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Commy
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St. Louis, MO, USA
Mar 2004
time: 05:34
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Once eco-damage, stuff like sea-levels rising and such, starts, it's permanent, and will only get worse. The best you can do is prevent it from getting worse, although this is very hard. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice a few bases so you can hurry a Transcendant victory, or other wise you will be erradicated.
Overall, you're screwed. About the only thing that is really effective is never getting there in the first place. There are, however, two strategies that appear to work, although I never use them, for they are highly unpractical...
One is using only artillery. Artillery kills mindworms, regardless of their lifecycle. Only problem is on SMAX, spore launchers tend to kill this idea...
Another strategy is filling every possible square on the map with a unit. By doing so, fungus pops may occur, but no midworms can possibly appear in the same square...
My personal strategy is to use a couple of artillery units, and a lot of missiles. Wipe out offshore worms with missiles, weaken other worms artillery, and use a couple of empath tanks to take out the now weakened worm mush. When it comes to worms, take like Civilization Strategy. Either you take them all out on the same turn, or you don't attack at all...
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Nabvrimn
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I'd use air superiority* empath choppers in water or coastal cities and empath rovers or tanks in land cities. Have a positive planet rating so you can capture mindworms and have those captured mindworms sit around your bases. I don't think they get penalties for being attacked in fungus, but in any case they were free so it doesn't matter so much if they get killed outside your bases.
* so you can attack locusts. Psi combat doesn't have the ground attack penalty for air superiority units.
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Zeiter
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quote:
Have a positive planet rating so you can capture mindworms and have those captured mindworms sit around your bases. |
Usually you'll find that you won't be able to do this, you'll get a message saying "our psi talents think that these mind worms are being controlled by a higher sentience" or something like that, and even though you have a positive planet rating, you won't capture any. But the positive planet rating certainly helps with the combat, adding 10% for each point. If you can, switch to green and cybernetic while you're under assault, and that will help.
An easy way to combat the worm armageddon is just to have oodles and oodles of trance and empath units - at least 5, preferably 10+ per base. Combine that with 3 cheap infantry arty units per base, the neural amplifier, the dream twister, and a planet rating of +4, and you should be able to withstand at least 20 worms/base/turn.
I'd actually be curious to see what the absolute limit is for how many mind worms could pop up. Thousands? Millions? For instance, what would happen if you launched 100 planet busters on the same turn? How many defenders would you need? You'd have to have pre-built pressure domes in all bases, that's for sure. You'd have a complete worm infested water world on your hands. Could be a fun scenario...
And yes, like Navbrimn said, in order to attack locusts with ground units or artillery (or is it just artillery?) you must have the SAM ability on the unit.
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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Zeiter
Usually you'll find that you won't be able to do this, you'll get a message saying "our psi talents think that these mind worms are being controlled by a higher sentience" or something like that, and even though you have a positive planet rating, you won't capture any. But the positive planet rating certainly helps with the combat, adding 10% for each point. If you can, switch to green and cybernetic while you're under assault, and that will help.
An easy way to combat the worm armageddon is just to have oodles and oodles of trance and empath units - at least 5, preferably 10+ per base. Combine that with 3 cheap infantry arty units per base, the neural amplifier, the dream twister, and a planet rating of +4, and you should be able to withstand at least 20 worms/base/turn.
I'd actually be curious to see what the absolute limit is for how many mind worms could pop up. Thousands? Millions? For instance, what would happen if you launched 100 planet busters on the same turn? How many defenders would you need? You'd have to have pre-built pressure domes in all bases, that's for sure. You'd have a complete worm infested water world on your hands. Could be a fun scenario...
And yes, like Navbrimn said, in order to attack locusts with ground units or artillery (or is it just artillery?) you must have the SAM ability on the unit. |
I think I remember launching about 6 or 8 fusion PB's and not getting hurt by planet that much. I was probably running green at the time.
But not like the scenario I described above. I used enough gas to accumulate 2000 years of sanctions. Planet did not like this. I had never seen such a relentless assault.
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Mead
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Before I learned about clean minerals I developed the following tactics to deal with the mind worms/locusts.
Make a lot of drop artillery.
These are useful as a 'fire brigade' to deal with any worm pops that appear near your land bases. If you have orbital insertion, then they can drop into any threatened land base and fire at the worms on the same turn. Follow up with land assault.
Concentrate on the big stack.
When there is a pop there will usually be worms in three squares per each pop. Two of these squares will often have only one worm in it. The third will have a large stack (sometimes 16 or more). Concentrate your offensive efforts on the large stack. Kill that stack first before you go after the other squares.
Remember that once you kill the native life in a square all the nearby ones seem to grow a life-cycle (as if they were not demon boil already).
Consider SAM artillery for the locusts.
I have not used this before, but have heard of its use by others. The SAM artillery softens up the locusts just as easily as the regular artilleary softens up the worms. I have been reminded that, because you can only have two special abilities per unit, you cannot make 'drop' SAM artillery. Deal with this by basing a couple of SAM artilleary in every base you want to protect, or give the units a high mobilty chassis to cover more ground.
I have not had to deal with the rampant worm attacks since I discovered clean minerals, but I am tempted to try a game where I am a complete eco-damaging, planet busting, and gassing demon to see just how badly I can tick planet off, and survive.
Mead
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Mead
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If, as a result of your eco-damage, you get repeated warnings of sea level rising 1000+ meters over the next 10 or so years, you'll need to modify the above post to rely more upon fast ships to provide your artillery support instead of the 'drop artillery'.
If you use ships instead, I guess you could add empath as a special ability.
Oh, and like others said, having Neural Amp, Dream Twister, good planet rating, and those other good SPs (Phonos Mutagen (spelling?)) help out too. I usually like having the DT and a good planet rating. NA only helps with the defense and you don't want to be on the defense. NA is good to have, but only as a backup.
Mead
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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I had a nerve gas and PB war in which I ended up losing a few bases to mindworms. They do keep coming for a while but eventually they stop-- perhaps because my minerals went back under the limits by raising my clean mineral count.
Defending against the swarms is really a losing battle so I can only recommend ONE trance resonance defender per base-- he resources for addtional ubits should be funnelled into 6r-empath rovers , SAM arty and the occasional empath chopper for killing strays and finsihing off the locusts. With a well sensored land, you should see all the worms and you always seems to get first crack.
Building defenders never made sense to me in a situation where one rover attack should kill the entire worm stack-- heck -- how many defenders would you need to contain stacks of 20 worms??
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Terraforming damage:
+1 for most terraforming
-1 per forest
+5 per condensor
+7 per echelon mirror
+9 per borehole
*2 for tiles actually worked (IIRC)
*.5 with tree farm
*.5 with hybrid forest
*0 with both tree farm and hybrid forest
Therefore, if your clean mineral count is high, no ecodamage. |
I have seen thses lists before but isn't it simply the first formulas you posted that matter. If you stay beneath your clean mineral limit you won't have fungal pops period. ??
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shawnmmcc
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I read somewhere, I cannot remember the reference, that Nanoreplicators also count as an Ecofacility. The problem is that they increase the mineral production at the same time, so it's a mixed blessing. Still, they are superior to any other mineral +50% facility simply for that reason.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Flubber: what I listed is part of the SMAC/X help for Ecodamage (Advanced). It may not be correct, but I haven't seen anyone challenge it. |
I haven't specifically tested this but I don't think it is correct, despite it appearing in the help files. I think this for the following reasons
1. Ecodamage in a given base ALWAYS seems to correspond to mineral production and my clean mineral limit. Put simply, If I have a base showing an ecodamage chance number, this number reduces if I lessen the number of minerals that base produces. Lets say it produces 30 minerals, I will see the ecodamage number go down with EACH mineral taken out of production until lets say at 26 minerals, my ecodamage number is 0. I have just worked backwards to discover my current clean mineral limit. If I check several bases, they all seem to come back to the SAME limit, regardless of their facilities OR terraforming
2. The clean mineral limit seems to be global-- in that EVERY base seems to have the same clean mineral limit irrespective of terraforming-- more specifically, the base with all forests and a few mines will show ecodamage while the base with 8 condensors and an equal number of mines to the forested base, will not. Where does this terraforming damage concept come in?
3. I haven't tested the effect of treefarms but if you do nothing else on a turn that affects ecodamage other than build a single treefarm, you will see the chance of ecodamage go down in ALL your bases, since you just added one to your clean mineral limit ( assuming at least one prior fungal pop). It does appear to have a greater impact in the base where it is built and I can accept the idea that it reduces the chance of ecodamage in that base by more than would be attributable to the clean mineral limit change. Put another way, I think a treefarm will lessen the impact of any minerals in excess of the clean mineral limit
So in summary, I'm not saying for certain that the help file stuff about "terraforming ecodamage" is bullcrap, but that is the direction I am leaning. In my games, mineral production in an individual base and the clean mineral limit determines ecodamage. The more you exceed the clean mineral limit, the higher the chance of ecodamage. A base with 10 condensors seems to never have ecodamage unless it also has a lot of minerals while the minerals inherent in forested bases mean that many of them might have ecodamage.
So my experience does not go in accordance with those help files. But if anyone has the inclination, it might be worthwhile to test it themselves. I don't have the time ( I am behind in a bunch of PBEMs and while I can post from work, I can't play)
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Whoha
Nano replicators are clean facilities to.
The description of eco damage is wierd in the advanced concepts though, it says that the % is:
(Minerals/1 + # of Preserves,temples,nanoreplicators ) *difficulty * technologies *(3-planet)*LIFE/300. |
THat formula seems odd and is probably somewhat incorrect.. Any formula that does not mention specifically that you start with x clean minerals and then it goes up by one for every fungal pop and ecofacility built ( note that TFs and HFs definitely are among the ecofacilities) is probably not completely right .
I'm not saying its all wrong either since I have never fully understood what determines the % chance of ecodamage once a base exceeds the clean mineral limit. Obviously each additional mineral increases the ecodamage chance but it seems that there are other modifiers working as well--- This is probably where planet rating, tech and the ecofacilities in the particular base come in.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Chaos Theory
In cities with multiple boreholes, I've noticed I have significant ecodamage, even before reaching my normal clean minerals count. I have also seen an increase in ecodamage from merely building a borehole near a base. The borehole itself is worked by some other base.
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I have not experienced this since my experience has been in accord with the clear concept
Below clean mineral limit-- no ecodamage
Above -- some although I have never figured out how the % is calculated
I may have to test this out ( don't know WHEN I will get the chance). It definitely wouldn't be the first time one of my long held assumptions turns out to be incorrect.
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Natalinasmpf
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You are using needlejets? Why not choppers?
Also, you could try suicide bombing, does that work?
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Natalinasmpf
You are using needlejets? Why not choppers?
Also, you could try suicide bombing, does that work? |
needlejets can be useful against worms to provide air cover to vulnerable units if the natives don't have anything that can take down a plane. In theory you could use a wall of needlejets to contain the worms while you focussed on killing all the locusts.
A comparison:
1. The damage taken in psi combat means that a chopper will generally fight only 1 or 2 battles a turn anyway so the multiple attack feature is lessened-- But if they can get back to base they will repair a turn quicker than the needlejet which takes 2 turns for a single attack and then needs the 3rd turn to repair.
2. The crashing feature of choppers impedes survivability if you can't get back to a base. Usually not a major problem when protecting the homeland
3. needles only advantage is aircover and immunity to ground attack
Self-destructing
Self-destructing works and is actually a reasonably decent tactic. For example attack and kill one key stack in the middle and then drop your damage rover in next to 3 or 4 huge stacks. Destruct and see them all take say 30 or 40% damage. It makes it so much easier for the next rover to take out stacks more easily.
I generally don't self-destruct all that much since artillery can give the damage needed for easy kills, but if arty isn't available (or damaged from previous duels with sporelaunchers), self-destructing can be ok. Its just beautiful if you can hurt a bunch of stacks
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08-08-2004 23:31
at least I feel like I'm not the only one now 
. See my thread about how I felt like nerve gas should not cause eco damage. I didn't like being raped by planet like that. I lost every single city (I hadn't prepared for the assault- I had never had that much ecodamage before) except one. And that was later taken by the believers. A loss for me.
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