SMAniaC

[MMC]

Originally posted by The_Reckoning
hey there, I was wondering how you managed to get the leader pictures to have that authentic monitor-sytle lined effect?

I have a couple of Photoshop / GIMP plugins in the toolkit in my sig. They are designed specifically to create scanlines such as those found in SMAC. Thus I included them in the hope of getting decent 'authentic' scanlines over the C4:AC graphics.

[Vaniver]

I don't really see why free market economies would per definition be worse for the environment than planned economies.

The reason why is because free market economies are often structured so that it's in someone's best interest to screw up the environment to get a quick buck. To use an example from classical economics, if I make money by running a coal furnace and don't have to pay for your worsened air-quality or blackening shirts, I will. It's only when the government taxes the soot I produce or the government mandates that everyone move to clean fuel that the soot starts to decrease.

With regards to the Private/Tariff economy choice: while tariffs keep production in local hands (thus a + to industry could be justified), they only do so in the cases when local hands are strictly worse than foreign hands. If you look at Indian history, Gandhi wanted a return to cottage industry, where people manually spun clothes. That's hideously inefficient compared to machines doing it (-efficiency), not just in terms of capital loss but also in terms of production (-industry, which doesn't mesh well with the +industry suggested before). That's a general principle as well, not just related to that example- the producers of lasers will fight to stop particle impactors if they can't produce them (which might even suggest -research, although that may be going too far). The lack of foreign competition can dissuade growth and innovation, which are largely the things that boost economy (-economy, although when you factor in it being private the net would be +) and lends more credence to the previous -research. Finally, few people want to trade with someone who doesn't want to trade with them, so commerce would suffer (since I don't think you can affect commerce directly, the best way would be -economy).
The other main problem with a "protectionist" economy in Alpha Centauri is that protectionism is already the default. You don't start trading until you manually contact someone else and begin to trade- perhaps it should replace subsistence? But that seems unnecessary.

I would actually put Green back in economy. You can see a Green economy starting to unfold in the United States, where people are paying more for eco-friendly choices- but they can only afford to do so because of their natural affluence. Educated people are typically drawn towards environment-friendly policies because they tend towards long-term benefits among other reasons. It's obviously more expensive to manufacture a building in a way that minimizes its energy loss (although that tends to be economical, if you can fork over the initial cost) and emissions, and the best way of reducing pollutants, taxing, tends to hurt industry. So, something like +2 Planet, +2 Efficiency, +1 Talent, -1 Economy, -1 Industry would be realistic, and seems like a counterpoint to the other two economies.

Now, that could just be my laissez-faire capitalist bias, but that tends to happen if you study economies enough.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Vaniver
Now, that could just be my laissez-faire capitalist bias, but that tends to happen if you study economies enough.

Indeed.
(Just so you know, I'm a political scientist and have an anti-laissez-faire bias. )

The reason why is because free market economies are often structured so that it's in someone's best interest to screw up the environment to get a quick buck. To use an example from classical economics, if I make money by running a coal furnace and don't have to pay for your worsened air-quality or blackening shirts, I will. It's only when the government taxes the soot I produce or the government mandates that everyone move to clean fuel that the soot starts to decrease.

That' s a surprising thing to say for a self-proclaimed laissez-faire-ist.
But what you say is exactly why green is on a seperate line, not with economics. Whether the government will enact green legislation is a political choice, and not inherent to a free market/private-owned economics. So you could run Private economics/Anthropocentric and pollute all you want, or run Private economics/Green and have a market with environmental regulations.
Same reasoning with Planned. The central planning office can decide the environment is worth protecting, or it can decide not to give a damn about it. Again a political choice.

With regards to the Private/Tariff economy choice: while tariffs keep production in local hands (thus a + to industry could be justified), they only do so in the cases when local hands are strictly worse than foreign hands.

Not true. Protectionism can also be used to shield your infant industries from foreign competition, until they have developed themselves enough to compete on the world market, and don't need the extra help anymore. Japan is (or used to be) the perfect example here.

So again, it's a political choice. You could decide to subsidize outdated industries, or you could decide to subsidize the industries of the future. Seeing that there aren't any laser or particle impactor industrialists to lobby and influence your policies (which would be kinda neat ), let's just abstract that away and assume the faction leader will use protectionism only the smart way.

The lack of foreign competition can dissuade growth and innovation, which are largely the things that boost economy (-economy, although when you factor in it being private the net would be +) and lends more credence to the previous -research. Finally, few people want to trade with someone who doesn't want to trade with them, so commerce would suffer (since I don't think you can affect commerce directly, the best way would be -economy).

Those effects are included. I haven't given Protectionism these extra penalties to keep it balanced compared to Planned economies. Instead you should compare Protectionism to the Private/Free Trade economics choice: +1 Research, +1 Economy (which increases commerce income), -1 Industry.

The other main problem with a "protectionist" economy in Alpha Centauri is that protectionism is already the default. You don't start trading until you manually contact someone else and begin to trade- perhaps it should replace subsistence? But that seems unnecessary.

Subsistence can indeed be considered protectionist. Then with some research you gain access to Planned and Private/Protectionist economies, also both mostly protectionist. It's only later with research of Planetary Economics you can switch to Free Trade.

[The_Reckoning]

Originally posted by Maniac


All the "new" graphics are remixes of factions that are on www.networknode.org. It was described there how to do it IIRC. Unfortunately the site's bandwidth seems to be constantly exceeded the last couple months.

Originally posted by vyeh
Try accessing networknode at the beginning of the month. I was able to get on the site June 1.

OK so I got onto the node today [July 1st ]

The site they linked to for the scanlines tutorial was no longer being hosted, so I used the Wayback Internet Archive to retrieve it.. and viola, scanlines tutorial!

http://web.archive.org/web/20050301050426/http://www.zeroplace.com/photoshop/scanlines/scanlines.html

http://tinyurl.com/oo4nu

[Vaniver]

That' s a surprising thing to say for a self-proclaimed laissez-faire-ist.

Well, yeah :P I tend to have a long-term view which necessitates caring about environmental factors, and an economist's approach to how to safeguard those factors.

But what you say is exactly why green is on a seperate line, not with economics.

That's true.

Not true. Protectionism can also be used to shield your infant industries from foreign competition, until they have developed themselves enough to compete on the world market, and don't need the extra help anymore.

I'd still contend that the infant industries are worse than the foreign industries, and it's non-tariff investment that will make them improve. Building an Energy Bank of your own would improve your economy more than blocking investment from or in Morganite banks, and I think that's the mechanic through which the game represents the government supporting fledgling industries. Subsidizing the industries of the future is essentially putting net energy growth to research rather than to economy.

[Xian]

Excellent mod, I'll post my thoughts on it later but I just played through a 300 turn game on talent (I choose an easy setting just to get my bearings with the new secret projects and techs.) You did a great job overall. More on that after Ive got a chance to spend mroe time with it.

Current discussion:

The problem with all the games in the Civillization series (Civ, civ2, civ3, smac, smax civ4) is that they dont model economic units seperate from the state or nation. Its sort of like things were in the very early days of feudalism - "france" or "england" are one entity with particular industries all sharing the same leadership and goals.

What the next game in the set of games should do is simulate independent and possibly international economic units like labor unions, religions, consumers associations, coporations, organized crime cartels, direct govt sponsored industries and any furture society sci-fi things (energy tribes, private supply crawlers, robot/cyborg unions that directly conflict with human workers, anything the designers can imagine)

When this is done we can really talk about free-market economics versus planned economies, and intracacies of that nature. True, if its a game we will still probably be allowed to control everything (and thats not really a design flaw, just like if the political system was modeled we would still want to be able to play all 300 turns or so and have control over all units... imagine playing the entire game with all the governers turned on...EWW) but the actual class wars and internal intracacies will be much more clear when the game actually includes classes and internal economic units.

[redazncommieDXP]

Is there any way we can get the whole mod, fully updated to the latest version, in just one link to click? I know I'm nitpicking, but it probably would get your file downloaded more if it weren't multiple downloads. Just putting it out there.

[Maniac]

I didn't do this previously because it takes rather long to upload, and I was making changes rather frequently. So if something needs to be edited, it's shorter to only re-upload one of the three files than one whole big one every time.

But since I'm not planning any more changes at the moment, here goes, SMAniaC Gold.

[nik9000]

I'd just like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who worked on this. You have breathed new life into my favorite game.

Now to go convert people....

Edit:

Has anyone noticed that The Republic and The Drones can't run any Economies other than planned? Is something broken on my side?

Edit 2:

My current fix is to rename Private/Free Trade to Free Trade and Private/Protectionist to Protectionist in all files. Its a fix, but not a great one.

[Raion]

Done already?

That seemed quick.

Have to download it and try it out.

[Maniac]

Woops I didn't notice your edit earlier.

Originally posted by nik9000
Has anyone noticed that The Republic and The Drones can't run any Economies other than planned? Is something broken on my side?

Weird. As intended I can't run Free Trade but can both Planned and Protectionist.

Originally posted by Raion
Done already?

That seemed quick.

How do you mean?


Btw, how did you find SMAniaC? Via the Apolyton directory? I didn't know people actually used that!

[Raion]

No, I been watching it. But I think now I read where you need the game "Alpha Centauri" to play this Mod for Civ IV.

I have it installed on the other OS (dual-boot system and it is in Windows 98SE).

I have not tried it yet, as usually something else is taking up my time lately. (always it seems)

But I thought this was going to be a full conversion to Civ IV of Alpha Centauri -- but doing all the graphics and such would require quite a bit of work.

I still have both Alpha Centauri and SMACX.

However, being in a hurry this summer after suffering an illness, I threw out an old CD-Rom drive that must of had X-COM first two games in the Collector's Edition I tossed out by accident.
Duh!

But, do you need the Alpha Centauri game to play this Mod for Civ IV?
(It works better in Windows 98SE, then will in Win2K Prof - and lately with all the updates on security, I got rid of those in Windows 98SE, because my DVD player did not work in September with the Graphics Rendering and HTML Critical Updates from Microsoft, and Pirates! does not work either - but that my be my new video card for some reason -- which should not be all that different than my old video card - both Geforce cards.)

Anyway, I downloaded this Mod, but it does seem small now, if the graphics and such are not included??

[Raion]

Plus anymore it is hard to find this Thread - as the others do not give the download in this Forum.

[Raion]

Plus, some new players to Civ IV were asking for a good Mod for Civ IV, and I thought I tell them about this Mod, but if the game Alpha Centauri is needed, I will have to mention that at the Gamespot's forum where the question was asked. Otherwise, other Mods for Civ IV will have to be given for an answer, unless they want to buy Alpha Centauri!

http://www.firaxis.com/smac/

(And my computer OS broke down, and everything had to be re-installed because of the DVD Player problem - ya, a back-up now, if they even work in Win2K Prof)

[ForesterSOF]

It is at sourceforge.net.

If you know of ppl that are willing and able to add to what we have feel free to send them this way.