The SMAC/X FAQ: COMMON QUESTIONS and their ANSWERS

[The Big Mc]

Is there a way to increases what you get from a base upgrade, like upgrading it so that century preserve gives a slightly greater eco bonus?

[CEO Aaron]

No. And please read the introduction of this thread, where it says that if you post a question, also post the answer. Thank you.

[Skanky Burns]

I have problems with the game under Windows XP

Originally posted by Kaboth
When launching Alpha Centauri. I receive the error message "CPU not supported". My computer has a Pentium 4 or newer CPU.

Answer
You will need to modify a line in the Alpha Centauri.ini that is located in the game folder. To do this:

Double click on My Computer
Double click on the C: Local Drive (your Hard Drive or the drive that the game is installed to)
Double click on the Program Files Folder
Double click on the Firaxis Games Folder
Double click on the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Folder]
Double click on the Alpha Centauri.ini File (The file looks like a read me text file with a little gold symbol on it).

Once the file is open in Notepad, change:

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0

to

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Be sure to save your changes, then run the game. You may still receive the error message. If it occurs, click OK and the game will load fine.

If you are Installed Sid Meier's Planetary pack then their will be no Alpha Centauri.ini File initially. Upon attemping to play the game and
clicking ok despite CPU being unsupported the ini file will be produced. Then simply change the ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm to 1. Or if necessary copy ini file from original SMAC.

ALSO download the patch that helps XP:

Alpha Centauri (PC) PATCH - Update for XP.

Question
What does this update do?

Answer
This patch will attempt to locate your installation of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and defaults to that location, if found. If the patch cannot locate Alpha Centauri, it will default to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

In this situation, you should ensure the patch installs to the directory that you have installed Alpha Centauri into.

This patch is a Windows 2000/XP compatibility update, to allow users of Windows 2000 or XP to run Alpha Centauri. It is not required for users of Windows 95, 98, or ME. However, users with these operating systems may will need to install this patch if they wish to play multiplayer games with other players who have installed this patch.

There is a known issue with sounds skipping on Windows ME machines. This should not affect the game stability.

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

I didn't need the XP compatability patch on my machine. I've never encountered not enough memory though. If it helps I run a P4 1.7 Ghz, 256 MB SD-RAM, 64 MB Geforce 2 and 40 GB hard disk space.

The latest patches need to be installed before the compatability patch can be also. But if your running planetary pack you should be at SMACX 2.0 already from memory.

[Polaris9485]

Where can I find Alpha Centauri for Mac??? Is it just hopeless?

[Chaunk]

38. Help! I suck at SMAC! What can I do?

Go to http://www.civgaming.net/smac/academy.shtml and learn! See also question 12 for more informative sites.

[iamyiddish]

What ability flags do what in the #units (predesigned units, worms/native, battle ogres, etc) table inside alpha/alphax.txt?

from left-to-right:

10000000000000000000000000 Dissociative Wave
01000000000000000000000000 Soporific Gas
00100000000000000000000000 Slow (-1 Move, unused in game)
00010000000000000000000000 2X Police
00001000000000000000000000 Repair
00000100000000000000000000 Nerve Gas
00000010000000000000000000 Heavy Transport (+50% cargo capacity, also Unused)
00000001000000000000000000 Trance
00000000100000000000000000 Blink Displacer
00000000010000000000000000 Clean Reactor
00000000001000000000000000 Artillery
00000000000100000000000000 Trained
00000000000010000000000000 Fungicidal
00000000000001000000000000 Polymorphic Encryption
00000000000000100000000000 Empathic
00000000000000010000000000 Antigrav Struts
00000000000000001000000000 Comm Jammer
00000000000000000100000000 AAA
00000000000000000010000000 Carrier
00000000000000000001000000 Deep Pressure Hull
00000000000000000000100000 AIR superiority
00000000000000000000010000 Drop Pod
00000000000000000000001000 Amphibious
00000000000000000000000100 Cloaked
00000000000000000000000010 Deep Radar
00000000000000000000000001 Super Terraformer

As of right now, I have no idea how to change the reactor setting for 'predisned units'.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Q: Is it possible to create predesign units with Fusion, Quantum or Singularity Reactors?

A: No, their is no paramiter for this, aparently its a stupid oversight on Firaxisi's part

Q: Is it possible to predsign and use units that use armor/weapons/abilites that are set to DISABLED in other parts of the Alpha?

A: Yes and they will work, the player will NOT be able to use the disabled weapon/armor/ability in the workshop after geting the predesigned unit, they will be able to build ONLY the predesigned unit adsactly as its described in the Alpha.

[Petek]

Q: I can't install SMAC on a PC running Windows XP. Setup.exe hangs when I try to do so. Can I fix this problem?

A: Try running the XP Program Compatibility Wizard on Setup.exe or run setup.exe in Windows 98/Me Compatability mode. See the following link for instructions on how to do so:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gethelp/appcompat.asp

[Qwerty88]

Originally posted by laurentius
Question 35:
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

In SMAC you can: Load the factions by using the LOAD function when selecting the factoin your playing as and typing the name of the faction; or you can edit the Alpha.txt file under the line #FACTIONS to the 7 factions you want; or change the name of the factions you want to the default faction names (GAIANS, HIVE, UNIV, ect.) For SMACX you can simply add the 7 factions you want in the alphax.txt file under the line #CUSTOMFACTIONS or load them in the sanario editor, save them, and click 'add faction to game'. Also in SMACX if you wanted to have 3 sets and switch factions back and forth frequently you could replace the 7 original factions with set , the 7 new factions with set 2, and add set 3 as the custom factions.

[Qwerty88]

39? What ability flags do what in the #units (predesigned units, worms/native, battle ogres, etc) table inside alpha/alphax.txt?

Note that for alpha.txt you cannot use the Dissociative Wave or the Soporific Gas special abilities and to delete the first to zeros.

41? Is it possible to predsign and use units that use armor/weapons/abilites that are set to DISABLED in other parts of the Alpha?

Though the player cannot use the disabled armor/weapon/ability they can revese engineer the unit to get other units with that armor/weapon/ability

[Xiab'ed]

What is SMAC v5.0 ?

The XP/2000 Compatability patch on the firaxis site also patches SMAC to version 5.0. FYI.

[...] the patch also introduces the dodgy drone display bug into SMAC, as well as fixing a few other bugs.
(answer from Chaunk)

[Enigma_Nova]

Q. Is there any way to spectate over a game of SMAX?
A. Watch an open-password PBEM:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=116127

NOTE: must have SMAX at hand to download and view files.

[GeoModder]

Q. Is there a possibility to let units go from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship in the base?

A. Yes, a landgoing unit can move from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship if there is a friendly (from pact partner or your own faction) unit standing on the target tile.

[Qwerty88]

Q. Is there a possibility to let units go from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship in the base?

A. Also units with amphibious pods can of course move freely.

[smacksim]

Originally posted by laurentius
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

One is being developed by me right now in DOS (Fileswatter) which is generalized for any game or application . There are other mod-swapping utilities around for the various civ games, including Modswapper and Civswap. I believe these are fairly specific to those games. To my knowledge no-one has done any work on this for Shell Scripts (linux) or Applescript (mac), both of which are substantially easier to work with for this sort of thing. Come by the Fileswatter thread and lend a hand.

Also, I believe this thread is for asking AND answering questions, so only post your questions when you've had them answered elsewhere and can provide a summary.