God, I love this game

[Guynemer]

In anticipation of Civ4, I fired up SMAC/X for the first time in many moons... I had forgotten how much fun this game is, much more so than Civ3.

Random huge world, random factions, I got the Angels. (First time ever!) Talent level. Yeah, I'm a wuss.


Managed a 490% Transcendance victory, capturing only two enemy bases the entire game. It's nice being on your own mid-sized continent, especially when you typically play as a builder.

Something odd, though. The Cyborgs were riding my ass from first contact. Wouldn't even talk. Any further attempts at contact would only elicit the "I shall wipe you from Planet" blah blah blah. I never committed any atrocities or anything, and no one else acted like that--although everyone was more hostile than usual; at only one time did I have more than two other factions not in a vendetta against me. Anyone else have someone go at you like that? Just like we were the two alien factions...

[Frankychan]

Re: God, I love this game

Originally posted by Guynemer
In anticipation of Civ4, I fired up SMAC/X for the first time in many moons... I had forgotten how much fun this game is, much more so than Civ3.

Random huge world, random factions, I got the Angels. (First time ever!) Talent level. Yeah, I'm a wuss.


Managed a 490% Transcendance victory, capturing only two enemy bases the entire game. It's nice being on your own mid-sized continent, especially when you typically play as a builder.

Something odd, though. The Cyborgs were riding my ass from first contact. Wouldn't even talk. Any further attempts at contact would only elicit the "I shall wipe you from Planet" blah blah blah. I never committed any atrocities or anything, and no one else acted like that--although everyone was more hostile than usual; at only one time did I have more than two other factions not in a vendetta against me. Anyone else have someone go at you like that? Just like we were the two alien factions...

I've never had it where everyone was against me so early in game...maybe a little later in the game.

I just don't like early first contact and the opposing faction immediately starts sending their military at you.

You should've used your probes to introduce certain......."viruses" into their population centers. Teach her to not mess with you.

Good to see old SMAC/X'ers coming back into the fold.

[Flubber]

muwahahahahahah

They cannot stay away muwhahahaha

[Guynemer]

Just played perhaps my easiest game ever.

I decided, for the first time ever (IIRC), to go with a standard-sized planet, instead of a huge planet. Because of that, I went with Talent level again, afraid that the increased proximity would compromise my typical play style, and I didn't want totally blood-thirsty opponents.

Randomized civs, and I get Lal. Wow. Hadn't played Lal since my very first game; at the time, he seemed very "vanilla" to me. Boy, was I wrong.

Of course, starting right on the edge of the Jungle helped a bit. Having a peaceful Morgan on one side and a peaceful (!) Miriam on the other helped a LOT. And the fact that I was able to seal off the other edge of the Jungle from Morgan pretty muched sealed the deal early on.

I won a Diplo victory as soon as MMI was discovered; I had well over 500 planetary votes at the time, even though I hadn't built too many bases or conquered more than a handful. (Miriam didn't stay peaceful.)

Even with tech stagnation on, it was over by the mid 2200s.

[Flubber]

Good show

A human in the jungle usually means a very easy victory. Plus I find that a nearby Morgan is a bonus since the AI manages support veryy badly such that Morgan is seldom any problem and often donates several useful techs to your cause

[Mart]

After a sweet and easy game, try something more difficult. There are some better challenges recently available.

[AoA]

SMAC is still the greatest game ever and I know the only time I'll take a break from it is to try out Civ4.
Best AI ever.

I'm the Gaians, I'm on cruise control taking it easy and I'm two turns away from Transcendance (I don't change my SE choices or spend the credits to get the Ascent finished quicker). Yang launches a PB...no problem, my satellite shoots it down. Ha, nice try loser. Then he launches another and another and another. Eventually nine satellites sacrificed and he still has more coming. Six of my core bases are vaporized all in one turn with most of my SP's gone. That's it!!! I launch all out war against Yang, go medieval on his ass and launch my remaining PB's at him. Now I'm fighting all out against all the factions with my X-Copters. I end the game with everybody else dissolved into craters.

Every game should be this fun.




I don't think I want a SMAC2. They can only screw it up.

[The_Reckoning]

Actually, I think SMAC 2 would be good. They could do something like Alpha Centauri A is going to become uninhabitable for whatever plot reason so they jump ship to B. Then there's another feud.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by The_Reckoning
Actually, I think SMAC 2 would be good. They could do something like Alpha Centauri A is going to become uninhabitable for whatever plot reason so they jump ship to B. Then there's another feud.

Hi The_Reckoning. It seems that you haven't noticed that Alpha Centauri A and B are stars. Game plays out on planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, Chiron. Here is some additional information:

Preliminary Report on the Alpha Centauri System

The "star" Alpha Centauri, as it appears in Earth’s sky, is actually a grouping of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, ("Alpha Prime") a G2V class main sequence yellow star slightly larger and older than our Sun; Alpha Centauri B ("Hercules"), a K5V orange star which orbits the primary with an aphelion of 35 astronomical units and a perihelion 11 A.U.; and Proxima Centauri, an M5 red dwarf a full light year distant. It is not so much a trinary system as a binary with a third star (Proxima) at a distance.

Alpha Centauri A

The brightest member of the Alpha Centauri system is Alpha Centauri A, simply called "the sun" by the colonists. It is very similar to Sol, having the same spectral class and emitting the same comfortable yellow-white light. It is somewhat more massive than Sol (1.08 solar masses) and significantly brighter (1.45 times solar luminosity).

Alpha Centauri B

Alpha Centauri B was named Hercules by the colonists, after the Greek hero who was a great nemesis of the mythical Centaur race. Hercules is a smaller, cooler star (0.91 solar masses, 0.45 times solar luminosity). Its light is more orange in color than its partner's.

At perihelion, or nearest approach to Alpha Prime, Hercules’ elliptical orbit brings it to about the distance of Saturn from our Sun. The orbital dynamics of a binary star system drastically limit the number of stable orbits available for planet formation. Thus we did not expect to find, and in fact did not find, planets further away from the primary than about 1.5 astronomical units (Earth is one astronomical unit away from our Sun).

The presence of Hercules in the Alpha Centauri system is ironically appropriate. Its mythical namesake killed a number of Centaurs during his career. The star Hercules is probably responsible for destabilizing the orbits of several planets which once circled Alpha Centauri A.

An observer on Planet will always see Hercules as the brightest of the "fixed" stars, between 140 and 1,400 times as bright as the full Moon once shone over Earth. Even at its most distant, Hercules is more than bright enough to read by at night.

Once every 80 years, as Alpha Centauri B reaches perihelion (its closest approach to Alpha Centauri A), it generates enough heat to increase Planet’s average temperature by 0.3° C. That doesn’t seem like much, but Planet’s climactic system might easily amplify this to uncomfortable levels. In fact, any life native to Planet may have evolved cyclic responses to this event.

Alpha Centauri C

Alpha Centauri C is much smaller than either of its partners. It is a red dwarf star, only about 0.065 times as massive as Sol and less than one ten-thousandth as bright. It is remarkable primarily for its very low mass, and for its nature as a highly active flare star. From hour to hour, Alpha Centauri C experiences constant stellar flares, any one of which may as much as double its normal brightness.

It is 0.15 light-years (a trillion miles, or more than 13,000 AUs*) from Alpha Centauri A and B, but turns out to be part of the Alpha Centauri system, nonetheless. Its orbit around the other two stars takes hundreds of thousands of years; for now, it is closer to us than either Alpha Centauri A or B, by the same 0.15 light-years. Officially, it is Alpha Centauri C. Unofficially, it is Proxima Centauri. We’ll keep calling Alpha Centauri a binary system, because Alpha Centauri C is too far away, and too small, to materially affect the two larger stars. From Planet, Alpha Centauri C is a dim star lost among the Galaxy's millions, only visible to the naked eye if the observer knows precisely where to look. As such, it was never given a mythological name of its own, and is called simply "C" or "Proxima" by the colonists.

Planets of Alpha Centauri A

Two planets make up Alpha Prime’s inner system: Eurytion, a small Mercury-like world, and Chiron. A large Jovian planet, Prometheus, orbits close in to Hercules. Aside from Eurytion and Chiron, there are no planets of significant size circling Alpha Centauri A. Beyond Chiron's orbit there is a broad scatter of asteroids, most of which trace complex paths around both stars of the A-B pair.

Eurytion

As it stands, Alpha Centauri A has only one planet other than Chiron. The planet Eurytion orbits A at a distance of 0.47 AU, somewhat greater than the average distance between Sol and Mercury. Eurytion is quite similar to Mercury in many respects, about half again as massive and slightly more dense. Due to the long-term effects of solar tides, Eurytion does not rotate with respect to Alpha Centauri A. Its "day face" is fiercely hot, with temperatures high enough to melt lead in places. On the other hand, the planet's "night face" is bitterly cold, with temperatures falling very close to absolute zero at the point furthest from the sun. Eurytion is a treasure world, dense and rich in heavy metals, with traces of frozen water and other volatile compounds on its night face.

Chiron

Target destination, Chiron, or "Planet", is a terrestrial world somewhat larger than our Earth. Under a gravitational force of 12.85 m/s2 (compared to Earth’s 9.81), colonists will feel 1.31 times heavier than on Earth, which will be uncomfortable at first but should not cause drastic long-term health problems. Chiron is somewhat farther from Alpha Prime than Earth is from our Sun (1.07 A.U.), but the higher luminosity of Alpha Prime more than offsets this. Moreover, since Alpha Prime is somewhat larger than the Sun, its size in Chiron’s sky will be indistinguishable from our Sun.

Chiron’s higher gravity results in a thick, dense atmosphere, so we can expect to find larger and more numerous flying creatures than on Earth. The massive preponderance of nitrogen in the atmosphere (over 90%, compared with Earth’s 78%) has several significant implications. First, the dangers of nitrogen narcosis with prevent humans and terrestrial animals from breathing the unfiltered air. Secondly, the low oxygen partial pressure will tend to suppress fires.

Chiron’s two moons, tiny inner Pholus and the somewhat larger Nessus, are each much smaller than Earth’s moon, but they orbit much closer in, so the overall tidal effect is comparable to Earth’s.

Pholus is the inner moon, with about 1/5 the diameter and about 1% of the mass of Earth's Moon. Its synodic month (the period from one full moon to the next) is 3.7 local days, and there are 144 such months in the course of Chiron's year. Pholus is a battered-looking moon, gray and cratered, which moves visibly against the background stars.

Nessus, the outer moon, has about half the diameter and about 9% of the mass of Earth's Moon. Its synodic month is 10.6 local days, and there are 50 such months in a local year. Nessus is relatively bright, with several large craters associated with "rays" of reflective dust.

Nessus and Pholus have a unique relationship. Their orbits fall in the same plane, and the orbital radius of Nessus is almost exactly twice that of Pholus. As a result, the two moons appear to be the same size from the surface of Chiron, each a little smaller than the Moon once appeared in Earth's sky. Each moon eclipses Alpha Centauri A from time to time, although they are too small to cover the sun's disk entirely and so the eclipses are only partial in nature. Far more frequent are lunar eclipses, in which one or the other moon moves through Planet's shadow. Even more frequent are the occasions on which Pholus passes in front of Nessus from the point of view of planet-bound observers

[Kataphraktoi]

nice


did you type that up yourself?

[Illuminatus]

I got the data by merging data from the old alpha.owo site, SMAC manual and GURPS handbook. Most of it was copy-pasted, the rest of it was typed. I only had to edit and arrange sentences to get a coherent whole. This is unfinished work (it lacks references!) and I have to add some data yet, but will be completed soon and available to all.

[Blake]

I noticed luna is reffered to in post-tense a couple times, in the story did something happen to the moon or is it reffering to the fact that there is no-one on earth to see the moon anymore?

[Illuminatus]

I believe the latter fact is at hand - after all, colonists are on Chiron - they can't observe moon appearing on Earth's sky anymore.

[GeoModder]

Some nitpits, Illuminatus. Hercules is a K1V class star, and the average distance between Proxima and the Centauri binary comes closer to a quarter* of a lightyear. (nowadays, at least) Source: Celestia Space Simulator at www.shatters.net/celestia/
* You mention in the beginning a distance of 1 lightyear, and later 0.15 lightyear between the Centauri binary and Proxima.

Where did you find this info about a gasgiant around B? Can't see it in the planets.txt of the game. Also, in RL, a gasgiant around either of those stars would be detected already by now.

[Illuminatus]

[Q=GeoModder]
Some nitpits, Illuminatus. Hercules is a K1V class star, and the average distance between Proxima and the Centauri binary comes closer to a quarter* of a lightyear. (nowadays, at least) Source: Celestia Space Simulator at www.shatters.net/celestia/
* You mention in the beginning a distance of 1 lightyear, and later 0.15 lightyear between the Centauri binary and Proxima. [/q]
You bring up an issue I am still considering - I am aware that data that comes along the game is incorrect and relative if you take new advances in astronomy into account. I am not sure if I should use real up-to-date data, or follow the one that comes with the game, considering that Alpha Centauri does happen in a sort of alternate universe.

Where did you find this info about a gasgiant around B? Can't see it in the planets.txt of the game. Also, in RL, a gasgiant around either of those stars would be detected already by now.

If you read my previous post, the data comes from several reasources. Everything will be clear when I prepare a version with references.
In RL, there should also be no boy genius Prokhor Zakharov, no Nwabudike Morgan born in a Kenyan noble family and no Yang studying caligraphy in Wuhan.