The best pod-popping

[reverend]

Hi.

I've recently taken up SMAC-ing after a couple of years. Now I have a question for you guys:

Which is the better foil to use when pod-popping? The transport or the standard foil? As we all know, the transport can find and haul alien artifacts. But the regular foil is faster and cheaper, and it can still find tech from time to time.

The regular foil also has the opportunity for higher morale, since you can use it to attack any mind worms you encounter. You can equip it with hypnotic trance cheaper. And, since you don't have to haul artifacts all the way back to your bases, you can cover larger areas.

So, which one do you use? And what equipment (armor, weapons, special abilities) do you use on it?

[Lefty Scaevola]

Early on it is a real choice. But the best unit when you get it in the Ilse of the deep. It can get atifacts and units at sea, transport, fight, capture wild IoDs, and heal itself far from home by sitting in sea fungus.

[Method]

in free market, i'd use a probe foil. doesn't cost support, doesn't cause pacifist drones, and it can infiltrate any rivals you may find.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

IIRC correctly free techs are limitted to the basic first level techs. So the window of opportunity to expect a tech from a pod pop is rather small for conventional foil unit. I would agree best overall unit is Isle of Deep.

[Barinthus]

I've not tried this - I didn't realize you could get alien artificats from a sea pod so I mostly used regular foils . Anyway I've read about some people prefer to use transport foil to pop with an accompanying regular foil to act as an armed escort. But I'd suppose once you can get your hands on an Isle O'Deep, that'd be ideal.

[Fake Boris]

Thanks dude, the isle of the deep idea is excellent

[reverend]

Thanks for all the good ideas!

However, the Isle of the Deep needs a level 5 tech to build. By that time, all pods will be gone if I do my thing right.

Also, green economics is not an option for me (playing mostly Morgan or Yang), so I wont be capturing any either.

I guess I'll have to stick to my old rackety transports...

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by reverend
Thanks for all the good ideas!

However, the Isle of the Deep needs a level 5 tech to build. By that time, all pods will be gone if I do my thing right.

Also, green economics is not an option for me (playing mostly Morgan or Yang), so I wont be capturing any either.

I guess I'll have to stick to my old rackety transports...

I also recall that a wild worm/spore launcher/IoD never attacks native life forms controlled by you, which adds more value to a captured IoD (correct me if I'm wrong on this ).

Also, a wild IoD emerging from a popped pod also comes with a mindworm or two loaded. So if you capture one such IoD, you also get the mind worms, which then give you the ability to explore land pods on uncharted islands, multiplying your exploration capabilities

Even one IoD can have such a dramatic impact on your exploration effort that I sometimes consider switching to green (even for a short time) in the hope of catching an IoD, if this is not too painful for the faction I'm playing.

Speaking so much on IoDs, there's also another theoretical way you can catch them, although it's really up to chance: If you land on or near Manifold Nexus (in SMAX, that is), you get +1 enviroment and that's good enough to catch native lifeforms without going green!

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Method
in free market, i'd use a probe foil. doesn't cost support, doesn't cause pacifist drones, and it can infiltrate any rivals you may find.

I also use a lot of probe foils for exploration. I even sometimes upgrade them to have resonance armour (and with it comes the free-of-cost hypnotic trance) to increase their suvivability, if I have the money around.

But overall, maybe it's a better idea to up-armour a foil transport in this fashion, in terms of cost and utility.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by reverend
However, the Isle of the Deep needs a level 5 tech to build. By that time, all pods will be gone if I do my thing right.

What kind of a furious explorer are you? And wouldn't it be better to wait, since the AI just doesn't seem to take the pods anyway?

[reverend]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris What kind of a furious explorer are you? And wouldn't it be better to wait, since the AI just doesn't seem to take the pods anyway?

Well, I guess I am pretty furious when it comes to exploring

As soon as I have the foil tech and seaside towns I just pump out transports until the whole map is explored. It's not just pods I'm after, I like to colonize as much as possible early on.

In SMAC you can never grow too large like you can in Civ 3 (which is one reason I don't play that game anymore).

If I play Yang, I also use what I call the "bee-hive strategy"´. I build my bases in a rigid pattern, each one having only three terain squares of forest to exploit. I switch to police state as soon as possible, and build recycling tanks in each base. That way, I get 8 minerals from each base, and the police state gives 4 free supports

The growth rate early on is horrendous, and the sheer momentum of it is more than enough to crush any resistance utterly. But you need to be aggressive, because in the end you'll probably lag behind in the tech race.

But before that happens you have ample time to swarm the planet!

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by reverend
Also, green economics is not an option for me (playing mostly Morgan or Yang), so I wont be capturing any either.

Green works fine for Morgan combined with wealth. He get the magic +2 economony (+1 faction characteristic and =1 from welath) and the planet and efficiancy modifier from green.

[reverend]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Green works fine for Morgan combined with wealth. He get the magic +2 economony (+1 faction characteristic and =1 from welath) and the planet and efficiancy modifier from green.

Hmmm, never thought of that. Thanks! I'll definately try it out!

[RedFred]

The pod outcomes are somewhat different if you use a foil. More cash, more IoDs but no units like an Ogre which can really alter the military balance of the game early on. I don't know if tech discoveries, comm links, rush builds or cloning odds are altered though.

Seeing as I value AAs the most I try to use a transport/IoD whenever possible. I'll send my transports out unescorted unless I have a head start on everyone on building foils (generally when I play Pirates).

To the guy who suggested that probe foils work best under FM, I believe that transports don't cause unrest. You can often capture a unit with a transport not homed to a base which is particularly valuble under FM. Your only worry is capturing a unit that is homed to a base, but I figure in that case you can either hot-foot it home, make a psych adjustment in one base, or even disband an occasional unit and still come out ahead.

[RedFred]

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