#smac

[anheliotrope]

Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang: If you really loved me, or humanity, at all, you would nerve staple yourself and show yourself to the nearest anguish factory.

Colonel Corazón Santiago: I think we should hurt people during boot camp more. It would build character.

Provost Zakharov: I must directly cause the extinction of every mind worm species despite knowing that the planet is sentient and self-aware and will collectively like humanity less for this. I fucking love science.

Lady Diedre Skye: The mind worms will rape us less frequently if we pollute less.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan: We're managing to sell more holosims of the recent war than the war is costing us so it's impossible to say if the war is morally good or bad on net.

Commissioner Pravin Lal: I think we should improve things somewhat.

Sister Miriam Godwinson: God himself reached out to me in a vision and told me that building fully automated nanobot thought police would be bad.

[light4chiron]

Happy Birthday, Deirdre Skye!

Deirdre Skye is born on this day, the 28th of May 2025.

Deirdre is the leader one of the more popular factions, and with good reason. Gaia’s Stepdaughters are fun to play, sympathetic (bad enough that Chiron is already Planet B for humanity, they don’t want yet another planet trashed, but they also care about people), and, from the flavour text, the closest the game has to a protagonist faction.

I’ve posted a drabble to commemorate this occasion.

However, the best way to celebrate is of course to work on protecting our own planet, Earth.

[absenceofgravitas]

revisiting the old games and remembering how the SMAC expansion got kinda goofy with the factions

[amazingfuntime]

Spartan impact infantry concept for Alpha Centauri

So I thought the martial philosophy of the Spartans might lead to some implications in their clothing and weaponry. Armour plates offer advanced protection, and the large-bore impact gun is perfect for target shooting in Chiron's atmosphere. The Spartan soldier is trained to a keen edge and equipped to fight the bloodiest struggles. But of what use is armour plate and an impact cannon against a boil of mindworms? The Spartan soldier is a perfect anachronism, as the Gaians would discover.

I sketched this when I saw a brilliant helmet in the background of an Adam Savage video on YT. It was probably a German helmet from the world wars, made up and modeled to for a sci-fi prop. Got me thinking about martial cultures in sci-fi. It's inspo for my crude impression of it here.

[siliziumtraeume]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is such a good game to this day

[the-hittite]

Chairman Yang told me mind worms keep eating his bases so I asked how many bases he has and he said he just builds a colony pod and gets a new one afterwards so I said it sounds like he's just feeding colonists to mind worms and then his drones started crying

[laikacomehome]

This week in I Can’t Stop Playing:

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999)

I played this game endlessly as a kid! I saw it on GoG for $2.50 yesterday and decided to jump in and never look back.

I’d forgotten how much personality it has!! The sort of “Dark Star Trek” tone marries so perfectly to a 4x game. Grateful that I can still play it, and that even after 26 years it can still have a death grip on my attention.

[horseabortion69]

Mid development screenshots from Alpha Centauri shown at E3 '97