Pick yer Poison

[Buster's Uncle]

Pick yer Poison

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=236


Scenario Name: Pick yer Poison
SMAC/ SMAX: SMAX
Author: Darsnan
Date of original posting: 5/10/08
Original host site: Apolyton


BACKDROP: In MY 2433 several factions discovered the wreckage of a
Progenitor interstellar spaceship on the farside of Nessus. After much
investigation it was determined that the ships star charts were intact,
and that the hyperdrive engine could be cloned.
By MY 2452 the first fleet of scoutships were built and sent out with a
mandate to investigate all of the habitable planets catalogued in the
Progenitor ships start charts. The results are mixed: some scoutships
return with exciting news of “Eden-class” planets, while other scouts
tell tales of planets who have degraded over the eons. Still other
scouts fail to return at all…
By MY2475 the "Diaspora of Man" had begun in earnest, with interstellar
colony ships being sent out to the far reaches of the Milky Way as fast
as they could be built. However as more and more planets were explored
it became clear that another civilization had visited many of the former
Progenitor worlds in between the time of the fall of Progenitor
civilization and the Rise of Man. Traces of this now-vanished
civilization could be found in many remote corners of the galaxy, and it
appeared that they were drawn to and understood the powers of the
Manifolds. Simply called “The Sentinels” because they seemed more intent
on watching the planets they visited than in colonization, their
artifacts can be found on many of the former Progenitor worlds that
house Manifolds. Some of the Sentinel artifacts are benign, while others
retain a modicum of their ancient programming and are openly hostile
towards humans!
It is now MY2500…..


Sooner or later Humanity knew they would encounter the living
descendants of the Progenitors, for with the Diaspora of Man taking
humanity to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way it was only a matter
of time before this event occurred. However it was also unanimously
agreed by all the Factions that no one wanted to win that particular
lottery and be the first to encounter the Progs in what would probably
be their interstellar back yard, for if what had happened in the Alpha
Centauri solar system was any indication as to how the Progs would react
to the upstart humans, then whoever did stumble into the Progs was
going to be in for a bumpy ride to say the very least!
And yet here you were, not even a year after arriving on your new
homeworld of Beratan 4.0, when the skies above opened up and two
Progenitor Battlecruisers, one Caretaker and one Usurper, took up orbit
around your planet. You listened in on the Progenitor comm channels as
each Prog Faction issued ritualistic challenges and insults, each round
becoming more pointed and threatening. And then a curious thing
happened: instead of escalating to all-out warfare between the two huge
battlecruisers, each ship deposited a single drop ship onto the face of
the planet, one at each pole, and then the two Prog battlecruisers
departed as mysteriously as they had arrived.
But what would have been a xenosociologists event of a lifetime is now a
waking nightmare for you, as you realize you are going to be caught in
the crosshairs of an all out no-holds barred Progenitor Civil War!


Planet Specifications

Planet: Baraton 4.0
Primary: Class M (currently unnamed)
Population: uninhabited
Climate: temperate
Temperature: average
Gravity: 1.3 standard
Class: habitable

Baraton 4.0 is another planet belonging to the Manifold experiment, and
so there could be an operational nexus on the planet. And of course
where there is a nexus there are native lifeforms to boot. There are
also rumors of an ancient city on the planetary surface. If this is true
then it is probably a Sentinel city, and any artifacts which could be
recovered would be of significant benefit to the Faction which discovers
them!

Directions

1) In your Scenarios subdirectory create a folder called "PyP", and download and unzip the attached files into it.
2) Start up SMAX, then select "Scenario", "Play Scenario", and then go
to the subdirectory "PyP" and choose the scenario. The game will
automatically load up with the Spartans.


Observations

- If you don’t like the graphics go to the PyP subdirectory and delete
the “terr1wreck.pcx” and “texture.pcx” files (and note you need to get
out of SMAX first before deleting these files).
- There are significant changes to the alphax.txt file in this game. it
is strongly recommended that you review the Datalinks at the beginning
of the game, specifically concerning basic units, terraforming options,
and certain facilities and SPs (examples: Robotic Assembly Plant has
been moved up to Ind Auto, Mining Sats to Doc:Air, while the Empath
Guild has been moved to Eudaimonia, among others).
- The Progs really don’t like to be gassed in this game.


Acknowledgements

Many thanx to the following:

- wgabrie for the graphics: I’ve been playing using his texture.pcx file
for years now: much better than the default IMO! wgabrie also did the
other graphics changes you will encounter in this scenario.
- Maurid Adran’s idea of having terraformers immediately available for
build: no more getting 40 – 50 turns into a game and finding that the AI
hasn’t even researched Centauri Ecology yet (and hence not done any
terraforming at all!). From what I have seen so far in playtesting this
is a significant boon to the AIs! I’ve also “encouraged” the AIs to
build these terraformers by making them cheaper to produce.
- I think it was smacksim who originally proposed the idea of having
terrain improvements such as mines, solar collectors, and farms linked
to techs (instead of being available to build right away): combining
this idea with the above of having cheapened terraformers immediately
available means that the AIs do plant some forests at the outset of the
game.

Hope you enjoy!


D