Battle Ogres Mk2 and 3?

[Lefty Scaevola]

. Had some buddies, the B U G S (bloodthirsty unstopable gaming society) that were realy into GEV miniatures, some big battles. Their boardgame favorite was Stellar Conquest. I played it once. wiped 3 of them and their collective 50 games experience right off the star chart. The made the AI like error of being PREDICTABLE in their approach to me, the novice.

------------------
Gauis Mucius Scaevola
older richer & wiser than you

[WhiteElephants]

Well Black Sunrise, here's the other side of the coin. Regardless of the size of the world you play there is still as chance that your opponent is going to start near you, although the chance shrinks as the size of the map expands. Also, the only factions able to capture mindworms in the early game are the Gaians and the Cult so that leaves the other 12 faction with their ****'s in the wind. And your defense of building a scout every turn certainly doesn't balance the books in my opinion. The equation would be: I pop a pod (which I would be doing anyway) and in return you are forced to build x amount (5? 10?) of scouts to counter. So, while you would be building scouts, that are dead before they hit the factory floor, I'm happily building colony pods, scouts of my own that won't die right away, or whatever, at your expense. And on top of it all only a "stupid opponent" would attack without any support.

Again, I don't think there is any "real" defense in the early game for Ogres which, in my opinion, makes them a bit unbalancing. Rewarding a player based on pure chance was never my idea of a good "strategy" game. Which in its purest form would also mean random events and the pods would be turned off as well.

[Aredhran]

I've had the Caretakers send me *two* Mk2 ogres while all I had to defend was 1-3-1, and my best weapon was Impact (shortly followed by Missile).

Took reconverting the production of all my bases but two to rush defensive units and cheap offensive rovers to wipe the suckers out, I needed something like 25 of them before the last ogre was destroyed (and I lost only one base)

Never seen an Mk3 outside the Scenario Editor though.

Aredhran

[Googlie]

The one I popped was on a truly humungous map (600 x 500 or so), late in the game - about 2455 or thereabouts as I remember - when there were still oodles of pods to be popped

G.

[XWaste]

I've never found a MKIII, I've only found a MKII once and thought it was a bug when I saw that it was twice the strength it should be - then I realised there was more than one type of ogre.

I really hate that they can't be repaired though, not because I really want to use them heaps, I just find it really untidy - I like all my units to be in tip top condition for the surprise inspections.

[Misotu]

Yeah ... getting a battle ogre is only just above getting a fungal bloom in my book. But if you could repair them ...

[Qilue]

I have yet to test this (although, I think this post should be in the SMAC creation forum)

Battle Ogre MK1, Infantry, R-Laser, 3-Res, 0,10, 0, Disable, 6, 00010000000000000000000000
Battle Ogre MK2, Infantry, R-Bolt, 8-Res, 0,15, 0, Disable, 6, 10010000000000000000000000
Battle Ogre MK3, Speeder, String, Stasis, 0,20, 0, Disable, 6, 10010000000000000000000000

Byte 4 in the ability flags is unique to ogres. I stopped playing SMAC before I had a chance to test whether that is the repair flag.

MOuse