Submit your faction! - Alpha Contest - administrative thread

[Buster's Uncle]

Sigma, would I be correct that you're willing to be in charge of this project?  What do we need to do to get started?

[Sigma]

Right now I need time. I'm preparing to move to a new apartment in another state so I won't be able to do much in the way of administrating; but once I'm relocated I should be much more available.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okydoke; I don't think there's any harm in taking the time to get all planned out and ducks in a row first, anyway - I just don't want to wait so long we forget to start...

[Green1]

If we just start posting the factions, the lurkers will snatch 'em up. No need for all official and such...

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm all for some lurker-bait.  That's how you catch members.

[JarlWolf]

I got ideas for factions, and I got time to do them.... its just motivation to get off my arse and do them.


Tell me what you want for your exterminatus buildings Green, that'll stir the juices up.

[ete]

hm, I very much like the idea of having a process for getting approved factions graphics and checks and stuff. I'm not quite so sure about having specific sets of seven released, or about limiting releases to winners.

I'd favor a system which works like:
Start monthly (?) thread
Members submit outlines for factions
Members submit their text files+basic idea of faction look, and make a usable download of the text file available for playtesting
Users give feedback
Artists take on projects

At the end of the month factions which are:
1. Finished (have all the required graphics, not broken text files)
2. Have fitting flavor (fit fairly well into the storyline)
3. Are balanced (factions intended to be unbalanced should be available in two versions, one balanced and one not)
4. Are somewhat interesting/unique

are placed in the core faction pack, which is a collection of all good finished factions which you can drop into your games and use. Factions which don't fit the above criteria are placed in the full faction pack, which contains all the custom factions ever.

Having only two faction packs simplifies things for the user. Rather than downloading things one by one, they just download a single file (core=quality factions, full=lots of factions), extract it, and are ready to go.

I'd be happy to give awards out (maybe once every 3-6 months) for things like:

Best artist
Best overall faction
Most interesting faction
Most helpful user
Best balancer
etc

and have a forum wide anonymous vote on them, but generally prefer co-operation being encouraged on factions rather than competition. We could have something in the postbit listing how many factions a user has had approved for the core set, which could be competed over somewhat, but input and assistance is good.

Joke factions and those for TCMs would need to be handled differently, probably TCM ones just included with the TCM and jokes.. should they be allowed in the core set ever? Maybe if they're especially well made/have some purpose?

[Green1]

I beg to differ with you, ete.

Most of the time when folks look for a custom faction, they are looking for something very specific. Let's say I want a third alien. I do not want a pack. I just want that cool one alien. If I want the Borg, I just want that one Borg, not the entire TNG universe. It is kind of like action figures when we were kids. I may want He-man and Master -at- Arms, but Orko sucks.

That said, I do think an AC2 faction pack of things from the Network Node and our own that fit in with story would maybe get some bites.

Speaking of Network Node factions: Sisko.... I just read Planet tales. I knew Juridic was one of the higher quality faction but I had no idea there was that much story behind it.

[ete]

For finding specific factions, we have the wiki. Categorized and searchable. However as I found it is an extremely long and repetitive process to put a large number of factions onto your computer if they're in separate downloads, and even if you're only ever going to use 3-4 of them, the time saved from installing the core pack in one go rather than setting them up one by one is significant.

Basically: Installing the whole pack, then searching the wiki for which ones you want to use/include in each game is much more efficient than searching for what you want then having to download/unzip/edit alphax each time you find one you want.

Additionally, maintaining just one or two downloads for faction packs is likely significantly easier than maintaining/updating a large number of individual downloads, though having individual downloads may be an option as well if someone is willing to put in some of extra work (maybe 5-10 hours of repetitive copying links back and forth to the wiki) to set them up properly (meaning: have it so you can update both downloads from one source, otherwise you get edit conflicts in factions and double the effort to update faction downloads forever). If there is demand and the more urgent projects I have don't need attention I'll do it, but it's not a trivial amount of effort and seems much less useful to me.

[Green1]

That's actually really helpful for testing my factions! Thank you.

Edit: I did that, and what happens is that I still control my faction but I can see all the others or I can play each factions turn. Its not letting me pick an option to just "watch" unfortunately.

Edit 2: nevermind I figured it out

Yeah, I learned that a while back from a thread on CFC.

There was a guy who was testing to find out what the strongest AI was. Overwhelmingly, it was Yang.

However, I think this was pre-Kyrub's terraforming AI port of his 444 experiment to SMAX. I have found with the terraforming AI that is in Kyrub;s that some factions are somewhat more powerful and deadly. I also have noticed crawlers, but the AI uses it differently than we do. And Deidre.. and those condensers..arghh... Both Kyrub's SMAX patch PLUS and Yitzi's has this. Probably needs to be done again in light of those developments.

But yeah, excellent tool to test AIs use of factions when you do not have the time for 3 games.

I really should have screen shot something for you, Jarlwolf. The Exterminatus and Crimson Comrades were locked in this EPIC battle! The sheer numbers Exterminatus was putting out! Thanks to the old scenario/auto AI trick!