Battle Units?

[Sprayber]

What are your favorite battle units? What makes up the backbone of your military? Are you a groundpounder at heart or do you practice Doctrine Mobility with rover and speeder strike forces? Do you fill the skies with your jets and bombers or do you rule Chiron from the seas? Or are your troops used to the good life in their warm and dry base barraks? Or, are your troops even human?

[Sindai]

I use Vorpal Rabbits mostly....

[Wiglaf]

Mine's the o-so-popular BugOff Ground Attack Mobility unit. I normally use infantry (some exceptions, of course) with the +50% attack and +50% defence against mindworms.

[karu-san]

Similar to SMACed: my favorite unit comes into play when I start to get worm-raped: I like psi-combat and usually build the dream twister and I also choose and stay with a reasonably green strategy. So with these enhancements I build "Bug-Off" choppers (trained, empath). In most battles against combat units, choppers can't really use their multi-attack capability since they take damage (sole exception: fending off a rover rush). But with the psi-odds so incredibly stacked, just one of these babies can cut a swath through worms a mile wide. By the way, Sindai: vorpal rabbits?
[This message has been edited by karu-san (edited January 29, 2001).]

[Skanderbeg]

I look what my enemiess have and build units which can encounter their advantages.
If I play against Deirdre with her worms, I build empath units, If I play against the Spartans with their high moral, I build trained units, and so on.
And it is always good to have a good mix of rovers, infantry and airforce, so You have the choice of the most effective weapon in attacking. If your enemies unit has AAA, you can attack with the rover first, if it has the special ability against rovers (don't know the English name), you can attack with the needlejet first.

[Sprayber]

Skanderbeg- You are correct in that you must build your military according to what your enemy has. I guess one concern is what your starting situation is. Since I play the Pirates or a custom faction based on them I start out isolated from early threats. When I attack someone, I have to have transports to take my units to the front. I must say that I do not use infantry much at all unless I am playing a land based faction. With my aquatic factions I use lots of rovers and speeders. A navy is also important to me but must admit that I have only once had a serious naval threat and that was early in the game. I am very fond of building colony pods and finding nice sized islands all to myself. I end up with bases all over the map. Choppers have become important to me. Sometimes I get creative and build native life forms. Not on a grand scale though. Too bad you can't design your own native life form. Think about it. After a certain tech you should be able to mix and match to come up with your own life form.

[DogberryMan]

Well when making an attack on anther faction I usually build units that suit the situation. These units will be different from game to game, but the defensive units I build are usually the same every game. I build two clean/AAA garrison units in each base, combined with two clean/air superiority needlejets. Then I build at least one artillery unit, and two clean choppers. I also build a good weapon/light armor rover, and if worms are a real problem I build on or two clean psi units.

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"Are you good men and true?" Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene III

[Blake]

The backbone of my military? Planet busters I dish em out to AI's on a per former destroyed basis
If I'm not using scorched earth policies I usually favour best-best infantry and mindworms for early game and highly versatile hovertanks latergame.

The Psi armour and Psi weapon can be used to design native units.. sorta, if you want a new native unit to appear at a certain tech add it in the alphax.txt in the units section, like a psi,psi,6,empath
super-sealurk unit, then make it available at whatever tech. You may even be able to give it a native lifeform icon. Unfortunately I believe the no haste-penalty comes from position in unit list.

[Wiglaf]

Blake -- how do you afford all those pb's ?

[Jasonian]

Once you get a decent industrial foundation built up (and a skunkworks for the first PB), it doesn't take that much to build a lot of the things.

[Skanderbeg]

Addition: For the end-game, I am gravship addicted.
I build the cheap basic things, small weapon (with fusion, chaos weapon costs not more than hand-weapon), and no armor. Even this basic gravships are good for devastastion of your enemie's territory. They can attack crawlers, formers, and even best-weapon/low armor rovers. If I got the SP that gives You + 50% in Psi attack, I train them hunting fungus towers until they are elite.
They were upgradet to the high-end gravships, best weapon, best armor, special abilities as needed.
A dozen of this can conquer a whole continent in a couple of turns.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Gravehsips, helocoptors and drop infantry, wiht whatever weapon is currently: first, effective against all rivals defense capability; secondly, most cost effective.

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Gaius Mucius Scaevola Sinistra
Pontificator Pendanticus
older richer & wiser than you
Did I mention that I like spellcheckers?

[Gregurabi]

It depends so much on which stage of the game we're talking about!

I'm not a huge fan of rover rushes. I'll build attack rovers, of course, for the early game -- but I usually back them up with infantry. Or better yet, I'll just forego lots of attacks in the early game, and concentrate on early infrastructure development.

In the later stages of the game, I use air power extensively. Half a dozen needlejets against a faction that doesn't have air power or AAA (Adv Mil Alg) yet are enough to let me do whatever I please.

In the end game, if there are any serious enemies left, I like to use Blink/Dissociative choppers to take out base garrisons, then drop infantry to occupy the bases.

[cbn]

In my current game I have started using locusts as air cover for my ground troops. They are great for late-game clean-up and also reduce the PIA factor of rotating air cover for my attack rovers. Interesting to use. They also work great as ocean sentries (much less vulnerable than any ship on patrol

My favorite units are always choppers with special abilities attuned to current circumstances.I love drop troops as well and most late-game expansion is through Drop pods and formers.

Hovertanks and gravships have never been available early enough to make a difference in my games (all SP) but they look to have excellent possibilities

[DilithiumDad]

In multiplayer, especially with 7 human factions, there's always the global arms race problem. If your neighbor sees you building military units, they are going to fet paranoid and start building up and switch research to Conquer techs. Then their neighbors start building up until pretty soon nobody is building anything but military units over the whole planet.

To avoid this, I usually build just a few defensive units until someone else starts cranking on military. I make sure I have some high-mineral bases ready to crank out units, two skunkworks, and some supply crawlers for prototyping.

[Wiglaf]

DD, think of how you could benefit from that. I mean, with everyone blindly bulding a military, you could focus on SP's and the home front (once, of course, you have the proper defence in place).

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The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[Blake]

quote: Originally posted by SMACed on 01-30-2001 10:28 PM Blake -- how do you afford all those pb's ?

The cheapest way to get your first volley of planet busters is to cash in supply crawlers at most of your bases for prototype development of planet buster, up to the value of a non-prototype PB. Then complete the prototype at your HQ and the next turn all of the PB's get completed and vola, 10 planet busters to get some revenge for those lost formers It's MUCH cheaper if you upgrade the crawlers first, depends if you consider that cheating or not, I don't

After that it is easy enough to build a PB in 10 turns w/o eco-damage, get 10 bases building PB's and that's a PB a turn. Once in a OCC I had mineral production above 320 and could build a PB a turn, don't ask how high the ecodamage got in that game. It doesn't take long launching a planet buster a turn for you to run out of PB targets. Then mop-up with gravships.

Incidentely my idea of a PB war is one were I have all the planet busters, I would probably have a heartattack if the AI ever PB'd me.

[Xerxes2]

I like them Deathstar Gravships.