Awesome / Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

• The Planet Buster is a quasi-nuclear missile that is so powerful, the U.N. Charter forbids their use. If you fire one, it devastates its target and anything in the blast radius, depending on the missile's reactor.
  • However, if you didn't pass the "Repeal U.N. Charter" bill in the Planetary Council, you'll be expelled from the Council and every faction will declare Vendetta on you. There's no way to negotiate peace after this, since they've labeled you a monster from launching a Planet Buster.
    • Even if you passed the "Repeal U.N. Charter" bill, they will still kick you out from the Council, team up and declare vendetta against you. Nervestapling and biological/chemical warfare are OK, but if you want to use planetbusters, you better make sure, you can take on them all (and the mindworms, because Planet will hate you, too) or have enough planetbusters!
    • Within the Alpha Centauri folder is text file (flavor.txt) that explicitly states that the basic Planet Buster is a Mk. 714 Plasma Bomb with an active kill radius of 2000 kilometers, and the explosive force of 296 billion tons of TNT. No wonder Planet goes total bugnuts when you use one. And remember, you get this when you research Orbital Spaceflight; Discover 6. The research tree goes up to 16, making it a literal Disc-One Nuke.
• The Manifold Nexus. Fullstop. If you have one within your territory, you get +1 Planet for free. If you are lucky, and make Planetfall near it, GET IT. Being a potential third faction (after Deirdre and Cha'Dawn) to catch mindworms, is a huge boon in early game. It's probably the reason why Miriam and the Usurper, who have attacking bonuses, also have -1 on Planet.
• While all the quotes are pretty awesome, the Universal Translator and Clinical Immortality quotes in particular make it clear that you're doing nothing less than subverting the will of God - and getting away with it!
  • Which makes it very ironic that Miriam can do them. Then again she could be a Treize Khushrenada (from Gundam Wing; he made a speech saying "I'm sure God would understand the steps we're taking" and then thinking to himself that God is an image created by humans); not actually religious but pretending to be to win influence.
• The cutscene in "Cloudbase Academy" the most epic cutscene of all the Secret Projects.
• Basically every victory condition. The human population left on Earth is presumed to be extinct, so you essentially rule over all of humankind.
  • The Diplomatic Victory, all of humanity unites behind you as Supreme Leader, and anyone who resists is wiped out. With humanity as a united front following you, the Epilogue describes you setting foot on a new orbital Planetary Headquarters; humanity has re-established spaceflight under your leadership. You muse that even if Chiron will not be hospitable to you for much longer, it is irrelevant, as humanity owns the stars again and Chiron is but one planet.
  • The ultimate victory condition, Transcendence. All of humanity merges with the Voice of the Planet to become psionic entities, and if you complete the Ascent to Transcendence first, you are the dominant personality of the Hive Mind. A million years later you've terraformed the planet to be perfectly friendly and hospitable to carbon-based lifeforms, like the synthetic bodies some humans choose to download their minds into to enjoy physical life for a period of time. Additionally, some of them have returned to Earth and rebuilt a nanotech civilization there.
    • Even if a rival completes Transcendence first, the "loss" screen for you is pretty cool. Your mind is "copied" into a rejuvenated clone body of yourself, young and in the fit of life, and you are sent to Earth to take charge of recolonizing it.

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