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[Fikes]

I'd say Sister Miriam is the most moral leader. Even after hundreds of years, she cares about her people. "Uh, do these teleporters

I would agree with that. Isn't she the one with the "we must dissent" quote? She keeps her principles at least.

[scrdest]

I'd say Sister Miriam is the most moral leader. Even after hundreds of years, she cares about her people. "Uh, do these teleporters

I would agree with that. Isn't she the one with the "we must dissent" quote? She keeps her principles at least.

Yeah, but that's kinda the problem when you've got a fundie. She keeps her principles with nerve gas and terror tactics.

[Fikes]

Maybe Sister Miriam seems the most moral because she doesn't go MORE insane as the game goes on, while everyone else does. Technology gets so advanced that everyone gets drunk with power and goes crazy, but Miriam was crazy long before planet fall.

Anyways, back more on topic for this game... I have seen exactly 1 screen shot and my first worry was that it did not look like you could terraform. Not really enough information to do anything other than speculate with but I really really hope I am wrong. I don't want a reskined Civ 5.

[Mr. Strange]

This is relevant to my interests.

[Neonivek]

Maybe Sister Miriam seems the most moral because she doesn't go MORE insane as the game goes on, while everyone else does. Technology gets so advanced that everyone gets drunk with power and goes crazy, but Miriam was crazy long before planet fall.

Anyways, back more on topic for this game... I have seen exactly 1 screen shot and my first worry was that it did not look like you could terraform. Not really enough information to do anything other than speculate with but I really really hope I am wrong. I don't want a reskined Civ 5.

Given that one of the three paths you can go down is to make the planet more like earth.

It seems like terraforming is a vital part of the game.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There are some implications that Lal turns a bit dictatorial in some later tech quotes as he chooses stability over principle, and also that quote about keeping a sample of his wife's cells to remember her by.  Because she didn't share in his faction leader near-immortality treatment for some reason.

The novelization has her get shot in the back by one of Santiago's troops when the situation on the Unity begins to disintegrate. That's the other thing about Lal. He's too....open and friendly for everything that has happened to him. Too pure. Like he's hiding something. Something bad. If I had to add anything to his story it would be something like him knowing about Diedre's plan to sic the mind worms on the Spartans and keeping it under wraps so they all die.

I'd say Sister Miriam is the most moral leader. Even after hundreds of years, she cares about her people. "Uh, do these teleporters teleport souls? I'm not risking sending my people through them."

Kind of ironic, as one of the theories for Miriam's "canon death" is a psi gate malfunction.

Maybe Sister Miriam seems the most moral because she doesn't go MORE insane as the game goes on, while everyone else does. Technology gets so advanced that everyone gets drunk with power and goes crazy, but Miriam was crazy long before planet fall.

I won't say she's the most moral, but her problems are linked more to Earth than Chiron, which makes her different from the others. It definitely is interesting how she starts off as the annoying Moral Guardian, but 500 years of exponential technological progress later her concerns about doing anything we can without asking if we really should start to resonate. We Must Dissent.

Anyways, back more on topic for this game... I have seen exactly 1 screen shot and my first worry was that it did not look like you could terraform. Not really enough information to do anything other than speculate with but I really really hope I am wrong. I don't want a reskined Civ 5.

You can definitely terraform, that's explicitly part of Purity's whole thing. They want to make the planet a New Earth.

And on that note, amahgawd this is amazing looking. I want. I'm especially liking the whole philosophy path system, since it makes a lot of sense for there to be a pretty huge societal reaction in response to losing Earth. I like how each of the different philosophies inhabits a different kind of response to the trauma of a planetary exodus. Purity is reactionary, Harmony is moderate, and Supremacy is radical.

And is that an Orion drive I see on the ship in the trailer? Oh my. Yes. Give me your gratuitous tech.

[Neonivek]

To me it sounds less like it is about Black and Grey Morality...

And more like actual depth (rather then black and grey) but that the incredibly long time span and technology withers away the moral fiber of even the most righteous.

Until everyone is the villain.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I actually have the opposite opinion. SMAC is designed to have characters with such radically divided worldviews that you'll sort them based on your own views into good and evil.

[Fikes]

I should have been more clear on what I meant by terraforming, specifically changing the elevation of tiles. Building mountains and digging trenches.

I remember playing SMAC after I had played a lot of Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and Civilization 2. All those games had super weapons and all of them were a bit... underwhelming. Then I launched my first planet buster... and turned a mountain into an inland sea.

I hope we can still do that.

[Aqizzar]

I should have been more clear on what I meant by terraforming, specifically changing the elevation of tiles. Building mountains and digging trenches.

I always felt the discrete elevation system of SMAC was a little pointless.  Raising mountains and blasting out seas is awesome and totally necessary to the game, but actually keeping track of height didn't add anything that the hill/plains/water system of the Civ series didn't do just as well.

Not that I'd prefer to see it one way or the other, and keeping the elevation-changing would speak well to the developers' attention to detail, but I won't miss it if its gone.

[TripJack]

Also wasn't there some other SMAC-like in the works or released recently?

yes, Pandora

[Culise]

Deidre quite happily uses mindworms against fellow humans. Mindworms psi-terrify their prey, then burrow into their brains while they're still alive. Morgan is less morally bankrupt than Deidre.

I'd say Sister Miriam is the most moral leader. Even after hundreds of years, she cares about her people. "Uh, do these teleporters teleport souls? I'm not risking sending my people through them."


Tentatively watching this with interest, even though I didn't like Civ V.

Indeed, I'd suggest Miriam's the most moral as well.  The problem's just that she's quite insistent on her particular brand of morality, and won't let anyone else get in her way of delivering that to everyone else on Chiron. 

There are some implications that Lal turns a bit dictatorial in some later tech quotes as he chooses stability over principle, and also that quote about keeping a sample of his wife's cells to remember her by.  Because she didn't share in his faction leader near-immortality treatment for some reason.

The novelization has her get shot in the back by one of Santiago's troops when the situation on the Unity begins to disintegrate. That's the other thing about Lal. He's too....open and friendly for everything that has happened to him. Too pure. Like he's hiding something. Something bad. If I had to add anything to his story it would be something like him knowing about Diedre's plan to sic the mind worms on the Spartans and keeping it under wraps so they all die.

Ah, interesting; I never thought of him as being "too pure."  I always thought that he just reacted to his losses by grabbing hold of the mission and refusing to let go, because that's all he has left after the loss of his wife, the death of the Captain (who seems to have been universally respected), and the disintegration of the Unity crew into bickering factions.  That is to say, he's outwardly open and friendly only because it's his only way to cope with everything that's happened, because that's the way he thinks he has to act to fulfill the Unity's mission and live up to Garland, and if he ever loses that, it will break him.  Uphold the UN Charter, create a New Earth for all the people of the Unity.  His flaws are largely personal, rather than political, and he will sacrifice practicality on the altar of a set of ideals that died on Earth in a heartbeat.  Admittedly, most of the faction leaders will do that in a heartbeat (hence the restricted social policies), but his ideal is the slavish devotion to a mission plan that died with his Captain and the planet it came from.  For all his "vanilla" nature, though, I think he's still among my favourite faction leaders. 

Regarding the game, it seems like an interesting notion, but I'm a bit uncertain.  I'll have to try to approach it on its own merits, but that's not necessarily going to be an easy thing with the legacy of SMAC behind it.  I'll say that I'm cautiously hopeful, though.

[Rez]

p2w,  hopefully they won't do a disservice to the IP.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Ah, interesting; I never thought of him as being "too pure."  I always thought that he just reacted to his losses by grabbing hold of the mission and refusing to let go, because that's all he has left after the loss of his wife, the death of the Captain (who seems to have been universally respected), and the disintegration of the Unity crew into bickering factions.  That is to say, he's outwardly open and friendly only because it's his only way to cope with everything that's happened, because that's the way he thinks he has to act to fulfill the Unity's mission and live up to Garland, and if he ever loses that, it will break him.  Uphold the UN Charter, create a New Earth for all the people of the Unity.  His flaws are largely personal, rather than political, and he will sacrifice practicality on the altar of a set of ideals that died on Earth in a heartbeat.  Admittedly, most of the faction leaders will do that in a heartbeat (hence the restricted social policies), but his ideal is the slavish devotion to a mission plan that died with his Captain and the planet it came from.  For all his "vanilla" nature, though, I think he's still among my favourite faction leaders.

I don't think you're wrong, exactly, it just gives me an uneasiness that he doesn't have open flaws like the others. The worst thing we actually find out about him is that he has a creepy obsession with making a clone of his wife, which while kind of bad is just another notch in the "holy fuck we're getting kind of powerful now" tree that is SMAC's tech progression.

Regarding the game, it seems like an interesting notion, but I'm a bit uncertain.  I'll have to try to approach it on its own merits, but that's not necessarily going to be an easy thing with the legacy of SMAC behind it.  I'll say that I'm cautiously hopeful, though.

I think they're off to a good start for reclaiming SMAC's depth with the differing paths. If they're doing what I think they're doing, it's being partly framed as a civilization-scale coping mechanism for, you know, losing your homeworld. Purity is "make things like it didn't happen, preserve humanity as it is, denial, denial, big guns, and denial", Harmony is "accept the world as it is and try not to fuck up this time", and Supremacy is "change so that we're immune to such things, damned be the consequences".

What I'm most curious about is the Emancipation ending. Who are you fighting back on Earth, and why? They built you a spaceship when you left, what happened in the meantime that would necessitate this kind of reaction?

[Rez]

I'm not up on the philosophy behind Lal, but, to me, he always embodied the tyranny of the majority and the last gasps of and grasps at power by the UN.