Marine Buggy

Gibsie · December 7, 2002, 14:52

An amusing bug I've come across... I attacked an enemy sea colony with a marine foil, and they had a foil defending, I won the combat and captured their vessel... which remained on hold in their base

Next turn I went to move my foil in as well to capture it, and I fought a losing battle against my own captured foil, which gained some experience. In cases like that I tend to reload...

I don't doubt that this is old news... but any other bugs I should look out for?

Method · December 7, 2002, 21:16

i thought that was fixed by the patch

Gibsie · December 8, 2002, 08:35

Apaprently not... or did I just not install the patch?

Uh-oh...

Mongoose · December 8, 2002, 13:04

Gibsie. I'll bet a dollar to a donut hole you're playing SMAX 1.0 and not 2.0.

The 2.0 patch is a must-have. Among other things, it fixes the Cyborg techsteal attribute which was broken out of the box.

Gibsie · December 8, 2002, 14:43

Yeah, I realised that. I thought that extracting the patch into my SMAC directory would've installed it, but after reading TKG's response realised that I didn't install it properly (I had to extract what I'd extracted the first time. Nice and simple).

spartak · December 8, 2002, 14:44

I'll have donut please.

Yep _ sounds really unpatched. The funniest bit is where you capture a foil in abase and all the defenders then become yours because the AI thinks they are in transit on acaptured boat.

Stupid game sometimes.

Patch it - :doitnow:

aaglo · December 9, 2002, 10:46

patchpatchpatchpatchpatchpatchpatchpatchpatchpatch patchpatchPATCH!

johndmuller · December 10, 2002, 04:55

Are you supposed to always be able to capture an enemy vessel, or is it supposed to be possible to destroy it instead (as I seem to have done recently). Perhaps a round of combat can go from too undamaged to transfer to too dead? Or did I just experience another feature. (Yes, I have the 2.0 patch installed.)

Is the 50% damage (or whatever the magic % that means you take over the vessel) supposed to be an absolute percentage or a percentage of what its health was when you attacked (i.e. do pre-existing wounds matter)?

Major Guz · December 10, 2002, 05:36

Semi-Quote from the SMAX manual:
If an attacking ship is equipped with the marine detachment special ability you can capture a [defending] ship 50% of the time if the health of that [defending] ship falls below 30%.

To summarize: If you have a ship with marine detachment and you pound an enemy vessel that hard it comes below 30% hit points there is a one out of 2 chance you capture that ship.

This does not count for the defender (if the defending vessel has marine detachment and the attacker comes below 30% the attacking vessel can never be captured)

Major Guz · December 10, 2002, 05:41

I don't know if the amount of hit points at which the ship can be captured is absolute or relative to what it started with.
An educated guess would seem to go in favor of the relative to start:
If for example your unity scout rover is attacked by those pesky worms in the beginning of the game it will disengage at 50% health. When the health is up to 80% again and it is attacked another time, it will disengage at 40% health.
I am not sure if this goes for ship capture also.

Clear Skies · December 10, 2002, 10:16

Don't forget ships can disengage as well - really irritating when you're counting on capturing one.

Gibsie · December 10, 2002, 14:16

Can you capture transports laden with troops..?

Mongoose · December 10, 2002, 19:02

Yes. You can also occasionally capture probe foils.

spartak · December 10, 2002, 20:28

Quote:

Originally posted by Gibsie
Can you capture transports laden with troops..?

Not only that, you can land the troops and take enemy cities

{thank god at least one smiley doesn't have a cap]

Gibsie · December 11, 2002, 17:03

Okay, that definitely qualifies under the bug-o-meter.

EmperorJay · December 14, 2002, 10:40

I have the same bug about the ships in cities...
and I am sure I play SMAX 2.0 (german version). when that happens, i always move the ship out of the city, so iI don't have to attack it...

and btw: why is capturing troops along with a transport a bug? sounds quite reasonable to me

Gibsie · December 14, 2002, 11:57

Because, you can control ships with a new crew. Unless marine detatchments have probe team brainswashers in attendance, why the hell would the troops on board not even put up a fight, let alone convert to the enemy?

Explain "reasonable" please...

Major Guz · December 16, 2002, 03:25

Well, the troops were asleep in their bunks when the marine detachment entered the transport.
They were given the choice: Fight with us or die.
Their choice seems reasonable.

EmperorJay · December 16, 2002, 12:49

hm, I have a slightly different view of troops: as they don't cost any population, they mainly consist of the material and weaponry. so when you capture a transport, you get all its load with it, and the crew isn't the main problem(shoot half of them and bribe the rest

)