Against alien factions?

[MysticWind]

I've read just a few negative comments about the presence of the Manifold Xenos in SMAX- on one minor entry of the Flash of Steel blog, and one stray message on a YouTube video. Really little stuff, really. However, they did bring up an interesting point. SMAC was all about human interaction on an alien world, and human ideologies in a future setting. SMAX turned it into just another sci-fi story. Seeing as how I don't even have SMAX, and that the human factions in it are pretty far-out already (Hackers? Cyborgs? Talks-to-Planet?), I don't really care either way. It's just an interesting criticism, and somewhat notable if and when SMAC 2 is going to be made.

So I'm wondering did anyone make that criticism here at Apolyton against aliens back when SMAX was coming out years and years ago?

[Hydro]

The main criticism of the alien factions is that they are wildly overpowered compared to the human factions. As such, they aren't really playable. They are good to fight against, however, and that may have been the point for including them in SMAX.

That said, they do make sense within AC. After all, the whole idea is that Chiron (aka Planet) is an engineered sentient (or pre-sentient) being, and there are lots of artifacts of an alien race (monoliths, alien artifacts, monolith ring, the SMAX Manifold Nexus). This begs the question of who they are, where did they go, and why they built Planet in the first place. We get snippets of answers in the technology Datalinks, which is why SMAX is far and away the best thought out game of its type. The alien factions simply add to this information.

Hydro

[Mark123jansen]

IMO the only thing I really liked about SMAX was the addition of an aquatic faction and all the base facilities to make sea bases more viable. The pirates themselves however were sadly lacking in philosophy, as were most of the other new factions.
I usually just play SMAX with the classic factions, the main reason is install smax is for the facilities, wonders and new tech tree.

[waab]

Originally posted by Mark123jansen
IMO the only thing I really liked about SMAX was the addition of an aquatic faction and all the base facilities to make sea bases more viable. The pirates themselves however were sadly lacking in philosophy, as were most of the other new factions.
I usually just play SMAX with the classic factions, the main reason is install smax is for the facilities, wonders and new tech tree.

The only faction that is anything special according to me is the Drones, and they have small fault. Would be much more intressting if the Drones had planned as preferred economical model. Then you could run a Drones/Morgan/Gaia and Hive/Peace/Belive to get some serious warfare