why land based transports?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by dacole
ok so now there is a unit I have haveing trouble visualising even in the sci-fi world of alpha centauri. Exactly how would the units being carried in the missle survive the impact of the missle...? Had never thought of that idea though man what an interesting late game strategy will have to remember that!

What unit ? And how is it surviving what ?

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by dacole
ok so now there is a unit I have haveing trouble visualising even in the sci-fi world of alpha centauri. Exactly how would the units being carried in the missle survive the impact of the missle...?

Its the only way I could simulate an orbital assault in SMAC(X). As far as how the units survive impact I visualize them dropping (they all had drop pods) clear at the last moment before impact - sort of like paratroopers dropping out of a plane, only in this case the plane is on a one way trip to an intended hardened target.

Originally posted by dacole
Had never thought of that idea though man what an interesting late game strategy will have to remember that!

You can't build them in the workshop. I designed them into the alphax.txt file. Here is the line from the file:

DRACa MK3, Missile, Conventional, 3-Res, 0, 0, 6, Disable, -1, 00000100000000010000010000

btw DRACa stood for "Drop Re-entry Assault Carrier: armored"

D

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by BlackCat


What unit ? And how is it surviving what ?

Heres the link. Download the file and play the game, and you'll see what dacole's refering to.

D

[Dis]

Originally posted by Darsnan


The Terran and Terranx files, because I can't!



Think Apocalypse Now where a Heli flew in the gunboat!

Also, over at CGN I set up a game whereby I staged an orbital assault onto a Planet using the Missile chassis with transport capability: the missile hits one target, eliminates that, then releases its clutch of assault shock troops which can then immediately go into combat. I loaded up a bunch of these missiles with Drop Assault troops and launched them against a heavily defended planet. Note that this game also included Usurpers with the free nerve gas ability for all their units. Cool stuff!


D

actually that's considered a movie mistake where the Huey flies a Navy gunboat. It's beyond the rated capacity (though not by much)

[johndmuller]

Ogie is an avid supporter of them (dont get him started ).

He likes them for the above mentioned infantry-gets-extra-move-or-two thing, and also for moving formers around to get some turn advantage. The latter can be proven to be cost effective, I think, but I've never been fond of paying the support. By the time clean comes around, it doesn't seem worth the trouble anymore.

I do like clean drop transports, however, for shuttling units around, like to move units between where they were built and/or going to and a base near a monolith to upgrade them. You also can tack on an extra move (of the transport-unit combo) after the passenger unit's regular move, if not before. Of course, they also serve as a regular land transport if they have any slack time.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can use the two ability slots for something else and don't need to tie one of them up with drop pods or make an extra upgrade.

Lord D, how do you give special abilities in the faction file? Or are you just creating a special unit with the ability or giving them the tech?

[Petek]

My one experiment with land transports was to build clean infantry transports with 3-res armor and trance. Also had the Neural Amp SP. I planned to use them to pop pods. If I got an AA, then the transport could ferry it back to a base and protect it from native life. I also hoped that these babies could survive popping eight worms from a pod. Didn't work though. These guys were no match for the eight worms.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by #endgame
Well, you could make the transport a combat unit by giving it synthmetal armor. I don't think it's possible to upgrade to one, but if you build a commando synthmetal one, you could then monolith it.

Actually you can't monolith any unit which does not contain a weapon in its weapon slot. What I do to get these transports up to elite is to use them to prototype new armor types. This gives me a handful of drop transports with which to move units without drop pods around the planet.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by BlackCat


Quite right. That's the reason you should not use all of the transporters movements, that gives acces to the Action - Unload option wich you loose when fully moving the unit.

If it's a bug or not may be a matter of definition. IRL unloading of even heavy armoured units from an areoplane is actually done - I think that the French has made that a speciality of theirs. From a chopper, it should obviously be possible.

The U.S. Army has Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES) for unloading heavy pallets from low flying cargo planes. They can unload light tanks this way without landing.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by johndmuller
Lord D, how do you give special abilities in the faction file? Or are you just creating a special unit with the ability or giving them the tech?

File sent via E-Mail


D

[Mart]

This all discussion reminded me of smth opposite from the WWII. If you maybe heard about it, people were recovered by planes, low flying with possible very small speed, they were not jets of course. A man was put into a "basket" with cusioning and in a certain way, so the acceleration would not hurt him. Plane had a hook, similar to todays planes landing on carriers, where they loos speed that way, but then, the hook kept the basket with the plane. This operation was performed on the territories occupied by Germany when planes could not land due to terrain and secret agents or special messengers needed to be recovered from behind the enemy lines.

[Lord Nword]

On the larger maps that I play (and I always play with pods on...), I tend to find a LOT of alien artifacts with their crummy 1 square movement. I've used tank transports (elite with antigrav, and drop or extra capacity) to go wandering around picking up a full load of artifacts and then running back to town...

Much easier has been modding to enable myself to build alien artifacts upon getting TranThought, so I can upgrade them to move faster...

[johndmuller]

Seems like the AAs should sometimes be booby-trapped; after all, what would you expect to see in the sci-fi movie when they open up the mysterious alien object they just found, Elvis?

--Instead of giving you a free tech, it could ruin all your network nodes;
--Instead of helping to build a prototype, it could build an wild Battle Ogre you'd have to deal with;
--Instead of adding to an SP build, it could delete one you already had;
--Then there are the old standbys:
blowing up the base, spreading a plague, submerging the land all around or turning it into fungus, or turning your men into fungus - or turning a bunch of them into wild NL controlled units, ..., or turning you personally into an AA.

[Commy]

Then nobody would use them...

[Senethro]

If that happened with random events turned off I would start looking for good firing positions overlooking the programmers offices. Things which are random and beyond the players control are not good things.

Popping pods is acceptable because you choose when to take the risk, where to take the risk and with what support to take the risk.
Losing a base? to ever use an alien artifact then I would need a 1/50 chance of getting Singularity mechanics.

[dacole]

Hmm I tried to make a land transport once and I just can't see the point. It goes down to one move point from rovers so it only has one move point thus at the most it has two points but that is if you move the unit in the cargo after moving the cargo. Then the next turn you have to move the transport back to pick up the unit using it's one move so you can't even really leapfrog. How exactly would this work for formers even? Roads seem like a much better investment...