Couple of questions from a returning player

[Blake00]

Hi guys,

Soon I'm going to be returning to SMAC for the first time in 17 or so years and wanted to ask the guru's here a few questions about playing SMAC these days. Thanks to guides here and at GoG I've got the fan patches and instructions on how to make the game play in HD which I'm looking forward to trying! But there's a few other things I'm wondering about..

For starters..

• Is there a way to increase the player count above 7 or is it too hardcoded into the game like with Civ 1 & 2? I've seen how fans have been able to push Call to Power & Civ 3 to quite high players counts, higher than originally intended due to their engines being more open to such things. It would be a dream to play a 14 player SMAC game with the original 7 factions and addon 7 factions all in the one game. Things with the council would get messy lol but oh what fun it would be. I found a thread over at Apolyton where what appears to be one of the SMAC modders talking about how modders were discussing (in a dedicated thread) how to implement this very thing however sadly the link he gave to civgaming.net is dead now. Did it ever amount to anything or was it put in the too hard basket?
• I'm doing a video series on how to successfully play as Barbarians in each Civ game (via either cheat modes, hex editing or fan patches) and I'm curious to know if anyone did any sort of similar work with SMAC? I remember if you played as the Gaians you could take control of land and ocean mind worms wrecking havoc on the other players haha but you were still one of the 7 factions and not an 8th Barb player. So I'm curious to know if there's a more comprehensive way to take control of the 'alien barbarians' like you could with Barbs in Civ? Also I can't remember what happens when a barb mind worm attacks a factions empty city? Do they capture it like the Barbs can in Civ or do they just kill the place or mess it up?
• Finally out of curiosity why is this place called Alpha Centauri 2? Is it just fans wishing for a official sequel or was it originally founded on a fan made sequel that never got finished? I ask because I love my fan projects (just visit my website to see how much haha) and I've never seen anything about fan made SMAC sequels/remakes yet there's some good Civilization, Colonization and Master of Orion ones out there still being worked on to this day.

[PvtHudson]

Welcome back to one of the greatest 4Xs of all time! Reserve some life span to [re]addict properly.

• Is there a way to increase the player count above 7 or is it too hardcoded into the game like with Civ 1 & 2?

For all I've heard, no. Too many things are coded as bits in 1 byte-long values.

• Also I can't remember what happens when a barb mind worm attacks a factions empty city? Do they capture it like the Barbs can in Civ or do they just kill the place or mess it up?

Population 1 base is destroyed. Population 2 or more loose 1 pop and some facilities.

[bvanevery]

Finally out of curiosity why is this place called Alpha Centauri 2?

I think it's just meant to be evocative.

[Buster's Uncle]

...I believe sisko meant to express hope for a sequel in that name...

[DrazharLn]

I seem to recall controlling the alien faction through the scenario editor a long time ago, but I couldn't work out how just now.

It's quite possible I'm misremembering.

[Vidsek]

    In my playing around with the Scenario Editor, I discovered you can assign units to the native faction, but not adjust other parameters for that "faction"  (such as aggressiveness or research priorities <chuckle>).  Of course, they don't have bases or governers, or therefore "territory". 
  I have no idea what would happen if you gave them a faction file or how you would link it to native life part of the AI.
  I did confirm an observation I read somewhere in these Forums that native life units you place only persist for a couple few turns, except for Fungal Towers, which stay in game indefinitely.
  I haven't tried giving them *non*native units, like colony pods or scouts, but now that I've realized that, it's something I'm just dieing to try out     One could try making a colony pod establish a base and see if that works and what would come of it.

[Blake00]

Thanks for all the answers guys, much appreciated!

    In my playing around with the Scenario Editor, I discovered you can assign units to the native faction, but not adjust other parameters for that "faction"  (such as aggressiveness or research priorities <chuckle>).  Of course, they don't have bases or governers, or therefore "territory". 
  I have no idea what would happen if you gave them a faction file or how you would link it to native life part of the AI.
  I did confirm an observation I read somewhere in these Forums that native life units you place only persist for a couple few turns, except for Fungal Towers, which stay in game indefinitely.
  I haven't tried giving them *non*native units, like colony pods or scouts, but now that I've realized that, it's something I'm just dieing to try out     One could try making a colony pod establish a base and see if that works and what would come of it.

Now that's an interesting idea and kinds of sounds similar to the Civ 2 Barb trick. In Civ 2 you go to the cheat mode/scenario editor, set the player view to Barbarian only, create a regular settler unit they wouldn't normally have and then click on it and end the turn to take control of it and play as a '8th player' Barb faction! Would be interesting if you can do something similar in SMAC. Let me know how it goes otherwise I'll try myself once I start playing the game proper (still finishing a Test of Time game atm). I've never messed with the SMAC scenario editor but hopefully I can figure it out!

[bvanevery]

BTW Blake, I tried to go to your Blake's Sanctum page for SMAC, but the URL is broken.
http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/Games/CivColSeries/AlphaC/AlphaC.html
The Civ III link is also broken.

[Blake00]

BTW Blake, I tried to go to your Blake's Sanctum page for SMAC, but the URL is broken.
http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/Games/CivColSeries/AlphaC/AlphaC.html
The Civ III link is also broken.

Thanks for checking out the site. Yeah I probably shouldn't have put the link in my footer yet as my Civ/Col/Alpha section is brand new and under construction. There's no AlphaC or Civ3 section yet because I haven't re-played them yet! Currently finishing off Test of Time.

[Blake00]

Well I finally has a look at the in-game scenario editor and sure enough I can create Alien (Barb) units and even give them regular units like colony settlers. However unfortunately the editor human player selector does not include Aliens (Barbs) so unless there's a hidden trick (like in Civ2's cheat editor) then you cannot take control of them. Therefore does anyone know of a good SMAC save file editor or save file hex editing guide that might make this a possibility?

[bvanevery]

I can create Alien (Barb) units and even give them regular units like colony settlers.

That's weird!  Will they actually found cities with those?  Or do they just walk around and eventually get killed?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about save game editing.

[Blake00]

That's weird!  Will they actually found cities with those?  Or do they just walk around and eventually get killed?

I'm afraid I don't know anything about save game editing.

They just wonder around and then disappear after 5 turns haha.

But not to worry as I've got good news! You CAN play as the Alien barbs! I asked the same questions as here over at CivFanatics and one of the SMAC guru's there Darsnan (who I'm guessing is prob somewhere around here too lol) was able to sucessfully take control of the Aliens, make a number of game adjustments to give them a chance and has just finished creating a scenario where you can play as them! You guys can check it out here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/play-as-barbarians-increase-player-count-beyond-7-in-alpha-centauri.643906/

So test of time is out of the way and I'm about to finally get started on SMAC! I still have my original cd's so I'm not using the GoG version nor have I installed any fan patches but I found some guides at gog on how to get the game working in in HD by putting in DirectDraw=0 into the ini. I did it and it seems to have worked just fine with SMACX however when I try to run original SMAC it's all blown up/zoomed in and I can't even see the menu buttons resulting in me being able to do nothing other than hitting escape to quit. Strange that one is fine with the change and one is not. Has this happened to anyone else? If so is there a fix? Or does one of the fan patches address this? I'm on Win 7 64bit running at 1920x1080.

[bvanevery]

Well there were some official patches for original SMAC, long before GOG.  Maybe that's your trouble.  Getting, installing, and verifying original patches is not an Art I'm up on, as there's no present need for it, given the cheapness and frequent sales of GOG.  For the true skinflints a path of least resistance would be to install PRACX.  Barring that, you could find the original game patches somewhere on this site and apply them to see if it makes things work.

Or maybe it's as simple as setting a compatibility mode for SMAC?

[Blake00]

Well there were some official patches for original SMAC, long before GOG.  Maybe that's your trouble.  Getting, installing, and verifying original patches is not an Art I'm up on, as there's no present need for it, given the cheapness and frequent sales of GOG.  For the true skinflints a path of least resistance would be to install PRACX.  Barring that, you could find the original game patches somewhere on this site and apply them to see if it makes things work.

Or maybe it's as simple as setting a compatibility mode for SMAC?

Both are already in compatibility mode, however I think your other suggestions is the way to go as now that I think of it I've probably forgotten to apply the official patches haha. I'll give that a try when I get home. If that fails then I've found that love PRACX graphics/resolution patch you guys have here which might save the day. It's list of features sounds most impressive.