are Monoliths a huge psi defense liability?

[bvanevery]

In my current AAR I was standing on a Monolith in rocky terrain.  I tried to enter some fungus and stirred up a mindworm larva.  This is early in the game so they cannot be expected to be terribly strong.  I attacked it, and as the Believers should be getting a 25% attack bonus.  It killed me and was left pretty wounded, deep into the red.  I brought up a 2nd scout to the same position, figuring I'd take a trivial hit and then heal on the Monolith.  It killed me.

A fungal stalk was 2 squares away from my position, and 3 squares away from the mindworm's position.  Does that have anything to do with it?

The mindworm healed on the Monolith, leveling up.  Then it attacked one of my bases.  It didn't do much harm to my scout there, I think 20% wounded.  I imagine the base provided some defensive advantage, but this sure went differently than out in the field.

Is there some kind of mindworm offense advantage, or Monolith defense penalty, going on here?  Or did I just get really bad luck?

[bvanevery]

Oops, I started writing the next installment of my AAR in this thread.  Too many open tabs.

[Geo]

Is there some kind of mindworm offense advantage, or Monolith defense penalty, going on here?  Or did I just get really bad luck?

Yes, native life on land has a 3-to-2 attack advantage over normal units.

[bvanevery]

No no no over and above usual advantages.  Nearly dead larvae do not kill full strength units at the beginning of the game.

[Geo]

IIRC, the fungus gives combat benefits to native life as well.

[bvanevery]

I think I've been attacked from fungus enough times not to be totally convinced that's the reason.  Yes, full strength larvae do have a fairly tough attack.  But low strength mindworms typically don't.  Maybe I haven't paid much attention to whether low strength mindworms were standing around on fungus or not when they attacked.  I will try to pay attention to that in the future and see if there's a pattern.

[Kirov]

1) Native life gets +50% bonus when the victim is in fungus (ie. the attacked tile).

2) For the first 15 turns, native life fights at 50% penalty.

3) The fungal tower has nothing to do with the combat odds of nearby worms, although it defends with +50 bonus (yeah you knew that bit).

[bvanevery]

Ah so it's 15 turns.  I knew it was "the beginning" but didn't know how long I was "fairly safe".

[Buster's Uncle]

You surely saw my post noting that empty pop-one bases are immune to disappearing in mindworm attacks until turn 11...

[bvanevery]

Actually I missed that.  But frankly that's not very long.  Worth knowing though, because I've played as though the bases can die.  Actually they can still die... from another faction.

[Kirov]

You surely saw my post noting that empty pop-one bases are immune to disappearing in mindworm attacks until turn 11...

Interesting, I didn't know. So you have seen mind worms just sort of hanging around your empty bases? I recall losing more than base this way. Then again, turn 11 comes very early, so I don't remember when this happened.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I like releasing mindworms into the wild next to a base that's in my way.  Using the timewarp cheat, I've had in excess of 50 worms next to an empty pop one base fail to do the job on turn nine.  They do go in, but it only wipes out progress on what's building, not the base.

See here for more: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=19506.0

[bvanevery]

Only?  Well that is hardly a slam dunk for leaving bases unguarded.  I'll stick to my traditional scout garrisoning ways.