Alpha Centauri
Alpha Centauri
I love this game and it's development, considering another sacred cow, Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire and that world, being developed in the freeciv manner, either as a separate endeavor or continuation within freeciv as a separate 'chapter', I found there was some effort towards this about 10-15 years ago, I wondered considering the state of freeciv currently whether there's any will to put towards alpha cent and applying some of the ideas and technologies from freeciv to bringing it towards something even better then the original, unlikely as that may be!
Re: Alpha Centauri
If someone with the required skills and free time were motivated enough it would already have been done. Personally I haven't seen any recent work on a more SMAC like Freeciv. Not even on the easier initial part. With that said: Some features in the development versions (some in 2.6, more in 3.0) will make it possible to create a more SMAC like ruleset than 2.5 allows.
If someone creates a SMAC like Freeciv ruleset he will find out what SMAC rules Freeciv can't support. If he informs us Freeciv developers about the unsupported rules it becomes more likely that we add support for those rules in future Freeciv versions. (It is too late for 2.5 and 2.6) If he implements the support himself (without breaking other rulesets) and sends it as a patch it may get accepted into Freeciv.
Creating a SMAC like Freeciv ruleset is relatively easy and requires relatively little time. Implementing support for currently unsupported SMAC rules requires more skills and free time. How much more varies from rule to rule. Big changes, like the unit workshop, is much harder to do than allowing some existing feature to be adjusted.
It is easier to get a developer to add support for new rules in the area he currently focuses on. Example: I'm currently working on giving the ruleset more control over what actions the player can do. I'm still limited to actions the player does via a unit. If you want Freeciv to support a SMAC unit action or a SMAC rule that makes a unit action legal (called action enablers) now is a good time to request it.
If someone creates a SMAC like Freeciv ruleset he will find out what SMAC rules Freeciv can't support. If he informs us Freeciv developers about the unsupported rules it becomes more likely that we add support for those rules in future Freeciv versions. (It is too late for 2.5 and 2.6) If he implements the support himself (without breaking other rulesets) and sends it as a patch it may get accepted into Freeciv.
Creating a SMAC like Freeciv ruleset is relatively easy and requires relatively little time. Implementing support for currently unsupported SMAC rules requires more skills and free time. How much more varies from rule to rule. Big changes, like the unit workshop, is much harder to do than allowing some existing feature to be adjusted.
It is easier to get a developer to add support for new rules in the area he currently focuses on. Example: I'm currently working on giving the ruleset more control over what actions the player can do. I'm still limited to actions the player does via a unit. If you want Freeciv to support a SMAC unit action or a SMAC rule that makes a unit action legal (called action enablers) now is a good time to request it.
Re: Alpha Centauri
There have been several attempts for a freeciv fork (or at least a project that feeds smac changes to freeciv). In fact, the entire effects system enabling so vastly different rulesets was originally made in such project. Before that, ruleset had significantly less power. Latest one I know was launched based on discussion on Civilization Fanatics site (can't remember any details, but you might be able to search it from there)