This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.
Centauri α is the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus. It is a binary star system, the third brightest star in the night sky, and the extrasolar star closest to our own besides Proxima Centauri (which may or may not be gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri). In 2012 an Earth sized planet was discovered in the system, making it the closest known exoplanet.
It's a popular destination in near-future space RPGs.
But you're here because of the vidya gaem "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" (SMAC), which is not only a strategy game accepted and welcome on /tg/, but the faction leaders in the game are also a meme used in mild role-playing.
It's the spiritual successor to Civilization 2, and direct predecessor to Civilization 3 since it shares much of of the same dev team. One of the possible ending conditions of the Civilization games is to launch the first colony ship into space -- destination Alpha Centauri. Once they find a habitable planet, the team leaders suffer a political breakdown, culminating in the assassination of the colony ship's captain. Each team leader takes a part of the colony ship and some of the colonists in hibernation, and make planetfall. The game starts with your faction arriving, reviving the colonists for labour, and exploring the new world.
There will never be a sequel to Alpha Centauri because the intellectual property rights are a clusterfuck. But if you really want a spacey 4x game, there's still Galactic Civilizations 2, although unlike SMAC, GC2 is way, way, way the hell soft scifi and doesn't take itself seriously even for a moment. On this subject, SMAC is noted for adhering to science, or at least throwing around sciencey sounding terms quite well. Everything in the setting is just fudging with (then) current understanding of physics to do nifty things. Yes, even the psychic death worms who lay eggs in your brain.
Alternatively, there's Civilization: Beyond Earth, which is, if not a sequel, than at least a game built with the same creative DNA with some of the same concepts.
The Roleplaying Game
Steve Jackson Games made a GURPS sourcebook for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The cover has a white border, which is unusual for GURPS splatbooks. You can usually find a scan of this book in 4chan's rapidshares catalog.
Some parts are pretty awesome, some are a little... meh. (The Spartans are generally crazier than they are even in the games.) It actually offers several suggestions for running a game set on Alpha Centauri, including ways to tweak the setting so that multi-faction parties are possible, though its attempts to integrate the "tech-levels" of the game into an overall narrative are a little... over the top.
The Factions
The elegan/tg/entlefolk, fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls will sometimes post to a thread with one of the faction leader portraits and respond in-character for that faction leader. This should help you understand what the fuck they're on about.
Gaia's Stepdaughters
Leader: Lady Deirdre Skye (Scottish)
Pacifist, Explorers, Green agenda, hates Free Market
Hippy-dippy freak. Wants to integrate with the existing biology, including the mind-raping local fauna. Still hot. Will mostly leave you alone, so long as you've got a Green economy and don't mind her running her mind-worm boils over your lawn. Probably the canonical winner, if the fact that the last tech in the game has her name on it is any indication.
Human Hive
Leader: Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang (Chinese)
Aggressive, Conquerers/Builders, Police State agenda, hates Democracy
Totalitarian TO THE EXXXTREME, think Mao to the Stalinth power. All about everyone being equal and subservient to the whole, even if it requires brain stapling for the greater good. Everyone lives underground, meaning that digging out his blood-tick cities is a pain in the butt. He's a warmongering fuck who will not coexist with anyone who does not share his extremely narrow set of social policies. And that sucks, because anyone else attempting them is basically committing economic suicide. (Only his faction bonuses allow him to ignore the penalties, and the Hive is still usually pretty broke.)
Only representative of a divided and fractured America, specifically the hyper-fundamentalist part. A psycho bitch who spams demands every turn then declares war the moment you decline. Everything you hate about Christfags rolled into one, may she be messily devoured by worms. Usually the first faction you fight if you're playing as Zakharov. If she's not your neighbor, then by the time you encounter her she's probably either been squished out of existence or rules the other half of the planet in a gigantic empire that is going to take forever to conquer.
Morgan is all about the Benjamins, and making sure his peeps are living the high life. If that means the environment gets fucked up beyond saving, or other factions having no monies, so be it. THE FREE MARKET WILL FIX IT! He's a black space Jew, a.k.a. the plague, but he won't openly try to slap your shit as long as you're not a dirty commie. One of the few factions that can actually reliably try for the otherwise-wonky "economic" victory, naturally.
Peacekeeping Forces
Leader: Commissioner Pravin Lal (India)
Erratic, no specialists, Democracy agenda, hates Police State
Wuss; usually the first to get wiped out in a game. When role-playing in a thread, Pravin will usually say something about "why don't we come to some sort of agreement" and everyone else agrees that Pravin should shut the fuck up. He's a limp-dicked peacenik, but he's tied with Deidere in being the overall fairest to his people, and he's one of the few leaders who can't be bought. Has few real strengths or weaknesses, so his faction is good for beginners to learn the ropes with, though victory with him will rely on the skill and talent of the player rather than the powers and bonuses of the faction to carry the day.
Spartan Federation
Leader: Colonel Corazón Santiago (Puerto Rico)
Erratic, Discoverers/Conquerers, Power agenda, hates Wealth
Will kick your ass. Has plus-four strength. All about military power and how soldiers are superior to soft lazy civvies like you. Most often accused of assassinating the colony ship's captain, despite a complete lack of proof. She's a psychopathic douchenozzle and often gets herself killed when she picks a fight with too many people at once, and is completely suspicious of anyone who picks a "value" other than "power." That said, if you beat her up and she surrenders, she actually means it, and will loyally serve you for the rest of the game. MRAs, rejoice!
Techno-fetish nerd, with all the toys (all of them), thus beloved of the denizens of /tg/ and /v/. He and Miriam fight like cats and dogs -- if only they'd finally get a room and fuck, but she's an ugly bitch and he's a unwashed dweeb, so it'll never work out. Prone to ranting about misconceptions of SCIENCE!, while indulging in the occasional horrifyingly-unethical vivisection.
The expansion pack Alien Crossfire upped the ante by adding new factions so criminally unbalanced they made the others obsolete.
Nautilus Pirates
Leader: Ulrik Svensgaard (USA)
Agressive, Explorers, Power agenda
Piratical raiders who start in the ocean unchallenged. If played by the AI they will reach epidemic levels of city expansion before you can field a navy, making conquering their strung out train wreck of an empire almost as bad as ignoring it. Hope you brought planet busters. He's an annoying anarchist douche in the story too, and he's desperately trying to be Captain Nemo while drunkenly cosplaying as a classical pirate to boot.
Cult of Planet
Leader: Cha Dawn (Unknown)
Erratic, Discoverers/Conquerers, Green agenda, hates Wealth
Super hippies led by a child of the corn who makes Deirdre look like Morgan. Takes over for Lal as the first person to get rolled in the expansion unless he finds some mind worms double quick. If foolishly allowed to live unmolested they will turn the game into a tentacle rape simulator for any player foolish enough to have an economy. Of course mind worms become easy-peasy late game, so laugh as he funnels free experience points into your troops.
Data Angels
Leader: Datajack Sinder Roze (Trinidad)
Erratic, Democracy agenda, hates Power
Basically 4chan in charge of a civilization. Make good allies if you can put up with their practical jokes (read: "anything the probe team can get away with"). Otherwise not all that annoying and they're easily ground into the dirt by a half competent military if they get uppity.
Cyborgs that will be teching towards victory while you're still trying to bang rocks together. Will cheerfully befriend you early on and trade tech to you at very reasonable prices for most of the game, until you turn down the perfectly reasonable late game option of subsuming your entire civilization into a cybernetic collective. Tends to skimp on her military, deal with her by drowning her in corpses, the manly way. If playing as her, her tech-looting powers ironically make military expansion one of your more-viable strategies.
Free Drones
Leader: Foreman Domai (Australia)
Erratic, Builder, Eudaimonic agenda
A less crazy, more bullshit overpowered version of the Hive. Can crap out an entire continent's worth of infrastructure before you build your third city. Oh, and after you meet him you start getting communist revolutions instead of drone riots. Fun. He'll probably still be swinging around lasers while you're blasting things with cosmic strings though. Assuming he doesn't have the time to build enough Labs to make that penalty meaningless. He and Aki Zeta-5 hate each other almost as much as they want to bone each other, and from their murderous hatefuck of an alliance you will know pain. Domai has numbers, and that covers for her weakness, and Aki will funnel him tech to cover his. If they manage to get along, be afraid.
Planet's absentee landlords, who have come back after a teensy weensy problem with the other manifold reaching sentience and killing everything within three systems. Ridiculously overpowered in most regards, they are balanced by the fact that they are automatically hostile to the Manifold Usurpers. Oh whats that? That never made it into the game due to a bug? Thanks Firaxis.
The second alien race and resident that guy. Wants to hijack planet's evolution and use it to turn themselves into a a single hive-minded physical god. Plays as more of a rip and tear marauding-barbarian type to H'minee's turtling builder. Once he allies with Domai and starts feeding him tech, it's fucking over. Enjoy your web-mouthed alien overlords.
Gallery
This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.
