planetbuster silos

fluffy · June 25, 2001, 11:23

It's true that you can learn new things however long you play SMAX...

Anyone else seen this before:

If another players city contains a planetbuster, one of the options for specific sabotage is:

planetbuster silos

If you are successful, the PB is destroyed. I was prepared to have to destroy the other units first to get at the PB - this is much easier!

Ned · June 25, 2001, 12:58

No, never knew that before. Ned

Lefty Scaevola · June 25, 2001, 14:20

Yep, whenever one of those evil scum AIs get the PB, they are visited by a swarm of my treachcoat legionaires, at least until I have the fleet of defense pods in orbit.

Maniac · June 25, 2001, 14:56

Or it could happen the other way around. I first discovered that option when my submissive pact brother Morgan sneakattacked me and destroyed my PB.

Earwicker · June 26, 2001, 11:14

Beeeg bummer, M@ni@c. Please forward all Morgan mail to his very own Punishment Sphere

.

I confess that is something that I've never seen as an option. But I like it, I like it. I can sleep nights when the PB construction starts in Yang Mines. If I can't sabotage its production, I can get it later. Good stuff.

johndmuller · June 26, 2001, 12:05

I've probed away PBs from AI players, but IIRC, it wasn't exactly a walk in the park. I think that the odds are mediocre and if you weren't already in Vendetta with them, you would probably need to go that way to keep the odds decent (a vendetta would, of course, probably put your bases on the PB target list).

It's not always so easy to sneak the probes into the right base, particularly if you are dealing with AI Yang where the road system is not likely to be large but the number of men on patrol will be. Even probe cruisers can have trouble if the bases you need to get to are hard to get to due to fungus or circuitous routes; armored probe ships are $$$ and you can't put AAA on them anyway, the AI will (if it is strong enough) shoot at any escort ships with (conventional) missles (of course, the AI always knows where your ships are too), whine, whine, etc., etc.

Again, if it is AI Yang, he can produce those d_____ things pretty d___ fast too; it's a major MM problem just keeping up with the intelligence. To the best of my knowledge, the locate function doesn't work for enemy's bases, even when you have infiltration and sats, so I spend a lot of time figuring out even where the particular bases are that I've found (so laborously in the F7 & F4 screens, whine, whine).

Naturallly, a human player would protect the PBs even better; they wouldn't, for example, forget to put a few probes of their own in the PB bases and they would have a good sensor net. Human PBs would probably be of the higher reactor type too.

My biggest problem, though, is dealing with all those whining generals.