NetworkNode.org

[MysticWind]

1. Is this the biggest site for custom factions?

2. What do you think of the general quality of the factions story-wise? Do you think they usually fit well with the original setting and ideas of SMAC?

3. Would it be possible to connect all of the custom factions together into a shared "fan Alpha Centauri universe", consisting of almost fifty different factions? Why would anyone want to?

[Illuminatus]

1. Yes.

2. Poor quality, but better than gameplay balance anyway.

3. Possible, but not likely to happen. As I said, their quality is poor.

[Leon Trotsky]

What happened to networknode?

[Illuminatus]

They have hosting problems, I did catch their site working fine couple of weeks earlier. If they get back online I'll try contacting them and mirroring all their custom factions here.

[Xian]

1. Obviously Yes

2. With only 2 or 3 exceptions out of well over 40, they are terrible - not so much in gameplay balance where about 5-10 are decent (esp as AI opponents rather than player factions) but in concept), but as concepts. These are some of the dumbest sci-fi ideas Ive ever seen.

3. No, as some of the storylines directly intersect and would be impossible to put in the same story. Furthermore no one should want to, as the factions at Network Node are so different from the ones that came with the game even in teh few cases that they are balanced gameplay wise.

[vyeh]

I tried networknode.org and got the message "This domain may be for sale by its owner!". A few days ago, my browser couldn't find the site.

I've PMed Illuminatus with an email address for networknode.org. Hope he can make contact.

[dbotiger]

It looks like Networknode.org is totally gone.

Does anyone know if the factions from the site are available anywhere else?

[Illuminatus]

It will be mirrored on Poly soon enough.. but the networkdnode creator is a bit slow when it comes to communication.

[The_Reckoning]

For extra factions I prefer Maniac's, they're well balanced and more interesting than most of those on NN.

Most of the NN don't even have original art. They have buildings from Starcraft and other games chopped up for cities.

[Darrell01]

I have all thier factions on my computer, but I'm in the middle oh nowhere in Alaska ATM, so I can't send them to anyone till late August. Most were crap, but they had the occasional nice city picture. The dumb ones were really dumb. Like the Children's Alliance. They are kids and they get -1 growth and +4 Research, or something stupid like that. There were about 9 or so I thought I could salvage and went about "fixing" the diplomacy, base names and suchm but never got around to finishing it. I also ended up reinstalling for some reason and haven't had a major urge to add them in again.

[Lord Nword]

I use the Agrarians from NN still... Terraforming is my favorite part of the game... and that's what the Agrarians do best.

[dbotiger]

I like the Agrarians too. I just never downloaded all the factions at NetworkNode. That's why I picked up the thread.

On a side note, has there ever been talk about a "create the best custom faction" contest? ("best" defined as a well-balanced faction that could easily fit into the game's story. )