Advice please (or link to guide) on probe team activity

[splunge the 2nd]

Hi all. I still consider myself a beginner in SMAC. I've won (or quit when it's all but won) a few games on lower levels but don't have a great handle on use of probe teams.

What exactly is infiltration fo an AI network and what does it get you? How do you sue it in the game? Is probe activity an act of war- will it trigger vendetta?

Any advice of useful links are welcome!

 

[Petek]

When you infiltrate an AI's network, you can see many of its activities. For example, press the F2 key. Now, in addition to displaying your current and prior research, you'll see an icon for each infiltrated AI. Selecting that icon displays the AI's research. The same is true for the F4 screen (base display). You'll be able to see all the AI's bases and what each is producing. The same holds for each of the other screens that display similar information.

Infiltrating (or attempting to infiltrate) an AI is not considered an act of war. Most other Probe actions may cause a vendetta, although some actions have an option to blame another faction or attempt the action without being detected.

Hope you find this information useful. Please post again if you have any other questions.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Thanks Petek. I love these forums!
I'm comfortable with Civ 3's advisors and diplomacy, but I still don't have a handle on the controls /info screen in SMAC!
Any advice on cotrolling the direction of research, figuring how many turns to beakthroughs etc. I beleive I tend to use blind research. Any tips?

 

[Petek]

Using blind research provides you with some control over which techs you'll discover (but not as much a directed research). When you first start researching techs, you'll be asked to specify the general direction. The four choices are

Explore
Discover
Build
Conquer

Each faction has a preference for research tendencies. For example, Morgan prefers Build, University prefers Discover and the Hive prefers Conquer + Build. You can replace those choices with any combination your own. Just about any choice is reasonable. After you learn the tech tree better, you may wish to use directed research to make it easier to discover certain key techs.

One other note about blind research: You will not exclusively research the type of tech(s) that you indicted. You'll get a mixture of all types, but with a tendency to discover your preferences.

To view information about your research, press the F2 key. The resulting screen displays the information you asked about, such as how many turns until you discover the next tech. You can't see which tech is being researched, but the color of the progress bar indicates the type (green = Explore, white = Discover, yellow = Build and red = Conquer).

Hope that answers your questions.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Thanks so much, very helpful!