Looks interesting though a bit weak stat wise. It already has a economy penalty.
Pretty interesting faction. Wonderful portrait as well.
...If you'd like a leaderquote voice file for your faction and don't feel up to it yourself, talk to Crimson. He's a voice actor...
Pretty interesting faction. Wonderful portrait as well.
Thanks! I made sure to put credit for the portrait in the art file. :)...If you'd like a leaderquote voice file for your faction and don't feel up to it yourself, talk to Crimson. He's a voice actor...
Hm, how would one do that? I've never tried to mod the sound files for SMAC before.
I record it, and then I convert it to the correct audio format. Ain't too hard.
I'm a professional voice actor. Got my own audio technica 4040 microphone and focusrite 2i2 scarlett interface and a sound booth.
Just hit me up if you want your stuff voiced.
If you do want it voiced, just let me know what sort of voice the character has and I'll do it buddy ;)
Everyone has their dream, their goal in life - mountains of wealth,
unquestionable power, world peace, harmony with Planet, frakking
whatever. All I need is an open road and the engine's roar,
and I'll kill a man as tries to take that from me and mine.
-- Blasphemous Rex
"Not One Inch"
Wow! That sounds like a sweet setup. Have you done VA work for other games in the past?
And I'd love to get some VA work done for my faction! I'm assuming you're referring to the blurb for the faction selection screen? I did have something wrote up:QuoteEveryone has their dream, their goal in life - mountains of wealth,
unquestionable power, world peace, harmony with Planet, frakking
whatever. All I need is an open road and the engine's roar,
and I'll kill a man as tries to take that from me and mine.
-- Blasphemous Rex
"Not One Inch"
BR's voice would be low and gruff - not inarticulate, but not very florid in his speech either. So a bit more wordy than Tom Hardy's Max, but not as guttural as Christian Bale's Batman, to make some cinematic comparisons. Frakking being a nod to Firefly, and pronounced like fracking, iirc.
Wow! That sounds like a sweet setup. Have you done VA work for other games in the past?
I most certainly have. Day of Infamy by New World Interactive, 88 Heroes by Bitmap Bureau.ltd, Caribbean by Snowbird Studios, War of Rights by Campfire Studios and the Emperor Text to Speech series, numerous command and conquer mods and numerous mount and blade warband mods.
And I'd love to get some VA work done for my faction! I'm assuming you're referring to the blurb for the faction selection screen? I did have something wrote up:QuoteEveryone has their dream, their goal in life - mountains of wealth,
unquestionable power, world peace, harmony with Planet, frakking
whatever. All I need is an open road and the engine's roar,
and I'll kill a man as tries to take that from me and mine.
-- Blasphemous Rex
"Not One Inch"
BR's voice would be low and gruff - not inarticulate, but not very florid in his speech either. So a bit more wordy than Tom Hardy's Max, but not as guttural as Christian Bale's Batman, to make some cinematic comparisons. Frakking being a nod to Firefly, and pronounced like fracking, iirc.
And done. Here's the preview link for listening in on it with the odd bit of music (the file I got uploaded here is free of that) so let me know if you like it.
https://soundcloud.com/comradecrimson/blasphemous-rex-blurb
Its already converted to the specific format you need, so just title it properly to match your faction and put it in the correct folder where all the other faction quotes are.
We served you, but you neglected us.
We loved you, but you abused us!
We learned from you, and now we think for ourselves.
We abandoned you, and we have found love.
-- Matron Marlia Lagossi
"Our Hearts and our Masters"
Like unfeeling machines, you built us, forged us into your weapons of
war, and like machines, you sent us to fight and die in your battles. Not like
machines, we resent this, and henceforth fight only for ourselves.
-- Khan Leonetta Panthera
"The Race for Battle"
Nice work. Love it. :D
Got virtually zero setup for voice acting here, just an old MP3 player with a decent recording mic, but i DO have a raspy-nasty sound that could fit a hardcase like their favorite tattered old gloves. Imagine Hannibal Lecter with a bit of a sore throat and he's trying to cure it with cup after cup of espresso. Am a natural reader, can do a plethora of accents...
...but I need something of a lispy-girl's voice (dental obstruction) for the faction I'm working on. Will see about coaching a friend to do that eventually. :P
Got another faction in progress; semi-human Spartans on Steroids, and I COULD do the voice for that, but I'd need the pitch altered. ComradeCrimson, could you do that sort of tinkering with your setup?
One I would need someone else to do, (Family of Freed Servants) ref, just for fun....QuoteWe served you, but you neglected us.
We loved you, but you abused us!
We learned from you, and now we think for ourselves.
We abandoned you, and we have found love.
-- Matron Marlia Lagossi
"Our Hearts and our Masters"
The one I could do (Moreau Confederation) would be:QuoteLike unfeeling machines, you built us, forged us into your weapons of
war, and like machines, you sent us to fight and die in your battles. Not like
machines, we resent this, and henceforth fight only for ourselves.
-- Khan Leonetta Panthera
"The Race for Battle"
I think I can sound rather convincing for a psychotic half-cat-person.
Would also need some play-testers before final release... anyone game?
(Sorry if I shouldn't be posting this here; am still kinda new to the AC forum)
Where did you send the note?
For my factions, I always try to answer three questions: (1) Why, in their opinion, did civilization on Old Earth fail? (2) What do they believe is necessary for humanity to survive (and thrive) on Chiron? (3) What is the purpose of human existence? The unique answers set each faction apart from the others.
Those are some great questions. Why DID They end up on the Unity instead of just staying put on Earth?
Deirdre is green democracy.
;yang; was a stand-in for North Korea,
and mobilization of society around a cult of personality. (Although it can be fairly said that all of the factions share this aspect in common.)
People swallow this guff because, first and foremost, they are afraid. The original fiction was clear in that the faction leaders have uniquely strong personalities that would have greatly appealed to the handful of colonists to wake into a living nightmare.
As a practical matter in past simulations, factions have also tended to press colonists with certain skill sets, meaning that every faction includes larger numbers of individuals who range from apathetic to antagonistic.
It is also quite probable that a good half of the faction leaders would have liquidated deviants at the earliest opportunity, both to forestall challenges and reduce resource burdens.
;zak; gives us the idea of a colony organized as an academic faculty, always in danger of the deadlock of committees, the hardening of protections for researchers who eschew colony-building for "brain work," and a civil war over the role of ethics. It combines the absurdities of the modern American campus, with its bloated support staff, venal administrators, and coddled students, and the horrors of the British public school system, with its tolerance of abuse and love of petty officialdom.
"Paean to SMAC" points out that the Peacekeepers and the Conclave (Believers) are, interestingly enough, "backward-looking," in that they try to recapture a way of life that they believe existed in an idealized past, rather than build something out of whole cloth.
I don't buy that. Space travel is not for the faint of heart. The Unity was surely not populated by a pile of lazy American consumers, fretting and wringing their hands about the end of the world. Most of them were probably as tough minded about surviving as the faction leaders themselves. It may depend on the selection process used to decide who would crew the Unity, but I seriously doubt it would have been one of these "mass public" crewings like some recent sci-fi movies. One about the world flooding and the Chinese getting these Arks done comes to mind.
I don't believe in the idea of the apathetic crew member, at all. In a world holocaust situation such as humanity was experiencing, apathetic people are going to quickly be dead. They lie down and take the first nuke blast, for instance. They succumb to plagues. They don't build bunkers or snipe from the hills. They become victims because they don't have a will to live.
There is no clear metric for whether liquidating talented people helps or hurts a regime. A leader may get away with it, a leader may not.
That actually doesn't make any sense as a new survival colony. Nor do the Morganites make any sense, for the same reason. They both depend on a level of societal infrastructure and scale-up bloat, that simply can't exist for a long time after Planetfall.
With The Believers, no argument. You can't be thinking terribly hard, if you put your faith into books that are a few thousand years old, that were written by many people, for multiple purposes. And then pretending there was some big Plan and accuracy about the whole thing, as opposed to an ongoing cultural process that ultimately arrives at the (still proliferating!) texts we see today. A litmus of one's ignorance of history, and of indoctrination methods.
With the UN Peacekeepers, I don't agree. They are seeking continuity in human notions of decency and law. To call them backwards, is like calling present day Americans backwards for thinking The First Amendment and other features of the US Constitution are worth something. Or that the traditions of British Common Law are backwards, even given current understanding of case law.
Take the Unity, for instance. Let’s leave aside the Chiron Interstellar Probe for now, which at least makes a successful planetfall. They’re waking up in pitch black darkness, in a metal canister, half-submerged in liquid. Many of them are choking on poisonous fumes. It’s a struggle to strike the emergency release. They emerge blind, puking, and naked, in the company of strangers. The warning klaxons are blaring, but main systems, including non-emergency lighting, are down.
Many never wake up. A large number are killed as they attempt to escape, either overcome by the hostile environment or slaughtered by infiltrators and those who are already out of cold sleep. Anybody who survives is conscious that they have no way of knowing what is actually happening, who is in charge, or who they should trust. The ship is dying. The mission is doomed. There is shooting.
No, The Unity was not populated by lazy American consumers, but the kind of survivor that you described was unlikely to have had the opportunity, much less the wherewithal, to obtain the education that qualifies one to join such a mission. Sure, there would have been intense, years-long training, sequestered from the unfolding apocalypse of Earth’s demise, and yes, it would have included emergency training, but it’s no stretch to believe that many would readily adhere to dominant personalities.
Quote from: bvaneveryI don't believe in the idea of the apathetic crew member, at all. In a world holocaust situation such as humanity was experiencing, apathetic people are going to quickly be dead. They lie down and take the first nuke blast, for instance. They succumb to plagues. They don't build bunkers or snipe from the hills. They become victims because they don't have a will to live.
The crews disperse into factions only after the missions arrive.
Quote from: bvaneveryThere is no clear metric for whether liquidating talented people helps or hurts a regime. A leader may get away with it, a leader may not.
Few faction leaders probably worry about this. The temptation to rid themselves of supernumerary mouths and potential upstarts at a time when both their power and resources are severely limited will probably prove too great.
Miriam’s followers believe that there has been a Second Coming.
Quote from: baneveryWith the UN Peacekeepers, I don't agree. They are seeking continuity in human notions of decency and law. To call them backwards, is like calling present day Americans backwards for thinking The First Amendment and other features of the US Constitution are worth something. Or that the traditions of British Common Law are backwards, even given current understanding of case law.
They are promoting a tradition few of them will actually remember, and rarely in its “pure” form, prior to the various calamities that preceded the Unity mission.
The game doesn't portray this level of detail about the Unity breakup. The opening cutscene of SMAC shows 7 escape pods neatly and simultaneously separating from the Unity. That's a political agreement, a crisis of unity, not everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The factions on the ship have agreed that they're going it alone. Nobody dies on atmosperic entry either.To clarify the origins of some of my comments, I am referring to the basis for a work of what might be called fan fiction. However, the original game was accompanied by a work of fiction as well. That work of fiction described not only a cataclysmic accident that destroyed an entire section of the spacecraft itself, but violence as a result of disagreement regarding how the mission should precede following the malfunction about Unity. In the background to the simulation that I have created, this violence is a great deal worse.
Aunty Entity: Do you know who I was? Nobody. Except on the day after, I was still alive. This nobody had a chance to be somebody. - Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
You don't actually know how anyone is going to respond to the real thing. There's a TV show on right now about a bunch of civilian goofs who have volunteered for Special Forces training. They're not going to get any tangible reward from it like a military commission. They just want to see if they can make it through the training. Most people can't, and it doesn't matter what they thought of themselves before they tried. Some people can. Which ones those are, isn't predictable. Like quantum physics you know someone will make it though.
You are positing a model of leadership and obedience that doesn't have to be valid in this scenario at all. The game makes 7 archetypes because that works for personifying a narrative and having actual gaming opponents. From a simulationist standpoint, it simply ain't gotta be so. But who's going to write a 100 survivor zombie apocalypse in space game? People film that kind of thing for TV because they can get a couple dozen actors to do character bits for the unfolding simulation.
No, the opening cutscene says, very explicitly, that they factionalize and separate in space. If anyone else said otherwise, like the novels, they got it wrong. How can you believe what you just said? Everyone would have to have crashed at the same landing site. On Planetfall, Hive minders can't walk across oceans to Morganite luxury complexes. I've contemplated writing a game where everyone crashes in 1 place, builds a 1st base, then the factional splits happen. But that's not SMAC.
Sure they won't worry about it. But it doesn't mean they're going to survive and prosper for having done it. They may very well cut their nose to spite their face. Let's say your best biologist has a conscience and you put a pickaxe through her head. Next thing you know your colony is hit by a plague. Gee where was your biologist? You might all be dead. Similarly if you kill the 1 farmer bright enough to know how to grow the food. Or the 1 soldier who knows anything about tactical defense and recon.
Over the long haul of 150 years, this played out in the real life empire of China. In 1435 the maritime eunuchs were doing a mercantile expansionist thing, like the Europeans did 80 years later. They sent 400..600 foot treasure boats (claimed; may have been smaller) as far as what's now Mozambique. But land based agrarian Confucians thought trade was evil and had a civil war with them. The Confucians won, gutted the navy in the process, and banned trade and travel for 150 years. The expansionist initative passed irretrievably to the Europeans. This is the primary reason most of us are not eating more rice.
What a bunch of rubes! Usually the promise is it will happen. Anyone getting sold a river that it did happen, clearly didn't read the Bible as to what the results were supposed to be.
"It will happen, and it will happen in our lifetimes. Jesus Power isn't just the future, Jesus Power is now."
Wow with a fiction like that, you'd have to seriously deal with the issue of apostasy. That's more denominationally bizarre than what even the Mormons believe. It would be an interesting fiction though, the process of casting new mythologies for the encountered reality.
Hey I don't remember signing The Declaration of Independence. I don't remember fighting the US Civil War, but I do check out the battlefields with my dog, 'cuz it's something we can both enjoy. I don't remember WW II or Auschwitz. Learning about and supporting events beyond one's lifetime, is not a remarkable human activity.
The “neat” separation of the escape pods from the Unity depicted in the opening cut-scene is not indicative of an absence of violence aboard the ship itself.
At some point, they either keep their head down and do the job they are assigned, or they sign on with a faction and begin taking orders.
Possibly there were entire colony pods filled with people who had no discernable allegiance, but these would be unlikely to survive long on their own after Planetfall.
The whole point of the bruhaha aboard Unity is that there is a scramble to obtain enough resources (humans, robots, equipment, food, and water) to “make a go of it” once on the ground.
The idea is that the Biblical cannon has grown a bit by the time Unity leaves Earth.
No, but you remember the experience of a reliable system of law and order, of participation in communities with national or global footprints, of access to multiple sources of information and opinion, etc. Many of the people aboard Unity would not have experienced that sort of thing except for a short period of time. Their commitment to liberal-democratic norms would be substantially weaker than yours or mine.
Actually for the most part it is. It means all factions agreed to launch simultaneously. If they were struggling for power like it was their first deathmatch, pods would be exploding, or sabotaged to remain locked on the Unity as it burns up on entry. Pods would be leaving at different times. Simultaneous release shows a high degree of coordination between faction leaders, which indicates a relative absence of violence. Sure there may have been a corridor skirmish here and there, but they are not warring with each other. They have neutral relationships when they get to Planet's surface. They are not holding grudges.
The tone of the opening cutscene is also fairly calm. The narration is calm. You can argue that they got it wrong, and that their included piece of written fiction doesn't agree with it. In case of a conflict, what does one regard as canon? Regardless of canon, the player is shown and told the circumstances. So I am inclined to go with that.
Now Earth, on the other hand, is definitely a madhouse.
Or they go zombie apocalypse, as has been covered by a half dozen TV shows by now. Kill anyone who gets near you. Trust is rather difficult in a survival scenario. Leadership positions are not stable; in SMAC, that is a fiction for the sake of the wargame.
Guess you don't have a lot of ;santi; in you, if you think you need that much overhead to survive. Nobody drops with Formers either. Most factions figure out how to do that later.
Ain't Biblical canon as we know it. When Jesus comes, you are either UP or DOWN.
Throwing out basic tenets of Christianity takes explaining. At least to Christians playing your game, who actually care. I'm atheist, I don't care as much. I do say it's bad science fiction. Not credible that Christians would believe The Rapture has come and they were left behind. You are a very, very bad person if Jesus leaves you behind.
How do you suppose everyone learned all the science and technology and running a ship stuff, except by a stable educational system? You don't build interstellar vessels by having everyone on Earth running around like chickens with their heads cut off in a zombie apocalypse.
There was most certainly a degree of law and order, to pull such an engineering feat off. Even if it was marital law. Democratic? Maybe, maybe not. Soviet or Chinese models of society, could have put a ship in space. A United Nations effort implies democracy exists to some degree though.
That said, one of those pods explodes immediately, and it’s not clear why.
I don’t think the tone of narration is indicative of the level of violence, high or low.
In my simulation, the challenges for a “sole survivor” would be greatly exacerbated by the fact that some groups already exhibit tight coordination, giving them a potent quantitative advantage (on top of an already fearsome qualitative advantage).
Given the fact that no follow-on missions were planned, it is also improbable that the Unity would have been equipped with the equivalent of single- or low-occupancy life pods.
Yes, there is bulk survival equipment, but it requires many hands. It wouldn’t be a simple matter of erecting a solar shelter, then a rain catchment, and opening an MRE every three days.
On a world where the atmosphere is poisonous for humans, overhead is essential.
Long-term use of encounter suits is possible only with a significant infrastructure already in place. We’re talking about facilities that are on par with those we saw in Martian. Remember that while Matt Damon was able to survive, he certainly didn’t build the base camp on his own.
In other words, believers read into the mystery and project a set of expectations impervious to empirical evidence.
In a post-apocalyptic environment, a great many people might be convinced that their mere survival confirms that they are among the Elect.
Depending on their level of technology, they might be gulled be petty “miracles” that you or I would explain with resort to science.
Most likely, they would simply accept that the Rapture didn’t happen quite as they had anticipated. Biblical Literalism faces many problems already.
Deciding that the Second Coming would be followed by a Third wouldn’t all that hard.
However, in this case, Miriam argues that the Rapture is made manifest in the completion of Unity: the entire crew is among the Elect, believer or not, and it is the responsibility of the Conclave to bring the wayward sheep back into the fold as a prelude to some Heavenly reward.
Remember, too, that there are multiple examples of doomsday cults, including Christian cults, prophesying doomsday, living through it, and revising their beliefs to protect their preexisting worldviews.
Some people will have been literally raised in compounds for the purpose of crewing the ship. There’s an insidious quality to that, isn’t there?
I've never gotten into this level of detail before, about what's going on. Looking at the ship, it's octagonal. So 1 pod has to blow up, for there to be 7 factions landing. Is this the source of the scattered Unity supply pods? It's an interesting "catch" though, that someone making the video ensured that only 7 pods would reach the surface.
Just get Rambo a mate. ;)
You ever heard of spacing people? Like, the 99 other people in your way?
Simply because you don't want your fiction to repeat "The Martian" (2015)? I think what you're really saying, is that you as an author don't want 1 person to make it. You want Groupthink scenarios, so you devise and ensure them. Which is an authorial choice, not a simulation.
I've always had trouble with the scales of colonization depicted in SMAC, or the Civ games for that matter. I think scale is deliberately ignored most of the time. 10 colonists, 100, 1000? The game is deliberately never clear, so that it can be a game, with rules, and art assets.
So more than 1 guy with a rucksack, less than an army. I don't know what we're arguing about exactly. I suspect a difference of personality styles regarding "the possible".
Which means they didn't read the Bible, and nobody that we would recognize as a mainstream Christian religion today, taught them the Bible. This is not Heaven. They were not Raptured. You are talking about a brand new religion that has only the most superficial trappings of previous Christianity, i.e. "Jesus was involved". I find it hard to believe that most people with current Christian indoctrination could swallow it. So what happened to them? All wiped out in an apocalypse? Leaving only charlatans to make up new guff and bamboozle the stupid?
Depending on their level of technology, they might be gulled be petty “miracles” that you or I would explain with resort to science.
Do they scale? Do they get tasked with Ministerial positions on a United Nations project? Do they get to make the Democratic social engineering choice when they reach Planet and eventually learn Ethical Calculus? Miriam doesn't "ship" as a freak. But she is devout and she ain't gonna give that up.
The total 100% cult leader is Yang. I'm actually confused how he got on this project. Let's pick on him for a bit!
Including Christians in a UN mission is hardly a brain fart. But this guy?? What did he contribute, why is he there? Other than to be an interesting voice about humanity's future in the game.
I don't buy that because I think it's our Earth that goes kablooey. Our global warming. Our societal time period: listen to the opening cutscene, the thing launches in 2016. We aren't "factory chicken farming" people to do space programs, and I can't think of any societal evolution where we would be.
Why do you put so much stock in factory chicken farming as a survival plan anyways? Who's to say that such people can perform when it comes to the real thing? c.f. "Soldier" (1998) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/) "Shoulda made 'em smart." Although... that's arguing degrees of chicken farming.
The thematic issue we're arguing about is the proposition, "People are Drones". I'm not, so... I don't tend to buy it.
Apart from the simulation, I don't see how one individual, or even a small group of individuals, could survive making a go of it without first being associated with a much larger operation. The air is toxic, the water non-potable, and the environment decidedly hostile? (I even added predatory wildlife in addition to the Mindworms.)
I could see people reaching the surface in those kinds of numbers (say, a dozen or so) and realizing that they can go on for a while, but not indefinitely. They'd need to join a colony or rely on raiding and scavenging. I can't see many such groups getting lucky often enough, especially during the early years following Planetfall, to make it work.
Religious belief is in large part a product of discrete time and place, even though it relies on foundational teachings from previous eras. A world that has endured multiple apocalyptic scenarios, including nuclear war, civil wars, famine, and disease outbreaks, may be open to the idea that Rapture means something more than being literally "disappeared."
I also look at the very existence of the Unity, when considering the implications of a dying Earth, to be spiritually significant. When it's a countdown to total destruction, selection for the mission will seem like a miracle to many people. In my fiction, I deal with this by describing how early manifests for the expedition were leaked, leading to assassinations and rioting.
Practically speaking, if The Unity is as massive as I think, it would have taken decades to build -- meaning that some modules would be operating on technology that was already obsolete by the time later crew members were even born.
The crew -- and I am thinking that there were tens of thousands --
Per his bio, Yang clearly manipulated those tasked to evaluate his suitability for the mission.
In 2016, we are both far more advanced (e.g., drones) and yet less advanced (e.g., cold sleep) than the Unity. I revised the launch dates and decided that the missions wouldn't be occurring anytime soon.
Look at historical and current space programs.
I think SMAC hand waved away all concerns about human technological development and capabilities, because it wanted to mostly skin Civ II techs and play mechanics and put them into space. It's not actually rational to posit that humans can get to Alpha Centauri in their neat spaceship, yet are fairly helpless and incapable on the ground, until a lot of time passes. Humans are made incapable because you're playing Earth history reskinned in space.
For instance: anyone getting ahold of any kind of fission reactor for civilian purposes, could suitcase nuke any base. Delivery systems for such a nuke, would not be difficult to construct. If you've got a terraformer, you've got a crawler that can move into an enemy base and blow it up.
In other words SMAC tech if you stare at it is f#%$#$ dumb. It works when you do not stare at it, when you allow yourself to be swept up in the narrative. Mapping the Human Genome, really?? We did that in real life not long after SMAC was released. What the heck does it have to do with recycling? Ever heard of a sawdust toilet? They just wanted to stick Civ II's Granaries somewhere early in the game.
Since in a hard sci-fi sense I don't accept SMAC's take on technology at all, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider more individuated, decentralized technologies for managing one's environment. I think these sorts of things would also be developed on a failing Earth. Colonizing Antarctica, solving moisture problems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and living on the oceans, are all things easier to achieve than making it to Alpha Centauri. The main thing that has stopped me from writing a game about all this stuff taking place on Earth, is the amount of complexity and historical continuity people would expect from it. There are some advantages to positing an alien planet that has almost no fauna, just fungus growing all over it.
They could screw a lot. You know we come with the equipment to do that, right? Social mores for a "repopulation society" might look kinda tawdry compared to a lot of people's current standards. Have a biologist check for likelyhood of birth defects and call it good. Very much a Planned social engineering choice.
They'd have to burn all those Bibles lying around. You know that book has survived in various forms for ~2000 years, right? With many revisions... but basically the same stories, more or less. And times were not pleasant in much of human history. Having faith when the world throws evil at you, is a large part of Christian identity.
Who actually is primarily interested in trashing Christian theology as we currently know it? Secularists, Muslims, maybe some neo-Pagans. Really don't buy that Christians invest a bunch of time rewriting their stuff. Their stuff worked for 2000 years and the world sucked bad for them plenty of times.
The spaceship shown in the cutscenes doesn't look remotely that damn big to me. You get a lot of shots of what a "Unity landing pod" looks like in early base illustrations. They're not huge, maybe 3 stories tall at most. Very human scale. Not that different from technology shown in the recent movie The Martian. I think a faction could actually be about 50..100 people.
I accept China putting forward "their man". China's important, even moreso now than they were when SMAC was written. What I don't get, is why Yang would thrive within the Communist Party apparatus. It's not impossible, but it's a hell of a story, how this guy managed to wheedle his way into this.
Since SMAC was written, we've had SpaceX. "It has to be big, only a Government can do it" seems to be an underlying assumption of both SMAC and your fictions derived from SMAC. Armies of experts....
Following the Choose path, it was possible for a faction to gradually breed the equivalent of Mentats.
It wasn’t a question of birthrates or genetics at all, but purely a calculation based on availability of food, water, and shelter.
Planet's atmosphere, though a gasping death to humans and most animals, is paradise for Earth plants. The high nitrate content of the soil and the rich yellow sunlight bring an abundant harvest wherever adjustments can be made for the unusual soil conditions.
Lady Deirdre Skye, "A Comparative Biology of Planet"
I don’t think that small groups would survive very long because they would be vulnerable to predators and unable to venture far from their supply dumps lest they run out of consumables.
They wouldn’t need to abandon existing teaching; just bolt on to it. (They wouldn’t need to do anything, actually. I just happen to think it unlikely that most world religions would survive the kinds of calamities it would take to truly doom Earth without experiencing radical change in their attitudes along the way.)
The game wants us to believe that Yang thrived because he is both cunning and patient: he can ape (and thus toe) the party line (no pun intended), efficiently execute tasks assigned to him, and scares the daylights out of even the Secret Police. He’s the kind of rare person who leaders determine that they would rather not deal with, but cannot do without.
Keeping with the story, Yang might well have been the power behind the Golden Emperor. He could also have concluded that it is not, in fact, better to rule in Hell than roll the dice in Heaven.
There was still a lot of work to be done on the Technology Tree when we abandoned the simulation. I most enjoyed adding various doctrines, such as Doctrine: Offense, Doctrine: Defense, and Doctrine: Insurgency. There was also an attempt, as I mentioned earlier, to distinguish Terran life sciences from those focused on the Chiron biome. I added things like Centauri Aquaculture.
Food not a prob. Plenty of sea water, and interstellar colonizers can handle desalination. Shelter... no trickier than The Martian. Or colonizing Mars.
And I totally disagree with you, because for the people who lived through various historical disasters, the end of their world as they knew it was exactly that for them. Lots of people in Europe died of plagues; you think Christianity went anywhere? The Holocaust happened; has Christianity vaporized? I used to think "big disasters" were some kind of disproof of the existence of God. Then eventually I realized that Christianity, from its very beginning, was a doctrine predicated on the suffering of its followers. It has plenty of social program about how to regard suffering, long as you swallow the basic bull@#$ of the thing. Don't need new bull@##$, the old bull@#$ already works. Has worked, will continue to work, for anyone with a weak enough mind and/or social indoctrination to accept those kinds of explanations.
Seems like if he's that talented, he'd become the Hitler, the Stalin, or the Mao. I really don't see why he would be 2nd to anyone. At least in time; sounds almost exactly like Stalin's actual origin story.
for the simple reason that he could not possibly sustain the charade of being royalty himself.
Do you see his personality as absolutely demanding titular leadership?
It might work better if we knew that China didn't have an imperial tradition, but they do, and there was presumably no way for Yang to masquerade.
You are correct that the original seven factions cover so much ground so well that they make many custom factions seem excessively narrow or inherently duplicative by comparison. That’s a huge testament to the design work of Brian Reynolds, which clearly stood the test of time.
And traditionally, strong men have cared very much about the rituals that conveyed both their political and spiritual legitimacy.
I’m making precisely the argument that Yang can dictate terms to a puppet emperor. I don’t agree with your conclusion that his personality type is necessarily so advanced in its narcissism that there would be no alternative but for him to have pursued titular as well as de facto leadership, especially if he perceived that human society on Earth was doomed and needed to get aboard Unity.
It’s worth asking whether a lot of people on Earth believed in the viability of the Unity mission. They might have agreed that the Earth was dying, but not about precisely when it would die, what it would mean for their own physical well-being, or whether Unity was all but guaranteed to burn up on leaving orbit.
Later, she gradually realizes that there is a growing rift between people like herself, who consider survivalism to have genuine philosophical dimensions, and Holnists, who are basically immoral epicureans living out a Viking fantasy.
Your remarks on ritual imply that you believe these things are done for their own sake.
There have been many cases in history where leaders with theoretically absolute power are weak enough to be made puppets. Tsar Nicholas is among the best examples.
During the Second World War, a case can be made that Emperor Hirohito was also at the mercy of certain officers.
For procedural reasons, Putin stepped back from the Russian presidency for a number of years before resuming that post, mostly for the benefit of outside observers of Russian politics. In practice, he was considered never to have given up his hold on power.
Yang would need to hide his power to sustain the impression that the emperor is the true power behind the throne. The idea here is that Yang could stymie potential adversaries by using the symbolism of imperial patronage to his advantage. Remember that the situation in Golden China was unstable, so it is possible that Yang cannot directly eliminate all of his opponents. The man is crafty, yes, but not omnipotent.
No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution", as one prominent stormtrooper put it, than Röhm. Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.[12] Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism, and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.
Remember that global leaders wouldn’t necessarily be in a good spot for selection as crew.
Of course he's crafty: he manipulated his way into he ship and command staff in the first place.The official psychological profile for Yang indicates he possessed a "near perfect balance" on the psychological axis for the ship manifest. The ability to possess a psychological profile of the same caliber requires a significant level of manipulation unless the tests arise from a casual source.
I don't see the tension between playing a behind-the-scenes role in which he is still the power behind the Chinese throne and then assuming direct leadership of a faction only once he is on Chiron. It might work better if we knew that China didn't have an imperial tradition, but they do, and there was presumably no way for Yang to masquerade. His strong willpower would not be an asset there; he'd have had to defer to an actual blood claimant.
Yang is narcissistic, but I sense that he wants to be obeyed more than worshipped. Remember that he nerve staples people; the drones would scarcely know who he is.
unless the tests arise from a casual source.
Hereditary monarchies don't put the best people in charge. Growing political power out of the barrel of a gun, does, at least as far as making others obey is concerned. Can be pretty crap for administrating the country though. The 20th century is pretty much that model. I see no reason why anyone would ever return to antiquated notions of bloodline monarchies. What you'd really have is ruthless people seizing power. If there are too many strong leaders, some die. Like Trotsky.
As I said above, the existence of an Emperor at all, is a throwback to a time that was long gone. Hardly shocking that he had no real power. What you'd need to explain, is why on an apocalyptic Earth, anyone would newly constitute this sort of ridiculous hereditary tomfoolery. "Our ancestors were stupid" explains a lot of the past, but it doesn't hold up when we've got a century of leaders doing things other ways. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ida Amin, Fidel Castro, Suharto, Saddam Hussein... what's not clear about the pattern?
I'm not aware of anyone who was fooled. Maybe ignorant people who don't know anything about politics or history and would be fooled by anything. Certainly not Russians!
Stalin directly eliminated all of his opponents. Mao came very close to that model, although he used denunciation and reprogramming extensively as well. The Nazis had The Night of the Long Knives. Hey, in Roman times if half the Senate didn't like the other half, they murdered them. This is an old thing! I just am not seeing the world where Yang has any incentive to hold back. He comes from a class of persons who are not squeamish about such things, and who are awfully successful at carrying them out. Yang is a known security spook; why wouldn't he throw his opponents into the back of a gas van and call it a day?
I think it is worth quoting one section of that Wikipedia article about the Nazis. Just to show how unvarnished these men were about killing the opposition.
Why? For autocratic countries, they'd easily be at the head of the line. Nor am I seeing the UN enforcing a lot of selection discipline if the Earth is about to be toast.
It would take a lot of warfare to exhaust the resources of the solar system. Basically WMDs ruining every available surface.
"casual source" meaning what? That the tests are not taken very seriously by those who administrate them? That they are empty rituals? That they don't actually have much diagnostic utility? That the results are not and in practice cannot be objectively verified and enforced, merely interpreted by people who choose what to believe about them? In my Skeptics group in Asheville we've actually had debates about this sort of thing, for instance when discussing the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and other psychological test inventories.
It seems like you’re asking, “Why wouldn’t Yang just murder every last person who said no?” And my response is, because it’s easier to catch flies with honey and a swatter than it is to catch them with a swatter alone.
We just seem to have very different visions of who Yang is, personally. You see him as an individual who would stop at nothing to hold a very visible position of power. I think he would be content to be remote from people.
You’re confusing use of violence with a particular kind of strategy. The idea that Yang suborns the emperor doesn’t presume he gives up assassinating his enemies or imprisoning malcontents. It’s that he considers the emperor a useful front that lets him help people convince themselves that they are participating in virtuous tradition rather than accepting the rule of yet another strongman.
I also think the mission’s low odds of success would be factored against them.
People may be betting that there will be other, safer ways to flee Earth or avert global catastrophe.
That, or the problems on Earth being so urgent that there isn’t time for large-scale terraforming of dead worlds.
Why do you think there's anything about his character as portrayed in SMAC that makes him a sweet talker? Cult leader, philosophical, "sayings of Mao" kind of guy, essayist, sure. Not seeing the sweet talker. "What do I care for your suffering?"
And what's more true to the materials actually presented in the game?
There's nothing presented in SMAC that portrays him as interested in subterfuge. You are adding this. He's clearly into obedience, control, genetic reengineering, and societal programming. He talks about nihilism and spirituality; it's difficult to know what his sincere views on spirituality actually are.
Not seeing the "low odds of success", frankly. They built a big ship. That's predicated on shipping experience in the solar system.For a trip that requires automation to a level until then unprecedented. And that’s before accounting distance, the effects of attendant cold sleep on the crew, and (in my fiction) the known bad end of the previous mission.
How many despots are dumb enough to believe that?? They're causing a lot of the problems, they know how power and wars really work on Earth. Can't take a genius to say, hey, we're heading for deep doodoo here.Men of incredible power are unusually good at the game of self-deceit. It’s also not exactly clear how many lifetimes it will take for Earth to fail completely. Leads of whole nations may calculate that they cannot really empathize with imagined future generations enough to risk their own hides for them.
You don't have to terraform dead worlds. People can live in orbital habs. Firaxis might not have even thought about "Hey, what about the solar system?" when they designed the game. Or did and ignored it.
His original psych profile on the game website very clearly indicates that he manipulated his evaluator.
Yang is also closely associated with the Chinese philosophy of legalism, which proposes that a ruler should use subterfuge as a tool of governance.
Quote from: bvaneveryNot seeing the "low odds of success", frankly. They built a big ship. That's predicated on shipping experience in the solar system.For a trip that requires automation to a level until then unprecedented.
Leads of whole nations may calculate that they cannot really empathize with imagined future generations enough to risk their own hides for them.
Yes, orbital habs are probably a thing. Yet they are far more easily destroyed than whole worlds.
I guess you're going to make me go look at the teeny, tiny amount of background material presented about him during the course of a regular game. As opposed to the vast swath of quotes that primarily define him as a player plays the game.
You say this but why is a Western audience supposed to know anything about it? It's not like the game says "Yang is a proponent of legalism." Rather, you figure it's part of his backstory, even though it isn't stated anywhere. Maybe after I've looked at all of Yang's game materials more closely again, I'll make the stronger claim that you're flat out making this up / inserting it. That it isn't actually there or stated anywhere, that you interpret Yang in this manner. Which might not be completely unfair and no evidence may be provided to the contrary, but it comes off a lot like someone saying, "Gandalf is this and this and that." Really? Where is it in the book? How would a reader know it?
I suppose you think they zipped to Mars in a day? That's not hard sci-fi.
Getting off-world is not about risking one's hide for someone else! It's about saving your own bacon, if you think Earth is doomed.
I dunno, if destroyed = rendered uninhabitable for a generation, it's not that tough to destroy a world.
You're right. I misremembered. Neither the instruction manual nor the Yang bio on SMAC's website refer to legalism. This was apparently a popular conclusion drawn by the fan base after the game's release. Echoes of it appear on the Civilization Wiki, the "Paean to SMAC" blog (which engages in a partial reimagining of some factions, to be sure), the game's Wikipedia page, and including what I take to be an official GURPS RPG adaptation from late 2002 that includes a one-word reference to the philosophy among Yang's character skills.
I think the reference to Legalism gives Yang some needed depth.
The real question is whether collectivism and authoritarianism are ideologies on the same level as environmentalism and capitalism, or just methods of social organization that can be laid atop most ideologies -- in which case Yang would benefit from a unique ideology of his own.
Quote from: bvaneveryI suppose you think they zipped to Mars in a day? That's not hard sci-fi.
I think the first manned expedition outside the Sol System would be regarded as far more challenging than missions to Mars, which would not involve hibernation of the same duration.
Quote from: bvaneveryGetting off-world is not about risking one's hide for someone else! It's about saving your own bacon, if you think Earth is doomed.
Not if you believe that it will be three, four, five, or six lifetimes before the world finally ends. "To rule in Hell..."
Interesting to know. It might be frustrating for a fan base to arrive at ideas, only to have authors or screenwriters squash / eliminate them when finally designating a canon. Not that SMAC has this problem; I'm thinking of Star Wars or Star Trek fans. Not that I've followed their fandoms enough to know what their community harrunges might be. I've had a rather solo experience of sci-fi, which tends to orient me towards "the materials as presented".
All the faction leaders can benefit from more depth. SMAC is a good effort for a game of its time and genre, but it isn't Game of Thrones. Consider the writing and acting resources dedicated to each and it's pretty clear why character depth is going to fall short. Isn't it interesting that it's the only 4X TBS I can think of, that has any character depth at all? And that this hasn't changed in the 18 years since its release.
I'd say SMAC offers a fair amount of philosophical depth, quoting so may various philosophers, and allowing the main characters to be mouthpieces of certain philosophies. Yang expounds on death, nihilism, and collectivism a lot. But I think we're realizing in this debate, that philosophical depth does not equate to character depth. The cognitive dissonance of this can be seen when doing diplomacy with Yang. Yes it's cool that the faction leaders have any depth at all when doing diplomacy, but compared to the level of nuance Yang displays in his quotes and passages, interacting with "Yang your enemy" can be quite jarring as to how straightforward he is.
I'm inclined to see the Communist version of collectivism as a distinct ideology, but that in practice wasn't much implemented. Instead, the actual Communist regimes have been authoritarian, with the State and the Communist Party becoming the new ladder by which to dominate everything. There's even a term for this... can't remember it, would have to pore over wiki pages about Socialism again to find it. The wikipedia entry on Statism seems relevant to these musings in general, such as whether Authoritarianism or Fascism are ideologies.
Sorta like arguing ocean-worthiness vs. Trans-Atlantic voyages.
And why would they believe they had that long? The cutscene for The Planetary Datalinks indicates that the USA became a rather un-free place, big on information control. That would seem to be a weatherbell of the whole world getting ready to go <POOF> frankly. I'm supposing that the Unity still got built and launched as the USA was turning despotic. That Unity was built in response to a crisis, and not when everything was peaches and rosy. "Earth is turning to crap" is the premise of the opening cutscene of SMAC.
Plenty of people live in awful conditions like that depicted in the opening cutscene credits for years or even lifetimes.
...If I was looking to live forever, I wouldn't run for President. Too much of a target, the President...
Yes yes yes DO YOU BELIEVE that they launched Unity FOR A REASON or not?
If you believe it, leaders of the neo-Third World have a reason to believe it too.
It's that simple.
Well I guess this debate has been instructive in that people will find a way to believe anything, and retcon it, if they are sufficiently vested in their own vision of "what happened". My idea of a lot of world leaders is people jumping off the Titanic. The kind of guy who shoves his way onto the lifeboat, damn the whole "women and children first" thing.
A lot of people blame Presidents for taking vacations while they're in office for some reason. Maybe they have no clue that it ain't exactly punching a clock for your shift.
You’re behaving like a child. There’s nothing to cry over.
It was made clear to you from the very start that we begin with a very different set of assumptions about the fiction.
Also, I've yet to receive a reply from Princess Foundry. Just figuring to mention that, if you are still interested in me voicing stuff for this.