These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri
Alternate Character Interpretation - There's a positive or negative interpretation possible for every faction in the game, even if you account for the limits of their ideologies. Yes, including the Hive and the Believers.
Commissioner Pravin Lal is the perfect embodiment of ethical integrity until one little quote in regardstogenetics.
"I loved my chosen. How then to face the day when she left me? So I took from her body a single cell, perhaps to love her again." — Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Time of Bereavement"
Then again, according to the short-story she was shot in the back by Santiago's men on the Unity.
And according to the novels, it doesn't work: the clone doesn't want anything to do with him.
Game Breaker - The Manifold Caretakers and the Manifold Usurpers are considered overpowered in multiplayer.
Cloudbase Academy. In multiplayer, of course, the usual response to someone else developing it is to nuke the base from orbit.
High Octane Nightmare Fuel - The Mind Worm's method of attack, and several of the Secret Project videos may freak you out considerably.
"Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours—the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers." - Mythology for Profit, Morgan Stellartots Keynote Speech.
Even years later, I've still never been able to watch The Dream Twister's video all the way through.
Made even worse by the near total silence - it's the only secret project video in the game without a voiceover (the text given above briefly unrolls on-screen at the end of the video).
The torture scene when you defeat a faction is a little disturbing.
When you realize exactly what Nerve Stapling is. Brrrr.
It matches the description of a Punishment Sphere according to the GURPS supplement. No wonder bases with them have their research halved and lose the ability of their citizens to become talents. Not only that, the GURPS supplement says that it is based on nerve stapling, but instead of performing it every few hours, it does it around every five minutes.
As for the Secret Projects:
"We must dissent..." from the Self-Aware colony was really chilling the first time, and it still creeps me out.
The sudden audio distortion in Zakharovs' speech for the Singularity Inductor is pretty disturbing. Hell, he's probably the single creepiest character in the game, far outstripping Yang. His clinical descriptions of his research often get very disturbing.
"I still have it, in fact. As you can see, the damage was not so great as they say..." — Prokhor Zakharov displaying the lab animal used in the first live teleportation experiment. Though, alternatively, it could have just meant that the rat is perfectly fine.
Magnificent Bastard - Sheng-Ji Yang. He cheated on his psych evaluation (using knowledge he obtained via having a PHD in psychology) to get on board the Unity as its executive officer and quite possibly (never confirmed) assassinated Captain Garland. Did I mention that his willpower is so great that he is nearly immune to the effects of pain?
Memetic Mutation: Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Player Punch: When you first create a Mind Worm boil, you'll be treated to an interlude where your faction leader dispatches a trusted aide to become the boil's controller. If that first boil gets destroyed in combat, another interlude will appear where your faction leader is looking upon the scorched remains of said aide, and is quite distraught by the sight.
The Scrappy - Miriam. War in 4X games built on the civilization model, like SMAC, is a costly and time-consuming endeavor, and without proper preparations it can quickly become long-winded war of attrition with no end in sight. Miriam is aggressive and therefore extremely annoying, should you end up with a common border or insufficiently large body of water between you. Playing as Miriam is even worse, because the AIs are suddenly as aggressive towards her as she usually is towards everyone else. All six of them.
Alternatively, she may immediately offer a treaty and pact depending on whether you're running fundamentalist or not, even if you're running democratic she may still pact you...
