bunkers - do You build them?

[Skanderbeg]

I would like to know what You think of bunkers.
I nearly never build them, because I use the
defense by attack defending style and see bunkers in my territory as a possible stepstone for an advancing enemy.
The only use I could imagine a bunker is usefull is on
a "bottleneck" as protection for a armored crawler.

Do You build bunkers and for which purpos?

Greetings Skanderbeg

[VoodooChild]

I'm not a big fan of bunkers and my formers are usualy out doing other things, but with just about anything there is a time and place for them.

If I find myself next to the Sargosso (SP) Sea and have some peninsula that I'm not planning on building on, then by all means a bunker is going to be built since I know mind worm are going to be attacking from that direction.

[Sikander]

I have never built one for the reasons you give above. By the time they are available I am usually ready to deal with any invaders on my territory with a relentless offense. I've never built an airfield either btw, though I could see them being useful on occaision.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I'll sometimes build them in the process of doing an invasion.

As I normally hate to build a Navy, I often times rely on air power and build a land bridge in my conquering phase.

That being said my lead elements are normally formers followed by speeders and covered by air power.

As I approach a destination base I'll create a forward bunker (since I'm road building from my own continent to bring up the speeders) and have the formers that built the bunker housed inside. In this way, if the enemy base attacks my lead elements they are not capable of attacking my rear elements (combat speeders) and instead have to make their way through the formers first (which by this time have been mostly armored). If they are capable of taking out the formers then the next unit gets stopped cold by having to capture the bunker and can still not attack my speeders.

In the event that happens, air power is employed to clean out the bunker thereby allowing my speeders to march forward and do untold damage to the enemy base. Of course airpower gets employed to help cleanout the enemy base as well, but the primary goal is to protect those speeders from harm thereby allowing base capture and continuance of the blitzgreig.

All in all its just a means for me to 'catch my breath' before I start the main assualt.

[WhiteElephants]

I've built them in multiplayer before, but it wasn't as successfull as I hoped for, though my opponent did go around it as opposed to attacking it straight on so I guess I could argue that it did serve its purpose.

I don't know that you really need them after you get the knack of single player games. I often end up on the offense and go about capturing my opponents bunkers, but get little use out of them except for a turn or two.

I'd be interested to know what other multiplayers have done. I think that a bunker and a sensor adding 75% to defense is a real boon, but the only problem is getting your opponent to attack it. On the other hand, I suppose you build it in hopes that they won't attack actually. A sort of leave-me-alone-I've-got-bunkers-over-here message.

[Velociryx]

Good thread! Bunkers really DON'T get a lot of play, but I have to admit to being a fan of them, especially where defense of the homeland is concerned. I do build them on occassion as part of a general offensive, and in much the same way Og described, but I have to admit to having the tendency to go waaaay overboard when it comes to defending the homeland, and bunkers provide a way to put more of those multiplicative defensive modifiers into play.

Due to time constraints, there's almost no way you could construct a necklace of bunkers around your coast and man them with at least two units....it'd be kinna cool I guess, but it would also be ruinously expensive both in terms of construction time and total mineral costs involved, but Bunkers DO have one extremely cool use, and that would be Metagame.

Suppose, for example, you want to make it extremely unattractive for an invader to land on your southern coast (which is, incidentally, where the bulk of your crawlers live and work). So, as part of your terraforming efforts in that region, you take the time to construct a necklace of bunkers at intervals of every other tile (perhaps 6 total bunkers). This would, in turn, create a huge "zone" of zoc-blocked coast....at least, once you manned those six bunkers (you'd have a relatively permanant block a whopping fourteen tiles wide), and there aren't too many would-be invaders who wanna be tied down like that--not to mention the fact that other sections of your coast appear totally undefended, and this section is fairly swarming with units--which would most likely prompt them to land on some other portion of your coast, which is exactly why you built the bunkers in the first place, and, since most invaders are in too much of a hurry to get overly sneaky, you can simiply trace the shortest path from the bunkers to the nearest strip of unguarded coast, and figure that'll be where the bulk of your attacks come from, and knowing that, you can set up all sorts of unseen surprises for anybody who tries to drive around your defensive works.

One of the coolest uses of Metagame approaches is to present your opponents with an obviously unattractive choice, which will prompt them to do the very thing you want them to do (even if they don't know it....no, *especially* if they don't know it).

Also keep in mind that unless somebody just has it out for you in particular, attackers are looking for soft kills....they don't WANT to fight somebody who's well defended, and bunkers bristling with all sorts of defenders can send a pretty strong message, even while the bulk of your forces are out beating the daylights out of somebody else....

-=Vel=-

[Viriato]

I seldom build bunkers because they don't provide protection to air attacks. If they did it would be a different story...

[Helium Pond]

I like to play Morgan or Aki-Zeta as purely defensive games; I set myself the challenge of not going on the offensive, but building a strong enough defensive force that attackers just smash themselves on me. I find that bunkers have come in handy a couple times in these situations.

Also, while I haven't actually done this, a bunker seems like it could be handy when making a shore landing: if you have enough transport space to include some rover formers with your troops, they could make an excellent landing site for you. It's always the most vulnerable time, otherwise. Just an idea.

[Sikander]

A question for the floor. What sort of terraforming can you build a bunker on? In other words, can you build one on a borehole without erasing the borehole? What about condensors?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sik,

Bunkers as far as I know can be put onto any square (except occean of course). Using a specialist game with tons o' formers, makes rapid hardening of key squares ala boreholes and condensor/farm/soil enrichers a breeze.

Armor up those crawlers and place them in the bunkers my freind. Real point as described before tho' is you normally have better tasks for those formers anyway like converting condensor/famrs into condensor soil enrichers etc.

Og

[Sikander]

Thanks Ogie. Another question for you. Does the AI ever build marines in order to invade your continent? I typically occupy every square of coastline to keep the AI from landing troops or probe teams. If they never build marines, then building bunkers would just be overkill. It does amuse me to think that every coast square contains either a well defended base or a bunker with a good defender though.

[Velociryx]

Good point 'bout bunkers NOT providing any boost where air attacks are concerned, but I'd still contend that they're a good investment, especially if you've got a fistful of formers who have just finished up critical terraforming in a given region....before sending them off to the next spot, have them take a few turns to double or triple up on bunker production, at the very least on your most productive and/or exposed tiles. A AAA scout can easily be upgraded to max armor\decent weapon and placed in the tile with a crawler, providing a nice double stacked defense (esp. if said crawler is outfitted with Trance ability). If worms call, the crawler will make short work of it, and if it's an air strike, then your AAA defender will take the first hit--and, with careful planning, of course ALL your bunkers will be inside your sensor net, giving you a 25% boost which IS effective vs. air assault....not quite as good as a base proper, mind you, but it certainly takes less micromanagement!

-=Vel=-

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sik,

I've seen the AI build Marines but almost inevitably does not know how to use them. Any invastion is at best piece meal ( a single transport maybe two and almost never supported by air power).

To me I've gotten great utility out of a Morgan game wherein I was on a fairly nice sized continent and a small isthmus connected me to Miriam. I was running FM/wealth and used but one or two elite Plasma - ECM probe teams in a bunker with a sensor to shut her down cold. Wave upon wave of her laser speeders were chewed up 'gainst a single armored probe team outside my borders. When it finally fell I was able to put another little sucker in the bunker and hold the line. I think 2 units were successfuly able to defend 'gainst 10 speeders. A little later I ended up with D:AP and was able to switch to Green/Wealth and take the fight to Miriam.

Does any one remember if other terrain adds to the defense factor for bunkers. For example if you build a bunker sensor on a rocky do you get a +50%, +25%, and +50% for the rocky square? I'm almost positive it does and as a consequence of building my 3 tile wide land bridges to other continents I'll make it a point going forward to build a bunker sensor on a rocky in the center tile in case my offensive has to be halted.
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited December 15, 2000).]

[Chowlett]

Artillery is a bit stupid, when it comes to defnse modifiers. Units in rolling or flat get +50% to represent maneuverability (oooo, that isn't spelt right!) But Units in rocky get +50% anyway. So basically, you ALWAYS get +50% against arty!

[Helium Pond]

Sikander:

If I recall correctly, Bunkers will replace Mines and Sensor Arrays, but will live happily with Boreholes and Farms and Forests and Solar Panels. But I probably don't recall correctly. How the heck could a Bunker replace a Mine but not a Borehole? Well, that's what I remember, anyway.

Over in AC-Creation, Simpson II was talking about making a Datalinks mod that corrected all the errors, and I recommended that he also make it spell out which terraforming choices cancelled out each other. I wonder if he ever got anywhere on that...

[Zonk]

I've had SP games where Marr and Miriam both have softened up a City before landing the Marines. But as stated above, the AI makes poor use of attack waves. I've had Sven use Marines a lot, also, but don't recall any Air Power used in conjunction.

[Sikander]

Thanks for all of the replies. It sounds like bunkers are of limited use to me, as they will overlay certain terraforming improvements, don't help against airpower, and the AI is seemingly powerless to mount a decent invasion.

I have been trying to perfect my "hollow" empire strategy, whereby I place my bases 2-3 squares apart along the coastline of my continent. Even placed 2 squares apart, this leaves me enough land to get them all up to 16 pop, with only a very few bases needing supplemental nutrients trucked in from the interior. My terraforming scheme is pretty simple. First, if I can put a borehole in a square, I do. If a square is rocky, it gets a mine. If it is not rocky, it gets a condensor / farm. All shelf squares within the production radius get kelp / harnesses. I only work boreholes and shelf squares, every other square gets a crawler. Most bases work 5 or less squares (with workers that is) which really keeps drone problems to a minimum. The 10+ engineers that each base has by the early second century really powers my economy.

For defense, every coastline square is occupied fairly early with either a Base, a crawler, or an armored probe team. Thus I am safe from invasion until marines, and effectively safe until much later (airpower, missles and planet busters) in single player. The extraordinary concentration of bases and units does increase the potential damage of planetbusters, but I do tend to grab a good tech lead, throw up some ODPs, and have a good deal of overlap with my flechette defenses. My 'hinterland' interior is quite safe, and I exploit it depending on my needs for nutrients, minerals or energy.

I have yet to try this strategy with anyone other than the University. I expect that it would work well with any high science faction, but I would tend to use more workers with Morgan to reap all of that windfall energy. I don't have all of the kinks worked out yet, and still have many things that I haven't tried, but I have run away with the game quite regularly with this method, in part because the easy defense allows me to concentrate on constantly improving my economy.

[Viriato]

Vel,
I have to agree with you on that; and in particular situations like defending a bottleneck I'd sure use a bunker.
The fact is that in my PBEM games (I don't play SP anymore) I always find something else I need my formers to do. Also in the games I've been in the most usual attacks were with rovers, marines or choppers/needlejets and were aimed at the bases, not the crawlers. Apart from defending against the 'rover rush' the bunkers are useless.
However if I have a land border with another faction it can be a good idea to have strategical placed crawlers to create ZOC's that can prevent a land assault while gathering resources. In this particular case I'd say that building bunkers in the crawlers positions would be a good decision.
Again this would probably make your enemies change their approach like using 'nerve gas' do destroy your bases.