Is Alien Crossfire worth it?

[SpideyBat]

I got Alpha Centauri for $20.00 two weeks ago and I LOVE it! I went to the some stores to get Alien Crossfire and to my suprise it costs $30!!! I don't have as much money as I like to, but is it worth it to get Alien Crossfire, or is it really no different than SMAC?

[Joe Bourque]

Well, I'd wait until it came down to 20$ as well. I paid the same amount (30$) for each of them, and while I think the Crossfire package is cool, its dosn't make enough overwhelming changes to rush out and grab right away. It did add some nifty stuff, and I liked the new factions though. Maybe you could download the Crossfire demo and see what you think.

Joe
[This message has been edited by Joe Bourque (edited April 20, 2000).]

definately. it adds a whole other half dimension to the game.

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And the women once proud Clutched the heart of the crowd
As the boulders smashed down from the mountain's hand
And the Magic in the stare Of the Wild Eyed Boy said
"Stop, Freecloud They won't think to cut me down"

[EternalSpark]

Here is why I don't think I'll be buying SMACX -

1) I can't use ACE edit, I gotta use a like internal (and buggy) program to do so.

2) The HSA ain't foolproof anymore.

3) Some of the "new" factions are rehashes of old ones. There is a "Alien Gaian" faction and a "Alien Morgan" faction... another Human Gaian faction. Bleh.

[SpideyBat]

Alright guys, thanks...I knew I should have just waited for the price to go down on the expansion. Instead I used the money to get a Nine Inch Nails CD (good band). The original SMAC is good enough anyway. Why get more factions when you can download them online?

[Qilue]

There are other things besides new factions, abilities, native units, techs, weapons, armour, missles, unit graphics and facilities.

Granted, you can download new factions off internet, but Alien crossfire comes with more base graphics. Also, AKAIK, there's no v5 patch for SMAC yet and the v2 patch for Alien Crossfire fixes some recurring bugs from SMAC. The speed of cavier graphics has also had a slight improvement although it can still seem like a slide show sometimes.

[jed]

There was one bug in SMAC that was finally fixed in Alien Crossfire v2.0 that convinced me to buy it. On Transcend or Thinker levels the maintenance costs of facilities were 1/3 or 2/3 of what they should have been respectively. Drove me crazy to know this was being calculated wrongly, until I couldn't play SMAC anymore. But anyways I think Alien Crossfire is a lot nicer, even playing with the original 7 factions. The game is somewhat more balanced and I get the impression that the AI is slightly better.
I like the new native life forms, the new ocean-based stuff, etc. I definitely think it was worth the $30 I paid for it, but of course that's just me.

[Master Marcus]

Yes, since that maintenance cost bug is fixed, I can say Alien Crossfire is really a worthy expansion and at Thinker & Transcend & STANDARD maps, the game challenge is much improved - highly recommended for hybrid players. However I guess the upgrades may have less impact for pacifist builders on huge maps. I still consider that map size is the most important customizable option, meaning the most repercussion upon the challenge.

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The art of mastering:"la Maîtrise des caprices du subconscient avant tout".

[Basil]

Thank you for pointing that bug out to me - yuck . But you can fix it in SMAC yourself, although the fix is ugly - just make a copy of alpha.txt (for future low-difficulty games) and then go into alpha.txt and triple the maintenance costs of all the facilities. This doesn't work perfectly, partly because the game calculates the maintenance costs of command centers dynamically, ignoring the value in alpha.txt, and partly because all your reports show the wrong numbers, but better the reports show the wrong numbers than that all your facilities be practically free on the "highest" difficulty level.

Then you have to make a third alpha.txt if you want to play at Thinker level, too .

I have SMACX, and have played it a few times, although my current game is using SMAC. Which raises the question in this thread, "If someone with SMACX is playing SMAC, why buy it?", and I don't regret buying SMACX at all. I like some of the new features very much - flechette defences, covert ops centers - but I don't like others because they seem to me "overpowered" (the various sea improvements, the brood pits) they make Planet too easy an environment for human survival for *my* taste, which is why I was playing SMAC again.

Some of the new factions are very interesting, far from just clones of the originals, but they seem to me overpowered compared to the original 7, which detracts from playability. I don't know why Firaxis did that, or is this just me and do other people think they're balanced?

[jed]

Basil,
I tried messing with the alpha.txt to fix the maintenance bugs myself, but it was never completely satisfactory, at least partly for the reasons that you point out. There might have been more, I can't remember, but I finally gave up in disgust. I was even more upset when Alien Crossfire first came out with the same bug, but at least they finally fixed it in v2.0.

I think it's good that the new factions are more powerful than the old. You can play with one of the old ones against the new for greater challenge. Of course, that's not great enough challenge for many. I think an interesting way to increase the challenge even more is to edit the factions to further boost your enemies.

You can see my suggestions along these lines in the strategy section under Korn's thread about a new challenge and comparison game.