Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: Trench Dog on July 22, 2019, 11:27:20 PM

Title: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 22, 2019, 11:27:20 PM
So figured to just make a full on new topic, because some of the ideas and other stuff have changed over the years.

For those of you unaware- I had an account here by the name of ComradeCrimson. Changed to this one instead because this is my more commonly used alias and quite frankly its been so long I forgot the login details and didn't want to bother using it anyways.

Given now that I have a fair bit more skill, stability, etc I can easily crank out stuff; that said I also have new ideas regarding factions.

So first things first: There was my old faction, the only one I really bothered to complete-

The United Army of Humanity. Which after some basic fiddling I found you couldn't give a secret project to a faction without some serious fiddling and exact matches with the text; in addition to some other balance concerns I gave them different bonuses.


So for now, here's a finished faction:


The Terran Hegemony, otherwise known as the Hegemony.

A totalitarian faction focused on eugenics and the genetic manipulation of its followers to create a new human race, and to replace the native flora and fauna with that of Earth based life forms, however modified to overtake the planet. The marshal values control and proclaims that it was the likes of bickering human factions that caused the collapse of Earth and instead wishes to guide humanity's evolution into something survivable and completely unified under one banner.

Gameplay wise in testing they are very good at expansion and production, but they suffer with research and are vulnerable to probes. Definitely a very strong aggressive faction too due to their production, and they will need a lot of military due to their poor relationship with Planet.

Comes with a custom graphics set, voice over and unique text.


Here's their datalinks descripton:
#DATALINKS1
^LEADER: {Marshal Humphrey Rodderick}
^BACKGROUND: {UN Peacekeeping Force, British Royal Bio Command}
^AGENDA: {Totalitarian Eugenics Regime}
^Genetic Controls: {Free PUNISHMENT SPHERES at each base}

#DATALINKS2
^+2 SUPPORT:   {Genetic castes commit all resources}
^-5 PLANET: {Actively purges alien life and disturbs ecosystem}
^-2 ECONOMY:  {Genetically modified population not skilled with commerce}
^Genetic Castes: {Free GENEJACK FACTORY at each base}
^{May not use Democratic politics.}

I'll be producing some different factions over time; overall I want to try some new crazy strategies out and work with some cool themes. For the most part I find the original factions cover a lot of the ideological bases pretty well and are flexible, but always room for crazy experimentation I suppose.

Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 23, 2019, 05:04:10 AM
I'm a little confused at how the Marshal believes others are demagogues, yet he runs a totalitarian regime.  Does he have an unironic complete lack of awareness of what he's doing?

I ask because in my study of various real world dictators, notably Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin, they pretty much seem to know exactly what they're doing.  They might tell other people all sorts of stories about so-and-so being evil, but it's gaslighting / propaganda.  They know they're all playing the same game with people's heads, and that it's about power.  This became very apparent to observers as Stalin was climbing to power, when Politburo meetings were becoming ideologically strained, with all sorts of rubbish uttered just to paint someone else badly for a day or two.  Then the completely opposite views would be held next week!  All just words; smarter people more interested in survival, recognized the posturing for exactly what it was, and kept their heads down because Stalin was going to be the winner.

As for the gameplay, doesn't -5 PLANET mean you cough and the whole world floods?  Particularly with Genejack Factories to egg it on.

A Punishment Sphere driven society is an interesting idea.  People can neither be unhappy nor excel.  In my mod I deliberately made the spheres cheap and available early, as torturing people to keep them in line really shouldn't need any special arrangements.  I might use them for distant cities, if I'm not obliterating everything.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 23, 2019, 06:46:21 AM
I'm a little confused at how the Marshal believes others are demagogues, yet he runs a totalitarian regime.  Does he have an unironic complete lack of awareness of what he's doing?

I ask because in my study of various real world dictators, notably Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin, they pretty much seem to know exactly what they're doing.  They might tell other people all sorts of stories about so-and-so being evil, but it's gaslighting / propaganda.  They know they're all playing the same game with people's heads, and that it's about power.  This became very apparent to observers as Stalin was climbing to power, when Politburo meetings were becoming ideologically strained, with all sorts of rubbish uttered just to paint someone else badly for a day or two.  Then the completely opposite views would be held next week!  All just words; smarter people more interested in survival, recognized the posturing for exactly what it was, and kept their heads down because Stalin was going to be the winner.

As for the gameplay, doesn't -5 PLANET mean you cough and the whole world floods?  Particularly with Genejack Factories to egg it on.

A Punishment Sphere driven society is an interesting idea.  People can neither be unhappy nor excel.  In my mod I deliberately made the spheres cheap and available early, as torturing people to keep them in line really shouldn't need any special arrangements.  I might use them for distant cities, if I'm not obliterating everything.


Probably need to re-write it, but yeah he knows what he's doing and he is interested in power. That's just his justification, I should probably re-write the description to pinpoint that better. The man is rather extreme as a whole and there's no real skirting around that. An ends justifies the means type of person.

As for the -5 planet, yeah- that and native life becomes more and more hostile faster. And this is representative of the rampant, unchecked genetic modification he does and wanton destruction of the environment for "humanity's progress." Stuff like damming rivers, rerouting them, tearing out native flora and fauna and replacing it with genetically modified stock of Earth flora and fauna and completely disregarding the ecology for the sake of his faction's totalitarian ideals of forced human evolution.

Edited the previous post now to something more suitable with the faction description.

Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 23, 2019, 07:14:25 AM
Is he going to make a million bucks harvesting stupid mindworms?

Ideally, he would be prohibited from making mindworms.  But I don't know that that's possible for a faction.

If -5 PLANET isn't bad enough, you could also give the faction a negative PSI "bonus" in the faction.txt.  Assuming a negative number works.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 23, 2019, 07:29:04 AM
Part of his income does actually come from slaughtering mind worms, yes.

As for further negatives bonuses I don't think its necessary, I tested it both as a player and an AI.

Player wise its easy to get powerful but anyone who has a tech advantage on you can seriously punish you hard. Playing on Thinker difficulty, I ran into ;marr; and started to struggle, and  ;lal; who managed to build up relatively undisturbed also posed some issues for me too. Morgan and the University had a tough time dealing with me as they bordered me, but overall the faction seems fairly well balanced I feel. Unity Army (suggestions welcome on a name btw) is definitely industrially strong but is crap at research and gets kind of stagnant when it comes to discovering techs. Probe teams seem to be pretty decent options for them though.

The AI needs some further testing but from what I seen the AI doesn't capitalize on the bonuses as well as a person does and they seem to be like a more belligerent and uncooperative Free Drones faction in a way.

Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 23, 2019, 04:53:52 PM
As for naming suggestions, I don't have anything specific yet, but I do have some thoughts on thematic relevance. 

"Unity" is really off the mark.  This faction is exactly the opposite of anything the Unity mission stood for: squabblers are wrong, only the Marshal is right.  "Unification" or "Unifying" might work better, and would definitely be a kind of doublespeak.  It also connotes a cult to some of us, because of the Unification Church, so that may or may not be a reason to use or avoid it.  My instinct is to stay away from "unification / unity" words and find something else, but I wouldn't pronounce final judgment on that, in the absence of anything concrete.

"Army" is a bad choice.  The Spartans do an army, that's their schtick.  Your faction is about genetic control.  Way back in the days of Gamma World, one of their factions was the "Knights of Genetic Purity".  I'm pretty sure the acronym was meant to resemble the KKK, although who knows maybe also the KGB.  That's not an explicit suggestion, that's just an idea of where genetics and eugenics might lead you.

All this war with Planet implies a lot of terraforming.  "Earth First" is a phrase that immediately leaps to mind, as to what the political consciousness of this faction might be like.  "Earth Makers".  "Originalists".  "Homeworld".  I'm imagining a sort of Earth nativist movement, rather explicitly racist and speciest.  Sort of thing Donald [Sleezebag] might like to be in charge of, but worse.  "@#ck Planet."  "Make Earth Great Again!"  "Planet is a @##thole."

The Eugemony?
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 24, 2019, 07:44:40 PM
As for naming suggestions, I don't have anything specific yet, but I do have some thoughts on thematic relevance. 

"Unity" is really off the mark.  This faction is exactly the opposite of anything the Unity mission stood for: squabblers are wrong, only the Marshal is right.  "Unification" or "Unifying" might work better, and would definitely be a kind of doublespeak.  It also connotes a cult to some of us, because of the Unification Church, so that may or may not be a reason to use or avoid it.  My instinct is to stay away from "unification / unity" words and find something else, but I wouldn't pronounce final judgment on that, in the absence of anything concrete.

"Army" is a bad choice.  The Spartans do an army, that's their schtick.  Your faction is about genetic control.  Way back in the days of Gamma World, one of their factions was the "Knights of Genetic Purity".  I'm pretty sure the acronym was meant to resemble the KKK, although who knows maybe also the KGB.  That's not an explicit suggestion, that's just an idea of where genetics and eugenics might lead you.

All this war with Planet implies a lot of terraforming.  "Earth First" is a phrase that immediately leaps to mind, as to what the political consciousness of this faction might be like.  "Earth Makers".  "Originalists".  "Homeworld".  I'm imagining a sort of Earth nativist movement, rather explicitly racist and speciest.  Sort of thing Donald [Sleezebag] might like to be in charge of, but worse.  "@#ck Planet."  "Make Earth Great Again!"  "Planet is a @##thole."

The Eugemony?

Eugemony sounds pretty good; and yeah they aren't racist. It's not a faction of Nazis trying to make some idealized Aryan or something, rather a faction literally creating genetic castes of people to do different jobs and biddings, forming humanity into an almost eusocial type of society that is easily controlled by the likes of Marshal Rodderick. Some parallels could be made to the Hive but the Hive does it through social experimentation and indoctrination with the veneered aim to find "utopia" (when its really just Yang having complete control) where as Rodderick is literally just modifying humans to suit his purposes.

In addition to that- you are absolutely correct on the Earth First mentality. They want the "purity of Terran life forms" and to create a new Earth essentially- as Planet and planet mind are a complete affront to their ideals.


Another naming idea- The Eugenic Mandate, or Eugenic Mandate. Thoughts?
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 24, 2019, 10:28:44 PM
"Mandate" doesn't mean anything to me.  It is phonetically similar to "Mandarin" and makes me think of Chinese, ala The Manchurian Candidate.

The Genejacks would fit the game's lore, except that then it would be Chairman Yang's gift to industry.  That sort of nomenclature might be worth playing with though.

The Genecutters?  "Why then, can we not cut one code here, and start another there?"
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 25, 2019, 01:16:29 AM
Evolutionary Regime? Evolving humanity for the future, and the planet?

Will ponder on this more a bit, I do intend to make some other factions too. I had some ideas for a few joke factions too that I'll make soon enough.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 25, 2019, 02:34:37 AM
They're not doing Evolution though.  They're doing the opposite: Intelligent Design.  So I don't think evolution or evolutionary is on the right track.

"Gene Stealers" is an image that comes to my mind, sorta ala Bladerunner, but not appropriate for a faction name.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 25, 2019, 02:42:30 AM
They're not doing Evolution though.  They're doing the opposite: Intelligent Design.  So I don't think evolution or evolutionary is on the right track.

"Gene Stealers" is an image that comes to my mind, sorta ala Bladerunner, but not appropriate for a faction name.

By the technical term of evolution, you are absolutely correct they are not "evolving" they are intelligently designing the human race.

But was just meaning theme wise.

The Terran/Earth Guard? Has that authoritarian sound to it, they value the idealism and romanticism of Earth and its original state.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: DeepWoodsSaint on July 25, 2019, 03:45:48 AM
Maybe something like the Essentialist Guard/Ascendancy/Hegemony/Enactors?
From a Platonic, philosophical standpoint, they mean to bring about the idealistic, perfected 'essence' of humanity once more, in the face of Planet's perceived, real 'imperfection'...but it is a little high-falutin'.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 25, 2019, 04:10:39 AM
Terran Hegemony. There we go. I'll go with that.


As for now; here's a joke faction I made. I suggest just booting it up and trying it out.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/247517340097314816/603784467856752661/unknown.png)

For those who are fans of DriveTribe/Old Top Gear, I was bored and inspired off of watching youtube videos.



Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 25, 2019, 07:52:42 AM
Sinking cars.  I used to drive something like that!
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 25, 2019, 07:57:34 PM
Glad you didn't sink with it!


Also, updated the Terran Hegemony with the new name.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 25, 2019, 09:23:38 PM
I don't take chances with things like that.  I remember some road in a National Forest that had water going over it.  I got out of my car to look at how much.  I probed the water with a stick to figure out the depth.  It wasn't much, but I decided to take no chance.  I couldn't probe all of it, and if anything went wrong, I'm the one who would be stuck miles from nowhere without aid.

And I always camped on high ground.  People die doing stupid things like camping at the bottom of a river bed that's known to flood periodically.  So yeah the 100 year storm comes through.  You're the one who's dead, not the actuary.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 25, 2019, 09:27:50 PM
Wise words. I took similar mottos myself, especially when out in the bush.

I actually have an idea for a faction; looking back at the Motor Tribe one- an actual serious idea.

A sort of "nomad" inspired faction where its meant to travel fast and long, and instead of normal colony pods; have colony "speeders" that travel faster. Does anyone know how to implement this? I also had a wild idea of doing a helicopter based one but I feel like the AI would be too stupid to properly do that.


I also got another faction idea in mind; but I feel it would be immensely overpowered:

An aircraft focused faction of some sort. Cloudbase Academy in its theme, aircraft enthusiast types who got a philosophy of "being as free as the wind" sort of deal.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2019, 03:33:54 AM
Making a Speeder or Hovertank predefined colonization unit is trivial in alphax.txt.  The trick would be making it only available to 1 faction.

I recently posted a thread about making a tech that a specific faction starts with.  The predefined unit could be given that way.  The downside is that if you click too far back on prereq techs in the Datalinks, it'll crash the game.  If you're willing to tell your players not to do that "or suffer the consequences", then you're fine.  I'm not willing to do that for my own mod, because I want the broadest possible adoption for my releases, and I don't want to be blamed for introducing bugs.

Actually I just realized you could do it in a non-buggy way.  It would have to be a late game tech, and a "leaf" dead end from some other tech.  Only the faction you want to have it, gets it at the start of the game.  This approach might have some skewing effects on some kind of tech cost mechanism though.  Like everyone else is working on Tier 1 techs and now you've got a Tier 10 tech, might change some cost formula somewhere, due to the average having such a high tech in it.

The faction could still trade away this tech to other factions.  You can't stop them from doing that.  So strictly speaking the idea of a faction-specific unit does not exist in SMAC, like it does in other games say Civ III forwards.  But you can definitely have a faction start with a kind of unit that others don't start with.

I seem to recall that Needlejet Colonists do actually work.  You can fly them out and actually build cities with them, on land at least, IIRC.  Problem is, the AI won't do it.  Has no clue.  So I removed that from my predefined unit designs, once I realized it would just make the AI do something pointless.

That's a general problem with predefined units.  I've concluded that they're for getting the AI to do stuff.  If the AI won't do something reasonable with a unit, it shouldn't be in there, because it'll just water down the AI's production into pointless stuff.  I've come up with a number of units that would be nifty for human players, but the AI can't handle them, so I discard the designs.
Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: Trench Dog on July 26, 2019, 10:25:01 AM
Making a Speeder or Hovertank predefined colonization unit is trivial in alphax.txt.  The trick would be making it only available to 1 faction.

The faction could still trade away this tech to other factions.  You can't stop them from doing that.  So strictly speaking the idea of a faction-specific unit does not exist in SMAC, like it does in other games say Civ III forwards.  But you can definitely have a faction start with a kind of unit that others don't start with.


I don't got any problem with that really. Because its technically possible to design it anyways in the workshop.

(click to show/hide)

That's my biggest problem, will the AI be too stupid to use colony rovers even? Either way, been drumming up a new faction.

The Settlers of Chiron, a faction focused on population growth and wealth.

Led by Indonesian woman Zeyda, (no surname due to her ethnicity) a former refugee and disaster relief officer in the UN and other organizations, she helped organize efforts against the likes of thermonuclear war and climate change.

The Settlers of Chiron are comprised of refugees the world over, and follow a philosophy of living in peace and pursuing their own ends, preferring to have their communities grow unhindered.
She starts aquatic, but her faction suffers both morale and probe deficits as they are pacifists, many of which are scarred refugees from either Earth or asylum seekers fleeing the grips of more pervasive factions and their conflicts on Chiron.

For installation just drag and drop all the files into your Alpha Centauri folder, nothing much more to it than that. Let me know your thoughts!

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/600116688561766410/604242159633170442/unknown.png)


Edit: Note, debating on nerfing this one a tad; but shall see.

She starts with 2 additional sea colony pods, doctrine flexibility, aquatic faction tag, hab complex and -2 morale and -1 probe. Her AI is non-aggressive.

Player test wise she was very easy to boom with and she can easily climb to bases with over 10 pop by about the time you get gene splicing and other sorta mid tier techs. I do think she'd get her arse kicked in any serious war though, I avoided warfare by being diplomatic, giving up techs and such when asked/demanded.


Title: Re: Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2019, 03:04:12 PM
That's my biggest problem, will the AI be too stupid to use colony rovers even?

No; in fact, I've seen the AI design and deploy a Fusion Speeder Colony Pod all on its own.  If you predefine a Speeder Colony Pod, it's going to be a Fission unit.  The question is whether the AI will choose to build it.  The AI will build a Trance 3-Res Colony Pod on an Infantry chassis, so it doesn't seem particularly averse to more expensive units.  Also you could customize the build cost of the unit.  Bear in mind that eventually, everyone will get this cheap colony unit though.

I don't think I've seen the AI design a Fusion Hovertank Colony Pod unit.  If you predefine it, it will be Fission.  I don't know whether the AI will choose to build it, you just have to run an AI only game and see what it does.  I didn't predefine this unit because by the time the AIs get hovertank technology in my mod, I wouldn't want to encourage them to settle anymore.
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