Favorite Units

[CEO Aaron]

Choppers. Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers, Choppers.

Can you tell I love choppers? Once I have choppers, I build drop garrisons and choppers, and all who oppose me die. Clean nerve-gas choppers with the best weapons and plant you can find.

I almost never get to build hovertanks and gravships, cause my choppers have finished off my foes too soon.

[Adalbertus]

Clean nerve-gas choppers

You don't like submissives, eh?

[Blake]

I think.... he likes choppers.

[BustaMike]

Clean Fission Singularity Laser Stasis Armor Hovertank Battery.

7000+ minerals to build

I like nerve gas too.

[CEO Aaron]

Adalbertus: No, I generally don't bother to accept the surrender of the AI factions, since they tend to be so worthless and dumb, with the possible exception of the University, since they can occasionally pitch in with a free tech here and there.

I actually won't build/use atrocity weapons, unless one of the AIs call the vote to suspend the charter, which I always let through if I'm casting the deciding vote and/or the Governor. However, in about 80% of the games I've played, the peacenik factions will get marginalized early, leaving a bunch of nuke-happy loons. (Miriam, Zak, Santiago, always Yang, that guy's harder to kill than a steel plated cockroach).

Once the Charter's been lifted, I usually take special effort to PB the poor sod who called the vote to lift it, as a sort of self-righteous object lesson. I especially like seeing all the planetary landmarks underwater.

[Blake]

You shouldn't scoff at commerce income, I could trade a tiny city to an AI pact mate, and get about +5 commerce income out of the deal, probably in a city with a good deal less ineffeciency. Once put through some facilities this would result in about 10 actual energy, better than the pathetic 2-5 minerals and 0 energy you would have got out of the base (for larger captured bases stuff them full off specialists).

Amusingly enough you can increase your score by giving cities to a pact mate, because the commerce income is worth more than the population.

A Morgan submissive makes a particullary good dumping ground for unwanted base because of the scads of commerce income he generates.

[Earwicker]

Absolutely! And the earlier you create your submissive, the longer the benefits last. Depending upon who you defeat, the benefits can be enormous. Like Yang or Domai with Zak under their thumbs to help out a lot with research. Captured Cult bases make great gifts . . .

[CEO Aaron]

Okay, point taken re: submissives, I'll give it a whirl. On a side note, Mister President, you said you gave up on the auto designer. Did you actually manage to turn the annoying bugger off? If so, how?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Okay, point taken re: submissives, I'll give it a whirl. On a side note, Mister President, you said you gave up on the auto designer. Did you actually manage to turn the annoying bugger off? If so, how?

IIRC select Game, Options, and a menu will open up with about 5 or 6 submenues. Almost every sort of option is available in those submenues, though I don't remember exactly which submenu the autodesign function is located in. Obviously not in display or sound.

[Straybow]

Definitely turn off auto-design: second option in Game Preferences. Possibly nothing more annoying in the entire game.

I can't play with just one of each chassis type in my build menu as somebody said. While only one special is allowed it takes more than 2 of each chassis to fill the necessary roles. I've never gotten to your euphemistic Death Spheres; games are either over or way too boring to last that long.

Yeah, the light empath jet is handy, especially since regular worms can't attack units in the air. Until then the light empath rover and light empath foil are both patrol units and pearl harvesters.

Military units get bonuses against noncombat units so formers die too easily. I've not found armoring them worthwhile. I don't have SMAX, so fungal/tectonic missiles are out.

I have found picket foils wonderously effective: best armor, AAA, best gun that doesn't bump the cost up a row (usually Impact). Crank 'em out and blocade your opponent's air units at your seashelf edge. (And later, at his own coast.) They're strong enough to take out unarmored transports easily and sometimes armored transport cruisers.

I build tidal harnesses just outside base radii and station deep radar supply foils on them. They form an early warning net as well as boost energy enormously. When attacks come in earnest the picket foils team up with them, and replacement supply foils can be armored for a little extra cost and an extra margin of defense.

Last comes the Dogs of War: light AAA Drop Garrison (whatever weapon doesn't bump up the cost). Smother enemy territory, plink his formers and crawlers, pillage his improvements, and impede his movement.

[Adalbertus]

Military units get bonuses against noncombat units so formers die too easily. I've not found armoring them worthwhile.

There is a 50% non-combat penalty, but this applies only to unarmored formers, crawlers etc. I've not (yet) seen anything of a bonus for attackers in this case. As soon as you give them armor, the penalty disappears.

[Clear Skies]

Which is nice, because all you ave to do is slap synthmetal armour on your supply crawlers and formers and their penalty when defending against native life vanishes. Great for crawlers which spend all their life in fungus...

[Shard]

Favourite non-combat: Supply Crawler

Favourite Combat: X Impact Rover or Shard Copter

[Straybow]

Really? It seemed that whenever I did put well armored (plasma+) crawlers or formers in the field enemy aircraft had no difficulty plinking them. I've never seen the AI use armored crawlers or formers, only transports. AI transports are allowed to have AAA ability as well, which clearly cancells the bonus because they are just as tough to sink as combat foils/hulls.

I guess "R-Laser" and "X-Impact" are SMAX weapons??

[MariOne]

1st: you can't seriously hold the AI as reference for unit design!!!!

A plasma armor in the field is no match for a missile aircaft "in general", when it's on the field outside the umbrella or AeroComp and AAA (and eventually sensor).
A plasma crawler will be as easy to kill from the air as a plasma garrison.
An unarmored former is twice as easy to kill from the air than a scout patrol.
You won't notice much difference with the naked eye tho.

If you LOOK in the combat display panels Straybow, you will CLEARLY see that unarmored-unweaponed units report a "-50% non-combat" modifier, while there's no corresponding bonus listed in the attack modifiers. In case, remember to switch "fast battle resolution" off!
Even better, if you really need to check and learn, toggle "pause after combat" on....

Clear Skies, while what you say is true, remember that native life attacks land units with a 3 vs 2 basic strength ratio.
Without the synth, a former or crawler would fight at 3 vs 1 because of the penalty.

3vs2 is alas not an effective improvement over 3 vs 1.
In this sense Straybow ended to make the good choice.
Your formers and crawlers will keep being almost always killed by worms even if you "slap" your synth armor on them.
But a Synth former will cost one whole more mineral row to build it.
IIRC a Synth crawler would cost TWO more rows (5 instead of 3).
With all those extra rows, you'd build much more rovers and crawlers than those you can actually foresee to lose from worms. For sure many many more than those you can imagine to actually *save* thanks to the added armor.

Whole different issue would be using Trance. But that would make them extra expensive, because of the units cost structure.
The only truly viable solution if you want to effectively protect your crawler/formers against worms, is Synth armor AND Neural Amplifier.
Otherwise just accept the structural loss and replace them, it's more convenient. Besides, instead of causing the worm to die when attacking a tough former, you'd better let him kill the former and then kill the worm, gaining a refund from planetpearls which partially compensates the cost for the substitute.

Later, Fusion R-Plasma Formers/Crawlers will become affordable, if you want to insist on that path.

R-lase is Resonance Laser, and is a SMAX weapon.
The whole concept of Resonance is and Alien concept intorduced in Alien Crossfire. Like with R-Plasma (resonance enhances unit's defense or offense in PSI combat, in which the nominal value of the armor/weapon itself would be otherwise ignored)

X-Impact is instead a classic SMAC concept.
X is the prefix the game adds to units description and names when you add the Nerve-Gas ability.
An X-Chaos Chopper can wipe a size-7 base with 3 Gas attacks (even a size-11 if there are *exactly* 3 defenders in base!).