Miriam makes me shiver

[bvanevery]

I discovered Digital Sentience.  I thought that was odd for an Explore focus, but I suppose my tech foci has been all over the place, and my prereqs are fairly broad.  I rushed the Robotic Assembly Plant under construction in my capitol, and the next turn began The Network Backbone.  I was going to wait until that completed before going Cybernetc, but then for some reason I happened to look at my social choices screen.  I was reminded that the Consciousness doesn't suffer any penalties from a Cybernetic society because it's a rational choice.   So cybergal I am now!

AFAICT my research bonus is maxed now.  I think +5 Research would max it, but I don't know of a way to get a +1 Research bonus or -1 penalty as a human.  An Alien could get a +1 bonus from the Manifold Nexus, but I am not.  I've got +5 Efficiency now, but it only changed the happiness balance in 1 of my cities, so I don't think Bureaucracy was my problem.  I still need population growth so I don't see any reason to change my other settings.

[bvanevery]

I have researched Super Tensile Solids.  It wasn't nearly as hard to get as I thought.  First I switched to Conquer focus to get the Neutronium prereq, then I switched to Build focus.  Now I can make Hab Domes and The Space Elevator.  I'm not sure what to research next.  I guess it would be good to have some Orbital Defense Pods?

My rail across the north pole is nearing completion.  Once it is done, I want to start raising land in the ocean west of my capitol.  That will be the last profitable economic zone in the vicinity of my capitol, I think.  Not enough time or incentive in the game to do more than that.

It probably wouldn't be that difficult to Transcend in this game, if I want to.  I'm not sure what exactly I want to do to win.  The other factions are so pathetic, I don't hear a peep out of them.  I'm not sure they fight each other all that much either.  Maybe I could pave them all into a big tectonic land mass so they can kill each other?

[bvanevery]

A solar flare destroyed all 16 of my Orbital Power Transmitters.  It would have also destroyed my Orbital Defense Pods if I'd had any, but I don't have that technology yet.  The flare left my Sky Hydroponics Labs alone.  I've overbuilt those, I don't actually have any cities that are size 25 yet.  But it may not be long, as I'm noticing my capitol is size 24 now.

Miriam has been bugging me a tiny bit.  She sunk a worthless sea former.  I sent a Penetrator to sink her ship, and it did, but for some weird reason it immediately ran out of fuel.  I think sometimes when you put a Penetrator back in a base, there's a weird bug where the fuel usage doesn't actually get reset.  The workaround seems to be to activate the unit and hit spacebar to end its movement, but I didn't notice the low fuel so didn't do that.  It had been sitting in base several turns, it shouldn't have been out of fuel.  I could have replayed the turn but I didn't, as it's less work to build a new one sometime.

Not like Miriam makes any great threats anyways.  She also strafed a simple Former working on a Mine.  I've been using those original Former units forever to work on Mines, because I don't care if they actually complete or not.  She has rarely strafed them.  A single Interceptor would probably take care of the problem, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

I've completed The Space Elevator.  I could do orbital drops to pick up pods now.  However, a fair number of the remaining pods are in oceanic waters fairly easy to access by ship.  I've been doing so with 1 ship and 1 rover, which has netted me a gaggle of independent mindworms in the process.  I did find an Artifact or two.  I suppose I'll consider dropping onto pods deep behind enemy lines, if there are any left, but building Flechette Missile Defenses and new Orbital Power Transmitters are higher priority.  Nobody's actually lobbed a missile at me yet, but I've seen the Pirates making them, and I don't want them coming my way.

I'm soon to complete The Cloning Vats.  I won't be needing to push excess colonists around anymore, except to found new cities.  I'm not presently motivated to do so, but the lands I've raised to the west of my capitol are now quite substantial.  They're crinkly water passage looking things.  I can't call them fijords because they don't have much altitude.  I find myself compelled to link with further land masses to the west, such as contain the Ruins and the Manifold Nexus.  I've been raising land arond the Nexus for some time now, so it's on a much bigger island than it was, but an eastern link has eluded me due to the water improvements I made earlier.

I have this 1 sea base surrounded by hostile neighbors, that doesn't have much in the way of tile improvements around it and is pretty pathetic.  I've devised a new unit to try to change the situation: the Neutronium Super Former Submarine.  Hopefully hard to detect, and difficult to kill even if detected.  I've already got a Neutronium surface vessel working the tiles, it just went into service and isn't in the main danger area yet, so my jury's out on how well armored Formers perform.

I don't really need to remove fungus at sea anymore.  I've got Centauri Psi and get 2-1-1 from fungus squares now.  That wouldn't be ok in pure fungus waters, but all of my sea bases are longstanding and have mostly cleared, developed water tiles.  I don't need to remove fungus around my cities on land either, because frankly there isn't any.  I do remove fungus when building rails, even though frankly now I don't have to.  Force of habit.  Keeps mindworms from showing up when I move troops around.  My Planet rating is +3 so it's not so likely to happen, and I might capture them even if I did, but eh.  Maybe I just want an excuse to use my Fungicidal Formers for what I designed them for?

Lots of things I do at this point in the game don't matter.  I am an artiste!

[bvanevery]

Neutronium fusion Sea Former armor works really well against fission missiles!  The attacking Believer ship summarily sunk, hardly scratching my Former.  Note the actual ship on the extreme right of the screen, half cut off.  This happened between turns so I had to think fast about taking a screenshot.

And that's only the fusion generation: I just got quantum drive.  I'm thinking a fleet of Clean Submarine Pulse Neutronium Transports could completely smother all those sea bases south of me.  Or maybe they could be Sea Crawlers and I'd take the resources from those tiles.  I will experiment.

I guess there's a risk that if I did use quantum drives, and the Pirates ever successfully attacked one, they could gain quantum and neutronium capability.  But I suspect it would only be for that 1 unit type.  I haven't noticed the Pirates designing new units on the basis of technology they've captured.  Especially: the AI does not know how to make ship based probe teams.

Next turn I will complete The Cloning Vats.  I'm at work on The Universal Translator.  My research focus is still Conquer.  I'm still trying to gain Orbital Defense Pod capability.

Maybe I should look at Nessus Mining Stations as well.  I can't remember the last time I built one, maybe in some ancient game a decade ago?  I just don't typically need minerals at this stage of the game.  When reading the archives today, I learned some interesting things about their eco-damage behavior, according to Yitzi.  Says they don't inherently increase eco-damage, they're exempt.  However, when factories increase minerals output, they are not exempt.  I'm not sure how much difference that really makes, since I have Robotic Assembly Plants in every city.

I might be able to handle a lot more minerals.  I currently have +3 Planet and could go to +5 if I go Green.  Once I have The Cloning Vats, I don't need Planned for growth anymore.  For that matter I could blow off being Democratic.  Democratic Planned and Police State Green have equivalent efficiency, it's the severe growth penalty that has kept me from making that choice.  I'd increase support and lose an Industry bonus.  Well, I'll think about it.  Nobody will care that I'm a Police State.  Cha Dawn may start to like me if I'm Green, not that I care what he wants.  The Aliens haven't liked me anyways even though I'm Planned.  Maybe I'll try talking to everyone again, now that I'm so much obviously stronger.  See who's got some sense.

[Geo]

That's still alot of inhabited islands.

[bvanevery]

Meaning what, that I should be worried about something?  Nobody's done hardly a thing to me.  I could build 1 Quantum Neutronium Former to finish mining where I got 1 old Former strafed before.

I've discovered that a sea supply crawler by itself will not blockade resources.  At least in the sense that, it can't extract resources from a tile that is already in use.  It could set up on an unused tile and prevent those resources from being used in the future.  I'm hoping that by accompanying the sea crawler with something else, I can block resources temporarily, then use the sea crawler to block them permanently.  Mabye a simple transport will do.  That would be best, as it would be a tactic even a Free Market economy could use.  Although, I just went Police State Green so it's not actually my problem.  Anyways, yep, the tile can be temporarily blocked with something as simple as a plane flying overhead.  That'll work fine near my coast for now.

I've got Nanohospital and Quantum Lab capability, but I'm not building them except in my capitol.  I'm very far ahead on tech.  I'm building a lot of Orbital Power Transmitters to replace the ones I lost.  I've learned that The Space Elevator will mislead you as to your city's mineral output when building a satellite.  It doubles the amount of minerals your city says it produces when doing that, but if you build anything else, your minerals goes back down to normal.

As long as I'm posting, here's what the western lands look like now.  It's a bit pointless and obsessive, but I don't have anything else I need to do with my Formers, so why not.  Notice all the chunks of minerals that rose out of the sea that I didn't want to disturb, that caused me to change course and build in a different direction.  I generally try to preserve the topology of the water so that I don't make my land impassable to ships.  I'm pretty obsessvie about succeeding at that.  Maybe I should just consider lowering some land sometime instead of always raising it.

[bvanevery]

I finally connected the Manifold Nexus to my mainland.  I've got another team of Formers coming from the east, so the connection will be in 2 directions, forming a giant loop!

I finally researched Orbital Defense Pods and am starting to throw them up in the air.  I'm not sure I'll make any Nessus Mining Stations, as 2 of my bases that have piles of minerals are now doing a small amount of eco-damage.  Currently I have them building Secret Projects, but when they are done I'll have them build Centauri Preserves.

[bvanevery]

I have completed the big rail loop through the Manifold Nexus.  I continue to compulsively link islands throughout an unoccupied ocean, as I really don't need my Formers for anything else.  I did make a couple of heavily armored Formers which I'm using to finish a few tiles on my mainland.  The Quantum engine ones were invulnerable enough, and now I have Singularity engines.

I've launched 19 Orbital Defense Pods, 25 Orbital Power Transmitters, and 25 Sky Hydroponics Labs.  My capitol is my largest city with a population of 36, so I still have some expansion room before these satellites no longer benefit me.  To be honest though, the drill of launching more and more satellites is pretty boring.    At least I've turned off "Golden Age" notifications so that it takes fewer mouseclicks during the maintenance section of a turn.

I've completed piles of Secret Projects.  It's mostly not interesting, because I already have umpteen zillion advantages and don't need more advantages.  At this point it's collecting gewgaws and blocking other players from ever building a SP.  I think the last time a player was able to challenge me on a SP was eons ago.  I think the Believers had the temerity to start The Neural Amplifier as I was finishing it.

I completed Clinical Immortality.  With the voting bonus I finally have enough to win a Diplomatic Victory.  If only the Caretakers and Usurpers were out of the game.  So it looks like I'll either transcend or do a leveraged buyout.  My money is coming awfully fast now, but I'm not sure I want to keep building satellites until I finally win.  Bor-ring!

My blockade against the Believers using armored sea crawlers is starting to work.  One of her cities is starving and won't have any minerals much longer.  Funny, this isn't an atrocity, even though it has a similar effect.  Not terribly Geneva Convention that's for sure.  Pretty much like slaughtering buffalo.

What has stopped me from committing atrocities this game?  Inconvenience?  I think I've had this naive idea that someday, someone will want to be my friend again.  You'd think Cha Dawn might, given how long I've been Green now, but she ignores my transmissions.  If I bring a probe team next to one of her units, will she suddenly talk?  Granted it's a transport at sea, next to my giant rail line.  Trying the experiment now.  Nope, that didn't work.  Well, I have had a Fusion Cruiser Probe Team sitting around at the Manifold Nexus forever.  Let's see if I can sail it to her and force some repartee.

I can't believe some of these fool factions still have the nerve to ask me for money.  They haven't done a thing to me all game, and surely they must realize by now that I could crush anyone at a whim?  Maybe they know I'm human and bored of playing this game!   

[PvtHudson]

Impressive homestead. Indeed, playing to the point when no one could challenge you either militarily, or economically, or at least cause you some trouble, is an entertainment for a few, call them 'gardeners'. Time to up the difficulty? Say, play Aki with -2 growth? Or 1-2-0 forests? Or give Progenitors free Nerve gas pods at High-energy chemistry? Throw in Antimind to hone a different tactic? Only probe-steal techs from enemy bases with Network nodes? Choppers with shortened range? I've found out those (someone could suggest more) changes which curtail features that benefit you more than AI can substantially prolong rivalry period of the game. If you survive the start, it is. Once again thank you for the effort to put here these AARs with all those handy screenshots.

[bvanevery]

I'm not sure what I really want out of the game now.  "Challenge" isn't strictly speaking the correct word.  At least, I don't want the kind of challenge where I find new excuses to tediously wade through piles and piles of enemy units.  Or piles and piles of gratuitous mouseclicks, which is what my satellite making feels like.  Maybe I need to turn off notifications for satellites completed, although sometimes I could swear that the queue has forgotten I was making a satellite, has gone to "stockpile energy" and needs me to assign something to do.  I wonder if it relates to running out of unit slots?  I suppose I could turn off auto-designing units now.  Everything offered is stupid nowadays anyways.

I settled the Ruins for laughs.  And the big joke is, now I get more productivity out of plain fungus than I do out of Monoliths!  Go figure.

I have not bothered to make drop units to pick up the last few pods in enemy territory.  Instead, I'm sending out an antimatter plated submarine transport.  It will rendezvous with the simple silksteel transport that's been tooling around in the unoccupied ocean all this time, and pick up the recon rover that I've been using for the pod popping.  Then we'll head deep into enemy territory.  I suppose a flaw in the plan is the rover can't offer protection if I actually do find an Artifact, but then again nothing can, from a conventional missile attack at least.  Last time around, I just sat there for 1 turn vulnerable and nothing attacked me.  So hopefully my luck holds, but I've seen games where Artifacts get the missile.

I built The Singularity Inductor.  A number of my cities now need to make Centauri Preserves to clean up minor eco-damage.  My biggest minerals producing city was boosted enough that it's producing 17 eco-damage, even with a Temple of Planet.  It's got 7 mines, that's just how the terrain got raised once upon a time.  Hey I'm happy if Planet wants to add some fungus around it.  Instead of a 0-4-0 mine I'd get a 3-4-5 fungal patch, it's actually an improvement!  But I cannot bring myself to gratuitously plant fungus.  I spent so much time manually improving every single tile, and culturally, I still don't trust the fungus.

I have The Voice of Planet available now, so I could win the game.  However I actually find transcendance a rather depressing ending for humanity, as I think it probably entails the destruction of individuality, in favor of some kind of hive mind.  So I don't think I will do that, unless I just get so bored that I want this game over at all cost.  What will I do instead?  I could corner the energy market, as my satellites are producing mad money now.  My current income is 2900 per turn, and without Secret Projects to finish with cash, I don't have anything to spend that on.  I'm not ready for "yep you have to end the game" though.  I feel like something is missing, that there's something more I need to do here.

I think the stasis of all the other factions bugs me a lot.  They haven't shifted their basic political boundaries this entire game!  The Spartans just took a base from Cha Dawn, that's about it.  I wonder what would happen if I changed my politics so that all the humans like me?  If I want even Miriam to like me, I guess I'd have to go Frontier Green Power Cybernetic.  I'd lose my +3 Police rating, which actually isn't important in my own bases anymore.  I'd keep my +4 Support, which is good since my bases are so huge, effectively meaning I don't have to ever produce Clean anything.  I could go Thought Control instead of Cybernetic, essentially trading Efficiency for Police.  Do I want to implement my will with Probe Teams?  I already have kickass probe team capability due to my SPs.

Well, first let's even see if Cha Dawn can be reasoned with.  Next turn my destroyer probe team will actually make contact with her.  Of course nowadays I can offer some pretty stupendous bribes to get my way.

What will I do with the aliens?  I find I desire to set them up to kill each other.  They will probably do a bad job of it though, and I'm not sure that gets me to winning the game.  I do not find myself relishing the idea of exterminating them.  If nothing else, it would take a lot of mouseclicks.  I've played many other games where I've been there, done that.  I mean, I could have exterminated everyone in this game a long time ago.  Why now?

[bvanevery]

I've completed the tech tree.  So, I switched from Knowledge to Power in the hope of making friends with the Pirates and the Spartans.  I don't pay any industry penalty because I have The Cloning Vats, but I do lose 1 Efficiency.  It increases my Support so I can afford to not be a Police State anymore.  That will also get me 2 more Efficiency.  Going Frontier will hopefully placate Miriam.

Although, I don't know what hope to really hold out.  Cha Dawn wouldn't speak when I came up with my cruiser probe team.  So I infiltrated her base and left.  Maybe I have to conquer a city to get her attention?  I wonder.

The fastest way of getting the Caretakers and Usurpers fighting each other would be with a spread of Tectonic Missiles, perhaps followed by some road work.  I've made a "Missile Submarine" to deliver them.  Hey, worked for the Cold War.

I've switched my economy to 70-20-10 because I don't need research anymore.  I've got the labs and I believe extra tech increases one's score, but I don't really care about that, so I will minimize it.

I forgot that I've had an Artifact sitting on an island for awhile, because it was covered by my mindworms.  Oops!  Well I'll put it in a museum somewhere.  I actually sorta enjoy watching shiny bald headed Artifacts zoom around on my rail lines.  However, my rail line hasn't reached this particular island yet.  I keep making rails, although I don't bother clearing fungus anymore, I build the rails right through the fungal patches.

I completed The Bulk Matter Transmitter.  That raised my minerals output rather seriously and is causing substantial eco-damage.  Consequently, most cities are now building Centauri Preserves, and many cities are building Temples of Planet.  I hope it is enough.  I actually haven't had any fungal pops so far, nor mindworms appearing.  I wonder if that's because I went pretty eco-friendly early in the game and never had any serious risk of flooding?  Well, I'm not going to undo all my careful terraforming work now.  That would be for the next game, drowning everyone with the Pirates.

I never built a Nessus Mining station.  At this point it would be ecological suicide.  Yitzi says that base minerals from satellites don't impose eco-damage, but minerals from factory output bonuses do.  I've got a Robotic Assembly Plant in every city, and The Singularity Inductor puts a free Quantum Converter in every city.  I've never built Nanoreplicators or Genejack Factories.  Perhaps the game designers didn't expect 1 faction to build all of these minerals boosting things.

My simple 1 movement Formers from the ancient days, I've got on tree planting duty.  Maybe it'll help with eco-damage.  I could sell off my Robotic Assembly Plants, but I don't want to.  Planet might fix everything with a few fungal pops, and I haven't ever launched a Solar Shade.

What am I supposed to do with 4000 credits?  And that's just this turn.  My income is now 5000 credits per turn.  I have 32 Sky Hydroponics Labs and 36 Orbital Power Transmitters.  My capitol is size 38 and actually uses all of that.

I just tried talking to everyone again.  I don't care how rich I am, there's no way I'm paying Svensgaard or Santiago for making war with me.  Svensgaard says he's got a Planet Buster, so I think I will buy whatever cities he's got those in and deprive him of his arsennal.  Sort of take on a UN Peacekeeper disarmament role.  Then we'll see if he's ready to make amends.

Ironically, I've never built a nuke, and only next turn will I finally produce one.  Mine is, ah, bigger than theirs.

Meergard here I come, baby.  He's got his 1 nuke there, although he has 2 more in slow-as-molasses production.  I hope a submarine probe team escapes detection.  If not, I hope the Stasis Generator armor actually matters.  It may not.  If not, I suppose I'll need an armored escort.  I tried to make some kind of exotic useful orbital insertion unit, but probe teams can't be amphibious, nor can they have a gravship chassis.  I [/i]could[/i] drop some Formers from orbit, instantly raise Meergard onto land, and thereby make it trivial to take over.  Or I could just wait until my Missile Submarine gets close enough and drop a Tectonic Missile next to it.  Hmm, meditating...

The islands next to Meergard, actually have pods on them.  That's a good excuse to put drop units in the area.  Even if I don't need Artifacts anymore, I'd like to put them in a trophy case somewhere.  Like maybe special "Artifact Parks" on the map, with defensive units to keep them from being stolen.

I've designed the Super Drop Former, and the Drop Probe Team with antigrav movement boost.  Drop transports don't turn out to be all that effective as they can only carry 1 unit.  I only really need a drop transport if there's an Artifact to pick up.  Actually if I'm taking over a city soon enough, then I don't even need that.  The probe team, I'll have next turn.  I'll be able to produce 4 Formers in 2 turns, which is enough for raising.  I've got so many cities tied up with other tasks that I can only produce so much right now.

Just realized my tactic would be thwarted by enemy Aerospace Complexes.  Fortunately, Meergard doesn't have one!

[bvanevery]

For some reason I couldn't drop my probe team on the pod next to Meergard.  Maybe there's a hidden unit nearby that's exerting a zone of control.  I was able to drop it on the other pod on the island, and this yielded an Artifact.  So now I'm exposed, but at least we're in the fungus and Pirate Seige doesn't seem to be able to see us.  Soon we may find out if armor on a probe team means anything.

I've switched to Frontier, netting me +6 Efficiency.  I'm down to +1 Police which lets me use 2 police units.  To be honest none of my cities really need police anymore.  They never did; I just didn't want a Support penalty from Democracy anymore.  I think I will keep Cybernetic, as I think the efficiency is worth more than the benefits of Thought Control.  And I certainly don't need any Eudaimonic money!

I'm still starving Miriam's coastal city, so she would do well to talk to me and make a Treaty.  But she's still ignoring my transmissions.  I'm beginning to sink a Caretaker base in the region, using my heavily armored Sea Formers that have nothing better to do right now.  That's only costing me 151 credits.  Sometimes the sinking costs are prohibitive but not in this case.  This base is pretty darned far from the Caretaker capitol, if that's a factor.

Oops, I was next to a sea energy resource when I started that sinking.  I'm worried that if I lower the ocean it will ruin the adjacent sea resource.  I should do an experiment on that somewhere, with a less precious resource like a nutrient.  Not like you don't get nutrients out of the sea, lol.  I cancelled my sinking.  I'll move over 1 square next turn and start again.

[bvanevery]

For some reason when I moved over 1 square and started lowering, the base instantly got lowered that turn.  Unfortunately the base had a Pressure Dome, although it did seem to diminish to size 1.  I will look at the interior of the base more carefully next time.  Could it be that an Alien faction automatically gets a Pressure Dome when a base sinks?  That wouldn't be much fun for trying to drown them.

I found the problem with my orbital insertion.  The square I wanted to land on had a fungal stalk on it, and I couldn't see that from orbit.  Also one cannot land next to a fungal stalk.  I discovered that when popping the other pod on the island with my probe team, which yielded a Monolith.  No problem, my probe team will guide the Formers in next turn and Meergard will be mine.  I assume with almost 20k credits by then, I will be able to afford it.  Then I'll see if the Pirates want to make peace or keep getting taken over.  I woudldn't mind expanding my water perimeter at their expense off my home shores.

The Believers, on the other hand, I'm having more fun strangling them.   I suspect the base isn't going to disappear entirely though.  Maybe it will if I bomb it?  Or does it have to be a naval or land unit that finishes it off, assuming it's dropped to size 1?

I'm building a horde of Drop Formers.  Maybe that's all I'll build from now on!  Until I'm totally sick of it.  Might have one really long "last turn".  It might be a more Planet friendly way of raising land, and it's definitely more precise, even if it takes longer.  Yitzi said that Tectonic Missiles actually count same as dropping a nuke as far as Planet getting pissed off.  Well we'll see, as I've built 7 and they're heading out to sea now.   It'll be some time before they're in range of a target, and Drop Formers definitely have the deployment advantage that way.

Maybe I could be really annoying and plant fungus all over people I don't like with them, once they're done with more important stuff.  They can try to attack them and will probably be destroyed trying.

I'm also making a fair number of Drop Probe Teams if I decide I want to screw with anyone that way.  I loaded my old rover based Probe Teams onto my Missile Submarine as well, seeing as how it has a Singularity engine and can hold 16 units.  The damage I can do...

[bvanevery]

Meergard is mine.  I raised the land in 1 turn.  Svensgaard's nuclear inventory is mine, and I've got an Artifact in that city now too.  That sounds like an awfully tempting target for missiles, so I took 2 precautions.  One is I disbanded an old transport and built a Flechette Defense System immediately.  I hope I don't get missiled before that completes.  The other is I got Svensgaard to sign a Truce.  We'll see if he sticks to it.  I actually offered him credits if he would sign a Treaty, but he's Seething and wouldn't budge.

It seems that taking a base is the key to getting someone's attention, so I've got more bases to take.  I'm actually ok with people only signing Truces.  I can continue to starve people to death at sea under a Truce.  Although, I can't kill off their last few units.  Small wrinkle that.  Well, maybe I'll save the Believers for the last op.

I've dropped a lot of probe teams and formers on the remaining pods.  Some of them sprung mindworms, so next turn we'll see what holds up in the face of those.  I didn't get any more Artifacts.

I'm getting a tech every turn, even with a 10% research budget.  Oh well.

It occurs to me: did anyone make any Secret Projects other than myself?  Checking.  Huh, the Caretakers made The Human Genome Project and The Empath Guild.  Well I'll just have to buy them out or invade them or something.  I've designed Drop Graviton Shock Troops, which is the largest "no additional cost" gun you can get with drop pods, non-lethal methods, and time stasis armor.  My version of a pea shooter.     I just wanted a garrison unit to replace the pathetic fission units in my newly captured base, but they'll also work for destroying things if need be.
 
I had to disband some old units to make room in my unit designs for new ones.  It's weird having that kind of limitation in a game.  I guess SMAC was made a long time ago, when having only 8 bytes for a unit instead of 16 bytes was a big deal.  Anyways my impact infantry and artillery are no more.  I still have an impact rover out and about, that I'm about to kill an interloping Alien colony pod with.  Otherwise I'd disband that too.  It's actually hard to find cities to disband them in though, where I'll actually speed the production of something.  Most stuff only takes me 1 turn to make nowadays in most places.

[bvanevery]

Some formers died from the mindworms.  Oddly, a probe team lived.

Cha Dawn came to talk to me with a probe team, after I linked to one of her islands.  She signed a Truce.  Then she destroyed her probe team on my former.  Sorry guys, you have to research harder if you don't want The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm to work!

I'm finally going to release some Tectonic Missiles.  The goal is to create a land bridge between the Usurpers and the Caretakers.  Unfortunately the bridge is likely to be rather long and runs through Pirate waters.  As I now have a Truce with the Pirates, I'm a little uncertain whether I can detonate Tectonic Missiles over them.  Guess we'll see soon enough.

Looks like in a moment, I'm going to seriously improve the quality of the ocean around Safe Haven!  You'd better thank me, Svensgaard.

Or not.  Detonating the missile will break my Truce with the Pirates.  I will have to be more delicate with my Drop Formers.

For my next trick, I shall detonate a missile in such a way as to give Marr strategic control of a narrows.  Nice bit 'o' work, eh?

Damn, I'm just not seeing any way to make a bridge through Pirate territory to the Caretakers.  Too much claimed ocean in the way.  How am I going to get them fighting?  Would I really need to make a superbelt through open ocean?  I can do it, I have the industrial output to make enough Tectnoic Missiles, but I wonder if there are any ecological consequences.  I guess I'll see after this turn whether Planet is pissed at me for firing missiles.  I think I'm out of range of anything I'd like to do this turn, and I can only post 5 attachments anyways, so I'll save further launches and illustrations for next turn.

I'll figure out where to drop my Formers to make this happen.

I've started to disband the really old 1-movement Formers.  I may need the unit slots for something else, and it's boring to push them around anymore.  They planted a few trees here and there, which might grow into mighty forests someday.  But I don't really need them to.  I've got 2 bases that pollute, otherwise I'm running a clean civilization.  Hopefully fungal pops will eventually clean up those bases.