SAM land units

[binTravkin]

Hi guys!

Don't laugh at me, but I seem to not know how do SAM land units work as air defense.

Do their intercept/scramble or something like that?

I was thinking they don't, but some player seems to have used them against an air attack (not mine - my pactmates) in PBEM..

[GeoModder]

SAM land -and sea units don't scramble when being attacked by choppers or noodles. That's were AAA is for. Instead, those units equipped with it can attack any airborn unit, and have better chances of taking out a tactical noodle in my experience.

[binTravkin]

Strange - I was seeing as an unexplored square opened with <6>-1-2 unit within it..

[Mr. Harley]

After the Aircraft attacks it ends it's turn at the point it attacked. If the SAM unit then attacks in its turn, you have a pretty much guaranteed kill as they attack the air units defense. Note however that SAM units are typically more expensive than the air units they are attacking, so they must be protected, i.e. AAA units or Aerospace Centers (to double defense) or better yet a combination.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Strange - I was seeing as an unexplored square opened with <6>-1-2 unit within it..

I don't get what you mean here. Do you mean that an enemy SAM rover attacked from 2 squares away, and that it showed itself only when it was attacking?

[Mr. Harley]

I've never made one, but I just pulled out an old game. You can make a SAM artillery unit, and attack aircraft from two squares away. I don't know why, the units are cursedly expensive. However, you can make them.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
I've never made one, but I just pulled out an old game. You can make a SAM artillery unit, and attack aircraft from two squares away. I don't know why, the units are cursedly expensive. However, you can make them.

They are great if you are polluting for damaging locusts. Usually one good SAM arty blast and then you can mop up the rest with an empath SAM unit or two. I will usually buils a couple of these SAM arty if I am polluting and harvesting pearls. They actually allow you to easily kill native life even if you are running a bad planet rating

[Flubber]

Oh ya and ALL aircraft are dead meat against SAM land units. You can armor your aircraft but all that means is you have a more expensive dead aircraft and the SAM unit is damaged a little more.

I advise best-1-2 for sam land units so they can run out and kill and aircraft and then duck back in the base . Let your AA units sensor and aerocomplex combine to defend against the air attacks.

I have mixed feelings about air interceptors. If at tech parity you are better letting AA+aerocomplex defend the base. The main use for air interceptors is they can scramble to prevent a cheapo air unit from plinking your crawler field and they can be handy to cover some ground troops in the open.

With a tech advantage, I like air interceptors much more but they remain very vulnerable to SAM land units

I've said it many times, there is no unit out there that defends well outside a base against tech parity. Attack is where its at.

Think about ships-- My 4-1-4 crushes a defending similar ship and against a 1-3-4, the arty duel makes the armor irrelevant. So to defend even "ok" you need a more expensive 4-3-4 which will still lose to direct attack or you need to accept that you will lose some ships and win by building more and being the attacker more often

[Net Warrior]

Also worth noting, SAM ground units do NOT get 2x weapons vs air units. The 2x weapons bonus only holds true for SAM air to air combat. So, to make cheap SAM ground units, make them with laser weapons at minimum. So you see, Applied Physics is useful as more than just a prereq.

[DilithiumDad]

I usually make a few SAM rovers. After Fusion, they only cost one more row. This is especially good against a human who uses needlejets to block with Zone of Control or an AI who uses lots of needlejets. (Although the AI only uses them to annoy my crawlers and formers!)

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Flubber
I advise best-1-2 for sam land units so they can run out and kill and aircraft and then duck back in the base . Let your AA units sensor and aerocomplex combine to defend against the air attacks.

Yup! The one thing I'd improve upon this design is to make it a Drop Unit. A Drop Sam "Best Weapon" Rover is a formidable unit. It kills aircraft at will. Being a Drop unit, it can move about the battlefield to "hot spots"/ "targets of opportunity" extremely quickly. And being a Rover why it gets the attack bonus whenever it catches units in the open, and can take cities (unlike Interceptors)! The only thing it can't do is provide cover for advancing forces like an interceptor can. Otherwise, a superior unit that I almost always build as soon as I can in my games!


D

[Mr. Harley]

Here's a quick question. The cheapest drop AAA fusion unit cost 60 minerals and has plenty of kill power. Which drop AAA unit makes more sense, especially in operations against a human player in the Fusion Era?

8-1-2 Drop Chaos Speeder

versus

6-1-2 Drop Missle Hovertank

You are trading off roughly an extra attack versus the loss of a movement point. I would suspect if they were elites, i.e. instead of 2 versus 3 move you are at 3 versus 4 move it would make a difference. As an elite if you are fighting a prolonged campaign against a human, the extra staying power of the Speeder's Chaos Gun will let it stay in action more turns. The Drop Missle Hovertank Elite probably couldn't sustain two full turns of offensive ops against air units, so I would guess the speeder. Any thoughts?

[Flubber]

My main thought is that in the drop and fusion era, your opponent will be mainly using choppers anyway so my favorite anti-needlejet weapon is a simple SAM chopper. Usually impact or gatling weapons are more than enough for the job.

As between your two choices, I would say build either and then upgrade

Seriously, I must have a different mindset because I don't think I ever built a drop SAM unit more than once or twice. The time from doc air to MMI can be very very short and I found once MMI came along, you don't see that many needles to make it worthwhile to builder super sam units

[#endgame]

Unless you're in the ACDG where choppers can't attack bases...

[Commy]

That's why there's PBs...

[Mead]

Originally posted by Flubber



They are great if you are polluting for damaging locusts. Usually one good SAM arty blast and then you can mop up the rest with an empath SAM unit or two. I will usually buils a couple of these SAM arty if I am polluting and harvesting pearls. They actually allow you to easily kill native life even if you are running a bad planet rating

I found SAM Empath ships are great for taking out Locusts if you are in a high pollutting game (either PBs and other atrocites or just plain high minerals).

The ship allow you to combine the SAM with empath and artillery. (I found because you are limited to only 2 special abilites for each unit, ships were the only way to get SAM, Empath, and artillery in the same package.) Plus, I was purposely polluting so much that the sea levels were rising phenomenally, allowing my cruisers to go just about everywhere.

I only did only one game like this (it did kinda get a little boring) but eventually I had a bunch of string <30> empath cruisers at the highest polluting bases which ensured that I was able to kill the Locusts by the dozens each turn. (OK, I was going Green, Cyber, and had DT too. I just wanted to see just how must native life forms I could stir up and still survive. I found with the empath SAM ships, and above settings and SP, the native life forms had NO chance.)


Mead

PS
One question, does a higher weapon rating (i.e. String vs. Shard) cause more damage to a native life form? I think it does with artillery, but I am not sure?

[Chaos Theory]

In normal psi combat, the weapon has no influence, except if it is resonance, in which case it's a 25% bonus.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Mead


I found SAM Empath ships are great for taking out Locusts if you are in a high pollutting game (either PBs and other atrocites or just plain high minerals).

The ship allow you to combine the SAM with empath and artillery. (I found because you are limited to only 2 special abilites for each unit, ships were the only way to get SAM, Empath, and artillery in the same package.) Plus, I was purposely polluting so much that the sea levels were rising phenomenally, allowing my cruisers to go just about everywhere.

I only did only one game like this (it did kinda get a little boring) but eventually I had a bunch of string <30> empath cruisers at the highest polluting bases which ensured that I was able to kill the Locusts by the dozens each turn. (OK, I was going Green, Cyber, and had DT too. I just wanted to see just how must native life forms I could stir up and still survive. I found with the empath SAM ships, and above settings and SP, the native life forms had NO chance.)


Mead

PS
One question, does a higher weapon rating (i.e. String vs. Shard) cause more damage to a native life form? I think it does with artillery, but I am not sure?

Interesting idea. I've used ships before for this sort of thing, but never thought of adding empath to the mix. I don't tend to pollute massively, but there are times where a certain base starts to piss planet off...

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Mead

One question, does a higher weapon rating (i.e. String vs. Shard) cause more damage to a native life form? I think it does with artillery, but I am not sure?

I agree that the higher weapon makes no diffeence to regular psi combat but it has always seemed to me that the higher weapon artillery causes more damage to the natives

Your use of ships is a smart way to get additional abilities into your artillery troops

More generally, I think that artillery is probably an underappreciated part of the game. While I use it mainly against natives, it can be useful as well in conventional war when stuck near tech parity.

I recall one of darsnan's challenges where the enemy caretakers had 3r armour early when I had only impact. Add in the caretaker defense bonus and my best advantage was 5:3.75 and an abundance of rocky squares made attacking foolhardy uif they benefitted from that additional 50%. Other than working my behind off to get commado or elite units my other solution was artillery. I actually set up a battery of \ 4 artillery units at a choke point. Dropping an enemy from 10hitpoints to 5, 6 or 7 made a huge difference and it turned a war that was slowly going against me into one wherer the AI sent troop after troop into a slaughter/kill zone