12-05-2000 20:06									#1
	How to make a good faction? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Here are what I think.

1. Be innovative, god dammit. Whatever you do, DON'T make faction that is modelled after some pop culture thingy, like Star Wars or Final Fantasy or something. God, I always get embarrassed for the maker when I see one. And equally bad are something that obviously is not centered around certain philosphy of life like normal SMAC factions, but rather some Earth thingy author wanted to, for reasons only God and he knows, use. This includes factions like Wrestlers, Police and Americans. No, those fellows are very unlikey to form factions in planets.

2. Try to invent innovative "sentences" for txt file. If someone has used bit of innovation in them, they are fun to read and contribute greatly to the atmosphere. Don't be redundant, and add a bit of humor in them - not too much though. And spellcheck them - it's embarrassing to see someone making trivial spelling errors.

3. Balanced factions are way to go. There is good rating system in http://www.crosswinds.net/~smaccf/fac-tool/faq2.htm and it should help to make faction a balanced one - about 7-9 points would be good, IMHO - but only playtesting will finally show it.

4. Graphics, graphics, graphics! Leader heads are hard, I know, but DON'T try to draw them yourself unless you are artist comparable to Leonardo Da Vinci. You can see results in FreeChina's "Socialistic" and "Anarchistic" factions. Uurgh, I get the blisters again. Photograhps are acceptable, but if you want good, drawn ones, http://members.xoom.com/acchiron has some good ones in Art section, and if you want real challenge try messing up with Talking Heads in fallout.gamestats.com - both in FO1 and FO2. There is one faction already to do this, and it looks great. Symbol is nice too, remember to make it simple yet elegant, and new bases are nice addition.

So, if you feel your faction is according to these principles, by God, what are you waiting? Email it to me at tatuahpo@pelu.jns.fi! (BTW, Famyn, where are those factions you said you'd send?)

Or, you could contribute to this list, of course, but that goes without saying.

	12-05-2000 23:11									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Stefu,

I agree with your comments on new factions completely. Deffinately too many lame concepts an dpoor graphics. I do however think that in teh context of a modpack the use of pop culture can be cool. (Because you create a new environment where their pressence makes sence.)

Anyway in the interest of creating more good factions here are a few things I have learned about faction graphics (I've just completed my first new set ) That hope will help other creators out there.

1) Faction leaders need look drawn well but can't look like a photgraph to fit in with the game. I've found that 3D graphics sights are a great way to find potential leader graphics. If you find a face that looks appropriate to your faction crop the photo in Paint Shop Pro and resize it. Use the blinds option to give the picture the same look as the rest of the leaders.

2) The biggest problem with new bases is they usually look 2-dimensional. Create your bases in a 3D modeling program and import them into PSPro. There is one called Blender that is free ware: (http://www.blender.nl/) it's a bit of a pain to learn how to use but it's FREE and pretty powerful as far as I can tell. (You can order the instructions fro $40 but I was able to get by without them.) Make sure that the right side of your base is the light side and the left side is the shaded side. (I've seen several bases that were nice but the shading was the opposite of what it should be!)

3) The symbol was much harder than I thought it would be! Use blinds to give it the horizantal banding and adjust the brightness (easy to do in PSPro) to match the symbols in the rest of the game. When your symbol is alot darker or brighter than all the others it's very obvious.

4) New sentances and base names aren't hard to make different, although funny or imaginative can be a challenge. But even a boring base name is better than Hive2.

I don't have alot of experience playtesting yet but it's very easy to overpower your new "pet" faction try to stay objective and get imput from others about balancing your faction. (This BB is a great place to do that)

These are just a few lessons I've learned.

	14-05-2000 22:59									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Sometimes, though, Hive bases look the best, esp. if they don't start out with PDs..

	18-05-2000 19:52									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Hm. Tried that faction rating system on one of the factions I've been toying around with and came up with a 9.... you do just add up the values you end up with, right?

Alas my graphics abilities are rather bad so I only have the Peacekeeper files with a slight alteration to the faction color files to give it a different shade of blue.

I'd like to add that you might want to playtest and make sure that the special ability you wish for is there, or you might want to change the 4 points for free ability (preq) to -4.

Unless I did something wrong while playtesting, the Drop Pods special ability refuses to function when it gets added to your units. Anyone try to make a faction with that one?

I've noticed the Marine Detachment ability doesn't add the graphics when it appears on your units either, but don't know if it actually works or not.

------------------
|"Anything I can do to help?" "Um. Short of dying? No, can't think of a |
| thing." -Morden, Vir. 'Interludes and Examinations' -Babylon 5 |

	19-05-2000 00:34									#5
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

They're coming. I've had a busy week.

Do you want them all (8 factions) in a big zip file, or do you want them individually...

	19-05-2000 16:59									#6
	Tired of ads?

Unless big zip file is over 1.4 megs, I'd like to have them in that format.

	20-05-2000 04:59									#7
	Remove this text

Zip file too large. Each zip is roughly 300+k. I'm sending them now.

Please post any bugs you find. I have looked over and over at the files, finding mistakes and trying to power up the factions, as they all seem a tad weak (except Night, which is too powerful in the hands of a player).

If you have suggestions, I'd be more then happy to hear them

	20-05-2000 11:45									#8
	Inflate your Upload Space

Oh, btw, add them directly to your alphax.txt. Me and FacEdit don't get along, and all it'll do is mess up my files.

Or, go ahead and use FacEdit, but after all the factions are added, re-unzip them into your alpha centauri folder again, to undo the damage that FacEdit will do to the files.