Units - land transport

[Mart]

After all this time, I finally got, how to make a land transport that is not slower due to its transport package.
It is pre-defined, and has at this stage of design 4 abilities, so it does not give you any ability below the required tech, thanks to how it works.

Rover chassis
- nanocell (blockage)
- repair (blockage)
- trained (for possibility to have elite, "no attack" units cannot upgrade on monoliths)
- grav struts (that gives a move point back)

No armor version
- forced cost 2 rows, Reconnaisance plan for AI, DocFlex

Synthmetal
- forced cost 2 (or 3?), Defense plan for AI, DocInit

AI is not going to use land transportation, coz it has only naval plan, so Reconnaisance does a good job, I think - needs testing
Defense is a good choice for armoured one. Should be then corelated with cost of a synth rover.

Rover transports thus move 2 (3 elite)
hovertank transports, 3 (4 elite)
It is an awesome combo now, when you have an infantry unit and you wish to attack an inland base, the same way you would do it from naval transport.

Need work on the whole set of rover and hover ones - armor versions.

Last note - depending on your esthetic alignment you may find the image of the transport from caviar either interesting or ugly

[Leon Trotsky]

It still gets stuck in the ocean, doesn't it?

[Mart]

I guess so, though you can make "pontoon" bridge from naval transports, land transport should drive on them, only I do not know how fast. needs testing.

[Mart]

Well, playing a bit more with the units, I found this is not that easy.
Antigrav struts allow to neglect difficult terrain penalties, so such a rover transport goes on rocky tile using 1 move point.
There is actually other way of doing 2 move rover transport. By giving cargo value to any rover with payload other than transport, e.g Gun, Probe team (does not work as such if plan is other than 11) or None (works like psi). Best is Probe team - gives non-combat "ability" more realistic IMO
However problem with sea still remains. One transport cannot transport another...

The more I take a look into the transport stuff, the more I find it quite powerful even without tweaking. There are problems still - loading air transports on sea for example, but otherwise, it's powerful.

[Mart]

Now I start to think, that a land transport with 2 move points may be too strong. One of my observations is that SMAC too much favors offense, though recently taking a closer look into things, I come to a conclusion it may be balanced in a way. Sea coastal bases are exposed to much to a surprise attack from a transport IMO, and a land transport with 2 move points would be similar. That would be good to test.

Re inability to transport a transport. That might be very much intentional from the game designers. Just to limit the unusual range of transport parties. but maybe not. -1 move for land transports is quite a penalty already.

And there is disabled in the standard version of alphax.txt ability of heavy transport. I think of bringing it over as an ability in pre-designed unit for reverse engineering.

[Mart]

Currently I am preparing a scenario that will combine two things:
- test of pre-defined units for AI enhancement and also a solution for returning some abilities to play without alphax.txt editing
- boosting AI by faction files atributes that get into the save file.

Abilities:
- amphibious pods for probe teams. Already made some before and it seems AI uses them well too.
- heavy transport
- grav struts for air units

So no land transports with improved abilities beyond heavy transport. After rethinking, that should make transports sufficiently attractive (I think, test will show)

[Mart]

Setting up the scenario. I'm in 2131 and Morgan made 3 SP, Gaians 1 SP (playing as PK) leaving intact pre-game crawling park. 6 unity supply droids (1 row supply, disabled) on tiles with mostly 5-7 resources (3 minerals, 2 nut, 1 energy). They are set as lurkers.
- I am not sure why, but possibly it is coz of large turn gain of crawling compared to only total 6 rows of minerals (does AI takes that into account at all?)
- Also, is "lurker" valid till some other faction appears nearby? Or any own faction unit can disable it?
- Just an impression, but giving AI strategy lots of colony pods, terraformers and probe teams might help.
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Over 70 turns in the scenario.
AI did not use a single crawler (36 of crawlers in 6 factions) for secret Projects, while building like 10 of them (SP). It seems possible to equip AI in crawler parks that would last quite long.