[ISPG] Interactive SinglePlayer Game

[Buster's Uncle]

I want you to know that I'm following and enjoying this thread - I'm just not in a talkative mood, lately.

Keep up the good work.

[Mart]

We have kinda slow start, I hope the game will get momentum by increased activity of more posters.
So present rate seems appropriate for this, maybe more people will jump in and in earlier game stage.
However, this allows for the story to better develop, since we have more time to think of ideas and plots.

[Mart]

Lt. John Fet led his scouting team for over 10 days along some hills ridge in North-West direction from Mechanic's Marvel. And now one of the hills was significantly taller than all the others.
"Over there, an excellent place to take a look over the horizon" said one of his men.
"Yes! definitely," he replied. "We gonna climb there right now."

After three hours they reached the peak. All over from East direction to North and then to the West in front of them on the horizon line there was nothing but well known to them pinkish color of this native fungi plants. And from the shape of it, they concluded it was not a narrow stretch.
"We need to report it and get new instructions."

- - - = = = * * * = = = - - -

So the scout unit leaves MM alone.
Risky!
But nothing happened.

2106

MM completes a new scout unit.
1 turn till next tech.

Questions:

• What to do with Lt. Fet's unit?

1) Try crossing the xenofungus?
2) Go east around it?
3) Return to MM to defend it? Free unit, let it serve the longest. It is 1 mineral/turn, after all.
4) Do nothing/make campfire.
5)  Reprimand Fet for lack of luck. He was supposed to have easy walk towards the spaceship wreckage!

• Go with new scout east around xenofungus.
• Do we change research aims? In one turn we have a tech, some new will be selected. We can make it conditional, there should be possibility to do it after we know (turnplayer knows) what tech it is.
• Anything else?

[Mart]

This thread is also intended for discussions about strategies.
Questions can be answered and also one can elaborate why s/he thinks, this is the best or optimal way to proceed.

E.g.
1) crawling nutrients, any thoughts on this?
2) use of independent units. Are they best to use as defenders? or maybe during FREE MARKET they are great "outside borders" explorers.
3) scouting techniques in general. How to do it, with pods ON, as we have it here, etc.

[Mart]

Lt. Fet is ordered to attempt crossing xenofungus field. Unfortunately, his attempt fails.
His unit though is able to spot UNS Unity wreckage behind it. So it is confirmed, the wreckage is there.

Newly formed scout unit departs from MM base, it will go around fungal fields.

2107

Centauri Ecology is discovered. The objectives were not changed. The next tech is "discover" one.
We run 60% Labs, 40% economy, shall we leave it that way?



Questions:

• Do we scout NE from Apollo HQ? with scout?
• Recall Lt. Fet to MM base? And let single scout go around towards Unity wreckage?
• Risk MM base one more turn and scout Fountainhead peak tile - we might see better tile for a worker.
• Do we switch to formers production? Where? Both bases?

[Mart]

Taking a risk. Lt. Fet is directed to Fountainhed to scout south and southwest slopes of the mountain.
- There is one rainy tile, though rocky... not much benefit at this moment.
- The river on moist rolling terrain ensures 1-1-1 gain from working it.

Scouting east from Apollo HQ. There is no land bridge, so we have no possibility to explore this direction.
Switched to formers in both bases.

2108



What to do with scouts?
- Any proposals?

[Avalon90]

Where can I download this and what are the system requirements? 

[Mart]

Having the game installed, and patched with latest official, which is  in the download section too, but early added, fixing win 2000 and XP:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=13
This is actually patch, that brings SMAC to v. 5.0, and fixes some other stuff in expansion.

So having game with expansion Alien Crossfire, download the patch from Resources>Downloads> ... Patches > Yitzi 3.4
the link to download page:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=291

This is windows executable, so under Linux should work with wine, I am not sure about MacBook.

The patch should overwrite game files, so you can also choose your patching strategy:
- just overwrite files
- backup files or whole game folder for possible "roll-back" to original state.

Game saves are attached in the posts in this thread.
Read the rules in the first post, important is to only view the turns, not playing them, which turnplayer does. This is in order not to spoil the fun for yourself and others. Diplomacy checks would be ok, we had that in ACDG3, but moving units around is not good idea. Especially more e.g. when they explore territory, while faction decides to move the unit in other direction.

[Rymdolov]

This seems like a lot of fun! I'm following your progress, but not participating otherwise.

I might give some bad advice later to foil your evil, libertarian schemes. 

[Mart]

Unfortunately, we play singleplayer, so you cannot join some opposing faction.
You can steer, however, faction diplomacy when voting on such subjects occurs, into foreign policy of your choosing.
Ultimately, you could become faction administrator (turnplayer) and foil Henry Roark's dream with greatest efficiency...

Except for unchangeable starting faction characteristics, we can also direct it into politics of our choosing. However, Green economics is not possible. No pretending Gaians.
Apollo Industries is something between Drones and Morgan, maybe Hive too? , so we can try something in this mood.

[Mart]

Lt. Fet recalled to security duty in MM base
Continuing towards UNS Unity Wreckage. The engine is already visible from the distance. It surely contains abundant energy banks.



Something from the east bombards our scout going to UNS Unity. Spore launcher, appeared for a second at the turn end.

2109



Proposed orders to units are shown.
What else? Any proposals?

- We continue producing formers and soon will have 2 such units.
- Since we will have 2 population in AH in 2 turns, I think about moving the crawler to another location.
The 1-1-1 river tile is second best we have next to monolith.

[Akritedes]

Might be premature, but now would be a very good time to decide whether to adopt a co-existence strategy with Planet or to clear the area and terraform it. Unless there's a desire to take the Green path, one of the first goals for the building Formers should be to clear out all the Xenofungus in the area, maybe even  before building improvements.

...then again, I always built very Former heavy, so I could do both.

[Mart]

Apollo Industries cannot choose Green Economics in SE. It would be very difficult to attempt "green" direction.
We know, even in role-play we could assume to know, that flora from Earth (forests) can overgrow native fungus. Maybe this is direction to go?

[Mart]

Terraforming tasks. A list of tasks for consideration:

- clear out all the Xenofungus in the area,
- build road AH-MM
- improve tiles for workers
-- farms, + solar collectors?
-- forests
- forestation for removal of xenofungus (more tiles and possibly even outside bases radii)

- - - * * * - - -
This much for the start.
As for me, I would begin from connecting bases with roads. Usually a useful thing for defensive purposes. And overall flexibility in units movement.

Any other ideas for terraforming tasks?

...then again, I always built very Former heavy, so I could do both.

I think, we could aim for 4 formers per base in the early game. What do you think about it?
The support may be a problem, but as we gain population, and especially after researching crawlers, it would be much easier.

[Akritedes]

I never built quite that Former heavy, because of support, but 2-3 per base with most auto-improving or clearing local fungus with one or two planting strategic forests to consume larger fungus deposits is certainly viable. Might need to balance it with defensive units to deal with Mindworms or escort the Formers, though.