Mind Control vs Total Thought Control issues?

[Trorkin]

Hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster.



I've heard before here and elsewhere that the difference between MC and TTC is that MC is 100% successful but counts as an offensive move, whereas TTC has a failure rate but guarantees no reaction. I'd never really tested it, as I tended to use MC during wars to coerce factions to surrender.


Oddly, in my current game as the University on Specialist, I found the opposite.


I have a treaty with Lal, but our boundaries are... odd. I appear not to have a territory boundary, so he can move his sea units right next to my land base grid and claim that he has no military units in my borders. He has a territory boundary so I have no such luxury. Never seen anything like this in any of my other games.

As a result, he built a sea base whose edges encroach on one of my land bases - the same one he'd trespassed near before. I wasn't having this, but I didn't want a war. I wasn't strong enough in his eyes to demand anything, let alone a base, and I wasn't about to give him anything for it, so I sent probes to take it over quietly.

I used TTC successfully, but the second value was 0% (1st was 50%), so the team died. Next turn Lal furiously demanded an extortionate amount of my credits - around half, maybe more. I refused and he declared vendetta.


Damn that, I thought. I reloaded and did the same things again like four times. Exact same results.

So I reloaded again and started using MC (100%, 34%) instead. No consequence, even after reloading multiple times. Got off scot free for a lower risk strategy. The team still died because my morale was crap from running Wealth, but that was no worry.



I'm using unpatched vanilla SMAC - I'm running Windows 7 on this (borrowed) computer, don't want SMAX and the patch causes problems.

Is this a bug?

[the_rest]

I think ttc means that you dont get extra drones as captured base if you succeed.

Remark: probe morale is not affected by the overall Morale, only by some technologies that you own (or not). I always use wealth, later with Eudaimonia (so i have -4 morale), but my probe teams still spawn elite.

[Trorkin]

Thanks!

Also turned out that I was a moron - Lal was actually declaring vendetta on me instantly every time I used MC, but just wasn't announcing it. In the end I didn't bother probing the base and he declared war on me a few turns later anyway.

I took the culprit base by force, probed a few others and now he's my slave.