Note on the nicknames: in violet is Brian Reynolds (Brian_), of Firaxis; in grey are the operators, Daniel Quick (DanQ), Markos Giannopoulos (MarkG) and Derek Lande(Akula), as well as everyone else in the unmoderated part of the chat..

*** Akula sets mode: +m
[Akula] THE CHANNEL IS NOW MODERATED
[Akula] A REMINDER IF YOU WANT QUESTIONS ASKED SEND THEM TO THE OP @QUESTIONS
[DanQ] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
[DanQ] As you know, tonight's moderatrs are myself, MarkG (Markos) and akula (Derek).
[DanQ] Welcome, Brian! We appreciate this opportunity to chat with you tonight.
[Brian_] Hi!
[DanQ] As you may or may not be aware, we will start off by having questions previously submitted asked of Brian. first.
[DanQ] These were questions submitted to us by email over the past week or so.
[DanQ] At any time, as Derek said, you can send q's anytime to @questions
[Brian_] Filtered, I hope ... ;-)
[DanQ] LOL
[DanQ] And now, tonight's first question. Ready Brian?
[DanQ] :)
[Brian_] Sure!
[DanQ] This question comes to us a from a Mr. George Williams.
[DanQ] "Why don't computer opponents use SAM weapons. I have never lost a base to a computer opponent because I simply stick a plane or two outside my base and the computer player marches his useless land units around in circles until they get dizzy."
[Brian_] In version 3.0, the computer is a lot better at anti-air tactics.
[DanQ] Excellent!
[Brian_] We found the AI was having some problems...
[Brian_] dealing with player air forces, so we worked on that for enhancement 3.
[Brian_] (done)
[DanQ] Again, for those just joining us, please send your questions to @questions
[DanQ] Question #2. This one is from Sean Broderick:
[DanQ] "SMAC is well known to be the unofficial sequal to CIV2. Where do you guys intend to take the line? Could there be a possibility of taking the SMAC style to a multi planetary scope? Thank you, Mr. Reynolds."
[Brian_] ...
[Brian_] You mean kind of a "Master of Orion" style game in the SMAC universe? ...
[DanQ] It was not specified, but that was my interpretation.
[Brian_] That's definitely something we'd consider (and perhaps are considering...)
[Brian_] Sorry, that was a rhetorical question ;-)
[DanQ] * crawls into little hole *
[DanQ] heh heh
[Brian_] (done)
[DanQ] Question #3. It's length, but here it goes (from MadMordigan):
[DanQ] "Presumably, all ways to win this game, other than Trancendance, represent a unification of humanity in preparation for Trancendance in the future. In other words, even if the world is conquered, or subjegated, humanity will still have to reckon with Planet. Why is there not an option to kill Planet..."
[DanQ] "...(ie, Poison, root out or otherwise annahilate native life and its conciousness along with it). Is this based on the premise that it would be impossible to practically accomplish? Or is it based on the premise that no faction, regardless of how radically humanist, could bring itself to persue such an adgenda?
[Brian_] ...
[Brian_] Heh heh.
[Brian_] When I was writing the story, I wrote the Transcendence part first...
[Brian_] The Transcendence method is of course the "prime" method, and is favored in the victory conditions...
[Brian_] Obviously "transcending to a higher life form" is a significantly greater achievement than ...
[Brian_] wiping everyone and everything else out, especially if that means losing your chance at transcending later...
[Brian_] So anyway, I decided to leave it a little vague in the other endings...
[Brian_] Once you've won (by essentially eliminating or otherwise coopting everyone else)...
[Brian_] it's presumed you can either concentrate on transcendence at that point...
[Brian_] or you can cohabit with planet without transcending...
[Brian_] or planet can wipe you out... :-)
[Brian_] or you could wipe planet out, which I would consider a "loss", since you'd probably end up with catastrophic environmental consequences.
[Brian_] (done!)
[DanQ] Thank you!
[Brian_] Ask a big question, get a big answer. :-)
[DanQ] Understandably!
[DanQ] Now, from ISiddiqui...
[DanQ] "Where specifically did the idea for the living planet come from?"
[Brian_] By the way, let me interject that "Imran Siddiqui" wins the prize for "name of actual person I'd most like to have used...
[Brian_] as a faction leader name"... (that is, if I'd thought of it!)...
[Brian_] Anyway, getting to the question...
[DanQ] {smile}
[Brian_] I think my biggest single inspiration for the SMAC story was (as I've mentioned elsewhere)...
[Brian_] a book called "The Jesus Incident" by Frank Herbert...
[Brian_] That featured humans trying to survive on a -really- hostile planet...
[Brian_] And there was a mysterious "hallucinogenic kelp" which grew in all the oceans...
[Brian_] And kept the powerful tides under control...
[Brian_] Turned out it was intelligent...
[Brian_] Incidentally (interesting w/ regard to last question) humans wiped it out ;-)
[Brian_] Anyway, that was certainly one of the big inspirations for it; others too, I'm sure; and the rest I just, well, thought of myself :-)
[Brian_] (done)
[Akula] +How much did Sid contribute to the design of SMAC? And what did he contribute?
[Akula] Thats from War_
[Brian_] ...
[Brian_] Well, most of you know that at Firaxis, Sid and I swap out in the "lead designer" role, ...
[Brian_] while the other of us works on prototypes for future games...
[Brian_] So anyway, during Alpha, Sid spent a lot of time prototyping future projects...
[Brian_] And also played SMAC a lot and made suggestions...
[Brian_] He was most interested in the early game and how to make it engrossing...
[Brian_] Also in finding ways to make the science fiction tech tree (etc) less mysterious.
[Brian_] (done)
[Akula] And from Master381 - Why wasn't your name put on the top of the packaging?
[Brian_] That's more of a marketing question, I guess...
[Brian_] Since we'd just changed organizations, we wanted to make sure all of our fans...
[Brian_] knew where we'd gone and what we were doing...
[Brian_] This was especially important given that the trademark we'd most often been...
[Brian_] associated with was being very publicly fought over in the courts...
[Brian_] So anyway, think of "Sid Meier's" as a stamp of approval.
[Brian_] (done)
[Akula] And from Unknown_Object - Did you get any ideas from popular Sci-Fi Such as Star Trek/Star Wars
[Brian_] Not so many...
[Brian_] We wanted a fairly plausible near future world...
[Brian_] Something that you could say "gee, we might actually be able to do that in 100-200 years"...
[Brian_] So we didn't go with much of the "space opera" stuff like Star Trek/Wars.
[Brian_] (done)
[DanQ] Starchild asks:
[DanQ] "Brian, where did you get the idea for a sentient planet (Chiron)?"
[Brian_] Didn't we already do that question (from Imran)?
[DanQ] My apologies. A dupe.
[Akula] Ok, the faction leaders, are their images based on any real actors
[Akula] Again from the Unknown Obkect
[DanQ] Just a quick interjection as a reminder, for those just arriving please send your questions to @questions
[DanQ] Thank you.
[Brian_] I don't think so; Jerome Atherholt (our portrait artist)...
[Brian_] is a really talented painter--don't you think?
[Brian_] (done)
[Akula] Did you design any other factions that were dropped or replaced form the game
[Akula] And if yes, what were the like?
[Brian_] I wouldn't so much way that we designed other factions...
[Brian_] But on the other hand some of the ones we do have have evolved quite a bit...
[Brian_] The Peacekeepers were originally more like the "Keepers of Wisdom" or something like that...
[Brian_] And had various bonuses relating to knowledge... In the end we changed them to make them more different from Zakharov...
[Brian_] The Hive was always about the same idea, but was originally called the Labyrinth...
[Brian_] But it's powers have changed radically through the different versions...
[Brian_] We knew we wanted an evil atheist dictator, but we weren't quite sure what that would mean...
[Brian_] as far as game effects...
[Brian_] Morgan has always been about the same, with various tunings to his power...
[Brian_] At one point he used to earn interest on all his saved money...
[Brian_] That was -way- too powerful...
[Brian_] Corazon Santiago was originally Joaquim Ortega (a man), but otherwise same idea...
[Brian_] Believers have been through a few name changes...
[Brian_] And have a much better power now than originally...
[Brian_] Deirdre has been around pretty much forever...
[Brian_] But only towards the end did we have the "eureka" idea of letting her capture...
[Brian_] mind worms and so forth.
[Brian_] (done)
[Brian_] Oh,
[Brian_] By the way...
[Brian_] I should mention on the topic of factions (and faction pictures)... that we're working on some...
[Brian_] cool new ones. Can't say much more than that, though.
[Brian_] (really done this time)
[MarkG] Now, speaking of factions...
[MarkG] are we going to see a factions editor from Firaxis?
[MarkG] and perhaps a rules one?
[Brian_] There will definitely be a faction editor of some variety or another...
[Brian_] We were pretty impressed with ACEdit, though...
[MarkG] No need then? :)
[Brian_] Well, we'll talk more, and may talk to the ACEdit guys...
[Brian_] Not sure about rules editor... Personally I find such things more clumsy than they're worth...
[Brian_] You know, give me a good text editor any day of the week...
[Brian_] But I know others feel differently...
[Brian_] Anyway, there will definitely be some cool stuff...
[Brian_] I lean slightly toward adding more rule variants and special parts...
[Brian_] of the game system, rather than a rules editor to configure the existing stuff...
[MarkG] Special parts?
[Brian_] Since the existing stuff can be roughly configured already.
[Brian_] (done)
[MarkG] Special parts?
[Brian_] Special parts...
[MarkG] oh :)
[Brian_] I mean new...
[Brian_] additions, maybe a new creature, a new kind of weapon, something like that...
[Brian_] (done)

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