Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Studio	Firaxis Games
Publisher	Electronic Arts (Win) Aspyr Media (Mac) Loki Software (Linux)
Erstveröffent- lichung	Windows: February 12, 1999 February 17, 1999 Mac OS: February 2000 March 10, 2000 Linux: August 2010
genre	Turn-based strategy game
Game mode	Single player , multiplayer
control	Keyboard , mouse
medium	CD-ROM , download
language	English , German
Current version	4.0 (1999) SMAC / X Patch 1.0 (2010, fan patch )
Age rating	USK

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri ( SMAC ) is a turn-based computer game by Firaxis Games from 1999, which is in the tradition of the Sid Meier’s Civilization series. Thematically, it connects to one of the possible game goals of the classic Civilization title: the dispatch of a spaceship to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system . Instead of civilizations, in this game you lead one of seven splinter groups that have formed from the crew of the spaceship.

Also in 1999 appeared with Alien Crossfire (SMAX) the only expansion to Alpha Centauri , which adds seven additional groupings to the game, including two factions that belong to an extraterrestrial species.

Backstory

According to the story of the game, humanity is on the verge of extinction due to wars , plagues , famines and other disasters on earth. However, the United Nations manages to send a colonization spaceship, the Unity , to the Alpha Centauri system, where an Earth-like planet called Chiron was discovered; it is hoped that the most eminent representatives of mankind will be able to build a better civilization there.

As the Unity , which left Earth in 2060, approaches Alpha Centauri in 2100 , the ship malfunctions and key officers are awakened from a cold slumber. While the crew is trying to repair the damage, Captain Garland is murdered. Due to the critical damage of the Unity , all seven leaders of the ship - along with like-minded crew members - escape in escape pods and land on Chiron. These seven, who belong to completely different character traits and political convictions, are now starting to compete to found a new society according to their ideology - and thus to lead humanity once again to factionalism and war.

Gameplay

The entire game takes place on a planet surface, shown in isometric plan view , which is divided into square fields by a grid as in the Civilization series. These can be of different types (e.g. sea level, precipitation, forests, rocks, fungus). Bases and units only ever occupy one space, the latter only move across the map in boxes.

The player takes on the role of the leader of one of the seven factions and is supposed to develop this into the dominant power on the planet. The strategy to achieve this goal can be chosen freely. The game mechanics are based on the four principles of “discover”, “conquer”, “explore” and “build” .

• Under Discover the exploration of the new planet goes in search of new resources, settlement sites, spaceship artifacts and native life forms.
• Conquering is self-explanatory - if the player's faction meets other factions and an agreement on the extensive diplomacy system is not possible, wars arise with a large variety of freely designable combat units.
• The exploration of new technology drives the gameplay forward significantly: The steerable by the player in different directions scientific progress allows new military units, basic improvements and even new forms of society.
• The erection finally includes the establishment of bases whose expansion with extensive improvements and the utilization of natural resources of the planet ( "Terraforming").

Other special features of the game are the so-called "social technology" system, with which the social structure of the faction can be comprehensively influenced; the interaction with the semi-conscious indigenous life form, the so-called fungus, which forms a network spanning the planet; as well as the extensive scientific and philosophical quotation collections in the "Datalinks", an in-game help and information system.

There are different possibilities to play against human players (simultaneously or one after the other in the network , play by email , hot seat ).

Victory conditions

To end the game, the player can choose between four forms of victory: military conquest of the entire planet; the scientific victory (reaching transcendence , a new level of human consciousness); diplomatic victory through election as “commander in chief” of the planet; economic victory through extensive control of the planetary energy market.

In the expansion, the aliens can achieve what is known as the ancestral victory. H. the summoning of an alien navy.

Groupings

In the basic version

The following fractions are available:

• Planet University (elite scientific organization under Provost Prokhor Zakharov)
• Gaia's Stepdaughters (Green Pacifists under Lady Deirdre Skye)
• Peacekeepers (successor of the UN under the envoy Pravin Lal)
• Morgan Industries (capitalists under CEO Nwabudike Morgan)
• Sparta Coalition (militarist alliance under Colonel Corazón Santiago)
• The Lord's Believers (Christian sect under Sister Miriam Godwinson)
• The collective spirit (totalitarian police state under chairman Sheng-Ji Yang)

In the extension

For Alpha Centauri there is an expansion called Alien Crossfire ( SMAX ), in which, among other things, another seven factions have been introduced, two of which are of extraterrestrial origin:

• The Nautilus Pirates (naval experts under Captain Ulrik Svensgaard)
• Die Datenengel (hacker group under data expert Sinder Roze)
• The cult of the planet (transcendent under Prophet Cha Dawn)
• The cybernetic consciousness (cyborgs with primary function Aki Zeta-Fünf)
• The free drones (worker revolutionaries under Master Domai)
• The Manifold Administrators (Conservative Aliens under Caretaker Lular H'minee [Aliens])
• The Manifold Usurpers (Rebel aliens under usurper Judaa Marr [aliens])

Others

• The fictional planet in the game is called Chiron (Latin and English form of Cheiron ), its two moons are called Pholus and Nessus . Thus, these celestial bodies are all named after centaurs in Greek mythology .
• The story of the colonization of the planet is told in small subtexts in the game in the form of a short story.
• The logical structure of the technologies, which are mostly based on today's scientific and philosophical theories, is also remarkable. These are presented in short quotations and explanatory texts.
• The game has a configuration mechanism for military units, in which the type of weapon (land, air, naval unit or cultivated native way of life) and equipment (weapons, armor, etc.) of the units can be determined by the player himself. According to the manufacturer, this results in 32,000 possible design variants.
• There is a SMAC source volume on the GURPS role-playing game system .
• The original color palette of the planet to be colonized meant that players who suffer from red-green visual impairment could hardly distinguish between different types of terrain. Therefore an alternative color palette for the graphics of the game was released with the expansion "Alien Crossfire".

Web links

• Website of the manufacturer (English)
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri at MobyGames (English)
• English StrategyWiki with instructions for the game (stump of an article)
• German fansite
• Game test by PC Player magazine, issue 3/99

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scient: Unofficial SMAC / X Patches Version 1.0 ( English ) www.civgaming.net. May 8, 2010. Archived from the original on July 3, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 14, 2011: “ This is a comprehensive set of fixes to bugs, crashes, and exploits found in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC) and Alien Crossfire (SMAX). The primary goal of this project is to try and fix all the bugs left after the official patches. " 
2. ↑ kyrub: SMAC 444 (AI experiment) ( English ) rpgcodex.com. March 11, 2011. Retrieved February 25, 2012: “ This is an experimental AI patch for SMAC for anybody who still loves and plays this old game. The patch tries to fix the most obvious AI flaws with as little work as possible. [...] All this was combined with scientist's excellent (unofficial) patch. I decided to put back the total unit 2048 limit, since scientist's version crashed the game. "
3. ↑ Web presence of the game at www.firaxis.com ( Memento of the original from January 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 24, 2011.