Tips for popping Unity Pods

[tonic]

With the pods playing such a vital role in the early game exploration phase and with the outcomes so markedly different, from drastic ("infested with mindworms") to wonderfully beneficial (data, free unit, energy, Alien Artifacts) perhaps the old hands here wouldn't mind revisiting this topic.

Just the most basic observations to start with:

1. Don't use an Alien Artifact for popping - there is a >50% chance of it vanishing

2. Allow a movement to spare just in case, wherever possible

3. The Gaians might with advantage follow the "Maritime pod popping" strategy discussed in a thread here.

I'd be most interested to hear how the experts deal with the riskier popping of land pods on xenofungus squares.

[Adalbertus]

Worms are quite good pod poppers, because they will not be attacked by wild worms (usually, at least. Never be sure.)
I like the artillery duel in SMAX when two or more spore launchers are popped

[Urban Ranger]

If you have mindworms, send them to pop the pods. IoD is particularly good for this, because I usually find loads of alien artifacts out in the sea.

[Clear Skies]

If popping sea pods with a transport foil pre-Centauri Med, always have an armed foil nearby to help fight off any IoDs that pop up. That's about all I can think of...

I was incredibly shocked to find that my best friend, whom I thought was an honourable player, saved every time before she popped a pod in SP and reloaded if she didn't like the contents! Talk about cheating!

[tonic]

Originally posted by Clear Skies
If popping sea pods with a transport foil pre-Centauri Med, always have an armed foil nearby to help fight off any IoDs that pop up. That's about all I can think of...

I think this is basically the "Maritime Pod popping strategy I mentioned in 3, except that the Gaians could use an IoD as the attacking unit with the appropriate tech advance.

[SIZE=1]
I was incredibly shocked to find that my best friend, whom I thought was an honourable player, saved every time before she popped a pod in SP and reloaded if she didn't like the contents! Talk about cheating!

With outcomes so markedly different, one can understand the temptation

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Clear Skies
I was incredibly shocked to find that my best friend, whom I thought was an honourable player, saved every time before she popped a pod in SP and reloaded if she didn't like the contents! Talk about cheating!

Well, the essence of SINGLE PLAYER is that you only have to deal with your own consicence, so if she found that reloading for pops was fit with her gaming experice needs ("whatever floats her boat"...), I don't see it as "dishonorable"

Quite different matter would be if she had to compare her Single Player scores or achievements in a Scenario game, or if she even boasted her reloadless score when actually behaving otherwise...

In MutliPlayer then, reloading, when no justified by crashes or major force, it's the synonym for cheating and dishonesty....

I'd keep the two contexts separate when "judging" ppl tho...

[MariOne]

More on topic, Dilithium Dad informed me in the ForumWars6 team game we're playing together (or rather *against*, as I'm representing ACOL or what remains of it, albeit we're temporarily allied against CGN team superpower...) of s "school of thought" I was not aware of, namely that some think it's more convenient to DELAY the popping of pods till the mid-late game.

Allegedly, Artifacts would be more likely to occur later in the game.

I cannot confirm this from my personal experience and observations, although I never kept a "scientific approach" record about it.

It's true that with the progress of the game some outcome become impossible (techs, commlinks) thus leaving in theory more room for other outcomes.
But the most frequent contents of pods are anyway resources and worms, and any eventual increase due to the fading of a couple categories is not significant imho.
If I should say offhand, I think that eventually useless cartographic and displacement pods show a sensible increase in the later game.

That said, I believe that dealying a pod pop is a "waste of opportunity".
I would only delay it in case:
- I don't have a transport nearby to a seapod, but I can provide it in not too long time
- I'm not prepared to face and/or bear with the eventual worms (say, an unguarded base nearbay, but not near enough to prevent worms, or a lush base site which I don't want to ruin with fungalbloom right before my CPod founds the base)
- the nearest base is about to complete a production, and I could profit of a Material Pod as soon as it begins an expensive facility or unit.

Shold you argue that later in the game Materials Pods will help you gain much more minerals from completion of more expensive facilities, I say you that pop-completing a Creche or Commons or Node in the early game when every tiny resource is valuable is at least as much important (if not more) as an Hybrid Forest when you are producing already 20 minerals per turn, 300 energy anf 500 labs anyway...

So, if there is actually someone around here who keeps his pods for later as a strategy, it would be interesting to hear him explain his motives...

[fluffy]

Originally posted by MariOne

Allegedly, Artifacts would be more likely to occur later in the game.

I cannot confirm this from my personal experience and observations, although I never kept a "scientific approach" record about it.

It's true that with the progress of the game some outcome become impossible (techs, commlinks) thus leaving in theory more room for other outcomes.

I would be suprised if artifacts were more likely later on, as it does not match my experience (but I also haven't kept records).

The only outcome that seems to stop early on (besides commlinks, which is understandable) is the free tech.

There seems to be a specific level above which it will not be gifted - level 1 or 2 perhaps? Is this documented anywhere?

[vitamin j]

For land pods I try to wait until they are inside a base radius before popping - I almost always get something good (I mean 90%+) using that technique. I'd have to agree that waiting a while can be a better strategy, unless there's some sort of emergency. A pod far from a base is much more likely to generate something nasty, in my experience.
WRT alien artifacts (the "holy grail" of pod-popping... ), I think it's definitely worth it to hang on to them for as long as you can, (i.e. after tech costs have increased) unless you're trying to get a project in the early game - 50 mins is a nice chunk.

[Tommara]

I tend to dilly-dally around with pod popping, especially when mind worms are a serious threat. Very early in the game, they are weak, so no sweat, and the rewards are valuable compared to what you have. Late in the game, they're no threat either, but the rewards are no big deal either. Just need to clean the trash off my nice clean green carpet.

About the time I get Industrial Automation, I tread more warily around them. My green/very green units are toast to a mind worm at that point. Like Vitamin J, I tend to feel that the chance of a mind worm pop is less likely if the pod is in a settled area.

Don't really know if that's true or not, though. Good idea to use a mind worm as a pod popper, I'll try that.

[Adalbertus]

Quite different matter would be if she had to compare her Single Player scores or achievements in a Scenario game, or if she even boasted her reloadless score when actually behaving otherwise...

I played multiplayer once with my brother ... both of us avid reloaders (now, that I know how to play SMAX, I do it rarely, but hey, when the AI is cheating (and I don't mean production bonus and so, but things like "AI knows the position of every of your units" or "AI missiles strike anywhere") - why not?) - that's why I don't post scores here . Anyway, we informed each other about reloading. And we had a "never attack" pact. So nothing serious. In Civ2, I believe to have noticed that the probability of barbarians in a hut is significantly reduced if you had movement points left; but this doesn't seem to apply to SMAC/X. For sea pod popping, I normally try (in SMAX) to get a 3-resonance armour trance transport, but indeed, there should be an empath (resonance) attacker around if you somehow manage to get a positive planet rating. IoD are the best maritime pod poppers, because they have both, attack/defense and transport capability.

[MariOne]

Justa as VitJ pointed out:
Worms *never* pop if the pod is *inside* a basezone (thin red line), and neither are blooms IIRC.
They are also less likely to come out if the pod is "near" a colonised area, but in theory you could get one even in the diagonal corner cropped out of a 2-tiles radius basezone, albeit very rarely.

Also, there is a "school of thought", not documented, but which I'd be more inclined to accept, that pods inside fungus usually have the highest chance of yielding something bad.
Although it's not clear wheter this is merely because your colonised areas usually steer clear of heavy fungal zones...
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Prima Guide reports that you can only get level 1 & 2 techs out of pods. I don't know how much Prima can be actually considered "official". It does reports this and very few other bits of info documented nowhere else.
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VitJ, whether linking AAs or keeping them is a parallel issue to pod-popping, but quite individual and distinct. You might for instance believe the necessity to pop pods ASAP while at the same time prefer to link AAs ALAP....
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Re: How to deal with popped worms and native... (under negative Planet SE)
The income from planetpearls can partially compensate you for not having popped something useful from the pod. In that sens a fungal bloom can be worse that a couple of worms.
But the other consideration is that you don't want your units to get killed by the spawned worms, or your facilities in base destroyed (if not a base altogether), or your terraforming undone.
Thus in some case escaping the spawned worms unscathed, or at least surviving, can be a goal already.

For that purpose, remember that planet rating affects only your *attack* strength in PSI combat.
Then, Empath ability costs you something, and you only build a unit with it purposefully, while Trance (coupled with armor higher than weapon) comes for free and you already use it *by default* on every defensive unit once you discover it. Also, Trance is discovered earlier than Empath Song.

True, when attacking a land native you begin with 3vs2 strength, while you begin at a loss (2vs3) if you let a native attack your land unit.
Under FM, you suffer -30% Planet.
Your basic attack strength sags down to 3*0.7=2.1
With Trance, your defense raises to 2*1.5=3, unaffected by FM.
It still remains an advantage in attacking over defending, but only a *very slight* one (2.1 vs 2 compared with 3 vs 3).
If you then plan to defend in favorable ground (in a base and/or near a sensor), you see that it can be more convenient to forsake the planetpearls and squat, with better chances to survive.

Against *sea* natives, where there is no attack bonus, the situation is totally tilted in favor of defense.
Even with 0 Planet SE, you'd attack at 1 vs1 and defend at 1.5 vs 1.
With FM, and without Empath ability, your attack becomes unthinkable (0.7 vs 1).
Of course morale levels have a great influence on this all.
It's also true that under FM you won't be sending around a combat unt because of pacifism, thus attack would be out of question, except adjacent to ports (in SMAX only). And that you need *armored* tranports (in addition to Trance) to avoid the non-combat defense penalty and survive the IoDs you spawn.
All in all FM makes pop-popping much more tricky. But you can't waive the advantages of FM only because of this, other consideration take priority, you'll just have to make do with popping under FM.

[Mongoose]

Against *sea* natives, --snip-- Even with 0 Planet SE, you'd attack at 1 vs1 and defend at 1.5 vs 1.

This is incorrect, I believe, or at least unclear. I think it would be 1:1 either way, before morale/lifecycle considerations. The 1.5 defense level is with trance factored in.

[Kirov]

It seems to me that using non-IoDs units to sea exploration spawns IoDs very often, whereas using IoDs usually benefits in finding good things (AA first of all). Did anybody noticed the same? Maybe it's just false impression due to my prejudice against water in SMAC...

[Andemagne]

start out as spartans, so you can build scout rovers in the beginning.
with scout rovers you can pop much more pods than with those pesky scout patrols.
spartans also have better morals so you can defeate mind worms more easily.
scout rovers have movement of 2, so you can use the first move to pop the pod and second to kill off the mind worms.