Are Needlejets worthless or neccessary...

[Dis]

I lost a whole bunch of bases to mindworms once. I was experimenting with nerve gas. I thought it would help me overcome a strong disadvantage going up against a stronger faction. It did, until planet had something to say about it. I thought I was prepared. I was wrong.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Dissident
I lost a whole bunch of bases to mindworms once. I was experimenting with nerve gas. I thought it would help me overcome a strong disadvantage going up against a stronger faction. It did, until planet had something to say about it. I thought I was prepared. I was wrong.

I laugh as I had the same experience once as well in a MP game. I was gassing the crap out of an opponent and we even exchanged a couple of nukes but then we were both suddenly very distracted by the worm hordes and if that wasn't bad enough, the sea levels started to rise a lot ( over 2000 metres in 20 years)


Its an experience you only need to have once to learn how overwhelming the worms can be. Defending against them seems futile as the stacks are often 10 big such that a base might face 40 or 50 attacks if you are defending . Much smarter to be able to attack and eliminate those stacks in a few shots. I don't think I would want to go down the mass gassing route again unless I had at least 2 empath rovers (one of them with SAM) in EVERY base. Even then I'd feel a lot better with and arty unit and empath chopper per base as well

[Senethro]

Ummmmmm? How much gas are you guys using? I thought I was pretty atrocity happy but I've never had this problem? Then again, I've had trouble keeping my interest in games after my score graph is top and my satellites are flying up.

[livid imp]

A fun experiment I did once (before I learned the upgrade crawler trick) was to mine every rocky square I could find and crawl all the mins to one base. Eventally I was building SPs in a single turn. Needless to say, Planet was more than a little upset with me. I was getting a fungal pops every round. I kept plenty of empath rovers around to kick Mother Planet in her big pink a$$. Each stack of worms would run about 130ecs..... Chaaaaaa-ching!

So not only was I building SPs at record speed, but I was making bank off the worms too. The only real danger was if the AI got PBs before you can get ODPs and/or Fletchettes. I was getting sea level rises, but they were easy enough to deal with. After about 5 or 6 rises, the global warming message would still pop up, but no additional sea rises would actually happen.

I think I am going to try this again one day with Cha Dawn, capturing the worms and release them on other factions lands.

[Commy]

You dont' neccessarily have to use nerve gas...playing as the morgans with -3 planet and 2-3 boreholes per base, along with forests, can cause a lot of damage just because of the minerals...add on robotic assembly plants, quantum converters, nanoreplicators...by now you will definitely be over a 100 eco-damage...having 20 Transcedent thoughts doens't help either, considering that the number of techs you have influence eco-damage...

As far as having mindworms every other turn, generally the swarms and boils wouldn't attack, or they would just move around, and then two turns worth would all attack at the same time...

[Dis]

ecodamage doesn't seem to be a problem after voice of planet is built. Fungal pops don't have any mindworms in them

[BlackCat]

Maybe I'm just parnoid, but I have stopped building BMT. It seems like native life goes crazy after that SP. Don't know why, but it also seems that they prefer to pop in tiles with bunkers so you only can kill one in an attack.

Am I really paranoid (that is more than average here ) ?

[Chaos Theory]

The Bulk Matter Transmitter, contrary to documentation, actually increases mineral yields by 50% at all bases. This causes enormous amounts of ecodamage. If worms in bunkers are giving you problems, don't build bunkers, and destroy the ones you do have.

[Mead]

Originally posted by Flubber



I laugh as I had the same experience once as well in a MP game. I was gassing the crap out of an opponent and we even exchanged a couple of nukes but then we were both suddenly very distracted by the worm hordes and if that wasn't bad enough, the sea levels started to rise a lot ( over 2000 metres in 20 years)


Its an experience you only need to have once to learn how overwhelming the worms can be. Defending against them seems futile as the stacks are often 10 big such that a base might face 40 or 50 attacks if you are defending . Much smarter to be able to attack and eliminate those stacks in a few shots. I don't think I would want to go down the mass gassing route again unless I had at least 2 empath rovers (one of them with SAM) in EVERY base. Even then I'd feel a lot better with and arty unit and empath chopper per base as well

An effective counter to mass worm attacks is active defense.

Make one or two bases you Mega Polluting Bases. The higher the eco damage in these bases the better. Try to get well into the triple digits.

First, ensure your bases are well equipped with empath/artillary, empath/SAM/Artillary (ships are the only way you can get all three special capabilities in one unit), empath ground units, plus some aviation units to scout and clean up the stray native life forms.

The large pops of MWs, IODs, and Locusts should appear near you big pollutors.

When they do, use your SAM artillary to soften up the locusts stacks then kill the entire stacks with surface units. Use the non SAM artilliary to soften up the MW and IOD stacks then kill those stacks with surface units. Use aircraft to kill any stray native life form that may not be part of a stack, after softening with artillary if possible, (there's usually one or two MWs that are not part of a stack).


Ususally, if you are polluting sufficiently, you'll have no trouble raising the sea levels fast enough to allow all your SAM/Empath ships to attack anywhere near your big polutting bases.

I only did one game where I purposely tried to make Planet as angry as I could (major pollution, PBs, and Gas). It was so easy defeating Planet that I have not tried a high pollution game since. Really, all you end up doing is watching pops, striking them with empath SAM artilliary followed by surface attack and then waiting for the next turn to repeat the cycle and to kill scores more.


Mead

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Mead



An effective counter to mass worm attacks is active defense.

Make one or two bases you Mega Polluting Bases. The higher the eco damage in these bases the better. Try to get well into the triple digits.

First, ensure your bases are well equipped with empath/artillary, empath/SAM/Artillary (ships are the only way you can get all three special capabilities in one unit), empath ground units, plus some aviation units to scout and clean up the stray native life forms.

The large pops of MWs, IODs, and Locusts should appear near you big pollutors.

When they do, use your SAM artillary to soften up the locusts stacks then kill the entire stacks with surface units. Use the non SAM artilliary to soften up the MW and IOD stacks then kill those stacks with surface units. Use aircraft to kill any stray native life form that may not be part of a stack, after softening with artillary if possible, (there's usually one or two MWs that are not part of a stack).


Ususally, if you are polluting sufficiently, you'll have no trouble raising the sea levels fast enough to allow all your SAM/Empath ships to attack anywhere near your big polutting bases.

I only did one game where I purposely tried to make Planet as angry as I could (major pollution, PBs, and Gas). It was so easy defeating Planet that I have not tried a high pollution game since. Really, all you end up doing is watching pops, striking them with empath SAM artilliary followed by surface attack and then waiting for the next turn to repeat the cycle and to kill scores more.


Mead

A good plan. If you check some old threads you will find I have advocated this very thing several times although in my variation one of the benefits of the polluter base was to raise your mineral limits so high that you could reassign a few crawlers and then have SEVERAL very high mineral bases with Zero ecodamage

[Flubber]

To caary on

Its situational-- sometimes its best to sink the world while other times you stop polluting and just enjoy having a lot of production pollution free and use your formers to keep you out of the drink fro earlier sea rises.

I do love SAM arty and have advocated it many times for people with worm problems. Generally though worm problems can be handled if you have a healthy empath unit available for each stack as it appears. An empath scout is not that expensive after all

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
The Bulk Matter Transmitter, contrary to documentation, actually increases mineral yields by 50% at all bases. This causes enormous amounts of ecodamage. If worms in bunkers are giving you problems, don't build bunkers, and destroy the ones you do have.

Just remebered that I haven't build BMT after I learned about clean mins. Just tried it and are getting 195 mins at best base with zero damage

You are right about not build / destroy bunkers, but I'm lazy, so after base 7 I set all new formers to autoimprove base except for a single forest to boost prod a little, and those little buggers usually build a bunker or two.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by BlackCat


Just remebered that I haven't build BMT after I learned about clean mins. Just tried it and are getting 195 mins at best base with zero damage

Its easy once you understand the formula. Allow a bunch of pops to raise your clean limit and then go build a bunch of TFs and HFs.

I never went to 195 clean but I recall doing over a hundred. Personally I'm guessing I would have only gotten to the 195 mineral level if I had played the game beyond the chop and drop era more often . My SP games hardly get to fusion so I rarely build the BMT

[BlackCat]

If you start on a 4x4 island on a 192x192 map with 70-90 % sea, that chop'n dropping isn't that easy - you need either space elev or carrier, and they come damn late - at that time I've rasied enough land to reach the enemies without. Crazy ? maybe, but I find that some of the fun.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by BlackCat
If you start on a 4x4 island on a 192x192 map with 70-90 % sea, that chop'n dropping isn't that easy - you need either space elev or carrier, and they come damn late - at that time I've rasied enough land to reach the enemies without. Crazy ? maybe, but I find that some of the fun.

Or a seabase or two . Even in the setup you describe, all you ned to be able to do is establish a seabase within 8 tiles of their coast. Once you get a point of entry, it becomes your jumping off point. If it were me, I would probably placea seabase 7-8 tiles away from my island and another 5-6 tiles further out still ( depends on the range of my cruisers as I don't want them outside my bases and loaded with troops too close to the enemy)

If you tell me there is no enemy you can reach from a base 15 tiles out, would be amazed.

In MP it can be a great suprise for an opponent to get hit by drop troops when supposedly no base was in range. Create the base, move in your cruiser and suddenly you have trrops ready to rain on your enemy . ( You can't drop into a seabase but you can certainly use one as the starting point) . ..