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Hey all Modders -
After completing, testing, and starting a PBEM game with my first mod, Proxima Centauri (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=123521), I'm working on another, more ambitious makeover for SMAC that imagines events on Earth immediately after the Unity departs for Alpha Centauri. I'd like to run the mod past other players and modder to see how the idea floats.
Setting: After the Unity mission, the situation on Earth deteriorated rapidly. Overpopulation, shortages of resources, climatic disruptions, ecological collapses, disease, political strife, and territorial disputes resulted in a global population on the verge of revolt. The situation came to a head as a result of a mysterious bombing of U.N. headquarters. Fingers were pointed, blame passed around, and popular dissent built until centers of power, seeing no alternative, launched attacks on one another in order to consolidate their holding in precious resources. Nuclear weapons destroyed many population centers before anti-missile defenses prevented an all-out cataclysm. In the aftermath, nations were thrown into disarray - their technological and communications infrastructures smashed, their governments destroyed, their roads and cities in ruins.
The partial devestation has left the world in a kind of modern dark age; semi-autonomous city-states, inhabited by the remaining educated elite, lord over the hungry masses outside. Governments have been re-organized along more primitive (autocratic) lines within the few cities still intact. Factions have assimilated the remaining military powers and wield brutal force to keep the surviving masses, who live on the edge of starvation, in line. Manufacturing and research capabilities were destroyed and need to be rebuilt from scratch. Technology must be re-mastered or re-discovered. "Legacy" systems - units and facilities from the high-tech age before the fall - are falling into disrepair and must be reverse-engineered before they can be mass-produced.
This total conversion will involve pretty much all of the data files that can be changed for SMAC. New feature will include:
I would be grateful to hear observations, questions, and ideas. Has this kind of conversion been done before? Does this sound interesting?
After completing, testing, and starting a PBEM game with my first mod, Proxima Centauri (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=123521), I'm working on another, more ambitious makeover for SMAC that imagines events on Earth immediately after the Unity departs for Alpha Centauri. I'd like to run the mod past other players and modder to see how the idea floats.
Setting: After the Unity mission, the situation on Earth deteriorated rapidly. Overpopulation, shortages of resources, climatic disruptions, ecological collapses, disease, political strife, and territorial disputes resulted in a global population on the verge of revolt. The situation came to a head as a result of a mysterious bombing of U.N. headquarters. Fingers were pointed, blame passed around, and popular dissent built until centers of power, seeing no alternative, launched attacks on one another in order to consolidate their holding in precious resources. Nuclear weapons destroyed many population centers before anti-missile defenses prevented an all-out cataclysm. In the aftermath, nations were thrown into disarray - their technological and communications infrastructures smashed, their governments destroyed, their roads and cities in ruins.
The partial devestation has left the world in a kind of modern dark age; semi-autonomous city-states, inhabited by the remaining educated elite, lord over the hungry masses outside. Governments have been re-organized along more primitive (autocratic) lines within the few cities still intact. Factions have assimilated the remaining military powers and wield brutal force to keep the surviving masses, who live on the edge of starvation, in line. Manufacturing and research capabilities were destroyed and need to be rebuilt from scratch. Technology must be re-mastered or re-discovered. "Legacy" systems - units and facilities from the high-tech age before the fall - are falling into disrepair and must be reverse-engineered before they can be mass-produced.
This total conversion will involve pretty much all of the data files that can be changed for SMAC. New feature will include:
- Seven custom factions: These include six groups organized along geographic/ethnographic lines - North America, South America, Europe, Africa, East Asia, and Russia - and one decentralized resistance group. Starting locations will be fixed in the scenario, except for the ristance group, who will begin with a number of colony pods, thus making their headquarters location variable and secret. The six primary factions will begin swith established cities, specific techs, and certain military units representing the remnants of their military forces. Each faction will start with diplomatic status with some other factions as well as some comm frequencies.
- Tech tree designed from scratch: "Techs" will be replaced with "Advances", as they represent more than simply technologies, but also fiscal policies, social agendas, political doctrines, and general fields of knowledge.
- New resources: Food, raw materials, capital (slight change in theme, same purpose)
- New facilities, map improvements, and Special Projects: while I can't change the basic function of these, I can rename them and alter the graphics to make them a closer fit for the scenario. Because the theme of this conversion is socio-political rather than ecological, facilities and improvements will be along the lines of industrial/commercial centers and government facilities.
- A custom map of Earth: I saw the map available for download on this site, but I found it to be a too small. I wanted more land area for base construction and warfare. So, I'm drawing a new one using outline and topographic maps as guides. I'm about 2/3 done - I have N. and S. America, Europe and Africa, western Asia and Antarctica drawn.
- New map textures: I am eliminating both forest and fungus, and replacing them with settlements and "sprawl" (see below for changes to alien life). Bases represent cities being rebuilt by the various factions. Sprawl represents the lawless, makeshift, pseudo-urban population areas where the majority of the world's population live at the subsistence level. Settlements are the "suburbs" - built by the factions and populated by city dwellers, providing resources to the cities, and tending to grow on their own.
- Altered alien life: I have found that I am able to change the graphics for mind worms by altering one of the .pcx files. My idea was to make worms, which are a manifestation of Planet's resentment toward the Unity colonists, into something more topical. I intend to change the "Planet" rating into something akin to "Social" to represent a faction's relations with the Earth's population at large - impoverished and starving as they are, according to this scenario. Thus eco-damage becomes "unrest" and worms become "insurgents", lightly-armed groups of fighters that appear in underdeveloped areas (sprawl), attack faction units using unconventional tactics ("insurgency" rather than psi), sometimes destroy improvements, and attack faction bases (cities). Certain advances will enable units to train to resist the insurgents' special tactics ("counter-insurgency" special ability) and fight them on their own terms. I think anyone who's been paying attention to the news lately understands the problem of a conventional armed force fighting loosely-organized guerilla fighters using unconventional tactics. Advances which, in SMAC, give a faction the ability to exploit fungus or use native life would reflect the development of degrees of trust between a government and the "outsider" population, enabling a faction to fund their own insurgents, extract resources from sprawl areas, build improvements there, etc.
- Changed monoliths and Unity pods: These will represent pre-collapse "Legacy" facilities (monoliths) and ruins (pods) that provide players with bonus units, advances, and resources.
I would be grateful to hear observations, questions, and ideas. Has this kind of conversion been done before? Does this sound interesting?
Thats the way I used to do it as well. Maybe 
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