Minor Newb Questions

[Elok]

Hooray for GOG.com, I finally got this thing yesterday! Only SMAC, not SMAX, but it's a start. But I already have a couple of questions:

1. Unit stats. They look pretty similar to Civ2's, and I gather that weapon makes attack value, armor defense value, chassis is movement and reactor, for some reason, is health. But does it work the same way as Civ2, with the obvious exception of firepower? I.E., only the defense strength matters if the unit is on the receiving end of an attack, while only attack strength matters for the aggressor? The game said something to imply that, but I want to make sure, because it makes no sense that a heavily-armored defender with hand weapons could shrug off an equally-armored attacker with moderately powerful armament.

Maybe I'm getting this all wrong, but to cut the rambling short, should a designated defender/garrison unit have crap weapons to save costs, but fantastic armor and reactor? Along with psi-defense and/or non lethal methods, etc., of course...conversely, should a needlejet I intend to reserve for bombing runs against a foe with no air-attack capacity not bother with armor at all? Not that such a situation is super-likely, I'm just using the question as an example.

2. Does it eventually get easier to tell what kind of terrain underlies the fugly graphics? I can generally tell where the fungus is, and arid is sort of recognizable, but whenever I want to build a base I have to squint and guess, or else fumble with the novel interface to scan each square to tell whether it's rolling or flat, moist or rainy. I miss the bit in Civ2 where you could just summon the cursor and move it around at will.

3. Zak seems grossly overpowered. I tried playing as Lal (balance is good for beginners, I figured) and everyone seemed to shoot ahead of me by every metric. Playing as the nerds, on the other hand, my free NNs AND research boost let me tech up and wipe out my supposed drone problem before it started, plus I got a big boost on terraforming. I suppose it's just a matter of playing style and/or higher difficulty...

[Lord Avalon]

Hooray for GOG.com

Indeed.

But I already have a couple of questions:

RTFM. Srsly. No, really - it's a good manual with a lot of info. 248 pages! You might also want to check out Vel's SMAX Guide.

1. Unit stats. They look pretty similar to Civ2's, and I gather that weapon makes attack value, armor defense value, chassis is movement and reactor, for some reason, is health. But does it work the same way as Civ2, with the obvious exception of firepower? I.E., only the defense strength matters if the unit is on the receiving end of an attack, while only attack strength matters for the aggressor? The game said something to imply that, but I want to make sure, because it makes no sense that a heavily-armored defender with hand weapons could shrug off an equally-armored attacker with moderately powerful armament.

Yes, SMAC is like an advancement of Civ2. Generally, attackers use their attack strength, and defenders their defense strength. An exception is an artillery duel, where it's attack vs attack. Better reactors give more hit points and lower mineral costs. And game combat doesn't always make sense.

Maybe I'm getting this all wrong, but to cut the rambling short, should a designated defender/garrison unit have crap weapons to save costs, but fantastic armor and reactor? Along with psi-defense and/or non lethal methods, etc., of course...conversely, should a needlejet I intend to reserve for bombing runs against a foe with no air-attack capacity not bother with armor at all? Not that such a situation is super-likely, I'm just using the question as an example.

With the base reactor a sole base defender will likely have attack 1 and best armor. If you are in a situation where you have the energy (SMAC $$) and can't support a lot of units, you might upgrade some infantry to best/best. Better reactors will enable you to have the best armor and better weapons than just the basic with no additional cost - play around with unit design to see. Air units are expensive to armor, so it's quite likely you won't put any on.

2. Does it eventually get easier to tell what kind of terrain underlies the fugly graphics? I can generally tell where the fungus is, and arid is sort of recognizable, but whenever I want to build a base I have to squint and guess, or else fumble with the novel interface to scan each square to tell whether it's rolling or flat, moist or rainy. I miss the bit in Civ2 where you could just summon the cursor and move it around at will.

Yes, a rolling square has a few rocks in it, flat has none. Moist has some green splotches, rainy more and darker green splotches. Shift+right click on a square and check the status view at lower left: it'll tell you elevation, type of terrain, and what improvements are present, if any.

3. Zak seems grossly overpowered. I tried playing as Lal (balance is good for beginners, I figured) and everyone seemed to shoot ahead of me by every metric. Playing as the nerds, on the other hand, my free NNs AND research boost let me tech up and wipe out my supposed drone problem before it started, plus I got a big boost on terraforming. I suppose it's just a matter of playing style and/or higher difficulty...

I don't think Zak is "grossly overpowered," but having the free tech and free network nodes helps boost research. Drone problems will happen at lower pop at higher difficulties, so you might try moving up when you play Zak again.

[Elok]

I actually did read the manual. Most of it, anyway--the questions I asked were about parts the manual didn't explain super-clearly. I also found Vel's guide on gameFAQs, though it looks to be more for strategy than basic bits of info like this. Thanks for responding!

[Flubber]

Garrisons

1. In the pre-airpower era, I recommend usually garrisoning with with 1--1-1 scouts for the most part-- For much of this time defenders best armour is a 3 while attackers often have immpact weapons. But then again I was always a proponent of active defense where you build some best-1-1 rovers and you have enough of a road system to hit them hard on their way in

In the airpower era where you may need guards more , my guys were often designed AA units with best armour and reactor. With an aerocomplex they did quite well.

But always ensure you toy with the design since with higher level armours you may find you can build an upgraded weapon on a unit for "free"--- generally though, best-best-best units are often a luxury that cost way too much when compared with the cost of "lesser" units


I found in most of my games my garrisons would start as simple 1-1-1 guys since they do as well against worms as anyone (assuming no empath or trance yet). Later many would get upgraded to 1 or police units or evenn high value attackers depending on the need

PLaying against the AI though I seldom garrisoned very much-- The goal is to be out there and killing their units on the way in. The AI attacks stupidly and particularly in the ground era it is fairly easy to set up a kill zone (think about a road, ideally on rocky terrain so it will cost an enemy all his movement to get on it. Your rovers can move up a tile, shoot and then move back a tile. In the most perfect situation you would even have a monolith to heal your guys. If you took care of your guys it was usually pretty easy to get some elite rovers spun up. Even two of these can massacre dozens of enemy AI units as they just keep coming and coming down the same routes

[Lord Avalon]

As Flubber says, scouts or trance scouts will be most of your garrisons. In fact if no one goes vendetta on you, the only more heavily armored garrisons might be your prototypes. (It is a good idea to build a prototype as soon as you can, and armor is cheap on infantry.) Unarmored rovers with best weapons will be your most active units, either in mobile defense or on the attack. Infantry are just so slow.

I usually play huge maps and fall on the hybrid/builder side of things, so I build very few attack infantry - a handful of marines and later drop troops, mostly. (I do like me some clean chaos amphibious rovers.) Although if you're Miriam on a small map, I imagine you'd send out a horde of impact infantry.

Hint: it is useless to put trance on a noncombat unit, but putting armor on makes it a combat unit, as in trance synthmetal transport. And you'll want to create an armored transport (even before trance) if you have any unity foils (move 2, cargo 1), because those don't upgrade to your basic unarmored transport foil (move 3, cargo 2) but do if there's armor.

[Elok]

I'm generally a pretty crappy TBS player. Right now I'm giving Zak a hand with my "Rent-a-cops" unit. Hand weapons, good armor which probably isn't necessary, double police power and clean reactor. I've got enough police bonuses that I think that adds up to four drones suppressed for one cheap unit which requires no support. And that's about the cleverest thing I've done, sadly. Oh well, I'll get better.

[Flubber]

I'm generally a pretty crappy TBS player. Right now I'm giving Zak a hand with my "Rent-a-cops" unit. Hand weapons, good armor which probably isn't necessary, double police power and clean reactor. I've got enough police bonuses that I think that adds up to four drones suppressed for one cheap unit which requires no support. And that's about the cleverest thing I've done, sadly. Oh well, I'll get better.

I had a unit called "Mall Cop" which was usually 1-1-1 clean police. ON many of my interior bases , that was all they ever needed. generally I was never much about defending-- worms have a 3-2 advantage if they attack you (assuming equal morale/lifecycle) and my recollection was that trance just made the odds equal. So my strategy near fungus was more about trying to have sensors and see them coming-- even a couple of high morale 1-1-2 rovers could be excellent for worm hunting (or capturing a worm almost made worms


Shipping-- I rarely armored my transports. Instead I would be more likely to try to send a transport with an escort. I found that an armored transport would likely take so much damage even from one attack that it either had to sit and heal or move when one more hit kills it. If I was pod popping I much preferred to have my foil take the hit and have the transport have a much better chance of surviving. If could time most of my sea exploration with a stint in green, I could capture some IoDs and have a small fleet going

Oh and here's a little trick if you are running green. Return a worm to the wild at an opportune moment (its badly damaged for instance) for the easy kill and the energy . Running with cha or dee you would often get 10 captured units and then even though I don't recall if the manual says it anywhere the chances of capture went way down. So if going to sea with a positive planet rating, kill most of your worms for the energy and then enjoy a much better capture rate with your ships-- and once you have IoDs you will never want to go back to transports since IoDs move effortlessly through the fungus

So Dee or Cha send a warship and capture your transport fleet of Iods -- Anyone else I would send warships to escort transports. The reality though is survivability at sea early can be hard. Your ships are slow and no matter what you do, if you pop a pod and 4-5 wildlife emerge, your nearby ships are likely dead

[Lord Avalon]

"Mall cop." Yes, clean police scouts are very useful. I build many.

The earliest transports I build probably aren't armored (certainly the first isn't, because I want to build that prototype ASAP), but while they're slow, unity foils are even slower and can carry only one thing, so I want to upgrade those. Also if I put trance on, it's also going to need armor.

While scouting the sea around your continent is quicker with a gun foil, if you have a low Police rating, military units outside your borders cause drones, so you might want to scout with transports. And later probe foils.

Flubber's right, the sea can be quite hazardous. But if you're stuck on a small continent, you have to cross the sea to find a place to expand.

@Elok - beelining Industrial Automation is important (if you're not on the warpath) for Wealth and supply crawlers, which send resources (especially minerals) back to base and speed up Secret Projects (much more so than disbanding scouts and probe teams). If you're Zak, Virtual World is a must have, as Network Nodes become free Hologram Theaters, and hey, you already have Network Nodes.

[Flubber]

Lord Avalon is correct-- the key and only early strategy for best play is that (except for probably the very smallest maps where you need weapons and rovers earlier) you need to get to Industrial Automation-- The only permissible deviation for building id to grab centauri ecology to get your formers working.


Zak-- everyone understands that he can be very powerful and some actually see him as overpowered. I never did really. He does have some huge early advantages and is very intuitive to play. But a research advanatage can easily be equalled in multi-player by two lesser researchers that are willing to trade and if research is equalized by probing or trade, then it comes down to how much Zak has translated his early advantage in reseaerch and getting crawlers first into infrastructure and special projects

I know Elok is only playing SMAC right now but another faction that many saw as very very powerful was the Drones with a research penalty and their industry bonus-- I played them with great success aganst the computer and even in multiplayer-- you would look so far back on the powergraph that no one fears you and trading tech is easy -- Against AI you would trade a bit and then plan a probe rape to vault yourself up. Against humans it would usually be a case where you would cooperate with the others against a leader. In either case though a Drone faction at anywhere near tech parity is awesomely powerful. People never knew what hit them. The Drones were harder to play no doubt but I saw enough games where a pretty decent human playing Zak got whipped to underestimate them.

If starting out I think Zak is a great chouice to learn how to whip the AI. Then Lal ( getting governorship so easy is so huge) and then Dee and try to learn to play with no FM and also learn the Green game. The Hive are immensely strong and worth a try as they are probably the best at shifting from building to conquest. Morgan-- oooh late in my Smax playing time I was really coming to love Morgan-- I never thought I was great with him but the power and cash that can come with them just from running wealth or from the FM wealth combination-- wow

The weak sisters of the original 7 are often cited as the believers and Spartans and they are far weaker on a larger or huge map. I have never seen either be regularly competitive on any of the larger maps favored in multiplayer games (or in particular in the no AI games we often created. To succeed they usually seemed to need smaller maps or adjacent AI so that their early military advantages could be telling-- I quite enjoyed kicking AI butt as the Spartans on the smaller maps but on the larger maps, all of the others coulld generally withstand the onslaught or crush it with better tech military or just greater numbers.

[Lord Avalon]

Elok, are you doing directed research? I guess I've assumed that, advising you to beeline, which you can't in blind research. Also, what difficulty are you playing at?

Re: the Human Hive. One thing I learned in Vel's guide that wasn't in the manual is that the Hive is "immune to inefficiency." I didn't notice this while playing either. Basically, you never go below 0 Efficiency. Yang already has +1 Growth, +1 Industry, and by selecting Planned gets +2 Growth, +1 Industry, while ignoring the -2 Efficiency. Also Police State: what -2 Efficiency? Of course his -2 Economy sucks, so you must build many bases (what efficiency penalty for too many bases?).

Edit: Morgan is tough for a beginner, but yes, having tons of energy is awesome. You can rush build to your heart's content.

[Flubber]

Elok, are you doing directed research? I guess I've assumed that, advising you to beeline, which you can't in blind research. Also, what difficulty are you playing at?

Re: the Human Hive. One thing I learned in Vel's guide that wasn't in the manual is that the Hive is "immune to inefficiency." I didn't notice this while playing either. Basically, you never go below 0 Efficiency. Yang already has +1 Growth, +1 Industry, and by selecting Planned gets +2 Growth, +1 Industry, while ignoring the -2 Efficiency. Also Police State: what -2 Efficiency? Of course his -2 Economy sucks, so you must build many bases (what efficiency penalty for too many bases?).

Exactly--- you end up with high support and high industry so you build awesome numbers of formers and terraform the world. Two formers and two poilce units per base and then just use that higher than average growth to pump out the pods

The downside is that 0 efficiency is stilly pretty sucky for sliding to 80 -100% research or things like that. It was always interesting to play with the Hive if you ever went out of Police state planned-- Sometimes I seem to recall short stints in green to capture some IoDs but generally any efficiency gains were essentially wasted

It was interesting how strong they could be when both +2Econ and the joys of a population boom were very hard to reach

[Flubber]

Oh and I always assume directed research

Blind is fun for a change but it often takes you so fasr from what is optimum for your situation, that speaking of best play and strategy often becomes moot as you simply adapt to your situation with whatever tech you can garner

[Flubber]

Edit: Morgan is tough for a beginner, but yes, having tons of energy is awesome. You can rush build to your heart's content.

Yup-- I had so very much money and probes were my friend. It was funny how often I would use a probe to steal a key unit in an invasion group-- and just self destruct it to cause havoc on nearby stacks of units--One probe and a couple of rovers and suddenly the massive invasion was in shambles

But I always loved the probe game-- My favorite was in a multiplayer where I stole an opponents key military staging area despite his two probe defenders (cost me three probeships to kill his two probes and then find out it was something like 3300 energy. It was a shock to him when suddenly he sees his former base sitting their with his 8 or 10 top flight military units and a few more I brought over

I recall when people tried a modification where the AI could earn interest on its cash( attempt to strengthen AI)-- This caused the AI to get crushed as humans just stole cash repeatedly and then rushed units.As a human player it was like a limitless supply

[Lord Avalon]

Well, Planetary Networks gives you Librarians as well as Planned, so you can make research bases.

I hate it when you play Blind Research, and you get vendetta'd before your idiot scientists have even discovered frickin' lasers!

[Lord Avalon]

Yup-- I had so very much money and probes were my friend. It was funny how often I would use a probe to steal a key unit in an invasion group-- and just self destruct it to cause havoc on nearby stacks of units--One probe and a couple of rovers and suddenly the massive invasion was in shambles

But I always loved the probe game-- My favorite was in a multiplayer where I stole an opponents key military staging area despite his two probe defenders (cost me three probeships to kill his two probes and then find out it was something like 3300 energy. It was a shock to him when suddenly he sees his former base sitting their with his 8 or 10 top flight military units and a few more I brought over

Hee hee. Nice base, I think I'll buy it.