How to build free base defense units!

[The Rusty Gamer]

This may have been mentioned before but this is something I've only just discovered for myself so I'd though I'd share it.

I've discovered a way to build base defense units that require no support whatsoever. Simply design a probe unit from the workshop with a top defense and just a movement of 1 (to make it cheaper). You can even add special abilities like trance defense and so on. Not only can you then build a whole bunch of them to defend your bases at absolutely no drainage on your minerals for maintenance since probe units require no support, but you are also simultaneously defending yourself from those nuisancy probe attacks by other factions.

Anybody else know about this? Does it help anybody?

[Blake]

Yes, this is known. There is a couple of minor problems:
1) The armoured probe is technically not a military unit, so *any* other military unit will be chosen as the preffered defender (this means a scout patrol is chosen in favour of a Silksteel probe)
2) When the last military unit dies, all the probes die with it. So if you have a scout patrol and armoured probe in the base, and the scout patrol gets killed, the probe dies without putting up a fight. The same applies for 2 armoured probes, if one dies, both die.

So, this means that the armoured probe is only usfull in a base if it is the only defender. So if you only want one defender, use the armoured probe.

[aaglo]

Funny thing about those armored probes...
A probe with a fusion reactor (R:2); when you add the armor to the infantry probe, it becomes a speeder probe (at least on my version, which is SMACX 2.0). Or do I have a serious illness with my settings?
Armored probes are still quite useful (dispite their lack of usefulness as a city defending unit). They are great as offensive units, 'cos they are hard to kill and cheap to build.
Have at thee, Provost! (not the Harrison one )

[bobyk464]

More funny probe armoring stuff:

I'm in a late-game situation, and I find that armoring cruiser probes to the max adds nothing to the cost, and armoring tank probes to the max actually decreases the cost. Hmmm... (And here we find that the red number with the exclamation point for unit cost isn't a really a function of the actual unit cost, but rather of the unit configuration: the cheaper armored probe has the exclamation, the more expensive unarmored one does not.)

I find that armored probes are pretty good for use in the field. Even though they can't disengage, the armor still improves their survivability somewhat. While the benefits of armor vs the cost on probes can be debated, there's certainly no debate that high morale and the best reactor make the probes more successful at what they have to do.

In my home turf, probes in bases are typically the standard unarmored speeder type. (Can't remember, is an unarmored infantry probe cheaper than an unarmored speeder probe?) If I'm in a situation where I'm overruning somebody and have confidence that they won't be able to strike and take a base back, I'll rush-build an armored infantry probe in a conquered base immediately. Usually ECM. (Can't remember again, can you put AAA on probes?) On the next turn, the probe stays as sole defender, and the overrunning troops move on to the next target. Rush-building the probe is more costly than rushing a regular military unit, but it certainly does offer multiple levels of protection, as Russel mentioned, until the standard garrisons are put into place.

[bobyk464]

Originally posted by aaglo
Funny thing about those armored probes...
A probe with a fusion reactor (R:2); when you add the armor to the infantry probe, it becomes a speeder probe (at least on my version, which is SMACX 2.0). Or do I have a serious illness with my settings?

No illness. The default probe team has movement=2, and this is done by assigning it a speeder chassis, even though the icon is still shown as infantry. When you put the armor on, then you see the chassis displayed like the combat units, and voila - the speeder gets wheels.

[johndmuller]

Don't these armored probes receive a 50% (non-combat unit) defensive penalty?

I don't believe that they will be morale-upgraded at a monolith either.

[bobyk464]

According the firaxis SMAC manual,

NON-COMBAT UNITS
Unarmed units get -50% penalty defending against combat units. A unit is considered “non-combat” if it has no weapon and no armor, so a former unit with plasma steel armor does not get the non-combat penalty when attacked.

Maybe some misleading grammer. The only thing we can say for sure is that the -50% defense penalty is waived by adding the armor. Other than that, probes, formers, etc... still behave as non-combat in every other way when armored.

-Like Mr. johndmuller, I've never seen a probe reap the benefits from passing through a monolith either. I always get the "Perhaps we should dispatch a military unit to investigate." message.

- TKG once posted that "non-combat units may never disengage." I can't find this rule written down elsewhere, but I believe it, because I've never seen a probe disengage. Even Maritime Control Center enhanced elite armored cruiser probes.

- And we've all seen that any number of probes or formers or what have you, armored or not, are all destroyed together when the last combat unit in the stack gets destroyed.

[RedFred]

The armored probe concept is something I have never been comfortable with. So I avoid building them.

This is reaching way, way back but regarding the probes and monoliths I thought that unpatched vanilla SMAC allowed experience upgrades from monoliths. If so, I think Firaxis made the right call in removing that "feature".

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by johndmuller
Don't these armored probes receive a 50% (non-combat unit) defensive penalty?

I don't believe that they will be morale-upgraded at a monolith either.

Spelled out in the manual that the non combat unit penalty does not applied to an armored non combat unit.
Probe morale is an independent system from other morale and is not affected by monoliths. Starting morale is determined by certain techs and by your probe rating from SE, and each successful probe action by a probe unit adds one to the morale.

[NorthSwordsman]

Warning, long post on Probes

I generally find Armored probes more trouble than they are worth.

The main reason why is that you cannot equip them with police powers to help against drones, while you can easily upgrade any armored military unit to that particular function. If you add a military unit with police powers, that defeats the purpose of armored probes to begin with, as you can read from the above postings.

When you run settings that add drones (Free Market, for example, when you have military units outside of your territory), or you are playing Zakharov, Police Powers are essential when someone else gets the Virtual World and you are struggling to build anti-drone facilities.

Armored probes do reduce the support hit, through, and are useful in certain situations. such as FreeMarket and peacetime. But! No police powers makes it difficult. I would rather have regular units with police powers rather than armored probes (which are expensive, pre-fusion) and a ton of anti-drone facilities. It is cheaper to just build 2 garrisons with police powers and have 1, just 1 lousy crawler parked on an out of the way forest square to support them than paying upkeep for drone-control facilities. If you use crawlers like you should be doing, you shouldn't have any problems with support.

I do know a few things... probes cannot be upgraded by a monolith, they do not disengage, and last.... the armor isn't worth anything against worms. Morale, plus modifiers, are the determining factor. You can't use a probe to capture a worm regardless. If you are in a situation where you are under attack, it's usually better to have regular military units and a regular probe in the base.

Any idiot who runs FM during wartime is just asking for his butt to be kicked to the other side of the galaxy.

So then how do you use armored probes? I find they generally have one good use, and just one, on a rover chassis. On an infantry chassis, they have a limited use for in-base only. On a rover chassis, if you park them in areas that are equidistant to coastal bases, if someone does land on your shores (and they shouldn't!), probe the units away if at all possible. Yeah, they would be vulnerable to air attack if you do not have the proper defensive set up (See Vel's "Creating Synergy" thread). If you set up your defenses tightly enough, the air units shouldn't have the range to reach them. Besides, you should have interceptors at your coastal bases to protect them anyhow!

Hope this helps someone....

NS

[Blake]

I've noticed a few comments regarding formers being non-combat in this thread, in fact each non-combat unit is slightly different...

Crawlers, Probes and Colony pods, all die together when stacked.

Formers, have more relaxed non combat rules, specifically stacked formers dont die together like stacked probes. Also armoured formers can get repairs at monoliths. (I suspect any non-combat unit can get repaired by a monolith, if armoured....)

Additionaly, Formers, crawlers and colony pods, even unarmoured ones, incur no -50% penalty when defending in bases against mindworms. This means, if an empty base is about to get wormraped, and a former is next to the base, garrison the base with the former! Chances are it'll beat off the worm. You can also use a single crawler or a colony pod (but consider that a colony pod is as valuable as a size one base, running could be a better option).

This means formers are very usfull to garrison your bases in an emergency, especially against bloom-worms. But dont try the same trick with crawlers, because they all die with the last unit.

Under no circumstances can any non-combat unit ever capture bases (in the traditional sense), or move after an airdrop.

Overall Formers, Probes and Colonypod/Crawler follow a different set of non-combat rules. Most (all?) of these variations are undocumented.

[aaglo]

Re: Warning, long post on Probes

Originally posted by NorthSwordsman
...When you run settings that add drones (Free Market, for example, when you have military units outside of your territory), or you are playing Zakharov, Police Powers are essential when someone else gets the Virtual World and you are struggling to build anti-drone facilities...

Um... I thought that when using Free market (in another words: Police way below zero) you cannot use military units as police. How does the police powers ability react to this (I can't remember, because I've never tried it).

[Sikander]

Since I am too lazy to look up one of the three old threads regarding armored probe teams I'll just go from memory. They are quite useful, but like many things their usefullness is limited to certain situations.

1) In the early game they are a clean unit. This means that you can build zillions of infantry probes to protect your shores, or send them to garrison your border. Don't stack them, it won't help and they can't be probed away from you anyway.

2) When you are running FM in the very early game you can use them in lieu of regular garrisons. You won't get any police benefits from garrisons anyway, and at least the armored probe team won't cost you any of your hard earned minerals, and it does double duty as a probe defense.

3) When you run FM at any time of the game you can use your armored probe teams to explore and claim areas which are outside your formal borders. This can be extremely useful. Pinch Yang off from that huge empty area with a few probe teams perched on good defensive terrain.

4) When you are running wealth armored probe teams have better morale than your regulars. Pound for pound they defend better than the same type of regular infantry, and rather than that anemic 1 attack factor they can turn the tables sometimes by buying that impact squad away from your enemy.

5) By the time you get clean units armored probes tend to be obsolete for some of their former missions. Use them to defend the coast, or garrison your own bases from enemy probes. They are still quite useful.

[Blake]

Morgan benefits by far the most from armoured probes, because it gets around his -1 support, he has plenty of cash to upgrade an infantry probe to armoured, and plenty of cash to use the secondary function of the armoured probe (or should that be primary function ).
Also morgan will either be running Free Market, in which case he needs no police, or Wealth, in which case conventional units will have lower morale than Armoured probes. It's a win-win.

[bobyk464]

Originally posted by Blake
I've noticed a few comments regarding formers being non-combat in this thread, in fact each non-combat unit is slightly different...

Thanks for clarifying (un-clarifying, in this case?). I thought I was getting a little funny in the head, watching the probe/cralwer/former/pod combat/non-combat thing and unable to put together some comprehensive rules. Now we find out that there are no comprehensive rules.