Fungal/Tectonic missiles...gotta have 'em.

[D4everman]

I haven't been to this discussion group for awhle so I was just rereading some of the older posts. Theres one about fungla and tectonic missiles. Seems some folks don't like them. I can't see why not...

I use fungal missiles to screw up an enemies production. As soon as I got the required advance I built a buttload of them and just kept for use later. (not like I didn't think I'd ever need them)Then when I was in the middle of a war with the Hive and Morgan wanted a piece of me I plopped a few dozen fungal loads in his core cities. The worms and fungla towers pretty much wiped him out for me. Plus his bases starved down to nothing! Beautiful! (idiot should have built some flechettes and odps.)

Tectonic missiles? A must if the Pirates are in the game. I had a game where Sven decided to attack me. I had a navy, but not as large as his....and I damn sure wasn't going to waste time building a large fleet and trying to take out his gazillion bases. I waited a time, built the Space Elevator (as soon as I get the advance I equip almost all of my troops with drop pods if I can afford it.) and launched my tectonic babies. Viola. His navy is gone or stranded in land cities and my troops are raining all over him. It only took about five or six turns to destroy him.

Does anyone else do that? The AI has never launched those missiles at me. Have they at you?

D4

[Lefty Scaevola]

I use the fungal missles prior to an invasionwhen I have a lot of the fungus production techs & projects.

[Sindai]

The real trouble with them is the cost. They're way more expensive than conventional missiles until you get quantum/singularity tech, and with lower reactor types are generaly far too inneffective for their raised costs, which only compounds the problem.

Even though I would've liked to, I found them too expensive to use until I went and cut the warhead costs in half in the alphax.txt file....

[Aredhran]

I've yet to play a game where I *need* to use these babies for anything else than academic or pure fun reasons.

But I *do* like them. And tectonic are also great if you need to quickly elevate some area (for energy gathering purposes for example)

[Deimos]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't these missiles create global eco-damage? Not on the order of a PB, but some, none the less.

I seem to remember an SP game where I decided to "try them out" (never had a tactical need for them up to that point). After deploying a largish number (30ish or so), I started to have a non-trivial amount of eco-damage in almost all of my bases.

If I'm wrong, I'll blame my false memories on senility

[DrFaustus]

Fungal payloads rock. Was just playing a transcend game where every faction - led by Deirdre - was clamoring to kill me all at once. I'm best at a military game, so I was doing fine at knocking them back. But my original intention was to try and work on my tech/SP skills at this level. So I built some fungal missiles and turned her home island into a twisting, fetid mass of fungal towers and swarming mind worms. Of course, she likes those better than most, but it shut down her home base completely. With her out of the way, was able to transcend easily.
Also, unlike tectonic payloads, the fungal version works over water squares as well. Try this on, say, the Pirates and watch all their kelp and tidal harnesses disappear into a mass of fungal stew. Yum!

[Lord Maxwell]

I find the fungal missiles to really shine when you have the Xenoempathy Dome. Especially against human opponents as they won't see you in the fungus, and a few missiles here and there makes him wonder where the attack comes. But even against the computer making terrain where you move as if on roads and he uses all his moves for a single step (native life not counting) is a pretty good idea.

And it destroys most tile enhancements.

[Sikander]

This thread has caused me to do some thinking about the terraforming capabilities of tectonic missles. Does anyone know if:

1) They really do cause ecodamage?

2) You can convert all of the sea squares in the game to land squares, or will the sea just run into what are now the lowest land squares on Planet?

I've been thinking about paving Planet with Farm/Condensor/Soil Enrichers and trying to blow up the machine through population overload. I'm just wondering if tectonic missles are a useful way to accomplish the raising of the terrain.

[Jasonian]

Yes, I know for a fact that they do cause eco damage. I tested a few using the scenario editor, and fungus started growing near my size-3 bases with NO eco damage prior to the missile detonations.

As for the "no sea"... why not?

[Sikander]

Jasonian,

Where would the water go? Still, if that's the way the game does it, I'm not going to argue.