I can't start new games

[GeneralTacticus]

Well, that seems to have been the problem. The real difficulty seems to be that I'm playing in the Alien Waterworld PBEM, which needs those custom factions. I guess I shall just have two versions of alphax.txt and switch between them.

[Archaic]

*Digs out manuals*

Apparently you should be able to have up to 8 Custom Factions TOTAL. If you can't have that many for some reason, then I have absolutly no idea what's happened to cause that except perhaps a corrupted alphax.exe (An unforseen side effect of the No-CD crack perhaps?).

[GeneralTacticus]

I don't have a no-CD crack, so it can't be anything to do with that.

[Googlie]

GT:

I get it all the time when I'm experimenting with cloned and aquatic factions, and with custom units - they are all to do with irregularities in the alphax.txt file

It can happen for a number of reasons:

When your .ini file holds seven last-played factions but for whatever reason one of these factions is no longer part of the 7 original / 7 new / 8 custom factions that are in your alphax.txt file

When you have a misspelling of the factions you have added to the custom list in the alphax.txt file

When your #UNITS doesn't equal your actual # of units

when you have created a custom unit with false parameters (e.g. the trawler, which needs DocFlex and IndAuto - but you can have only one prereq for a custom unit)

If you have re-installed smac/x, then adding the waterworld faction clones shouldn't affect the ability to open a new game, but the infallible solution, if you have enough disk space, is to run two versions of smac/x side by side

G.