'Q' Ships

[Googlie]

Remember the 'Q' Ships of WW II?

When the submarine surfaced to capture/destroy the innocent looking cargo ship the crew whipped off the tarp unmasking a 5 inch gun and started taking pot shots at the sub's conning tower

Well, Petek's post here got me thinking about the possibilities in smac/x of using these flags. I'll scenario-test some of them but how about:

> a transport with the marine detatchment ability (marines hiding under the traps that when the gunship approaches leap out with grappling hooks and get on board subduing the gunship's crew). Trannie would prolly need to be armored to survive the first attack by the gunfoil

> a crawler or terraformer armed with AAA capability. (surely some of that massive crew could have stinger missiles? see:

extracted from flavor.txt
#TERRAFORMING UNIT
Crew: 367
Composition: Bonded steel\ceramic
Armament: Sidearms only
Armor: Passive (Applique)

> noodle or chopper probes, as Petek outlines

> tectonic or fungal payloads on sea units (even trannies!!) - sail your unit adjacent to an enemy's island where he has numerous seabases then detonate - instant continent

> nervegas missiles - Darsnan has already done that

> Trident class subs (carrier deck, capable of carrying PB's and launching them - again, Darsnan has done that

I'm sure that there are more - and prolly not too good to use them in a game versus the AI as they never would build them, but in PBEMs .......

G.

[Commy]

What I'd like to see is hovertanks going over land AND ocean shelf, but I already mentioned that...

The problem with SMAC, as in any other strategy game like Civ III, is that the game has to represent the most general concepts.

For example, you could say that transports could be decoys and are fixed to blow when the enemy attacks, but in real life, that might only happen a couple of times, compared to the hundreds of times real transports are boarded and captured. Since decoy transports are too specific, and the game is too general, they don't exist. The game designers simply don't take the time too do it, and most players probably wouldn't even use the new features like decoy transports. Also, remember the AI would have to be better and learn how to use the new features...

[Flubber]

What I would like to see is sonar buoys that would work unless destroyed by an enemy

Googlie, interesting ideas-- I have already played some Darsnan scenarios where he has come up with some crazy native life . .. like that thing that looks like an IOD only it is on land and is cloaked OR those native seabases that have the marine capture ability .. . its a real supreise to start having your own ships attacking you in the early game--

As for other ideas, I think a noodle probe would be unbalancing for a while until people adapted to the idea that they needed a probe defender in ALL their bases.

I would love to be able to put AAA on crawlers and formers-- it would make plinking them much harder but would do very little against the self destruct bug. On that note, I wish that we could have an "anti suicide bomber" special ability that would reduce the effectiveness of this tactic-- It always seemed unrealistic to me that an opponent was armoured enough that my weapon could only damage him, but blowing up unit could kill/damage a bunch over a wide area

[Impaler[WrG]]

Nice ideas Googlie,

One idea I had and put in my still underconstruction Mod (realy must get that thing finished) is to alow the "marine detatchment" ability on land units as well, this could open up all kind of interesting options (probly totaly unbalanced but what the heck).

Oh and what realy anoys me is that the Foil which is described (and looks like) a hovercraft cant move onto Flat low elevation tiles (<1000m). That would be realistic with what Hovercraft actualy do and give a lot of interesting tactical options.

[Petek]

Re: 'Q' Ships

Originally posted by Googlie

> noodle or chopper probes, as Petek outlines

Googlie,

The Alpha(x).txt modification in my post lets you give probe teams the SAM ability. The probes can then subvert needlejets and choppers (probably grav ships too, but I never tried that). However, it doesn't let you make noodle or chopper probes. I don't think anyone has ever figured out how to do that (although it's been several years since it was last discussed). Just wanted to clear that up.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
One idea I had and put in my still underconstruction Mod (realy must get that thing finished) is to alow the "marine detatchment" ability on land units as well, this could open up all kind of interesting options (probly totaly unbalanced but what the heck).

I think this ability only works with sea units. After all IIRC Pirate land units also have the marine detachment ability for free, but without any effect.

Originally posted by Petek
I don't think anyone has ever figured out how to do make noodle or chopper probes.

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