Anything special about dealing with spore launchers ...

[lbores]

... et al?

To date - I've been playing SMAC v4 to get used to the game. I'm about to move into SMAX v2. I note that there are some variants of the fungi hanging out. I didn't note anything about handling spore launchers and fungal towers in Vel's SMAX v3 Guide.

I'm assuming that spore launchers are a bit like arty in that they can wipe out improvements from 2 squares or kill another arty unit. I had intended to go right at them with a Recon Rover or the like - get in close and kick ass.

Anyone?

[hellrazor]

I'll even pop a garrison unit out to attack the spore launcher...if your green rating is halfway decent or your garrision unit has resonable morale I can usually take out the spore launcher without much problem. I've never had the offshore spore launcher thing happen to me...although they certainly like to takeout improvements from land.

[cbn]

The fungal tower is a spawning area for native life and is usually pretty hard to kill in the beginning . But you can reduce the "lifecycle" strength of a fungal tower by terraforming away the surrounding fungus.

I usually ignore the fungal tower except to keep a worm killer unit nearby to kill the worms it spawns. When you want to exand in its direction just terraform away a few squares of fungus and kill the thing.

Oh and I also hate the offshore spore launcher thing. Before air power they can do quite a lot of damage if there is no arty or navy nearby.

[Clear Skies]

Yeah, the offshore bombardment thing really gets up my cybernetically-enhanced nostrils. It's especially annoying when they do it near a base with about 2 pop and you've got no energy to rush-build either some of your own arty or a ship. Now that is annoying.

Fungal towers you say? Nothing to them. Since they can't fight back, just take some artillery in (plus a hypnotic trance unit to stack with and designate as primary defender in case of mind worm boils) and you can reduce their power to 1, then take em out easily with the trance-trained unit.
Simple. No more tower, no more problem.
Hope it works for you as well as it did for me...

There was one occasion, however, when a FT (yet another abbreviation for the list) actually helped me. I had popped a pod right in the centre square of a 3-square-wide neck of land with ocean on wither side. To the north were the Spartans (quite damn powerful) and to the south was me (exhausted after a 3-front war against Lal, Miriam and Domai - which ended in the elimination of Lal and Miriam and the pacting-into-submission of Domai). Santiago decided, in that oh-so-xenophobic way of hers, that she didn't want my Cyborgs around, so she sent a massive army down to meet me. Then, just as she got there...mind worm boils galore! Wiped out almost her entire army (she had -2 planet)! Brill!

[Slimehorse]

The other trick is that FTs have one rank of morale for every square of fungus to which they are adjacent. A former should remove fungus prior to an attack. Very useful in the earliest stages of the game when you don't even have trance but you would like to get rid of a "commando" FT that's taking up prime real estate right next to the second base you've built, before it starts spewing out locusts and whatnot, but the best unit you have is your original scout patrol, now maybe at "disciplined" or "hardened" after a mindworm encounter. (yick, too many clauses in that sentence)

hmm... realized this post is somewhat of a repeat of cbn's advice, but I disagree with what cbn says about ignoring them. I don't like them- they're aesthetically unappealing (don't like a red shield sitting near a bunch of size 7 bases), they're unpredictable (locusts AGAIN?!?), if you get them from a pod pop in the early game they will take up squares that more likely you would want a base on, and they lower nearby property values, which causes me to lose tax revenue. sorry... a Sim City burp

But of course, you might be able to use them as a free troop factory if you're a green faction... although again, you should be capturing your mindworms from active exploration and pod pops, not from complacently harvesting the home-front towers. One of the things that really boosts a green faction's power is wanderlust- the need to keep traveling to find more worms, which results in more commfrequencies, more artifacts, more free rush builds. All of this being IM(very)HO.
[This message has been edited by Slimehorse (edited March 02, 2001).]

[WhiteElephants]

Like most people have already said, I'll take out the tower if its sitting on some prime real estate, otherwise I leave them. They make nice borders and who doesn't need the energy credit from killing whatever they spawn? I know it comes in handy for me. Planet Pearls and Rocky Mountain Oysters, ummm good!

[Slimehorse]

WhiteElephants' (there's more than one of you?) comment about borders got me thinking... if you plant a nice big patch of fungus, say 3x3 or 4x4 out in the wilderness somewhere, has a tower ever shown up? (not immediately upon planting, but at some point down the road) Could you theoretically ring your territory with former-planted fungus and eventually get a bonus tower or two for your pains? Or is this just a Friday afternoon stuck-at-work hallucination?

[Blake]

I played on a particullary interesting random map once, there was 4 fungal towers in a row on this massive fungus field that formed a border between me and the drones, the ZoC blocking made any attack extremely difficult, but provided excellent cover for my probe teams. Especially once I got xenoempathy dome. It was a rather cool "landmark" actually, probably the coolest I've ever seen in a random map.

On spore launchers, try the (1)-1t-1 bombards, trance. It defends with a +50% bonus against spore launchers (effective odds 1.5:1 in favour of you, more like 2:1 with sensor/base bonus), which is pretty good considering under FM you attack a spore launcher with about 1:1 odds, and worse if running wealth too.

[Fitz]

quote: Originally posted by Blake on 03-02-2001 05:31 PM On spore launchers, try the (1)-1t-1 bombards, trance. It defends with a +50% bonus against spore launchers (effective odds 1.5:1 in favour of you, more like 2:1 with sensor/base bonus), which is pretty good considering under FM you attack a spore launcher with about 1:1 odds, and worse if running wealth too.

Alternately, if the offshore sporelaunchers are a pain and you're in Green, build a (1)e-1-1 bombard, empath. Just be sure you get the first shot off.

Personally, this has happened to me so many times that in the mid game all major bases stock either a (1)-1t-1 Clean Trance bombard, or a (1)e-1-1 Clean Empath Bombard. If enemies approach that aren't native, you can always upgrade to best-1-1 for defensive bombardment.

Just remember to hit (i.e. - bombard) the approach road before you do the upgrade, so your opponent is slowed down .

Edit: Fixed in response to a nitpick


[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited March 02, 2001).]

[Blake]

quote: Personally, this has happened to me so many times that in the mid game all major bases stock either a (1)-1t-1 Clean Trance bombard, or a (1)e-1t-1 Clean Empath Bombard. If enemies approach that aren't native, you can always upgrade to best-1-1 for defensive bombardment.

Not to nitpick... but thats 3 special abilities

I don't find empath bombard usfull, I find spore launchers are easy to bait into attacking your trance arty, and having an empath rover unit is much better, because it attacks with a +50% attacker bonus as well. Besides usually I run FM, which is why I need the defensive trance bombard. But once I get to clean I upgrade them to best-1-1,clean,bombard the +25% base +25% sensor is more than enough to defend against any bombardment, native or otherwise. Later when I switch to green I'll bombard spore launchers if I run out of ground attackers / can't engage with full movement, interesting thing, if there is a stack of mixed spore launchers and mindworms, and you kill a spore launcher in artillary duel all the worms in the stack die.

[Fitz]

I must be tired. In fact, I even threw in additional t on the Clean Empath Bombard.

Hmmmm.... I probably use Empath & Trance bombards without the clean then. I do this in SP all the time, so I probably grab the Living Refinery, which would make me care less about support. Not that I pay THAT much attention to support. I also use my own spore launchers a fair amount.

In MP, I would probably go without clean too, so long as my formers & garrisons had it. I haven't gotten far enough in any SMACX PBEM games yet to where I'm ready to do this, and in my LAN games I use a 1/3 minerals to support rule.

I find empath bombard helpfull in dealing with the occasional roving mindworm (or outbreak), which is one of the reason I use them. I'd say I use about 50% trance, 25% empath, and 25% spore launchers. Speaking of which, time for a new thread.
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited March 02, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited March 02, 2001).]

[Clear Skies]

I HATE spore launchers!
The most annoying thing they do is sit offshore in a IoD and continually bombard your improvements. I really can't stand it when they do that.
Just keep some artillery in your bases and you should be OK. Probably the best way to kill them is using scouts with empathic abilities. Recon rovers would do fine.
Not really anything special about them - they're basically just native artillery, or so I think... also I've never noticed lifecycle making any difference to their abilities.
Fungal towers are quite annoying but not very common - at least not in my experience. They sometimes appear when you pop a pod and get a fungal bloom. They can't attack but they do exert zones of control which can REALLY get on your nerves. Also, mind worms seem to be more common around them. Dunno why.
That's my 2c.

[lbores]

quote: Originally posted by Blake on 03-02-2001 07:24 PM Not to nitpick... but thats 3 special abilities

Not to nitpick - but isn't there an SP that essentially confers the same ability on units as Trance? In which case - you could build units as described.

[Blake]

The neural amp gives +50% defensive psi combat, but if you wish you may still put trance on your units. IMO it's use is more for enhancing native lifeforms, as normally you want to be on the offense against mindworms.

[Skanderbeg]

In early game fungus towers are difficult to kill, so I leave them alone.

Later, I terraform them down and kill them with an empath unit.

Sometimes I let them grow to protect my borders, and when I am ready to go to the offensive (very effective with xenoempathy dome), I kill them with a missile ($$$) and give my troops a "Go!".

And when You have got the SP that gives 50% psi attack, its nice to train your gravships on fungus tower hunting until they are elite.

"Steelborn, Starborn"