SMAX technology tree improvement

[Trenacker]

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

[Buster's Uncle]

This is getting way past acceptable manners, b.

[bvanevery]

When is there going to be a boundary line drawn, on someone casting aspersions on my personality?  Specifically:

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.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, on page three of you ride'in the guy, I'll allow it.

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...

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

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.

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.
  
  

  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.

  
  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.
  
  

  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 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.
  
  

  I 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.
  
  

  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.

  
  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.
  
  

  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.

  
  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.
  
  

  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.

  
  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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

[Nexii]

My experience with redoing the tech tree is that many are very hard to place, whether you go the lore route or more hard logical route.

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)

[Trenacker]

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. Thus, Lal gives us the quote for Centauri Psi; a Morganite “Weakener” for Digital Sentience; Lal again for Doctrine: Mobility, Neural Grafting, and Fusion Power; Godwinson for High Energy Chemistry, Industrial Nanorobotics, and yes, Information Networks; Santiago for Nanomettalurgy. Miriam usually talks about stellar and physical phenomenon, but when it comes to Singularity Mechanics, we get a Morganite technician. Morganites are quoted mostly when it comes to industrial techs, but Lal gets the quote for Silksteel.

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Neural Grafting,

It's 100% Lal's "human rights" area.  Humanity is slipping into cyborg darkness.

and Fusion Power;

No, that's the "Morganite announcer".

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.

Industrial Nanorobotics,

100% her character opposition to technological "advancement" BS.

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.

Santiago for Nanomettalurgy.

She likes military toys.  Why wouldn't she?  She polishes artillery pieces.

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"

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.

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.

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?

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.

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" ?

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.

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.

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.

[Nexii]

Getting rather off-topic which was how to rework the tech tree.

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

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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, but he also presents Lal as the “Everybody Should be Peaceful, and We Should All Get Along Guy.” (Start at timestamp 25:35.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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" ?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

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"

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.

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.

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.
 

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.

Yeah, but every faction does research,

Miriam is reputed to mostly do it badly.  Tapped out at basic high energy chemistry.

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.

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,

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

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.

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.

The cookie cutter format isn't complicated, it's one dimensional.  "Zingers".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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".

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.

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.

Is Morgan “bad” because he focuses on wealth?

He's an inversion.  He's gonna destroy the Earth / Planet, "chewing and eating his fill".

He would argue that good or bad are relative.

He's wrong.  Most people who argue that sort of thing are wrong.

His entire faction is about the “happying” of oneself.

No evidence that he's happy.  Only that he's greedy and wants control.

Many people (myself included) actually agree that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness.

Life's only actual purpose is life itself.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

Is Yang an ethical trainwreck?

Yes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[EmpathCrawler]

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.

[bvanevery]

The funny thing about clones is they're only an empty vessel.  It's the use of clones as military slaves that would make them a tool of conquest.  Clones in a democracy would just be more mouths to feed and opinions to entertain.