Design units or let computer do it????

[october]

Well I have just finished my first game of Alpha Centauri. I played a few but did not follow them through. I played as the Spartans (which noone seems to like using ) and this time I finished and won, though I am a bit unsatisfied with the win. I waged a successful military campaign, and got ahead enough in science to begin building the ascent to trancendance. After a few turns, I did not want to wait anymore so after eliminating the believers, and eliminiating (in the first 10 turns) the Hive and the University, I called a council and managed to get elected supreme leader. I would have been far more satisfied with a conquest victory. I only held about 60% of the planet's surface.

Part of the reason that I wanted to end it fast though is because the computer was designing my units and I wanted to try playing a game in which I took control of my design workshop and obsolete unit pruning. My production menues were too cluttered for my taste with complicated-named units.

I play a game now as the Spartans, and I am only designing units that I want. I designed a cool police unit that defends my cities and has non lethal methods and anti air, and I also used defenders with bonus against psi. I build a former that has psi defense so it's less likely to get picked off by mind worms. And I just eliminated the Believers. I am fighting the University and almost beat them off my continent. Once I beat them off, I'll hold off on the fighting and build some even mroe advanced units. (I have been using fusion bombers with silksteel armer, and fusion speeders with plasma armor to take over cities). I need to figure out how to build an aircraft carrier. I thought carrier deck was an option for naval units but I don't see it. Maybe I don't have the science yet.

Cool game. It's great when tired of civ3. And then civ3 is great when tired of smac.

-october-

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Once you have ant understanding of the unit system, you want to desiegn your own ynits. The AI designs two many units, and misses too many important ones.

 

[bvd]

I design most units used later in the game. As Morgan with a free market and wealth strategy in mind, I usually modify the following units:

Infantry garrisons -
In all cities, I equip them with clean reactors and non-lethal methods, upgrading their armor as necessary.

Speeders -
In frontier cities, I equip them with AAA-tracking and air superiority - to go along the best weapon/armor available. These make great defensive units, able to shift position, attack in the open and serve as a surrogate airforce. And, for all they can do, they are relatively cheap; with enough crawled minerals, I can build one of them within ten turns.

Crawlers -
They always should be clean; they must be able to pay for themselves. A well-known feature is the ability to design "trawlers", or foils with crawler equipment. These can extract loads of energy from ocean tiles with tidal harnesses. Add deep radar and, with good air defense established in sea-bases, they can be much more useful than sensors in staving off any attack.

Colony-pods -
Add drop-pods on a gravship chassis with colony-pod equipment, and, if you have the space-elevator, they can be placed on any map tile, including ocean tiles.

Formers -
Clean super-formers.

Naval units -
The computer never designs carriers; the user must design them. AAA cruisers make good carrier precursors. They entail nanometallurgy (explore VIII), which appears fairly late in the game. Then again, mobile airbases are only useful if you have a large airforce...

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by bvd

Crawlers -
They always should be clean; they must be able to pay for themselves.

Supply units (crawlers) and probe teams are always automatically free on support. addi clean reactor to them is a costly redudency.

 

[bvd]

I did not know that... is it documented anywhere?

 

[Richard III]

I usually stick with computer designs with three exceptions:

1. I armor my aircraft to better protect them over enemy territory (my military strategy in SMAC is always heavily dependent on massive infrastructural bombing and use of aircraft to interdict attack routes while I concentrate land forces to attack at unexpected points).

2. I will usually redesign tanks, when I get them, into two additional models: an "abrams" and a "sheridan" model, the former being much more heavily armored, armed and ponderously slow for seige-type slugging matches, and the latter being an armored scout model designed for screening and penetration of exposed flanks.

3. My favorite and most important design: early in the game, I ALWAYS create a few well protected, psi-boosted seaborne probe teams to scout the planet's waterways and get early links into opponent's networks, etc. Very versatile. Heavy casualties from the islands of the deep or whatever, but worth every penny.

All of this reminds me of how sophisticated warfare is in SMAC. And so I will go right this very second to fire it up...

R.III

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Richard III
1. I armor my aircraft to better protect them over enemy territory

In smac-x the cost of amroring aircraft is way up, armored aircraft there will caost around 250 to 1100 minerals.

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by bvd
I did not know that... is it documented anywhere?

I do not recall is it in the manual of datalinks. I figure on the crawlers myslf somehow, and learned about probe teams in a thread about Morgan using them as suport free garrisons, (not a real good idea there, armored probe teams cost too much before fusion, by which time you should have clean reactors for regular garrisons, ane if there is an less or unarmored regular unit in the same square, it will defend instead of the probe team).

 

[Crimson Sunrise]

I design them myself, because I only use two kinds of ground units: assault rovers and infantry garrisons. The computer always makes three different variants on the Chaos Squad for some reason.

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola

In smac-x the cost of amroring aircraft is way up, armored aircraft there will caost around 250 to 1100 minerals.

All the more reason not to get it! I would hate to see my precious pilots lose their nads to Hive ground fire, wouldn't you?

 

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Richard III


All the more reason not to get it! I would hate to see my precious pilots lose their nads to Hive ground fire, wouldn't you?

What Lefty is presupposing is this. Base cost of 250-1100 can instead be used to build many many replacement noodles and/or choppers.

Air units are disposable. Once that is understood then expensive extras like best armor, clean, etc. look unnattractive in comparision to simply making many many noodle and choppers. Many folks like to use a best weapon chopper to inflict massive damage and then at the end of its fourth turn foray self destruct the say Fusion Laser - 1- 12 (fusion reactor) near a group of formers and/or crawlers to take out an addition 6 or more units.

If interdiction is your game, then a 4-1-10 noodle is a cheap unit that you can make scads of. Base cost 40 mins say 250. that a full 6 units.

I'm not even considering nerve gas which to my mind is completely unbalancing.

Lefty,

The Probe team gambit is best served for Morgan as follows. Assuming you have scads of energy you start with an unarmored infantry chassis PT. Base cost is 20 mins. Rush the second 10mins at 25 Ec's. Next turn upgrade to PT synth/trance and begin build of fac and/or former then colony pod.

Its a good way to secure your early bases pre-clean. Once clean is around Morgie is better suited with regular clean AAA armored units etc.

Og

 

[Achinz]

Definitely design my own - one needs only a few important units in a particular phase of the game.

 

[Sim_One]

I arm my terraformers with trance and later turn them in to rover and hoovertank formers.

 

[Terje]

I use a blend between own designed and computer designed units. Some of the basic units (marines, penetrators, etc) are made superbly by the computer, with clean reactor and everything. But he rest of the units I usually design myself, coz the computer makes these horrible 0-5-x formers. Formars are so cheap and so easy to make that you don't have to protect them by armour and ****. (I'm not saying that I drive my formers into the heat of battle, but I don't take as much care of them as I do of my civ2 settlers ingeneers..)

Also, I never give my speeders anything else than best weapon and clean reactor, since tey also are chep like hell, so you can afford a whole bunch of them. Same with planes, hovertanks, and garv ship. The only unit I give both best armour and best weapon are combat infantery(elits, thanx to monlites, command centre, and bioenhancement centre) and boats (cruisers and foils).

Clean reactor is the best special abilty, no explanation needed.
Blend!!

 

[YNCS]

I always make the following mods to units:

Rover formers and, when available, hover formers.

I put deep radar on transports. Unity Transports can be upgraded to these transports. Before I have deep radar, I make a Trance Transport so i can upgrade Unity Transports.

Foil crawlers. There's always some sea resource that's unused by sea (or land) colonies, so put an ocean-going crawler on it. These are cheap units and the long-term benefits are fantastic.

I also dump whole bunches of units the AI designs that I never build. For instance, I never use the Scout Rover (with deep radar) so as soon as the AI offers it to me, away it goes.

 

[The_Newbie]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola

In smac-x the cost of amroring aircraft is way up, armored aircraft there will caost around 250 to 1100 minerals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



All the more reason not to get it! I would hate to see my precious pilots lose their nads to Hive ground fire, wouldn't you?

If you are concerned about losing aircraft, it is much cheaper (at least without the free armour for air units bug) and more effective to guard them with interceptors. Assuming you are not not way ahead in technology, weapons will almost always be more powerful than armour. As air-superiority units get a 100% bonus when attacking air units, and air units never have any defense bonuses, you will lose more twice as many air units as you kill (more like four times as much considering average weapon strengths v. armour strengths). Interceptors, however, defend with their weapon strength*2 against other interceptors, meaning all combats (assuming equal technology) will be equal.

 

[LesCanadiens]

I generally let the computer design units for me, but when it comes to making a first strike or punching through a stalemate I usually use a reserve of hand designed units, top quality.

 

[Eli the Lich]

I make many try in design of unit and th e computer always propose to build the design one I stil doo is airplane or choper with transport pod it carry only one unit but very good to make the final capture when the atack is based on airplane and chopper
apaer from this I let the computer to make the design and dump half of his design the problem is always with the upgrade to decide to upgrade or not Carier I design when the tecnoloogy is available . when I can build Locust of chiron . i stoped to make other ofensive unit . this is the best unit for conquer .

 

[Titi]

After some games, I decided to design my own units because I found the computer doesn't make a choice on their use. If you need fighting units, then it's better to have the top weapons given to them !
By the way, I can't play any more (I upgraded to XP, and many games don't run now).

 

[YNCS]

I've had no problems running SMAC/SMAX on XP once I downloaded the patch from Firaxis.