Tips for replacing obsolete units?

Nethog · #1 February 11th, 2002, 11:38 PM

Does anyone have any tips for dealing with the management of obsolete units? I mean, If I have several dozen planets with old weapons patforms, and hundreds of obsolete satellites, fighters, and mines stored on planets, carriers, or floating around space, as well as several construction queues with scheduled builds for obsolete units, how the heck do you keep with replacing existing units or queued units with the latest designs? (I mean short of painful micromagement of all units)

Hopefully SEIV Gold has new functionality to address this.

Nethog

geoschmo · #2 February 11th, 2002, 11:51 PM

Well, you can jettison them. One click and they are history.

Mines and sats that have been launched can be self destructed. I think fighters and sats can be scrapped if they are in orbit of a planet with a space yard. Fighters in space can also be landed on a planet and then jettisoned. fighters can be fired on and destroyed I think. I know you can if there are other ships in the same sector, not sure about if it's just one lanrge fighter group.

Geo

Q · #3 February 12th, 2002, 11:39 AM

I use them as cannon-fodder: transport it to a place where you expect an enemy attack. They will absorb some damage even if they will not be effective to do damage themselves.

Val · #4 February 13th, 2002, 02:47 AM

I use the troops as garrison troops on my less valuable worlds. I games where I have TONS of troops I will keep the outdated guys in transports that move along with my planet conquering fleets and use them to garrison the planet until new troops are built.

Nethog · #5 February 13th, 2002, 08:11 PM

Thanks for the comments - there were some good ideas mentioned that will help me. An observation however: no-one seemed to offer an overall strategy that helps minimize the tedious micromanagement of units upgrading stemming from unit obsolescence. I still think the game should have additional functionality to make retrofitting units easier, something like the "upgrade facilities" button in the Construction Queues window. If I placed 1000 Kt of Weapons Platforms on a planet with 2000 Kt cargo capacity, I should be able to "retrofit" the weapons platform to a new design without having to jettison the WPs, and re-build them. Doing this for an occasional single planet is no big deal but when I am trying to keep 50 planets updated it becomes a tedious task - and I LIKE micromangement, but not this kind of tedious stuff. I would also like to be able to "update" the units on all construction queues to use a new more advanced design without having to delete them and add the new design.

Am I the only one who feels this way or are there others that agree?

Egregius · #6 February 13th, 2002, 09:51 PM

Well as general strategy I usually make sure I have a lot of planets defendable with a few key points, and I put all mines/fighters/sattelites at those keypoints. I also build some WPFs and troops on the other planets, and keep obsolete fighters/sats as extra backup def on them.

Usually all that's good for is population happyness (troops, any troop will do) and ease of mind (well even obsolete wpfs can do some damage).

I only upgrade planets 'at the front' or in systems with possible enemies, and the rest I upgrade only once or twice a game.

Why scrap obsolete sats/fighters anyway except when you forgot to put the units limit up?

Baron Munchausen · #7 February 14th, 2002, 12:21 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Nethog:
Thanks for the comments - there were some good ideas mentioned that will help me. An observation however: no-one seemed to offer an overall strategy that helps minimize the tedious micromanagement of units upgrading stemming from unit obsolescence. I still think the game should have additional functionality to make retrofitting units easier, something like the "upgrade facilities" button in the Construction Queues window. If I placed 1000 Kt of Weapons Platforms on a planet with 2000 Kt cargo capacity, I should be able to "retrofit" the weapons platform to a new design without having to jettison the WPs, and re-build them. Doing this for an occasional single planet is no big deal but when I am trying to keep 50 planets updated it becomes a tedious task - and I LIKE micromangement, but not this kind of tedious stuff. I would also like to be able to "update" the units on all construction queues to use a new more advanced design without having to delete them and add the new design.

Am I the only one who feels this way or are there others that agree?

Yes, I've been complaining about the problem of obsolete WPs since before the game was released. I think that MM considers the non-upgradability of units to be a 'balancing' factor for their lack of maintenance cost. It seems unlikely that anything will ever be done to allow them to be upgraded. If we can persuade him to allow units in planetary cargo to be scrapped that will at least make the problem manageable. Right now, you have no choice but to jettison old WPs and troops.

[ 14 February 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Wardad · #8 February 14th, 2002, 01:34 AM

Upgrading WPs could help the AI. If the AI is coded for it and if some control of it could be scripted in AI files.

There is one MOD (Zippys?) that doesn't allow the AI to do what its not good at, like build WPs.

Mephisto · #9 February 14th, 2002, 03:54 PM

Who said that the AI was not good at building weapon platforms? If you make a good design_creation.txt you will have very good AI weapon platforms that can bLast entire fleets out of the sky (especially after they gain +6 range and +80% to hit with gold

).

Wardad · #10 February 15th, 2002, 06:01 PM

Does the AI scrap and replace the WP???? It seems to max out and stop on the smaller planets.

I ravaged some AI opponents with cloaked Avenger BCs containing Level 5 Plague, armor, shields, repair, solar, and PD. Great against undefended planets or ones with older WPs. One of these wipe out all of the smaller pop planets in 7 systems.