My favorite thing about SMAC...

[PrinceBimz]

I think my favorite thing about SMAC has to be the Unit Workshop What is yours?

[WhiteElephants]

I concur, and having played Civ 2 quite a bit I also really like the Social Engineering choices as opposed to the bland governments available in Civ. My hope is that this will carry over to Civ 3 as well as the unit workshop.

[XWaste]

I like the idea of the unit workshop, but it still needs some tweaking to make it fun to use. I really think the development of the game, with its well realised factions (even though a lacking diplomacy fails to capture their potential) and storyline that revolves around the environment you are in, is the games strong point.

[Helium Pond]

I went back and played a little Civ II, and the thing I missed most was the Social Engineering. The combination of the Social Engineering and the faction differences really make the game change depending on who you're playing.

While I like the Unit Workshop, it suffers from exceedingly poor interface design.

[VoodooChild]

The concept of the workshop is very nice and I really appreciate the felxibility to make my own weapons, but the application needs a little work. At some point in the game I usually have to do spring cleaning and remove all those units I dont play with. With all those slots this can be a annoyance and interupts the flow of the game. If I delete them as they come in then every new tech I learn they all appear again and again.

I also enjoy the flexibility of the SEs and the impact within the game.

[Fitz]

Turn off the option to autodesign new units. This only works in SP though. I usually leave auto obselete on though.

[Helium Pond]

You can turn off the autodesign in MP, I'm pretty sure. I've been playing some PBEM games that haven't autodesigned units. The thing is, MP only keeps one set of preferences for the game, so if you turn autodesign off, someone else may be turning it back on. If everybody agrees on settings, though, you can keep them the same as any SP game.