posted 06-19-99 04:21 AM ET     

You need a conquered faction to do it. Just move your units into their city, go into the city view, and right-click on your unit, and tell it "support from here". Voila. You don't support it any more but you control it. It doesn't even get supported by the conquered faction. It doesn't show up in your support screen or theirs.

It only works from withing the city menu tho.

posted 06-19-99 12:35 PM ET            

I think with this knowledge, my current record of fastest conquest could soon be re-written, easily.

posted 06-19-99 08:36 PM ET            

Which verson are you playing now? Coz I check through last night and discover that once you switch over the unit's support base (in this case, of the conquered faction), then the conquered faction will actually get to support that unit - it's not free.

posted 06-19-99 09:17 PM ET         

I'm onv3 too. I just rechecked and my conquered factions aren't supporting them.

posted 06-20-99 06:42 AM ET            

but the city view screen means the base control screen right?

posted 06-20-99 10:40 AM ET            

So that means you are getting the bonus and I'm not....... ......time to lay my hands on somebody else's computer

posted 06-20-99 07:03 PM ET            

you CAN beam your missles anywhere on planet. just hit shift A to automate them then the missles are under computer control. they will fly around and be really annoying must of the time, but when the computer decides it's time for a missle strike your missles will fly across the globe and hit anywhere. but human control is still much more effective

posted 06-20-99 11:03 PM ET         

Well what can I say? I'm a cheating putz. Thanks for letting me know. So glad we've got an Einstein on the board. And how many tactics did you figure out on your own without reading the board?

On a lighter note, thanks korn469, I'll try that sometime.

posted 06-21-99 06:59 AM ET            

Base window:
-the units in the bottom row are the units currently in base, wether they're supported or not
-the units in the bottom right box are all the units currently supported by the base.
They are ALL supported from the base, no matter if the mineral show below them.
-the supported units with a mineral visible below them, have actually to PAY for the support
-the supported units withOUT a mineral visible below them, are SUPPORTED FREE by the base (they're anyway supported tho!). The # of free supported units per base depends on the value of your SUPPORT SE setting (or the one of the base faction of course).
-some units don't need support at all (i.e. probes...)

Regarding this issue, it could be possible that the units in th right bottom box are the one controlled (and supported) by the base. If you say that the units are supported but not controlled, it is possible they don't show up there.
You could check the mineral resource production of the base tho: you do the maths and verify if your units are tallied in the base support or not.

posted 06-21-99 07:09 AM ET            

and, laurens:
"I think with this knowledge, my current record of fastest conquest could soon be re-written, easily."

Of course too it makes no sense comparing scores if you don't stick to fairplay. this way you don't beat the game. You beat 1.yourself 2.Firaxis programmer's ability, and that's not the same thing as "the game".

I'd like to use scores as first hand parameter to compare my skills with other better SMACers than me. Statements and practices like yours spoil the whole concept, and that's why many disregard scoring comparisons as futile and pitiful (Eris, do tell something to the guy...).

posted 06-21-99 07:25 AM ET            

Surely there are many commendable SMACers who devised smart tactics and showed them to the community, and maybe you did that too somewhere in the forums, probably more than I did.

Of course you agree that no tactic at all has been shown in this thread.

Here you just teached us yet another bug in the game and its UI. This too is a commendable endeavour, many members of this forum were deeply committed to this purpose, Yin26 to name one.

Then anyone is his own master and free to decide how to make use of his bug knowledge.
In single player.

Boasting about your skill in spotting bugs doesn't deserve you the right to transform it into a legal practice.
In the PBEM community it would obviously be rejected and blemished as a major CHEAT, thus not allowed in challenges.

We were not aware of this bug, we are thus grateful to you to have helped us in spotting it.

posted 06-21-99 01:53 PM ET            

looks like I forgot to add in something to my previous statement -

I think with this knowledge, my current record of fastest conquest could soon be re-written, easily.

posted 06-21-99 05:03 PM ET            

Rimmer's a jerk, but it still is a cheat if it works. I've figured out far more tactics on my own (that I haven't shared on this board, since I'm heavily into PBEMs) than I've ever gotten from the board. What I've gotten from the board (as far as game tactics goes) is (a) entertainment and (b) cheats like this I never would have discovered, since I look for real ways to win, not cheats - a perfect example is the SE and supply crawler manipulation to artificially load up SP's. I'd never even thought to try it, since it is so obviously bogus.

I stomped the AI at Transcend/Ironman numerous times before I ever made my first post here, and I have yet to lose a single city to anyone human or AI, for any reason, with ONE exception - I had a single mindworm hit a just founded colony pod before the scout unit was active the next turn. You don't need to rely on cheats to excel at the game.

posted 06-22-99 01:10 AM ET            

It's just that some of us here are so grave about the whole thing that not even a slight remark made in jest can be made down here.

posted 06-22-99 04:33 AM ET            

Seriously, I didn't catch that you said 2272 - I thought you said 2172, or I would have assumed you were joking, or hadn't conquered much. I find building more fun, and seeing how well I can get along with planet, so I've only played conquer games just to play around with the techniques.

I don't know if you played CivII at all, but when I got SMAC, I just started at the middle level, realized how much of the game worked the same as CivII, and stomped the game at Thinker, then went to Transcend. Starting position has more to do with it than skill, though, as far as the speed of conquest.

So I make up some fun contests in SP play - conquer the world with only a dozen ground units, besides garrison infantry. Ships and needlejets are allowed, but no helos, or only 2. The trick is that any of the dozen ground units lost isn't allowed to be replaced, nor are the helos. So if you lose them, they are gone forever.

posted 06-22-99 05:28 AM ET            

The funny is, I always thought the fourm was full of nervous guys, incapable to understand the sarcasm w/out seeing a smiley and too ready to jump at each other's throat, and here I go as the dumbest of morons the first time I lower my focus (lot of stress with my new home connection already stuttering).

The sad thing is, I was easily mislead coz I'm sure for 1 like you there are 10 around here that would have posted that line without sarcasm.

More, I only seldom indulge in keeping lectures (when I forget to bite my tongue b4 ), this time I should have let the thing settle in my mind b4 answering.

And "grave", c'mon, you maybe read me making fool of myself a lot in these forums, I just want to have fun, and playing with cheaters will spoil that fun, that's all .

posted 06-22-99 06:34 AM ET            

I would readily apologize for any misunderstandings caused here.
SMAC is a great game and it deserves all the respect and defintely not unnecessary arguments, though there's still lotsa room for improvement.

I'm a relatively young gamer, and yes, I did try out CIV II but not liking it as much as Centauri now. I like to find out as much as possible about a game and hope to learn something from it too (you know, role-playing games that tell about yourself). If I can't complete a game at the hardest possible, and logical manner, I deemed myself as never having completed it at all.

In A. Centauri, the first time I play was the quick start tutorial. Next, I played the UoP on transcend ironman. I just don't want bad habits to creep up on me (underestimation comes when you thought victory is so sweet and easy). So don't worry about that coz I would never try to make my life easy - except in real life :p - let alone bugs. If one beats the other in a fair fight, the former would deserve all due respect and praise.

posted 06-22-99 12:49 PM ET            

However, try this on for size, Builders . . .

Take this knowledge and couple it with knowledge about automating formers (the silly programming that makes "automate former" work like crap, but "autoimprove homebase" work okay). When my infrastructure is established but my stupid pact bro's and sis's don't even have ROADS, I send a couple of clean superformers to their bases. Now I could just give them away, but I don't trust the scaly bums. And I sure don't want to micromanage my bases and theirs as well. So I "home" it with the bug and have the unit "autoimprove homebase". When it runs out of things to do, I lather rinse repeat.

posted 06-22-99 03:59 PM ET            

I am still hacking and slashing my way through the lower levels and expect to get quite a few game hours out of this game without the cheats.