I have been reading about the prevalence of atrocities in MP games. It seems logical, considering that the players would not be concerned about the well-being of the people since there are no people. However, it is not realistic and it results in overly militaristic games (I gather. I have not played much on MP except against myself, in which case I always lose, but peacefully.) I believe I have a deep and innovative solution to this. I bet nobody has EVER thought of this before, and I will revolutionize the SMAC multiplayer WORLD!!!
PBEM No atrocities allowed. How 'bout it?
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I do not want to get as crazy as Hydro's prose game (although I wouldn't mind doing something like that) but I do want to have a game where people play their faction personalities like they were meant to be played. It pains me to see Lal go Fundy and Miriam go Democratic, but how do you play Deirdre and forego Planned in favor of Green? Do you really need +6 Efficiency? Do you really want that growth penalty? The only reason to convert to Green as Deirdre is to help capture mindworms so you can kill people. That's not very good role-playing, after all. So I have a theory - a fledgling theory, but a theory:
All factions do not experience the negative effects of their preferred social choice.
For Lal, Miriam, Deirdre, and Yang this is fine. You can consider Santiago's preference to be Power, so that is fine, too. But Zakharov already is immune to the negative effects of Knowledge, unless he uses Thought Control, since -2 Probe is the same as -4 Probe. I considered giving him another bonus to compensate, since he is going to use Knowledge anyway. I thought +1 Support would do it, but that is kind of arbitrary. The other problem is Morgan. Negating the negative effects of Free Market economics is downright ridiculous. Is it possible to partially negate the effects of a Social Engineering choice? I thought FM could cause -3 Planet, -2 Police for Morgan, if that were possible, but I think it isn't. Anyway you could make Morgan immune to the negative effects of Wealth, but he is going to pick wealth anyhow unless he already picked FM, which would be kind of silly. But it is workable. So... tell me what you think.
