Tell me how you use your choppers, boyo!

[Vi Vicdi]

Actually since you can do multiple drops in a single turn range is virtually unlimited. (Damage taken on non-base drops is the only limiting factor.)

[LoD]

Alinestra Covelia: Copters cannot conquer cities (use Locusts for that) and they can be attacked by non-airborne units if they "run-out of fuel" (finish the turn outside a base or airbase) - so try to avoid that. But still, they are great.

Vi Vicdi: Have it your way, but that's under "cheating" in my book.

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---LoD

He, who comprehends the past, shall conquer the present and rule the future.

[This message has been edited by LoD (edited February 28, 2000).]

[MichaeltheGreat]

In single player, I've never allowed an enemy faction to live long enough for me to bother with Space Elevator, except in games where I transcended, and thus let the pathetic AI live. Choppers aren't necessary in SP games, but they are decisively lethal in multiplayer.

Alinestra - that tactic will work against the AI, but a SAM chopper will shred all your needlejets in one turn - not as an interceptor, but in it's own turn.

Aredhran has half the formula - put a big "X" in front of those Shard Fusion choppers. In one multiplayer (PBEM) game I'm finishing up, I've constructed 34 X-Fusion Fusion and X-Shard Fusion choppers, and I have 17 of them now for the finale. The 19 that I've used (17 destroyed) have been almost exclusively the force that I've used to destroy nine enemy bases (70 population points) and over 120 enemy units, including forty supply crawlers - this against a well armed human enemy whose land mass is 14 ocean squares away from my nearest forward base. Against crawlers and formers, these high grade choppers (cheap to build) can do lethal damage at 90% damage - so you have three turns to fly oblique routes and show up in the enemy rear. When they self destruct, the power of the Shard/Fusion combo will take out any non-military units, and inflict redline damage on anything else not in a base, but in adjacent squares.

I've used choppers to plink enemy crawlers 25 squares away from my closest base - get 3-4 crawlers per chopper, and you're not only way ahead on minerals, but you've taken a good deal of production away from the other guy, until he replaces the crawlers. The maximum effective range is even further, but I haven't found anything that far out to plink.