How practic is it to fight only using native life?

[Black Sunrise]

Two best things about native life:
1) can't be nerve gassed (have at least 1 in every city when playing MP to protect against nerve choppers).
2) can be behind on tech, and still have a fighting chance. Focus all energy on cash, no research and rush rush rush build. Don't need research, since native life puts you at a (rough) parity.


I finally found a use for captured spore launchers, which, in my opinion, suck. They don't do enough damage to be worth anything at all, and since they can't win fights (except with other arty) they don't become demon boils (therefore sucking as garrison units). Even worse, since the more captured life forms you have the less likely you are to capture new life, when you have them you can't catch more worms to send against your enemies). This is what you do: Release them into the wild, kill them with your mindworms. Now you get money, by winning a fight, your mindworms get trained, and you have better chances of catching more worms!
A total win situation!

Indra
Black Sunrise

[knowhow2]

my experience is that Spore Launcher don't have the 3 against 2 disadvantage against aircraft when in defense. Could be mighty useful in base with aerspace complex (since enemy aircraft with best weapon would go through aeo complex and AAA armour in most cases.

[Lefty Scaevola]

The locust has several advatages. It is strong offesively against both ground and air targets, it is strong defensively (inportant in smac-z where is costs too much to armor air units) and it can take bases, it can hover indefinately and needs no no maitainece if over a fungus square (you can actually build and anti air wall with them to keep out rabbit hunting pennetrators). Its main disadvantage is that it is slow. I like to use that as air defense or to provide defense value to unarmored penetrators.

[Black Sunrise]

Huh?
Why would you armor an air unit?

And the big advantage of a locust is it can be used to capture cities.

[Earwicker]

I agree that SL's are the least useful of native lifeforms, but not completely useless. I never build them but don't mind grabbing freebies. Send them over to visit your enemies and bombard terrain improvements. Sure, maybe they'll get killed: but better a free SL than a valuable shard rover.

They can't be Demons? I'm certain I've pumped some of these guys up that high. They go trolling for pods and worms with the rest of my worm army and get to attack all the wild SL's I find.

Not that a demon boil SL does any noticable damage to non-native life . . .

Red is 100% right about the way to exploit Cha's +2 planet. Early in the game, probably only the Spartans will be any match for your worm rush, and even they'll have trouble. The beautiful thing is that you can have your bases merrily producing anything they want (CP's, formers, probes, and SP's) while the war machine cranks along in the fungus fields. The advantage dries up quickly, so go for it!

[Enigma]

Here is yet another numeric comparison-
+7 Ecology SE (70%)
Demon Boil (50%)
Dream Twister(50%)
Base number- 3 (effectively 50%)

Optimal defender
Elite + Children's Creche (75%) (yes this does happen)
Trance (50%)
3 Res Armor (25%)
Base bonus (25%)
Sensor bonus (25%)

I realize this is a crude comparison, but I am not exactly sure how the game calculates defense/offense, some values are calculated using starting value, other values accumulate...

But sheer addings brings the total to 220% vs 200%- and that is with EVERY POSSIBLE bonus for the person on the offense, +7 ecology SE is Cha green/cyber with Manifold Nexus- generally unlikely.

Native life is its best on the high seas- the 1:1 ratio is awesome, and native life has a big advantage. It can heal in fungus, it costs nothing when captured (ships can be EXPENSIVE- especially before fusion), it can survive being attacked (Not possible otherwise without BIG tech advantage- silksteel vs impact or whatever), IoDs can transport units, and can pop pods and recieve alien artifacts.

The other big deal is that they are invulnerable to nerve gas. Overall native life is much better for defending bases with low infrastructure than for attacking.

But on the ground native life is pretty sucky in my opinion. If you remove the dream twister and the ludicrous +7 ecology SE then the green attacker is at a big disadvantage, and remember both of these come late in the game. Demon boils are hard to get because the lifecycle facilities only give +1 lifecycle each, and mind worms are very expensive until brood pits.

The function of native life in an MP game is to prevent your opponent from running FM, this is very good as Morgan can run Green/Wealth and get +2 econ

I would have liked to have seen native life better implemented, it simply takes way too much damage against conventional units. Maybe if hit points were implemented differently, as in mind worms either win a battle without HP loss or lose... it would require a lot of game rebalancing but it would increase the use of native life.

[T-hawk]

Doesn't the defender also get a Planet SE bonus? And you forgot Neural Amplifier.

And every combat factor in the game multiplies, with the absolute only exception being: Perimeter/Naval/Aerospace supersede the Base +25% and provide +100%; and Tachyon Field improves a PD/NY/AC to be +200% (None of which applies to psi combat.)

So your numbers would be:
Attacker: 3 * 1.7 * 1.5 * 1.5 = 11.475
Defender: 2 * 1.75 * 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 10.254.
But add Planet SE for Gaia/Green/Cyber * 1.5 and Neural Amplifier * 1.5 and the defender has strength of 23.072, more than twice the attacker.

[big_canuk]

The defender is not affected by planet SE. That is why Morgan running FM early is way better to defend with trance infantry in base, than to go out an attack them. (Unless you have a *very* high morale rover (maybe with empath) especially for the purpose to get the planet pearls)

[Fan-Anf]

Mind Worms are one of best land war "machines"... Why? Becouse if they do 1/3 move or 2/3 move, they still have a 100% of atack. I means that we have a mind rover.... :>

Atacking bases with only mindworms is very stupid. If we play in SMACSingle, only Believers are using sometimes "advanced" units as transce or empath. But If we play multi with a friend, he'll build many of transce and empath units.

If we plan to atack some nation with mindworms in single, I propose Univeristy, Morganities...

With other factions we must build a high technology war machines. I propose 4 up to date rovers, and if we have some aircrafts. This technique is I think the best in first turns of midgame.