missile cruisers don't defend either?!?!

[krp312]

i had a stack of transports w/land units and missile cruisers. ramesses attacked the stack and wiped out the transports. the mc's did nothing. WTH anyone know about this

 

[MrCynical]

Hmm, I've never noticed a problem with missle cruisers defending - they've always acted like battleships in that respect. A conceivable problem is that the game is set up so that a unit which is transporting other units does not defend first, even if it's the strongest (e.g. a caravel would defend rather than a loaded galleon).

Conceivably there might be something screwy if you have a fully loaded missle cruiser, but I've never noticed them refusing to defend. In any case, if the transports were fully loaded as well, that still wouldn't make sense.

Can you post a save or a screenshot showing the combat log?

 

[KMadCandy]

A conceivable problem is that the game is set up so that a unit which is transporting other units does not defend first, even if it's the strongest (e.g. a caravel would defend rather than a loaded galleon).

yes the game does use a different set of rules when a boat is transporting stuff. you can see it with privateers in exactly the way you described, caravels will defend before galleons if the galleons are loaded. there's quite a long discussion about that whole thing going on in the Bhruic unofficial patch thread.

i had a stack of transports w/land units and missile cruisers. ramesses attacked the stack and wiped out the transports. the mc's did nothing. WTH anyone know about this

my understanding from following the discussion in that thread is that in your case, if the mcs had missiles on them, and if the transports were empty, then yes that's by design. the empty transports gave their lives to defend the cargo on the mcs. i don't think the game makes any distinction about how valuable the cargo is, so a transport carrying one worker is considered the same as a transport carrying 4 modern armor.

 

[krp312]

my understanding from following the discussion in that thread is that in your case, if the mcs had missiles on them, and if the transports were empty, then yes that's by design.

the mc's were fully stocked w/missiles and the transports with modern armor's and such. YARRGH what an annoying little detail

in a recent previous post i also mentioned how stealth destroyers wouldn't defend in a similar stack. what an issue this is!

Can you post a save or a screenshot showing the combat log?

yes i shall when i get home tonight

 

[KMadCandy]

yeah stealths don't admit that they're even THERE unless the "bad guy" has a stealth unit of his own in the area, at that moment, that can see them. it's like "oh, we must protect national security by hiding the fact we know this technology" even tho the trade screen shows we do. logical? heck no.

edit: defending SDDs in a stack will attempt to intercept planes that are attacking ships that planes can see (such as MCs), provided that the MCs aren't yet damaged to the planes max can do. once the planes can't hurt any non-SDDs in the stack, they can't attack the stack further. your planes cannot see or attack the enemy SDDs at any point, even after you "know" there are SDDs in the stack because you've been hit by 'em.

but if you have sent your own SDD to spot the stack this current turn, so that you have visual evidence there's an SDD there, all of your troops know it exists and can attack it.

i don't know the rule on "which transport defends if all have cargo". it might be in the unofficial patch thread, i'll go skim it and see if i can find where that discussion started. it is spread out over several/many pages and there are other topics mixed in but you may be frustrated enough to want to read it and maybe contribute your thoughts.

 

[KMadCandy]

SDDs defending even when "invisible", and loaded transports defending in some/all cases, were being discussed at least as early as page 68. the thread is now up to page 75, and has several other topics mixed in since then. so your call whether to sort thru it or not.

 

[Florian]

yeah stealths don't admit that they're even THERE unless the "bad guy" has a stealth unit of his own in the area, at that moment, that can see them.

So if you spy a fleet of transports and stealth destroyers headed your way, the best strategy is to take the unit that can see sd's and run it far away, where it can't tell you the bad news. Then next turn, sink the transports with some unit that's too dumb to know there are invisible sd's that are supposed to be guarding them. Yikes.

It's the ostrich principle. Stick your head in the sand, and the enemy really _will_ disappear.

 

[obsolete]

What a coincidence, I just finished another game, and tested out Stealth Destoryers for the first time ever. I love the movement points, but I did some really stupid plays cause I wasn't too familiar with them. For example, I saw some badly damaged transports, then took my SD's and tried to attack them.

Poof, your SDs are dead. WHAT!??

I guess the only logical conclusion is there was another SD stack in the enemy's transport stack. Somehow, I guess I was expecting for a pop-up to warn me there is a hidden unit there at the last second. You would THINK so anyway, the way everything else is handled.

 

[krp312]

SDDs defending even when "invisible", and loaded transports defending in some/all cases, were being discussed at least as early as page 68. the thread is now up to page 75, and has several other topics mixed in since then. so your call whether to sort thru it or not.

thx for pointing me to this. i'm guessing bhruic (sp?) hasn't released a patch attempting to resolve these issues yet

i guess the only way to deal is keep mc's w/o missiles in naval stacks and hope sd's actually defend

what a shame!

edit: it's kinda funny bc i thought this issue would be a lot bigger than i've seen here on these boards; i wonder if firaxis knows about it. at the same time i'm not surprised bc we're talking naval units here and maybe it's possible that most players don't use naval units often