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Adalbertus
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Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001
time: 06:21
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Straybow, your complaints are mostly about inherent logic, and then about interface usage and graphics.
About the interface, your objections are certainly valid, and it could have been improved considerably without changing the gameplay. But I'm still to see a builder game which is close to perfect in this respect.
The graphics are mostly a matter of taste, it is something I usually don't complain about. (I didn't have the impression that Civ3 has a much better graphics, the only I would think is better is Railroad Tycoon II; I didn't play at SimCity 3000, the screenshots look uninteresting for me)
About realism, your main point: Implement all those ideas and you'll arrive at something that is boring at best and unplayable worst  . It's a game and as such you first have to make it playable. When you essentially possess everything at the beginning, there is no fun in discovering. You'll arrive at a pure wargame with the only advances possible being more. More firepower, more movement range, more armour. The point in SMAC/X is to start at the very beginning and build up everything. No game I know (and there is no Civ-like game really better) is fully realistic. And why so? Real life already exists, I don't need a second one. And honestly, I'm rather surprised that there is so many correct. I expected much worse of a SciFi game.
What makes the game great for me is involvement. For example that the game forced me to take fungus/mindworms seriously. An eighth faction and not a small nuisance as the barbarians in Civ.
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Zakharov VII
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quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
There are no organizational options for Base Ops screen. It can't display which bases have key improvements you might want to manage (which goes all the way back to Civ1, for those who remember). No grouping by geography, no classification types available (frontier, sea power, air power, etc). Can't sort by name, size, production, psych, etc. |
There is some sorting options for the Base Operations (F4) screen (though Firaxis did a rather nice job hiding it). Instead of the thoroughly useless Governer tab (at least, I find it useless...), click on the "Best Bases" tab in the bottom left corner. You'll see a list of the best bases in a number of categories - Nutrients, Population, Minerals, Garrison, Psych, Energy, Research, probably a few others (maybe Infrastructure?). Click on one of these categories and its best base, the line'll be highlighted, and the bases will sort themselves out, from best to worst, according to what you clicked on. It's great for seeing best Mineral bases when you need to figure out where to stick a Secret Project, for example, or to sort by Population to see whether to start/stop a population boom. AFAIK, unfortunately, you can't sort by current production, so switching all Research Hospitals to Tree Farms, for example, has to happen manually  . And the only way to see if a base has a certain facility is to actually go to that base  ...
Anyways, I love SMAC (Civ3 is uninstalled), though it does bother me that they had an opportunity to do a bit better than they did...
Z
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:21
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Yeah, Tas500. Loved Civ3…  SMAC SE is great, the premise of the game is great; the game delivers mediocrity in every other area. It fails to capture the struggle for survival. It fails to capture the speed and deadliness of advanced weaponry (except the absurdity of PBs). Love it, hate it; I would not be playing it now if I weren't fiddling with Alpha.txt. I love Civ3 less and hate Civ3 more, and I can't fiddle with the things to make it better.
Adalb, this is supposed to be a strategic game. I don't see how changing ComCtr, Nav, Aer into prerequisites for construction of the vehicle types would make it more of a wargame. I don't see how making a difference between infantry weapons and heavy weapons would make it more of a wargame. I don't see how reducing the dominance of attack strength would make it more of a wargame.
Research already is "Goody, more attack! Hey, better armor! Oh bother, this one doesn't give me anything new except a terraforming ability." The game already is build-as-many-units-everywhere, so how can SMAC be less of a wargame except by making infrastructure more important?
With facilities necessary for heavy units their location becomes a strategic choice, and that is good. You still don't possess from the start the practical knowledge of building a large calibre gun—that must be tested by trial and error (researched) to allow the construction of ComCtr. The tricks to building heavy marine engines and high-gee airframes must also be learned to allow construction of Nav or Aer.
Building any kind of vehicle should require Ind Base, otherwise why is it in the tech tree? These colonists have to figure out how to use their meager starting resources to build things we take for granted: bearings, engine parts, body panels and windows that actually fit together. Then you could make light vehicles armed with infantry weapons. Small watercraft and aircraft with light arms could be built at that point without Nav/Aer facilities.
Remember that unlike other Civlike games these pop units are based on 1000 instead of 10,000. A size 4 SMAC city is equal to a size 1 Civ city; size 7 in SMAC is roughly size 2 in Civ. For a long time these colonists simply would not have the manpower or resources to build big ships or heavy tanks or jet engines. They would have to invest a large portion of that manpower and resources just to build their infrastructure to the point of making such things.
So early in the game, with only patrol vehicles available, you would be forced to do something other than pound your way to victory. How is that more of a wargame? Wouldn't that emphasize the dire struggle for survival that life on Chiron is supposed to be? That is certainly what I was hoping for when SMAC came out, and certainly not what we got.
Z, IIRC the Best Bases only shows one for each category. It provides information but not organization. Besides, I already know which of my first few bases I've nurtured for science, production, etc. If I capture a large city that might rival one of mine it will be getting due attention to its rebuilding anyway. I need to know which of a dozen mid-sized cities still needs Hab Complex or Research Hospital.
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Mongoose
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Harrisburg,PA USA
Apr 1999
time: 00:21
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Z is exactly correct, Straybow. You do not recall correctly.
Best bases does indeed sort the F4 display by whichever category is chosen. It was not so in the initial release. I cannot recall which patch added that functionality.
Z, you can see all the facilties at any base in the F3 screen. Clicking on the base name in the lower left panel brings up the infrastructire and associated maintenence expenses of that base in the main right panel. Clicking on a facility name in the lower right panel brings up all the bases at which that facility is present in the main right panel. Clicking on a base name in the main right panel changes the panel display to the base's infrastructure and maintenence expense.
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Adalbertus
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Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001
time: 06:21
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Straybow, I read your first post today as a more elaborate version of "Hey, we've got everything available on earth already. Why not using it on Planet?" - About the second post it's more about how to manage the start-up. I got the idea that this might be the reason why most chassis-techs are called Doctrine:xxx. Perhaps this should reflect the fact that the basic theory is known but you need to learn how to do it in the special environment. Making facilities a prerequisite for certain units to build would change the gameplay only slightly. When you're seriously about warring, you'll try to build your military units in bases with the necessary enhancement anyway, and for the defense boni I want to have Aerospace Complexes in every base and a Naval Yard in coastal/sea bases. Not so much a change for the gameplay IMHO. If you prefer a harder start, there are settings for humidity and native life.
The range of artillery etc. are typical things where a game must make compromises against real life. In real life you can fly around the earth in two days, and it takes one or two years until you've built a factory. Try to translate this somehow to SMAC. It would be horrible. Each facility taking something like 200 rounds around planet. Same with the artillery range. When you want to allow the occupation of land by a military unit, it has to be at least one square. This means, attack must be from the next square. Infantry fighting over a distance of 200km. As soon as you want to somehow include long-range attack, it has to be one field further, which it is. No way to get to realistic dimensions, except using a finer grid or declaring planet to be much smaller. I don't expect realism of a game
Btw, it might be interesting if you post your changes to alpha.txt when you think you've got improved something.
quote:
Z, IIRC the Best Bases only shows one for each category. It provides information but not organization. |
When you click on "Best Bases" and then on "Population" in the lower left window of the F4-screen, the bases in the centre window are sorted by their population. Recently, I started using this more regularly.
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Comrade Tassadar
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quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
 Land's sakes, Jethro! Clickin' on stuff to arrange everthing purty is as nice as that cee-ment swimmin' hole. An' silly me, I never did thinka clickin' on the Best Bases list on F4 or the facilities panel on F3, even though I reglarly use the Base list on the F3 screen.
Butcha still hafta mesmerize the names on F3 and go check production on F4, so's liketa produce planes only wheres you gotsa Aerospace Complex, and such.
Hey, DeathByMicromanagement, I only said SMAC was stupid, ugly, and frustrating. Here I just found out one part I thought was stupid ain't quite so stupid after all.  |
That was a lame troll. I've seen much better trolls in OT.
.0001/10
Oh, and, since smac seems to annoy the ......  ........ outta you, what games do you play?
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:21
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What? Your opponents actually build satellites? I haven't seen an AI build one yet. Tass, while I was being facetious I did learn something new and handy. That was not trolling.
Adalbertus, one problem is that the game is set on a strategic scale, but the premise is essentially tactical in nature. A tile is easily 100+ km across, 10,000 km², and for a mere 1000 able bodies to occupy and exloit its resources to the fullest is absurd. At size 14 your base has 105,000 adults and occupies 15 tiles, about 1 person/km² (allowing for ½ child per adult). On most pop density maps that is the lowest category shown.
Initially they would have to use something akin to crawlers to use any resources within the base tile, much less any surrounding tiles. Automated mines and farms with small camps of caretakers come to mind. By the time they need a Hab Dome they can actually settle the base tile and extend into a few around it with villages at the richest resources, superficially resembling a Medieval European manor system with everyone taking flight to the base in time of trouble.
That is something that could have been modeled, instead of going the Civish route of workers and singular improvements taking up whole tiles. They could have actually used a linear population model instead of the "traditional" arithmetic model.
In Civ your units are at least battalion sized, 1000 or more. In SMAC your whole faction is barely that big to start. Your units are probably platoons of 50-100 people. Can you imagine trying to hold a 100 km square with a platoon? Zones of control wouldn't exist; the tile the unit is in would be a stretch to control.
In a modern air force it takes at least 50 personnel for each aircraft in service, counting air crew and ground crew for the plane, base personnel for maintenance, supply, admin, security, etc. So each Needlejet unit is, literally, one needlejet! The combat model in either Civ or SMAC is wholely inadequate for airpower anyway. In the Civ3 List I proposed an air combat model that would work, even for a single tactical aircraft attacking over a strategic time scale.
In Civ the combat isn't necessarily one battle but many skirmishes and a few major engagements. In pre-gunpowder times the battlefield was often a killing field where the losers were exterminated to the last man. But that model breaks down in the modern era where 10% losses can break a unit and force retreat, yet chasing down enemies to wipe them out is usually impossible.
The combat model for singular units of this size would favor hit-and-run skirmishes. Nobody stands to fight toe-to-toe in the open field with platoon sized units. Attacking a base would be a nettlesome issue; many units in coordination would be required. The militia value of your population would easily exceed the strength of one advanced infantry unit per population point.
Take that image into a mindworm attack. If they had a thousand men with flamethrowers and other area effect weaponry it would be like fighting a fire: create a line of defense the worms can't cross, then surround and extinguish them. Consider mindworms attacking a small group of a few score individuals, how easily the tables turn to find the soldiers surrounded and psionically overwhelmed.
If the scale of units, time, and movement is a little screwy in Civlike games, it's totally screwed up in SMAC. Trying to think of what's supposed to be going on in those tiles creates a cognitive dissonance. But if you "close your eyes and think of England," and just play it as Civ with different units, you'll be OK.
If I wanted Yet Another Civlike Game I'd play a Civ2 mod. Presently I'm looking to Freeciv for the kind of game I'd really like. SMAC was supposed to be a totally different take, the struggle for survival; instead we get a slightly different flavor of the crusader rush and the dip/spy rape. Fun as that may be it leaves me disappointed because of what the game could've been.
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Comrade Tassadar
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If your going to nitpick about every single small little detail.......Just dont play games. They're never going to be perfectly consistent with all the laws of real life. Only real life can achieve that. I mean......give me any game and I'll find inconsistencies with it. Because that's all they are, is games.
And you still haven't answered my question. If not SMAC (because the scale is horrible), what games DO you play (and they must statisfy you...)
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MariOne
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Erewhon in Neverland
May 1999
time: 06:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Tassadar5000
... If not SMAC ..., what games DO you play (and they must statisfy you...) |
LOL
sorry if you have read this somewhere else already, and if the question was not direted to me or to a general audience, but I won't let pass any occasion to repeat it:
as a matter of fact, SMAC/X apart, the only games that I still play from time to time to get some distraction and entertaining (up to the point that I expressly kept a true DOS partition on my machine for them) are:
Master of Magic
Machiavelli the Prince.
I have some other games still installed on my pc, like Stars!, MoO 2, Angband, Tropico, Age of Wonders, Settlers III, but regardless of the feelings I may have for them, the plain reality is that I've not started any of them once during 2002 (or even earlier maybe).
Hmmm... maybe this post has nothing to do with this thread, but I don't want to erase what I'v written now! 
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02-09-2002 11:42
My point.
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