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MysticWind
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In future sequels to SMAC?
I always thought that in SMAC 1, at least, the map is way too small. Also, it would be fun if there were three or even four competing alliances at once. Having more factions would make things more complicated, but I don't think as complicated as Paradox (EU, Victoria, Hearts of Iron) games.
So how many should there be?
I'm thinking that 28 would be good. 50 would be overkill. More stats and special features are needed to make factions unique, but I think doubling the original 14 is doable.
What's the max number of factions per game for Civ III?
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Brent
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I think a good number would be 35. Or maybe forget about multiples of seven all together, and instead start each game with one or more pairs of archnemeses. Maybe then a total of 40 or 48 factions.
What about political factions within "geographical" factions?
I definitely think the number playing together should vary (from 2 to 14 or to 20 or to 35)
I do like the idea of pairs of similar factions, i.e. a technological militarist faction and a manpower militarist faction.
And have a choice between male and female for each one.
Check "Ask Sid" on the official Firaxis site. He says an Alpha Centauri sequel (or a Colonization sequel) is always under consideration for the next project.
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Senethro
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I think a max limit of 20 would be best. There are only so many faction types you can come up with before you start getting duplicates.
Also, if there were 35 factions then the personality of the leaders wouldn't be expressed and we would love them much less than we love, say, Morgan now. Although I like playing with the SMACX factions they're much less developed than the SMAC 7. Is there anyone here who doesn't despise Miriam?
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Brent
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I think we need all the originals, with the possible exception of the Progenitors, plus at least seven new ones. Maybe the only old ones we need to keep are the original seven plus the pirates.
I'm always Miriam.
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Senethro
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Yes, I like playing factions with research penalties as well. However, playing against Miriam I've only ever pacted with her once to achieve victory.
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WotanAnubis
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quote:
Originally posted by Senethro
Is there anyone here who doesn't despise Miriam? |
I don't despise her, as such. I just think she's rather... misguided. But at least she has the potential to see the light.
Yang, on the other hand...
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Commy
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St. Louis, MO, USA
Mar 2004
time: 05:31
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I think the best number would be 10, for three reasons...
First, note that each faction is either explore, discover, build, or conquer, or two of these...mathematically, using either one or two of these interests, there are 10 possibilities...
Second, there are 10 social effects (economy, morale, research, etc.)...
Each of the ten factions would each have one of these as their primary interest...
Third, there are 12 social engineering choices, but only 10 appear to be an "idealogy"...I find it hard, but I guess not impossible, to find someone for wealth and planned, but I guess a communist could do that...
The ten factions would look like something from below...
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Commy
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St. Louis, MO, USA
Mar 2004
time: 05:31
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1. The ecology insane people like the Gaians...
PLANET, GREEN econmics, Explore
2. A play off of the University...
RESEARCH, KNOWLEDGE values, Discover
3. Basically, the drones...
INDUSTRY, EUDAIMONIC society, Build
4. A military faction like the Spartans...
MORALE, POWER values, Conquer
5. Something like the cyborgs...
EFFICIENCY, CYBERNETIC society, Explore and Discover
6. Humanitarians
GROWTH, DEMOCRACY politics, Explore and Build
7. Your religious freaks...
SUPPORT, FUNDALMENTALIST politics, Explore and Conquer
8. Our good old buddy Morgan, but with a zeal for technology...
ECONOMY, FREE MARKET economics, Discover and Build
9. Like the Angels, but without the freedom loving part, more like an evil twin...
PROBE, THOUGHT CONTROL society, Discover and Conquer
10. Basically, Yang...
POLICE, POLICE STATE politics, Build and Conquer
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Brent
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Are you sure a SMAC2 would have the same set of available Traits? And why can't we have more combinations of the existing ones even if they'd wind up too similar to each other? And we could create our own faction in startup. By the way, I never did get the old faction editor to work. I want that fixed, maybe have an editor more similar to that of Civ2, 3, or 4, or some combination. Maybe we could even have a Trait system influenced by Civ3, like maybe a hybrid. Or be able to edit the Trait system, to give factions varying numbers of them. I could have tried the normal way to edit factions, but I don't play SMAC1 anymore.
So you think Sid's not exactly being honest with us in the Ask Sid section?
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MysticWind
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quote:
Originally posted by Commy
I think the best number would be 10, for three reasons...
First, note that each faction is either explore, discover, build, or conquer, or two of these...mathematically, using either one or two of these interests, there are 10 possibilities...
Second, there are 10 social effects (economy, morale, research, etc.)...
Third, there are 12 social engineering choices, but only 10 appear to be an "idealogy"...I find it hard, but I guess not impossible, to find someone for wealth and planned, but I guess a communist could do that...
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Simple. We simply need more social effects and social engineering choices. It'll be a lot more intersting with more government types. Also, as in Civ, just give certain factions special units unique to them.
However, it is true that the current factions have exhausted a lot of the archtypes. Basically, the original SMAC's factions represented important parts of human civilization, except maybe for art and culture.
Are there any archtypes left out besides science, religion, peace, war, control, wealth, and planet-loving?
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Brent
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We could always have a separate Progenitor counterpart to every human faction, maybe introduce nonprogenitor aliens. And in addition to the same paramaters as humans, I agree they could have parameters of their own.
I don't know much about the fancreated factions out there. What does their nature indicate more, that you really can't easily have additional unique enough factions, or that more diversity would work after all?
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Brent
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We could separate commerce from industry
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MysticWind
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quote:
Originally posted by Brent
I don't know much about the fancreated factions out there. What does their nature indicate more, that you really can't easily have additional unique enough factions, or that more diversity would work after all? |
The best site for fancreated factions is http://www.networknode.org
My main point about the site is while it's very cool there are a lot of factions there, most of the factions are either themed from something else (Dr. Evil faction, for example), or just knock-offs of the originals with the same stats (there's too many Green factions that have no depth in story! argh!)
Of course, there are other faction types. They are often odd, like a children's faction, as well as Public Health of Planet faction. I don't know if any faction is meant to be thought of as on the same level as the original factions. Personally, I'm trying to model my Second Ship factions after the originals in term of story and fromat.
Story-wise, I think in any sequels there should be room for at least 14 new factions, since we can already handle that number. The problem is as the story moves on, the factions become more esoteric, that is you have to know more of the story to appreciate them. You no longer have a "religious faction" or a "science faction" or a "hacker's faction", but you have to know more of the story.
I think it's inaccurate to say that more than the original 14 from SMAC and SMAX and you won't appreciate the new people as much. The problem is that as factions become more specific, they have less depth. I think the SMAX factions aren't exactly as open-ended to interpretation, story-wise, as the original ones. Forex, the Usurpers are definitely evil, and the Cult is never portrayed as good. Everyone else in SMAX is either slightly good (in a roguish way) or just neutral.
Game-wise, I think up to 50 different factions or players would be cool, though there would be rarely over 40 players at once. I think it should be doable, as long as there are plenty of unique units and styles of play.
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Brent
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Well maybe there would be seven categories, and seven options to choose from in each category. You could never have more than one science faction at the same time, but you could pick your one or two favorites to use frequently out of seven. Each could have a very unique personality, and slightly different Traits.Maybe they could design it so that most people would be likely to gravitate to one or two from each category and really get to know them.
Oh! Blasphemy time again! Forget about deep story for the sequel, let gameplay make up for it.
But maybe all this discussion leads to just using basically the same factions on a different Planet, or expanding from Chiron to have other maps in the Alpha Centauri system, or going interstellar.
I personally never care much about number of civs or factions playing together. What I care about is options. And I'd just as well have 40 AI opponents as human ones.
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Commy
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St. Louis, MO, USA
Mar 2004
time: 05:31
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Having more than 14 or 15 factions would, well, detach us from the game...how many of you would be attached to the SMAC characters if there were 30 or 40 or 50? I know this has already been said, but I think that sometimes having too many choices is worst than having none at all...perhaps by having only a handful of factions that come with the game, and then creating your personal faction instead of choosing from a list of 40 would be a lot better...
Perhaps the new SMAC 2 should have, say, seven factions, with perhaps 20 different graphic sets...maybe they could let you scan your picture and make it a lot easier to create custom factions instead of having to look through text files and going through Paint shop Pro, fast movie editors...
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MysticWind
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Okay, how about this:
How many new factions do you think players can handle? Suppose the old 14 won't be playable, but will appear in the story. How many more sides can appear?
Personally, I think it would be awesome if there were three or more alliances fighting at once. But true, it would be hard on the story and attention to have too many new factions. Also, the original 7, again, were all based on parts of human culture- fundamental parts like peace, war, religion, science, wealth, and nature. There's not much more you can squeeze out of that.
I still think if I ever do get my Second Ship project set up, it wouldn't be too hard to handle...
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Brent
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Maybe we should have all the same factions, or fewer, and create new characters to lead subfactions. These can be your advisors, and they would lead mostly-non-geographical political parties. And there would be a game mode where the whole world was Believers, or University, or whatever, and it could run a little more like The Political Machine, but just a little. You could command a subfaction and try to sway regions politically. And I'd also like to have the option to treat the subfactions the way SMAC1 treats the original factions. All the (sub)factions in this game would have something in common, but not everything. You might gravitate toward one macrofaction to use all the time, or almost, and get to know and love those seven subfaction leaders.
The Believers could be an orthodox denomination, a reform one, an ultrafundamentalist one, a semisecular one, a planetcult one, etc.
The University can be a space administration, a geology- oriented group, a xenologist group, etc.
The Gaians can have an ultraextremist group and a least extreme group, a pacifist group and an ultramilitant group, one that wants to control Planet and one that wants to submit to Planet.
The Spartans can have an Air Force, an Army, a Navy, a Technologist group, and a Manpower group.
The Morgans can have an industrial group and an economical group, a greedy group and a philanthropist group.
The Pirates can have nonpiratical merchant marines, nonaquatic economic pirates, and the traditional pirates.
The Peacekeepers could have a noninterfering group and a busybody group.
Or, you could have the original seven factions but specialize them according to the subfactions, led either by the SMAC1 leaders or the subfaction leaders.
You could have the default factions and still include minor factions that few people will want to play often: give them a penalty of some sort. Have different choices by difficulty level? Have midgame splitoffs? Have two worlds to choose from, and each faction is strictly assigned to one of them? I guess having only seven complete factions but extra graphicsets would do too. And definitely be able to import a picture of yourself, and be able to make it 3D possibly.
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Brent
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An artistic faction sounds interesting but how would that work in the game? And maybe one faction above the others would seek to preserve Earth culture and/ or transmit a database of it to friendly aliens.
Nonplayer factions sonds like a possibility.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:31
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A different type of science faction sounds interesting to me-- Instead of research bonuses, they could be able to learn methodologies unknown to any other faction like perhaps they are geologists and all their mines are +1 mineral compared to anyone else, or agriculturalists with +1 food from any type of tile etc . I think there are many ways to give advantages and disadvantages.
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Brent
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Could imitate Galciv, and have various ways to boost the same general area of focus: bonuses to manpower, bonuses to vehicles, increased speed, more allowed trade routes, more income from each trade route...
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30-03-2005 01:01
).
Some bases breaks free and start their own way after Yangs agande.
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