Do Busters cause eco damage?

[Slim-Neo]

I've used about 10 Planet Busters on my enemies, and Deirdre has used a couple on me, but it seems they don't make the sea level rise or anything, the only thing that makes them rise is straight after fungus pops up.

I mean Busters would cause eco damage wouldn't they? Aren't they like nukes or something?

[Sindai]

Yes, in fact they cause a HELL of a lot of eco damage.

The fungus growth isn't what is causing the ocean to rise, the eco damage from the Busters is causing BOTH those things to happen.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Big time eco damage, using tem runs up the ecodamage of all? your bases to high numbers, and this in turn cause the global warming. The ice caps on Chiron must be huge. In the game where I decided to explore the maximu potential of the busters, I blasted all land base and most sea based AI cities with PBs. I had all my bases with presure domes and garisoned with multiple trance elite scouts, and smaller fission & fusion PBs to balst worm/fungus boils, thus using PBs repeatedly over sevral turns. over 7000 meters sea level rise. All land (what little left after the PBs) sunk down to ocean trench depth, and fungus gone. Just 1 nutrient per sea square plus sattilite resources.

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Gaius Mucius Scaevola Sinistra
Pontificator Pendanticus
older richer & wiser than you

[Sindai]

LOL....now to butcher a famous quote....

"You launch one Planet Buster, it is an atrocity; lauch a hundred, and it is terraforming."

Hmm, sounds like something Yang would say.

Now figure out the original quote, not that it's that hard.....
[This message has been edited by Sindai (edited December 30, 2000).]

[Lefty Scaevola]

There are about twenty versions of the qute from Stalin in the quote thread in the Apolyton forum.
They can,t aree if its 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000.

[Sindai]

I always heard it was a million....

[Skanderbeg]

My experience is, that ecodamage by using PB's is dependent on some other things:

1. The time range of the PB-ing. Using some PB's in the same turn cause more ecodamage than the same number used over long time.

2. Your ecodamage of production and your planet rating.
If You have no ecodamage of production because running
tree farms/hybrid forest production style and positive planet rating , you even may use one or two PB's without getting more ecodamage than some smaller worm boils.

And my Tip for using PB's: You don't normally need 10 PB's (except You do it for the fun of the big bang) to break an enemies neck. Normally one singularity PB is enough (so I call this the "neckbreaker"). Remember, the singularity PB has a destruction radius of 4!.
The AI ever packs its bases to close together, so it is possible to destroy more than one city with a PB.
In most cases, the best target is not the big city You want to destroy, but a small unprotected base less than 4 squares away, which has normally some over bases in its destruction radius!
My personal record is destruction of 11 bases with only two PB's in one turn (5 from Morgan, 6 from Roze) with a half dozen of secret projects. They survived with some remaining bases, but they NEVER made trouble any more.

[Blake]

I worked out an effective tatic to get lots of PB's very cheaply.
Basically PB's cost too damn much to buy, in fact too much to be reasonable for high energy/ low mineral strategies.
BEFORE building your first PB build skunkworks in lots of your bases, then build crawlers to the value of 320 minerals (under standard industry SE) at each base, I usually just upgrade a supply rover to a silksteel/Clean/Drop variety. Then in the same turn set all of your bases production queues to PB's, and cash in those crawlers for "prototype development".
A lot of fun can be had with a couple dozen planet busters, to be fair I usually "give" each enemy faction one planet buster for each of my formers they have destroyed

[big_canuk]

Blake:

That's the stratagy, but you don't need lots of skunkworks, only 1, preferably the first 1 on your F4 base operations list.

Cash the crawlers to the normal, not prototype level for all of your PB's. The next turn the 1st PB, (at the skunkworks will finish), all the others will switch to non prototype design, and finish as well! (If your skunkworks base is not the first, then the PBs at bases before that base on the F4 screen, will finish the next turn)

This is a great way to build a deterrent force all at once, when facing a potential attacker who already has
1 or 2 PBs. If you build them 1 at a time, you risk that they will be destroyed, along with their base as they are produced.