posted 06-11-99 07:21 AM ET        

You must strive to improve diplomacy (make the leaders more "alive"), graphics (we all know it, they were not good...), number of factions/civs (SEVEN! What's that? You need at least 12) and include a "view city" and throne room/palace option like in earlier games. There must be more random events that actually make a difference. Rankings like in civ 1-2 should appear once in a while, and you must make better endings with movies, M-O-V-I-E-S, I don't want to just read a little text after playing for hours.

The civilopedia must also be improved and there must be a better "presentation" when you research something, not just a logo that means nothing to us and a bit of text explaining what it does. Sure the quotes are quite good, but that's not enough...

And finally, you should make a game based on a good concept, I'm thinking of Master of Orion here! You MUST make a MOO3, now that MPS is more or less dead. In their heydays they were far superior to what Firaxis is now, but I guess you must be excused since you are still a young company...

But work hard on improving, you need it! I'm sorry, but someone had to tell you...

posted 06-11-99 10:59 AM ET            

Let me just say a few things, since I know you are offering criticism in order to hopefully help Firaxis make a better game.

First, I agree with you that the graphics are off-putting at first. But, given time, you will probably come to love the 3d terrain and the distinct feel of Planet. I'm trying to like CtP now, but the graphics look cartoonist and flat to me (though they are more colorful). And a view city and throne room screen would be very nice. I miss those, too. Oh yes, better movies, sure.

But, from there you basically lose me:

*** The diplomacy in SMAC is one of the best you are currently going to find in this genre. In fact, I've never actually felt that my oppenents were as alive as when I yelled: "Lal, you sack of sh*t." SMAC has done a great job making these AI characters seem something like real people.

*** Why do you need "at least 12" factions? You have a Civ2 mindset here. More is not necessarily better. There is ample room to try to master each of the seven factions without feeling like they are just the same things different colors. They are truly different factions. So, unlike Civ2 and CtP wherein all civs are basically the same thing, you actually get 7 unique factions. 7 to 1. SMAC wins. Though if what you are saying is that a few more of these kinds of factions would be nice, I agree.

*** As for random events, have you had an asteroid wipe out your four best cities? Tell me THAT doesn't matter! But perhaps a slide bar allowing the player to up or down the frequency of such things would have been nice, I agree.

*** The rankings are in SMAC all the time on the bar graph, but not to the degree you mention. So, I see your point, actually. This one is a tie...

I'll leave the other things you mentioned for another day, but let me just say that SMAC is a truly great game. It just is. But it took me a while to come to think that way. In fact, I literally FORCED myself to play it the first few days I had it, for a lot of the reasons you mentioned.

But when it comes down to it, the AI is fairly competent, the unit workshop makes for some fun possibilities, and it's pretty hard to become a master of strategy for all 7 factions--it just takes too much damn time! And that's the fun of it.

Anyway, I suspect you haven't had the game very long, have you? If not, give it time. There used to be some really good info on strategies for the different factions on the 'faction' page here. I'm not sure anymore. But stuff like that really helped me to appreciate the balance and depth of the game.

posted 06-11-99 12:08 PM ET            

Who the hell are you and what did you do with Yin's body?

posted 06-11-99 01:35 PM ET            

SMAC's graphics are the wonderful thing that was Civ2, for sure. But... they do get the job done.

You can create as many factions as you want. You are merely limited to a total of 7 factions in the game. Go hit the SMAC fan sites and pick up a few if you want to try out something different. Or fight different factions.

View City would have been interesting, but then they would have needed 7 sets... on for each faction. Otherwise, we would have whined about the fact they all look the same.

You have a Monuments of your Faction, rather than a Throne Room (Civ2) or Castle (Civ). Just a different twist.

Movie endings could have been nice for all victory paths. But they aren't necessary, especially when you get those long credits... I generally feel the game is done when I achieve a "Victory" condition.

The Datalinks seem very good to me. They might need a little touch ups with all the changes between version 1 and 3, and a couple of items could use a better linking, but I found them invaluable when learning to play SMAC. I cannot say the same for the Civpedia in Civ2 (although it was useful from time to time).

The Techs are what they are. They are presented in the classic "Advance" style of the Civs with the bonus of a voice-over. What would you suggest they do different to improve their appeal to you? Show a fireworks display?

While I am an advocate for Sid's game 3 to be similar to MOO3, I don't think it was Microprose that actually developed the Moos (IIRC). Microprose merely distributed/published it.

I think SMAC has a great deal of potential. While I think they used an over-simplified combat resolution system, my main complaint with SMAC is in Implementation Quality, not Design Quality. Design-wise, SMAC is a truly incredible game, and despite its incredible amount of bugs, comes out as a fun and enjoyable game overall. I agree that they should strive to improve, as there is always room for improvement (especially in their Implementation Quality using SMAC as their last grade). But then, we should ALL strive to improve, people as well as businesses.

posted 06-11-99 01:36 PM ET            

- What I don't like about diplomacy in SMAC is the lack of options. There really isn't much you can do since the only diplomacy is war - not war - peace - alliance
That's all there is really, and the council also has way too few options. Master of Orion 2 had a lot more diplomacy options for those of you that have played it. I also hate the "forced responses" do different actions. I doubt all factions would condemn my use of nerve gas pods. What if the Morganites have a great business arrangement with me and don't want to lose it? Hmmm? That could happen, Morgan seems like a rather ruthless capitalist.

- I think you misunderstood me a little. It's not that the leaders don't have different personalities, it's more that there's just a picture, it doesn't move, and there's no herald, and the picture is so small. Besides the diplomacy screen should cover the entire computer screen to really give you that negotiation feel.

- What I'm saying is that there should be more different factions so that you do not face the same opponents every time. It gets a bit boring. I don't want to fight the same people every time I play the game. I agree the difference in personality is great, but I sometimes feel it's a bit exaggerated (Morgan going to war because of my green politics?)

- I haven't experienced my four best cities wiped out by an asteroid, no, but that sounds a bit exaggerated again.

I kind of enjoyed playing it the first few days actually, and didn't mind the graphics too much. I've had the game for some time, but I just don't like it all that much any more. I feel there's something missing. If I have to force myself to play it, then maybe it isn't too good after all?

I think that Firaxis deserves a few more chances though, sooner or later they have to get it right. It's still a new company. I don't really hate SMAC either, I just don't like it as much as I hoped I would, and critizising is easier than complementing (I see you have some experience with that yourself).

posted 06-11-99 01:38 PM ET            

Told you I wasn't up to snuff today...

posted 06-11-99 01:56 PM ET            

Darkstar:
- I have looked around fan sites (I even run one myself, strange as it may seem) and there aren't very many good factions. Most have no base graphics, and often no leader picture, and are rather lacking in other ways as well.

- I would not whine if "city view" looked the same for all factions, although the best would of course be if it did. The monument isn't a very good replacement since all that happens is a little extra is added on the sides and there are some logos. I want something that actually improves.

- Well, I still won't ending movies, no matter what you think. The game isn't over until you've seen the ending movie. That is the little reward you feel you deserve afterwards (well, I do, at least)

- The datalinks are efficient, but they look very boring. A miss that small picture above the description that you had in Civ 2.
No, I don't want fireworks, I simply want a picture, or a presentation like in MOO2 where a scientist brings pictures up as holograms (in a futuristic research lab) and the text appears in a box next to it (that's the best one).

- I think a company called Simtex or something developed the MOO-games, and as far as I know Simtex is one of Microprose's development studios (in Texas, I think), like Blizzard North is a separate section of Blizzard.

Please spare me your optimist philosophy. I know we all can improve, but right now I'm complaining about SMAC and Firaxis, and I'm rather enjoying it actually, so just allow me to complain about someone else, and then I can complain about myself later if I ever feel like it.

Oh, and SMAC is not an incredible game, only modestly succesful. I actually installed MOO2 again today, and I'm having the time of my life! Did Sid actually do anything except lend his name to this game anyway?

The still ever-critical (it's just who I am...) Rigil Kentaurus

posted 06-11-99 02:31 PM ET            

There are those that would find you criticizing me for defending SMAC to be hilarious, since I too like to ask/whine/demand/motivate Firaxis to doing better. LOL!

I think it's Simtex, but I haven't powered up MOO or MOOII in a little over a month.

Sure, have fun criticizing.

If SMAC isn't a wonderful game for you, I hope you spend time playing one that is. If that's MOO2, have fun.

The MOO2 Tech sceen was very cool. Good Taste, Rigil!

And there will probably be a new end movie or two in SMACX, the expansion. Just a guess on my part, but if the Aliens that built the monoliths and boreholes are coming back...

Sid's level of involvement is not well known. Its somewhere between none and all according to what we were told by Sid and Brian. He played a lot of the early prototype and Alpha code, made some suggestions, and what else, we don't know.

posted 06-11-99 06:54 PM ET            

RK, I understand that your experience with SMAC has been less than you would have hoped, and less than with the Moo's. I happend to think that SMAC is completely on par with MOO and rules over MOO 2 (which for some strange reason I could not get into - maybe I will try again at some point.)

I actually got bored with MOO much faster than I will with SMAC (I have not even become close to bored yet).

I like the feel that both the graphics and music lend to the game (though they could both be better), and any improvement to them is trivial compared to improving the overall game balance and play ie. the opponent engine.

I find this opponent to be more able than anything MOO threw at me, if some of the design elements here were improved as well then the game would be that much better.

Since it is Friday afternoon I am leaning towards agreeing to disagree, but maybe on Monday after a weekend without SMAC (SOB!) I will be more inclined to say some of the things I initially thought reading your first post here.

posted 06-12-99 03:05 AM ET            

Darkstar, CivII did NOT have good graphics. This was my least favourite part of the game.

posted 06-12-99 03:19 AM ET            

Goob, you have to suffer through this weekend without SMAC? Are you going to survive? Will you family? You have my sympathies...

posted 06-12-99 04:45 AM ET            

Darkstar:
- I guess it's a bit funny, yes, I thought yin normally criticized as well...

- Is it certain that the aliens will return, or is it just a guess?

- How much does anyone really know about SMACX? Will there be some new terrain graphics? Why doesn't anyone make new terrain graphics? It seems to me the Civ2 creation-community was much more active.
I'm still whining! GOD, can I never do anything but whine?

Goobmeister:
- I feel much the same way about SMAC as you do about MOO2, I guess, it just lacks something... Sure, the AI is better, but that's about all I find better. I loved the details of previous games that SMAC lacks, for instance I loved bombing or destroying planets in MOO2 or watching those tiny men running around firing their lasers or whatever at each other. The graphics weren't too great, but it was really funny to watch...

- What's wrong with your computer, oh, you unfortunate creature?

yin:
- How much? Well, I played it for about two weeks before stopping, after that I've played once in a while, but after I save and quit I'm not able to force myself to continue later...

Oh, by the way, I actually agree with Darkstar, the graphics were better in Civ2 (in a way at least). Because of the simplicity they were easy to change for the few that had the necessary skills (myself not included...), so more people did it. Is it even possible to change the unit graphics in SMAC without some special program?

Whenever there's whining to be done, I'm your man!

Rigil Kentaurus, a whiner for the future - I even have my own whineyard (ouch, that was a cheap one!)

posted 06-12-99 10:08 AM ET         

Rigil_Kentaurus - I could do some screen shots of two asteroid craters in my current game.

posted 06-12-99 02:41 PM ET            

I think the number of SMAC fan sites and players (well, it seems that way) shows that people do NOT love SMAC as much as you say. The Civ2 community was much more active, and even now you can probably find more active Civ2-sites than SMAC-sites. You'll probably find even less MOO2-sites, but it was made three years ago, it wasn't promoted at all, and it didn't - and this is very important - have Sid's name on it... That means a lot you know.

I do not get the feeling you speak of, and I do NOT like the logos. The only feeling I get is the this-game-is-not-finished-and-we-won't-finish-it-either-feeling, and if I have to look harder it's probably not worth it. I'm sorry you didn't like MOO2, but I certainly did, and I think there would be more people here to support my view if they had slapped Sid's name on it before releasing it.

posted 06-13-99 02:22 AM ET            

There are more Civ2 sites because Civ2 is a good game and been around for quite some time.

MOO2 was not as customizable in units or set up. Although it allowed you to COMPLETELY design your starships and race/faction.

Personally, I found MOO to be the better game for fun. True, when I first bought MOO2, it was version 1.0 which had an outrageous cheat value setting for the Opponents. But even with that fixed, I found it lacking its "Risk"iness. I had enjoyed the epic games where swarms and swarms of ships fought... In MOO2, you could win the game with just 5 or 10 ships. MOO2 had a lot of nice features, but... I missed the great swarms, and missed having to figure out how to live on half the planet types... MOO2, I did not find as much fun to play, to me at least.

Aliens return in SMACX - Well, that was the word leaked from Firaxians (I think). But until SMACX goes gold (master sent to manufacturing) what will and will not be in it is not firmly known to us, the SMAC public.

SMAC Graphics - It is not possible, as far as it has been explained, to hack the custom 3rd party Cavalier technology that allowed them to place a 3D figure on 2D landscape. Or, it would not be worth the effort.

Chrono - to some people, MOO isn't the greatest. To others, it is. That's a matter of opinion, like so many things here.

MOO could have been better... MOO2 could have been better... Civ and Civ2 could have been better... SMAC could have been better... what program is ever perfect?

Does SMAC's graphics and interface make me think or feel that I am on Chiron? Nope. But I know I am playing SMAC. That is enough.

posted 06-13-99 02:25 AM ET         

Do you have any pennies? Face it those pennies have been in my @ss. I've never touched anything that's been in your @ss.

posted 06-13-99 02:35 AM ET            

$100 to the first person other than Rimmer (the name just might be a clue!) who can explain that one.

posted 06-13-99 02:44 AM ET         

My SMACview is that it has almost infinite replayability. There are so many suggestions as to game objectives out there (and so little time to try them all )

Some of them:

The TI One City Challenge (or One Base Challenge), with every faction
All the SPs challenge
The Forest Economy challenge
Waterworld (384 x 256 map, 90% water)
The orbitals challenge
The energy challenge
fastest TI victory on a huge map,
etc., etc.

The fun you get (or don't get, as the case may be) depends a lot on why you are playing the game.

Sometimes (for those authors among us) the game itself is secondary - it's simply fodder for a plot line.

I don't remember ever being tempted to write about a CivII, MOO2 game (and certainly not with CtP).

posted 06-13-99 02:54 AM ET            

@ss pennies - From Upright Citizen's Brigade on Comedy Central channel. Skit involving how a mover and shaker describes how he gets the confidence edge. He take $20 worth of pennies, and shoves them up his bum ("No you idiot, one penny at a time!"). Then he spends them. He'd done it since about Carter era and estimated that all pennies in US circulation had been up his bum at least once.

You were afraid for good reason.

"We don't want no astronauts in our neighborhood, hanging upside down, and using their stomachs as an alien incubator!"

"That's the hot chicks room..."

posted 06-13-99 04:29 AM ET            

Rigil_Kentaurus: If you think the current SMAC graphics are ridiculous, you should check units.pcx (or something like that) - it has units' pics that were in the game prior to it's release.
What's wrong with 7 factions? Seven is the number of perfection!

"Aliens returning in SMAC." Give me a break! Firaxis, don't you think the theme of alien invasion is a *little* worn?

googlie: Could you specify what "The Forest Economy challenge", "The orbitals challenge" and "The energy challenge" are?

posted 06-13-99 08:12 AM ET            

The units are okay, but in a way I think it would have been better to use the Civ2-style units so that people could change them. The fact that nothing can be done about them really decreases the possibilities for good scenarios or mods.

Another thing is that I think the whole design is a bit dark and depressing and sometimes it seems like they have chosen the simply way out because they were tired of making graphics (logos instead of a picture symbolizing what things actually are in the datalinks for instance).

Except for the boring terrain it's not really the graphics that are the greatest problem.

Damn, I'm not in a whining mood today! I almost feel like playing SMAC. Well, maybe I will, perhaps it's not so bad after all. But don't be surprised if I come back tomorrow to whine some more...

posted 06-13-99 09:14 AM ET            

I've been in Korea too long, obviously! I'm starting to lose touch with U.S. pop culture. From the looks of it, though, that's in my favor.

Well, leave it to you to steal my money. I'll send it to you in pennies.

posted 06-13-99 01:47 PM ET            

Oh, I didn't play SMAC after all. I played MOO2 instead. Sorry.

posted 06-13-99 04:09 PM ET            

About the units: It would be really nice if Firaxis would issue a 3D editor, but it is impossible. So they should make a 2D editor instead.

The pictures in the Datalinks are very appropriate (IMHO). Mobility has the symbol in it, and Centauri Empathy has a heart in it. It's pretty much intuitive (there are some exclusions from this rule, of course).

posted 06-13-99 05:46 PM ET            

Well, maybe the logos are intuitive, but I still preferred the pictures of something associated with the tech that you got in civ2.

I agree, they should simply have used 2d-units so that normal people could edit them... The possibilities for scenarios and such was one of the greatest things in civ2.
If you were tired of the same thing, you could just load a new scenario, and suddenly you were in a hi-tech future or the world of the dinosaurs.

007: They wouldn't necessarily have to do a lot more, just do it better.

Why everyone is turning on SMAC?
- We've played it a little more
- We don't like it
- We realize it's impossible to find any good mods
- The game is not as good as at least I had expected from Sid, and of course he didn't do much except lend his name to the title.
- I read the entire "Journey to Alpha Centauri" and read everything about the game before the game was released, so maybe I was already getting tired of it.
- We love whining
- We're bored, and this is a good place to whine

posted 06-13-99 05:57 PM ET            

Yes, I agree that SMAC is getting a little boring, and it is getting boring a lot faster than Civ II did. As a matter of fact, I just traded in my third copy of Civ II, (which was the last copy I'll purchase)to get a "sim"; Jane's Fleet Command. This leads to my point. Jane's is notorious for making fun, detailed, realistic games. I am disapointed with Fleet Command due to the lack of an intuitive interface. But I still think its a fun game. I learned to work around the negative and focus on the positive- a fun game. The same goes for SMAC. The bugs annoy me, and the stupid attacks Planet makes towards the end tick me off, but I still play, because it IS a good game. Yes, it's not as "good" as Civ II, but it is as good as it is, and we should be happy. Hey FIRAXIS- We'll be even happier when a REAL patch come out!!! (Hint,hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

posted 06-14-99 12:07 AM ET         

AJR BSC SSC

stands for and where it came from.

posted 06-14-99 08:24 AM ET            

"You live in Korea?"

Yes. I'm here to learn the language and build up a few connections. Interesting place.

"Are you Korean,"

No. Mainly Irish-American, Italian and Cherokee Indian. In other words, a good old Amerian mut.

"...if not, why?"

posted 06-14-99 08:51 AM ET            

Since you seem to be having so much trouble finding MODs, here are the top 4 sites for SMAC:

1. Apolyton CS (http://apolyton.net/ac)
2. SidGames.com (http://www.sidgames.com/ac)
3. The Arrival (http://ac.strategy-gaming.com)
4. Addicted to Alpha Centauri (http://come.to/addicted)

posted 06-14-99 03:03 PM ET            

Well, I don't know anymore... I guess I just don't like the game all that much...
I didn't mind that most civs looked the same in civ2, so I guess it's not really that...
I don't know. I'm confused, but I do know that I still don't enjoy SMAC all that much. After all this I've started playing MOO2 again though, so it doesn't really matter all that much. It's still just as great as the first time I played it.

Maybe I'll try SMAC again, later... About the factions, I just think it's annoying when the faction has the same leader and logo (I can live with the base thing). Or maybe I'll just wait until SMACX is released.

I think it's more than just the fact that the game is new though... I doubt the creation community will ever really get going. The CTP community seems much more active. Maybe I'll have to buy CTP...