Looking for a couple of players to try a map

[Earthmichael]

All land PSI attackers get a 3/2 (50%) bonus to attack.   Even my weakest attacker had overall odds of 6/5 against your worm, even though your worm had higher morale, and my stronger attacker had a larger margin in his favor.   Land PSI attack favors that attacker (except when you add trance to your unit), which then just balances the defense.  Since mindworms can't get trance defenses, they are relatively weak on the defense, until you get a secret project that increases all PSI defenses by 50%.  Defenders can also take advantage of defense terrain modifiers as well, but unless you have rocky or forest or city going for you defensively, the defensive terrain modifier is not going to be much help.

[roninscg]

Thanks for explanation 

[Earthmichael]

I tried to get a screenshot for you from my latest turn, but I was unable to screenshot the dialog box.  So I just wrote down some info.

The first attack of this turn was 45-32.  The dialog box looked something like this:

1-2-2    ?-?-1
PSI 3    PSI 2
VG       Boil
-25%    0%
Strength: 2.20    2.0
Power: 10    8

The second attack was 45-28, I did not write down the details.

But the main thing is that the PSI for the Attacker is 3, and PSI for the Defender is 2.  Even the better morale only made up for 25%, so the attacker still had a strong advantage.

 

[roninscg]

Good to know, I have not played with PSI units too often,
I will not make similar mistakes in future games.

[Earthmichael]

I think PSI units are too expensive to make, so I only use them if I capture them.  But I try to make sure I have some way to avoid having my opponent strike back on the attack if possible.  Usually, this is not possible, so I try to make stealthy first strikes against relatively isolated units, to avoid the counterstrike.  Because PSI units cannot be made Trance, they are actually weaker on the defense than an ordinary Trance scout or Speeder, which gets a 50% defensive boost because of Trance.  Still, all that does is help offset the normal 50% bonus for PSI attackers, so that the PSI attack is more or less on a 1 to 1 rather than 3 to 2 footing.  Of course, my units suffer from low morale because of Wealth, so they lose 25% penalty to morale (very green verses a normal boil), but even with the 25% morale loss, the 50% attack bonus still gives an overall 25% bonus to my units on attack, so they will most often win, despite the 25% lower morale.

On the defensive, my Trance units will still get a 50% bonus to defense, but if it is one of my low morale (very green) units, it will still most likely lose on the defense as long as the attacking unit has higher morale.  Because the 50% trance bonus nullifies the 50% attacker bonus, and makes it mostly just a morale vs morale battle (unless my defender happens to be sitting on Rocky ground or a Forest which will give another 50% boost to the defense.  But if my very green Trance unit is attacked on ordinary terrain by a higher morale unit, the attacker will still probably win.  Which is why I try to have at least pairs or more for mutual defense.  Because then even if I lose, the pair unit will most likely be able to counterattack and win.  Also, with a speeder, even if I lose, the speeder can sometimes withdraw and I can still escape with the damaged unit.  All in all, I find PSI units most useful for the stealthy assault of non-combat or lone combat units, just like when you wiped out my colony pod and 3-4 terraformers a single stealthy blow.   If not for this attack, I would be close to settling a colony at the borehole cluster by now.

I just hope I weakened your forces enough that it will take awhile to recruit more mindworms for another attack like that.

 

[ete]

Excellent, good to see some skirmishes working . ronin, are you transferring control of your worms to non-native factions once your capture rate goes down? I'm pretty sure the largest factor in capture rate is number of natives owned by the faction, so constantly transferring units to a different faction should allow you to harvest worms at maximum efficiency (though the worms would be a bit weaker in combat due to being owned by a lower Planet score faction).

And EM, I bet you're having to spend a bit more attention on preparing for future attacks than you're used to? Or perhaps still focusing almost entirely on building, expecting native to be handled by a few rovers?

Note: I've not looked at any saves yet so am not revealing any info.


How are you both feeling about the rush distance so far?

[Earthmichael]

I had not really thought about the implications of the path through the Ruins.  Until the sneak attack, I had not thought about this as a shortcut, but for native life, it certainly is a shortcut, though for the Rovers, following this path would be a long journey compared to just looping around the river at the east end of the map.

This shortcut was the reason my advance scouts did not see any opposition, other than a single Hive scout, which disappeared the turn after I found him.  I was more expecting Hive opposition than the Prophets attack.

I think there is something wrong with the crash site.  I don't think anything is there.  I will finish exploring every square of the crash site in the next two turns, and so far, I have discovered nothing.  I thought I would find SOMETHING at the crash site, I thought that was why we were racing to get there.  It could be that the scenario needs something to link the crash site into possible finds to operate properly; this is not the first time I have explored a crash site in a custom scenario and found nothing.  But in the map of Planet, the crash site always gives some kind of rewards: a Unity chopper, some energy, a mining  laser, comm frequencies, always something.

I have built a LOT of defensive units, which are costing me quite a bit of support, since we have not had time to research clean reactors yet.  But the single mine near the ambush site yields 7 minerals per turn if I can protect it, so that pays for up to 7 units right there.

I figure on rebuilding and making another run for the borehole cluster at some point.  I figure the Ruins belongs as a bonus to the native player.  I am not going to try to reach or hold a site completely surround by fungus like the Ruins.

My only question is what percentage of the native player forces I eliminated, and how long it will take to troll fungus to build them back up with new recruits again.  I feel optimistic about my position, but that may be based on ignorance of how quickly the native army can rebuild.

[ete]

The sneak attack path through the ruins is indeed a bonus for the native players, nice to hear it's working as intended.

The crash site not working may be due to ronin getting there before you (quite likely with early worms), or it may be a bug (perhaps due to altered altitude or some other factor). I'll look into it when home/have free time.

mhm, lots of defenders is pretty much required with a possible attack coming. Those big resource squares are important, like the rest of the fertile terrain, it'll be interesting to see how much of your resources it takes to maintain defenses, and whether you'll have enough to take and hold the borehole cluster area and more importantly the nexus.

Native users can rebuild armies extremely quickly, but only if they have a small number of native units at a time. This means that collecting natives from near the site of battle is critical, and keeping a handful of forces back from each attack to catch the next wave is important. I'm not sure how carefully ronin has been doing this, but if he's playing right you could have another ambush or full attack on your hands in only a handful of turns.

[Earthmichael]

Ronin,  in the interest of scenario debugging, have you already visited the crash site?   If so, did you get anything?

I am just asking because I am exploring the crash site now, thinking I was first, and surprised not to find anything.  But if you already visited the crash site, that would explain why I can't find anything.

[roninscg]

Ronin,  in the interest of scenario debugging, have you already visited the crash site?   If so, did you get anything?

I am just asking because I am exploring the crash site now, thinking I was first, and surprised not to find anything.  But if you already visited the crash site, that would explain why I can't find anything.

I have not been to the crash site.

Native users can rebuild armies extremely quickly, but only if they have a small number of native units at a time. This means that collecting natives from near the site of battle is critical, and keeping a handful of forces back from each attack to catch the next wave is important. I'm not sure how carefully ronin has been doing this, but if he's playing right you could have another ambush or full attack on your hands in only a handful of turns.

which parameters you use for natural/alien life forms?
I ran on only four worms and only one i catch. With CD

Path through the ruins is very good for natural units, however the exit i.e entrance is too tight is easy to watch.
 

[roninscg]

How are you both feeling about the rush distance so far?

in my view distance is ok if you take into consideration that I play with Gaia, CD, I think that is too large for some other faction, is difficult to do some rash and keep the pressure on bilder enemy.
 however If the map is designed for a reason that the battle takes place around the borehole cluster than distance is ok. :-)
I look from strategic side.

p.s. sorry for my bad english :-)

[Earthmichael]

 

[roninscg]

 

[Earthmichael]

Is our game set on Dense Alien Life?

I have had two spontaneous native mindworm attacks coming from different random squares.  I am used to the idea of finding "hidden" mindworms when I move through fungus; I am not so used to native mindworms just appearing out of nowhere and wiping out my units, especially when I am not generating any ecodamage yet, so they are not due to a fungal pop.

So far, the native mindworms have done almost as much as Prophet's directed mindworms.

To 

[roninscg]

 

too bad I have not found them