Alien Artifacts and their uses

[Blake]

I never rehome my units before scrapping them, and I use it alot to accelerate production, both of early SP's and later to get rid of junk units (especially green morale AI gifts) to break the 10 mineral threshold (or to accelerate production of new units, enabling them to complete in 1 turn...). I assure you I would have noticed if the minerals didn't go to the base the unit is scrapped at.

Getting back to rush sp vs free tech.
When building the WP, I use AA's to rush 100% of the time. (the WP is THAT important to prevent stagnation - only exception may be Morgan)
Post-crawlers, I use AA's for techs 100% of the time (but I may wait for env.eco and bioengineering)
At points in between it really depends on a lot factors.

[Qwerty88]

For scrapping units I don't think natives give any minerals.

[#endgame]

Battle ogres give great minerals, but aren't technically native. It's still a good use for a 90% damaged ogre to shave turns off a SP.

[Chaos Theory]

I think disbanded mind worms give a single mineral

[Straybow]

Why's that? Do Battle Ogres not heal themselves?

(I had a d/l version of SMAX on another computer, but it wouldn't run properly. Haven't put it on this one.)

[Chaos Theory]

Battle Ogres never recover by any means.

[Enigma_Nova]

Tested with:
Capture enemy base
Spend 1 turn in friendly base
Go to monolith

The buggers just don't repair.

[Straybow]

I didn't think Worms gave anything. But with a Project or big prototype I might have just not noticed the 1 min when I tried it.

[smacksim]

In SP I nearly always save the AAs 'till the end of the game. Recently I've used a few for SProjects with beefed AI. Otherwise it's an easy way to increase the difficulty. The only projects I rush this way are the ME and perhaps the HGP. The ME because it's location is so important. Capturing it far away is kinda sad. The HGP because I feel entitled to a little drone control vs. the AI. But it's a great one to let the AI build. Even Miriam with the HGP is formiddable sometimes.

-Smack

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Hydro
Sik - you re-home the unit so when you scrap it the minerals go to the target base. Otherwise I'm pretty sure (but not 100% sure) the minerals are lost if the scrapped unit is not at its home base (anyone experiment with this? I’ll have to check). This is inefficient but only feasibly way of transferring mineral resources before you have supply crawlers. Scrapping nets you half the minerals of construction, so you do pay a penalty. My favorite sacrificial units are probes since they don’t take support, are useful for defensive and some offensive purposes, and have a move of two (unless they are cheap-o move 1 defensive probes).

The benefits of re-homing and scrapping are:

* You can do this for ANY unit or improvement, even one that has already been prototyped and is not a Project.
* It can be easily used with rushing. For instance, you could scrap an old scout (adding 5 minerals of its 10 construction cost to the base’s unit/improvement) to get the minerals over the magic 10, and then rush for much less cost. This eliminates the need to over-rush the previous item (with carryover to the next item), which is very energy expensive
* It is useful if you are unit-heavy and energy-limited. Rushing is great if you have lodes of cash, but if you are can’t use FM (Gaians), are pre-FM, can't reasonably run FM (Hive), or it isn't convenient to do so (drone control or war footing issues) then this can be used to good effect.
* If someone is snooping on you can surprise them by getting critical unit or improvement/Project done before they would otherwise suspect (eg - it is another in a bag of tricks to be used judiciously)

For those that B-line via directed research to IA this tactic is probably not of much use since you get crawlers early (as folks have posted, many go for AI before all else save CE). For those using Blind or Semi-Blind research this can be critical.

I agree with Blake. When I disband in the base screen I can see the minerals added. This is SMAX with the latest patch, I'm not sure about SMAC or earlier versions. I like to send Probe Teams to the SP building base before I have IA and really need the WP or the HGP. They are clean and move 2, which are both advantages. If I'm beat to the project, at least I'll still have some useful units that didn't cost me a bunch of support in the interim. Oh, btw don't "burn" the Probe Teams until you can get your project finished that turn. Waste not want not.

[mmontgomery]

I would say that I get about an average of 6 AAs per game on a normal size planet. (Much more on huge.) Many of these come from popping sea pods with Isles.

Although I might cash an AA to get an early SP that would otherwise be lost, my typical use is to first trade/steal every tech that anyone has to date, and then to cash every AA at once for a massive tech gain. (Carefully prepare ahead of time to defend yourself against enemy probes which will try to steal your new techs.) Usually this is right around the time of copters.

I keep hearing some people say that getting the techs earlier is not useful since they are not ready to capitalize on them. This is baloney! Some techs just are not that useful, early or later. But the good techs change the game as soon as you get them, and there is no excuse not to change strategy immediately to capitalize on some great tech.

I have had many games where I conquered the board very quickly due to early copters. Even games where I disallow victory by conquest, I can often get most if not all factions to surrender to me, making the run to transcendence fast and painless.

To summarize, early in the game, the tech boost won't help much; better to trade and/or steal everything first. In mid-game (where it might take 10 - 20 turns to research a tech), a 6 tech boost can break the game wide open. But don't save the pods until late game. By late game, you will often be getting 1 or 2 techs per turn, and the game is already decided anyway.

[Leon Trotsky]

I have a hunch, and it would be good to have it either confirmed or refuted. It goes like this:

"Alien Artifacts can always enter fungus squares."

If true, it would be very important to early scouting (as a unit in xenofungus enables any other to get into the stack without penalty).

[binTravkin]

True.

[Xian]

Originally posted by Commy
You can move AAs around, don't forget that...

Not really, no. You woudl need muscle to protect it, and obviously thats a huge waste for something that woudl be much safer at a base with units protecting it.

Once i get an AA to any base it pretty much has to stay there unless there are interesting circumstances

[Kataphraktoi]

if you have enemy units running around in core areas i suggest you forget the AA and build some army

on the topic,is there any way at all to predict AA techs? i reloaded in a SP game recently and got the same tech 75% of the time. if i could have 75% accuracy in MP i would be alot more confident in using them,but i think that may be an isolated event