Build mind worm army?

[binTravkin]

In 30 years:

We should have Air Power.
We should have pop boomed.
The land bridge will be gone (not that the Spartans would use something so dangerous).
Cruiser transports will need to be escorted by AAA ships to stand a chance of not being shot down.


If we want to attack the Spartans, should they be thoroughly entrenched, we won't be able to use conventional warfare. No biggie, as that's not what we're good at. The other options are:

Native life - expensive, but they ignore perimeter defenses and force opponents to diversify into trance defenders
PBs - very expensive, and with nasty repercussions
Probe teams - expensive, but devastatingly effective, if done right.

Who says we need to come into face-to-face contact with the Spartans ever? It's in our interests not to, and to make it undesirable for the Spartans to. Who cares if they overdefend?

You stole words out of my mouth!

[Illuminatus]

Oh and MWs are waste to be produced - just my 0.02 cents - their abbilities are not worth the minerals.

Seeing the difference in our opinions, you may consider me a right-wing nutjob - at least it is good you have one such. But I strongly agitate for production of a transport foil and 1-1-foil in near future after sea former is complete - we could scavenge sea pods for artifacts and capture IoDs.

[binTravkin]

I listened, but it takes contact for Yang to declare vendetta against them - Spartans may soon withdraw their rover after Yang hypotheticaly requests them to do so, or even disband it. If they manage to avoid his teritory and units, even with seething relations it will take time for Yang to declare war against them. At least Hive-Angel war would be good, since we would appear as protector allies to them (and we could charge them for sinking their land bridge too).

I estimate Yang will have another V'dtta by the time we sink the landbridge - Morgan is getting powerful (which Yang dislikes) and Spartans are close and will probably steal some SP he wants (which can anger him quite much).

[binTravkin]

Oh and MWs are waste to be produced - just my 0.02 cents - their abbilities are not worth the minerals.

Yeah, if one doesn't know how to use them..

[Chaos Theory]

Mind worms as part of an offensive or defensive force are worth their cost because they force the opponent to add empath/trance to a significant number of units, or lose too many battles. As a whole force, they are garbage for their cost.

Yang may not declare actually vendetta on the Spartans, but he has two bases on their peninsula and thus is more or less inextricable for them.

[binTravkin]

As a whole force, they are garbage for their cost.

If you use them in combination of probes and Neural Amplifier they're awesome as one can only destroy them if having higher morale.

I usually build Biology labs + Cent Preserves + BioEnh centers + Xenodome and use monolith to immediately get Demon boil MWs which are just unstoppable

[Illuminatus]

MWs are too expensive to be produced - anything else is better. I wouldn't oppose IoDs or Locusts, but we are better off capturing them, than producing a mass worm army.

[binTravkin]

50 minerals are not that much for an army of superb defense, 1.5 times better attack and immunity any kind of higher-reactor attacks + the ability to capture other MWs

[Illuminatus]

Biology labs + Cent Preserves + BioEnh centers + Xenodome

How much minerals is that?
.

We should produce one or two at best, if we are short of them, and to capture/patrol our wastes.

[Chaos Theory]

Mind worms have several important flaws that prevent them from forming an effective force all by themselves:

Trance scout patrols are significant obstacles to them, and those cost just 1 mineral row, compared to 5.

Empath scout rovers can chase down and kill mind worms in open terrain, or on roads, with great efficiency, with or without the NA.

Mind worms are slow off-fungus and never get fast, even when "elite".

Mind worms don't benefit from most of the facilities that benefit conventional troops, and vice versa.

Mind worms do effectively counter tech differences, including reactor types.

[Illuminatus]

Also MW are free for support if they are in fungus, but that is just a minor advantage.

[binTravkin]

Mind worms don't benefit from most of the facilities that benefit conventional troops, and vice versa

I consider this the main MW advantage - you can have ++INDUSTRY and demon boil MWs (so you can produce em at 40 min cost),
but it's damn hard to have ++INDUSTRY and elite troops, even if you build all the facilities/SPs for that.

AND:

Why noone takes in count superior MW defense with NA?
Only Empath rovers can kill them in that case, but they can be easily captured by probe teams (as they are cheaper to capture than better units, they're likely to be 1e-1-2 rovers)


Anyways - if we want to offset Empath unit bonuses, we can accompany our MWs with 1-2-2 or 1-2+-2 rovers.
If an enemy 1e-1-2 empath rover will attack such a stack (of MW and defensive rover and probably probe), they will be actually attacking unit with the highest defense - 1-2-2 rover and will lose, especially if it's EMP rover. We could also make em 1-3-2 rovers as soon as we steal the tech from Yang (I think by the time it comes to the military action, Yang will have it).

Also consider that if stacked with MW, our rover becomes immune to probe team attacks and our probe if stacked is immune to normal attacks!

And if this stack is attacked not with Empath, but high normal attack unit, say 4-1-2 or even 4-1-2*2 rover, it will survive, because our lyfecycle is likely to be better than their morale (if they're not Spartans).

Yang for example will have a morale of +1 (monolith) to his units as he has no "Power" SE right now and rarely builds Command Centers in bases where military is built.

We at the same time can afford having BioLab at each base, and maybe also Xenodome (by that time).
It makes up a total of +3 lyfecycles.

[Chaos Theory]

Facilities != SE table. I mean that mind worms don't benefit from command centers, naval yards, or aerospace complexes, and need their own morale-boosting facilities.

We cannot afford having Bio Labs at every base for quite a while. There will probably always be something better than Bio Labs to build, or we've really fallen behind in tech.

We can stack defensive units and mind worms in limited cases, but that gets expensive quickly. Mind worms are 5 rows; impact rovers are 3 rows; missile infantry are 2 rows. Regardless, we aren't at war now (Yang doesn't count), and don't need to make this decision now.