Something that's been bothering me for a long time now are dependencies, for various reasons. There is the excess weight of all the BSC mega packs, very little of which is medieval. This will slow the game down completely unnecessarily as well as being a significant download. Then there are all the additional desc & lot files etc.
What I am leading up to is, after much thought, I have decided the initial release of SM will be DEPENDENCY FREE. That's right, not a single one (well, except for NAM possibly, but most likely not). I want SM to be as accessible as possible to people that have never played SC4 before and for the setup process to be as simple as is humanly possible.
The main reason for the mega packs is for the plant props, but my plant collection is growing steadily and I don't see this as an issue. Also I remain confident that many of the creators of existing medieval BATs will (sooner or later in the creation process), allow them to be included in the official release.
This doesn't mean that SM will be without dependencies, just the initial, self-contained release (and the object of our current focus). A SM addon pack (with dependencies ), can be released as the same time (so the lots that have been made using dependencies can still be used, just keep them separate).
