Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Mart on December 16, 2018, 01:31:57 PM

Title: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: Mart on December 16, 2018, 01:31:57 PM

Has that been ever attempted? To adapt SMAX factions to SMAC?
We have opposite gender versions, but how about having for example CyCon in SMAC? There are custom factions for SMAC, so it would be possible to copy and modify as needed these in expansion.

Four human factions would be easy:
CyCon
Drones
Angels
Cult

Some adaptation of faction attributes would need to be done, but they start on land, so I guess it would be all.

Pirates

We have no "marine/naval" stuff in SMAC, so they would need to start on land. In scenarios though it could be different, but having additional resource from ocean tiles would need to be replaced by something, not sure now what would be good enough.

Caretakers
Usurpers

Biggest problem. Two solutions:
- If keeping "human-only" theme, they might be cult-like factions, having their philosophy around Progenitors. But this would be practically a mod.
- It would be possible to make Alien-like factions. Their diplomacy might be changed to what they speak in expansion. No "Alien" keyword though, co victory conditions would be human based. It might work quite well though, but I have not attempted it.

Any thoughts on this? And have we had any attempts to make these?

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2018, 02:34:48 PM

Well now I just realized you can't control the mineral content of ordinary squares, only bonus squares.  So there's no way to implement oceans that have better mineral content.  I'm also not seeing faction bonus descriptions in alpha.txt that would distinguish the Pirates.  I think it would be best to name them something else.  You can change their fixation from Power to Wealth as I did, since there wasn't any faction fixated on Wealth.  The other fixation that's lacking among factions is Thought Control, which I did for the Data Angels.  There's also the possibility of no fixation at all, which I did recently for the Believers.

From a gameplay standpoint I don't see the point of the exercise though.  Getting rid of sea bases is an inferior game IMO.

Also how do you add 7 more factions to the original game?  The original menu does not give you an option to choose from 14 factions, there are only the original 7 to choose from.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: Mart on December 16, 2018, 02:46:24 PM

Quote from: bvanevery on December 16, 2018, 02:34:48 PM

...

Also how do you add 7 more factions to the original game?  The original menu does not give you an option to choose from 14 factions, there are only the original 7 to choose from.

It could be used at least in scenario building. In editor you could reload a faction, where you can type the name. Also, temporarily alpha.txt could be changed to have substituted names in that 7 factions list. From experience, however, I know, after doing something like this n times, it is almost certain to forget about manually changing back that txt file.

It is though usefull if you prepare a scenario for someone else, cause another player would need to add the new faction to the main folder, and in .sc file there would everything already set up.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2018, 03:08:20 PM

What advantage is to be gained by these heroics in any event?  If there are technologies or facilities in SMACX that are not liked, they can be removed.

The faction placement algorithm may be screwed up because of the Aliens, but with my world building tweaks, I've mitigated that to the size of Enormous 80x160 planets.  For people who insist on larger maps than that, there are other techniques for getting reasonable starts.  Such as pregenerating enough maps that one doesn't remember the details of any of them, then just randomly picking one to play.

There's no cost argument, the Planetary Pack is sold on GOG every few months for $1.49.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: Mart on December 16, 2018, 03:16:11 PM

Some people play SMAC only, or play mostly SMAC, so these adaptations could be used for scenarios, which replicate SMAX scenarios, but in SMAC.
If we have a game of SMAX with only 7 original factions, then there is no problem, but if we mix-in some of these new ones, we can no longer closely replicate such scenario in SMAC. With these adaptations, it would be possible with only little differences.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2018, 09:50:21 PM

I don't personally see the point in catering to this.  I spend buckets upon buckets of time on my modding work, which I give away for free.  The least someone can do, if they want to experience my work, is pay $1.49 and abandon their personal aesthetics / hangups about which version of SMAC they're willing to touch.  I'm only interested in objective advantages between terran.exe and terranx.exe, not subjective insistences that someone will play "only original SMAC".  Fine, they don't have to play my mod then.

I think it would be fine if a "cut down" version of SMACX existed, that got rid of things like Resonance Armor and Lasers, for instance.  Frankly I think the tech tree has twice as much junk in it, as is needed for a complex and challenging game.  However, I personally am not going to produce this "stripped down SMACX".  It's not in my best interest to split my player base in many different directions.  Rather, it is best that I offer one free product, and get as much attention for that one product on the internet as possible.  It's actual work to do that, and I see no point in diluting my effort.

Someday, the actual "stripped down game" will be my own commercial 4X title, that I make money from.  I don't know when.

If someone likes my work, but wants something different out of it than I do, well I did license it CC-A-NC.  They can do the work of modding it, if they really really want to.  And supporting their mod, if they want to release their changes publicly to others.  I'm declining to do the work.  Open source is about people stepping up and doing the gruntwork, for what they actually want to have.  Being generous and giving people things for free only goes so far.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: Geo on December 16, 2018, 10:03:35 PM

Did you put your mod in the downloads section of this forum, bvanevery? Can't seem to find it...

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2018, 10:07:01 PM

No my mod work continues to exist in my development thread in the Modding forum.  That is where I've announced to like 6 sites that it exists.  I'd like the occasional person to get sucked into my development commentary and read what I post about development.  If someday I reach a point where there's no new development and I'm strictly in maintenance mode, then I'll finally put it in the Downloads section.  Until then, it's simply work to bother with things being in 2 different places.  The dominant consumers of my mod are from /r/4Xgaming and they know where it's located, because I've never told them it's anywhere else.

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: Geo on December 16, 2018, 10:10:40 PM

Oh no, now I have to sift through another thread. :P

Title: Re: Expansion factions adapted to vanilla SMAC
Post by: bvanevery on December 17, 2018, 07:03:43 PM

Not to grab my mod.  Most recent version is attached to the bottom of my 1st post.  Granted, it's a long first post, so you'll have to use those scrolling finger muscles.  But plenty of people have figured it out without problem.