Air Superiority

[Snowflake]

I understand that units without air superiority cannot attack needlejets. Does this mean if I have a needlejet in a base then nobody can attack it unless they have airsuperiority? Or does it only work in open field? What about choppers?

[Barinthus]

If I'm right, any units can attack an aircraft that's parked at a base or perhaps even at a airbase (I haven't done this so) regardless whether if they have the air superiority element added or not.

However if the aircraft is in the air, it's a different story. Only air units with air superiority and ground units with SAMs can attack.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

AIrcraft in base can be attacked by pertty much any unit.

Needlejets in flight generally can only be attacked by air superiority enabled units (SAM) capable. *

Choppers can be attacked in the open because they land at the end of each turn so no need for SAM capable units to attack choppers.

* All in the open units can be attacked via self destruct. An airborn needlejet can still be eliminated by self destructing non SAM units.

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
* All in the open units can be attacked via self destruct. An airborn needlejet can still be eliminated by self destructing non SAM units.

Sort like that captured Terran unit then infected by Zergs... Anyway is this a bug or a twinkish loop in rules? Or it was intended by the designers that we can blow up units to kill other units?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

It was designed although one would question whether designer knew how much this exploit can be used.

It can be devestatingly effective.

Imagine if you will a stack of 40 or so air units in a square.

A single detonated unit can eliminate all 40.

Search the archives or past thread on self destructing units and see how overpowering they can be.

Imagine worm rape wherein you are facing innumerbale stacks of natives. A single detonation can wipe them out.

We discussed it here at 'Poly and over at CGN (www.civgaming.net)

[Frankychan]

I love eliminating a worm boil with 20 or so demon's in them, just to have my 1-1-1 Clean Police destroy them all and get 1000 creds.

[The Mad Monk]

You can kill enemy units by blowing yours up?

[SynthetGod8]

My GOD! The power! I wish I'd heard of this sooner. do detonations hurt your own units? Sure, I've accidentally destroyed my own units, but nothing's ever happened.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Detonation hurts all units in all adjacent non base squares including your own.

A fission unit has 10 hit points
fusion 20 hit point
quantum 30 hit points
Singularity 40 hit points

Roughly speaking the damage caused by an exploding unit is

Hps damage = Weapon strength * reactor Strength/2

Where reactor strength is
fission = 1
fusion = 2
quantum = 3
singularity =4

The maximum amount of damage is no more than 10 hps for a fission reactored unit, 20 for a fusion etc.

Native life is considered fission reactors.

So as an example, 10 chaos fission choppers are attacking a base. A single fusion laser fusion reactor 10-1-1*2 is exploded adjacent to them. All 10 chaos fission choppers are dealt 10 hit points and destroyed.

[The Mad Monk]

That means conventional missles can be pretty damn nasty.

[Urban Ranger]

No, missiles work differently from self-destruction. IIRC. It goes into a square before blowing up.

[Starfarer]

I think he means self-destructing the missile insteadof just firing it off.

which begs the question... CAn you do this? Anyone ever tried? And my god, if you could manage this with a Planet Buster...

Wow. No atrocity, everthing goes Boom anyway.

[Urban Ranger]

You don't want to self-destruct a planet buster, it's got a huge warhead strength.

[Skanky Burns]

You do if it is in enemy territory.

[TheRedmenace]

While we're on the topic: I had just gotten air power and built some needlejets, all penetrators. I decided I needed some interceptors. No problem, just CTRL-U. Wait...can't upgrade? Apparently it wouldn't allow me to upgrade to an interceptor because it wan't a 'superior unit). I only had missiles at the time and that was what all my penetrators were using.

So is this normal? I tried adding armor to 'em, or ANYTHING to get the darn planes to switch over to inties. No dice, apparently. Can anyone confirm this is the case?

[Alinestra Covelia]

I don't know if you can self destruct a PB. There have been many times I've wanted to detonate a PB just for tactical purposes (destroying a landbridge, eg) but couldn't because there weren't any darn enemy units there.

[Skanky Burns]

Tis strange that people don't know some things about the game, despite it having been played to death for several years.

/me plans to test this if my game ever gets that far technologically.

[TheRedmenace]

You can always test it in the scenario editor. I use it a lot to test things out that I don't want to wait till the mid or late game to achieve.

I only ask about the needlejet upgrading issue because I'm not sure if I'm overlooking some option which makes an upgrade possible, but both in single player games and in scenarios I've created, the needlejets seem to refuse to be upgraded to SAMs of the same weapon level.

[Snowflake]

Have you created the design for interceptors?

[TheRedmenace]

Yep, created the design, needlejets & missiles are prototyped. When I couldn't make them, I tried adding armor to the interceptor design in hopes that the game might view those as a 'superior model' and allow an upgrade. No dice.

Edit: Hong Hu, what is your avatar from? Looks familiar...

[Snowflake]

Romance of The Three Kingdoms. She's SunChang, daughter of SunJian and sister of SunQuan, married to LiuBei. She is a true princess. And very brave, and intelligent.

[Maniac]

Sorry, TheRedmenace, but you simply can't upgrade air units without SAM to a SAM design, nor the reverse.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I don't know if you can self destruct a PB. There have been many times I've wanted to detonate a PB just for tactical purposes (destroying a landbridge, eg) but couldn't because there weren't any darn enemy units there.

There is always the build a locust, move it to the land bridge, release it to the wild and then PB it gambit.

'Course this still carries sanctions, vendettas and planetary reprisals normal to PB'ing.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
That means conventional missles can be pretty damn nasty.

True but missiles of any flavor are expensive. My favorite is Drop-best weapon-1-1*best reactor for economics. Missiles obviously offer better range althougha chopper is pretty handy for range as well aslongas once has a decent weapon strength.

[Starfarer]

Missiles are expensive, yes, but as they're nothing but suicide units ANYWAY, why WOULDN'T you want to use them to take out a particularly well-defended bunker or something?

Especially if you've only got a couple of other military units in the area and aren't willing to sacrifice them just yet?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms!

I remember reading that twice in my undergrad studies! But of course I had to read it in translation... my Chinese just isn't good enough to understand the original - yet.

Ah, brings back the memories.

Sadly, I can't make that Three Kingdoms Civ2 scenario work on my version. I've got ToT.

T^T

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Starfarer
Missiles are expensive, yes, but as they're nothing but suicide units ANYWAY, why WOULDN'T you want to use them to take out a particularly well-defended bunker or something?

Especially if you've only got a couple of other military units in the area and aren't willing to sacrifice them just yet?

You may. It's just if you are looking for 'bang for the buck' pardonthe pun, there are more cost effective alternatives (although early on when weapon strength is low in comparison to the 16 of conventional missiles less so). Later on when orbital insertionis available the drop troops offer unlimitted range at littel cost for detonation purposes.

Because of the prohibitive cost of missiles I rarely if ever build them regardless of potential for detonation. (although I do see the application at times)

[Mart]

There is a good way to test some stuff in the game - just turn on the scenario editor and create the setup for testing. I check many things this way if i need to

[Frankychan]

Holy crap, THATS where your avatar comes from. I knew it looked familiar.

I'm always partial to Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei.....what was that called again, the "cherry tree oath" or something.

[Urban Ranger]

What, you like the bad guys?