Best air defense?

[ReconRoverRush]

I finally won my Morgan game on planet year 2350 on difficulty 4. I barely won beause Sister Mirriam had a huge continent to herself after taking out Yang. I don't know why people think Yang is the hardest, Mirriam often wins in the very early game against Yang. Anyways despite democracy and free market versus fundamentalist and controlled Mirriam beat everyone in tech. Luckily there was a huge ocean between me and her.

To make a long story short Mirriam had a huge air force coupled with lots of elite infantry. The AI would wait a while then basically zerg down one base in one turn. Then rinse, repeat. The question is how do you defend a base against 20+ fusion pentrators? I've tried fusion interceptors they win about 50% of the time. AAA cruiser get blown up real good. I set the govenor to conquer and it kept building isles of the deep and mindworms, which worked medicore. Basically, if the AI had a little more time, I would have lost hands down. I beat Mirriam in tech for a little bit, but due to sheer number of cities she started outteching me, let alone in military.

After the penetrators/bombers kill everything Mirriam can just drop a few elite infantry which get 2 moves, meaning one for drop from transport, and one to capture. This game reminds me a lot of the Master of Orion series where you take the faction that is the worst with science and it ends up number 1 in technology because of sheer amount of territory/people.

[BlackCat]

Choppers are your friend. They are cheap and can hit several times. They are actually the most powerful unit in the game.

If you play SMAX, get the Cloudbase Academy, otherwise build an areospace complex - then the enemy can't drop closely.

[ReconRoverRush]

Oh yeah forget about chopters, I did have cloudbase academy but Mirriam was taking 2 cities a turn by the end. She wasn't air dropping she was using transport foils. My problem with interceptors is this:

A. If you attack enemy aircraft the turn after it strikes, the interceptor wins. Using defenders defense against interceptors offense.
B. If the interceptor scrambles it uses attack vs attack meaning it will go to the highest morale or about 50%/50%.

In case B I find my interceptors just wasted against superior numbers. Something this is anti my opponent shouldn't only win 50% of the time. Not to mention in case A the perpetrator already struck and won.

[Kahryl]

For *blocking* air attacks there are a lot of options:
1. AAA gives 100% defense bonus.
2. Aerospace complex gives 100% defense bonus to every unit in the base (easy to forget, and I think an undocumented feature)
3. Tachyon Field gives another 100% defense bonus.

Get 2/3 of those and stack them and Miriam will have a hell of a time taking you out.

For *reacting* to air attacks, interceptors and choppers aren't your best bet, because when they scramble for some reason they pit their attack values against the enemy attack values, so it's a coin toss as to whether they even win. Meanwhile, if you attack an enemy plane on YOUR turn, it compares to their defense, which is 1.

My favorite is having a SAM rover. <6>-1-2 or even <4>-1-2. Park a couple in a base and they can each shoot down two planes a turn! Alternatively, make an interceptor-chopper but don't leave it in a base that's likely to be attacked - leave it in a base that's nearby one, then fly it over to clean up after the attack.


Was Miriam really attacking your *bases* with planes? For some reason my A.I. opponents never do that (though they will zerg a base with missiles to great effect). They will occasionally pick off units in the field with planes but otherwise don't seem to understand how to use them. It's one of my main frustrations with the A.I.

Miriam tends to be one of the weaker opponents in my games - she spreads fast but has paper thin bases. In my current game, however, she is dominating with about 20 bases on a standard-size world. It remains to be seen if my little force of mind worms can stop her for long enough to get a good economy going.

[zeeshan123]

I'm playing the pirates, and all I do is load/unload probe teams and scouts. I don't know about you, but for me it gets really repetitive and boring with all the transports. To make things worse, you make one little mistake and all your veteran probe teams sink with the transport. There's a bunch of pods on little islands, but it doesn't seem any fun to load up a scout, drive to the island, unload, pop the pod, and then reload the scout, and finally repeat.

[Mensonge]

Funny.

In my games Zakharov has often the first lead, then Miriam or Santiago thrives, then The Hive takes over and really takes the cake. I've always found that pattern logical considering their respective strengths, but it's happened so many times I'm glad when a game turns out to be different.