posted 03-05-99 08:27 AM ET     

Well, for some time, I have been following this forum to determine how "good" or "bad" a game SMAC is. I have also played the demo, but that won't show me everything.

1) In regards to military units that are "stacked" in the same square or are all in squares adjacent to an enemy unit, do these attack in combination or one at a time?

2) Does each faction have other personalities besides their main leader?

3) How do you regard the game's AI in the most generalized sense? Does it compare better with most other strategy games or worse? Or more to the point, do you find it personally challenging at different levels?

4) I occasionally see a comment on the newsgroups about "SMAC II" or "SMAC V3.0". Do any of you have reliable info on what is planned in the 3rd upgrade, or when that is expected for release? Has Brian or any other Firaxis member suggested a separate game that would sequel this one?

5) Now for the biggie: What would be the one thing you would want most to see changed in a future upgrade?

I should note that I haven't played Civ or Civ2 priorhand (yes, I know, blasemphy!). Just never got around to it, although I did play MOO/MOO2 in earlier times. My primary gameplay for now has been TalonSoft's "Operational Art of War."

posted 03-05-99 08:50 AM ET            

1. Stacks. Best defensive unit defends and the remainder take "collateral" damage if it^s defeated.

2. No, just the one.

3. AI is very good, especially movement over long distances, which is a great improvement on earlier titles.

4. Not that I know of, though you can bet there will be a SMAC2, incorporating the best ideas we players come up with. Like Civ/Civ2.

5. Most wanted change? The ground gets very cluttered with several units, cities and improvements and the ultra zoomed-in mode seriously restricts your view. It would probably be OK on a monster screen, but not manyof us can afford those yet. Tighter graphics, in other words.

posted 03-05-99 11:32 AM ET            

2. There are some names mentioned in the in-game storyline (a feature which caught me pleasantly off guard, although their effect on gameplay is non-existent), but you're always dealing with the leader of the enemy factions, not their lieutenants or adjutants.

3. I find the AI to be competent; certainly it builds its defending units to counter the type of offense which is being mounted against it. I've heard some mixed opinions on the strength of its offensive AI, but as an intermediate Civ/Civ II player I haven't found it to be a rollover. I find the diplomacy AI to be believable and engaging; it's successfully bluffed me a few times when negotiating from a weaker position (which was not apparent to me until later in the game, when I crushed them for their presumption ).

4 & 5 are topics for other threads. Some of them have been hashed over fairly recently under The Game forum. Take a look around.

posted 03-05-99 01:10 PM ET            

The nature of your questions leads me to think that you are a sophisticated and competent gamer. Therefore, I will focus my responses a bit deeper than I would for a novice.

1) Stacked combat- this has already been addressed. However, I would also expect that this is in opposition to your current game experience. That is because SMAC is not a war game and therefore combat is unfortunately oversimplified. The SMAC system can best be described as picking your champions to fight and spreading some collateral damage. Therefore, you will find that combined arms is not as powerful as in a war game as you cannot do things like overunning an enemy or killing their supply lines.

2)Personalities- Already addressed. Unfortunately you won't find any generals or leadership modifiers as you commonly find in war games. On the other hand, you can have a lot of fun using the social engineering menu to tailor your faction to suit your needs. I like to play the Spartans with a "love the planet" slant. However, you can also play Deirdre as the queen of pollution and this adds a lot to the appeal of this game.

3) A/I- This is a question that will elicit different responses from everyone. I find the A/I to be both a success and a disappointment. It is substantially improved over the Civ games, but it is also 100% predictable and easy to beat under most circumstances. I say this because I expect that you are the type of person who pays attention to details since you play a game like OAW. As a result, clear patterns will quickly become obvious to you and you will find it easy to beat the A/I. BTW, you will also find numerous "cheats" buried in the code where your successes will be rewarded with every conceivable hardship. As such, these cheats only make the game harder rather than better. This is my opinion and you will obviously make your own.

4) Sequels- It is my experience that sequels tend to fix bugs and add things like scenarios. As a matter of fact, there is already a patch to fix multiplayer problems that was posted on the Apolyton website before the game was released. Therefore, I think that a true sequel will need to address the myriad of problems with the game engine and this would result in a totally different game.

5)My dream list- Ah, I only wish my dreams ran the world. I wish for a game engine that was smarter than me. Not one that cheats, but actually smarter than me. I learn more by losing to a good opponent than by beating a lousy one. However, since I am not a programmer, I do not actually know if this can actually be done.

posted 03-06-99 03:10 PM ET         

Uncleroggy, I certainly don't consider myself a sophisticated gamer, but in regards to "historical" wargames, I do prefer that the game elements be consistent with the attempted historical theme. Actually, the combat model for SMAC as you've described it is reasonable to me. From the demo's play, I did like the aspects of unit experience and "damage levels" which allow for attrition rather than an all-or-nothing approach to combat damage.

By no means were the combat models detailed in MOO2 either. It was better for space battles (although fighting on a 2D grid lost that "space" feel), but for planet battles, you dropped on a planet, put one set of troops against the other, and added the various modifiers to see how it resolved in kills.

But what was such a draw to me on MOO/MOO2 was that deep thought needed to evolve your race in size, economy, technology, and military power, while everypone else was doing the same.

That is supposed to be the case in SMAC too, although by playing human factions against each other, I wouldn't mind to see more personalities for each faction. In MOO2, you just didn't have combat leaders, you also could get planet governors (for a price) that brought special abilities with them, such as trade relations, public relations, building efficiency, etc.

So whenever a new colony is set up, I would like the game to "pop up" a new personality to govern the colony (which could still be turned off; you're telling him/her to sit behind a desk and shut up). Each governor would have a randomly-generated set of abilities, although the type of abilities would gravitate towards the preferences of the faction. A like MOO2, these governors could be reassigned between colonies, so to match that governor's abilities more to the circumstance of that colony (explore, build, yadda yadda).

My point for this is that by having only one personality for each faction (the present case?), it gives the feel that each leader is only in control of robots rather than humans. So including more "persons" within each faction would make the game more personable. And to allow the old human vice element, these governors might attempt sneaky things too, like embezzling & treachery. Perhaps a faction leader could be "bumped off" by an ambitious governor (and thus put a new "face" on the comm-link) if the faction is suffering in its fortunes.

Well, just rambling thoughts.

posted 03-07-99 01:45 AM ET            

I think you have a couple of great ideas regarding the additional personalities. In addition, you are right on target with your point that the population pretty much falls into line other than in situations where a base can and will revolt if you do not handle the drone riots.

One additional point regarding the Smac governors. Please look at some of the other threads as you will see that a number of people have found the governors to be a better idea in concept than in practice. I do not use them as I prefer the build queues.

Finally, I made my assumption regarding "sophistication" based on your current gaming experience with OAW. I have personnally found OAW to be a game for people who prefer a deeper and more detail oriented game. However, the trend with SMAC and the other Civ series games is actually to reduce many of these functions as many people have expressed preferences to increase the speed of the games. QED governors, terraform automation and the like. As a result, some of the real feel of nurturing and building your empire may be a little harder to achieve.

In any event, you'll have to judge for yourself as no one can fully transmit all of the details. You might want to look at downloading the demo. I think it,s still on the website.