For the average random citizen, which faction has the best quality of life?

Miriam and Yang hate me and have enough of a population to stop me. Santiago also hates me, but she's less important. I do have the empath guild, though.

University has human experimentation or ignores little things called "Ethics" in their science.

Shit, each HAB Complex for the poor must have their own GLaDOS version.

Hive. Nerve stapled drone is a happy drone.

I remember my most recent game of this. I was Spartan, started off on what I quickly discovered to be an island to where only myself was basically positioned at. So once I fortified my cities a bit I expanded like crazy on that island, went FULL BLAST on resources and science. The University and the Morganites loved me, hell all the PC's loved me as I gave them tons of money in exchange for tech and was peaceful...

Then the Clean Reactor hovertanks started rolling out of my cities. Literally two per turn. At that point the entire map was literally flooded in regenerating tanks that had a mixture of Nerve Gas/AA guns. Everyone turned against me but I didn't a shit. Anytime I got a new tech, I pretty much immediately upgraded my tanks with almost no cost, it was amazing.

Morganites.
Social and Economic freedom for citizens fuel free markets.

>playing SMAC
>making contact with almost everyone
>conflict with Spartans
>mostly peaceful after kicking their teeth in
>sudden realization
>"Where the hell is Yang?"
>send out scouts
>there's another landmass
>mfw

This.

Every single fucking time.

And by the time you find him most of that continent is a Hived up, borehole encrusted hellscape that can brute force all of the problems and with an army that outnumbers everyone else on the map three times over.

Your only hope is to hold out long enough to get Planet Busters.

In order of preference it would be

Peace Keepers
Free Drones / Lord's Believers
Cybernetic Consciousness / Spartans / Hyper Capitalists
University / Hippies / Pirates
Bonus Easter Egg Faction
Death
Hive / Death Cult / Data Angels

>Sci-fi setting
>7 heads of state
>Three men
>None of them are white
I don't want to be that guy, but...

Really, user? Can't we even enjoy SMAC anymore without some assmonger bringing in real-world bullshit?

From the original, Gians, just so long as you aren't SOOOOO unlucky as to be black-bagged and have experiments done to you. Barring that, Lal.

From the expansion: Free Drones, easily.

University ofc

>three men
There are four. The fourth one is white. Shut up and go away.

>A game with various real-world political ideologies can't be discussed in real-world terms
Found the nu-male

>I don't want to be that guy, but...

Are you sure about that?

You don't really know how to count.

In the setting Unity was a publicity stunt to try and get people to stop thinking about how shit earth is, of course none of the rich white western leadership was going to get on, seeing as it was expected to fail. The fact it did sort of suceed is immaterial.

Probably

Deidre/Lal
Miriam
Zhakarov
Santiago
Morgan
Yang

Gians are probably fine if you're a hippie and manage to avoid being turned into mind worm fodder/handlers
Lal is probably fine if you're in the majority
Miriam is probably fine so long as you believe and don't expect to be caught up on the latest techs
Zhakarov is probably only fine if you're very smart
Santiago is probably pretty shit unless you enjoy fighting
Morgan is probably pretty shit unless you're the 1%
Yang is self explanatory

You got a point, but it makes sense for them to be like that, as Chinese, Indians and Negores are the majority of world's population.

>you got a point

No he doesn't. Pic related. He's Russian, the whitest people on the fucking planet.

does Provost look like a bitch to you?

By point i mean that three out of four are non-white. I know that Russians are White, i am a Russian myself.

SMAC/X has been sort of adopted by Veeky Forums as our own, because 1. although I see /v/ threads occasionally the natural home for it would be /vr/ and they don't seem interested in it 2. there's some incredibly solid and compelling worldbuilding/characterization.

It seems to have the tacit approval of the mods and janitors, so it stays.

All of them either come from countries with active space programs in the present day, or have ample-enough excuse to be there regardless. There's literally no reason to question anyone's inclusion, especially if you've read any of the supplementary material.

...

>Missing the point that they are all objectively and legitimately horrific.

All of them come with an arial true type font file that you can't delete which is really fucking annoying.

I mean, Lal gets a little crazy with the genetics when he starts thinking he can get his dead wife back, but his "canon" ideology is basically humanism, democracy, and republicanism. And if you can get over the Gaians weird mind worm buggery, which you have to admit they end up being totally right about, they make carefully cultivated paradises wherein they have tons of free love.

He is status quo, nothing changing, nothing moving, nothing. He's not humanism, he's bureaucracy and popularist.

Deadrie forcibly implants mind raping worms in to the people (Everyone does eventually, but she is the first by a long way). If you do not agree with her hardcore ways of you being second to nature you will be the next victim to mindworms.

>he's bureaucracy and popularist
Those things don't go together. Due process isn't something mobs care for.

Yes they do, bureaucracy is the means by which nothing moves forwards. Popularist is the means by which he stays in power in a democratic society.

>As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.

Freeflow goes both ways, People Government. He's watching you, it is Orwellien.

He's certainly bureaucratic, but for the republican democrat that is how you maintain civic responsibility within society.

What?

A good, efficient government bureaucracy ensures that the civilian population knows who to talk to if they have a problem, that there is someone responsible for solving that problem, and that it is done in such a way that protects the rights and responsibilities of those involved.

It depends. Santiago and Yang seem pretty horrible under any circumstances but most of them could be alright depending on the details.
Someone post the pdf.

Lal: cold socialist hell. intellectual and inclusive, but you have to fill out forms, bribe officials, and wait in line for 6 months to buy groceries or get your teeth cleaned.

Miriam: if you buy into the religion you're probably happy as a pig in shit, despite living in shit.

Santiago: training and competition = fun, discipline = no fun

Dierdre: barefoot goddess-worshipping orgy hippies. unfortunately i like my orgies without sentient fungus.

Zarkhov: annoying anarchist nerds jerking off over the latest videogame forever.

Yang: you work yourself to death for the state, but you're (almost) too ignorant to know there's any alternative.

Morgan: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. probably a lot like america, meaning the median citizen is lower-middle class and believes all his problems are caused by the poor people he's ripping off and not the rich people ripping him off.

i'd probably go with Dierdre or Zarkhov, just like when i play.

>Popularist is the means by which he stays in power in a democratic society.
And the means by which progressives and reactionaries topple the status quo. It goes both ways, but I'm telling you bureaucracy isn't popular and you know it.

>bureaucracy is the means by which nothing moves forwards
Now that's a popular opinion. Bureaucracy is required for any top-down change to occur. It's not something that characterizes just our democratic republics, it's what allowed the centralization of power in despotic monarchs during the early modern age and the effective administration of large empires all over the world. "Bureaucracy=red-tape" is a belief of those with no grounding in history, politics and/or economics.

>A good, efficient government bureaucracy ensures that the civilian population knows who to talk to if they have a problem

This works if the Government is small and lean. But that is not Lal, his is a gross, unwieldy and corpulent government that exists to perpetuate itself. It has no use for the teeming masses of people it creates, all that matters is the vote they cast.

>Lal: cold socialist hell. intellectual and inclusive
It may well be socialist hell but it is not intellectual and inclusive beyond casting your vote I would place it near to the Leftist parties in the US with their rhetoric on what they think is justice (Social and more) despite facts and evidence showing they have a better quality of life than all others.

Given the choices, I would go Morgan. It is the only Meritocracy in which you can excell in a number of fields, the more you are worth the more you can earn. In others it is a narrow field (Miriam Theocracy, Zarkhov Scientific literacy). If you can prove your value, you lift your quality of life.

>This works if the Government is small and lean. But that is not Lal, his is a gross, unwieldy and corpulent government that exists to perpetuate itself. It has no use for the teeming masses of people it creates, all that matters is the vote they cast.
Bureaucracies are all the more needed for larger governments.

Democratic parties (including Republicans, in case the term "democratic" confuses you) all tend to be inclusive because you don't want to alienate voters. To gain voters, you appeal to the interests of your voting base. It doesn't matter if the party doesn't care about the people's interests themselves, as long as they care about gaining the people's support - that requires appealing to their interests.

addendum: i should add that, as others have said, it depends heavily on how you play. i'm assuming things vaguely based on the modifiers you get when you start (for example the game flat-out tells you Lal's bureaucracy is inefficient).

if they ran their countries well, Morgan or Lal would probably be extremely nice leaders.

then again the whole "fuck the environment, let's make money!" philosophy works a lot better on Earth where the environment is not sentient. on Planet living with the Morganites would mean being inside a fancy walled neighborhood with high-tech guards, believing everything is fine, while outside a mountain of mindworms is piling up World War Z style, waiting to get over the walls and rape your brain to death.

>I'm telling you bureaucracy isn't popular and you know it.
Strawman. I know it is not, nowhere did I say it is popular. I said that his Government is a ever-widening bureaucracy. Nobody wants a bureaucracy, except those employed by it.

>"Bureaucracy=red-tape" is a belief of those with no grounding in history, politics and/or economics.

This is incorrect, very incorrect. There is not a single case of a Western democracy giving up oversight once they aquire it, not a single case of a Western democracy giving up any power once it has aquired it, the staff and those employed by it is ever growing, even when population rates go down. This is true in history and modern day. The EU began as a econimic union but swelled and grew coruplent and became a very strong political union and akin to a Federal government to the majority of Europe.

I do not deplore Democracy, by any means, it has given the best standard of life by generations.

LOL show me on the doll where the mean liberals touched you

When I said that, I meant it would akin to placed like India.

It kinda looks like an old lesbian

It's true tho. Wage gap, minority descrimination, police bias, instituionalized racism. None of it exists.

That is not to say that there are not racists, mythanthropes and under payed women but they are such a tiny tiny percentage that if they ever acted on it they would have their life ruined. All statistics prove this with no evidence to show otherwise.

>Slavs
>White

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_bureaucracy_and_aristocracy

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union

>There is not a single case of a Western democracy giving up oversight once they aquire it, not a single case of a Western democracy giving up any power once it has aquired it, the staff and those employed by it is ever growing, even when population rates go down. This is true in history and modern day. The EU began as a econimic union but swelled and grew coruplent and became a very strong political union and akin to a Federal government to the majority of Europe.
Wrong. Austerity measures such as those implemented in Portugal under troika direction have effectively downsized the government. Several public functions were privatized and government spending was cut. All within a democratic country with socialist leanings. You also fail to address my other points. Can you name any powerful modern nation or any empire anywhere that didn't rely on it's bureaucracy to implement changes? No, because formalized administrative hierarchies of officials are part of any government more solid than a petty feudal kingdom.

>Strawman. I know it is not, nowhere did I say it is popular. I said that his Government is a ever-widening bureaucracy. Nobody wants a bureaucracy, except those employed by it.
Didn't meant to accuse you of implying bureaucracy being popular, I was pointing out that being an advocate for bureaucracy would run against his goal of amassing popular support. Populism and bureaucracy don't mix well - the masses, specifically the LCD, tend to display sentiments such as "politicians are all crooks", "those suits don't know how bad things really are", "we need to put real, salt-of-the-earth people in those seats", etc.

As someone whose life was dependent on government-sponsored healthcare and enjoys an easily affordable superior education I disagree with your big-government-is-bad general sentiment, though I also supported the austerity measures implemented years ago.

Yes, what?

>discipline = no fun
And here's why the west is collapsing.

Rationing. During the war the government literally had control of the distribution of food, fuel, and all vital war materials.

For more modern examples, airline routes, much of the financial sector, and the requirement to present an ideologically balanced schedule also known as the 'fairness doctrine'.

You know, this game used to be a Veeky Forums acceptable game from /v/, but now it's just fucking /pol/ bait.

/pol/ shits in our bed enough. Take it back to /v/.

>Austerity measures such as those implemented in Portugal under troika direction have effectively downsized the government. Several public functions were privatized and government spending was cut.

The anti-austerity party is at the majority at over 50%, they have requested several lones all close to 100 billion from the IMF, you can not compare a failing nation that has to cut public funding because they can not pay their own Government wages. That is not the same as Government riding high a successful encomy and doing well.

>Can you name any powerful modern nation or any empire anywhere that didn't rely on it's bureaucracy to implement changes? No, because formalized administrative hierarchies of officials are part of any government more solid than a petty feudal kingdom.
I understand we need them, that they are a process by which we maintain the balance of power in a democratic society but they all grow far beyond their remit and snowball and eventually become completely unknowable.

As above your rationing is a specific circumstance it is in the event of an extreme action in which a tragedy of the commons would result in a net loss for the whole of the nation. I maintain the position in which they do not relinquish authority by any means in the regular course of everyday life.

>financial sector
There is more regulation now than ever before, in all manners. The reason for such low oil prices is Government owned companies in the Middle-East are playing politics with Russia. It is the reason bread-lines are forming in Venezuala

>fairness doctrine
In no way is this observed by any media station, hell there are only a handful of companies that own every major tv station, radio station, newspaper and magazine. Further proving that they are not interested in regulation but in perpetuating their own power. Despite their being statures on the books to stop monopolies and cartels from forming and to encourage competition, it happened anyway

Whitest folks on earth.

Nope.

Irish and Welsh are far more pale. Possibly even beyond the pale.

>The anti-austerity party is at the majority at over 50%, they have requested several lones all close to 100 billion from the IMF, you can not compare a failing nation that has to cut public funding because they can not pay their own Government wages. That is not the same as Government riding high a successful encomy and doing well.
You are overlooking the point. The pro-austerity party formed a western democratic government that gave up powers and unemployed several of it's workers. You clearly stated that such didn't happen ever. There was a de facto downsizing of the government under the past Portuguese government.

The EU allows for peaceful secession, by the way. It is not a federation in the sense that the USA is.

Anyway, what do you think a bureaucracy is? It's almost as if you conflate it with democracy or somesuch. What of the empires of the Romans, the Mongols, and the colonial European world powers?

Celts, user. They are the strongest blooded Celts are the Irish and Welsh.

Only one of them was actually a head of state.
Santiago was a Puerto Rican colonel, Skye was a Scottish biologist/botanist, Yang was some kind of Chinese cadre (training officer), Zhakarov was a Russian scientist (including a brief stint in military R&D), Godwinson was effectively a female Jack Chick and Lal was an Indian surgeon. Morgan was an African prince of some sort, and he only made it on because he literally went "I'll pay for the whole damn thing if I'm allowed to come with".

Godwinson was a psychologist

>The EU allows for peaceful secession, by the way. It is not a federation in the sense that the USA is.

Indeed it does, but what began as an economic union spiralled far far out of control. What economic union must set the amount of refugees you must take? Over the past 20 years they have exponetionally gained more and more authority and the ability to make Europe-spanning laws, indeed you can opt out of most, but you must agree in order to trade. Why would you tie the free movement of peoples in with free trade?

>The pro-austerity party formed a western democratic government that gave up powers and unemployed several of it's workers. You clearly stated that such didn't happen ever. There was a de facto downsizing of the government under the past Portuguese government.

You are conflating the two, user. There is a clear difference between a Governement bankrupting itself from having over extended and grown far too fat for it's people to support which is what has happened in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and a Government limiting itself and rejecting more authority, more oversight, more money.

I maintain the difference between a Government being unable to pay for everything and being forced to cut less (And often functioning) offices, they don't cut the higher ones that do nothing and are often completely unknowable to the general electorate.

>Anyway, what do you think a bureaucracy is? It's almost as if you conflate it with democracy or somesuch.
It has become a way in which to obscure, hide and confuse the general population. It is no longer used for the purpose in which you say, a means to enact change and balance the humors of politics.

>Godwinson was effectively a female Jack Chick
She wasn't that bad.

She didn't have a frothing at the mouth hate for anything new. She was just extremely cautious. All the others had a "we can do it = we should do it" attitude to new things. She thought that giving the nano-machine cloud sapience was a stupid and potentially dangerous idea.

If you slightly alter some of the fluff, the Hive is basically Alpha Complex.

As such, most of the low-tier workers are probably pretty happy, because of the constant drug-induced haze of mildly stupid contentedness.

No, Yang is clearly just Legalism mixed with transhumanism.

Wha'? Yang is the collective over the individual. He routinely nerve-staples his people, the first to recycle his people in to raw materials, controls what, where, who and how his people interact.

He is about transhumanism, he is about uplifting his 'nation' but at the expense of all things that make you... you.

I think Morgan industries is said to have the lifestyle close to 50's America, it's why in game habs take longer to grow.

Gaians, Peacekeepers, Morganites.

Morgan is the best on average, better to be middleclass+ in MI than any other faction. If you're worried about being stuck as a poorfag then Peacekeepers are also a high quality of life society without needing to roll the dice

>What economic union must set the amount of refugees you must take? Over the past 20 years they have exponentially gained more and more authority and the ability to make Europe-spanning laws, indeed you can opt out of most, but you must agree in order to trade. Why would you tie the free movement of peoples in with free trade?
We're not actually taking in many refuges, our wages are low (lowest minimum in western Europe). Free movement of people=free exchange of workers. The workers that the national market cannot absorb move to where they can (it's an invisible-hand-of-the-market thing).

>You are conflating the two, user. There is a clear difference between a Governement bankrupting itself from having over extended and grown far too fat for it's people to support which is what has happened in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland, and a Government limiting itself and rejecting more authority, more oversight, more money.
There was no bankruptcy in Portugal. The government that pushed the austerity measures was not the one that called for foreign intervention, either. Austerity was part of the political platform of the PSD. It's leader got reelected but the opposition voted him out after - governments are shuffled in and out.

>It has become a way in which to obscure, hide and confuse the general population. It is no longer used for the purpose in which you say, a means to enact change and balance the humors of politics.
I never implied "balance of humors". Despots made bureaucracies for these to enact their will. Governments before had departments had departments of propaganda, and secret services aren't a novelty. Bureaucracies are much the same as they have always been, they aren't necessarily bound to any ideology, certainly not democracy anymore than autocracy. "Bureaucracy" isn't even necessarily tied to "nation". It exists in pretty much any organization too large for one guy to boss the others around directly or for direct democracy.

I would point out that Morgan is the only faction that routinely gets quotes from his employees attached to techs and buildings and such. It actually seems like a pretty cool place to live. The GURPS supplement supports it as well, that life in Morgan Industries >>> anywhere else as long as you're not at the total bottom of the barrel. You don't have to be the 1%, but they do live like gods. Anything above "moderately poor" is actually really nice.

Can someone post the pdf for GURPS Alpha Centauri? I'm poor.

This one?
storagebin.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gurps_-_Alpha_Centauri.pdf

University

Yay! Thanks!

No problem lad.

Has anybody ever actually GM'd/played the GURPS of this? If so, was it good?

I'm planning to, now.

>Reassigned stateside when native populations elevated her to a cult-like religious figure (the 'Prophet Phenomenon' often coinciding with post-nuclear madness).

Okay, maybe she herself wasn't female Jack Chick, but the people around her certainly thought she was.

>My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack’s muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?

checkmate believers

Yang is the most fun to play as, but I would NEVER want to live in the Hive.

Why do people shit on Deidre? I don't recall any indication that she mind worms her own people. In fact, she has a penalty to police states, so she probably has the most freedom for regular people of any original faction.

But if you live in the Hive, you love it. Problem solved.

Mostly that Veeky Forums largely identifies with the University, so spouts their memes about the Gaians.

>Yang is the most fun to play as
Truth.

I'm not all that keen on Infinite Industrial Tapestry, but perfect placement of bases, maximum terraforming, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Preserves and Nanoreplicators everywhere, as many orbital facilities as you need to max out your orbital production at your largest base (which, incidentally, is the size of the base for ALL of the orbitals). I worked out that it's possible to get one base to size 114. Add to this Eudaimonia and Power social engineering, and if you're playing Yang you should be running Planned and Police State already, and that one base is supporting enough units to provide a police unit at literally EVERY one of your bases. You might even have a few left over, so you can supply some formers or something.

As Lal, how can you have less population than Yang?

Yang is good at horizontal growth, but you are exceptional vertical grower, with the right policies (democratic and planed) and facilities (children's creche), you can put all your bases into permanent population boom and they will grow every turn sufficient nutrients are provided (trivial with supply crawlers). AI is too stupid to do this and Yang is specificaly unable of doing so due to being blocked from picking democracy.

>can sympathise with everyone, even Santiago
>but not fucking Yang

What kind of retarded meme is "muh common good" WHEN EVERYONE IS LIVING IN FUCKING SQUALOR.

It sometimes looks like his ideology is just "the people alive now are immaterial compared to the future of humanity and its transendence", but how did this cunt know transcendence was even a fucking thing? He just fucking assumes there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and builds a bridge of human bodies to get there.

Actually, you know what? It's higher. Size 135. And more useful than the size 114, because it doesn't have to be entirely naval, so it can benefit from rolling squares.

Santiago is allright as long as you don't mind serving time in the military before retiring to private life with a good wife, an hard but rewarding job and a crapload of Veeky Forums children you get to train.
Nothing precludes Santiago from choosing Democracy, Capitalism, Power and Cybernetic and being America In Space. I won at 500% once doing just that.

His view is that 100 babies with expected life quality 0.011 is worth more than 1 baby with expected life quality 1 (applying arbitrary units), because 100*0.011>1*1. His plan is not "everyone gets luxuries", but instead "everyone goes to bed with a full belly, having worked enough to pay for their food and living conditions while also having generated added value". That lack of luxury means that the serfs don't have to work to make the luxuries, so instead they can work on more useful things, like infrastructure, extra food production to help feed even more people or weaponry to defend the Hive from aggressors and push others out so that they can move into the space just vacated (and hence create a need for even more infrastructure and food production, thus keeping the Hive's economy rolling).

Basically human ants

I'd probably go with Miriam or Lal, favoring Miriam because Lal's largest failing is he can't ever let go of the past. Miriam's is just she that she is VERY suspicious of everything.

Avoid the absolute madness of Yang, Provost, or Morgan (why yes, I would like you to jack the shit out of my genes, and while you're at it staple my brain and stick me in a tank full of meme spamming AI nanogoo JUST to see what happens, for the state/science/profit of course.)

Santiago would be interesting, even admirable but I'm not going to pretend I am near physically fit or stoic enough to ever become one.

Dierdre, aesthetically appealing, but worms creep me out, and I'm not about to start worshiping a planet just because it has a nervous system.

>>What kind of retarded meme is "muh common good" WHEN EVERYONE IS LIVING IN FUCKING SQUALOR.
We call that socialism.

>Someone post the pdf.
Someone?