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**johndmuller** · September 24, 2003, 05:15

The Story Line

"What did you say to Yang, USC, that set him off like that?", asked Comstr slyly, "You know he's been pretty hair-triggered ever since the Cap'n assigned Dierdre to do the survey landing. Yang and Dierdre . . . who would have believed that back on Earth? What do you think was in that capsule she sent up to him in the recon rocket?"

"I didn't say anything, Commie", replied USC, "..just asked him why he had all those BioGen chips from the library, hardly the stuff Morgan's favorite sweatshop boss would be reading at bedtime, eh . . ha ha ha - told him the Lord didn't really go for that sort of thing, that we were supposed to get along with the equipment He gave us, not go looking for trouble in the DNA . . . guess I should know better than to try to get through to him, right Blut0?"

"You of all people, 'U', ha ha", chimed in Bluto, ". . . you know, I thought I'd get some of that stuff from the capsule, D said on the comm that I'd be real interested in the native life down there, figured she'd send me a sample, but when I asked the lovelorn blue meanie what was in that lead-lined isopak, he told me to get back to my *(&*&%^in' ^%%## &^$$#&ed meditation or he'd blah blah #%$^%in blah blah blah, ha ha ha. . .(shouting down the axisway) Hey Red! did Yang show you that stuff?"

"Don't bother the Menace," interjected FonnParr, "he's down there in lab with Yang now, trying to get something out of that bad boy - I think Yang's reallly worried about something, but he sure won't talk to me. Red grew up in one of those communes though, just like Yang, so he can sometimes get through to him when he goes seething; I asked him to find out what's going on, maybe it was something Dierdre told him that set him off. You were down there before, Dr. MM, what did he want from you, someone he could yell at who wouldn't fight back?"

"I beg your pardon, Sir," taunted the Professor, "He was actually quite civil. and remarkably focussed on Xenobiology, a subject they probably don't teach at the 'Point', ha ha; Yang has remarkable amounts of energy, do you know, it looked like he had taught himself how to use all the RadBio equipment and was cooking up something in the Quarantine Chamber; I'm sure he could have cared less about any of that stuff a couple of weeks ago. Seemed to be worried about Dierdre, afraid she might catch some bug down there, I gave him a copy of my short story on Alien Mind Control, told him my students found it very relaxing, ha ha; He actually looked interested in it, said Dierdre thought she was hearing voices, like something out there was trying to talk to her. I told him to talk to you, USC, you're always talking to something thats not there, or to you, Blut0, don;t you like, talk to the trees, or something like that when you zone out on the hydrodeck, well I suppose its more like grass than trees on the hydrodeck - ah, maybe that's why you zone out too, eh?"

"Oh shutup MM," muttered Blut0, "like you don't have orgasms doing calculus. . . well what's Yang actually doing, does Dierdre have him running tests on stuff, trying to clone them or something?"

"Don't know, when I mentioned you guys, he just threw me out. I think really, what he wanted from me was to show him how to run the gene splicer, you know, the one with the instruction manual that's all pictures? After I showed him that, I think he was talking to me, you know, just to be nice, you know, . . . not really like him at all . . almost like he wanted to actually tell me something, you know?"

"Hold it guys," said FonnParr, "I think the Menace is coming back up now, I hear a lot of banging and cussing, that must be Yang telling him to get lost, ha ha."

"Quick, he's going crazy down there", shouts Red, rushing in, followed by sounds of hatches closing; the lights flicker and Comp's dulcet tones announce a system reboot, "He's really gonna do it, damn, I can't believe it."

"Calm down, calm down", soothed USC, "We go plenty of time; we're not going anywhere til Comp's finished getting back up. Who's really gonna do What Red?"

"Yang, . . . the survey base . . D, she said they were all going crazy, the biotechs were pulling their faces off or something . . didn't make any sense . . . but the vid, . . . God, I never saw anything like it . . Yang,. . , you can imagine, . . he said 'I gotta get down there', 'How', I said, "The pod', he says; 'But that's the only one that works' I told him,'the rest will take months to assemble, and we're not supposed to go down until we're sure its OK down there'. 'OK DOWN THERE???' he shouts, ARE YOU %$^%#ING INSANE. DOES THAT LOOK ^*%$ING OK?' Then he rounds up all the rest of the Biotechs and has them loading stuff into the pod, all sorts of stuff, he must have been thinking about this before - it looks like he's taking the whole damn biolab."

"Well", says Comstr, "it was made that way, to take down there with us; what about the techs?"

"It looks like he's taking them too, pretty much a full load, what with the formers and temphabs and the lifesupport gear, got himself the first settlement, he does, if they can handle it down there. He even had a *(&*^in gun! They all did, he must've gotten to them somehow, brainwashed them or something. Pointing the guns at me, in the ship even! So I left to come up here, to see what we could do. He did a reset on Comp from the engine room override so he could change the codes, so I don't know what we're gonna do about that; have to wait til it's finished the syscheck before we can even think about trying to get it back in our control. I think he's messing up the mech on the midway seal too, we won't be able to get through there for half a day, if we're lucky, he'll be long gone by then. We won't see him again for months, if we ever see him again."

"We should be so &^%^$in' lucky", says Blut0.

**FonnParr** · September 24, 2003, 09:45

"You call THAT a landing liutenant" FonnParr shouted at the pilot.
"Sorry Colonel, the atmosphere is a little different to what I'm used to and... and the seals..., I... I..., I think someone's been tampering with the escape pods... and..."
"Never mind the excuses luitenant, where's the rest of the pods?"
"Only six pods made it down!"
"SIX where's the rest?"
"I..., I..., I don't know"
"Ok, Ok, settle down! Get me Provost Minute Mirage on ComLink... ...What do you mean you don't know the frequency!!!!"

------

**Minute Mirage** · September 24, 2003, 11:38

Nice to get started and thanks to johndmuller for CMN:ing! A quick question concerning the starting techs: did everyone start with Centauri Ecology?

Anyway, turn played and sent onward to Red Menace.

**johndmuller** · September 24, 2003, 14:50

For those of you who may be new to SMAX PBEMs - you quite likely will experience incorrect colors and graphics associated with the factions - i.e. Morgan's face may pop up on your screen instead of Santi's when she is talking to you, or the faction colors on the map will not be what you expect. This is strictly a cosmetic problem and does not effect the game itself - that is not to say that it won't be a problem for you, as the colors on the map could be ambiguous, mixing up several factions, or worse, that the foreground/background colors on the unit/base 'flags' (denoting the pop for bases and the orders for units) may be virturally identical in some factions, making the text invisible, or practically so.

The reason for this effect lies in the faction list in the file 'Alpha Centauri.ini' in the directory 'Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'. It is updated when you start a new SMAX game on your computer, but it is not adjusted when you load a PBEM, so the graphics and colors will only be correct if the last SMAX game you started on your computer had the right factions in the right order. As SMAC has only the 7 original factions, and they are always in the same order, this is not a problem in SMAC, as the game apparently has the factions hardwired in there; in SMAX however, it looks to this list in the .ini file to get it's graphics files, so it comes into play.

You have a couple of choices - you can either live with it, or you can adjust it so that it works better. If you want to create an 'Alpha Centauri.ini' file that is exactly correct for this game, here is the list:
Faction 1=SPARTANS
Faction 2=UNIV
Faction 3=HIVE
Faction 4=DRONE
Faction 5=PEACE
Faction 6=FUNGBOY
Faction 7=BELIEVE
Before you mess with the .ini file, please make a backup of the entire .ini file to preserve what you currently have - I don't want to have to troubleshoot .ini problems, they can be real killers. Personally, I play it by ear - I only change it when there is a definite problem and I try to find a set that works for all my games colorwise, the leader pictures I try to live with; some people just copy the entire .ini file that goes with each game and then reload it before starting the game. A problem with that method is that it also freezes the settings for other parameters in there, so if there is an annoying preference setting in that .ini file, it will be immortalized and to the extent that some (but not all) of the settings get passed on to the next player, they may find it chronically annoying too.

Anyway, there is the list - and the (no doubt excessive) details behind it; do with it what you'all will.

**Minute Mirage** · September 24, 2003, 15:40

Does changing the in-game options affect all players? That is, I'd like my units to move quickly (no animation) so would changing this option affect everyone else too?

**johndmuller** · September 24, 2003, 16:54

I believe that some prefereences do and some don't, but I don't know for sure, and that goes for your particular preference too - I don't know whether or not it passes that preference on to the next player.

The major game settings are presumably inalterable, like victory c onditions and the rest of the options in the game setup, but some of the preferences seem to stick and go on to the next player's turn.

Some of these things seem to be 'contagious' too; in other words I think that sometimes a preference from a PBEM turn seems to 'infect' your own .ini file and then other games, SP's at least (it would seem inconsistent that your .ini file could get changed by one outside PBEM and not others, so they are probably not contagious between PBEMS - although SMAC vs SMAX could explain some seeming anomalies).

Anyway, I really have no solid info on whether and/or what things like this might or might not pass between players in a PBEM. For the most part, I don't have much trouble with this stuff, as each game seems to stabilize somehow, either because the stuff doesn't pass, or because someone gives up changing them or doesn't notice them changed back. The ones that bother me are the one where the planes break off what you are telling them to do on their 2nd turn and go to an arbitrary base to refuel and the 'click on unit cancels orders' one (which I think can lose terraforming turns if you wake up a former accidentally); I don't think anyone likes the planes one, but if I find the single click awaken one being set, I would try to jawbone whomever was doing it to stop.

**TheRedmenace** · September 24, 2003, 19:54

I sent the turn to Comstr earlier. I didn't start with Centauri Ecology but DID start with my standard tech (Industrial Base).

Is that as intended, or should I have Cent Ecology?

**johndmuller** · September 24, 2003, 20:30

As far as I know, everything's all right with the techs; MM was just unsure which variation of the startup we went with (there was some talk in the setup thread about giving everyone CentEcology, but that went with Blind Research, which was not a crowd pleaser). Anyway, we're playing with Directed Research, despite the game's name (I gave you guys a chance to change it), and it is the standard tech setup - except for the Chairman, who, as you may recall, crammed a lot of stuff from the Unity library, getting himself up to speed while he was trying to help D, before making off with some of the library chips, the Pod, the BioLab, and whatever else.

BTW, its a good idea to post the turns, especially at the beginning, where there may be bad initial email connections or whatnot, just so miscommunications don't take forever to even detect (please see my revisions to the first post).

**Comstr** · September 24, 2003, 22:33

Sir!

Yes Lt?

We have made planetfall. Our probe teams have discovered some kind of alien life form. Our Scout teams have discovered some sort of anchient monumets, in both the land and sea. Our recon teams have found a very good location for UN headquaters.

Very good. Set up base and send out the colonists. Lets see what's out there on our new home.
.
.
.
SIIIIIIIIIIIR! OUR SHIP INVISTAGED ONE OF THE UNITY PODS AND IS BEING ATTACKED BY ALIEN AHHHHHHHHHHHH.......Zzzzzzzze4eeeeeeettttttttt.
.
.
.
And I thought the borg were bad. So much for the UN Navy.

Turn sent to Bluto.

**Blut0** · September 25, 2003, 02:54

"Comstr, Comstr...come in Comstr." Blut0 figeted unconsciously at the communicator. "We seem to have lost contact with the other landers once we hit the ionosphere," said the comm officer. "The last one we had optical communication with was Comstr before we hit reentry blackout and I transmitted that we should switch to the NOSPAMblut02000@yahoo.com packet protocol. I hope the message got through...." "Did you make sure it was clearly stated that there was a zero at the end of blut0 rather than an O?", demanded Blut0. "Y-y-y-esssir!" said the comm officer, with a noticible bead of sweat dripping down his cheek. "Then enumerate your thoughts in order of plausability as to why we have not received the turn from Brother Comstr yet." "I'll run a thorough level 1 self test on the comm equipment right away," said the tech as he quickly left the bridge of the lander.

**Comstr** · September 25, 2003, 03:12

Err....try that again.

Sorry, I'm getting so many faulse spamm bouncebacks any real bouncebacks go straighjt to the spam filter.

resent.

**Blut0** · September 25, 2003, 03:51

"Ahh, you bring me good news, ensign? Or should I address you as private?" said Blut0. "Well sir, it appears that someone was eating some canned meat rations on top of the comm console and the pull tab lid slid off and shorted out the playback buffer relays..." "I see," said Blut0 as he surreptitiously slid some flexisheaf folders over a fork sitting on the corner of his desk. "Post orders that there is to be no more eating on the bridge."

Turn to USC.

**Erik at Home** · September 25, 2003, 16:09

The Lord shall certainly punish the Godless Yang for his unscrupulously plans on this Planet -- whatever they may be. And it seems we -- but perhaps not only we? -- have been blessed by Him, having landed in force in a bountiful countryside. He came to me last night in a dream, however, stating that we are not the only sword He shall wield, nor have we been blessed alone.

Looking out from our escape pod heading southward to our final destination, we saw the land that is now to our north and said:

"CMNbody up there has a perverted sense of humor!!"

Turn passed to FonnParr.

USC

**UnityScoutChopper** · September 26, 2003, 05:32

ummm... split personality crisis here....

I took a second login here a few months back when I couldn't find my USC password. It's cookied on my home computer. I realize double logins are verboten; I'll change it before the next upload.

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