Centauri background

[iapetus556]

I've recently started playing SMAC, for the first time in several years (as a result of getting acess to a computer that will run it), and have beed inspired to have a go at writting a a bit of SMAC fanfic.

In order to get some ideas and a bit more depth to the story, I have a few questions about life of Alpha Centauri, that I was wondering if there are any official/semi-official answers to:

1) Native life: other than Fungus and the Mind Worm varients, what other forms of life are there on Planet? Some of the advances/structure blurbs mention Glowmites, Razorbeaks, and some sort of fruit (as well as the numerous species made extinct since planetfall). Does anyone know what these and other lifeforms are, and what they are like/do? In particular, are there any dangerous lifeforms other than the three mindworm variants? And are any of these big enough and tough enough that the best defence against them would be conventional weapons and armour, rather than high moral and flamers?

2) Atmosphere: is it posible to breathe the atmosphere of planet for any length of time? If so, how long? And if the atmosphere is hostile, would it be feasible for someone to live in their own home outside a base? Or is the atmosphere for hostile that only a proper base would have the facilities for providing its inhabitents with a sealed environment and breathable air?

3) What are the various weapons and armours like in "human" terms? The basic strength-1 handweapons are pathetic in the game, but, based on the "Journey" story, seem extremely powerful by contemporary standards. So what sort of damage could, say, an impact rifle inflict? How tough actually is synthmetal or plasma steel?

4) The faction leaders all manage to live for centuries, even without constructing the Longetivity Vaccine. Are they more or less unique in this respect, or are whatever medical advances that allow this available to many other colonists as well?

5) What did the Unity colonists do when they discovered that Alpha Centauri had already been reached by the MSS Ghengis Khan, in 1836, and was extensively colonised by the Mongols?

Okay, that last one wasn't serious, but does anyone have any answers to the other questions?

[Hydro]

Hi, and welcome to the SMAC fiction forum!

I can offer some information and a few opinions.

1) Life forms: The native life forms you’ll see in the game are mindworms, sealurks, isles of the deep, locusts of Chiron, and fungal towers. Of these you’ll commonly see MWs, locusts, and isles. If you play SMAX you’ll see fungal towers all over the map, and you’ll occasionally see sealurks.

Sealurks are the sea vector of mindworms. They can attack sea bases and land bases near the sea, and sea units. They seem to not like sea fungus, and their movement in it is limited. A faction with a Planet rating of 1 or better can capture sea lurks, but in my experience they are almost worthless.

Isle of the Deep are wonderful for greenies out there. They move through fungus, can carry cargo, and attack sea-based units. They do not receive the 50% attack bonus mindworms get, but if you’ve got a good Planet rating that helps a lot. Many green factions (Cult, Gaians) can use these to haul in all those Unity pods bobbing in the ocean, and get a formidable navy from Planet – for free!

Locust of Chiron are the airborne vector of mindworm. They seem to be generated as a result of eco damage. They have no range, and can go anywhere they darned well please. They can capture land or sea bases. I don’t recall ever capturing one.

Fungal towers – these nasties will spread fungus to adjacent tiles and, when all are filled, start spawning worms. They have a huge defensive psi bonus. You can’t capture fungal towers.

As for the other items mentioned in the blubs, these are details of that describe the ecosystem.

As for defense, regular armor and conventional weaponry are useless. The only defense is resonance armor, trance, and good morale, and I think later in the game there is psi armor. Instead of defense you can go offense – here empathy ability is useful, and late in the game there are psi attacks.

2) The atmosphere of Chiron has plenty of oxygen, but has too much nitrogen – causing nitrogen narcosis. As I understand it, prolonged exposure will cause hallucinations and eventually death. This means that human will have to live in habitats (bubble tents, positive pressure controlled buildings) or have the excess nitrogen scrubbed. Many authors either ignore this as background, or make passing comment to scrubber masks. Other ideas are that humans would modify themselves or invent symbiots (perhaps native life forms) that would eliminate the problem. For instance, Morganites might have spiffy techno implants, and greenie Gaians a bio-partner – like wearing a tentacled beastie that, say, attaches itself and sips their blood and scrubs nitrogen for them in return. All of this is good fodder for a SMAC/X story.

3) Weapons and armor – I’ll speculate that any techno name would indicate that the weapon or armor is more advanced that what we had on Earth. For instance, I can see impact or missile, but ‘chaos weapons’ clearly indicates that it is outside 21st Century technology. Likewise for armor.

4) Longevity – good question, and I think this is open for interpretation. You can hypothesize that by the time Unity left that medical science had advanced to the point that humans could live for at least a hundred years. But could this tech be sustained after the Unity disaster? Or is there something about Chiron? Or maybe the faction leaders are little more than arthritic vegetative props of the faction power structure that are kept in place to serve the ends of the real leader? There are lots of options.

As for the Ghengis Kahn, that could be a story, too!

If you’re interested in how others have dealt with these questions you may want to peruse some of the fiction in the Chiron Archives, which is at the top of the forum page.

Good luck!
Hydro

[Bearcat]

1) In one of the SMAX chapters written by Michael Ely, he mentions things called xenotoads. I imagine that they'd look something like frogs, but live in the fungus. One of the Gaian bases is named Silverbird Park, so maybe there are creatures called silverbirds? I also remember reading in the gameguide that Planet was home to plants that resembled palm trees, but didn't grow quite as high. A lot of it is probably open to your imagination as an author.

2) Like Hydro said, short exposure probably wouldn't kill the colonists, but they can't stay out for extended periods of time without breathing masks. I imagine that further in the mission, bases become like a city nowadays, with an economic and government center, and than residential and industrial sectors. They could either be open air, but than the buildings themselves would have to be sealed against the atmosphere or they whole base could be inside a giant bubble tent that encloses a Terran like environment.

3) Most of the weapons are either energy or projectile based weapons. That means they either fire a bullet, like a rifle or they're laser guns. Armor would therefore have to defend accordingly.

4) From everything I've read, the colonies develop some sort of gene therapy that seems to extend the user's life almost indefinately. It's pretty vague about whether only the factions' ruling classes can benefit from it or if everyone can.

[bluetemplar]

Native life:
You forgot the Spore Launcher!

Sealurks are not completely useless: they have the deep pressure hull hability, which makes them invisible!

Information on weapons inf flavor.txt :
e.g:
; WEAPONS

#HAND WEAPONS
Ammo: 7.62mm UN standard
Muzzle velocity: 1100 mps
Rate of fire: Var; max 120\min
Max range: 550 m
Target acquistion: Visual

[iapetus556]

Regarding the flavor.txt:

It says that the Partical Impactor is a projectile (10mm caseless) weapon. One would have thought from the name that it was a partical beam weapon. Is there any confirmation either way in any official literature?

[Hydro]

BT - how could I forget! mea culpa!

Hydro

[GeneralTacticus]

Re: Locusts - they are definitely capturable. In several of my games, I've seen fungal blooms spawn vast hordes of the things, and captured whole stacks with the Empath Rovers I sent to remove them.

[Slaughtergaard]

Serious? Cool! Never seen Locusts coming from Towers... Maybe because i made sure that there's no TOWERS!

[GeneralTacticus]

Not Towers - fungal blooms brought on by ecodamage. Late in the game, they spawn native life forms in huge quantities, usually including Locusts.

[Asc]

I'm wondering about the atmosphere too. The cutscene things indicate that nitrogen narcosis is a worry, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Planet has atmospheric pressure of 1.75 bars, 90% of which is nitrogen, giving a partial pressure of 1.5 bars. Nitrogen narcosis becomes pronounced at a partial pressure of 3.1 bars, and if pressure is reduced the effects are gone at a partial pressure of 2.2 bars, a safe margin above Planet's partial pressure. Unconciousness from nitrogen narcosis apparently occurs somewhere upwards of nine bars.

Oxygen also doesn't seem to be a worry; Planet's oxygen partial pressure of about .15 bars corresponds to (I think) an altitude of about 8000 feet on earth.



However, for storytelling purposes, it would probably be best to assume that dangerous nitrogen narcosis does occur. Supposedly, when exposed to high pressure, it takes about three minutes for the maximum effects to set in.

EDIT: but maybe long term exposure to high partial pressure does cause problems. I'll try to find out.