Psi Weapons & Armor

[Zibong]

Maybe I'm missing something here, or maybe I'm not reading the manual closely enough, but I'm curious as to how psi combat works, especially when you can start outfitting your troops with psi weapons and psi armor. Can anyone confirm the following and correct me if I'm wrong:

1) Attacker holds 3:2 advantage on land, 1:1 odds on sea or in air.

2) Attacker's and defender's morale is the primary factor to calculate psi 'strength' and psi 'defense'. Trance and Empath abilities help.

3) Exactly when psi combat is triggered: From what I gather, if EITHER the attacker has a psi weapon (?-1-1, for example) OR if the defender has psi armor (1-?-1), psi combat is initiated instead of normal combat. Doesn't matter if you 'Modern Armor' unit is 24-12-3, and sitting on a bunker with a sensor. You don't attack a 1-?-1 commando, you take the initiative against a ?-1-1 commando, and you get the heck outta the way of a great boil Mind Worm.

4) Bombardment: Does psi armor offer ANY protection against artillery bombardment? It sure doesn't seem that way; instead, it seems that they have a defense of 1. Hehehe... 30 Mind Worms just spawned outside of UN Education Agency? Hi, have you met my Howitzer? *BOOM*

I'm asking all this because I'm trying to figure out what to do with my Gravships. 860 shields (base) for a 1-12-16*4/Trained/Clean Gravship?!?!?! That's, like, TWO Secret Projects! On the other hand, a 24-?-16*4/Trained/Clean Gravship 'only' costs me 240 shields base. Still expensive, but much more affordable.

If psi works how I think it works, I'm gonna outfit my whole air force with Psi Armor. And terminate any SAM Artillery/Foils/Cruisers with extreme prejudice.

Thanks in advance.

--Zibong

 

[aaglo]

Firstly, I'd advise you not to put armor on flying units, that's a wasted prospect.

But if you do, then I'd go with psi-armor too (especially if I have the secret project which adds +50 defence on psi - I forgot the SP-name).

The ingame-help says that air units with armor ignore the armour in air-to-air combat - I don't know if this is true when air-unit has a psi-armor.

When unit costs more than 150-200 shields, you should really consider if they're worth building. 8 un-armored gravships is better than 1 armored one. Better yet, 1 un-armored chopper is better than 8 un-armored gravships

 

[Zibong]

Thanks for the help.

Hey, if armor really is ignored in air-to-air combat, then it's most definitely worth it to trigger psi combat instead with Psi Armor.

What about bombardment though? Do psi armored units basically have no armor vs. artillery?

--Zibong

 

[aaglo]

I think that the psi-armor is somewhat useless against artillery... but I'm really not sure.

As a bit unrelated opinion: I think that the combat mechanics in AC/AX are quite sophisticated.