I've released version 1.26 of my extensive mod for SMAC. I don't have a reputation high enough to give you a URL for it, so I'll just tell you how to find it yourself. Go to Alphacentauri2 dot info, the last bastion of substantial community for this game. Go to the Forum section, to the Modding section, and look for my "SMACX AI Growth mod". If someone with more rep than myself wants to reply with a proper link, I'd be much obliged.

I've attached a screenshot of my new Social Engineering Choices table, to give you a feel of just one aspect of the mod. Ordinarily I'd put it as a splashy screenshot at the top of my post, but the text editor on this forum doesn't have that capability. We shall make do!

I'm on an "at least 1 month between releases" development cycle now. If you tried out 1.25, here is a summary of what has changed since then:

- Social engineering choices all start at Tier 3 now instead of Tier 2, and have Secret Projects associated with them, so the AI isn't going to trade them with you. Except Democracy, which remains at Tier 2 because it's useless early on anyways.
- The Explore path in the tech tree aims straight at learning how to make mindworms, so that PLANET friendly factions can get started with their mode of conquest.
- Early armors are spread out over the tech tree instead of all being clumped together. Synthmetal Armor is back to being a Tier 1 tech. Lasers are strength 2 again and are a Tier 2 tech.
- The Discover path in the tech tree is shortened, so that RESEARCH oriented factions can start building advanced labs more quickly.
- Some combat variables are tweaked to make the game more tactical and less annoying. For instance, Sensor Arrays now give a +50% defense bonus instead of +25%. If you want to fortify your defenses, build Sensor Arrays where enemy artillery can't hit them.
- Added various predefined units.

If you haven't tried my mod before at all, get full details on my home site as per above! Lots of changes, all for the better. This is not amateur hour diddling, this is professional grade game design. 4.5 PERSON MONTHS of work to pull this off so far, and still counting. Try it!

There will be a 1.27 release in January. I'm speeding up ships, making Needlejets have greater range, and probably putting Orbital Insertion much earlier in the tech tree. My mod is designed around Huge maps to give the AI factions enough room to expand and create a more substantial challenge. Various units feel way too slow and cumbersome on that size of map. I also think orbital drop warfare is somewhat interesting. It's my policy to push "interesting stuff" earlier in the tree, so that it actually gets used in the game instead of forgotten about. I push "boring stuff" later in the tree, mainly bigger weapons and armor.

Thank you for all this hard work. I wanted you to know that I am really enjoying them.


Did I need a fresh folder for 1.26 or can i just dump it on top of 1.25 folder and start a new game?

It's great to see that modding is still alive for this now nearly twenty years old gem of a 4X game. The changes described all make sense and adress many gameplay issues present in the unmodded game. I'm really tempted to give this a try - in fact the only thing holding me back is the incompatibility to the unoffical patches, which fix some annoying bugs. So it feels a bit like a trade-off between having bug fixes and balancing/gameplay improvements (though a voice in my head whispers that your mod is probably the better deal in the long run…:-) I supect that it's probably technically just not possible to build on the unofficial patches and I don't intend to make you great effort smaller in any way...it's just the feeling that combining both would be far more then sum of both parts.

Which bugs annoy you the most? I'm not seeing any really annoying bugs in my own play lately.

I used to have some lockup stuff that I thought had something to do with Secret Project videos. I had them turned off for the longest time, but I turned them back on the other day, to help someone else diagnose some problem. I didn't have any lockups at all, no issues. A fairly current version of Windows 10, although not bleeding edge, and the current GOG version of the game. I always recommend the GOG version to solve problems, as it often seems to resolve them in the real world. Whatever compatibility work they did, it was a good job, and worth the $1.50..$6.00 you might pay for the game.

Historically, the Interceptor crash bug was the big one for me. When a Penetrator attacks and an Interceptor tries to do its job, the game would crash. I just learned not to defend my front line bases with Interceptors, but instead use them as a counter force 1 line of cities behind. To be honest the AI hasn't been able to mount any kind of serious air campaign against me in a long time, so as a matter of circumstance, the point is moot. Scient's patch should work, because he didn't do anything stupid in the alphax.txt file. You'd need to do my alphax.txt of course, and not his.

Yitzi did a very small number of stupid things in alphax.txt that make it incompatible. They are entirely resolveable. However, someone has to actually do the gruntwork of resolving them. Someone did do the gruntwork for a bit, but only for his own purposes. He never had the discipline to make a public release for other people's benefit. In fairness, I expressly made it a policy that someone else would have to do this gruntwork, not me. I knew that I'd be changing alphax.txt very frequently, and I wasn't going to get into doubling my workload.

The correct solution has always been to write an automated script to handle the differences, so that people don't have to keep manually changing stuff. But nobody's had an "open source disciplinarian" attitude and been willing to take on this small amount of gruntwork. Yitzi's patch isn't worth anything to me, in particular it doesn't improve AI capability, and it fixes bugs I'm not being bothered by anyways. The reality is Yitzi's work is slowly dying because he disappeared and nobody's stepped up to take on the maintenance job. Anyone could package it up properly, but nobody does so.

The PRACX graphics patch does not mess with gameplay stuff like alphax.txt and should work just fine.

Any other .exe patches, YMMV. I have no experience.

For my part, I will be putting my energy into a new commercial gaming effort that I can someday make money from, rather than these futzy old maintenance issues. I think my mod plays just fine without any patches at all, and there's nothing stopping anyone from installing multiple different games on their machine.