A spontaneous community faction project.

[Kilkakon]

Heh good thing Buster's Uncle posted in his graphics thread or I'd have never known about this. Very funny idea guys, I love the leaderhead. I might suggest a bit of cleaning up of the faction logo, and yes the waterbases are a bit basic... I can help out in a pinch if necessary.

Oh and heh, I have a Virgin mobile.

[Davyboy]

Oh and heh, I have a Virgin mobile.

"Virgin Mobile" should be a basename. Next revision, your credit.

[Kilkakon]

Don't forget Dave Pitt!

"Essays on Mind and Money" <-- Sounds like somebody copy/pasted from Hive. Same for the treaty/war ones.

I spotted a few purple pixels on the leaderhead--not sure if they were deliberate.

I didn't know about [square brackets]!

[Buster's Uncle]

I spotted a few purple pixels on the leaderhead--not sure if they were deliberate.

Odd; I'd noticed a blip on the forehead, but not thought much of it.  You can see that it wasn't there when I posted just the leaderhead, which was cropped out of the faction graphic.  I think when I loaded the SMAC palette in Photoshop, some white pixels decided they were transparent.

Here it is corrected.

[Davyboy]

Don't forget Dave Pitt!

"Essays on Mind and Money" <-- Sounds like somebody copy/pasted from Hive. Same for the treaty/war ones.

Mea culpa. Comes from using Facedit (sic) to kick off a new faction textfile, pasting in the index header from Brian's and editing the results.
Looks like I might have left a few Hivisms behind in the process which I am getting round to correcting.

I didn't know about [square brackets]!

It really was new to me too. But  a few days later, as part of my "clean-up" as noted above, I was trawling through 'script.txt' looking for something related - and found THIS almost at the beginning:--

; 6) The "{" and "}" characters are used to indicate text which should
;    be displayed in BOLD type. The "[" and "]" characters indicate
;    text which should be displayed in ITALIC type. A {} sequence or
;    a [] sequence can begin and end on different lines.
;
; 7) Lines beginning with "^" begin on new lines.
;
; 8 ) Lines beginning with "^^" are centered.

So, it was there all along, written in 1997 by the Firaxis team.
Interesting note: you can see the results of using [ ] brackets at game setup for the Virgin faction BUT if you look up the faction profile through F1 there's NO italic used, it's all squashed to normal font type.

I'm still getting my head around that oddity, but my current best guess would be that alphacentauri.ini values take senior precedence.

Interesting note #2: the [ ] brackets don't seem to work as advertised within the 'movlist.txt' file. On the other hand, the ^ and ^^ operands DO seem functional. Italic type is possible during projects but it's a different hack and has a few variations. I'll post a separate how-to thread when I've dotted all of the "i"s.

[Davyboy]

I spotted a few purple pixels on the leaderhead--not sure if they were deliberate.

Odd; I'd noticed a blip on the forehead, but not thought much of it.  You can see that it wasn't there when I posted just the leaderhead, which was cropped out of the faction graphic.  I think when I loaded the SMAC palette in Photoshop, some white pixels decided they were transparent.

Here it is corrected.

Looks fine now. All zits cleared up!

I'm definitely going to have to do something about the PSphere bug. About 80% of conquered bases spawn a parasitic PS (much worse than Naval Yards with Sven. As a result, drones should be a bigger problem outside of 'his' rump territory. They're not. The PSs don't seem to be halving research at all now...

I'll try gifting Deirdre with a base that has a NN and a biolab , see if the PS is passed on as well and what the result is.

[Davyboy]

I'll try gifting Deirdre with a base that has a NN and a biolab , see if the PS is passed on as well and what the result is.

Fat chance there.
We aren't talking. Only Santiago isn't at 'Branson's' throat. As it turns out, Branson is anathema to ALL female factions -- a true Ladies Man (NOT!, the only reason the Spartans are mollified is bc VALUES=POWER for Branson atm.

Had to mod Branson anyway -- ROBUST ECONOMY is an oxymoron as it turns out. ""There are no genes for weaker economy"" (to misquote) NO social setting handicaps ECONOMY.

Still no joy handicapping the RESEARCH via PSs -- looks like a bug -- can't remember if this happened with any of the Borg factions from yesteryear, maybe BUncle, sisko or someone else remembers?

If I can't get that to work it'll have to come out and 'he'll' have to be handicapped in some other fashion I suppose....

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't know anything about it.

[Kilkakon]

So what are the current stats?

[Davyboy]

Different game, on a different installation - vanilla PPack with no patches just to see if I can work out what's happening with the research handicap. And I might just have an answer.

My earlier gripe that as soon as Branson gets his Psheres the research rate goes from 6 years to ... 6 years and yet it FELT slower in the research department because it WAS slower and I was fooled from noticing how the slowdown was happening. Take the following example:--

I start researching N-Space in 2351 and according to F2 menu I'm good for 2-tear breakthroughs (also 2 years in social screen). Here's three screenies:--

You don't notice the research change per base, nothing seems to change there. Nothing seems to change in the F2 screen -- X points for the next tech, Y per MY -- but each year you get nerfed for half the research! The obvious 'error' is in HOW it's presented to the player.

I live and learn.

[Buster's Uncle]

Interesting. 

How close would you say you are to being finished?  I assume you want me to do Branson2.pcx and Branson3.pcx?  I usually don't bother, but I wouldn't mind.

Kil, would you like to describe what cleaning up you think the logo needs, or even do it yourself?

[Davyboy]

Interesting. 

How close would you say you are to being finished?  I assume you want me to do Branson2.pcx and Branson3.pcx?  I usually don't bother, but I wouldn't mind.

Kil, would you like to describe what cleaning up you think the logo needs, or even do it yourself?

Pretty close. I really would be grateful for a version of the other .pcx's. I'm finished for tonight (your time +6hrs) but intend to try 'him' in a contemporaneous SMACX tomorrow and also run him a couple of times as AI. I think the ver1.6 file is about as good as I can make it -- I took Kil's criticisms on board and rewrote the datalinks. I've had more than a few very refreshing games. And they weren't easy imho.

[Kilkakon]

Thanks for freshening them up.

The logo seems a bit dull, lack of contrast, and a bit sharp on the edges. Also the cresent on the bottom left seems a bit random.

What do you think?

[Buster's Uncle]

Dunno.  The original was a bit amorphous, but the cresent was part of it.

I guess I need to have another look at what I did with it.

[Kilkakon]

Okay sure! Was just putting in my 2c.