SMAC

[Awen]

Was cleaning out some old boxes and found my Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri manual, man that was such a great game. I played it a couple of years ago, picked it up on GOG. Is there any chance of a remake or a similar game? I know Beyond Earth is probably the closest we'll ever get, but SMAC had so much depth to it. My favorite thing was the workshop and being able to prototype and build your own units outfitted however you wanted as you discovered technologies.

That's probably difficult as hell to balance, but made the game so much fun.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Caribou:

My favorite thing was the workshop and being able to prototype and build your own units outfitted however you wanted as you discovered technologies.

Might want to have a look at Pandora: First Contact if you haven't already. It's not nearly on the level of SMAC and lacks a lot of "flavor", but it does have a rather expansive unit workshop, and takes and modernizes a lot of the other elements from that game.

[Nightshade878]

This is NOT a remake of SMAC. It is however, a good Civ game that stands well on it's own.

[Vargas78]

I have Pandora as well, it's good but the AI is super savage. You can never really build up a comfort zone.

[Awen]

Thanks for the comments. Pandora looks interesting, will probably pick it up next time it's on sale.

[Gon]

Nowt wrong with playing the original. I ran through it a few times recently and had a blast.

[Awen]

Here are a few photos of the manual. https://imgur.com/a/Ws0y5

Sadly, the poster with the tech tree on it has been hanging in my parent's basement for the last ~20 years, but last time I was over looks like they got rid of it.

[Snobgoblin]

Beautiful, I had such hopes for BE, but it falls completely flat when compared to SMAC. I wish they would just do a visual update of it, the game was perfect on its own, but could use better graphics. Oh what a dream that is.

[airmikee99]

https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri

[Planetfall Survivor X]

Miss SMAC too. Well, not really "miss" as I still play it a lot. My only problem with Smacx is really superficial. I would love a "remastered" edition. Just new graphics, everything else could stay the same.
Except maybe, I'd love an addition to "tile improvements". A "laser turret" similar to those defense facilities in the smac-ish "Deadlock" games. Doesn't really make sense, gameplay wise maybe. Oh, and that "missle defense" from Alien Crossfire needs to be fixed. It never really reduced damage & those ais love missles (Yang! *shaking fist*).

That being said, I finally played Beyond Earth for the first time and a for few hours and it seems pretty decent and "in the spirit" of Smac (as advertised). Not bad so far and far better than I've read.

[Awen]

I think one of my favorite things about SMAC was the amount of control you had over the units. I assume these were items already in there that the AI leveraged, but they were great. Things like:

Fortifying for 10 turns, then becoming active
Patrolling between user defined points
Creating groups of units and using group go to
Go to nearest base
Setting a unit's "home base" and Go to home base
Designated defender

Obviously, most of these features are only workable without one unit per tile, but there was SO much flexibility. I would love a patrol feature in Civ VI.

[Planetfall Survivor X]

That sure is one of the great features of smac. In combination with the workshop and the ability to name the new unit type (until a reactor type upgrade undoes that :D ), it is one of the most fun parts of the game. Shielded terraformers, submarine probe teams, sensor enhanced supply crawlers...
In CivV, first civ game I ever played, you can't even set the path your units will take, right? It's either click on a far away spot and accept the route the game picks or go turn by turn, if you want precision.
Yeah, a patrole feature would be great. Anykind of unit grouping, even if not staked, would be a relief.
Mentioning supply crawlers! CivV is far inferior to smac in every way from my pov, but that not even a similar unit like that exists frustrates me extremely. Having to create cities in subpar spots, just for one ressource, be it luxury or strategic...
A few more hours into Besyond Earth now. The spoken research break-through pop-ups are a nice homage to smac. That deep philosophy in the game is amazing and every secret project video is a reward in itself. Talking smac again. Not Beyond Earth. I'm not sure how I like having to pay for trade agreements with diplomacy points. Not at a point yet, were I really grasp when and how I will really cash in "diplomacy", if at all.

[Awen]

Yes, supply crawlers were amazing. Using them to rush secret projects and move resources was great, but the most powerful thing was the ability to "work" a resource out of your territory with them. I think Civ III had a similar concept where you could build a colony on a resource, but it needed a road to it.

My favorite sneaky thing to build in the workshop was Colony Pod Needlejets. For those who don't recall, needlejet movement had two turns. Out and Back with an equal amount of movement points for each leg. If you didn't end your turn in a base, you lost the unit. But if the range was 12, you could move up to 23 tiles away and settle a base. This REALLY made forward settling easy, because you discovered needlejets pretty early in the tech tree.