Strategy, tactics, hints and tips

[Terje]

I've been searching this SMAC forum for a Strategy-only discusion, but haven't found any. So here it is. Do you have someting to contribute with??

I myself always give my units the cleaqn reactor ability to prevent my cities minerals to disappear into the greedy hands of supply traders..
Also I prefer the Locusts of Chiron as an offensive unit(combined with some groung forces), since this unit can do everything: Attack air units, conquer cities and act as air support for ground units. Locusts of Chiron: The safe choice!
I also favour this strategy: use ships to take your opponents sea bases, and use these as airbases while bombing your enemy's bases to smithereens..

 

[CrackedCrystal]

I use Supply crawlers for defense.

Thats right, slap some armor on those puppies, and you got your self some defenders.

Need to hurry that Secret Project? You have an amry to help.

Need to increase production? Send them out to mine a few turns.

The only thing they can't do is attack, but how often do people have the same units attack and defend anyway?

Oh, they might not be able to police either, but I am not sure of that, I run Free Market and can't use police anyway.

 

[Terje]

Crawlers as police? Hmm.. can't you give them 'non-lethal methods'? lets see, if they have non-lethal, that's one ability, and they don't need clean reactor, since crawlers don't require any support, but it could probably be nice to give them comm jammer. That would be two. Hey, that sound like the perfect defensive unit; police, no support and ECM. Ooh, that's a nice trick...

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Just remember to give them armor Terje. That is the key to everything. If they are armorless, it will not count as a defender.

As for the police aspect, we need to test that. like I said I am not sure they count for that. The unit may have to have a weapon to do police work. But, you're right, they do not need clean reactors. I always use trance and res armor (you'll need alien crossfire for the res armor) for them.

They will hold off any mindworm attack and cost much less then other defenders. And I still have another ability available. I usually put AAA if the opponent has lots of air, or like you said ECM.

As an extention to this, ALWAYS put some armor on your formers, probes, crawlers, and colony pods if it does not increase the mineral cost (even if its only synthmetal). If they are attacked, they will not have the 50% penalty to defense, and even though they will probably die anyway, they will inflict alot of damage to the attacker.

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Well, I just did some testing.

Supply crawlers, probe teams, and Colony pods do NOT provide police. Only units with weapons give police effects. Even though they can't do policing, the still are great defenders in my opinion.

 

[Terje]

Hmm. Armour on defensive units? That's an idea. Perhaps I now can finally win a game, thanx for that tip. Of course I would give them armour! I just thought that would be so obvious that I didn't need to mention them.

Gravships, by the way, are extremely good units! Even with singularity gun, the 12th armour and clean reactor, they only cost 80-90 minerals. As a comparization, Hovertanks or Speeders with the same equipement would easily cost around 180-220 minerals. (EDIT: Just found out that most the needlejets are just as cheap, but gravships are WAY superior to ordinary planes...)

Cheap, good ground support units would be Speeders, Elite Infantry or Hovertanks with the best weapon. Infantry should also be given best armour, coz they don't cost too much. All with clean reactor of course.

 

[YNCS]

One thing I've found rather interesting if you're using ships or Isles of the Deep is to find a monolith on the sea coast that's otherwise useless and send a seaformer to lower the adjacent ocean. This will drop the monolith into the water, but it'll still be functional. You can then run your ships and Isles through the monolith, getting the automatic upgrade and repairing any damage. If you have any units on the ship/Isle, select them and they'll be upgraded/repaired as well. This even works for air units on a carrier.

 

[Eli the Lich]

thank for the tip

crawler with armor help a lot good defender .
I still use an infantry to defend my city .
putting armor on the former was very helpful
they always atacks my formers


at the end my former were with Psi armor clean reactor and super former ,singularity engine . do not need Fungicical tank any more because fungus square are great 2 food 3 mineral and 2 energy
I just plant fungus in 2 turn (with Pargdim weather)

economicly city on shore or on water with some rocky island near

kelp farm for food Mine and forest for mineral most of Mine with a Crawler on top

 

[Shirastro]

One strat i allways use is the chper/drop unit combo. Build lot of chopers and lot of units with drop ability. Use you chopers to clean everithing that you can ate enemies terithory and once hes left without defenders just drop your units in his base. This is very usefull when hes on separate island that is not to far.

 

[Eli the Lich]

Originally posted by Shirastro
One strat i allways use is the chper/drop unit combo. Build lot of chopers and lot of units with drop ability. Use you chopers to clean everithing that you can ate enemies terithory and once hes left without defenders just drop your units in his base. This is very usefull when hes on separate island that is not to far.

ya I do almost the same I realize that most of the time I use the unit with drop ability only to conquer a city without defender
so Most of unit with drop ability are drop sentinel
infantry hand weapon armor 3 or better (rarely) and drop ability .
later in game after building the nano factory use graviship ,drop sentinel and drop hovertank

 

[The Last Conformist]

I always found "spyships" useful - place the Probe Team "weapon" on a cruiser, and raid other factions' maritime bases for tech.

 

[smalltalk]

Armored crawlers and formers are quite expensive. But I do heavily use armored infantry probes as a garrison, espicially if playing Morgan. (-1 support)

 

[CamBot]

If you're running with Morgan, you should be generating enough cash to upgrade regular crawlers to armored ones. This is an economical way to add "mineral value" to each crawler, which is great for rush-building secret projects.

In the later/mid game, I also like to armor up some sea formers to send to my enemys territory and do nasty things like lowering land and planting sea fungus.

 

[Eli the Lich]

Originally posted by CamBot
If you're running with Morgan, you should be generating enough cash to upgrade regular crawlers to armored ones. This is an economical way to add "mineral value" to each crawler, which is great for rush-building secret projects.

In the later/mid game, I also like to armor up some sea formers to send to my enemys territory and do nasty things like lowering land and planting sea fungus.

crawler just lately I begin to use crawler . i tried to put armor on them . last game I found a better solution , I give the hypnotic trance ability and when I discover fusion I give them fusion reactor . I Played with the univrrcity most of time in free market
-3 planet and the Eco damage was hight in the end mind worm and locust of chiron were atacking my crawler and city , they resist pretty well none was lost . most of my city were making crawler 1 SSC 2 or 3 building Secret project one city with Punishement Sphere and Aerospsce complex to build all Air unit
one city to build land unit , the crawler were suplying everything
Nutrient to accelerate grow or period of Shortage mineral to produce more crawler and energy to the SSC for this I used naval unit with a suply pod and of course supply crawler to build secret project .