Default faction sets for SMAC in SMAX

[Geo]

I'd go for 'blank' as well. Let the Player Preach his/her Particular Prey of Factions. It's only a little work to type seven faction labels in the alphax.

I never thought, all those years ago, the aquatized factions would still be around.

[Buster's Uncle]

Of course they're still around.  They're awesome.

[kyrub]

My vote goes for:

1)  SMAX factions minus the two alien factions (who would probably crash the game). E.g. all five and then twice blank-blank. Not sure if this is possible. For me, SMAX factions are not the problem, on the contrary, more options in setup is a good thing (but they don't have adequate AI + the alien factions are doubtful).

or - equally as good, if not better

1) All blanks. Man can choose his fate.


2) It's hard to agree on a superior package from the mods. In general, I am surprised by their quality (I should try them I guess), but they seem to follow different aims, sometimes more role-playing, sometimes usage of all capacities, sometimes revamp of original factions. None of the packages appear flawless to me, to the point to give it green light and promote it at the expense of other ones. If community wishes to put a 7-faction package in, I let others to decide.

[Buster's Uncle]

diessa?

[ete]

@kyrub: I doubt aliens will crash the game, the easiest way to remove aliens is just take out the factions so there's unlikely to be the need for any changes which would cause incompatibility. The SMAX 5 is something I'd neglected to put on the list though, worth considering.

@Geo/kyrub: Bear in mind that even if it's easy to edit factions into alphax, having defaults bundled means that players have access to new factions without having to specifically find out about/find and download them (or fiddle with alphax at all), which probably means a lot more playtesters and an automatic demonstration of the custom factions for people. Additionally with SMAX custom faction handling it's equally easy to swap out default factions as add factions into default blank slots, so does not particularly save player time. The main tradeoff is that having default blank makes the download smaller, and makes the game appear more clean, which are both points worth considering but it'd also be cool to showcase some factions.

[Buster's Uncle]

Our community is a modding powerhouse, after all; I like the idea of promoting the guys' stuff this way.

ete, a link in the README to the appropriate place in the AC Wiki is a must, no matter what else we do, I think.

[diessa]

There is some indecision within my post, but I want to see how things develop before placing my "vote." I agree that the choice of secondary factions to appear beside the primary, original factions is an important one because it represents a decision that we need to make about what we want to highlight. Do we want to introduce players to the modification community? Do we want the SMAX factions to remain (more) visible? Do we want to "reboot" the setting to provide a sense that is familiar, yet fresh? Do we want to leave it at the original factions?

Sigma provides factions that have developed backgrounds, motives, and abilities. I appreciate that they take many of the original faction's characteristics and combine them less stereotypically. For example, the religious faction is less of the stereotyped Christian crusader. However, the quality between the factions is inconsistent. House Satori, in particular, is influenced too much by feudal Japan, to the point that it is a caricature. Similarly, I am weary of the possible balance issues of some of the unit and ability bonuses. It would need to be tested and, perhaps, modified based on the results.

Dio provides factions with tested, careful bonuses that cover many areas of the game. I would be interested to see what another pass at naming and some thought to leader biographies and texts would result in. I want to play with him mod, so I may come back to this entry at a later date. This option, with attention to setting, could become the strongest for me.

One of the reasons I like SMAC is that it took existing social movements and reproduced them in familiar, yet different ways. As a result, JarlWolf's direct allusions to Communism (e.g., lodges with the hammer and sickle on them) detract from the atmosphere of the game, which is one of the reasons for this project to exist. Similarly, part of this project is removing aliens as an immediate factor in the game's universe, so ariente's factions and options that retain aliens are out of the scope of my interest.

Seven permutations of the existing factions is an option, alongside blank, that would be safest. The graphic updates to the original seven would be an option that would interest me, in particular. Seven aquatic factions would be fun, but does anyone remember/know what the state of balance was with the faction bonuses while everyone was at sea (and had the +1 mineral bonus)?

My top three preferences, at this point, are Dio, Sigma, and graphically updated Originals (plus having the SMAX human factions in the custom pool). Dio's remain under development and Sigma's should be revisited. Ultimately, it may be best to leave the middle menu blank for a first release. We have used the logic of having the broadest possible point of entry into this project, so it makes sense to just focus on the originals. Perhaps the "hybrid" version of this modification could have one of the alternate faction sets included with it? If that, or something similar, is the case, I suggest that we wait until Dio has developed some of the lore of each faction and/or Sigma's work has been evaluated for tone and balance.

[DrazharLn]

I've published a mod in the other thread that makes almost all of the mechanical and online help changes necessary to the game. With the changes I've made, Aliens will not crash the game, however, they will not be capable of talking to the human factions until they have social psych (the humans will not be able research progenitor psych) and will not be able to win by building subspace generators (though I could re-enable them without affecting the human factions).

The game balance for the SMAX factions is also upset because a number of abilities and facilities are no longer available. Aquatic factions are less viable because the bonus sea resources facilities are gone, data angels might be broken because the covert ops center (their free facility) is out, the cult are missing their brood pit and the extra alien life too.

[Nexii]

Isn't it a bit strange to say alien factions don't belong but custom human ones do in SMAC?  If going for the feel of the original? Remixes or reworks on the original 7 faction bonuses/penalties I can understand more.  Or is it more the gameplay mechanic of 2 alien factions that are not in the council and locked in war that is less appealing? 

It's a good point diessa raised - although one could say Spartans are based on Earth's Spartans as much as a communist faction could be based on communist Russia.  There are ties back to Earth with all the factions as there should be.  Perhaps the symbolism could be toned down - but the ideology could remain.  Seems fairly similar to Yang's beliefs though at a glance.  I think where the focus needs to be on not so much on where the custom faction comes from - but where they are headed as humanity evolves.  This is why the original seven were more compelling - their beliefs were explained through the tech/SP/facility lore.

There isn't a whole lot of tech space, though some could be made by clearing out the SMAX 5 quotes and alien quotes/techs.  Not sure how everyone feels about the SMAX 5 remaining.  Personally I'd like to just see one really well done faction that could fill all that space...since it's about 10-15% of the total blurbs/etc.  But that would be heading away from SMAC and more to another mod entirely.

[ete]

None of the new factions would have tech/faction blurbs, and all of the SMAX specific techs/facilities are going to be removed so unless you removed SMAC original blurbs (which is not going to happen) there's no room for their quotes beyond dialogue and the faction text blurb.

[Geo]

Something that doesn't seem to be mentioned sofar (haven't throughly read all the posts), is the possibility to use the SMACX slots for the somehow improved SMAC factions to be used as AI opponents to the human player.
For instance, enabling more governor flags (Explore/Discover/Build/Conquer), or +talent (easier drone control for the AI) or something else that doesn't immediately glares the player in the face.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's not a bad idea at all.  Buffed originals for opponents. 

[Geo]

Too bad a free crawler at the start of the game won't do the AI much good. Those start with the independent flag as well, and I can't see an AI rehoming them to their starting base.

[Sigma]

There is some indecision within my post, but I want to see how things develop before placing my "vote." I agree that the choice of secondary factions to appear beside the primary, original factions is an important one because it represents a decision that we need to make about what we want to highlight. Do we want to introduce players to the modification community? Do we want the SMAX factions to remain (more) visible? Do we want to "reboot" the setting to provide a sense that is familiar, yet fresh? Do we want to leave it at the original factions?

Sigma provides factions that have developed backgrounds, motives, and abilities. I appreciate that they take many of the original faction's characteristics and combine them less stereotypically. For example, the religious faction is less of the stereotyped Christian crusader. However, the quality between the factions is inconsistent. House Satori, in particular, is influenced too much by feudal Japan, to the point that it is a caricature. Similarly, I am weary of the possible balance issues of some of the unit and ability bonuses. It would need to be tested and, perhaps, modified based on the results.

Dio provides factions with tested, careful bonuses that cover many areas of the game. I would be interested to see what another pass at naming and some thought to leader biographies and texts would result in. I want to play with him mod, so I may come back to this entry at a later date. This option, with attention to setting, could become the strongest for me.

One of the reasons I like SMAC is that it took existing social movements and reproduced them in familiar, yet different ways. As a result, JarlWolf's direct allusions to Communism (e.g., lodges with the hammer and sickle on them) detract from the atmosphere of the game, which is one of the reasons for this project to exist. Similarly, part of this project is removing aliens as an immediate factor in the game's universe, so ariente's factions and options that retain aliens are out of the scope of my interest.

Seven permutations of the existing factions is an option, alongside blank, that would be safest. The graphic updates to the original seven would be an option that would interest me, in particular. Seven aquatic factions would be fun, but does anyone remember/know what the state of balance was with the faction bonuses while everyone was at sea (and had the +1 mineral bonus)?

My top three preferences, at this point, are Dio, Sigma, and graphically updated Originals (plus having the SMAX human factions in the custom pool). Dio's remain under development and Sigma's should be revisited. Ultimately, it may be best to leave the middle menu blank for a first release. We have used the logic of having the broadest possible point of entry into this project, so it makes sense to just focus on the originals. Perhaps the "hybrid" version of this modification could have one of the alternate faction sets included with it? If that, or something similar, is the case, I suggest that we wait until Dio has developed some of the lore of each faction and/or Sigma's work has been evaluated for tone and balance.

Appreciate the input on my old work!

Since I "finished" my faction set (it still needs a lot of polishing and testing) my life has changed fairly drastically. I moved to a new state, got married and all sorts of other things have taken precedence over this. And happily they're still going great! That said I absolutely do not have the availability anymore to actually dig back into the old factions, so I'm considering them to be open source and anyone who wants to dig into them to improve them is more than welcome to!

Concerning House Satori, I had a strong concept in mind when I was devising them, but when it came to actually putting those ideas into text documents, they kind of fell short, so as you pointed out they wound up being tonally inconsistent in comparison to other factions in the set. Their ideology is nowhere near as crystalline as the other factions, a fault they share, I think, with the Genarchs, who are simultaneously my most ideologically insecure faction and, in the tests that I was able to do, by far the most overpowered.

Were I to redo the faction set I'd probably wind up seriously rewriting House Satori, and completely reworking the background and ideology of the Genarchs.

[kyrub]

Aquatic factions are less viable because the bonus sea resources facilities are gone.

Funny. I thought that would actually make Pirates fair and balanced, forcing them to grab some land.


Buffed opponents? Isn't it boring? And governor flags aren't going to cut it, they will be far less important in next AI patches. Also, enabling all of them means enabling nothing, like all colours together give white.

Maybe the question is, what should the extra column offer? For me it is:
a) either "variety close to official version" = SMAX factions / blank
b) or "really clever variety" = a very good (probably not too extravagant) package of 7 factions.
I am ok with this, as long as there is community consensus behind this. Maybe a few people can discuss how to improve one of the packages (Sigma or Dio seem frontrunners) and overcome its feeble points?