I don't understand how to play pirates....

[Question]

Can someone help me on this?

The inability to improve ocean squares seem like a huge drawback for most of the game as it limits where you can build your bases.

I find that i quickly run out of space early game to expand....maybe 4 or 5 bases max. Each base might have 1 or 2 bonus squares if i'm lucky.

I'm not sure which improvements to build exactly. Obviously kelp farms should go in most squares because it stacks with either mining platforms or tidal harnesses. I usually make one base devoted to mines and another devoted to harnesses, the latter which is my HQ.

It works well at the start but once i start expanding im not sure which improvements to build for the other bases. It seems like mining is better because it wont take the new bases forever to catch up in facilities.

Im also having trouble fighting off needle jets. I tried using SAM cruisers, but they can't beat a needlejet in a 1 on 1 fight nor do they intercept jets in nearby squares. Is my only option air superiority needle jets?

 

[Hightower]

You can raise terrain in the oceans to be able to develop tiles that were previously too deep.

 

[Herfelt]

When I play pirates I often build a transport foil and colony pod early on. It really sucks if someone else "steals" your land tiles. Cities should generally be near land due to the shallow coast tiles. I try to make both mines and tidan harnesses for all cities.

The counter to air units is your own air units. Having AAA on your defenders and aerospace complex as well makes your cities almost unbeatable (unless you are behind by a lot). A plasma garrison with AAA and an aerospace complex can beat a chaos needlejet without any problems. Needlejets with air superiority is the best option to fight off enemy jets. Be careful with choosing automatic air defense.

 

[Question]

But sea cities can't work land tiles right? I never seem to be able to.

 

[Herfelt]

But sea cities can't work land tiles right? I never seem to be able to.

They can work land tiles if the land tiles are not owned by someone else. That's why it can be crucial to get a colony pod and transport foil to keep valuable land tiles for your sea bases.

 

[Question]

Playing a bit more, i noticed that land artillery units easily beat naval ships. No idea why...land based artillery is significantly lighter than sea and are not well suited to attacking sea based targets.

A single artillery rover can easily take on 3 cruisers. How am i supposed to launch an amphibious invasion like this?

Another problem is the complexities of a amphibious invasion. Needing cruisers, interceptors, a transport, multiple marines is very time consuming. Hell, scrolling through a long list of units alone to find the one you want takes forever.

AI usually doesn't bother defending ports either...they let me take it, then zerg rush it the turn after. Since weapon values are roughly twice that of armor, this makes defending a newly captured base pretty much impossible (unless you can take it intact with perimeter defenses). Thoughts?

Also the hassle of managing bases that i don't want....

What's the best way to automate interceptors for air defence? The automate air defense option just seems to make them fly all over the place...

 

[Question]

Some other things :

-Is it possible to set a stack to follow one unit around as a escort?

-If i have tons of units in a base, how do i quickly select the one i want?

-If i have a unit lost on the map, how do i find and select it? The military nexus does not seem to allow me to do this.

-Is there a way to automate formers to ONLY plant forests? Or only make a particular type of terrain improvement (e.g. solar collectors, tidal harnesses)?

-Do sea based improvements cause eco damage like farms/mines/etc?

-Do improvements in areas not under your control (e.g. a borehole in the middle of nowhere) cause eco damage?

-How do you get a decent level of mineral output going for sea bases when you dont have access to subsea trunklines yet? With mining platforms, they only give you 2 minerals each.

-How do you get decent growth for land bases when forests only give you 1 nutrient and farms only give 2? Are you just supposed to rely on nutrient square + kelp farms?

-Is it possible to quickly start a randomized map with a particular set of settings? The randomize option seems to just select options at random, and the other option forces you to choose each setting.

-Is it possible to have more than 8 factions in a particular game?

-Is it possible to "rescue" a defeated faction? E.G. Hive is defeated by Caretakers, can i defeat Caretakers to make Hive active again?

-Is there a way to change the home base of supply crawlers without moving it to that particular base and using ctrl + h?

 

[Herfelt]

Some other things :

-Is it possible to set a stack to follow one unit around as a escort?
I don't know. You can make them move to the same tile, but I don't think it is possible to make an escort.

-If i have tons of units in a base, how do i quickly select the one i want?
"a" to active units. It brings up a list of the units in the square.

-If i have a unit lost on the map, how do i find and select it? The military nexus does not seem to allow me to do this.
I don't think so.

-Is there a way to automate formers to ONLY plant forests? Or only make a particular type of terrain improvement (e.g. solar collectors, tidal harnesses)?
Sadly no. I usually don't automate land-formers. Only sea formers, since you will want a nice mix for mines and tidal harnesses. Sometimes I use the auto-road, auto-tube or auto fungus remove.

-Do sea based improvements cause eco damage like farms/mines/etc?
I think so.

-Do improvements in areas not under your control (e.g. a borehole in the middle of nowhere) cause eco damage?
No idea.

-How do you get a decent level of mineral output going for sea bases when you dont have access to subsea trunklines yet? With mining platforms, they only give you 2 minerals each.
2 minerals is the same as forests, and you will have an additional nutrient compared to the forest. Having a few rocky land tiles with mines and crawlers can really boost the mineral output.
Sea bases generally don't get as high production as the land bases, but they can easily grow big and produce a ton of energy.

-How do you get decent growth for land bases when forests only give you 1 nutrient and farms only give 2? Are you just supposed to rely on nutrient square + kelp farms?

Gene splicing is the key tech to rapid growth. A kelp farm with a tidal harness and aquafarm in the base will produce a total of 4 nutrient. Childrens creche gives +2 growth for the city, and democracy + planned economy gives +4 growth. The pirates can't pop-boom without a golden age (before future societies), which makes it rather difficult, and in most cases not worthwhile.

-Is it possible to quickly start a randomized map with a particular set of settings? The randomize option seems to just select options at random, and the other option forces you to choose each setting.
If you create a map with a particular set of settings (e.g. sparse cloud cover), you can choose the quick game, and it will create a map with those settings, same difficulty and same opponents.

-Is it possible to have more than 8 factions in a particular game?
Nope, 7 factions is the maximum.

-Is it possible to "rescue" a defeated faction? E.G. Hive is defeated by Caretakers, can i defeat Caretakers to make Hive active again?
You can use a probe team to rescue a defeated leader. You will gain pact with the rescued faction.

-Is there a way to change the home base of supply crawlers without moving it to that particular base and using ctrl + h?
I don't think it's possible.

I hope my answers are useful

 

[Question]

Thanks, that helped.

I'm really struggling in the early game though, since it does take a while to get gene splicing.

For example i tried out a game as drones. My bases were all stuck at around 3 pop because i had no tech and no means of getting said tech. It also took forever to get the first sea former out.

 

[Herfelt]

Thanks, that helped.

I'm really struggling in the early game though, since it does take a while to get gene splicing.

For example i tried out a game as drones. My bases were all stuck at around 3 pop because i had no tech and no means of getting said tech. It also took forever to get the first sea former out.

The early game is all about getting as many colony pods out as possible (while not dying to mind worms and early attacks). I usually devotes one or two bases (with some nice tiles with mineral bonuses) for secret projects and network nodes to get my research going. I don't know what difficulty you play on, but on transcend I find human genome project to be one of the better ones. It allows you to get 1 more pop before drone riots (on transcend it can mean the difference between having 1 or 2 working citizens).

 

[Question]

Is there a way to gift units to another faction? Submissive factions can do that, is there a way to not accept the gifted units?

Im guessing that if you commit atrocities against another faction, they will never forgive you ever? Or do they forgive you after some time?

Do condensors and boreholes still cause eco damage with tree + hybrid forests?

 

[Petek]

Is there a way to gift units to another faction?

Move the unit into the other faction's territory. Either press Ctrl-Shift=u or go Menu-->Action-->Turn Over Unit Control.

Submissive factions can do that, is there a way to not accept the gifted units?

No, but you can disband the gifted unit.

Im guessing that if you commit atrocities against another faction, they will never forgive you ever? Or do they forgive you after some time?

AFAIK, they will never forgive.

Do condensors and boreholes still cause eco damage with tree + hybrid forests?

After you build a Hybrid Forest in a base, terraforming no longer causes eco-damage. However, the minerals from a borehole might continue to cause eco-damage depending on your clean mineral limit.

 

[Question]

So what happens if you build improvements outside of a base area? Do they still cause eco damage?

Also noticed that i don't seem to get any of my usual modifiers when fighting locusts. Other than morale. Is this normal? Empath song and resonnce lasers don't work when attacking locusts, which is kind of odd. Is this a bug?

I tried setting choppers to alert, which as i understand it is supposed to make them go out and auto attack hostiles. The problem is that every now and then hey just randomly fly around, run out of fuel and crash outside the base, even if no hostiles are present. What gives? On other occasions ive had them just sit in the base and do nothing when hostiles are right outside.

And can anyone answer the following please :

Playing a bit more, i noticed that land artillery units easily beat naval ships. No idea why...land based artillery is significantly lighter than sea and are not well suited to attacking sea based targets.

A single artillery rover can easily take on 3 cruisers. How am i supposed to launch an amphibious invasion like this?

Another problem is the complexities of a amphibious invasion. Needing cruisers, interceptors, a transport, multiple marines is very time consuming. Hell, scrolling through a long list of units alone to find the one you want takes forever.

AI usually doesn't bother defending ports either...they let me take it, then zerg rush it the turn after. Since weapon values are roughly twice that of armor, this makes defending a newly captured base pretty much impossible (unless you can take it intact with perimeter defenses). Thoughts?

Also the hassle of managing bases that i don't want....

What's the best way to automate interceptors for air defence? The automate air defense option just seems to make them fly all over the place...

 

[Petek]

So what happens if you build improvements outside of a base area? Do they still cause eco damage?

I don't think so. For the rest of your questions, please make sure that your game is fully patched (the official patches plus scient's unofficial patch). Instructions for patching may be found here. To determine your version number, press Ctrl-F4 from within a game. SMAC should show version 5.0, SMAX 2.0. The version numbers aren't changed by scient's unofficial patches.

 

[Giftless]

I haven't played as the Pirates but I've noticed a couple of points of interest in fighting against them.

1. They seem to become most powerful when they're able to surround an unoccupied land mass with sea colonies.
2. Foils and Cruisers make poor base defenders due to the "Caught in Port" negative modifier. Generally you'll want to use infantry as defenders and use Needlejets or Choppers to strike out over your holdings, whether they be land or sea.
3. Sea power tends to be pretty poor on continental assaults; at least until you get submersible transports with small groups of cloaked marines-- a couple of these can take out an entire A.I. since they're blind in terms of where to rush their Zerglings to.

 

[AcetyleneLamp]

I just finished playing a game as the pirates and it turned out to be a somewhat frustrating experience. The biggest problem was that one of the alien factions wiped out the other one really early on and I spent basically the whole game fighting a war of attrition with them and then with three human factions (two of them fairly weak ones that I eventually conquered) when I used planet busters on the aliens after failing to get the UN rules repealed. I did manage to raise the sea levels quite a bit with the planet busters (and then, funnily enough, I got the council to agree to raise them some more) and destroyed some enemy cities that way but it never really put a significant dent in the aliens.

Of course, another big problem was not being able to hold onto much territory on land until pretty late in the game.