HELP!!!! Being Raped by Mind worms

[The Bloody Baro]

Its my first game of SMAC [I finally got it] and its at the very end where the stuff I research has the same name. Suddenly fungus starts poppin up like babies at a chinese hospital and mind worms are raping my bases like pamala anderson lee would be in New York. What is this phenomean? Does it occur in every game? And ost importantly, WTF SHOULD I DO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[Method]

hmm, quite the similies you have there.

this phenomenon is eco damage. it occurs in (most) every game and it has to do with the amount of minerals your base produces. to see how much eco damage your base is creating, its right above the build box IIRC. to reduce eco damage:

-build more tree farms, hybrid forests, centauri preserves, and temples of planet.

-limit the minerals you bases produce.

each ''pop'' (fungus growth) reduces eco damage, but each pop after the 2nd produces worms, isles and/or locusts. build empath artillery, rovers, choppers, and trance defenders to combat them. attacking a stack of worms with ground units destoys them all.

***Read the eco damage formula if you can find it. (not the one in the datalinks, its wrong)

[The Mad Monk]

I'm not sure but I think he may be refering to the bloom that occurs when you complete either threshold or ascent to transcendence?

If you are, Baro, its normal.

I think.

[Apocalypse]

Empath Choppers are very good in this situation. They can move fast and attack more than once per turn.

[Nubclear]

Re: HELP!!!! Being Raped by Mind worms

Originally posted by The Bloody Baro
Its my first game of SMAC [I finally got it] and its at the very end where the stuff I research has the same name. Suddenly fungus starts poppin up like babies at a chinese hospital and mind worms are raping my bases like pamala anderson lee would be in New York. What is this phenomean? Does it occur in every game? And ost importantly, WTF SHOULD I DO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Has anyone built the voice of planet? Have you built Ascent to Transcendence?

[Method]

oh. it is the bloom from the voice . the thing about empath and trance units still applies though.

should have read more carefully! all the research has the same name: transcendant thought!

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
Empath Choppers are very good in this situation. They can move fast and attack more than once per turn.

I prefer to build ground based units to handle a majority of these worm stacks, as they kill everything with one successful assault. The best thing about the choppers though is that they can handle worms on any terrain (land or sea), while land based units can only attack the land based stacks (unless you give them the marine attribute and they are attacking an adjacent sea square).

[Blake]

Building the VoP causes fungus to spread, but doesn't create mindworms. In response to the original post, what probably happened is the construction of several late game SP's (and maybe some mineral orbitals) which put minerals through the roof.

My preference at destroyed worms is empath rovers, or just any old unit which is lying around (non free-market). Empath choppers are good at picking off lone worms, and/or if you want to build up lifecycles of spawned worms to increase pearl income (HINT: if a bloom causes worms in multiple tiles, kill the lone worms first then the large central stack).
By far the best way to eliminate stacks of locusts is SAM artillery (SMAX only, I think SMAC artillery is broken) or self destruct units with fusion reactor and a 10+ weapon. In particular a cheap chopper can be good for this, you can knock out a locust to get in a good position then destruct. If you have +ve planet and/or the dream twister empath choppers probably will do fairly good against locusts but otherwise just blast em.

[Flubber]

what Blake said

artillery in Smax just devastates native life such that a 6r-empath rover can kill two stacks of worms and hardly take any damage when at this stage of the game, I will usually pop out a few SAM arty units and Sam rovers

As has been pointed out, choppers are less effective but i still like to have a few for defending the fringes.

I never bother much with trance defense as my attitude is always to try to be attacking the natives, not defending


Oh and a final thing is to put your SE choices to maximize Planet rating-- it makes no difference when defending but an extra 40% on the attack can make dealing with worms easy--


For most players, this native attack should be no big deal,since in practical terms, you only need protect the base that will build the final SP on the next turn

[johndmuller]

Originally posted by Sikander ...........while land based units can only attack the land based stacks (unless you give them the marine attribute and they are attacking an adjacent sea square).

(I'm assuming you mean Amphib instead of Marine)
Does this really work? I know you can attack sea bases with amphibs, and I think that you can attack land units from a ship with them, but I've just recently tried (in SMAX) attacking a warship with an amphib from shore and that doesn't work - I'm pretty sure I tried the ship to ship amphib attack and it didn't work either - Could it be a SMAC vs SMAX thing?. The Marines ability attatched to a ship will let you capture another ship (if you knock it down to 50% or less), but I don't think you can attatch it to land units.

[Darius]

There is some confusing terminology here. When you build a land unit with the Amphibious special ability, that unit is usually called a marine. That is not the same as a ship with the Marine Detachment special ability.

(Just doing my part to confuse the issue...)

[Sikander]

Originally posted by johndmuller

(I'm assuming you mean Amphib instead of Marine)
Does this really work? I know you can attack sea bases with amphibs, and I think that you can attack land units from a ship with them, but I've just recently tried (in SMAX) attacking a warship with an amphib from shore and that doesn't work - I'm pretty sure I tried the ship to ship amphib attack and it didn't work either - Could it be a SMAC vs SMAX thing?. The Marines ability attatched to a ship will let you capture another ship (if you knock it down to 50% or less), but I don't think you can attatch it to land units.

I couldn't remember the name for amphib, only that the game tends to name infantry units with that capability marines. And no I haven't tested it, so take it with a large grain of salt. Usually I have locusts in blooms over sea squares, and I know helicopters (as locusts are chassis-wise) are vulnerable to surface assault. I know that amphibious units can attack sea bases from ships or adjacent land, so it doesn't seem completely far fetched. I seriously doubt it would work against sea based native life, but it might with worms. I always have patrol helos at my coastal bases so it's pretty easy to wax any blooms that occur over the sea, but I haven't tested this method as I don't tend to have a problem that isn't already solved.

[johndmuller]

I find the sea game, such as it is, to be fairly interesting - it's too bad that the balance seems to be a bit off viz-z-viz aircraft and that aircraft seem to be available before ships get a chance to come into their own. Part of the problem is that it is hard to get a ship with decent morale until you can build it with both a navy yard and a bioenhancement center - without a decent morale, they seem to sink if someone looks at them funny. Another part is that ships, especially cruiser-based, are really expensive until fusion comes around (when doc: air power is probably already available). OTOH, ships can be pretty effective in the early game, scooping up pods and especially bombarding terraformers and terraforming.

Once planes come out though, ships seem to be uneconomic - while a stout ship may stand up to an NJ, it probably won't stand up to 2 NJs (which likely cost much less) and a decent missile can sink just about any ship. I tend to build strictly offensive and strictly defensive ships, instead of combos, to save money (they sometimes don't cost much more than equivalent land units) and give you more overall abilities than a combo battleship would, but then you have additional support costs.

[Sikander]

I rarely build ships these days, instead I just build land bridges and use drop pods to get after my enemies. I do so for exactly the reasons you state above, namely that ships have a pretty short window during which they are all that useful. I build them if I need to chase away some early harrassment, but I prefer to use artillery if I have it.

[Phil_de_geezer]

Increasing your planet rating will not only help in the fight against mindworms but it should also decrease ecological damage.