creating custom units

[bobyk464]

It's true, Ned - my SE choices usually result in a police rating so poor that maintaining domestic tranquility with the non-lethal thugs just doesn't happen. I focus instead on psych-enhancing base facilities, doctors & empaths, and obtaining enough energy that I can channel some psych in on the SE scale without a drastic penalty on income & research. Though I'm usually Sven, sometimes it looks like Zak - drone riots here, drone riots there... Rapid growth can be a bad thing when operating in this fashion. Serious drawback. That's just one more of the things that makes this game good - decisions, tradeoffs; following one path and not another.

The arrival of the Telepathic Matrix makes life whole lot easier. It's a priority to build or capture it. After that, psych can get set to zero, and no new drone-control facilities are necessary (note that I'm not fool enough to scrap and recycle existing ones). A large segment of the population become drones. But, no more riots, no more problem.

I make sure that the base containing the TM is heavily garrisoned. Without it, development of fringe bases, whether new or captured, is a difficult task. I haven't been playing AC that long, so I have yet to play game where I've lost the TM after once obtaining it. How bad will things be when I've been happily ignoring drone control for a good while, and suddenly have that benefit taken away? When that inevitable day comes, maybe we'll all get to see a grown man cry...

[Black Sunrise]

bobyk464:
Thanks for drawing my attention to the subject of clean.
Scout patrol: 10 minerals.
Upgrade to clean scout patrol: 20 energy.
Very very cheap.
Upgrading standard formers to clean: 30 energy.
Much cheaper than I thought.
More than worth it for the mineral output. Wish I had realized that earlier in my MP games!
Indra

[Ned]

Bob, The TM is generally a useless SP for me b/c I run a "Green" strategy and use police and a bit of Pysch to quell drones. Typically, I keep all my bases in GA. That, combined with Wealth, gets that fearsome +2 economy.

Brood Pits, with their +2 police, really help.

I also use Locusts and Sealurks as my main weapons. You really cannot do this an use FM at the same time.

Ned

[Kassiopeia]

yeah, Clean reactors are a blast. You can run all sorts of negative support SE choices, but Clean reactors help it mega lot.
An if you have SP's like Ascetic V. and Self-AC, you'r police rate can rise to something like +3...

[Ned]

Kass, Good point on negative support. IIRC, -4 Support can make each unit cost 2 minerals to support. You get -4 Support if you try to run Demo and Thought Control at the same time w/o the Cloning Vats. Obviously, the only way to go in this environment is to make as many of your units as possible "clean."

Ned

[Method]

for sea defence the only way to go is trance (+50%) res defence (+25%) combined with neural amp (+50%) (and +25% base defence). i had a fung bloom and 5 locusts and an iod couldn't kill 1 defender. of course you don't need ECM at sea, and nobody has air power yet so i don't need AAA.

of course on land i have 4 basic garrisons depending on the situation, and i thought i had a 5th but i can't remember what it was . i usually start with these at photon or probability
garrison unit #1- 1-best t-1 (AAA trance)
garrison unit #2- 1-best +-1 (AAA ECM)
garrison unit #3- 1e-best t-1 (empath trance just for worm hunting later in the game)
garrison unit #4- 1-best-1 (AAA police) for huge drone bases.

and i might just go only AAA depending on if i need a cheap garrison NOW. and with tachyons the AI doesn't even bother.

[bobyk464]

Ned - Yeah, I betchya it's probably pretty dangerous to run with any Society rating skewed horrifically negative. The game is designed well enough so that strong adherence to an extreme doctrine can be fatal, if an opponent capitalizes on your resulting weakness and cracks open that chink in the armor.

I'm running Democratic/FreeMarket/Knowledge/Cybernetic, and here's the results:

Economy +2
Efficiency +4
Support 0
Morale 0
Police -4
Growth +1
Planet -1
Probe -2
Industry 0
Research +4

Net Income 4618
Breakthroughs 1


Pirates, Thinker, BTW.

Great economy, horrible crowd control. I fooled around a bit to see what would happed if I raised my Police rating to something usable, but found that I didn't like the impacts on the other ratings. I'm using mostly Clean Reactor units, so Support doesn't matter here. The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and armored probe garrison units at home also means I don't care much about my Probe rating, either. I've got OK Morale and Planet ratings, and I don't want to mess with those. But most importantly, I've got a powerful Econ/Efficiency/Research setup, and I'm willing to run the risky -4 Police to keep it. At least in this current game. I don't think I'm at risk of losing the Telepathic Matrix to any of these AI players - I'm on the offensive with some heavy campaign forces here and there, and I've got good defensive garrisons and "attack garrison" type units keeping watch on things at home.

If I do lose the TM, I'll have a lot of restructuring on my hands to regain a stable society. There'll be changes in SE choices, and lots of rush building. The Brood Pit / Police Garrison combo you cited looks like a fine institution to put in place. In my smaller cities, I've got some unfortunate catching up to do with Rec Commons and Paradise Gardens. I don't care for Punishment Spheres, but that could be a good temporary solution until all the other units and infrastructure are in place.

Curious thing here, if we leave the other SE choices listed here alone and change from Knowledge to Wealth, we go from Econ+2/Eff+4 to Econ+3/Eff+3, and net income actually drops a bit, to 4574. Looks like Efficiency is the driving factor in this instance.

[Ned]

Yeah, the real income comes at +2 econ. +3 econ does not add much, but efficiency losses can more than make up for the paltry econ boost.

As I said, the real trick is getting those bases in GA while in Wealth. This gives the all important +2 econ. One really needs a combination of police, high efficiency (to combat b-drones) and psych to do it. It also does not hurt to have the HGP, Clinical Immortatilty, or a Paradise Garden to provide that final boost. The high efficiency can come from Demo and Green. Thought Control may actually be better than Cyber for the purpose of getting the base into GA due to the high police rating it gives you. You really need to get to a +3 police rating, and have 3 police units in a base. These take care of 9 drones! In contrast, increasing efficiency by +2 can with Cyber only affect one b-drone in a base. The difference is obvious if GA is the objective.

Just some thoughts.

[EtheMind]

That sounds like an efficient strategy Ned. I'll have to try it in my next "Green" game. When I play Free Market in mid-late game I usually succeed to get few GA's here and there. But that isn't such a bonus when you already have that +2 Econ.

I think the real problem in Free Market is not the amount of control you lose. When you play FreeMarket, Democracy is a natural choice. So you won't lose a lot of control anyway. It's the pacifist effect that really makes life tough.

I have tendency to overlook SE bonuses brought by facilities. But Brood Pit for example can really enchance your perfomance in control. And if you have Police units under +3 rating, doesn't that mean that you can neutralize 12 Drones?

[Black Sunrise]

"When you play FreeMarket, Democracy is a natural choice. So you won't lose a lot of control anyway. It's the pacifist effect that really makes life tough. "
Clean units, made all over your nation, home in on one (small) base in your heartland, with a Punishment Sphere. And your armies march off to war.
The punishment sphere also works well with economy cities, where every population unit is a cash making specialist.
Indra

[Ned]

Ethemind, No, I think only 9 drones are pacified. I think it works like this:

3 units: three drones
3 police units: 3 for the units, 3 for the police effect

Now double the police effect with a +3 rating

3 police units (+3 rating): 3 for the units, 6 for the police effect = 9

Ned

[EtheMind]

Clean units, made all over your nation, home in on one (small) base in your heartland, with a Punishment Sphere. And your armies march off to war.

Well, that's it.
I wage heavy wars less often when I'm playing with less militant faction. You don't need that sophisticated tactics against AI. But that's a very nice one. Though it only works very well in the late-game and depending from your strategy you may have already beaten the opponent in theory.

I've always thought it goes like 6(+3 Police)*(2xNon-Lethal Methods), having 12 pacified. But I don't remember witnessing this. So maybe someone can clear this up?

[Deimos]

EtheMind,

The Non-Lethal Methods special ability of the garrison troops adds +1 drone control to whatever the base unit provides. So, in a normal situation, each unit will pacify 2 drones. In the Double Police rating situation, it's (2*1) +1, for a total of 3 drones controlled per unit.

So, like Ned indicated, the best you can get is 9 drones pacified from garrison troops.

[Avenoct]

Ah, the Sea Lurk. Well I did reinvent it! I'll have to go change something. The obvious missing unit to Smac was a submarine, especially a psi-sub.

-Smack

[Ken Hinds]

You can Air Drop from Air Transports

If you put troops or better yet a colony pod in your air transport you can air drop your troops and move them on the same turn. When you get the transport where you want to drop off a troop just hit the unload key and it is just like pulling into port on the ocean. Unit hops out and is ready to move. If your unit is a colony pod then just make sure that you unload before making the final movement point and build an instant base. Now you have a landing point for the following transports and voila Forward deployed troops and if you bring a second transport or a fully equiped C-5A Gallaxy (Colony Pod on a needle jet) you can establish the next base in line and fly everyone in to it. The nice thing about the C-5A is that it has a 20 square range so you can fly a couple over to that island with all the unity pods that you found or all those nice resources and beat someone else to them or just land on the coast in front of your troop ships and pull them into port on the final move and you don't lose any movement points for the units onboard.

I call this the Flexible Air Power Doctrine.

Ken