actions for a captured fungal tower

[bvanevery]

Every once in awhile, you might capture a fungal tower.  Next year, it's going to revert to a wild life form.  You do have 1 turn though, where it's thoroughly yours.  I'm not sure that buys you anything, but perhaps one of you will be motivated to find out!  I'm in the middle of an After Action Report, where this situation came up.

You can't take an action with the tower, if it's just sitting out in the open as an Independent unit.  However, I used a Singularity Fungal Missile to lay fungus around one of my own cities, deliberately.  I'm at the end of the game and fungus is actually the most valuable terrain.  I had a lot of hardscrabble rock, so this was a good idea.  This happened to put the missile created fungal tower, within my territory and owned by my city.  Generating fungal towers within your own territory, is quite easily repeatable.  And if you made enough of 'em, perhaps capturing one consistently, wouldn't be so hard?

When you have a captured fungal tower that's Homed to one of your cities, you can get a right click context menu for it, in the SUPPORT window of your home base!  Here's the elaboration of what happened.  Feel free to figure out what could happen.

Details the use of fungus for Good

the use of fungus for Good

We've had a Fungal Singularity Missile sitting around unused for a long time.  I think I made a very cheap reactor upgrade at one point.  I actually now have a use for it.  We're in an era where arguably, fungus is actually the best terrain.  I honestly can't ever overcome my Earthly green trees bias, so I do plant trees.  They do look better on the map.

Part of the reason for keeping a missile design around, is so the game doesn't forget your design.   It happens when the game runs out of design slots, as it will just recycle the ones for units that are not in use.  This is particularly annoying in the case of a nuke, which takes a long time to complete a prototype.  It's not so bad in the case of a Tectonic missile, which has happened. I was working on a new Tectonic missile at my Skunkworks "just in case", but now Inertial Damping armor is available.  I might as well prototype the capability, just to have it ready.

Details it looks like suicide

it looks like suicide

Where I once had hardscrabble dry flatlands, now I've instantly got 6 squares of beneficial fungus!  Of course big nasty mindworms and a small fungal tower are sitting on top of them.  But when I bought this base from Morgan, I inherited 3 tiny mindworm larvae.  That was the only garrison.  And then I cheekily dropped in my surplus of Fission Drop Trance 3-Res Garrisons, because I had them, and not much else frankly.  Not good enough to resist a conventional attack, but totally excellent against mindworms.  Even if every single one of my larvae dies, I seriously doubt the mindworms can harm me.  I mean, I am the master of both the Neural Amplifier and the Dream Twister.

Details a capture!

a capture!

Even better, I finally get something for all this +2 PLANET I've had since forever.  Unfortunately a captured fungal tower will turn right back into an indigenous enemy next year.  I don't think it's possible to move it into a land transport, aka a "truck", but I don't remember actually trying.  This doesn't come up all that often.  It might also be a source of weird "fungal simultaneous existence" bugs on the map, so I'm gonna try to disband this thing in a minute here.  First I kill or capture other stuff though.

Details just made me bigger

just made me bigger

Not a single loss.  Hardly a scratch on my worms.  In fact, this is a recruitment strategy!  I can guarantee the position of mindworms within a small area, that I know I can either capture or kill.  It farms me either recruits, or a small amount of money if unsuccessful.  With the missile range increases in my mod, I could keep walking a front of this stuff for quite some distance from my home territory.  I bet anything captured would also be Independent, if I was operating far enough away from my territory.  I've never thought of such tactics before.  I think I will make another missile, to preserve my capability!

Details there's no place like home

there's no place like home

Um, I can't get the captured fungal tower active in order to disband it.  Right clicking on it doesn't do anything.  However, it did Home itself to Xi Sector when it appeared.  I can get a right click menu in the unit support window!

Details safety first

safety first

Although it is tempting to discover what the other menu options might do to an immobile shouldn't-be-mine unit, this has been a long After Action Report.  I've already had to fire up the Scenario Editor once to fix a problem, and I don't really want to tempt fate.  However I will post about this exotic experience elsewhere in the forum, to encourage others to find out what's up.

Details what's a biological overload

what's a biological overload

Tempting as it might be to see this thing explode in a shower of spores, I'd like my own units, in and around the tower, to stay intact.  Again, something to explore some other time.  In case anyone wants to explore this now, I'm attaching a saved game.

Oh shoot.  I am big dummy!  Getting all excited typing this up, I hit Confirmed.  Of course now there's no point in the save, because there's no fungal tower.  Sorry!