"Planet: A Survivalist's Guide": Comments and Discussion

[Maniac]

For any comments about the posts in the "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide" thread, and possible strategy discussions.

[Kassiopeia]

From your morale treatise:

Also 'Elite (+)' gives no extra bonus beyond 'Elite''s +50%.

I could swear I've seen Elite(+) units with a moral bonus of +62.5% when attacking or defending. Perhaps they were not Elite (+), but I have seen 62.5%.

[Maniac]

Have you scrolled through to Children's Creches? Perhaps that explains it? If not, back to testing I guess.

[Kassiopeia]

I just finished the text, the CC effect probably does explain it. What a messed up system it is though. It's a good text, I've never bothered to delve into the matter so deeply but now I feel like I know everything about it (perhaps I do!).

[Googlie]

Don't Elite Believer units have 62.5% morale (50% with a 1.25 fanatic bonus?)

[Kassiopeia]

I don't recall them being Believers, I recall having 62.5 when playing (or at least the units were of) the Peacekeepers (!).

[Maniac]

I realized I forgot to add a rather important way to get morale upgrades:

7) Battle Upgrades


When a unit wins a battle, there is a certain chance this unit will receive a morale upgrade of one level. The probability of such a battle upgrade seems to differ depending on the current morale of the unit. Very green and green units will always get a morale boost after winning a battle. After that, the odds seem to decrease the higher the unit morale becomes.

One possible tip, knowing this, is, instead of first moving a unit on a monolith and then sending it off to whatever destination you want, is first letting it fight several battles until it becomes 'commando', and then use a monolith to obtain that last difficult morale boost. This is of course risky, as you can never be sure a unit will be able cross the path of a monolith when you want it to.

[KrysiasKrusader]

Hey Maniac:

That's excellent work!

Maybe we can incorporate some of that in the SMAC Academy too...

[Maniac]

Originally posted by KrysiasKrusader
Hey Maniac:

That's excellent work!

Thanks!

Maybe we can incorporate some of that in the SMAC Academy too...

Ooh that'd be great!

Btw, feel free to add articles to the Survivalist's Guide as well! I've hardly given any thought to the Spartans before this ACDG, so I'm curious what's the Spartan strategy of other players like you, especially since you IIRC say you play them like a builder.

[KrysiasKrusader]

I had a lot of experience playing the Spartans years back. Lots of droped PBEM positions are Spartan.

I remember having written something on it in the past as well. So went hunting through some of my old posts and... I found this in the archives at Apolyton (!).

It's a bit dated, but very much of it still applies today. Ogie Oglethorpe (one of my idols) had added to it.

Also... I now see that Maniac and Zeiter had even contributed to the thread.

[Maniac]

Yes I remember that thread. It was very useful for me when thinking about possible Spartan strategy. One thing I'm still wondering about though is whether or not it's beneficial to run free market as the Spartans. Of course, you get some extra energy, but on the other side you lose your +1 Police SE: the only builder advantage we have over the other factions.

Btw, why don't you contact Ogie Oglethorpe and ask if he's interested again in participating in this ACDG? As you can see he's a Spartan member, but he never posted here: only several times in our recruitment thread before the ACDG was fully set up. But perhaps if he knows you're now a Spartan too, he could return.

[KrysiasKrusader]

Well. Everything is situational, of course. But FREE MARKET sure brings in the e.c's and labs. Try thinking about what you said, and adding POLICE STATE...

I'll see what I can do with Ogie...

[Maniac]

In case you have read my latest addition to the Survivalist's Guide, do you think we should use those methods involving prototypes, or not?

Those "prototype hurry methods" (very short explained a way to hurry units and facilities with (upgraded) crawlers instead of credits) are certainly using aspects and features of the game that were not intended to be used that way by Firaxis. But the same no doubt counts for the stockpile energy bug, upgraded crawlers, unit shells, certain aspects of retro-engineering and unit workshop upgrading, using the nutrient box mechanisms to let your citizens survive while they are actually starving, and so on... But yet they are fully accepted by the PBEM community. So there is no inherent reason not to use these methods I described. It would always mostly be an arbitrary decision made by the SMAC community.

That being said, these could be a few possible scenarios how to deal with these prototype hurry methods:

• Using the undocumented feature of the Skunkworks (switching production for free) or the "delete unit design" method is never allowed.
• Using the "Skunkworks method" is allowed, but the "delete unit design" not; not for anyone. This would be most unfair IMO, as that would put the Spartans at a disadvantage (not being able to build Skunkworks), while everyone else could use it.
• Using the Skunkworks method is allowed, but the "delete unit design" not, except for the Spartans, who may use it. Since the Spartans don't have to pay prototype costs right from the start, one could argue that the Spartans have a "free Skunkworks facility" right from the start (just like the UoP has network nodes), and therefore should be able to use, besides the no-prototype-cost feature, also the undocumented no-production-penalty feature right from the start.
• Everyone is allowed to use both the Skunkworks and delete-unit-design method.

Further matters are, if the "delete-unit design" would be allowed, would it only be for unit-to-unit switching, or also for unit-to-facility switching (which can't be done with the skunkworks method)?

What's your opinion on this?
In any case, please keep quiet about this for now. Just in case it would be allowed, there's no need for our rivals to learn about this yet (especially since at the moment they probably have more crawlers than us).

[Maniac]

Strange. I had expected some reaction.

[Kassiopeia]

I think it's a bit unclear in your post - are you asking that these method's be decided on by the entire DG, as to whether they should be allowed or not?