Supply Crawlers are what you build in towns that have built everything cool they can build and you send to help turn your other cities into industrial sprawl.
Edit: After having built them in your crappy towns to turn your capitals into sprawling metropolises.
Supply Crawlers are what you build in towns that have built everything cool they can build and you send to help turn your other cities into industrial sprawl.
Edit: After having built them in your crappy towns to turn your capitals into sprawling metropolises.
Eh. It's nice to build them early too because the resource bonuses add up. They're cheap and barring destruction, last for the rest of the game.
So I've been looking for the expansion for this and am trying to figure out if its crazy expensive everywhere. Anywhere I've looked its been 100+ dollars o_O
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
Mmm, nothing like SMAC talk.
I've found that the Pirates are good if you want to cover all the land (water) in a second darkness, just have every base churn out at least two colony pods once they can, and automate every such pod. Outteching University because you have THAT MANY MORE MANS is fun. Just sit back, manage your bases, maybe build a few boats if someone hates you, and tech your heart out as fast as you can for Clean Reactors. Once you have those, its time to mass-produce Clean [best weapon you've got] Gravships. And by mass-produce, I mean set every base you have aside from your designated Secret Project base start building these. Your military power will rather rapidly go from pathetic to OMNIPOTENT. If you haven't guessed by now, victory by conquest is eminent.
Alternatively, if you're impatient, you can start a land invasion consisting of drop troops in sufficient number to airdrop as close to a given base as you can and have it conquered by the end of your turn. Repeat every turn, checking to see if they want to surrender yet. Or not, if you'd rather just conquer them into submission and put their people to the sword.
(Slightly unrelated, I once had a faction surrender to me dozens of turns after my last military actions against them, I was starting an Economic victory, and decided to call all the factions and share all my tech with them, because they were screwed regardless. I contact the faction, and they're all "ohay we surrender")
As for favored factions, I'm a pirate at heart, followed by the 'green' factions. I don't think I've ever really played any other faction. They just don't appeal to me as much as MINDWORMS AND PIRATES.
NEO|Phyte on
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
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Snowbeati need somethingto kick this thing's ass over the lineRegistered Userregular
Oh wow. How could I miss a thread on my favorite strategy game of all time?
My first memory of Alpha Centauri is finding the instruction manual, which was the most intense thing I've ever seen. It was something like 200 pages long, and contained practically ever piece of useful information in the game. I scoured that tome for days before actually starting up the game. I knew my plan already. University of Planet, bitches. Zacharov all up in here.
My favorite thing about the game is how much it is geared towards the Turtle or Hybrid players. The real meat of the game is building your empire and racing up the tech tree. Mid to late game wars are utterly amazing once you open up technology like Drop Pods and Choppers and Cloaked Hovertanks. It's a beautiful thing to be able land a dozen heavily armored Plasma Troopers within two squares of your opponent's headquarters, and make him yours.
I think what impresses me most about it even today is the amount of work that clearly went into developing the kind of future history that Alpha Centauri is built around. The Tech tree is utterly marvelous in its creativity, and the sheer variety of philosophical concepts it explores, along with glorious Technobabble like Polymorphic Software.
I've prayed for a sequel to this game harder than I have for any other game. Or even a remake of the first game with some better computer AI and new components. It's sad that Firaxis has all but confirmed that they're done with the series.
Yang makes the best AI opponent by far, simply because of his ability to ignore negative efficiency mods on the SE screen. Means he can do some hideous things. Police State and Yang really work out well.
Just finished a game as Yang. Ended up on the middle continent with the Data Jocks, 40 years later it was only me. Cha was on the eastern continent along with Zhakarov and Aki. 50 years later it was only him over there. Morgan started on the island and was a non-issue, though treatying him gave me tons o cash. Santiago was solo on the wester continent but she never got off properly, losing base after base to mind worms. Snagged a diplomatic victory the turn I got the tech. All my bases being size 16 due to ample psych spending and a lot of Orbital KFCs meant I had three times the pop of the rest of the world combined. 30 Orbital gardens means all your bases get 1 food per pop. Add golden ages from psych spending and a new base will go from 1 to 16 in no time.
Man, I remember playing this in multi on a LAN once. 7 of us. The amount of backstabbing and underhand deals going down was astounding. The guy who won was playing Miriam and he managed to pull of an economic victory. What Morgan was doing that game I never found out.
The other thing that the AI does with Yang that makes him incredible fun to play against is build HUGE Empires consisting of 15,000 bases within three squares of one another. That means depending on the tech disparity or difficulty, you're either in for an epic war of attrition, or a blitzkrieg where you sweep through his entire territory and defeat him in under ten turns.
I remember when Yang dropped a Planet Buster on my capital. Bastard. Just a lake where my shining city of capitalism was. Unfortunately for him I had more planet busters than he did.
I had this game when I was little, lost the cds ages ago. Finally I found out that it was on gametap and that plus planescape torment are why I originally subscribed. Unfortunately, the removed it for some reason awhile ago, so now I have no way to play it.
I had this game when I was little, lost the cds ages ago. Finally I found out that it was on gametap and that plus planescape torment are why I originally subscribed. Unfortunately, the removed it for some reason awhile ago, so now I have no way to play it.
Someone was offering to send their copy to anyone who didn't have it earlier in this thread, don't know what happened to that.
I can basically add nothing to what Kayne said, basically.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited May 2008
I was maybe going to use "more or less" instead of the second "basically," but it turns out they kinda mean the same thing, so I sorta figured I'd just put a bit more emphasis on it and repeat myself perhaps.
AC is one of those games that is soo good it should just be ported up to modern systems so that others may share in it's bounty.
Interestingly enough, all the games on the PC end of this in my view all take place in space.
MoO, MoOII, AC, TIE Fighter Star Control II.
MoO I'd add multiplayer, and that's it.
MoO II and AC are fine as is, TIE Fighter could use multiplayer maybe, but it's the campaign I'm really interested in.
Star Control II? Already exists on modern machines. For Free. A director's cut version even, with all the good parts from the various versions all rolled into one. The only reason it's listed is because it is an example of exactly what to do.
I would kill a man for a modernized port of Alpha Centauri. Fuck, I'd kill MANS. PLURAL.
Baby steps. Start with an AI that can beat a blubbering mentally handicapped moose. Then we can build from there. Maybe add some game balance too for that matter.
Well thanks to this thread I discovered AC is installed on my computer, didn't think I had reinstalled it after my latest reformat. Time to planetbust me some believers!
It's basically the story of what happens if you pull off the Space Race victory, basically.
Not really, in my opinion. I admit I haven't played the second Civ, but if you pull off the Space Race Victory I'm going to assume that you'll have a pretty powerful and prosporous empire.
This isn't quite the case in Alpha Centauri, where humanity is rapidly on its way to total extinction and the hastily slapped together Unity is the last shot they have for the species to survive.
WotanAnubis on
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
It's basically the story of what happens if you pull off the Space Race victory, basically.
Not really, in my opinion. I admit I haven't played the second Civ, but if you pull off the Space Race Victory I'm going to assume that you'll have a pretty powerful and prosporous empire.
This isn't quite the case in Alpha Centauri, where humanity is rapidly on its way to total extinction and the hastily slapped together Unity is the last shot they have for the species to survive.
The Space Race Victory required the construction of a ship by slow construction of the various components- which, IIRC, the player had some ability to customise. So not all ships needed to be the same - if in a hurry you could not build some parts, which would reduce performance or probability of success.
Firaxis actually still hosts the XP patch and compatibility instructions on their site. Probably the least issues I've had getting an old game to work under XP (most:System Shock 2).
That said, University of Planet, every time. Pact with the Gaians, maybe Lal if he was around. I was the big democratic hippie professor with an army to back up his sunshine will. Always tried for transcendence. Usually sent my shitty transports out to see for hundreds of years at a time looking for Alien Artifacts or rovers or mind worms to convert while I laboured away on secret projects. The vids are pretty freaky, particularly anything involving a quote from the Spartans or the Hive, like Clinical Immortality with the floating brain.
"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb..."
Turns out they pulled most of the vids from an experimental movie called Baraka.
I got the expansion my accident almost. I bought it for $10 out of a horse trailer in 2001 at a giant flea market. Still have the tech tree taped to my ceiling. I still think of the luck, ties with finding Bushido Blade for $3 in a bargain bin a few months ago.
I would kill a man for a modernized port of Alpha Centauri. Fuck, I'd kill MANS. PLURAL.
Baby steps. Start with an AI that can beat a blubbering mentally handicapped moose. Then we can build from there. Maybe add some game balance too for that matter.
Game balance was pretty terrible, but I can't recall it ever in any way hindering the experience. Sheer flavor drowned out such flaws.
I got the expansion my accident almost. I bought it for $10 out of a horse trailer in 2001 at a giant flea market. Still have the tech tree taped to my ceiling. I still think of the luck, ties with finding Bushido Blade for $3 in a bargain bin a few months ago.
I got very lucky finding the game as well. I recall looking all over the internets for an online seller... practically the only people peddling the game were pirates. I then went to Wal-Mart that night at 3 am with a buddy (and after being accosted by a crackwhore), I ran into a late night stocker putting out a " four game lap-top compilation" released by EA that had the original AC and expansion included for $20. It was a sign. A sign to planet-bust my opposition.
I would kill a man for a modernized port of Alpha Centauri. Fuck, I'd kill MANS. PLURAL.
Baby steps. Start with an AI that can beat a blubbering mentally handicapped moose. Then we can build from there. Maybe add some game balance too for that matter.
Game balance was pretty terrible, but I can't recall it ever in any way hindering the experience. Sheer flavor drowned out such flaws.
So yeah I'd still take a port.
Well, the balance issues got so so much worse with the expansion, and that's my lasting memory of AC, so *shrug* Playing as certain factions, especially... say... the Pirates... was just pathetic.
Well, the SA lets play inspired me to try out the hippies for the first time. Muahahahahaha, so many mind worms just rolling over the enemies.
I was able to run AC just by copying the installed files from my XP machine to my Vista laptop and run them, no patches, no compatibility mode, no ini editing. Woo?
Definitely my favorite game of all time, including the expansion. I loves me some Aki Zeta 5 and Foreman Domai. And Velocyrix's strategy guide is the most bestest guide for playing the game ever. That guide inspired me to try some of the most degenerate terraforming projects such as turning an entire continent into an energy farm with solar panels, echelon mirrors, and supply crawlers.
For some reason Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is always inexplicably linked to SMAC in my mind. I gotta get this game installed.
Definitely my favorite game of all time, including the expansion. I loves me some Aki Zeta 5 and Foreman Domai. And Velocyrix's strategy guide is the most bestest guide for playing the game ever. That guide inspired me to try some of the most degenerate terraforming projects such as turning an entire continent into an energy farm with solar panels, echelon mirrors, and supply crawlers.
For some reason Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is always inexplicably linked to SMAC in my mind. I gotta get this game installed.
Posts
They give you extra resources/cash if you have them harvest resource squares. You can also use them to hurry production.
Edit: After having built them in your crappy towns to turn your capitals into sprawling metropolises.
Eh. It's nice to build them early too because the resource bonuses add up. They're cheap and barring destruction, last for the rest of the game.
I'd assume it'll run fine on XP seeing as I'm running it on 64 bit vista with no issues. I believe there was an XP compat patch released though.
most specifically the horrific flesh-eating swarms of hellworms which infested every inch of the planet.
I was also intrigued by the idea of human transcedence.
That disturbed you, but the voluntary suicide to become food did not?
They would make a lot.
I've found that the Pirates are good if you want to cover all the land (water) in a second darkness, just have every base churn out at least two colony pods once they can, and automate every such pod. Outteching University because you have THAT MANY MORE MANS is fun. Just sit back, manage your bases, maybe build a few boats if someone hates you, and tech your heart out as fast as you can for Clean Reactors. Once you have those, its time to mass-produce Clean [best weapon you've got] Gravships. And by mass-produce, I mean set every base you have aside from your designated Secret Project base start building these. Your military power will rather rapidly go from pathetic to OMNIPOTENT. If you haven't guessed by now, victory by conquest is eminent.
Alternatively, if you're impatient, you can start a land invasion consisting of drop troops in sufficient number to airdrop as close to a given base as you can and have it conquered by the end of your turn. Repeat every turn, checking to see if they want to surrender yet. Or not, if you'd rather just conquer them into submission and put their people to the sword.
(Slightly unrelated, I once had a faction surrender to me dozens of turns after my last military actions against them, I was starting an Economic victory, and decided to call all the factions and share all my tech with them, because they were screwed regardless. I contact the faction, and they're all "ohay we surrender")
As for favored factions, I'm a pirate at heart, followed by the 'green' factions. I don't think I've ever really played any other faction. They just don't appeal to me as much as MINDWORMS AND PIRATES.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I must've thought that the people getting Soylent Greened were already dead or something.
Voluntary? It's a goddamn quote by Yang. No fucking way it was VOLUNTARY.
"Voluntary," maybe.
My first memory of Alpha Centauri is finding the instruction manual, which was the most intense thing I've ever seen. It was something like 200 pages long, and contained practically ever piece of useful information in the game. I scoured that tome for days before actually starting up the game. I knew my plan already. University of Planet, bitches. Zacharov all up in here.
My favorite thing about the game is how much it is geared towards the Turtle or Hybrid players. The real meat of the game is building your empire and racing up the tech tree. Mid to late game wars are utterly amazing once you open up technology like Drop Pods and Choppers and Cloaked Hovertanks. It's a beautiful thing to be able land a dozen heavily armored Plasma Troopers within two squares of your opponent's headquarters, and make him yours.
I think what impresses me most about it even today is the amount of work that clearly went into developing the kind of future history that Alpha Centauri is built around. The Tech tree is utterly marvelous in its creativity, and the sheer variety of philosophical concepts it explores, along with glorious Technobabble like Polymorphic Software.
I've prayed for a sequel to this game harder than I have for any other game. Or even a remake of the first game with some better computer AI and new components. It's sad that Firaxis has all but confirmed that they're done with the series.
Then the Firaxis team needs a good nerve stapling until they agree to make a mind-blowing sequel.
Well it is kind of like the sequel to Civ 2 in a way. There was a scenario for Civ 2 that involved colonizing Alpha Centauri, I think.
Also being created by the same guy and all.
Someone was offering to send their copy to anyone who didn't have it earlier in this thread, don't know what happened to that.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Interestingly enough, all the games on the PC end of this in my view all take place in space.
MoO, MoOII, AC, TIE Fighter Star Control II.
MoO I'd add multiplayer, and that's it.
MoO II and AC are fine as is, TIE Fighter could use multiplayer maybe, but it's the campaign I'm really interested in.
Star Control II? Already exists on modern machines. For Free. A director's cut version even, with all the good parts from the various versions all rolled into one. The only reason it's listed is because it is an example of exactly what to do.
Is there a link?
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Mostly since I always hate how spreading out and having fifty colonies is always better than having ten or twenty colonies.
Baby steps. Start with an AI that can beat a blubbering mentally handicapped moose. Then we can build from there. Maybe add some game balance too for that matter.
This isn't quite the case in Alpha Centauri, where humanity is rapidly on its way to total extinction and the hastily slapped together Unity is the last shot they have for the species to survive.
Depends on how you played Civ 2.
That said, University of Planet, every time. Pact with the Gaians, maybe Lal if he was around. I was the big democratic hippie professor with an army to back up his sunshine will. Always tried for transcendence. Usually sent my shitty transports out to see for hundreds of years at a time looking for Alien Artifacts or rovers or mind worms to convert while I laboured away on secret projects. The vids are pretty freaky, particularly anything involving a quote from the Spartans or the Hive, like Clinical Immortality with the floating brain.
"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb..."
Turns out they pulled most of the vids from an experimental movie called Baraka.
I got the expansion my accident almost. I bought it for $10 out of a horse trailer in 2001 at a giant flea market. Still have the tech tree taped to my ceiling. I still think of the luck, ties with finding Bushido Blade for $3 in a bargain bin a few months ago.
Game balance was pretty terrible, but I can't recall it ever in any way hindering the experience. Sheer flavor drowned out such flaws.
So yeah I'd still take a port.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I got very lucky finding the game as well. I recall looking all over the internets for an online seller... practically the only people peddling the game were pirates. I then went to Wal-Mart that night at 3 am with a buddy (and after being accosted by a crackwhore), I ran into a late night stocker putting out a " four game lap-top compilation" released by EA that had the original AC and expansion included for $20. It was a sign. A sign to planet-bust my opposition.
Well, the balance issues got so so much worse with the expansion, and that's my lasting memory of AC, so *shrug* Playing as certain factions, especially... say... the Pirates... was just pathetic.
I was able to run AC just by copying the installed files from my XP machine to my Vista laptop and run them, no patches, no compatibility mode, no ini editing. Woo?
For some reason Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series is always inexplicably linked to SMAC in my mind. I gotta get this game installed.
Oo\ Ironsizide
Foreman Domai rocks, as does KSR