction colonies fighting each other, with one being there long with a larger bonus due to higher experience. Space ships docked in a defending colony add to the attack bonus as those in the defending colony (which give an offencive bonus). I was thinking of giving one of the terran factions, the industrialist one, a free lunar mining colony at start. The story behind them is that they are decendants of Moon colonists who escaped the chaos of Earth and have chosen a time to resettle it. The other faction stayed there through all the chaos and torments of the apocaliptic Earth.

Different species should have different name for different thing (like eg. humans call a facility Recreation Commons but natives call it Mutant Respiratories while zo'or call it Drone Grounds and robots don't have them at all). Maybe in an alpha.txt (or whatever) file it would look like this:

...
Recreation Commons, 1, Mutant Respiratories, 1, Drone Grounds, 1, Recreation Commons, 0 ...

ie. human name, do they build it? (1=yes, 0=no), mutant name, do they build it?, alien name, do they build it?, robot name, do they build it?...

More to come, please comment so far ...

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"I hate this storm. The others all pretend they're not afraid but I know better. They're as scared as I am, but they won't admit it. They look at me and smile and make brave faces and they can see how frightened I am. The wind howls out there and they all pretend they don't hear it. And when I turn my back to them, when they think I can't see them, they laugh at me. I can hear them laughing at me even over the noise of the wind."

Extract from
"Return to Mars"
by Ben Bova