Yitzi with Thinker?

[golingarf]

If you really can't accept those factions, but you're willing to accept the 5 new human factions, perhaps it would be expedient to simply delete caretake.txt and usurper.txt.  Then you could, for instance, select games with random opponents and you'd never get Alien factions in the game.  I haven't tried this approach so I'm not 100% sure it works, but I do know if you delete enough stuff pertaining to those factions, they're not going to be available.  There are a few other files associated with a faction, but getting rid of the *.txt might do it.

Some people have issues with the technologies the Alien factions introduce, and want those gone.  I'm not hardcore like that, I can't be bothered / flapped that easily.  I did, however, rebalance those techs in my mod.  In particular, Soporific Gas Pods are overpowered.  I made them late and helluh expensive, a "soft" way of taking them out of the game.  You can have them if you're willing to pay through the nose for them.  And with lotsa things being otherwise more expensive and harder to obtain in my mod, you'll probably think better of it.  And then you won't miss them.  You won't fret about whether you should have built the Soporific Gas Pod version of everything anymore.

I really don't like anything introduced in the expansion. Even the five other human factions make no sense in the context of the game universe. Why is there already a cybernetic faction, when that tech is available only late in the game? And a "cult of planet" run by a child, before Centauri Meditation, etc.? Not to mention the factions based on a skill rather than a utopian social ideal - "Data Angels" and "Pirates". University is almost like that, but at least they can be rationalized as some kind of technocracy, which has been seriously proposed on earth. Then there are the new alien units, "battle ogres" (why exactly do you discover better kinds as the game goes on?) and the very worst are, of course, "spore launchers." Mind worms were already an enormous stretch, but an organism that projects spores two grid squares, destroying terrain improvements?

There is actually a lot of silliness in the original game, so I understand the perspective that you may as well forget about it not being silly, but I think the original SMAC setting had a kind of charm. If I created a mod, which is an idea I've toyed with, I would basically make it a more low-tech setting, without venturing too far into science fantasy later in the tech tree. And of course there would be no unity supply pods - at all - but especially not ones that teleport your unit "through a dimensional gate."

[bvanevery]

I really don't like anything introduced in the expansion. Even the five other human factions make no sense in the context of the game universe. Why is there already a cybernetic faction, when that tech is available only late in the game?

True, they crapped all over historical continuity and previously established narrative.  The question is, do you value narrative so much in a game, that it's a dealbreaker as compared to new gameplay features?  GNS Theory weighs in here.  You could be strongly Narrativist and say this story makes no sense, can't accept it.  You could be strongly Simulationist and say, techs have to be accurate in some way or I'm not playing.  But the 5 human factions are not objectionable in Gamist terms.  They're not perfect but they do introduce reasonable play mechanics and had some thought behind them in that regard.  In fact I'd say that the narrative layer was added as almost a second-hand excuse on top of the thought put into the game mechanics.  I have no certainty of that, I haven't read developer logs of the period, but I'm willing to bet they thought of game stuff first and then worked the characters around it.

And a "cult of planet" run by a child, before Centauri Meditation, etc.?

I prefer to think of him as the [progeny of unmarried parents] son of Yang and Deirdre.

Not to mention the factions based on a skill rather than a utopian social ideal - "Data Angels" and "Pirates".

That's not strictly true, but their narratives are underwhelming in that regard, so I can see how you'd think so.  The Data Angels are the "data wants to be free" faction, which was a very au courrant idea in the 1990s.  The Pirates think we're all better off living on or under the water, like Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.  I hate the voice acting for Svensgaard though.  He sounds like some college student wearing a nice sweater, not a pirate.  I have seriously considered redoing the voice acting for him, and for Cha Dawn, who was obviously voiced by a woman and doesn't sound like the boy he's supposed to be.  But that's a completely profitless project by itself, and I don't have enough real life justification to get into voice acting.  If I did, I should probably spend my time on original characters and dialogue that I can sell in my own game, not always throwing my abilities away on SMAC.

I think being more about a game mechanic, is a clue that that's what the developers first and foremost priorities were.

University is almost like that, but at least they can be rationalized as some kind of technocracy, which has been seriously proposed on earth.

The University also gets far more air time to flesh out and world build what they are as a society, compared to the noob factions.  They clearly weren't going to do the same level of narrative production values with 7 new factions, as they did in the original game.  For one thing, where's the money in it?  SMAC didn't do as well financially as other Civ titles.

"battle ogres" (why exactly do you discover better kinds as the game goes on?)

For strictly play mechanical reasons.  If you're near the Fusion Power era you're going to get something that keeps up with that era.  I'm not sure I've ever gotten a Mark III but maybe it has happened.  This again is a conflict between a Gamist expectation and something else.  A Gamist would be like kewl, new junk to go exploit.

and the very worst are, of course, "spore launchers."

I'm not getting why this is an "of course".  From either a narrative or simulation perspective, they make perfectly good sense.

Mind worms were already an enormous stretch, but an organism that projects spores two grid squares, destroying terrain improvements?

Why not?  Seed hurling plants exist on Earth.  Could it be that you think the unit artwork looks stupid? 

[golingarf]

Why not?  Seed hurling plants exist on Earth.  Could it be that you think the unit artwork looks stupid?

The distance of two grid squares, and the explosive power necessary to destroy mines, are a bit much for a seed hurling plant.

Again, I understand you're just looking at it as a board game where the pieces don't have to make sense (just as no one asks why the knights can jump in chess), but I like the setting, aesthetically, flawed as it is.

[dino]

I got the files from the git that you link, and I am launching the game from SMACXLauncher, as the author recommended. I am not launching from a command line, so I don't know where I can set any "smac_only" variable. It does work, however: almost all the expansion content is gone.

You should launch the game with "terranx_mod.exe".

You will find "smac_only" in "thinker.ini" file, you can edit it with notepad. It's a thinker mod configuration file.
Make sure you've installed thinker version of the SMAC mod, with smac mod files in ac_mod\ folder in the root game folder.

Optionally you can create a shortcut and add -smac to the target element path in file properies, or whatever it's called in english Windows version.
For convenience I've redirected GOG shortcuts to thinker, with with SMAC shortcut using -smac parameter, but if you are going to play only SMAC mod, better stick with just editing thinker.ini.

I also suggest to edit alphax.txt in ac_mod folder:
At the end of #RULES section:
1, 2     ; Numerator/Denominator for frequency of global warming (1,2 would be "half" normal warming).
With thinker AIs generate much more ecodamage, so this change is recommended to decrease rate of sea level rise to be closer to original.

If you have an OCD like me, you can also rename interface textures in root game folder, so once the game start it'll look exactly like SMAC, find:
console.pcx
console_x.pcx
console_x2.pcx
console2.pcx
iface_down.pcx
iface_down2.pcx
iface_up.pcx
iface_up2.pcx
openinga.pcx
openingb.pcx

Copy somewhere and rename to:
console_A.pcx
console_x_a.pcx
console_x2_a.pcx
console2_A.pcx
iface_down_A.pcx
iface_down2_A.pcx
iface_up_A.pcx
iface_up2_A.pcx
xopeninga.pcx
xopeningb.pcx

Then move back, to overwrite SMAX files ( you may want to make a backup smax versions before this operation ).

@Induktio
If the mod was included with thinker releases, the whole smac mode enabling process and instructions would consist of: "change smac_only variable in thinker.ini file from 0 to 1" 
According to the poll in the other thread 20-30% of users could be interested in trying this mode.

[golingarf]

Ah, thank you. The need to change a parameter in thinker.ini was not mentioned anywhere, as far as I could tell.

[bvanevery]

The distance of two grid squares, and the explosive power necessary to destroy mines, are a bit much for a seed hurling plant.

They don't have to be explosive, and they don't have to be seeds.  All they have to do is destroy the mine somehow.  Perhaps it would have been more realistic for them to cover things in fungus rather than destroy them.  However they clearly wanted an indigenous artillery piece so there it is.

What do you think of the bugs in Starship Troopers?  Do they drive you up the wall, that they can do stuff that takes us tech to do?

Again, I understand you're just looking at it as a board game where the pieces don't have to make sense (just as no one asks why the knights can jump in chess), but I like the setting, aesthetically, flawed as it is.

This sounds like a Simulationist objection.  Plant-like life forms can't do this because, reasons.  To that I say, one can invent other reasons.  I do acknowledge that the game didn't provide those reasons though.  You're left to imagine how it works for yourself.  Which leaves you imagining it doesn't work.

Heh, wonder what the description text on Spore Launchers is anyways?  Let's see what the Datalinks say.

Spore launchers tend to lurk on the outskirts of a settlement, expelling bursts of corrosive spores that can destroy manmade or Progenitor improvements from a range of two squares away.

So there you have it.  Corrosive, not explosive.

[golingarf]

I don't know Starship Troopers.

So there you have it.  Corrosive, not explosive.

Even assuming these are wind-dispersed, rather than projected through the stratosphere like artillery shells, there are no corrosion resistant coatings or materials? Can the door to the mineshaft be shut, or will the corrosive spores corrode right through it, and go on corroding the earthen walls until the shaft collapses? We'll have to agree to disagree on this.

[bvanevery]

Even assuming these are wind-dispersed, rather than projected through the stratosphere like artillery shells,

Wouldn't be stratosphere, that's extreme exaggeration.  It would be through the air, at a range comparable to artillery shells. 

there are no corrosion resistant coatings or materials?

The lore says a mindworm will chew through anything softer than plasma steel, that's a direct quote from Deidre the xenobiologist herself.  You don't start the game with plasma steel either, so I don't think mining installations are made out of that stuff.  This is a rough environment with a lot of toxic stuff about.  Really even the very air can kill you.  That sound when infantry starts moving about, that's an airlock cycling.  I think that level of danger gets lost in the shuffle, as it doesn't have any play mechanical effects, and it isn't presented in the lore all that often.  But there's nothing unusual or particularly weird about Planet having a biological corrosive agent that can destroy stuff.

[golingarf]

Even modern artillery shells pass through the stratosphere or close, with ranges upwards of 40 km, which is 1/1000 the circumference of Earth - less than one map square. As for that Deirdre quote, I guess I can't get behind that either. There's clearly a lot in the original that doesn't add up, as the designers appear not to have been as scientifically literate as might be desired. Anyway, it's just my two cents. The spore launchers are not to my taste.

[bvanevery]

Even modern artillery shells pass through the stratosphere or close, with ranges upwards of 40 km,

News to me, but I don't know much about modern artillery.  You have some kind of cite for that?

which is 1/1000 the circumference of Earth - less than one map square.

The map scale and time scales of the game are clearly not accurate and grossly conflate tactics with strategy.  It doesn't take 1 year to fire an artillery shell either.

As for that Deirdre quote, I guess I can't get behind that either. There's clearly a lot in the original that doesn't add up, as the designers appear not to have been as scientifically literate as might be desired. Anyway, it's just my two cents. The spore launchers are not to my taste.

Getting into second guessing the basic premises of SMAC, as they exist even in the original game, is not a productive way to go if you wish to be satisfied about the game.  I mean, why stop at dissing SMACX?  Why not just find more and more things that are wrong about original SMAC until you're incapable of liking it?  You definitely sound like you are in the Simulationist school of objections.  Things are wrong because, facts, science.  Well frankly they shouldn't have gotten to Alpha Centauri at all if you're going to take that stance.  They threw a lot of stuff in that they did think about, and the question is to what degree you're going to second guess whatever they originally wrote and established as the lore.

Original SMAC's primary strength is narrative.  That's the main reason people still care about it 20 years later.  Nobody has even remotely attempted to do that much narrative and world building in a 4X TBS game since then.  I don't recall anyone claiming over the years that SMAC is a great simulation of humanity's future.  This is not completely hard science fiction.  For instance, there is woo.

[PvtHudson]

I hate the voice acting for Svensgaard though.

What do you expected to hear, constant arrghs and other TLAPD stuff? They wouldn't put a thug in a chief Unity astrogator position.

[Geo]

I hate the voice acting for Svensgaard though.

What do you expected to hear, constant arrghs and other TLAPD stuff? They wouldn't put a thug in a chief Unity astrogator position.

They did put a dictator in the XO slot.

[bvanevery]

I hate the voice acting for Svensgaard though.

What do you expected to hear, constant arrghs and other TLAPD stuff?

Considering that they do in fact make parrot and rum jokes at his expense, it would have been an improvement, if not ideal.  For nuance on pirate characters one might look to Game of Thrones for models.  Although that's a current show, long before SMAC, I'm sure that some other treatment of pirates exists in the past.  Isn't Captain Nemo essentially a pirate?

They wouldn't put a thug in a chief Unity astrogator position.

That's a BS excuse because they're the ones who chose to make him a "Unity astrogator" to begin with.  There's no inherent reason that one job would have anything to do with the other, or have any power implication.

[Induktio]

If the mod was included with thinker releases, the whole smac mode enabling process and instructions would consist of: "change smac_only variable in thinker.ini file from 0 to 1" 
According to the poll in the other thread 20-30% of users could be interested in trying this mode.

Which thread had the poll about that again? Can't remember. There's also another argument to be made for bundling the txt mod files with Thinker mod: those files should include the Worldbuilder enhancements and the other smaller fixes, so they don't have to be edited manually. That's something I would like avoid, but originally I wasn't sure how popular smac-in-smacx would be.

Probably in the next release we could bundle the txt files with Thinker but no idea when that release might be. It seems there hasn't been any other bug reports since v0.9 release. Anyway, it's probably better to report those in the main thread for Thinker.

[dino]

Vanilla SMAC OR Expansion SMAX, that is the question

Small sample but possibly more, or less representative: 12 voters: 7 SMAX only, 2 SMAC sometimes but prefer SMAX, 1 prefer SMAC (me) and 2 SMAC only.

And I play some SMAX currently with original 7 and only becuase I've made a mod that removes aliens and their techs from the game. If I had to take it as it is, I'd be in SMAC only camp too.