GameSpot's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Game Guide

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appendices

Appendix A: Modifying Alpha Centauri Rules

Appendix B: Creating Custom Functions

Appendix C: Creating Maps and Scenarios

Altering Unit Building Blocks, continued
The complement to the weapons section is the armor or defenses section (labeled #DEFENSES), which lets you change such elements as the armor rating (how resistant the armor is to damage), cost, and prerequisite.

The final unit building block, the special abilities, is a little different. Special abilities look like this:

Super Former, 1, EcoEng2, Super, 00000010111, Terraform rate doubled

The first four values are the ability's name, cost, and prerequisites. The string of numbers is a flag indicating what kinds of units can have the ability (a table inside alpha.txt shows how to interpret these). The last value is a description of the ability.

While you can change subtle effects of the special ability as well as the prerequisites required for that ability, you can't alter the ability itself. For example, the super former will always double the terraforming rate no matter what tweaks you make to the values. The most complex part of the special abilities is the cost. When you set a positive number, the cost increases by 25 percent of the number; however, if you set it to a negative number, the cost depends on certain other elements. For instance, setting the cost to -2 increases the cost with the weapon value.

Once you've scrolled down past the building blocks, the next section, labeled #UNITS, lists the basic units that are predesigned for each player. You can change the chassis, weapons, armor, cost, carrying capacity, and prerequisites of these units.

WARNING
The predesigned units are predesigned for a reason - most of them are extremely important to gameplay. Take caution when altering these units because they can cause huge swings in game balance.