Realy newbie question

[Samson]

I have just bought a copy on SMAC really cheap, 'cos I had heard such good things about it. It came with no manual. I have played all the civs to a fairly high level, and it definatly does remind me of Civ 2.

The main question I have it how do I set reaserch to a particular tech? I have found Lab status, f2, and that does not seem to actually do anything. I can set the general direction of reaserch with Shift-R but that does not help me much as I do not know what techs that means.

An on-line manual or tech tree would be great.

Thank for any help. I may well undate this thread with new questions as they arise.

 

[Zibong]

One of the options before starting a game is for explicitly selecting research goals. If you check that option, you can specifically choose which tech to research next. If you do not select that option before starting, you're left with the more abstract research fields to allocate points into.

Being a Civ 2 veteran myself, I actually ended up restarting my very first SMAC game because of this. Once you're used to the tech options in the game, the more abstact research methods can be quite enjoyable, as it throws a random element into the works.

 

[Zibong]

By the way, your CD has an electronic manual on it, but if I recall correctly, there's no actual tree in it (like the poster for Civ 2, or the Science Advisor screens for Civ 3), just a list of available techs. There's the in-game Datalinks, but that's hardly an improvement over the manual

 

[aaglo]

Yep, when you begin a game, you get to select the game rules.
Just remove "blind research", and you can strive for specific techs just like in civ.