Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: Nexii on May 16, 2020, 12:19:12 AM

Title: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 16, 2020, 12:19:12 AM

If you were a colonist on the failing UNS Unity, which faction would you choose to go with and why? Include the breakaway expansion factions if you like.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: EmpathCrawler on May 16, 2020, 03:47:55 AM

Gaians for those sweet psy powers and their agenda aligns most with my beliefs. The rest sound like hell on Planet to me. I don't really like the SMAX factions, but I do think it would also be cool to be a cyborg.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2020, 04:33:53 AM

Lotta bad choices.  One possibility would be to choose the faction that would be easiest to assassinate the leadership and take over. 

I've always thought that in an apocalypse, I personally would either choose the anti-social approach of running for the hills and picking off anyone who gets near me with a sniper rifle, or I'd have to be the leader of some group.  Which would mean murdering people with a katana early and often.  Like when they've just come up with some great idea about how to run things.  "Yes, yes, that's a fantastic idea!"  Back turns for a moment and slice.  There's some movie about mercenaries in maybe 16th century Europe where it sorta goes like that.  This one Catholic guy keeps on talking rubbish about needing to kill Protestants, in an outfit where the spoken agreement is they're mercs and that kinda stuff ain't happenin'.  So the leader, while polishing the spike on the top of his helmet, suddenly runs the other guy through.  That would be very exactly my style of leadership.

I've wondered the degree to which I could keep it up.  Once you start down that road, you pretty much have to.  Wonder if it gets any easier?  I care enough about other human beings, that I don't think it's a good idea to kill just anyone.  But I'm also pretty cold about knowing what a survival threat is.  The calculation that "this one's gotta go".

The difficulty is not having the others kill you in your sleep.  You gotta sleep sometime.  You gotta trust sometime, at least partially.

Some factions I could eliminate pretty easily as not viable for me.  I'm not an Alien, so the Caretakers and Usurpers don't work.  I'd never get along with the Cult, in fact I'd probably gas all of them.  I'm an atheist, so the Believers would give me too much friction.  Don't like water, can't see myself as a Pirate.  Don't believe in Cyborg anything, sounds like a real bad idea.  I think the Hive probably has too much of a security apparatus for me to take over anything.

So that leaves me with: the Angels, Drones, Gaians, Morganites, Peacekeepers, Spartans, and University.  Not sure who I'd make my stand with.

I'd really have trouble with shared values in the Morganites.  I think the early Morganites, it would be easy to assassinate Morgan.  But once they get going, I think they'd turn all corporate and police statey.  Like a much worse version of the USA.  Capitalist cyberpunk dystopia.  There was even a TV show that dramatized this sort of thing: Incorporated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)).

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 16, 2020, 12:45:51 PM

I always thought Gaians would probably be #1. But I'm not so sure about their buildings. They're kind of like treetop villages, living up high seems uncomfortable. Not that I have a fear of heights or anything. It's hard to judge the expansion factions.

Spartans would be very tempting, they offer a practical belief of survival at all costs. Which is very important when first settling down. However the chances of ending up a soldier and being sent off to war kind of outweigh that.

PKs would probably be the best runner up. Though they are a bit idealistic maybe I'd land a cushy diplomatic job haha.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Geo on May 16, 2020, 02:06:58 PM

Too bad you didn't include ALL factions for choice. Otherwise my main choice would be the Planetmind. :P
What? What's not to like? You can dream for all of eternity until some pesky neural spillover effect comes into play. You can induce psychic terror to everyone and its things if you feel like it, like some nasty aliens landing on your mantle. You can implant all fauna in your garden(s) with your eggs, spores, or whatnot if you feel like it.

For choice of faction, I'd say it depends on what kind of talent-level job(s) I could get there.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2020, 04:09:14 PM

Trough sucker at the Hive.  :whip:

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 16, 2020, 05:24:16 PM

But for Planet you'd have humanity polluting and killing your life as well. I suppose humanity could prove interesting in an otherwise sort of lonely existence.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2020, 05:31:31 PM

I could spice it up with the promised Singularity Planet Core bombs.

Might actually make a good tower defense game.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 09:17:50 AM

Insofar as those that seem like the least hellish to live in, that would be Peacekeepers. Although they are pretty boring, of all the original factions, they are the ones that are known to treat their people the least badly. I like the Gaians at a personal level (Deirdre sound like a cool person and I like Green ideas in general), but would you like to live around mindworms all the time? I don't know. They might even get as bad as Cult of Planet! But I suppose it's part of the extreme flexibility of the system that any faction could be a great place to live in, or a horrible one.
Not sure what my personal agenda would be within the SMAC categories (there is no pro-AI Future Society). I suppose I would be most into Knowledge, and therefore University, but I think it's probable that University treats its peons like [poop] (at least, that's usually how people interpret the extra drones), and I would be a peon (I don't have a head for science at all).
I haven't played SMAX, but of those, the Data Angels and the Cybernetic Consciousness seem the least bad.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 10:03:33 AM

Fair point, life in any faction as a Talent would probably be great. In fact it might be even better in some of those more oppressive factions, you'd have slaves... err... 'servants' to help you with all your needs. CyCon seems pretty bad to me and perhaps the worst of all them. They got tagged with pacifist but being possessed like the Borg seems highly intrusive. Perhaps it's not quite the same but even having the emotional half of your brain shut down is akin to being half dead.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 10:10:13 AM

Well, I suppose it's the closest there is in SMAC/X to an AI-led faction. Not sure why they need humans to do it, though... But it would probably be the one faction that's closest to my ideal.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 10:45:12 AM

I'd expect AI to not be all that creative even if it is great at industrial tasks. So there might be a need for human researchers. I suppose being mentally linked could speed up the research process. To me it'd be offset by groupthink tendencies. Hence why my CyCon just gives effic and not research. Okay some of it was for balance, they can't dissent and that's very powerful lol.

Data Angels feel kind of hands off to me. Which might be more bad than good in a world where it's hard to survive.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 11:14:15 AM

Well, it's not really AI though. It's a weird modification of humans so they are more like AI. Right now that would be a good bet, as we don't have any computers that are nearly as fast as the human brain (although computers are a lot more efficient at solving specific problems, while the human brain is a generalist). But in the future, betting against computers becoming as fast as human brains seems like a losing proposition... especially in the far future of SMAC, where they do, after all, develop Digital Sentience, so one must assume that they do develop computers that are that fast.
In a world with full AI, having cyborgs around probably seems.. quaint. Outdated. Why even bother?

The fact that they are "hands off" is what I like about Data Angels. They were probably based on the early Internet communities. SMAX was released in late 1999, with the dot com bubble in full swing, and the Internet culture was at its zenith, before everyone and his dog got on it. Open source software, hacking, freedom of speech, fear of corporate takeover, were all hot issues (and many still are), and I think that's part and parcel of what the Data Angels are about. And information is information, whether it's a text message board or data on how to make Planet Busters.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 11:33:19 AM

Quote from: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 09:17:50 AM

but would you like to live around mindworms all the time?

High stress hippies!
 ;brainhurts ;brainhurts ;brainhurts ;hippy ;brainhurts ;brainhurts ;brainhurts

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Not sure what my personal agenda would be within the SMAC categories (there is no pro-AI Future Society).

Surely, Cybernetic.  Gained via Digital Sentience.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 11:48:52 AM

Yea Cybernetic isn't a fully AI run society. It became a little more clear to me after reading the script blurbs. It's more like rational human thought is augmented by AI, at the cost of right brain and creative thinking. So to me that doesn't really go with bonus research so much as productivity gains, finding improvements in existing processes. Those are the sorts of things AI is good at. It might be a master at chess but it would have a hard time inventing chess.

A full AI/machine life society could be a faction I suppose, it would be quite different from CyCon. The thing is they might not really make sense to exist from the start of the game. Might have made for an interesting 2nd aliens faction in the late game. Bases revolt to machine life faction, although the randomness of that might not be too fun.

Perhaps a human faction that aspires to become machine life could make a bit more sense. I've been trying to conjure up ideas for 2 more factions to replace the aliens.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 12:10:45 PM

Actually it's not that hard to invent good new games. I read an article by someone who had a simple evolutionary algorithm look for new ideas for games, and found one pretty easily. I can imagine an AI would have quite a field day at it, especially since it could deal with complexities we simply cannot.

My favourite would be a eudaimonic faction which wants AIs as leaders, ala Culture by Iain Banks. However, as you said, that doesn't really make sense as a setup from the beginning of the game. Besides, it probably wouldn't really be that much different from other factions. I like the original seven because they are all highly distinctive and interesting (apart perhaps from the Peacekeepers, who are not that developed as an ideologically). I think some of the expansion factions are good, some are not so distinctive (just admixtures of two original ones).

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: EmpathCrawler on May 17, 2020, 02:13:04 PM

Quote from: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 09:17:50 AM

I like the Gaians at a personal level (Deirdre sound like a cool person and I like Green ideas in general), but would you like to live around mindworms all the time? I don't know. They might even get as bad as Cult of Planet!

I'd feel safer living around tamed mind worms than I would in a faction with negative PLANET getting attacked by them!

Quote from: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 12:10:45 PM

I like the original seven because they are all highly distinctive and interesting (apart perhaps from the Peacekeepers, who are not that developed as an ideologically). I think some of the expansion factions are good, some are not so distinctive (just admixtures of two original ones).

The Peacekeepers adhere to the original mission goals which is itself an ideology. They're space centrists! I never got into the SMAX factions. I think the Free Drones and Data Angels were maybe more interesting ideas that could have benefited from some lore. They rest were gimmicky or hackneyed sci-fi ideas.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 04:50:05 PM

I'd be worried about the mind worms getting loose. I imagine they're kept in the brood pits away from the common workers.

I think all of the expansion factions could have been good but there was little lore to make most of them believable or relatable the way that the original 7 were. What made the originals good was that all were compelling in a way, even if you didn't see yourself as wanting to be a member of that faction. I'd have liked to see ones that were more about Eudaimonic and Thought Control rather than the aliens. Aliens to me were strange because the original was so focused on humanity. Yea drones were tagged Eudaimonic but I got more of a socialist/communist vibe, one that goes more in the Planned economics box. Which is fine since that one needed filled.

That might be my next little project. To make two opposed factions, one Thought Control and the other Eudaimonic. Perhaps the TC faction wants to become machines with the remaining humans brainwashed for whatever menial tasks remain. Eudaimonic I'm a bit less sure on. I think a bit different take than just another soft/hard environmentalist (Gaia/Cult) or humanitarian (PKs). Maybe more extreme views than Yang on bioengineering, a sort of post-humanist view. That we have to genetically alter ourselves to evolve as a species.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 08:18:22 PM

Quote from: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 11:48:52 AM

So to me that doesn't really go with bonus research so much as productivity gains, finding improvements in existing processes.

I dunno, they'd probably split atoms just fine.  They just wouldn't invent an iPhone.  Not interested in how people feel about stuff, what's 'cool', what their image is.

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It might be a master at chess but it would have a hard time inventing chess.

I don't know why you draw such a distinction.  Chess is just a collection of rules for moving pieces on a grid.  It did not come into existence overnight, fullblown as someone's concept.  It's a game that evolved from previous games.

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I've been trying to conjure up ideas for 2 more factions to replace the aliens.

No harm trying!  They're expendable.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Geo on May 20, 2020, 09:23:28 AM

Quote from: EmpathCrawler on May 17, 2020, 02:13:04 PM

Quote from: Hierophant on May 17, 2020, 09:17:50 AM

I like the Gaians at a personal level (Deirdre sound like a cool person and I like Green ideas in general), but would you like to live around mindworms all the time? I don't know. They might even get as bad as Cult of Planet!

I'd feel safer living around tamed mind worms than I would in a faction with negative PLANET getting attacked by them!

Quote from: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 04:50:05 PM

I'd be worried about the mind worms getting loose. I imagine they're kept in the brood pits away from the common workers.

Not to worry, those broodpit boils aren't 'tamed' in the stricter sense of the word, they are bonded with a human.
And as long as that trusted human doesn't go bonkers... ;)

Quote from: Nexii on May 17, 2020, 04:50:05 PM

That might be my next little project. To make two opposed factions, one Thought Control and the other Eudaimonic. Perhaps the TC faction wants to become machines with the remaining humans brainwashed for whatever menial tasks remain. Eudaimonic I'm a bit less sure on. I think a bit different take than just another soft/hard environmentalist (Gaia/Cult) or humanitarian (PKs). Maybe more extreme views than Yang on bioengineering, a sort of post-humanist view. That we have to genetically alter ourselves to evolve as a species.

To me it sounds alot like a Democratic and Police State faction coming to blows.

Title: Re: Which faction would you be?
Post by: Nexii on May 20, 2020, 05:23:17 PM

Quote from: Geo on May 20, 2020, 09:23:28 AM

To me it sounds alot like a Democratic and Police State faction coming to blows.

Yea I created them in my other faction thread. Both can go PS and Democratic, even if that's a bit odd. I guess they're more forward looking. The TC society you'd be slave to a robot more or less. Probably wouldn't be so fun but who knows, maybe they'd be benevolent.