How does SMAC differ from Star Trek?

[bvanevery]

Please allow a few hand waves.  This is to make a point about narrative focus, which is a core reason why people actually liked and still care about SMAC.  I came across an old post in the archives which got me thinking:

I've seen some things mentioned that a spiritual successor to SMAC/SMAX should have, but you all forgot one major thing.
A hostile environment with lifeforms that want to kill you. In Alpha Centauri you have Planet, or Chiron is what its actual name is if I recall right. And on this planet is the Planetmind, which is a sentient planet wide nervous system which is prevalent in the vast majority, if not all of the planet's life. And this sentient mind is distrustful of foreign agents and treats them like a body's white blood cells treat a foreign agent in the body.

First I thought, am I married to mindworms?  No, not really.  I always saw them as a bit of a Dune ripoff and I'm not really into ripoffs.  The idea of "the planetary environment is against you" somehow is basically valid though, as a game mechanic.  Lots of different ways to implement that.

Then I suddenly imagined, some kind of fusion between Nomad from STTOS, the Replicators from Stargate Atlantis, and the incredibly stupid aliens from the Mel Gibson movie "Signs".  A world with all these little bots milling around, tending to stuff.  A sort of robotic garden, with no organization beyond capricious machine patterns.  Didn't Aki Zeta-5 talk about mechanical beings who might have scoffed at the idea of intelligence residing within meat?  Or maybe this is the remnant of a once biological civilization, all that's left now.

It made me think, how does SMAC science fiction differ from Star Trek anyways?  Couldn't Planet basically be something the USS Enterprise zooms up to, has 1 episode dealing with it, and then leaves again?  What of importance would change?  Fire a few lasers at it and call it good.

Weird creatures that kill people?  Did that with the Horta.  Made friends with it too; Centauri Empathy indeed!  Only takes a Vulcan mind meld, apparently, and some good sense with cement.

What about SMAC is valuable as a set of science fiction concepts at all?  Is it just the scope of trying to deal with humanity's future?  Stargate Atlantis did that, more or less.  They get to work with a relic city of the Ancients, and sometimes they even get flung into the far future as well.  Although, it was merely a means to restore the past.  Funny how everyone just wants to restore the status quo.  It's like they have little writers in their brain redirecting them: "No you don't want that, no you don't want that...."

Note that Star Trek didn't tend to fling its protagonists into the future, being a futuristic show already.  They tended to fling its protagonists into the past, often literally by slingshotting around the sun at warp speed.  Granted, in later installments of the franchise they did have "temporal incursions" and whatnot, so there is some stuff about the future.  But it's typically just a plot device and there's not a lot of information dumping about what the future "beyond current Star Trek" looks like.

I mean heck, how can you tell anyways?  Go to any arbitrary place in the galaxy, and you will meet some civilization that is far more advanced than your own.  Organians, anyone?  What is special about SMAC again?

[Unorthodox]

First I thought, am I married to mindworms?  No, not really.  I always saw them as a bit of a Dune ripoff and I'm not really into ripoffs.  The idea of "the planetary environment is against you" somehow is basically valid though, as a game mechanic.  Lots of different ways to implement that.

As some here are aware, my interest in Sci-Fi is directly proportional to it's amount of horror.  As such, I always found the mind worms rather under-utilized as a story element. 

Something of a body snatchers, or even Empire or the Ants element to them would be nice.  (I'm sure there's ST references that fit both those, BU might have to fill them in) 

[bvanevery]

As some here are aware, my interest in Sci-Fi is directly proportional to it's amount of horror.  As such, I always found the mind worms rather under-utilized as a story element. 

Even though horror is not really my thing, I can almost feel you there.  Except for me the horror is Chairman Yang.  For me personally, that is what SMAC is all about.  Not the mindworms.  "Into the tanks!"

To answer my own question, I think 6 of the characters of the orignal SMAC are what make it strong, compared to anything else.  Except Santiago.  She's weak.  I never, ever believed that she was either a grunt or a great military general.  No credibility at all.  They wanted to put a sexy girl in some kind of role to balance out the man fest.  They put her in the right wing military outfit and frankly it's a joke.

The SMACX characters are worthless as characters.  Stupid cartoons, a real step down from the original game.  But I've come to realize their factions are game mechanically sound.  That's a different issue entirely, has nothing basically to do with narrative.  I wouldn't be shocked if they thought "wouldn't it be cool if we had a faction that did X" 7 times, and attaching characters to those game designed factions was a complete afterthought.  Whereas in the case of the original 7-1, they are the core of the game.  That is SMAC.

Come on, Svensgaard??  They had lame voice acting for that, and that poor slob actor got bad lines to work with to begin with.  I'm a big fan of the TV show "Vikings".  You think Svensgaard would last 5 seconds with those guys??  The archetype of a pirate leader is a good idea.  They just did a piss poor job with it.

[Unorthodox]

As some here are aware, my interest in Sci-Fi is directly proportional to it's amount of horror.  As such, I always found the mind worms rather under-utilized as a story element. 

Even though horror is not really my thing, I can almost feel you there.  Except for me the horror is Chairman Yang.  For me personally, that is what SMAC is all about.  Not the mindworms.  "Into the tanks!"

To answer my own question, I think 6 of the characters of the orignal SMAC are what make it strong, compared to anything else.  Except Santiago.  She's weak.  I never, ever believed that she was either a grunt or a great military general.  No credibility at all.  They wanted to put a sexy girl in some kind of role to balance out the man fest.  They put her in the right wing military outfit and frankly it's a joke.

I might be wrong in the timing, but I always took her as a blatant Sarah Connor ripoff.  As such, I didn't mind her much at all, and she was easily the most relatable to me out of the gate. 

And yes, there's a reason I always circled back to playing Yang...

Coming from more Horror inspired background, Yang, Miriam and Diedre were the ones that really stood out to me, with Morgan and Santiago being cliche but acceptable.  Lal and science boy always fell flat in my eyes. 

The SMACX characters are worthless as characters.  Stupid cartoons, a real step down from the original game.  But I've come to realize their factions are game mechanically sound.  That's a different issue entirely, has nothing basically to do with narrative.  I wouldn't be shocked if they thought "wouldn't it be cool if we had a faction that did X" 7 times, and attaching characters to those game designed factions was a complete afterthought.  Whereas in the case of the original 7-1, they are the core of the game.  That is SMAC.

Come on, Svensgaard??  They had lame voice acting for that, and that poor slob actor got bad lines to work with to begin with.  I'm a big fan of the TV show "Vikings".  You think Svensgaard would last 5 seconds with those guys??  The archetype of a pirate leader is a good idea.  They just did a piss poor job with it.

Can't comment intelligently on SMACX, extremely brief time on it. 

[bvanevery]

I might be wrong in the timing, but I always took her as a blatant Sarah Connor ripoff.

I don't think you're wrong about the timing, as Terminator 2 came out in 1991.  I wish they would have ripped off Sarah Conner.  IMO they clearly didn't.  Sarah Conner would have kicked Santiago's ass, using a broken broom handle of course.  She was way more of a survivalist nutjob than Santiago would ever be, and for good reason.  She wouldn't laugh or smile or sound pleasant about being a general, Sarah Conner would kill things.

Similarly, Sigourney Weaver as the anti-Alien gal would totally wipe the floor with Santiago.  Using a mech lifter of course.

Who Santiago should have been, is that Hispanic grunt woman in Aliens.  Can't remember her name, but one of the other grunts jokes at her, "When they said aliens, you thought they meant illegal aliens."  That gal didn't take ####.

There have been a lot of variations on "female military person" in TV and movies, and in sci-fi.  Samantha Carter certainly has more brains than Santiago, if not a right wing militia leader's temperament.  I've also not met a military woman in real life, who acted like Santiago.

Actually there's a current TV show, called The Expanse, that has a female Martian marine grunt character that is much more like what a Santiago should be.  I think she may be Malaysian in ethnic origin, I can't quite tell.  She's a physically robust woman, who looks like she could knock a lot of men out cold.  When she's chicken####ted by one of her superiors, she solves the diplomatic impasse by nearly killing him with her bare hands.  Yes, she could be the trainer that "snapped his arm back against itself" when studying Doctrine:Flexibility.  She's the best grunt anyone could ever ask for and she doesn't take crap from the politicians that are killing her own.  The character is Bobbie Draper, the actress is Frankie Adams.

Details frankie adams as bobbie draper in the expanse season 2

frankie adams as bobbie draper in the expanse season 2

The Expanse has a lot to offer as far as narrating awful politics.  The core dynamic is an uneasy Earth vs. Mars, with the Belters caught in a political crossfire and seeking to fend for themselves.  It shows that you don't have to have a pile of factions to write about this stuff.  A few key ones will do.  The show also has "magic biological aliens" show up, which take the role that Planet and the mindworms might otherwise have.

Coming from more Horror inspired background, Yang, Miriam and Diedre were the ones that really stood out to me, with Morgan and Santiago being cliche but acceptable. 

Morgan is the clown who gets to take the digs at Microsoft.  Really topical in the era the game was made.  Morgan has the funniest lines in the whole game.  They're all about deep corporate cynicism, which is a very believable future for humanity.

Lal and science boy always fell flat in my eyes. 

Lal is a weak character but has several very good introspective bits of dialogue.  Like his reaction to "MMI".  "Dark, rigid, cold, alien."  He was well voice acted and I thought completely credible as a pusillanimous wimp beleagured UN leader.

Zhakarov's main value is to talk about the tech of the world, and to take a few atheist digs at religion.  Usually he's calm.  I like the one time where he really loses is ####, about mindworms.  "That species, will be exterminated.  Exterminated!"

[bvanevery]

Found a video review of SMAC from 2017. 

Gaming History: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri "The greatest story ever played"

In the 1st part it makes interesting comments about SMAC's success at presenting narrative in a game.  Yes maybe nothing from a sci-fi standpoint is particuarly new and noteworthy in SMAC, but the story is mostly integrated into the gameplay.  I think the reviewer makes a good point that SMAC doesn't beat you over the head too much with its philosophies etc.  Apparently other games get too preachy.  I might not know, because frankly I've been playing SMAC for quite a long time and not much else.  I've wondered at times if I've just been in a rut for many years, but perhaps I understood that the work is just better in a lot of ways than other games.

[Geo]

Oh boy, that voice definitely reminds me of our good Chairman.

[bvanevery]

Sounds more Russian to me.