Green Maritime Pod Strategy

[Maniac]

Indeed. There is a countermeasure for most of all these smart tricks. For example, just patrol your shores and the "transport full of marines" is redundant as well.

Btw, I'm wondering, do people use to strategy to surround their entire continent with sea bases, as is suggested in Vel's guide. I've never yet encountered it in my games (well yes one time, but I think that was just because he lacked room to expand - he was surrounded by me :-), but then again, I haven't yet played that many MPs.

[Maniac]

Btw, I thought people used Impact Choppers for that job

[Mongoose]

Missile Choppers are more lethal than impact when self destructed.

[Maniac]

Oh, they're used for self-destruct! Does that kill the crawlers or just damages them for the next suicide chopper?

[Mongoose]

Chop 'til you're out of fuel, then SD. Nice thread about it at CGN.

[Maniac]

Ah yes, I really should visit that site once...

[Sikander]

Originally posted by M@ni@c
Indeed. There is a countermeasure for most of all these smart tricks. For example, just patrol your shores and the "transport full of marines" is redundant as well.

Btw, I'm wondering, do people use to strategy to surround their entire continent with sea bases, as is suggested in Vel's guide. I've never yet encountered it in my games (well yes one time, but I think that was just because he lacked room to expand - he was surrounded by me :-), but then again, I haven't yet played that many MPs.

I used to do this in SP, but against another human player sea bases are too vulnerable. I'll still place one as an airbase sometimes, but unless you have certain air superiority these bases can be turned against you quickly. Against the AI of course they provide you with a huge buffer against incursion, as well as a greatly extended reach for your air force, at a cost of several usually marginally productive bases.

I use a lot of crawlers, but I've taken to only using them in the base radius. This gives me two advantages vs a more typical crawler park. Firstly, I can replace any lost crawler with a worker immediately. Secondly, I can very easily defend my crawlers with an interceptor in my base. By dense packing my bases (2x2 on the diagonals) I can build a wall around my empire of AAA infantry backed up with numerous interceptors. Attacks against my productive area are difficult, with every square occupied and under the influence of friendly sensors. Eventually my whole perimiter is backed up with flechettes as well.

[johndmuller]

I share the feeling that sea bases are more vulnerable than land but I wonder if the logic backs that up too or is it just the result of the pitiful sea bases that the AI often scatters all over.

Intrinsically, the sea base itself is no weaker than a land base (unless the underlying terrain adds something to it and you make a point of foresting your base plot first).

Perhaps we get the feeling that sea bases are vulnerable because they can be attacked by ships from any direction from pretty far away. But at the same time, we say that ships are for s#&% and are hardly worth having, so why should we be afraid of them? As far as long distance goes, aircraft and missiles can attack you from further away and with just as little warning.

You can put all the same defensive facilities in a sea base and stock it with all the same kind of units (for what it's worth, you can even put ships in a sea base, which you can't always do in a land base ) so as far as air defense goes, they are pretty much the same as land bases as far as withstanding the attacks.

You can't put down a sensor before you build your sea base, but you can have a sensor within range on a convenient piece of land or you can protect it with a GeoSync Survey pod if you get that far into the tree.

If you have a cruiser transport or two in the right place(s), you can reinforce from/to the sea base nearly as quickly and easily as a land base.

So what's the big weakness?

I know, if you put a lone sea base in the middle of the ocean all by itself, you don't have anything nearby to help protect it with, but that would be just as true in the middle of nowhere on land too.

The main drawback to sea bases is the low min production, but if you put your sea base close enough to land to have a borehole or two and/or you pick its original location because there are a couple of min specials in the base production area, you are covered there as well.

If you are going to put a sea base far out in the ocean, it is probably because it is an absolutely fantastic production area full of specials or because it is to be used as a relay point for choppers so that they can move around without having to take a damage hit. Similarly, you might also want it as a staging area for drop units if you otherwise can't get close enough to the enemy (for this purpose it would be helpful, but not essential, to have an adjacent island (with a borehole) to land drop units on). If you have one of these bases, it is worth sending out a the few extra patrols to keep people from sneaking up on you.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

JD,

Interesting. Your correct sea bases in of themsleves are not more vulnerable than land bases.

What makes them more difficult to defend is a couple of factors that you've already touched on.

a) Ability to reinforce from other bases (more on this point c)

b) poor mineral production - normally resulting in less ability to build/support units

c) Expensive units needed to be built to reinforce. Foil and Cruiser chassis are so bleedin expensive and to move units for reinforcing purposes means your building some of these units as transports simply to move a AAA unit from land or sea base to the one being attacked. THats an expensive unit first off and is an extra unit that otherwise isn't produced on land for the simple purpose of allowing you to reinforce your holdings. (An ability you have on land w/o having to build the transport unit. That being said I like land to play around with land transports)

d) Unit defensive abilities don't allow you to really counter the ultra mobile forces ie.marine attacks or ship attacks as you can on land. THis allows an enemy to have tremendous long range strike ability to sieze your base w/o any unit special ability to counter it like ECM for the more mobile land units.

Og

[Drago Sinio]

"Unit defensive abilities don't allow you to really counter the ultra mobile forces ie.marine attacks or ship attacks as you can on land. "

On the other hand, an artillery unit does have a built in advantage against a ship, as opposed to a land based attacker, does it not? And also there are generally fewer units in your opponents force that are even capable of attacking a sea base at all. What they are most vulnerable to is Air Attack, and you can build your defender with AAA special ability to counter, or station an interceptor there. Or Both.

Also in terms of Naval Power, the more "ports" you have,(bases with access to the ocean) the more ships you can build. The More Ships you have, the more you are able to control the sea. If you control the sea, your enemy has a much more difficult time getting any where near you in the first place.

The biggest weakness of a seabase is its lack of minerals, and careful placement of the base, or a few crawlers mining in a protected area can fix that.

(And thanks for remembering Scott Johnson as the "inventor" of the Green Maritime Pod" strategy. )

[Sikander]

I have to disagree somewhat about the defensibility of sea bases. In addition to the several reasons given above for why sea bases are less defensible, I have a few more.

1) They are usually more vulnerable to approach than land bases, as they are usually spread farther apart, farther afield, and have fewer (but more expensive) units in and around the base, and with no ZOCs, these units are usually powerless to keep the enemy's fast units from assaulting the base before any reinforcements can be built or deployed.

2) There is no terrain (other than possible sea fungus, or well positioned islands) which forces approaching troops through a bottleneck and / or to attack a particular square which is more defensible. On land for instance I can build a bunker on a rocky square and force the enemy through that point (assuming that I've chosen the right point), often at great cost.

3) The great speed with which the dominant weapons systems on the sea (ships and aircraft) work, the usual lack of means to slow them by ZOC blocking or terrain add up to a situation where your chances of detecting and reacting to an enemy approach in time to make a big difference are not very good. Sea base battles tend to be 'come as you are' type battles. If you had a strong force based in and around the sea base, you will probably be able to both detect and counter an enemy threat. If your base is only staffed by a couple of units, you may not have any warning of an attack, and even if you do get a turn's notice you will be hard pressed to move enough troops into the base quickly enough to make it viable defensively.

With sea bases IMO the best defense is a good offense. I usually wait until air power to build sea bases (if I do at all), because with a stack of planes large enough to assure local superiority your sea bases are probably at least as defensible as your land bases (moreso if drop troops are a threat). This is expensive however, and changes the base from a cog in your economy into a strategic investment. This is how I tend to use my sea bases, as air bases to aid my power projection against far-flung enemies, and sometimes as patrol bases to secure plenty of warning should the enemy approach from my flank or rear.

[Clear Skies]

I agree that seabases can be less easily defensible - I tend to find it a lot easier to fight Sven than, say, Domai. Especially since Sven seems to think that defending his bases with scout rovers will help against my chaos cruisers....
But then, Sven is an unmitigated idiot.

[Xian]

The above posts are excactly why i try to be as peaceful as possible in my single player games. War isnt even fun in the game for me |-]

[Clear Skies]

I always try to be peaceful in my SP games, but it rarely works... Always always always, even if I'm playing with six other really peaceful factions, I seem to get up their noses. Morgan hates me for running Green, Sven hates me for running Knowledge, and the others just end up hating me because I'm #1 on the power graph. In my latest game even the supposed peacenik Aki has just launched a surprise attack!

It seems vendetta isn't that easy to avoid after all...

[Phil_de_geezer]

I find the easiest way to defend a land base from a land attack is with a few rovers - something you can't do with a sea base. Sea bases also tend to be built later and so are not as well developed. I rarely build sea bases and any that i capture are either destroyed or left defenceless - it's just not worth the effort to defend them. This is particularly true in my games as everyone seems to get shard weapons before silksteel, making defence a little difficult.

I don't like the idea of seabases anyway. What are they? Floating islands? Underwater bases? That's what they seem to be but then why can aircraft/ships attack them. Why can marines attack them? Do they swim down to the ocean floor and knock on the pressure dome saying "please let us in"? What happens if the pressure dome gets cracked or broken? How can you transport troops to and from the base? Surely the transport would have to be some sort of submarine? How do the workers work the tiles?

I think sea bases were a bad idea and the game would be more interesting without them.

Hmmm, i seem to have strayed a little off-topic! Ooops!