can probe teams fight probe teams when the Hunter seeker algorithm is in effect?

[D4everman]

I had a game recently where I had built the Hunter Seeker algorithm....I ALWAYS build that even if I have to attack another faction to keep them from building it...but yet the gaians sent a probe team to a city I captured by mind control and the two probe teams fought. Mine died. But I thought the HSA rendered all enemy probe actions useless!

Either I'm wrong, theres a bug, or the AI, seeing that I was unstoppable at that point decided to "ignore" my probe dampening power just to piss me off.

D4

[RedFred]

If you are playing SMAC, then it is a bug.

If you are playing SMACX and the AI is WAY up the tech tree, then this sort of thing could happen legitimately.

[MariOne]

RedFred, if you have reasons or arguments to state that it's a bug, I'm ready to listen to them.

My answer to D4 is:
Yes, as I once realized to my dismay!

If you try to reason about it, you'll find out that you can find a way to explain it, and that it doesn't go against the stated game rules nor against the "designer's intention" (not that I have a very high consideration about the consistency and credibility of such intentions chez FurXs®, I have to say).

Indeed, the HSA protects your bases and units against any kind of probing.
It does.
Probe combat is not probing. It's combat. Combat of a special kind, like PSI combat, but combat.
Thus HSA has nothing to do with it.

Consider some peculiarities of probe combat.
- it does not trigger vendetta, or alter your diplomatic status
- although probe units arel listed under non-combat units, adding armor to them improvese their defens against normal attackers, but probe combat between armored probes remains uninfluenced

- if you have two units stacked, then a probe can't affect them. It simply can't access the tile they occupy, without even a simple onscreen messagfe from the game. Well, if you have a probe stacked with any number of other units, an attacking probe will be able to start probe combat against the stacked probe.

These cases let us see that probes are treated in a special way. Especially the last shows us that probe combat is considered as a special kind of combat, and not as a "probing action" like those you can perform against normal units.

I think that this makes perfectly sense.
I'd say that it's an unexpected feature, but not a bug at all.
Unless you can show me that there some point wher it's stated that it should not happen. Or some game mechanincs which logicallly should exclude that.


Even if the Gaian attacker was alloed to attack the probe you had in the base, that was all the HSA allowed it. No other action could have been performed by the enemy probe to your base or to any other unit stationed in it.

I indeed thought like you at the beginning, and hoped that the faction with HSA could help make his pactmates immune too, by stacking his invulnerable probes with his pactmate's units and bases.
Well, my tactic proved useless, as the probes are never immune to probe combat, and don't protect stacked Pactmates units or bases.
It was Bingmann who originally helped me to understand these "details".

PS:
I do not have SMAX.
From RedFred comment, I might surmise that probe combat became explicitly covered by HSA too, until some SMAX specific tech is discovered. I can't comment to that, except that it must be a SMAX peculiarity, but it doesn't alter the fact that in plain SMAC probe combat not covered by HSA makes perfectly sense.
[This message has been edited by MariOne (edited July 13, 2000).]

[Googlie]

MariOne (and Bingman) is right.

HSA protects the base, but doesn't give any additional powers to the probe team in combat. The only combat modifier is the green to elite status of the probe unit itself. (You can actually check that under a scenario if you give one faction the HSA, then send two probes out to do battle, and look at the combat power comparisons - the HSA confers no advantage.

Even the Algorithmic Enhancement under SMAX confers no psi combat advantage, it mrerely reduces the chance of failure in a probe team action by 50% (or halves their normal chance of success against the HSA or an 'immune' SE faction)

A Covert Ops Center (SMAX again) built in a base gives probe teams built at that base a +2 morale which does help in psi-combat.

Googlie

[RedFred]

You've made a good case for post-HSA probe wars, MariOne.

It has been a while ago, but I think my logic on my first post was that the programming treatment is not consistant. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that if the AI has HSA and a probe in one of its cities, you will not be able to attack that probe, if for some perverse reason you decide to try. It should work the same way whether you are prober or probee. Probee? Well, you know what I mean.

You are quite right that a late game tech in SMACX does make even the HSA owner somewhat probe vulnerable. Actually B8 isn't that late of a tech, but the AI doesn't seem to utilize it. I get rid of all my defensive probes ( by probing or scrapping them ) after building HSA without any consequence.

Another bug? I would be interested in hearing if anyone has been successfully probed by the AI after you have HSA in SMACX.

[Googlie]

Not really relevant, but one thing we let stand in the Spartan Chronicles was after Yang captured Morgan's base of Morgan Pharmaceuicals (which had built the HSA) - and renaming it Communal Conquest, Edgecrusher wrote a post whereby the Spartan probes mindcontrolled the base (under the Elite probe known as Edgecrusher, of course).

We let it stand, but it's bothered me ever since. Sparta didn't have the Nanominiaturizing tech (giving the Algorithmic Enhancement), so how could the base have been mind controlled?

Googlie



[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited July 14, 2000).]