Wierd units

Psycho146 · January 1, 2000, 18:09

If you're like me, and i know you are, then I kno you've played around and made some freaky units. I was wondering what the weirdest unit you've made AND found a use for was. Mine has to be, I made a trance super singularity rover former with stasis generator armor and drop pods. I needed to make air bases FAST, that is how I found this thing useful. haha, let's see what you guys made.

ProvostB · January 1, 2000, 19:53

a unit that cost 12,400 to produce.

FreeChina · January 1, 2000, 20:22

What did it do? And how did you ever find a practical use for something that cost 12,400?

Psycho146 · January 1, 2000, 22:27

WHat was it though? I never said it had to be practical. Mine sure wasn't. It did tend to come in handy although expensive.

ProvostB · January 1, 2000, 22:30

i forget, but it had a gravship chassis with heavy artillery, and other things...

AlexanderIII · January 3, 2000, 20:54

Mine was a cruiser Superformer with Deep Pressure Hull and Neutronium Armor. I would invisibly sneak up to an enemy's base and plant fungus all over, choking him in it so my other units could sneak up real close camouflaged in the fungus and beat the hell out of the enemy... although, it turned out somewhat impracticle as most bases I attacked were captured way before the fungus planting was finished. Oh well.

zsozso · January 3, 2000, 22:27

That might be a neat tactic in a multi-player game, but I very strong suspect, that the AI cheats, and uses its inherent extra knowledge of your unit locations regardless of deep pressure hull, cloacking or fungus.

I've seen many times AI taking out my units from fungus without any scouting or browsing (and there was no sensor around).

zsozso

Urban Ranger · January 3, 2000, 22:34

With few exceptions, such as Warlords II, Computer players definitely cheat. That really irritates me. Anybody remember how a computer player in Civ can switch production during your turn? I don't doubt SMAC CP's have extra knowledge, such as location of your units, your number of credits, and what techs do you know. How else would some faction demand a tech from you when you know with absolute certainty that there is no way for her to know?

[Getting off topic again]

CBH · January 4, 2000, 06:11

Unfortunately with AI at its current level, its essential to give the computer these advantages, otherwise it would be even less of a challenge than it is now.

Increasing difficulty level doesnt make the AI smarter, merely stacks the unfair advantages against you.

zsozso · January 4, 2000, 10:07

I understand that the AI needs some extra push to balance its weak strategy, and I have nothing against things like having industry, growth, research advantages (in percentage - aka SE bonus) as it is in higher difficulty levels.

Steering back this off-topic discussion to the weird units: But I do object using location knowledge of units with cloacking ability (or deep pressure hull, or in fungus) because this simply renders those game features useless in single player mode. Why go into all the trouble implementing them in the first place if they are rendered useless by the AI advantage (read cheating) ?

zsozso

The Profit · January 4, 2000, 15:32

Back on topic....

I've made some strange creations in my time. Visually, I think when changing a Colony Pod to a Rover Pod is a radical sift in design. Add to it drop struts, and it looks absolutely ridiculous.

In recent games I have been using Inf. chassis for probe teams stationed for base defense. I put armor 2 on them, and the costs come out the same. I don't know if the armor helps in a probe battle, or if combat is just based on moral, but I feel better about this unit guarding the safety of my bases instead of a regular probe team.

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Mine is not to wonder why, mine is just to fluff and dry.

Darkstar · January 4, 2000, 17:32

The AI is all knowing in SMAC. It knows EXACTLY where all your units are, for instance. So fungus, deep hull, etc are a waste against it.

It's not to make the Computer a better opponent. It's an appendix from when there wasn't enough RAM to spare giving it it's own set of maps and what not. Instead, it just uses the Master map. The fact that it gives the computer a bonus is just that, a unintended bonus. These days, it's hard to justify NOT giving each computer side it's own maps and whatnot, except laziness and speed. (It's a LOT easier to program an Artificial Idiot by making use of the current state of things, and not what it THINKS is the current state.)

Putting armor on a probe team is about useless. There is a bug in SMAC so that if it's stacked with a combat unit, it's removed when the combat unit dies. This also shows up when you have multiple armored probe teams stacked together... if one dies, they all die. So armored probe teams are only useful in a base as garrison if they are the SOLO defender. (Armor is SUPPOSE to help them against non-probes, but it's been so long since I did it that I don't remember if it DOES). Transports, on the other hand, even unarmored, do NOT get wasted as non-combat units when the last defender gets wiped out.

I used to think my Jet Colonizers were odd, until I read that a few other people use them pretty regularly as well.

Why bother armoring sea formers? Give them a real combat naval unit for protection. If you don't have a reactor lead, it's not like the armor is going to help much... but a couple of naval fighters to attack anything sea threatening would be more useful. And you can stick AAA on one of the naval fighting vessels to help against air attacks...

The freakest unit I can recall are drop scout artillery. Used by a player to keep a stack pinned while their planes repaired enough to make another attack...

-Darkstarr

hroman21 · June 23, 2000, 22:23

uhhh...how about trance armored crawling units? or trance armored sea crawl units? oh...oh...how about air crawlers! now that's got to be cool!

hroman21

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"Laughter is the most powerful weapon ever created. Against laughter, nothing stands!"

waynehead · June 23, 2000, 22:33

I'm really boring, I guess. The oddest unit I make are drop probe teams (which are really useful, btw).

Ned · June 24, 2000, 00:12

I just tried a fusion probe team with PSI defense. One such unit probed a city defended by a probe team. It won, taking 70% damage. It then withstood two counterattacks by 12-4-1-2 units, and lost to a third such attack. Impressive.

I now intend to have pairs of these really tough hombre's walk in broad daylight down the enemy's main street. This should be fun.

Details: The probe was elite. I had the Nural Amplifier. The attacker was in Free Market.

Googlie · June 24, 2000, 00:59

Any new crazy ideas for units in the last six months?

Googlie · June 24, 2000, 17:49

hroman21:

I did build a needlejet crawler once, to harvest energy from a mnountain top. It cost soemthing like 90 minerals to build, I flew it out to the site, it returned (I think) 6 energy that turn then disappeared the next turn.

What a waste.

(I regularly give my crawler trance and armor - doesn't everybody?)

G.

[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited June 24, 2000).]

Cooliofunkadelic · July 13, 2000, 04:00

I use needlejet crawlers. Since, when you apply a crawler to building a wonder, its production cost is applied, nothing is wasted by making needlejet crawlers to combine 4 or 5 big cities to pump out a wonder quick. Added bonuses are they can travel far quickly, and if a base's production speed is high, you won't have wasted minerals from building something too small.

Docfeelgood · July 13, 2000, 11:21

I made a deep pressure hull aircraft carrier.

Submersable carrier, what a concept !!!

Ned · July 13, 2000, 13:48

Armored probe teams are GREAT! AI garisons attack these units even thought the odds of winning are hopeless. So to take a well entrenched city, simply park one or more of your best armored probe team next to the target city. The city's garrisons will attack until there are no more garisons. Just amazing!

I also created 1-3-1 drop garrison units. These were used to take cities cleared by copters or armored probe units. See above. I created these units because I had noticed that my drop 12-4-1 (you name the weapon)never seemed to be involved in actual offense. They were simply used to take a city after the copters and probe teams had done their job. So why build such expensive units for simply dropping in and holding a city against counter attacks.

MariOne · July 14, 2000, 08:00

DS:
wow! You're the first one that I read, to consider the death of stacked probes a BUG!!! I admit that it's an interesting PoV, although I disagree with it.
Is there consensus on it being a bug, here at 'poly, or is it just your quite personal opinion?

So far, I guess that all the players I spoke with considered it just as a normal game mechanics, without it being a bug ever dawning in our minds...

About armored probes, it's just that theyr're treated in a very special way.
e.g.,they remain support-free.
They're never picked as defenders, UNLESS you designate them.
When armored, they indeed defend as combat-units against conventional attackers.
But if they're not defending, then they're treated as probes, not as armored units, thus they still all die.
OTOH, probe combat is unaffected by the presence of armor.
About unarmored transports surviving, is because they neverhteless have 0.5 defense strenght, while unarmored probes have 0.

WH: you KNOW that drop probe teams 1.can't move on the same turn they drop 2.can't drop in other's basezones regardless of air defense, unless you have Pact, don't you?
Maybe, an Elite drop probe, droppe right outside of the basezone, and hpoing not to be spotted for uone turn...
I agree that a few might be useful for internal use, fast relocation of defending probes.

Air crawlers: I never actually tested them, but I though that they could collect their resources each other turn! The trick lies in canceling their orders on their tripback turn, before the game routine gets there.

Most expensive units: Well, a Drop-Clean bestarmor fission crawlers is a useful design if the crawlerupgrading technique is not banned from your pbem. (or a ECM-Trance as well with armor up to 4) Otherwise, keeping crawlers simpl is more cost effective, more flexible and less investment-risky.
And, as none could propose to ban normal units upgrade, if you make tests you'll find out that the most expensive units are still worth to upgrade to, only for disbanding them into a project, even with the half-mineral yield. Still cheaper than direclty hurrying the project... Of course, hurrying a lot of good ole Fusion Speeder Supplies would still be more cost-effective

Oh, DS again.
I can't recall the detail, but fiddling in the DW you should find out that with fusion reactor, plasma armor on a seaformer should come for free. So, why NOT putting on equipment which comes for FREE? Dont' you agrEE? On the same line, when you make a Fusion AAA garrison, you might find out that a decent weapon comes for FREE too: even if that's not the purpose you were designing that AAA defender for, would that be a reason to refuse an added weapon you can get for FREE?

Ned · July 14, 2000, 10:59

Marione, I have tried, but could not or, better yet, could not figure out how to designate an armored probe team to be the defender in a stack. If you have done this in the past, could you share with us the detailed steps on how to do it?

Ned

WhiteElephants · July 14, 2000, 17:04

I believe Control + D sets the unit selected as a designated defender. You can also select this through the right-click pop up screens.

Ned · July 14, 2000, 17:42

But, has anyone done this with an armored probe team? Ned

MariOne · July 14, 2000, 18:37

Well, I'm pretty sure to recall that when recently I tested armored probe facts using the Scenario Editor, I wanted to verify if the DD fearture also worked...

No wait, now I recall better.
I had a green 1-1-1 stacked with an Elite synth probe. I attacked that stack with some laser unit. I realized that the game picked the weaker unit as default defender, even if the armored probe had better odds.
Then I thought: how can I make the probe to defend the stack? I went with the obvious attempt, using indeed Ctrl+D. It worked.
I use SMACv4, never had SMAX, don't know if this is related.

I might double check it, I always let room for doubt, but I'm pretty sure.
I think though that I tested it with a stack in the open. I probably didn't try it in a base.
Could it also be possible that it works with the SE activated only? Just wondering.

Helium Pond · July 14, 2000, 18:53

As far as drop probe teams go, they actually are incredibly useful, if you know how. The message preventing their drop says you can't drop non-combat units inside enemy zones of control, which made me go, hmmm... but what if I have a zone of control inside enemy territory? Sure enough, if I first send a drop infantry past enemy lines, I can drop a probe right on top of 'em.

MariOne · July 14, 2000, 19:01

Well, may I be damned, now I can't do it anymore, like you say.
I'd doubt of myself, but I have that vivid visual memory of my armored probe defending the stack in the test I put up...
I hope that I saved the test file, but I did it at work, so I have to wait for Monday...

Did I dream?

Honestly I wouldn't have been going around making straight statments hadn't I been sure...

MariOne · July 14, 2000, 19:04

I remember (although I now begin doubting myself) that the drop of non-weapon units is prevented by basezones and ZoCs. You can drop only with Pact.
I did test it (

). IIRC tho, an "empty" basezone didn't exert its control in that sense...

Well, let's test it again!

MariOne · July 14, 2000, 20:39

Well, now rereading it, it says "bases and Zones of Control", not "basezones".

Yet, I was not able to drop a probe in an opponent ZoC.
Not even after dropping first a normal unit on the spot, and then the probe right on top of it.

Still, the fact that a drop probe is a sitting duck after landing, makes it rather difficult for it to survive the enemy's reaction before it's its turn to move again...
All I can figure, is that it can work as support for a conventional drop.
Or as stopgap or dummy target, but then there might be cheaper drop combinaisons for those wasteful purposes.

609x512 · July 15, 2000, 01:12

The strangest unit ive built was a colony pod on a gravship chassis with syth armor. I was assuming that i can set up bases anywhere but it turns out i cant deploy it on water. i find clean gravship formers with photon armor very useful however, but thats late game when i got nothing better to do than slap some expensive armor on a flying former