collateral damages

[Pocus]

the collateral damages done to other units when you kill one in a stack is really killing the AI ability to hand your a... on a silver plate imho. Its not rare to stop a full offensive of 50+ AI units, all agglomerated into a few squares with only an handful of units eg...

1. what is your opinion on this mechanism. I can understand it has been introduced as an anti-snowballing effect against the most powerful faction, but I think its detrimental to the solo game.

2. do you have any idea on how to disable it?

[Blake]

1) It's better than having no collatoral damage. But I think there should be a limit to the amount of collatoral damage, say that no more total damage can be done than the initial targets hitpoints, so if theres a stack of 10 fusion units, and you kill one, a maximum of 20 damage would be distributed over the other units, each one taking 2 damage, if it was a stack of 50 units, 20 of them would take 1 damage and the rest be unharmed... type thing. Some of the collatoral damage (say 1/4) could also be bounced back at the attacking stack, it stands to reason that the units taking collatoral damage are in shooting back range.

2) Sadly, I have no idea, short of some serious hacking. A fair number of older games (especially Transport Tycoon) have some serious user modifications to the game code, so it's surely possible. But it'd be tedious debugger work and you'd need someone who knows what they are doing...

[Dis]

it'd be better to teach the ai to spread the units out . of course that probably isn't possible.

collateral damage was a nice compromise from the civ2 stack kill option which I hate (though it worked in my advantage most of the time )

[Commy]

Here's another major difference between civ3 and SMAC: unit stacks. Ultimately, I think it's a nice way to make use of artillery, air dropping, and marine units, since using brute force and simply walking over enemies is a little bit more challenging with collateral damage. On the other hand, usually in real life "units" in the same "square" form armies on their own, but I guess you can't do that...

[Pocus]

the problem of collateral damage is that it really hampers the AI, and seldomly the player. Also, concentration of forces is the basis of strategy, and should not be penalized that much.

So no idea how to mod that...

[Lord Nword]

Does anyone know exactly how collateral damage works?

[Chaos Theory]

If a unit in a stack in the open is destroyed while defending against a land, non-artillery, non-probe-team unit, all units in the stack suffer 30% damage. Units in bunkers or cities are not in the open, but all others are.

It seems that when native life, controlled by the planet, suffers collateral damage, it suffers 100% instead of 30%. Furthermore, artillery can destroy native life controlled by the planet in the open, but cannot destroy other units except in artillery duels.

[Blake]

A few clarifactions and additions:
* It is 30% of reactor value of the attacker, this means fission units take a real hammering from collateral from fusion attackers.

* Certain non combat units such as Colony Pod and probe team take 100% collateral damage if there is no other surviving combat defender. Other non combat units such as Formers have the non combat penalty, but are combat units for all collateral damage purposes.

* In an arterilly duel, if the defender dies, all other units in the stack take normal collateral damage rather than bombard damage - collateral damage is usually (but not quite always) much higher than bombard damage - lesson - never defend stacks with artillery unless it has a good chance of winning a duel. (ie putting scout artillery in your stacks is a REALLY BAD IDEA). This goes double/triple/quadruple when being bombarded by units with higher reactor levels.

* Air and sea units can be destroyed by bombard damage (only SAM artillery and SAM ships can bombard air), land units will never be destroyed by bombard unless they go down with a transport (ie any bombard will reduce probes in a transport to 10%). PSI status & ownership has nothing to do with it, transport foils, Isles of the Deep, missile needles, Locusts can all be killed by bombard. Missile rovers and Mindworms cannot. Probe ships die instantly to any bombard if not in a base.
Exception: When a defending Spore Launcher dies in an artillery duel, it deals collateral damage to other worms in the stack, seeing as planet native life takes 100% collateral damage planet mindworms can in fact be killed by artillery - but only in a package deal with a defending spore launcher. Ofcourse this goes equally for all stacks of mixed artillery and non-artillery.

* Damage from Self Destruct is potentially lethal to land and air and is a set amount of damage equal to exploding unit max hitpoints / 2 (for weapon values 10 and higher, for less it's reactor level * weapon strength / 2). SelfD fusion destroys fission units outright. SelfD fissions damage fusion units to 1/4. SelfD is generally by far the most potent collateral as it damages all units in all adjacant tiles unless they are in a base. It is also the most exploitive when it comes to wiping out massed attacks, largely because a very green fusion chopper can eliminate elite units in several tiles... Missiles are also effective for SelfD purposes.
Note: The balancing between native units and normal unit reactors does not extent to self destruct - fusion units do twice as much damage to natives as fission units.

* Planet mindworms destroyed by SelfD or Bombard do not give cash. When killed by normal attacks or normal collateral they do give cash.

[Dis]

interesting tidbit about self destruct.

I remember we had a thread about self destructing. I still don't use it, but it almost seems like it could have its uses.

[Blake]

It more has it's abuses than uses

When facing giant stacks and/or a huge morale disadvantage SelfD is the easy, no hassle, IWin button

[Commy]

Should cause drones. Maybe it should be considered an atrocity so you couldn't just kill everyone with one crappy unit...

[Chaos Theory]

Re: Blake

Never knew artillery could kill noncombat sea units. I guess it's usually ineffective at doing so, and I've never had a probe foil bombarded. Combat sea units are themselves artillery and I've never had my IoDs bombarded.

Also never knew collateral damage was based on the reactor of the attacker. I guess by the time reactors matter much, my only attacks are by air.

By the time I'm successfully bombarding native life, it's all locusts or worms on IoDs (thanks to global warming). Never noticed that mind worms couldn't directly die to artillery.

Scout artillery can still be a good idea in fortified tiles (bunker, city) because they will keep sparse artillery from softening up defending probe teams.

[Blake]

Right. Scout artillery also defends/attacks spore launchers as good as anything else. Theres a time and a place for it, defending your stacks (in the open) just isn't one of them .

As for Artillery vs Sea & Air... try playing using exclusively Free Market and not circumventing it with fun spheres or specialist bases. Have no airforce at all. Then you will appreciate the power of artillery, your ships can sit in your borders and bombard stuff outside, along the coastline bunkers with artillery make a real headache for ships. IIRC missile artillery has even odds of sinking unarmored transports, and 2 volleys will often sink an IoD. Once you have plasma shards native life is toast. Even against armored transports a quick volley will cripple any lightly armored contents, probes get reduced to 1 move = useless, rovers will take a hammering. I'm not sure what the cost effectiveness is compared to airpower, but it is rather fun bombarding the crap out of anything that tries invading.

And then there is the other use of sea bombard... say you have 2-1-4's, and the enemy has 1-3-4's - normally you can't win, instead engage in artillery duel and laugh. With ship combat, always remember to assess whether bombarding will have equal or better odds than normal attacking - ie armor is greater or equal to attack. With 2 bombard range this can also save a move, and may save your ship from a counter attack.