Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 29, 2020, 06:54:36 PM
Purpose
* Emulate actual SMAX research development as outlined in story line and as supported by in game features.
* Keep sensible connections between technologies. Not super important but to extent possible.
* Support game features appearing at approximate time of discovery.
* Rename technologies for clarity.
At the same time do as less modifications as possible trying to preserve original name set.
Main idea
To have smaller number of technology families evolving gradually rather than a bunch of unconnected random appearances.
Technology families to keep
Centauri
One of the most important lore families moving us along the story line.
Studies Alpha Centauri itself and all its specifics (environment, creatures, fungus, etc.). I'd also add all alien technologies to it as side addition as they don't fit anywhere else. Supposedly, aliens knew more about AC already and share their secrets.
Applications
* Understand and exploit Centauri environment: fungus production, terraforming.
* Understand and produce natives.
* Ultimately understand fungus sentience and fungus neural network.
Brain, Neural application, Computers, Information, Algorithms, Digital sentience
Second most important story line family.
Studies brain function, neural network, computers, algorithms, brain/neural-computer interface, sentient algorithms, digital sentience.
Applications
* Direct research improvement applications.
* Chassis and abilities related to brain-machine control.
* All kind of networks and communications with other factions, global and local.
* Improved algorithms for warfare/industrial/economical breakthroughs.
* Understanding fungus sentience and fungus neural network.
Transcendence
This is an ultimate merge of two above families resulting in human population intellect to be uploaded into fungus neural network. I believe they should merge together at the very end for ultimate story line match: Secrets of Alpha Centauri + Digital Sentience -> Threshold of Transcendence or Secrets of the Manifolds + Digital Sentience -> Threshold of Transcendence (alternative version if we want Secrets of the Manifolds to be a path to final victory and not as alternative tree end).
Self-Aware Machines could be another option for end of digital family and lead to Threshold of Transcendence.
Science
Studies fundamental and applied science. It should also have some notable sub categories to emulate some sort of a progress and not just random named and unconnected "future techs".
Applications
* Warfare: weapon, armor, chassis, combat abilities, military infrastructure.
* Special infrastructure supposedly requiring new material and technologies (Habitation Dome).
Social
Studies all kind of social oriented things to support internal and global social organization. That also includes all kind of psychology related studies.
Applications
* Drone quelling related things (facilities, SE, abilities, etc.).
* SE in general.
* International relations and global relations (counsel, diplomacy, etc.).
Industry/Economics
I combined them together because they are very tightly coupled in game already on all levels.
Applications
* Infrastructure and wealth and growth.
* Some SE, of course.
Doctrines
Big combat related lore.
Applications
* Chassis and other combat/unit related stuff besides weapon and armor.
Research
This is not a dedicated family but we need to recognize some technologies to be research related or research boosting for any research oriented factions and because there is a research concept largely embedded in game. Research can come from any kind of existing families especially highlighting "fundamental research" association (opposing applied science).
Applications
* Research facilities.
* Some SE, of course.
Space exploration
Not many of them but they are quite logical step toward satellites and overall planet exploration.
Technology to potentially remove
Remove, replace or rename them to associate with main families.
Biology/Genetics
This is a very interesting subject. I am not sure how to deal with it, though. It doesn't connect to lore well, there are no much vanilla genetics technologies, they are pretty difficult to connect to other families, and this path ends with nothing. They are only there to justify specific features like Biogenetics -> Recycling Tanks, Gene Splicing -> Research Hospital, Retroviral Engineering -> Genejack Factory, Homo Superior -> Nanohospital, Biomachinery -> Cloning Vats, etc. They probably can be kept but we need to think how to phase them out so they do not end hanging at the very end.
Nanotech
Again just three of them. Interesting subject by itself but they start from nowhere and lead to nowhere.
Weird buzzword "science"
They are no cool nor clear to understand how they are connected to everything else or how they allow their corresponding features. Of course, it can be explained somehow but why bother? Anything can be "explained".
Matter Compression - only to justify Neutronium armor.
Frictionless Surfaces - no sensible applications.
Graviton Theory, Applied Gravitonics - only to justify things like Antigrav struts, Gravship chassis, Graviton gun (???).
Singularity everything - only to justify things with word "singularity" in them. There are quite of few of them, though, including one reactor. However, I don't see how it stems from other science.
Temporal everything - just one of them.
Probability everything - same concern.
Super Tensile Solids - no sensible applications.
Photon/Wave Mechanics - just one of such.
Secrets of Creation - this is a logical end of science line. The question is - do we need science to end there and how should it lead to transcendence?
Organic Superlubricant - Eh?
N-Space Compression - another compression?
Potential renaming
Weird named buzzword techs could be renamed to stay in line with existing families or similar.
There are also some techs in dare need for renaming just for clarity. I constantly keep confusing Environmental Economics and Ecological Engineering. Although, they are completely different things.
Ecological -> Terraforming. I don't give a damn whether they are scientifically connected. I naturally associate ecology with environment protection. Whereas terraforming is quite the opposite thing.
Biogenetics -> Human Genetics, maybe? Genetics was part of biology AFAIK. Was it?
Doctrine: Flexibility, Doctrine: Initiative -> to something clearly highlighting they are naval/sea related. Now they are very abstractly named. Compare to Doctrine: Air Power, for example.
Adaptive Doctrine -> I guess it is fine as it is but it enables Marine detachment only. I guess we need to decide whether it is a generic warfare application or marine only.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 02:46:39 AM
I'm assuming you're not willing to learn how to do voice acting, try to match the performance of original actors somewhat, and insert your own brand new material. I did look into all of that, because I do believe I have the aptitude for voice acting. However for that amount of work, there are many other things I could get done in my life. I would rather have that work go into creative content ventures that can clearly make me money. I wasn't interested in creating a "voice acting resume" or trying to get gigs in the industry. It would be worth going up the learning curve if I wanted to do that. As it is, I only want voice acting for my own games, maybe, someday. It is clearly not the best area to put my time efforts into yet. Let alone for SMAC modding, which will be hours and hours of work for $0.
So it's not actually good idea to rename Doctrine: Initiative. How is Santiago's quote about Doctrine: Air Power going to make any sense if you do that? She refers to Mobility, Flexibility, and Initiative. You get rid of those and it's going to be like WTF?
Personally, I think it's ok to make players learn some of the lore of the game, of this world. It doesn't have to be all spoon-fed pre-intelligible for arbitrary audiences. You don't have to dumb things down for them. There have been psychological studies that making people struggle a bit to understand something, actually increases their investment and attention for the knowledge. You spoon feed, and it's in one ear and out the other.
Nanorobots figure into Miriam's gripes about robots taking over. It's a pastiche about fear of the machine taking over. Lal's fears about "thoughts crossing back" are in the same genre. Although those are more about what our consciousness becomes. Miriam's fears are more about the ultimate surveillance state, "We Must Dissent". I modded for this story line in 2 ways. First, I made Miriam perfectly able to study Knowledge, but totally unable to choose Cybernetic. Second, I eventually made Cybernetic into the "evil anti-Planet" option. Think about a Morganic surveillance moneymaking state ala the older Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report". Every business surveys your eyes and pushes targeted holographic advertizing at you.
I did repurpose Frictionless Surfaces. It has nothing inherently to do with a Cloaking Device. First I changed it to Single-Sided Surfaces, and had it as my explanation for how Clean Reactors worked. I hand waved, in my own mind, that it was some kind of Mobius Strip or Klein bottle. Eventually though, I didn't need that explanation anymore. It got repurposed for 3-Pulse armor and comm jammers. I just needed an armor progression and that's how it worked out. Frictionlessness isn't helpful for explaining ECM, so I didn't change it back. Single-Sided is vague enough that I can explain all sorts of techno babble things that way. Also, it's my mark as a modder, like a dog peeing on a tree! I did this thing, why change it back?
I explain Hovertanks with Organic Superlubricant. That's another really vague one. "Oh it's great stuff great stuff." WTF should it have anything to do with a Fusion Laser? I also got rid of the Fusion Laser anyways. I found having both a weapon and a reactor having the same name, to be very confusing for automated unit names. I threw in some Trek homage, I have phasers. Got a little tired of laser this, laser that anyways.
Anyways my hovertanks work on the same basic principle as mindworms going through fungus, whatever that is. Some kind of slime or grease! I don't have anything in-game to really spell this out, I just made a note of it in my design notes. Hey, it's a better hand wave than saying it's for a Fusion Laser.
Anyways you can go on and on with the specific details of various quotes. Some lock you into things, and others don't.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on June 30, 2020, 03:06:32 AM
If we can preserve lore to extent - awesome. Otherwise, eh. No biggie. I guess any complete newbie can play vanilla 100 times to listen and absorb all the quotes and project videos and blurbs and books and interludes and all other additional content. At some point they stop paying attention.
Besides, I do want to make it closer to original tree. So it is a step toward quote preservation, not away.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2020, 03:23:26 AM
People are aware they are playing modded version with reshuffled tree. They tolerate discrepancy.
That's not 100% true. I had a poster in r/alphacentauri the other day that was going straight for my mod, no previous learning curve in SMAC. It surprised me, and it wasn't the game design circumstance I expected or planned for. But, there it was. There were legitimate reasons for him to do it, the details of which escape me, but it had to do with quality of the play balancing experience. They were facile with 4X TBS, just not SMAC. So I made my unusual recommendation.
You also cannot count on how well players remember tech trees. Just because you or I may be able to quote chapter and verse with all the techs, doesn't mean everyone else is that facile or motivated. People don't all usually put the same amount of time into SMAC lore. We're in a circumstance where people such as myself, are extolling SMAC on r/4Xgaming as "something you should try now". It's not just an audience of "old guard" recapturing old glory. We're getting brand new players.
So I'd advise you not to assume that people are just going to mentally navigate from the original work, and thereby make sense of everything. Your work should stand on its own. If you botch the quotes too much, it really is a problem. They'll say "WAT?" and they may be blaming you.
I actually get players reporting bugs in my mod threads on r/alphacentauri. I take great pains to establish whether it's a bug in the original game, so that my own work doesn't get sullied. So far so good. But the fact that people think they should raise a bug in my mod thread, means that not everyone is an expert about the original game. And heck, I didn't even know about the bug anyways. It was news to me!
Quote
At some point they stop paying attention.
Don't assume that. 4X TBS gaming is a high pass filter for players that are anal. There's almost no such thing as a casual 4X TBS player in the wild.
Post by: Trenacker on July 04, 2020, 05:32:56 AM
Since I was doing this creation in the context of a wargame, I opted to greatly expand the technology tree. I started by trying to define the distinction between tech and doctrine. Then, I decided on the different ways I wanted that tech and doctrine to actually influence the game.
For me, scientific research was supposed to deal with practical advancements made mostly in the laboratory. Doctrine was about revolutions in thought that could influence faction behavior, particularly on the battlefield. Simply put, research is about crafting new things. Doctrine is about acting in a better or different way.
I then laid out the focus areas:
- The Build path contains advances in materials science, engineering, and industrial organization that are directed toward the built environment. Follow this path to enhance base infrastructure and improve production.
- The Discover path relates to the Terran physical and life sciences, including descriptive neurology and psychology. Follow this path to unlock the potential of the flora and fauna brough to Chiron from Earth.
- The Explore path deals with the physical and life sciences of Chiron. Follow this path to learn more about how to influence or exploit Planet.
- The Conquer path focuses on technology with direct military applications. Follow this path to expand your arsenal.
- The Expand path is concerned with population growth and mobility. Follow this path to expand your footprint and awareness on Chiron, and to reverse-engineer the survival kit recovered from Unity.
- The Command path is organized around doctrines with implications for social control.
- The Choose path explores thought as technology associated with the ethical challenges of survival in a hostile environment. Follow this path to train your followers in ascetic techniques like water discipline or to inculcate civic virtues.
As you can see, the example of Frank Herbert's Dune inspired me to look at how doctrine could be related to certain mental disciplines that had more to do with changing perspectives toward one's environment than accumulating new data about it.
Since I wanted the game to linger in the Planetfall phase, I also considered adding a so-called Unity path that looked specifically at "Level 0" technology like Industrial Base. SMAC's "Level 0" was a mix of old and new. Industrial Base had to be essentially rediscovered (to the extent it even qualifies as a "tech" at all), while the breakthroughs embodied by Social Psych only emerged from analysis of data accumulated during the Unity voyage.
Here are some examples of new "Level 0" tech I added, along with associated flavor text:
- Austere Medicine - During those first, harrowing years after Planetfall, complex medicine was virtually unheard of. There were two, maybe three mobile surgeries operating within our territory. Infection was rampant in such a humid environment, and analgesics worth their weight in gold. Many of the Colony Pods recovered near the landing site had been cracked and their contents spoiled. Bad drugs were a serious concern. A run of people in the Paddock died from botched attempts to treat abscessed teeth. Efficacy of intervention was very low, and our standard of care became brutal as a result: we cauterized wounds to conserve sutures and regularly administered overdoes of morphine to anyone we judged might need intensive care over the long term--care we simply couldn't provide. – Lara Cambrysis, Emergency Medical Technician, Main Force Patrol
- UNITY Workshops - Factions that seized large quantities of heavy construction equipment before escaping the UNITY enjoyed a compounding advantage. The pulsing heart of every early colony was the machine shop, where scrap could be transformed into shelter and complex devices returned to service. No settlement was complete without a defensive rampart. Irrigation ditches, pipelines, and foundations needed to be sunk in the ground and large tracts of xenofungus cleared to admit agriculture. All these things were also possible by hand, of course, but it was a question of weeks versus months of effort for often-sick and -starving colonists. - Librarian Setwe Abanake, "Lectures on Planetfall"
- Doctrine: Special War - The fundamental condition between factions on Chiron is anarchy: each one, being sovereign, does not admit of any rights or privileges on the part of any others. As there is no power to define wrongdoing, let alone punish or restrain it, each one lives in mortal fear of its neighbor. And yet, with an eye to reducing uncertainty and the burdens of preparedness and anxiety that must result, they have gradually coined certain norms between them: no vendetta without cassis belli, no militarization of the Uranium Flats, and so on. Each proceedes in the hope that to exercise these principles themselves is to stimulate reciprocation by others. To practice Special War is to be scrupulous in the performance of these virtues, but not their observance. - Director Aleigha Cohen, "Wolves Among Sheep"
- Hydraulic Tapping - To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. - Heart of Darkness
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 01:42:26 PM
Post by: Trenacker on July 04, 2020, 03:56:26 PM
To clarify, I am building a text/forum-based politico-military simulation, not modding the computer game. However, I think some of the creative process for both is naturally complementary.
I think it depends on what you mean by "game features." I do add randomized events and faction-specific objectives (e.g., build a base facility that can send and receive messages from Earth, enforce freedom of movement on Chiron's seas, etc.), which are both technically new features familiar to modern 4X games. I added the Affinity system from Beyond Earth, which I quite liked, but haven't done much with it other than to use it as a handy marker for the kinds of values a faction has, which is arguably redundant (since values are part of Social Engineering).
I add a lot of flavor, including new factions (Hunters of Chiron, Human Ascendancy, Dreamers of Chiron, Human Tribe, New Two Thousand, Shapers of Chiron), dozens of new base facilities and technologies with their own quotations and Datalinks entries, and new types of Population ("Specials," which are above Talents; Technicians, who deal with equipment and improvements; Overseers, which neutralize labor discontent; Librarians, who assist with base administration; Thinkers, who pursue doctrine and increase faction influence; and Robots, which are simple laborers.)
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 04, 2020, 04:31:06 PM
not modding the computer game
You are not talking about SMACX modding at all? Is it some completely standalone project? Sorry, I misunderstood you then.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2020, 06:25:15 PM
- The Build path contains advances in materials science, engineering, and industrial organization that are directed toward the built environment. Follow this path to enhance base infrastructure and improve production.
- The Discover path relates to the Terran physical and life sciences, including descriptive neurology and psychology. Follow this path to unlock the potential of the flora and fauna brough to Chiron from Earth.
- The Explore path deals with the physical and life sciences of Chiron. Follow this path to learn more about how to influence or exploit Planet.
- The Conquer path focuses on technology with direct military applications. Follow this path to expand your arsenal.
- The Expand path is concerned with population growth and mobility. Follow this path to expand your footprint and awareness on Chiron, and to reverse-engineer the survival kit recovered from Unity.
- The Command path is organized around doctrines with implications for social control.
- The Choose path explores thought as technology associated with the ethical challenges of survival in a hostile environment. Follow this path to train your followers in ascetic techniques like water discipline or to inculcate civic virtues.
Conquer is the clear one of the bunch. Unambiguous. I did the same thing in my mod. If you want weapons and armor, you study Conquer. You don't get them any other way. No "sprinkling of benefits" in other categories, like the original game did. The most egregious example of that was the strength 6 Missile Launcher for Explore 6: Synthetic Fossil Fuels. The Gaians should not be given the keys to the kingdom like that.
Build would be straightforward, but you're undermining it with Expand. Surely if you want to expand, you have to build stuff?
Discover=Earth, Explore=Chiron does not basically make sense. We don't currently know a lot of what's going on under our own oceans, and nobody would have gained that knowledge in the cataclysmic events leading up to the launch of the Unity. There's tons of stuff we don't know about our own solar system as well, and again, wouldn't in the game's fiction.
I think here, you are running afoul of 2 different design preoccupations. The desire to keep a style of language for specifying categories (Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer per the original game), vs. trying to cleanly separate different areas of social endeavor. Earth Sciences vs. Xenobiology would be completely straightforward, for instance. In your shoes, I would pick one preoccupation to be "loyal" to.
"Command vs. Choose" is a contrast that could work. Authoritarian examples are easy to come up with. I'm less certain what's going to be an example of a society "choosing", since generally speaking, law is a policy decision. But maybe you'll have something. I'd need to see concrete examples to pass judgment. When I think about social engineering choices and government models actually bestowed by the game, there's nothing clearly in the SE table that I'd call "choosing". Rather, a Police State is enforced, or a Democracy is enforced, or a Theocracy is enforced...
It is possible that drawing a categorical contrast with "Choose" is a wrong move, and that all these things are really forms of Command.
Post by: Trenacker on July 04, 2020, 06:45:25 PM
Quote from: tnevolin
You are not talking about SMACX modding at all? Is it some completely standalone project? Sorry, I misunderstood you then.
No. The ideas I developed were not specifically intended for SMACX the computer game, although I would certainly love to find a modder capable of adding them.
Quote from: bvanevery
Conquer is the clear one of the bunch. Unambiguous. I did the same thing in my mod. If you want weapons and armor, you study Conquer. You don't get them any other way. No "sprinkling of benefits" in other categories, like the original game did. The most egregious example of that was the strength 6 Missile Launcher for Explore 6: Synthetic Fossil Fuels. The Gaians should not be given the keys to the kingdom like that.
Build would be straightforward, but you're undermining it with Expand. Surely if you want to expand, you have to build stuff?
Discover=Earth, Explore=Chiron does not basically make sense. We don't currently know a lot of what's going on under our own oceans, and nobody would have gained that knowledge in the cataclysmic events leading up to the launch of the Unity. There's tons of stuff we don't know about our own solar system as well, and again, wouldn't in the game's fiction.
I think here, you are running afoul of 2 different design preoccupations. The desire to keep a style of language for specifying categories (Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer per the original game), vs. trying to cleanly separate different areas of social endeavor. Earth Sciences vs. Xenobiology would be completely straightforward, for instance. In your shoes, I would pick one preoccupation to be "loyal" to.
"Command vs. Choose" is a contrast that could work. Authoritarian examples are easy to come up with. I'm less certain what's going to be an example of a society "choosing", since generally speaking, law is a policy decision. But maybe you'll have something. I'd need to see concrete examples to pass judgment. When I think about social engineering choices and government models actually bestowed by the game, there's nothing clearly in the SE table that I'd call "choosing". Rather, a Police State is enforced, or a Democracy is enforced, or a Theocracy is enforced...
It is possible that drawing a categorical contrast with "Choose" is a wrong move, and that all these things are really forms of Command.
Overall, I agree with you: the research pathways are not as distinct as I wish they were. Part of this is because, in trying to be loyal to the original categories presented by the game designers, I am mapping onto a flawed foundation, the style of language. And that absolutely competes with the categorization into separate areas of social endeavor. But I did pick one preoccupation: the first.
I think Discover and Explore are distinct in gameplay terms, but there is certainly no factual validity in pretending there is a total separation between the science that must be done on Earth, or with regard to the legacies of Earth, and the science that must be done on Chiron. Physics on Earth is the same as physics on Jupiter.
Command and Choose also cross over. At the end of the day, as in the original SMAC/X, I am comfortable relying on the colors and some loose, imperfect categorization to help players make their decisions. It's not as sharp as a left/right divide, but it's "left enough" and "right enough" to let them get their bearings.
If I were to try to be more specific, Choose is about certain mental disciplines or values that all of society is supposed to practice to "live better," while Command is about a series of technologies and strategies designed to bring about compliance to an abstract authority.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2020, 07:18:34 PM
Explore is the most problematic category of the original game. It does way too much stuff. It's Deidre's mindworm and Planet stuff. It's also "colonization and growth" to the AI. SMACX AI Growth mod started out based on this observation. Then I compounded the problem by taking Happiness techs away from Build and putting them into Explore. Doesn't work for wordsmithing, does work for "colonization and growth". In my mod, a city can be big and happy and poor as dirt. It can be wealthy and miserable. Frankly I see that as the Capitalist Morganic way of life, at least for the strata of society that the rich fat cats live on the backs of.
So I have way too many early Explore techs. Damn if I'm going to send them back to Build though. At least as my Explore tree goes on, it thins out into only / mostly mindworm tech stuff. And it's a nearly isolated branch of the tree, ultimately culminating in The Manifold Harmonics. Hab Domes are Explore but they're also cross-listed with Build and in a different part of the tree.
If I were to fix this, based on what I've actually got after 2+ years of the heaviest possible thinking about in-game categorization, I clearly need a "Happiness" category. But I don't have an (Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer) style word for it. Nor any incentive to binary hack it. It's more like brand new game territory.
Oh, and Explore also gets used for most of the vehicle chasses. Needlejets less so, because they don't actually have any explorational range, for the time of the game at which they appear. And I don't allow Copters, except for my gonzo Unity Lifter unit, basically a fast Transport copter. Big mystery why nobody managed to make any more of those ever...
Post by: Trenacker on July 04, 2020, 08:01:53 PM
The flies in the ointment are Build and Conquer, which presumably involve physics-related advancements also. Thus, what you get is watered down to: Discovery (research) and Explore (life sciences). You could, of course, eliminate Build and collapse it all under Discovery, which I think is the most parsimonious solution.
I am hypothesizing that the game designers wanted to sort the technologies by the type of utility they offered, which I think is why it makes so much sense to me that there is some cross-pollination between all/most of the tree. From a player's perspective, it's clear what I'm going to get when I say, "Let's focus on Build," versus, "Let's focus on Expand." If I want more facilities and improvements, I build. If I want to quell Drone riots, I go with Command. If I want to fry someone's rover with a laser, I go Conquest. If I want to understand more about Chiron, I go Explore. If I want to make a weird future society, Choose is my thing. If I want to build a great many colonies quickly, Expand. If I need to learn about adapting Earth crops to Chiron's soil, Discover.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 04:07:09 AM
Quote
If I want to quell Drone riots, I go with Command.
Military command and societal command aren't exactly the same thing. It's not clear to me why land, sea, air, and space Doctrines are the same thing as Police State, Thought Control, and Punishment Spheres. And Power, is it a Command or is it Conquer? I don't have extra Command or Choose categories, so I don't have any confusion on this point. And I know from Santiago's characterization that my decision is correct with respect to the game lore.
You have complicated your problems by expanding the decisionmaking into a larger game, with greater numbers of players, a greater surface area of simulation interactions, and roleplaying. As the game gets larger, I can see why you might be tempted to make the verbal category set get larger as well. But you may be doing yourself a disservice. Less may be more.
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If I need to learn about adapting Earth crops to Chiron's soil, Discover.
No, Explore. Pay attention to the game lore, particularly Deidre's quotes. This is Xenobiology 101.
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If I want to make a weird future society, Choose is my thing.
This begs a big question: why? All your other categorizations are choices as well. You're always choosing... choose what?
There's nothing inherent about the word 'Choose', that indicates Eudaimonia.
Cybernetic, do you choose that? Seems more like a Life Sciences prereq. What is Secrets of the Human Brain? Since the original game is not saddled with a need for a lot of extra verbs, it's simply a Discover tech. Can discover particle physics, can discover fundamentals of human consciousness. Ala Pre-Sentient Algorithms, although I don't actually buy their mathematical hand wave about that.
If a Cybernetic future society has research prereqs, like needing to know how to jack into a human brain, and it's just a social engineering choice, given you have all your prereqs, then why do you need another research path to choose it? Conceptually that's just a speed bump delay on the obvious.
It's similar to asking the question, why does Democracy need to be 'researched' ? Frankly it doesn't. I've interpreted it as needing a certain degree of infrastructure to implement. Apropos in my mod since it makes you money. Theocratic, I now have the least of requirements for it: just Social Psych. Getting people to believe in a God is one of the oldest tricks in the human book!
When does the player start playing? What are they required to already know, in order to play? I introduce all my Politics and Economics by Tier 2, in the early game. These could all be said to be a protracted exposition about the basics of the game. A somewhat different game design could start out with these choices presupposed.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 04:41:17 AM
Quote from: bvanevery
Even the game's lore made a clear distinction between theoretical and applied sciences.
In the names of individual technologies, yes, but not in distribution across the categories. "Theory" technologies appear in three of four branches: Superstring Theory (Conquer), Advanced Subatomic Theory (Discover), Explore (Graviton Theory). Only the Build Technologies are without an explicitly-labeled theoretical technology, and even then, it features technologies like "Temporal Mechanics" and "Probability Mechanics" that sound more like principle-based frameworks and less like immediate applications.
Per the game's instruction manual, there were four types of technologies available in SMAC:
- Technologies for your base
- Technologies for your units
- Technologies related to Planet
- Technologies related to theoretical science
Membership in these categorizes was not intuitive. Technologies were (one might assume) grouped according to what they did in gameplay terms, but Bioadaptive Resonance, Retroviral Engineering, Photon/Wave Mechanics, Superconductors, and Matter Compression, all in the Conquer category, do not scream "military application" at first glance. Likewise, it is hard to see how Synthetic Fossil Fuels or Metallurgy are advances possible only on an alien world.
Quote from: bvanevery
Military command and societal command aren't exactly the same thing. It's not clear to me why land, sea, air, and space Doctrines are the same thing as Police State, Thought Control, and Punishment Spheres. And Power, is it a Command or is it Conquer? I don't have extra Command or Choose categories, so I don't have any confusion on this point. And I know from Santiago's characterization that my decision is correct with respect to the game lore.
I don't think it's inherently confusing. Conquer is about building weapons. Command is about subjugation through means other than war. Perhaps the definitions can even be better refined for clarity: Conquer is about overcoming external resistance, and Command is about overcoming internal resistance, although I think the distinction is more on the types of tools rather than their targets. Conquer is about the military and Command is about social control.
Quote from: bvanevery
No, Explore. Pay attention to the game lore, particularly Deidre's quotes. This is Xenobiology 101.
I was referring to the guidance that a player would receive in my own simulation.
Quote from: bvanevery
This begs a big question: why? All your other categorizations are choices as well. You're always choosing... choose what?
That's no more or less valid than saying that every type of technology in SMAC is also a discovery, or also allows you to build something. It's supposed to be an evocative word.
Quote from: bvanevery
When does the player start playing? What are they required to already know, in order to play? I introduce all my Politics and Economics by Tier 2, in the early game. These could all be said to be a protracted exposition about the basics of the game. A somewhat different game design could start out with these choices presupposed.
Brian Reynolds tackled just this problem in an interesting podcast from several years ago. He explained that most players already have a schema that lets them very easily apprehend what will happen in historical strategy games if they research Archery or The Wheel, for example. It was a challenge for him to come up with equally intuitive systems for SMAC because people didn't share a deep fund of knowledge about future technology.
My hypothesis is that, in order to play, one merely needs to be given an explanation of what is tech versus doctrine and what research along each of the branches can potentially offer. The basic explanations I offer are designed to allow the player to say, "If I want to do X, then I clearly need to devote energies down this path."
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 10:22:58 AM
Membership in these categorizes was not intuitive. Technologies were (one might assume) grouped according to what they did in gameplay terms, but Bioadaptive Resonance, Retroviral Engineering, Photon/Wave Mechanics, Superconductors, and Matter Compression, all in the Conquer category, do not scream "military application" at first glance. Likewise, it is hard to see how Synthetic Fossil Fuels or Metallurgy are advances possible only on an alien world.
Are you picking on the names of the techs, or what the techs give you? Because I'm inclined to view the former as whatever techno babble they came up with, and not problematic. BTW it's Nanometallurgy, not Metallurgy. Metallurgy is what gives you Cannons in Civ II or Freeciv. The dumb part about some of that was giving you things like a Carrier Deck as some kind of "advanced" ability. This is an artifact of skinning the tech tree of Civ II.
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Quote from: bvaneveryNo, Explore. Pay attention to the game lore, particularly Deidre's quotes. This is Xenobiology 101.
I was referring to the guidance that a player would receive in my own simulation.
Bad guidance if it's to be SMAC. You have to explore an alien landscape to understand and utilize its flora and fauna. Xenobiology 101. You can discover anything. You can discover you had an extra sandwich in the back of your refrigerator. If you're climbing a tech tree, how is anything not a discovery? Only thing I can think of, is the things inserted in the tree that aren't actually techs, but social conditions. Like Democracy.
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That's no more or less valid than saying that every type of technology in SMAC is also a discovery,
So we agree on that problem, that "to discover" doesn't mean much in a tech tree. At least the original game is recursive about it! "Discover is about making discoveries more quickly." Yeah, uh, discover what? "Everything". Well except you'll spend most of your time discovering the discoveries that make you discover everything faster.
We have nothing to research, except... research itself!
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It's supposed to be an evocative word.
I'm trying to tell you that your tonal poem "Command vs. Choose" means more to you, than it does to an arbitrary player trying to figure out what's going on. It's a specific instance of the general game design problem, "categories mean more to the designer who wrote them, than the new player who hasn't seen them used before."
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My hypothesis is that, in order to play, one merely needs to be given an explanation of what is tech versus doctrine and what research along each of the branches can potentially offer.
I'm suggesting that "Choose" is capable of being fantastically bad guidance for a new player. No a priori mental model of what's a "Choice" vs. anything else.
Players actually quit games when guidance is fantastically bad. It may take more than one such thing, but player irritation with things they don't understand, is cumulative.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 05, 2020, 04:07:01 PM
Nonlinear Mathematics <- Applied Physics + Information Networks
Applied Physics seems to be overloaded already because every science stems from it. Besides, usually breakthrough in math is extended to science and not other way around. Would it be more logical to drive something nonlinear from Progenitor Psych instead? I understand it is a stretch (as anything else in a tree) but it sounds explainable and involves progenitors technologies more into main branch. Currently they kinda stay aside.
Industrial Economics <- Industrial Base
That is perfectly fine. However, I feel the Economics part needs another prerequisite. How about Biogenetics? It seems like most economical aligned first level tech. Other options would be Centauri Ecology and Social Psych but they are very overloaded already.
Intellectual Integrity <- Ethical Calculus + Doctrine: Loyalty
Ethical Calculus seems on target but Doctrine: Loyalty is clear opposite to "unburdened by prejudices" and "clarity of undistorted knowledge". Yet, despite their own description game designers perceive it as a military/totalitarian technology that unlocks Citizen's Defense Force, High morale and non-lethal methods. So maybe this dependency is fine in a scope of a game.
Centauri Empathy <- Secrets of the Human Brain + Centauri Ecology
Centauri Ecology is a logical "Centauri" prerequisite. Secrets of the Human Brain is kinda off target, though. How human brain function align with Centauri anything? Too big of a stretch. I think it is a perfect opportunity to involve more alien technologies and make Centauri Empathy dependent on Field Modulation, for example.
Superconductor <- Optical Computers + Industrial Base
This is one of the off standalone tech those are difficult to tie to any other SMACX concept. It sounds both scientific and industrial a bit. So dependency on Industrial Base seems fine. However, Optical Computer doesn't seem to fit the bill. I have no ideas here. Theoretically it should come from physics/chemistry probably but these two are very overloaded already. Any other suggestions?
Silksteel Alloys <- Advanced Subatomic Theory + Industrial Automation
Another ambiguity. It seems to be an application rather than a pure science. So any relation to industry is fine. However, it is not clear how Industrial Automation can help there. Advanced Subatomic Theory is clearly off the chart here. Alloys are more of chemistry level stuff. Again, no ideas. Open for suggestions.
Planetary Networks <- Information Networks
That is fine. I just want to add another prerequisite like Secrets of the human brain. It seems logical since Planetary Networks enable Hologram Theater that may need to understand human brain. Another choice would be Social Psych for the same reason.
Organic Superlubricant <- Synthetic Fossil Fuels, Fusion Power
I see how it can be connected to Synthetic Fossil Fuels. However, Fusion Power? Besides, it won't connect to any future technology. Why fusion laser is enabled by it is a mystery. I think it is better just to remove or rename it.
I'll rename it to "cold fusion". I guess it makes better sense as fusion power application as well as further advances in spaceflight based on it.
Matter Editation <- Self-Aware Machines + Super Tensile Solids
Doesn't make sense. Name matches Matter Compression. Picture matches nanotech.
There is also a lot of interesting connections on higher levels. For example, Graviton Theory <- Quantum Machinery + Mind/Machine Interface, etc. I guess they can be linked either way because they are mostly science. For the same reason people wouldn't complain about it much.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 04:16:55 PM
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on July 05, 2020, 04:24:01 PM
tnevolin, are you able to add new techs to the tree, or are you limited to having to "rewire" the existing tree to make the linkages and dependencies more sensible?
There are three unused slots in the list those can be added. All tech are completely customizable. So in addition to rewiring they can be renamed. However, this'll be a completely new experience for user. There are tons of mods out there with renamed techs. I am trying to stick as close to vanilla. However, I am open to suggestions. Like small renaming here and there to make it stick together better.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 04:59:10 PM
Quote from: bvanevery
Are you picking on the names of the techs, or what the techs give you? Because I'm inclined to view the former as whatever techno babble they came up with, and not problematic. BTW it's Nanometallurgy, not Metallurgy. Metallurgy is what gives you Cannons in Civ II or Freeciv. The dumb part about some of that was giving you things like a Carrier Deck as some kind of "advanced" ability. This is an artifact of skinning the tech tree of Civ II.
Both. There is much more scope in a written project to rename techs, but I am trying to keep all the original ones because they constitute a ready-made trove of universe-appropriate material. Nonetheless, the technobabble they came up with does sometimes violate the plausibility principle. When I build “Industrial Base,” I can intuit that my factories will work better. I don’t have the same instant recognition for “Nonlinear Mathematics” or “Monopole Magnets.”
For reference, I am both rewiring and adding to the tech tree. As previously mentioned, I’m adding a “Tier 0” with breakthroughs relevant to the cannibalism and reverse-engineering of Unity materials.
Quote from: bvanevery
Bad guidance if it's to be SMAC. You have to explore an alien landscape to understand and utilize its flora and fauna. Xenobiology 101. You can discover anything. You can discover you had an extra sandwich in the back of your refrigerator. If you're climbing a tech tree, how is anything not a discovery? Only thing I can think of, is the things inserted in the tree that aren't actually techs, but social conditions. Like Democracy.
The answer to this would be to use a word other than “Discovery.” I’ve made a conscious choice to keep using it because it was part of the original tech tree. I’ve just added a small explanatory remark to help players get a good sense of what happens if they go down that path in the limited context of my game. That’s exactly what Alpha Centauri did by printing out the tech tree as an insert poster packaged with the software: they gave a very simple roadmap to help players figure out what “Monopole Magnets” could do for them.
Quote from: bvanevery
So we agree on that problem, that "to discover" doesn't mean much in a tech tree. At least the original game is recursive about it! "Discover is about making discoveries more quickly." Yeah, uh, discover what? "Everything". Well except you'll spend most of your time discovering the discoveries that make you discover everything faster.
We have nothing to research, except... research itself!
Yes.
Quote from: bvanevery
I'm trying to tell you that your tonal poem "Command vs. Choose" means more to you, than it does to an arbitrary player trying to figure out what's going on. It's a specific instance of the general game design problem, "categories mean more to the designer who wrote them, than the new player who hasn't seen them used before."
So does the tonal poem “Monopole Magnets.” So you give them small cues. Not novellas, but bullet points or colors.
Quote from: bvanevery
Players actually quit games when guidance is fantastically bad. It may take more than one such thing, but player irritation with things they don't understand, is cumulative.
Based on experience from 2014 and feedback from other reviewers, this isn’t causing irritation to anyone right now.
Quote from: tnevolin
There are three unused slots in the list those can be added. All tech are completely customizable. So in addition to rewiring they can be renamed. However, this'll be a completely new experience for user. There are tons of mods out there with renamed techs. I am trying to stick as close to vanilla. However, I am open to suggestions. Like small renaming here and there to make it stick together better.
Only three? Is there any practical way to expand that number? It feels like the available mods are slowly growing more ambitious as the relative simplicity of the source code increases while the years pass.
I haven’t run across mods with renamed techs, but I’d be curious to find a list of those techs, if you know of any.
Quote from: tnevolin
Nonlinear Mathematics <- Applied Physics + Information Networks
This one feels fine to me, but I don’t have any objection to swapping Applied Physics for Progenitor Psych, or simply adding Progenitor Psych as a new prerequisite.
Quote from: tnevolin
Industrial Economics <- Industrial Base
I don’t see the need, but Social Psych seems the most plausible new input.
Quote from: tnevolin
Centauri Empathy <- Secrets of the Human Brain + Centauri Ecology
My take on the lore is that Planet is approachable enough for humans. Indeed, the implication that Planet was once Earth makes the connection explicit. Yes, some warping of the mind is inevitable—looking into the Abyss means that Abyss looks back into you, and all that. But Planet’s never presented as Lovecraftian in its ineffability.
Quote from: tnevolin
Silksteel Alloys <- Advanced Subatomic Theory + Industrial Automation
Agreed. Maybe Advanced Subatomic Theory and Gene Splicing, because of the mention of silk? High Energy Chemistry also seems a relevant precursor.
Quote from: tnevolin
Planetary Networks <- Information Networks
Sure.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 06:25:10 PM
Nonlinear Mathematics <- Applied Physics + Information Networks
Applied Physics seems to be overloaded already because every science stems from it. Besides, usually breakthrough in math is extended to science and not other way around.
These are not unreasonable dependencies from a narrative point of view.
The biggest question is whether it's appropriate to have a strength 4 weapon come so quickly after a strength 2 weapon. I say it isn't appropriate, I don't do that, and the original game made a fundamental mistake doing it. I have the strength 3 R-Laser, which I believe you and I discussed eons ago. Currently in my tree, they are not a linear sequence. They are in different parts of the tree, the R-Laser being part of the Alien tech sequence. Particle Impactors and R-Lasers are actually equal cost weapons on the same tier. I have a gap between strengths 2 and 4, there is simply no "plain" strength 3 weapon. This is because weapon artwork is strictly locked to weapon strength in the game.
The second major concern, is whether an obviously Discover tech such as Information Networks, should be a research bottleneck for a Conquer tech. Generally in my mod, with its clean separation of Conquer as a research concern, that's a no-no. I do make a few exceptions here and there out of necessity, but usually Conquer techs have Conquer prereqs.
Gameplay trumps narrative. When you have a conflict between narrative and gameplay in the tech tree, IMO you have to jettison narrative. In many releases of my mod, I've had "minor warts" of this sort, transitions that don't make a lot of narrative sense. Over time, as I became more intimately familiar with every single last shred of tech and quote, I found ways to solve these problems. A different change in the tech tree, would often "free up" something to be used elsewhere.
In very late, mature development, it becomes necessary to consider fundamental repurposings, because everything is tied up and in use. There's no flexibility left in the tree anymore. My most recent big flash of insight, is that Superconductor should be a Build tech, not a Conquer tech. It's Morgan's line about "superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible". For me this now gives the Energy Bank and the Merchant Exchange, and it's at Tier 3. This is 100% a lore fit, it's just counter to player experience. Gatling Laser is gone, moved it to C5 Doctrine: Air Power. I'm not 100% thrilled about giving that gun and the Needlejet chassis at the same time, but it's not a great harm at that point in the game, and I'm out of techs.
Later in the game, I typically give a weapon and an armor of the same strength in the same tech. This frees up more techs to be used for other things. By late game it's like, let's get on with the war already. Don't need to crawl over whether you've got a weapon or an armor now.
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Would it be more logical to drive something nonlinear from Progenitor Psych instead?
No. That would be anti-character and anti-lore. Progenitor Psych is about Progenitor stuff. Languages composed from tonal relativity. (So what's their written system, game narrative geniuses? What a boner.) Shadow regiments, cloaking stuff. Ways of influencing Planet. There's nothing mathematical or "dry lab" about these Alien characters at all. It's clearly Zhakarov's kind of research area. Paying attention to who's voicing the quote for the tech, can usually give guidance about who's area it is. Not always, but usually.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 06:47:26 PM
Industrial Economics <- Industrial Base
That is perfectly fine. However, I feel the Economics part needs another prerequisite. How about Biogenetics? It seems like most economical aligned first level tech. Other options would be Centauri Ecology and Social Psych but they are very overloaded already.
Nexii had the insight that Industrial Base is a more meaningful way to give Formers than Centauri Ecology. Well it's debatable, but a Former is a heavy piece of industrial machinery. A sort of Planet Raper, if you will, although one could plant "nice trees" or relatively benign crops with it as well. Anyways, I ran with it in my mod, and gave him an acknowledgement.
A corollary to this, is that Centauri Ecology needs to do something else. I think I had the insight to use it for Recycling Tanks. Nexii can correct me if it was really his idea, but I think it was mine. I've been playing with "Centauri Ecology is Tier 1 and gives the Recycling Tank" and I really like the change. It's a way better lore fit to hippie skippy Gaian "conservationist" sensibilities. Yeah don't ruin my rainbow by talking to me about plastic bag sorters. ;lol I like to think that the Gaians have implemented large scale biological recycling. Even Yang is in on the act: "it is every citizen's final duty...."
Tier 1 Recycling Tank encourages more vertical play. Yeah I guess the original game does that too, just with Biogenetics. I've had Recycling Tank at Tier 2 for a very long time, so its effect on gameplay moving it back to Tier 1, seems like a big deal to me.
I have Industrial Base and Centauri Ecology as my prereqs for Industrial Economics. I'm surprised to see that the original game only had Industrial Base as a prereq, no 2nd one. My tech tree is a very strictly "2 prereqs" tree with tiers in lock step, always Tier N preceding Tier N+1. This is only violated at the very end of the game. My tree is dense and the Tier of a tech does have inherent meaning for when it's more likely to occur in the game. The time window of appearance is bounded by how wide or narrow a given tier is. For instance, you get Tier 2 techs pretty quickly in my mod, because there are no Secret Projects guarding them from being traded. But there are a lot of them, so getting all Tier 2 techs takes quite a bit longer. Factions will definitely be specializing in Tier 3 before they get all of Tier 2.
The Tier 1 techs being overloaded, is a "prereq puzzle" I've worked through many times. Some of my mod releases were very cramped. I think the lowest number of Tier 1 techs I managed, without grossly violating dependency sensibilities and after piles of hard thought about narrative implications, was 5.
Past experience has shown that the Command Center must be given on Tier 1. Otherwise the AIs are gonna suck. They may suck anyways, for some reason in my mod they're not that great about building Command Centers. This is rather different than the unmodded game where the AI factions seem to build Command Centers excessively.
Recently I had the insight that Doctrine: Loyalty wasn't serving an important purpose where I had it. That I could move the Punishment Sphere somewhere else, and that Fundamentalist / Extremist / Theocratic did not have to be there. I put that in Social Psych, and the PS went to Ethical Calculus. "Gonna be good or evil?" PS is only important for conquering distant bases, it has no value as an early game accelerant, I've found. It's always cheaper / better to just do Rec Commons etc. until your bases get really big. And by then, it's your core empire and you're not gonna just tear that stuff up and screw over your research. Slaves are empire, not core.
Anyways, completely freed up Doctrine: Loyalty. Put the Command Center in that and made it a Tier 1 tech.
Generally speaking, this is the kind of maneuver you do when you've got too much pressure on your Tier 1. Find a tech somewhere else that has something that's not that important, and shift its stuff to other parts of the tree.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 07:05:20 PM
Intellectual Integrity <- Ethical Calculus + Doctrine: Loyalty
Ethical Calculus seems on target but Doctrine: Loyalty is clear opposite to "unburdened by prejudices" and "clarity of undistorted knowledge". Yet, despite their own description game designers perceive it as a military/totalitarian technology that unlocks Citizen's Defense Force, High morale and non-lethal methods. So maybe this dependency is fine in a scope of a game.
No, the actual use of Intellectual Integrity in the game is completely totally stupid BS. I will go so far as to say, they had a more fitting idea at some point, but were forced for reasons of gameplay balance, to shuffle things around. I.I. is clearly voice acted as a Zhakarov science tech. Citizens' Defense Force is totally nonsensical and they stuck it in there "because they wanted it to happen at that time in the game".
In my mod, I.I. is a pure Discover tech that gives the Universal Translator, and unfortunately nothing else because there's only so much pure Discover stuff available. I'm not happy about the U.T. video coming so early in the game, but it's an acceptable loss. It's also quite intellectually disingenuous to have Miriam's "God translator stele" be a part of II, but eh whatever! This is a case of gameplay trumping narrative for videos. The actual play mechanic of the Universal Translator, is pretty useless to have later. It costs 300 minerals, equivalent to 6 Alien Artifacts. Well you could pop 2 Artifacts and you'd get the same "2 new techs" bonus. It is clearly not worth it, and there's no way I'm going to put it later in the game, where Secret Projects generally cost more minerals. And being able to cash an infinite number of Artifacts, that's really only worthwhile in the early game, when you don't have a lot of Network Nodes at your disposal.
Citizens' Defense Force went to the same Tier 3 tech that gives Plasma Armor. I see it as a kind of wall. Hey, that's what they actually draw on the map. Doesn't matter to me if you're supposed to imagine little beefy Spartan women in cutoff camo t-shirts running around flaming mindworms with flamethrowers. You draw an armored base, I'm going to say it's an armored base. 1st person to get to the armor, can build better armored bases.
Oh, and Non-Lethal Methods. Why is this even an invention / tech? I guess SMAC had some deep Black Lives Matter conversation for a very long time, and they forgot basic concepts in policework. ;lol Anyways it's not an intellectual issue, it's a POLICE issue. If you think the methods are really some kind of extra surveillance, well that would be a good argument for renaming the ability. I'm not deeply invested in doing so though. Keeping N.L.M. is less confusing for veteran players, absent some higher concern, that I don't actually have.
I'm currently giving N.L.M. the same time I'm giving Police State. I've predefined some police units like the Synth Police and Plasma Police, so that the AI factions will build them. I've seen some uptake of those, not as much as I might like but some.
BTW... all these interlocked concerns, are demonstrating that as a system of authorship, this kind of "narratively constrained tech tree" idea really sucks. It wastes incredible amounts of production labor, having to think hard and shuffle around these relationships. To the extent that I contemplate doing a commercial 4X TBS game myself, I've been thinking about an "event driven" system. Define needed game conditions and areas of narrative relevance. Fire the event when sufficient thresholds are reached. A certain degree of randomness of "what comes when" would be expected, but the tech and narrative continuities would be preserved by the algorithm. There would be no "fixed static tree".
With such a system, I could model things like why some societies build Recycling Tanks everywhere and other societies don't.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 08:05:22 PM
I think it makes more sense for Formers to come from Centauri Ecology because, while industrial plants build Formers, their proper use depends on a full understanding of Centauri geology, hydrology, etc. Technically speaking, it is Industrial Base that builds everything in the game. Why have any other techs?
Non-Lethal Methods may actually best belong at the beginning of the tree. Shredder pistols were presumably no less, and perhaps even more, lethal than slug weapons, and chosen for the reduced likelihood they would pierce Unity's hull. But you have to wonder if the stun gun/Taser was also in widespread use. Hard to believe otherwise.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 08:08:12 PM
Centauri Empathy <- Secrets of the Human Brain + Centauri Ecology
Centauri Ecology is a logical "Centauri" prerequisite. Secrets of the Human Brain is kinda off target, though. How human brain function align with Centauri anything? Too big of a stretch. I think it is a perfect opportunity to involve more alien technologies and make Centauri Empathy dependent on Field Modulation, for example.
My SotHB prereqs are D2 Information Networks and E2 Centauri Empathy. Empathy is how you start getting better at controlling mindworms with your own mind, so in terms of game lore this is not crazy. My SotHB gives you the 1 free tech + the Virtual World. V.W. is a lore fit as well, you're jacking into the brain to give a virtual experience.
The Kantian quote is also hand-wavy possible to say it's about "distinguishing reality from non-reality". I didn't actually plan that, I only just looked it up, but hey it fits well enough. I'm not a big fan of the various philosophical sprinklings. It educates the player about what it's like to major in Philosophy in college, but it usually waters down the characterizations of the major game characters. Like, I'd rather hear Yang or Zhakarov talk about this stuff, not Kant. And indeed they do, but I'd like more of them, less of the dead guys.
The game mechanical consideration for me, is I use Explore techs as the Happiness techs. The Virtual World is a Happiness device. Therefore, it should have an Explore component to the tech. In my mod it does. It's cross-listed, although Discover is more dominant than Explore. So I have both a Discover and an Explore prereq. One might wonder why the Virtual World should be a Discover tech at all in my regime, since all it does is provide happiness and doesn't make research go any faster. I rationalize that it provides happiness while you're doing research. I'm also goosing Zhakarov along. He's got all those free Network Nodes to make use of, and he's the pure Discover poster child in my mod. It's "his tech tree".
I don't give Zhakarov that "unethical drone penalty" though. Can't abide the harm to AI performance. In fact he gets an unethical bonus, his POLICE penalties are halved. My SE table evolved to have Knowledge and Cybernetic as the main anti-POLICE options for a long time, so this was necessary.
If you're building lotsa N.N.s then the V.W. is a good thing to have. Although it's less important in my mod, because Hologram Theaters are cheaper and require less maintenance. But, you don't get them right away nowadays. It takes some time, and they're on a different path to keep the AI from redundantly building both H.T.s and the V.W. For various factions, the V.W. may be the 1st tech that gets them to that level of happiness in a cost-effective manner.
Centauri Empathy isn't my "make mindworms" tech. Mine's Centauri Genetics and it's Explore 3. Centauri Empathy is my Green tech and it's Explore 2.
A Field Modulation dependence, is a judgment call about whether you think things should depend on Alien ways of looking at things, or if humans could have jolly well figured it out themselves. With some grey area for game mechanical requirements. It's not a foreign idea to me, as I say the Aliens taught everyone Hypnotic Trance and the humans didn't figure it out. I don't exactly like that as it's not original game, but play mechanically it works. My Progenitors start the game with Hypnotic Trance available, via Progenitor Psych which is Explore 3. Field Modulation is Conquer 2 and gives the Cloaking Field, which is Cloaking Device renamed to be a better lore fit. Walking around invisible is totally what these Aliens do. It's also a useless ability when playing against the AI, so I'm pretty happy to give it away early as unimportant. It enabled me to use Frictionless Surfaces for something else, which I actually renamed to Single-Sided Surfaces at one point, to make it more applicable to other stuff.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 08:16:26 PM
There are three unused slots in the list those can be added.
For 2 of them, their quotes and voice acting can be reactivated. I suggest you do so, because it's pretty much easter egg content to people familiar with the game. I have Global Energy Theory and Inertial Damping. The User Technology, it's not useful because the icon is stupid looking, an electric light bulb with either a question mark or a 9 in it, I forget.
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All tech are completely customizable.
Only if you're willing to edit blurbsx.txt and provide new voice acting, or turn off / waylay the voice acting, and also edit the icon artwork. That's a lot of work and it would be better to regard each tech, as being inherently stuck with some fixed content. This is what makes the techs a narrative constraint.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 08:26:00 PM
I don’t have the same instant recognition for “Nonlinear Mathematics” or “Monopole Magnets.”
You have a point that Nonlinear Mathematics is ripe for repurposing as something else, much as I repurposed Superconductor according to Morgan's actual quote and voice acting. But from a game modding standpoint, for what? There aren't actually enough Discover oriented pure research techs, to put it into the Discover tree where the name and Zhakarov voice acting actually belong. And what's going to give the Particle Impactor if not that? I think narratively they did some "high energy science techno babble" for various weapons, so that's what we've got.
And is it a problem really? Do Star Trek watchers get "upset" when someone talks about a "quantum phase inverter" or whatever <insert techno babble here> is being used to explain energy physics that obviously we have no current understanding of? I'd say if you're watching a sci-fi show and can't handle this sort of thing, you need to watch something else. Which admittedly, can be a problem when a game hemorrhages its audience to something more "historical", as in the case of SMAC vs. Civ. The historical story is way easier for most people to digest.
I don't see the problem with Monopole Magnets. You get mag tubes. It's a glorified monorail in the future. I mean if you're a certain age and you don't know about monorails, you're a dummy. Or poor / in some other part of the world or something. I was exposed to the things at Disneyland, which I guess means I was "rich" as a kid. As an adult, they were in downtown Seattle to get to the World's Fair grounds and back.
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So does the tonal poem “Monopole Magnets.”
Educated grade school kids know that magnets are dipole. Talking about them being monopole may be exotic, but it's hardly off-topic. Adults may not remember the terminology because their teachers aren't whipping them for compliance :whip:, but if a player is really put out by this and can't wrap their head around it at all, they're dummies and shouldn't be playing a sci-fi game. Let alone roleplaying one in your extended wargame. I mean there's a point at which "I don't know what 'monopole' means" just isn't a valid objection about anything. It would be like "don't write with fifty cent words", which is a non-goal for making a sci-fi game.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 08:41:46 PM
Some Trekkies do get upset when the inconsistencies and discontinuities stack up, yes. The idea is that you are creating a story that should have some internal consistency, not that you can't have future tech. Nonliner Mathematics doesn't present a problem by merely existing--it is just that it has no obvious application at first glance. It needs the benefit of flavor text a while lot more than does Industrial Base.
Monopole Magnets is problematic because the immediate industrial application of a magnet isn't intuitive. Again, "Industrial Base probably enhances my manufacturing." What do monopole magnets do for me? I know what a magnet is, and I know what monopole magnets must be in broad strokes, but I don't immediately think "monorails!" What if I thought, "Gauss cannon!" instead?
Quote from: bvanevery
Educated grade school kids know that magnets are dipole. Talking about them being monopole may be exotic, but it's hardly off-topic. Adults may not remember the terminology because their teachers aren't whipping them for compliance :whip:, but if a player is really put out by this and can't wrap their head around it at all, they're dummies and shouldn't be playing a sci-fi game. Let alone roleplaying one in your extended wargame. I mean there's a point at which "I don't know what 'monopole' means" just isn't a valid objection about anything. It would be like "don't write with fifty cent words", which is a non-goal for making a sci-fi game.
There are times I wonder if you just enjoy argument for its own sake.
You complained previously that a good game is one in which the players needn't do too much intellectual gymnastics to apprehend what happens if they push Button A or pull Lever B. Now, you're waving all that away.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 08:42:21 PM
Quote from: bvaneveryPlayers actually quit games when guidance is fantastically bad. It may take more than one such thing, but player irritation with things they don't understand, is cumulative.
Based on experience from 2014 and feedback from other reviewers, this isn’t causing irritation to anyone right now.
Well you have the luxury of hand picking your crew of ~15 players for the extended wargame you're running. And personally answering any questions anyone has about what they're vague on. And we established, unfortunately on the Discord, that your game designing isn't mass audience facing. You are neither concerned with how it will be narrated to someone who is not playing, nor whether anyone else would adopt your gaming system as a standard. And finally, I believe you're saying that you haven't actually run the game with the "Choose" category in it yet.
If you're not personally going to tell people what's going on, there's a reason to come up with a better category name.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 08:46:58 PM
Technically speaking, it is Industrial Base that builds everything in the game.
That's false. It's Industrial Base, not Industrial Everything. Listen to what Morgan actually tells you when you get that tech. You gotta start somewhere, and the Former is the most basic piece of industrial equipment to the whole game.
I mean, this whole tree isn't in a vacuum of "words, categories, and player preconceptions". There's extensive narrative guidance, voice acted. This is why we're still playing the game 21 years later, and why nobody has equaled this thing.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2020, 09:25:05 PM
Did we ever expect to hear pacifistic Skye talk about the aftermath of a military victory against the Spartans?
No, and it's out of character. The problem is, why is Deirdre using a quantum tank to plow through a wrecked Sparta Command? Deidre fought totally conventional war, and won against the Spartans? FFS why? We're being given a narrative reversal, that "Gaians, despite being pacifist, can actually kick some ass." And we'd be right to question the writing here. If Deidre had mindwormed and locusted everyone to death, we'd get it. We might even expect it. But quantum tanks? Well I guess Gaian research is pretty darned spiffy over the long haul. And what's the secret in "Our Secret War" ? It's supposed to be mindworms; Buster's Uncle got me wise to one of the most obscure commands of the game, "Release mindworms into the wild." There is a secret war. What's up with this quantum tank stuff? Deidre amassed a sizable legion of quantum tanks secretly, despite the preponderance of probe teams in this gaming universe, and did some kind of fooled ya sucker punch invasion?
Not buying it. I'm a modder; I know the game did some things wrong. But redoing voice acting is expensive and not low hanging fruit. "...as our mindworm boil slithered over the rubble... there were few screams of human life." That's how you take out Spartans when you're 'pacifist'.
Deidre is an eco-Nazi anyways. She never fooled me. Must be all that cartooney one-dimensional faction diplomatic dialogue, in the cookie cutter template that doesn't allow for anything else.
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How about Lal talking about mobility?
Out of character. Probably written and voice acted at a time where they didn't fully know where they were going with stuff yet. Or, they may have realized they didn't have enough "Lal lines" and tossed in a mediocre one to make up for it.
Or maybe they just didn't have the writing chops to make Santiago into a credible military leader. It clearly should have been her area. She's the weakest of the original lineup. She never invades anything, shoots anything, gives an order... she does the "philosophical" thing like everyone else, and that's not a convincing portrayal of a military leader. Warlords kill and bomb stuff. They also execute the insubordinate on the spot.
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Nonliner Mathematics doesn't present a problem by merely existing--it is just that it has no obvious application at first glance.
SMAC doesn't have to be a 'glancing' narrative. There's piles upon piles of game lore that Nonlinear Mathematics techno-babble fits into. Just keep listening to Zhakarov, he'll set you straight.
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Monopole Magnets is problematic because the immediate industrial application of a magnet isn't intuitive.
It is if you know you're getting mag tubes and have ever seen a monorail. Monorail monomagnet monopole monowhatever. Mono mono mono mono mono. If Yang had started talking about monotheism in all of this, I might be worried, but he talked about Yin without Yang, North without South, Pleasure without Pain. This is a very Enlightened way to travel. It's hardcore application of indoctrinal woo.
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I know what a magnet is, and I know what monopole magnets must be in broad strokes, but I don't immediately think "monorails!"
They tell you what it makes, so you shouldn't have any problem figuring it out. It's not like this is a game of "guess the application" and "enter it into a text parser to solve a puzzle".
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What if I thought, "Gauss cannon!" instead?
How about if you're even capable of contemplating how a railgun works, you already know how a monorail works? You jolly well should. And those that don't know either, aren't a problem, because the tech entry explained what everything is for. And used the prefix "mono-" to make a hand wavy connection in the mind of the audience as to how they're related. The techno babble here is perfectly fine.
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There are times I wonder if you just enjoy argument for its own sake.
I don't think you like your own design biases laid bare.
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You complained previously that a good game is one in which the players needn't do too much intellectual gymnastics to apprehend what happens if they push Button A or pull Lever B. Now, you're waving all that away.
I can't even begin to understand why you personally have a blind spot about the basic technology of a monorail. But you do, and there it is.
Go do an internet survey on how many sci-fi fans know what a monorail is.
Post by: Trenacker on July 05, 2020, 10:24:21 PM
Quote from: bvanevery
Well you have the luxury of hand picking your crew of ~15 players for the extended wargame you're running. And personally answering any questions anyone has about what they're vague on. And we established, unfortunately on the Discord, that your game designing isn't mass audience facing. You are neither concerned with how it will be narrated to someone who is not playing, nor whether anyone else would adopt your gaming system as a standard. And finally, I believe you're saying that you haven't actually run the game with the "Choose" category in it yet.
If you're not personally going to tell people what's going on, there's a reason to come up with a better category name.
It’s as simple as adding a note to the menu of research options that reads, “Here’s what the Choose Focus is about.” Just like, “Monopole Magnets unlock the Mag-Lev.” Once they’d seen that, nobody had lingering confusion.
Quote from: bvanevery
That's false. It's Industrial Base, not Industrial Everything. Listen to what Morgan actually tells you when you get that tech. You gotta start somewhere, and the Former is the most basic piece of industrial equipment to the whole game.
I mean, this whole tree isn't in a vacuum of "words, categories, and player preconceptions". There's extensive narrative guidance, voice acted. This is why we're still playing the game 21 years later, and why nobody has equaled this thing.
Morgan talks abstractly about his philosophy regarding consumption in the Industrial Base quotation. In “Paean to SMAC,” the author makes the compelling point that this is really a meditation about whether or not civilization on Earth “failed” in a meaningful sense. Morgan says, no—they simply reached a new stage of their relationship with nature.
The logic that says, “Formers are the basic building blocks of a faction’s economy” is no more or less ambitious than the logic that says, “In order to form, you have to first understand the medium.”
Quote from: bvanevery
No, and it's out of character. The problem is, why is Deirdre using a quantum tank to plow through a wrecked Sparta Command? Deidre fought totally conventional war, and won against the Spartans? FFS why? We're being given a narrative reversal, that "Gaians, despite being pacifist, can actually kick some ass." And we'd be right to question the writing here. If Deidre had mindwormed and locusted everyone to death, we'd get it. We might even expect it. But quantum tanks? Well I guess Gaian research is pretty darned spiffy over the long haul. And what's the secret in "Our Secret War" ? It's supposed to be mindworms; Buster's Uncle got me wise to one of the most obscure commands of the game, "Release mindworms into the wild." There is a secret war. What's up with this quantum tank stuff? Deidre amassed a sizable legion of quantum tanks secretly, despite the preponderance of probe teams in this gaming universe, and did some kind of fooled ya sucker punch invasion?
Not buying it. I'm a modder; I know the game did some things wrong. But redoing voice acting is expensive and not low hanging fruit. "...as our mindworm boil slithered over the rubble... there were few screams of human life." That's how you take out Spartans when you're 'pacifist'.
Deidre is an eco-Nazi anyways. She never fooled me. Must be all that cartooney one-dimensional faction diplomatic dialogue, in the cookie cutter template that doesn't allow for anything else.
I disagree that these were miscast. I think it’s part of the essential genius of the story that leaders are commenting on topics outside their ostensible areas of scientific expertise. One of the two major SMAC blogs pointed out that the faction leaders are unique because they are all intellectuals. Even Morgan and Santiago wax poetical in ways that most people don’t.
There’s nothing wrong with Miriam building quantum tanks. I still drew the same conclusion you did: that the wider war was probably won by virtue of the Gaian’s reliance on native lifeforms to overcome the Spartan advantage in built weapons.
Quote from: bvanevery
Or maybe they just didn't have the writing chops to make Santiago into a credible military leader. It clearly should have been her area. She's the weakest of the original lineup. She never invades anything, shoots anything, gives an order... she does the "philosophical" thing like everyone else, and that's not a convincing portrayal of a military leader. Warlords kill and bomb stuff. They also execute the insubordinate on the spot.
Santiago is a warlord only if subverted. Played straight, she’s more akin to a Founding Father.
I think you’re seeking stereotypes, and that’s just not interesting to me. It was refreshing to see Alpha Centauri do some judo with our expectations—culturally, racially, genderwise, and in regard to the topics on which we get insights from each leader.
SMAC is all about subversion. Skye is either a hippie eco-terrorist or a pacifistic conservationist, and maybe both. Santiago is either a prudent prepper who understands intuitively from whence our liberty comes, or else she is a maniac on the order of David Koresh, and maybe both. Zakharov is either a brilliant scientist who will lead us out of a dark age of scientific illiteracy, or an ethical monster who puts his desire to know ahead of every human impulse, and maybe both.
Quote from: bvanevery
It is if you know you're getting mag tubes and have ever seen a monorail. Monorail monomagnet monopole monowhatever. Mono mono mono mono mono. If Yang had started talking about monotheism in all of this, I might be worried, but he talked about Yin without Yang, North without South, Pleasure without Pain. This is a very Enlightened way to travel. It's hardcore application of indoctrinal woo.
Except monorails aren’t uniformly driven by magnets. Magnets are merely one potential means of propelling monorails.
Quote from: bvanevery
They tell you what it makes, so you shouldn't have any problem figuring it out. It's not like this is a game of "guess the application" and "enter it into a text parser to solve a puzzle".
Just like I tell players what the “Choose” line of research means in the rule booklet and game aids.
You go back and forth repeatedly between, "Immediate clarity is the main thing--shouldn't have to explain," and, "If you tell them, the confusion is gone."
Quote from: bvanevery
I don't think you like your own design biases laid bare.
If that is true, I certainly spend a lot of time talking about them.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2020, 12:25:09 AM
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Morgan talks abstractly about his philosophy regarding consumption in the Industrial Base quotation.
I forgot that "...whole cloth..." is Industrial Economics. Nevertheless they're thematically and temporally close to one another. The Former is a very basic piece of industrial equipment, given immediate visual representation in the game.
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One of the two major SMAC blogs pointed out that the faction leaders are unique because they are all intellectuals. Even Morgan and Santiago wax poetical in ways that most people don’t.
Santiago is wholly unconvincing as an intellectual military leader. Adolph Hitler is convincing. Lenin is convincing. Santiago is a "diversity cast" that is off-character. She shouldn't be philosophizing, she should be fighting. She's a militia woman in camo pajamas.
Santiago is structurally unconvincing because she's not on a major axis of conflict. Human rights is Lal vs. Yang. Environment is Deidre vs. Morgan. Religion is Miriam vs. Zhakarov. Santiago got stuck in there to make the diplomatic interactions unstable. 6 is more stable than 7.
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There’s nothing wrong with Miriam building quantum tanks.
Sure there is. It's Deirdre's Secret War, not Miriam's. Miriam's secret war, per the original game, would have been with probe teams. It is especially silly to give Deirdre the quantum tanks when it's Santiago extolling their military virtues in the Secret Project video about them. She's all over the industrial nanopaste. This simply isn't Deirdre's bailiwick and it's not credible.
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Santiago is a warlord only if subverted. Played straight, she’s more akin to a Founding Father.
BS. If she were a founding father, George Washington would have established a dictatorship. He knew he could, and he didn't. Santiago is a clowning of paranoid militia movements of the 1990s, much as Miriam is a clowning of the Religious Far Right ala the Church Chat Lady on Saturday Night Live. There's plenty of "Founding Father" material Santiago could have directly drawn upon, if that was the authorial intent. Original papers of the time period etc. They didn't / she doesn't. She's all about the blood and guts. Kill kill kill. "Why should the future be different?" Because it's silly, that's why. Go command a real military force already.
I don't think she's probably even as intellectual as Napoleon. She's as intellectual as a Third World Junta.
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Zakharov is either a brilliant scientist who will lead us out of a dark age of scientific illiteracy, or an ethical monster who puts his desire to know ahead of every human impulse, and maybe both.
No, it's just a throwaway line in the faction diplomatic dialogue to justify a penalty, because the game designers thought "all factions should have penalties". It's right up there with Miriam's throwaway line about being anti-Planet. There's nothing else in the game to support it at all. It's a half-baked idea and it shows. Yang is the scientific monster, not Zhakarov. Yang got all the "monster research" parts. I don't think it's wrong to pair them as natural allies though. Except of course Yang is probably going to roll over everyone with Power at some point, and moralizing Zhakarov is going to put a stop to it! Yeah, suuuure he does evil experiments, when he cares that much about 'Power' being bad.
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Except monorails aren’t uniformly driven by magnets. Magnets are merely one potential means of propelling monorails.
If you know what a monorail is, you've run into concept of the electromagnetic version of them. Why do you persist in claiming this is hard stuff? This is easy. Do you think kids don't go to children's science museums or something? Don't read science fiction books as kids? I had some book that had "mag tubes" in it, big painted illustration, of these things going through the crust of a planet.
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You go back and forth repeatedly between, "Immediate clarity is the main thing--shouldn't have to explain," and, "If you tell them, the confusion is gone."
I think this is your real sore point. You want this to be about me telling you one thing, and not criticizing your choice. But that's not how design works. You can have too much of something, you can have too little of something. Correct design is within the bounded range of possibilities. You are doing too little with 'Choose', for an audience other than your hand picked 15 players. Like, nobody would be selling your game manual at Barnes & Noble on this basis. Your Publisher Editor would be telling you to fix that, to be more specific.
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If that is true, I certainly spend a lot of time talking about them.
You really shouldn't complain, especially about someone's personality rather than their arguments, when someone reacts to your designs differently than you want them to.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 06, 2020, 12:59:34 AM
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2020, 01:28:36 AM
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There are times I wonder if you just enjoy argument for its own sake.
I have said nothing worse than that. If I can't say things, then Trenacker should not be saying such things either.
Do I need to hit Report buttons myself in the future? This isn't one-sided.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 06, 2020, 02:12:51 AM
If I know Trenacker, and I reckon I definitely do by now, he really wants and values feedback - it's more of a tonal problem than anything, and one I'm poorly qualified to explain for fear of being an obvious hypocrite. ...If you went to a lot more trouble to fake a little modesty and not state quite so bluntly that the other party is wrong -and not so often- I believe you'd find these episodes of generous feedback on your part -and let me thank you, on behalf of everyone, for that frequent good intention- would be more smoothly received. Everyone would be happier, and that includes you, I should hope.
Thank you in advance for your gracious cooperation...
Post by: Trenacker on July 06, 2020, 11:36:56 PM
Quote from: bvanevery
This is getting to "I can lead a horse to water, I can't make them drink." I don't think you currently have any design pressure to make your 'Choose' category more quickly intelligible. All I can point out is that it specifies absolutely nothing.
Sure. I get that. Possibly pulling out this remark from the context of a broader discussion of places where SMAC’s original design was unintelligible helps make your point clear.
Quote from: bvanevery
I forgot that "...whole cloth..." is Industrial Economics. Nevertheless they're thematically and temporally close to one another. The Former is a very basic piece of industrial equipment, given immediate visual representation in the game.
I think it makes perfect sense to introduce the Former in connection with Industrial Base. I do see the clear connection. At the same time, I don’t think it makes any less sense to introduce it in connection with Centauri Ecology.
Quote from: bvanevery
Santiago is wholly unconvincing as an intellectual military leader. Adolph Hitler is convincing. Lenin is convincing. Santiago is a "diversity cast" that is off-character. She shouldn't be philosophizing, she should be fighting. She's a militia woman in camo pajamas.
I find your perspective absolutely fascinating, perhaps more-so because I know there is no objective right answer.
I’ve always understood Santiago to have multiple different inspirations: Ruby Ridge (the “survivalist” theme), 1980s gang culture (the reference to the Jade Falcon street gang, which was also an unsubtle nod to the BattleTech franchise), South American military juntas, libertarians, and gun enthusiasts. In some guises, Santiago might even be the Dennis Hopper character in WaterWorld or the Bill Paxton character in The Postman.
I agree that Santiago had subjectively lackluster quotations. I think she and Miriam actually get the shortest end of the stick, followed by Lal. The latter two do have one or two big hitters, but overall their quotations are mostly forgettable. Morgan has a big selection of middle and some heavyweights. Yang was some good ones, too.
Quote from: bvanevery
Santiago is structurally unconvincing because she's not on a major axis of conflict. Human rights is Lal vs. Yang. Environment is Deidre vs. Morgan. Religion is Miriam vs. Zhakarov. Santiago got stuck in there to make the diplomatic interactions unstable. 6 is more stable than 7.
The dyadic relationships of Alpha Centauri are a huge point of interest to me given my academic interests in international relations and military history. You may find it interesting (I hope) that I always paired Santiago with Lal and saw Yang as the odd one out. Possible this is because I looked at the Peacekeepers in a literal sense—as those concerned with policing conflict—than from the point of view of a democratic society fundamentally opposed to Yang’s theories on control of information.
I think my new factions are certainly distinctive, but they are not dyadic with either each other or the original faction set.
Here are the dyads as I see them:
- Morgan---Skye [Consumption/Conservation]
- Lal---Santiago [Compromise/Conflict]
- Godwinson---Zakharov [Faith/Science] (Even that is an over-simplification. I'm not religious myself, and I can't empathize with religiously-motivated skepticism toward science, but as I've understood it, religious people often claim to have had faith experiences that confirm to them the existence of the Divine in ways they accept as empirical and tangible even if those cannot be proved to others. That is, I don't think Godwinson's followers reject science as important--it's just that they don't see scientific solutions as being desirable ones for an equally broad range of problems and question the moral consequences of embracing certain technologies.)
I think there are a lot of ways my new factions can engage with the others, some dyadic, some not:
- Marsh---Van de Graaf [Communitarian/Individualist] (Marsh values usufruct rights and the principle of free passage; van de Graaf is obsessed with the possession and alienation of personal property.)
- St. Germaine---Lal [Restrictive/Open] (While Yang could also fit here, I think St. Germaine most expresses the flip side of Lal's argument about why freedom of information is so essential to the preservation of freedom, since it is the New State that proposes an overload of information leads inevitably to a desire for authoritarian government to impose order on the chaos and eliminate the anxiety that comes of self-direction.)
- Pahlavi---? [Biology/Technology] (I had intended to add a character named Johann Anhalt whose faction basically did what David Brinn's Corvallis, Oregon did: turn over all government to a super-computer.)
- Nagao---Skye [Earth/Chiron] (The Shapers want to literally remake Planet into Earth. To the Gaians, that's a genocidal agenda.)
The Dreamers of Chiron, who are basically addicts, could be said to be uniquely without a dyadic partner, although in theory you could subvert Lal to get someone obsessed with the law (hearkening back to what I think are fan theories stressing Legalism) and present the Dreamers as inveterate law-breakers.Quote from: bvaneverySure there is. It's Deirdre's Secret War, not Miriam's. Miriam's secret war, per the original game, would have been with probe teams. It is especially silly to give Deirdre the quantum tanks when it's Santiago extolling their military virtues in the Secret Project video about them. She's all over the industrial nanopaste. This simply isn't Deirdre's bailiwick and it's not credible.
I meant Deirdre, which you intuited anyway.
I think giving Deirdre quantum tanks adds a layer of depth to the storytelling. In real life, Athens, the preeminent naval power of ancient Greece, still had a small land army, too.Quote from: bvaneveryBS. If she were a founding father, George Washington would have established a dictatorship. He knew he could, and he didn't. Santiago is a clowning of paranoid militia movements of the 1990s, much as Miriam is a clowning of the Religious Far Right ala the Church Chat Lady on Saturday Night Live. There's plenty of "Founding Father" material Santiago could have directly drawn upon, if that was the authorial intent. Original papers of the time period etc. They didn't / she doesn't. She's all about the blood and guts. Kill kill kill. "Why should the future be different?" Because it's silly, that's why. Go command a real military force already.
I don’t think that follows. Played straight, Santiago articulates a way of life that might be recognizable to anyone obsessed with the idea of the citizen-soldier. She can be a clowning, just as Miriam can be a clowning, but that is not strictly necessary.Quote from: bvaneveryI don't think she's probably even as intellectual as Napoleon. She's as intellectual as a Third World Junta.
She’s the least-intellectual of the bunch, which is unsurprising given her lack of formal education, but certainly more intellectual than most.Quote from: bvaneveryNo, it's just a throwaway line in the faction diplomatic dialogue to justify a penalty, because the game designers thought "all factions should have penalties". It's right up there with Miriam's throwaway line about being anti-Planet. There's nothing else in the game to support it at all. It's a half-baked idea and it shows. Yang is the scientific monster, not Zhakarov. Yang got all the "monster research" parts. I don't think it's wrong to pair them as natural allies though. Except of course Yang is probably going to roll over everyone with Power at some point, and moralizing Zhakarov is going to put a stop to it! Yeah, suuuure he does evil experiments, when he cares that much about 'Power' being bad.
Miriam’s “anti-Planet” association comes from the logical implications of arguing that God “gave” Man the planet to do with as he pleased. Some conservative Evangelical resistance to climate science is rooted in that kind of thinking.
Any of the faction leaders can be scientific monsters, including Skye, who essentially sics aliens on people, and Morgan, who orders citizens nerve-stapled after they discover the ineffable horrors sealed away in his labs. Zakharov rails at the Genetic Police for violating his privacy. Zakharov’s psych profile even emphasizes his moral deficiencies.Quote from: bvaneveryI think this is your real sore point. You want this to be about me telling you one thing, and not criticizing your choice. But that's not how design works. You can have too much of something, you can have too little of something. Correct design is within the bounded range of possibilities. You are doing too little with 'Choose', for an audience other than your hand picked 15 players. Like, nobody would be selling your game manual at Barnes & Noble on this basis. Your Publisher Editor would be telling you to fix that, to be more specific.
I understand your point, but it feels… gratuitous. I’m not writing in hopes of publishing anything. I’m writing for a very specific audience. I think some of your input is still quite valid. It’s simply better if things are intuitive. Everyone then has to do less mental work to orient themselves, which makes it easier to get to the enjoyment of things. But just like SMAC had time to explain itself to players, I will, too.Quote from: bvaneveryYou really shouldn't complain, especially about someone's personality rather than their arguments, when someone reacts to your designs differently than you want them to.
Personality is part of what helps people decide whether they want repeat interaction.
What frustrates me is that, at times, you seem to assume that we are driven by the same objectives or are necessarily bound by the same design principles. We aren’t. I value your different perspective, and I usually enjoy our exchanges, but at times it feels like you are lecturing about material I didn’t learn correctly rather than sharing a personal viewpoint.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2020, 07:36:14 PM
You may find it interesting (I hope) that I always paired Santiago with Lal and saw Yang as the odd one out. Possible this is because I looked at the Peacekeepers in a literal sense—as those concerned with policing conflict—than from the point of view of a democratic society fundamentally opposed to Yang’s theories on control of information.
Indeed I do find it interesting, because your point of view is quite simply, not the plain reading of the material.
Lal can't choose Police State. Yang can't choose Democratic. They're in direct opposition to each other in the SE table. Either could be Fundamentalist. They have diplomatic dialogue specifically barbing each other.
The U.N. Charter can be Repealed and Reinstated. Yang is the primary proponent of nihilistic atrocities. Lal is the obvious defense of human rights.
Yang performs the biological experiments on the human condition. "What do I care for your suffering?" Lal decries the experiments as creepy, the thoughts that cross back, the true horror of these monstrosities.
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but at times it feels like you are lecturing about material I didn’t learn correctly rather than sharing a personal viewpoint.
Because at times, you didn't!
I mean, I get that the game is intended to be an open tableau to some extent, that you project your own roles, aspirations, and cognitive processes upon. It's somewhat successful at that, enough to keep us talking about it 21 years later. But I also know the writers (singular? plural?) had some clear authorial intent in places. They were delivering certain messages as part of their worldbuilding and lore.
Something uncontroversial: if you didn't think Deidre was about environmentalism, you'd be 100% wholly wrong.
Maybe not every character and foiling is as clear cut as that. Maybe some pairings are more ambiguous than that. But I'm inclined to say that Lal vs. Yang is pretty hard to miss.
And we know, structurally, as game designers and analysts, why 7 factions were chosen and not 6. It's a system of possible allies and possible enemies, as you look at all the relationships across the diplomatic circle. We know that there are going to be secondary alliances and enemies, besides the primary. We know that Miriam is opposed to Zhakarov, it's the primary. But we also know she's gonna be opposed to Lal.
So the design exercise is, which do you really believe was intended as the authorial primary? Do you really think Santiago was speaking against "the United Nations" ? Did she really have a lot of anti-New World Order lines that I missed? Or did you think, "she's militia, so it must be so" and sorta run with it in your own mind?
There are many times when I think you are too consumed with your own personal interest in creating new material, to see the original material in its own terms. You tend to spend a lot of energy on things you want to create and bring forth.
I think the "philosopher king and legalism" stuff with Yang, is an instance of that. We've had arguments about that in the past; you know I don't buy your interpretation there at all. Yang is Mao Tse-Tung in space, straight up. We didn't get around to talking about this on your Discord the other day, because other issues... precluded us ever getting there.
I don't buy your sexist interpretation of Deirdre either. I don't think she wants women-only leaders... I certainly never got that impression from the game. I haven't read the novelizations much, as they're too badly written to soldier through. Your version of Deidre sounds like a fanfic that you're running for the heck of it. But to give you benefit of the doubt, maybe sexism was in the novels, and Firaxis just wisely left those ideas out of the game.
Post by: Nexii on July 07, 2020, 09:12:36 PM
I think the board game Adv/Mega Civilization had better categorization, where advances were divided amongst types of knowledge rather than the strategy they imply. As there are really only two strategies in 4x games, and those are build or conquer. Hence most of explore/discover is co-dependent with build.
There was: Tools, Arts, Sciences, Civics, and Religion
SMAC isn't analogous but if I were to do a tech tree again I'd consider categories more like:
Infrastructure (pop growth, economic facilities, 'industrial' terraforming)
Biology (native & human life, 'green' terraforming, most 'secrets' techs)
Civics (SE choices, specialists, diplomatic options)
Military (chassis, weapon, armor)
Post by: Trenacker on July 08, 2020, 12:25:13 AM
You say that Yang is the one who focuses on biological experiments with regard to the human condition, but Zakharov’s is the voice associated with Gene Splicing. Zakharov also relates to us the brutal reality of Matter Transmission. If Zakharov is not an ethical train wreck, why the quote for Retroviral Engineering? Why is he the one to first disobey Captain Garland during the Unity Crisis? Why does his Psych Profile explicitly discuss his ethical deficiencies? Too many explicit and implicit datapoints.
Quote from: bvanevery
So the design exercise is, which do you really believe was intended as the authorial primary? Do you really think Santiago was speaking against "the United Nations" ? Did she really have a lot of anti-New World Order lines that I missed? Or did you think, "she's militia, so it must be so" and sorta run with it in your own mind?There’s a difference between somebody who is articulating a fear of One World Order and somebody who looks at the United Nations as the epitome of values they believe destroyed our species: compromise, negotiation, de-escalation, intervention, etc.
Quote from: bvanevery
I think the "philosopher king and legalism" stuff with Yang, is an instance of that. We've had arguments about that in the past; you know I don't buy your interpretation there at all. Yang is Mao Tse-Tung in space, straight up. We didn't get around to talking about this on your Discord the other day, because other issues... precluded us ever getting there.
I don't buy your sexist interpretation of Deirdre either. I don't think she wants women-only leaders... I certainly never got that impression from the game. I haven't read the novelizations much, as they're too badly written to soldier through. Your version of Deidre sounds like a fanfic that you're running for the heck of it. But to give you benefit of the doubt, maybe sexism was in the novels, and Firaxis just wisely left those ideas out of the game.
I didn’t invoke either of those concepts here. I understand clearly the distinction between concepts I or others have offered to expand the fiction and the original material provided in the computer game, the manual, and associated promotional products.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2020, 05:34:59 AM
I think it was no mistake that we got so many leaders speaking to so many technologies that, on the face of it, were quintessential research goals for other factions. It happened too often.
The sprinklings into "other leaders' areas" were clearly deliberate. The question is whether they were effective. That's to be judged for each specific quote. I have no doubt that one of the main drivers of the sprinklings, was "equal air time" for the voice actors. Regardless of whether the game had enough character material, areas of concern, or techs, for that to be appropriate. I would estimate that half of the tech tree is actually stuff that should be classified as straightforward Conquer. Well it can't just be Santiago talking the whole time now, can it.
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Thus, Lal gives us the quote for Centauri Psi;
I found it off, that Lal has gone "Green". It seems to communicate that the Gaians have been successful at communicating and instilling a world view in other faction leaders' minds. Or possibly even in co-opting the Planetary Council.
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a Morganite “Weakener” for Digital Sentience;
The Morganites have a number of quotes that indicate they actually do research, that Zhakarov doesn't have a unique lock on it. Morgan is in particular pretty hell bent on applied research. Even to the point of applying it on live subjects in hospitals.
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Lal again for Doctrine: Mobility,
I say it's just because they can't have Santiago doing every military line, and Lal didn't have enough material of his own.
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Neural Grafting,
It's 100% Lal's "human rights" area. Humanity is slipping into cyborg darkness.
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and Fusion Power;
No, that's the "Morganite announcer".
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Godwinson for High Energy Chemistry,
Quotes and videos give us "contemplative Miriam". It's the faction diplomatic dialogue that give us the shrill Bible thumping Church Chat Lady. It is dissonant, and I have chosen to dump or tone down the latter as much as I can.
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Industrial Nanorobotics,
100% her character opposition to technological "advancement" BS.
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and yes, Information Networks;
This is exactly the same thing. Science doesn't make the religious comply. Science vs. Religion is a major structural axis of the game.
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Santiago for Nanomettalurgy.
She likes military toys. Why wouldn't she? She polishes artillery pieces.
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Lal gets the quote for Silksteel.
His original AI faction focus was Explore, Discover. Game mechanically I'm not sure why they decided on that. Perhaps because they couldn't have him as pure Explore, as that's Deidre's thing. And making him Explore, Build may have made him seem like he was too much in Morgan's area, or somehow "halfway" between Deirdre and Morgan, as a kind of neutral. Explore, Conquer would have made him an [jerk, sphincter], like Miriam. Obviously can't be pure Conquer either. So I think by process of elimination we land at Explore, Discover.
Given that, I think they tossed him some lines to increase his scientific brain trust credibility. He also has an unused line about lighting paper on fire and getting energy out of it, if you dig into the Global Energy Theory deactivated tech. I don't think it can ever be triggered because I think it was supposed to be used with Stockpile Energy. It's in blurbsx.txt if you poke around there. I can't remember if there's actual voice acting to go with it.
Code: [Select]
##Mass to Energy
#FAC38
I hold a scrap of paper in the darkness and
light it. I watch it burn bright and curl, disappearing
into nothingness, and the heat burns my fingers.
Where has it gone? What has it become? I cannot shake
the feeling that I have witnessed a form of transcendence.
^
^ -- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
^ "The Convergence"Quote
You say that Yang is the one who focuses on biological experiments with regard to the human condition,
Because it's true, and not really open to question or interpretation in the basic factualness of it. To believe otherwise is to miss a core voice in the game.
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but Zakharov’s is the voice associated with Gene Splicing.
His points are bland:
Code: [Select]
##Gene Splicing
#TECH49
The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature
and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron
in the brain. What it {can} do is describe the underlying
fractal pattern which creates them.
^
^ -- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
^ "Nonlinear Genetics"He's teaching 'kids' playing SMAC, who don't know much about biology, how DNA works. This is is not controversy about the human condition. It's holding a player's hand to understand basic facts about science. This isn't Civ. Nobody's got "chariot wheels" and "knights with lances" to form a basic game substrate out of.
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Zakharov also relates to us the brutal reality of Matter Transmission.
He still has the rat, he didn't even kill it. What's the problem? That you can't ever do an experiment with a rat, before proceeding to human trials?
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If Zakharov is not an ethical train wreck, why the quote for Retroviral Engineering?
They're screwing with Microsoft, and other tech companies that make press releases that are complete BS. It's not about the University. It's about what corporations say in the 1990s. "Where do you want your node today?" Or dictators; Saddam Hussein was sparring with UN Weapons Inspectors in the timeframe of the game.
You don't have to be an ethical train wreck to have a clandestine weapons program. The USSR did it, the USA did it. It's done.
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Why is he the one to first disobey Captain Garland during the Unity Crisis?
Whatever was written in the paper manual that came with the game, might be considered relevant characterization. However, although people in those days were required to RTFM to play complex games, they were not exactly required to read Appendicies and "filler, extra" material. It doesn't exactly show a top-drawer narrative concern, to bury any such storyline in the written notes. And we'd still need to perform the exercise of dissecting that material for relevance and your claim anyways.
"Someone disobeyed". What of it? Are you a Nazi, "only following orders" ?
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Why does his Psych Profile explicitly discuss his ethical deficiencies?
Let's see... how easy is it for me to pull up Zhakarov's psych profile while playing the game? I'll check that now. I don't expect to be long, as I haven't seen it in years. That means it's probably not readily accessible and not really a substantial part of the game. I mean, how many hours have I logged playing this game by now?
Faction profile says, "Extra DRONE every four citizens (lack of ethics)". So they did have a play mechanic and an explanation about it, but such a pithy explanation doesn't exactly lend a lot of narrative weight. By itself, that's in the same weight class as Miriam being anti-Planet, because of her 1 line in her faction description. Against that, are all the quotes and videos for either of them, delivering nothing of the sort at all. Zhakarov is actually guilty of being a bit boring. He speaks in tech jargon and academese all the time. "Stodgy physicist" is about all you can really say about his real characterization, if you're being honest.
I use the Scenario Editor to give myself an immediate Commlink to him. Bioscan shows nothing further, just some photos going by. Profile and Datalinks can only show the faction info, giving this 1 line about him, with the game mechanic.
It was very easy for me to dump this game mechanic, because there's nothing else in the game itself that backs it up. I say they had an early idea about his character, and they didn't follow through. With Yang as "the heavy", it probably wasn't even useful to follow through. You don't need multiple characters competing to be "the unethical researcher". With the quotes, voice acting, and videos they actually delivered, that's Yang, pure and simple.
Firaxis may have had some stuff on their website about extended portraits of the faction leaders. AFAIAC, that doesn't count. I don't habitually go on websites to play games.
And again, paper manuals are pretty weak ways to get players to read or remember anything about character. I haven't had any reason to look at the game's manual in, forever.
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There’s a difference between somebody who is articulating a fear of One World Order and somebody who looks at the United Nations as the epitome of values they believe destroyed our species: compromise, negotiation, de-escalation, intervention, etc.
Santiago doesn't have a single quote or video on any of those points. Not a one. She's perfectly capable of negotiation, she's got all the dialogue entries proving that she can. Just like any other faction. None of her faction.txt info speaks to your vision of her either. Here's what the Spartans of the game are really about, per their faction.txt:
Code: [Select]
#BLURB
Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together,
a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained,
well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser
brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate.
^
^ -- Col. Corazon Santiago,
^ "Spartan Battle Manual"Spartans are mainly about kicking ass. Survivalism, the 2nd Amendment, and love of weapons are primary material, right there in the faction description.
I don't know if the paper manual has given you a basis for "going to town" on other interpretations. I will check on that.
The novelizations don't count. Players might read them, Firaxis may have even put them out, but they're not the game. Firaxis is perfectly capable of screwing the pooch with characterization making a novel too. Happened all the time with Star Wars extended universe stuff. I read Splinter of the Mind's Eye as a kid, one of the earliest books published in conjunction with the movie. My reaction? "That's not Darth Vader!" And I wasn't convinced that was Luke and Leia either. Like, what were they on about? That put me off of "third party writing" pretty much forever. I cannot seem to overcome that complete lack of character quality and continuity, that I experienced as a kid.
I wonder if I would object to it as much now? It sure pinged my BS-O-Meter as a kid.
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I didn’t invoke either of those concepts here. I understand clearly the distinction between concepts I or others have offered to expand the fiction and the original material provided in the computer game, the manual, and associated promotional products.
Good to know. In turn, I know that the Miriam of the original game, was partly given the portrayal of the violent Church Chat Lady. In my mod I've mostly jettisoned it, because it's dissonant and prejudiced. Rewriting the game with more religious characters, that aren't all just horrible punching bags, would be the best narrative approach. However I'm not going to spend the labor to do that, so I've just eliminated or toned down what I had ready access to.
I get the most flak for changing Miriam, of any of the changes I've made. And I will stick to my guns. I'm only supporting "contemplative Miriam." I think the Church Chat Lady stuff reads like a bad rough draft.
Post by: Nexii on July 08, 2020, 05:01:26 PM
I've been working on this new categorization
As far as lore-based tech categorization, roughly a quarter fit into each of the categories I proposed: Infrastructure, Civics, Biology, Military.
About 35-40% of all the benefits techs can give fall into military. Which means that military techs need to grant a few more benefits each on average, but I think it's not a big deal.
I may also go back to using more of the vanilla techs (i.e. no alien/progenitor stuff). Though that ends up being a lot of picking and choosing, not all the SMAX content was bad
Post by: Trenacker on July 10, 2020, 05:23:25 AM
Quote from: bvanevery
The sprinklings into "other leaders' areas" were clearly deliberate. The question is whether they were effective. That's to be judged for each specific quote. I have no doubt that one of the main drivers of the sprinklings, was "equal air time" for the voice actors. Regardless of whether the game had enough character material, areas of concern, or techs, for that to be appropriate. I would estimate that half of the tech tree is actually stuff that should be classified as straightforward Conquer. Well it can't just be Santiago talking the whole time now, can it.Yes, mileage for each individual quote varies. One of the great joys of writing fan fiction for SMACX, even in the broader context of game development, is to paint a fuller picture of each leader. Sometimes, that means bolstering the clear intentions of the original designers, but it may also mean painting our own interpretations into the tableau.
I’m not sure “equal air time” was a discernable objective. I’ve never counted the quotations to determine whether they were evenly distributed. I guess it always felt like Lal and Zakharov spoke least-often.
Quote from: bvanevery
I found it off, that Lal has gone "Green". It seems to communicate that the Gaians have been successful at communicating and instilling a world view in other faction leaders' minds. Or possibly even in co-opting the Planetary Council.Why? Lal’s remarks on mindworms don’t convey that he has been coopted by a conservation agenda. If I made to you an insightful remark about blood pressure, would that imply I was a doctor?
Even though individual faction leaders are apt to be the foremost thinkers about certain subjects—Skye for Centauri Psi, etc.—it doesn’t follow that they are necessarily also the most insightful. Again, the potential for interdisciplinary analysis comes to the fore.
Reading the Centauri Psi quote from Lal, I can draw the following conclusions: mind worms are a credible threat to every faction, which makes them an urgent subject even for those not deeply invested in ecological conservations, and Lal finds mind worms personally fascinating.
Quote from: bvanevery
The Morganites have a number of quotes that indicate they actually do research, that Zhakarov doesn't have a unique lock on it. Morgan is in particular pretty hell bent on applied research. Even to the point of applying it on live subjects in hospitals.Yeah, but every faction does research, and all factions probably do a great deal of applied research even if Morgan might be most likely to express frustration about learning for its own sake. I’m sure you agree that it’s very CEO-like to encourage subordinates not to miss the big picture or forget “why we are in business.”
Quote from: bvanevery
I say it's just because they can't have Santiago doing every military line, and Lal didn't have enough material of his own.I really don’t think so. Given his personal background, which includes academic learning in the areas of history and philosophy, I think Reynolds wanted us to hear from the leaders on topics beyond their particular ideological predilections. Lal might not have much use for Centauri Psi, but it has use for him.
Quote from: bvanevery
I say it's just because they can't have Santiago doing every military line, and Lal didn't have enough material of his own.It’s because Lal has something meaningful to say about movement, even though it was tied into a technology that was evidenced in Santiago’s starting unit.
In terms of dyadic relationships, Brian Reynolds does cite Santiago as a “militarist” on this podcast (https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/the-alpha-centauri-show), but he also presents Lal as the “Everybody Should be Peaceful, and We Should All Get Along Guy.” (Start at timestamp 25:35.)
Quote from: bvanevery
Quotes and videos give us "contemplative Miriam". It's the faction diplomatic dialogue that give us the shrill Bible thumping Church Chat Lady. It is dissonant, and I have chosen to dump or tone down the latter as much as I can.Dissonant yes, but not the same thing as unrealistic. People are complicated. Look at how an individual like Donald [Sleezebag], who has had consistent populist views on topics like trade, military intervention, criminal justice, and trade since the 1970s, is mutable by degrees.
Quote from: bvanevery
100% her character opposition to technological "advancement" BS.I’d guess that, as a quirk of forcing distinctive malluses and bonuses on the factions to affect gameplay, Miriam had to come off as a Luddite. But skepticism toward what technology might pipe isn’t the same thing as opposition to advancement per se. Can someone allow that skepticism to become a general dislike of “science”? Sure. It is sometimes easier to simply stand athwart the tracks than to shunt the train using a switch.
Quote from: bvanevery
Given that, I think they tossed him some lines to increase his scientific brain trust credibility. He also has an unused line about lighting paper on fire and getting energy out of it, if you dig into the Global Energy Theory deactivated tech. I don't think it can ever be triggered because I think it was supposed to be used with Stockpile Energy. It's in blurbsx.txt if you poke around there. I can't remember if there's actual voice acting to go with it.Right. Sometimes, the goal of the quotations, which I think is legitimate, is simply to remind us: we are dealing with very smart people who are intellectuals, at least by their own estimation of themselves.
Quote from: bvanevery
Because it's true, and not really open to question or interpretation in the basic factualness of it. To believe otherwise is to miss a core voice in the game.I encourage you to be precise. It is not open to question whether Yang does perform biological experiments. However, he is not the only one to do so. Morgan and Zakharov clearly do as well. And depending on how the game is played, any faction leader could be first to make it a priority.
Quote from: bvanevery
He's teaching 'kids' playing SMAC, who don't know much about biology, how DNA works. This is is not controversy about the human condition. It's holding a player's hand to understand basic facts about science. This isn't Civ. Nobody's got "chariot wheels" and "knights with lances" to form a basic game substrate out of.Yes, but that’s legitimate, too. I sometimes wish they’d done more of it.
Quote from: bvanevery
He still has the rat, he didn't even kill it. What's the problem? That you can't ever do an experiment with a rat, before proceeding to human trials?There’s no problem. It’s still evidence that he tut-tutted people worried about the ethical implications of an experiment he performed. Does it make him as much a monster as Yang? I think it depends on which experiments they’ve each run. Is Yang still a monster in his own right? Yes.
Quote from: bvanevery
They're screwing with Microsoft, and other tech companies that make press releases that are complete BS. It's not about the University. It's about what corporations say in the 1990s. "Where do you want your node today?" Or dictators; Saddam Hussein was sparring with UN Weapons Inspectors in the timeframe of the game.I think there are ethicists, and certainly citizens engaged in the political process, who would argue that, yes, biological and chemical weapons programs consisted “ethical train wrecks.” Would those assessments perhaps by colored by political allegiance? Of course.
You don't have to be an ethical train wreck to have a clandestine weapons program. The USSR did it, the USA did it. It's done.
Quote from: bvanevery
Whatever was written in the paper manual that came with the game, might be considered relevant characterization. However, although people in those days were required to RTFM to play complex games, they were not exactly required to read Appendicies and "filler, extra" material. It doesn't exactly show a top-drawer narrative concern, to bury any such storyline in the written notes. And we'd still need to perform the exercise of dissecting that material for relevance and your claim anyways.I’m not here to debate what is a “top-shelf” product. If your position is that the material not included in the computer game itself is less to be counted because it is less likely to have been experienced, sure, that’s a fair and fine approach to informing your own designs. The late 1990s was really the era of the “extra” in games. StarCraft, Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, Dark Reign—they all came with slick, well-produced game manuals that contained lore as well as instructions on how to install and play. Total Annihilation designed a website where customers could go to download after-market units. Firaxis built a website in the style of the Unity Datalinks and shared information about each of the seven original and seven expansion faction leaders.
"Someone disobeyed". What of it? Are you a Nazi, "only following orders" ?
Quote from: bvanevery
Faction profile says, "Extra DRONE every four citizens (lack of ethics)". So they did have a play mechanic and an explanation about it, but such a pithy explanation doesn't exactly lend a lot of narrative weight. By itself, that's in the same weight class as Miriam being anti-Planet, because of her 1 line in her faction description. Against that, are all the quotes and videos for either of them, delivering nothing of the sort at all. Zhakarov is actually guilty of being a bit boring. He speaks in tech jargon and academese all the time. "Stodgy physicist" is about all you can really say about his real characterization, if you're being honest.Maybe it boils down to the fact that I’m just more comfortable riffing and speculating on the original material than you are when you create your mods. That’s fine.
The thing I loved (and love) about SMACX is that it forces the player to reckon with the question: what would it mean if we were governed by a stody physicist?
So, with Godwinson, that translates to, “What would it mean if somebody thought God turned Planet over to Man?” So you think about how fundamentalists or Evangelicals or what have you look at climate issues today. They (sometimes) say: “God gave us dominion over the Earth to do with as we pleased. We owe no obligation to it.” They (sometimes) say: “My religious views are compatible with only one economic system: capitalism. And to the extent that I think your climate views drive a set of political values that are inconsistent with capitalism, then your agenda is clearly undermining my religious views also.” I honestly think that, in the context of American politics, Evangelicals line up on the “Climate Change Skepticism” side of the issues because that’s where they are told that “good conservatives” belong. Then, motivated reasoning prompts them to search for commentary and research that speaks on behalf of the position they already hold. It’s a posture they backed into. As Jewish physicians and Muslim inventors of the European Dark Ages remind us, it is not particularly “religious” to be incurious about the mechanics of our natural world.
Quote from: bvanevery
Santiago doesn't have a single quote or video on any of those points. Not a one. She's perfectly capable of negotiation, she's got all the dialogue entries proving that she can. Just like any other faction. None of her faction.txt info speaks to your vision of her either. Here's what the Spartans of the game are really about, per their faction.txt:My read of Santiago is informed by my belief about how cultural products come about. And SMACX is a cultural product like anything is a cultural product. If Brian Reynolds designed the same game today, I don’t think he would have the same characters and ideologies.
There’s a reason that A Song of Ice and Fire was put to paper first in the early 1990s and didn’t get popular until 2010. It needed a dark cultural moment. We had to believe that anti-heroes were the only authentic heroes. The same dynamic helps to explain why The Watchmen, a piece greatly informed by the author’s dim view of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, became popular around the same time. Robocop, Die Hard, and all the other hard-edged action-cop movies of the same era are inextricable from the crack cocaine epidemic and a growing belief among white suburbanites that inner city violence was absolutely out of control. Ergo, by the same higher logic, Santiago’s militia character, who literally does more than anyone except perhaps Zakharov to sabotage the United Nations mission to the stars, is probably acidly critical of the United Nations. She’s Litwalkian: give war a chance, she says--there are things worth fighting, and dying, over.
Quote from: bvanevery
I don't know if the paper manual has given you a basis for "going to town" on other interpretations. I will check on that.I just take from what speaks to me. Many aspects of the fictional story I tell are my own takes. Many are the takes of others (e.g., Yang’s legalism).
To the extent you and I might discuss only the implications of what is empirically included in the computer game, though, I think we still draw vastly different conclusions.
Quote from: bvanevery
Good to know. In turn, I know that the Miriam of the original game, was partly given the portrayal of the violent Church Chat Lady. In my mod I've mostly jettisoned it, because it's dissonant and prejudiced. Rewriting the game with more religious characters, that aren't all just horrible punching bags, would be the best narrative approach. However I'm not going to spend the labor to do that, so I've just eliminated or toned down what I had ready access to.
I get the most flak for changing Miriam, of any of the changes I've made. And I will stick to my guns. I'm only supporting "contemplative Miriam." I think the Church Chat Lady stuff reads like a bad rough draft.
The issue is that the faction leaders are so mediated by play. And the fact that the player could do this or that, and that the game had to account for it, is the reason I think all the characters were very intentionally two-faced.
Is Morgan “bad” because he focuses on wealth? He would argue that good or bad are relative. His entire faction is about the “happying” of oneself. Many people (myself included) actually agree that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness. Is Zakharov “bad” because he is willing to put learning and knowledge ahead of other ends? I don’t think so, not necessarily. Is even Yang bad? I am confident that Yang sees every one of his decisions as totally selfless. And in fact, that’s where I think he takes on his most interesting guise—when he is played or presented in fiction as a leader who thinks he is forging steel from bad ingots, forcing them to let go of their weaknesses and impurities. Some players respond to a harsh coach. As I recall, most of my high school peers did just that. By contrast, I flourished under coaches with a more nurturing style.
This all goes back to your earlier challenge. Would people say that the mere existence of chemical and biological weapons programs constitutes an ethical trainwreck? The truth is that some do, and some don't. Is Yang an ethical trainwreck? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It depends on where you stand. I think he is, because I think there are certain hallmarks that make a person good or bad. I'd guess 97-98% of other humans would agree with me. But some wouldn't.
Today, someone asked me, "One day, are we all going to be remembered as cruel and vicious because we did things that seemed unremarkable to us, but which will later turn out to be revealed as monstrously selfish or incurious?" I'd guess so. I think that's how society grows and gets better.
In my fiction, Zakharov is actually angry that people rejected scientific advances like immunization. Lal is ironically the one who, despite his being a medical doctor, has the highest tolerance for dissent, because he is a moral relativist who accepts more easily than Zakharov that different people might prioritize other values about physical health. For Lal, folkways and religious fulfillment are a part of the tapestry of life. To force inoculations on people would be to tear that tapestry. What good is repairing the body if you have torn the soul? Zakharov thinks that's nonsense. Pahlavi thinks it's criminal.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2020, 08:26:02 AM
Why? Lal’s remarks on mindworms don’t convey that he has been coopted by a conservation agenda.
His quote when you finish a Centauri Preserve is straight up conservationist:
Code: [Select]
##Centauri Preserve
#FAC31
In the years since our arrival, we have foolishly disrupted so
many of Planet's ecosystems that entire species may vanish
without our ever having understood, or even known them. We must halt
this plunder, and halt it immediately, for our own survival as a
species depends on our ability to strike a balance on this world.
^
^ -- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
^ "Mind Worm, Mind Worm"Quote
Even though individual faction leaders are apt to be the foremost thinkers about certain subjects—Skye for Centauri Psi, etc.—it doesn’t follow that they are necessarily also the most insightful.
Actually it does. Every one of the original characters has their core area of expertise.
Some character might have an insight on a subject they're basically opposed to. Lal about cyborg soldiers, for instance. Santiago would probably just say they're great at killing stuff, if anyone had asked her. They sorta did in the video for the Cloning Vats.
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Again, the potential for interdisciplinary analysis comes to the fore.
I don't think that's really going on. Especially with the abandoned paper burning quote, I think they're establishing that "Lal is cerebral and contemplative." He keeps journals, diaries, and historical records about stuff. Somehow Deidre turned him Green though.
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Reading the Centauri Psi quote from Lal, I can draw the following conclusions: mind worms are a credible threat to every faction, which makes them an urgent subject even for those not deeply invested in ecological conservations, and Lal finds mind worms personally fascinating.
The quote isn't about Lal having a fascination. It's about Lal feeling there's a dire urgency to "save Planet", that we can die if we don't. It's a straight paraphrasing of the deforestation and global warming threats of the 1990s. He is deeply vested and he's gone Green.
Zhakarov would just exterminate "that species" and might even find a way to do it!
Morgan would be like, meh. He's a Republican. Where's my terraformer?
Yang, Miriam, and Santiago don't care. They never talk about mindworms.
I've now figured out what's going on. They wanted to simulate the effect of dialogue between the characters, even though they never talk to each other when voice acted. They're exchanging op-eds or blog entries. This is so Deirdre won't be seen as the only one who ever contemplated being a nature looney.
;hippy :danc:
They could have just left it as a battle between Deirdre and Morgan though. What's Zhakarov's actual contribution to the debate? "Mindworms suck." But at least it's funny! Because it's like the only time that Zhakarov the academic dullard, really loses it.
And you know what? He is right. Mindworms do suck. I'd definitely have "exterminate Planet" on the table as a game ending.
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Yeah, but every faction does research,
Miriam is reputed to mostly do it badly. Tapped out at
And although Santiago has "Discover, Conquer" as her default research foci, when does she ever actually talk about a Discover class research breakthrough at all? She likes the various toys, but I can't think of a single quote where she's talking about research. And she gets her ass kicked by the Xenobiologist. With a quantum tank. I think that's a pretty clear message that "she should have done more research".
Lal doesn't do any research either. He's a historian. Not once does he say "the Peacekeepers discovered X". Despite having Explore, Discover as his research foci.
So no, the factions don't all do research. The University, the Hive, the Gaians, and the Morganites do the research.
I suppose Lal did clone his sex partner. But mostly he objects to cyborgs.
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Quote from: bvaneveryI say it's just because they can't have Santiago doing every military line, and Lal didn't have enough material of his own.It’s because Lal has something meaningful to say about movement,
He actually said nothing. He's like the serious version of Yang saying nothing, "North without South, Pleasure without Pain...."
Code: [Select]
##Doctrine: Mobility
#TECH5
Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his
environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left.
Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.
^
^ -- Commissioner Pravin Lal,
^ "A Social History of Planet""Cat's outta da bag." For further clowning, here's the PhD version of "row, row, row your boat":
Propel, propel, propel your craft
Carefully through the solution
Ecstatically! Ecstatically! Ecstatically! Ecstatically
Existence is but an illusion
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he also presents Lal as the “Everybody Should be Peaceful, and We Should All Get Along Guy.”
Ok, he went Green because he's singing John Lennon's "Imagine".
You know what really undermines his peaceful vibe? The militancy of his faction diplomatic dialogue. That cookie cutter format is not good for character nuance.
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Quote from: bvaneveryQuotes and videos give us "contemplative Miriam". It's the faction diplomatic dialogue that give us the shrill Bible thumping Church Chat Lady. It is dissonant, and I have chosen to dump or tone down the latter as much as I can.Dissonant yes, but not the same thing as unrealistic. People are complicated.
The cookie cutter format isn't complicated, it's one dimensional. "Zingers".
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I’d guess that, as a quirk of forcing distinctive malluses and bonuses on the factions to affect gameplay, Miriam had to come off as a Luddite.
"So-and-so can't do research" is harmful to narrative. And the punchline is, it was harmful to gameplay too. The AIs aren't smart enough to handle or leverage a research impediment. So finally, after 46 releases, I saw the light and got rid of it. It's not a good play mechanic, and I'm not sure what would turn it into one.
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Quote from: bvaneveryHe still has the rat, he didn't even kill it. What's the problem? That you can't ever do an experiment with a rat, before proceeding to human trials?There’s no problem. It’s still evidence that he tut-tutted people worried about the ethical implications of an experiment he performed. Does it make him as much a monster as Yang? I think it depends on which experiments they’ve each run.
Here's how you can approach a narrative. You can either go with what they actually tell you a character did, or you can let your imagination run wild with all kinds of stuff. Zhakarov has nothing, nada, zip, that's monstrous. Morgan has one hospital incident, as well as some ethical challenges about what you do with Recon Rover Rick. Yang has lots. Santiago clones people, and also births them to the slaughter (Children's Creche). And surprisingly for a mindworm manipulator, Deirdre doesn't have any. That flies in the face of what the Gaians would actually be doing in combat, but we seem to be left to make our own inferences. She's all like, pet the lovely mindworm, like it's a puppy. Sing kumbaya with Planet.
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Quote from: bvaneveryI think there are ethicists, and certainly citizens engaged in the political process, who would argue that, yes, biological and chemical weapons programs consisted “ethical train wrecks.”
You don't have to be an ethical train wreck to have a clandestine weapons program. The USSR did it, the USA did it. It's done.
Those people think war is an ethical train wreck. And they're not usually rational about what level of armament actually keeps the peace. Compare Mutual Assured Destruction. Not that scaling back the number of nukes everyone's holding onto is a bad idea, but they do stop world wars from happening.
We are living in an era when we're strangely squeamish about WMDs. Even though when it comes to annihilating an opposing civilization in space, they're the totally logical things to use. Yes I'd prefer everyone just get along, touch fingers like E.T. and not have wars. But if you're going to posit space war, it's far more rational that it would be brutal, quick, and over.
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If your position is that the material not included in the computer game itself is less to be counted because it is less likely to have been experienced, sure, that’s a fair and fine approach to informing your own designs.
It informs anyone's design in the real world. Just because Brian Reynolds or whoever threw some stuff in a *.txt file in the game's installation directory, doesn't mean that material is shaping most people's knowledge and awareness of things in the game. A few diehards will chase it down out of obsessive interest, and most people won't.
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Maybe it boils down to the fact that I’m just more comfortable riffing and speculating on the original material than you are when you create your mods.
I say the only reason you personally mod, is to support all your riffing and speculating. You're primarily driven to create a lot of derivative material. At times that has the effect of watering down or missing the point of the original material.
I'm primarily driven to fix the game rules and play experiences that are broken. To perfect what's already there. And I don't like stereotypical prejudices like "Christians are bad, m'kay?" so I took a cleaver to it. Egged on by vonbach, who was genuinely offended.
If I could snap my fingers to change buckets of content with nearly no effort, I would 1) recast Svensgaard's voice acting, and probably also rework his lines, and 2) recast Cha Dawn's voice acting, because "the boy" is being voiced by a woman. It's not fooling me. His lines are ok, in their so-soishness. Not worse than Alien Crossfire generally.
I wouldn't really embark upon the effort of making Santiago more credible, or banishing the Aliens, or giving the newer factions a more credible existence relative to the Unity, or giving the game a "kill Planet" ending. I'd just write a new game from scratch, vowing not to have certain warts in my own work.
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The thing I loved (and love) about SMACX is that it forces the player to reckon with the question: what would it mean if we were governed by a stody physicist?
This is ludonarratively dissonant. If you've gone democratic, you'd vote them out of office if you didn't like it. But the game mechanics don't support democratic processes. It supports control freak dictators, the dominant character profile of most actual 4X TBS players. Just as most FPS players are murdering maniacs, running again into ludonarrative problems.
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I honestly think that, in the context of American politics, Evangelicals line up on the “Climate Change Skepticism” side of the issues because that’s where they are told that “good conservatives” belong.
Yet another stereotype that, even if dominant and statistical, isn't the only Christian Conservative point of view on the environment out there. Rising to the point of organized movements. Stuff you actually hear about when you live in Asheville NC, in the Bible belt, surrounded by trees. These causes generally aren't helped by shrill portraits of Christians. I feel strongly enough about this to put my $0.02 into the game. Falls under the moral heading of "don't support, aid, or abet prejudiced thinking."
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There’s a reason that A Song of Ice and Fire was put to paper first in the early 1990s and didn’t get popular until 2010.
Yeah it's called production reality in the publishing, film, and TV industries. There's time lag. Harry Potter didn't go straight to screen either.
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It needed a dark cultural moment.
There's always a dark cultural moment available. Billy Joel's quick study: "We Didn't Start The Fire".
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Ergo, by the same higher logic, Santiago’s militia character, who literally does more than anyone except perhaps Zakharov to sabotage the United Nations mission to the stars,
And there's the rub. Correlation is not causality. You are not told who performed the assassination for a reason. It's so you can stew in your own juices, letting your imagination run wild, with whatever you personally want to make up about everything.
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The issue is that the faction leaders are so mediated by play. And the fact that the player could do this or that, and that the game had to account for it, is the reason I think all the characters were very intentionally two-faced.
I think they simply designed a dialogue system from the standpoint of an AI programmer, and not from a narrative writer. Cookie cutter 'zinger' lines are not actually a compelling way to advance narrative. By forcing everyone into the same format, they make all faction leaders more generic. They're all violent and unlikeable. If I make a 4X TBS, I won't be using this system. Narratively, it is not important for a player to have every option available at their fingertips, all the time. That genericizes. They will have to experience "summits with Hitler" more qualitatively.
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Is Morgan “bad” because he focuses on wealth?
He's an inversion. He's gonna destroy the Earth / Planet, "chewing and eating his fill".
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He would argue that good or bad are relative.
He's wrong. Most people who argue that sort of thing are wrong.
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His entire faction is about the “happying” of oneself.
No evidence that he's happy. Only that he's greedy and wants control.
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Many people (myself included) actually agree that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness.
Life's only actual purpose is life itself.
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Is Zakharov “bad” because he is willing to put learning and knowledge ahead of other ends?
He's actually a seriously neutral force, and a seriously neutral voicing.
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Is even Yang bad?
Yep. "What do I care for your suffering?" Spoke like the pure BS of a cult leader who never practices what he preaches. Straight up Mao Tse-Tung.
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I am confident that Yang sees every one of his decisions as totally selfless.
Nope. He's lying to you, and you have bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Wrapped up in all the 'woo' mumbo jumbo to sell it and make it sound like he's got a point. He doesn't. When you look into the historical person he's actually based on, you'll see it. Probably; YMMV. But of course Mao spouted Maoism.
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Some players respond to a harsh coach.
It's a bad metaphor. Real studies would be of psychological abuse, narcissim, and cult mind control. As well as the number of people who were "shot out back" by Stalinists. People who claim gentler metaphors, the Soviets would have called "useful idiots".
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This all goes back to your earlier challenge. Would people say that the mere existence of chemical and biological weapons programs constitutes an ethical trainwreck? The truth is that some do, and some don't.
Contrary to popular belief, morality isn't all relative. Dead is dead. Political frameworks that don't keep people from dying, don't work.
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Is Yang an ethical trainwreck?
Yes.
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Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It depends on where you stand. I think he is, because I think there are certain hallmarks that make a person good or bad. I'd guess 97-98% of other humans would agree with me. But some wouldn't.
The only relevance of the outliers, is to rigorously test the moral system. The most likely reason they are outliers, is because they're evil. Someone has to think it's kewl to be a serial killer.
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Today, someone asked me, "One day, are we all going to be remembered as cruel and vicious because we did things that seemed unremarkable to us, but which will later turn out to be revealed as monstrously selfish or incurious?" I'd guess so. I think that's how society grows and gets better.
Nope. Movements like the Vegan movement just want to exert a lot of control and propaganda over you. They won't deal with the actual health effects of their beliefs for a lot of people. When someone shows me the food that keeps my brain working properly, I'll be eating it instead of meat. 'Till then, this is the body I've got, and the food supply we know. All my vegetarian attempts, not even vegan, have failed within days. You'd think for all the eggs and cheese I had I'd be fine, but nope. Something's missing.
Various political movements idealize reality, then try to pretend we're in some perfect world where their ideals are actually directly relevant, without any kind of complication or work. A typical line of thinking is "every consumer product you buy is evil somehow, and therefore, you are evil (somehow)." This belies the fact that such people wouldn't have even had the facilities to complain, were it not for these 'evils'. The internet, computers, electricity, modern infrastructure writ large... what gave them all these choices, to luxuriate in their notions of evil? Frankly a few centuries previous, they'd be serfs, barely surviving, most of them having no time to contemplate the finer points of morality at all. If they managed to get something sewn, they'd be glad to have it done.
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In my fiction, Zakharov is actually angry that people rejected scientific advances like immunization.
Uuuh... wat? Talk about a strawman. Not plausible.
Look we've got this playing out in real time right now. People who can't figure out survival of the fittest, die. Or at least get other people to die. Gonna be a fair amount of dying before this COVID-19 thing is done. The big social experiment, is if there's ever gonna be a tipping point? Where Trumpians actually know enough people that died, so that it affects them personally, and they don't want to just follow the Fearless Leader in his anti-science posturing anymore?
I'm encouraged that Brazil's President has got COVID-19 now, due to his complete foolishness. And that he was ordered by a Brazilian judge to wear a mask. Checks and balances, on would-be demagogues and dictators.
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Lal is ironically the one who, despite his being a medical doctor, has the highest tolerance for dissent, because he is a moral relativist who accepts more easily than Zakharov that different people might prioritize other values about physical health.
Lal isn't gonna quit the World Health Organization.
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For Lal, folkways and religious fulfillment are a part of the tapestry of life.
Leaders aren't whoever you might imagine them to be. In Lal's case, this would be an elected leader. Which means you have to consider what kinds of public sensibilities got him into office. He did not run on an anti-vaxxer ticket.
Lal isn't going to be into "religious freedom" when faced with epidemic disease. Your rights to individual stupidity, end when the health of everyone else is at stake. Health is seen by the United Nations as a human right. Good grief, the amount of suffering and death at stake in the underdeveloped world... there's nothing plausible about your reinterpretation of Lal.
If you are imagining a very co-opted and corrupt U.N., that doesn't actually have any principles and only power, then you can do whatever you want. Then Lal would be whatever got him into power. He could have bought his way in. Or killed the right people. The U.N. as just a regime.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on July 10, 2020, 12:51:25 PM
Biology/Genetics
This is a very interesting subject. I am not sure how to deal with it, though. It doesn't connect to lore well, there are no much vanilla genetics technologies, they are pretty difficult to connect to other families, and this path ends with nothing. They are only there to justify specific features like Biogenetics -> Recycling Tanks, Gene Splicing -> Research Hospital, Retroviral Engineering -> Genejack Factory, Homo Superior -> Nanohospital, Biomachinery -> Cloning Vats, etc. They probably can be kept but we need to think how to phase them out so they do not end hanging at the very end.
Disagree here! The "biology/genetic" techs tell the story of humans adopting artificial selection as the driving force behind evolution above and beyond what we're capable of today, or even willing to do. By necessity it sort of has to "end with nothing" because the pinnacle of the tech tree is transcendence and there isn't a victory condition for figuring out eugenics (thankfully!). The Cloning Vats ought to be the end of that story because it makes the most aggressive SE choices easier to run and provides and endless population to support world conquest.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2020, 07:53:16 PM
Post by: Trenacker on July 10, 2020, 10:12:20 PM
It’s no mistake that they present Lal as cerebral and contemplative. But I think they do the same for all the characters. Doesn’t Morgan also keep a diary? If I’m not mistaken, Yang writes poetry.
Quote from: bvanevery
The quote isn't about Lal having a fascination. It's about Lal feeling there's a dire urgency to "save Planet", that we can die if we don't. It's a straight paraphrasing of the deforestation and global warming threats of the 1990s. He is deeply vested and he's gone Green.I think global warming is a problem. Does that mean I’ve “gone Green?” (And are you sure we’re talking about Centauri Psi, which deals explicitly with mind worms, a deadly menace to every faction?)
Quote from: bvanevery
And you know what? He is right. Mindworms do suck. I'd definitely have "exterminate Planet" on the table as a game ending.One of the new factions included in my game, The Shapers of Chiron, explicitly aim to kill Planet.
Quote from: bvanevery
I've now figured out what's going on. They wanted to simulate the effect of dialogue between the characters, even though they never talk to each other when voice acted. They're exchanging op-eds or blog entries. This is so Deirdre won't be seen as the only one who ever contemplated being a nature looney.Possibly dialogue, yes, but engaging somebody in talks about nature, or mindworms, isn’t the same thing as traveling with them on their intellectual journey.
Quote from: bvanevery
So no, the factions don't all do research. The University, the Hive, the Gaians, and the Morganites do the research.Of course all factions do research. There’s a difference between not doing something and not talking about something in leader quotes. The game itself shows us that every faction does research, some better than others.
Quote from: bvanevery
He actually said nothing. He's like the serious version of Yang saying nothing, "North without South, Pleasure without Pain...."Every faction leader quote can be lampooned like that. “Buy Morganite!” “Science is so cooooool!” “I don’t care. Go ahead and die.”
Quote from: bvanevery
Here's how you can approach a narrative. You can either go with what they actually tell you a character did, or you can let your imagination run wild with all kinds of stuff. Zhakarov has nothing, nada, zip, that's monstrous. Morgan has one hospital incident, as well as some ethical challenges about what you do with Recon Rover Rick. Yang has lots. Santiago clones people, and also births them to the slaughter (Children's Creche). And surprisingly for a mindworm manipulator, Deirdre doesn't have any. That flies in the face of what the Gaians would actually be doing in combat, but we seem to be left to make our own inferences. She's all like, pet the lovely mindworm, like it's a puppy. Sing kumbaya with Planet.Morgan’s ethical problems are prefaced in the faction psych profiles, where he’s presented as a corrupt war profiteer. And it requires only the mildest skeptic to perceive that a capitalist society is probably going to have its fair share of the oppressed and malcontent. Per his quotations, everything with Morgan boils down to profile and control. And Morgan’s “one hospital incident” literally involves his conclusion that the easiest way to deal with somebody who could expose controversial research is to lobotomize them.
Step back from what is explicit and think about what is implicit. Despite our very different takes on the world of AC, we both perceive that Skye has her own share of ethical challenges. By virtue of the other factions explaining how terrified they are of Mindworms, we can extrapolate that her harnessing of them as a weapon of war involved some ethical breaches.
Quote from: bvanevery
Those people think war is an ethical train wreck. And they're not usually rational about what level of armament actually keeps the peace. Compare Mutual Assured Destruction. Not that scaling back the number of nukes everyone's holding onto is a bad idea, but they do stop world wars from happening.If you’re going to insist that we take your personal ethical compass as the guiding light, then yes. It’s the No True Scotsman fallacy. “There are people who think this is unethical.” “Yes, but their system of ethics isn’t really credible to me.”
Quote from: bvanevery
It informs anyone's design in the real world. Just because Brian Reynolds or whoever threw some stuff in a *.txt file in the game's installation directory, doesn't mean that material is shaping most people's knowledge and awareness of things in the game. A few diehards will chase it down out of obsessive interest, and most people won't.I’m not interested in what most people in the audience will do. I’m interested in what Brian Reynolds gave us to play with.
Quote from: bvanevery
This is ludonarratively dissonant. If you've gone democratic, you'd vote them out of office if you didn't like it. But the game mechanics don't support democratic processes. It supports control freak dictators, the dominant character profile of most actual 4X TBS players. Just as most FPS players are murdering maniacs, running again into ludonarrative problems.That’s because most games are ludonarratively dissonant. They involve allowing players to make choices about how to behave, and they very often present enough options that they can play against type.
To me, the quotations in Alpha Centauri, inasmuch as they simulate the gradual development of the factions, point to an almost parallel playthrough in which they all govern as dictators and manifest in their “played straight” forms.
Quote from: bvanevery
Falls under the moral heading of "don't support, aid, or abet prejudiced thinking."I don’t think the game forces you to go either way with Miriam Godwinson. I think some of the quotes intentionally rehabilitate her from a mere stereotype. Further, even though I have criticism for climate change skeptics, they do exist, and they do legitimately believe in ways I described. Acknowledging the existence of such values systems is not itself prejudicial.
Quote from: bvanevery
Yeah it's called production reality in the publishing, film, and TV industries. There's time lag. Harry Potter didn't go straight to screen either.Production times could not account for the lag in the case of ASOIAF because we’re literally talking more than a decade. You also have a huge range of media products that fit the same mould, ranging from Peaky Blinders to The Boys to Yellowstone to Breaking Bad.
Quote from: bvanevery
There's always a dark cultural moment available. Billy Joel's quick study: "We Didn't Start The Fire".The 1990s and early 2000s were not that moment. Our heroes could be tortured souls, but they were generally not almost indistinguishable from the villains.
Quote from: bvanevery
And there's the rub. Correlation is not causality. You are not told who performed the assassination for a reason. It's so you can stew in your own juices, letting your imagination run wild, with whatever you personally want to make up about everything.I didn’t lay blame for the assassination at Santiago’s doorstep, but it’s hard to argue that she didn’t hammer the last nail into the ship’s coffin. Did you read the fiction packaged with the game?
Quote from: bvanevery
He's an inversion. He's gonna destroy the Earth / Planet, "chewing and eating his fill".Not destroy. As Nick Stepanovich pointed out, Morgan could as easily be tapping Planet, not destroying it. Are you “destroying” an apple when you eat it? It is a consumptive act, but is it necessarily a violent one?
Quote from: bvanevery
No evidence that he's happy. Only that he's greedy and wants control.His people are lazy and over-pampered.
Quote from: bvanevery
Yep. "What do I care for your suffering?" Spoke like the pure BS of a cult leader who never practices what he preaches. Straight up Mao Tse-Tung.Mao Tse-Tung thought he was the good guy. So did millions of Chinese.
You and I think Yang is a monster, but I’m confident Yang doesn’t see himself that way.
Quote from: bvanevery
Nope. Movements like the Vegan movement just want to exert a lot of control and propaganda over you.I honestly don’t think the majority of vegans are organized into a cabal with the goal of influencing you.
Quote from: bvanevery
Uuuh... wat? Talk about a strawman. Not plausible.Of course plausible. Zakharov is all about using tools to shape his environment. Why wouldn’t he be furious over the idea that people are setting aside truths about the universe, and the useful applications that point up, because they prefer to believe that which is unempirical?
Quote from: bvanevery
Lal isn't going to be into "religious freedom" when faced with epidemic disease. Your rights to individual stupidity, end when the health of everyone else is at stake. Health is seen by the United Nations as a human right. Good grief, the amount of suffering and death at stake in the underdeveloped world... there's nothing plausible about your reinterpretation of Lal.The U.N. has many facets. Even people who think of it as nothing more than a misguided, exceptionally naïve “Do-Gooders’ Society” cite problems like excessive, Kafkaesque bureaucracy; a tendency to presume moral equivalence between disputants; rank cowardice; and a tendency to place the appearance of harmony and impartiality above genuine human interests. This is the U.N. that went to Bosnia and let the Serbs massacre the Bosniaks. It is the U.N. that seats Libya on the Human Rights Council. It is the U.N. let Biafrans starve and insisted that Katangans did not know their own minds. It is possible for the U.N. to be massively misguided, but also genuinely convinced that it is doing good. I don’t think these are mustache-twirling villains, just captives of a particular worldview.
If you are imagining a very co-opted and corrupt U.N., that doesn't actually have any principles and only power, then you can do whatever you want. Then Lal would be whatever got him into power. He could have bought his way in. Or killed the right people. The U.N. as just a regime.
Post by: bvanevery on July 11, 2020, 03:20:14 AM
Quote from: bvaneveryThe quote isn't about Lal having a fascination. It's about Lal feeling there's a dire urgency to "save Planet", that we can die if we don't. It's a straight paraphrasing of the deforestation and global warming threats of the 1990s. He is deeply vested and he's gone Green.I think global warming is a problem. Does that mean I’ve “gone Green?”
Yep. By American polarized political standards, most certainly. If you don't think global warming is a problem by now, you're very likely to be a Trumpian or equivalent in your country of choice. In the time the game was written, the polemics and polarization weren't that different either. Same major actors opposing each other on the points.
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(And are you sure we’re talking about Centauri Psi, which deals explicitly with mind worms, a deadly menace to every faction?)
As I said before, when you complete a Centauri Preserve, you get Lal's "total Greener" quote. I also provided the quote, straight from blurbsx.txt, so I'm not sure what's being asked here. Maybe you're just responding to comments in order, without reading the supporting evidence that follows. There's no ambiguity in what Lal says at all. He believes we must take urgent ecological action to save Planet, in a manner exactly identical to global warming politics of the 1990s.
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Quote from: bvaneverySo no, the factions don't all do research. The University, the Hive, the Gaians, and the Morganites do the research.Of course all factions do research.
That's actually game mechanically false. You can set your LABS budget to zero, and various factions have incentives to do so.
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The game itself shows us that every faction does research, some better than others.
How does it show you? Did you watch the AI set a budget? Did you see whether an AI faction researched something itself, or just traded for it? Did you pay attention to the AI whose research stagnated? "Factions don't all do research" isn't met literally, like factions never even set up so much as 1 joule of energy towards research. It means that 4 factions are doing massively more research than the others, and the scientific contributions of the other 3 do not matter. They are always behind.
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Quote from: bvaneveryHe actually said nothing. He's like the serious version of Yang saying nothing, "North without South, Pleasure without Pain...."Every faction leader quote can be lampooned like that. “Buy Morganite!” “Science is so cooooool!” “I don’t care. Go ahead and die.”
How are you going to lampoon the only purpose of life being life itself? Some quotes mean nothing, they're just communicating character and tone. Other quotes, are saying something. Well anyways take your best crack at lampooning "life's only purpose..." to prove me wrong by counterexample. I think you're gonna have trouble. Yang and Lal aren't at the same level of insight, with these 2 quotes.
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And Morgan’s “one hospital incident” literally involves his conclusion that the easiest way to deal with somebody who could expose controversial research is to lobotomize them.
Nerve stapling isn't lobotomy. The effect wears off. In fact eventually, a drone becomes immune to it. Nerve stapling is bad, that's why you can't do it if you have a -1 POLICE rating.
Doesn't matter anyways. We weren't arguing about Morgan. We were arguing about whether Zhakarov is shown to be a bad guy. He isn't, not once, in the game. Deforming a rat that lived, does not make him a bad guy. Zhakarov is a dry stodgy old grump. Who will go to war with Santiago for pursuing too much 'power' ! He's this academic liberal. Trying to cast him as a mad scientist doing unethical stuff, doesn't actually make any damn sense at all. If they wanted to make that character, and it's not hard to make such (just look at Yang), well they simply didn't follow through in the game's materials at all.
Most likely reason for that, is it's Yang's job and they realized they didn't need 2 Yangs. This is like screenwriting 101, differentiating characters in a screenplay. Whoever wrote the initial game mechanics with the diplomatic dialogue though, may not have taken screenwriting 101.
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Step back from what is explicit and think about what is implicit. Despite our very different takes on the world of AC, we both perceive that Skye has her own share of ethical challenges. By virtue of the other factions explaining how terrified they are of Mindworms, we can extrapolate that her harnessing of them as a weapon of war involved some ethical breaches.
Nobody else is trying to do her mindworm cuddling job in the original game. Although the funny thing is, we all get the Interlude if we choose to breed a mindworm in captivity. Our first mindworm gets our first young lieutenant to go with it. If that unit gets killed, there's the sad bit. And then if an enemy base is captured that has some kind of relevance to the killing, I forget what, the base gets renamed in their honor. So there's some very explicit storytelling about mindworms in captivity. It doesn't really address the moral implications of using mindworms at all. This is pretty much left up to you.
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Quote from: bvaneveryThose people think war is an ethical train wreck. And they're not usually rational about what level of armament actually keeps the peace. Compare Mutual Assured Destruction. Not that scaling back the number of nukes everyone's holding onto is a bad idea, but they do stop world wars from happening.If you’re going to insist that we take your personal ethical compass as the guiding light, then yes. It’s the No True Scotsman fallacy. “There are people who think this is unethical.” “Yes, but their system of ethics isn’t really credible to me.”
It's just a bigger argument than we're going to get done in this thread. I can defend "the minimization of the loss of life" until the cows come home.
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I’m not interested in what most people in the audience will do. I’m interested in what Brian Reynolds gave us to play with.
Fixating on the smallest of the small details, that weren't even put in a location where they'd be readily noticed by most of the audience, doesn't profit you for understanding the core messages of the work.
I don't think film has quite so many Easter Egg problems, typically. Although it is possible to write a film that is obscure in meaning. A film where you watch it and say, WTF are you on about?
An Appendix in a game manual isn't obscure, it's just badly presented. It cannot be expected to be retained as basic material about the game.
A website isn't even part of the game. It's extended material.
What kind of continuity assurance does the author of the game provide? Other franchises, like say Star Trek or Star Wars, continuity and canon are big deals. Not that they can't screw it up over the course of many seasons, episodes, and even shows, but they know they're trying to preserve continuity. They take it seriously enough, to posit entirely different timelines to avoid interference in previous material. Rather than just say "eh, we don't care anymore" about previous material.
Firaxis, well, not top drawer on making sure all parts of the puzzle are 'baked'. To be expected, as they don't have Star Trek's history or production budget for working out the kinks over time.
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and manifest in their “played straight” forms.
I usually don't know what you mean when you utter the phrase "played straight", because your actual usage in context, is often merely a contrast with some other way of playing the role. I don't usually believe you when you say one approach is "straight" and another is "subverted". I often only see you making different interpretations.
Actors, in general, would do that. And directors, in general, would sort the actor out as far as what vision they have, what performance they're after.
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Further, even though I have criticism for climate change skeptics, they do exist, and they do legitimately believe in ways I described. Acknowledging the existence of such values systems is not itself prejudicial.
Tacking it onto Miriam's religious beliefs is prejudicial. There are no other conversations about climate change skepticism in the game at all. Not even Morgan has anything to say on the matter. We just know that he's going to ignore any such concern and strip mine Planet. Miriam's 1 line description in her faction.txt is a throwaway. So I threw it away.
If Miriam had had a lot of quote ranting about Planet, I would have kept it. She doesn't. She has quote ranting about cyborgs and nanorobots.
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Quote from: bvaneveryThere's always a dark cultural moment available. Billy Joel's quick study: "We Didn't Start The Fire".The 1990s and early 2000s were not that moment.
Wat? 9/11, WTC and other buildings falling, anthrax by mail, entering Afghanistan, Iraq war, "code orange" getting on planes, then it turns out all that "yellow cake" stuff was BS....
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Did you read the fiction packaged with the game?
Sure at some point. Was totally unimpressed by Yang being some kind of jumping bug superhero type. Didn't fit his in-game characterization at all. Pretty much the point at which I got completely turned off and concluded this writer is very stupid, not worth listening to. When I argue with you about the "extra game" quality of this stuff, I'm giving myself the maximum amount of rope to hang myself with. Because I think when I finally do go back and read the material, I'm going to be completely vindicated about how we should just pretend it was bad fanfic and never happened.
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Quote from: bvaneveryHe's an inversion. He's gonna destroy the Earth / Planet, "chewing and eating his fill".Not destroy. As Nick Stepanovich pointed out, Morgan could as easily be tapping Planet, not destroying it.
Uuuh, noooo. I don't know who this Nick guy is, but Morgan is anti-environmental and doesn't get any points doing what he does on Planet. Global warming happens, global flooding happens. Mindworms come to destroy your factories. What game did you play?
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Quote from: bvaneveryNo evidence that he's happy. Only that he's greedy and wants control.His people are lazy and over-pampered.
We're told that, again a throwaway line in his faction.txt, but where else is it supported at all?
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Mao Tse-Tung thought he was the good guy.
Your proof? What I've read, is that Mao thought he was out for himself. Which doesn't make his self-image that of the "good" guy, but of the important guy. At a minimum he was a total narcissist. This is probably a longer argument than we're going to get done here.
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I honestly don’t think the majority of vegans are organized into a cabal with the goal of influencing you.
A minority of vegans have newspapers they're distributing around Asheville NC all the time. They appear in the same kind of street boxes as apartment rental papers do.
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Quote from: bvaneveryUuuh... wat? Talk about a strawman. Not plausible.Of course plausible.
When you posit something like "suddenly people don't believe in vaccination at all, in the future" and that Zhakarov is merely reacting to this, it's your job to come up with why that circumstance is even remotely plausible. With more than a hand wave about it being "of course" plausible. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous.
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The U.N. has many facets. Even people who think of it as nothing more than a misguided, exceptionally naïve “Do-Gooders’ Society” cite problems like excessive, Kafkaesque bureaucracy; a tendency to presume moral equivalence between disputants; rank cowardice; and a tendency to place the appearance of harmony and impartiality above genuine human interests. This is the U.N. that went to Bosnia and let the Serbs massacre the Bosniaks. It is the U.N. that seats Libya on the Human Rights Council. It is the U.N. let Biafrans starve and insisted that Katangans did not know their own minds. It is possible for the U.N. to be massively misguided, but also genuinely convinced that it is doing good. I don’t think these are mustache-twirling villains, just captives of a particular worldview.
Lal is not the U.N. The idea that Lal is going to get elected on an anti-vaxxer, absolute religious freedom ticket, is ridiculous. Ebola happens, the U.N. does something (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/09/794675939/what-will-it-take-to-finally-end-congos-ebola-outbreak-in-2020). No organization has to be effective in the face of a problem. Doesn't make Lal's moral compass blase or in denial about the realities or what's at stake.
Ebola Congo 2020, before COVID-19 |
Post by: Trenacker on July 12, 2020, 03:41:05 AM
I think it’s inaccurate to say that anybody who accepts the argument that climate change is a problem demanding urgent action is a Greenie on the level of Deirdre Skye. As the game illustrates so starkly, once sea levels begin to rise, Global Warming becomes everyone’s problem, even the Morganites. What distinguishes Skye and the Stepdaughters is not their acknowledgement of the reality of Global Warming, but the extent to which they propose to reorder life to address it.
I continue to believe that our differences in perspective are enlightening. You look at the game only, eschewing other material because it is not accessible. I look at that other material to help me understand what I see in the game. You take some quotations or interludes to reflect poor writing or editing more than credible character development (“throwaway” lines), while I see interpret the same discordances as depth. That’s not a dispute that has any resolution.
Generally speaking, I think the player is given the narrative tools, not just the freedom of gameplay, to take at least two roads with each of the factions and their leaders. Is Miriam enlightened like Annushka Volovodov in The Expanse, or a latter-day Hong Xiuquan? Is Zakharov a mild-mannered scientist or a Dr. Mindbender equivalent? Is Skye an eco-apologist or an eco-terrorist? Is Morgan most similar to Bill Gates or Lex Luthor? Is Santiago honoring the Spartan ethos or just a Holnist? Is Lal able to put bureaucracy and high-mindedness aside to actually do the gritty work of saving and improving lives? In Yang, do we have a philosopher- or a hermit-king? Yes, there is absolutely ludonarrative dissonance, but I think the players were expected to accept some of that as the cost for a rich tapestry, not to treat every quote or diplomatic insult as an inviolable guard rail.
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Wat? 9/11, WTC and other buildings falling, anthrax by mail, entering Afghanistan, Iraq war, "code orange" getting on planes, then it turns out all that "yellow cake" stuff was BS....
The 1990’s were not that moment. There are distinctive versions of the “hero” when you compare that time period with our own, just like the music of the 1980s is qualitatively different than that of the 1990s.
Quote from: bvanevery
Uuuh, noooo. I don't know who this Nick guy is, but Morgan is anti-environmental and doesn't get any points doing what he does on Planet. Global warming happens, global flooding happens. Mindworms come to destroy your factories. What game did you play?
Morgan isn’t putting a moral judgment out there. Earth is dead. So what? Things die. Morgan isn’t dwelling on why, or how. He thinks it’s natural. “We ate Earth. Great. We’ll go to Chiron and eat it, too. Then, when it’s dead, we will be impelled to build another spaceship so that we can go to eat another planet.” That’s a very distinctive attitude.
Quote from: bvanevery
When you posit something like "suddenly people don't believe in vaccination at all, in the future" and that Zhakarov is merely reacting to this, it's your job to come up with why that circumstance is even remotely plausible. With more than a hand wave about it being "of course" plausible. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous.
Not all people. Some people. The curious case of COVID-19 in the United States is a very good (and tragic) example of how people interpret medical reality through different lenses. Zakharov would presumably look at us now and say, “Really? Are we going to let the dictates of economics or electoral politics shape our attitude toward proven interventions (masks)?”
Quote from: bvanevery
Lal is not the U.N. The idea that Lal is going to get elected on an anti-vaxxer, absolute religious freedom ticket, is ridiculous. Ebola happens, the U.N. does something. No organization has to be effective in the face of a problem. Doesn't make Lal's moral compass blase or in denial about the realities or what's at stake.
No, the idea is that, like the U.N., Lal can (potentially) be so wedded to the idea of self-determination that the concept of good loses all meaning. By the end of the 1990s, objections to the U.N.’s failings were legion. As the “U.N.” character, Lal bears those crosses. You don’t have to play him that way, but it’s both a possibility and one of the most likely stereotypes of Lal that other faction leaders are likely to hold.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2020, 09:06:05 AM
I think it’s inaccurate to say that anybody who accepts the argument that climate change is a problem demanding urgent action is a Greenie on the level of Deirdre Skye.
I don't know why you're trying to make Green the equivalent of a Planet Nazi. Al Gore is Green, and he's clearly not a Climate Denier. You don't have to have mindworms coming out of your ears to be Green. Lal went Green.
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As the game illustrates so starkly, once sea levels begin to rise, Global Warming becomes everyone’s problem, even the Morganites.
I'm pretty sure I've had games with Morgan voting against lowering the flood waters. I wonder if the AI tries to calculate what would hurt me the most? The AI doesn't play like global flooding is particularly a problem. It'll wipe a few bases, but mostly the AI factions build Pressure Domes and call it a day. Global flooding unfortunately isn't that great a weapon against the AI factions. It's not going to destroy them.
I thought I was doing them a favor. But if they want it this way, fine!
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while I see interpret the same discordances as depth. That’s not a dispute that has any resolution.
If I expect internal support in the rest of the material, and you don't, then yes we will not see eye to eye on much of anything. One half-baked idea doesn't necessarily fit with anything else they did.
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Generally speaking, I think the player is given the narrative tools, not just the freedom of gameplay, to take at least two roads with each of the factions and their leaders.
I think it's almost impossible to make a realistic world where someone can be a complete 100% goody two shoes or a complete 100% cackling evildoer. That said, Yang comes pretty close to the latter. Lal is as close to goody two shoes as one could probably get, and he still is given belligerent faction diplomatic dialogue. 'Cuz, cookie cutter format. Zingers. Crap on your buddy. Trash talk during the NBA game. In fairness, they're trying to model the emotional outrage of ideologies clashing.
Anyways, this freedom you claim, does not say much. Because, it's a somewhat realistic somewhat hard sci-fi game. Every faction is going to do something a bit nasty to survive. Let's say you think there were good guys in WW II. You think cities didn't get firebombed anyways?
The AI is going to play each faction the same way every time. That says something about narrative intent. Sure you're the player and can choose / roleplay differently. But that doesn't change the core characterization of the faction leaders.
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QuoteWat? 9/11, WTC and other buildings falling, anthrax by mail, entering Afghanistan, Iraq war, "code orange" getting on planes, then it turns out all that "yellow cake" stuff was BS....
The 1990’s were not that moment.
You also invoked the early 2000s and we were talking about why various franchises took a long time to become popular. You cited some kind of special condition of stress as being necessary. I say humanity is always under stress and it's the same old same old. So did The Who. "Don't Get Fooled (Again)"
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Quote from: bvaneveryUuuh, noooo. I don't know who this Nick guy is, but Morgan is anti-environmental and doesn't get any points doing what he does on Planet. Global warming happens, global flooding happens. Mindworms come to destroy your factories. What game did you play?
Morgan isn’t putting a moral judgment out there.
Morgan gets -3 PLANET for running his favorite Free Market economics. There's moral judgment alright, he just doesn't deliver any lines about it. Rather, his factories mess up Planet. Quotes aren't the only way story is delivered in this game. When he says he's gonna "chew and eat our fill", he means he's gonna strip mine everything he wants out of Planet to live good right now. The whole "forgotten future" thing is an inversion of the global warming "think of the children and future generations" politics of the 1990s.
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Earth is dead. So what? Things die. Morgan isn’t dwelling on why, or how. He thinks it’s natural. “We ate Earth. Great. We’ll go to Chiron and eat it, too. Then, when it’s dead, we will be impelled to build another spaceship so that we can go to eat another planet.” That’s a very distinctive attitude.
Yeah it's a moral judgment that a planet doesn't have an inherent value, and neither do future generations. I don't know how you manage to frame it as "not a moral judgment". He's Deirdre's opposite number, he doesn't care what happens to the planet, or any planet. He wants his coal mines etc.!
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Quote from: bvaneveryWhen you posit something like "suddenly people don't believe in vaccination at all, in the future" and that Zhakarov is merely reacting to this, it's your job to come up with why that circumstance is even remotely plausible. With more than a hand wave about it being "of course" plausible. Frankly it's pretty ridiculous.
Not all people. Some people. The curious case of COVID-19 in the United States is a very good (and tragic) example of how people interpret medical reality through different lenses. Zakharov would presumably look at us now and say, “Really? Are we going to let the dictates of economics or electoral politics shape our attitude toward proven interventions (masks)?”
Some people just end up dying. Some people don't run Earth into the ground. Your bitter Zhakarov only makes sense in a future where piles and piles of people succeeded in wiping out most of humanity due to disease. And that's assuming they "didn't want vaccinations", as opposed to fighting biological wars.
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No, the idea is that, like the U.N., Lal can (potentially) be so wedded to the idea of self-determination that the concept of good loses all meaning.
It's ridiculous. Look at the photo again. Please take pains to notice there are no white people in the picture while you're at it. We live in an actual historical reality, with an actual U.N. The thing Lal would get Fundamentalist about, is all the U.N. declaration of human rights stuff.
Post by: Trenacker on July 12, 2020, 02:55:34 PM
I think we must also differ on what we think when we read or use the political label “Green.”
Quote from: bvanevery
I'm pretty sure I've had games with Morgan voting against lowering the flood waters. I wonder if the AI tries to calculate what would hurt me the most? The AI doesn't play like global flooding is particularly a problem. It'll wipe a few bases, but mostly the AI factions build Pressure Domes and call it a day. Global flooding unfortunately isn't that great a weapon against the AI factions. It's not going to destroy them.
The fact that the AI sometimes votes for raising or dropping sea levels may tell you more about their military designs than their perspectives on taking care of Planet (or not). The fact that everyone scrambles to build Pressure Domes, and that some cities and units get totally destroyed, is a good indicator that there are massive consequences.
Quote from: bvanevery
If I expect internal support in the rest of the material, and you don't, then yes we will not see eye to eye on much of anything. One half-baked idea doesn't necessarily fit with anything else they did.
This is the problem. I don’t count them as inconsistencies. You seem almost to have an implicit rule of, “I need 2 or 3 mentions of it before I admit it into my head-canon. And even then, I want sharply-cut tropes, not blurring at the margins.” That’s fine. It’s a creative difference, and therefore subjective.
Quote from: bvanevery
The AI is going to play each faction the same way every time. That says something about narrative intent. Sure you're the player and can choose / roleplay differently. But that doesn't change the core characterization of the faction leaders.
The projects I work on also demand answers to many more questions than the computer game, because a wider range of specific situations can arise. For example, what would each of the factions think about trying to make contact with Earth?
Quote from: bvanevery
You also invoked the early 2000s and we were talking about why various franchises took a long time to become popular. You cited some kind of special condition of stress as being necessary. I say humanity is always under stress and it's the same old same old. So did The Who. "Don't Get Fooled (Again)"
It's about a particular kind of stress. The crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s created a very different expectation for policing than has the social media era of the 2010s.
Would you mind answering this simple question? If Brian Reynolds wrote Alpha Centauri today, would he use the same factions?
(I hope you find it fascinating that I saw him say, a year or two ago, on one of the AC blogs, that he left no discarded faction ideas on the cutting room floor. He began with 7, and he ended with the same 7.)
Quote from: bvanevery
Yeah it's a moral judgment that a planet doesn't have an inherent value, and neither do future generations. I don't know how you manage to frame it as "not a moral judgment". He's Deirdre's opposite number, he doesn't care what happens to the planet, or any planet. He wants his coal mines etc.!
I think we agree on the end state: Morgan is disinterested in Planet. If consuming Planet’s resources destroys it, fine. If Planet’s resources were inexhaustible, he’d be fine with that, too. Contrast Morgan’s agenda with that the custom Shapers of Chiron faction, which literally proposes to replace Planet’s biosphere with that of Planet Earth.
Quote from: bvanevery
Some people just end up dying. Some people don't run Earth into the ground. Your bitter Zhakarov only makes sense in a future where piles and piles of people succeeded in wiping out most of humanity due to disease. And that's assuming they "didn't want vaccinations", as opposed to fighting biological wars.
My bitter Zakharov makes sense in a game premised on the prior destruction of Earth from any of a dozen intersecting calamities.
My interest in delving into the faction leaders’ past experiences also has to do with the call from many players of my game in 2014 for insight and alignment around how Earth failed. They thought that information could help them create better characters.
Quote from: bvanevery
It's ridiculous. Look at the photo again. Please take pains to notice there are no white people in the picture while you're at it. We live in an actual historical reality, with an actual U.N. The thing Lal would get Fundamentalist about, is all the U.N. declaration of human rights stuff.
Unsure what point you’re trying to make.
It almost seems that you value the U.N. as a force for consistent positive good. But John Bolton, former Ambassador to the U.N. and recently-departed U.S. National Security Adviser, would tell you that the “actual U.N.” has been hypocritical, complicit, and largely useless.
The U.N., like any organization that must balance the competing interests of entities more powerful than itself and yet which it must nevertheless restrain, often makes political decisions with grave moral implications. Look at how fraught African interventions have been. Who will pay? Which conflicts are amenable to intervention? Can enough political capital be obtained to intervene at all? How long should diplomacy be allowed to run before peacekeepers are sent in contrary to the wishes of the sovereign nations in play? Are the peacekeepers they send equally predatory or worse than local combatants? Will the peacekeepers use force only in self-defense, or can they actively intervene to protect civilians?
The U.N. faces the same problems the U.S. does today. “Can we force people to do what a scientist or technocrat thinks is genuinely in their best interest, or does respecting individual self-determination mean allowing people to decide that they don’t want to do those things, either for themselves or for others?”