Opinions on "questionable" tactics in MP

BustaMike · February 11, 2004, 17:14

This thread is geared toward the more experienced players, but I'd recommend everyone reading it. Some of you might learn a stupid trick or two

.

I recently picked up playing SMAC again after about a year off in a MP game against one of my friends. Both of us are very rusty which is making the game interesting. My friend has done several things this game in a feeble attempt to beat me (we both understand that I'm the stronger player) but some of his tactics I'm not sure should be allowed in future games. I'll make a list, tell me what you think.

Deceptive renaming of units - IMO this is ok, especially cause it's funny most of the time. Earlier in the game he upgraded a sizeable number of recon rovers to gas-impact rovers, but renamed the unit type to recon rover (note the 2 spaces) in the workshop. I almost didn't notice the "new" recon rovers were 4X-1-2

. We used to do this a lot, naming choppers as sea formers or other ridiculous things, but it had been so long it almost caught me off guard.

Renaming of bases - He renamed ALL his bases to Mike Sucks. This makes it a horrible pain in the ass to figure out what base did what, and it would be even worse if I didn't have him infiltrated. IMO this isn't ok, and it takes away from the role-playing aspect of the game that helps make SMAC so good.

Free Market Military Base - When running free market, going on offense is hard... unless you create a size 1 base that is well protected and crawler enough minerals to it to support your entire army. I had completely forgotten you could do this and was counting on him not being able to maintain his energy output + a good offense. This is one of those game loopholes that I don't think should be allowed.

What do you guys think?

Maniac · February 11, 2004, 17:20

All allowed IMHO.

Blake · February 11, 2004, 17:58

IMO base renaming to all the same name shouldn't be allowed. The game should probably do a check to ensure the base name is unique (atleast within the faction).

Otherwise I really think it depends on whether your playing it like an RPG or strictly as a pure strategy game.

Ogie Oglethorpe · February 11, 2004, 18:03

Busta,

Renaming units - Funny and allowable

Renaming Bases - Funny, insultable and allowable. Just remember its gonna be a bit of a pain for him as well.

Military Base in FM- Absolutely allowed. You wanna be a bastard to him pick off his crawlers and watch his units evaporate and/or get rehomed to other bases causing riot. Now if he made those units all clean thats a different story, but he still had to pay more for them.

Sorry Busta, but I'm of the opinion of Maniac.

Flubber · February 11, 2004, 20:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Maniac
All allowed IMHO.

Agreed

BustaMike · February 12, 2004, 12:08

you guys play mean. That's fine then, I'm really good at playing mean too. I'll let him know others think it's just fine.

Lazerus · February 12, 2004, 15:28

First is funny, second does detract from role play and i wouldnt use it in a serious game and the last is perfectly fine (every govt deceives its citizens about its activities when it goes to war anyways so think of it that way, top secret military base nobody can complain about)

johndmuller · February 12, 2004, 18:29

Maybe if you changed your name

, #2 wouldn't bother you as much.
(even better if you were able to change your friend's name to Mike while you were at it).

The game provides punishment spheres, which also convert a base into a suitable home for your foreign legion, so they were possably thinking of ways to allow for overseas forces. In SMAX, the Brood Pits also give you a partial exemption with the local +2 Police benefit (let you at least get 1 out of the faction unit per Brood Pit base).

Jamski · February 12, 2004, 19:38

All allowed if you ask me.

-Jam

Skanky Burns · February 13, 2004, 03:07

Plink his crawler farms, you got a lotta dead ~~bugs~~ enemy units.

Barinthus · February 13, 2004, 15:28

Twinkish if you ask me and shouldn't be allowed. But hey, to everybody their own. However if you're playing a MP, those kind of detials should be ironed out and agreed upon before the game starts. Once a game has started, it's too late.

Mr. Harley · February 14, 2004, 18:03

First, legal and used by as a classic move in military counter-intelligence to mislead the enemy. Allowable, and historical.

Second - I'd never thought of that.

Really tacky, perfectly legal, highly obnoxious.

Third. Standard tactic. Good target for suicide choppers or needlejets - fission w/impact weapons. Choppers will wreak havoc if you can get them through, needlejets have a better chance of getting through but will only get one kill. Crawlers cost 30, suicide units cost 20. Simple math.

Enigma_Nova · February 14, 2004, 19:38

One of the great things I would do, is to rename my units with spaces or underscores (all of them), and rename my bases to their co-ordinates.

We all know the bug where if you tell a unit to move over the base on (24, 56) the text comes up: Move to: The Hive
So in my games I rename my base to (24, 56) until I'm infiltrated, then I rename them to -entirely different- co-ordinates, possibly the same ones.

I loved the expression on my opponent's face when I went ICS and he tried to use above bug to find my bases - I had named my pases in -reverse grid- order, so (1,1) was bottom right.
The central base had the right number.
Drove him nuts until he got a probe team round to figure out WTF was going on.

Maniac · February 14, 2004, 20:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
We all know the bug where if you tell a unit to move over the base on (24, 56) the text comes up: Move to: The Hive

Btw, what is everyone's opinion about using that bug?

BustaMike · February 15, 2004, 02:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Maniac
Btw, what is everyone's opinion about using that bug?

I think it's cheating personally.

Oh, and as for the game I was talking about I won pretty easily anyway.