Two questions from a long-time SMACX fan

[Ermelloth]

Dear SMACX fans,

Perhaps you would enlighten an old-time player. I still play SMACX for a while, and really love it, but there are two things that keep "bugging" me through. Perhaps you could help me out?

1. I play only on Transcend difficulty, but roll custom maps (standard short maps are boring), cause I like to play with endgame technologies. But the time limit set in the game is killing much of the fun.

Is there a possibility to extend / remove the time limit beyond n.y.2500?

2. There is an annoying bug in the game, which occurs when AI uses the "designate defender" script, deploying his needlejets with "Air Superiority" special ability. This causes the game to crush, and there is nothing I can do other than replay several turns so such situation won't happen. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.

How to get rid of that super annoying bug?

Thanks in advance,
Erm

 

[Petek]

Hey Ermelloth,

Welcome to CFC and the Alpha Centauri forum.

1. To extend the ending year, open your Alpha(x).txt file in Notepad (or some other text editor) and locate the following lines:

2600     ; Normal ending year for lowest 3 difficulty levels
2500     ; Normal ending year for highest 3 difficulty levels

Change the values to whatever you like (within reason) and save the file. I set my ending year to 3000 and that works fine.

2. This bug is usually called the interceptor crash bug. It (and other bugs) is fixed in the so-called unofficial patches. See this thread for more information. I suggest that, for now, you download and install this patch. That's the original unofficial patch by scient. It consists entirely of bug fixes. The other unofficial patches (which build upon scient's patch) fix some additional bugs and also change game play. You can read about the other patches and decide whether you want to install them.

Hope you find this information helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Ermelloth]

Thanks a lot, Petek!

I was lucky to find these forums. Never expected that SMACX still has so many fans after nearly 14 years