How do you know any mod is active though? It's not a friendly mod system in terms of letting the gamer know a mod is installed right or is working okay.

Of course they would, because they don't care they have created a game that is ideal to while away the hours on a long journey, and yet you cannot just because the game has to initialize using the internet! This will leave me continuing to play Alpha Centauri when I take my business trips, and certa...

Pandora First Contact DOES have DRM because you HAVE to be online to play it! If you cannot stick it on your laptop to go on a long journey because it needs to initialize online, then that is, de-facto, DRM!