armored probe teams

[Theben]

I am about to test a promising strategy and am building these in my current game to send off to get attacked. 2 questions:

Do armored probe teams actually get a defense (beyond 0.00 or 0.01)?
If in a stack that loses, will the armored probe teams automatically die (as regular PT's)?
[This message has been edited by Theben (edited January 20, 2000).]

[Aredhran]

YES and YES

I think armored probes are too expensive, don't bother...

Aredhran

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Theben,

As Aredhran indicates both answers are yes. Armored probes have their use depending on game style. If you are a Morganite or play a style that favors low support ratings. These early 'clean' units can be very helpful for garrison duty and as anti probe duty. Since they self distruct if another unit is successfully attacked, if you are going to use them you might as well make them the designated defender when in a stack of units.

In late game I'm particularly fond of PSI armored drop probes assuming I have Nueral Amp SP. By that time all your probes are elite and are tough little suckers to tackle and are the perfect unit to cut off reinforcements by your opponent. (they are however susceptable to missiles). Even better is to use PSI armor on a foil probe as sea to sea is 1:1 combat odds.

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"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.

[Theben]

Thanks guys. I still may be able to pull off my strat, just not as well if they automatically die. Since the rules will probably be changed soon, I'll tell you: create a probe team with an INFANTRY chassis. Give it-
fusion reactor
pulse or resonance 3 armor
com jammer
trance DEF

The cost of this beastie is 30. Not bad, eh? And with op centers available elite PT's are easy to get, so even though it's an infantry unit it'll still have a move of 2. It'll also still look like a standard probe team (with a red jacket) so a careless player in MP might get sucked into attacking it. What I was considering doing was using these to garrison my cities (along with 1-1-1 police units; 10 cost) AND to have them accompany my mind worms in a worm rush (playing gaian, not morgan). Using worms and Armored PT's almost exclusively would make support, morale, and probe categories not to be worried about. This would allow the Gaian player to choose Democratic, Green, and WEALTH. Make sure you have Golden Ages in your cities and you can be effectively defended, attack, and have sufficient wealth/tech to put Morgan to shame!

This brings 3 more questions:
Are resonance/pulse armor cumulative with com jammer/trance DEF? Do they interfere with it? I always forget to check during combat.

How DO you designate a defender? I've never done it.
[This message has been edited by Theben (edited January 20, 2000).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Theben,

Good ideas. The combo of either res or pulse with trance and comm jammer will make them very tough. I also like the downgrading to infantry chassis approach to save on cost. (30 minerals, huh not too bad) (In actuality I didn't realize you could put comm jammer on PT's. I usually only go with trance on foils for pod popping duty).

In answer to your questions, Res and/or pulse is indeed cumulative with trance and/or comm jammer as appropriate and do not interfere.

As for designating a defender, I can't remember but believe it is either shift D or control D. Anyway right click the unit and go to actions it's in there somewhere.

In early to mid game this looks to be an especially tough nut to crack,susceptibility to air power seems to be the only weakness.

As I still have one last installment on Combined Arms Tactics thread, would you mind terribly if I incorporated some of these ideas into it? (Liberally plagerizing no doubt)

P.S. I'll make sure you are properly recognized for the ideas.

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"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited January 20, 2000).]

[Aredhran]

Not 100% sure on that one, but IIRC pulse/res are cumulative with ECM/trance.

To designate defender: with unit active (blinking), type CTRL-D. A message will appear, and a # sign will be displayed next to the unit's stats (eg. 1-3t-1#)

Aredhran

[Theben]

ogie/le,
Go ahead and add it. I'm not sure how useful it'll be yet; I'm testing it now. It seems to be pretty much a mid-game tactic as before fusion it's still kind of expensive.

Both: Thanks for the help.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Theben,

One counter to this tactic will be an opponent that counters your probe team with his own and then follows with a more conventional attack. In this way an opponent could combat your expensive 30 mineral PT with a conventional cheap one and assuming both are elite have a 50/50 chance of causing you a 30 mineral loss while risking a cheaper costing probe (can't remember the actual cost).

It would be interesting to see if the AI is smart enough to figure that out.

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"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited January 20, 2000).]

[Theben]

The cost of a standard probe team is also 30. I've never seen a cheaper cost for one, INDUSTRY Se settings aside. And in the case of the AI that wouldn't work anyway, because it's not smart enough to put fusion reactors on its PT's. Even if the other PT was elite the player would still have twice as many hit points. As it stands in my current game, my APT killed 3 units before falling to a 4th: a probe team, a mind worm (these 2 did the most damage), a 4-2-2 rover, and finally fell to a 4-3r-1 infantry. This worked because of a familar tactic to civ2 players: I moved the APTs adjacent to the enemy city on good terrain and just sat there. Then watched as the enemy units bounced off. I was also surprised to learn that APTs can be repaired by monoliths. Maybe the standard ones can too; I've just never had the opportunity to find out before. I can imagine this would present a dilemma for people in MP as well: do I risk attacking that unit or wait and risk what kind of damage a PT can do to my city?
BTW, after a little investigating I noticed that the reason it was so cheap it that res/pulse armor is considered a "5" on the cost scale. This means that the same tactic should work with photon wall armor as well. This armor is the one that most resembles the "none" armor, so if you drop the "trance" ability and just use jammers you might have a greater chance of catching an opponent off guard.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Theben,

As long as bringing up good old CIv2 tactics, you may also want to try the old build a fort/bunker next to the city square.

Make the same armor choices, comm jam and trance to a former and build your bunker(s) next to the base square. That ought to make survivability of those units even more a problem for your opponents (granted the former is not a clean unit but what the hey).

Do you know off hand the cost for a PT without any specials on an infantry chassis?

Finally, I was also giving some thought to use of crawlers in the same way. If you assume that by moving a conventional unit into a city square you have blockaded thereby disallowing him the ability to work it, shouldn't you then be able to collect his resources by assigning a crawler to them? Something about 1) denying him his resources and then 2)using them yourself appeals to me.


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"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited January 21, 2000).]

[Theben]

As far as I know, the cheapest any probe team gets is 30. Even so, given what the APT can have that makes it pretty cheap; the lowest cost fusion defender I've seen is 30. As for crawlers, that's sounds like a good idea but bear in mind the reason the APT is cheap is because it's "weapon" has a "4" cost while the armor is 5...which is why the com jammer/trance are free. Since a crawler's "weapon" costs 8, the com j/trance will cost you.
BTW a transport's "weapon" also costs 4, maybe you can come up with a plan using armored land transports...

[Sarxis]

Did someone say 'Armored Transport'? http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum31/H...tml?date=04:26

I have been using PTs on infantry chassis with trance as an affordable 'counter espionage' unit. I will usually build one of these for each of my bases for pobe defense, and that's where they usually stay.

[Theben]

Now that I've actually bothered to check, an unarmored PT infantry with NO specials does indeed cost less, 20 pts...

[Longtooth]

Unarmored PT's cant repair on a Monolith

[Patriqvium]

Armored probe teams really make good defenders, specially when playing the Data Angels (free +2 morale...). They do have one counter-effect: when one is destroyed, so are the other ones stationed in the same square.

[Misotu]

OK, I must have missed something here. I'm playing around with a new game as the data angels. Since they have probes from the start, decided to build some armoured probes as garrisons.

I built infantry probes with synthmetal armour (best I have right now, I'm only a few turns in). Cost was 30, which is fine.

Two problems:
1 Ctrl D does not designate an APT as defender. It works on scouts etc, but does not work for APTs.
2 There is no designate defender option in the action menu for an APT. It does appear as an option for a scout unit.

Just as an aside, my APT does not count as a police unit, which is slightly disappointing :-)

So how come I can't designate my probes as defenders?? Where am I going wrong?

- Mis

[Sikander]

Misotu,

In my experience you can't. Their usefullness is pretty limited. If you have a very low police rating, they can be used in lieu of regular infantry garrisons, and provide the additional benefit of defending against enemy probes. (Since you get no police benefit anyway, you don't lose anything, and you don't pay upkeep). You don't want to stack them (due to the non-combatant destruct) with other units, but they can be very useful for occupying border areas and slowing an enemy's attack. They are mainly useful to a player who has a low police and or support rating, as they cost nothing to maintain, and don't make anyone unhappy if they are deployed outside of your area.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Mis

Oops sorry I gave you a bad stear on the designate defender approach. Been playing too much Morgan lately in FM and didn't need a garrison for police as a result and used some psych to quell drones. I typically was only using an armored probe in the base as a defender and had roving empath speeders for wild life issues. (not something you would want to try in a multiplayer game)

What a bite that AP can't designate as a defender.

Apologies again.

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"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited February 21, 2000).]

[Misotu]

Oh OK, no problem. I just thought I'd missed something. I'm only messing around, so no harm done. Glad I found out before trying it out in the PBEM game :-))

cheers
- Mis

[Sarxis]

Ok, just pretend that armored probe teams are futuristic cyber-ninjas that must fight alone and in the shadows to be effective.

[Kinjiru]

Anunikoba that's quite funny that you mention cyber_ninjas because that is exactly what I rename my armoured probed team to!