Wierd units

[Googlie]

Any new crazy ideas for units in the last six months?

[Googlie]

hroman21:

I did build a needlejet crawler once, to harvest energy from a mnountain top. It cost soemthing like 90 minerals to build, I flew it out to the site, it returned (I think) 6 energy that turn then disappeared the next turn.

What a waste.

(I regularly give my crawler trance and armor - doesn't everybody?)

G.

[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited June 24, 2000).]

[Cooliofunkadelic]

I use needlejet crawlers. Since, when you apply a crawler to building a wonder, its production cost is applied, nothing is wasted by making needlejet crawlers to combine 4 or 5 big cities to pump out a wonder quick. Added bonuses are they can travel far quickly, and if a base's production speed is high, you won't have wasted minerals from building something too small.

[Docfeelgood]

I made a deep pressure hull aircraft carrier.


Submersable carrier, what a concept !!!

[Ned]

Armored probe teams are GREAT! AI garisons attack these units even thought the odds of winning are hopeless. So to take a well entrenched city, simply park one or more of your best armored probe team next to the target city. The city's garrisons will attack until there are no more garisons. Just amazing!

I also created 1-3-1 drop garrison units. These were used to take cities cleared by copters or armored probe units. See above. I created these units because I had noticed that my drop 12-4-1 (you name the weapon)never seemed to be involved in actual offense. They were simply used to take a city after the copters and probe teams had done their job. So why build such expensive units for simply dropping in and holding a city against counter attacks.

[MariOne]

DS:
wow! You're the first one that I read, to consider the death of stacked probes a BUG!!! I admit that it's an interesting PoV, although I disagree with it.
Is there consensus on it being a bug, here at 'poly, or is it just your quite personal opinion?

So far, I guess that all the players I spoke with considered it just as a normal game mechanics, without it being a bug ever dawning in our minds...

About armored probes, it's just that theyr're treated in a very special way.
e.g.,they remain support-free.
They're never picked as defenders, UNLESS you designate them.
When armored, they indeed defend as combat-units against conventional attackers.
But if they're not defending, then they're treated as probes, not as armored units, thus they still all die.
OTOH, probe combat is unaffected by the presence of armor.
About unarmored transports surviving, is because they neverhteless have 0.5 defense strenght, while unarmored probes have 0.


WH: you KNOW that drop probe teams 1.can't move on the same turn they drop 2.can't drop in other's basezones regardless of air defense, unless you have Pact, don't you?
Maybe, an Elite drop probe, droppe right outside of the basezone, and hpoing not to be spotted for uone turn...
I agree that a few might be useful for internal use, fast relocation of defending probes.


Air crawlers: I never actually tested them, but I though that they could collect their resources each other turn! The trick lies in canceling their orders on their tripback turn, before the game routine gets there.

Most expensive units: Well, a Drop-Clean bestarmor fission crawlers is a useful design if the crawlerupgrading technique is not banned from your pbem. (or a ECM-Trance as well with armor up to 4) Otherwise, keeping crawlers simpl is more cost effective, more flexible and less investment-risky.
And, as none could propose to ban normal units upgrade, if you make tests you'll find out that the most expensive units are still worth to upgrade to, only for disbanding them into a project, even with the half-mineral yield. Still cheaper than direclty hurrying the project... Of course, hurrying a lot of good ole Fusion Speeder Supplies would still be more cost-effective

Oh, DS again.
I can't recall the detail, but fiddling in the DW you should find out that with fusion reactor, plasma armor on a seaformer should come for free. So, why NOT putting on equipment which comes for FREE? Dont' you agrEE? On the same line, when you make a Fusion AAA garrison, you might find out that a decent weapon comes for FREE too: even if that's not the purpose you were designing that AAA defender for, would that be a reason to refuse an added weapon you can get for FREE?

[Ned]

Marione, I have tried, but could not or, better yet, could not figure out how to designate an armored probe team to be the defender in a stack. If you have done this in the past, could you share with us the detailed steps on how to do it?

Ned

[WhiteElephants]

I believe Control + D sets the unit selected as a designated defender. You can also select this through the right-click pop up screens.

[Ned]

But, has anyone done this with an armored probe team? Ned

[MariOne]

Well, I'm pretty sure to recall that when recently I tested armored probe facts using the Scenario Editor, I wanted to verify if the DD fearture also worked...

No wait, now I recall better.
I had a green 1-1-1 stacked with an Elite synth probe. I attacked that stack with some laser unit. I realized that the game picked the weaker unit as default defender, even if the armored probe had better odds.
Then I thought: how can I make the probe to defend the stack? I went with the obvious attempt, using indeed Ctrl+D. It worked.
I use SMACv4, never had SMAX, don't know if this is related.

I might double check it, I always let room for doubt, but I'm pretty sure.
I think though that I tested it with a stack in the open. I probably didn't try it in a base.
Could it also be possible that it works with the SE activated only? Just wondering.

[Helium Pond]

As far as drop probe teams go, they actually are incredibly useful, if you know how. The message preventing their drop says you can't drop non-combat units inside enemy zones of control, which made me go, hmmm... but what if I have a zone of control inside enemy territory? Sure enough, if I first send a drop infantry past enemy lines, I can drop a probe right on top of 'em.

[MariOne]

Well, may I be damned, now I can't do it anymore, like you say.
I'd doubt of myself, but I have that vivid visual memory of my armored probe defending the stack in the test I put up...
I hope that I saved the test file, but I did it at work, so I have to wait for Monday...

Did I dream?

Honestly I wouldn't have been going around making straight statments hadn't I been sure...

[MariOne]

I remember (although I now begin doubting myself) that the drop of non-weapon units is prevented by basezones and ZoCs. You can drop only with Pact.
I did test it ( ). IIRC tho, an "empty" basezone didn't exert its control in that sense...

Well, let's test it again!

[MariOne]

Well, now rereading it, it says "bases and Zones of Control", not "basezones".

Yet, I was not able to drop a probe in an opponent ZoC.
Not even after dropping first a normal unit on the spot, and then the probe right on top of it.

Still, the fact that a drop probe is a sitting duck after landing, makes it rather difficult for it to survive the enemy's reaction before it's its turn to move again...
All I can figure, is that it can work as support for a conventional drop.
Or as stopgap or dummy target, but then there might be cheaper drop combinaisons for those wasteful purposes.

[609x512]

The strangest unit ive built was a colony pod on a gravship chassis with syth armor. I was assuming that i can set up bases anywhere but it turns out i cant deploy it on water. i find clean gravship formers with photon armor very useful however, but thats late game when i got nothing better to do than slap some expensive armor on a flying former